I do not pull my punches with Blizz but I don’t temper my praise either.
The games fine. I actually haven’t seen that much of the end game because I’ve been busy trying different builds on different class / race combos just to see how they’ll pan out in BGs.
Ya know. Like this is a fun RPG with a buncha viable if suboptimal play styles. And I’m not worried about the end game because for the first time since arguably Vanilla it feels like a destination and not the entire point.
I’m just baffled what you people even want from this game.
Like what it’s not wholesome enough, it’s not dark enough, now it’s too wholesome, now it’s too dark.
Now it’s veering off too much from established lore. Now it’s veering too much into it.
Frankly I’m on CDev’s side for once. There’s no pleasing 8 million people. They ought to just do whatever they want. Not like ya’ll would leave. Anyone who would already did.
I think for the most part, people just want these topics dealt with considerately.
Contrasting this is a small timegated quest chain with a Dragonmaw orc that was around since WC2, and while the Alexstrasza half isn’t specifically brought up, it does go into the guilt he carries for having been a part of his clan’s actions back then.
And it was largely praised by the playerbase, from what I’ve seen.
Yeah, DF’s playing it incredibly safe after the last two expansions, and it makes sense why. While I personally don’t mind it, I can understand why some feel it might be a little too safe. But the Alexstrasza time travel quest vaults way in the other direction to being stupid and uncomfortable.
I think it’s reasonable to not want a quest of this nature in the game.
What’s unreasonable is comparing the crimes visited on human beings, usually by family members or other people they believed they could trust, to an absurd fantasy situation involving an aircraft carrier sized reptillian and the words ‘Demon Soul’.
Is this quest tone deaf? Absolutely.
But I still think I’m within my rights to find that comparison outlandishly offensive.
Edit: As you can guess SA is pretty close to home for me. I am close with multiple survivors and unfortunately one person who took her life over it.
This is not a topic I have ANY interest in comparing to a duck mothering WoW questline about DRAGONS of all things. Jesus. Christ.
I dunno what else to say, then. I’ve been seeing players chime in about how they’re SA victims too and the thought of the quest asking them to be accomplice to it was ripping open old wounds for them. It might be watered down for you because of the imagined dissonance of it being about giant reptiles but they’re still characters written with human thoughts and emotions, even if she’s part-time toothy.
Well everyone copes differently and WoW’s certainly cheaper than therapy.
But to them I’d say if this is genuinely triggering then you need to seek psychiatric care ASAP.
And unlike pricks I say that as someone with a therapist who’s on multiple medications for the issues I’ve developed from experiencing multiple horrific situations.
Yeah WoW is stupid for bringing this up but need I point to the Sylvanas novel again? Or the even worse Arthas one before that?
If you’re looking to this contraption basically designed to siphon money from the lonely and mentally unwell for some sense of genuine community or healing then I’ve to tell you you’re looking in the wrong spot.
This is a hobbyist’s toy. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I genuinely feel awful for the people confusing it for something else.
Like just dropping the internet kayfabe I’ve been on a 6 year long mental health journey. I’ve attempted suicide multiple times and experienced so many screwed up situations that I just normalized them in my head.
I’ve watched parents bury their children eight god damn times. And also turns out stuff like ‘seeing a man shot dead in front of you at 9am while going to work’ isn’t the sort of thing you’re supposed to shrug off. Because even if I decided it wasn’t a big deal, my survival instincts didn’t, and ‘Oh so that’s why I am acutely aware of every door that opens’ was the result.
Also turns out you’re not supposed to be randomly breathless with fear while driving because you know firsthand in the most personal way imaginable all it takes is one lunatic to ensure your loved ones don’t even get to bury you.
It’s NOT NORMAL to be hypervigiliant toward every cough or sneeze or sign of unwellness your loved ones show because you know, personally, that disease will strike at any second and force you to watch the most vibrant amongst you wither before your eyes until there’s nothing left.
If you have any of these symptoms, or anything that even vaguely sounds like them, please seek help. I sought help but just didnt bring a lot of it up because I thought I was just being sensible.
I wasn’t. I was letting my neuroses fester until I had an honest to God nervous breakdown. Rolling around on the floor veering from hysterical laughing to inconsolable sobbing.
I HIGHLY recommend you don’t let things build until your brain eventually just snaps in half.
I hesitate to speak for others, but for my part, I am fine with the topic being discussed as part of the lore. I am not fine with Blizzard having the Player Champion participate actively in carrying it through, on a repeatable quest.
I am not coming to Warcraft to find inner peace or healing - I am playing to have fun. I can find fun in thwarting my enemies through all sorts of cruel and callous ways, but it is not fun for me to personally enable SA as a playable repeatable quest.
It is just gratuitous and offensive. There are ways to tell this story without making the Player Champion participate in laying out a preplanned gang SA that gets repeated like Groundhog’s Day.
I am just glad Blizzard decided to take a second look, at least.
My point is a story point from a 1995 RTS explaining away why Orcs riding dragons was a thing really was never meant to be an allegory for SA.
Because presumably before the internet people were able to differentiate between absurd fantasy situations that no living person has nor ever will experience, and the horrors of the human condition.
Though frankly if anyone can relate to being enslaved by a duck mothering DEMON SOUL so they can mass produce children to serve as bombers for an invading alien army, then I’m FASCINATED to hear their tell all story.
From behind a thick sheet of bulletproof glass with several armed guards at the ready because I’m pretty sure that’s just Charles Manson.
I would say it was explicit SA from the start. Not just a mere allegory. And afterward, the treatment of the Red Flight under the control of the Dragonmaw is mentioned with “forced breeding” being discussed by Blizzard’s writers throughout their various forms of media.
It is an explicit reference to SA in the lore from the start. Which I have no issue with. My issue is that Blizzard thought it was a good idea to have the Player Champion in an MMORPG helping to lay out this canonical example of SA… for rewards… on a repeatable quest… Which thankfully is being reconsidered.
I would be charitable and suggest that an RTS story beat did not translate well to an MMORPG, so perhaps it should be handled carefully.
I think the conversation around (if we exclude the extreme takes) is that there isn’t a problem with dark themes or SA in a story. It’s about being being complicit and how people personally feel that due to their character’s own personality traits and/or perceived closeness with Alexstrasza (we’ve been questing with her since WoTLK) that they don’t feel comfortable with supporting what had happened and would like to have an option to instead help free her or such. Which I think is a perfectly valid thing to ask for.
If I have to go back in time and help perpetuate a bad thing, I’d personally not follow through with it. Timeline be damned. And it’s funny cause that’d make for a far more interesting storyline.
There have been people who said they don’t like the faction conflict and such. So again, it’s a weird cop-out argument to invalidate people’s current feelings about a situation. “Let’s keep quiet about something going wrong now since the world’s history is full of atrocities!”
I am invalidating people’s feelings if they think this absolute lunacy is comparable to SA.
It isn’t. I want one person who’s actually experienced this feeling to come explain to me why they feel this way. Because all I’m seeing is weird dudes assure me these people exist.
You came in mid thread and asked what was going on so maybe you missed my post where I attempted to delineate how I see it, as far as what I am doing in a video game or an RPG :
I can have fun doing crazy bad stuff in a video game, but playing an SA simulator for Daily Quest rewards does not sound appealing to me.
Ever had your mother tell you about the time she had the father of the children she babysat force herself on her while she was just out of screaming distance of my grandparent’s house?
No?
Because I’d LOVE to hear how thats JUST LIKE a dragon broodmother.
Perhaps not everyone is as willing to share in their trauma or issues. That does not make their experience any less real. You act as if an experience can not be real, if it lacks posts on social media to bolster it.
I do not think people need to justify their disgust about this quest with IRL drama. The tale is in the telling - and Blizzard botched the telling in this instance.
What other people have been through is a particular kink that I do not indulge.
