Originally Posted by
darkwarrior42
Lorewise, if they wanted to work up to a war between the factions, they did a pretty terrible job. They had the Horde antagonize the Alliance in a way that even a lot of Horde people disliked, then had that part of the Horde become and NPC faction to be put down.
To have an actual, ongoing war between the factions, it absolutely would have been better to have Vol'Jin in charge... and then have actual reasons for the war. By having a hot-headed warmonger in charge, they don't need to bother with real reasons for the war... but that also makes the war seem wasteful, like an excuse to keep the PvP theme going instead of an actual development within the game world.
And even if the time period of the Cataclysm was needed to rework the game world (for the purposes of updating old world) and to give time for the situation between the factions to develop, that is still no excuse for the lack of high level content or the complete butchering of the story (Seriously, we resolved the Deathwing storyline by means of time traveling deus ex machina?).
I liked the idea of MoP a lot, but ToT was very random and brought in too many ideas... and felt like a filler to give time for the situation with Garrosh to develop, rather than a real story in its own right. I also would have loved to see the Sha as something other than remnants of an old god, as well as seeing the mantid develop as more of a threat in their own right, but the ideas there were still pretty sound. I don't even fault MoP for its strong Asian theme, because every expansion has had a pretty strong, singular theme that ran throughout the entire expansion, with occasional breaks here and there. MoP was no different, it just chose a different theme to run with.
*shrug* Deathwing destroyed resources, ostensibly to force the factions into conflict. How much more awesome would it have been if Deathwing wasn't just some random old god puppet? If there were people in both factions trying to solve the situation, but deathwing and his agents kept disrupting all attempts? New farms are razed to the ground, droughts starve the land, monster dens are destroyed forcing the gnolls/centaurs/murlocs/etc of the world closer to civilization... all while both sides slowly realize that there may not be enough resources left to sustain both the Alliance and the Horde. Throw in some political intrigue, and you've got all the motivation you need for an entire expansion. No need for old gods, the Twilight Cult, or time travel, just make Deathwing actually intelligent. Or at least, that's what I would have liked... I'm sure lots of people will disagree :-P