I think the story needs a Red Wedding style surprise

[cparle87]

I don't know how anyone over 18 can still care about this story, honestly. Have you seen the covenant finales? It's so cheesy that you can't possibly take it seriously. The writers themselves are screaming at you to stop taking this shit seriously whenever someone like Kel'thuzad blurts out "FooOOooOOols!!!!!" in the most ridiculous fashion.

Blizzard has never taken themselves seriously. But there's a difference between being able to take a joke and disregarding the entire story. I also find it intensely ironic that someone with your username is talking about cheese, taking things seriously, and ridiculousness.

[Gimlix]

I didn't know the world had quotas for deaths within a family. Certainly good news

Anduin is like only interesting Alliance main character from all other factions, killing him off would give nothing good into the story.
Especially after developing him for so long as little boy till adult, who knows he might even become old man.

Sylvanas makes WAY more sense to be killed off already.

[Nnyco]

Would be nice if we actually see some alliance char die.

[Vakir]

WoW's story is already almost entirely reliant on shock to appear meaningful, though. Doing it again is just the status quo.

The Wrathgate is held up as some kind of golden goose by the community despite it being a wholly stupid conflict ball at the time and inconsistent about its origins and participants even now - Sylvanas was, or wasn't, aware? There must always be a Lich King, what a twist! ...for extremely flimsy and contradictory reasons that are only just now being addressed 6 expansions later.

Cataclysm was almost completely predicated on a forced shocking element to justify the world revamp rather than just have things happen naturally through a passage of time, and as a result by the time we hit the midpoint of the expansion there was no more justification for why Deathwing didn't simply finish the job besides "madness." He even routinely flew over zones that would have been half-destroyed the first time he did. Most of the final raid had to contrive reasons that Deathwing just flapped around aimlessly shooting damage-less fireballs at Wyrmrest rather than utterly obliterate us when it had been established that he could.

Mists of Pandaria. Theramore, plenty of other twists therein. Though actually, Mists was the closest it ever came to feeling grounded and with events being a consequence of one another rather than spontaneous cool things happening that are full of intrigue simply because.

WoD - another scary apocalyptic threat from effectively out of nowhere. Several shocking contrived character deaths. A series of character arcs that are ultimately meaningless due to a timeskip to contrive a reason for a future zealot villain group.

Legion. ZOMG, both leaders die immediately, it's just like Game of Thrones because characters are dying, you guys! Tirion's dead! You get all the weapons! But...then we go back to the Shore and immediately the same threat is weaksauce. And that's after a full patch cycle of Dalaran floating there without being shot down. Holy shit, it's Aegwynn! Argus appears in the sky, zomg! Sargeras is here and he stabs the planet, zomg!

BFA. Oh no, the planet is DYING! TWO capital cities destroyed, oh shit! Epic scene where a fleet suddenly returns all at once, what a swerve! We're finally at the big foreshadowed showdown with Zul aaaand it's pretty underwhelming. SUDDENLY N'Zoth is free aaaand it doesn't matter. Saurfang is suddenly relevant aaaaand he's gone to the shock of no one.

Shadowlands. NOW THE SKY SHATTERS and it's basically just a cool wallpaper in terms of consequences, outside the pre-event. It only happens for reasons strongly hinted, but not outright confirmed, until a fucking art book. Foreboding fortune cookie dialogue! The secondary villain still doesn't explain her motivations for a fucking year since that trailer! Spooky Shalamourne! ...except there's still no value or stakes because the character in peril has no agency or crisis of faith and is wholly unmoved. We still don't know why the fuck the Jailer wants what he wants beyond vague villain platitudes. While there's value in mystery, his rhetoric is so cartoony and silly that the shock of his actions don't matter.

The thing about shocking developments is they need to be well-developed and intrinsically threaded into the narrative in a believable way. So much stuff built up to moments like Ned's beheading or the Red Wedding. But WoW's way of doing surprises and shocking character deaths is done almost entirely with 2-5 minute cutscenes, dialogue that consists almost entirely of made-for-trailer quotes, and a series of events that are heavily divorced from our own actions. Adding more wacky things and more characters dying isn't going to fix that because the way it presents it within the story has never been effective, and because EVERY major event in the game is treated as this bombastic event.

If everything is dialed up to 11, nothing stands out. WoW needs to go back to smaller and more intimate storytelling without the need for spectacle creep in order for some big event or character death to truly surprise me.

[Lucetia]

Sylvannas has long out worn her welcome but she isn't the only lore character who has been around forever for the sake of it. I think when we are first questing in shadowlands and the Jailer drops Baine, there was an opportunity to kill Baine right there. I don't have anything against Baine at all but that would've done leaps and bound for making the Jailer feel like a really evil and bad being. Currently he seems like a pissy guy who maybe Sylvannas is going to betray, but i certainly don't feel like "oh god this guys going to ruin and rule the world if we don't do something"

I don't want characters to die for nothing, I just don't feel the overall threat looming yet. I am however enjoying most of the expansion

In theory the Jailers intent was to kill Baine when he dropped him off the cliff as he was falling from that height, plus was poisoned and going to die anyway. The Jailer just wasn't expecting us to save him.

As for deaths, I would rather see more Alliance centric deaths for the leaders than Horde. So far we've had Varian die for the Alliance and for Horde Vol'jin and Baine, possibly Rastakhan (depending on if you want to count them as part of the Horde at the time). You could argue Garrosh too but I'm placing him in the other category where Arthas would go to since they were more villainous than sticking with the faction. Could argue Tirion but he was more of a neutral faction.

Not that it needs to be balanced in terms of numbers, but would feel a bit better for the Alliance to lose another leader type person as well. They did come close with Mekkatorque but ultimately had him survive.

[bagina]

The story needs to decide what it wants to be. Either a self-aware, over the top cheesefest or a gritty tale full of pathos. Getting mixed messages there.

[Stormwolf64]

Anduin is like only interesting Alliance main character from all other factions, killing him off would give nothing good into the story.
Especially after developing him for so long as little boy till adult, who knows he might even become old man.

Sylvanas makes WAY more sense to be killed off already.

Anduin is not in the least interesting. Wouldn't mind in the slightest if he was killed and blizzard retconned this army of light bullshit

[neocount]

I don't think the Red Wedding needed a Red Wedding style surprise. I thought it was gratuitous, disgusting, and totally unnecessary.

[rowaasr13]

Sylvannas has long out worn her welcome but she isn't the only lore character who has been around forever for the sake of it. I think when we are first questing in shadowlands and the Jailer drops Baine, there was an opportunity to kill Baine right there. I don't have anything against Baine at all but that would've done leaps and bound for making the Jailer feel like a really evil and bad being.

So, we need another start of Pandaria or another start of Legion cliche? Thanks, but no, thanks. Those "surprises" were stale already even back then.

[Amnaught]

Sylvannas has long out worn her welcome but she isn't the only lore character who has been around forever for the sake of it. I think when we are first questing in shadowlands and the Jailer drops Baine, there was an opportunity to kill Baine right there. I don't have anything against Baine at all but that would've done leaps and bound for making the Jailer feel like a really evil and bad being. Currently he seems like a pissy guy who maybe Sylvannas is going to betray, but i certainly don't feel like "oh god this guys going to ruin and rule the world if we don't do something"

I don't want characters to die for nothing, I just don't feel the overall threat looming yet. I am however enjoying most of the expansion

Look I want significant character deaths too but can we please stop killing Horde leaders

I literally fought to kill Jaina and now we're apparently buddies, just let her die.

[Swnem]

Sure, lets kill more characters. Like that doesn't already happen. It's the thing mmo's try to do all the time to invoke an "emotional" response, but it's so overdone it has no effect anymore.

Hey, maybe one day it's just the champion and a stick and it gets snapwd in two for a cheap emotional response.


You know what happens? I've seen this "movie". You start getting characters brought back to life cause there is no one else to drive the story.

Can we just give up on WoW's story already? It's always going to be some cartoony nonsense. Killing off characters any more than they alreasy do is just gonna lead to minus, not plus.

[Dimmak]

I am going to disagree. To be honest the Jailer is such an existential crisis that it dwarfs everything else we faced. Sargerous wanted to kill all life but we knew there was an afterlife. The old gods? They wanted to conquer all and you continue. Even the original horde it was just death in a world that knew death was not the end.

But the Jailer wants to obliterate it all. If we fail its not just us but everything that gets wiped out... including anyone or anything we loved back on Azeroth undoing everything we have done. Further its worse than death... its annihilation an utter end. Our characters have never faced mortality, true mortality like we are now.

The jailer sets himself far above the petty squabbles that his minions engage. He doesn't even act like Azshara who would taunt you that the generals you killed were unworthy. No every triumph we make so far he laughs off as inconsequential. Capture Denarius? Nope he already served his purpose. Unlike the Lich King we don't matter to him. Its been a long time since the big bad just doesn't care what we do.

This will be his flaw but its a different one than we've face for xpac after xpac. Here we are the saviors of the universe... queue the music.... and we get no pop on our entrance. I suspect though just when the Big J is about to succeed we'll deliver a crucial run in with a steel chair.

[AngerFork]

Totally disagree. We've had enough Red Wedding style deaths in the last few expansions to last us for a while. I definitely think that we need twists & turns, but there are better ways to do that than character deaths out of left field. Well done deaths like Saurfang's, I'm good with that style if it actually works for the story. I just don't want to have another set of Varian/Vol'jin style deaths that seemed to have no better reason than to have them.

[Jigga93]

i dont think we'll get one this expansion. I'm going with one we'll get at the start of next expansion when we go back to azeroth and see a long time has passed and azeroths changed again.

[Gimlix]

Anduin is not in the least interesting. Wouldn't mind in the slightest if he was killed and blizzard retconned this army of light bullshit

That's just you though.

[slime]

Ned Stark is heels over head about that idea.

[Nerovar]

Nothing can shock me after hearing lines like:

"I thought you believed in free will, Sylvanas!"

We also have enough GoT inspired nonsense with Daen...-- Sylvanas wanting to break the wheel or whatever.

[LordVargK]

You need likeable characters and players invested in the story to achieve a "red wedding" effect.
The story so far is meh, since Alliance doesn't care about Sylvannas at all, while Anduin is not very likeable or the definition of "meh".

Also since the scale of the Warcraft universe is sooo enormous some random character dying is nothing special.

[Oakshana]

How about no, enough characters have died recently and well they need to stop killing characters off that..aren't really done yet(Vol'Jin is one that got killed off for dumbest of reasons).

ESPECIALLY right after he had JUST become Warchief.

It's sometimes like they are just drawing ideas written on scraps of paper at random out of a fishbowl.

[LordVargK]

I am going to disagree. To be honest the Jailer is such an existential crisis that it dwarfs everything else we faced. Sargerous wanted to kill all life but we knew there was an afterlife. The old gods? They wanted to conquer all and you continue. Even the original horde it was just death in a world that knew death was not the end.

But the Jailer wants to obliterate it all. If we fail its not just us but everything that gets wiped out... including anyone or anything we loved back on Azeroth undoing everything we have done. Further its worse than death... its annihilation an utter end. Our characters have never faced mortality, true mortality like we are now.

That's wrong though. We didn't know that there was an afterlife (for all mortals). We do now, but before the Shadowlands were just a place with spooky ghosts where DKs got their horses. If it was common sense that there was an afterlife, the suicide rate in Azeroth would probably skyrocket. Why living a life where your family was slaugthered by orcs, if you could live with them in the afterlife?