Before this expansion launched, Blizzard’s messaging was that the story would be all about faction pride, and would emphasize shades of grey and that there are two sides to every story.
But that obviously is not what the story was about, and Blizzard had to know it. They’ve often stated that they are always working several expansions ahead. So they knew that the expansion was going to frame the Alliance as the heroes and the Horde as the villains.
Which then begs the question: “why the misdirect?” To me, this implies that they knew the story direction would be unpopular, especially with Horde players, and tried to hide it for as long as possible. In other words, when various Blizzard representatives express surprise at the story’s poor reception…that doesn’t make sense. If they thought that the story was going to go over well, they would have leaned into it. We would have had declarations like “Yeah, we really want to go right back to our roots with the Horde as these kind of ruthless antagonists…”
The fact that they tried to misdirect implies that Blizzard knew there was going to be a backlash. So then my ultimate question is: why did they keep going down this road?
I think that different people took over halfway though development and yanked it hard in an exciting new direction (MoP 2.0). We know Metzen wrote the intro cinema years ago before retiring, but said he was shocked about Teldrassil burning and that it was Sylv who did it.
The original BFA vision was probably wildly different that the smoking turd we are currently rolling around in. This wouldn’t be the first time they GREATLY changed an Xpac, WoD used to have Wrathion and the Infinite Dragonflight as primary antagonists.
I’ll definately admit that this expansion does feel like one of contradictions. Especially on the Horde side.
I’d almost be okay with a villainous Horde storyline…if we weren’t simultaneously portraying the Horde as protagonists in many other storylines. It’s more than a little jarring for Magni to send the Horde player to deal with some nefarious group that’s abusing Azerite, while totally ignoring that the Horde is arguably one of the biggest abusers of Azerite there is.
Faction pride also runs into problems when the question of what the Horde even stands for is at best being treated as an open question, and at worst is definitively not what the person currently occupying the position of Warchief wants to it to stand for. “For the Horde!” doesn’t mean much if I have no idea what the Horde is supposed to be.
I’m not really sure how this could of come about. Part of it might of been obfuscating certain plot points, but that feels like it only can go so far.
I have this sinking suspicion that the story is going to take a hard turn into “sylvanas was the hero all along because reasons!” Or at least anti-hero as I’ve seen thrown around on the forums before.
Light might be just as bad as dark and all that so the alliance could take a turn being “evil” in that way.
I feel like we are still missing some key piece of the puzzle to their overall vision for the expansion though, whether or not that can make it good in the end who knows.
A good, or even great, ending doesn’t really make the expansion more fun to experience, it just makes the ending good.
I kind of wonder if this is really the source of the problem. Blizzard may very well have an ending planned out that is extremely solid and is at least in the conversation for the best finale of any expansion.
However what they failed to understand is that in the medium Warcraft exists in, a strong ending isn’t good enough. The story needs to be enjoyable at every stage and shocking swearves need to have very rapid followup and not be left in the air for months at a time. And that’s at least a big part of where BfA is faltering.
In a movie, or even some books, it’s ok to make the audience feel like crap for a bit so they can experience joy at the big comeback…but not with WOW where they expect you to pay monthly while waiting 2 years for it.
It doesn’t help that Blizz seems to have very broad definitions for their favorite buzzwords. “Honor” changes almost every time the word is used. I cringe hard whenever I hear “honor” in game now.
They also seem to think that “morally grey” is just characters contradicting their normal moral priorities or doing something bad with and excuse to justify it.
Morally grey done well shouldnt be “bad action for good reason” or visa versa; it should be you don’t actually know if it is good or bad. You could see it either way but you’re not 100% sure. The only truly morally grey character in bfa IMO is Bwonsamdi, and even then I feel like they’re trying to push him more towards the villain side with the most recent raid.
Basically I feel blizz is trying to create a story with nuance and subtlety but then has all their characters take the most extreme action possible and it falls apart
If BfA were a movie, pretty much everyone would have walked out in disgust. Only ones left would be the ones on their phones, unaware of what is going on at all.
But to elaborate on Car’s question. Despite the cinematic being made by Metzen, the team leading up to BfA did tout all that morally grey/faction pride nonsense, so at least some people knew this was the direction it would go.
All in all, they threw that out because otherwise people would likely quite enmasse. I can’t imagine many Horde players would stick around if they just outright said “Hey Horde, remember MoP and how fun it was to find yourselves and oust your warchief? Well in BfA you can do it ALL OVER AGAIN!”
I mean it feels like, by the time they realized just how much the Horde players hated it, it was too late. So they tried to smile and pretend nothing was wrong.
But how could they have not known? There had been but people telling them that what they eventually did was not what we wanted for quite some time before hand.
Keep in mind, when it comes to the Horde, there are two distinct groups of players, which I believe even the Devs have acknowledged.
You have the Third War, Honorable Savages, Thrall’s New Horde kind of players who love their honor and see themselves as underdogs struggling heroically against a world that judges and hates them for the past that isn’t even entirely capable of falling on the shoulders of the current generation of the Horde.
And you have the Second War, Brutal and Bloodthirsty, Garrosh’s True Horde kind of players who love killing the Alliance and painting the world red no matter what, and reveling in every act on the way, seeing anyone who tries to stand against them or bring up, “honor,” as whiny weaklings who need to be put in their place; beneath the boots of the Horde, choking on the mud, where they belong.
So, for players of that second category, yeah, I imagine BFA is giving them a strong sense of, ‘Faction Pride.’
I’m not convinced it was misdirection. I’m still on team “Blizzard somehow thinks this is actually grey”. Look at how absolutely not prepared they were for the blowback against Teldrassil.
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