We could use an expansion without any overarching theme/villain

[Drusin]

I had 1/4th of an idea the other day for an expansion to fix issues in Azeroth

edit: I thought after the Azshara raid I'd FINALLY be free of seeing people say "next xpac will be Azshara" but now all I see is "Azshara/Nzoth was wasted", will I ever be free?

[Nathasil]

I'm confused....wasn't BFA EXACTLY that?

Edit:
And most people i know (myself included) hated it. This theme worked a lot better when the player was a nobody and not the CHAMPION. Being the almighty champion and then not having an actual clear theme is the worst possible combination you can have in an MMO, imho.

[Michael Jackson]

World of Warcraft: Beaches of Tel'Abim.

I mean replace Beaches with Sands and I'm sold on the sound of it alone.
If you leave Beaches there all I can imagine is Blood Elf chicks in bikinis and pina coladas. I mean that's FINE, just not very WoW related.

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I'm confused....wasn't BFA EXACTLY that?

Edit:
And most people i know (myself included) hated it. This theme worked a lot better when the player was a nobody and not the CHAMPION. Being the almighty champion and then not having an actual clear theme is the worst possible combination you can have in an MMO, imho.

It was for the most part, but there was always some comeback to "The Horde is attacking" and "something something Old God allusion", but you're right, overall it was pretty refreshing, especially the starting zone of Alliance.

[Berndorf]

What I'd like is an expansion where everything doesn't feel so tied into faction identity and furthering the goals of your faction.

[Kyphael]

Hard pass. Mists of Pandaria is the closest concept to this idea and it was pretty boring lore-wise.

[tmamass]

I think one of the reasons pre-BC was so immersive and memorable (not that I still play that shit again, 3 characters was enough) is because there was no overarching theme being shoved down your throat at every corner.

You mean like Vanilla where the story was all over the place but wasnt good? no thank you. Vanilla was good because it was NEW and EASY accessible.

[Bryan Adam]

Snipped!

If there's an expansion without any overarching villain, then what's the purpose of the expansion? What's the catalyst behind the expansion? Theory like this could work but most of the time the catalyst behind an expansion usually requires a significant force to constitute an adventure and objective for the players to puruse.

[McNeil]

They should just have left out N'zoth in BFA and build him up to be the main villain in the following expansion as Nya'lotha as a new continent (with maybe more realms to add diversity). BFA could have been used to deal with the whole Alliance vs Horde conflict once and for all, ending with a Stormwind raid where N'zoth at the end shows himself and utterly destroys both factions, which leads up to us having to band together to defeat him in his own realm. We would still have Azshara and Nazjatar in BFA where she frees N'zoth, but 8.3 would be wrapping up the AvH conflict instead. As for the Sylvanas stuff she should have remained the warchief while leading the Horde's assault on Stormwind, wanting to ress every human to be part of her army.

The way N'zoth was tacked on during BFA felt underwhelming for someone who is supposedly one of the few remaining big bad guys left after Sargeras. He outsmarted the other Old God's, was build up in several expansions, was completely freed out of his prison, yet he decides to only attack 2 zones and we end up defeating him rather easily with another Cata ending. So much potential wasted.

[Michael Jackson]

Not gonna happen. Not with the amount of data-mining we have.

Oh..and by the way I found how story was handled in Classic total crap. I dinged 60 in EPL and basically had ZERO clue what would happen next. I remember at one point seeing 40 ppl around the corpse of Lucifron in a cave and I was like "WTF is that place and why are there so many ppl"?

I didn't even know raiding existed.

Also your examples are atrocious at best. Yeah...big surprise that an x-pac called Wrath of the Lich King would end up with us fighting Arthas or an x-pac called Legion would be about...the Burning Legion. Who could have thought that the x-pac with Ilidan in the trailer would have us fight him?

But don't worry. Guess everyone is happy you got your wish with "Battle for Azeroth" where it wasn't clear about who we would fight. We thought we heal the planet and as I hear, everybody loves how that turned out.

...and if you tell me "Oh I always knew it was about an Old God in the end" - congratz, you proved my point of "Not gonna happen. Not with the amount of data-mining we have"

Sheesh who pissed on your conjured mana strudel lol

[Thrif]

Blizzard didnt even give an attempt to explain how faction war is in any way related to N'zoth beyond the throwaway line of being stronger together, which could be applied to literally any WoW villain in the game.

I don't think it is related, just two underdeveloped stories in the same expansion. When people first saw the old god stuff in the alliance zone most assumed that it would be revealed that the war was a result of N'zoths whispers, weakening the forces of Azeroth before he emerged and took over, which is a pretty logical line of thinking.

Turns out it wasn't for N'zoth, but rather the Jailer, which we still know very little about. So it was a little plot twist to find that out, but at the end of the day we have two half-baked stories mashed into one expansion, with especially N'zoth feeling like he deserved a lot more development.

[Michael Jackson]

Yeah, I kinda expected this would be all you have as a reply.

I would glady reply more but judging by your tone I'm afraid you'd think it's a personal attack against you or something, judging by your original reply's tone.
I don't know if it's the coronavirus keeping people locked at home or you're just one of those people who's angry at everything but your tone isn't one of someone who likes to be debated with, but rather who likes to be told he's right.

For the sake of dismantling your expectations simply to show you I'm not here to fight you or whatever is going on in your head about what this thread is about:

Literally one of my main points of my original post was that you had no idea what to do. Everything was an adventure.
Me too, at lvl ~28, I was out of quests in Darkshire and I just randomly stumbled upon Stranglethorn Vale after randomly going to Kalimdor and doing low level Night Elf quests.
Kalimdor was like another planet compared to Eastern Kingdoms, aside from the Murlocs. I went from dismantling political plots and saving villagers to talking to trees and bears and fighting sea snakes and shit all overshadowed by the tragic loss of immortality of the Elves. Cool.

Yeah me too, I would hear people talk about DM runs and Molten Core and all I thought to myself is "holy shit, I don't know what that is, but I want to do it someday!".
I was a level 40 begging people to take me with them telling them shit like "I'll stay in the back I promise I just want to see!", back when there was no Youtube and attunements weren't even in my vocabulary, let alone knowledge of.

And my examples are....once again, literally one of the main points of my thread. It gets repetitive. It gets stale. The scourge the scourge the scourge. The Legion the legion the legion. The only breath in that expansion was Ulduar, which was actually exactly what I'm talking about.
It spilled some of the old god hints we got in Howling Fjord and blew them up to 11, and the titan lore was just fan fucking tastic.
And then...scourrrrrgeeeeee. Did Arthas need to be the end boss? Did we have to fight him? Literally not. He could have annihilated the Argent Crusade pretty much single handedly and we could have returned home defeated or something, instead we had to kill him in a lore convoluted way because "you get to fight Arthass!!! Yaaay."

And it's not my fault blizzard fucked up at deciding what they want. Yeah, BFA's overarching story sounded great, it was less about a big bad and more about horde/ally conflict and healing the planet.
The fact that Sylvanas got blown up to biblical power levels was shit.
Shoehorning N'Zoth was shit.
Ending was shit.
Azshara was shit.

The premise was great, the start was great, then they fucked up middle to end. So great premise, shit execution. It's not the fact there was no main villain that made it so, just blizzard's inability to decide on a story and character dev direction.

So I hope you kinda realize none of your assumed made up ideas about what I want, and what my thread is about (which was literally explained to you twice now), are right.

P.S: if your reply will be as senseless as your previous previous one, I won't bother replying. I'm not here to fight you nor to help increase your post count.

[Lochton]

Eh. I believe you need an actual theme setting the minimum or you'll go a little Stormsong Valley on the place (Mists and BFA had wide births of themes).

[matrix123mko]

BfA was a mess with many villains: G'huun, Gorak'Tul, Alliance, pirates(they weren't aware of Azshara, I think), Azshara, N'zoth, Mechagon...

[Relapses]

World of Warcraft: Beige Edition

[MrLachyG]

snip

I disagree, there were lots of overarching themes and villains; just most were limited to a patch. BfA has been the same basically

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BfA was a mess with many villains: G'huun, Gorak'Tul, Alliance, pirates(they weren't aware of Azshara, I think), Azshara, N'zoth, Mechagon...

if you think BfA is a mess because too many villains then how do you rate Classic?

[shise]

So MoP? Even the trailer presented it as a new adventure and a new beginning. Like Classic, it had multiple narrative threads, such as the faction war started by Garrosh, the reawakening of the Sha, the mantid and yaungol invasions, or the mogu. Patch 5.2 was considered to be the best MoP offered and it was about a relatively secondary villain, Lei Shen. We also didn't know what the end of MoP had in store for us. We know after 5.2 that Garrosh would be the end boss, but we didn't know exactly what was the deal with Y'Shaarj and how he'd factor into the story.

Yes, that is right. We had it 10 years ago and one tho, so it would be nice and refreshing.

[Arenchac of Suramar]

I must admit, it's kind of interesting overall to think of a set of unrelated plotlines at the start that don't have any explicit relation, but I really don't see how that could make a decent non-filler expansion overall.

Maybe if they went back to the old era of making more storyline-neutral zones, or larger expansions with various disconnected storylines that come together near the end, or even various disconnected storylines that don't have any relation as well as a main plot like most RPGs (which I think was the philosophy for early BFA, but was dropped after 8.1,) that could all be cool.

But I just really don't see them being able to properly produce or sell an expansion that's just "random stuff and also adventure," especially as the game becomes more story-driven.

[Mirishka]

I mean it isn't rocket science what they do.

It is "Big bad has arrived! We fight big bad together! Peace works! We are stronger together! Big bad dies"

Then

It is "Big bad died! Peace was great! Lets go to war! Look stupid fighting let another big bad show up! Lets fight the big bad together!"

I mean that is it.

Aha! You've exposed yourself, Blizzard writer!

[matrix123mko]

if you think BfA is a mess because too many villains then how do you rate Classic?

Classic at least had enough zones for all of them.

[Powerogue]

So more of the little-of-everything sort of stuff we had in vanilla? I wouldn't be against it, so long as the smaller stories were interesting enough.