I get what people mean when they say wow isn’t as ‘metal’–it’s more a vibe, not even style itself. The feeling you’d get of seeing a twelve foot tall mountain of rippled muscle and fur that is a tauren stand against an immense, evil foe, for example.
Cosmetic elements like gender/location/characters aren’t as important as the presentation and thematic. (Seriously, you can replace the male tauren likely envisioned in my first example with say, Mayla Highmountain and all it’d take are some lighting adjustments to make it work.) Fiercer dialogue delivery, or at least more confidently and less serene. Greater physicality in cutscenes perhaps, and dialogue that’s perhaps just a little bit eloquent but with a strong dramatic undercurrent. Like Saurfang and Garrosh’s dialogue in Warsong Hold versus some of the ‘Stay awhile and listen’ featurettes in Shadowlands, to give another example.
I can say that my impression of TWW, thinking about it in this context, is that TWW is significantly closer to ‘metal’ than Dragonflight was. I’m enjoying the Earthen’s rigidity, and the first inklings of a stalwart, even possibly narrowminded and unforgiving Arathi Empire somewhere far off. Really, as long as we keep with the current tone and don’t have anymore cutscenes where the dialogue is delivered at a glacial cadence and has heroes and villains speaking to each other like that one CGI children’s show with the pajamas I’ll be happy.
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I blame all the people who say those things then demonstrate by their actions that they do hate everyone who isn’t just like them.
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That is fantastically put tbh. DF was so…dreadfully childish it wasn’t even funny. I was rolling my eyes constantly. Felt like I was watching a more fantasy focused Bluey, but Bluey still handles more mature themes better than DF did not going to lie. It is indeed all about the tone and delivery and the bits of information/aesthetic adjustments.
I agree its a step in the right direction I judt midd my Illidans and Varians but it is not about gender for sure that anime of Alleria they put out was metal for sure.
I do miss characters with more backbone. All we get are riffs on Sylvanas now, Can’t wait until we’re done with the Windrunners! At least bring back Tyrande, she was even more tiring, but at least she isn’t a windrunner!
Seriously! Give us Liadrin again, no more WINDRUNNERS! They’ve bookended so many characters just to bring them back and wiggle them around until all the bounce is away from them.
Woah, I must still be sick, I sorta lost the point here.
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Sorry if you feel you have to put me in that camp. I assure its never been my stance.
I think blizzard has taken a step back from the glorified violence it used to have. They still do violence, but it’s covered with “good”, and almost censored.
It is a game about conflicts, there should be a healthy amount of violence.
Do we still have quests to mount centaur heads on pikes?
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Blizzard has definitely changed. Maybe in a way that has made it softer. I think a good example of that that isn’t just thinly veiled racism, sexism, or other ism is that they made a point of showing how the Neurbians are People. Not just mindless pure evil monsters, but people. With jobs, with worries, with hopes, dreams, goals. They went through the effort of having Anduin show the player (and Alleria) that this isnt just a mindless evil horde to be killed, but thinking, living people, with complex feelings and beliefs. Many of which are inhuman and not normal. But ultimately; they are individuals just as much as any PC race.
The game presents them as a people who can be turned from the darkness, and who can become allies to us. Who we can turn against their evil queen who serves the Harbinger, instead of just genociding.
In older WoW the neurbians would have maybe had one or two Good Ones you could interact with, and the rest would be portrayed as unsympathetic murderers with undying loyalty to their evil overlord, who is a literal baby eating monster. There would have been no nuance, no chance of turning them good, no alliances or friendships to be had. There would be no quest where you track down a missing husband and then watch him get black widow’d by his wife due to her Traditional Values, then go take revenge for him.
Older WoW would have just made the city of threads the dungeon (or a raid). Not somewhere to explore, quest in, buy stuff, etc.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe to some. I like it, personally.
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I don’t think any of that should go away that is jood story telling. I just think there is room to have harder edge characters and storylines as well.
Yes. Wow is overdosing on estrogen at the moment.
Well the game always had pink haired pig-tail gnomes since the beginning so not sure how ‘metal’ it can be.
Thank you for not being a hateful or bigoted person, it’s a stereotype but I would say yeah, your average ‘straight white male in its 30s’ likes when things are brutal and edgy - but I don’t mind the tone I just want the game to work and be fun. I’m gay, but I’m also a white man- so I guess I like things half-metal. =p
I would like real somber darkness back, like old school darkshire maybe- and less campy troll-you stuff, or things that feel purposefully designed to piss off the player and nothing more. I didn’t mind Shadowlands story at all, it was ‘metal’ enough for me- but the devs had this dumb idea that both the story and gameplay all had to be ‘edgy’ - and people quit in droves because of it. So I would say yeah it should be a bit more metal, but overly punishing gameplay mechanics in casual content isn’t it.
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I think they tried with Alleria, a bit. She was very much hard edge ‘i will do anything to kill my enemy’ type. Its just that this is presented as Wrong in current writing, that she was playing into the enemy’s hands, pushing away her allies and potential allies, all for the sake of single minded violence. She literally says she doesn’t care how many have to die if she kills Xalatath, which is exactly how old WoW writing was.
She’s very reminiscent of MoP/WoD/BFA Jaina, of Cata/MoP Garrosh, of BC/Wrath Varian, of every single time Genn Graymane or Sylvanas showed up through the entirety of the game.
Its just that she gets called out on it and goes ‘yeah i screwed up’ within 10 hours of gameplay, instead of over the course of literal years of bad decisions. Its framed by the game as bad stupid decisions immediately, rather than only in hindsight.
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The thing with characters who solve all or even most of their problems with violence is they really only have 2 roles in a story:
- Using violence to solve their problems
- Learning that violence doesn’t solve all problems
This is basically what Alleria is right now in the story, but with stuff like Azj-Kahet wanting to pull the “our enemies aren’t actually mindless monsters” thing then that rules out the “let’s use violence to solve all our problems” option above.
So instead we get her use of violence playing into the real enemy’s hands, and she’s going to have to learn that violence doesn’t solve all problems.
Though I do think the whole Anduin trying to mimic what his dad did moment should have been saved for something more epic. Even if it still didn’t return the Light to him, it could have been his moment to learn the reverse.
It could have been his moment to be hardened a bit and tie it all back into what Varian was saying to him in the Legion trailer: “Peace is the noblest aspiration, but to preserve it you must be willing to fight”.
This is also probably what BfA should have done with Anduin but that ship has long since sailed, burned, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Death Metal Knight called me and asked meto tell you “STOP TRYING TO TAKE MY THING!”
Yeah but they just stole that whole thing from the OG edgelord: Undead Rogues.
The game would be a lot better and more fun if it was M-rated and we had a WARchief like Geya’rah or Cromush
I’m an edgelord and I’m not embarrassed about it, I want the game to be more edgy.
