“If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act”.
–Chekov
All that quote really means is that you don’t put details into a story that are meaningless. You don’t make false promises to your audience. To do so is bad writing.
Nobody expects WoW to be the least bit literary, but when you make an expansion that is all about the war between two factions escalating, it is absolutely hideous writing to have the story end basically the same way it began: With an uneasy co-existence.
And there is simply no greater flouting of Chekov’s rule than beginning an expac with “Ermigerd there’s a giant sword stuck in the world so we have to spend YEARS collecting bits of Azerite and healing woooons” and ending it with . . .a sword still stuck in Azeroth.
We can argue the merits of making half the Horde dupes (you decide which half) and making the Alliance once again “help” them, plus all the controversial bits hanging on all that. But I can’t understand how BfA’s story broke such a basic rule of storytelling.
I’m no lore devotee at all, but come on. Everyone who bought BfA deserved to feel like their game-play changed things. And this expac had none of that.
Soo, the actual impact and presence of the sword itself isn’t really a danger to the planet.
It’s a Planet. It was formed by having lots of big rocks smack in to it over billions of years.
What was dangerous was the malevolent influence of Sargeras (Cleansed with our Artifacts from Legion), which opened wounds all over the planet which began to leak Azerite.
We cured the source of the injury in Legion, and have spent the past expansion patching up all the ancillary wounds caused by the source.
At this point the sword is effectively a big rock sticking out of the planet. A super-dense magic material rock… but a rock. With creepy flowing looking skin.
But we have, on a planetary scale, effectively created a cyst around the wound and the planet is fine now.
Pulling the sword out may actually cause more damage than leaving it in. What should be happening is a demolition project designed to grind the sword down until it is no more than a hill compared to the surrounding terrain.
I’m not happy with how poorly this has been explained in-game, but the bits and pieces are mostly there to pick up if you pay attention and have a lot of imagination.
IIRC, we blew up the ship that nearly killed the giant turtle of Panda Isle. Not sure why we couldn’t get Khadgar and a few thousand healers plus all the players with Azerite necks to Witch Mountain/Ghost Buster beam/ 13 Black Ajah and one Jedi master levitate and destroy that thing.
Also, speaking of the gun the wall. Jaina has a magic battle cruiser and Turalyon has Vindicaar/ Protoss carrier.
I’m trying to imagine what they would hit, aside from the ground.
It is conceivable to have a cannon fire out to extreme ranges, Saddam had commissioned a gun that, theoretically, could have reached out 1,000 Km.
But the Germans were unable to produce any acceptable accuracy (Compared to regular line Artillery firing at closer ranges, but still indirect) with their rail-mounted cannons at ranges of 20 - 40Km firing from stable specially prepared positions.
I’m at work atm so I can’t properly look it up, but I’m pretty sure even the New Jersey requires a hefty bit of ordnance and several fires to get dialed in on BVR targets, and She’s famed for her accuracy.
BfA was a narrative atrocity. If there’s something I’m really salt about WoW right now, it’s how the story has been handled post-Legion. It was never perfect before, but BfA, at the same time it reached new highs in cinematics and minor storylines (like Jaina’s personal arc or some leveling zones), it also reached its lowest point in handling the main story and failing to deliver a satisfying conclusion. I can’t believe any expansion could have been as bad, if not worse, than WoD in that regard.
This expansion started with a bang and died with a whimper.
I say for the pre-patch, every single hero on Azeroth gets to grab a chunk of the sword to make their own statless Transmog-only “Weapon of Sargeras”, with one super oversized weapon for each weapon-type, in the same style as the sword.
Actually, the US had a guy who was developing long range cannon technology as an alternative to ICBMs. The military lost interest and when he tried to shop his life’s work elsewhere we exiled him to Canada and then assassinated him.
