Why are people so mad with Shadowlands story?

Lore Story Forum
183

My main problem with BfA was mostly the fact that both factions firmly held on to the ‘idiot ball’ so that anything could even happen in the first place. Examples include:

  • The entire Battle of Lordaeron for the Alliance. Lack of preparation against the Blight and the siege towers being nothing more than decoration (because cannons firing at medieval stone walls do absolutely no damage…it’s not like there was a reason why castles and stone walls got replaced by forts).

  • The Battle of Dazar’alor was one for both sides. The entire plan of the Alliance was completely…urgh. I don’t even know a word in my native language which would describe it. For the Horde meanwhile the fact that over the entire time nobody EVER checked the Zandalari ships. Seemingly their ships never need repairs or some other maintenance.

  • The Nazjatar-intro. Nothing to add here.

There’s more but these are the biggest offenders. What was also missing was some sort of larger strategy as it never felt that either faction actually tried to win the war.

6 Likes
184

People have pointed out that the Night Elves didn’t give the Orcs adequate warning in Warcraft 3. I think that’s an incomplete, one-sided account, but there is nevertheless some truth to it. The Night Elves were introduced as being territorial and savage. Standard diplomacy should not have been in their nature. They’ve moved significantly (and for the worse) since then, but if they were to embody that today, such a description of their “warrior culture” would land.

Orcs’ warrior culture meanwhile is and has always been aggressive, racially supremacist, and based around conquest in a similar vein to say, Klingons. That WoD orcs exhibited this ideology therefore, and took it to the places they did is not inconsistent with prior lore.

Is that a statement therefore that WoD is necessarily good content for the Orcs or good development for them? No, and I’ve brought this up before with respect to the direction that Dave Kosak in particular wanted to take the race. My limited point on this is that they were in line with a consistent vision of what the Orcs are and were - which has nothing to say about whether that’s satisfying to people who wanted to see where Warcraft 3 would have and should have taken them.

Hope that clarifies my position.

185

One of clans, Bladewind, indeed attacked the draenei first. While the rest of the clans just preferred to keep distance.

Ever since prologue to the horde campaign and troll leaving their home, theme of “family” and cooperation was one of they key for them. Same goes for the theme of freedom and surviving together in a “hostile world”.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/File:Horde-alliance_pandaren.jpg

prologue of W3.

Perhaps there are other people who started playing the horde because of those early depictions, and could share other stories.

I am aware that C. Golden has been writing Warcraft related novels for a while.

The topic to which the thread moved was about WoD and how that expansion affected the way the horde was portrayed earlier in the games (by “early” usually mentioned the stuff created in the time frame which shaped the premise of the mmo, early 2000s, so, W3, Classic-TBC, some of which got its way into WotLK).

Picking 1 characteristic / idea from a few and ignoring the rest is not quite enough to state that the story remained “in-character” to the previous characterisation.

The horde made a certain progress, chose a differnt path after they became free from demons. And that is the “vision” I am talking about. Thrall’s & co. decisions throughout W3, all the way to his support of Sylvanas’s cause during the siege of Undercity and Saurfang’s arc with Garrosh and later - his son.

Going backward to “without Thrall that’s what they truly are” seems deceiving to me.

But you’re of course free to have whatever opinion on the subject. If you see that orcs hopping into one war after the other because that’s what they casually do after the morning tea - cool, I guess.

gl hf

186

Sure.

I do not see that the concept of “warrior culture” is inherently a problem for a faction based game, especially since both sides supposed to have members of that kind.

It’s not doomed to be all about “orcs kill, then sad orcs are forgiven”. But it’s up for the devs to express their capabilities for storytelling.

gl hf

1 Like
187

It depends on how they deal with the concept.

Warcraft 2’s orcs were for the most part evil, and Warcraft 3 - in the same vein as it did for the other races in order to set them up for the MMO, made substantial changes to make them reconcile with that evil, and redefine their culture in a manner that would have made them more palatable as a playable race choice. A lot of people latched onto that, a lot of people identified with that. It was a fresh concept at the time, and it’s one of the big things that gave the modern concept of the Horde its brand identity.

Then, they yanked that out from under the people who invested in that concept.

That’s one thing that I think people miss about the MMO concept. When you build and define playable races, you are asking people to build something on top of them as well. They are building investment. They are building identification. They are settling in and getting comfortable, and that’s based on what you sold them in the first place. Something in there appealed to them, and Blizzard should have respected that.

They didn’t. They performed a sort of eminent domain. “We need to do this thing with our story, so we’re going to uproot what you care about.”

6 Likes
188

Not sure about that. We’re told orcish warrior culture evolved due to being on a hostile planet but that wasn’t what defined the race in its entirety, only certain clans and individuals. This is why it took the machinations of Kil’Jaeden to get most of the orcs on board with killing Draenai when only 1 clan was actively doing it beforehand.

WC3 goes on to emphasize that Grom and the Warsong clan were the more militant group within the orcish Horde.

:pancakes:

2 Likes
189

It was just badly planned by Blizz. An addon that is about war but has hardly seen anything. The war actually started with patch 8.1 and ends with patch 8.2.5.
8.0,8.2 and 8.3 have absolutely nothing to do with war. The Horde and Alliance do not seem to have learned anything from the past. Horde is evil again and is losing.
The Alliance would rather watch than do something.

It’s been like that for years and they don’t change anything. Instead of doing something about the war, we’re wasting time on Azhara and N’Zoth.

The Lordaeron scenario was so predictable, but then suddenly Jaina shows up and saves the day. The Alliance cannot do anything without Jaina and the Horde fights against itself as always.

In short, Blizz is overwhelmed and has no idea what they’re doing.

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190

None of that disputes that Orcs were not warring clans before the demon blood drinking context.
People keep crying about Orcs was changed and no one has yet shown a single solitary identifier that was advertised as Yellow but suddenly WoD insists was actually Purple.

What specifically was changed?

191

If you’re willing to ignore what is pointed out, there is nothing I can do about it. Perhaps you’ll find another willing souls to address your concerns.

gl hf

192

You are talking about Vanilla intros about family and surviving hostile world.
None of it disproves the warring nature of the Orcs before the WC invasions.

193

Miles better.

Character werent gian super powers who could literally fart and a galaxy was born etc.

Sure the Iron horde was whackky etc and basically a threat that was like an AU scarlet crusade.

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194

There are myriad issues. Keytomost hearts, regardless of faction partisanship, is that Blizzard has shown time and again in this expansion alone that they have absolutely no commitment to canon – they’ve repeatedly retconned things they’ve just introduced, and they’re showing no signs of stopping.

Why would you ever buy a book, knowing what they did to Before the Storm? Or from 9.0 to 9.1?

7 Likes
195

Why Im mad at Shadowlands? Stop calling my Forsaken “Mortal”.

How lazy are the writers that they didn’t change the dialogue for a literal walking talking corpses in the afterlife?

196

Come on, all the undead of Azeroth are mortal and after death they will fall into Shadowlands. So what’s the point of calling someone who you already had, but for some reason left and not that much changed in any other way?

197

For so many years the Forsaken have always had dialogue where they refer to their mortal life as a thing in the past. Their Undeath is an unnatural never ending pause to what should have been their mortal death. That is what makes them undead - they don’t fit the definition of “living”, they don’t fit the definition of dead - they are something else, to many, they are abominations against the natural order of mortal life.

What’s the lifespan of a Forsaken? They don’t have a lifespan in the way they once did as mortal humans. They theoretically live forever until killed. And while its true their corpses get weaker and weaker with decay - apparently there are dark rituals that can give them perfect undeath bodies (Blightcaller).

It still doesn’t make any sense for the denizens of the Shadowlands to be like “GASP, YOU’RE A MORTAL” when you literally look like any other walking talking corpse of Maldraxxus. So its just really lazy dialogue for me.

The Forsaken have always been a philosophical group, both in game and in the books. What does it mean for them that they can walk into the afterlives, as beings who rejected their mortal death? Yet I haven’t seen any Forsaken NPC ask these questions. Its out of character for me.

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198

Interesting reasoning. On the other hand, the original soul of the Forsaken belongs to human. Damaged, forcibly trapped in the body, but the basis is still the mortal soul of human.

199

N’Zoth whispers: I alone can save you from what is to come.

Lets hope N’zoth’s “gift” was allowing us to see these events unfold in a Nightmare while in Ny’alotha and this is all just a dream. We wake up and kill Sylvanas with Tyrande when she enters ICC. :sob:

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200

I haven’t played much of Shadowlands, to be honest, but from I know the story so far… I have a feeling I can’t take what’s going on seriously.

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201

I would never have wanted this… but it would be so much better than the alternative.

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202

That clip is so universally versatile.