WoW’s “feel” of the world.

[Ameonna]

I guess it’s mostly about Sargeras for me. Not having a clear enemy, just rando guys who appear at launch and get killed by the end of the xp, doesn’t do it for me.

Welp, to me you are being a bit forgetful of some points, is that Sargeras was not the only big threat since at least wrath, you had always the baddies revolving around 3 major pillars and we could establish them every expac : Legion, Scourge and Old Gods

Vanilla : A bit of everything
Tbc : Legion
Wolk : Scourge
Cata : Old Gods
MoP : Mainly Old Gods (but it was maybe the least related to any of these 3)
WoD : Legion
Legion : well Legion
Bfa : Old Gods
SL : Scourge (Death stuff)
Df : We are yet to see but you dont need to be some genius to know the Void is going to be playing out.

When you think about it, it is even before always revolving around the 3 big negative power of the cosomology they made during Legion.

And Sargeras was just ONE of these enemies, since Wrath and Yogg-saron there was already some big guesses as to who would win between Sargeras and the Old Gods, and with chronnicles they added the Void Lords above them as the big baddies (which we are yet to see)

To me you sound like these peoples who beleived and said (mostly out of ignorance) that Arthas was the big bad of wow...i dont know but, its like if you told me that Cata was ok bringing up Deathwind or Wrath with LK because "we have Sargeras waiting somewhere anyway"

[Shadowferal]

Am I the only one who doesn't mind the Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe to Warcraft? I used to take the lore seriously, now I just enjoy it like reading a X-men comic. Everythings ridiculous, nobody stays dead, goofy villains, revealing the master plan to the heroes sort of thing.

X-Men comic used to be damn good up until the mid 80s.

[Orby]

X-Men comic used to be damn good up until the mid 80s.

I went back and brought the 'God Loves, Man Kills', 'Hellfire', 'X-Tinction Agenda', 'Fatal Attraction', 'The X-Cutioner's Song' and 'Bishops Crossing' TPB, man those stories still read so well now, its actually strange how mature they feel now compared to Marvel stories today feel. And I have no nostalgia attached to those books.

[Nerovar]

It's the opposite. BFA had one of the best premises the game's coughed up and it was downhill before day one because it combined loathing that premise with a passion with being breathtakingly, incomprehensibly inept in execution.

@Nerovar

Oh, yeah, that's not even in question. We're not dishing out prescriptions here, we're doing an autopsy. BFA was the final blow, not out of nowhere. The WC3 bit is telling only in as much as the writers actually knew that their messiahs were, if not an outright problem, then a narrative stumbling block, which is why Jaina and Thrall got shunted off in the expansion to focus on the other characters who were still good to go and why when they wisely went back to Orcs and Humans for the MMO they worked to inject some more conflict in. Past that, from Mists onwards the issue hasn't been a realization that they need to backtrack, but shock that the dosage didn't kill the patient and they need to up it.

While I've gone on about how Jaina and Thrall in WC3 were themselves just versions of this and going on about how the game has strayed from that version of the Horde and Alliance as a way to critique the world peace direction is a completely lost cause since they were its origin points, the writing staff on WC3 still knew that conflict was the name of the game. The actual canary in the coal mine for harmony between homogenized parties being an end state, not a bug, much like most everything that'd later also crop up in WoW is Starcraft II.

I think BfA is interesting because in a way it was an attempt to return to form but by that time, the actual civilisational differences between Horde and Alliance races had been so abraded that the whole prospect of a war between Horde and Alliance had effectively become a logical impossibility in the minds of most players and required an absolutely farcical plot contrivance to lure them into conflict.
In other words: the world building that preceded BfA actually made the narrative of BfA impossible. At that point, we were already talking about two enlightened factions that effectively operate under the exact same moral code ("muh honour") that transcends all racial, civilisational and - as we figure out one expansion later - even cosmic/metaphysical boundaries.

With that being said, there is some degree of morbid curiosity that makes me want to see what kind of schizophrenic plot they'd come up with to start the next faction war IF they ever try their hand at that again. But expecting the setting to shift its focus on what is effectively "race wars" seems pretty unrealistic at this point.

[Le Conceptuel]

It's the opposite. BFA had one of the best premises the game's coughed up and it was downhill before day one because it combined loathing that premise with a passion with being breathtakingly, incomprehensibly inept in execution.

True, but you're actually missing one relevant element: BfA squandered two of the game's best possible premises for an expansion. The first came because the writers evidently wrote it out of a desire to expunge the faction war and reshape the faction dynamic to begin with, and the second came because the writers were too busy stomping on the burning corpse of a key component of the franchise to remember that they had actual passion for the N'Zoth/Azshara arc that never manifested tangibly because they had to wrap it up as quickly as possible to get rid of that loose thread. In addition to loathing the fundamental nature of one of their premises, they were unable to actually dedicate anything to the premise they seemed to actually care about and were building up to because they divided their attention.

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I think BfA is interesting because in a way it was an attempt to return to form but . . . At that point, we were already talking about two enlightened factions that effectively operate under the exact same moral code ("muh honour") that transcends all racial, civilisational and - as we figure out one expansion later - even cosmic/metaphysical boundaries.

That's a good summary of the fundamental failure behind BfA. In the end, it failed to manifest an interesting plot partially because of the fact that there was no real existential friction between the factions; because there was no distinction between them on any inherent or even ideological level, the only option that Blizzard could find was to render the whole thing cognate around a single conscious malefactor. This destroyed any chance for there to be any nuance in the war because there was no risk of good people coming to blows with one another over irreconcilable differences within their belief sets. The tragedy of war was wholly undermined precisely because there was a villain upon whom all strife could be effectively pinned.

With that being said, there is some degree of morbid curiosity that makes me want to see what kind of schizophrenic plot they'd come up with to start the next faction war IF they ever try their hand at that again.

Admittedly, I will disagree here. I think I can see a couple ways in which faction conflict can reemerge if only the writers actually wanted it to. I fear that I may begin to sound like the one who shall not be named in saying this, but Turalyon is currently it the head of the Alliance. This provides us with an interesting type of character we haven't really had in charge of a faction yet: someone who is simultaneously indisputably morally-good—even level-headed at times—and unabashedly hawkish. If the writers can avoid hitting him with the villain bat, I could see this presenting an opportunity for the paradigm to shift with the Alliance becoming frequent aggressors without the need to strictly define someone as a villain.

In the end, the conflict between the post-Thrall Horde and the Alliance is best manifested as one between roughness and civilization, but also of freedom and imperialism. Both sides can be fundamentally good—or at least partially-so—while also being entirely contradictory in their ideology and conduct. The Alliance can bring order and civilization, but does so at the cost of eradicating cultures and employing coercion. The Horde may preserve your culture and freedom, but is also rougher and less fair. This conflict of civilization and freedom is one which is not particularly difficult to execute effectively, yet which also enables two factions of heroes to be existentially-incompatible to such an extent that armed conflict is inevitable.

[Shadowferal]

I have to wonder...

Blizz stays the course because imo it's cheap and easy to placate most of the playerbase with little to no complexity regarding lore and story, and simply doling out "nice gimmicks." (It is what it is to me) Considering there's no change in subscription price...the current playerbase has little to contend with when homogenization becomes the rule. Indeed, many seem to cheer such.

Now if blizz wants to increase the playerbase, that would take investment. Separate servers for a reinvention of the game. All the depth a good story and (fixes to lore) can bring and a solid foundation for a game to be played on.
Sadly, while blizz might be up for a reinvestment, I don't believe they've the talent to bring back that "feel" I once had.

...just thinking aloud.

[Super Dickmann]

I think BfA is interesting because in a way it was an attempt to return to form but by that time, the actual civilisational differences between Horde and Alliance races had been so abraded that the whole prospect of a war between Horde and Alliance had effectively become a logical impossibility in the minds of most players and required an absolutely farcical plot contrivance to lure them into conflict.
In other words: the world building that preceded BfA actually made the narrative of BfA impossible. At that point, we were already talking about two enlightened factions that effectively operate under the exact same moral code ("muh honour") that transcends all racial, civilisational and - as we figure out one expansion later - even cosmic/metaphysical boundaries.
.

On the contrary, BFA's premise and conceit is so self-explanatory and its circumstances so easy to spin into a committed faction war story that the only way you could fuck it up is if you aim to do so deliberately, which is what we ended up getting. You have to actively, purposefully try at every turn, in contravention of logic to have everyone hold hands and forgive each other and ignore all their previously set up cultural markers to get to that point. You don't even have to go back for it. The idea that there's suddenly uranium deposits around and there's a possibility that Sylvanas gets her hands on them to make nukes is clean enough a motive for war over an arms race as it gets, but that's just if you keep it on the level of the present expansion.

The thing is, one thing Blizzard were right about is that Mists didn't resolve shit about the faction war because of its own poor relationship to Cata. All it did was create a brief coalition to overthrow Garrosh and gut the orcish part of the Orcish Horde. But the actual reasons that war even started in the first place - Varian being a victim of a still active Horde slave ring, the experiments under the Undercity, the orcish resource deprivation combined with being saddled with allies who aren't really much help spurring them to taking lands, none of that got solved. It just had a bandaid hastily put on and had the orcs blamed for it. The Horde didn't turn on the premise of Garrosh's war, they turned on Garrosh as an individual and the orcs at large because they didn't see their interests and the orcish ones as being one and the same. At the same time, they didn't have any actual cultural core binding them, just the skeleton of the orcish institutions. Ally-side meanwhile, your main adversary is still there and the territorial losses to both the orcs and the Forsaken still stuck, with the undead being both belligerent and the only race who grows from repeated mass death. Jaina's Warbringers on its own works as a perfectly reasonable conclusion for her and Kul Tiras to come to and to then lead into a war scenario, with the azerite emergence serving as a pretext to kick things off, in the process also roping the trolls in since it was their islands Daelin hit. Lordaeron by itself is one of the mainstays of the game, with its conquest and reconquest having legit hundreds of quests to it. Before BFA no one could even imagine that it'd be a footnote while we spent years going on about Sylvanas torching Teldrassil, being that the two had never interacted up to that point and the plot has no build up.

You can have Genn make the Patton argument that they beat the wrong enemy as the Horde institutions are figuratively and literally zombied about by the Forsaken state superimposed onto it now that Sylvanas is Warchief and make that the conflict. You can have the uranium arms race, possibly pushed on by Azshara. You can actually legitimately do the story beats that Sadfang and Sylvanas's conversation never actually got into because neither actually represented any vision of the Horde, be it value-based or interest-based, but were instead both proxies for someone else. You can show how de-orcing the Orcish Horde while keeping its skeleton about only invites trouble, especially when the main orcish reasons for souring on their allies were never solved. Even on the much smaller front, you have this whole point made about how the Zandalari hate undead and elves and yet that's the face of the group coming to their aid, but it doesn't go anywhere. The Horde's individual reasons for backing or opposing war never come up because BFA is deliberately written, unlike Mists, to have everyone only be motivated by their shared love of muh honor.

Point being, you have plenty of material and all the above is just on the racial front, notwithstanding that if you really must you can just as easily make a character drama story around Anudin and Sylvanas coming into their own as leaders, one you didn't tell because one was Jesus and the other Satan and were completely static. To produce BFA you have to deliberately not use anything you set up before and then go on to purposefully either demolish or ignore it in order to come to your conclusion.

With that being said, there is some degree of morbid curiosity that makes me want to see what kind of schizophrenic plot they'd come up with to start the next faction war IF they ever try their hand at that again. But expecting the setting to shift its focus on what is effectively "race wars" seems pretty unrealistic at this point.

There's 0 chance the current writers have anyone duke it out and while at the start of BFA the allied races ranged from mostly inoffensive (the Horde ones) to an absolute blight, but ones the plot went on to ignore anyway (LF and VE) by the end of it not only was every race clones of each other, but the factions had become mirrors of each and the Horde nixed all its distinguishing traits to become a literal red Alliance. That you can fix with some handwaves and retcons. But you won't, because the very thought of 'war' let alone 'race war' would produce heart attacks in the current writers room and calls to HR.

That said, if they were to do it, which marketing and people's boredom with world peace might get them to try, the way I see them starting it back on is first with meme characters like Volrath and that Alliance Ashran bint that you can handwave as being tongue-in-cheek and check the waters, and then move on into a regional struggle that was previously popular or meme worthy, so either Hillsbrad or Ashenvale, likely with whole new characters to not sully their babies with actual human emotion and political motive.

[Ameonna]

I think BfA is interesting because in a way it was an attempt to return to form but by that time, the actual civilisational differences between Horde and Alliance races had been so abraded that the whole prospect of a war between Horde and Alliance had effectively become a logical impossibility in the minds of most players and required an absolutely farcical plot contrivance to lure them into conflict.
In other words: the world building that preceded BfA actually made the narrative of BfA impossible. At that point, we were already talking about two enlightened factions that effectively operate under the exact same moral code ("muh honour") that transcends all racial, civilisational and - as we figure out one expansion later - even cosmic/metaphysical boundaries.

With that being said, there is some degree of morbid curiosity that makes me want to see what kind of schizophrenic plot they'd come up with to start the next faction war IF they ever try their hand at that again. But expecting the setting to shift its focus on what is effectively "race wars" seems pretty unrealistic at this point.

Actually, i very much agree with what you say here, it is why when Blizz announced the faction war as the main plot of bfa, a lot of players rolled their eyes in a like "what is this???" manner, like "why is blizzard doing lame faction war when we just united to beat the Legion in class halls?"

But there is also the fact that you had already a big faction war during Cata and MoP and that well, faction war cant really deliver because you cant have a true winner at the end since the game cant delete one faction.

Another "silly" thing with bfa faction war is that it is called the 4th war while well...there was wars between the 3rd and 4th like the one during cata/mop and its silly to not count them as wars while they were big scales wars.

[Clone]

It's the opposite. BFA had one of the best premises the game's coughed up and it was downhill before day one because it combined loathing that premise with a passion with being breathtakingly, incomprehensibly inept in execution.

Horde getting the villain bat again and Alliance having to take another one in the butt is a terrible premise.

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Another "silly" thing with bfa faction war is that it is called the 4th war while well...there was wars between the 3rd and 4th like the one during cata/mop and its silly to not count them as wars while they were big scales wars.

WC3 shouldn't even be called the 3rd war seeing how it's a collection of different conflicts that aren't related to WC1/2.

[Ameonna]

WC3 shouldn't even be called the 3rd war seeing how it's a collection of different conflicts that aren't related to WC1/2.

From what they said, they said war3 was 3rd war because it was on a world scale with the Legion, but then at this point could also say war of the ancient was "1st war" or something...

[Clone]

From what they said, they said war3 was 3rd war because it was on a world scale with the Legion, but then at this point could also say war of the ancient was "1st war" or something...

Or even the night elves' war with the trolls, seeing as how they are the predominant civilizations of their time. Or the trolls against the aquir for the same reasons. I think that's a really lame excuse.. A good portion of the participants of WC1/2 didn't even participate in WC3.

[Combatbutler]

WoW or warcraft in general was never grand, it always felt small and constrained. Whether it was in novels or the games itself, Reducing entire species to nations attached to one major city has always been shoddy world building.

[Shadowferal]

The game grew...and it grew up...then stagnated into something that tortured to death any sense of depth it had, and seems to me to be devolving into "pew pew pew..."

[Eazy]

-snip-

I totally agree.

Blizzard is slowly killing toxic masculinity/edginess/WAR from their game.

Just check out the characters that we had:
Varian - killed, Garrosh and Grommash - killed, Malfurion - in stasis. Illidan - in stasis. Sylvanas - in stasis.

The characters that we have right now:
Baine - lol. Anduin - lol. Thrall - become a father and is no longer fighting as much as before. Ebyssian - a pacifist and coward who became a black dragon aspect, lol. Sabellian and Wrathion became pathetic with the new cinematic/patch.

Inb4 someone calls it "character growth, so they no longer use violence" - fuck off, I am playing world of WARcraft, not world of soap opera.

[Super Dickmann]

Horde getting the villain bat again and Alliance having to take another one in the butt is a terrible premise.

The premise was an expansion wholly focused on the faction. The Mists 2.0 route with a tacked on ending to a completely unrelated story was the execution.

[Stickiler]

Inb4 someone calls it "character growth, so they no longer use violence" - fuck off, I am playing world of WARcraft, not world of soap opera.

That is character growth though, throwing off the violent childish tantrums and engaging with discussions

[Shadowferal]

That is character growth though, throwing off the violent childish tantrums and engaging with discussions

What "discussions?"

[Soon-TM]

I won't drink the coffee of course, but I just want to sit here and talk about how great this place used to be".

And he comes back the next day.

You seem to imply that no one should ever post about WoW if they aren't actively playing. Confirm/deny?

@Super Dickmann

BfA was a great idea awfully executed. SL was an awful idea with great execution. And DF is just a milquetoast thing all around, there is nothing particularly bad, but there is nothing particularly good either, it's just... There.

[Clone]

The premise was an expansion wholly focused on the faction. The Mists 2.0 route with a tacked on ending to a completely unrelated story was the execution.

What it's focused on isn't the same as if it's good.

[Super Dickmann]

What it's focused on isn't the same as if it's good.

Obviously not, that's the whole point. BFA's concept (faction war expansion) is very good, its execution (Mists 2.0 + Old Gods) is very bad.

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BfA was a great idea awfully executed. SL was an awful idea with great execution. And DF is just a milquetoast thing all around, there is nothing particularly bad, but there is nothing particularly good either, it's just... There.

Great is heavily pushing it for SL, even if I'm in the minority of people who thinks that when it actually got down to using its concepts, they were interesting. It had the triple whammy of BFA as its legacy, an awful concept, and having SC2 and the Cata main plot as its inspiration, which is something not even a much better story, written by much abler authors could ever recover from.

DF meanwhile is just fine. I don't feel strongly about it one way or another. What it has over BFA and SL is consistency of tone. It does what it sets out to do, and where it has missed, it's because what it's produced is boring - like the centaur, or neutered - like most of the aspect selections, and the latter barely counts given that that has been the WoW dragon default since day 1. This thread is a good point of it, because while no one can argue with a straight face it has a WC3 or Wrath tone, you'd also need to be kidding yourself to think it's even trying. It's basically Hearthstone: The WoW expansion.