Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ersula]

The Alex Afrasiabi that was also Creative Director in WoD and Legion as well, plus didn't draw that?

People shouldn't give more power to a name than necessary when they aren't the sole reason behind the inconsistencies with a character the whole team trashed.

He approved it. So he gets responsibility. And he wasn't the top of the story food chain in Legion: Stockton & Chilton are credited as brainstoming the "Garrosh/Legion Era." BFA was all Afrasiabi's brainchild.

[Raetary]

We knew the Afrasiabi era was going to be rough when the first thing he gave us as head writer was "Brown Eyes Sylvanas"

I doubt the writing even mentioned her eyes.

It's just an artistic decision which looks weird in context.
Probably for the sake of having her look more human, which was quite unnecessary imo.

[Vakir]

He approved it. So he gets responsibility. And he wasn't the top of the story food chain in Legion: Stockton & Chilton are credited as brainstoming the "Garrosh/Legion Era." BFA was all Afrasiabi's brainchild.

Nah, it's just a convenient way to escape from bad quality for simps. Sorry. Also, he's still directly credited as Creative Director, and I trust that more than you. Which is a low bar.

Stop giving so much power and influence to an abuser. It's toxic to allow them so much credit. How could you. I am literally shaking rn, smh.

Also hilarious to believe that a franchise like Warcraft that has almost always put so little stock into story and continuity would actually have their directors look at every product. This was 100% the work of a bunch of hyper-crammed artists given extremely unfair deadlines. The sole quality metric was "does it look cool?" because that is the only metric Blizzard has known since sometime in 2003.

[Ansi]

A year ago they actually planned to release the Sylvanas book on the 22th of February. That’s patch day. Is everything going accordingly to plan?

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...r-pre-purchase

[Vakir]

A year ago they actually planned to release the Sylvanas book on the 22th of February. That’s patch day. Is everything going accordingly to plan?

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...r-pre-purchase

Nah, that's the second revision. It was originally November of 2021. Probably a coincidence.

[Palapop]

Is anyone excited about seeing Arthas in 9.2 cinematic (after Anduins defeat)?

[Vakir]

Is anyone excited about seeing Arthas in 9.2 cinematic (after Anduins defeat)?

I'm more terrified than excited, frankly. Let the damn corpse be unbeaten for once. If he even shows outside the encounter.

[Ersula]

Nah, it's just a convenient way to escape from bad quality for simps. Sorry. Also, he's still directly credited as Creative Director, and I trust that more than you. Which is a low bar.

Well tell this guy, he thinks Afasiabi was actually writing scripts:

I doubt the writing even mentioned her eyes.

I said head writer just because that's not an actual title at Blizzard, and expansions always have multiple Creative Directors but for a video game a lot of those never even touch the story. The biggest tell is Danuser describing himself as super-low on the story totem pole, as "loremaster' effectively an editor working on quests & cutscenes but has suddenly been credited in interviews as "In-Charge of the story" since Afrasiabi was fired: Despite his job title never changing.

- - - Updated - - -

Is anyone excited about seeing Arthas in 9.2 cinematic (after Anduins defeat)?

I'm excited to laugh really hard if he doesn't appear in it. I know we fight him but knowing this is blizzard there's no guarentee he'll be in the cutscene.

[Vakir]

Well tell this guy, he thinks Afasiabi was actually writing scripts.

Better than hiding one's head in the sand on someone's title in two other games based on hearsay?

But yeah. Blizzard's art or even most of their overall content pipeline isn't actually verified all that often by their higher ups unless it's probably very specific instances. I'm still reminded of the whole kerfuffle over Ysera's eye status in Cataclysm that necessitated a beta thread on it. To say nothing of map inconsistencies and just various assets overall. And of course, our friend Falstad, who I'm certain is dead.

[Sondrelk]

Is anyone excited about seeing Arthas in 9.2 cinematic (after Anduins defeat)?

More intrigued than excited, but generally I am quite positive towards his return. The Uther/Arthas storyline in SL has mostly been done pretty damn good from the start, and even if that meant an absence of Arthas outside flashbacks, that still shows a level of restraint on the side of the writers to not overexpose Arthas.

[Ersula]

Blizzard's art

That wasn't some concept art. It was a video: The Warbringers film. A major part of BFA's promotion. And they gave her an eyecolor no elves have. That's not on the same level as some borked assets.

[Vakir]

That wasn't some concept art. It was a video: The Warbringers film. A major part of BFA's promotion. And they gave her an eyecolor no elves have. That's not on the same level as some borked assets.

I didn't say it was concept art. I said "Blizzard's art." As quoted. I did not stutter.

Blizzard in most contexts has never been great about continuity, and it's already been that way in an industry as a whole that has so many moving parts that it usually doesn't happen that way in the first place. Obviously not a Blizzard product, but for example - Heavensward's opening, a highly expensive CGI trailer, has Hraesvalgar, a character that has never been hostile in a context with actual mortal peril, shown attacking the player character and it was literally spawned from just an internal communication error about the wrong color main dragon. But rendering him and having him breathe fire on the WoL probably cost several thousands at least.

I dunno why you wanna keep giving so much power and agency to an abuser, but strange flex.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

does everyone still understand that even if a new expac is announced that steve is still head of the lore and the last 2 expansion stories have been absolute dog shit??

[Vakir]

does everyone still understand that even if a new expac is announced that steve is still head of the lore and the last 2 expansion stories have been absolute dog shit??

Of course they understand. But they don't want to confront that reality, so they're going to deflect it by giving needlessly high amounts of power to one specific individual rather than hold a very large development group accountable. All while people do the same thing on a gameplay level by blaming the whipping dog of the year similarly, only to probably sing their praises once they leave, such as Greg Street.

It's not done from a position of honesty. It's easy categorization because the alternative is cognitive dissonance.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

does everyone still understand that even if a new expac is announced that steve is still head of the lore and the last 2 expansion stories have been absolute dog shit??

Being cynical about the future because of the past is one thing, but to write off something before you actually see it/experience is stupid. Who knows how the next expansion is going to. It was the same song and dance with BFA and SLands up until it wasn't.


Especially, since the lot of you presently here, continue to keep up with it all. Go figure.

[Catastrophy349]

I'll be the first to say this (and I don't mind saying it either): I will play EVERY new WoW patch AND expansion no matter what. Sure, if it's "bad" I won't play "as much as others." However, I will ALWAYS give new content the benefit of the doubt. I've been playing WoW for nearly 16 years. I love the game and will be here until the end.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I'll be the first to say this (and I don't mind saying it either): I will play EVERY new WoW patch AND expansion no matter what. Sure, if it's "bad" I won't play "as much as others." However, I will ALWAYS give new content the benefit of the doubt. I've been playing WoW for nearly 16 years. I love the game and will be here until the end.

There is nothing wrong with this if you are still having fun playing the game. That is money well spent if you are getting your money's worth.

[Vakir]

Especially, since the lot of you presently here, continue to keep up with it all. Go figure.

"And yet you participate in society, how curious!" vibes.

You can be engaged in something, love it on the base level or what it was or can be, and still have a critical voice in response to certain things.

That being said, same energy with Danuser. We can talk about very clear signatures of his, particularly how he feels about Sylvanas, in his writing, just like we can talk about very clear signatures of Afrasiabi's, with his D-tier Game of Thrones twists for cheap drama - but there's still an entire team working on this shit and signing off on it. So it's impossible to say "X is doing Y, so there bad" in that sense because it presupposes that WoW's team is made up of like 10 people.

[Ersula]

I dunno why you wanna keep giving so much power and agency to an abuser, but strange flex.

Because multiple former employees have said he was in charge of the story when the story was bad (Specifically BFA and the first 7 months of Shadowlands development). I'm sorry I guess giving the abuser accurate credit for the bad story he was in charge of was out of line.

- - - Updated - - -

does everyone still understand that even if a new expac is announced that steve is still head of the lore and the last 2 expansion stories have been absolute dog shit??

According to former employees he was only in charge since Afrasiabi was fired. (So about 70% of Shadowlands) and I do regard Shadowlands as being a very slightly better than BFA. It's a mess but it's marginally more interesting. ("But that's so much of Shadowlands" sure but by 6 months before release the story for the whole expansion is locked in due to voice actor commitments. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because the whole storyline was a nosedive difficult to correct)

[Hitei]

I find the Sylvanas eye thing hilarious because High Elf eyes are super inconsistent in lore to begin with pretty much all the way up until the community randomly decided that the canon for High Elves was glowing blue eyes because that's what Blizzard went with when they changed them over to edited blood elf model in BC.

WC3's High elves have solid white eyes with no pupil/iris for Kael and the spell breakers, glowing blue modern high elf eyes for the priest, and the sorceress has regular human eyes but purple/red. Vanilla's version have pupil-less, non-glowing blue eyes, purple eyes, light purple eyes or red eyes largely just depending on the sort of magic they interact with.

WC3 Syvlanas didn't even have blue eyes, she had the Kael/Spell Breaker solid white eyes with a hint of purple.

Chen had green eyes in WC3 and they retconned them to yellow/gold in MoP's full rendered cinematic, but no one complains about that. They aren't even consistent in the comics, where sometimes he and Li li have jade eyes, and other times they're yellow. Li li's HotS unit has almost blue eyes.

Who honestly cares if Sylvanas has grey (are people seriously blind or something?) eyes in the warbringers? That's closer to her white-eyed WC3 model than glowing blue eyes.