I’m a copy editor and there are quite a few errors in that text. This is more correct:
A conspiracy of ravens is preying on citizens of Rustbolt, it’s most unacceptable! Prince Erazmin has asked me to rescue as many citizens as I can but I could use your help. I’ve tracked the ravens to this hill; we blast the ravens out of the sky and you rescue the Mechagnomes. Use my marker gun if you need help bringing one of the ravens down.
The text itself is pretty stilted but I’ll chalk that up to an NPC’s dialect. I corrected the punctuation errors.
You can’t hear a misspelled word. You can’t hear a superfluous apostrophe. Your comment is irrelevant because the way people talk has nothing to do with errors in written language. No one here is talking about people using words like “y’all” or “yer” (you’re/your), we’re talking about glaring errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Spotting these blatant errors helps break my immersion. Blizzard isn’t some small indie company, these problems shouldn’t be in the game in the first place.
Currently the most common error I see is when people use apostrophes on every plural noun turning it into possessive. The cats are having fun, becomes the cat’s are having fun. Drives me bonkers, or should I say drive’s me bonker’s. lmao. It’s not just plural nouns it seems to be every word with an s.
There’s a huge difference between dialect, grammar, and proper punctuation. Even if the dialect and grammar don’t match perfect standard English the punctuation should still be consistent to represent the speaker’s intent. When we read text we can’t hear the contextual clues so the punctuation serves that function.
Writing “raven’s” when the speaker clearly intended “ravens” has very little to do with the speech patterns and more about the intention. By confusing the two the text is much more difficult to read.
The serious answer is because it was rushed out the door to compete with FFXIV. Blizzard is not the A-list developer they once were, and this quality of work is par for the course now, especially when they rush something.
Grammar errors in general drive me batty. Does no one pay attention in English class anymore? The worst is when they happen in publications like newspapers, or ad copy.
Akston just likes to take the opposite side in a thread, I don’t know why he has to argue against everyone and everything, even on something as simple as this.
Ok. And I get that. But people are also referring to dialect and grammar matching perfect standard English. And that apparently goblins and mechagnomes should speak in this perfect standard English.
Yep, I’m not a stickler for grammar any more even though I was an English minor in college. I tend to use too many commas, but the apostrophe thing bugs the crap outta me.
I guess I need to spell things out for my fanbase that likes to troll and not contribute to the conversation.
I get spelling errors like “Raven’s” vs “ravens”. Yes. Fix those.
I guess I should have been more clear that I feel it would be wrong if every single NPC we meet spoke in perfect english. Which is also what is being asked for.
That sounds like an extremely boring game where you have a dozen+ races constantly talking to use, and all using perfect human english. Not much unique flavor.
Maybe they write the quest text so that the majority of the players will understand it? Syntax, spelling and grammar are not strong suits for many in these forums.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")