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  1. #81
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Sylvanas could've
    Everything can be changed with a could've. All you are doing is showing how because you don't like the story of Shadowlands the lore could have been changed to X instead and that story wouldn't have mattered. That is true with any lore we have got. Change one, or a few, things and the story because irrelevant to anything else. We could have killed Gul'dan at the start of WoD and Legion never would have happened or the ending of WoD for example.

    Which is why after you dismiss everything with "could have" you turn to dismissing everything with the term strawman. Not to mention throwing in a dumb because you just have to insult further.

    Mists was never irrelevant, even foregoing its actually recurring worldbuilding, it removed the orcish leader and gutted the main Horde race for all time.
    So the horde leader couldn't be remove by any other means then mists of pandaria? The entire story was irrelevant because the bombing of Theramore could have happened in Cataclysm, or any other expansion, and caused him to be removed. But sure it is brain dead to accept that. Perhaps focus less on propping your arguments up with insults and actually see that any expansion can be made irrelevant with a few changes.
    "Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
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  2. #82
    No it wasnt filler, it was the finale to several arcs and an important excursion into the domains of one of the 6 cosmic powers.

    It didnt live up to the potential for a lot of players but it had issues no other expansion had, namely the covid pandemic which interrupted the work flow, and also the lawsuits that cropped up. Blizz was in terrible shape throughout shadowlands and it really shows, some problems could have been remedied with a better equipped dev team but they werent.

    It definitely feels filler though being completely inconsequential being the ONLY expansion to not release a new class or race, which was a huge pain point.

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    Everything can be changed with a could've. All you are doing is showing how because you don't like the story of Shadowlands the lore could have been changed to X instead and that story wouldn't have mattered. That is true with any lore we have got. Change one, or a few, things and the story because irrelevant to anything else. We could have killed Gul'dan at the start of WoD and Legion never would have happened or the ending of WoD for example.

    Which is why after you dismiss everything with "could have" you turn to dismissing everything with the term strawman. Not to mention throwing in a dumb because you just have to insult further.
    Is this a performance art? You respond to me telling you that without Gul'dan Legion couldn't have happened and an end boss would have to be changed by telling me that this could've been done by the Scepter of Sargeras. Then when I tell you that if you go down that route a lot of things 'could' have happened to get us to the start of DF, you take offense to the use of 'could'. Do you acknowledge that the relevance of an expansion can be determined by how many of its elements reappear and how many changes you'd have to be able to do the same beats or not? Because in your last paragraph you go much further than both your take on WoD and the Sylvanas example:

    So the horde leader couldn't be remove by any other means then mists of pandaria? The entire story was irrelevant because the bombing of Theramore could have happened in Cataclysm, or any other expansion, and caused him to be removed. But sure it is brain dead to accept that. Perhaps focus less on propping your arguments up with insults and actually see that any expansion can be made irrelevant with a few changes.
    Cutting Pandaria means no pandaren joining the factions, no monks, Garrosh still being Warchief, a lot of orcish characters still being alive and the race not being a joke and the whole continent of Pandaria not appearing. The pandaren keep appearing later, Pandaria appears in Legion, as do monks, Garrosh being dead and Vol'jin being Warchief is essential to there being a truce for Legion, etc. etc. To be able to reach the same point you'd have to maim large parts of multiple expansions. By comparison, to cut SL relative to DF would require the removal of one character, as the Shadowlands, unlike Pandaria, do not recur, and no race or class stays with the factions, who also don't change as a result of the expansion.

    The amount of changes needed show the relevance of the expansion. With most expansions, that's a lot. For WoD and SL it's very few. This isn't based on their quality either. BFA and TBC's consequences are both hugely relevant and also fucking dreadful, whereas SL is on the bad side of mediocre and WoD on the good one.

    I do take offense to being told I'm only insulting you to dismiss your argument. The two go together, like spread on a sandwhich.
    Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.

    Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.

  4. #84
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Do you acknowledge that the relevance of an expansion can be determined by how many of its elements reappear and how many changes you'd have to be able to do the same beats or not? Because in your last paragraph you go much further than both your take on WoD and the Sylvanas example:
    So then Shadowlands is relelvant because of how many past story threads ended with Shadowlands. So focused on insulting me that you missed how you defeat your own argument, right? It highlights not that an expansion if filler when something like Dragonflight comes along. But that Blizzard jumps around in the story telling to pick up past story elements whenever it is convenient.



    Cutting Pandaria means no pandaren joining the factions, no monks, Garrosh still being Warchief, a lot of orcish characters still being alive and the race not being a joke and the whole continent of Pandaria not appearing.
    And? Are you that incapable of an imagination that you can't see any other way to remove Garrosh? That orcs would be killed? No wonder you have to insult and dismiss when you can't imagine anything other then what has already happened.
    Last edited by rhorle; 2022-04-25 at 07:26 AM.
    "Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
    You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

  5. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    So then Shadowlands is relelvant because of how many past story threads ended with Shadowlands. So focused on insulting me that you missed how you defeat your own argument, right? It highlights not that an expansion if filler when something like Dragonflight comes along. But that Blizzard jumps around in the story telling to pick up past story elements whenever it is convenient.
    Shadowlands' elements are likely to come up and be relevant later, you say? I'm glad there's such keen insight in this thread, luckily some dashingly handsome commenter already pointed this out:

    Quote Originally Posted by Me
    The plot of Legion can't take place without meaningful gameplay and story alterations without Gul'dan. Without knowing he exists and what his deal is, the story doesn't make sense. By comparison, SL at large has less bearing on DF than BFA does and nothing of its premise hinges on SL having taken place. At most, character beats are affected. Overall and in the long term I expect SL to have a lot more relevance, but as it stands, WoD has had a bigger impact. Since WoD's impact is nill until the Mag'har introduction that means SL and it have the biggest claim to being filler.
    Your last sentence is a non-sequitor that I already answered in my previous post, if you actually bothered to read what you were replying to rather than running immediately to stab at strawmen:

    Quote Originally Posted by Also Me
    The pandaren keep appearing later, Pandaria appears in Legion, as do monks, Garrosh being dead and Vol'jin being Warchief is essential to there being a truce for Legion, etc. etc. To be able to reach the same point you'd have to maim large parts of multiple expansions. By comparison, to cut SL relative to DF would require the removal of one character, as the Shadowlands, unlike Pandaria, do not recur, and no race or class stays with the factions, who also don't change as a result of the expansion.

    The amount of changes needed show the relevance of the expansion. With most expansions, that's a lot. For WoD and SL it's very few. This isn't based on their quality either. BFA and TBC's consequences are both hugely relevant and also fucking dreadful, whereas SL is on the bad side of mediocre and WoD on the good one.
    Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.

    Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by Iheartnathanos View Post
    I didn’t play the last patches of BfA, but looking back there is a huge emphasis on dragon lore in those last patches. It’s amazing that the dragon foreshadowing is only paying off after this pointless excursion into robo-afterlife.

    It is sad that the worst parts of BfA were so bad because they simply served as a prologue for Shadowlands. The first arc of that xpac, ignoring Lordaeron and the war campaign, is still great.
    Imagine if we went from BFA to DF, would be much cooler. That said, we havent played 10.0 yet sooo..

    I know alot of us already think of SL as a bad & weird xpac, but in a couple of years SL will look even more silly. What was even the point of all of this? The main villain(Jailer) was useless. Ran around with his nipples and doing 5d chess with sylvanas as a pet. We just had to fight the jailer once and he was dead. Sylvanas jumped into the maw as punishment.

    The whole of SL and everything related to it is forgettable and utterly useless in all aspects.

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by crusadernero View Post
    Imagine if we went from BFA to DF, would be much cooler. That said, we havent played 10.0 yet sooo..

    I know alot of us already think of SL as a bad & weird xpac, but in a couple of years SL will look even more silly. What was even the point of all of this? The main villain(Jailer) was useless. Ran around with his nipples and doing 5d chess with sylvanas as a pet. We just had to fight the jailer once and he was dead. Sylvanas jumped into the maw as punishment.

    The whole of SL and everything related to it is forgettable and utterly useless in all aspects.
    The one that makes me saddest is Pandaria to BFA. BFA, with a little tinkering, is the perfect sequel.

    The war is over, a tenuous peace. Jaina returns home to muster an army to dismantle the Horde, only to be sentenced to death for her part in Daelin’s death.

    Warchief Vol’jin seeks to put an end to the threat of Zul and takes a Darkspear delegation to Zuldazar to treat with Rastakhan.

    What could have been…

  8. #88
    Quote Originally Posted by bloodmoth13 View Post
    It didnt live up to the potential for a lot of players but it had issues no other expansion had, namely the covid pandemic which interrupted the work flow
    That Covid excuse is convenient. What does Covid have to do with poor writing ? It can generate some delays of course, even though that shouldn't be that bad for videogames companies (unless they have moronic management), but the quality of the work should remain the same. I only see praises about Elden Ring nowadays, was it done in 2010 but somehow released in the Covid era ?

  9. #89
    Quote Originally Posted by Iheartnathanos View Post
    The one that makes me saddest is Pandaria to BFA. BFA, with a little tinkering, is the perfect sequel.

    The war is over, a tenuous peace. Jaina returns home to muster an army to dismantle the Horde, only to be sentenced to death for her part in Daelin’s death.

    Warchief Vol’jin seeks to put an end to the threat of Zul and takes a Darkspear delegation to Zuldazar to treat with Rastakhan.

    What could have been…
    Indeed. I think Blizzard to often behave like the jailer and are activly doing 5d chess when creating new lore and story for this game. They forsee(as they should) what lies years ahead and plan for that now. So we get lots of weird storylines that appears like a utter mess, but if one spends LOTS of time reading up on everything and connect all the dots, they somewhat makes sense.

    Imagine being the player that just plays the game and doesnt go out theyre way to watch YT lore videos, read the books or browse forums for story & lore info. Theres many of them and for them this games story must be a utter chaos and probably one of the last reasons they play this game. Or maybe its the first reason cause they know only the surface of it, better off not knowing everything lol.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Ophenia View Post
    That Covid excuse is convenient. What does Covid have to do with poor writing ? It can generate some delays of course, even though that shouldn't be that bad for videogames companies (unless they have moronic management), but the quality of the work should remain the same. I only see praises about Elden Ring nowadays, was it done in 2010 but somehow released in the Covid era ?
    I agree, its convinient to blame it. At worst, SL is 1 big patch short. Not "ripping the cord" on the locked Covenant choice was not a covid thing either. It was a active choice that would happen in the officer or at home. Doubt we missed out on a whole lot. The writing is what it is with or without covid lockdown. If anything, 10.0 is the xpac to suffer. Mainly being that its delayed.

  10. #90
    We went to a place that we will mostly ignore from now on.
    We learned some stuff about how the unsiverse works.
    Some main characters had their storyline continiued/finished.
    The main villain who had great plans to destroy the world didn't destroy the world and is now gone.

    Sounds like any other expansion to me.
    "And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five?
    A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head."

  11. #91
    Moderator Aucald's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Gul'dan's addition or some other contrivance could've handled the Legion's return, but the orc clans are exponentially better for Warlords having happened especially now that they've been imported into the MU and Gul'dan is better for having the screen time he did, to the point where he's the best villain in Legion purely on the back of his side materials. And the exact inciting of Legion and a part of its content couldn't take place without Warlords. If Anduin takes no role in DF, as is likely, then even that element wouldn't directly need to have been from SL to have happened, but that part at least is obviously too early to tell.
    Gul'dan's always great, but as you said the contrivance for getting him back into the MU doesn't require WoD - and any/all screen time could've been handled in Legion if his arrival was covered in-game. I actually thought AU Gul'dan was a bit underused in Legion, so giving him more screen time there instead of in WoD would be uniformly better, at least in my opinion. As for the bit about the orc clans, eh, it's a bit from column A and a bit from column B, really. WoD rang in a lot of changes and other weirdness for the clans, that while not out and out retcons due to the alternate universe nature of WoD, were kind of weird relative to previous information from WC2: BtDP and Rise of the Clans. I've never been a fan of the whole "planet of hats" trope myself, and the WoD clans being hyper-specialized into specific hats felt a bit hackneyed to me. YMMV, of course. As for Anduin, I don't expect him to appear overmuch in Dragonflight, but since the expansion deep dive says Turalyon is going to take an active role, and Turalyon is Anduin's replacement as High King, I'd say that's pretty significant as concern's Shadowlands' narrative developments concerning Anduin.
    "We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by Aucald View Post
    Gul'dan's always great, but as you said the contrivance for getting him back into the MU doesn't require WoD - and any/all screen time could've been handled in Legion if his arrival was covered in-game. I actually thought AU Gul'dan was a bit underused in Legion, so giving him more screen time there instead of in WoD would be uniformly better, at least in my opinion. As for the bit about the orc clans, eh, it's a bit from column A and a bit from column B, really. WoD rang in a lot of changes and other weirdness for the clans, that while not out and out retcons due to the alternate universe nature of WoD, were kind of weird relative to previous information from WC2: BtDP and Rise of the Clans. I've never been a fan of the whole "planet of hats" trope myself, and the WoD clans being hyper-specialized into specific hats felt a bit hackneyed to me. YMMV, of course. As for Anduin, I don't expect him to appear overmuch in Dragonflight, but since the expansion deep dive says Turalyon is going to take an active role, and Turalyon is Anduin's replacement as High King, I'd say that's pretty significant as concern's Shadowlands' narrative developments concerning Anduin.
    Gul'dan did get screwed in Legion proper, but so did all of its villains. They were its weakest part by a large margin. Squeezing it into an even shorter time frame and taking the return of Gul'dan out of the context where it worked fairly well in WoD because of the weirdness of the situation would've taken from the punchiness that was one of Legion's big advantages. It's not an either/or situation. It's good he had a lot of screentime in WoD, but he could've had a lot more in Legion and actually seen some payoff to the audiodrama. That'd also have given more room to KJ and Elisande to breathe as villains.

    As for the Clans. WoD was the first time they went properly back to the well of clan lore and massively expanded it. I'm a fan of WC2's manual take on it, less so Rise of the Horde and WoD's approach to really focus on giving each one a separate identity that's still recognizably orcish is its biggest success after WC3 and most of the lore up to then had ditched the clans in favour of making everyone but the Warsong and Dragonmaw different shapes and size of Thrall wannabes.

    Regarding Anduin, judging the relevance of SL will matter less on Anduin's absence than Turalyon's presence, because Anduin not being there could just be accomplished with him being busy whereas Turalyon acting as Regent being a plot point of its own hinges on him being away. I consider Anduin to be one of SL's successes, the Sylvanas book aside, since they hit him and it actually stuck for a change.
    Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.

    Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.

  13. #93
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Shadowlands' elements are likely to come up and be relevant later, you say? I'm glad there's such keen insight in this thread, luckily some dashingly handsome commenter already pointed this out:
    Was mentioning performance art pure projection? Because that is what you keep doing. Performing for yourself while not engaging in anything that was said. Your link doesn't even cover shadowlands being relelvant because of the stories it wrapped up. lol.
    "Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
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  14. #94
    I mean it established/set-up a creation ending threat, so unless Blizzard drop the cosmic saga shit it's not remotely filler story-wise
    Last edited by Wonderment2; 2022-04-25 at 04:46 PM.

  15. #95
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    Was mentioning performance art pure projection? Because that is what you keep doing. Performing for yourself while not engaging in anything that was said. Your link doesn't even cover shadowlands being relelvant because of the stories it wrapped up. lol.
    Yes, because that's not the point I was making. You can happily try and fail to make that point yourself as you have for pages on end while assidiously avoiding any arguments.
    Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.

    Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.

  16. #96
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Yes, because that's not the point I was making. You can happily try and fail to make that point yourself as you have for pages on end while assidiously avoiding any arguments.
    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    Do you acknowledge that the relevance of an expansion can be determined by how many of its elements reappear and how many changes you'd have to be able to do the same beats or not?
    So you weren't saying the relevance is an expansion can be determined by how many of its elements reappear? You did not qualify that with "future expansions" so past expansions is still part of the point you made. You are so intent on insults and demeaning that you can't actually make a competent argument otherwise.
    "Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
    You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

  17. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by rhorle View Post
    So you weren't saying the relevance is an expansion can be determined by how many of its elements reappear? You did not qualify that with "future expansions" so past expansions is still part of the point you made. You are so intent on insults and demeaning that you can't actually make a competent argument otherwise.
    How can something reappear in an expansion prior to it coming out? I know I can't expect much from room temperature IQ arguments, but surely basic cause and effect shouldn't be that hard to follow. Altering past information in a self-contained way isn't relevant. Whether Kael is dead and has his nipples tweaked in hell or is merely dead makes no difference to future plots. Ditto the state of draenei society before the war with the orcs. However, killing Kael in the first place does. That's why SL's treatment of the character could be construed as filler whereas TBC's can't, despite SL's treatment of the character being better. Elements that recur later are more relevant than ones that recur less and the easier something is to entirely ditch without changing anything else about the plot, the less important the plot it occupies. For this reason, SL at present is the least relevant expansion because it brings no races or classes that will recur by default and its only change to the roster is ditching Anduin.
    Last edited by Super Dickmann; 2022-04-25 at 05:12 PM.
    Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.

    Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.

  18. #98
    The Insane rhorle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Super Dickmann View Post
    How can something reappear in an expansion prior to it coming out?
    So then how was it possible for storylines from the past to appear in Shadowlands and get resolved? Lmao.
    "Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
    You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

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