I loved the idea that my Forsaken is not exactly the homicidal type and has nothing but hope for the future of the Forsaken believing they deserve and can forge themselves a new future.
But then Sylvanas turned out to be evil all along because why not… and then they put players in the boring ultimatum of “DUHHH U PRO CHEMICAL WARFARE BANSHEE WIFE OR YOU WANT BE AWWIANCE FWIEND”
And then all the sudden every Forsaken is evil now.
Same reason why i hated Night elves, the tough amazonian savages got turned into memes and Malfurion got Ysera killed. And now Tyrande is going to be given Jaina treatment and be angry for a month. Then go back to being a complete mystery morality wise.
But whatever i let this get to me i deserve my problem.
TLDR: Story man bad, and yes there is a disconnect
Really cool to hear the perspective of someone who started playing more recently, so thank you for sharing!
I totally agree that there is disconnect, and I think the culprit is bfa pushing faction loyalty rather than race fantasy. I understand it, but I believe it does a disservice to the complexities of who these vastly different peoples are and what they’re about. Commons values are important. Common enemies are important. But, for me, the differences are what allow immersion and connection to my character.
A big part of the problem is that the areas are locked in time and it isn’t always clear when they are locked. When our toons travel they time travel and understanding what’s going on, what life is like is hard. Further the stories that bring the lore forward are stories about specific characters and tend to do little or nothing to advance the racial lore. Silvermoon is still in TBC and without many Blood Elf communes outside of Silvermoon, there is no way of knowing what’s going on with them. Even when a few characters have lore progression, their race does not. The story has become about a few heroes and the rest of it has taken a back seat. It’s become impossible for the player to get a good grasp of the world and understand their place in it.
Further, Blizzard’s exposition is extremely poor. How would we know from playing the game who won the warfronts? It took me years to realize that the Emerald Nightmare and Satyr weren’t part of the Legion and I forgot that the Naga weren’t years ago, because they always show up with little to no explanation. The game hasn’t been a role playing game for some time, and not just because the standards have changed. Many players aren’t aware that they didn’t save the world. Veren and Illidan killed Sargeras, but the way we experienced it, we did that while they just covered the exit and popped in to help. We waited two years from when they dropped the burning tree bomb to know what it meant and before we could get there we were off on too many tangents. Blizzard needs to reevaluate thier philosophy for story telling and think about how it’s being recieved and how they mean for it to be understood.
A friend of mine has always wanted to play WoW, but she’s not really into violent video games and the commercials really make the game seem like a 100% serious, badass and violent environment.
Imagine her shock when I told her about some of the game’s quests and showed her that 90% of the game is nothing but memes and comedy.
There’s a HUGE disconnect between what the game wants us to think it is, and what it actually is.
Except…You know, the Horde has most recently been retconned to be more villainous in recent years only for Blizzard to backtrack when at least a loud enough if not large enough portion of the Horde base is like: “NO!”
Actually, why am I trying to correct? This never ends anywhere other than a flame war.
I can agree that the writing is terrible, I do not know enough of what the heck goes on there to say the writers themselves are terrible. All I know is that however things are operating from a writing standpoint is not working.
Wonderful feedback. Thank you so much for the responses.
I won’t say I think the writing is horrible. I does seem to be safely geared towards its general audience, sometimes a bit too safe. I would like to see it take more risks, but that’s me projecting my own desires onto someone else’s work.
Idk the writers seem to have this thing about giving horde some self identity crisis/discovery thing going on
I would happy if they just wrote alliance with a little more umf and less like reactionary NPCs. I mean both sides have quite bit to work with in regards to the books.
