I’m sure the place is filled with Tourists taking photos with the less intelligent ones getting duped by the businessmen everywhere.
Most exotic locals ruled by dictators work like that. Baator is no different aside from the businessmen having more means to exploit you to their advantage and you have to expertly haggle to get any food(make a note: if you want to survive Baator make sure you are wearing artifacts that remove the need for sustenance).
Just started watching this channel, and this particular video made me think about the course WoW has charted.
It almost seems like early blizzard bumbled into the benefits of soft worldbuilding accidentally, then ruined it through later intentional tempering of the world.
I would opine that soft worldbuilding is essential for a truly immersive virtual world. The player and their character experience has to be central. And yet, there must be hard elements. The world has to feel like a place. It has to have structure that exists independent of that experience.
SWOTOR, for example, feels much too hard to succeed as an MMO. There really isnt enough mystery to make me (personally) feel like I am exploring a world, as opposed to playing out a scripted experience, keeping an eye out for easter eggs. Neverwinter as well. WoW is beginning to have that feeling as the world becomes harder. And yet, attempts to take us to mysterious places and introduce new lore fall flat in many cases… but that is because they rationalize previous soft worldbuilding, like J.K. Rowling is accused of in this video. When they just give us Ve’nari, I’m completely on board. And Ve’nari (as well as the entire broker culture) is great soft worldbuilding…until it isnt.
Cynically, I get the impression that a great virtual world can only happen by accident. Someone has to fail, while intentionally building a hard world. They have to define a world, and try to make it seem like the Middle Earth, but they have to miss enough details that we are quite lost while exploring it. We have to wonder what even is materia? There can’t be a good tutorial. A bad one is worse. Travel has to be cumbersome, but it has to seem like a forgivable oversight, not a game feature. Finding Mankrik’s wife has to be one of the hardest things you do, but not because the devs are cheeky.
It’s going to be a long time before anyone manages to create an experience like WoW.
Is it just me or did the “last visit” line color change to red. I cant handle this kind of sudden radical change.
I noticed it too. After the forum logged me out first
OR also suffers from the same prequelitis that plagues ESO.
Like Ive experienced stories set in this universe centuties later, and not a single word of any of this came up even once, so I dont exactly feel like I’m on some epic saga of an adventure.
I mean it’s sort of a salient point about how quickly history is forgotten as time marches on, indifferent to the triumphs, tribulations and tragedies of your age. But I think I already get enough existential crises IRL, thank you very much.
Was it Blue like Domination last time? If so the change may suggest what color theme Dragonflight is going for.
We live in a generation of narcissists. An important part of creating fiction is to serve the audience, but these days there is a lot of media that is made to cater to its creators. Reboots are usually terrible because the people making them largely want to take ownership of something that already exists for their own vanity instead of building onto what was there before. This can be seen especially in cartoons; I can not think of a cartoon series that has been rebooted in recent times that has not had controversy caused from being too different (Teen Titans Go, Powerpuff Girls, Blues Clues, Rugrats, etc). There’s an animated Super Mario movie coming out next year by the Teen Titans Go creators, which I guarantee will butcher the characters personalities and will just be used for random jokes unrelated to the franchise.
I just found out about the Velma Scooby Doo spinoff that’s being created for HBO. Executives really want to turn established children series into franchises for adults and I don’t entirely understand why. There has never been a point in time before this generation where creators have pushed so much to make these things a part of a different age demographic than what they’ve been catered to. These things have always been made for the same demographic as time goes on, but now people cling to what they enjoyed as children and try to make it age with them. So now we have manchildren making a Scooby Doo cartoon series that features naked girls and children getting their heads bifurcated while the previously established main character is turned into one of the show’s creators in cosplay.
I have younger cousins who I want to enjoy TV shows like I did when I was their age, but the classics have been remade into garbage. They mostly enjoy anime instead of American made cartoons. I blame that on unnecessary issues getting crowbarred into these shows which take away the magic that kids liked about them. I’m assuming this has happened because the previous generation that watched them as kids won’t grow up. They’re making things for themselves, not for the generation after them.
I think Reboots are often made because some number cruncher at a corporation sees they own a property or franchise that was once profitable, but is currently dormant. So they want to squeeze profit out of any place they can. That would be the job of a number cruncher, so I don’t judge them.
The way they go about it afterward is where your issue comes in. And that is where things can go wrong.
Take Charlie’s Angels. Two reboots. Two different directions. One reboot went goofy and leaned into the hot chicks and glamour. It was moderately successful. The other… “had a message” and eschewed the glamour for a more gritty take. It was not as successful.
Again I think this is more about taking the easiest way out, and giving old ideas a new coat of paint to sell as this year’s model with yesterday’s memories.
Is it a lack of creativity? Laziness? Or could it be the market place? Maybe people are reticent to expand their horizons unless given good reason.
I guess I see alot of angles and it isnt just this generation that has the blame. The monied interests who own these old properties are not usually zoomers.
Even though the more recent movie wasn’t as successful, I still think they’re fine. They were made with the same type of audience in mind and the characters are the same in spirit. There was a TV show reboot made between the two most recent movies which wasn’t too bad either.
It’s spoiled millenials putting their personal issues or unrelated interests into properties without considering whether or not the zoomer children would be interested in things like that.
Imagine laying between in a doorway of two rooms wondering if the gravity reversed you’d land without stubbing your toes, and arguing with the boytoy over it.
Friends don’t let friends go white girl drunk with absinthe.
What a crazy night Australia had yesterday. Went to bed happy and woke up even happier.
First Trump got the boot. Now Scott Morrison and the Liberal / National Party. Can the UK make it 3/3 and kick Boris Johnson out. Send Rupert Murdoch a message to get lost.
And the cream on top, Pauline Hanson might lose her seat in the senate.
Controversy or not, She-Ra and He-Man are far better now than they ever were.
Exactly. There will always be people who will be upset at a reboot regardless of the quality of said reboot. And thanks to social media, they can have a very loud voice, even if they are the minority.
You can have something that can be marketed towards both. One that can feel light hearted but also have adult themes and sometimes imagery. Mystery Incorporated has done it the best out of any Scooby Doo reboot or reimagining. That show having a more serialized story helped as well. A lot of episodes in season 2 are dark. Even if you don’t see certain characters dying on screen, they still die. One gets blown up. The other shot (and you hear the gun shots). I miss when children shows took risks. The 2003 TMNT show (which is shocking given that it was done by 4Kids), Teen Titans, Mystery Incorporated etc. These days if something is for children, even early teens, it has to be super kid friendly. Which is why I loved the Dreamworks / netflix She-ra series. It took risks. Catra dies on screen in season 5 episode 5. Even though she gets resurrected a few scenes later, a main lead still dies.
I feel like some of these people see the success of the Harley Quinn show and others like it and go “see, adults love blood, guts and course language, let’s copy that”. Failing to realize that the Harley Quinn show is a parody. Even then, the show treated Mr Freeze and his backstory with respect instead of making it a joke like the other Batman villains.
That moment when Daddy D did a better job of being WoW’s “devil character” post Sargeras than Zovaal. Whom Blizzard wanted to fill in that role.
Blizzard be like, “Sometimes my genius is… it’s almost frightening”.
Keep in mind, before the Harley Quinn show, Batman and Harley Quinn the animated movie definitely explored some more mature themes. And its not like Harley Quinn was ever not sexualized. Batman the Animated series may have been marketed to kids, but it was a pretty mature detective serial. It might actually have been the best format for delivering the Batman story, for any agegroup (I would argue it is) and being animated did nothing to make it less suited to adults. Some of the most successful Batman films have been the animated ones, and Mark Hamill would strongly suggest that The Killing Joke is not for kids.
Point being, The Harley Quinn show shouldn’t be an example of what can be done with children’s characters, because Harley Quinn was never really a children’s character, puddin’.
Gargoyles. I mean, I disagree with the show’s gun-control messaging, but that was just one episode, and it was still a really daring and provocative for the time. The whole show explored themes of racism and interracial relationships (which has been a tradition for fantasy for a long time.) Thats the first show that comes to mind for me when you say this.
Made for 40 year olds living in their parents basements still obsessed about a show from the 80s.
This is true, but the new Velma show isn’t.
Mystery Incorporated is trash. Scooby Doo shouldn’t be about social media and Twilight.
Wait, there are still people obessed with shows from the 80s?
I can understand if it’s something like Star Wars, where they’re constantly making new games, shows and books, but He-Man hasn’t relevant for a LONG time now.
I don’t watch He-Man, I know it’s been rebooted atleast a couple times, but I have heard some people talking about the newest show. It’s a continuation of the original one, which somehow still has a lot of fans. They’ve been complaining about it and arguing amongst each other about whether or not it delivers what they’ve wanted. People somehow are still passionate about an IP that hasn’t been culturally significant for decades.