End cinematic damaged the lore

[Tart]

Has Silithis been updated yet to show the sword?

[Tackhisis]

Not phasing bullshit, the game is now a game with no stormwind, no stockades, anything that was there is deleted forever.

People paid for the game with Stormwind. They cannot cut the contents people paid for.

[lockybalboa]

Yes, bad writing from Blizz as usual. So why was Aman'thul still alive? I thought he got totally destroyed and even his essence was gobbled by some mogu?

[InfiniteCharger]

Blizzard is cheap and doesn't want to actually put effort into making a living evolving MMO which is how MMO's are supposed to work. Their formula since the beginning is to treat expansion as a stand alone story arc and if that means ignoring everything and having to retcon the lore then so be it. Along with that, the big flaw of WOW is players cannot die so they are bound to become immortal and blizzard has shown no interest in actually showing the players being defeated in a major way. By this I mean something like having legion start by having a massive wave of 20 world boss scale elites and hundreds of lesser elites and hundreds more minions attack storm wind and orgrimmar all at the same time. And I don't mean level 100s either. I mean level 111 bosses and elites. Watch the city get pounded into dust and the humans have to evacuate. That would have been a much better way to establish threat than this. That would be the time when the main characters fall defending their factions main bases. Then the reunion with Jaina and the Zandalar would happen as part of the retreat. The forces would regroup and begin a counter attack. This would lead to story lines involving the legion going for the world soul of Azeroth along with the attack on the broken shore/tomb of Sargeras. At the tomb of Sargeras we actually fight the avatar of Sargeras similar to what Aegwin did. But first we would have to stop Guldan and his minions. That story would have been more than enough for 2 expansions. Oh and somewhere in there Darnassus gets burned to the ground/corrupted by the legion as well. Not to mention the massive legion presence draws the Naga and Ashara out in force as well.

Then at the very end when everything seems lost they finally find the titan souls and are able to help them defeat the corruption and as the titan souls grow in power they help the players defeat the avatar. No space ships. No giant cloud of sargeras. No argus. No demon hunters. No illidan. But if they are in the story they are there purely as a last resort to kill demons.

But more importantly with the introduction of the titan souls or even the titans, we get the option of restoring the dragon aspects to protect various portions of Azeroth as they have all but been destroyed by the legion, including chromie. As a result not only is there this massive elite invasion, but there is upheaval in all parts of the elements sphere, magical sphere and natural sphere of Azeroth as all these forces turn chaotic. Timeways begin acting erratic. Magic becomes chaotic. Nature begins acting chaotic. Queue the need for massive battles to restore these parts of Azeroth to balance with major battles with all kinds of stuff. And at some point queue a major battle to restore the soul of Azeroth itself and awaken the titan..... But all of that together would be like 3 expansions if not 4. Because in this version the entire planet of Azeroth is dying and full of chaos and no part of the world is untouched. Meaning every zone is part of the story and everything is being reworked. And there would be no alliance vs horde mess. That would be dead. It is an all out fight for survival and if anything individual smaller factions.

[darkfire979]

I kinda agree with what OP is saying, there is fairly little build up on the power of Sargeras that is visible to the players and just like that, the threat is gone. It's similar to how I feel watching the Justice league trailer, not as excited as watching the newly release Avengers Infinity war trailer, with it's 10 years of Marvel movies build up behind it.

There used to be an animated series called Shadow Raiders where the main antagonist is also planet size but they build up it's threat throughout the series. They will inter-space short clips every few episodes where the antagonist was destroying a random populated world with it's futile defences as it moves towards the hero's planet, this builds up the threat of the main bad guy to the viewers. Blizzard could have done something similar by having maybe 'last days' recordings that player could find on Argus of destroyed worlds, or even abandoned portals to small sections of worlds that have been destroyed by Sargeras.

[Polybius]

Spoilers...

Theres very few rules in storytelling but a big one is to make the threats credible, to make the challenge worthy of your heroes quest. This was Sargeras, first appearance in full form in a cinematic and hes THE big bad so they had only one mandate: make him credible. And....they got it utterly wrong.

1. They have the guy hiding in a cloud like a coward.
2. The cinematic is basically Sargeras getting his ass kicked.
3. He whines and screams like a baby.
4. He gets jailed and now illidan is going to kick his ass for eternity.
5. Sargeras kills ZERO lore heroes on his way out.
6. Velen, Khadgar, and co actually look BORED watching this play out.

Now, it might feel really cool to you TODAY to see this. But this irreparably does damage to the lore. You see, Sargeras’ victories are ALL off screen, rumored, little to no corroboration for any of it. THIS is his FIRST screen time EVER. that means going forward THIS cinematic WILL define who Sargeras is. For the next 10 years, when kids ask “who is sargeras?” People will tell them to watch this video. And they will come away with the impression that Sargeras is an inept stupid moron that loses despite his massive size. In short, his lore will be dimished to that of an imperial stormtrooper over time.

Some people should be fired for this cinematic. They had one job. And they blew it.

Oh you don't know real pain...

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, bad writing from Blizz as usual. So why was Aman'thul still alive? I thought he got totally destroyed and even his essence was gobbled by some mogu?

Apparently they scrapped the "Titan Builders" that were datamined before 7.3. Basically the Legion invaded Ulduar and gathered the essences that were stored there. These essences would then be stored inside constructs, or avatars. I'm surprised Khadgar did not mention anything, since he initially says the Titans are dead.

There's also a theory that Sargeras came to Northrend before Aegwynn defeated him (canon in the books, but not revealed why he's there) only to steal the Titan essences, which were scattered and contained by the Keepers. The Avatar would then become active, transferring the Titan souls to Argus. Argus time goes by quick, so we never really see what happens.

[thunterman]

1

Yes and that is the whole problem with Blizz Story writing. They make the enemies literal gods, in the case of Sargeras so OP that it's just gets silly. In the end you can only solve the dilemma by making the villain look like an idiot or invent some deus ex machina on the last meters. That's why I liked MoP and look forward to BfA, because there the villains are somewhat defeatable without being outright silly. I believe that we can defeat Garrosh, or even Arthas, with a little Light's help, or a weakened Old God, or the Emperess of the Klaxxi, or a emporered Eredar like KJ or Archi. But with someone on the powerlevel as Sargeras the only thing Blizz could do was fail. That's why you normally keep these kind of villains out of the story and keep them a distant threat or impose limits within the game world why they are really OP but cannot interfere with us directly and need lesser minions to do the job (which we can defeat).

Azshara from a lore perspective is way beyond our power, heavy hints at Nzoth too. The old gods are immensely powerful, it's a fantasy game, there has to be mega threats that are beyond our comprehension, and the only way to "defeat" them is to employ help, or else the idea of them being immensely powerful is thrown out the window when 20 adventurers roll in and defeat said boss. I've never had a problem with Blizzards story telling, I'd rather have some cliche scenario to defeat Sargaras than it turn out we are actually stronger than him.

[Deleted]

Theres very few rules in storytelling And....they got it utterly wrong.

Show me a reliable source of these exact rules.
Regardless if there are any, you certainly don't seem to understand any of it.

Sargeras is basically so massive and powerful, we are not yet ready to face him and only in the face of Argus' defeat and the combined might of all his brethren allowed for him to be imprisoned for now.

WoD was damaging to the lore. Pandas, interreality demons and duplicate characters are lore breaking, not a questionable but atleast feasible ending to an decade spanning story.

[Deleted]

Spoilers...

Theres very few rules in storytelling but a big one is to make the threats credible, to make the challenge worthy of your heroes quest. This was Sargeras, first appearance in full form in a cinematic and hes THE big bad so they had only one mandate: make him credible. And....they got it utterly wrong.

1. They have the guy hiding in a cloud like a coward.
2. The cinematic is basically Sargeras getting his ass kicked.
3. He whines and screams like a baby.
4. He gets jailed and now illidan is going to kick his ass for eternity.
5. Sargeras kills ZERO lore heroes on his way out.
6. Velen, Khadgar, and co actually look BORED watching this play out.

Now, it might feel really cool to you TODAY to see this. But this irreparably does damage to the lore. You see, Sargeras’ victories are ALL off screen, rumored, little to no corroboration for any of it. THIS is his FIRST screen time EVER. that means going forward THIS cinematic WILL define who Sargeras is. For the next 10 years, when kids ask “who is sargeras?” People will tell them to watch this video. And they will come away with the impression that Sargeras is an inept stupid moron that loses despite his massive size. In short, his lore will be dimished to that of an imperial stormtrooper over time.

Some people should be fired for this cinematic. They had one job. And they blew it.

I didn't fully realize it at the time but No.6 is devastating. It's so true. They just stand there motionless as if they aren't witnessing the horror taking place.

[Zyky]

The cinematic was a huge let down for me. At the very least they should have shown a little more of Illidan vs Sargeras. That's a bare minimum, but what we got was very crappy, Sargeras didn't even have any real lines and the Pantheon is like "SIT DOWN AND CHANNEL A BEAM INTO SPACE!"

[Spotnick]

Not only that, but basically all of WoW is always the same shit. Nothing has weight, ever. Why don't they change the fucking game? Make the sword land in Stormwind and DELETE stormwind, it's over, a fucking crater of shit and it's not replaced, any quest or NPCs that were there are dead FOR EVERYONE. Not phasing bullshit, the game is now a game with no stormwind, no stockades, anything that was there is deleted forever. That's how you make threats credible, by literally affecting the world in a meaningful way. Who gives a shit if silithus gets stabbed. Go destroy the game.

Azeroth bleeding and dying is actually a possible opportunity to leave and start over on a new world and bring back Vanilla style experience else where.

I don't know if they would have the guts to do it... but...

At some point, they can't just add new continents all the time.

[Shakou]

I have to disagree with OP entirely for very simple reasons: because it takes the entire Pantheon being resurrected and working together to stop him, and they don't even manage to keep him from seriously wounding Azeroth in the process. If you were "let down" by this, well that's understandable but in context they accomplished everything they needed to.

Apparently some of you somehow MISSED the point that Sargeras himself RESURRECTED THE PANTHEON, intending to bend them to his will and use them to complete his crusade. Instead heroes of Azeroth managed to stop that (by defeating Argus the Unmaker), and so the "rebirth" of the Pantheon instead led to the end of the Burning Legion but Sargeras himself being merely captured. Not even killed.

You haven't seen the end of this storyline yet.

I mean ya I wanted an epic battle against Sargeras too, I wanted him to seriously wreak havoc on Azeroth, but for this story none of that was essential at all.

In fact I would argue that it being any other way would be akin to Sauron physically making an appearance at the Battle of the Black gate in Return of the King (something they almost actually did in the film and thankfully did not). What you people are asking for is literally like asking for Michael Bay's version of LORD OF THE RINGS. It's not good story you guys are asking for, it's mindless destruction and whiz bang explosions and crap, and y'all try to frame it like you're actually arguing for story? SMH

[Bigbazz]

To me it came across a bit like a wet fart.

[Fabinas]

hahaaha...

I stopped playing WoW almost 5 months ago.

I'm glad. This is the most uninspiring and pathetic expansion end Video ever. Compare it with the Arthas defeat cinematic to see what i mean.

[Vynestra]

i think this was literally the only way to end it, having us fight sargeras would be stupid, it would literally be what everyone whines about, us turning into mythical champions, if we defeated a god it'd be over.

Let's consider we now have the void lords whom are a larger threat than sargeras, and we couldn't even touch sargeras if we wanted without the help of the titans who are now also locked away w/ sargeras...

so yeah.

We should not be able to defeat sargeras, argus? sure he was damaged goods, and we had the titans help, sargeras? no.

Just imprison his ass.

[Deleted]

4. Illidan is dead, he either gets crushed by Sargeras or he dies by lack of food and water.

He's immortal !

[Shinuclaw]

Blizzard may cheese around with their stories, but they LOVE iconic characters. I could see them making the Void Lords corrupt Sargeras sometime in the future when they're ready to bring him back as the ultimate evil again.

[cuafpr]

its almost like legion isn't over and maybe this isn't the end of the line for it all....

[Deleted]

Blizzard may cheese around with their stories, but they LOVE iconic characters. I could see them making the Void Lords corrupt Sargeras sometime in the future when they're ready to bring him back as the ultimate evil again.

Na, he will be saved to become our bitch later, just like Illidan. In the fight against the ultimate Void Overlord he will sacrifice himself to destroy the Void.

[Akka]

I was more shocked to see that striking a planet with a 3000 km-long sword moving at several hundred of km/s does just... fuck all and we end up with a 500m blade planted in the ground ?
Seriously ?
I know Warcraft is very, very, very light on realism, but fuck... this is just stupid.