and we have nothing to look forward to. if we take the direction with varian’s death in legion and the slow character buildup of anduin, it is just looking like a snoozefest.
they are doing everything wrong. they are building up characters that nobody cares about over the course of years. they keep running this ham and cheese sandwich that is the boring old gods or “the legion” which is awesome, but it seems like apart from the lich king and the undead they are incapable of doing anything to that awesome extent since.
so many years has passed with this game that they could of slowly introduced and or hinted around to new over the top villians and armies that by now we could be getting goosebumps again watching some insane over the top trailer.
but here we are in 2024, failed xpac after failed xpac going into the next xpac with nothing more to look forward to other than salty teared, mundane anduin in a new underground zone. thinks about zaralek caverns and shivers
The sad part is they’ll never straight up admit this out of pride and because it would also beg the question of judgement on why they didn’t just retcon right away as soon as he was out. So while A.A. might have struck the wound by sticking a jagged dagger in the game’s back*, the other devs kind of just stared at it and packed it with gauze rather than pulling the dagger out. Like the sword in Silithus they pretended it just didn’t exist or wasn’t a problem until it was a bit late and now they’ve decided they want to keep it.
*a very apt and relevant metaphor given the literal sword stuck in Azeroth and given like the lore problem we only ever stopped the Azerite bleeding without seeing the actual removal of the weapon, the weapon like this dagger in the lore has to be pulled out for the healing to truly begin and in this case a retcon is the only solution.
And truthfully the reason why we’ll never get the healing we need, the retcons we need is pride. They can’t retcon them because it would be an admission of failure in front of the players and that’s the worst thing these prideful devs could experience, being humbled and having to own mistakes including very painful ones involving a man given way too much power to half burn-down the shop on his way out.
I would go so far as to say the end of Legion or specifically the Argus part with the void/light stuff needs to go as it kind of set the stage for all cosmic stuff that followed. At this point straight up retconning it is too problematic because of all the void elves running around but they should neutralize it in a story and game-play sense that is in addition to retconning everything after between DF.
I’d say Alleria’s void nonsense needs to be neutralized. Kill her off, purify her by force, whatever. Doing the same to most void elves canonically would also be a good idea as would taking a look at those lightforged space goats. Not that this has to filter down to players as after all they’re allowing Man’ari eredar to wander around these days but canonically RPers and the story should feel such types of heretics/zealots should be exceptionally rare, not condoned or permitted by the leadership of either faction and just generally brushed off as that one time with the weirdness that we all agree we don’t talk about anymore.
Yet a hard retcon could have been done instantly with DF. They could have had a small cut-scene or scripted talking event which revealed the whole SL thing was an old god dying power influenced mad dream, BFA was also an altered reality, don’t ask too many more questions, we’re not comfortable with it, just consider it struck. Which would upset some people but would also begin the healing instead of inserting more lore referencing back to SL lore which further codifies it. Just as they breezily said “what sword” about the sword and brushed it off, they could brush off erasing the lore and truthfully most of the people who follow it most closely would breathe a sigh of relief. Sure a few malcontent rabble-rousers would pick at it but people would stop giving them the time of day after a few years.
I’ve been playing on the classic hard core server, goofing around with the self found feature. It does feel like an entirely different game. Each one sort of refreshes my tolerance for the other.
Game playwise the two complement one another nicely. Logging in to do my warrior’s weekly chores, I feel like I’m playing Marvels Thor. I move across the screen like a hurricane and I can’t imagine any number of normal non-elites that could even pose a threat to me.
Meanwhile, my survival mode hunter lives like a rat in the walls staring longingly at the treasure chest but not daring to approach the six non-elite gnolls guarding it. It’s not worth your life, let it go.
Story-wise, classic is sturdy and serviceable. Very down to earth bog standard fantasy world building. The dwarven senate says the troggs have to go (do we ever hear about the dwarf senators again?). The Blackrock Clan are invading The King’s Lands. Find Hillary’s necklace. Uncover a conspiracy of thieves.
The story in retail right now is just full on anime-mode. Which is fine, I guess. Since I’m playing marvel’s thor, falling from the sky on endless seas of enemies that are dispatched in waves with each swing of my weapon.
Look, if we’re being brutally honest, the lore has been terrible ever since tentacle-faced goats from outer space crash-landed onto a previously undiscovered island next to a massive tree.
More or less yeah but it’s just so out of character considering pre-established lore like the stuff Kil’jaeden did to hunt down Velen and the Draenei Traitors all because he was Envious of Velen like what? Also this happened in the same expansion we learn about Velens family and the fate of his son at the hands of Kil’jaeden.
Yes it’s so awesome having a character who has eradicated entire planets in a bloody crusade to wipe out the Draenei get treated like he’s actually super sympathetic and not actually that evil.
He’s a convenient scapegoat, mainly. It’s easy to place blame on someone who has been ousted and has a bad reputation among almost everyone in the community (there are some who just don’t know who he is, therefore “almost everyone”.) It could definitely be true, but it’s not like the writing magically got much better when he left.
The weird part is that he said “I’ve been writing Sylvanas personally since 2006” (Blizzcon 2018). So, the Sylvanas many people proclaim to “love” was also mostly written by him.
As far as the WoW story goes, it’s always felt a bit off, ever since the start. It feels to me like much of the world building that happened in Warcraft III was just altered to fit in with the MMO box. I’ll bet so many things were changed because “You can’t do that in an MMO”. And races (like the Night Elves) were quite drastically changed in the transition. I mean, it is what it is, but WoW doesn’t quite feel like it’s ever been a real direct continuation of the Warcraft III story, even if it contains the same cast of characters.
