Sargeras and The Burning Legion will always be the true bad guys of the setting to me.
I love Old God stuff, but mostly as a fan theory speculation farm. I actually kinda hate us physically fighting them to death. Like, that isn’t the appeal of the whole Lovecraftian pastiche. If you are punching them, you’ve already lost the plot. Feels a bit like trying to tell a Friday the 13th story with Jason Vorhees, but dropping Goku and Superman into the protagonist role. I mean, points for absurdity I guess, but there’s not much ground to cover in terms of a horror film at that point.
I liked Dimensius and Xal’atath being a Galactus/Silver Surfer analog, but I’m not really keen on them reconceptualizing The Void at large as just strong eats weak. Honestly, this is the latest in a trend that leaves me scratching my head wondering why we are even doing all this Cosmic Parade stuff. If we’re having to reinvent the wheel every time we meet a new slice of Cosmic Pie, what was even the appeal of doing it to begin with? “Oh boy, we’re finally fighting that thing that is no longer even remotely similar to the thing we were excited about maybe fighting some day 10 years ago.”
I have some bad news for you.
Last year maria hamilton was constantly saying “Do we really know she’s evil? Do we?”
And as Taliesin points out, she wastes a whole lot of time not killing Lor’themar or even trying to take the Sunwell.
She’s going to be redeemed, or proven correct, trying to defend Azeroth or something else. She’s just another chess player in a long line of chess players, and she’s going to be on our team in the end.
More invested does not mean heavily invested. I have never had a high expectation for Blizzard storytelling, aside from briefly for Starcraft 2. (I did quite enjoy the story of the original Starcraft and Brood War.) When it doesn’t want to make me groan, that’s a win. When it does, that’s just a Tuesday.
I prefer the Void’s aesthetics but the Legion is the more interesting villain by an enormous margin. Its characters have actual character instead of being just big blueberries, and it has had a bigger, more personal role in the setting’s history. Kagehiro is also right that fighting a lovecraftian horror is kind of anathema to the entire lovecraftian horror thing. WoW’s Old Gods have always just been big tentacle monsters because of that. They’re not scary, they’re just hammy.
tbf, “punching out cthulhu” is probably the most common use of lovecraftian horrors on the whole. Other things in genre mask it better than WoW does, though, because of the escalation treadmill.
I don’t know that I’ve ever found the Legion to be interesting as characters, though. It’s hard to find any group interesting when being a member of it seems to immediately flip your personality completely; can any member of the Burning Legion we’ve seen with detail be described as anything but “hammy”? Rakeesh felt like a very weak attempt at pathos, imo. Good idea and bad execution.
I always felt the strongest aspect of the Legion conceit was the mythic and unapproachable deific nature of it all, and that got shrunk as much as Lovecraft did.
Maybe not but I think that a hammy demon is more palatable than a hammy attempt-at-Lovecraft. Demons are all fire and brimstone so hamming it up works, but if you’re trying to do a creep elder god you shouldn’t make it sound like Yogg-Saron.
Characters like Kil’jaeden or Gul’dan may be flat but like, at least they have something instead of Faceless One #6452.
You’re right that the Legion also lost some mystique as time went on, though. In Legion in particular I think they went too hard on the scifi angle.
The Burning Legion was a one note Army of Doom but it was Warcraft’s one note Army of Doom.
They had decades of lore and were directly or indirectly responsible for the origin’s of several playable races. Whole zones were shaped by their incursions. They weren’t interesting beyond Existential Threat but they were the iconic one. Who could forget getting to the Blasted Lands for the first time in Classic and seeing Doomlords? Again nobody’s calling them that interesting- they had things called Doomlords.
But they were iconic and established.
Then we defeated them. And that’s not the worst idea it kind of had to happen eventually. But instead of that being a big finale and WoW focusing on world building and localized threats they just kept trying to redo the Legion.
First was the Jailor and I audibly laughed in the intro when I think Baine goes “His army rivals the Legion” and did they? There were like 20 guys on screen. And even if they had a really cool skybox showing a gazillion enemies they were all empty suits of armor or gray balls with a sad face. Utter failure from concept to execution.
Now we have the Void which is just an incredibly boring villain type. The Black Empire had some Cthulu flair at least but these mfers are mostly just angry purple stuff. With maybe a purple colored monster or vaguely light blue colored guything.
Compare that to Pitlords, Imps, Felguards, Doomlords, Felhunters, and of course the Fel corruption that actually made stuff look different like the Fel Orcs or Fel Elves.
WoW needs to give up on the cosmic stuff and focus on rebuilding Azeroth proper and giving us local threats. I promise if you give us memorable characters a Bandit Lord holding just a regular knife to a child’s throat will be infinitely more terrifying than Doomdark the Deathkiller threatening the vague concept of the universe.
Yes, I said to begin with that I don’t think, in continuity, the void is a good follow-up act to the Burning Legion—where it’s improved, the improvements are minor. And a retread needs to do more than minor improvements as a general rule.
I think that’s because for a lot of us the idea that somehow ignorance is a superpower and a defense against “knowing what you shouldn’t” just doesn’t appeal.
I find the very concept absurd. The whole “I’m going nuts just being here” doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m doing anything meaningful it just feels like some anti-intellectual sat down and decided to write an attack on curiosity and being observant instead of merely reverent.
What personal stakes? How dare you suggest something like that… it’s all supposed to be impersonal so only those who see only numbers and stats can truly crave the glory of the end game…
I’d be more motivated if the enemies were actually grounded and didn’t feel like concepts more than people.
Of course, we’d also need the Devs to give our characters the ability to meaningfully influence the outcome of a quest.
I really like the gryphon model they’re using with trading post. It’s a better fit for WoW’s art style than the model that’s been used from 2011 to 2024, and the wings finally tuck properly rather than fold like paper while on the ground. Makes me want to dust my wildhammer off.
I’m still unreasonably mad I learned the Forsaken ghost ponies weren’t flying mounts only after buying them.
I love the sky galloping animation. It’s so rad. But I only get to prance amongst the clouds on my PvP unicorns which don’t really work ICly for anyone. So I was so excited to get a flying banshee steed.
Yet they’re ground locked. Despite being obviously banshee inspired. And those girls flying is second only to their shrieking in terms of things their known for.
Ghost horses should fly. I got a very cool looking ghost horse from the Maw—I like some undead stuff, I just tend to go more gothic than 80s Metal—and was disappointed to find out that it is landlocked.
On that note, I will always be mad that the paladin mounts are just horses and don’t get wings, though. I’m actually not a fan of the sky galloping animation but I DO love pegasi.
Well the real pisser is I’ve the vicious black bonesteed already. Which is a way cooler Forsaken themed mount than those two. So I will probably never use them. Just transmog token funbucks down the drain.
Really though the greatest thing they could do for Forsaken mount enthusiasts is have the Plaguebat chill a bit. It snarls and screeches when idle which is kinda cool. But when you have a full party of Forsaken on them it turns into a non stop cacophony of rawrs and rees.
Although it is funny picturing an undead shouting at a screeching monstrosity like it’s a barking dog.
“Heidi, HEIDI, I KNOW! I KNOW! IT’S JUST THE MAIL CARRIER HE’S HERE EVERYDAY”
I wish Blizz would just add flying animations to everything.
Having a giant flying trex in FF14 was the greatest thing I’ve ever had in a video game and Blizzard hasn’t even given us a Bruto sized devilsaur mount.
Also the Adamantoise flying animation can never be beaten.
I do get plenty of use from my land mounts in dungeons (which are rarely indoors these days: out of the current M+ rotation, all but one is mountable for almost the entire dungeon, and that one is half mountable. Though one is Dawnbreaker so that one’s for flying mounts). My Champion’s Treadblade gets a workout.
Doesn’t help for all alts though because M+ is a lot of extra stress and I’m not putting that on most of my characters.
There is nothing left to invent and you cannot be convinced otherwise.
https://i.imgur.com/HSQCI89.png
I think this is probably my favorite “you can’t do that right now” error message they’ve ever made. Enjoying how they handled engineering this expansion.
Showed my Gen Alpha cousins the 90s Batman and it really demonstrates how timeless a show is that they like it.
Gonna have to wait a bit to show them Kevin Conroy’s final curtain bow. This legitimately gets me emotional. Dude cemented the voice of Batman in the minds of generations then casually goes out saying;
“At least I go out like this - Being Batman”
And in a recreation of the 90s animation I grew up on? Bro are you trying to make me cry?!
Anima run of Sanctum of Domination has not helped that. JFC. Oh my god. Most annoying old raid boss to solo ever. I’m sure that was an epic fight when it was new but at 1:30 AM interspersed with cutscenes and a health bar that just refuses to move because the game knows it will glitch while she’s teleporting like Shadow the Hedgehog from an AO3 fanfic, djskfjkdf. I was terrified of falling and dying and having to be subjected to those cutscenes/teleport spam a second time.
Gotta say though as someone who did like pre-evil Garrosh and hated his full villain direction? He went out like a boss.
Still wish they hadn’t done it but pretty rare for me to think a villain has drip.
(I did quite enjoy the story of the original Starcraft and Brood War.) When it doesn’t want to make me groan, that’s a win. When it does, that’s just a Tuesday.