I can’t say much about the 1st one, because it’s from another “iteration” of the game and had it’s purpose as a narrative tool at the time. To establish Varian’s character, Jaina’s one, it had peculiar interactions between Thrall and Sylvanas, etc.
But now we have this “Wrathgate was on her command” which makes me scratch my head, and I do not understand what is the purpose of it. I feel like that version of Sylvanas, who was both ruthless and did not think twice about picking the tools for action, yet had some sentiment toward the forsaken and the blood elves, and supposedly wanted to free all the scourge, was just ripped out of the story to use her image for promo materials, yet replace the personality with who knows WTH.
To me this alteration changes a lot. What is now the place of Thrall in all of that? Or the blood elves? How that corellates with her interaction with Varian then, and evolved into events with Varian in the later stories? To me there is no “flow”, it’s just now a random mesh of events.
Because I do not get how it even supposed to work I can’t say what it supposed to mean from the perspective of where the lore got to currently.
When it comes to the BfA one, also not avalable afaia, it’s… bizzare? Like, they’re acting against Sylvanas, but not ready for blight… after Wraithgate story being one of the most well known in the in-game history?
Siege of Ruins of Lordaeron… without Turalyon? How is this even?..
And the list goes on. I do not have much opinions about this one because to me it’s one of those events, that I can’t even say, why was it added to the game, other than someone thinking that it would be cool.
It does not accomplish anything. Shows the alliance as idiots. The horde evacuates most people. And there is Sadfang stuck with the alliance to absorb a doze of human potential.
It show the horde as willing to stand for Sylvanas after they learned about the tree™. What does it tell about those leader? Are they cowards? Are they spineless? Are they actually happy to seek benefits from such devastation?
They were used as narrative tools, but I do not understand what is there left out of their characters. Like Valtrois, iirc, compared the horde with the Legion. Valtrois! (unless I mistake her for someone else). This is the character who was part of missions. Among those missions there are also those that prevent civilians from evacuating to Azuremyst. This is the person who in blizz opinion should sound convinsing talking about the Legion comparisons?
TL;DR: something about “problems the players don’t have” and “solutions the players don’t want”.
And even more comical (in a bad way) was one of comments from Ion:
“And yes, we do find ourselves fettered by something that was a small piece of a campaign in an RTS game when no one ever imagined for a moment this was going to be taken and built into a world of this scale – and it gets in the way of telling the story we need to tell.” When that happens, things are “flexible.”
While many people just focus on the “flexible” part, and it is kind of bad, to me what stands out is this “the story we need to tell”. What does “need” even possibly mean? They pick what to tell and how. What is this running away from responsibility?
edit: actually I do know what it supposed to accomplish, and mentioned it a bit earlier. But it is overall a thing that blizz did and I have no idea who among the fans asked for it. How to ruin good things 101?
gl hf