I know when i bought BFA for wow I didn’t expect to get the same story as MOP with just different characters. We were told at Blizzcon that this would not be the same story.
However the story has copied the exact same flow of the story as MOP almost beat for beat. The story started essentially the same with the Horde attacking the Alliance and destroying a city. Each of the patches has followed a similar theme as well.
The start of the expansion has both factions going to new islands and trying to befriend the locals and assisting them with their problems. while both have an underlying issue of influence of the old goes.
5.1
We had the Alliance and horde invading Pandaria this was escalation of the war.
The Horde attack Darnassus to get the bell.
The Alliance attacking at the horde as a grey moment of the Purge.
We also had the Horde getting hold of the old god affiliated divine bell.
Voljin is attacked by warchief starts rebellion.
Varian declares that we will be better than the horde by not waging same sort of war as Horde.
8.1/8.1.5
The Horde attack the alliance at Kultiras the Alliance start attacking horde. in Zuldzar
The Alliance attack Zuldzar invading and killing king Rastakan(grey moment) this was the Escalation of the War.
We also had the horde getting hold of the old god affiliated Dagger.
Suarfang is attacked by warchief Starts rebellion.
Jaina declares that we will be better than the horde by not waging same sort of war as Horde.
5.2
Thunder king shows up as protagonist on new area which both faction end up at.
Both factions realise that they need to put away there arguments to fight said Thunder King.
The horde help Warchief get Old God heart, (as bell was destroyed)
8.1.5/8.2
Ashzara shows up as protagonist in new area that both factions show up at.
Both factions realise that they need to put away there arguments to fight said Ashzara.
The Horde helps warchief get Dagger(i admit this does get listed twice)
Now with the direction of 8.2.5 heading back towards the same as 5.3 when do we say enough is enough? I Mean if i was a teacher marking this as a essay for writing I would have to fail the writers of BFA because all they have done is slightly changed the story and characters.
Even if Blizzard change the direction of the story at the end the majority of the expansion has been repeated content.
we did the second it was announced it was going to be a faction conflict Expac
Warchief goes crazy asking for unneeded aggressions? check
Horde receive inner conflict about following warchief? check
Horde than turn against Warchief? check
Old god…? check
“figthing each other has only left us blind to the TRUE threat”? check
Beat up Warchief but dont kill? check
Ends with a King of Stormwind telling horde in a stern voice “dont do that again”… probably check
At some point you have to either believe (against all reason) that they have intentionally setup BfA to be a mirror of MoP’s storytelling beat by beat (to the point that they even included a map of SoO in the 8.2.5 datamining). Or you have to come to terms with the fact that one of the departments at Blizzard (coughCdevcough) is just not pulling their weight.
I just wonder if they are completely blind to it though thinking they are doing a good job telling something unique.
Is it possible they are aware of it but are doing it on purpose? I mean if they are its pretty damn stupid to do that when it was poorly received by fans back then
I just want answers to why they keep expect players to accept paying for an expansion which is basically telling a story we have already played through when they told us it wouldn’t be at Blizzcon.
I mean I hope some of this is brought up at blizzcon to the writers panel.
Honestly? I think this is a case of newly empowered leadership among the story-telling team emboldened by the departure of Chris Metzen to re-write a story in a way they wish they had been allowed to write it back in MoP.
Yup. We saw something similar in Cataclysm. A new writing team takes over as Metzen and other devs move to Project Titan. And to show how much more “serious” they are than the last crew, they try to outdo them in pure shock appeal.
No surprise that the subscriber count nosedived afterwards.
A long time ago Metzen once said that the faction wars were always cyclical. I mean if you were looking for parallel might as well use the RTS.
The Horde destroys a city, it leads to a global war, someone from the Horde/Alliance betray their respective factions, faction war ends with the Head honcho of the Horde in chains. I more or less decribed both MoP and BfA.
The difference has always been the settling, the reaction and how it all ends. In Warcraft RTS it ended with the Horde in chains, MoP ended with a form of unsettling peace. Blizzard seems confident that however BfA will end will be satisfying or at the very least shocking to all of us. I dont see an MoP ending but due to the fact this is not RTS means we wont get a Warcraft 2 ending either.
Unfortunately, everything they think is a crazy surprise is actually what everyone was expecting. “Who will burn Teldrassil?” comes to mind. Everyone expected in some shape or form that the Heart of Azeroth would end up helping the old gods. They keep teasing these build ups and acting like nobody saw it coming. Anyone who pays attention can see it from miles away.
I agree with Metzen, I like the idea of a faction war. Its what the game is built off of. But they can’t do it right. That’s a fact. The alliance attacking Lordaeron first would have been a good set up for the expansion. The rest of the expac could have been the Horde “On the defensive”. It wouldn’t change the parallels but it would at least change the motives.
Instead we have an actual copy and paste from MoP. It’s disappointing. It’s one thing to take inspiration from another point in Warcraft, but its asinine that nobody in the story department saw how many parallels there were. To the point where the whole story is a parallel.
The way I see it, BfA is a filler expac like WoD. Legion was a good expac, hopefully Blizzcon this year reveals something good.
At this point in the story, we can only hope for an “epic subversion” of our expectations by having the story end with some massive twist that will hopefully at least attempt to clear the names of at least a few characters. Blizzard isn’t that creatively bankrupt to where they’ll just entirely lift MoP’s story and execute it the same way while pretending it’s something else.
Pretty much when WoT’s ended with Teldrassil burning for morally black reasons, instead of either an accident, Alliance being partially to blame, or Slyvanas doing it to save the Horde army from being wiped out by a trap, such as the Druids tapping the World Tree’s power to nuke the Horde army as they were exposed crossing to occupy the tree.
Mind you I agree if the writers weren’t tone def to the fans things should have been altered/never changed to have Lorderon happen first.
It wouldn’t have even been that hard , say in the novel Turalyon is in position to save Calia leading to Anduin’s meeting backfiring causing Horde to feel the Alliance acted in bad faith while the Alliance says Turaylon was merely protecting his rightful Queen. From there we then have Calia chose to be lightforged, to gain the power to stand up to Slyvanas, because she believes Slyvanas is the problem to peace between the living and Forsaken. We then have the Alliance find out Slyvanas is building the Azerite Warmachines, which leads to Calia, Turalyon, and Genn pressuring Anduin into a preemptive strike on Lorderon, to seize the Azerite there and cripple the Horde in the Eastern Kingdoms.
Blam Alliance gets to be proactive and Horde has a moral leg to stand on.
I interpret their words as - “We don’t feel like our message got through the first time in MOP, so we’re goin’ to try again despite everythin’ the players have told us.”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. There were so many loose ends at the end of MoP and it was all based around Sylvanas. Lor’themar looks at her worriedly while talking about Vol’jin having his hands full. Varian mentions about dealing with Sylvanas. I can’t help but feel that half way through MoP when they’ve finalized Garrosh as the big bad and no turning back, the cdevs realized “Oh cr@p! We have to deal with Sylvanas’ arc still!”