Or just that the old ideas were outright bad in the new generation’s opinion.
A big problem is that they’re trying to tell stories on a global scale. Except they can’t get it right. We need to go back to leaving the world-wide consequences open-ended for later story. Both times they’ve tried to shift the view of the expac (BfA and Legion), the story’s suffered for it.
Both Argus and N’zoth deserved to be new expacs, not afterthoughts. And the more we kill potential villains at breakneck speed, the more truncated the story gets - and the more often we’ll have situations like Sylvanas going from antihero to villain.
The revisionism is bad too. Remember when trolls were extremely hard to kill? In Vol’jin’s book, there were disemboweled Zandalari stuffing their guts back inside because they could actually live through it if nobody finished the job. Garrosh needed a poison specifically designed to kill Trolls, which Vol’jin survived, only for him to die to… poison (if there were any doubts of the writers’ ingenuity).
Man, the storytelling has fallen hard. They should put me in charge.
Things like this are why I largely gave up on the lore a long time ago. Blizzard has shown numerous times that they have no qualms retconning lore to tell whatever new story they want to tell, rather than have new stories fit in with already established lore.
Chronicles is Lore on the Great Dark Beyond(which makes it clear the Narrator is not omniscient by telling us that there are many theories on the actual origin of the Emerald Dream without telling us the true story) while Grimoire of the Shadowlands is Lore on the Shadowlands.
They are books detailing the recorded history of the things they focus on!
There’s a difference between a retcon that happens because years upon years of storytelling made old lore fit poorly with the current iteration of the narrative…
And retconning brand new lore with newer lore because “oh wait we have a better idea”.
The later just makes any and all lore untrustworthy and meaningless. Anything can change at any moment on a whim.
I don’t even want to go down the path of how bad Vol’jin’s death was. To be killed by a poison we never saw before OR after, with no explanation as to why it’s somehow more potent than a literal poison designed to hinder troll regeneration, is one of the biggest insults to a character’s story. I think the only worse one was killing Cairne in a book and not even acknowledging it in game with a quest or a cutscene outside of the funeral.
The storytelling is what really brought people into the game because it stood out. Now…you’re right, the universal threats are getting old, and it almost feels more like they’re rushing through villains to end WoW’s life. Because your’e right; Argus and N’Zoth could have been their own expansions. We covered essentially four or even five expansions in the span of two, and it shows badly.
Only reference I could find mention Val’kyr doesn’t call them Spirit Healers. In fact Spirit healers are not even mentioned in the 3 volumes of Chronicle.
Not all Val’kyr continued to follow Helya after Odyn’s defeat. Some of these spectral beings disappeared into the Shadowlands. The few who still retained a glimmer of nobility in their souls dedicated themselves to watching over the physical world. From within the Shadowlands, these Val’kyr would at times guide the dead back to the land of the living.
Chronicle Volume 1 Page 57
Noble Souls dedicating themselves to watching over the living realms sounds like what the Kyrian of Bastion does. These Val’kyr when disappearing into the Shadowlands could have gone to bastion and joined up.
But again the term Spirit Healers are not mentioned in Chronicles even though that what they’ve been called since Vanilla and before Val’kyr were created.
The Valkyr within the Shadowlands are probably going to appear in Odyn’s Patch of the Shadowlands to lead us directly to him in the Great Dark Beyond.
The fact that Wowpedia and the Red Shirt Guy both automatically assumed the Chronicle’s statement meant that the Valkyr were Spirit Healers despite not actually saying that is embarrassing! They jump to conclusions just as much as I do!
Oh yeah, I half expected to see the poison at least used as a plot device. It actually would have made the Legion far more threatening (and they were already threatening) if their weapons were now equipped with this untreatable poison that could kill even trolls.
We’re going to start seeing a lot more antiheroes getting whacked with the villain bat. Else, villains are going to be conjured out of nowhere which can only work a portion of the time.
Meanwhile, they kill off our major lore characters like this is Game of Thrones, except we can’t replace our lore characters as easily. Going back to Vol’jin, ask all of the troll players how they’re liking Rokhan as their replacement.
The Undead sound real thrilled with Calia - and Voss is no leader either. The goblin race also had a very specific theme that its players bought into - its why Trade Prince Gallywix was kept around - and now they have Gazlowe who is hardly representative of the race. The Horde’s antihero races are now as good-aligned as the tauren.
What we’re witnessing is almost a… cultural and moral purge of the Horde’s leadership. Almost like they’re trying to make the Horde as bland as the Alliance.
Its like the current gen of of writers/devs think of themselves as creators instead of Stewards. They are not making something from scratch, they are guiding something that others built. If they want to be original creators, create your own world outside of this one and see if anyone will buy it.
Its just like the new Star Wards sequels. And Disney got burned badly and is forced to go 180 degrees the other way.
There is no point. Blizzard has shown complete disrespect for the lore and those who follow it. It is lazy story telling to just go and change what ever you want to make it fit into the current narrative.
Have you seen any of the reports on supposed insiders have relayed? If what they relayed is true, Disney is going to be business first - make $$ by win back our core customers (in SW) first. One guy was even reporting they want all vestiges of “woke” will be gone from the company.
Don’t worry, we’ll get another expansion exploring what it means to be Horde when Talanji goes off the deep end, and we’ll have to rebel against her and her Zandalari conquest. Because at this point, that’s what I’ve come to expect of Blizzard’s writing.
This is another reason I don’t support the faction war any longer; I strongly believe the story is worse off for it at this point in time. But it won’t go away, so we’re going to keep this ridiculous back and forth and stripping characters of any interesting quality. Back and forth, again and again, we’ll bicker and whine and moan about the other side but nothing changes. Their showboating with Thrall and Jaina doesn’t matter.
At this point in time, and I’ve been saying this a lot, WoW needs a full reset. We need a time skip that puts us forward, so we can wash the story of the horrifically awful loops and start fresh. The world needs a face lift and the story needs to just be plucked and moved forward, it’s the only way to really clean it up because otherwise we’ll simply retread the same ground again and again.
I honestly don’t think they have a choice, if they want Star Wars to get anywhere. Definitely obvious that there’s a lot more money from core fans than whatever they got from this new arc.
Pffft, that will never happen. I really, really wish though.