And these I think are pretty valid critiques.
Anduin was initially shown as a very peaceful co-existence sort of character, which he still largely is, but his physical portrayal and actions should be completely different. Poor guy was basically in a body cast after getting his bones smashed to bits by Garrosh. That should be some lasting damage. Instead we see him hopping on top of an azerite tank and stabbing it dead. His mass heal/rez during the BFA cinematic was good, thats Anduin, not so much a swordsmen. He can be the perfect moral compass, that much is fine, but that perfect compass should be wrong or flawed sometimes because the world is messy. We should be living in peace, old animosities should be laid to rest, workers of the world should unite, but there are so many different histories, experiences, and outlooks, that prevent that from happening right now. Showing that Genn was the war monger for the 4th War (and a whole rewrite of those 2 expansions tbh) could have shown that. The young and idealist âHigh Kingâ canât reign in the old grump, and is now forced to participate in this war that he is also actively trying to end peacefully to the point of refusing to commit troops to offensives into Horde territory when strategically sound, if not obvious, but is also the first to go to the front to heal and care for wounded troops, shrinking perhaps his administrative and leadership duties cause the light calls to him to help, or whatever. That, in my eyes, is Anduin.
As for Tyrande, yeah I think that just gets thrown to âBFA was a mess, SL was in the works but lets try and start to course correct, and DF was lets just reset it all without doing a hard retconâ but we also just canât poof it all back together so we need some sort of story.
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With the addition of the Earthen we now have another set of characters that can communicate across the faction divide.
Personally never understood why if bad writing gets us into a mess, bad writing canât get us out of it. Why carry the dead weight forward in a game where time travel exists. Shadowlands literally built in a reset, start again button in the final raid, haha.
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Because slop on top of more slop doesnât suddenly make the slop better. Blizz is making the right choice by ignoring the faction war
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The slop isnât in isolation, though, because the lore and characters are ruined. It is more like eating a single bowl of slop to save yourself from having to endure a different type of slop with every meal going forward.
It isnât even outside the bounds of the existing storylineâGulâdan and the Magâhar were literally plucked out of an alternate timeline.
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All Iâm saying is that since they gotten AWAY from faction war storytelling and added cross faction guilds and groups and with the different approach to storytelling in DF, we have actually seen a UPTICK in subscriber numbers
The game is relatively healthy again and doing pretty well. Something we should be thankful for.
Edit: The faction war as a storyline was garbage. Always was, always will be
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I swore you can talk to each other now in cities. My Kulâtiran were chatting up two Blood elf sisters in Dongral or whatever a couple of days ago.
Only in say though.
Thereâs zero reason to associate the subscription numbers with faction paradigm. WotLK passed 12 million with things at a boil, MoP remains one of the most popular expansions, and Shadowlands was an abysmal failure despite having nothing to do with Horde vs. Alliance. On the contrary, Classic subs seem to have carried the franchise through that patch.
That, and Dragonflight deserves praise for a lot of non story stuff, not least of which being relaxed Renown, dragonriding, no borrowed power grindsinks. DFâs story typically gets a fair bit of criticism, especially re: feeling like Warcraft.
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Sure there is. BfA and SL, both dealing with a FACTION WAR and the other with the AFTERMATH of said war saw people leaving the game in droves
And I wonder why that it is.
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Because the writers did the thing the players were begging them not to do (SoO 2.0) and ruined or killed off a bunch of characters, then retconned the foundational elements of the Warcraft multiverse?
Like, are we really going to sit here and say the problem with Shadowlands was that the Horde and Alliance have fought too long? Huh?
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The thing is about âbad writing,â you dont know its bad writing until someone is able to actually critique it. Power dynamics at Blizzard doesnt exactly allow for folks lower on the rung to say âthis isnt a good ideaâ without fear of repercussions, real or not. So we can say bad writing in hindsight, even in late development when its shown, but its far too late by then. Someone already thought it was good writing and had a vision they thought was going to work out.
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And what was BfAâs main story around? A faction war
And what did SL deal with? The aftermath of said faction war and chasing Sylvanas into the realm of death.
Both deal with a faction war as the main storyline and both saw droves of people leave.
Dragonflight, for whatever reason you want to use. Saved WoW. And most people seem to be enjoying TWW for a variety of reasons also. None of those reasons being faction related
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Yeah, âno negativity in the dojoâ was at least twice as dumb as it sounds.
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Nobody said there canât be war. Just a faction war is played out.
This is sill warcraft with intermingled stories. It doesnât have to be about horde and alliance. Even back in the RTS, the most interesting stories were personal and not about the factions.
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Correlation is not causation. BFA had a strong turnout initially, despite wearing front and center how faction oriented it was going to be (and to this day probably one of the best cinematics theyâve delivered). The playerbase were there for it until the exact things they begged cdev not to do were done. Worse than that, they just lied about itâmorally grey, Faction pride, yada yada.
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Is the whole THE FACTION WAR DIDNâT WORK somehow getting lost here?
People liked Wrath, yet people complained when the faction war stuff came up. (Varian acting stupid in Undercity, the horde backstabbing the alliance, the air ship battle)
People also enjoyed MoP. I know many who absolutely hated the faction war stuff in it
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People got more excited about the horde and alliance attacking orgrimmar to get at garrosh than the actual faction war.
The gist is literally warcrafts faction war was such a backdrop during the RTS that the most popular stories from w1-3 is literally about not the faction wars. It is about illidan vs burning crusade and his own people and Arthas vs the undead. Then playing as death knight Arthas.
Lothar, doomhammer, etc? Forgotten. Arthas and illidan, soy jacked to the extreme
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There is a Potion of Tongues sold in Legion Dalaran. Allows you to understand the other factionâs default language.
Like take Wrath for example. It was super popular because of Arthas the Lich King. Everyone was excited to finally be able to fight him and see how the story would end.
No one I know was going Oh joy, canât wait for that faction war to show up!
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Horde and Alliance being antagonistic is not the reason for the failed expansions of recent history. It is a surface level scapegoat that ignores a deeply flawed creative process.
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