There were so many parts…
My choice: The part where Saurfang spared Anduin at the ramparts because he wanted him to live and defeat Sylvanas - then shortly there after, Saurfang knowingly lets Anduin walk into the death trap that Auntie Jaina ends up saving him from.
It was just emblematic of how horrid the whole “Sourpuss Saga” was.
The Jailhouse Pep talk is a close second.
when the baby burner got sad about burning babies and had a huge focus of the story while the victim race had their lore butchered with barely any spotlight (though that may be a small mercy to further avoid blizzards stupid writing)
Well on the bright side, I felt that going through BC was still worse than this in terms of lore, funny that. That’s even including the following rant. On the down side, welllll if I had to pick one thing, it’s the fact that c’mon, the end of this saga made both factions want to kill each other more so to the death, no morals, us or them, make the whole world blind scenario.
Alliance wants to remove the Horde races with the whole genocide, Brennadam, senseless war, and MoP. Horde wants to remove Alliance because Horde is written as the WC2 evil Horde, well maybe not now
but at the start of this war. Too little too late to change over a new leaf sadly. Even then the Horde at this point regardless of being no longer the WC2 Horde has to attempt to remove the Alliance. Obviously because well … the Alliance has more than a few good legitimate reasons to hold onto grudges to remove us now.
The only reason we’re not is because of N’Zoth, which further proves the cycle isn’t broken and peace is forever impossible. Either we find a peace that doesn’t involve some sort of outside force, or we either fight to the death, or force one side off of Azeroth forever. Unfortunately with the amount of blood spilled at this point, no amount of sweet talk that Anduin can possibly pull can bring peace. That’s the problem with Mary sue/Gary stu, always ruin the plot and never make sense.
So the ending with “breaking the cycle” makes less sense than even MoP’s ending. That ending made little sense as it was. To go even lower is some new level of bad writing.
The funny part is that these fools probably thought it would be sooo cool when Saurfang says the same thing as dying Delaryn without thinking twice about it.
I feel like they just throw random stuff without context into cinematics now
Basically all of it was equally bad, but the worst part, for me, is where the literal hero of the Horde, who has killed both metaphorical and literal gods in the name of their faction, as well as two leaders of the faction, representing both old and new aspects of the current Horde, can’t rally Saurfang into action.
But a teenage human who leads the faction he was fully on board with conquering can do it just fine.
Well it was a story about a fantastical war and it wasn’t fun to play. Least from the Horde’s side.
Personally I love PVP. That is the main gameplay aspect I play for. It is not hard to make me want to attack Alliance cities and players - I was on an RPPVP server and typically keep WM on. Fighting Alliance is just part of the game for me.
So making me not want to fight Blues is a fairly hard thing to accomplish, but they managed it. They made it pretty exceedingly clear Slyvanas was a maniac who cared for no one and would indeed murder her own unarmed citizens for being in earshot of a perceived crime. The Warchief was a cartoonishly evil antagonist you were obliged to actively work against the whole time. Seriously how strange was that. I couldn’t feel any thrill in crushing the Alliance since I was doing it for the villain I was also trying to subvert.
In retrospect the launch cinematic feels like false advertising. How absolutely hollow does that ‘For the Horde!’ feel coming out of Windrunner now? I was expecting some epic fantasy war but at no point could I feel some glory in conquest. You can’t when the head of your side is objectively evil.
The part where everyone was crying at my Undead Warlock about honor as if he was supposed to care in the slightest.
Seriously, just let me kill the Alliance.
What possible reason would my toon ever have to even consider helping Baine or Saurfang? The Burning of Teldrassil? Pfft. Yeah right. Derek? He’s a Proudmoore, he was getting better than he deserved.
That I couldn’t play my character the way that I wanted to was by far the worst.
uhh he may have executed the plan but to accuse Saurfang of coming up with him is laughable. He is a soldier…not a tactician/strategist…
Edit: And I believe the original plan was the kill Malfurion…not incinerate Teldrassil.
I think it was one of the books that had it has his idea.
Then again they’re also writing Sylvanas with these 4D chess moves with motivates that are 2deep4u to understand as well.
to murder innocents?
Yeah…sure. I think the plan was the capture Darnassas to choke Alliance off from Kalimdor to capitalize on mining azerite…right?
Is it better to be a loser who gets slapped in the face, and then is told to forgive and forget when you know it’s just gonna happen again…
Or is it better to be a forced to be a jerk who kicks puppies while slapping themselves in the face saying “you’re evil! Hate yourself!”
TLDR: It all sucked.
But the Horde has never been about mutual understanding but of dominance hence why there will always need to be a warchief to bring the other horde races in line.
This council idea will be shortlived. My bet after Thrall’s interaction with Draka in the shadowlands is that Thrall will be the warchief again since none of the other leaders want to step up to the plate.
No more of this Green Jesus crap but an actual guy that strives for doing better despite their imperfections and past sins.
The Alliance got to be good guys to an insane degree I can totally see being maddeningly dumb in it’s own right.
I was actually agog at the Dazar’Alor postscript. First off the attack’s stated goal was to drive a wedge between the Horde and Zandalari? By launching a surprise attack on their Capitol that involves rampaging through their sacred temples and murdering their King? Because that’s totally how deescalating a tense situation works.
So with any hope of that goal completely obliterated the next move is to - let the Zandalari mourn their King and rebuild their forces? In the middle of a World War? I appreciate your good intentions Andy but I don’t think the daughter of the King your men just killed is going to forgive you for being chill about stuff now. Bridge is burned you really ought to press the attack.
The low point of BfA’s story, for me at least, will forever be the absolutely atrocious implementation of its faction conflict. That the writers were so lacking in imagination as to do a total rehash of MoP - another evil warchief, another destroyed Alliance city, another cross-faction cooperation story that amounted to nothing - suggests staggering ineptitude and tone-deafness. And that’s the charitable interpretation - if they genuinely thought doing MoP all over again was a good thing for the story, well…
But what offends me the most is the frankly dishonest way they sold this expansion to us. “It’s time to resolve the faction conflict”… except not really. All the recycled plot elements, the characters killed or ruined along the way, the destruction of beloved locales; all of this was meaningless and pointless, written off as just another hollow chapter in a story which, from the devs’ own mouths, will never be allowed a real resolution.
Arthas was still technically Prince of Lordaeron, as he hadn’t bothered to crown himself King after his patricide. Anduin is correct to list him as one of the Alliance’s really bad eggs. And Daelin flew the flag of Kul Tiras which was Alliance at the time.
She’d have been a fool not to keep a contingency eye on Thrall and to have an agent ready to take him out if he looked like he was going to get involved. And she may have known that he was no longer a shaman of any stripe.
Like many Hero NPC’s Saurfang may have qualities of multiple classes Why should the Alliance hog all that action with Anduin and Tyrande? Warrior with a helping of Rogue or Monk bears possibility.
I mean, all of it. All of the stuff mentioned above.
But here’s something that gets me that wasn’t mentioned. Did we ever find out the reason for Saurfang’s hissy fit in Undercity? Was he mad because of Teldrassil? Was he mad because fallen Horde soldiers were animated into skeletons? Was he mad because Undercity was rigged to explode in a ploy to remove the Alliance’s leadership?
If it was Teldrassil, then what the hell was the point of the cinematic with him and Zappyboi? I get that he was locked into participating in the Battle for Undercity by the expansion trailer. So maybe just don’t show him losing heart and nearly sacrificing himself out of shame, or have him be one of the foot soldiers who became over-extended and cut off by Blight. But trying to kill himself out of shame, being brought back around by a wide-eyed moppet, only to try to kill himself out of shame a second time is tedious.
If it was Horde soldiers being animated into skeletons. Well, screw him. Undead are part of the Horde, and by the way, he could have freed his son from the Lich King’s control and maybe let Draenosh decide if he’d rather live on as a Death Knight or die.
As for him being angry that Undercity was rigged to explode. What the hell? A bomb that would only target combatants, only if they invaded the Horde, and would save countless Horde lives by ending a war quickly is the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Sadfang is honestly portrayed as an idiot throughout BfA.
I am not surprised.
Oh, and there was all that buildup, only to have Saurfang’s genius plan be “Gather an army, attack Orgrimmar, start a duel, hope Sylvanas says something stupid.”
Seriously, would it have been hard to have Saurfang break out of Stormwind prison when the players were there, but then just disappear into the night to seek out a solution to the Sylvanas problem?
You could still hit all the same story beats, player helps trackdown Saurfang, Saurfang has a heart to heart with Anduin and involves the Alliance in his plan, Saurfang saves Thrall from the most ill-conceived assassination plot since Vol’jin stopped a knife with his neck. But instead of Saurfang rotting away in a prison doing nothing, the player base is interested in what he’s going to come up with and actually anticipating, rather than dreading, his return. Then he can show up to that duel with a trick up his sleeve and prompt the ‘Sylvanas is a monster’ reveal out of cleverness and planning, rather than lucking into her by taunting this centuries old woman into saying something stupid.
Hell, going this route you can even involve the Alliance more by having Saurfang call upon their resources to obtain the trick that he plays, owing to him not knowing exactly who in the Horde he can trust fully.
I whole heartily agree with all the points in this thread.
My own are cinematic themselves, they have ruined what used a special reveal of these hd cinematic. Usually one done every few years, with the exception of Guldan in legion, but that was more a teaser and did not wear out it’s welcome.
Unlike the Sadfang saga, seeming wasting all the time and effort into story beats that should have just been rendered in game or preferably not at all.
The plot drag on, with emphasis on a character that is more then responsible for the genocide at Teldressal. The plot told us to feel sad for his guilt, but I felt annoyed at even been ask that.
I came to dread the next cinematic reveal, like I was expecting to be hit over the head with how sad this unsympathetic character was.
Those feeling carried into then shadowlands cinematic, which I felt nothing for. No excitement or no thrill leading up to it, and after watching it feeling a sense of utter disappointment.
I really not sure it because I am done with this plot and Sylvanas, or just done with blizzard cinematics. I truly believe they ruined the special moment with their high definition cinematic used to have .