Normally Tuesday is all about rushing-rushing-rushing to do my ED weeklies, and THEN working on my side project, but today I am avoiding all in-game contact!!
… Or I WAS until I was trying to go do a thing on my druid and went to the Emerald Dreamway for a shortcut, only to find out there is a portal from there to Amirdrassil now, so now I HAVE to explore the tree!!!
All I know is that I’m done with gilneas. I don’t care anymore. Going forward I will be using my own lore and ignoring everything blizzs says about gilneas or the worgen
Also, Tess is not my leader and never will be. Blizzard be damned.
Holy carrps. It’s that bad??
Karebear, I’m so sorry. I know you’ve been wanting this for years, so I can only imagine how bad it must be for you to fully turn against it.
Yeah, it’s that bad. It killed the last bit of hope I had for the race going forward. I’m soo over all of it. It NEVER should have went live in the shape it did and Metzen seriously needs to be fired if this was his idea because he’s a damn hack along with the rest of blizzard
Obviously, I don’t have any investment in this… that said… I’m sorry, Karestae.
If you need to vent, I’m leveling a toon, Synsá, you are welcome to rage out all you like.
edit: Should probably have read all those back dated posts… I’m really sorry things turned out like this.
I started to feel this with DF’s launch, but I am starting to feel it more. I suspect blizzard has, rather than trying to change their approach to presenting growth or using characters to express personalities that are more than just “big purple antler man like nature” they’ve just started making tender moments in a short-term appeal to relatable emotions, rather than anything to really sink your teeth into or consider.
Merithra and Ysera’s height was the hug cutscene. After that… nothing mattered for them. Whole story went nowhere- and even if we do believe that they paniced because of backlash and made that a side story, that didn’t solve anyones issues, because people wanted some development and exploration of Merithra as a character to grow into those shoes… not just like, one scene at best where Ysera wasn’t even there? It feels as if they genuinely ONLY thought about the tender moment that people can relate to, because the majority of us probably love our moms.
Why they didn’t go any deeper on Wild Gods to really give them the cool ideas from their earlier lore, because all they truly planned out was “Ursoc appears as a pretty animal who looks cool, goes into seed, seed dies, everyone feels bad because pretty bear is gone forever.” They give lip service to it with Ursol, but… that’s it, no real further explanation or dive into what the wild gods represented. They either can look cool for a minute, be a MCU funny guy, or just do nothing because they think only those two will give short-term quick reactions.
It’s how I feel about the NE stuff. They had to backtrack on bad decisions because too many people -didn’t- fall for “pretty tree look pretty” and wanted something that made sense within the fantasy. And it feels like they wanted to use a tender hug and kiss, which I do think shows a capacity to love that is good for the characters, to cover-up the fact that they ultimately did nothing of real story value with any of them. Nothing that’ll be remembered years down the line.
If true, I do kind of get the idea on seeking short term, base emotional reactions. But I think that it feels hollow to see a tender moment if everything else around it just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the very lore they’re touching.
Alright. I’m not sure what’s going on.
I keep getting notifications that Alynsa and Karestae are making posts to this thread, but I’m not seeing them.
Since I don’t know what’s up with the forums right now. I’m just going to try taking a break.
Again, I’m sorry things turned out bad, Karestae. If you want to talk still, tomorrow now, since forums have me not feeling like playing right now, we can.
Good night people, try to remember to breathe, maybe listen to some metal or some other kind of music. Though I’ve seen research that metal helps with processing anger.
Edit (because why not?)
Same, it’s the earlier reply notifications finally pushing through.
After doing a lot of the non-Gilneas stuff and expecting to do that soon, I might need to make a big post. I have… A lot of thoughts.
So I just did the Gilneas Questchain and it was pretty freaking awesome. Have you guys seen the new layout of gilneas yet?
Welcome to the “TTRPG Style AU Worldbuilding” Club
Took you long enough
An absolute trainwreck
I mean, I can usually glass half full like an expert and I’m pretty realistic about video game (and especially MMO) writing…
But I’m completely willing to admit that Gilneas was pretty underwhelming. A lot of things happened (some of which was pretty hefty plotwise), very little was explained, and it was like 10 minutes of quests and a bodysuit mog (and a cute fox mount which still beggars the question of when riding foxes became a Gilnean thing).
Looking at Warhammer 40K: Darktide I finally got to see what the Lower Hives of Hive Cities properly look like: They actually look like something livable(and not that different from the Upper Hive aside from all the buildings having a ceiling over them in the same way Hallowfall does) which is more than can be said for the Underhive we visit in Necromunda(looks like the inside of a Factory if nothing else).
One can live comfortably in Lower Hives(underground Cities) and Upper Hives(aboveground Cities) but the Underhive seems to be the worst place to live in the Imperium.
I thought I’d have a lot of things to say about this patch, but…
I feel like I somehow missed out on half the Gilneas questline, because I was finishing the cutscene right around when I thought the quest was getting started.
Bel’ameth? Big flop. It was a whole mood when I did the epilogue where Tyrande and Malfurion tell Shandris that she’s in charge now, and we’re all standing in an empty field, surrounded by more emptiness.
Follower Dungeons are… Not worth the effort, frankly. XP-wise, I can mob grind and gather to get better XP, and given I can only do 10 per day account-wide, I’ll only ever use them as practice specifically for tanking characters.
Maximum Zoom everywhere is fine. Old World is just so flat overall that it feels less dynamic than on the Dragonlands, but it’s nifty that I never need flight paths again.
And I haven’t done Azerothian Archivist Archeology thing. But unless it turns out to be major fun, the whole patch is a big skip.
A lot of the choices that were made are… Things they did, even if they didn’t have to. And maybe sometimes when you can do a thing, you should stop and consider if you should do a thing.
Does anyone know if there’s actually a portal anywhere in Gilneas?
Once the profiles update, the most important part of the patch is this top hat on this troll with this red and black mog.
I look fantastic.
Some steps are bugged. Like really bugged. More bugged then every bug raid combined.
Since the patch wasn’t out when I woke up, I looked to see spoilers when I did awake. I’ve seen all the cinematics, which IMO are all pretty great. I feel like there’s been an increase in quality for the writing when compared to the lame 10.2 MCU style stuff. I really enjoyed the Bel’ameth scene, because it confirms the Night Elves have a lot of their lands while also showing a good moment with an actual family and not a metaphorical one. The Vyranoth and Iridikron scene confirms that the artifact is the Dark Heart and I’m glad Iridikron didn’t just disappear for the rest of the expansion after going through that portal.
Reading about Gilneas, I’m satisfied with what’s happened. It could’ve been better, such as having involvement from other characters such as Ivar Bloodfang, though despite being underwhelming it was good enough. So when I looked at the forums to see people’s thoughts, I was surprised. It feels like the Night Elf heritage quest again, where there are things that could’ve been better but nothing to absolutely hate. These are quests advancing the world forward after so long, something people have been requesting, yet people are still angry when it’s given to them.
Just feels like there’s no nuance when it comes to fan reactions here. It’s either love or hate, no I kinda liked it or I kinda didn’t like it. There’s a lot of times where it feels like Blizzard doesn’t understand what players want, but sometimes I feel like players should temper their expectations. A lot of us have played this game long enough to know what to expect. This is just a minor content patch.
I suppose the answer to this would be for Blizzard to dedicate dev time to make side stories into major patch content. Dunno how you would be able to market an expansion that would just be .5 content made bigger. Maybe perhaps it’s a matter of video game development having grown too big for Blizzard to catch up to. Major content patches take what, 6 months to make? So they make these smaller patches in the meantime, yet it’s still not enough for some people.
Thanks hun. I appreciate it. I’m sad more than anything after thinking about it. I got a gnoll RP profile and a primal cat profile that I’m going to use going forward in game.
I’m just done caring. Once the draenei get druids, I’m race changing, so I can at least be happy again.
This patch feels like the leftover crumbs that they couldn’t (or forgot) to squeeze into the Guardians of the Dream patch that they tried to make look like more than what it is.
Bel’ameth, while beautiful is just a big empty island with a bunch of disconnected buildings. I love the re-skins of classic Kaldorei assets but overall it doesn’t act functionally as a good hub. I was hoping to park Nithae there but unless I’m missing something it all feels way too spread out to be a convenient place to park your toons.
Gilneas was… I don’t even know. I’m still trying to process the 20 minute blink of wtf-ery that was. I’m not even sure how that was even worth the hype they made it out to be. I have yet to explore it as a city, but from other people’s feedback it’s more disappointing than Bel’ameth so… woops.
The ONE new Draenei skin tone felt like one they just forgot to add when they introducted Man’ari. It looks really cool though, so… one good thing?
I didn’t do follower dungeons yet, but I’m intrigued for at least the ‘practice’ part. I haven’t healed in a long time and have been wanting to get back into it so at least it’s there as an option.
I also read Azerothian Archives is just a mess right now, so I’m skipping until they iron out the bugs because buggy content makes me mad and skews my opinion greatly on something I would’ve otherwise enjoyed.
That’s all the new drae skin tone is, since it was datamined with the orignal man’ari skins but never made it live with the others for some reason, than they decided to add it much later.
This is one of the worst half baked patches I’ve seen in a long time.
That was my issue too. My Alliance main is a night elf druid, and initially I was like “this is amazing, I can access so much from here”. But then I realized how dispersed things were, how nothing felt… I dunno, visually memoriable enough for me to hearth in, look around and just know which direction to go to one of the portals spread across the area. And if I want to visit there, I’m still a druid. Emerald Dreamway has a portal to BA. I can take that and flutter around, getting my bearings, and eventually forget why I went there.
Oh no, you actually did explore it fully. Because there’s nothing there to explore. There’s some very basic vendors/useful NPCs standing in a row in an alley, but that’s it. It’s post-Worgo start zone Gilneas, with a handful of do-nothing NPCs and an alley with a banker.
No portal. Not even a flight master.
Why isn’t there at the very least a flight master?!