Gameplay's great, but a few story rants

[Wyrt]

I know why the Primalists hate the Titans. That's pretty obvious. But we as player characters are decendants of Titan creations (as far as established lore goes). A mixture of Titan and old gods. So why would we side with the anti-titan factions?

Most of the player races are not titan creations or mutations of titan creations. It's mostly just humans, dwarves, gnomes, and orcs. Most everything else is either a natural race like trolls(and their many, many offshoots) or a race birthed from wild gods like pandaren or whatever the hell goblins are.

It is really weird that there are a bunch of dwarf primalists around, but I think all the other primalist races are not titan made.

[LordVargK]

It does make sense if you think of dragons happening AFTER natural evolution. In that sense, proto-dragons would effectively be where their dinosaur-like forms ended up evolutionarily, and then the Titans messed with stuff after that to turn them into "proper" dragons. The proto is not a misnomer in that case, even if they're the apex of their own natural evolution. It's all relative to whatever point in history you take as a reference, anyway - maybe a million years from now, we'll be known as the proto-form of whatever humans have turned into at that point. Who knows

Then the dragon evolution would be scales/leather -> scales/feathers -> scales/leather. If we talk about dinosaurs as "predecessors" to dragons.
Of course WoW canon is different, but I think it's clear that I don't like it very much

- - - Updated - - -

Most of the player races are not titan creations or mutations of titan creations. It's mostly just humans, dwarves, gnomes, and orcs. Most everything else is either a natural race like trolls(and their many, many offshoots) or a race birthed from wild gods like pandaren or whatever the hell goblins are.

It is really weird that there are a bunch of dwarf primalists around, but I think all the other primalist races are not titan made.

Well, human and orcish politics are dominant among the factions. The players themselves have fought along the titans so why would they ever turn against them?

[sensei]

Didn't you see the roundtables? They have a bunch of feminist dance graduates designing the game. This is what you get when you put ">muh diversity" before actual talent

Funny thing is that practically no one gives a shit about the story anyway. I barely got to 70 today and I was talking to people in my guild and they all hit 70 Tuesday morning and not one actually bothered to follow any of the storyline. I was talking like about that one dwarf quest where he has a story he tells you, not a one bothered to read any of it. Seems they all just picked up quests, read the objective and moved on while skipping all the cutscenes. Heck one of the options in a quest when you first start DF and they ask for the purpose of your visit is literally "You tell me. I don't read quests, I just complete them!".

[Wyrt]

Well, human and orcish politics are dominant among the factions.

This alone is enough for me to want to side with wiping out the titan scum.

[Sableye]

the problem with Evil In A Can in WoW isn't that entire continents pop up with varying frequency (in fact you could probably see DI from Wyrmcrest Temple) its that these sedicious cults somehow keep getting literally thousands of members out of thin air. Like by the amount of cultists we've killed between Classic, TBC, Wrath, Cata, Legion, BFA, and finally now DF, basically every npc in stormwind and orgrimar are simultaniously a member of the primalists, the burning legion, the cult of the damned, a twilight hammer, and also a defias brotherhood sympathizer

I mean my grandfather was a shriner, a rotory club fellow, and a mason but people in WoW are in a league of their own

[Caradras]

Once i met the third gay couple before even hitting lvl 65 i stopped reading all the quests. Blizz has gone completely woke this expansion.

- The leader of practically any faction is female and when it is a male its either a villain or becomes one or is vain, rash, brutish, impatient, weak etc.
- Black versions of any race are all over the place, ugh black elves/dwarfs. randomly dropping those everywhere is not how skin-color works. (i know it's just a fantasy game but it breaks my immersion). having whole groups being black (or any color) is fine when lore wise they come from the same place or share a common cause for this (like the green orcs). Now its just done for pandering and nothing else. Barely any white males to be found, what a coincidence.
- blatantly open gay couples and trans. Just don't mention it unless its relevant for the plot. Or mention for every other character they are straight/normal to balance it out... Iam surprised the npcs don't mention their preferred pronouns yet.

On another note, i found the centaurs very ugly (look at their faces) with similar story as high mountain Tauren. The tuskar utterly boring (i just don't see the appeal there, all they do is fish??) another elemental cult led by a dragon, seen this in cata already. Zones that remind me of Nagrand, grizzly hills and gorgrond. I mean, do ppl actually get paid to come up with this stuff? it's all just regurgitated from previous expansions. The dragon theme is very generic, and the zones lack a fantasy aspect. Taldrasxus is somewhat fantasy like with all the architecture.

Dragonriding wasnt that bad, i thought i would hate it but i only strongly dislike it. Can deal with it until normal flying comes back. Valdrakken capitol looks nice and talents are alright imo. Looking forward to what the raids r like. Shame grey/white transmog isnt in the game yet, that and new talents was what i was waiting for the most.

[Syegfryed]

You have no idea what you're talking about if you think this expansion has a bad story so far. Hell, Legions story is better than WoDs and Catas.

Legion main story was fucking awful, people just got the illusion of good because it was after WoD, but even WoD main story was bette than Legion. Its full of flaws, bad retcons, nonsenses, and the final boss is a random ass titan instead of sargeras, after streamroling the Legion home planet with a bunch of randos.

And this expansion lore is already garbage just looking t the shit dracthyr;

[Jastall]

There's some nice moments in the expansion but the overall storytelling is even worse than Shadowlands for actual entertainment value, even if it is less damaging to the franchise.

Once I hit the Centaur area I wanted to skip absolutely every single line of dialogue. I hate these fucking people and do not care about their plight one iota, just let me swoop, slash and loot.

I do think the stories of the Centaur and Tuskarr are just boring as hell. Waking Shore starts out OK with introducing the setting, the Primalists as a threat and most interestingly the Wrathion/Sabellian rivalry, but the Plains are just "evil guy from race X goes rogue and we fight him alongside good guys from race X" that we've seen countless times and not executed particularly well, and the Span hardly has a story at all beyond helping Kalecgos fix his stuff.

TBH I don't care that much, after so many poor decisions by Blizzard I'd rather the lore take a backseat to the gameplay and general setting (which I do generally like so far) than throwing bad story after bad story at us.

[Kyux]

Once i met the third gay couple before even hitting lvl 65 i stopped reading all the quests. Blizz has gone completely woke this expansion.

- The leader of practically any faction is female and when it is a male its either a villain or becomes one or is vain, rash, brutish, impatient, weak etc.
- Black versions of any race are all over the place, ugh black elves/dwarfs. randomly dropping those everywhere is not how skin-color works. (i know it's just a fantasy game but it breaks my immersion). having whole groups being black (or any color) is fine when lore wise they come from the same place or share a common cause for this (like the green orcs). Now its just done for pandering and nothing else. Barely any white males to be found, what a coincidence.
- blatantly open gay couples and trans. Just don't mention it unless its relevant for the plot. Or mention for every other character they are straight/normal to balance it out... Iam surprised the npcs don't mention their preferred pronouns yet.

I see where you're coming from about the LGBT+ couples being front and centre, but tell me this: did you make the same complaint in Classic when Tyrande's relationship with Malfurion was well known? Did you complain about Jaina and Arthas in the Culling of Stratholme? Did you complain about Thrall and Aggra in Cata? Not about how dumb their coupling/matching was, but the fact their relationship was thrust into the story?

Similarly, have you every made a complaint to date about the fact that every character in the game has been white pretty much until now?

You say a whole group should be one skin colour if they come from one place, but then immedaitely say there are no white people to be found. And the issue with black skinned people popping up all over the place, do you not think that's actually normal? Say an Alien came to the US and saw the multitude of colours of people would they think "this makes no sense and is made up" or would they draw the logical conclusion that peoples' heritage must have come from varied places and move on? We are the alien visiting the Dragon Isles.

You seem concerned that minorities are popping up. Yes it sticks out, but that's because they haven't been seen for the game's life so far. It's not being woke, it's evening the scales that have been unbalanced for almost 2 decades.

[Aucald]

the problem with Evil In A Can in WoW isn't that entire continents pop up with varying frequency (in fact you could probably see DI from Wyrmcrest Temple) its that these sedicious cults somehow keep getting literally thousands of members out of thin air. Like by the amount of cultists we've killed between Classic, TBC, Wrath, Cata, Legion, BFA, and finally now DF, basically every npc in stormwind and orgrimar are simultaniously a member of the primalists, the burning legion, the cult of the damned, a twilight hammer, and also a defias brotherhood sympathizer

I mean my grandfather was a shriner, a rotory club fellow, and a mason but people in WoW are in a league of their own

While still unrealistic, I don't think the Primalists number in the thousands by any means - I'd say they're likely just a few hundred, some of whom are likely former Twilight Cultists, some of whom are members of marginalized groups, and so on. Plus they've got a lot of cult remnants to draw upon by your own listing above, from the Cult of the Damned to the Defias, all people who are looking for a banner under which to organize and give voice to their rage. Azeroth is a world gripped by what seems like a ceaseless panoply of wars, so it stands to reason there are a *lot* of people who have agendas and desires that run toward revolution or just rampant destruction for its own sake.

[Kellorion]

O Plains took a nose dive.

Who was the N. Elf? What were goals? Is she really dead, was the final battle supposed to be that easy? They couldnt warn the Greens any other way, I cant go back to Alexstrasza and say hey the greens need to just come to the centaur in the plains, like now.

A balista? the Green are afraid of a balista? They can fight a Xavius empowered by N'zoth all day long, but they cant yaw left or right?!?!


How does Wrathion not know about Sabelian, or about the Netherwing flight? He read everything he could on Daddy D, or sent spies everywhere except Outland?

[Sableye]

Legion main story was fucking awful, people just got the illusion of good because it was after WoD, but even WoD main story was bette than Legion. Its full of flaws, bad retcons, nonsenses, and the final boss is a random ass titan instead of sargeras, after streamroling the Legion home planet with a bunch of randos.

And this expansion lore is already garbage just looking t the shit dracthyr;

legion had good villains that made sense though...

like gul'dan-2 escaping to azeroth is a conceat I admit, but such an immensly powerful warlock loose in azeroth was actually a very dangerous thing, and he brought the legion to the world again. But before that we found the emerald dream was 5 minutes from collapsing so we quickly had to fix that. then we had to infiltrate and build a resistance movement in suramar because they were using the nightwell to bring the legion to azeroth, then we took them on in their foothold, broke their leadership and went on the offense. the story flowed like a real war, with the world pushed back, regrouped, winning the important battles, and taking on the legion

[Khaza-R]

legion had good villains that made sense though...

like gul'dan-2 escaping to azeroth is a conceat I admit, but such an immensly powerful warlock loose in azeroth was actually a very dangerous thing, and he brought the legion to the world again. But before that we found the emerald dream was 5 minutes from collapsing so we quickly had to fix that. then we had to infiltrate and build a resistance movement in suramar because they were using the nightwell to bring the legion to azeroth, then we took them on in their foothold, broke their leadership and went on the offense. the story flowed like a real war, with the world pushed back, regrouped, winning the important battles, and taking on the legion

I thought Legion started out strong but sort of devolved over the course of the expansion. The initial Broken Isles story and Nighthold were very good. Tomb was pretty good. I liked KJ's conclusion with Velen.

However, I think that's where the expansion should of ended. The whole going to Argus is where it lost me. Not only was it abrupt but it sort of undermined the whole endless Legion thing it tried to set up in the beginning of the expansion. Not to mention the ridiculous world ending sword debacle. I think it would of been better if ToS was the final tier. The mid-tier was instead going to Nathreza and dealing with it in game instead of off-screen.

[Skytotem]

O Plains took a nose dive.

Who was the N. Elf? What were goals? Is she really dead, was the final battle supposed to be that easy? They couldnt warn the Greens any other way, I cant go back to Alexstrasza and say hey the greens need to just come to the centaur in the plains, like now.

A balista? the Green are afraid of a balista? They can fight a Xavius empowered by N'zoth all day long, but they cant yaw left or right?!?!


How does Wrathion not know about Sabelian, or about the Netherwing flight? He read everything he could on Daddy D, or sent spies everywhere except Outland?

The ballista bit does feel a bit wonky. Even if they're supposed to be imbued with storm magic it just doesn't feel like something that ought to be taking down dragons in one shot.

[Syegfryed]

legion had good villains that made sense though...

like gul'dan-2 escaping to azeroth is a conceat I admit, but such an immensly powerful warlock loose in azeroth was actually a very dangerous thing, and he brought the legion to the world again. But before that we found the emerald dream was 5 minutes from collapsing so we quickly had to fix that. then we had to infiltrate and build a resistance movement in suramar because they were using the nightwell to bring the legion to azeroth, then we took them on in their foothold, broke their leadership and went on the offense. the story flowed like a real war, with the world pushed back, regrouped, winning the important battles, and taking on the legion

Only Gul'dan was good but wasted.

The entire plot of Legion benefits of something that already was build and set rom over a decade, it was not their on merit, and even then, they manage to ruin it

"the legion is attacking our world" but we only fight on broken isles was a shit deal, the pre-patch was more engaging and was more fun than broken isles who suddenly have this many people we never saw or knew about.

[Aucald]

O Plains took a nose dive.

Who was the N. Elf? What were goals? Is she really dead, was the final battle supposed to be that easy? They couldnt warn the Greens any other way, I cant go back to Alexstrasza and say hey the greens need to just come to the centaur in the plains, like now.

If you're referring to Koroleth then she's a Primalist, her goal is to overthrow the designs of the Titans and institute a chaotic new world based on the elements, like Azeroth was in its primeval days. The Green Dragonflight was already present in Ohn'ahra, but focused on restoring their Oathstone and not really paying attention to the goings-on of internal Maruuk politics until the Primalists get involved. Based on her burned face it's likely she's a survivor of Teldrassil, and that means she's probably very angry and deeply disenfranchised with the world at large, hence her service to the Primalists.

A balista? the Green are afraid of a balista? They can fight a Xavius empowered by N'zoth all day long, but they cant yaw left or right?!?!

They're called "Dragonkiller Ballista" for a reason, one supposes. They're imbued with elemental Storm magic, meaning they likely fire very quickly and pack a heavy punch for the purpose of killing dragons. The Green Dragonflight also has a, let's say less than stellar, track record when it comes to fighting Xavius as well considering he corrupted their best and brightest, including their former Aspect Ysera.

How does Wrathion not know about Sabelian, or about the Netherwing flight? He read everything he could on Daddy D, or sent spies everywhere except Outland?

Ask a CDev established several years ago that Wrathion was unaware of Sabellian and the other Black Dragonflight members in Outland. Lore-wise, Outland isn't easy to access and even more difficult to get information on - he also didn't really have a reason to go there, since Deathwing apparently kept his operations there pretty hush-hush in terms of leaving info on it lying around.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

Once i met the third gay couple before even hitting lvl 65 i stopped reading all the quests. Blizz has gone completely woke this expansion.

- The leader of practically any faction is female and when it is a male its either a villain or becomes one or is vain, rash, brutish, impatient, weak etc.
- Black versions of any race are all over the place, ugh black elves/dwarfs. randomly dropping those everywhere is not how skin-color works. (i know it's just a fantasy game but it breaks my immersion). having whole groups being black (or any color) is fine when lore wise they come from the same place or share a common cause for this (like the green orcs). Now its just done for pandering and nothing else. Barely any white males to be found, what a coincidence.
- blatantly open gay couples and trans. Just don't mention it unless its relevant for the plot. Or mention for every other character they are straight/normal to balance it out... Iam surprised the npcs don't mention their preferred pronouns yet.

On another note, i found the centaurs very ugly (look at their faces) with similar story as high mountain Tauren. The tuskar utterly boring (i just don't see the appeal there, all they do is fish??) another elemental cult led by a dragon, seen this in cata already. Zones that remind me of Nagrand, grizzly hills and gorgrond. I mean, do ppl actually get paid to come up with this stuff? it's all just regurgitated from previous expansions. The dragon theme is very generic, and the zones lack a fantasy aspect. Taldrasxus is somewhat fantasy like with all the architecture.

Dragonriding wasnt that bad, i thought i would hate it but i only strongly dislike it. Can deal with it until normal flying comes back. Valdrakken capitol looks nice and talents are alright imo. Looking forward to what the raids r like. Shame grey/white transmog isnt in the game yet, that and new talents was what i was waiting for the most.

Lmao!

But they are making gay characters as fan services to the females since girls aren't gonna mind seeing two hot guys kissing and boys aren't gonna mind two hot girls kissing. They already made a lot of lesbian stuff even all the way back in 1968 from movies like Babarella etc as fan service for the guys so now they are doing the gays for the female fanservice. If you want less woke/less lgbt stuff than you can go to FFIV but that has weebs which are even worse.

Also black elves totally fit in any fantasy setting. They are basically dark elves and dark elves have been in fantasy franchise since the early days.

I agree on the centuars tho. They remind me of Morrowind modding where some of the mods made the npc faces look way too different compared to their body graphic and style.

[Syegfryed]

Yeah no, Legion story was really good for what it was. WoDs story admittedly STARTED OFF really good, but then the expansions problems soon revealed themselves, and the Lore had to suffer as a result, hence the really rushed Iron Horde stuff, no Farahlon, scrapped plotlines like the Yrel and Maraad stuff, and only 1 content patch post launch. Must I mention the "Draenor is free" bullshit?

Draenor is free bullshit is the same of "argus/azeroth" is free!!' finally, they just didn't said out loud, the final is basically the same.

We are not talking bout the overall expansion, but the main story, yeah, wod handled the story worse, because they cut the expansion in half basically, so things went rushed, but at least it was believable, it make sense how things could unfold.

Legion was just a mess, Legion invade our world, but we only fight in broken isles, Illidan is back because nostalgia, broken isles is suddenly filled with tons of races, despite being in the bottom of the ocean before(retcon), Illidan bring a portal so we, a bunch of randos, can attack the planet home-base of the Legion, who looks like a dumpster green, when ti should be a fortress impenetrable, Then He kill the army of the light god figure, IN FRONT OF THEN, and they are, yeah m8, this is fine, lets go hang around together!

Legion at least gave us 3 Content Patches with .5 mini patches, with Thal'dranath essentially being replaced by Argus and Antorus (which was quite possibly the best trade ever...).

ha yes, the planet of he LEegion, who should be their bastion of might, who could support an entire expansion on his own, its a shit final patch that we just streamroll with a bunch of people, amazing, just like emerald dream wasted.

I love that they focused on the Legion being the main antagonists, and how their presence really affected all of Azeroth.

You mean affected all of broken isles, because thats all we see

WoW Legion is how you do a Cosmic Plotline imo.

Nonsenses, retcons, and unsatisfying final, since you only beat a titan that they made for that expansion, Sargeras, who was THE antagonist of the franchise, and we do shit to him? Then he just gets imprisoned to be used again? oh waow, amazing zzzz

[voidox]

I see where you're coming from about the LGBT+ couples being front and centre, but tell me this: did you make the same complaint in Classic when Tyrande's relationship with Malfurion was well known? Did you complain about Jaina and Arthas in the Culling of Stratholme? Did you complain about Thrall and Aggra in Cata? Not about how dumb their coupling/matching was, but the fact their relationship was thrust into the story?

tbf, I remember everyone complaining about Thrall and Aggra, heck people still hate Aggra as a character today for how bad she was and their relationship being thrust on us. Heck, Metzen even apologised for all that.

As for tyrande and Malf, I mean it's a relationship built with characters from the warcraft RTS games, characters people liked. Same for Jaina and Arthas, they were fan favorite characters with history from the rts games.

Point is, there's a difference between relationships being built up over time and/or with characters people like and have history with and just random NPC couples popping up all over the place. I mean, in your examples you are talking about 3 relationships that happened in entirely different expansions spread across many years.

Now random NPC relationships are usually just w.e, but Danuser and co. are just going at it one after the other here and making it front and center and oh so blatant - that makes it really stupid, doesn't matter if they are gay/straight relationships. And it's made worse when the writers are garbage (cause you then the awful/cringe dialogue and such on top of that) and doing it to make up some stupid quota.

And this also goes for w.e relationship that suddenly pops up for more major characters - I think the Thalyssra/Lor'themar relationship is forced, rushed and incredibly badly written. That goblin/gnome relationship Golden wrote for BFA was poorly written as well. Everyone hated Jaina and Kalecgos, sylvanus and nathanos was next level cringe, I remember most not caring for Vereesa and Rhonin and the list goes on for the many straight couples that aren't liked and people voice said opinion all the time on these.

Similarly, have you every made a complaint to date about the fact that every character in the game has been white pretty much until now?

uh, well considering that WoW is a story made up of MANY non-human characters, I don't really get this. So does every non-human race need to have a skin colour range from white to black or something?

sure you can say most of the humans that have shown up in-game have been light skinned, so it's good to see more variety there for the major human characters. But I think extending this complaint to non-human races is dumb.

unless you are talking about human characters only, then ignore this.

You say a whole group should be one skin colour if they come from one place, but then immedaitely say there are no white people to be found. And the issue with black skinned people popping up all over the place, do you not think that's actually normal? Say an Alien came to the US and saw the multitude of colours of people would they think "this makes no sense and is made up" or would they draw the logical conclusion that peoples' heritage must have come from varied places and move on? We are the alien visiting the Dragon Isles.

You seem concerned that minorities are popping up. Yes it sticks out, but that's because they haven't been seen for the game's life so far. It's not being woke, it's evening the scales that have been unbalanced for almost 2 decades.

I think the issue @Caradras is bringing up, at least as far as I understand, is how Danuser and co. are retconning non-human races to suddenly have darker skin when we've never seen them have that before.

Non-human races have an established look, and they should be different from humans cause they are not freaking humans. I don't get why some people want every single non-human race to have a dark skin option, like why? doesn't matter if it's elves, they are still non-human.

and come on, there are non-human races in fiction with all sorts of skin colors, there is no stipulation that it must have a specific skin colour

e.g. we have fictional non-human races with only dark skin, only light skin, only weird color skins, some with a mix and so on. All of these are fine and there is no need to make sure every non-human race must have a specific skin option cause that's dumb, especially when it's randomly forced in with a retcon and being done for stupid quotas and whatnot :/

You seem concerned that minorities are popping up.

just a side note, lol I hope you aren't saying that in non-human races in wow... anyone with a darker skin is a minority, like wat? do we even have any information or established lore about the "skin colour distribution in orcs/blood elves/taurent/w.e"?

for one, I would hope not cause that would be really dumb and my point is that having darker/lighter/different colour skin != minority for non-human races.

[Aucald]

Let's pivot away from real-world sociopolitics and identity politics and focus instead on concerns more centric to the expansion story.