As you may have known both Keeshan and Harrison Jones, Characters who have started off as one offs for Pop culture have now become part of the game lore as recurring characters. While Harrison Jones was not all well received, Keeshan has become a bit more popular in recent times. I believe this is because they toned down the rambo references and made them more subtle.
This can be done in the Shadowlands as well for example we could find a piece of a shattered or very worn sinstone that implies in life the Countess was in fact Lady Dimitrescu.
A bad version of a pop culture reference in Shadowlads is to have a Necrolord that makes it obvious he is a parody of Reaper from Overwatch and have him act just like Reaper from Overwatch.
So in conclusion as long as long as the character is not defined by their pop culture reference I do not mind them being a recurring character.
In my opinion, references and memes are like spices. They can add flavor to content, but function poorly if they ARE the content. I think that’s why Westfall, Redridge and Uldum are generally received so poorly; the in-jokes are the main ingredient, they only become worse as the references age, and this problem doubles down when you remember these jokes were only fresh when the content was made, not when it was released.
Stuff like self-referential jokes to WoW content fare a little better because their jokes stay relevant for as long as the game itself does, which is why I think the “you work as a questgiver with your own ! over your head” moment in Hillsbrad is looked at a little more fondly. But I wouldn’t want to spend an entire zone clicking on a titan terminal controlling a construct in a Realm of Fighting Arts hologram either.
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This is actually part of why Cataclysm was so irritating to me. Coming out of an expansion that took itself seriously when it needed to, while not being afraid to poke fun once in a while, it was grating to see an expansion that couldn’t go ten seconds without making some kind of poop joke or movie reference. Cataclysm was a near-apocalypse story - droves of people had just died or lost their homes due to planetary upheaval. But the tone never matched the narrative, so it was difficult for me to get invested.
I think the part where I snapped was when I saw the last quest in Twilight Highlands - the LAST of the Cataclysm starting zones, and essentially the finale of the Cataclysm experience before the greater endgame - was a friggin’ Jonathan Coulton reference. I love JoCo, but I’d had more than enough at that point.
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Well it looks like you answered your question.
An acceptable amount is fine as long as it doesn’t distract or overwhelm the narrative - yet, what people find acceptable varies greatly. I suppose there are some hard core RP types who refuse to acknowledge the real world, and are opposed to almost any pop culture references.
My threshold is probably higher than most. Harris Pilton and Floyd Pinkus are just harmless little touches that make for a giggle. Keeshan and Harrison Jones are a larger part of the narrative, especially as Alliance. I don’t mind them, but they get a lot of negative commentary.
I sometimes have a slight chuckle at some of the stuff I see. Quest names and achievements and double entendres and pop culture references. But some others feel they detract from the setting.
Again, everyone has their different thresholds. I don’t mind them very much.
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Human Females still have a /joke that references Alias, a reference that was already dated in 2004.
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What about something like adding a pop culture refernce for an existing character for example you find part of a sinstone that implies the Countess was in life Lady Dimitrescu? Would that be too much?
Not for me. As I said, I probably have a more liberal attitude about it than most.
I am not super well versed in recent pop culture. I had to look up that “Lady D” you mentioned. The last Resident Evil I played was Resident Evil 3. So I didn’t know anything about her until now. But now that I read about her, I am still fine with it. The Shadowlands are an Afterlife for various realities and dimensions and worlds. So Shadowlands in particular is much more open to that situation.
The Linken quests are a mild example. I kind of like that he doesn’t know how he got there… like he might be some sort of “AU Link” that appeared in our universe somehow.
Wirt’s third leg in WC 3 is another example, though they are from the same company, so that may be viewed differently, idk. But it sort of links the Diablo and Warcraft universes.
I guess maybe I am a fan of cross overs.
Quest names or some random npcs sitting somwhere is fine if it’s not separate.
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I feel like this particular example is very different from the usual WoW references.
A reference to Lady D would be something like… having an extra-tall Venthyr sitting somewhere and she is named “Countess Dimitracy” or whatever. She can give quests with further easter eggs, but she is still kinda her own character that exists solely in WoW. And I am, personally, fine with that.
What you are suggesting, however, is having another franchise directly seep into WoW.
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We probably would’ve gotten one had RE8 come out last year
Countess has some light literary references as it stands
After they were WAAAY too heavy handed in cataclysm they calmed down on references a lot. Some of the BFA ones honestly amuse me. Like Bri’tani, who happens to sell Spears.
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I personally don’t really mind most of the the pop references in the game, not even those in Cataclysm, partly because I wasn’t aware of a few of them so not being able to notice them and identify them causes them to blend into the story very well. I never got the Rambo references with Keeshan so nothing seamed out of the ordinary with his questline.
A couple of them irked me a little because of how out of place they were (SMB and Link in Un’Goro) but since they were stand-alone appearances and not part of the overall story, they could be ignored.
On the other hand, I actually LIKED Harrison Jones and all the Indiana Jones references in Uldum. I felt they blend in really well to the over-all story because of how well they fit given the setting and I’m racking my brain as to how they could of done the story there WITHOUT such references… I mean, they pretty much wrote themselves.
Wouldn’t really work. As someone who was originally mortal, she’s actually a regular sized Venthyr, unlike the native Venthyr.
If they were going to introduce a Lady D character, it would likely be a new NPC.
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Fighting games do it all the time.
Depends…
For instance, one of my favorite things in the franchise is the Night Elf Warden, which was designed from the ground up to be a Judge Dredd reference. But they’ve obviously evolved into something that’s rather iconic to the Warcraft franchise.
On the other hand, yeah, some of Cataclysm’s references were kind of bad. I’m remembering in particular the CSI Miami ones in Westfall that seriously broke any immersion that the zone could have had in order to make that joke happen.
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I really enjoyed the Ardenweald play, it was fun to see references and the writers poke at themselves. It is good to know they are at least a bit self aware
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One thing I liked, but wouldn’t have noticed if someone hadn’t pointed out to me beforehand, is that the BFA section of the play vastly dips in quality compared to the Legion part. You go from having those magical illusions of raid bosses to low-effort props and masks instead.
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Honestly I’m upset that I have yet to find a NPC based on Christopher Lee in Revendreth. Given that he was a seasoned fencer and he played Dracula, he would fit right in 
Also I am upset that there is no Spyro easter egg in Ardenweald. Could have a purple version of those dragons in the zone sitting with a female Sylvar.
But honestly I prefer pop culture references when they are just little Easter Eggs. Whether that be NPC names, Achievement titles or even just a random quest that has no major impact of the zones story.
They went with a more well known (the most known) reference with a Bela Lugosi NPC.
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A series that’s very good at pop culture references imho is Fallout. In New Vegas for example there’s a funny bit where you’ll find a skeleton in an irradiated refrigerator in the middle of the Mojave desert. Check the corpse and he’s dressed like Indiana Jones.
It’s just a fun little joke about how that scene in Crystal Skull would’ve actually gone down. I’m positive plenty of players have walked by that joke having never noticed it.
Now compare that to WoW’s Indiana Jones reference. The first quest was cute. It’s far from blink and you’ll miss it but a quest chain that’s a parody of a famous movie scene could be fun. And as you couldn’t get far into Uldum content without outleveling it pre rework I thought that’s all it was.
Turns out though the whole zone is 50% extended Indiana Jones reference. The joke was already going on for a little too long as it was Blizz. This isn’t parody its creative bankruptcy.
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