Story Forum Community Lounge (Part 1)

Lore Story Forum
8556

But they very clearly don’t understand why any of those things are good.

They just take the most surface level understanding of media and spot weld it to a game that frankly always had a tone problem but really wasn’t trying to be taken all that seriously.

Because if you click on the units enough they say something silly. And the Belf Priest;

“I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY THE BIG METAL HAND IN THE SKY!”

Is legitimately pretty funny.

But recently it’s just been Oops all melodrama and it looks for all the world like a wreck of a wine mom is working out some issues with her kid’s action figures.

I don’t know if I should laugh, cry or slowly back out of the room trying desperately to go unnoticed.

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8557

I mean we know this.

They tried to invoke “Wakanda Forever” with “Zandalar Forever” without doing any of the intra-Black/Pan-Africanist intellectual labor that the movie did well that resonated with both Africans and the African Diaspora across the world.

They don’t have the range.

Because too many writers are PAINFULLY ignorant of history.

Golden outright admitted in her deleted Anduin tweet that she believed that there was Actual World Peace On The Planet between the years 1989 and 2001

It’s horrifying

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8558

… There wasn’t even peace in just the Western part. Is she away of the Yugoslav Wars or?

What am I saying of course she isn’t.

There was a genocide in the Balkans. We bombed Serbia. Just - what.

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8559

Imagine my frustration with people respond to my HEAVY suggestion they need at least two historians/cultural experts per IRL UN Geoscheme World Region in WoW to serve as a resource to the writers for “how do wars play out in ways that actually make sense and allow for complexity and nuance” with contempt

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8560

It’s April 1st. Good luck out there on the internet today.

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8561

April 1st why would w-"We are One! We are All! We are Nothing! What was once Void shall be returned to it! We cannot be undone!"

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8562

I’m still trying to process the last statement. I was a literal baby about the time all that was going down and I know about it.

I just don’t fundamentally understand a fantasy writer who’s disinterested in history and culture. Because that’s what we’re exploring here albeit in a detached sense.

It’s similar to why I love horror. A monster is seldom just a monster. They more often than not reflect what that society is afraid of, and often what it is unable or unwilling to discuss openly.

Are they really still engaging with this on a “So magic swords are cool” surface level? Because that’s fine for a consumer. Back to my earlier point Dawn of the Dead or 2019’s Indigenous Canadian Blood Quantum can just be a zombie movie if that’s all you want them to be. But if you’re paying even a little closer attention there’s some big ideas just under the carnage.

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8563

Mind you that Blizzard’s Brain Trust decided that the best way to deal with the self-apparent Chattel Slavery Parallel in-game was to *checks notes *

Have the ex-slave culture run a gladiator slave ring where they enslaved members of their slaver’s race

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8564

The issue seems to me to be even if they did so, they have demonstrated they can and will ignore feedback that conflicts with what they want to do.

No negativity in the dojo, remember?

:expressionless: sigh

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8565

Remains hilarious they’re very apparently refusing to let go of that and unlearn that

even though we all know who came up with that motto

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8566

I half way wonder if Copeland ended up like he did because trying to do his job and being ignored for years just ground him down into total apathy and “why does it even matter, anymore.”

Can you imagine being a historian on call for a game that actively ignores its own facts if they are inconvenient?

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8567

Just discovered: Selune turns into a Dragon in D&D after being brainwashed by Shar… Selune is a Dragon…

Makes Elune who is based on her even more likely of being like Soo-Won…

Soo-Won, Selune, Elune…

Next you are going to tell me that Hasbro’s Next Generation Adaption of MoonDreamers is going to have the Moon Dragon Galaxia succumb to the Void and start working for Scowlene!

8568

There’s also a ‘fun’ Cata quest in Durotar where you can smack around an Orc’s slaves a bit off the coast. They’re a taunka, Naga and either a human or Naga respectively.

It’s very weird to me people still bring up Hillsbrad. If you don’t find it funny thats fine but it’s trying to be comedic. There’s characters named Johnny Awesome and Dumass in it.

But with a lot of Kalimdor quests I find myself just looking around for a punchline that never comes. Like this is maybe the only line of dialogue in WoW that genuinely made me uncomfortable.

"Sergeant Dontrag says: What could an orc as depraved as you enjoy more than killing Alliance, Utvoch?

Scout Utvoch says: You know I can’t resist tauren women, Donty. They’re my one weakness…

Sergeant Dontrag says: You are a sick, sick orc, Ut."

That’s probably a reference to something I’m missing. But I just remember playing the quest like;

“Uh so I think this guy’s a serial killer who targest minority women. Am… I’m supposed to kill this guy right? No? We’re just moving along here? Fun, fun, fun”

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8569

Their answer is “there’s something for everybody!!” Want a serious war? We got that!! Want goofy comedy? We got that too!! But because they try to do both at the same time, you get this narrative dissonance. You get:

Log in.
“Something has spooked one of the brotasaurs, sending it into a PANIC!!”

Check your map. Horde invading Kul Tiras, so you head there.
“This pandaren monk is protecting civilians and healing critically wounded soldiers. She’s off to the side and staying out of the conflict because she wants no part of it. Murder her. Then go find some civilians elsewhere and murder them too.”

Rise, repeat, go to the next stage.
“HEY DO I HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU!!! Monster Hamster Ball of DEATH!!! Roll over people, then use it to blow up the gates with you in it!!! Roflmao!!!”

Cool, done, time to do some WQs for my Emissary.
“A turtle made it to the water…”

Like, if the objective is to make me emotionally numb to it all and totally unimmersed, you succeeded.

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8570

What I find the most frustrating about BFA is the faction conflict should be fun. But it should always feel a bit like this;

Ah the heroes are having a punch up. This could all easily be avoided if everyone acted like an adult for all of two minutes but cmon you want to see them smack eachother around.

Because it’s neat to see asymmetric power sets bounce off eachother. I think a Forsaken VS Nelf fight could be extremely entertaining because they have the most disparate powers imaginable.

But it’s supposed to end with the misunderstanding resolved and attention moved to the main big bad. They don’t have to dust eachother off and go get lunch but at least a begrudging respect and letting bygones be bygones for at least the time being.

Instead they make it this poe faced war drama but we still have to team up to fight the cartoonish big bad anyway. So it now feels like if midway through Saving Private Ryan aliens invade and they gotta team up with the N@ZIs because the movie decided its Mars Attacks! in the middle of the 2nd act.

This has just been a baffling product.

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8571

The fundamental issue with making a “more fun version” of the faction war is that because of how every other threat is also treated, it needs to be serious.

Dark Portal opens again and spills demons from Outland? Rally your forces, Horde and Alliance! The Argent Dawn is fighting for the sake of our world, and you just got drafted to invade an alien world!!

Scourge invade from Northrend? Put aside your petty grievances, because all life is under threat!! It’s literal zombie apocalypse time, and you need to save the world!!

Deathwing awakens? Holy crap, this one might actually do it because he already started the job!!

Dark Portal opens again and technologically advanced orcs invade? We’re all gonna die, go through and invade yet another alien world, but it’s kinda that first one too, and stop this threat to our very existence!!!

Demons are raining down from the sky itself!! WFT?!? This might really be the end boys!! Throw everything you possibly have at it, because we have next to no freaking chance again!!!

Ok, freaking N’zoth now?!? He’s literally eating the soul of the world!! We can’t, we just cannot possibly win this freaking thing!!! Do the best you can, because nothing can be worse than this!!!

It’s worse now!!! Totally worse!!! Death itself is coming to kill us all!! AND the Scourge are back, freaking hell!!!

Ahem.

Literally every threat is an extinction-level threat. Every single time we’re called to act, it’s for the fate of life itself, so the very idea that the only two megapowers who are barely holding things together just decided to throw down against each other? It has to be at that same scale, or it’s just as dissonant.

Because if it’s not, then it means everyone’s a freaking idiot. With annual threats looking to wipe everyone from the face of the world, y’all thought it would be a good idea to weaken each other in the few moments of peace and safety we have?!?

The problem is that because everything around the factions is some life-or-death-but-probably-death struggle against all odds, the very idea these two entities would fight each other in the middle of it all is beyond ridiculous. The over-the-top level of threats regularly facing Azeroth shouldn’t leave any room at all for a blow-up between the Alliance and Horde.

And yet, there’s always room for mass-slaughter of the only line of defense we have against the infinite cosmic threats facing all life.

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8572

This is WoW storytelling boiled down. And yeah Wrath lost me at the end because the Alliance and Horde deciding to kill eachother while in the Lich King’s laundry room was almost as stupid as the big twist. That apparently a mindless zombie swarm is even more dangerous without strategic high command and a full support structure.

But seriously though this is why WoW’s narrative needs to calm the hell down and focus on a more basic fantasy storyline. I really loved Exile’s Reach because it was just a fun little story. It had a zombie army and an ogre clan and a huge undead dragon but that feels positively mundane compared to the rest of SL.

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8573

What would happen if a Hate Plague caused Paranoia in people(to the point where they see everything as inhuman monsters seeking their death) within a specific town at the same time some Malignant Cosmic manifestation of the Void started possessing people?

I’m sure the Hate-Plagued People wouldn’t be able to even so much as attack the Void corrupted before the Void decided to infect their Hate-Plagued Minds making them go instantly from “Die you inhuman monster!” to “We are all. We are nothing. We are the thread that binds eons together. We cannot be undone! That which was once Void shall be returned to it!”

A Virus causing a Hate Plague of Paranoia would be no match for the Void in any of it’s corrupting incarnations(Final Fantasy, WoW, Guild Wars, etc.).

8574

Speaking of April 1st…

Everyone’s favorite yearly patch notes!

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8575

As soon as Dark Rangers are available to play, that’s my new main.

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