If you’re not saying that it’s good, then I don’t see why you’re defending it, or trying to double down with a comment from a man whose entire framework I regard as bankrupt for an MMORPG.
Regarding RaiderIo’s numbers - can you tell me why they’re not accurate? What did they screw up? How did they get it wrong? How does Blizzard’s inability to figure out a way to deal with the imbalance (referring back to Ion calling it a social issue) contradict RaiderIO’s figures?
I am saying it has never been a good feeling for players but it probably something that is needed by the game(and many stories in general) that the factions factions are pushed to the limit and lose from time to time.
Like it or not Kosak’s entire Devs watercooler discussion is still as relevant today as it was back in Cata. Also, I generally like Kosak, back in the days he answer a few of my question and always seemed like a pleasant guy.
Which is my way of saying your views of the world of warcraft are you’re own and is not a hard fact.
For one I doubt everyone raiderIO and even then things can throw said thing off balance like people buying carries. It is a tool, nothing more, nothing else. Blizzard literally has all the date and they confirmed literally just a day ago the source of the imbalance is the racials but that simply fixing racials can’t undo the damage because people are people and they take the path of least resistance.
People don’t have to be ok with that.
They don’t have to be. Having said that they can’t ignore this will continue to happen to the various races. Blizzard will likely keep destroying/killing characters that is the nature of Warcraft story. The flip side is they will(eventually) fix it/give new stuff. Biggest example is the Stormwind Park.
On that note, I am not sure the humans/Alliance will escape the villain bat forever. Turalyon’s style of leadership seems like it bound to cause conflict sooner or later.
It’s certainly relevant. I would argue that the “Hero Factory” was central to BFA’s construction. If you actually read the Watercooler, Kosak replies to the question of whether the devs were biased towards the Horde by saying that they were, then with a dodge trying to compare events in books and prologue with events that were happening right then onscreen, and a segue into a model that we need to have an unjust world in order for heroes to rise.
In other words:
Alliiance: Victims of an unjust world.
Horde: Villains who created that unjust world.
Can you tell me who exactly has been satisfied by this model? Because I see Horde players all over the place rightfully complaining about the latter, and Night Elf fans who have become a meme in this fashion because we bear the brunt of the former.
This isn’t fun - and that’s a pretty critical thing that your video game has to be if you want to sell it. I don’t care if you think that things are fine because tragedy is fine in passive media. I love the movie Schindler’s List, but I would never play a video game based on it where my only option was “die tragically”. That game wouldn’t be fun, I wouldn’t play it. Yet somehow this is what I’m supposed to be satisfied with? How exactly? Are the Horde supposed to be satisfied with having their vision in Warcraft 3 twisted into being the bad guys with Schindler’s List? Why should THEY play it?
That’s the danger with looking at the lore without considering what it’s there to actually do. The story exists for the game, not the other way around, and if the story’s direction disagrees with the game’s objectives - it’s a bad story. Kosak’s entire way of thinking disagrees with the game’s objectives as well. That makes it a bad narrative framework.
On raiderIO - I can tell you are not going to have this conversation seriously. They have more than a large enough base of data to sample the population and present representative figures. Blizzard also didn’t contradict them. Ion said that the faction imbalance issue was driven by social factors. Tweaking racials won’t do it.
Cool.
Then what’s the problem? If they don’t have to be ok with it, then there’s no point in adding anything after that.
You view only the things in WoW as important. I don’t. For me the RTS is just as important as anything else. Not to mention with how BFA ended its
And it clear you only hear the part you wanted to hear, it is being driven by social factors NOW in the sense that this problem was added long ago and now the raiding masses have migrated to the Horde side that short of a major shake up their is no incentive to go back.
You are not gonna get an argument from that the Horde are fairly villainous. Having said that they some of them were just as much victims(some willing victims but I digress) of a vicious interstellar war that seems to be going on by the various cosmological forces.
Then you are missing on a lot of good games. Walking Dead, Life is Strange series, Fallout 3(hell the best ending is suppose to be the player sacrificing themselves), Dragon age 1 to name a few.
Also, they specifically spelled out even back in cata that they “don’t do happy endings in Blizzard” and we have seen that in how Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 ended.
I am saying you will have to live with it. That despite our biggest protest this will probably continue to be how Warcraft story will unfold. Plenty of tragedy with only small glimpses of hope. Warcraft is Warhammer lite, and unlike Warhammer you actually do feel you might still win.
To see the factions ebb and flow as their leaders get embroiled in all manner of heroism or skullduggery is like a reward for long-time players.-Kosak
Look, maybe the Horde will turn evil again, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will be worse off or maybe now that the worse elements of it are gone it will be a better organization. Who knows, kinda the point of why we are all here is to see where it all leads.
Re: Block 1 and Block 2 - You can hold that opinion, but it’s at odds with the media you’re dealing with. The RTS is well in the past and does not promote racial investment the way an MMO does. Warcraft 3 Reforged flopped and therefore couldn’t reignite interest in it - and books, tweets, and other non-visual media are trumped every time by visual media in terms of memorability and impact. That’s how our brains work - and you don’t get to ignore that. You also don’t get to ignore that the MMO is the beating heart of the franchise currently - that’s how it’s understood - not by a tie-in book written fifteen years ago that perhaps a half-percent of the population read.
Regarding 2 - I’m aware of what he said regarding the genesis of the problem - but you’re missing why it remains a problem now, which again has to do with social dynamics.
Regarding Block 4 - I would have to ask how those games approach gameplay as a whole. Because while a game can end with something on the level of a heroic sacrifice, that’s not the same thing as the game and players representing your faction rival constantly beating into your head that you suck, that you will always lose, that there’s nothing you can do about it, and that your efforts are meaningless.
Such is a direct and constant attack on the feeling of competence, one of the three psychological needs that we play video games for in the first place. For the Horde? Blizzard is going after another one - their relatedness. These are suicidal moves if you are intending to sell copies of your video game.
Not really, that’s the point of listing problems and advocating change. Obviously nothing changes immediately.
Do you go to cancer walks reminding people we still have to live with cancer?
‘You can be not ok with it but it happens’, ok? Just a nonstatement.
I remember when I first arrived at Dazaralor. I explored a bit and immediately thought:
“Oh Sh… this place is gonna be a raid.”
And this was almost after BfA launched.
It just had the hallmarks of a Raid zone from day 1 and I can’t even explain why. It seemed compartmentalized yet open. Spacious yet confined.
Intelligence doesn’t equal wisdom.
We have had this argument before and now visual media does not trump written works. They are simply different. Second. Warcraft 3 reforged flopped because it was horribly made and not necessarily because RTS are in the past.
Lastly, many people are still Horde/Alliance precisely because they were shaped by the RTS factions divide, certainly the older players.
And your missing the fact that the social dynamics is now due to the fact there is no incentive to leave the dominant faction. That the pro simply outweigh the cons.
That is why we have characters on both factions. There ultimate fate usually determine what happens to the world. And yes our efforts are suppose to be meaningless, Warcraft has never shied away from telling us the faction conflict is a distraction from the great evils that keep attacking us but due to neccesity is still something we all need to fight.
The thing is I doubt Blizzard considers it a problem and if anything realize that is a pillar to what makes warcraft, warcraft.
Using your doctor analogy it more like a doctor telling you what his treatment method will be, You may not like and you are certainly free not to accept it/try a different doctor but aside from some small palliative request you wont change the doctors recommendations.
We have had this argument before and now visual media does not trump written works.
Yes they do, and you in no way in the past demonstrated otherwise. Nonvisual, inaccessible media does not hold a candle to the impact of visual information presented in the heart of the franchise that most of the population accesses and sees. Sorry.
Your second point is incorrect. The RaiderIO data demonstrates that Alliance racials are dominant to the point where the population on tournament servers is greater than 90% Alliance. That’s a pretty strong incentive, but it’s not enough to overcome wanting to play on the Horde. It was strong enough in the past to make people abandon the Alliance though - that difference is worth examining.
Your third block may be distilled down to “if you want to have fun, the Horde is waiting for you” - which is an attack on the third psychological need that we play video games for: autonomy. You seem to be presenting my recourse as “abandon what you want to play and play another option instead”. I have a better option: unsubscribe in disgust, and play a game that actually cares about doing right by me as a customer.
So you are saying they should just accept it.
Defeatism is pretty meh advice. But I’ll remember that if you ever have a complaint.
It wasn’t a doctor analogy… It was you as a lay person telling random people working against something that said thing is still a problem at the very place they’re working against it.
Like going to a Pride parade and telling people randomly that some people probably dislike them for their sexuality. And I guess always will?
Doesn’t really change trying to do something about the complaint.
That is your opinion. All it would take is for you to type “are books better the movies” to see a whole list of arguments tell you it is just an opinion and is not in any way shape or form fact.
Then that isn’t a good analogy either. It would be more like me, a lay person telling you disregarding/stubbornly not listing to what the doctor said, no matter how bad it is probably a bad idea.
You do realize this is a fact. Some people are beyond ever changing their view. It is something you literally have to live with.
Over the past few years, I’ve only seen a single reason cited for why any raiders refuse to go back to the alliance, and that’s because most of the higher-skilled players have already consolidated on the horde. There’s no benefit whatsoever for them to, at best, split their opportunities in half by joining the faction that’s competitively lagging behind. Apparently this is an issue in rated PVP as well; last I heard from one, they were astonished that they managed to wrangle three horde players into jumping faction specifically to play with them. That’s a gamble with a real monetary cost.
I’d imagine you would have to bring down the faction barrier and let people group and guild across lines, which would finally free people up to pick whichever faction they actually prefer without harming their end game prospects.
We have had this argument before and now visual media does not trump written works.
It’s not a matter of quality - it’s a matter of how well the information can be remembered and what kind of impression it leaves - and on that front, visual information beats text any day of the week. Sorry. This is why they say “show don’t tell”, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and why digital marketers say that video content is far and away more effective than text versions of the same content.
Mix in the fact that WoW books are nowhere near as popular as the base game, and we have a serious issue. You can’t expect transmedia narrative to undo impressions made in the game - that means if you want to deliver a certain impression, you actually have to make the investments to do it.
It also means that impressions made in the game have far and away more staying power than something that was clarified on page 47 of some book.
Sigh, I have already had this discussion with you. “Show don’t tell” is literally a WRITING TECHNIQUE about making your characters relatable though sensory details and actions as oppose to exposition. You can literally still “tell and not show” in a movie/TV if you keep using exposition.
Because that was never suppose to be the goal of warcraft book. They are ANCILLARY to the game’s story and was never suppose to be the main source.
Except sometime a written narrative is actually a better way to deliver information than even an ingame experience. I would argue some people think A Good War/Elegy is better and possibly more impactful then the War of Thorns ingame event which had to bend over backwards for game play purposes .
Genuinely thought this was a commonly accepted reason. Like… there’s no way anyone thinks lore has anything to do with it, right? Your average top 500 EU tank in M+ probably doesn’t even know any lore beyond voice-acted quests.