It was more of a joke, but the point still kinda stands. A bunch of pitchforked farmers (and a fledgling hero) were able to take out a Val’kyr but somehow their empowerment makes Nathanos invulnerable to a Moon Juiced Tyrande. It was a silly take.
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Yeah, it’s not like they even needed to have Nathanos be the primary fighter there.
Could’ve just had the Val’kyr tank hits until dead and Nathanos retreat when that happens.
I’m not sure how the Alliance side looked but I’m assuming it was a similar ‘beat on the tank dummy until plot happens’?
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Pretty much, yeah.
It’s been a while since I’ve done it but basically bear shifted Malfurion and some Elune empowered Worgen show up as back-up dancers as Tyrande does some fancy moonfire that does nothing to hurt Nathanos until she kills a Val’kyr causing him to retreat. Someone can feel free to correct me on this, like I said, it’s been a little while since I did the scenario.
I do like your alternate take on just having the Val’kyr in as frontline attackers and Nathanos hanging back/retreating at the Val’kyr dying, it would’ve made more sense with the scenario.
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Yes. I think the name for the TV Trope of this is the ‘Worf Effect’, wherein to show how much of a threat someone is, have them beat Worf in a physical match.
Which is all well and good for it to happen once, but if literally all that happens with Worf is he keeps getting his keister handed to him, it starts to make you wonder if he serves a purpose other than ‘Let me show you how tough this new guy is’.
You know what’s sad?
I was so desperate to see a night elf do something that I got goosebumps when Tyrande pretty much Nathanos her…ahem during their last fight.
Because that’s how it should have gone. The first time they fought. Way, way before this Night Warrior thing. Tyrande created the Sentinels. I don’t know why people keep thinking she can’t wipe the floor with most of the people on the planet.
Sigh
Sure glad I spent that time helping them fix up Darkshore and Ashenvale before that. Makes me feel like I made a big difference.
They had to go by the HQ of the Silverwing Sentinels too, right?
Sigh Yeah.
Respectfully, I think you’re missing the point.
Even if you ignore the levels? This is still someone getting taken out by a group of untrained farmers with pitchforks.
The point, I believe, is that pretending this val’kyr empowered Nathanos to somehow survive the wrath of the two (arguably) strongest night elves on the planet ignores the fact that val’kyr don’t really seem to be all that powerful. Not enough for what they did.
No. I’m sorry, but no.
Even if we agree that Nathanos’ training as a human Ranger [I forget the specific title] is somehow enough to create a level playing field? These are woods he is unfamiliar with.
He is dealing with people who would have the same kind of training, except for thousands (this is not hyperbole) of years of experience doing exactly what they are doing in woods that they literally live in.
Hard enough to imagine him escaping one of them. But two of them? One of whom can literally just ask a tree “Hey, where did he go?” and get an answer?
No. That’s ridiculous.
Mind you, that’s not something I’m putting on you. I’m not calling you ridiculous. I’m saying the entire situation was ridiculous. The way to handle it better was to have written it down, looked at it, then realized “…no, this is stupid, let me not do this”.
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Honestly, I was shocked when Blizzard went all in on the genocide. When I initially heard about the burning I half expect they would go the Theramore route and at least have the Alliance evacuate the civilians.
It would probably have been a more paletable thing if we know the civilians/children did not die.
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Read Elegy. Stormwind was overflowing with refugees.
Horde-side, is it even supposed to feel cool going up against Malfurion and Tyrande? To me, the problem with the premise of having to fight off an army of vengeful night elves is that for them to be vengeful, you have to have wronged them first. And the game already did that “aggrieved alliance” shtick in the last faction war.
When you don’t want to be the bad guy but the game’s cast you as that anyway, it just made me feel resentful when alliance characters even show up, let alone do anything. And it’s definitely impacted me enough that I still feel that frustration even now into Dragonflight.
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Except alot more died than was saved.
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Still thousands. So the lament that Night elves are genocided is an overreaction. They are getting a new tree and will be able to repopulate eventually. The true victims of Bfa are the Zandalari who only existed for a single patch and now will never matter ever again.
I will say this…
The war of thorns was the first time that I felt the way that I did. It was the first time I wanted to log off right after watching a cutscene.
I’ve been disappointed and salty at the game before, but not like that.
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It was the term used. Again, if like the story mentioned every/nearly every civilian night elf survived it would have had a different feel to it.
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You ever had that kind of ‘friend’ who will say something when you’re out, and then you have to get in trouble because of that?
Yeah. That wasn’t fun in high school, and it’s not fun in a game where I’m trying to be a hero.
Seriously, if you’re doing something that the guy you’re controlling in any of the Grand Theft Autos might go “Hey…hey, whoa. WHOA.”? Maybe…maybe the game writers are losing track of the tone they should be setting.
This is the kind of thing that is unbelievably difficult to handle well. It can be done, but it takes a nuanced, deft hand holding the pen.
There’s ‘grim and dark and adult’ and ‘Jesus Christ, Mark, what the hell is wrong with you?’
There’s ‘guilty pleasure’ and ‘You do understand that I’m not actually a monster, right?’
It’s…I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but whta on earth where they thinking?
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I have to say, it’s really fascinating to hear from someone who played BfA without the WoT. That’s a perspective that was impossible to get, back when the expansion was new.
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I think there were (3?) Civilians you could kill in astranaar optionally as Horde, but on the Alliance side, you found them dead, implying that your character canonically decided to whack them in cold blood.
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I amended that for you. Horde players have a whole separate set of problems—which, I stress, is not saying that ours matter more than yours. Just that there’s room for another entire list.
And if you do get it, then I’m afraid resentment is going to fester in the other direction. There really seems to be no way to make both sides happy. Unfortunately.
Yeah—I’d love to make a Zandalari character, but as long as it’s locked behind the BfA war campaign, I’m not going to do it. The only way I can deal is that I never played the WoT on any of my Horde toons and never did the Horde war campaign either. That way, my characters were canonically not there.
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When all is said and done, there are small things I can take from the story and find ways to appreciate the parts of it that I am able.
I’ve struggled with something I’ll call misotheism in the past. so for example, the “I will never serve” cutscene was extremely daft and I felt like it really undermined her entire character in one fel swoop. But if I look at it as a metaphor for one who is a cog in an ever dissonant machine, it’s like… are you willing to die right then and there out of principal? to subject yourself to the wrath of a god because you’re just… tired of it all?
Granted, I have to dig reeeeally deep to even see the metaphor which was so haphazardly strung together in the first place. It shouldn’t be that difficult, I should just sit back and enjoy the story but I haven’t been able to for some time.
That isn’t to say Dragonflight is bad or anything, quite the contrary. It’s a breath of much needed fresh air.
But Teldrassil was so polarizing I still taste it in my mouth. And I hate it.
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I think there are ways to finagle a scenario so that its negatives for both factions are outweighed by the bonuses for both factions, but I agree that it would take a level of care and finesse that I’m too burned to believe that Blizz has. Still, my own opinion is that leaving things as-is is worse than genuinely trying to fix it. Or else it will continue being the eternal talking point that every conversation here will inevitably go back to.
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I think it’ll end up being an eternal talking point regardless of what blizz does. Even if they do fix it with all the care in the world, it’s still going to open old wounds for horde players, and remind us, yet again, that our characters were complicit in a genocide.
It’s really something most people don’t want to deal with it. And that’s why I think there’s a lot of pushback on a big NE win. I honestly think it’s not a fixable situation and blizz seems to be aware of that. That no matter what they do, it’s going to anger a lot of people
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I still maintain that evidence points to the school being empty when it exploded, if that helps. 
No, be fair, the Zandalari did carry BfA (on the Horde side). The power thing is a separate issue.
According to the leaks we’ve heard, the burning of Teldrassil was Alex Afrasiabi’s idea, but he was out before the follow-up, and he never told anyone what his plans for that were. If he even had any, which is questionable.
Not that I can think of, but for a certain type of writer, spotlight for maximum angst is love.
Oh, totally. Both sides have a big case of “grass is greener” whenever this topic comes up.
I’m not sure. I think it (a story about the Azerite arms race) may have been the original plan, but the expansion concept drifted a lot during development.
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That’s true. They did carry the expansion and Zandalar was fun, a ton of fun actually.
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