I have no problems with Gazlowe either. I believe it’s a good angle for one heroic goblin to try and make his own cartel, with respectable living standards and good wages. It’s good this character exists.
The problem is… I don’t think Blizzard is going to convey just how insanely uphill and difficult Gazlowe’s fight will be. The story will probably have us enter the Undermine (which will probably be a dungeon), punch Merchant-Lord Meaniehead in the mouth, and somehow that will resolve the entire plot thread. All the ethical conundrumsof capitalist enterprise resolved with a stupid swordfight.
Large conglomerates don’t start treating employees poorly over time because they find it funny. The fact of the matter is if you’re really ruthless, you can undercut or totally outrun your competition. This is how tons of recognizable companies got to where they are. And while I know for a fact some writer was fired because they made fun of Bobby Kotick’s yacht with a Venture Company goblin character, Blizzard writers of all people should understand why big money-making groups cut corners and abuse people.
“We want better more serious stories written for adults” gets a better more serious and adult story with actual character development “No we want goofy silly stories with zero character development and races that act like hiveminds”.
I don’t think a single thing about this franchise has ever felt like it was for adults, honestly. By that logic, Sonic the Hedgehog is a franchise for adults.
WoW always felt and looked like a saturday’s morning cartoon for childeren. Like… we use talking cows, lizards and an overly cute disney like fox as avatars. Come on xD
The follow-through is what’s going to matter here, but the story was fine. Gazlowe was acting in-character, this has been his thing for a while.
Genuinely though, I’d like it if this didn’t get a happy pay-off. I’d like it if Gazlowe ultimately failed, or was even deposed because his radical platform, in the eyes of influential goblins, threatened their profit margins. I don’t want goblins to become bastions for worker’s rights, I want them to continue to be comically over-the-top, insatiably greedy, heartless profiteers. There’s nothing wrong with creating foils to that to narratively condemn it – in fact, one of my biggest criticisms of Blizzard is that rather than seed their morals into the story by framing it around surprisingly dark and brutal themes with the traditional dose of Warcraft levity, they’ve started to construct new cultures and redesign old ones to reflect those values internally from the beginning.
It feels unearned, and loses any impact or valuable social message it might have. For what it’s worth, I find people sometimes underestimate how good Blizzard can be at writing positive messages in a compelling way – MoP was a good example of that, and a lot of its impact relied on portraying the horrors of war in as unfiltered and condemnatory a manner as possible.
In a vacuum, I think this story is fine. It does what it wants to do, it’s setting something up for the future of goblins. What I’m afraid of is that it’s going to be resolved in a very straightforward, video gamey manner, setting up all these interesting and complex issues in goblin society by a character who’s been built up for years to champion that cause, and rather than deliver a meaningful if bitter conclusion to that, they’ll sort of handwave it into a happily-ever-after that doesn’t feel earned and just leaves everyone feeling like they lost something essential to what made goblins so fun.
It’s not impossible to have goblin leadership fundamentally change the working conditions of the average goblin, that was a theme introduced to the story of goblins since they were first released. I’m just not sure I trust Blizzard to write a satisfying pay-off to that story. Maybe TWW will surprise me – it’s left a good impression so far.
Are you saying you don’t take peoples rights seriously? Cause thats what I’m getting from this in which case um yikes >.>
Also the people of California America aren’t the only people on this entire planet that care about those things.
But anyway back on topic writing a group of people as a rigid unchanging monolith is extremely unrealistic and garbage world building it is not good story writing.
The writer DID write for a lot of Marvel properties, according to the About the Author blurb at the end, but he’s been with Blizzard since 2014. He appears to have done writing for the Harbingers animated shorts for Legion and the Afterlives shorts for Shadowlands.
