Story Forum Community Lounge (Part 1)

Lore Story Forum
8801

To a point I guess?

As someone who had a 3,000 year Elf I can tell you it’s sort of impossible to do much of interest there.

For me I had him being one of the elves that taught humans magic after the Troll Wars be kind of a reasoning for his mistrust of any, to him, short-lived races. Sure an individual Orc of Human might be a genuinely great person. But what about their kid? What about their kid’s kid? And so on.

The Menethils had been perfectly pleasant neighbors until one of their bloodline turned out to be a sociopath. Any power given to a Dwarf or Troll will invariably be handed down to their children who perhaps cannot be trusted with it.

So that was well and good but honestly any elf, draenei or undead could come to that conclusion on their own without a millenia of perspective.

And so much of Azeroth’s history is nothing at all happening for millenia. Until approximately everything happened in the past 30 years. So you have thousands upon thousands of years where the character just lounges around because what else is there to do?

8802

I play and have played such old and sometimes much older characters.

You don’t play a character of this age as a “front man”, but rather as a puppeteer. You have to play someone like that with a lot of foresight, wisdom, understanding of things and experience. Such a character would look at a problem from many angles and have a wealth of experience to fall back on, making him the perfect puppeteer.

This view with “Never trust an elf”, from Middle Earth for comparison, can also be traced back to this, this “intriguing” what the dwarves make up…the human call it partly know-it-all…is this “puppeteer”. Mostly elves also have superior and less mortal enemies, powerful demons, undead necromancer kings and and, the mortal ones are positioned thereby like on a chessboard.

This is how you play such an old and experienced as well as powerful character. Most of the time, they also tend to be coldly pragmatic, a certain cynicism that made them so old and experienced in the first place.

8803

That’s pretty much what I wound up doing.

Because that’s the one thing you can do with them. And thankfully Warlock is basically a win button if you know how to PvP so I could actually back that up should someone want to test why he’s so bored and dismissive.

Now ask me if he was as interesting to write for as the former Defias undead cowboy. Not a frontman indeed.

Got a lot of use out’ve this I tell ya that;

8804

I’ve played elves many times, through Warhammer, through LOTR, through WOW, through DND, through the Black Eye. Of all the elves, the elves in Middle Earth were the most challenging to play. For many reasons. ( i play most of the time rp in pnp, not in online-format)

However, playing an elf requires the ability to listen, to really understand your opponent, and to be patient. Understanding is the key to initiating the whole puppeteer plot. Played correctly, people will begin to come to you, and little by little you can begin to set them up on your chessboard.

And this is exactly the kind that can be truly terrifying and …interesting in the same time. " Sacrificing an entire army of mortals for the good of the world is a terrible sacrifice…but a necessary one". This “For the greater good” …can be one of the most difficult and complex things about the character. Assuming a certain Strategic Mind, it makes them vulnerable to “Watch out for big threat Y and X” to even recognize and locate the …mortal problems. They literally live in their own “bubbles” and there they need people they can trust, that the world does not only exist in tomorrow, but also in the here and now.

Played correctly…especially ancient elves can be the most interesting characters.This problem is an …elf problem, that’s why there are many who play elves…but very few who can play ancient elves, and even less who can write an ancient elf(young elves is easy)

8805

The thing is they should be so experienced and competent as to be practically impossible to ambush.

There was actually one interesting bit in Drustvar where the LForged went up against the Darkspear and get their tails handed to them.

And I thought that was interesting because the LForged do have a millenia of combat experience but very specifically against the Legion.

So they probably don’t have anything in their Codex Astartes for WTF to do when three giant floating wooden masks starts tearing through their defensive line.

“Uh okay so those things are maybe just sort of corporeal? Also the commanding Exarch has been vomiting spiders uncontrollably after making eye contact with one, and the lieutenants a frog now. I am seriously regretting settling on this planet”

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8806

But an ambush is always possible, it just has to be very well thought out. But you can’t build an element of specialness if the ambush or the young people triumph every time, that’s just LAME…and inconsistent of the world.

The experienced war steeled people, with individuals as old as entire civilizations…steeled in war by one of the toughest opponents in the entire galaxy should have seen just about every dirty tactic.

The Lightforged were supposed to be one of the most difficult opponents ever, their strategies were tuned to someone who knew neither morale nor skruppel, also their tactics were supposed to be built accordingly.

8807

They also very specifically fought an enemy that utilizes three types of magic and mostly just the green renewable energy that is demon souls.

So I was more picturing them reacting like this, but instead of a lightsaber it’s just a giant voodoo mask coming in like a freight train.

Because the Legion actually never managed to bring Trolls into the fold so why would they have any idea what to expect?

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8808

The lightforged are written as kind of a joke opponent. You would think going to different planets to fight the legion, adaptability would be one of their biggest strengths, when they have to fight the different races the legion corrupts and the powers they bring. That however doesn’t pan out in game and they are just cameo fodder. Lightforged seemed more like a last minute addition to bring Turalyon more than anything else, and they basically have no characters (rip any Fareeya development) just so the alliance could get a counterpart to the much more fleshed out races of HMT or NB…then they pulled void elves out of nowhere.

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8809

That is the reason why I wrote: Were supposed. I think we all can agree that they are not currently this thing the story wanted to sell to us…over years.

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8810

Oh yeah for sure, it’s just more of blizzard’s “tell don’t show” mentality, and when it’s ever “shown” it’s the opposite of what we were told.

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8811

This is actually why I found Darkshore so upsetting.

Because the unaddressed situation writes itself. I can just picture the Worgen turning up and the Night Elves going

“Hey thanks for turning up but we already sent the Horde packing. After bathing this haunted forest in an eternal night there is nothing here but blood and the wailing of baleful ghosts. What deranged fools would even want to dwell in such a place, much less fight for it?”

The Worgen go wide eyed and start mobilizing, digging defensive positions and setting up sentries in a ‘no time to explain’ fashion. A Sentinel finally manages to physically catch a Worgen officer and demand an explanation. She jams a spyglass and points out to sea, not even bothering to independently confirm their worries because they already know.

“Oh…” the Sentinel says lowering the spyglass, “Them” she says. Purple tattered sails breach the mist as the first wave of batrider scouts literally screech overhead, noting troop placement with sonar.

God BFA still pisses me off. It could’ve been such a fun exhibition match between Red and Blue odd couples. I would’ve loved to have seen the gnomes and their AR take on the Tauren in The Barrens. Brain VS Brawn. Nature VS Technology.

Bah. Bah I say. What imbecile decided this should be a tragic story about genocide and police states? I wanted to just have fun watching an Ancient and Mega Abomination have a kaiju WWE match.

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8812

And yet the Legion clearly never valued Polymorphing, Voodoo or(unlike the Horde Warlocks) even proper Portal construction and thus the Lightforged were never trained to fight it.

The Legion only cares about throwing armies at a target, infiltrating the target’s bases and throwing Fel at everything! Only Archimonde uses any elaborate fancy Magic that’s not infiltration as shown by his destruction of Dalaran.

Archimonde was also the only one in the Triumvirate who was a Mage. No wonder he was so intolerant of failure! He is surrounded by brutes whose only form of strategy is to infiltrate the enemy’s ranks!

Of Archimonde’s lieutenants from before the Legion we have Jarraxus, Aargoss and Velysra. They as far as I’m aware of were only focused on Discipline, Elemental Summoning, Shield Making and Soul Binding.

Infiltration came from the Nathrezim while everything else was just brute force attacks!

The Lightforged would be trained for Demon Infiltration, Fel Shields and the Legion’s Brute Force tactics but not any Voodoo, Arcane Polymorphing or Stable Portals! They are trained for Direct Tactics(Zerg Rush, Shields and Infiltration) not Sheer Chaos(Voodoo and Polymorphing)!

8813

It’s like what compelled them to also add the genocide part to the expansion? Sure burn the tree, but why commit genocide against a player race when there is no follow up to it? My initial thoughts were that Tyrande was going to burn the tree after they evacuated the civilians and the horde was invading it, killing a good amount of the invading army as the night elves escaped.

But nah, it was just sylvanas committing genocide because she thought it would be a fun idea, with no follow up for the victims, other than Tyrande getting black eyes (an apt metaphor for the abuse the night elves have gone through I guess) in 8.1 and the developers saying that was her getting revenge. What did they actually think was good about adding genocide as well into the mix of this? And they literally had no follow up for the race that went through this in that expansion, they were omitted from BfA almost entirely.

If you’re going to do things like this in a game, make it a more satisfying back and forth between the factions, there isn’t really a need to toss heavy subjects like genocide in there when your writers are literally just lobotomized apes.

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8814

Precisely what I thought was going to happen.

The Burning of Teldrassil kinda reminded me of the White Phosphorus scene from Spec Opps: The Line. Which if you’re unfamilar is imho the greatest piece of anti war art ever created. Because it gets you into that CoD, FPS shooter mindset then spins it around on you.

The tagline of the game might as well be, “Do you feel like a hero yet?”. Because its showing you war as it is. Seriously I’d only say watch this if you’ve no intention of playing the game. This is the only time I think a game made me feel physically ill. Because it gave you the fun war power fantasy then went “Would you like to see what this sort of thing actually looks like? Too late. You called in the bombs. Look at the result”.

And the Burning of Teldrassil left a similar “WTF” taste in my mouth. But the last thing you do is rescue civilians. In fact you’re given pretty shocking agency over how honorable or brutal the war will be based on your own personal decision making.

Both in Astranaar and in WQs where you can let Alliance soldiers go. So it wasn’t just tone deaf it was shocking ludonarrative dissonance because until that moment I had total control over the nature of this conflict. And then outve nowhere it’s wham, genocide, hope you’re proud of yourself.

Like I had any say in a cutscene.

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8815

Oh yeah, I’ve heard a lot about Spec Ops: The line but have never played it myself. That is a good scene in showing the actual brutality and carnage of war and the choices people make as opposed to it just being a fun game running around head shotting people. Teldrassil was just played as a shocking moment for the sake of it, with no follow up, but it’s like who is this for?

I get they’ve hated night elves for a while, but is killing large swaths of civilians something horde players want and feel good about? I would think most normal people don’t like that, then if that doesn’t feel good to them, then they have to keep serving under sylvanas for a while longer, why make this story? It just seems to alienate players more than anything else.

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8816

Spec Ops: The Line is a masterpiece when it comes to meta-narrative and the examination of player agency. Now I’m in the mood to play it again.

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8817

I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy Hillsbrad. And it is largely smacking humans around with a rolled up newspaper.

Which was deserved. I genuinely don’t care whatever lore Blizz pulled out of their butt to make Southshore full of orphaned pet rescuers and nuns. I lived then relived Vanilla Hillsbrad. There’s a reason it became infamous for PvP so massive it would crash servers. SS was actively encouraging griefing. So, naturally, when Horde players did climb up to level 60 they came back to kill the level 30s who were tasked with questing near level 20s Horde. Which caused other level 60s to turn up.

There’s a whole zone that was rendered unplayable I’ve to imagine because the PvP servers were a later development. Ashenvale by contrast is so perfectly designed. To the point where I had a quest to kill Nelf Druids in the same burrow as Forsaken meddlers and I just /wave’d at a Nelf player. Because we were the same level and the grave walk was long for both of us so let’s just pretend we don’t see eachother.

Frankly I would’ve had fun if it was as dark as certain Blue posters say it was out of sheer vengeful hatred. But it’s really not darker than a Sam Rami movie. You’ve objective comedic characters lightening the tone everywhere. Nothing is taken all that seriously. Pretty much everything is connected to a gag. The “infamous” human seedling quest is the funniest in game. Because the story baits you into helping them. But if you click on the NPCs instead of the shovel, which was at least my first instinct, this happens;

Excuse me if I don’t think a firehouse blast of blood is to be taken all that seriously.

Now compare that to the idea of rounding up citizens for execution in Astranaar. Or having death camps in Darkshore. Yeah not really a tonal consistency. I still desperately want to know who thought that was a good idea. And I want them to explain to me why they’d think having a weird recreation of events that nearly exterminated my family line but now I’m the perpetrator would be fun escapist fantasy.

There’s nothing particularly fun about Darkshore and that it’s greatest crime. Like this is a banger;

Probably the best Forsaken music since the UC’s. And has a such a lovely “Darkness Triumphant” theme to it. Which would of course be a pretty funny idea when you’re fighting Night Elves.

So many missed opportunities for “The Dark Is My Home Too” banter. I’m picturing the Kaldorei flinching at the Worgen idea of burning a cave full of bats. And the Forsaken not really being on board with the idea of blasting an artifical sun into the sky.

Because since obviously the Horde and Alliance will have to return to a status quo because they fundamentally need eachother to fend off the ceaseless apocalypses. So this;

Should be the result of fun odd couple subfaction pairings.

Darkshore should’ve been a fun romp where we shake our fists at eachother. Perhaps ending with a handful of UC factioned Kaldorei dicking around Tirisfal with a Moonwell to keep the sun off. And a few Darnassus aligned undead kicking around Teldrassil helping to rehabilitate the corrupted spiders.

Instead we got this absolute clown show of a storyline that did nothing else but piss off everyone.

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8818

Boy, there are a bunch of toxic little turds in the wowhead twitter post about this article.

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8819

Reminds me of the previous person that was announced to have left.

8820

I went to go see, but WoWhead actually locked its comment section. Was it that bad?