Xpac Where we lose

[Video Games]

You would do a normal raid, where you organize the defense of Orgrimmar/Stormind. First bosses go great, they attack, you kill their trash and then them, get called to the next breach and so on. Instead of a pop up saying "yay, city defended, now go on the offensive and kill big bad you get Velen screaming something like: "Oh noes, the main force has landed. We must evacuate the city!" Then a Giant invasion comes through all the breaches you just defended.

From here on the whole thing turns into desperate last stand kind of encounters, where your goal isnt to win the siege, but to secure enough time for the citizens to escape. You still kill bosses, but whenever you are done, you fall back a tier while the enemies burn down the place.

Last fight is to hold out till the transporters arrive. You kill the last boss (they the antagonist trying to summon evil force X to the planet throughout the expansion), but not before he opens a giant portal.
Last scene is you watchthing Orgrimmar/Stormwind burn from the fleeing transporters as something giant comes out of the portal stomping stuff.

Ok, what about when we aren't in the raid? What about dailies, ah, whatever? It doesn't make any sense like the people who thought we'd lose our artifacts after beating Argus. Like lol what other weapons would we use for out in the world/next week.

[MoanaLisa]

like spine of deathwing thing. we think we beat the beast but we didn't. we get our rewards but the moment before Deathwing unleashes bukakke from all his tentacles on all over Azeroth, Khadgar ports us all out to Dark Portal and we rush to the other planet.

end of expansion.

With all the comments about "filler expansions" I cannot even begin to imagine how something like an expansion like this would be received.

[clevin]

Ok, what about when we aren't in the raid? What about dailies, ah, whatever?

That's not really an issue. We currently are doing dailies that imply the Legion is still a threat and Sargeras still at large but the current raid has us defeat them, kill Argus and imprison Sargeras. We even see this from Azeroth, with the Pantheon just a bright light in the sky. But dailies don't reflect that change, there are still invasions of the Broken Isles, etc.

Raid story and outside world story have never really synced up so saying that they wouldn't be synced in this case is irrelevant.

[Dellis0991]

Clevin and Owbu get the idea. That's the sorta thing I had in mind. Seems to me like this stuff could really work and provide a great epic story. Most of the other examples of losing so far miss the idea entirely. It'd be sweet to have a raid where the object changes and it's all about now just surviving while retreating. One advantage to this is it helps slow down the power creep that we're seeing (which I know some don't mind but I hate). Love to read more examples like the ones they gave.

Ok losing a city isn't bad but losing our planet is....we are literally the "last stand" in the universe against the void....we fall and all the other planets fall. There won't be a place to flee to because there existence is now our existence which means having a tentacles shoved up our nether regions.

[clevin]

Ok losing a city isn't bad but losing our planet is....we are literally the "last stand" in the universe against the void....we fall and all the other planets fall. There won't be a place to flee to because there existence is now our existence which means having a tentacles shoved up our nether regions.

That's why WOD was the time to do this. We could lose that planet and not run into the issues you raise. See my earlier comment.

[Deleted]

Every day with antivision in charge we lose.

[SinR]

Azeroth's blood manipulating faction leaders into an all-out Faction War just because She wants us off her so She can live in peace.

or something.

End of BfA She manifests herself kinda like Argus did in Antorus and kills us all, but not before Dadghar opens a portal to a new planet thanks to his own manipulation of the Sargerite Keystone and we start World of Warcraft 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Video Games]

That's not really an issue. We currently are doing dailies that imply the Legion is still a threat and Sargeras still at large but the current raid has us defeat them, kill Argus and imprison Sargeras. We even see this from Azeroth, with the Pantheon just a bright light in the sky. But dailies don't reflect that change, there are still invasions of the Broken Isles, etc.

Raid story and outside world story have never really synced up so saying that they wouldn't be synced in this case is irrelevant.

So then we don't really lose and seeing sw/org burned down doesn't mean anything because we still have to go there for the ah or something. What's the point then?

[Deleted]

I don't see how we'll ever win anything by fighting each other, so BfA sure is setting us up for an ultimate failure.

[CreatureLives]

I really wouldn't call Cataclysm an expansion where we won. We just ended the threat but the damage was already done.

[Paraka]

Am I the only one who really badly wants to see an xpac where we lose? I don't mean die, but, something along to lines of: if in Warlords we were fighting to save Draenor but in the end the Legion comes in full force anyway because while we kill Arch, it gives Gul'dan enough time to complete a spell and we have to abandon Draenor/flee or whatever, it ends up the same as it looks like in TBC (I don't mean this losing in particular, just the idea).

I'd love a an ending to be something along the lines of Empire Strikes Back. We're fleeing, regrouping, planning for vengeance or something like that, possibly looking for new allies, something along these lines. I know Blizz always throws in some deaths to make it not all rainbows and sunshine, which is fine; but I mean I'd love it if we actually lost our main objective, not just some heroes.

I feel like this is doable in an MMO, especially if the ending really foreshadows the next xpac of us coming back to kick major ass. Maybe it's too risky and people want more generally happy endings though. But I'd love this sorta dark ending with the promise/hint/foreshadow of revenge to come.

What do you think? Interested? Can it be done well? Can it be done well by Blizz? Just something I'm craving. I'd love to hear people's thoughts if interested on possible ways this can be implemented without gamers feeling like they wasted their time raiding and so on (basically, avoiding the rage that happened at the end of mass effect 3 where people were pissed; no I don't want some debated on whether those feelings were justified or not; you get the idea).

I'd definitely be up for an expansion where everything seems to be applying the pressure on us to a point of breaking, where our last Raid would be a victory at a great cost. Not just defeat X villain and suddenly the next big bad comes up and takes something else (LK to Deathwing transition for example).

[Nekrotix]

So then we don't really lose and seeing sw/org burned down doesn't mean anything because we still have to go there for the ah or something. What's the point then?

Well we know Teldrassil burns down in Battle for Azeroth, so another major city being utterly annihilated doesn't seem totally out of Blizzard's grasp. Although I doubt they're gonna destroy Orgrimmar or Stormwind, two of the most iconic major cities in all of Warcraft, anytime soon unless they REALLY wanted to make some kind of big spectacle out of it.

[Niwes]

op is right imo. its time to do that AvH thing and move over to the void thing. and this, as the end of BfA should be the time, were we horrible loose against void stuff. and next xpac should be „return of the jedi“ like.

imo, this would be a great plan. way better than AvH moving the exact same way to void stuff, as Iron Horde stuff move to Legion stuff in WoD.

We will see how creative and nonconservative blizz will be with BfA.

[Deleted]

Unless it's like the final battle in a final raid is we retreat and the next expasion leads of from that?

[sam86]

no u aren't only one but reality speaking imagine the nightmare of trying to advertise to ur game : come play wow where u get fucked, done, what u expect to play a game to win? nah u coming to get fucked, lose, get beaten, end... yeah can't imagine it sell well, maybe for us old veterans would LOVE to see something like that after 14 years of fucking everyone from lich to demon lord to the Lich King himself to detroyer of worlds to an orc (-.-) to agan demon lord to a fucking titan, but seriously it will hurt their sales badly, it will be an exp that focus on veterans, and not any veterans, ppl who played the game most of its life, not ppl who log for 2-3 weeks every exp and done, they don't feel bored from beating titan souls because they never did in first place

Technically we lost to the Lich King during his fight, but then Tirion remembered paladins can bubble out of CC and he saved the day.

We also lost at the start of Legion, which will probably remain the first major character lose(King Chin, Vol'jin and Tirion) for a time since WoW needs some more interesting lead characters imo.

which has zero effect in game since u are literally as player far more powerful than any of them, that loss may had impact when we weren't walking with doomhammers, frostmourne twins, ashbringers, and scepters of sargeras
we literally lost 'sidekicks' to us main characters, this exp made us fuck a titan, i can't imagine how can we even think of a random troll in a dungeon as threat anymore when we literally fought a titan and won

I already did muru and heroic rag.

muru : entropis ? the HARDEST boss ever in wow history ?

[clevin]

So then we don't really lose and seeing sw/org burned down doesn't mean anything because we still have to go there for the ah or something. What's the point then?

Losing isn't binary... Forces often lose battles, even major battles and have to retreat without being utterly destroyed. The problem OP is calling out is that we never really lose even major battle. Each expansion ends with us winning. SW/Org burning isn't the canonical definition of losing, either.

[Video Games]

Losing isn't binary... Forces often lose battles, even major battles and have to retreat without being utterly destroyed. The problem OP is calling out is that we never really lose even major battle. Each expansion ends with us winning. SW/Org burning isn't the canonical definition of losing, either.

But for the story to have any impact it has to stay, like I hope teldrasill will. What impact would it have if varian got assploded, but then you still see him around sw? None.

[clevin]

But for the story to have any impact it has to stay, like I hope teldrasill will. What impact would it have if varian got assploded, but then you still see him around sw? None.

Again, read my earlier post. I'm not retyping everything. And I view WoD to Legion as the best place to have done this. In many expansions it wouldn't work.

Oh hell, here:

WoD would have been the perfect setting for this and a great segue into Legion. We'd lose that Draenor. Some of the heroes we befriended there retreat through portals with us. The Legion realizes what we are and follows us to our timeline and world.

Even if the heroes from Draenor (Yrel etc) don't actually take part in Legion, they're available. As it is, we last hear from Yrel that whenever we needed her people, they'd come help... well, we just fought a full on war against the Legion but... that was utterly forgotten.

None of this mattered when each threat was self-contained. Illidan and the TBC storyline didn't really connect to Arthas nor did the Arthas storyline connect in any meaningful way to Cata. Mists kind of connected to Cata in the sense that the cataclysm reveled Pandaria but that was it. Then Mists kind of led to WoD in the sense that Garrosh escaped there but that storyline was not really developed. But you can see that with the Cata to Mists link they started trying to have the events of one expansion affect the next... but they don't really carry much over.

[In Ogres We Trust]

Personally, while I would be in favor of this, Blizzard enjoys a singular arc over an individual expansion. However, to me, the game would be better off if they drew-out the story over 2-3 expansions, e.g. WotLK would have been two expansions (the first expansion would have ended with Ulduar, and the second expansion would have seen us starting out in Azjol'Nerub).

[Ombree]

I like it, but I think it might make people disappointed or angry.