[spoiler] Ghostcrawler confirms ridiculous Alliance outcome in 5.4

[DeltrusDisc]

Yeah, and my sub just renewed, so I'm on board for 6 months no matter what, so we'll see.

But the only after effects I've heard them refer to is revealing who the new Warchief will be. I honestly just don't expect any ramifications or plot points of interest for the Alliance anymore. Warcraft is essentially about the Horde and their journey. I don't think Blizzard has the ability to write for the Alliance due to not really sparking any excitement among them internally. They don't get fired up about Alliance leaders, lore, or stories like they do for the Horde characters. They don't got that fire in their belly for both sides, I don't think.

Which honestly, happens. Sometimes even when it's YOUR characters you're writing, some of those characters lose interest and others hold it.

*coughs*

I'm honestly not totally sure I agree with you, at least fully. Arthas, pre-LK was set to be one of the major Alliance kings. More or less making the Lich King expansion, for the most part, Alliance-focused, since they were truly the ones who were betrayed.

In Cataclysm, Malfurion and Tyrande having their points of interest, while not as big as Thrall's, sure, are still important. Thrall at this point has also become more or less a faction-less character, unlike Malfurion and Tyrande who remain in Darnassus.

[Faroth]

Thing with Ashenvale is though, how do you show the Night Elves taking control back without taking away questing hubs for Horde players? Even at 90, people still like to go back and do quests fore loremaster, etc. So you take that quest hub above Astranaar away, you take a flight path and quest hub away from the horde for example.

I'd rather see a reference in lore to the horde pulling out of ashenvale, maybe populate Gilneas with some npcs, and touch up a few areas like making Sentinel Hill not on fire, and maybe some minor phasing added to other alliance areas without taking quest hubs away from horde.

Phasing? Didn't they make Krasarang pre-patch accessible after the fact?

*coughs*

I'm honestly not totally sure I agree with you, at least fully. Arthas, pre-LK was set to be one of the major Alliance kings. More or less making the Lich King expansion, for the most part, Alliance-focused, since they were truly the ones who were betrayed.

Well, Arthas pre-LK was a story from a long time ago. However, the Horde love to argue the Alliance have absolutely no claim to Lordaeron because the true Lordaeron citizens are in the majority members of the Forsaken. So by that argument, the Lich King primarily betrayed, then slaughtered, then raised, then enslaved the Forsaken. So they would therefore be the ones most betrayed.

I don't consider Wrath to be an Alliance centric expansion, though. It did very little to further the faction other than Muradin being alive. We didn't see any further growth or new actions from any of the Alliance's races, nor the Alliance factions as a whole. We didn't see the Alliance raise the fallen Order of the Silver Hand to be renewed or anything like that. We actually took away the symbolic, defining class, from the Alliance and made it largely a neutral class faction with the Argent Crusade.

I personally feel like Wrath was a pretty solid neutral faction expansion because it was focused on Horde & Alliance against the Scourge. Both sides had their moments, both sides had their own separate things going on, but it was fairly balanced because it was largely a shared enemy.

After Wrath it became us vs them and that becomes more difficult to balance out and the end result was the Horde decimates the Alliance at every turn. MoP was supposed to be the rallying point with the Alliance pushing back, defeating the enemy, and seeing justice be done but instead it turned out to be the Horde splinters internally, turns against itself, and defeats a fraction of their own forces with Alliance support.

In Cataclysm, Malfurion and Tyrande having their points of interest, while not as big as Thrall's, sure, are still important. Thrall at this point has also become more or less a faction-less character, unlike Malfurion and Tyrande who remain in Darnassus.

In Cataclysm Tyrande makes a single appearance standing next to Malfurion at Thrall's return from the elemental planes. Well, the imposter Tyrande because the heavy accent and suddenly green hair will forever be "imposter Tyrande" to me.

Malfurion had some points in pushing Ragnaros back, but for a character that's been trumpeted as a really big deal for 5 years, his return was extremely lackluster and overshadowed by Thrall in the patch trailer and again by Fandral ignoring him to get Thrall as well as the restoration of Nordrassil being forgotten and not even explained in favor of Thrall taking Aggra as his mate. Fandral HATED Malfurion and yet he has absolutely no reaction to him.

Thrall is the symbol of the Horde. Cataclysm starts with him having your goblin kill three ships of Alliance soldiers and then a quest to kill 60 Alliance on a beach. Then he goes neutral until it's time to go back and rejoin the Horde in MoP, which Metzen acknowledged in SDCC before MoP even released.

Meanwhile, Malfurion will stand by and watch you kill Tyrande in game.

[Florena]

*coughs*

I'm honestly not totally sure I agree with you, at least fully. Arthas, pre-LK was set to be one of the major Alliance kings. More or less making the Lich King expansion, for the most part, Alliance-focused, since they were truly the ones who were betrayed.

In Cataclysm, Malfurion and Tyrande having their points of interest, while not as big as Thrall's, sure, are still important. Thrall at this point has also become more or less a faction-less character, unlike Malfurion and Tyrande who remain in Darnassus.

Tyrande is still very much Alliance, Malfurion since his return has acted like a neutral character. The way it's working more in practice has been 'Tyrande leads the night elves, Malfurion leads the cenarian circle.' The only Alliance centered thing he's done is Wolfheart, and even there he was chasing after Maiev instead of fighting the Horde. In Darnassus he doesn't even fight when you attack Tyrande.

Also, you would have a point with Arthas if not for the Forsaken and Blood Elves. They, by FAR, have a bigger history and grievance with Arthas than the Stormwind humans or Ironforge dwarves do.

- - - Updated - - -

Phasing? Didn't they make Krasarang pre-patch accessible after the fact?

In Krasarang and 5.3, they used unused space to add the new content. They didn't have to take anything away in 5.1 from Krasarang's questing because they set land aside intentionally to use in 5.1. For northern barrens, it just had lots of empty space they could use without messing up quest flow.

For Ashenvale, to show the Horde being driven out you would have to take away horde quest hubs via phasing, which just seems like a waste to me. Again I'd rather just see them do a better job going forward, or touch up a couple of smaller areas like that one place in Ashenvale that's under siege by npcs and Sentinel Hill than see them redo the zone to remove the orc quest hubs.

[mvaliz]

*coughs*

I'm honestly not totally sure I agree with you, at least fully. Arthas, pre-LK was set to be one of the major Alliance kings. More or less making the Lich King expansion, for the most part, Alliance-focused, since they were truly the ones who were betrayed.

As long as you completely ignore that whole "Forsaken" thing. You know - the events at Wrathgate and that their entire faction's whole purpose was the complete and utter destruction of Arthas... the one who created them in the first place.

In Cataclysm, Malfurion and Tyrande having their points of interest, while not as big as Thrall's, sure, are still important. Thrall at this point has also become more or less a faction-less character, unlike Malfurion and Tyrande who remain in Darnassus.

Tyrande? What did she do? She damn-near disappeared when Malfurion came back into play.

And all Malfurion did was wake up and say "Holy Hell! The Horde are attacking our forrests and homes? Well - I better start ignoring that and instead HIRE (via rewards) them to help me beat off this Ragnaros problem in Hyjal... "

Yeah...

But all that bits aside... I will say that in BC/Wrath there was some very little favortism on either side - but it wasn't nearly enough or done as BADLY as it was in Cataclysm. I summed it up like this:

Vanilla = Orc and Human glaring angrily at each other
BC = Orc shoves Human and says "F-YOU!"
Wrath = Human shoves Orc and says "No! F-YOU!!"
Cataclysm = Human falling down a cliff face with the Orc laughing his ass off while peeing over the edge of the cliff at the human.

[loki504]

op they get someting out of it. they got rid of garrosh. the one that started the whole war. so they might get some peach out of it.

[Deleted]

Tyrande is still very much Alliance, Malfurion since his return has acted like a neutral character. The way it's working more in practice has been 'Tyrande leads the night elves, Malfurion leads the cenarian circle.' The only Alliance centered thing he's done is Wolfheart, and even there he was chasing after Maiev instead of fighting the Horde. In Darnassus he doesn't even fight when you attack Tyrande.

Also, you would have a point with Arthas if not for the Forsaken and Blood Elves. They, by FAR, have a bigger history and grievance with Arthas than the Stormwind humans or Ironforge dwarves do.

- - - Updated - - -



In Krasarang and 5.3, they used unused space to add the new content. They didn't have to take anything away in 5.1 from Krasarang's questing because they set land aside intentionally to use in 5.1. For northern barrens, it just had lots of empty space they could use without messing up quest flow.

For Ashenvale, to show the Horde being driven out you would have to take away horde quest hubs via phasing, which just seems like a waste to me. Again I'd rather just see them do a better job going forward, or touch up a couple of smaller areas like that one place in Ashenvale that's under siege by npcs and Sentinel Hill than see them redo the zone to remove the orc quest hubs.

Theramore.

[Trassk]

Vanilla = Orc and Human glaring angrily at each other
BC = Orc shoves Human and says "F-YOU!"
Wrath = Human shoves Orc and says "No! F-YOU!!"
Cataclysm = Human falling down a cliff face with the Orc laughing his ass off while peeing over the edge of the cliff at the human.

Mop = Orc keeps laughing until Troll pushes him off the cliff with the human and pees on them both.

[Deleted]

Mop = Orc keeps laughing until Troll pushes him off the cliff with the human and pees on them both.

Thats what human thinks he is doing, in reality, troll joins orc while they piss over the human.

[mvaliz]

Mop = Orc keeps laughing until Troll pushes him off the cliff with the human and pees on them both.

Thats what human thinks he is doing, in reality, troll joins orc while they piss over the human.

You guys will have to fill that one in for me. I haven't played MoP so I can't comment on any in-game bias yet (other than waiting to see what the fabled "Fist-pump" moment was to be...). That's why I left that part blank.

From everything I've read, it sounds more like Kazomir is correct. I mean, lets face it, the majority of the horde faction hate Garrosh and have hated him since his weird inexplicable bully-mongering personality transformation in mid-Wrath.

[Talen]

The problem is that a lot of people want the phasing just for the sake of reflecting Garrosh's defeat at SoO. But phasing Ashenvale (for example) just for "oh look, the Horde retreated" doesn't really offer anything substantive to justify doing it.

It improves the immersiveness of the game and it provides a visual in game reward for players, showing that their actions can and do have an impact. That reward, that sense of statisfaction at seeing how actions are reflected in game has a value in its own right that doesn't depend on the presence of quests.


Blizzard had no real need to remove Theramore from the game, for example. But it did so. Why? Because the in game impact provided a sense of a living world and a reward for Horde players who get to see it destroyed as a result of their actions.


As for what L90s would be doing there...assuming you did piut quewst there, then there are other possibilities. Clearing out Garrosh holdouts. Cleansing the rmenants og the Burnign legion. Building up Forest Song and acting to support the Alliance forces in Azshara. Helping to regrow the forest the Orcs cut down, honoring the dead slaughtered by the Horde, locating the remanants of Garroshes secret weapons, diplomatic quests to the Horde (perhaps in response to an "incident"), finally dealing with the Furbolg and so on.


Anyone who can't think of relevant quests that could be added to any reclaimed zone isn't thinking hard enough


Putting it bluntly....Blizzard can phase the lands and zones to reflect the changed situations. If they wanted to they could just swap over some graphics for Horde to Alliance equivalents. Or they could add new sites, new bases and a vastly increased Alliance presence along with stories and quests....for BOTH sides.


The question is would this be worth the effort. This would help wrap up this storyline, it would provide activities and content for both sides and it would finally give the Alliance players some in game impact and reward.


Another alternative would be to just use the existing Horde system and place them into a new context within Alliance territories and just make the victory lore based. And so on.


Blizzard has a wide range of options it can select from.


So far, the one it appears to have chosen is "Lets make the Alliance look like suckers".

"It's always a challenge doing a lot of work just for lore reasons unless it comes with awesome gameplay too.

Which it can. GCs being deliberately obtuse when he tries to implies gameplay can't be added. As well as the implication that there needs to be changes in game at all. Thats never been a problem before but now the Alliance are asking for even just the lore - not even the game, just the story via a bit of quest text - to reflect the situation, all of a sudden it's a problem?


EJL

[Deleted]

You guys will have to fill that one in for me. I haven't played MoP so I can't comment on any in-game bias yet (other than waiting to see what the fabled "Fist-pump" moment was to be...). That's why I left that part blank.

From everything I've read, it sounds more like Kazomir is correct. I mean, lets face it, the majority of the horde faction hate Garrosh and have hated him since his weird inexplicable bully-mongering personality transformation in mid-Wrath.

Basically the Alliance are portrayed as Goody-two shoes and that, in blizzard's eyes, syould make them morons.

[mizeri]

they should make it when the alliance finished the raid, they do a bit on ethnic cleansing of azaroth thus ending the war of warcraft, and the servers shuts down after a bit of ingame fire works kinda like in the end of return of the jedi.

[Aquamonkey]

It improves the immersiveness of the game and it provides a visual in game reward for players, showing that their actions can and do have an impact. That reward, that sense of statisfaction at seeing how actions are reflected in game has a value in its own right that doesn't depend on the presence of quests.

Immersion is useless and a waste of resources if players don't have a reason to go there. Making such a large change just so people see it once while flying over then afk'ing in cities does not justify the resources.

Blizzard had no real need to remove Theramore from the game, for example. But it did so. Why? Because the in game impact provided a sense of a living world and a reward for Horde players who get to see it destroyed as a result of their actions.

Perhaps, but it was a tiny location compared to sweeping zone changes. Removing something and replacing it with an empty crater is a far cry from changing all the NPCs and architecture of a zone. Theramore was also directly involved in the events of the scenario for which it was changed.

As for what L90s would be doing there...assuming you did piut quewst there, then there are other possibilities. Clearing out Garrosh holdouts. Cleansing the rmenants og the Burnign legion. Building up Forest Song and acting to support the Alliance forces in Azshara. Helping to regrow the forest the Orcs cut down, honoring the dead slaughtered by the Horde, locating the remanants of Garroshes secret weapons, diplomatic quests to the Horde (perhaps in response to an "incident"), finally dealing with the Furbolg and so on.

Anyone who can't think of relevant quests that could be added to any reclaimed zone isn't thinking hard enough

Putting it bluntly....Blizzard can phase the lands and zones to reflect the changed situations. If they wanted to they could just swap over some graphics for Horde to Alliance equivalents. Or they could add new sites, new bases and a vastly increased Alliance presence along with stories and quests....for BOTH sides.

The question is would this be worth the effort. This would help wrap up this storyline, it would provide activities and content for both sides and it would finally give the Alliance players some in game impact and reward.

I already posted:
Although... if it were the pre-patch for the next expansion, it could work. Like you're sent off to do this tedious diplomacy/construction crap then suddenly you're attacked by the initial wave of the next Legion invasion, that would be interesting.

But a patch just for doing tedious crap after the final raid of the expansion isn't likely going to be worth it for Blizzard. They aren't going to throw resources at something like that when they could spend it on the next expansion.

[Dreknar20]

But a patch just for doing tedious crap after the final raid of the expansion isn't likely going to be worth it for Blizzard. They aren't going to throw resources at something like that when they could spend it on the next expansion.

"Do you want updated old zones or a new x-pac?" - Metzen

[Aquamonkey]

"Do you want updated old zones or a new x-pac?" - Metzen

If it's phased and actually incorporated into the narrative, I don't have a problem with it. It worked alright for 5.3.

EDIT: I'd like to reiterate the difference between 5.3 and the proposed post-SoO crap:
"Giving them something to do isn't the same giving them a reason to go there. Reworking Ashenvale in a post 5.4 patch as you describe sounds pretty lame. After fighting a massive battle to remove the most hated man in Azeroth with an expansion's worth of buildup, you are sent off to do chores... in an area which is even more optional than 5.3. The Barrens/Durotar stuff at least pushes the story towards the climax and acts as a setup for how the invasion of Orgrimmar will happen."

[Deleted]

"Do you want updated old zones or a new x-pac?" - Metzen

So cataclysm wasnt an expansion.
Okay.

[Dreknar20]

If it's phased and incorporated into the narrative of the new expansion, I don't have a problem with it. It worked alright for 5.3.

yes but he was referencing old zones ( as in not max level)
Cata changes were done for gameplay reason not purely lore, to make the leveling better and more engaging (since most sub losses are from people who dont reach max level)

Plus part of the whole vibe for new expansions is just new zones and lands, places we havent been before

[Aquamonkey]

yes but he was referencing old zones ( as in not max level)
Cata changes were done for gameplay reason not purely lore, to make the leveling better and more engaging (since most sub losses are from people who dont reach max level)

Plus part of the whole vibe for new expansions is just new zones and lands, places we havent been before

I know. That's why I've been saying that if they were to make 90+ go back to those zones to show the post-SoO outcomes, there'd have to be compelling gameplay to give us a reason to go there. Doing so takes up deveopment resouces. Something Blizzard isn't going to spend after the last raid of an expansion just for lore flavor because they would want to put those resources on the next expansion.

Unless those things overlap. Like we are sent to those areas for things happening in the next expansion and they just happen to reflect post-SoO because that is the timeframe in which they occur.

[Deleted]

Bloody hell this thread is getting into a loop.. The aliance will never have enough "compensation" so the debate is getting silly..

Ill give blizz at least a thumbs up in keeping ppl pasionate about the lore..

[mvaliz]

Bloody hell this thread is getting into a loop.. The aliance will never have enough "compensation" so the debate is getting silly..

Ill give blizz at least a thumbs up in keeping ppl pasionate about the lore..

The Alliance will never have enough compensation!?

Hell man, I'm still trying to find the first installment of said "compensation" for the lopsided design of Cataclysm ("Compensation" that's not also mutually beneficial to the Horde, I mean - so don't wave the "Deposing the Warchief" at me, as damn near every Horde player and character hated him since Wath).

That's like all the Gnomes shouting "Damnit! We want to see more Gnome love!" and you saying "My God... they fixed the Black Morass so you guys don't swim anymore. Are you NEVER satisfied!?"