I’d like to use the game Fable 2 as an example, where story choices significantly impact both the game world and the player’s hero.
Recently, while revisiting Siege of Orgrimmar, I found it frustrating that players were forced to oppose Garrosh and his plans.
This experience made me then wonder: could we introduce alternate story paths that allow players to choose their own narrative instead of being confined to a single storyline?
Ngl. I miss the customization of fable 2. Good and evil, pure and corrupt. Pure and evil made you looking like a vampire, good and corrupt made you have sores and pimples on your face. lol.
I know this ain’t much but death knights get a couple options like this where npc will act differently toward you. I think for raids it would probably take a weird turn if they tried, like they did in BoD kinda. Forcing you to play Alliance as Horde in BoD probably was one of the experience I hated the most.
I agree the Death Knight example is excellent. Incorporating more experiences like this enhances the game’s depth, in my opinion.
In terms of BoD, what about that gave you an unpleasant experience?
EDIT: I misread what you wrote. I would agree that being forced to place as Alliance was a terrible experience and is also how I felt going through SoO in MoP.
This would be great, but…I really don’t see it happening here. It would be nice if our choices actually had an impact on the world.
In a MMO?
No we could not.
At most a few text lines from random NPCs.
Because this part. What would that mean for the player?
You dont get to participate in the raid. Or any raid?
There is a second set of dungeons/raids created for those people?
Neither one of those is feasible.
To be fair, it’s totally feasible.
You could make one Raid, with the same set of his fight mechanics, but change the 3D models and cutscenes you get depending on which choice you made.
For example, let’s imagine if they had done that in SoO:
If you play as a revolutionary, you fight against Garrosh’s forces. You invade Orgrimmar up until you are very close to Garrosh. Then in the penultimate boss, you get flanked by a group of Garrosh loyalists that followed you. After the fight, everybody witnesses that Garrosh is going full Old God, and then we all join forces to stop Y’shaarj Garrosh, which isn’t good for anybody.
But if you play as a loyalist, you fight the revolutionary forces that just invaded Orgrimmar to take back the city, and right before Garrosh, you catch up with the revolutionary vanguard. Then you fight them. After that fight, you witness Garrosh drinking Old God juice and decide that you need to save Garrosh from the corruptive influence of Y’shaarj by beating the Old God out of him.
Ultimately it’s just one Raid mechanically telling just one story, but you get different PoVs depending on your choices.
But the fights won’t make sense.
You keep winning the raid. But falling back because you are losing.
Who are you even fighting
It just wouldn’t work in WoW. Not anywhere near the extent of Fable, at least.
They would, you just have to get creative.
Like, if you are a loyalist, instead of fighting an Orc on a Protodragon, you fight a Blood Elf on a Firehawk.
At the end, they give you a good reason to fight Garrosh.
Ultimately if you pick Garrosh, you are picking the losing side. You will win the battles but lose the War.
But freedom to choose the losing side is better than nothing.
Ok. So you defeat the elf on the dragon hawk.
An unnamed elf of course. They can’t be fighting named people like the canon run.
So you win a beach front fight to push the attackers off. Next fight? You retreat to the gates. Despite the fact you just had a victory that would have completely ended the entire attack.
If you want me to give you a full rundown of the hypothetical raid, I can’t right now. I’m at work.
But the idea is you go through the same path, fight bosses with the same mechanics and just change the dialog and 3d models.
It’s perfectly doable.
Well we had once and many ppl whined about it all over social media outlets around wow . Something about them not able to control their feelings when making a choice , the usual .
So who knows Blizzard might actually do it again
First, had to hop in and say I LOVED Fable 2. I spent many a night staying up too late playing that game. It was so much better than 1, and ended up being better than 3 as well, in my opinion.
As for wow, sadly I don’t think we’ll ever get a real “choice”. I thought they were going to try that when we had those questlines with Sylvanas and Saurfang, but nope, just took us down the rails through the same quest no matter what we did.
I’ve often imagined the ability to break off from Alliance and Horde with certain characters, into other smaller factions, ones that when we come across them have different races and seem to be getting along just fine, but also ones that aren’t good people and hide in the shadows. I am ok with it overall, but sometimes I don’t agree with whatever my leaders are doing depending on which characters I’m playing and having choices would be nice. /shrug
It’s doable. Sure.
But it will not make sense.
I can not imagine any hypothetical where the story is “you win every pivotal battle in a raid but you retreat constantly”
It makes the story silly and worthless.
I loved 1 but would agree, 2 was where it was at. The first two were great games if you ask me.
So what happens when you’re in a 10 or 25 or 40 man raid and not everyone makes the same choice?
Sure they could change the character models along the way depending on your faction and ultimately you end up attacking the bad Garrosh no matter what side you’re on, because I think most everyone can agree that Garrosh = Old God = bad. (But then again, what if there are people that want to support that?)
But for what the OP is asking - your choices make a lasting impact on your character and/or the world… not sure that’s feasible from the standpoint of not everyone in your group or raid may pick the same choice. So you can’t have any REAL impact on the world, since we all share it.
never played any fable games myself.
would be a lot of work to implement in wow.
I don’t know where you got this “retreat constantly” idea.
You don’t.
The Revolutionaries go first, take Orgrimmar, then the Loyalists go, start retaking Orgrimmar.
Then at the end the circumstances converge and both sides have to fight Garrosh for different reasons.
Then at the end the Revolutionaries win.
i think i’m an old god irl lol