Unexpected Azshara plot twist that will BLOW!... your mind.

[zlygork]

I dont see how factions can merge? Imagine undead and worgen in same party, night elf and undead? human and undead? When u think about it only undead are the problem...

Before the Storm kinda sets that one up. Genn himself acknowledges that Sylvanas does not represent the forsaken.

[VladlTutushkin]

I dont see how factions can merge? Imagine undead and worgen in same party, night elf and undead? human and undead? When u think about it only undead are the problem...

Btw this. They somehow wrote Forsaken so despicable that they cant get on well with anyone, maybe only Goblins but even that is a thin thread.

[sillag]

you'll never expect that azshara's true plan was to wait for the alliance and horde to weaken themselves from fighting eachother, then attack the coastlines with lots of naga

[Kokolums]

https://ptr.wowhead.com/news=291015/...ass-diversity-

When asked about Azshara’s role in the conflict between the Alliance and Horde, Ion emphasized that she will play a major role, with a surprising turn of events we won’t expect.

May the light have mercy on our narrative.

Taliesin in his latest youtube video speculated that N'Zoth offers to help us kill Azshara, which is a plot twist because we've assumed she was his #1 the whole time. As it turns out, they have been rivals. N'Zoth empowered her, but Azshara did absolutely nothing to help him all this time. We end up killing Azshara and helping N'Zoth by mistake.

[Super Dickmann]

Settling down whole shebang between Genn and Sylvanas was easy, that could have being made through any number of means from Old Gods showing up to Silithus situation causing a ceasefire and for example Genn being put under home arrest (because he is a King all things considered) but releasedfor a duraton of a crisis and Sylvanas having too much trouble with Kalimdor being stabbed by a huge sword of Doom to care about Genn. .

Could it have been solved without a faction war? Theoretically, sure. But the tensions were such that it was a plausible way to go and those plot threads were set up for the purpose of a faction war. By contrast, after Mists you had every opportunity to end the war. Now, as to why end it...

And why? Well its kinda obvious no? Dwindling subscription base, unsustainable nature of the conflict (aka not a signle side can win), whole amount of bigger threats that require heroes to work together and factions to unite. Basically conflict just stale, pointless and always the same - steaming pile of atrocities for Alliance to swallow and Horde getting off the hook. Its just what they are worst at - faction conflict. It creates nothing more aside from forum hatred and dick-measuring contests and flame-fests.

That it can't have one side win completely is just a reason to contain the conflict regionally. Conflicts between the races/factions by default carry more investment than against the villain of the week because people actually play them and are invested in their themes and characters. By extension, there's actual stakes involved and since the enemy is not just some evil monster but someone with a motive, the conflicts can be morally grey. Vanilla, Wrath and Cataclysm all handled this pretty decently, the final one far more so on the Horde side than the Ally one because many ally wins were sidelined and downplayed.

As for the bigger enemy thing, that's always been a meme, in the same way that the heat death of the universe is more dangerous than the man with a gun threatening you in some broader sense, but if you don't solve the latter problem, you're never gonna get to the former. The presence of big bads doesn't mean that the factions don't have irreconcilable differences in ideology, resource requirements or territorial demands.

[ChairmanKaga]

My guess is Azshara will become the big bad of the expac by taking an opportunity to double cross Nzoth and seek to drain Azeroth to steal her power/attempt to become a Titan.

[legendaryusername]

8.2 cant come soon enough..

[VladlTutushkin]

Could it have been solved without a faction war? Theoretically, sure. But the tensions were such that it was a plausible way to go and those plot threads were set up for the purpose of a faction war. By contrast, after Mists you had every opportunity to end the war. Now, as to why end it...



That it can't have one side win completely is just a reason to contain the conflict regionally. Conflicts between the races/factions by default carry more investment than against the villain of the week because people actually play them and are invested in their themes and characters. By extension, there's actual stakes involved and since the enemy is not just some evil monster but someone with a motive, the conflicts can be morally grey. Vanilla, Wrath and Cataclysm all handled this pretty decently, the final one far more so on the Horde side than the Ally one because many ally wins were sidelined and downplayed.

As for the bigger enemy thing, that's always been a meme, in the same way that the heat death of the universe is more dangerous than the man with a gun threatening you in some broader sense, but if you don't solve the latter problem, you're never gonna get to the former. The presence of big bads doesn't mean that the factions don't have irreconcilable differences in ideology, resource requirements or territorial demands.

I never felt "invested" into Faction Conflict? Scarred by it? Shamed by it? Bored by it? Tired of it? Afraid of possible shitty endings of it? Sure. Invested? Never. I never cared about this stupid Horde VS Alliance thing after MoP. I hoesntly never found it engaging. Maybe because i dont like PvP at all, amybe not. Many players would agree with that i bet. I would rather wait for the next Big Bad or some kind of cataclysm or anything then just sit and wait for another "Horde attacks Alliance weakly reacts" bullcrap ontray. It causes me to cringe and yawn or sigh in desperation but not to #fistbump or feel any kind of pride or involvement. Maybe thats because i played both sides and seeing things from Alliance perspective makes faction conflict look like the worst part of the game. Cuz kiddigloves we wear and all that.

[Dagoth Ur]

My guess is Azshara will become the big bad of the expac by taking an opportunity to double cross Nzoth

I have a feeling something like this is gonna be it. Azshara just seems too vain and self absorbed to serve someone else. Could be the big twist is simply that she's trying to play him too.

Interesting bit though is that she'll supposedly participate in faction war. Must be where the whole Sylvanas & Ashvane thing comes into play.

[styil]

8.2 cant come soon enough..

9.0 can't come soon enough.

[Kelathos]

Let's wildly speculate.

Azshara's rise is about her as an ally against the void. With her might we overthrow both the old gods and the new!

[Varodoc]

Certainly Azshara and N'zoth have to survive this expansion. Otherwise what main villains are left for future expansions? Bolvar? Oh, you mean Arthas on fire? B-O-R-I-N-G.

[Athredas]

This is a stupid storyline, and nothing Azshara does can truly redeem it. This expansion should have just been about Azshara and the Old Gods from the beginning. What a mess of an expansion, I can't wait for 9.0. Nothing could ever be worse than this ridiculous faction war, and I hate how Blizzard wants to stain Azshara by having her participate in that garbage faction war plot. Azshara deserves her own separate narrative.

Yes, because God awful Lovecraftian rip-offs and Star Wars EU-tier stories are soooo exciting....not.

[Aleksej89]

The unexpected twist is that azshara used to be an elf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy smokes no one saw that coming, blizzard sure pulled the curtain over our eyes.

9.0 can't come soon enough.

Also this, please speed up BFA so that we can see the next expansion class reworks and will any be even remotely interesting to play.

[ChairmanKaga]

I have a feeling something like this is gonna be it. Azshara just seems too vain and self absorbed to serve someone else. Could be the big twist is simply that she's trying to play him too.

Interesting bit though is that she'll supposedly participate in faction war. Must be where the whole Sylvanas & Ashvane thing comes into play.

I think it also fits in with those animated vignettes focusing on Sylvanas, Jaina and Azshara. I think that's a clue they are elevating her beyond a 1 tier raid boss. She may even end up bridging into the next expansion like AU Gul'dan WoD>Legion

[Super Dickmann]

I never felt "invested" into Faction Conflict? Scarred by it? Shamed by it? Bored by it? Tired of it? Afraid of possible shitty endings of it? Sure. Invested? Never. I never cared about this stupid Horde VS Alliance thing after MoP. I hoesntly never found it engaging. Maybe because i dont like PvP at all, amybe not. Many players would agree with that i bet. I would rather wait for the next Big Bad or some kind of cataclysm or anything then just sit and wait for another "Horde attacks Alliance weakly reacts" bullcrap ontray. It causes me to cringe and yawn or sigh in desperation but not to #fistbump or feel any kind of pride or involvement. Maybe thats because i played both sides and seeing things from Alliance perspective makes faction conflict look like the worst part of the game. Cuz kiddigloves we wear and all that.

I do think that you being an Alliance player has a big influence on your view of how pointless this whole thing is, in that you've been denied a real resolution or a chance to strike back for ages. You do get victories, but they're victories in the sense of something that'll aggravate the Horde player, not that makes the Alliance player happy. For example, Jaina's stunts or Dazar'alor or Siege of Orgrimmar. These things are 'technically' victories, but even only playing Alliance as a side thing, I can see how they'd be a bitch.

In the same way, I'm heavily influenced by being a Horde player and by enjoying the more contained conflicts between people with at least understandable motives, if not laudable ones. A large part of that is that when the Horde isn't being the bad guy or involved in a faction war, it might as well not exist. It's why while I get the views many Alliance posters have about just wanting this done with, I'd take years of this crap before I go through another Legion.

[VladlTutushkin]

I do think that you being an Alliance player has a big influence on your view of how pointless this whole thing is, in that you've been denied a real resolution or a chance to strike back for ages. You do get victories, but they're victories in the sense of something that'll aggravate the Horde player, not that makes the Alliance player happy. For example, Jaina's stunts or Dazar'alor or Siege of Orgrimmar. These things are 'technically' victories, but even only playing Alliance as a side thing, I can see how they'd be a bitch.

In the same way, I'm heavily influenced by being a Horde player and by enjoying the more contained conflicts between people with at least understandable motives, if not laudable ones. A large part of that is that when the Horde isn't being the bad guy or involved in a faction war, it might as well not exist. It's why while I get the views many Alliance posters have about just wanting this done with, I'd take years of this crap before I go through another Legion.

Dont get me wrong i loved Horde too. Cata was spot on for the Horde expansion but then... Despite me loving Silvermoon, Orgrimmar and goblins i just cant stand being part of the genocide. Will never be able to enoy such narrative. Maybe even for Alliance... Cant tell for sure but maybe. Might have something to do with being a slav where anything comparable to Hitler or his "lets do genocide for fertile lands" is anathema.
And Horde CAN exist outside the faction conflict, Blizz should just fire Danuser, kill Sylvanas, tone down the "manic murder" side (not neuter the Horde though) and let them have some meaningful plot that does not involves war crimes.

[Super Dickmann]

Dont get me wrong i loved Horde too. Cata was spot on for the Horde expansion but then... Despite me loving Silvermoon, Orgrimmar and goblins i just cant stand being part of the genocide. Will never be able to enoy such narrative. Maybe even for Alliance... Cant tell for sure but maybe. Might have something to do with being a slav where anything comparable to Hitler or his "lets do genocide for fertile lands" is anathema.
And Horde CAN exist outside the faction conflict, Blizz should just fire Danuser, kill Sylvanas, tone down the "manic murder" side (not neuter the Horde though) and let them have some meaningful plot that does not involves war crimes.

The Horde -can- do it, but it historically hasn't, at any point. Orcs were excluded from the resolution of their post-WC3 founding villain, behind everything that happened to them. I've rehashed it a million times, but it's still true that we spent two expansions following a WC2 Alliance character going after Gul'dan and the Legion, while no Horde character ever interacts with them at all. Not one line of dialogue. This goes back to Tirion dealing with the Lich King and so forth. This is not to downplay the Alliance following Thrall episode, but just remember that one and then think of it, except extended across two expansions.

On Sylvanas and the Forsaken there's not really much point discussing since we wont' get anywhere. I don't have your cultural background, so I don't view it from the same position to start with, so I'll keep it to this. The Forsaken, before BTS, were always one thing. Now they're being turned into something completely different that runs counter to what they have been for these 15 years. Their new direction has no appeal to their target demographic, that being the people who actually played Forsaken throughout all this time. Even with orc players and Garrosh you had a decent divide between those who liked him and those who wanted Thrall back. There is genuinely no undead player that wants Sylvanas replaced with Calia, even if they've dropped any interest in Sylvanas herself by this stage. Changing them did not require the actions they took, especially given the character turns we've seen from characters like Illidan and Genn.

No argument on firing Danuser, but Golden and Afrasiabi must go as well.

[Cyram]

Hopefully the unexpected twist is Baine choking on a murloc bone.
... now, seriously, who is she working with now, trying to betray Nzoth? Is she allied with Bolvar? Helya? Wrathion? The Island Expedition quest items could have some sort of foreshadowing.
(but yea, surely it's just gonna be a "screw you Nzoth I'm out" kind of """UNEXPECTED""" twist).

[Florena]

I'm not saying that Azshara and Kil'jaeden should have had their own expansions, but they should have played a larger role. Kil'jaeden in The Burning Crusade was an unseen threat as most of the expansion was focused on Illidan as the main antagonist. In Legion, both Kil'jaeden and Archimonde should have been the final bosses, instead of a random asspull villain, Argus the Unmaker. Instead, Blizzard brilliantly decided to waste Archimonde at the end of 6.2 in a most humiliating way, and proceeded to show some promise with Kil'jaeden's character, but dropped the ball completely in the end.

Yes it should be the same with Azshara. If she dies in 8.2, I will be very disappointed, because she deserves to play a much larger role in the storyline, her presence shouldn't be reduced to a mere patch after all the build-up she's had.

To be fair I think they should have never brought Archimonde back. No end to him in WoW was ever going to be as satisfying as the end of WC 3.