Does WoW need to return to swords and sorcery?

[Benomatic]

If anything, the game needs a "cooling off" period from the cosmic threats. A time to re-direct the focus back on the medieval-like aspect of the game.

It was eventual we would start dealing with powerful, space bound foes and it would end up us being in our suits of armor, swords and shields in hand fighting off alien spaceships who have far more advanced technology.

Or at least advanced in the case of being far ahead of swords, armor, magic from wands, and the like.

We haven't gotten too far in the sense of the gaming morphing from high fantasy, swords & sorcery to futuristic, cosmic-punk.

Maybe next expansion will focus back more on the world we dwell on and have us have to engage in the world "old fashioned" like.

Exactly! I would prefer we burn off or burn out our collective power level to repel the current threat and go back to a more level playing field.

[Mendzia]

Yes. We need more dragons instead of space ships.

[Benomatic]

i think, what op roughly means, is a little bit less of this:



and a little bit more of this:

yes!!!!!!!!

[Flurryfang]

Would be alright, but i don't think it can do anymore. We have taken the step up in tech and unless Blizz want to answer a bazillion questions each year about "Why did we not just use this tech to solve our problem?", they really have to form the world around the dreanei tech, flying battleships and huge mechs.

[Benomatic]

OP, your suggestions are 100% opposite to what I expect of the game. As a Priest, I've always found the universe to be mundane and the "down-to-earth" swords and sorcery put me off every time. Right now with the introduction of more Light/Void lore, I finally feel at home.

With that being said, if WoW was ever to return to "swords and sorcery", I would leave and never come back to the game. It would be an insult to the long awaited progress I anticipated from the game's world and lore.

You'd probably be better off with destiny then.

[Deleted]

WoW is suffering from the classic fantasy power escalation trope. There's no way out due to how MMORPG are designed, meaning we can go back to Firelands and stomp Ragnaros with a naked character, meaning our current toons are way more powerful than Ragnaros ever was.

This inconsistency is what breeds bad storytelling.

[bewbew]

The game has had massive shredder bots/machines/etc for the entirety of its existence, and we've used overpowered 'warframe' style vehicles as far back as Wrath.

Maybe you want the game to be World of Excaliburcraft (humble heroes charging across a field of grass on loyal steeds) but WoW always has been and always will be a fantasy RPG... fantasy being the key word.

The high technology was never so overpowering it was distinctively better than everything else.

Steams tanks didn't obliterate armies. They were just very limited sieging.

Now we have warships with guns that can murder entire countries, while Stormwind is guarded by 2 lvl 55 footmen.

[Wyrt]

Is magi-tech not part of sorcery?

[tankbug]

Pretty much, yeah.

The vanilla experience was priceless. Back then even so much as a red drake mattered. I remember there was one cruising through Hillsbrad and whenever one of our guildies would see it, we'd gather up and take it down feeling like we've dealt with something huge. Now? Let us go and murder a hundred dreadlords, felguards, doomguards and eredar to get 167 gold and 70 silver. They need to bring the World back into World of Warcraft, but the real problem is that the if the title and arc isn't "bombastic", it won't attract enough people.

In vanilla, everything was awesome, and everything mattered. If people no longer gives a fuck about the fate of Mankirk's Wife, when all quests are just icons on the map, and the only thing that matters is that shiny piece of loot at the end of a journey you try to make as short as possible, it's hard to engage the players in anything that isn't the epic world-changing battle against evil gods.

[Trickname]

I'm in the club of spaceships and death star style guns going too far...hell I've never been too happy about motorcycles in-game.

It still seems easy to have all that tech wiped out in Legion and I hope they go down that route.

[Benomatic]

The use of the arcane was once blamed for attracting the legion, unless that has been retconned.

The last thing we want is the WoW version of the MCU where legion tech falls into the wrong hands and breeds a new type of threat.

[Constraint]

I completely want a return to swords and sorcery. Why the fuck are we now involved in time travel and demonic inter-galactic space-ships...?

I'm sure there are a few who like it, or who don't particularly care one way or another, but to me it's really immersion-breaking.

[Magnagarde]

In vanilla, everything was awesome, and everything mattered. If people no longer gives a fuck about the fate of Mankirk's Wife, when all quests are just icons on the map, and the only thing that matters is that shiny piece of loot at the end of a journey you try to make as short as possible, it's hard to engage the players in anything that isn't the epic world-changing battle against evil gods.

Man I remember when ten of us gathered and killed those red drakes besides classic Grim Batol, only to run behind and see it is emtpy space, but defeating those drakes felt amazing.

I even remember getting that epic quiver from Azuregos and I felt like my character was something extraordinary just because of that.

[tankbug]

Man I remember when ten of us gathered and killed those red drakes besides classic Grim Batol, only to run behind and see it is emtpy space, but defeating those drakes felt amazing.

I even remember getting that epic quiver from Azuregos and I felt like my character was something extraordinary just because of that.

Indeed! Gathering up some people just killing random elites in some fortification was fun. Maybe some secret boss would appear? Maybe we would somehow "win" the camp? When we didn't know the boundaries of the game, and most aspects of the game was fun in themselves, the game felt magical. They've done what they can to keep it interesting, and I still enjoy it, but we can't go back to vanilla. That feeling is gone forever.

[Deleted]

WoW is suffering from the classic fantasy power escalation trope. There's no way out due to how MMORPG are designed, meaning we can go back to Firelands and stomp Ragnaros with a naked character, meaning our current toons are way more powerful than Ragnaros ever was.

This inconsistency is what breeds bad storytelling.

bad storytelling breeds bad storytelling
what you said makes no sense because there is no reason for someone making a story to take into account a STRICTLY gameplay element such as "player characters grow in power"

[Pony Soldier]

I don't understand why people think the whole sci-fi/Legion spaceship stuff is some new concept in WoW. It's always been a part Warcraft lore since at least the Warcraft 3 days. The spaceships themselves may not have been but space demons were always a thing in Warcraft lore. Where do you think the infernals came from when they crashed into Azeroth in that opening WC 3 cinematic? And since they came from a different planet how do you think the others got here? A logical explanation would be spaceships. Hell, the draenei came to Azeroth in a flying crystal spaceship that crash landed in Azuremyst Isle. Did people forget that? Right there pretty much established the fact that there are spaceships and space travel in the Warcraft universe. It's just that we're actually seeing them for the first time.

I don't know why people think Warcraft is just as simple as swords and magic because it's not. It's much more than that. It's not your typical fantasy game. This is coming from a guy who has a hard time keeping up with the stories and hardly read into any of the lore. If I am able to point these things out while others cannot then I have either just simply played longer or people have not been paying much attention to what is going on in WoW.

[Magnagarde]

Indeed! Gathering up some people just killing random elites in some fortification was fun. Maybe some secret boss would appear? Maybe we would somehow "win" the camp? When we didn't know the boundaries of the game, and most aspects of the game was fun in themselves, the game felt magical. They've done what they can to keep it interesting, and I still enjoy it, but we can't go back to vanilla. That feeling is gone forever.

As much as PTR helps get rid of bugs, it takes out much of the exploration and surprise factor.

The same goes for raid tactics being known a month and more in advance. Tactics for some Antorus bosses are already out.

[Justpassing]

There's no going back.

[Sigxy]

I would absolutely like to go back to more of the fantasy stuff and less of the sci-fi stuff. Never when I was less than 10 years and played WC1 and WC2, did I think that in the same unvierse as those two, I'd be doing a quest that involves shooting down 'Demon jet planes' that flies in the sky.

Plus, it was a lot more interesting to fight the foes of Azeroth. Fighting cosmic battles are just... meh. I don't feel it belongs in WoW a whole lot.

[Deleted]

always since Warcraft 3

always=/=warcraft 3

and really, it's not even warcraft 3, it's TBC as we've discussed earlier in the thread
warcraft 3 had no such elements, even though they introduced a lot of the stuff that would go in WoW later

and no, just because daemons are otherwordly doesn't mean the game should focus so much on space battles and space ships
daemons can traverse worlds through portals, the whole idea was that they were a cosmic thread beyond our world, that doesn't even make them much different from christian daemons
nowhere in the original lore was it stated that the daemons were the galactic empire