There was no point. They took several plot points, finished none of them and hop-skipped from subject to subject without finishing any of it.
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As I said I’m likely giving them too much credit. But I’ve seen a lot of complaints levied that boil down to
“We lost X, we gained nothing, Y is ruined forever and this whole thing was stupid”
Which deliberate or not does ring to me as the general hindsight opinion of a great many wars in human history. I freely admit I’m probably thinking too hard about it.
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if i can define the faction war in one word:Pointless.
this was all pointless.
unless blizzard manages to exhaust us so much with this nonsense making us wish for never have faction war ever again.
Now,that would be actually true if they truly want to truly end the cycle.
but we all know that isn’t true, we all know that the next expansion about faction war starts with another horde atrocity.
on the good side, i enjoyed the kultiran storyline. and boralus is awesome.
the art team always does a fantastic job.
Still sends a really bad message for 1 faction to get away unpunished with genocide after they started a war.
2 Likes
It’d also be pretty much how most wars go. Upset about how the injustice to your people is being ignored by exhausted powers who just want peace?
Spin a globe and throw a dart odds are it’ll land somewhere where exactly that happened.
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I think part of it is that we’re observing this war as outside observers. The narrative to us doesn’t affect our real lives. What might be “what an unsatisfying conclusion!” to the reader is actually “oh my god, thank god that war is over, so many people are dead” to the characters. So in that aspect, it makes sense. A lot of it honestly.
Bloodless reparations? Well, that’s a different story, we’ll see. I’m keeping an open mind based on how pumped I am for things moving forward.
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You don’t write a story that makes everyone sad as if something like this happened in real life.
You just don’t do that. A story is supposed to be fun and entertaining, not infuriating and depressing.
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At least the proudmoores ended on a good note and we developed screen time with shadris.
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I’m just bewildered now. Tragedy is a genre of story telling. Are you arguing they shouldn’t exist or, not be in this game as this is far from the first bummer story set in Azeroth.
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I’d say any anti-war message is incidental.
The cycle is not broken. There’s no greater proof of this than Ion reaffirming the Horde-Alliance divide as integral and immutable to the Warcraft DNA.
Never mind that Mercenary Mode in PVP is a far more egregious offense to the sanctity of those allegiances than allowing for PVE content to be handled cross-faction. Or that the history of Warcraft - comically at this point - has us working together more often than not and storylines following the same beats that always end with us teaming up against the new big bad.
Also, the narrative of Battle for Azeroth was absolutely non-essential to arrive at the point that Shadowlands requires. There’s enough death from regular world shaking threats that even the glutinous Maw should be choking on the number of souls being fed through.
The Fourth War was completely pointless.
It wasn’t necessary to produce dead people. It purported to provide an answer for a question nobody asked about the Horde’s identity and then did not provide that answer. We get the additional objective of Breaking the Cycle added mid-expansion but we know that’s a farce.
Sylvanas didn’t have to become a cartoon villain to be our antagonist.
Hell, we’re going into the next expansion’s story and I still have no clue if she’s supposed to be the bad guy. Azshara - a core, foundational villain to WoW - became our ally for crying out loud! What assurance do we have Sylvanas isn’t going to be the hero in the end? She keeps being portrayed in an ambiguously heroic manner in the neat CGI trailers.
But she could have just played Warchief by the book, doing her own thing in the shadows or having her pet do it for her like he did in BfA anyway - as we dealt with recovering from the damned Legion invasion and the huge freakin’ sword killing our planet, then buggered off mysteriously at the end to her date with Bolvar.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing matters.
It’s all just some weird stream of consciousness that we’re supposed to awe and marvel at its coolness.
21 Likes
It was touched on, ever so briefly, in the Prisoner cinematic. I think Anduin remarks while looking at a new returning shipment of Alliance dead that the next crop of soldiers will be farmers.
This implies that at least the Alliance but presumably both factions are beginning to suffer from attrition. The professional soldiers are already deployed or dead so now it’s conscripts being set into the grinder. And if those run out then you’re stuck with people previously considered too young, old or ill to fight.
I’m thinking back to historical accounts of towns that were left near abandoned due to costly war efforts and wonder if that’s how Goldshire or Razor Hilll is supposed to feel right now. If so - I feel like a lot of people would just be glad to see it over. Andy’s the King of Stormwind afterall and I can see why he’d be amenable to letting people go back to growing food.
And again - even if this was the intention that doesn’t save the story or retroactively make the writing good. But it’s an angle worth considering.
1 Like
The destruction of the Lich King means the unleashing of the Scourge upon Azeroth. The reason Bolvar took up the mantle, the reason “there must always be a Lich King”, is that the mindless Scourge was too great a threat.
So now, after our armies are depleted, we’re supposed to be able to handle let alone defeat such a force?
Again, nothing matters. If there were any consistency the destruction of the Helm of Domination would be Azeroth’s death knell.
11 Likes
Oh, absolutely, they stated at BlizzCon that the Fourth War ranked up an obscene amount of casualties on both sides - knowing Sylvanas started it for that purpose, this was definitely by design.
Much like we’re getting tired of the faction war, I’d imagine that (barring those who are trying to bloat some realm in the Shadowlands with millions of souls) most of Azeroth is too.
2 Likes
Honestly the idea that the Scourge would be more dangerous without a strategic mind pulling the strings remains the single dumbest thing this game has ever said. In my book at least.
“Now that they’re all mindless animals - they’ll be UNSTOPPABLE!”. Yeah, totally, I’d be so much more terrified of an enemy after they all received frontal lobotomies.
I don’t know how they’re going to handle that but I say open fire with the retcon gun. Why’d Bolvar have to put it on in the first place? To just keep the Scourge in Northrend to spare Azeroth the truly herculean mop up that would’ve been cleaning it up. Or literally anything else.
3 Likes
I can agree to that to an extent. I dunno how the Scourge with no direction would be more dangerous than a Scourge under the direction of someone who wanted to do exactly what they apparently would’ve done without any direction in the first place. But I’m willing to accept it, I do like that the Scourge is back at least.
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Yeah, I think we’re about to learn that it’s not so much a mindless ravening scourge is unstoppable, as it is inconvenient for a couple of weeks. Maybe a month.
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I understood they wanted to literally freeze the Lich King because hey, cool concept we’ll probably use him again later. From a meta perspective I understood they were just doing that and was fine with it.
From a story perspective- how does an army of the dead hellbent on the eradication of all life on the planet get worse? Probably not by removing their capacity for strategic thought.
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One could argue that Bolvar gave them all frontal lobotomies while he was in control - he kept them subdued and pacified. As such, without him holding them back, they could potentially become more of a threat, just not as much of one without someone telling them to destroy all life.
I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, by the by. Just tossing it out there.
1 Like
Perhaps I’m misremembering but I recall Wrath ending with it being pulled out of nowhere that there must be a Lich King otherwise the Scourge will destroy all life on Azeroth. Which - that was literally Arthas’s game plan. They’d be more dangerous without him?! Why the f"$"k did we just kill him then?!
2 Likes
Some sliver of Arthas’s humanity remained, which was also holding them back. Three kingdoms died the last time the entirety of the Scourge was released.