1. #1

    Thumbs up The best thing about BFA was... the creativity of the fan theories

    Nature abhors a vacuum. When official creativity was lacking, the community was compelled to step up. And y'all were amazing.

    From the moment the expansion was announced and we saw images of Teldrassil burning, the community went into overdrive to crowdsource the most creative, imaginative, reasonable, logical, and just plain awesome ideas of how it could happen, what led to it, what the repurcussions would be, and what it would mean for the 4th War.


    All throughout the expansion, from Uldir to Azshara to Sylvanas to N'zoth, all the way to the next expansion and how this one would seamlessly lead to it, the (proven fake) fan theories were amazing. I loved them all, and loved watching them grow and expand and was awed at how the community worked together to form extraordinary creative wonders.

    Even when the biggest and most popular fan theory about the Shadowlands expansion broke (the one where we literally kill each other in the last "War for Azeroth" raid and Sylvanas leads us post-mortem into the Shadowlands to prepare us to fight the Old Gods, who fear undeath) was brilliant.

    In those weeks that followed, people were disecting the legitimacy of the "leaked" screenshots of ghostly armies at the harbor, and every time I turned the game on and saw the BFA login screen that showed a desolate battlefield amidst ruins, with carrion hunters circling over corpseless armor and weapons, I thought to myself "It makes sense! The login screen was the biggest clue of The Grand Design! It shows a terrible aftermath of the war; a lifeless world because we killed each other and now we're off in the Shadowlands; the only place immune from Old God corruption, and when beat N'zoth and return years later, Azeroth is forever changed! World revamp, here we come!!!


    Of course, it was all false. And the reality was so very, very, very underwhelming, unimaginative, nonsensical and borderline insulting.

    But damn, I will always remember how BFA brought the entire WoW community together out of necessity because the story was so creatively bankrupt, and from start to finish everyone kept theorizing and scriptwriting and predicting all the ways the story could be salvaged and made awesome. So many ideas thrown around, so many turns taken, all those glorious theories and story developments that kept emerging every step of the way throughout BFA.

    That's what I will always remember about this expansion; how at every chapter of the War campaign, the community crowdsourced such creative, imaginative, logical and brilliant alternatives to fill the plot holes we were perpetually fed. Every step of the way, the community came up with better ideas of what could have happened, and brilliant ideas of where things could go from here to salvage the story... and when Blizzard let us down again, the community did it all over again. And again and again and again.

    Seriously, the story ideas you people came up with all throughout this expansion were nothing short of amazing. You came up with them because you were forced to, and they were great. I loved them all.

  2. #2
    Epic! Merryck's Avatar
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    I'm convinced I could've come up with a better story for BfA than the current writers. It was so unimaginative and weak. sad.

    I've dreamt up better worlds and narratives in my head 15 minutes before sleeping.
    Last edited by Merryck; 2020-01-25 at 04:11 AM.

  3. #3
    The fan theories were better than BFA, correct.

  4. #4
    I am Murloc! Maljinwo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by thottstation View Post
    Even when the biggest and most popular fan theory about the Shadowlands expansion broke (the one where we literally kill each other in the last "War for Azeroth" raid and Sylvanas leads us post-mortem into the Shadowlands to prepare us to fight the Old Gods, who fear undeath) was brilliant.
    Brilliant until you realize that the Void doesn't give a damn about undeath and there are even undead made by the void


    But yes, the Theories were better than the actual product simply because the theories more or less didn't retcon half of the past to accomodate for the clusterfuck of a storyline that BfA has
    This world don't give us nothing. It be our lot to suffer... and our duty to fight back.

  5. #5
    I remember the theories leading up to the burning. Everything from Old God corruption (everyone felt like the war plot would give way to an old god plot) to Sylvanas underestimating her Azerite weaponry and being remorseful, to the tree being full of azerite and reacting to a firebombing too drastically to exactly the same result.

    And then it turns out Sylvanas was just being petty and serving her agenda of killing people, while Blizzard insisted she was morally grey for committing genocide on civilian Night Elves and damning them all to superhell. (their "She's not evil, just wait and see" defense of her is going to hang like an albatross around the writing team's neck for the rest of the game's lifecycle at this point.)

    Some of the fake leaks or Next Expansion Wants that never pretended to be leaks also sounded so much better than the hook we ended up getting for SL.
    Last edited by Veluren; 2020-01-25 at 04:38 AM.

  6. #6
    Yep the cherry on top of the shitty lore was N’Zoth getting Dragon Ball Z Kamehameha’d and the tower falling like at the end of Lord of the Rings.

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