In World of Warcraft you’re a soldier. BFA kicked that up into a full scale war.
Atrocity and war go hand in hand, no matter what war you’re talking about, no matter which side. That’s simply a fact of history. Sadism comes into play when you are adding to that by your own choice. When it comes to attacking Ashenvale, the player has the choice of killing only the soldiers or including civillians on his body count. That IS YOUR player choice. And even revenge-driven Logrash gives you a bit of side eye the first time you choose a civillian.
I did not see that element in the Horde side of the War of Thorns. Saurfang sure isn’t laughing after Sylvannas has the Tree torched. In the movie I reference, Schindler isn’t exactly an unvarnished hero. He originally comes into the situation not as a vicious man but not someone who’s looking beyond his own self interests either. His viewpoint however evolves along with the situation.
Well, because the WoT wasn’t written by a top shelf writing team that was stuck with going either oddly out of place, nor dissonant. They just went with poorly told entirely. We still have goblins being goblins, but the actual travesty (not the event itself, but the fall-out of such an event) is practically a non-issue. Tyrande doesn’t see a problem with taking her nearly extinct race into battle, because by that point the near-genocide of the night elves is a non-issue. Horde-side people talk about how Sylvanas “went too far”, but barely mention how she went too far. More focus is quickly shifted to her more ramped up use of necromancy than nearly wiping out a race.
A top shelf writer’s gonna have to figure out a way to write around the goofier aspects of daily play in WoW, where my character has to handle the knowledge of aiding in the near-extermination of the night elves, but then also goes off to Mekkagon to aid the Junkion rebellion or collect eight crates from the Dazar’alor market place because something spooked a brutosaur again, or write the entire expansion without anything like that.
And WoW, without those aspects, wouldn’t feel like WoW.
And this is where I have to remind you that this is game which originally started out with a command and conquer game that was carrying truck fuls of camp. That’s literally what you were buying into when you decided to sub for this game. It’ snot like it wasn’t fairly common knowledge that the venu is pretty much a smorgasboard of themes ranging from dramatic to downright satire.
I roleplay a fairly serious character but I also realise that for all the Star Trek, there’s a lot of Orville as well.
I’m curious if blizzard have actually deemed teldrassyl a genocide, or if it was just a loss of life higher than would be liked. Since population numbers aren’t something they usually take into consideration, cause let’s not forget Belves has 90% of their entire race decimated by the scourge and we have that as a basis for how bad off Belves are in terms of population yet some reason they still participate in wars.
I’m just curious as to what the official percentage is on the night elf deaths, since during WoTs it was looking obvious that the night elves would lose after awhile, and they began evacuating people to SW and the Draenei isles.
And yes, that’s kinda been a part of my point this entire time. And it’s why throwing genocide in the middle of all that was always doomed. Because you can tell a good story about genocide in a movie, but an MMO isn’t a movie. And WoW isn’t just any MMO.
… I’m not even sure what we’re disagreeing about now.
I never put much thought into it, but… BfA’s faction war really started with the climactic moment, and worked their way up to the mid-point. Like, the Cata/Mop war had its issues there too, but nowhere near as pronounced. Grrosh is harassing the nelves, Sylvanas is going full Banshee in the EK, but nothing really off the scale until Theramore. Then MoP started building up and building up until Garry’s actions caused the Vale to have a minor explosion. It’s not as big of a climax as Theramore, but it’s still a climax.
Meanwhile, we start BfA with the biggest event to happen to a playable race, then quickly de-escalate from there to skirmish battles, then down further from there to petty battles until finally ending… On a duel.
Don’t remind me how they did Garry, in all honesty I know stonetalon was only made because there where miscommunications on Garry bois character route but he would’ve been such a more interesting leader if they kept him like that. Cause I’m his mind his people where staring and he needed to act in order to keep them from entering a famine, and being a warrior all he’d know is how to war but war with honor. Really just a slap in the face to orc fans when we learn in every other timeline Garry was the best warchief.
Also you’re right Syl started way way to big and tried to bring it down to skirmish battles with high failure success rates, just so she can see as many die as possible. At least Garry started off small skirmishes and worked his way up.
I understand the context of what you’re saying so I don’t disagree with you, but my biggest problem with BfA was that it actually didn’t kick it up into a full scale war.
The promo trailers involved the battle for Lordaeron - a huge battle involving heroic acts by Sylvanas and Anduin. We saw the videos leading up showing Teldrassil being burned. It was “Horde v Alliance” - with the backdrop of Azerite weaponry and strategic choices.
Sylvanas and Saurfang agreed they needed to take out Teldrassil to remove the Alliance presence in Kalimdor - a successful feint that lead to taking out the port on Kalimdor. Sylvanas wanted to kill Malfurion to help kill the hope of the Alliance and instead burned Teldrassil when he escaped. The Alliance marched to Lordaeron to remove the Horde presence in the Eastern Kingdoms. To deny a new Alliance stronghold, Sylvanas blighted the area. I’m not justifying and/or criticizing any of the actions taken, just that this was the entire lead up. The expectation would be a giant war, spanning the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor (and since we discovered more island chains let’s spread it there too).
Instead we fight a fake Old God, release a real Old God, fight and kill said real Old God (who happened to be the biggest bad for the last decade or so). The Alliance and Horde work together (vaguely) against an Old God, Azshara, and N’zoth. We even vaguely work together in Nazjatar and Mechagon.
The “war” aspect is limited to some scenarios in the newly (re)discovered island chain (plus I guess the expeditions), a command table slew of missions, and a raid where the Alliance invades the Horde city in the expansion and assassinates their leader (again not justifying and/or criticizing). Even then, the Horde does a freaky Friday so they can experience raiding the enemy stronghold. At the end of it all, “we” were just “part” of some atrocities that occurred followed by a c’oup.
It would be like Shadowlands 9.1 and onward focusing on raiding/invading the Twisting Nether, the Void, and the Light.
Well duh… you didn’t write angry enough letters to the devs
The writing team got caught in a crummy plot hole… even if they wanted to get it to Ardenweald we were already there with the Ysera story line… and we are doing the drust and Zandalari troll story as wel, we didn’t need the night warrior to tie in Ardenweald too.
It’s works now that they created the Night warrior story, but they didn’t need to create the night warrior in the first place if their original goal was to tie it up in Ardenweald. The night warrior will have no true impact on the overall story by the end of SL, unless it’s a power boon they distribute to the player to defeat the jailer.
When you think about it, the Horde has become their world as anything negative that happens is reacted with “HORDE EVIL”
Agreed, they’re showing night elf lore where it doesn’t belong in hopes to silence the angry screams from the nelf players and as expected this didn’t work out and wasted a zone that feels like Legion 2.0
Wouldn’t be Furion as he caused her death for going Leeroy against Xavius? Tyrande literally never interacted with Ysera prior to Legion
To distract from yet another failed attempt to cash in on the E-sports craze and bolster a toxic playerbase in a game mode that’s never mattered in the long term health of the game compared to PvE content.
Blizzard’s futile attempts to make PvP center stage or even relevant never ceases to amuse me.
