Does WoW need to return to swords and sorcery?

[SirBeef]

Does WoW need to return to a simpler time of swords and sorcery? We are increasingly rushing headlong in to greater threats and associating with beings of such great power such as the titans that I fear we are losing sight on the simplicity and enjoyment of the swords and sorcery aspect we were introduced to.

I understand the story needs to progress, but I am worried by the current expedited increase of the threats we face and our own grandeur and how we are becoming a galactic universal force of power.

Does anyone else feel we need to come back down to earth and confront threats out of our reach but feasibly able to defeat.

Outside of WC1 it never was just swords and sorcery.

[Swalload]

Does WoW need to return to a simpler time of swords and sorcery? We are increasingly rushing headlong in to greater threats and associating with beings of such great power such as the titans that I fear we are losing sight on the simplicity and enjoyment of the swords and sorcery aspect we were introduced to.

I understand the story needs to progress, but I am worried by the current expedited increase of the threats we face and our own grandeur and how we are becoming a galactic universal force of power.

Does anyone else feel we need to come back down to earth and confront threats out of our reach but feasibly able to defeat.

If you're talking about the first Warcraft ok. But WoW started after the shit hit the fan with burning legion and whatever in warcraft 2 and 3. At this point we were already far from the simple sword and sorcery.

[nyc81991]

You seem overly bitter about this from a couple posts I have seen. With passive aggressiveness towards Starcraft for some reason over this. Not very healthy. But I do get entertainment from it.

I have no idea where you got that from. If anything you are the one who just wrote something "passive aggressive" and directed it at me. You probably shouldn't try to attach a "tone" to text on a screen, it rarely works and makes you look silly for trying to act like some kind of internet psychiatrist. I actually love StarCraft, I just don't like what Blizzard is doing with WoW and the Burning Legion.

[Souflikar]

I don't want to go all out galactic. It's OK for Legion but I'd prefer a more rustic WOW feel moving forward.....or backward, depending on how you see it.

[huth]

Always this terror when Fantasy seemingly turns into SciFi, even though both are more or less the same thing with minor variations. Particularly since the Legion explicitly employs a crap-ton of magitek powered by souls.

You want a group shoving it over into SciFi? Look at Gnomes and Goblins, not the Legion.

WarCraft has ridden the line between the two at the very least since they introduced flying machines in WC2. Complaning about it now makes me wonder what mountain you've spend the last 23 years or so under.

Keep in mind that dwarves, gnomes and goblins have always ensured that WoW wasn't a true fantasy game, with tanks, helicopters and whatnot, and TBC did away with fantasy in its entirety with its crystal spaceships and so on.

"True Fantasy" isn't actually a thing. Fantasy(and SciFi) are very loose clusters of genres that constantly shift borders and heavily depend on the viewer.

However, i disagree with your last point. Magical Crystal Spaceships propelled by glowing windchimes are far more at home in Fantasy than SciFi. It's not whether technology exists that defines what side of the Fantasy/SciFi scale something falls on, it's how that technologies existence is justified. And for all the Legion and Naaru stuff, that's pretty much "It's magic". Now, Gnome/Titan tech is a different topic.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I have no idea where you got that from. If anything you are the one who just wrote something "passive aggressive" and directed it at me. You probably shouldn't try to attach a "tone" to text on a screen, it rarely works and makes you look silly for trying to act like some kind of internet psychiatrist. I actually love StarCraft, I just don't like what Blizzard is doing with WoW and the Burning Legion.

Very defensive too. Anything I can do to help? I am here to be attacked and then giggle at it when you are done hon.

[DeltrusDisc]

I'd like to see less of the silly Legion spaceship armada, but other than that I think it's fine.

This.

Less Star Wars/Trek and more Lord of the Rings, thanks.

[sef24]

One thing that sucks is that this expansion makes me feel like the Horde/Alliance and other friendly forces are just SO powerful when defeating these enemies. Feels like we can't have expansions of lesser baddies now, because it wouldn't make much sense of us having difficulties against them when we fought a greater foe before.

Like every expansion the big bads have to go up in power. Can't have the lesser greater evils get any focus other than dungeon bosses. Bah.

[Deleted]

Yes please

[nyc81991]

Very defensive too. Anything I can do to help? I am here to be attacked and then giggle at it when you are done hon.

I'm not even going to respond to you from this point on unless you actually have something constructive to say that's actually on topic. You are obviously trying to get reactions out of people for whatever weird reason you have. If you want to actually have an intellectual conversation about the topic, that's fine but I'm not going to play your game.

[ro9ue]

I don't like the technology aspects of Warcraft. Goblins, Gnomes, Draenei, time travel, Legion spacecrafts, etc. Not a fan personally.

It's what Warcraft is though. Too much of the original story involves time and space travel. Even Warcraft 3 - though primarily fantasy - had goblins and gnomes with some crude steampunk tech.

If anything I'd just hope they can put it back in the peripheries.

[Lasombria]

I've talked about this extensively elsewhere, but put shortly yes I think we need to go back to a more grounded fantasy setting.

Orcs & Humans starts off with an interdimensional portal large enough for invading armies, rampaging demons, and more. Which makes sense, given that it started life intended to be a Warhammer Fantasy RTS. It's never been "grounded" - it's always been high-octane with loud guitar solos and high weirdness.

[Eurhetemec]

Outside of WC1 it never was just swords and sorcery.

Even in WC1 it was clearly High Fantasy or even Epic Fantasy, not S&S. Less extreme than some high fantasy but it has all the trappings.

S&S is how a lot of pen and paper RPGs are, and a number of CRPGs sit on the S&S/High Fantasy borderlands, but Warcraft has always been epic and extreme, and only got more so with WC2 and WC3 and TFT. WoW actually kind of stepped back from the extreme-ness of WC3, but the whole tone is that deeply magic-saturated High Fantasy one, not the more "street level" one of S&S. The only MMO I can think of which was solidly S&S was Age of Conan.

All that said, would it be nice for WoW to step back from the cosmic stuff? Yes. But it would be hard to do convincingly and without ending up in some trashy Horde-Alliance feud (which just seems/petty silly in context - we don't have the built-up emotions and so on of GoT and it even seems pretty silly there!).

I do feel like we're getting to a sort of "WoW 2" point. I doubt it'd be an actual game at this point, but an expansion which was fairly massive in scope and where you had new characters from L1, in a new Azeroth set, say, 50-100 years on might be viable. I suspect Blizzard would want it to be on the same sub to WoW so you could transition players over steadily (or stick with WoW if they preferred), which would be maximally profitable. That's still likely 2 expansions off by my reckoning though. Or maybe they can keep it going indefinitely.

[Grimo]

I don't see the problem. Its an invasion , if it would be 2 fel murlocks with wooden swords poking at us, would you be satisfied then ?
But joke aside, i think the tech is well within wow norms , its just everybody is kind of burnt out of saving the world , so we need a calmer xpac.

IMO, it should be WAY worse. Stormwind and Org in ashes - no one goes there anyway. Refugee trains streaming out from all the major settlements, whole areas of old Azeroth fel-charred ruins. This is supposed to be the BIGGEST Legion invasion of Azeroth ever, but they just stick around that fucking island.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I'm not even going to respond to you from this point on unless you actually have something constructive to say that's actually on topic. You are obviously trying to get reactions out of people for whatever weird reason you have. If you want to actually have an intellectual conversation about the topic, that's fine but I'm not going to play your game.

Ah then the classic defensive move of "since I am superior to you I won't respond" card. I was right about you. It is a lot easy to just say I was right instead of dragging it out but I understand. We are all winners, we all get first place trophies, and momma said you were special. Don't worry you reading this and not answering only cements my being right.

[Joeydivision82]

I think the biggest issue for me was in WoD with all the hardcore industrialisation, the advanced military, machines, trains, bombs and guns! Now with Legion and the fel cannons and fel ships. It's leaving behind the adventurer and turning us into the terminator.

You know WoD was in the past, right?

[MoanaLisa]

It's like power levels, once you start up that ladder it's very difficult to get back down it. Does anyone want to buy an expansion where the main villain is some powerful but otherwise ordinary wizard holed up in his castle?

That doesn't sound compelling to me. So while I think the sentiment that the size of the threats we face have come to be ridiculous (starting with Deathwing really which was visually moronic at the end of the expansion in the last raid and I think a reason why that raid is so generally disliked) it's difficult to find a path back down that's going to keep everyone's interest.

Because the opposite is true as well: Once we've commanded armies and faced down near gods why should we care much about some old bearded guy torturing the inhabitants of a small town off in the wilderness somewhere?

Tough problem which I'm glad I don't have to solve.

[nyc81991]

Ah then the classic defensive move of "since I am superior to you I won't respond" card. I was right about you. It is a lot easy to just say I was right instead of dragging it out but I understand. We are all winners, we all get first place trophies, and momma said you were special. Don't worry you reading this and not answering only cements my being right.

I actually said "If you want to actually have an intellectual conversation about the topic, that's fine but I'm not going to play your game.".

[Thoughtcrime]

Orcs & Humans starts off with an interdimensional portal large enough for invading armies, rampaging demons, and more. Which makes sense, given that it started life intended to be a Warhammer Fantasy RTS. It's never been "grounded" - it's always been high-octane with loud guitar solos and high weirdness.

I started out delivering love letters, helping farmers and villagers. My adventures consisted of helping a beleaguered kingdom against bandits, outlaws, pirates attacking farms and renegade orcs invading lakeside towns. I joined the night watch in protecting their town from worgen and a necromancer that tricked me into helping him build an abomination. In fact almost all of the adventures up to level 60 were low key like that and it was wonderful. Nowadays we can't go a zone without bombastic world ending threats. Everything has to be epic, with space ships, and demon lords, and void gods, and it's boring. None of it can ever be as engaging as something as small and simple as a broken man trying to bring back his wife or people protecting their homes and families in a dangerous world.

Stories need humanity. Or they're not stories we care about.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I actually said "If you want to actually have an intellectual conversation about the topic, that's fine but I'm not going to play your game.".

Dance boy dance.