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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Haven View Post
    For some reason, I foresee a final "us vs. all Warlords at once" kind of fight.
    From a design standpoint, there's a lot of reasons why they wouldn't do this. Firstly, it cheapens the individual significance of each of the personalities of the Warlords. The entire point (lorewise) of doing an expansion like this is to utilize personalities in a way Blizzard never thought they'd get to. There's no way when they were writing Warcraft 2 they thought "Hey, maybe we shouldn't kill these guys in case we make an MMO and want a chance to explore their characters on a much more personal level." Killing the Warlords in a "council" style fight feels cheap.

    You then have the actual mechanics of the fight. If you have them "rotate" out, the fight feels cheap. You're talking about 20 man raids for progression now, which means they can't really design having more than 4 tanks without things getting really weird for the fight. While you could do some kind of cool DPS-offtank mechanic, this just feels mechanically cheap. Either the encounter has to give the players the tools (deus ex machina) or it has to be so absurdly specifically designed that it essentially is going to require an exact 20 man running an exact spec across the players in that raid that it just becomes a "shove the triangle into the triangle hole" type of thing.

    So it's limited either in impact or mechanics, and neither makes for a good expansion conclusion.

    Secondly, what's the point then? Sure, okay, we kill the Warlords, but where does WoW go from there? Every expansion has ended with "Bee tee dubz, this is coming your way." BC pointed at the Lich King (sort of), Lich King pointed at Cataclysm, Cataclysm sort-of pointed at Garrosh (if not Pandaria itself), and now Pandaria pointed at...well, Garrosh again. It left room.

    There's no room left if the xpac ends with the Warlords. We become wholly responders to an event, there's no initiative taken. BC was because we chased Illidan, Wrath was a response-scenario (The Scourge's War, albeit it was a war we saw coming). Cataclysm was a pure response event (whoops). Pandaria was a really organic movement of conflict through a new setting and in that regard particularly was well-written.

    If the goal is for players to feel like a protagonist, it can't be a constant "response" scenario and that's what ending WoD with the Warlords does. We need to take initiative in some way. We fall into Superhero Syndrome otherwise, and if you didn't know, Superman doesn't do jack-diddly-squat until Lex Luthor starts stirring things up

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by Saafe View Post
    I dunno why but I keep thinking Anduin might be the last boss of the xpac, isn't he seen visiting Garrosh in prison or whatever?
    This is my theory as well, he is too good not to turn evil lol.

  3. #63
    hopefully Sargeras will be in it

  4. #64
    Banned Haven's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Letdown View Post
    From a design standpoint, there's a lot of reasons why they wouldn't do this. Firstly, it cheapens the individual significance of each of the personalities of the Warlords. The entire point (lorewise) of doing an expansion like this is to utilize personalities in a way Blizzard never thought they'd get to. There's no way when they were writing Warcraft 2 they thought "Hey, maybe we shouldn't kill these guys in case we make an MMO and want a chance to explore their characters on a much more personal level." Killing the Warlords in a "council" style fight feels cheap.

    You then have the actual mechanics of the fight. If you have them "rotate" out, the fight feels cheap. You're talking about 20 man raids for progression now, which means they can't really design having more than 4 tanks without things getting really weird for the fight. While you could do some kind of cool DPS-offtank mechanic, this just feels mechanically cheap. Either the encounter has to give the players the tools (deus ex machina) or it has to be so absurdly specifically designed that it essentially is going to require an exact 20 man running an exact spec across the players in that raid that it just becomes a "shove the triangle into the triangle hole" type of thing.

    So it's limited either in impact or mechanics, and neither makes for a good expansion conclusion.

    Secondly, what's the point then? Sure, okay, we kill the Warlords, but where does WoW go from there? Every expansion has ended with "Bee tee dubz, this is coming your way." BC pointed at the Lich King (sort of), Lich King pointed at Cataclysm, Cataclysm sort-of pointed at Garrosh (if not Pandaria itself), and now Pandaria pointed at...well, Garrosh again. It left room.

    There's no room left if the xpac ends with the Warlords. We become wholly responders to an event, there's no initiative taken. BC was because we chased Illidan, Wrath was a response-scenario (The Scourge's War, albeit it was a war we saw coming). Cataclysm was a pure response event (whoops). Pandaria was a really organic movement of conflict through a new setting and in that regard particularly was well-written.

    If the goal is for players to feel like a protagonist, it can't be a constant "response" scenario and that's what ending WoD with the Warlords does. We need to take initiative in some way. We fall into Superhero Syndrome otherwise, and if you didn't know, Superman doesn't do jack-diddly-squat until Lex Luthor starts stirring things up
    I thought of this as an evolution of Faction Champions fight from ToC. They could demonstrate intelligence by ignoring tank mind control called "aggro" and force players to use their class' defensive abilities. Like, they do lower damage than your average boss individually, but they choose their own targets: Grommash and Blackhand go for tanks, Gul'dan goes for healers, while Kargath, Kilrogg and Ner'zhul go for dps. An unorthodox fight once in a while.

  5. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by Haven View Post
    I thought of this as an evolution of Faction Champions fight from ToC. They could demonstrate intelligence by ignoring tank mind control called "aggro" and force players to use their class' defensive abilities. Like, they do lower damage than your average boss individually, but they choose their own targets: Grommash and Blackhand go for tanks, Gul'dan goes for healers, while Kargath, Kilrogg and Ner'zhul go for dps. An unorthodox fight once in a while.
    You do realize that this thread has nothing to do with this and your post belongs in another thread right?

    Also your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

  6. #66
    Banned Haven's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lastlivingsoul View Post
    You do realize that this thread has nothing to do with this and your post belongs in another thread right?

    Also your idea is bad and you should feel bad.
    What? It's about the final boss of WoD, just like the title says. And not everything has to be tank and spank, you know. Now I'll go to my counselor, gotta repair all of my feels you broken.

  7. #67
    High Overlord ForPandaria's Avatar
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    While I doubt she is a suitable candidate for an endgame boss I would love to see Jaina Proudmoore as the final encounter of a raid. I think it's feasible considering how her hatred for the horde continually evolves and deepens. I can see her being utterly consumed by her prejudice until finally she orchestrates some unforgivable act of aggression resulting in both Varian and Vol'jin agreeing that she now poses too much of a threat to be left to her own devices and order her execution. Bonus points would be awarded if the final encounter was a timed affair fought in the streets of a deserted Dalaran which Jaina has severed all magic anchors to in one final act of desperation and is now hurtling back to the ground.

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