I could imagine it getting a arathi highlands style new coat of paint update. I hope they do. They deserve it after so long.
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My guess is that morons bought into the whole “encrypting the Lordaeron quests made it better!” and they’ve seemingly doubled down on it ever since.
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Because it does? Encryption has allowed WoW story to not be spoiled long before they were suppose to be on live. So now everyone can experience certain story beats at the same time.
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I know Blizzard gets a lot of criticism, rightfully so, but this is just rude. There’s nothing stupid about keeping the questline a secret until players can play it as intended.
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On the other hand, encryption would’ve seen stuff like the 8.1 Darkshore death camps or the “make sure Alexstrasza keeps suffering” questline go live.
I just found it funny that reception to the Lordaeron questline cooled once people finally rubbed their two brain cells together to see it was mostly about making Calia fit in than it was the race itself.
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On its own no (in fact if anything I don’t think test builds should be public at all, seeing everything in out of context pieces months before it’s live is terrible for storytelling), but I think it’s also fair to say that Blizzard has made a lot of questionable at best quest decisions on PTR before that only got changed because of fan outcry. Like the Alexstrasza Grim Batol quest in the Chromie dailies.
I don’t think there’s anything in Gilneas that’s sensitive enough subject matter to be cause for concern though.
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I mean, that is how stories are suppose to be? You are not suppose to know if its good or bad until after you read/experience it.
And considering I am still on a Scott Pilgrim high, I do think making sure the audience does not know exactly how the story will unfold is always going to be the better option then spoiling your own twist and then workshoping it your audience.
The thing is, I distinctly remember having the opposite experience with MoP, where knowing ahead of time that Garrosh was the final boss let me appreciate the expansion more because I could distance myself from immersing in the faction war storyline aspect of it.
Given how much you disliked the Sylvanas face-turn + soul re-merging and “speaking over Arthas’s wisp” cutscenes, do you really feel the lack of datamining made them better for you?
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If you place ` at the front and end of a link, you can post it without having to chop it up like that. It’ll look like this, and be easier for people to copy/paste or open.
https://i.imgur.com/Dg6SB7R.jpg
That said, the image for those curious. Looks a bit low effort, but something is better than nothing, and it doesn’t clash that badly with other Gilnean architecture.
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The dock actually looks really nice.
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I think it’s a preexisting dock model, which is why it doesn’t look up to today’s model standards. But I think it’s better to actually match its surroundings than stick out by being higher res than everything else.
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Thanks for the tip!
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The conventional wisdom that reading narratives is all about surprise flies in the face of some studies I’ve seen about how we actually consume media as well as my personal experience. There are many reasons why familiar tropes are familiar, and one of them is that it can help us interpret what we experience as we experience it. There are benefits to both surprise and expectation and neither should be universally applied for all narratives.
I don’t have any strong opinion about whether Blizz should encrypt or not, but just for grounding that awful Alexstrasza Grim Batol quest I’m always going to be grateful for PTR previews.
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I’m really curious about something. I remembered in the Gilneas starting zone you have to go talk to Lorna, the Hayward Bros, and Grandma Wahl to evacuate. The Haywards say they are going to escape by sea cause their family have been sailing forever.
Shortly after this that entire area gets sunk into the sea from the Catacylsm…
Now earlier in the thread someone posted pictures of the brothers back in Gilneas at their shipyard. So I’m curious, is Blizzard going to put back the entire area that sunk into the sea? I don’t mind it if they sort of retcon this cause I thought Duskhaven and that whole area was cool.
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I forget, why were parts of Gilneas sinking? It was timed with Cata but the writing seemed to imply it was Forsaken-caused.
Something something Deathwing rubbling the land, something something made it unstable and so it collapsed.
The Forsaken only used the cataclysm to their advantage, with Deathwing messing up the land the coral reefs I believe that protected Gilneas were basically destroyed allowing the Forsaken to attack by sea.
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I am curious how Night Elf Worgen would work. They should theoretically have completely different voice clips. Also, would you be able to be a Night Elf in the cataclysm starting zone? Although imagining a Night Elf speaking with the Gilnean voice would be funny. Or would they just use normal Night Elf voices and add the distortion that regular Worgen have.
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That’s a good point. I’m not sure how they would do that. Maybe add something in the code where if you pick the Night Elf Worgen option when you make a character you can only select Exile’s Reach? And yeah I assume they would probably give them the Night Elf voices but add the distortion for their worgen form.
I really like the ambiance and architectural style Gilneas has going for it. It’s much more palatable to me than the brightness of Stormwind with its colored roofs.
I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect modernized assets (foliage, textures, structures) to be implemented right from the start, but I do hope that’s in the pipeline.
For instance, the reclaiming Gilneas questline ending with NPC’s repopulating the zone, with construction zones, and scaffolding set up that is eventually revisited in the future and updated properly.
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I’m kind of hoping for this to happen in the next patch, and then Midnight giving us a full on revamp with updated models and such, maybe a bigger city.
But who knows maybe they will surprise us and next patch will give us a semi-revamp at least where Gilneas is a fully functioning city with vendors and stores the way Stormwind has, only with Gilnean architecture obviously.
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