"Villains need to be at least at Titan power level now to be a credible threat."

[TheFirstOnes]

wc3 ner'zhul would like to have a word with you

other than that, yeah, the new villains are all shit and painfully pushed as "an even bigger threat than daddy sargeras" bc our new villains are sooo much cooler
big news here

Tbf here, the potential "Void Titan", and the Jailer seem to be the only guys that are above Sargeras in power. The Void Lords and Elune aren't confirmed. The First Ones are tied with the other Pantheons (Such as Order and Death), which means they may be of more than 1 cosmic power in the chart. Hell, who's to say that aren't above the Cosmology Chart itself, therefore ranking them above even the Void Lords. It's highly possible.

The Pantheon of Death is only Titan level, which is basically weaker than Sargeras based on the Chronicle, etc.

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Is it not obvious? The other members of the "Pantheon of Death" are going to help us, who are probably close to that power level. Or whoever the First Ones are? Who knows. We definitely aren't fighting him on our own though. It's weird you're saying it's bad storytelling when you haven't even seen how it's been written yet.

I get that we're getting help and shit like that, but I'd much prefer it if we weren't fighting literal omnipotent cosmic gods, aid of other cosmic powers or not. I feel like peaking at N'Zoth level, or KJ level was fine enough. But, whatever, ya know? I don't hate it, but it does feel rather jarring.

[Koryn123]

If the combined power of the Old Gods was said to be enough to bring Sargeras to his knees, the void lords surely are incredibly OP. This is why you don't bring gods, planets and spaceships into a game about swords and bows and arrows and magic.

[TheFirstOnes]

Remember how, during MoP, everyone was talking about how meeting the Titans would be like an ant meeting a fucking greek god? Well, uhm, now, 4 expansions later, we're making the Titan Pantheon feel like literal kids at a playground. Again, I personally like this power creep, but it is jarring, and I can see why people hate it.

[Razion]

In terms of gameplay they only have to throw us in front of another new type of boar or wolf with bigger numbers for our characters to whimper in fear. It only takes an NPC saying it's a credible threat and then it actually being a threat to our characters in practice in terms of actually beating us when we had a real shot at winning which cements that credibility (otherwise it's just a character reduced to 1 hp quest which poses no real threat to you and has no real chance of failure either or is just inherently unfair). Threats are only not credible when they're both weak to fight and also weak in the overall scale of the narrative. But if everything kicked our butts all the time we'd never be winning and the game would be an exercise in frustration. It's important we have a lot of weaker enemies to fight as well to give things perspective.

[TigTone]

If the combined power of the Old Gods was said to be enough to bring Sargeras to his knees, the void lords surely are incredibly OP. This is why you don't bring gods, planets and spaceships into a game about swords and bows and arrows and magic.

That’s old god stuff is no longer valid. Old gods are just insects to Titans.

[TheFirstOnes]

If the combined power of the Old Gods was said to be enough to bring Sargeras to his knees, the void lords surely are incredibly OP. This is why you don't bring gods, planets and spaceships into a game about swords and bows and arrows and magic.

The Old Gods got retconned into just parasites of the Void Lords ages ago, with Y'shaarj, the strongest of the Old Gods, being weaker than Aman'thul's 2 finger tips.

[lionofwar87]

We have some quality storytelling right here... You dont need to powercreep to make good antagonists.

Fighting antagonists with titan power level every expansion is dumb, titans should be one of the most powerful entities in warcraft universe, we SHOULDNT be able to defeat an enemy with such powerlevel every expansion, We SHOULDNT be able to defeat titan level antagonists without some sort of HEAVY help.

I would like to see normal villain, ala Baron Zemo from Captain America. Someone that outsmarts the two factions.

[GucciWarr]

You guys flaming this all sound like geezers get With the times or unsub, regardless please stop ruining wow for the rest of us thanks

[MrLachyG]

We have some quality storytelling right here... You dont need to powercreep to make good antagonists.

Fighting antagonists with titan power level every expansion is dumb, titans should be one of the most powerful entities in warcraft universe, we SHOULDNT be able to defeat an enemy with such powerlevel every expansion, We SHOULDNT be able to defeat titan level antagonists without some sort of HEAVY help.

I mean technically no enemy we have fought was even close to the power of a titan. yes, Argus and Aggramar were titans but they were severely weakened. next would be the Old Gods who were no match for the Titans in terms of power.

[Koryn123]

You guys flaming this all sound like geezers get With the times or unsub, regardless please stop ruining wow for the rest of us thanks

Enjoying how Anduin can find time to defeat an army of aliens led by a Satan statue space god but still can't spare a single footman to protect Redridge from orcs, Duskwood from worgen and undead (to the point that the Night Watch finally got fed up and said "screw this" and joined the Legion after 7 years of inaction from Stormwind, 5 of which didn't have Onyxia pulling strings to cause turmoil), or to protect or feed the homeless in Westfall?

Power creep like this is what's ruining things, not people criticizing it.

"Why doesn't Anduin order Turalyon to vaporize Orgrimmar from orbit with his Army of Light spaceship?"

"Why is Anduin stressed about a navy when he has a spaceship?"

"Why is Stormwind bothering with swords and bows and arrows when they can just learn spaceship and space laser weapon technology from the Army of Light?"

"Why didn't Anduin vaporize Lordaeron at the beginning of BfA with his spaceship?"

"Why is the Horde still a threat when the Alliance have a spaceship with space lasers?"

"Why didn't Anduin tell Turalyon to use his space ship to nuke the Horde destroying the Night Elf civilization on their way to Darkshore to attack Teldrassil?"

"Why didn't Anduin have his spaceship use its light speed we've seen it use before to get to Teldrassil and evacuate everyone in his SPACE SHIP?!"

[Cronovey]

We have some quality storytelling right here... You dont need to powercreep to make good antagonists.

Fighting antagonists with titan power level every expansion is dumb, titans should be one of the most powerful entities in warcraft universe, we SHOULDNT be able to defeat an enemy with such powerlevel every expansion, We SHOULDNT be able to defeat titan level antagonists without some sort of HEAVY help.

The problem is that different players want different things. Some people won't feel more powerful (and thus won't feel as though they really progressed in a new expansion) unless they defeat the next big bad, which is a traditional thing in gaming as a whole; the enemies become more difficult as you gain power. Some people want intelligent, crafty characters to fight against like Gul'dan or Kil'jaeden who are supposed to be subtle and deceitful, but the problem is that making them into any kind of raid boss is going to require them to be powerful. How do you defeat an entity like Gul'dan, one of the original warlocks and someone who managed to deceive an entire species even in his infirm state which was looked down on and trick them into slavery, in a raid fight without him being incredibly powerful personally? Do the heroes of the game just walk up to him and kick the cane out from under his hands and arrest him, stick him in the Violet Hold to await trial and execution? That's just as boring as "HERE'S THE NEXT GUY STRONGER THAN A TITAN BUT THAT WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT" as well.

Your characters need to be growing more powerful or you feel all your actions are pointless and accomplish nothing. If the threats against you aren't stronger than previous ones, is there any challenge to it? And if you keep knocking down small fry enemies all day how are you supposed to deal with a powerful one later? Character progression through power creep is almost necessary to maintain the game; the problem is that it was just escalated far too quickly because players wanted to see familiar faces and characters and they ran through Illidan, the Lich King, and Deathwing far too quickly instead of saving them for later expansions to slow down the power creep.

Power creep is not only important but honestly necessary for gaming to still be fresh and exciting; look at what leveling in BfA felt like. As you leveled you gained nothing and your stats became worth less; this was one of the huge complaints about BfA in general was that you felt like you got incredibly weak compared to your Legion status as you leveled because there was no power gain anywhere along the way! The main problem they had was doing it too hard too quickly and now we've scaled up in power to the point that we can fight Titan avatars and Old Gods without dying instantly or being driven completely insane. However, in most of these fights there's some sort of outside gimmick. TBC had fighting Kael'thas with his own legendary weapons and Kil'jaeden being done with the assistance of blue dragons, Wrath had you receiving help from Tirion and his breaking of Frostmourne to defeat the Lich King, Cataclysm had time traveling to retrieve an insanely powerful artifact to finish Deathwing and Ragnaros being assisted by some of the most powerful druids Azeroth has to offer, etc.

Our characters aren't actually incredibly powerful in terms of offensive power, but more in defensive power. The fact that the Lich King could carve his way straight through Eversong Forest and into Silvermoon City to defeat a king with his army is impressive and then win a duel against Illidan while not even completed in terms of power is another major feat, but then we get a duo of tank players taking all that abuse the Lich King could punish us with speaks to the tankiness of player characters rather than their damage. We always have assistance when it comes to landing killing blows on major enemies because other than numbers advantage, we're actually fairly weak. It's our sturdiness that is ridiculous. Not being immediately squished into oblivion by a threat like Aggramar or the Avatar of Sargeras, not being driven insane nearly immediately by any of the Old Gods we faced before (at least this expansion there was a reason with the cloak), not just being roasted alive by Deathwing (although some certainly were while leveling), etc is honestly absurd. We're not incredible in terms of offense, we're just unstoppable predators in terms of our staying power.

[Koryn123]

snip

And yet all the power creep is doing is making people apathetic toward the story. At a certain point, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 looks exactly the same as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 despite being 1,000x smaller.

Saying we can handle gods makes you then wonder why there are any roving bands of gnolls left on Azeroth. It shatters immersion and challenges your suspension of disbelief to its limits.

If the Horde and Alliance while fighting each other can also handle space gods, then why can't the Tauren survive against the centaur well enough on their own? Why can't the blood elves completely destroy the Scourge remnants left in the Ghostlands? Why can't the humans fix Westfall, Duskwood, and Redridge? Why can't the gnomes retake Gnomeregan? Why can't the dwarves clear out Grim Batol for the Wildhammers? It goes on and on.

The story can only go on forever if it's about the exciting events and drama between groups that keep people interested, not the power level of the boss they kill.

Blizzard realized too late that they could keep this train going longer than 5 years and they blew their load with Burning Crusade especially by killing off the Illidan crew. They treat the groups and characters and countries of WoW like a kleenex, to be used once and discarded for a new one.

They could have kept things going longer by forcing the Horde and Alliance to accept the existence of certain groups as just a new reality to get used to. For instance, they should've had to try and use diplomacy with the Scarlet Crusade instead of write them off when they were a valuable ally against the more immediate threat of the Scourge.

Nothing goes on longer than the expansion it was introduced in except in a drastically reduced form.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

mudmug is now the avatar of azeroth and wields the power of all the cosmic magics while riding the corpse of a light empowered deathwing

[Samuraijake]

We want blizzard to give us badass things...

but not too many badass things

otherwise we'll go beat up badass villains

and then complain that we've become too badass. :/

#%!#%$# script-writers #$%Q%@#%$#$ hate blizzard for no reason @#%$#$#

[TigTone]

Villains being absurdly powerful is not something new in WoW.

The players character power comes from their weapon and gear. That’s what makes our character powerful.

Every expansion we collect and empower items to help us defeat the next bad demigods, demon lords and so on.

Our characters almost always have the help of very powerful lore figures along the way as well.

And at end of every expansion our built up power is lost or removed in some way or form.

That explains why there is still small world/village threats on Azeroth. Our characters really don’t deal with the small threats anymore like they did back in Vanilla wow.

[Cronovey]

And yet all the power creep is doing is making people apathetic toward the story. At a certain point, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 looks exactly the same as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 despite being 1,000x smaller.

Saying we can handle gods makes you then wonder why there are any roving bands of gnolls left on Azeroth. It shatters immersion and challenges your suspension of disbelief to its limits.

If the Horde and Alliance while fighting each other can also handle space gods, then why can't the Tauren survive against the centaur well enough on their own? Why can't the blood elves completely destroy the Scourge remnants left in the Ghostlands? Why can't the humans fix Westfall, Duskwood, and Redridge? Why can't the gnomes retake Gnomeregan? Why can't the dwarves clear out Grim Batol for the Wildhammers? It goes on and on.

The story can only go on forever if it's about the exciting events and drama between groups that keep people interested, not the power level of the boss they kill.

Blizzard realized too late that they could keep this train going longer than 5 years and they blew their load with Burning Crusade especially by killing off the Illidan crew. They treat the groups and characters and countries of WoW like a kleenex, to be used once and discarded for a new one.

The issue of "why are there still weak bad guys" is really just a "time" thing which is why it's difficult for them to re-use older zones without massive amounts of phasing tech. The issue with this is that it just wasn't there when the game was new so progressive zones and phasing were nonexistent until they'd already released a few expansions and let the sled hit the slope.

If they could start from the beginning with their current phasing technology for the servers, they could probably make us care a lot more about faction conflict and things like that when you've wiped out the Gnolls in Elwynn Forest, completely uprooted the Defias Brotherhood from Westfall, etc and there aren't any minor conflicts left to worry about. The problem then is that you've either turned it into "the entire game is faction conflict" at that point or you run into the same problem where there's still major threats that need to be dealt with even if the minor ones are taken care of, and you end up in the same loop of superpowered enemies or allies that need to be removed or assisted in some way. Once you solve the problems of the minor areas, the world in that area becomes neat and organized and...boring. There's no reason to go visit Gnomeregan after the Gnomes take it back, because the threat there is over and all you're doing is making the next big bad if you have it turn to a conflicted area again.

That's the struggle of any game; keeping older things relevant but still making you feel that you've actually progressed at the same time. There's no right or wrong answer for how to combat it because every player is different. I agree that they killed off some significant lore characters a little too early, but at the same time there was going to be power creep leading up to them eventually just based on how video gaming in general works. A great story with no increase in power is fairly pointless; the time could just be spent reading a book instead that doesn't cost you a monthly subscription. The trick is finding the balance, which is where they're struggling.

[Syegfryed]

Lex Luthor started out in the Golden Age as just an engineer/scientist/whatever.

Nowadays he's one of the smartest beings in the universe, in many realities he becomes President of the US, he regularly engages with / defeats cosmic-level threats, etc.

Same shit.

he is just a smart guy still,, of course he can change and base around this, they can even give him super intelligence based around other stuff, but they do not need to give luthor super strength and might abilities so he can stand up to superman in a fistcuff, so "every superman villain must be of Darkseid lv of power"


the point is we don't need super villains more powerful than the last, and keep escalating to feel fulfillment, if the story is good and plot is good, the power lv is not the key point.

i mean just in a wow example, we went from a world shatter experience with a giant dragon who would destroy the earth to just a well armed Orcish army, Garrosh didn't need to be on Deathwing or Arthas lv of power for people to feel "fulfilled"

[S2H]

We have some quality storytelling right here... You dont need to powercreep to make good antagonists.

Fighting antagonists with titan power level every expansion is dumb, titans should be one of the most powerful entities in warcraft universe, we SHOULDNT be able to defeat an enemy with such powerlevel every expansion, We SHOULDNT be able to defeat titan level antagonists without some sort of HEAVY help.

Legendary artifact weapons blessed by titans

Empowered by actual titans

[TheFirstOnes]

I kinda love how we're getting more powerful by each expansion? Beating up gods and other cosmic entities gives me life, ngl.

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Legendary artifact weapons blessed by titans

Empowered by actual titans

You mean the spirits of the Titans? I mean, yeah, they helped and all, but it was mostly cosmetic help against Argus' other crazy abilities + Sargeras' abilities such as Sargeras' gaze, the Chains of Sargeras, etc. Most of the fight, outside of phase 3 with the Titanforging amps, came from our power alone. Meanwhile, Sargeras was empowering Argus to the point where he literally amp'd up the tortured World Soul with his own energy, making him stronger than Time itself.

[NoiseTank13]

Power creep probably would be far less of an issue if Blizzards abuse and molestation of the "rule of cool" wasn't so brutal.