Yea I still can't believe people defend this level of shitty writing.. I hated BFA the second it was announced and the intro video was a big grunt armies fighting each other when the previous cinematic had laser cannons, godly entities and insane power levels. It was another spit in the face to not even explore the friendships that were built with class halls and how people feel about being on the opposite sides of war again which would have been a better fucking story but at this point its like they don't even care anymore. It is past the point of "omitting" some plot points/tool from legion going into BFA or a forcefully changing the theme or plot direction.
The whole emeralder dream is mind-numbingly insane after not only establishing for decades now that the nature souls going into to emerald dream but we have actually been there and seen it happen in the first place. Now they have the audacity to say that, oh no you know what that person you saw in the emerald dream which is a plain on the life part of the cosmology on map that we just fucking created - they actually go to emeralder dream in the death plain.
I am still waiting for an explanation on how Uther went to smurfland when he died while the cinematic itself shows him being sucked into the sword, we have seen him in the sword, it is established lore that souls were trapped in the sword, and after arthas was killed, we saw his soul in fucking uther's tomb and interacted with it! Now at the same time, he actually went to shadowlands right after his death, trained for years and came back to pick up arthas's soul when he should have been just released from frostmourne around the same time?
What about all the shadows/ghosts/wraiths etc that we interacted with over the years, which plains were they sent to and how were they able to come back to azeroth to interact with us? what about the ghosts stuck here, why didn't the smurfs pick them up and take them to shadowlands? Although rare, how does resurrection work, do you forget about the time you spent in whatever plain you went to? What happened to the DKs that we raised for example? What if we raise mograine again? Is he going to remember his adventures in the afterlives?
There is no reason to be immersed in the lore side of game or emotionally invested in anything anymore because blizz will just blatantly ignore established lore even if we personally experienced it and then spit in your face for even believing in it.
Not as bad as Maldraxxus, but nowhere near Bastion. I mean, it's not a quality problem, the videos are all beautiful. Just, Bastion went down with highly known characters and heavy implications on the story, while these two are somewhat "less relevant". I mean, i know who Draka is, but they could have put anyone else in the spot and nothing would have had the slightest change.
This one is the same thing. The story is laid out nicely, we know what the issue is in Ardenweald but the characters are all "someones". There's Ursoc, whose only role is literally to die (after being dead? superdead?). There's the Queen which is....the Queen.
I don't know. I think Bastion set the expectance really high given the names involved, i'd have released it as the last video and the perception of the other two would have been different. Well, let's see what the Venthyr one gives us.
Nobody said they were not, and they're clearly struggling with the fact that there is not enough Anima to go around. Their duty is to ensure Ardenweald remains viable for as long as possible. This is why your "rations" example doesn't work. The problem here is that the land is dying, but unlike an actual country you don't get to leave.
If they allow every grove to remain the entire land will perish quickly, imperiling ALL souls immediately AND those to come.
No one is saying what is happening isn't tragic, they're saying it's not MALICIOUS. My point is that it isn't MALICIOUS. The intent isn't to harm the soul, it's to save the friggin' realm dude.
I agree completely. It's sad when people are oblivious to this garbage-tier level of writing. It reminds me of Star Wars fan literally crying while watching the Rise of the Skywalker trailer. Consume, be excited for the next product. Consume, don't ask questions. Consume, pay up.
I liked this one the most because of the following:
1: you can definitely see that the grovekeeper has a hard time destroy his oath that he made. The queen showed him a vision of ardenweald going down. Only that made him change his mind. Remember that oaths in certain wow societies are not taken lightly by those beings. So breaking them is.... very hard.
2: The winter queen is giving him a choice even though both of them know that ursoc would die anyway, cuz of low anima. But she still showed compassion and you can see it from her face.
3: Instead of forcing him to give up the souls they tried to reason with him.
4: Bastion, well I don't understand why uther said "he was my student" since when he actually died, he said "I clearly hope there is a special place in hell for you". So it contradicts a bit. I think Bastion is liked more since you see Arthas and Uther. You don't see the problem that is occurring in Bastion. It didn't have a lot of impact, he went to the road of vengeance while Darth sidieous was whispering in his ear UNLIMITED POWER.
It seems that with Uther it's the compassion side of him showing up as the two halves of the soul merged. He still wanted justice but seeing him there helpless in his own hand and remembering the times before the culling. Yeah the special place in hell still happened but people can say things when enraged but when calmed, especially when the person they are even rightfully enraged at seem helpless can soften up.
I think the actual interesting one is the venthyr one.
Bastion was good, not great.
Ardenweald yea.. not bad, just I dont care about the fairy forest. I really liked the winterqueen voice tho.. her model or head realy feels like collyflower.. hmm.
Venthyr I am the most curious about. We might even see the jailer in there.
The issue of class halls and friendships is null when your Kingdom demands you to answer the call for war. It sucks but that's how the military works.
The Emerald Dream is just that: a dream, and through this cinematic, it is revealed to us how spirits are maintained in the dream. Slumbering in Ardenweald allows you to gather anima and be reborn into the cycle. Think of it like a coin, on one side we have our Azeroth, the other is Ardenweald and as the soul passes through it sits in limbo or the Emerald Dream gathering its strength.
Uther had his soul split in two, shown in the cinematic, not hard to miss at all. Now for an explanation of how/why we will need to play through and let the storytellers show us. It could be his connection to the light allowed his severed soul (Frostmourne side) to remain on Azeroth and interact with him and upon the shattering of Frostmourne maybe the two fragments were reunited, maybe not, time will tell. His afterlives training again was with a wounded split soul.
A lot of the spirits we interact with on Azeroth are bound to our realm through necromancy or arcane powers, others follow our lore of unfinished business and emotional baggage keeping them here (Justice, Revenge, Vengeance, Sheer Hatred). Resurrection is rare and usually explained in the quest text of the reasoning it worked for the npc, for the PC it was thoroughly explained that the Spirit Healers are the agents of the realm of death that tell us we are not ready to pass over, we refuse to leave or they won't take us yet. As for DKs and such its not as simple as killed and off to the Shadowlands, many powers of above, fight for the claim of fallen souls. Odyn sends his agents to gather the fiercest warriors, Helya claims hers, and so on. All souls pass through the Arbiter, so maybe that includes risen souls of DKs and maybe they get wiped before being sent back to us.
In conclusion, there is zero retconning going on, just expansion to the story that was broadly written to allow for more information to be added by a transitioning writing team, and 15 years of game lore is going to have some continuity issues that involve broad writing that isn't favorable to all.
I mean, yes, but they also introduce us to the way each covenant zone is functioning.
Bastion taught us about the purpose of Kyrian and the Path. It taught us about how each new soul there starts as an Aspirant and what they need to do to transcend.
Ardenweald taught us about the way wild spirits get ressurected, how the whole process of renewal looks like and how this process can be stopped, turning a soul into a fuel.
What did Maldraxxus one teach us? They supposedly serve as the guardians of Shadowlands, but from what threat? What started the fighting there? Hell, we wouldn't even know Maldraxxus denizens are able to venture into the living realm if it wasn't for a tweet - which is the ultimate proof of how this particular cinematic failed to explain how the zone is functioning.
It's not Afterlives: Uther or Ara'lon, because they are only a part of the cinematic. Meanwhile, as I said, Maldraxxus one in focusing only on Draka and how great of a saviour she is to Maldraxxus, with all the events just being there, unexplained and not really mattering.
And to be honest, the comparison to the Lords of War series is wrong, because they were specifically focused on the Warlords, Maraad and Khadgar. It wasn't Lords of War: Frostfire Ridge, it was Lords of War: Durotan.
Honestly if I could bother to put the clown putting on make up meme, it would line up with your paragraphs perfectly. This is exactly what I was talking about with person I quoted in the first place about how people will eat up and defend anything blizz does regardless of how beyond belief it is. I noticed you just decided to skip over the parts of my argument that you realized that you couldn't spin but thats ok.. I will not stick to those since you will ignore it again anyway but lets focus on what you presented.
No emerald dream is not literally a dream lol, what are you 5? Thunder bluff is also not made of thunder in case you were confused. We literally physically entered it just a couple years ago and had other physical beings in there. Beings with strong connection to nature being able to connect to the emerald dream in a dream/meditation state, doesn't change the fact that you can open a portal and walk right through. It is another dimension tied to nature and was the basis of resurrection on its own before they tied it to the life side on cosmology and pulled ardenweald out of their asses. We knew wild gods to be recovering in the emerald dream and that was where certain natural beings went to rest after they died. We saw it directly ourselves as well in both cata and legion. You need to go to mental gymnastics Olympics to convince yourself that dying on azeroth > to go to ardenweal as a pod > somehow maintain your physical shape in the dream > resurrect back to dream > then enter back azeroth while being able to connect to the emerald dream from both azeroth and ardenweald through different parts of cosmology, makes sense.
Yes, I do realize Uther's soul split into 2 in the cinematic, if you read what I said, I mentioned it as well. What I was pointing out that it was beyond retarded and makes no sense. They just wanted uther in the shadowlands and somehow connect him to arthas, realized that timeline wasn't making sense and went with another major asspull. Do you not realize that the concept of soulsplitting is beyond insane and has literally no precedent in the entire warcraft lore for goddamn good reason. This is a bigger mess up than the wod timetravel - multiple versions of same people + legion existing across dimensions BS that was caused. Uther's soul that we interacted with looked quite complete and coherent in the past. It looks more like his soul is somehow cloned then split since everything is intact (not going into whoever put the white dress on him at bastion not realizing a giant wound on his chest and somehow the glowing blue scar never being visible through for years..). What does it mean for resurrection? What if we managed to resurrect uther, will he have a soul doing its own thing another one in his body? What happened to the other part of his soul that was sucked into blade since it clearly didn't merge when uther came down to pick him up? Somehow uther was such a special snowflake that he resisted the power of frostmourne and saved part of his soul, and other part of his soul is completely unaware of it. I could go on but you will ignore most of this anyway since it doesn't fit your agenda so lets continue with the rest..
You do realize we as players constantly dying and walking back to our body is a game mechanic right? lorewise we never died.. Heroes of azeroth don't constantly wipe on bosses and get sent back by spirit healers since that is not a thing. Yes, I do realize there are valkyrs and other beings specially made to interfere with the soul collection process but what I was talking about was if there is a freaking soul collection system that goes to pick up all souls - how is it possible that some get stuck here on their own? really a random murdered woman has unfinished business as a ghost so winged smurfs don't come back down for him but they go to pick uther up.. clearly he didn't have any unfinished business. DEATH is literally end of all your business, otherwise everyone would be left behind as ghosts to continue whatever they were in the middle of. If all souls pass through the arbiter, they wouldn't end up with odyn and helya in the first place + you are suggesting they also pass through arbiter on the way back down when they are resurrected and she wipes their memory .. ok.
Also "there is zero retconning going on" and "is going to have some continuity issues" in the same sentence = masterpiece
This one is my favorite so far. It blended established characters and new characters and treated them both with respect, without leaning too hard on them (bastion) or missing the mark on the investment (maldraxxus). It established the core story and characters of the zone, had beautiful art, music, and high emotional impact - particularly, I think the "nature" afterline having a more "visceral" feel from start to finish is very appropriate.
It does make my speculation brain tingle as well - The Winter's Queen's spooky eye magic sure does seem similar in style to the eyes of the OG Lich King and Scourge.
I mean, I have not really looked at any beta stuff yet and the Maldraxxus one did give me a lot of info, tbh. The whole warriors of the shadowlands that specialize in specific types of warfare and thus sort into houses thing was established pretty early. Then we got to see that they train the souls of warriors to fight in their ranks, saw them scout outside the Shadowlands and ultimately the storybeat about the infighting and betrayal between houses. I might just have been inferring the part of outside Shadowlands since it had such different scenery, legion presence and because I figured those in Maldraxxus are there to fight against outside invaders. That part certainly could be elaborated on more.
Draka is central, but mostly because she is the viewpoint character of the episode, who explains things to us - unlike Uther, who was the one that a second character had to explain everything to. It had a very different way of delivering exposition, but it was still there.
So far, all three have had a relatively simple core concept - introduce some major players, how the zone works in general and set up the central conflict. That's usually how a lot of trailers work in general. And Maldraxxus has given us all three of these things. Just in a different way than Bastion for example, since there we had a lot more focus on characters just flat out telling us what is going on.
"Torturing someone is not an evil thing to do if it is done for good reasons" by Varodoc
"You sit in OG/SW waiting on a Mythic+ queue" by Altmer <- Oh, the pearls in this forum...
"They sort of did this Dragonriding, which ushered in the Dracthyr race." by Teriz <- the BS some people reach for their narratives...
I knew I reconized the voice actor for Ara'lon lol, I end up thinking it was Anduins voice actor cos to me it sounded somewhat like him. Then I found out who it actually is and just kind of laughed, in a good way xD
"Torturing someone is not an evil thing to do if it is done for good reasons" by Varodoc
"You sit in OG/SW waiting on a Mythic+ queue" by Altmer <- Oh, the pearls in this forum...
"They sort of did this Dragonriding, which ushered in the Dracthyr race." by Teriz <- the BS some people reach for their narratives...
Man, all these professionally trained connoiseurs of the written word spending time being nerdraged over WoW's writing.
Funny just how much time people will waste on shit they hate.
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So, who is the actor? o.O. I recognize the voice as well but can't place it.