Darkness Induced Audience Apathy

[JFrombaugh]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...AudienceApathy

I've already argued this to death back in the days of MoP, but honestly, I have always felt that Cata and Mists are probably the best example of this trope in any MMO I have played to date.

I mean think about it, in those two expansions our "heroes" were pretty much as follows:

-An adventurer/soldier whose moral bearing, and in fact personality, is whatever the current questline requires (The Player Character)

-A King who was, along with Garrosh, one of the main people responsible for the re-ignition of hostilities between the Alliance and Horde before finally realizing the error of his ways and becoming a Mary Sue (Varian)

-An unbridled tyrant who singlehandedly condemned Azeroth and who gives Gul'dan a run for his money in terms of sheer socipathy (Garrosh)

-A prince who most people are not entirely convinced is the benevelent black dragon the story makes him out to be (Wrathion)

-A corporate executive who is more or less directly responsible for the Goblins turning into a race of greedy, amoral, corrupt businessmen (Gallywix)

-Over-the-top, exaggerated Mary Sues (Thrall, Malfurion, Khadghar)

-Eternal Jekyll & Hyde flip-floppers (Jaina, Sylvanas, Tyrande)

-Has beens struggling to find a purpose in life (Vol'jin, High Tinker Mechatorque)

-Wise warrior-leader types who are more unambiguously Lawful Good but are nevertheless not above acting just as arrogant and discriminating as most of their race (Lorethmar, Genn Greymane, Taran Zhu)

-Benign nice guys too weak, gullible, restrained, and/or petty to ever do any lasting good (Baine Bloodhoof, Anduin Wrynn, Kalecgos, Chen Stormsnout)

-Hotheaded chauvinists (Admiral Rogers, Shandris Feathermoon, Vindicator Marad)

I'll add more to this list as I think of them.

With Warlords, it seems like things may have leveled off a bit as the story has shifted more towards the alternate timeline Draenor. But I personally am very doubtful that the lessons of Pandaria will in fact stick...I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Arrashi]

The problem with WoW isn't use of tropes per say. Hell, you can put any story/setting no matter how good or popular and reduce it to tropes.

The issue is that blizzard does a very lazy job hiding existence of those tropes, and doesn't bother to add enough unique things to make us not care about tropes.

As for now both MoP and WoD are so painfully generic it makes me wonder how can you be so uncreative.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I honestly don't think Wrath, Cata, and MoP really fit that trope at all..

[Zuben]

Well I certainly had apathy during MoP as I knew we'd turn against our Warchief and all our gains would therefore be moot. I enjoyed the journey, but there was no excitement or sense of victory due to the awareness Horde would suffer in any case.

[Zaelsino]

Well I certainly had apathy during MoP as I knew we'd turn against our Warchief and all our gains would therefore be moot. I enjoyed the journey, but there was no excitement or sense of victory due to the awareness Horde would suffer in any case.

This is sad but true. I imagine it would've been obvious by 5.1 that Garrosh was going to be deposed though (Vol'jin and Theron preparing to fight him, Thrall talking about turning orcs against him, the Darkspear oppression, killing Kor'kron, Garrosh's obsession with sha power...), even if we weren't forewarned.

[gcsmith]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...AudienceApathy

I've already argued this to death back in the days of MoP, but honestly, I have always felt that Cata and Mists are probably the best example of this trope in any MMO I have played to date.

I mean think about it, in those two expansions our "heroes" were pretty much as follows:

-An adventurer/soldier whose moral bearing, and in fact personality, is whatever the current questline requires (The Player Character)

-A King who was, along with Garrosh, one of the main people responsible for the re-ignition of hostilities between the Alliance and Horde before finally realizing the error of his ways and becoming a Mary Sue (Varian)

-An unbridled tyrant who singlehandedly condemned Azeroth and who gives Gul'dan a run for his money in terms of sheer socipathy (Garrosh)

-A prince who most people are not entirely convinced is the benevelent black dragon the story makes him out to be (Wrathion)

-A corporate executive who is more or less directly responsible for the Goblins turning into a race of greedy, amoral, corrupt businessmen (Gallywix)

-Over-the-top, exaggerated Mary Sues (Thrall, Malfurion, Khadghar)

-Eternal Jekyll & Hyde flip-floppers (Jaina, Sylvanas, Tyrande)

-Has beens struggling to find a purpose in life (Vol'jin, High Tinker Mechatorque)

-Wise warrior-leader types who are more unambiguously Lawful Good but are nevertheless not above acting just as arrogant and discriminating as most of their race (Lorethmar, Genn Greymane, Taran Zhu)

-Benign nice guys too weak, gullible, restrained, and/or petty to ever do any lasting good (Baine Bloodhoof, Anduin Wrynn, Kalecgos, Chen Stormsnout)

-Hotheaded chauvinists (Admiral Rogers, Shandris Feathermoon, Vindicator Marad)

I'll add more to this list as I think of them.

With Warlords, it seems like things may have leveled off a bit as the story has shifted more towards the alternate timeline Draenor. But I personally am very doubtful that the lessons of Pandaria will in fact stick...I guess we'll have to wait and see.

My problem in Bold, Firstly character growth does not a mary sue make and Varian is most definitely not a self insert for Metzon, he's already admitted that to Thrall taking that mantle. Secondly Varian was for years attempting to make peace with the Horde, it was on route to one of these he got kidnapped and the whole thing with Onyxia effectively taking over Stormwind happened. The problem is the Horde constantly breaking said peace agreements. Heck, on Ashran the Horde started hostilities, despite how in Lore the Alliance could take a massive dump over the Horde.

[Darmalus]

This is sad but true. I imagine it would've been obvious by 5.1 that Garrosh was going to be deposed though (Vol'jin and Theron preparing to fight him, Thrall talking about turning orcs against him, the Darkspear oppression, killing Kor'kron, Garrosh's obsession with sha power...), even if we weren't forewarned.

I have the same issue with WoD. It's an alternate timeline plot, pretty but with no impact and forgotten as soon as it's over and we go back to the MU.

Of course, part of my problem is my main is Horde. The entire Horde plotline in WoD could have been dropped from the game and no one would have noticed, it's breathtaking in the sheer scope of it's blandness.

Thought I guess my problem with WoD (Horde-side) is more the Eight Deadly Words than DIAA.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...ghtDeadlyWords

[Florena]

I have the same issue with WoD. It's an alternate timeline plot, pretty but with no impact and forgotten as soon as it's over and we go back to the MU.

Of course, part of my problem is my main is Horde. The entire Horde plotline in WoD could have been dropped from the game and no one would have noticed, it's breathtaking in the sheer scope of it's blandness.

You could just as easily cut out the alliance too and just have the horde there.

[Darmalus]

You could just as easily cut out the alliance too and just have the horde there.

I haven't hit 100 on my Alliance main yet, so I hesitate to pass verdict, but what I've seen so far is miles ahead of the entire Horde plotline.

[Florena]

I haven't hit 100 on my Alliance main yet, so I hesitate to pass verdict, but what I've seen so far is miles ahead of the entire Horde plotline.

Only only ceitical alliance chatacter is khadgar really and he's pretty much neutral.

If you just mean better quality maybe smv is bettsr than ffr. But this story doesn't require the alliance, just Khadgar himself.

[gcsmith]

Only only ceitical alliance chatacter is khadgar really and he's pretty much neutral.

If you just mean better quality maybe smv is bettsr than ffr. But this story doesn't require the alliance, just Khadgar himself.

Of course Khadgar is neutral, when is an Alliance member actually relevant to content not?

[Deleted]

I've never seen anyone claim that WoW - least of all Mists is too dark. I can only imagine how you'd react to Game of Thrones.

[Jokubas]

World of Warcraft isn't dark enough to have this.

It does have Faction-Induced Audience Apathy though. As long as the factions are a strict part of the gameplay, any story element involving the factions in conflict with each other is impossible to care about. The politics always have to snap back to the status quo, no matter what happens. No one can "win," the blood elves can't finish talks to switch sides, etc. etc. Those plot points are meaningless, because there's only one way they can ever turn out.

Note: Obviously, that only applies to faction-based stories. Every expansion's main plot still works for the most part (even Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, because the faction war was a sideplot to Deathwing and the True Horde, respectively, though the latter definitely suffered in the resolution).

[arcaneshot]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...AudienceApathy

I've already argued this to death back in the days of MoP, but honestly, I have always felt that Cata and Mists are probably the best example of this trope in any MMO I have played to date.

I think you're trying too hard to make things fit into something that you had to link to in order for anyone to understand what you were trying to get at.

ED: looking over that page, no wonder I've never heard of it-- the entire thing isn't objective. Those are possibly the worst trope pages you can base an argument on.

[JFrombaugh]

World of Warcraft isn't dark enough to have this.

It does have Faction-Induced Audience Apathy though.

This was mainly what I was getting at. Specifically, the quote from that link that made me think of Cata is:
"Even when there are clear-cut good guys, they can be so smug, priggish, hypocritical, unpleasant, or just plain annoying that it's hard to feel too sad if the bad guys defeat them, especially if the bad guys actually have a good reason for hating them."

But in any case, one other thing I should have probably pointed out is that Darkness Induced Audience Apathy is an example of what TVTropes calls a "YMMV" trope (short for Your Mileage Might Vary). This means that it is largely subjective and something that some people MIGHT find in a listed work, while others may disagree completely.

[Catforum]

This trope sounds like real life

[JFrombaugh]

A good example IMO is the Humans. While Stormwind had always been what my Literature professor would refer to as a Middle Ages-esque "Warrior Culture", there had always been an underlying decency to them prior to Wrath and Cata. They felt a certain entitlement to rule Azeroth, valued physical strength over intelligence, and generally were more stereotypically aggressive than the other Alliance races, but for the most part they didn't believe that their cause gave them the right to be as brutal as they pleased, didn't routinely commit acts nearly as bad as the main villain of the expansion, and didn't allow patriotic fervor to forego compassion and judgement. On the contrary, in Vanilla WoW, the Humans' defining traits were their sense of justice and honor and their wide range of personalities and backgrounds.

[Graeham]

This is sad but true. I imagine it would've been obvious by 5.1 that Garrosh was going to be deposed though (Vol'jin and Theron preparing to fight him, Thrall talking about turning orcs against him, the Darkspear oppression, killing Kor'kron, Garrosh's obsession with sha power...), even if we weren't forewarned.

Mm. Blizzard's storytelling is becoming rather predictable, sadly. Even many of their 'twists' are obvious if you pay attention. I'm not nearly as invested in the lore as I used to be simply because the lore team don't seem to follow through with anything. I really loved the rising tensions between the Kirin Tor and Sunreavers during 5.1 and 5.2 and yet we saw a pretty unsatisfying resolution.

The blood elves played the part of the persecuted victims, the Kirin Tor once again ignored their allies in need and the Silver Covenant acted like complete psychopaths...alongside Jaina, who 'got better'. Meanwhile we don't know what happened to the Sunreaver prisoners locked up in the Violet Hold and now the Kirin Tor are...working alongside the Horde once more, making 5.1 and 5.2 rather pointless.

[Deleted]

The problem is not that no matter who wins the world will still suck. The problem is that there are paying customers who don't like losing.
We can't have true set back, neither caused by the opposing faction (horde vs alliance will forever be a stalemate) or by a third party (they tried with deathwing, hardly anyone liked it).

There is also the fact that after 10 years of stories at some point you exhaust your fountain of ideas and either start using stories you deemed not good enough before or rehash stories already told with different names (or just stick with the name hellscream and roll with it ).

[Karrosene]

Hey adventurer il give a new back pack if you go wipe out that village for me. I mean us players are willing commit genocide just for some rep and silver, put in a toy somewhere well do it daily. If you were a npc you'd be thinking these guys are crazy.