Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nymrohd]

That's not the same thing as being apolitical.

The original Lord of the Rings was absolutely political in the sense that it was informed by Tolkein's experiences in World War 1, his perspectives on environmentalism, industrialism, and being a relatively conservative Catholic.

Writing is influenced by political beliefs and they will be analyzed and engaged with no matter what, in the same way that someone can't just turn off their personal biases, but what you mean is that not all writing is going to be preachy or overt.

WoW's problem isn't the presence of politics, it's that it sucks shit at presenting them and that the direction of its characters informed by attempts at moderate blandness are incompatible with its history. Or an interesting story.

I guess a subtler and more nuanced way to state it would be to say that everything is informed by politics. Which to me makes everything political, even if it is subconscious.

I'd say in fantasy mediums the biggest issue is when a statement shatters the fourth wall, when you feel as if the characters turn and look at you. It makes me wonder if the writers lack the ability to immerse themselves in a fantasy world so the veil is very thin for them. We are influenced creatively by what we have consumed and I feel the very young (Zillenials and younger), because of the increased speed of technology are very much contained in a recent paradigm with very few references that are older than them. It brings them in opposition to older generations not only because of the unavoidable generational gap but because in Baudrillard's terms, they experience reality in artificial, hyperreal terms while our response to said reality is abhorrence to what we feel is denaturated or simply, fake. Stories are no longer immersive mediums, they are simply messaging constructs striped of aesthetics. Their structure, the choices in presentation are not even perceived; the message is paramount.

[Vakir]

We are influenced creatively by what we have consumed and I feel the very young (Zillenials and younger), because of the increased speed of technology are very much contained in a recent paradigm with very few references that are older than them.

I was kind of with you except for this: The problem children in WoW's lore over the last 15 or so years have been the very same people who started it.

Really, all of Blizzard lore. Starcraft 2 was guilty of this same stuff, in many ways worse, but it's a Metzen brain child. So was Diablo 3's direction, and it was far more bland heroic fantasy than it was dark fantasy, which was attributed to the shift in being more idealistic and less of an edgy 20-30something.

Even the artists - people like Val like to glaze Samwise and his art and keep reposting that cringey "To the victor go to the spoils" orc art, but he's the same art lead behind the increasingly cartoonified SC2 and then later Heroes of the Storm, which had more than its fair share of whining about how they toned down certain things or, god forbid, made Alexstrasza a whole plus half-size larger. The guy is retired.

[COBRAstriker]

The bizarre thing is they already have 'em. But they "look goofy" flying to them, apparently, which is just indicting the reality that the courser flying animations do suck.

I like the Sylverians so I don't really care, but many High Elf fans are sadly insufferable and rabid.



"Old, generic fantasy" is still rooted in the politics of the trope codification of those same origins. It's still political.

The fucking Hobbit, a children's story, has Bilbo zonk out through the Battle of the Five Armies because it's a heavy-handed indictment of war and its irrelevance by Tolkien. Naturally, Warner Brothers wasted 3 hours of our time jerking off something that's supposed to be destructive and pathetic. I wonder what the whole greed-based dwarven disease is supposed to represent.

I don't care what you "think" you can do, you're not intellectually equipped to have this conversation.

The problem is what I said it is.

You're just a random, like I am. You're in no position to have that attitude. The word 'political' has been stetched to absolute hell to the point it has lost all meaning. Not every piece of art is political in nature or has a bigger message behind it. You might see everything through a political lens, but that's on you

[Nymrohd]

I was kind of with you except for this: The problem children in WoW's lore over the last 15 or so years have been the very same people who started it.

Really, all of Blizzard lore. Starcraft 2 was guilty of this same stuff, in many ways worse, but it's a Metzen brain child. So was Diablo 3's direction, and it was far more bland heroic fantasy than it was dark fantasy, which was attributed to the shift in being more idealistic and less of an edgy 20-30something.

Even the artists - people like Val like to glaze Samwise and his art and keep reposting that cringey "To the victor go to the spoils" orc art, but he's the same art lead behind the increasingly cartoonified SC2 and then later Heroes of the Storm, which had more than its fair share of whining about how they toned down certain things or, god forbid, made Alexstrasza a whole plus half-size larger. The guy is retired.

The thing is often my issue is not the message, it is how they choose to present it. The idealism was always there and I never minded it but it was presented and juxtaposed with pragmatism.
Also, I always liked the WORLD of Warcraft. Was never a huge fun of the story of it. No, not even with Arthas.

[BaumanKing]

I've missed exactly why people are upset about Turalyon and Arator. What's the deal?

Arator is written as a naive teenager searching for his place in the world. He's about thirty, but he feels more kinship with the ten-year-old squires. It is implied that half-elves age differently.

On the other hand, Turalyon has been retconned as being a villain since the Second War. His most "triumphant" moment, defeating Orgrim, has been given a completely different context now. Most people are okay with him becoming a villain, as there were signs of it back in Legion, but going way back to WC2 and completely changing his backstory is a bit much.

[Vakir]

You're just a random, like I am. You're in no position to have that attitude. The word 'political' has been stetched to absolute hell to the point it has lost all meaning. Not every piece of art is political in nature or has a bigger message behind it. You might see everything through a political lens, but that's on you

Everyone is a random by the same logic. It doesn't mean that you're not engaging with something on a pretty bland and surface-level read, and it doesn't mean you haven't been shown multiple times and through multiple bans to be pretty evasive and otherwise terrible at arguing your point.

Case and point, "Whatever politics influenced old WoW, they certainly weren't post 2016 modern politics" is a laughable statement because it presupposes that post-2016 politics just materialized fully-formed from Zeus' head rather than that they were a reaction and progression from pre-2016 politics. Politics that still absolutely had influence and relevance including in pop media like Blizzard Games. Go ask a WC2 fan how they feel about WC3 - Thrall and the New Horde were themselves a response to the presentation of a lot of traditional orcish tropes to turn them into a noble savage angle, and by the same token that direction was seen as weak and homogenizing with modern values, when "modern values" were circa 2002. But for what it's worth, I'm talking right now to someone who probably wasn't alive when Warcraft 1 came out.

There are plenty of people on this forum that I disagree with all the time regarding story direction or the origins of it that I still deeply respect. But they interact with the medium on a reasonably advanced enough level that they don't take the easy way out by boiling down exclusively to shaking a cane at a cloud based on regurgitation of talking points from online grifters without understanding the historical and creator context behind why a bunch of blandness is happening.

I understand some reactive whinging, but reactive whinging is proven to be all you have.

Also, I always liked the WORLD of Warcraft. Was never a huge fun of the story of it. No, not even with Arthas.

Frankly, this is the way.

It's always been something grasping blindly for an identity after not getting the Warhammer Fantasy license.

But WC3 worked for what it was intended to be, which was setting up a world for an open and close storyline.

WoW has floundered aimlessly in retrospect because the story they set up in WC3 is so at odds with an MMO that concession after concession was made, and after around Wrath or Cata where they tried to expand on and more explicitly present the story information without relying on supplemental material, inconsistency and failure after inconsistency and failure were more noticeable.

[allegrian]

Deathwing flat out monologues about his destruction and how "all will burn beneath the shadow of my wings."



Nothing leaked, it was uploaded the same day as the raid defeat.

Not a single Horde character plays into anything of worth with her defeat in SL. Thrall is a walking platform-maker in the encounter with virtually no dialogue of note. If anyone, it's a bunch of mea culpa with Tyrande in the epilogue after copious amounts of jerking off Anduin.

Sylvanas writing sucks, but man, there's a lot of tourists in here.

Sylvannas defeat in bfa is vs Saurfang and Garrosh both in MoP and WoD is vs Thrall. And we dont get to kill sylvannas in SL, we don't even win the fight against her, she gets to about 40% of her health or so and then the fight ends with her and the Jailer achieving what they wanted.

[Vakir]

Sylvannas defeat in bfa is vs Saurfang and Garrosh both in MoP and WoD is vs Thrall.

Sylvanas isn't defeated, but for what it's worth, the entire idea around that timeframe in BFA is that Sylvanas has majority Horde approval for...some reason until she says something asinine for absolutely no reason but plot convenience. So this does less to elevate the Horde as it does make them and Sylvanas look unbelievably stupid while also making Saurfang a patsy and sidekick for Anduin.

Thrall gets bodied in Mists.

This is less an Alliance or Horde issue and more just overall incompetence from people who fail to understand both factions. The entirety of BFA was a walking rejection of factions in general. It's not a great example of anyone getting the better side of the stick.

And we dont get to kill sylvannas in SL, we don't even win the fight against her, she gets to about 40% of her health or so and then the fight ends with her and the Jailer achieving what they wanted.

I never said otherwise? She doesn't even seem like she broke a sweat. It's not like a Gul'dan situation where the stealing of the kill-blow can be written off as us softening her up, the raid encounter could have been skipped entirely with the same outcome.

But my argument was "Not a single Horde character plays into anything of worth with her defeat in SL," and my point stands that is the case. You aren't rebutting anything.

[Nymrohd]

Go ask a WC2 fan how they feel about WC3 - Thrall and the New Horde were themselves a response to the presentation of a lot of traditional orcish tropes to turn them into a noble savage angle, and by the same token that direction was seen as weak and homogenizing with modern values, when "modern values" were circa 2002.

Heck it was not even that original to WoW. Forgotten Realms was doing the same thing with Obould Many Arrows (in 2001 and 2002 in RPG material by Greenwood and in Salvatore's novels that build upon this idea from 2003 to 2010).

[Vakir]

Heck it was not even that original to WoW. Forgotten Realms was doing the same thing with Obould Many Arrows (in 2001 and 2002 in RPG material by Greenwood and in Salvatore's novels that build upon this idea from 2003 to 2010).

Don't forget rebellious good Drow OCs becoming more common than the thing they're rebelling against in the first place.

But these people don't come from that world or time. Most of them got their first experience in Warcraft like 10-15 years ago but pretend to know the rest through Youtube videos.

[Nymrohd]

WoW has floundered aimlessly in retrospect because the story they set up in WC3 is so at odds with an MMO that concession after concession was made

See this is where I disagree. ESO did three factions. They had their faction war stories but adventurers could also always work together. Guild Wars' races are not one big happy family. The biggest mistake made on release was taking five different factions from WC3 (yes, five; the "Alliance" campaign was effectively the founding of an Illidari faction) and squeezing them into two factions. There is so little space for nuance in a binary

- - - Updated - - -

Don't forget rebellious good Drow OCs becoming more common than the thing they're rebelling against in the first place.

But these people don't come from that world or time. Most of them got their first experience in Warcraft like 10-15 years ago but pretend to know the rest through Youtube videos.

Lol, Drow OCs were more common since the original Unearthed Arcana allowed them as a playable race and that's when I was born! (1985)
Drow are just sexy (not to me, never got the appeal but I can see it is there).

[COBRAstriker]

snip

You don't need a PhD in literature to understand what the issue with modern WoW is. Warcraft at its core is very simple and generic. There's nothing 'deep' about the setting. Trying to frame the issue as being something bigger than just a bunch of hacks hijacking the franchise so they could shove in their own personal fanfics is pointless.

You're giving these writers way too much credit. The issue goes way past the blandness. They can't even keep track of their own fucking lore. Not to mention how sudden an estsblished character can change in just a single patch. It's not only the blandness, it's the offensively bad, modern and preachy writing which often breaks the fourth wall

Blandness is just one part of the problem

[Throren]

This is just wild to me. Giving them an undead shadowlands creature from Ardenweald instead of the many dragonhawk/hippogryph options is beyond me. Love how he then goes: "They are Dalaran dragons." sure, Jan!

God forbid they make something new and unique, tailored for High Elves, like a Pegasus or something.

They're Sylverian Dreamers not Veilwings

Sylverian Dreamers- Magic conjured creature from Dalaran
Veilwings - Ardenweald native creatures

They just re-use/share a model, like a lot of things in WoW
The dev did go on to explain why exactly they used them over the hippogryph models or dragonhawks



From a pure aesthetic standpoint I think they fit pretty well, they have the perfect blue and silver colour scheme, and are feathery bird like dragons which kinda fits the elf vibe with all their bird imagery - and I guess making a brand new HD Silver Covenant Hippogryph just for mountsused in a one off quest would probably have been too much waste of time/resources

[Vakir]

See this is where I disagree. ESO did three factions. They had their faction war stories but adventurers could also always work together. Guild Wars' races are not one big happy family. The biggest mistake made on release was taking five different factions from WC3 (yes, five; the "Alliance" campaign was effectively the founding of an Illidari faction) and squeezing them into two factions. There is so little space for nuance in a binary

I can accept this, albeit even Guild Wars in its modern state has the current antagonism mainly around what Warcraft does - big dragon size existential threats and/or fringe terrorist groups a la Scarlet Briar.

The sad reality is that WoW eventually wanted to do the faction thing for the sake of big sweeping shock moments like the Wrathgate but they didn't mesh at all with the Cold-ish war writing of Vanilla.

And the lack of clear direction is very apparent when you compare Vanilla's writing to the opening cinematic that seemed to indicate we were heading towards a Fourth War immediately, except it's a lie and we weren't even close.

It's been a nonstop conga line of stop and start uncertainty.

(Also, as a little aside for more indication, Illidan's leitmotif is present at the end of the full version of Seasons of War which indicates he was planned as a launch boss, which fits with Caydiem saying he was the strongest NPC back in 2005 and the datamined and discarded/updated Outland-turned-Hellfire Peninsula

They had no fucking idea what they were doing from the start.)

You don't need a PhD in literature to understand what the issue with modern WoW is. Warcraft at its core is very simple and generic. There's nothing 'deep' about the setting. Trying to frame the issue as being something bigger than just a bunch of hacks hijacking the franchise so they could shove in their own personal fanfics is pointless.

You're giving these writers way too much credit. The issue goes way past the blandness. They can't even keep track of their own fucking lore. Not to mention how sudden an estsblished character can change in just a single patch. It's not only the blandness, it's the offensively bad, modern and preachy writing which often breaks the fourth wall

Blandness is just one part of the problem

Reading this as expecting a PhD proves my point. I'm not asking for the upper end of the bell curve.

I am saying you're on the low end.

Case and point, no, I'm not giving these writers credit. I'm saying the opposite. A lot of the narrative around this by the worst offenders in the thread is that it's some kind of malicious humiliation ritual out of active disdain for the setting, as if they think about you at all. But they don't. It's Hanlon's Razor at work.

It's just a bunch of fucking hacks. But the hackery has nothing to do with a particular axe to grind, because the same people who made the version you guys pretend is good are the ones heavily responsible for ruining it.

Metzen walked out on stage wearing an Alliance shirt holding the Doomhammer back in freakin' 2012. Where were you guys then?

[Nymrohd]

I can accept this, albeit even Guild Wars in its modern state has the current antagonism mainly around what Warcraft does - big dragon size existential threats and/or fringe terrorist groups a la Scarlet.

The sad reality is that WoW eventually wanted to do the faction thing for the sake of big sweeping shock moments like the Wrathgate but they didn't mesh at all with the Cold-ish war writing of Vanilla.

And the lack of clear direction is very apparent when you compare Vanilla's writing to the opening cinematic that seemed to indicate we were heading towards a Fourth War immediately, except it's a lie and we weren't even close.

It's been a nonstop conga line of stop and start uncertainty.

(Also, as a little aside for more indication, Illidan's leitmotif is present at the end of the full version of Seasons of War which indicates he was planned as a launch boss, which fits with Caydiem saying he was the strongest NPC back in 2005 and the datamined and discarded/updated Outland-turned-Hellfire Peninsula

They had no fucking idea what they were doing from the start.)

Oh that much is clear, we know enough of early WoW development to see that they were very much winging it.

[Santandame]

Sylvanas's killing everyone indiscriminately to serve what she thought was (and probably was right about) a more noble purpose than anything in reality is a more noble goal than imprisoning and killing 90% of the Horde because it's not Orcs. Hate it or love it, Cata-MOP Garrosh was turned into a racist fascist. As badass as he was, and a cool character at that, it is 100% in character for most, if not all, surviving WoW characters to hate his guts.

Sylvanas killed everyone because she was spoiled that the universe is mechanical/evil. Garrosh did most of everything he did because he was stupid.

“You cannot kill hope.”
Sylvanas smirks
“Can’t I?”

Yes, Sylvanas was on a noble crusade who bore a heavy cross.

[Nymrohd]

Metzen walked out on stage wearing an Alliance shirt holding the Doomhammer back in freakin' 2012. Where were you guys then?

This is really the crux of it. They consistently marketed the product on Horde vs Alliance lines for more than a decade while constantly berating in lore anyone who sought conflict between the factions. The only malice I see here is false marketing.

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“You cannot kill hope.”
Sylvanas smirks
“Can’t I?”

Yes, Sylvanas was on a noble crusade who bore a heavy cross.

Which Sylvanas? Girl changed attitude, concept, even inner thoughts on the drop of a hat. Schrödinger's cat could never.

[Vakir]

“You cannot kill hope.”
Sylvanas smirks
“Can’t I?”

Yes, Sylvanas was on a noble crusade who bore a heavy cross.

See, this argument is a dead end, because that cinematic, "A Good War," "Elegy," and Golden's eventual book are all at odds in both intention and consistency.

Just as the BFA-SL Sylvanas is so obviously not the same one as Edge of Night Sylvanas. Or that Edge of Night Sylvanas isn't even consistent with the one in the Western Plaguelands from the same era, really.

It's all bullshit. If Blizzard employed the "that was a Doombot" school of writing for addressing things they don't agree with on any one given writer, 85% of the story's setting would be Doombots.

[COBRAstriker]

Case and point, no, I'm not giving these writers credit. I'm saying the opposite. A lot of the narrative around this by the worst offenders in the thread is that it's some kind of malicious humiliation ritual out of active disdain for the setting, as if they think about you at all. But they don't. It's Hanlon's Razor at work.

It's just a bunch of fucking hacks. But the hackery has nothing to do with a particular axe to grind, because the same people who made the version you guys pretend is good are the ones heavily responsible for ruining it

Oh but they do hate me. Why else would they go out of their way to hire open misandrists to write for a franchise which was traditionally tailored for a male audience? There's tons of writers on this planet, odd how it's always people with very questionable world views, especially towards men or masculinity, that are hired

The OG writers didn't write Shadowlands or Dragonflight. People always had issues with WoW's writing, but it never was this bad

[Vakir]

Oh but they do hate me. Why else would they go out of their way to hire open miandrists to write for a franchise which was traditionally tailored for a male audience?

Aaaand there it is. You're blinded by reactionary Youtube grifters that are designed to intrigue you into being radicalized via fearmongering nonsense, because the sole bargaining chip they have is an appeal to the belief that old franchises are being "taken" or altered out of some mission to undermine civilization, when it's really just a bunch of cynical attempts to court a new audience rather than the one they have - and the one that will stay and cry about it anyway.

Garrosh wasn't supposed to be a character you liked in the first place, my dude. When asked about it circa Cataclysm, Metzen said he existed to be a foil to the Thrall we know and that we were headed towards "If you love the Horde today, how much more will you love it when you have to fight for it?" Quote from the same Cata reveal, the entire visual representation of nu-Orgrimmar was an indication that "we lost ourselves somewhere out there in the snow" back in Northrend.

Don't get me wrong, when I say you're not meant to "like," I don't dispute he's the best primary antagonist Warcraft arguably has in retrospect (Arthas was ruined by Wrath), and it doesn't mean people can't take their own interpretation from the past events to support something even if the text is trying to oppose it. But Garrosh was, from the start, designed around being incompetent enough to require Saurfang saving us back at Borean Tundra, then he Leeroys off a zeppelin in Cataclysm while alienating half of his faction around him, and it was all downhill from there. People pick out one example with Stonetalon, a confirmed dev miscommunication, explicitly because they want the opposite, but it's a fact.

The fact that some people are emboldened by how the character presents despite that he's deliberately invoking certain political trademarks - an idealistic perspective on an imagined "glorious" past with no acceptance of the negatives, a rejection of an out-group for what later borders on an ethnostate, a might-makes-right perspective, etc. kinda just speaks to how art is political even if it's not even the intended read.

For the other side, Varian was supposed to be under the influence of a literal "magical mood disorder," another quote from Chris, still among the funniest shit I have ever read. Varian only becomes a deliberately heroic character after he starts taking on the values of his son that we are still stuck with and that still ruins absolutely every story he touches. Even now, Arator is as dogshit as he is because he's just Anduin with the serial numbers filed off because they want to tell the same story but they can't, because now Anduin has a beard and is a sadsack instead of being full Jesus.

That's what throws me about this "traditional masculinity has been rejected" schtick. The closest thing to main characters in Vanilla were a literal-who being tricked by dragon pussy and the same green Moses that exists now, except instead of doing nothing like now, he was...doing nothing. Burning Crusade when it wasn't ruining prior antiheroes and turning them into loot boxes was in the end about a 20,000 year old alien wizard helping redeem the Blood Elves by solving addiction with floating, pretentious holy bacon.

The OG writers didn't write Shadowlands or Dragonflight. People always had issues with WoW's writing, but it never was this bad

I'm a male, I was there, and I can tell you with certainty that it always sucked. Shadowlands and Dragonflight wouldn't be better if we gender-flipped the vacuous centaur to be a Patriarchal society rather than Matriarchal or made any number of the Eternal Ones leaders men that were still produced by 3D printers. It would be just as damaging to the setting and just as boring. Would Arthas not being 35 anima change that he was a Saturday Morning Cartoon in Wrath that completely discarded any personality or charm he had in TFT, leaning on the fourth wall ("It's time to end the game once and for all") and being a snarky and cruel son of a bitch ("Who, me?" Messing with Kael about Jaina, etc.)? If Vyranoth had a penis and was assertive and headstrong rather than cold (ha) and Fyrakk was a woman, would it suddenly make the Emerald Dream patch any less stupid? Would it change that the sudden Endgame Portals scene attempt by everyone was deeply unearned and a cynical attempt at making things seem like a nice bow? No, it's still a big fucking waste of time and nobody would care.

I could write a damn book on how much of a festering disappointment Wrath was, and I was saying it almost 20 years ago per my join date when everyone else was arguing otherwise. Now plenty of people are looking back and seeing it my way, mostly because I was factually right like I always am. And I just went into detail on the B-plot of Cata and how it was always leading to a dumb kumbaya moment, and people still don't comprehend it even when I give them exact time stamps of the same devs making it clear.

Everything would look less conspicuous with all the new bland female leaders crammed in to basically everything, but that's the part where you guys are so blinded by the same politics you claim never existed, but did, that you don't see the forest for the trees: Those characters are irrelevant and immediately discarded anyway. It isn't some sweeping conspiracy to try to estrogenize a once strong franchise. At best it's a cynical attempt to look progressive and court the audience they want rather than the one they have.

Again - the one they want rather than the one they have.

80% of the people with mainstream interest left for other flavors of the month like League back in 2011. There's a reason the Warcraft movie bombed in 2016 and not today - and look at that trailer! Overflowing with testosterone and Durotar-punching with solely a fanservice Garona for female rep. And nobody cared! And nobody would have anyway if they changed it.

You keep seeing criticism and rejection of your fear-based nonsense as defense of the modern writing when you have it backwards and you feel the need to cling to things being somehow "better," but in reality, you don't want to have to come to terms with how dogshit some of the things you liked in the first place were. It's the Prequels vs. the Sequels all over again. A cynical nothing plot with zero planning and an underwritten female lead doesn't change that the Prequels were dogshit consumed by 7 year olds that are angry adults now. One sucking doesn't make the other good.