When are we going to lose?

[nothingsjim]

In Blizzard's game, the player always win, it doesn't matter how grim things are at the beginning, in the end, us the player will win. It has been like that since Diablo, and it has been Blizzard's way to give the players the ego boost and satisfaction so they keep playing the game. Afterall, it feels good to win.

In Diablo, Blizz's way to make the bad guy win is let shit happens between games, like how Prince Aiden ala Warrior went bonkers between Diablo 1 and 2, Rogue becomes Blood Raven etcetc.

In Warcraft, Blizz's solution to "Bad guy wins" is simple by making us the bad guy. Need to raze Lorderaon? We play as Arthas. Need to kill Cenarius? We play as Grommash. It doesn't matter if it's the good guy or the bad guy that wins the day, since in the end it's the player that wins.

None of these are possible in WoW since we can't play as the bad guy. While making us lose to the bad guy in the end is against the whole idea of Blizzard's formula of success, that is, the player wins.

[zox2]

Ending an expansion in a major loss, then becoming something like resistance fighters would be pretty amazing I think. Uniting pockets of resistance, fighting from the shadows, then slowly redeeming the land...

[Elfezen]

We already lost in Broken Shore during start of Legion and in other battles, if you mean to lose an entire Expansion that wouldn't make sense since the story moves forward with the villains

[Strafer]

The cataclysm was a huge loss.

[Lochton]

We'll always win in the end but at a greater cause. Legion might be a win but we lost a lot of heroes for it.

[kennytheone]

Well I think we still lose this expansion...for the ines who know what happens in the end of Antorus, I am sure that will backfire on us in future expansion and I don't mean only by releasing n'zoth

[In Ogres We Trust]

It's a part of the substandard plots post-WotLK.

[Bas Prime]

why could we never go back? game wise we havent gone back to outland or northrend too, at least not most of us.

What I wanted to say is, that it would be weird, if WoD Draenor would be conquered or destoryed by the Legion, everybody would be killed or flee to us on Azeroth and suddenly you still could go back to WoD and just be there.
It would not be a problem to let us do that, but it would be the same problem we have in wow at the moment. You start the game in Cata, where Garrosh is Warchief, then you level to 60 moving to Outland, where Thrall is Warchief and meets Garrosh the first time, then we move to LK and after that we are back in Cata and the story moves on from there.
Back to you question, or pointing out that it could work. Yes, it could. But I would prefer a working timeline. That is not a given at the moment and really just a minor flaw. Still, it would feel a bit odd and would ne be the intended "We have lost Draenor to the legion" when we can go back.
Lets say Draenor would have been destroyed, really ripped appart, more than outland, where there would be no way to live there. Going back then would only work in combination with the bronze dragons. In a way it would be like going to thousand needles before it was flooded in Cataclysm. Yeah, better example.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure we lost at the Wrath Gate and the Broken Shore. A definitive loss isn't possible due to game mechanics of an MMO.

Back in Warcraft there could be major losses, for example the Humans losing to the Scourge.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

When are they finally going to destroy the world and end the game. Probably when its a lot less profitable. Until then just get used to saving the world or go play another game where oddly enough you will end up likely saving the world. It is less a WoW problem and much more a MMO / RPG / over all video themed narrative. Right.. since this is the internet.. "your right man.. not 100% of games are that way, I understand, you are special" - I hope the disclaimer helps you feel good about yourself.

[Deleted]

What's really tiresome is the continues struggle and war that never seems to end. Whenever some major bad guy is defeated we are already in the next big war.

I would love an expansion without any major story lines or big baddies and just some small scale, zone related lore like we had in Vanilla as well.

[InfiniteCharger]

Warcraft as an RTS allowed you to control bases and minions to fight battles and of course in that sense you could "lose" as in a garrison, a base, minions, etc. However, the overall story involved epic events as "losses" that the player could not stop: ie, Arthas taking down Lordaeron or the the scourge taking Strathholme, etc.

Neither type of game play was added to WOW as an MMO. So without base building and player controlled units, you cannot really have the "war" aspect that featured heavily in Warcraft. Also lore wise, while the world was huge in MMO terms, in real terms there isn't a whole lot of territory owned by friendly factions to actually be used as settings for battles like the original warcraft where you actually did battle in the towns and cities we know from the game and in many cases suffered losses in said towns and cities. You can't do that in the same fashion in wow because of 'quest hubs', 'flight hubs', 'trainers', 'trade npcs' and so forth. Not to mention a story line like Arthas could never be done in-game with WOW because of the same reasons. In fact, most of the story line for the whole rise of the Lich King could never happen in WOW because at every step of the story there would be a dungeon or raid where key 'baddies' in the game get beat by the player, thus making the story impossible.

And in terms of MMO game play, just the act of player death has been a lot more lenient in WOW than most MMOs before or since. Dying as a Night Elf was simply a small hit to equipped items and wisp flight back to your body. So lore wise and story wise, WOW has made the players like gods, they cant die and there is no serious set back for death and they can keep coming back against any baddie and that baddie always 'dies' no matter what. Or they get creative and work around it like they are doing with the titans and the events concerning Sargeras in 7.3 to push the story along but in a very "wow" type of way. If Legion was done as a Warcraft RTS, whole areas of Azeroth would be corrupted and or destroyed, leaders killed/corrupted/imprisoned and new factions would rise as a result of Legion corruption/destruction and Sargeras would be on his way to taking over the planet. Not going to happen with Wow.

[Miatog]

What's really tiresome is the continues struggle and war that never seems to end. Whenever some major bad guy is defeated we are already in the next big war.

I would love an expansion without any major story lines or big baddies and just some small scale, zone related lore like we had in Vanilla as well.

Right, small scale, like Ragnaros and Nefarian who were both poised to start conquering Azeroth. Well we did have a small scale old god ready to take over with his incect armies poised everywhere. The scourge was about to make another big push but that was small scale. Vanilla was unfocused in it's end game, it was not however small scale. We were sending armies to take care of these issues, a new faction rose up to lead a unitied army against C'Thun. MoP is closer to what you're looking for, where the sha were a localized issue. Sure the entire continent could have been lost, but the world wasn't at risk.

Though I do agree with your sentiment. An expansion that takes a break from this is nice, it's one of the reasons why I loved MoP. Let's just go for a vacation and find that some pirates need to be killed...

[Inukashi]

There is a point in each game/movie/serie that is called (by me and maybe others too) the maga-power-point. It's when the Progression of the characters gets to much.
It's the point where the human being starts fighting gods, splits the earth in two and makes the devil fear him more than anything else.
It's when the chars move too fast for the camera and a snick of the chars finger kills an entire city. It's when the players get weapons so strong they can defeat the guys who created the universe.
This is the point where the story begins to suck.. always! The authors have given up and all that will come now is fanservice for the mass. It's when you depend on short time hypes without creating something really good. You can't produce real quality for the mass. This is where WoW is now.

[Deleted]

We loss every LFR Wipeout

[Hitei]

When are we going to lose?

Innumerable years ago when Azeroth was tainted by the Old Gods.
10,000 years ago when the Sundering happened.
A decade ago when the Scourge thoroughly wiped out Lordaeron and destroyed a good bit of Quel'Thalas.
A few years ago when Deathwing destroyed a fair bit of the world emerging from Deepholme.

[Samin]

The main problem is escalation. Almost every threat in World of Warcraft has been "if you don't stop them the world will end." You can't lose to that because then there would be no more story or game. We need more localized scope to threats.

The problem is, after dealing with all these potentionally world ending threats, what "localized" threat could really pose and risk of winning against us?

Actually I think if anything, we need the opposite. As long as Azeroth is under any threat, we'll have to win! Fighting for another planet, that the story could 'afford' to lose.

Unless Blizzard wants to scrap Azeroth for the warcraft universe and start over fresh with a new world, which (never say never) is quite unlikely, in my opinion. But then we could actually lose to a world ending threat.

[Ynna]

Here's a question for people who want to see losses:

How would an encounter look where the players lose? How would you make this a fulfilling experience for the players?

Keep in mind that this would be content that people will be pouring a lot of time in, knowing that they'll lose the fight. They'll be required to run the encounter over and over again, but "successfully" completing the encounter would mean having to lose. How do you make that an enjoyable experience using the mechanics of WoW, without ruining the emotional aspect of a loss.

[Kokolums]

A loss story, while interesting, would be very hard to pull off. I know that if I put in all that time questing, dungeons, raiding, gearing, everything, all just to lose, that would suck.

In a single player game, you can tell that kind of story because you character can be carried on into the overcome story, but in an MMO, a loss has an impact on the world and we all know how the last world impact changed the world.

The orginal transformers cartoon from the 1980s was a loss story. Megatron successfully conquered cybertron. Both factions crashed on earth but it was clear from the start that the deceptions had the upper hand. Only deceptions could fly. There were episodes where the deceptions converted an entire bay into an energon production facility and it was never really shut down by the autobots. The deceptions were slowly converting the planet and the autobots were basically hiding in the crashed spaceship run by teletran-1.

The story arc was ruined with the cartoon movie featuring Unicron & Galvatron because suddenly the autobots had the upper hand for no reason and they replaced a compelling criminal genius in Megatron with a raging crazy idiot in Galvatron. Galvatron sucked the way Deathwing sucked in Cata.

It would be cool if Megatron had a counterpart in WoW lore but no villain is shown to be that cunning vicious and successful. Blizz would only do it the crappy way by TELLING us some villain is that adept in backstory while having him lose every fite in-game. For example, were told kiljaeden is a huge threat but we kill him immediately and he cant even kill a major lore hero or anything

- - - Updated - - -

Here's a question for people who want to see losses:

How would an encounter look where the players lose? How would you make this a fulfilling experience for the players?

Who said anything about losing an encounter? Im talking losing in the story arc. Maybe the villains win and we win some fights to secure safe passage to exile.

Its not hard to write a losing story arc. You dont even have to write it. There are tons of them to borrow from. You could borrow from the transformers arc. Doctor who had single serials that were losing story arcs such as genesis of the daleks. Most horror is losing story arcs.

[Deleted]

You have literally no idea how much more damage than good this would cause to the story.

GoT can do it. So can we!