Do you think BFA’s story is worse than WOD?

[DaHomieG]

Uhh... what? WoD's story was absolutely ridiculous. The theme was complete garbage too. What in the Hell are you on about?

Were you really satisfied, after spending the latter half of the previous expansion ousting a good Warchief, to go back in time and kill Horde heroes of yesteryear in some ridiculous bizarro world? Did you somehow enjoy "One Legion, many unvierses?" Do you actually think "Time travel and Alternate Universes" are fine, and not the absolute worst sort of comic book-tier writing?

The only "good" Warchief is an orc warchief. Been that way since the First War. I personally don't acknowledge Vol'jin and Sylvanas.

And obviously the writing wasn't good but the theme was cool as shit. You can't tell me the Iron Horde wasn't fucking badass come on my guy. All the orcish clans uniting under one banner and using modern technology to create badass metal monstrosities? Shit was cash

[Razzako]

Even though BFA and its story suck balls, there's no way it's worse than WoD however you may compare them. WoD was just a massive let down, the end doesn't even make sense.

[Super Dickmann]

The only "good" Warchief is an orc warchief. Been that way since the First War. I personally don't acknowledge Vol'jin and Sylvanas.

And obviously the writing wasn't good but the theme was cool as shit. You can't tell me the Iron Horde wasn't fucking badass come on my guy. All the orcish clans uniting under one banner and using modern technology to create badass metal monstrosities? Shit was cash

He means Garrosh. The best Warchief since Orgrim. The whole previous expansion was based around overthrowing him and killing much of the orc cast in order to elevate Vol'jin and a kumbaya fortune cookie message.

While I also like the Iron Horde, they were not just antagonists, but antagonists that the game gutted by having them not even control most of Draenor and be beaten back immediately after some minor wins despite logically being more powerful. This is without mentioning that the Horde experience consisted of killing the WC2 Horde cast again, partly on the orders of a WC2 Alliance character. It's only BFA that added the fleshed out clans and the Iron Horde back into the MU Horde.

Past that, I agree with you in so far as WoD is better than BFA setting-wise and it ultimately had no impact on much of anything.

[DaHomieG]

He means Garrosh. The best Warchief since Orgrim. The whole previous expansion was based around overthrowing him and killing much of the orc cast in order to elevate Vol'jin and a kumbaya fortune cookie message.

While I also like the Iron Horde, they were not just antagonists, but antagonists that the game gutted by having them not even control most of Draenor and be beaten back immediately after some minor wins despite logically being more powerful. This is without mentioning that the Horde experience consisted of killing the WC2 Horde cast again, partly on the orders of a WC2 Alliance character. It's only BFA that added the fleshed out clans and the Iron Horde back into the MU Horde.

Past that, I agree with you in so far as WoD is better than BFA setting-wise and it ultimately had no impact on much of anything.

Honestly if Blizzard didn't rush the expansion to get their demon-boner throbbing for Legion, WoD would've been one of the best expansion we've ever gotten. The ogre continent, Faralon, etc would've been so good

[Super Dickmann]

Honestly if Blizzard didn't rush the expansion to get their demon-boner throbbing for Legion, WoD would've been one of the best expansion we've ever gotten. The ogre continent, Faralon, etc would've been so good

I don't know about the best, but I loved Draenor and the clans, so I agree. And not getting Farahlon was a crime. They'd have time to have Grom turn more naturally.

[AngerFork]

Honestly if Blizzard didn't rush the expansion to get their demon-boner throbbing for Legion, WoD would've been one of the best expansion we've ever gotten. The ogre continent, Faralon, etc would've been so good

Completely agree. Having recently gone back through the leveling while working on an Allied Race, I think that very level of quality shows in the leveling experience and had it been allowed to carry forward would have been a surprisingly good expansion.

Can you imagine if we'd gotten WoD as it was initially set up to be? A fully customizable garrison which could be moved & set on each land mass of the continent, capital cities in Karabor & Bladespire, a slow & steady rollout of each leader from the Iron Horde complete with clan story, Farahlon as an expansive land mass alongside the supposed Ogre continent to the south of the Draenor we explored. Plus that Shattrath raid.

[Magnagarde]

WoD has fuck-juggled with several very important concepts within the lore; timelines and multiverses, timelapses between said timelines and multiverses, the Burning Legion's existence across all realities and a few more that are far less noteworthy. A very important thing is how the ending made absolutely zero sense whatsoever and BfA still has to be judged on that.

The only shortcoming of BfA is that the faction conflict theme quickly turned out to not be the main drive of the expansion halfway through it. That's like a mild inconvenience compared to the clusterfuck caused by WoD in which they refashioned what constitutes a demon's deadzone, how demons can not only die in the Twisting Nether, but also possibly(?)... relatively... surely in areas super-saturated with fel too.

The Burning Legion was the one thing that overarched almost all Warcraft stories at that point in time. They were the big bad guys who did most of the bad stuff across the universe. To mess with the story concepts of such an important participant in the lore is incomparable to anything bad BfA could've brought forward.

The BfA complaints mostly boil down to individual plot executions and representations, not overarching super-important concepts like the existence of the Burning Legion. Why Anduin rushes Lordaeron without thinking about the plague, why Saurfang didn't kill Malfurion, how Derek turned out to have a body after being incinerated to ash and similar questions are mild inconveniences compared to the aforementioned, but these minor inconveniences seem to be huge problems simply because players have more personal investment into their faction and said faction's main characters.

[Rexosaurus]

It's hard for me to say if BfA is better or worse without seeing the ending, but I went ahead and voted "yea" just because this storyline is far too close to ground that we already tread in MoP.

Both of them are bad enough (so far) that I personally don't think that it matters to figure out which one is technically worse. It'd be like making fun of your friend for getting an F when you got a D-.

[Wildberry]

The only "good" Warchief is an orc warchief. Been that way since the First War. I personally don't acknowledge Vol'jin and Sylvanas.

And obviously the writing wasn't good but the theme was cool as shit. You can't tell me the Iron Horde wasn't fucking badass come on my guy. All the orcish clans uniting under one banner and using modern technology to create badass metal monstrosities? Shit was cash

Yeah, I was talking about Garrosh.

The backbone of my complaints with WoD have already been highlighted by Dickmann. To add on to what's already been said, the narrative felt absolutely awful as a Horde player. You point out that you felt the Iron Horde was badass. Sure, okay, fine. It's a lot less bad ass when you have to go kill them, your iconic heroes of yesteryear, while the Alliance gets to relive their finest RTS moments. Especially since we had just come off from an expansion dedicated to ruining the Horde.

I'm not sure killing the people "The Horde should be" for Vol'jin's Horde is satisfying at all, considering our shared perspective on the matter.

Beyond that, there's the fact that time travel is just bad. It's always tacky and Blizzard certainly doesn't have the writing skill to make it anything but. Even if we move past the widespread dislike for time travel as a concept, WoD was put in an unfavorable position due to the inherent nature of "Alternate Universe Time Travelling." Many players (rightfully) criticized WoD as a filler expansion, it certainly felt that way. It didn't have much impact on the story as a whole and did little to drive the narrative forward or seed future plots. That's just what happens when you have something self-contained like AU Time Traveling.

For WoD to have any lasting impact on the story, it required a ridiculous retcon. "One Legion, Many Universes" was the ridiculous retcon we got in order to make things work. That created far more problems than it solved, it cheapened the Legion, and was just another bad addition to an expansion with already-flimsy lore.

Honestly if Blizzard didn't rush the expansion to get their demon-boner throbbing for Legion, WoD would've been one of the best expansion we've ever gotten. The ogre continent, Faralon, etc would've been so good

Not really. I mean putting aside the horrendous gameplay philosophies, Farahlon & the Ogre continent would've suffered from the same problems outlined above. The cut content was annoying, it did feel disjointed, the fact that the plot had a section cut out, and was sewn back together haphazardly is blatantly obvious, sure. I'm not sure fixing those mistakes (Which were never the reasons WoD was bad in the first place) would have bumped WoD up to any notable degree. Maybe some people would feel like it edged out Cataclysm if that were the case, maybe, but beating World of Memecraft isn't exactly a spectacular feat. WoD certainly wouldn't have been the best expansion in terms of story even with those minor issues fixed.

[Feanoro]

"The Iron Horde was badass."

Right up until we sailed off to SMV/Frostfire, then they became the standard Warcraft passive, bumbling fools that wait for you to come use the Do Not Press button they left out with neon lights and a welcome mat. Any sense of threat went out the window when we were able to build garrisons that remained totally uncontested by this army that supposedly controlled the whole world.


Other brief thoughts on WoD, which had decent raids and dungeons, but whose story wasn't even as good as the patch 3.2 intern project.

I freely admit to not quite seeing the Horde fan's perspective here (duh), as to me, the Warlords are AU versions of mass murdering psychopaths who barely needed demonic encouragement. That said, I understand that to them, it was murdering off the characters they enjoyed, while twisting their stories. Can't blame them for not liking it.

Alliance side wasn't exactly great either, with building up Maraad just to sacrifice him for that screechy voiced idiot who was just the bestest paladin evar somehow. ("Vhot is HOPPENINK to dis whirl-uh-duh?!") People bitch about Jaina, but for personality flips, she's got nothing on Yrel. "Noooooo! It is hopeless!" 3,2,1 "I wheel fight!" 3,2,1 "Nooooooo! Vhot can ve doooooo?" We kept propping that bitch up only to be rewarded with a pat on the head as her faithful pets during her exarch ceremony.

Blizz never was, is not, and never will be good enough to handle time travel well, especially with their famous tendency to ignore anything inconvenient. The only saving grace is the AU characters weren't all sporting goatees. Exhibit A in "Blizz can't write time travel" is how it massacred the Legion and particularly Archimonde and Gul'dan. Archie takes the heroes to the one place he can be killed (until Blizz trots him out for another humiliation) and Gul'dan is a bad parody of the original.


Is BFA worse? No, but it's not too much better. More "brilliant" plot points that demonstrated Blizz's fantastic ability to paint themselves into corners ("Where the fuck are all these Alliance resources?"), build up hype and never deliver ("SAVAGE!" "Nelves will get revenge!"), and piss off their playerbase with flat out lies ("Who burns the tree?").

[Simca]

WoD was a waste of a time travel expansion and antagonists topped with a rushed and uninteresting story whilst BfA is a poor man's rewrite of MoP that makes even less sense than the last time they tried to do it with a frankly inconsistent and baffling rebellion this time around and dumb things happening all over the place. WoD is still frankly worse but BfA is one stupid ending off from tying with it in terms of quality.

I agree with your assessment completely.