Blizzard to Begin New Character Cycle?

[elderu]

So with the large deaths in Legion, we have some empty niches for characters, and I'm wondering what Blizzard could have in store.

Right off the bat, we need a new prominent Troll character.
Rokhan is an alright dude, but he's an old character, and lacks any unique characteristics that make him a spotlight character so far.. How unlikely is it that Blizzard could actually write a new Troll character? Long as it fits well enough, I'd be very happy to see somebody perhaps a little more rough than Vol'jin.

Although it isn't exactly from LEGION, the Orcs need somebody to take charge again, and idk if it'll really end up being Saurfang. (If Legion IS Wrath 2.0, he's dying this expac. )

A Champion of the Light? Well yes, during Legion it'll be YOU! (if you're a paladin?) But after Legion, what will we have?
Right now, Anduin is brewing into his character, and it looks like he's teetering on being his father's replacement as King of the Humans, or the Champion of the Light.
Another strange option is Illidan, it would seem.. (Blizzard trying to go all G.R.R.M on us with multiple supposed prophecy and visions of different great champions of the light! ... Azor Ahai)

Illidan is probably gonna have a time to shine, but he won't be a Champion of the Light to stick around, no.
However Anduin could take both roles replacing Varion and Tirion?

It just seems like Blizzard is trying to roll with new characters for a new age of WoW a little.. So will we continue to see our old beloveds slowly die off more?

What do you guys think/want?

[Deleted]

It would be a pertty fucking boring story if noone ever died or developed their character.

There doesnt need to be a big prominent troll guy. They need a leader yes, but there are plenty of races with leaders not that big.

I'm hopeing they develop a little on what they currently have. The horde could use some new characters with their new warchief basicly being the only interesting one

[Deleted]

Killing a strong character right off the bat to show how scary the new baddy is is a super-cheap storytelling trick, old as coal. "WooooW, the Legion took out not two, but THREE jormungars!?!?!? Phwoooar, the stakes have NEVER been so high1!!1!".

That said, WoW needed to craft their own identity instead of coasting on past nostalgia from RTS (and realistically, mostly Warcraft III, the game that the majority of the players was most likely to play, thus all the calls of "WoW story ended with Wrath"). They did a pretty good job making some memorable WoW-only characters (Saurfang, Hogger, VanCleef, Nefarian, Admiral Taylor, Nazgrim, Matthias Shaw, Bob of Silvermoon, Garrosh Hellscream, Chromie, Fandral Staghelm, the list goes on and on)... but then have always been way too quick on killing them off as well, then panic-resurrecting them after "setbacks", to the point of absurd in WoD where they just bring back the whole Orc cast.

WoW needs to stand on its own two legs, because the RTS stopped carrying it hard years ago, and they're not creating memorable characters as fast as they're killing them off, to the point that we seem to have no named Troll characters that stick out, for example (if pressed, uh... Mojodishu? Gravy the bartender? Seriously drawing a blank here).

Come to think of it... Hearthstone does it pretty well, adding characters that are pretty distinctive on their own as legendary cards instead of just rehashing WoW ones.

Hearthstone characters in WoW next?

[Kokolums]

Killing a strong character right off the bat to show how scary the new baddy is is a super-cheap storytelling trick, old as coal. "WooooW, the Legion took out not two, but THREE jormungars!?!?!? Phwoooar, the stakes have NEVER been so high1!!1!".

This is totally wrong. Textbook quality storytelling requires that the obstacles are worthy of your heroes quest. If the villains do NOT achieve goals and kill heroes, they quickly turn into Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars, or even the iron Horde from AU Draenor, where they lose EVERY fight and look pathetic. The ultimate goal of any story is to reveal the character of your heroes. If they never suffer, if they never lose, you can't reveal their character. This is not super-cheap. Its how storytelling is done.

I'll pick a random thing. X-Men First Class. Magneto is raging on the beach and in his rage he accidentally deflects a bullet into Xavier's back. Its a tragedy. Its a horrible loss. How does Magneto react? He drops his rage and runs to help Xavier. This changes him from a cardboard cutout villain to a three dimensional character with complex motivations. But it can't happen if Xavier doesn't fall. Heroes fall, evil wins, and through it the story tells itself and you show the audience what drives your characters.

Maybe to you, you'd call Xavier taking that bullet is a super cheap storytelling trick. I'd say you are utterly wrong.

[Soulwind]

So far, they've failed to introduce important characters players immediately care about. The best ones they've done are those like Garrosh or Varian: characters who have been built up throughout several expansions.

It's hard to make players connect to an NPC in an MMO, which is why the characters the players controlled in the RTS were always more popular, you can't just create a troll character, make him the leader of the Darkspear and expect people to like him as much as they like Thrall. Not many people cared about Vol'jin because even though he was always there, he didn't do anything. He barely interacted with the story or the player. Nobody has a strong opinion on him because there's hardly anything to base it on. But at least we knew him.

In order for them to introduce a bunch of characters players should care about, they would have to make a lot of them and have them around for a few years. Let some of them become villains, let some of them die... see which ones are liked and which ones aren't. It's not something they haven't done, but they haven't done it enough to keep up with the rate at which important characters die.

For every Nazgrim they've managed to introduce, they've killed three Illidans.

In my opinion, Cataclysm was a step in the right direction, they created a ton of interesting characters for the 1-60 content. The problem is, they forgot about most of them by the end of that expansion. You got to see some of them in that daily quest in Hyjal, and that was cool, but they weren't really doing anything story-wise, they were just companions.

Familiarity is important, turning the characters we already know into main characters will always be easier than creating new main characters. Yrel failed to become the protagonist they wanted because we had just met her months before she was supposed to lead us. That character's arc simply wasn't there.

[Kokolums]

So far, they've failed to introduce important characters players immediately care about. The best ones they've done are those like Garrosh or Varian: characters who have been built up throughout several expansions.

Typical poor writing is to be afraid to create complex heroes because they might do things that are a little controversial. As that attitude persists, all of the heroes become unlikable cardboard cutouts with zero charisma. Meanwhile, the villains get written with no filter. Over time, the villains grow to be more interesting than the heroes. The bad writers do this without realizing it, but then they start to notice that all the truly interesting characters are villains, so they try to fix the balance by writing redemption stories all over the place to create interesting heroes. The villains that get redeemed then get remolded into unlikable cardboard cutouts and the problem persists.

I'd say this isn't really a problem in WoW as Jaina and Genn are growing more complex. But they also seem to not get used much.

[Deleted]

This is totally wrong.

Killing or maiming characters isn't necessarily cheap, but operative word being "right off the bat". Having the spine bullet hit at the end of the movie is totally different from it happening in the first two minutes of the movie, which is what Broken Shore is.

If Boromir in the prologue of the Fellowship, not the end, would you care? It'd just be "wait, who? Oh I guess some random goon". If Bilbo died at the start it would probably feel like "oh, I guess the author just wanted us to focus on a new hero, that Frodo dude, fair enough". Would there be an emotional attachment to such a death? In-universe, perhaps, but would the reader be invested? Attachment can be created the hard way, through good storytelling over a prolonged period of time, or the brute force way - starting the story with "so this dude is dead, this is your protagonist now, deal with it".

Sorry, but the Broken Shore is just that. We're being thrown at the tail end of events instead of following them (the battle had already been decided, Argent forces vanquished, Tirion captured). Varian at least goes down like a boss with an act of conscious sacrifice, while Vol'jin gets offed like a redshirt, and Tirion just gets flushed in Sargeras's toilet. All in the first 10 minutes.

This abruptness makes it just cheap shock tactics to show people how high the stakes are this time, like, for real you guys, and Blizzard making some room for some NPC shuffling.

[Every Pwny]

The only really "new" characters are Baine and Anduin, everything else is kind of old and they don't seem to be developing new characters for the races. I don't think I could name an important troll after Vol'jin or an important Tauren, Gnome or Draenei after their faction leaders. If that is their plan they are doing a bad job of passing the torch.

[Deleted]

The only really "new" characters are Baine and Anduin, everything else is kind of old and they don't seem to be developing new characters for the races. I don't think I could name an important troll after Vol'jin or an important Tauren, Gnome or Draenei after their faction leaders. If that is their plan they are doing a bad job of passing the torch.

Mojodishu and Yrel for faction leaders 2017.

[Pull My Finger]

Killing a strong character right off the bat to show how scary the new baddy is is a super-cheap storytelling trick

It's not a "cheap" trick, but a classic vehicle. There's nothing inherently cheap about it. The only people who think like that are academics (who, frankly, don't know shit about anything) and people who try to say things that academics would say.

[Every Pwny]

Mojodishu and Yrel for faction leaders 2017.

I would have thought Yrel would come help out against the legion, but it seems blizzard wants to forget about her entirely after cutting out so much of her story in WoD.

[Deleted]

It's not a "cheap" trick, but a classic vehicle. There's nothing inherently cheap about it. The only people who think like that are academics (who, frankly, don't know shit about anything) and people who try to say things that academics would say.

Well sorry, if a movie/book/game expansion begins with a BIG BAD DUDE killing a previously established IMPORTANT CHARACTER right there in the prologue to show THE STAKES ARE SOOOO HIGH IN THIS SEQUEL I feel it's cheap. No academic papers were read to arrive at this conclusion, neither is it a quote of one.

Generalizing like that ain't cool by the way.

I would have thought Yrel would come help out against the legion, but it seems blizzard wants to forget about her entirely after cutting out so much of her story in WoD.

If they bring back AU Grommash as a good guy because "fighting a demon once totally redeems any genocide one could have commited prior, DRAENOR IS FREE" I'm going to be really bummed.

It was a nice sightseeing trip, but probably best if WoD stays buried under the sands of time forever. To think we lost Maraad, the "dude from TBC intro" there, too... the only draenei left I can name off the top of my head would be Nobundo and Akama, and they're both broken so not even of the playable kind.

[looorg]

Overall there will be time for the backseat characters to step up - you know all those leaders that have just been benchwarming it forever or for the last few expansions.

Genn Greymane, Gelbin Mekkatorque and all the dwarfs. At least Genn and Gelbin was in/on the broken shore.

Jastor Gallywix (seriously I doubt he'll ever amount to anything - they could just kill him and nobody would know). Lor'themar Theron (last did something at ToT, ok he did help carry Vol'jin to his pyre).

Not sure who will be the new troll leader.

I recon the panda leaders will just fade into oblivion, I can't even remember their names. It's like generic-beardude#1.

[escalle]

who cares let them all die

[Every Pwny]

If they bring back AU Grommash as a good guy because "fighting a demon once totally redeems any genocide one could have commited prior, DRAENOR IS FREE" I'm going to be really bummed.

Yeah that would be pretty bad. They just ended HFC so horribly.

[Koloss]

I guess Anduin Wrynn and Med'an will be the big heroes. Sounds like a gay party. Also Sylvanas, Velen and Khadgar. And still the Thrall+Malfurion+Jaina combo what Medivh assembled. There are already new ones in it, Khadgar and Anduin was nowhere in the beginning. Yeah, i would like to see some badass Troll they need a new leader.

[Soulwind]

Typical poor writing is to be afraid to create complex heroes because they might do things that are a little controversial. As that attitude persists, all of the heroes become unlikable cardboard cutouts with zero charisma. Meanwhile, the villains get written with no filter. Over time, the villains grow to be more interesting than the heroes. The bad writers do this without realizing it, but then they start to notice that all the truly interesting characters are villains, so they try to fix the balance by writing redemption stories all over the place to create interesting heroes. The villains that get redeemed then get remolded into unlikable cardboard cutouts and the problem persists.

I'd say this isn't really a problem in WoW as Jaina and Genn are growing more complex. But they also seem to not get used much.

I don't think Warcraft has a problem with lacking gray characters. It's one of the few fantasy universes where orcs, trolls and zombies aren't necessarily evil, and humans, elves and dwarves aren't necessarily good. For its comic-like aesthetic and story, it's quite original.

The main issue is giving these characters enough screen time and character development in a game that's all about gameplay. Having an NPC next to you when you kill a boss is not nearly as compelling as controlling that character in a game much more focused on storytelling. They need to counter that lack of depth with frequent appearances.

By the time these characters do something important, we need to know them, we need to remember the quests we did with them, the dungeons and raids they helped us in, the conversations they offered to our characters. Only then we'll feel any sort of connection to them and care about them dying, betraying us or killing the bad guy for us. Only then you'll have people making threads about "who is right" and "X should have died to save Y".

And the only way for them to have enough of these characters going on to keep up with the ones they're killing is to create a ton of them every expansion.

[Pull My Finger]

Well sorry, if a movie/book/game expansion begins with a BIG BAD DUDE killing a previously established IMPORTANT CHARACTER right there in the prologue to show THE STAKES ARE SOOOO HIGH IN THIS SEQUEL I feel it's cheap.

That's not because of the storytelling vehicle itself, but because of how it was used.

[Ehrenpanzer]

I would love to see them completely fuck lore by retconning it to somehow have a half-demon be champion of the Light..fuck..might as well just hand Bolvar the Ashbringer after Legion and have the LK be the champion of the Light.

Sarcasm aside, they are going to shove Anduin into a Lothar-esque character, having him as the Champion of the Light and King of Stormwind

[Blur4stuff]

they could write the best story to have ever existed on earth and 99% of players would ignore it and click straight through to the loot

only way you're gonna get players to connect to a character is to play with them or play as them. good opportunity for solo scenario story telling.