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  1. #1

    Trial of the High King: Not living up to expectations?

    So, at the last Blizzcon (when MoP was announced), Blizzard announced this epic questline that would be us helping Varian Wrynn become the king that the Alliance deserves. It was described as us working alongside Varian as a squire in order to earn him the respect of the entire Alliance and make him the true High King. It was supposed to be a series of quests that would rally the Alliance and make us feel proud of our faction. The problem is: Where is it?

    Blizzard has told us that it will be a gradual experience that would take place over the course of the expansion, which we have seen in the form of scenarios. However, this journey has hardly felt "epic" in any way.

    Lets look at Varian for example. For the hero of this story, he sure hasn't shown up very much. He has little presence in 5.0, only showing up in the beginning during a short cinematic. The next time we see him is in patch 5.1, where he shows up to do a scenario with us and Tyrande. All he does is spend the time arguing with her about strategy while we, the heroes, go and do all the work. After that, he just throws us to Jaina and Anduin for the rest of the patch. Next is 5.2 and there's not much to say about that. He shows up once again in a scenario with Moira where he just stands around and waits for us to solve the problem for him. He sure works hard for a "High King"! Now onto the latest patch, 5.3. Oh wait, he isn't here. We are ramping up into a huge raid on the capitol of the Horde and our leader doesn't even show up. Well, to be fair he sends us a letter after we finish working with the Horde rebellion telling us how proud a king he is of us. Thanks?

    For a story about Varian's journey to become High King, he really doesn't do... anything. He shows up, tells us what to do, then leaves. This is supposed to be a cool story that will make the Alliance proud. But, I don't really fell proud... He was supposed to work with the other leaders to become accepted as king. He has worked with 2, but there are still 3 more racial leaders which haven't been mentioned (4 if you include Aysa Clousinger). I'm hoping there is something in 5.4, but I'm losing hope of this story going anywhere. Thoughts?

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by ParadoxDuo View Post
    Next is 5.2 and there's not much to say about that. He shows up once again in a scenario with Moira where he just stands around and waits for us to solve the problem for him. He sure works hard for a "High King"! Now onto the latest patch, 5.3. Oh wait, he isn't here. We are ramping up into a huge raid on the capitol of the Horde and our leader doesn't even show up.
    Blood in the Snow was a scenario added in 5.3, not 5.2.

    Regardless, I'm not sure what you're expecting a king to do. Kings are leaders. While he can fight on the front lines (as he has before, at least in the lore if not in the game), his main purpose isn't to charge into each battle himself and deal with the issue. It's to lead his people in a reasonable manner.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by ParadoxDuo View Post
    So, at the last Blizzcon (when MoP was announced), Blizzard announced this epic questline that would be us helping Varian Wrynn become the king that the Alliance deserves. It was described as us working alongside Varian as a squire in order to earn him the respect of the entire Alliance and make him the true High King. It was supposed to be a series of quests that would rally the Alliance and make us feel proud of our faction. The problem is: Where is it?
    I thought they ditched it because too many people on the WoW forums were complaining about the title and wanted it to be "Supreme Allied Commander".

  4. #4
    As I recall they didn't promise it at blizzcon, but said it was something they were considering.

    Then A Little Patience got a huge backlash from Tyrande's portrayal so they reconsidered the angle I think, though they still did Blood in the Snow. In the end, it was something they never really 'promised' us that just didn't pan out in the end .

  5. #5
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    I thought Varian was supposed to prove he was the High King.

    Looks to me like Varian is just forcing the other races to relent to his rule.
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  6. #6
    You know, the basic concept you describe sounds a lot like what everyone is doing with Wrathion. Helping him, on an epic (legendary?) questline spanning the whole expansion, to shape the world and establish his place in it. Perhaps Blizz changed to that between the announcement and MoP's release. Wouldn't be the first time an announced expansion detail didn't make it to release.

  7. #7
    Blood In The Snow was awesome.

    A Little Patience was terrible.

    But I feel like they just backed off from it. They never really confirmed anything, just was talking about considering it.

  8. #8
    I hope there are some more quests about Varian in 5.4. I really like him. Blizzard doesn't give him as much attention as he derserves.

  9. #9
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    agree, it's really disapointing

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by StationaryHawk View Post
    Blood in the Snow was a scenario added in 5.3, not 5.2.

    Regardless, I'm not sure what you're expecting a king to do. Kings are leaders. While he can fight on the front lines (as he has before, at least in the lore if not in the game), his main purpose isn't to charge into each battle himself and deal with the issue. It's to lead his people in a reasonable manner.
    Oops, sorry about that. The presence of the Zandalari kind of threw me off, making me think it was 5.2.

    What I mean is that, I don't expect him to be charging in Leeroy Jenkins style, I just want him to actually show up and be a character we recognize. For someone who is supposed to be central to the Alliance, he really doesn't do much of anything. The Alliance needs heroes we can interact with and who are present. So far this expansion, all we've seen are Anduin and Jaina actually working with the player to accomplish anything.

  11. #11
    No it doesn't live up to expectations. Two most prominent reasons why I think so many people hate it are 1. it's one of the 3 major branches of Alliance story in MoP. What is the problem with that? Well the problem is that the other 2 alliance stories are about Anduin and Jaina. The 2nd reason being that whenever the other races actually given the gift of seeing the light of day by metzen, they are either made to look like incompetent(Tyrande) in effort to make Varian appear as a brilliant tactician or they are shown completely out of character (Moira and her complete 180 in her opinion of the Council of Three Hammers and the Alliance)
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  12. #12
    Agreed it has been very disappointing. I enjoyed the 5.1 story stuff but like you pointed out, he was barely actually there for any of it. Anduin and Jaina were the focus for most of it and Jaina once again was the focus Alliance hero character of 5.2. Problem is, like with a lot of things with Blizzard, they have these great ideas but it doesn't really pan out. Somewhere along the line the idea of making Varian into this badass king that every respects got thrown out the window in favor of pushing more Anduin and Jaina on. Which maybe wouldn't be a bad thing, if the Scenarios with Varian in were actually better.

    Lets face it though, A Little Patience is a terrible terrible scenario. I can imagine when they were designing it on paper and brainstorming the concept it was good. In-game though it's terrible, boring and was bugged a lot of the times i was forced to do it.

    We see Varian in both the scenarios but don't actually do anything with him. This is kind of the complete opposite of Battle for Undercity, where Varian fights side by side with us. I guess the vision is there, but extremely poorly executed.
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  13. #13
    This was my biggest disappointment with MOP, they may have not promised the trials of the high king quest line but they did promise some REAL involvment with Varian in the story. The entire 5.1 quest line was actually really epic if you played through it all and bared with the rep grind, it showed Varian taking leadership of the Alliance through council meetings over the sha and consulting with Jaina. It had good promise but when another minor patch comes out (5.3) Varian gets an "alright" scenario and no presence in the so called "espionage" we conduct. I think it just shows blizzard forgetting about possible attempts to make the Alliance epic in game.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Romeothecat View Post
    The 2nd reason being that whenever the other races actually given the gift of seeing the light of day by metzen, they are either made to look like incompetent(Tyrande) in effort to make Varian appear as a brilliant tactician or they are shown completely out of character (Moira and her complete 180 in her opinion of the Council of Three Hammers and the Alliance)
    The Moira one makes sense with the Forstmane Trolls trying to be come more powerful with the Thunder King, and Ironforge having a lot of instability (they didn't get along with each other until King Rageaholic tells them to shut up or get consumed by the newly powered trolls). Moira makes more sense compared to Tyrande, since she's trying to defend her reputation after post-Wrath incidents.

    The biggest travesty is thew Drainos and Worgen are doing jack shit. There could have been a scenario or two with Greymane, or even Velen telling King Rageholic to chill.
    Last edited by Orkwuzhere; 2013-07-02 at 09:04 PM.

  15. #15
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    I am honestly starting to believe Blizzard doesn't know how to write anything "heroic" for the Alliance. The Alliance has a lot of good characters and lore that could be expanded upon, but it just never seems to happen and they end up playing second fiddle to the Horde in terms of story. I keep hoping that one of these days it is going to happen, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.

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  16. #16
    I hope they just scrap it. It was never a good idea to begin with. The alliance doesn't need a warchief, it defeats the purpose of an alliance.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wyrt View Post
    I hope they just scrap it. It was never a good idea to begin with. The alliance doesn't need a warchief, it defeats the purpose of an alliance.
    The High King title is basically Supreme Commander 2.0, a title which Lothar had in wc2. Nothing new or the same as the warchief title either.

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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    The High King title is basically Supreme Commander 2.0, a title which Lothar had in wc2. Nothing new or the same as the warchief title either.
    Not when they first announced it. They changed it to Supreme Commander after the pissed off a bunch of people. Supreme Commander worked for Lothar because he wasn't a leader of a nation and all the fighting was on a single continent. It doesn't work for Varian.

  19. #19
    Varian is a really crap character anyway, they have basically destroyed Jaina and Tyrande already just to make him look good. I have no idea why they had to introduce Varian and Garrosh into the game, but the lore has gone completly tits up after those two came into focus.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Orkwuzhere View Post
    The Moira one makes sense with the Forstmane Trolls trying to be come more powerful with the Thunder King, and Ironforge having a lot of instability (they didn't get along with each other until King Rageaholic tells them to shut up or get consumed by the newly powered trolls). Moira makes more sense compared to Tyrande, since she's trying to defend her reputation after post-Wrath incidents.

    The biggest travesty is thew Drainos and Worgen are doing jack shit. There could have been a scenario or two with Greymane, or even Velen telling King Rageholic to chill.
    That's a valid point about wanting to deal with the trolls but if that were the reason why Moira had changed then after the zandalar had been dealt with She would have just gone back to her old self again which according to the epilogue she has not. Which again means we are stuck asking how the heck she could go from the short story version where she is portrayed as devious and shady to 5.3 who is as far as we've been shown is the complete opposite. The epilogue also says that the three dwarven clans have been united by Varian(wtf did he do to unite them?) I personally would have rather seen the council members stay distrustful of one another even after this event, a story like that for the alliance would have been very unique and interesting had it been handled properly.

    I agree with you completely in regards to dreanei and worgen. Gnomes need some love too but I have no idea what could be done with them. They don't seem to have any goals or clear direction as to where they are heading as a civilization not to mention they don't have any noteworthy figures in lore to rally behind.
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