Can we talk about the New Alliance Intro and how it just screams that Blizzard basically wants to make the Alliance the “Humans and friends” faction. It was very disappointing.
I feared this was coming because if you look at the Gilneas flag for the Heritage quest they completely changed it from the Gilneas logo to the Stormwind logo. It is obvious they just want Worgen to have no identity and just be furry Stormwind Humans. Now it seems like they are doing the same with the other races by making Stormwind the “capital” of the Alliance.
On one hand, I can’t say I didn’t know that Blizz wanted to focus all their efforts on a single city per faction.
On the other, I really hoped that they’d at least keep the veil up that this was still an Alliance of equals, and that in lore if not in gameplay, each city was equivalent.
I mean, every non-Elwynn human zone has its story based on “Stormwind can’t afford to send us troops so we have to deal with our major problems ourselves”, and yet that bit of gameplay-lore never gets mentioned in Stormwind itself - so why can’t “every expac is funneled through Stormwind” use that same in-lore lack of recognition to at least pretend the other Alliance subfactions can do good stuff, too?
I love the new customations coming in Shadowlands, but everything else I’ve heard about it is neutral at best and repellent at worst.
Historically speaking, if I could be so bold as to make a dangerous generalization, the casual wow audience is willing to put up with a lot as long as the little they get is something they have an ounce of care for. And that’s not knocking anyone, I was like that, it’s sort of the way people be.
It’s just crazy how long Blizzard gets by on “one step forward, two or more steps back”
Let’s be honest. WoW is an aged game and a lot of what people didn’t like in Legion and BfA is due less about Blizzard being incompetent and more about making the game manageable to a smaller team of individuals.
I’m not about to start screaming from the ramparts that WoW is right around the corner from being put into maintenance mode (That screed’s been around since Burning Crusade), but there’s very much a sense of pulling back the scale of the world. Especially now that BfA removed two capital cities from the narrative going forward.
this is probably the biggest part of it for me, cause the covenants are so out there and unrelated to azeroth that i have a hard time… giving a sh!t, you know?
the vampires dont have enough blood to drink! the proto-scourge are being mean to each other! the angels dont have enough people to lobotomize!
its like… okay? who cares? these are problems that are so beyond the scope of the world i play the game for that i just cant be interested in them. ardenweald is the only zone id care about but thats because the night elves are my favourite race and its a similar aesthetic, and everything ive seen of it so far is just… the loa. which is cool for troll players, but im not a troll player!
more to the point, the lack of info of whats going on with tyrande is annoying. its inevitable that blizzard is going to kill her off, but my concern is that its done in such a way that does justice to her character. hearing that her story continues from the “Sylvia isnt evil, actually.” dev team isnt reassuring.
but to be honest, id rather she die than become a spineless, neutral questgiver. if i still care about WoW at all ill come back to this post in a year and see how true this is.
It’s been that way since Catacylsm when they decided to make Varian High King. Before that the Alliance was a group of different city states essentially, as all the races united. But Stormwind wasn’t leading the Alliance.
Now Anduin is running things, which makes no sense, and they are forcing all the races into Stormwind. With what they have done with the Worgen, seeing the Draenei in Stormwind armor, and seeing the intro talk about Stormwind being the capital and the Stormwind army, not the Alliance army, it just feels like Blizzard has gone all in on making the Alliance the Human faction with other races thrown in.
They are just being assimilated into Stormwind Human culture and losing all their racial identities because Blizzard doesn’t want to write for other races.
If there is one solace for the factions not being dissolved, it’s that the Horde won’t be assimilated into being Humans. It’s bleeding over a little bit, especially with BFA, but they still have the safeguard.
I think a lot of the story / worldbuilding decisions stem from a burden of knowledge philosophy. We as veteran players have years of experience with this lore and world, those who have played WoW from the start or even earlier with the RTS games.
New players, however, don’t have that burden and from a casual POV don’t want it. A new player to WoW isn’t going to bat an eye at the shallowness of the Shadowlands Alliance intro, they won’t connect the dots of gaping plot issues in BFA, and won’t find the dilemmas of Shadowlands gameplay to be distant to the world they know. It’s an interesting dilemma between keeping new content relatable to a 15-year veteran and a first time player.
I’ll grant that this POV may be optimistic with regards to how much thought Blizzard may or may not have put into it, but that’s what I’d be considering in their shoes and it explains the objective behind the decisions made (if not the end result) sufficiently for me.
I mean true, but they could have easily shown the other cities of the races, giving a quick look at their cultures before finally settling on Stormwind. That way we get this vibe that the Alliance is a collection of different people from different cultures. Not what we got which is just Stormwind is the Alliance.
You’re probably right. It does rise the concern that we’re not going to be receiving another World Building experience where you represented your race. Moving forward, they’re likely to go all in with Alliance and Horde and it’s really a shame.
Over the years of playing Alliance, I’ve always found that players A side are way more into racial pride than Alliance pride.
The other thing that they could do is add more racial diversity in the architecture if they’re going to make Stormwind and Orgrimmar as the only capitals that matter.
My thoughts exactly. I have been of the mindset that if they plan on making Stormwind the Alliance capital, especially with half the races being “homeless”, then they need to update it and have districts or architecture that represents each race.
Like bring back the Night Elf park we had pre-Cataclysm. Add a Gilnean district. Maybe have a Draenei ship near the docks where they live? I don’t know just anything would be better than what we are getting.
Waiting to see the Horde intro to see how they handle their diversity and intro script.
Refugee faction.
There are things they could do with the Mage District. Seeing a Gnome tutoring human kids in the Arcane would be nice. Having Void Elves and Draenei experiment new techniques would be cool and having a Dark Iron Shaman and Bronzebeard Mage debate between which technique is better would be fun.
Worgen and Night Elf maintaining the Overgrowth area and having that transformed into a park district could be cool.
Lightforged and a human in the cathedral district talking about how out of touch the young ones are with the Light and how they could get them interested into the faith…
Kul Tiran and Gnome boat racing section. Kul Tiran use their muscles vs. Gnomish technology. Have a little makeshift dock area the leads to the north of the Mage District.
Pandaren and Dwarves working with Night Elves in the garden section of Stormwind on best ways to grow hops, okra, wheat (etc). Have a tent nearby that is a Pandaren noodle stand that sells their ale.
Have a Night Elf that has them ‘constructing’ treehouses with nature magic for local kids to climb in and enjoy. Have a Shaman nearby that uses nature to lift them into the houses and catches them when they want down.
Void Elf and a Hunter (any race) challenging each other on Marksman ship. Void Elf utilized their void portals to do trick shots while the Hunter mocks them for over-complicating the simplistic beauty of a well aimed shot.
Gnome, Mechagnome, Dwarf and Draenei have an engineering place in the Dwarven District where they have a lot of doodads and are actively tinkering about.
Noble houses are now in the game and have the other races clashing with them. So, a capital building, maybe in the castle? Maybe in the Light district.