Legion messed up the entire Warcraft universe

[Zantos]

They put aside their differences (mostly) to fight off the Legion. With that done, it seems fairly logical that they would say 'Yeah so about ya'll abandoning our king and leaving him to die...'

Except, they could easily retort with what actually happened. Given the bond they should have created, it wouldn't be hard to imagine them forgiving. I mean, class order halls literally had factions fighting side by side. How would they explain lore wise, the leaders of these groups suddenly going back to their factions, or their followers choosing sides that could potentially oppose their organizations leader. Such as the highlord of paladins.

Between the legion and class halls, they put themselves in a corner I dont see them writing themselves out of without it being super tacky and bs filled.

[Halyon]

Personal bias aside for Illidan, I think it'll be nice for Blizz to have new lore development open up to them.

[SirCowdog]

I just saw the ending cinematic of Antorus. It's amazing how little I care about anything happening here.

In my opinion they completely destroyed the entire Warcraft story with Legion. They rushed through a lot of major villains and other characters like the titans without much buildup. Nothing feels like it matters anymore. We see Sargeras and I don't feel anything.

Just look at what this expansion did in just about a year:
- They wasted the Emerald Nightmare as an entry raid. Ursoc gone, Xavius gone.
- Gul'dan gone in the same tier.
- Helya introduced and thrown away in a half-tier.
- Kil'jaeden gone.
- Aggramar used as a pre-final boss.
- Other titans shown all at once and then just put away again.
- Argus is done with (the planet as well as the guy).
- Sargeras introduced and locked away in the same cutscene. Only thing he says is 'no'.
- Illidan re-introduced and then put away again.
- A lot of other major lore characters, important weapons (artifacts) used outside of raids and pretty much thrown away.

I'm really sorry, but this is too much. Far too much.
In the last expansion it all led up to Archimonde. And now here we are throwing away major lore characters left and right - and that's not even enough. We need to introduce new ones like Argus and then throw them away as well. And all of that on top of throwing away a whole arsenal of legendary weapons that had major lore significance.

It's like they threw everything into this that once had a name in the Warcraft universe. And for what? Now everything feels irrelevant. It's like our characters are plowing through the entirety of Warcraft history and just burning everything to the ground.

Legion had enough lore for 5 expansions, as far as I see it. But instead they chose to rush through everything and throw away most of what many players know about Warcraft. Good job.

YES! Absolutely! I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt a resounding "MEH!" about the entire thing. It's like they're trying to cram so much fan service and lore into a short span of time in order to keep people interested. It just comes across as uninteresting.

I mean, we knew Blizzard was bad at delivering story, but this is awful.

[Detheavn]

Oh, I don't know perhaps because it was popularized by a 1960s Christmas song?

WoW is full of pop-culture references. Why does this one specifically irk you so much?

[Stormspellz]

I mean, lore wise it went out the window with wod convoluted, no logic just to bring back guldan and illidan? Ya I know illidan is edgelord supreme loved by all the kids, and to blizz's credit for his part he handled him rather well all things considered. But the whole lets do all this to open up a portal to the only place in the universe that has beaten us, not once but twice right before we finish our "iwin" ceremony because what could go wrong? And lets not forget the magic space ship armadas vs swords thing.

Argus is a big missed opportunity, it should of been its own expansion and each patch we go to another world that is being invaded by legion, save the natives and get the natives to help us fight the legion, one of the last one tiers could be a portal to a void controlled planet, setting up that whole arc. Think of it, as we gain new allies we come across a heavily guarded castle (for lack of better term) but it seems to be guarding something behind a fel barrier, so we the heroes think its some great weapon or relic, he bring the barrier down to find a void world, we turn argus into a three way fight, and with such a distraction we make a covert strike on antorus

[Geschan]

They put aside their differences (mostly) to fight off the Legion. With that done, it seems fairly logical that they would say 'Yeah so about ya'll abandoning our king and leaving him to die...'

Since a lot of people know what really happend, not really? The rogue order knows for example. And they are partially alliance too.
People from all orders where working together for a long time. One would think that at some point somebody would take the time and ask what happened.
But there is an even simpler reason for not going apeshit on the other faction: Ressources.
The legion more or less annihilated the faction armies. There aren't enough soldiers left.
And don't forget that the economy is still down thanks to the cataclysm. So regaining soldiers? Not that easy.
In addition to that, the factions have quite the amount of infighting.
Dwarfs are almost at a state of civil war (nobody likes the dark iron dwarves).
Gnomes are basically homeless and still restoring Gnomeregan.
Nightelves are still restoring nature after the cataclysm and the emerald nightmare.
Worgen are still homeless and cursed.
Humans have a lot of infighting with the nobles and just lost their king.
Draenei blew all their ressources on saving Argus.
Orcs lost a lot of forces thanks to SoO and the legion AND there is infighting.
Same with the Tauren. They just had a civil war.
Trolls just lost their leader.
The undead can't replenish their forces, because there aren't enough val'kyr.
Goblins are homeless thanks to the cataclysm.
And Blood Elves still have issues with energy forms.
The only player race that is somewhat in shape are the pandaren on their turtle.
But they are only a minority, since they don't add any faction forces.

While some of these issues are solved with subraces, not all of them are.
Some of them simply can't be solved that fast.

I personally think the focus on the faction war simply makes no sense.
I would have rather have Blizzard remove the faction war for players since it would solve the faction imbalance.
(I.e. Some of the dead factions could finally play, without transferring realm)

The addon could have still been the same. Just instead of the factions fighting for the islands, the heroes (players) could have been hired by Explorer XY to guard their efforts and the story could have been more of an Indiana Jones style setup. (Basically you stumble upon the enemy by accident and save the world).
A more simple, more lighthearted addon would have been fine after the legion.

[Wildberry]

WoW is full of pop-culture references. Why does this one specifically irk you so much?

Novel vs. ignorable easter egg.

[Detheavn]

Novel vs. ignorable easter egg.

It's the same universe with the same references. I seriously don't get the distinction.

[CaptainV]

I just saw the ending cinematic of Antorus. It's amazing how little I care about anything happening here.

In my opinion they completely destroyed the entire Warcraft story with Legion. They rushed through a lot of major villains and other characters like the titans without much buildup. Nothing feels like it matters anymore. We see Sargeras and I don't feel anything.

Just look at what this expansion did in just about a year:
- They wasted the Emerald Nightmare as an entry raid. Ursoc gone, Xavius gone.
- Gul'dan gone in the same tier.
- Helya introduced and thrown away in a half-tier.
- Kil'jaeden gone.
- Aggramar used as a pre-final boss.
- Other titans shown all at once and then just put away again.
- Argus is done with (the planet as well as the guy).
- Sargeras introduced and locked away in the same cutscene. Only thing he says is 'no'.
- Illidan re-introduced and then put away again.
- A lot of other major lore characters, important weapons (artifacts) used outside of raids and pretty much thrown away.

I'm really sorry, but this is too much. Far too much.
In the last expansion it all led up to Archimonde. And now here we are throwing away major lore characters left and right - and that's not even enough. We need to introduce new ones like Argus and then throw them away as well. And all of that on top of throwing away a whole arsenal of legendary weapons that had major lore significance.

It's like they threw everything into this that once had a name in the Warcraft universe. And for what? Now everything feels irrelevant. It's like our characters are plowing through the entirety of Warcraft history and just burning everything to the ground.

Legion had enough lore for 5 expansions, as far as I see it. But instead they chose to rush through everything and throw away most of what many players know about Warcraft. Good job.

Are you kidding?

Legion was the dustup to the mess Metzen left in TBC and many previous expansion, Afrasiabi cleaned up alot of that and finally made some genuine sense of the entire ordeal.

We got a new canon that helped set the path of the story much straighter.

We got a better story than anything Metzen has ever written in previous expansions combined (Possibly exluding MoP).

We got a huge ass ending that gave Illidan the closure he damn well deserved in the most poetic possible way it could have been.

And we got to see Sargeras do something increadably badass and evil.

This is exactly what Classic Warcraft 3 was, phyrric victories and dark endings, tragedy, sacrifice, heroism, bare triumph.

This, was nostalgia incarnate for those who played WC3.

[Thimagryn]

So many points to address. Let me break it down so it's not so confusing.

a) There's too many plot lines happening at the same time
Yes, they definitely bit off more they can chew this time. I figure it's because of reactions that the plot was so slow in the prev couple expansions that addressed very little of the Warcraft world in general that pushed them to tie so many things up, from Emerald Dream to Azshara's appearance to the return of T&A.

b) They rushed the plot lines
Yes, it certainly did feel rushed for some plot points, but I think that's the nature of any expansion tackling a lot of content. I think Emerald Dream could have been saved for later especially since the story didn't really have anything directly to do with the Legion. But overall, it's not very different from any other expansion. They introduce a major threat and deal with it in the same patch every time, whether it's a Mogu emperor or an old god that recently awakes. I agree that it's rushed but I don't think the story was rushed that much more than in any previous content patch that deals with a new major threat.

c) They messed up the entire Warcraft universe
Wut? No. The entire Warcraft universe doesn't center around Sargeras. BfA is a natural progression for what Warcraft universe is all about; Orcs vs Humans, Alliance vs Horde.

[Wildberry]

It's the same universe with the same references. I seriously don't get the distinction.

That's entirely on you then. There's a massive difference between novels and in-game easter eggs.

[jackofwind]

I don’t really think it’s out of place given how goblins talk in wow and it’s the goblin it self saying it. If it was any other race i could agree it’s out of place but not for a goblin.

The point is that it's referring to a real-world thing. They might as well reference Candlenights, it's as reasonable as alluding to Western Christmas traditions in Warcraft.

- - - Updated - - -

It's the same universe with the same references. I seriously don't get the distinction.

The books aren't though. The books take themselves much more seriously.

[gutnbrg]

so is illidan gone forever now? the cinematic makes it look that way

[A dot Ham]

tl;dr: Golden is a pretty bad writer.

So there are people who see her for what she really is... I'll never understand why they hired her to be part of the writer team.

She couldn't write a decent story when it was dictated to her, now she is supposed to write a story that actually advances lore... if there was one event we could point to as WoW's downfall and the destruction of Warcraft as a franchise, its the date she became a full time employee.

[Deleted]

What's with this damn fetish about Emerald Nightmare????? Is literally a fucking copy of Azeroth, whit some random enemy stuff. Nothing really new,

[Dagoth Ur]

This is exactly what Classic Warcraft 3 was, phyrric victories and dark endings, tragedy, sacrifice, heroism, bare triumph.

This alone makes me like the ending.

About time some villain finally managed to achieve at least somewhat akin to victory in WoW. (I mean phyrric victory for us)

[Detheavn]

The books aren't though. The books take themselves much more seriously.

I know the books take themselves more seriously, but it's still the same universe. I still don't get why one little phrase is such a big deal then?

I'm seriously interested as to what the real issue with the phrase is.
Ah well. To each their own I guess.

[CreatureLives]

-Everyone thinks there is/was enough "lore" behind the Emerald Dream/Nightmare to have its own xpac... I disagree and so does Blizzard. It got a zone and a raid. Entry level or not... it was well done.

100% agreed. If Blizzard thought it could have it's own expansion they wouldn't have taken so long to address it. My guess is Blizz kept putting it off because they didn't know how to make an expansion out of it and for years have been trying to. Maybe they finally realized they just couldn't. Especially with Metzen leaving.

But what a lot of people don't understand is a story being given it's own zone in 2017 (or whenever Legion was released probably 2016) is a lot bigger than a story being given its own zone in 2004. Blizzard have gotten so good at telling stories during the questing experience.

[jackofwind]

I know the books take themselves more seriously, but it's still the same universe. I still don't get why one little phrase is such a big deal then?

I'm seriously interested as to what the real issue with the phrase is.
Ah well. To each their own I guess.

It's a big deal in that Golden's writing is full of shit like that, along with other things like pedantic exposition and unintentionally stilted dialogue - and that sort of thing is what separates good writers from bad ones.

Golden isn't considered anywhere near a good fantasy writer by people who actually care about literature. Anyone can be a popular and successful pulp writer, especially if they're working inside an established IP - look at the myriad of shit books in the Star Trek, Star Wars and Warhammer universes. Look how many pulp writers there are churning out commercially successful military novels or murder mysteries by the dozens.

Compare someone like Golden to an author like Steven Erikson and she might as well be a 4th grader scrawling in crayon.

[bryroo]

I really liked how Kil'jadens character was fleshed out in Argus and his relationship with Velen played out in the end.

I'm glad to see some resolution concerning the Legion andthrilled they're taking a break.

I loved Legion's plot. Sad to see it replaced with more no-resolution faction warfare.