(SPOILERS) Chains of Domination final chapter cut-scene

[Lynnaroo]

I ignore WoW shit for a while and come back to the story becoming even worse. These writers are some else...

[Tripzzz]

I ignore WoW shit for a while and come back to the story becoming even worse. These writers are some else...

Lmao, same here. The end of this expac will be some serious trash based on the obvious trajectory that Danuser has laid out.

[username993720]

Can we just appreciate how much they improved their in-game custcenes with that one?

Instead of them only using /talk to convey the whole dialogue, they actually animated them accordingly. It really shows and conveys much emotion. It's about time they did that.

[Nerovar]

Pretty much the only way this villain will be worthwhile is if he at least partially wins. This has been said about tons of villains but all of them at least had some other stories to lean back on and there was enough juice in the setting conflict-wise that their victory would derail things. Such is not the case here. If the Blue Man wins, they can justify any string of nonsense for the follow-up while also allowing them to freely change any amount of poor plot lines. Additionally it'll be a feat that's all his own and not off-handedly prescribed to him by other, earlier characters.

Well, he's already got a partial victory in the form of getting all the infinity stones and flexing in front of us wearing his new armor during his "just as planned" speech. After all we're talking about Blizzard who have gone on record saying Tyrande using her new-found God powers to lose a duel to Nathanos at Darkshore was getting "her revenge for the Night Elves". So I wouldn't really get my hopes up especially if we consider how unlikely a 9.3 patch is looking with the current schedule.

[Ivarr]

Lmao, same here. The end of this expac will be some serious trash based on the obvious trajectory that Danuser has laid out.

It has already leaked actually:

Pretty much the only way this villain will be worthwhile is if he at least partially wins. This has been said about tons of villains but all of them at least had some other stories to lean back on and there was enough juice in the setting conflict-wise that their victory would derail things. Such is not the case here. If the Blue Man wins, they can justify any string of nonsense for the follow-up while also allowing them to freely change any amount of poor plot lines. Additionally it'll be a feat that's all his own and not off-handedly prescribed to him by other, earlier characters.

Or at least have his faction continue to be a threat. That's a weakness in WoW. Players are just working down a list of established villains that are being turned into loot pinatas.

At least if you kill the main villain, have a successor in place, or at least a cult that will honor their leader and vow revenge.

[Super Dickmann]

Well, he's already got a partial victory in the form of getting all the infinity stones and flexing in front of us wearing his new armor during his "just as planned" speech. After all we're talking about Blizzard who have gone on record saying Tyrande using her new-found God powers to lose a duel to Nathanos at Darkshore was getting "her revenge for the Night Elves". So I wouldn't really get my hopes up especially if we consider how unlikely a 9.3 patch is looking with the current schedule.

Yes, but nobody cares about the infinity stones or about anything he said in that cutscene, firstly because it's boring and secondly because the cinematic only exists so that Sylvanas can change her mind. The sigils and his holding rights over them are a meme for a reason. That however is actually a point in favor of having him win. Not that it'll happen, just on practical grounds. The plot now is bad, but going back to Azeroth means dealing with, as @Ivarr points out a setting that's completely decimated in terms of villains and on top of that has every character be a bargain bin interchangable peacenik. Having the Blue Man snap his fingers at the end of this gives them a fig leaf to do whatever they want going forward and adjust any number of elements that don't work. It's not like there's anything remotely worthwhile about the post-BFA status quo to lose and the likelihood that they'll bank hard on nostalgia for the next one to try and win back the crowd is very high.

[Nerovar]

It's not like there's anything remotely worthwhile about the post-BFA status quo to lose and the likelihood that they'll bank hard on nostalgia for the next one to try and win back the crowd is very high.

I'm not even sure if there even is anything to salvage in terms of nostalgia. Feels like we've killed everything off and now the afterlife is off the table as well.

[Ivarr]

This book is amazing. It's a compendium to A Song of Ice and Fire. And rather than cheaply milking its success it actually reads as an in-world encyclopedia of the history of Westeros for millenia. Kingdom after kingdom gets discussed in bizarre detail. Generations of rulers each with their own quirks and distinct fates.

And all of these stories accumulate into Ned Stark taking his sons to execute a guard of the Black Watch who tried to warn the world the walkers have returned, and on their home discover dire wolf pups, one for each child.



Even though the story will end in one giant cheesefest, for both the show and the books. What this fictional encyclopedia reveals, is that the history of Westeros has been one big cheesefest with moments of relative petty squabbles in between.

Blizzard actually managed to achieve this several times. The Dark Portal destroyed Draenor. The worlds settled on both ends. Then Archimonde almost destroyed the World Tree and Arthas scourged Lordaeron and again, the world settled. Not always in a prosperous way, but even the plague lands ended up an equilibrium scourge rather than something teetering on the brink of destruction.

What's important for WoW, as an MMO, is that within these periods of calm, all kinds of groups and communities formed. Cultists, warbands, separatists. Petty warlords that exploited the power vacuums that these massive conflicts left behind.


It's been a while since the writers allowed the world to just settle down and let these situations form 'organically'. Rather than just continuously raising the stakes for these handful of main characters, WoW would benefit enormously from just kicking back, going through each of these zones and speculate what has happened after the big bads have been removed.

Especially because these massive superheroes have been continuously preoccupied in an intergalactic war, it's suffices to say that all kinds of nasty individuals saw their chance to carve out their slice of Azeroth.

[Nerovar]

Even though the story will end in one giant cheesefest, for both the show and the books.

Some people might disagree.
https://twitter.com/stevedanuser/status/1127781070701678592?

[OokOok]

Some people might disagree.
https://twitter.com/stevedanuser/status/1127781070701678592?

Yeah he also thinks his writing of sylvannas is brilliant, so

[Ivarr]

Some people might disagree.
https://twitter.com/stevedanuser/status/1127781070701678592?

lmao I honestly forgot that.

I also liked the finale. But that's because the five books did all the heavy lifting for the show. Especially for Daenerys there's far more clues that would predict the way she would respond to finding out that nobody was waiting for her return. I expect G RR Martin to write at least that part of the books very much similarly to what happened in the show.

G RR Martin himself stated the show would have needed 15 seasons to be faithful, we got a little more than half of that.

https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-...rge-rr-martin/

[Super Dickmann]

I'm not even sure if there even is anything to salvage in terms of nostalgia. Feels like we've killed everything off and now the afterlife is off the table as well.

Even more benefit to a selective reset that brings back whatever they figure will rake in the nostalgia bucks.

@Ivarr

I still don't get why some people were shitting on Fire and Blood. Sure the fat man should be writing the main series instead of fondling himself and lamenting how they fucked up his payday along with the show post-Season 5, but it's solid. That's said it's also inapplicable to Warcraft. By default the format of the MMO means it can't show stretches of nothing as every aspect of the story must be conducive to the end goal of killing X of something to collect Y number of its asses.

And yes, Daenerys going batshit isn't a bad route by itself, it's bad because the show sacrificed the entire point of the Mereen storyline building in that direction ('dragons plant no trees') so they could have Tyrion show up, steal Barristan's plotline and make dick jokes with Varys. Also cutting out Young Griff fucked them beyond repair as did turning Euron into the Joker/Jack Sparrow.

[Kathranis]

G RR Martin himself stated the show would have needed 15 seasons to be faithful, we got a little more than half of that.

The show did a pretty solid job (about as good as could be expected) of adapting the first three books. Three books, four seasons. The third and fourth seasons were the best the show had to offer, and was really the only time they actually have the necessary screen time to adequately adapt one of the books (two seasons for one book).

After that the show went into overdrive and crammed the next two books (four plus seasons of material) into a single season. And then in the sixth season basically used up the last handful of crumbs Martin had already divulged to them or hinted at.

That left them with seasons seven and eight to wrap everything up, but with them skipping the vast majority of books 4-6, they had almost none of the underpinning framework needed to make Dany's invasion and the final war work. They kinda just winged it, and rather than even committing to two full seasons, only did abridged seasons.

If you look at the fact that Martin intends to finish the series off with two more massive tomes, which will probably be bigger than any of the previous books if he finishes them, the reality is that the book series is barely 2/3rds complete, if that, since the first two books were comparatively short.

[Ivarr]

Yeah as a fan I'm just happy we got specific scenes done well. Like that fight in the arena, or the Red Wedding. I'll just mentally fill the rest in with what I gathered from the books myself.

If you look at the fact that Martin intends to finish the series off with two more massive tomes, which will probably be bigger than any of the previous books if he finishes them, the reality is that the book series is barely 2/3rds complete, if that, since the first two books were comparatively short.

I expect him to finish the 7th book, should his health permit, much faster than this 6th book. He's currently taking so long because he's already moving all the pieces in position for the 7th book to topple them in rapid succession.

- - - Updated - - -

That's said it's also inapplicable to Warcraft. By default the format of the MMO means it can't show stretches of nothing as every aspect of the story must be conducive to the end goal of killing X of something to collect Y number of its asses.

That's true, but it's mainly true because Blizzard is shoehorning their MMO into being a cooperative single player rather than this massive online experience.

Had they embraced and innovated towards the 'massive' aspect then they would've eased up on the self-contained stories and expanded on self-perpetuating conflicts. Storywise each major group of villains would always have vaguely known, always shrouded head honcho that remains untouchable but keeps sending forth underlings.

The bad guys in an MMO would be more similar to G-Man in Half Life. Constantly walking around in the background causing events to happen. Events that are preferably procedurally variated.

[Super Dickmann]

That's true, but it's mainly true because Blizzard is shoehorning their MMO into being a cooperative single player rather than this massive online experience.

Had they embraced and innovated towards the 'massive' aspect then they would've eased up on the self-contained stories and expanded on self-perpetuating conflicts. Storywise each major group of villains would always have vaguely known, always shrouded head honcho that remains untouchable but keeps sending forth underlings.

The bad guys in an MMO would be more similar to G-Man in Half Life. Constantly walking around in the background causing events to happen. Events that are preferably procedurally variated.

I agree entirely in principle, though I'm naff on procedural generation given how I've yet to see a single MMO do it well. Blizzard give up on every attempt at even small roguelite elements the second they aren't the proverbial golden goose. See Island Expeditions and Torghast.

Blizzard were justifiable at the start when they didn't think this'd last but when you're butchering multiple expansion baddies in a single go in Legion/BFA knowing that you're going to keep this MMO indefinitely in at worst Runescape/TOR-style conditions you run out of excuses to be this wasteful with characters and the setting.

[Ivarr]

I agree entirely in principle, though I'm naff on procedural generation given how I've yet to see a single MMO do it well. Blizzard give up on every attempt at even small roguelite elements the second they aren't the proverbial golden goose. See Island Expeditions and Torghast.

In a way World Quests are procedural gameplay in their most rudimentary setting. A humongous amount of handcrafted content, BUT distributed in a random order and with an extra layer of random emissaries providing players varied incentives to complete certain of them. Invasions should have been the next step, where they add another permutation to the amount of content that's provided through the World Quests. Because invasions are conditional on what a group of players accomplish, this would be the first foray into player-generated content.

Alas, Blizzard skirted right past this moment.

Blizzard were justifiable at the start when they didn't think this'd last but when you're butchering multiple expansion baddies in a single go in Legion/BFA knowing that you're going to keep this MMO indefinitely in at worst Runescape/TOR-style conditions you run out of excuses to be this wasteful with characters and the setting.

Yes, a more prudent writer would have constantly added loose threads to each expansion such that the story becomes renewable. The prominent role of Naga in Legion providing a segway into Nazjatar and Azshara's raid was a good move.

The Allied Race quests are probably what Blizzard intends to be the new cans of worms that are about to be opened. But it's too little, too exclusive, and also too late.

[kansor]

The bad guys in an MMO would be more similar to G-Man in Half Life. Constantly walking around in the background causing events to happen. Events that are preferably procedurally variated.

I disagree, you do need to topple the badguys otherwise it gets boring. Procedurally generated content can work but in an RPG it needs to exist within a meaningful story framework. Personally, I'm not that interested in ML/procedural generation in RPGs until it can create responsive and meaningfully customized game experiences which is a fair ways off yet. Until then it's better to handcraft the content.

[Ivarr]

I disagree, you do need to topple the badguys otherwise it gets boring. Procedurally generated content can work but in an RPG it needs to exist within a meaningful story framework. Personally, I'm not that interested in ML/procedural generation in RPGs until it can create responsive and meaningfully customized game experiences which is a fair ways off yet. Until then it's better to handcraft the content.

And yet this is what we're doing. Every week we're killing the same characters, often in the same order.

[kansor]

And yet this is what we're doing. Every week we're killing the same characters, often in the same order.

But I think people actually prefer reliving a meaningful moment to living a new moment that has no significance.

[Mic_128]

But I think people actually prefer reliving a meaningful moment to living a new moment that has no significance.

Exactly. It's like watching a movie vs 2 hours of security camera footage of a busy street.