I think it’s more like that they get to see the story that was supposed to have been, with all the connecting fibers, and we see the story only after it’s been processed through game development, time constraints, and the cutting room.
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And sometimes, they see where it’s all supposed to lead, and they assume it points there more clearly than it does.
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I really feel like they could benefit from a set of outside eyes to double-check on their work, because I do think they suffer from something akin to this. Or, knowing where things are supposed to go, they calculate that the story payoffs are sometimes worth a few inconsistencies in the short term… lacking the perspective of players who have to live with these inconsistencies for sometimes quite a long time before they see said “payoff”.
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No negativity in the dojo!
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BFA’s story would’ve been infinitely more palatable had they gone this route. N’Zoth manipulatin’ and distortin’ people’s perceptions and memories to drive the war would’ve been WAY more interestin’. Would’ve been kind of fun tryin’ to guess who N’Zoth manipulated next; guessin’ whether or not the battle was a legit Red vs Blue, or if it was Red or Blue vs Purple.
Imagine if the expansion opened with N’Zoth whisperin’ to Anduin, convince him to take Lordaeron. Then he starts whisperin’ to Sylvanas and tells her that Orgrimmar is next. Burn the tree.
Nah, instead we got MOP 2.0. Zzzzzzzzz.
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Did you do the loyalist quests she didn’t have the people
Blizzard wanting you to wait and see isn’t evidence they let it leak on day one of blizzcon that the alliance attacked lorderan in retaliation the only other thing that could have happened was a false flag but literally anyone with a brain knew Sylvanas was gonna trick the horde when her pages where show knew in bts about needing to burn stormwind
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Blizzcon 2017? First, I don’t remember that–I just remember them saying, “You have to ask yourselves, why would the Horde burn Teldrassil?” And second, even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean there were no rewrites. It just means that they made at least one decision on the story before November 2017.
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cause it was in a interview They didnt say the horde did it but that it did 100% happen first, this was literally hours after they announced bfa
The worst thing you could say about WoD’s story was that there wasn’t much of one, given all the cut content and how unfinished the things that were there felt. But at least it didn’t feel awful to experience and actively make people angry.
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funny you mention wod as that story had rewrites that we all knew about, funny that the actual rewrites we know about like most of wod and replacing the qullboar with horde
In the novels the Rogues never reached Astranaar, rather in Elegy the Night Elves planted the bodies in Astranaar themselves to lull the Horde into a trap. Delaryn made reference to this when the Alliance player arrives in Astranaar:
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More like The Pre-patch stuff overshadowed the rest of the X-pac. The fact it was left unresolved meant it stayed in the fore front of everyone’s mind.
There is a reason Azshara and N’Zoth were “tentacle distractions” for the Alliance. Sylvanas was the big bad of the X-pac and she was a no show. Look back at stuff from before 8.1, 8.2, 8.25, and 8.3 and Sylvanas and resolving Teldrassil were the big issues. Not Azshara and N’Zoth.
If anything a lot of people wanted Azshara and N’Zoth saved for a different x-pac that they could be the focus of.
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I wouldn’t have wanted this either, honestly. It would have been better, but I wouldn’t have wanted this.
I guess I’m Alliance main these days (technically longer than I was Horde main but i play a lot less now) but I’m not one of the Alliance looking for a good reason to kick someone’s teeth in. I like being boringly good. It’s a nice diversion from a real world where most of the causes I join are equally boringly good but fail.
I suppose it doesn’t hurt for me that I just don’t care about night elves at all. Teldrassil did nothing to me because Blizzard killed all my interest in Night Elves from classic to cata as they kept relying on night elves for tropes that fit high elves instead.
Got a link? I’m not saying I doubt you–I just like to have all my sources nailed down, and I don’t really remember what was said when.
Like … druidism? 
If you just mean being old and wise, I don’t think those things are inappropriate for Night Elves. They just should have realized that the savagery was a large part of the appeal to a lot of players and made more of an effort to keep that in.
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I first really noticed it in Silithus, with the male non-druid night elf generals that seemed out of place and the frivolous brain washed night elf wife. But it was always there, like the female night elves randomly bouncing on their heels like a school girl for an idle. As a one-off bit of levity? Cute. But it was really just part of a long pattern where female night elves not only didn’t come off as the military leaders of a wise, old society, they felt like a stereotype of a generic elf. Male night elves managed to retain their dignity more consistently but it is still a problem for them.
Despite being the race most distant from Stormwind socially, their flavor NPCs frequently ping as the least likely to make a significant clash with the plans of the other Alliance characters in a given quest hub.
I don’t object to seeing their culture have layers, so savage isn’t really the word I’d choose here. The highborne were not an inherently bad addition. It’s more like they don’t feel coherent.
The MoP high king scenario which mentally always feels Cata to me was the crowning jewel where they decided to flip Varian from roid man because that was unpopular to make him wise decision man, presaging a similar weird decision in how they decided to make Jaina suddenly and conveniently flip. (Her changing I never objected to; the manner and moment, however, was bad. Anyway, Elves.) The one moment Night Elves could have really shined through their leader to wrap their conflicting parts together and instead they portray Tyrande as an impatient child, not a strong, decisive, experienced commander.
That was the moment when they finally completely lost me on night elves.
Teldrassil burning? I feel bad for the players that love night elves, but they were already dead for me.
Oh yeah, the treatment of Fandral didn’t help. I’d hate the guy IRL and in game I’d never want him to be like, the supreme leader, but he had depth if you ever did his few quests and he felt old and arrogant but well intentioned. That’s less elf trope confusion and more “he’s not a purple human that loves Varian, get him” though
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`https://www.wowhead.com/news=275594/speculation-on-the-burning-of-teldrassil-in-battle-for-azeroth
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I honestly expect a future Chronicle Volume to be used to help connect the plots. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they give N’Zoth more of an influence over the faction war as an attempt to make the story flow better.
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tbh bfas plot is worse than tbcs plot. that is tbcs plot pre-chronicles/illidan book.
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But this would make the Alliance something other than the Unquestionably Moral Player-Insert Faction.
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