Good news is that Undermine is changing completely after the Dwarven Earthen story.
Much better than DF and shadowlanda
I legit don’t get the venom for this story. The Alliance focus for the leveling stretch was annoying but that was the basic show for the dudes in the cheap seats.
For everyone paying attention you got great ish where your undeath actually mattered and after a questline a Sacred Flamer goes:
“You stood by me… side by side, against that monster.
I have been following the Church of the Sacred Flame since the moment I was born. Doctrine is hard to set aside.
But I see now that you are here to help. And as long as you use your powers for us, I will reach out a hand of friendship-- regardless of where that power came from.
I will tell the others that you can be trusted. Thank you for your help*”
To say nothing of the utterly heartbreaking questline with Earthern suffering from robo Alzheimer’s that’s going to hit like a truck if you’ve dealt with a situation like that.
Or just amusing stuff like Mr. Sunflower the Nerubian therapist who offers group therapy and crawls up to Khaz Algar’s markets to look for gold star stickers.
The lore, side story stuff has been meaty and well written.
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The lore, side story stuff has been meaty and well written.
Think this is the main issue. People are not going out their way to do side quests with story things or staying a while and listen to the NPC chat to flesh out their characters.
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I suspect people are hungry for the story to do something specific (faction races) and frustrated that it went off in another direction again. I’m hoping the heavy-handed foreshadowing of another Cataclysm level event will shake up the world enough that engaging with those themes (faction races) takes center stage for a bit.
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Blizzard: “Hey guys, have you heard about my friends the void elves and high elves?”
Also Blizzard: “Blood who?? Trolls???”
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look i can say atleast one of those things is good, but i’m not gunna say a story is good because i enjoyed one thing out of the entire experience
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I mean I’ll say the story is good because they presented me a living feeling world full of well realized cultures that are both actively interesting and emotionally fulfilling to interact with.
I’ve some complaints. I think I would’ve liked the Earthern more if they were more Dwarf-like and on the flipside the Arathi more if they leaned more puritanical and dogmatic. But on the whole they were fine and the Nerubians hit a sweet spot of being both completely alien and completely mundane.
I’m actually excited to see what they do with the Goblins who’ve been pretty much a joke race from the word go. That’ll be the real canary-in-the-coal-mine for seeing how Blizz handles writing for established races now that they’ve decided entire nations can have more than 1 - 3 personalities.
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Joke races are the best but the Goblins are the most real of all the races. They legit are the ones that kept the horde going for so long, the one who keeps trade routes open to the whole planet and found ways across dimensions with tech, before the gnomes.
If anyone asks, which race seems the most realistic from WoW, I automatically think Goblin. They’re just real life humans.
I didn’t particularly find any of the experience fulfilling, the nerubians were atleast interesting, but i didn’t care for the dwarves, i only like arathi as villains and would never have helped them if the plot didn’t demand, and anduins arc while realistic, i just don’t like anduin and probably never will. there just wasen’t enough. for me to give it more then like a 5/10
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Blizzard’s writing has never been good. It’s always been the Chuck E. Cheese pizza of high fantasy, but BFA and Shadowlands doubled down on the worst part of WoW’s writing - the fascist apologetics - and I had to become numb to the story to keep playing.
So I’ve not really paid attention to the story in TWW and I haven’t enjoyed the game this much in a while. That said I’ve still picked up a few tidbits here and there while questing and it’s safe to say it’s still very much the Chuck E. Cheese pizza of high fantasy. Interesting concepts wrapped in poor execution and shoehorned into a RvB dynamic.
You’re just a forsakan fanboi so your thoughts are irrelevant
Interesting you say that because this is one of the first few expansions when THAT isn’t happening. There is no red vs blue dynamic this time
You can rest knowing the goblins will soon own fealty to the high king anduin, alleria and the alliance heroes when we save the goblins from themselves come Undermine patch 
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Except for the promo cinematic which frames RvB as a central struggle to overcome. I’m sure that was a mistake though and won’t come up during the expansion at all.
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Was there because I only saw the cinematic and the promo for that was just mostly the main characters hearing the world soul.
Being a fan of the Forsaken demonstrates exceptionally good taste.
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Mate, if they pay me enough and let me build a better goldshire into an actual Las Vegas, I’m game.
I’m a goblin, faction politics bore me.
Only good taste when you can stand up straight! Fix your backs!
This is certainly one piece I really appreciated for obvious reasons. To expand on it however, Forsaken typically fall into this weird slot where their heroics aren’t particularly heroic in the traditional sense. Aesthetically, they’re smaller, seemingly frail, dark, scheming, in the background, and are a general anomaly to all traditional ideas of heroics, almost antithetical. So if you’re trying to get into a story as your character, as your Forsaken specifically, it can be difficult to care. You feel almost forgotten about or simply not cared about, and definitely belong back in the lab or ghastly forests of Tirisfal.
The only times Forsaken do get to do something heroic is when they’re front and center and you’re working for the Forsaken or a story directly tied to them. We only really see this now in the leveling experience for Cata (but not really), Howling Fjord and a bit of Dragonblight, and Stormheim.
So the simple acknowledgement that you’re odd, weird, unexpected, out of the norm, but still doing all the heroics that no one would bat an eye at if you had a bit more skin and swung a holy hammer is appreciated. Even Death Knights get more of that heroic feeling by virtue of being more ‘put together’ and are front and center. Their whole mantra of ‘we do what the living wont’ feels heroic. The Forsaken never really had that.
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