Oh lordy.
I will start by saying there were bright spots, mostly in side quests and the characters. And I was tickled pink to finally visit Zandalar.
THAT BEING SAID.
The night elf issue. We start with a borderline ridiculous Worfing of the night elves, where they’re fighting with both hands tied behind their back (no army, no allies, suddenly incompetent in the forest) where the plot knots itself into an entire pretzel twist to get us to the burning. Which then drops off the face of the earth. This mega-tragedy goes for almost a year before the plot brings it up in a meaningful way again. And then Malfurion vs one orc and a battlefront resolved by tweet a few months down the road is pretty obviously intended as more than enough for night elves. A lot of the night elf resolution or dealing with the fallout at all reads as extremely ad-hoc. Instead, we get lovingly rendered, very expensive cinematics about how bad mass murder made Saurfang feel.
The night elves may be in the cinematic. Or at least their arms. We don’t have a whole high res model for them, just a blood elf colored purple.
The Horde, in the meantime, spends the entire arch looking A) comically, ridiculously evil and B) kind of incompetent at it. Since Bliz is allergic to Alliance beating the Horde on screen or any sort of Alliance beats in AvH story besides vague remorse, being sad about tragedy, or snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (we won but at what coooooost), but has written the Horde so bonkers insane that their victories entail scorched earth, the Alliance keeps winning via tweets or one line in ancillary media (and an entirely missable line from Nathanos).
The end result is that both sides feel kind of horrible to play. If you want to be a noble punching bag told how much you suffer, you roll blue and if you want to be mustache twirling evil but also too incompetent to actually win, the Horde is waiting for you.
The whole story takes a turn for the insane with the big revelation that the reason that the Horde is so bad at warfighting is because their boss is literally trying to kill as many of them as possible. Yay.
You have baffling beats like the Horde getting the San’layn, an inherently interesting concept, but never seeing them because the whole thing gets wrapped up in a quest with a slight “BUT IS IT” at the end.
You have the Alliance doing insane things like sacrificing Blademaster Telamon (a fun character) for a raid on the Zandalari only to leave because suddenly war is so rude actually.
You have the Horde doing insane things like Rexxar saying he’s going to drive the Kul’tirans from Horde land… on Kul Tiras. Having a repeatable daily kill the Doctors Without Borders medic.
It’s just a mess.
And I mean, okay, WoW story is frequently a mess. This isn’t new. And most of the Horde vs Alliance stuff wouldn’t be so egregious if it wasn’t an amplification and repeat of Cata/MOP issues. But all of this flanderization, character assassination, ferocious bludgeoning with the villainy bat and the idiot ball… And the big payoff was…
Shadowland’s story.
Which, and I say this wholeheartedly, was not worth the monkey’s fist knot we went through to get there.
Anyway.
