TBC vs MoP on theme and races.

[Wyrt]

Their lessons weren't wrong. It's just that they were all in your face about it, all the time. I didn't say the expansion was perfect, or that the pandaren were portrayed perfectly. It's just that they, and their expansion, are heavily criticized for things like what you pointed out, while big flaws from TBC (Turning Kael into a traitor and joining the Legion, having Illidan become crazy-ish and borderline villain with little to no explanation as to why he suddenly became one... and those were all major lore characters that were butchered one by one, in a single expansion) are treated like no big deal. But like I said before, all of those are handwaved away. But Elune forbid the pandaren have flaws in how they were used.

The lessons were pretty wrong.

"People can change!" Um, yeah, that sure worked out well with Garrosh now didn't it?
"Stop fighting!" How'd that work out for the Vale of Eternal Blossoms again?
"Fighting makes you stronger!" Uh, isn't this contradictory with the point above? Also still confused on how it makes us stronger. Does getting in a fight and having my arm broken make me stronger?

I wouldn't have as big of a problem with them being wrong if they weren't presented in game as 100% right and wise. I have the same problems with Anduin.

[TomatoBisque]

Ok.

Just like orcs not being evil demons was pulled out of Metzen's ass for WC2.

Draenei is far from the first or biggest retcon to happen, but for some reason it's the one people bitch about the most.



Pretty sure orcs had shamanism for longer than the 200 years draenei were on Draenor. Hard to develop an entire religion in that short amount of time.

The gnome and goblin steampunk technology is more sci-fi than the draenei's high fantasy magi-tech.

People just need to stop being babies and get the fuck over the retcon already. Having the eredar be pure chaotic evil by nature is just boring. That's also why Metzen retconned the orcs away from being pure chaotic evil as well. Orcs received pretty much exactly the same retcon the draenei did, but no one bitches about that.

It's not about one retcon being "the worst," it's just there's a lot of people holding the pre-cata lore up on a pedestal as though everything since has been a total butchering and ruining everything even though the lore has always been full of Blizzard changing shit on a whim because "This seems cool" without thinking things through.

[Adramalech]

The lessons were pretty wrong.

"People can change!" Um, yeah, that sure worked out well with Garrosh now didn't it?
"Stop fighting!" How'd that work out for the Vale of Eternal Blossoms again?
"Fighting makes you stronger!" Uh, isn't this contradictory with the point above? Also still confused on how it makes us stronger. Does getting in a fight and having my arm broken make me stronger?

I wouldn't have as big of a problem with them being wrong if they weren't presented in game as 100% right and wise. I have the same problems with Anduin.

Fair enough, we can disagree on that

[Arenis]

people really hated the Asian theme I feel. some of us just want the cookie cutter elves, dwarves and Orcs shit that's been so played out. heaven forbid an entire planet like Azeroth have settings other then western medieval. there being Pandas involved only exacerbated the butthurt.

There are so many asian influenced MMO's/RPG's, I don't think many people went to play WoW if that is what they wanted.

[sam86]

Did you play when TBC came out? There was TONS of criticism and backlash from a race/lore standpoint, from Blood Elves being introduced to the Horde to Draenei lore basically being a giant retcon.

You might have forgotten, after all it has been some number of years, but there was definitely tons of criticism when it first came out.

second that, in fact TBC is the ONLY time where Metzen officially apologized for creating the Draenei lore for 'forgetting' their story that was introduced in wc3 and some small quests in vanilla wow in Swamp of Sorrows
Let's not forget the MASSIVE backlash on europe forums from the question 'why we kill Illidan - because he drop epix' that caused lot of bans and was the reason why i lost faith in typing anything in blizzard official forums

[Deleted]

Here's an unbiased opinion.
I started playing in early tbc and got to experience raiding up till the second boss in swp.
First, tbc my favorite expansions ever. BUT it was awful sometimes.
Before Badges of justice were introduced, you had to do a shitload of grinding to even get to tier 4.
Reputation farming > normal dungeons farming > hc dungeons farming.
It might sound great but it isnt. A common misconception is that TBC dungeons were hard, well not really, everything just used to hit hard, there were no complex mechanics that required you to be a brain surgeon to complete them. Things just used to hit hard, tanks would lose aggro really easy, and if you made a wrong step you'd pull half the instance.
You could spend up to 2 hours in a dungeon and maby get a blue item (YAAAY YOU HAD TO WORK FOR YOUR ITEMS)
It was bad and no one liked that.
After doing that for a few months, if you didnt quit the game by now, you'd start doing kara. One of the best raids ever, but then again, at the beginning it could take your almost a day to clear it. the trash was atrocious, the bosses were easy, most of them had 1 phase and 2-3 spells. Karazhan was great for the first 2-3 times i did it, by the 8th time i would even hate thinking about it.
Gruul and maggy are not even worth mentioning.
SSC was fine, thats how raiding should be. bosses had some more mechanics, most of them werent dps/heal race but you had to survive.
As for tempest keep i dont really remember much, first bosses were quite easy but we did kael two or three times for the bt attunement and he was quite hard.
Now Black temple was a big step. the attunement was somewhat annoying but worthed. Bosses were not that hard mostly because if you got to bt it meant you knew what you were doing. Some stuff was also bad like shadow/fire resistance for certain bosses. I played a holy / prot pala and a destruction warlock. Holy pala was basicly spam flash of light, protection was nice and it also had spell power on items and it required sp to hold aggro, and my warlock's rotation was...shadowbolt spam.

[Sky High]

There are so many asian influenced MMO's/RPG's, I don't think many people went to play WoW if that is what they wanted.

those are entire games, not just one expansion that had an asian aesthetic to it.

[Toppy]

those are entire games, not just one expansion that had an asian aesthetic to it.

Not to mention many of the race of wow have those influences.

[Sky High]

Not to mention many of the race of wow have those influences.

night elves are the only race besides pandas I can think of that have obvious eastern influences, architecture wise.

[Glyngaris]

There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion, get over yourself.

[Trickname]

Personally didn't dislike the Asian theme. It was almost entirely the Pandaren and what they stood for which brought MoP down for me. They took what could have been an awesome and even dark expansion and turned it into a cuddle land with awful jokes and a race which disagreed with our warlike nature.

They may not have developed their storytelling methods by TBC but at-least we weren't stuck with a peace loving species we had to tolerate at every turn. Pandaren could have even worked if they weren't kung-fu panda stylised. Seriously, we enter the second zone to be met with someone telling us to slow down and we have to walk whilst listening to some lame ass story which I'm pretty sure didn't include anyone being stabbed in the face. To me they even came across as an intentional joke. On the bright side I think Blizzard learn't their lesson(s) from MoP and (hopefully) won't spoil another potentially top expansion with such crap.

[Toppy]

night elves are the only race besides pandas I can think of that have obvious eastern influences, architecture wise.

Night Elves for obvious reasons.

Orcs have the oh so obviously samurai blade masters as well as mongolian influence out the ass. Even more so in WoD.

Point is we already had a hinting at the theme in other races. Its not like Pandaren were some huge departure.

[Boxilot]

There has always been some level of comic relief in WoW, but it has been just that; comic relief. The entire Pandaren race was pretty badly imagined and executed in my mind. It was a horrible mix match of chinese and japanese culture with some pop references thrown in the mix. The fact that they say omnom when they talk is just.. bad.

I don't think TBC and Pandaren themes are comparable. Not because tbc lore was oh so much better, but because their aim was totally different. TBC had established badasses such as Illidan and Kael'thas etc that even if the rest of the lore flunked a bit, they sort of could still make it work. Pandaren was, however, paddling along most of the time and the only thing keeping it floating was some vague Pandaren philosophy of "do not fight or else these weird entities will turn into your emotions". It just didn't mix, at all, imo. Nothing to do with it being asian, but everything to do with bad storytelling and bad execution of said storytelling.

[Toppy]

Personally didn't dislike the Asian theme. It was almost entirely the Pandaren and what they stood for which brought MoP down for me. They took what could have been an awesome and even dark expansion and turned it into a cuddle land with awful jokes and a race which disagreed with our warlike nature.

They may not have developed their storytelling methods by TBC but at-least we weren't stuck with a peace loving species we had to tolerate at every turn. Pandaren could have even worked if they weren't kung-fu panda stylised. Seriously, we enter the second zone to be met with someone telling us to slow down and we have to walk whilst listening to some lame ass story which I'm pretty sure didn't include anyone being stabbed in the face. To me they even came across as an intentional joke. On the bright side I think Blizzard learn't their lesson(s) from MoP and (hopefully) won't spoil another potentially top expansion with such crap.

Draenei have forgiven the Orcs, twice, for their near genocide and are so do nothing that Tyrande had thought they had left Azeroth.

On the subject: Gnomes and Goblins arent warlike at all and are treated as walking jokes. At least Pandaren gave us some badasses: something gnomes and goblins have yet to do. Draenei lost their big badass for being to warlike since Draenei are all supposed to be overly forgiving, holier than though peace lovers.

Nothing about Draenei fits Warcraft.

- - - Updated - - -

There has always been some level of comic relief in WoW, but it has been just that; comic relief. The entire Pandaren race was pretty badly imagined and executed in my mind. It was a horrible mix match of chinese and japanese culture with some pop references thrown in the mix. The fact that they say omnom when they talk is just.. bad.

I don't think TBC and Pandaren themes are comparable. Not because tbc lore was oh so much better, but because their aim was totally different. TBC had established badasses such as Illidan and Kael'thas etc that even if the rest of the lore flunked a bit, they sort of could still make it work. Pandaren was, however, paddling along most of the time and the only thing keeping it floating was some vague Pandaren philosophy of "do not fight or else these weird entities will turn into your emotions". It just didn't mix, at all, imo. Nothing to do with it being asian, but everything to do with bad storytelling and bad execution of said storytelling.

There actually was very little, if any, japanese culture with the Pandaren.

A lot of people assume there is due to japanese and asia always going hand in hand with popular media, and then never question that there must be japanese influence there. But there's really nothing there thats uniquely japanese. Hell, the only creature in MoP to even use a katana was a Saurok.


Lets not forget that the TBC had crap story telling to. What was Illidans motivation for attacking us and Shattrath?

Exactly.

[Breaque]

Call me bias, but i refuse to play as a panda in a world full of orcs demons and undead. as for the dreanai, think archimonde and kiljaden can support a very strong backbone for tbc race lore.

[Super Kami Dende]

The lore and atmosphere was amazing in MoP. I found most people that hate on it were just the retarded "HURR KUNGFU PANDA" fuckwits of these Forums.

Anyone that couldn't see the actual great lore and themes of MoP are either dumb as shit or 12.

[Deleted]

Because some people are pretty shallow even when it comes to video games. If it isn't super edgey or dark it can't be Warcraft. It's not like we're playing one of the nerdiest, cartoonish kids game in current era. The only place where you'd be able to argue whether Pandas are fitting in a universe populated by walking cows and midgets is on an actual WoW forum.

[Pull My Finger]

People are always the same. When TBC came out, there was a crazy amount of bitching and whine. Doesn't feel like Warcraft at all any more, Blizzard is raping and destroying the franchise, what's with this outer space bullshit, omg Draenei retcon, welfare epics, game is dying, blah blah. WotLK was even more hated and the whiners were even more furious.

[Breaque]

Lets not forget that the TBC had crap story telling to. What was Illidans motivation for attacking us and Shattrath?

Correct me if i'm wrong , wasn't illeden the ruler of outland and we were the rebel ? seem's a legit motive to keep his domain.

[Deleted]

Correct me if i'm wrong , wasn't illeden the ruler of outland and we were the rebel ? seem's a legit motive to keep his domain.

He was as much the ruler of Outland as Magtheridon was - aka not really. Illidan made home in the Black Temple/Outland because he thought he could escape Kil'jaeden, but that didn't work out. He was 100% an antihero back in the RTS, but then comes TBC expansion and he's just sorta turned mad, so now we had to kill him. There was not much thought behind TBC lore.