OOoh, this is a nice feature.
oh neat! always love little touches that help with the flow of the story. Glad the expansion is coming with a host of UI changes and updates too. those go a really long way
From Red Shirt dude on Teldrassil being retconned:
The War of Thorns has NOT Been Retconned
UPDATE: As BussyBlastBismallah (thanks for taking time to explain) pointed out in the comments, âretconâ can have several meanings. I should specify that when I say the War of Thorns has not been retconned by these quests, I mean that it is not saying the events are no longer canon and that Teldrassil didnât burn down anymore. Unless Blizzard says otherwise, the War of Thorns still happened in WoW lore.(Deleted and reposted this because I was in a hurry to quell the confusion and left some embarrassing typos in the title in my rush, sorry about that).
So Iâve been informed on twitter that on this reddit a series of tweets I had made caused people to believe that Teldrassil was retconned. I donât understand that, but I will explain in more detail whatâs going on in the new starting experience.
When you complete Exileâs Reach, you are then sent to Stormwind and, after a quest that gives you a mount and a quest that teaches you how inns and hearthstones work, are immediately sent to a new version of the Kul Tiras intro. The dialogue is completely rewritten but carries the same basic idea except that Anduin is the one to come up with recruiting Kul Tiras instead of Jaina, and that Genn is very slightly more rude to her. They also removed the cinematic of the fleet getting destroyed by the Zandalari navy, and no longer mention Zul and Talanji escaping from the stockade. Instead it opens with Shaw telling Anduin the Zandalari have already âjoined forcesâ with the Horde.
In this new version you donât do the Battle for Lordaeron and never receive the Heart of Azeroth necklace. Because of these removals, new characters are never informed that the Battle for Lordaeron or the burning of Teldrassil happened (though new night elf players are made aware that Teldrassil exists in their starting cinematic, in what myself and many others have considered an odd decision given the timeline).
The only explanation offered for why the Alliance and Horde are at war, and these are direct quotes from the questline, are âIt seems there was some trouble with the Horde while we were awayâ and âI have received word that the Horde has joined forces with the Zandalari Empire ⌠Then we must make new allies of our own.â
Once you leave Stormwind on Jainaâs ship, the Kul Tiras quests proceed as normal with no further changes (aside from the gameplay change of your character not having the Heart of Azeroth equipped).
Iâm not sure why this is causing such confusion. They removed references to the events, not implied they never happened. The new intro also removes all reference to the Heart of Azeroth and the Wound in Silithus. You never meet Magni at all. Yet no one is using that to argue those events are being made non-canon.
Iâm sorry about any confusion that has arisen from this and hope Iâve provided more clarity.
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So its not a retcon (yet), but its still confusing to me.
Why are they going to all this trouble to remove the references? If i had to guess, maybe they think a completely new player who knows nothing of warcraftâs lore might get confused by Magniâs part, not knowing who Sargeras is or why his sword is in the planet, but they should really be told as soon as possible why the horde and alliance are fighting if they are to understand anything about the BFA story.
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It seems pretty obvious why itâs causing confusion, unless I skimmed that poorly and heâs referring to something else people are taking out of context.
In Blizzardâs poorly managed time capsule of a video game world, itâs almost singularly inconceivable that theyâve just outright removed any reference to a series of fairly significant events and instead reworked the instances to be some sort of sideways, not-retcon of events that are somehow both at once supposed to be(?) the âcurrentâ version of the place while retelling the events that already happened(?).
This sounds like the type of convoluted only Blizzard could produce and people will still tell you theyâre a quality company.
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That sounds like the ramp-up to a retcon to me, actually.
Whitewashing it was met with backlash, so theyâre trying to downplay it enough so that they can remove it quietly when no oneâs looking.
How can they retcon or âwhitewashâ (words apparently donât have meaning anymore) events that are referenced and expanded upon in the next expansion?
War of thorns, undercity, etc are being snipped because none of the other leveling expansion choices have multiple hour long instances tacked to them. They just want people to level up by questing until they hit shadowlands.
iâve seen two people confused about it now but whitewashing as a term also refers to concealing problematic aspects of someone or something and presenting it as not so bad or even good
it isnât just the hollywood tendency to replace POC/non-white characters with white actors even though thatâs its more well-known and modern use
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nervous monkey puppet meme
Yeah, I thought it was obvious to anyone who had read a book and had a vague grasp of what context was.
I am desperately, truly sorry for the revelation that words can mean different things based on context. Iâm sorry so many people had to find out this way.
it still isnât even that. If Shadowlands presented a re-written War of Thorns where the night elves were the aggressors, or a re-shot Undercity where the Alliance blight bombed the city, you would be right
but its not. its just letting players skip two very drawn out instanced questing locations so they can start directly on their chosen island.
the lack of references to the two events is BFAs fault, its not a new problem.
i mean, i can definitely see why people are getting that impression. they arenât insane for not being too keen on the opening events of BfA being severely downplayed coupled with the⌠interesting horde race description rewrites that were previewed, though itâs good to see those are going to get another look
like i donât really have an opinion on all of the intro quest stuff beyond it seems lazy and quickly cobbled together, but thatâs kind of BfAâs tagline at this point and i donât mind that they want to expedite the process a bit so youâre free to have this argument with someone actually arguing that itâs a retcon. iâm just explaining that the word you take issue with has more than one meaning
i actually think itâs fairly obvious that itâs not being retconned given one of the shadowlands scenario objectives is killing a bunch of dead night elf civilian souls cobbled together into a spooky monster and thereâs no indication that either undercity or teldrassil are coming back in any meaningful form
also the battle for lordaeron is currently mandatory content for your first character entering BfA soâŚ
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Eh. How obvious would it really be?
Like, you donât think Blizzard would retcon the burning of the tree and still forget to do something about the night elves?
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Im well aware the word has more than one meaning and the current use doesnt fit any of them
Lets be real here. This is all in service to just be mad at something. Because being mad at something, and being the victim in this situation is fun for some people.
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or, more likely, people legitimately just have an issue with it. i donât understand whatâs so outlandish about people wanting to hold blizzard accountable for their bad writing, my dude.
why does it always have to be some âgah!! evil outrage culture! people want to be victimsâ conspiracy? why canât people just actually dislike something and express their criticism?
edit: i also feel like i need to point out that genuine criticism comes from a place of desiring improvement. people who criticize blizzard and the game generally just want the company and the product to be better and deliver good experiences. blizzard is actually showing a willingness to listen at the moment, and peopleâs criticisms are what leads to things changing for the better, so the âsit back and shut up, you just want to be the victimâ thing is honestly counterproductive even if you donât agree with other peopleâs grievances
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Because having standards is being a victim, Pridesong. Jeez.
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Theres a big difference between âblizzards writing is subpar, heres how they can fix it and heres what i would like to seeâ
And
âBlizzard is purposefully whitewashing events because they condone genocide and hate the allianceâ
And you know it. Youre better than this. The purposeful goalpost shifting of âmalice vs incompetenceâ and back and forth when called out is giving me whiplash.
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nah pridesong is a stinky butthead, speaking from experience; he consistently steals my job in stardew valley (and also loots my minerals in the dungeon)
But seriously, hereâs a dictionary definition for whitewashing:
âdeliberately attempt to conceal unpleasant facts about (a person or organization).â
Now, from what we saw early on (and this does not appear to be the case now) the entire night elf genocide was being whitewashed in favor of just⌠ignoring it. The new race descriptions were pretending the forsaken were goody two-shoes sad undead who never wanted to hurt anyone uwu. Because Blizzard wants to make the races more appealing, they toned down the factionâs problematic history by completely ignoring it, which is definitely a form of whitewashing.
I donât see anyone saying blizzard actually condones genocide, fyi, but I guess I could have missed it in the 1299 posts in this thread. In fact I remember them being somewhat uncomfortable at horde players cheering about Teldrassil, because, uh, yâknow.
Additionally, while constructive criticism is preferred, people are not obligated to make every one of their posts constructive criticism when they want to vent about how blizzardâs blatant disregard for consistent characterization, narrative, and at times basic writing made them unhappy with the story direction of a faction or game that they previously enjoyed. Blizzard is very likely not going to be reading these threads anyway, so constructive criticism doesnât even serve much of a purpose unless that is the intent of the conversation. Just because someone is emotionally exaggerating the extent of an issue within the game (and there are many issues to do this about) does not mean they are deliberately, dishonestly arguing in order to drag blizzard through the mud. Itâs a forum for a game and people are mad about the story direction.
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Having opinions is a victim mentality.
And its still not that