Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Super Dickmann]

need factors into every single thing any dev puts in any game. They wanted to set a tone and that tone was already fulfilled without going to such distasteful ends.

The distastefulness is the point of it. A softer depiction wouldn't be able to communicate it. Likely accidentally, they captured both why this would be a massively taxing position to take up, why most of them, including the leader, ultimately went Infinite. Alex's reaction at the end of the quest is more character than she's had in most everything else she's been in. All within a quest that takes sub-three minutes to complete and for all the whining has zero graphic content of any kind. If anything it's an instruction manual on how to handle this kind of thing in T-rated media.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Though again, this debate is moot as it'll definitely be cut.

Yeah, from what i read people were contacting/taging devs and former wow devs on twitter.

How triggered someone can be over an optional quest in a video game, lol.

Like you said debate is moot because we all know what blizzard will do, just to be safe.

[Super Dickmann]

...There's absolutely nothing wrong with exploring those themes, I just don't think the writers are doing an adequate job of balancing it with the primary appeal of Warcraft.

You put it well enough that I don't really have mcuh to add besides agreeing, with the caveat that the tonal issue is also one of overlap. DF is for the most consistently soft, with its side content going a little bit serious in times and its character wtiing being marginally better. Even as someone firmly in the wheelhouse that it's the wrong route for the franchise at large, I've found the tone it has gone for to be fine for what it is.

The War of Thorns was, especially in those final couple pages of Elegy, relentlessly bleak in a way the game hasn't been even in things that are more graphic, like Vanilla Scholomance. But it's not in a story that's up for those themes, it's in a story that ultimately wants to tell you about how everyone should be friends and nothing really divides us. The whiplash of it is as bad as anything else.

There's also the swap in perspective, we were the perpetrator in the Scourging of Lordaeron, while the torching of the tree, besides being more poorly handled of course, had a portion of the playerbase in the role of the victim. This can work, we had the same pivot to the victim in going from being Arthas stomping over every named character and taking the piss out of them, to said wrecks picking themselves up in the MMO, it's the meat and potatoes of Sylvanas's story, but the War of Thorns lacks that aspect of control. That's a different line of thought though.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

The distastefulness is the point of it. A softer depiction wouldn't be able to communicate it.

killing allies like amber, helping purge strath, letting the orcs into Azeroth all communicate the awfulness of keeping the time line wonderfully, having a company that was complicate in SA/SH make you compliance in it in game should not be a thing.

[Super Dickmann]

killing allies like amber, helping purge strath, letting the orcs into Azeroth all communicate the awfulness of keeping the time line wonderfully, having a company that was complicate in SA/SH make you compliance in it in game should not be a thing.

Au contraire, if anything their experience with it makes them more qualified to deliver an authentic experience.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

So what's on the bingo card for edit:tomorrow* blue news?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Au contraire, if anything their experience with it makes them more qualified to deliver an authentic experience.

Lol, no .

[Murlocos]

Yeah, the whiplash is the core issue and dives back into the timeless Blizzard problem of bouncing between extremes. Contrast the old Horde doing heinous and evil deeds, then having a lengthy story decades later of reforming with new leadership and purpose and still struggling with those sins. The orc heritage questline is fantastic, but in the back of my mind I just think about how the new Horde also just committed evil and heinous deeds and effectively just got away with it and have totally absolved themselves of it a heartbeat later. The dissonance of that whiplash strips away the believability of the setting. Yes, addressing it would take a lot of effort, it'd feel played out and repetitive, but the writers set up this problem for themselves in the first place.

That said, I agree with Lorgar on this. I don't consider the writing or the writers sacrosanct enough that such specifically controversial content needs to stay in for the sake of their vision (or realistically knowing how the development pipeline actually works, one quest designer threw this together for a daily quest and it's not like Ion and Danuser decreed this from their thrones). There are better ways of going about it. And yeah, I've seen people complain that killing Amber is problematic or misogynistic, and I think that's entering the realm of absurdity.

[Super Dickmann]

So what's on the bingo card for edit:tomorrow* blue news?

Formal apology, the responsible dev ritually eviscerating himself with an Alexstrasza funko pop in front of Blizzard HQ.

- - - Updated - - -

That said, I agree with Lorgar on this. I don't consider the writing or the writers sacrosanct enough that such specifically controversial content needs to stay in for the sake of their vision (or realistically knowing how the development pipeline actually works, one quest designer threw this together for a daily quest and it's not like Ion and Danuser decreed this from their thrones). There are better ways of going about it. And yeah, I've seen people complain that killing Amber is problematic or misogynistic, and I think that's entering the realm of absurdity.

The writers' vision in general I don't give a shit about, my stance on this is entirely context-specific. I have zero issue with say, the vision for the Sadfang questline being destroyed, it was funny. I appreciate the quest as such and on a broader level think that whatever rationalization is cooked up for why this in particular needs to go, them caving on it will have a negative knock-on effect on their ability to refer to darker subject matter in any way going further and further encourage their worst saccharine trends. When you cave on a side quest with 0 graphic content which doesn't even refer to the deed at large this won't lead to you pondering wiser, more nuanced implementation (Not that any is needed, as the quest is fine in that regard) it will lead you to avoiding anything like it like the plague and playing it safe, especially where your bigger story is concerned.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Formal apology, the responsible dev ritually eviscerating himself with an Alexstrasza funko pop in front of Blizzard HQ.

Dev making this quest is probably dealing with a shitton of stress right now.

I bet if i would open twitter right now of certain people, there will be furiously and toxically typed tweets about firing the dev.


I think they should make alternative version of this quest locked behind trader tenders 1000 bundle.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Dev making this quest is probably dealing with a shitton of stress right now.

I bet if i would open twitter right now of certain people, there will be furiously and toxically typed tweets about firing the dev.


I think they should make alternative version of this quest blahhh idea here.

Don't give them ideas

[micwini]

So what's on the bingo card for edit:tomorrow* blue news?

10.1.5 release date announcement PRayge

[Berkilak]

Dev making this quest is probably dealing with a shitton of stress right now.

I bet if i would open twitter right now of certain people, there will be furiously and toxically typed tweets about firing the dev.


I think they should make alternative version of this quest locked behind trader tenders 1000 bundle.

Odds are, they’re completely unaware and wouldn’t care even if they knew about an impotent Twitter rage fest.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

So there was new interview with Morgan day and about megadungeon he said

"One of the things being done differently with Dawn of the Infinites is intentionally releasing it at a higher difficulty level, requiring coordination similar to raids, in response to requests for challenging content and meaningful rewards for smaller group sizes. There's no hard mode, it's just baked in, but it's also why they're keen on getting the split Heroic versions out faster in Patch 10.1.7 instead of waiting for Season 3."

Seems like new megadungeon might be very hard when they officially release it on live servers.

[Gielnik2]

I don't know if this has been posted before but I just watched a Bellular video that fits the current Alexstrasza quest controversy well. WoW is just too afraid to not be disney-level friendly nowadays and I fear this incident will only amplify that.

[Lady Atia]

So there was new interview with Morgan day and about megadungeon he said

"One of the things being done differently with Dawn of the Infinites is intentionally releasing it at a higher difficulty level, requiring coordination similar to raids, in response to requests for challenging content and meaningful rewards for smaller group sizes. There's no hard mode, it's just baked in, but it's also why they're keen on getting the split Heroic versions out faster in Patch 10.1.7 instead of waiting for Season 3."

Seems like new megadungeon might be very hard when they officially release it on live servers.

I hope so, because Tazavesh was a joke when they released it. Also no one run the megadungeons without hardmode anyways, so this is a great change.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't know if this has been posted before but I just watched a Bellular video that fits the current Alexstrasza quest controversy well. WoW is just too afraid to not be disney-level friendly nowadays and I fear this incident will only amplify that.

I really don't think thats the case here, cause we just came off of very rough stuff a few years ago. And also.... this weird disney esque complaint just reeks of ignorance of WoW. There's plenty of dark stuff going on through the game recently.


Edit: Not directed at you Gielnik.

[Skildar]

I don't know if this has been posted before but I just watched a Bellular video that fits the current Alexstrasza quest controversy well. WoW is just too afraid to not be disney-level friendly nowadays and I fear this incident will only amplify that.

I'm not really receptive to sharing youtube videos like these showcasing people exterior to the dev team or with no knowledge that isn't already there, etc. It just feels like dressed up advertisement :/

[micwini]

Lost Codex interview

"By the end of the Dawn of the Infinite, the Murozond story is finished, for now. However, there will be more quests following the dungeon. And this doesn't mean the end of the Infinite Dragonflight."

Seems they are keeping Murozond as a future villain and probably won't be a major focus in the remainder of this expansion.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Don't play it then. Development is not up to you. It's just a fucking quest and seeing people totally freaked out about it makes me laugh. Go outside, take a deep breath and touch the grass.

Sure I won't play it, and neither will you because there's no way this is making it to live.