Eh. I just have my doubts. Granted I’m not a programmer. Maybe giving WoW the Telltale style, illusion of choice branching path narrative thing was as easy as flipping a switch. Someone who knows more about it than I would have to say.
But I imagine putting in those options and setting the precedent that PCs can now make choices in quests beyond doing them or not doing them seems like a big move for a small problem.
I mean hell Nelves are the third most popular race period on US and EU servers and at least a third of them have been vocally pissed since the word go - and that’s led so far to approximately dick and all in terms of implemented changes.
If they planned that…nonsense ahead of time, then they really should have given Loyalists a better ending than “HAHA THANKS FOR THE HELP DUMMY I’m going to murder you next expac.”
I think you underestimate the size of Sylvanas’s fan base. It’s not just Forsaken players, or even just Horde players that hated the direction of the story in BFA. It’s not just limited to the players either, as obviously Sylvanas has fans on the dev team as well. There were a ton of people who wanted the option to not side with Saurfang even though it was clear from the Old Soldier cinematic that we were meant to.
I actually think the impetuous behind the loyalist plotline was that there were some parts of the dev team that were not happy with the direction of BFA either (the first cinematic for BFA was finished long before the plot was finished and had a very different tone than the rest of BFA for example.) Ultimately I don’t think it was just a way to give fans who would have otherwise quit before siding against Sylvanas an outlet for their frustrations, but also a way to let some of the dev team blow off steam by letting them come up with this alternate quest chain.
Gold star post of the day. 100% agree–and, everyone I know that rolls Horde feels this way as well. The traitor Saurfang should have been hung and fed to the Forsaken.
I mean, maybe. The branching quest narrative was, regardless of how it turned out, the most interesting new aspect to WoW through this expansion.
Quests are the meat and potatoes of WoW content. It’s the first thing you’re exposed to when you start, and it’s what you’ll be doing for the majority of your time in Azeroth. For 15 years now they operated on a very simple premise- person tells you to do something then you do it. Your only option is to not do it. There’s no middle ground or half measures or alternative solutions. If you need the head of a bandit you either cut it off or go away. You can’t side with the bandit or try to turn the bandit away from their life of crime or bribe them to leave. Kill him or don’t that’s your lot.
But now for the first time we’ve options. Granted the rebel / loyalist options weren’t exactly some epic chose your own adventure story and your choices were very limited. But it’s a new thing that could change how we fundamentally interact with WoW’s main content.
Now maybe this was just a quick fix to appease fans. I don’t know enough to say otherwise. But that seems like a big change to add in just so the inevitably outraged and disappointed would be slightly less so for a bit.
I’ll admit it would be cool if player agency became a regular fixture of the story. And Hell, the way the Covenants might allow you to choose your own story aesthetic and loyalties suggest something like that might be in the cards.
I just find it hard to be hyped about those possibilities when the first outing with the system was so disappointing and half-baked.
You can come away from a “war is hell” storyline and feel satisfied by the quality of the story telling, use of characters involved and the message the writers are trying to convey.
Part of the issue is that the developers want there always to be Alliance and Horde. The story can’t really progress, in my opinion, if they refuse to let go of the faction divide in some way. One of the two can’t win and dismantle the other, because the developers are determined to keep both factions no matter what. This is going to mean ensuring that they stagnate and refuse to grow, and that there are enough other checks and balances to keep either of them from experiencing a true victory.
That’s fair. But there’s a lot of janky stuff in WoW that seems to be proof of concept for later installments.
This being an MMO I think the choices, to a point, are going to be somewhat anticlimactic. Since at the end of the day they can’t change so much as to make another player’s world wholly incongruous with yours. Or hell maybe they could Legion’s unlimited Ashbringers still springs to mind in terms of weird decisions.
All in all though quest options feels like a pretty big change to add in just to placate people. Maybe I’m wrong and nothing of that sort will ever happen again. We’ll have to wait and see.
Right–so if you’re going to make player choices a thing, you need to write a player-centered story from the ground up, not tack choices onto an npc-centered drama. Build the world in such a way that the drama and our choices both focus on things we can realistically all make a meaningful impact on, like the fate of small characters and limited zones.
I don’t think this cinematic style of writing plays nice with player-choice centered writing. Since Blizzard doesn’t seem to be moving away from cinematic writing, I’m skeptical player choice is going to be implemented in a satisfying way.
Tbh this is why I think the Horde VS Alliance as the main storyline is a bad idea. It works great as an ongoing B Plot - this cold war between super powers.
When it turns into a hot war the ending is going to be disappointing. No one can win without the faction system being destroyed or at least heavily reworked, and the faction system is the foundation of the whole game. Hence why doing that to me sounds like building a different game.
It does however work very well as an ongoing B plot. I think it’s been thoroughly established that the Horde and Alliance are basically evenly matched and furthermore kind of need eachother to combat the relentless cosmic horrors that invade the world every other Tuesday.
So going forward my advice to the writing team is - just add in some more flashpoint BGs or some PVP based questing areas but leave the war betwixt Red and Blue to the players. Orgrimmar and Stormwind can just be there as a part of the sandbox we can rampage through to annoy eachother now and again I don’t need a cutscene or a quest to justify it.
You right blizzard was telling a anti war narrative I am pretty sure no one was suppose to feel anything other than glad that the war is over that’s why there’s all the think of ending the cycle of hatred
It’s becoming pretty clear to me that Blizzard, perhaps since the end of Wrath, have ‘builder’ expansions and then ‘major’ expansions, in terms of story and assets. Usually with a bunch of different story elements tossed in, as well as a huge slew of new assets made to use in the future.
They say they plan each xpac years in advance, but never to what detail. It seems to me that one team is given a rough road map of where the other team wants to be for their expansion, story wise, and then it’s up to the first team to figure out a way to get there.
Faction war needed to be over.
They wanted Sylvanas as a villain.
Jaina’s story needed to be over or wrapped up.
Everything else was just a means to get to that point. Not exactly the cleanest way to go about things, honestly, and that sort of planning is at odds with the writers own biases and preferences, but I think that’s what happened with BfA.
Cata was also a ‘builder’ storywise, setting up the faction war, but it didn’t make a massive amount of reusable assets because we then went to Pandaria. That’s probably where the issues with WoD, another ‘builder’ came in, because they had no assets to fall back on. But we’re also still seeing assets created in WoD being used to this day, and I think the same will be said for BfA.
That’s why SL has me curious. It’s main feature seems heavily built around choice. These covenants seem a little more in depth than the Scryers or Aldor decisions of old.
Of course- we’ll see. Activision-Blizzard hasn’t exactly filled me with good will. But I hope at least the loyalist/rebel stuff was a proof of concept for more advanced, or at least more interesting, options down the road.
I’d be totally fine with this. I’d like to be able to stop caring about the faction war on an OOC level, because on an IC level, my characters are already entirely neutral. I understand wanting the factions for the PvP/eSports aspects, because those are big draws. Leaving it all in the hands of the players seems like an ideal solution to me.
Talking with a friend of mine about this, and we feel like Legion did this pretty well. The overall focus was on the war with the Legion itself, but there were still smaller aspects of the faction conflict happening for those who enjoy that sort of thing, i.e. Genn and Sylvanas in Stormheim. It wasn’t the overarching narrative of that zone, but it still showed the tensions between Alliance and Horde.
Exactly. Personally PVP and WPVP in particular is my favorite gameplay. I’m usually not actually fighting Blues, I just love the extra tension and danger it adds to the world when half the players are a potential threat. Suddenly finding myself in a tooth and nail battle to the death with a Rogue really spices up my flower farming.
My other favorite gameplay is of the user created RP variety. Working with Alliance players I’ve helped organized skirmishes in interesting locations with our own little stories, objectives and rules. That’s consistently been a lot more fun than any structured PVP content Blizz has created.
We don’t need a huge, dramatic reason for Red to fight Blue. The world is set for the factions to be at odds, the players who like PVP will PVP, and the players who also like RP will come up for their own story reasons to do battle.
I’m a big fan of ending war as quickly as possible, since human lives (in the case of WoW, human or otherwise) are precious and most everything someone could want to attain with war could be attained without. While I can probably apply that same logic to the universe thinking as a character within it (being an RPer helps), I don’t know that I can say honestly that I believe the writers wanted to push that message.