Shadowlands Patch 9.1 New Interviews Roundup

[exochaft]

It's been around for quite awhile. Since Vanilla. We know how dragon naming works, but with Chromie apparently that's not how it works. At the end of the day it's a fictional dragon that's chosen the mortal guise of a female gnome. Not sure why people freak the fuck out over it for.

The problem is the popular trend today is to take existing content and twist it towards current-day social/political narratives that almost certainly had no bearing upon the original content. Basically, they're turning what likely was originally either a mistake, an inconsistency, or an internal joke/running gag into a huge platform that it was never meant to be. Happens quite often in games, where something goes wrong with a mechanic or crafting a story (or even a typo) but ends up staying in because the developers are fond of it on some level. The larger overall problem is that so much focus has been put into inclusion/diversity that when less effort is put into the quality of the content, it makes one wonder if the creators' priorities are in the wrong place. I don't think I'd be the only person to suggest that Blizz currently has a LOT of their priorities in the wrong place.

Anyways, I heavily object to the idea that WoW needs more real-life diversity and representation in the game based upon people needing to see themselves exactly how they are. While that may exist, that's rarely the case. When it comes to character creation, people tend to pick something that's different from themselves. Personally, I tend to make female characters for my game with certain hair/eye colors, hairstyles, etc. that I find appealing and/or match the setting of the game/story... and I'm a guy. I've never once made a character, even the male ones, look or act anything like myself. People who have the need of creating an exact copy of themselves in a game tend to be those that require self-validation in high amounts... not always, but it's pretty common.

People don't play games to immerse themselves in real life social/politic crap that's normally in their lives, they play games to escape it. Same concept can be expanded to TV and movies, as well. In general, you know the writing and crafting of media is going to be terrible when they start introducing current-day real-life social/politic topics... it's basically an updated version of jumping the shark.

[hipolnalrt]

For me the most interesting thing lore-wise is “note in Tazavesh mentions a possible seventh cosmic force. Time will tell whether the scribe has lost their mind. or if it leads to something more substaintial!”

I think Danuser just spilt the beans. Time is the 7th force.

[TheRevenantHero]

Lol wow. Sylvanas won't be dying. Yeah this expansion is a fucking train wreck of a story. It's legitimately worse than WoD.

[Ezyah]

So she doesn't die (re-die ?). That's allready a nice spoiler...

Did anyone ever believed they would actually kill her lol ?

She's gonna go full kerrigan now

[Mic_128]

Second, nobody comes to Warcraft wanting to know about the intriacices of dragon sexuality.

Someone hasn't been to the right websites.

[SinR]

Ion looks forward to seeing the community discuss and dissect what is next for Sylvanas after the events in Chains of Domination.

Well there you have it folks

[ONCHEhap]

Sylvanas is going to ascend into being a Xel'Naga and will defeat Amon in a 1v1 duel.

If we're gonna recycle shitty plotlines,why not go all in?

- - - Updated - - -

If its just that I would not bat an eyelid, shapeshifting into different races/sexes so what.

Just hypervigilant over stuff being for the sake of it, but this seems pretty low key.

Yeah,realisticly no one actually genuinely gave a shit,but this is very clearly an attempt to go after the "LGBT dollar". I must say,I don't actually know if that kind of stuff ever works,but since corporations keep doing it,I guess it does work.
I don't think anyone is genuinely upset about any kind of representation in the game,but seeing corpotrash pretend to care in order to suck up as much money as possible is just kinda gross no matter where you stand

[ExtremelyCrusty]

...........lol

[Krakan]

Wait... so we are killing off kel'thuzard a character who was tricked into serving evil out of his desire for power and recognition only to later become a compelling character pivotal in stopping the burn legion and has hand his hand in a massive amount of events as a mini boss...

...and sylvannas gets to shit up 4 expansions of plot?

[TheWorkingTitle]

"We will actually smash Kel'thuzad's phylactery this time, so he is likely gone for good after his fight in the raid."

What about the two known players that still own his phylactery from Naxx 40?

[Zeons]

I always like interviews. This was pretty nice.

[Candy Cough]

Trying not be a cyncical asshole...but what a joke product this game has become - it's hard to find these interviews anything outright laughable.

"wanted to focus on the quality" ----- as opposed to what?

And slyvannas has been a mediocre presence in the game before WoW. I'm really glad to see them anchoring their franchise on a trash character, supported by trash fanbois.

Cry some more, Sylvanas is a Queen

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Steve wanted to explore how a dragon chooses their humanoid form with the short story involving Chromie and what it would mean for a male dragon to choose a female form. It is meant to show that the world of Azeroth has love and acceptance and an opportunity for people to see themselves represented in this world.

Stop, just stop already.

[ApeDosMil]

The problem is the popular trend today is to take existing content and twist it towards current-day social/political narratives that almost certainly had no bearing upon the original content. Basically, they're turning what likely was originally either a mistake, an inconsistency, or an internal joke/running gag into a huge platform that it was never meant to be. Happens quite often in games, where something goes wrong with a mechanic or crafting a story (or even a typo) but ends up staying in because the developers are fond of it on some level. The larger overall problem is that so much focus has been put into inclusion/diversity that when less effort is put into the quality of the content, it makes one wonder if the creators' priorities are in the wrong place. I don't think I'd be the only person to suggest that Blizz currently has a LOT of their priorities in the wrong place.

Anyways, I heavily object to the idea that WoW needs more real-life diversity and representation in the game based upon people needing to see themselves exactly how they are. While that may exist, that's rarely the case. When it comes to character creation, people tend to pick something that's different from themselves. Personally, I tend to make female characters for my game with certain hair/eye colors, hairstyles, etc. that I find appealing and/or match the setting of the game/story... and I'm a guy. I've never once made a character, even the male ones, look or act anything like myself. People who have the need of creating an exact copy of themselves in a game tend to be those that require self-validation in high amounts... not always, but it's pretty common.

People don't play games to immerse themselves in real life social/politic crap that's normally in their lives, they play games to escape it. Same concept can be expanded to TV and movies, as well. In general, you know the writing and crafting of media is going to be terrible when they start introducing current-day real-life social/politic topics... it's basically an updated version of jumping the shark.

TLDR: You're probably a bigot. lol

Anyone who looks at something as simple and harmless as being inclusive by making a fictional character trans and sees it as politics, has too much time on their hands and is truly, desperately out of touch.

Cheers.

[Doombringer]

Ion is... probably the worst choice for game director at this point. Nothing personal. He's clearly very intelligent. He has a good design sense for CERTAIN AREAS OF THE GAME... but not to drive the entire thing. He's like a statistician trying to write a love poem. All data and no passion.

It's not lost on me that the devs of FF14 feel they have a duty to the players to do their best and to be as honest and connected to their base as possible. It's a philosophy to design a game that players love and will also happily spend money on. Blizzard's approach seems to be using their decades of credibility and world-building to keep players on the treadmill here, paying as they go and feeling they're too invested to leave. Or, that they love the world too much that they'll see past even the most egregious of design problems and cash-grabs.

Sad.

I was a dyed in the wool Blizzard fanboy. I look at my shelves of WoW Collector Editions, the murloc plushes we've accumulated, my Sylvanas statue... years of memories, most of them good, some even great. BlizzCon after BlizzCon. Now, it's just plain depressing at this point. Their merger with Activision was the death knell for this company. Mike Morhaime held out, but even he couldn't stay there.

[Super Kami Dende]

Steve wanted to explore how a dragon chooses their humanoid form with the short story involving Chromie and what it would mean for a male dragon to choose a female form. It is meant to show that the world of Azeroth has love and acceptance and an opportunity for people to see themselves represented in this world.

Ahahahahaha. I like that instead of just admitting that years ago they fucked up with Chromies character and gave them the naming convention of a Male Dragon in lore of Chronormu instead of Chronormi and are now trying to spin it to a "MUH REPRESENTATION FOR TRANS" shit.

Danuser is actual trash and is a major component of the decline in WoW's overall narrative.

[italian504]

I can't even believe it. Ion spoiled the only thing I wanted to see with my own eyes. My disappointment in this patch's story has already come.
Dude went full galaxy brain idea with the wording.

4 more expansions of Sylvanas here we go -_-

[Selennah]

They're not saying it's the players fault. They're simply saying there is feedback they didn't get because context changes feedback. People weren't playing it in live, and so that context wasn't there.

There was a lot of feedback about torghast and the twisting corridors in the forums during beta. Many of us who played beta got the mount frorn completing the 8 layers of TC so the context was there... the players were doing what people would do in live servers and we gave lots of feedback.. it was them that didn't read the forums at all, because lots of the bugs that we reported there over and over did make it to the tive version of shadowlands...

[qwerty123456]

Ion looks forward to seeing the community discuss and dissect what is next for Sylvanas after the events in Chains of Domination.

God damn it .......

[aceperson]

They're not saying it's the players fault. They're simply saying there is feedback they didn't get because context changes feedback. People weren't playing it in live, and so that context wasn't there.

what are you trying to say? i'm going to dissect what you said and explain why it makes no sense to me.

"they're not saying it's the players fault."

this is an easy point to understand. i don't agree with it, but the premise is clear.

"they're simply saying there is feedback they didn't get because context changes feedback."

so the devs didn't get feedback they wanted because they willingly didn't give the context the testers needed to provide proper feedback. fair enough.

"people weren't playing it in live, and so that context wasn't there."

what does playing it in live mean? they weren't playing the release version? cause they did in the late beta. so unless you can clearly explain what i'm not understanding, this sentence comes across as "the devs didn't give the players context so it's the players fault for not providing proper feedback". if blizz wanted directed feedback, why didn't they make a blog post or something on their super secret, elite players only forum that explained what they were looking for in feedback?