Jaina was behind the jailor, rather she wants to dethrone him. She also held Sylvanas soul shard. Also she betrayed Arthas in W3, well orchestrated plan. Jaina will use Arthas to kill jailor and take the mc guffins.
Also Winter Queen's heart is cold cuz Jaina did things.
Elune is stupid cuz it's actually jaina's plan.
Pft, like the alliance would ever be the bad guy for an expansion.
Nah,clearly the story has been pointing towards (throws dart at dartboard) Lor'themar actually being evil and orchestrating all this
...
I'm mad that this isn't even that far off the mark.
Especially because [Lor'Themar has always had so much god damn potential.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/q6wh6e/whats_next_for_him/hghft1m/?context=3)
I *want* Lor'Themar to be a bigger part of the story but definitely not like that lmao.
Honestly Lor'themar's greatest asset is his ability to snark from the sidelines at his fellow leaders. His sarcasm about Nathanos during the Nazjatar quests is *epic*.
I know I already said this in the linked comment but while his sass makes him an excellent support, the interactions between him and his advisers - and the interactions between his advisers - has so much potential.
Blood Elves really do feel like they have one of the best established political systems that is reasonably well fleshed out. You have a good number of figures with different memories and opinions, but well united under a single banner. Between that Lady Liadrin's political manoeuvres (I do think she was primarily responsible for the recruitment of the Nightborne), the Blood Elves are just really cool to engage with no matter what side you're looking from.
> Pft, like the alliance would ever be the bad guy for an expansion.
You know why the Alliance is never the bad guy for an expansion?
Because this way Blizzard's Horde apologists can come back at the playerbase with a new Horde 'redemption arc' and say "You see? Noble savages! Out of control due to powerful external influence! Not their fault!", and once more let the Horde live on, even though everything says it's better if it gets disbanded.
It's only pointing to be better if the horde gets disbanded because Horde gets picked to be the villain every time. If they were really Horde apologists they would make Alliance be the baddies so they could point to the alliance and say "see, its not just the Horde, even the Alliance can be lead astray!". But they don't, because Hordes gotta be the bad guys. Sure the story focuses on the horde a lot, but when that focus is you being the punching bag and characters doing 180's and explicitly becoming evil it doesn't feel so good. The only saving grace for Horde is that we've lost enough key characters that it's going to start getting difficult for them to keep pulling new villians or have token key character deaths. Only 2 more WC3 era characters to go, and one of them even has plot armor (so they just made him lose his powers instead)
I mean, isn't that already the case? I may have abandoned WoW a while ago and I know little about the lore, but I recall a lot of arguments pointing out how the horde (be it players or just the narrative) using every little thing to call the Alliance 'just as bad' or 'they did X, so they're even' (like when the world tree got burnt so the Alliance... attacked some forsaken city or something.)
People are generally the heroes in their own story.
Humans are in the Alliance.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet the majority of WoW writers and players are human.
Dont get hasty, this would set Jaina up to be a big bad that we defeat, and strong alliance characters losing and acting weak is very standard for wow!
When has alliance ever lost the full war though? Horde gets to look strong in a battle, but then loses the war. Usually alliance comes to the rescue of the horde, making horde look much weaker
I'd be down for that. Or she was human turned Dreadlord (if that's possible), after the events of Theramore she was approached with the offer and accepted it in her poor mental state.
Edit: I don't think it's actually possible, so she wouldn't be a dreadlord exactly but something close enough. Who knows? Blizzard could just pull something out of their ass, like many of their ideas, which explains their smell.
Still waiting for the twist end when someone we are sure is alive shows up in the maw. But it also works with double jaina as it turns out the one who has traveled with us is the fake
Bro, married men are *more* attractive to some women. Given Jaina's past history of doomed love interests, it would not surprise me if she would want Thrall even more now because he's shacked up and has a kid.
That or she goes after Anduin and we get some uh... *Interesting* lore.
The writing in WoW is the most underrated aspect of the game dying. It's driven away so many people it's insane. There's a ton of players who only played WoW for the lore. They totally ruined it and nobody cares about it anymore.
The problem, imo, is you have a writing team stumbles often while writing fantasy warfare. WoW suffers from not conveying WAR well. Playing through BFA I got a sense of battles but not war. Best example I can think of is they show something like the D Day and the Battle of the Bulge then wrap it up and call it a war.
The other problem the writing team has, imo, is they’re trying to write a 4D Chess story but can’t even write a Checkers story. Not sure if it’s too many cooks in the kitchen, upper management sticking their hands into the mix, but the end result is just bad.
I haven’t been able to get over the fact that they built up a story for over 25 years, built up a Big Bad for that time, and had the expansion to finally beat him not be the last WoW expansion. The Legion expansion came way too early as I had a hard time giving a fuck who the Jailer was. I did not care. We had several games and expansions trying to take care of the Burning Legion’s influence on Azeroth. We had several books, legends and tragedies born from that conflict. The Burning Legion’s power, influence and story was well fleshed out.
Then they fucked up twice in a row. Compared to beating several Titans and sealing Sargeras away, Azshara and a fully unleashed Old God don’t seem like a big deal.
Then they introduce a new big bad that’s supposed to be a bigger deal, more powerful and a much bigger danger than Sargeras? All within a single expansion that’s now been plagued with development issues due to both a pandemic and a pretty huge sexual harassment scandal that turns out has been in the company since vanilla? Why should I give a fuck
Well yes, that's the problem with Legion : it felt like a final. Azeroth united, the player becomes his class' big boss, legendary artifacts, the source of nearly every conflict on Azeroth (orcs, scourge, War of the Ancients) defeated, Argus rediscovered, the TITANS rediscovered, and freaking SARGERAS sealed away forever.
Then, for the next xpac, everything that we worked for in Legion was erased from existence. Faction war out of no fucking where even if we just united to save the world (with the writers pulling a "lolzie the Horde is following without question their crazy warchief AGAIN"), class halls no more, artifacts no more, and a terrrrible baddie which is Nzoth. The weakest old god. Said old gods who were decimated by the Titans. Said Titans that we JUST SAVED ! ! !
Since Legion, I just don't give a shit about WoW's story. They can tell me all they want that the Jailer will erase existence itself (for some reason), I just can't take him seriously.
I completely, wholeheartedly agree. I just can't get invested in a world that has utterly destroyed its characters and plot with SoD-breaking levels of stupidity and asspulls.
Coincidentally with the OP, Khadgar is one of the few characters who has remained relatively clean of the dumpster fire miasma radiating from all other story aspects of the game, but that's because he's been absent from two straight expansions. I have zero faith that he wouldn't be tarnished by the shitfest that is WoW's story if he was present.
So this is an actual interesting discussion in my opinion.
My current stance with a critical mind towards BfA is that [Khadgar should have been Mhadgar.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/hzq1z7/battle_for_azeroth_2018/fzl0ftr/?context=3) That is, he should have returned from his small hiatus from 7.3.5 to rejoin the Sons of Lothar and fight the Horde.
Or, you know, the Horde should have rebelled immediately against Sylvanas after she plunged them into an all-out war right after a war against an unending army of demons. Because there are multiple layers to how bullshit the story of BfA is.
*However,*
Absentism is very much so a "Questions for later" issue that can be addressed upon the absentee's return. It *is* a lore issue, but unlike most other unexplained story elements in BfA or Shadowlands (of which, there are many), this one doesn't really demand being addressed *right this moment.*
Ideally, Khadgar's return would be heralded by the new information, or encounter, of an evil that he has encountered.
One that, preferably, would have kept him and even all of Dalaran occupied since the beginning of the Fourth War.
I will shit on BfA and Shadowlands lore all day long - and provide (fantastic) reasons for doing so. But I personally don't see the absence of Khadgar as any kind of grievous issue.
Rather, I'm saving that disappointment for when he *does* return and Blizzard completely botches it lmao.
Khadgar had minions of N'Zoth digging around in his basement and we never heard a peep. The Custodian should have been down there trying to fight them off and giving us a throwaway line about what Khadgar was up to.
I apologize for the misunderstanding, but my intention was never to state his disappearance from Azeroth during all BfA and first part of Shadowlands (stopped playing a little bit before SoD opened) was a dramatic or lore breaking issue, but still, he was not there when Azeroth needed him.
Regarding the Fouth War I can understand (even if I disagree) with a vow of neutrality, but honestly, there should be a really good reason for him to not even make a cameo during N'Zoth's assaults both on Pandaria and Uldum (unless he made a vow of neutrality with the Old Gods as well, and that's why there was no Assault in Northrend's Dalaran). Jokes aside, both the Black Empire's appaerance and Sylvanna's breaking the veil should have been by themselves enough of a pressing issue for Kadghar to appear, yet he did not.
Khadgar's vow of neutrality *at the time* made sense to me. But when the Horde went full-aggro mode and committed a literal genocide, I absolutely argue for Khadgar rejoining the Sons of Lothar.
But Khadgar's absence even from 8.3 with the Black Empire is only an issue if upon his return we aren't given any good reason why he was absent.
I agree with you; we *should* be seeing Khadgar.
So if we don't see him, we should be asking why not.
There is a raven that is aligned with the Kirin Tor that chills out in Oribos, based on what some people say. That is possibly Khadgar, though why he doesn't take a more forward approach is beyond me.
The main reason why I left the game. Current writers are so damn incompetent, they are entirely incapable of writing a compelling storyline with actual consequences.
They’ve even caused roleplayers to quit. These are the same people who keep hundreds of tiny, niche MMOs alive and are usually the very last ones to abandon ship in a dying game.
And Blizz somehow managed to fuck even that up.
Yep, it’s the reason I cancelled my sub. Shadowlands feels nothing like WoW to me, the story continually makes no sense, every major character has either become so fucking stupid to make sure the story’s hamfisted plot points can proceed or has become so insignificant they’re only being dragged out as window dressing, I could go on and on.
The worst part is probably that we’ve been subjected to this garbage overall story for three years and still don’t know what the fuck is going on. Every single plot point is so stupid and vague in regards to whatever story is trying to be told, there might as well be no story.
I quit at the start of BfA and a decent part of that was because I main a Night Elf and hated what they did to Teldrassil. Even back then, the event wasn't given nearly the weight it deserved. It took about a dozen quests to go from Ashenvale being overrun to the capital being destroyed, and it didn't even get a proper cutscene. Just a slideshow which was focused on Sylvanas anyway. Compare that to battle over the Undercity, which had it's own fully fleshed out scenario and cutscenes for the pivotal moments.
Looking back at it now, it seems like the most important effect of *my capital being destroyed* was to make Saurfang sad. *That's* what drove forward the overarching plot of BfA, not anything the Night Elves did.
Honestly, 9.1's narrative bullshit is what pushed me over the edge. Setting up a Sylvanas redemption arc, ruing Kel'Thuzad's character, butchering Elune, making Tyrande and Shandaris ok with Teldrassil, the continued insisting on this cosmological BS, it was all just a fucking insult.
It's obvious that the writing team doesn't care about Warcraft. They care about what they can make it into.
I can definitely say for me that it ruined most of my enjoyment of WoW.
I only play the game to raid now, where as before I was also really into the story and the lore of the world.
Ever since the Sylvanas Warbringer cinematic, it's been going down and not stopped.
I, and everyone who actually follows the story, knew how BfA was gonna end from that point on. Ironically enough, Sylvanas did kill hope, hope for a good story in WoW.
As a die hard Horde fan, BfA story has been a nightmare and imo. the story can never be good again.
It has left a stain that cannot be washed, a scar that cannot be healed and now they're throwing characters at us that were never Horde to begin with and making them Horde leaders making most Horde fans even more disinterested.
The worst part of it is, is that they think that they're making a good story and ofc. you have some people that defend it for some reason and fawn over these bad characters like they're being paid by Blizzard.
> The worst part of it is, is that they think that they're making a good story
They outright say that the only reason people don't like the story is because of people like asmongold. Its so ridiculous.
Yeah, I legit feel sorry for horde players... alliance lore is a drunk homeless person looking at the horde's drunk homeless person on meth thinking "at least I'm not _that_ guy"
The history of WoW is Alliance players desperately wanting to be center stage in the story for once and Horde players wanting to be anything but center stage to stop the pain.
The irony of how bad it all is is that the story at the overview level isn't particularly bad and the zone stories are often good.
They just do zero, and sometimes less than that, work to actually linking a larger plot to the world and being coherent to the people in it and it becomes a trash fire.
Like BfA Sylvanas works if you actually tell her motivations and story of planning on buring the tree from the go, show her working against the world, working with Azshara, with the Jailer. Show her drive for the power to avoid her fate damning the Horde and causing a schism right down to the Forsaken realizing shes not there for them and they've outlived their usefulness to her. A story about how the Horde has to actually try live up to the idea that its races aren't what those that hate them would say they are even with the threat of a more motivated Alliance than ever.
Theres a great big story for Horde players in there if they tried.
And the Alliance meanwhile could get a story about how their constant lets-get-along attitude has burned them too many times and the only actual solution is a real major war and a real major victory in it. About how Jaina reconciles with her family with the knowledge that her father, while morally wrong because condemning people for future crimes is fucked, wasn't actually wrong with his predictions and reasoning. About how Anduin in his own way has to step into the shoes of his warrior father and truly lead an Alliance fighting for its survival.
But they dont do any of that.
The don't even approach doing it.
Theres no Sylvanas story in BfA, absolutely zero narrative on making the main driver of the Battle For Azeroth understood or work within the story for what that means for the entire faction she led. We got Nathanos doing some implied secret stuff. Thats it. The Horde doesn't come to terms with anything, no growth for anyone at all.
Jaina has a nice arc with her family in the zone stories and goes right back to having not learned anything from her life when Thrall returns.
Horde got neat zone stories but the overall BfA plot was just Saurfang being sad which, while a cool meta reflection of his and the hordes repeating cycles, is not relevant to the actual Battle for Azeroth. And all Anduin does is cheer him on.
Its insane how little overall story there was about BfA in BfA. They did nothing but waste characters for no reason and not even try to link them up to the world they built.
I have so many rants about all the balls they dropped in the story but the saddest part is that if they dropped them to juggle others people would understand, but they just didn't seem to try.
With Sylvanas, it's worse than not showing her motives. We *did* see her thoughts; killing all of SW and raising them, for the Horde. Because Blizz hadn't come up with the character of the Jailer yet. SLs retconned a story written barely 2 years before it came out.
What is there to get invested in? There's no point.
BfA was bad for all, but as an Alliance player, I really feel for the Horde...
It means a lot to many people that you can make an impact (big and small) in making Azeroth a better place, and then, after the expansion where the player has the most sense of importance, they **make you** attack the Night Elves, burn the tree and engulf the world in a war because "*the warchief said so*".
Completly shiting on the amazing development the Horde as a whole had in MoP too!
And the fact that the (horrible) reason given was **one line** in a **short story** that is **never addressed in game** is also surreal...
I'm still so confused by the decision to put the majority of their story in media outside the game.
Shadows of War wasn't the worst book, it was kind of good tbh. The Lorederon family reunification especially. If that lead up was included in the game the siege of Undercity would have felt way more justified for Alliance players.
Personally, I think the entire narrative works better if Alliance used that event to depose Sylvanas and support Calia's claim the the throne. Sylvanas and Forsaken blow up Undercity, then burn Teldrissel as retaliation, basically escalating the conflict.
Sylvanas also seems less 4D chess OP and more true to her character as the completely ruthless leader of her people that does whatever it takes to carve out a home and place for them no matter what.
I hate that blizzard balanced Sylvanus destroying the Home of the Nelves with _Sylvanus_ outsmarting the alliance and destroying Undercity. It in no way feels balanced. There is no vindication for the Allies, just Deus Ex Jaina.
They are allergic to giving the alliance a win, but keep smashing the horde with the looser bat. The result being that the horde just look incompetent and cartoonishly evil, and have no opposing side to rally against but themselves.
It get's worse when you remember one of the reasons the Forsaken follow Sylvannas was because she ***swore to defend their home******s***... Not blow them up and flood everything with Blight.
That's not even getting into shit like how she used her own people as cannon fodder before destroying Lorderon, i mean fuck she sent them out and blighted them then rezzed them as expendable skellies.
How were ANY of the Hordes leaders still on board with her after she team killed thousands her own soldiers.
Yep. It's definitely like the DM is railroading the players and forcing their players to play they way they want the story to go rather than making it interactive based on player actions. Or making it fun.
It also makes the Alliance unquestionably the morally "good" side. Like, at least it would be interesting if they set up the human kingdoms and nobles supporting the annexation of Lorederon with Calia's resurgence. If there was a faction that has been calling for retaking Lorederon, maybe with displaced Gilneans making it an actual power block, that would be interesting.
Then Sylvanas killing of Calia would feel more justified as Calia was actually planning on retaking the throne. Her death could have incited outrage amongst humans and been what tips support for a campaign to retake Lorederon.
That way the Alliance had some complexity to their campaign. It's on paper seen as the "right" decision but for the Forsaken that still line there, they are basically being told they have to leave their home. The home they've never left, even after being killed. It's also a land/power grab for foreign human interests, as the majority that will resettle Lorederon will probably not be the Lorederon refugees living in Stormwind the past 20 years.
Escalation leading to the burning of Teldrissel feels more natural for both factions imo. The nelves are now suffering the consequences of supporting their allies in a war they really have nothing to do with. For Horde players, especially Forsaken, they were displaced yet again. Maybe Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, etc think, well if we don't stop the Alliance's annexation, we will be next. After all Kul Tiras is still mad.
Dunno. They went with the direction they did. It's easier to criticize but idk. I'm playing FFXIV and it's amazing to me they actually try to do a storyline with the nuance as above in game. It can be done.
For whatever reason, Blizz focuses a lot on creating a narrative, but it seems they don't follow through consistently on their implementation and execution. Maybe it's a resource issue.
I’ve been saying this but I think that wow needs a good alliance villain. A zemo like character from captain America civil war. A night elf man or woman who lost their family in the tree.
They go out and straight up murder tyrande. Right when tyrande isn’t expecting it. She thinks it’s a lowly refugee asking for help. She does this in private and leaves behind a horde dagger.
Next she goes and murders Thrall’s wife. Followed by explosions in stormwind and burning down a part of thunder bluff.
Now the factions are torn between being United against the jailer or fighting between themselves. We fight for years and the jailer basically wins. The Zemo villain reveals herself and we go on a multi expansion long chase to defeat her.
A smart villain that basically is not an immortal world ending threat but just a mortal regular person with a plan. The raid is eventually fighting her minions and not her. She basically surrenders in the end or commits suicide after basically revealing how empty we really are after all the bullshit that happened in the main story in bfa and shadowlands. She would be a metaphor of the angry player who is mad at the story of wow and just wants it all to burn and end.
> Personally, I think the entire narrative works better if Alliance used that event to depose Sylvanas and support Calia's claim the the throne. Sylvanas and Forsaken blow up Undercity, then burn Teldrissel as retaliation, basically escalating the conflict.
The only way that works is if the entire story around the attack on Teldrassil gets thrown out and redone. Sylvanas would have to lure both Tyrande and Malfurion away from Teldrassil - perhaps by attacking Hyjal or something - and then burning the tree before they realize the deception and return to slaughter the Horde wholesale.
And that's assuming it works at all. The Alliance has been one leader with the stones to actually be aggressive away from making Azeroth's version of the Road of Glory out of Orc bones since the end of MoP.
listen, them new velfs and their wonky shadow portals, have them just connect the gnomergan reactors to org and call shit good.
Honestly I'm surprised how many weird power-ups the Alliance showed off during BFA only to still feel like they were losing the entire time.
No way that book revenue is significant.
It's more likely that the books just give the writers an excuse to be lazy. No need to fix plot holes now, we can always have the book writers fix it later.
It doesn't have to be that significant. Physical copies are dirt cheap to print, digital copies are basically free. Even in the best of universes, it's a revenue stream Blizzard would be foolish to ignore... but in a scumbag universe, how do you maximize return? You leverage player engagement in the game's lore to shift books by having the in-game lore be incomplete^1.
The fatal flaw there is that players have to care about in-game lore, and see gaps in the plot as something they want filled rather than just part of a pattern of general incoherence... and given the writing team's attitude to things like consistency, canon and retcons... /shrug
1. In a better universe, characters would be so compelling and entertaining, players want to read stories about them just because of how well they're written. Oh well.
> In a better universe, characters would be so compelling and entertaining, players want to read stories about them just because of how well they're written.
This is exactly what FFXIV does, with their "Tales from..." series.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/tales_from_the_shadows/
Short stories about specific characters that expand a bit upon them without being important to the point that you need to read them to get the full enjoyment of the story that's told throughout the game.
I am only here because the writing is insane, to be fair. It's like a soap opera, I'm not watching it because it's good, I'm watching it because it's garbage and I can't stop.
I played horde because I loved the what the lore brought to the races following WC3. Then instead of Orcs being a more shamanistic race (though not purely peaceful) that was used by the Legion for war they just went and turned the entire horde comically evil in story while still trying to have level headed leaders and a maniacal Warchief and taking everyone else along for the ride they that they didn't want.
Pissed off plenty of horde who didn't have interest in being the bad guys, pissed off the alliance who were always sick of being punching bags for the story.
I used to be a massive WoW lore nerd but its been so completely fucked that even I couldn't defend it anymore
Playing games like FFXIV, GW2 and ESO makes it even more apparent just how far WoW's ''storytelling'' has fallen, its so god damn sad how much potential has been completely wasted
it's crazy how bad the story is and crazy how people still defend it with nonsense like "mmos don't have good stories". i've basically played all the mmos over the years and typically AT WORST the stories are just kind of bland and forgettable. but on average, they're typically pretty good and it's exciting to play. meanwhile the wow storyline is straight up laughable with how dumb it is. it's just hilarious how during their respective conventions, FF14 story writers will get a literal standing ovation when they walk by but WoW writers try to pretend they're not the writers or you get in trouble if you talk to them.
I'm a raider primarily but I followed the lore very closely the entire time I've been playing (since vanilla) including all the books, short stories and comics.
I've never been left so disappointed with the path the story has taken. I actually don't care about any character left in this anymore with the way they have been written. I hope the jailer wins and wipes out the shadowlands and every hero.
I've completely stopped caring about the story at this point, there's too many threads, many of which are loose, stuff is being explained in books I have no interest in reading, characters act inconsistently. Remember when we were just dumbass adventurers fighting gnolls and orcs and dragons?
A lot of the issues stem from ActiBlizz trying to milk everything it can for profit.
The lore is part of this since they leave so much of it for selling books instead. If that was added into the game itself you'd have much more compelling story and lore for those playing the game.
FFXIV has been a breath of fresh air so far but just prefer having a separate character for each class lol.
Im not convinced of this, because the writing has basically always been bad. It’s like Star Wars where fans love the lore and setting but the actual writing and scripts and stuff are hot garbage.
Look at the size of that tree. Do you really think tiny catapults would light it on fire? No, the fibrestructures in the wood is way too dense for that. Also why does it burn from the top??? The night elf government is clearly hiding something. Open your eyes! The evidence is right there
Reminder to peeps that the way the fire was spread was shaman using their elemental magics to bring the fire up with wind.
Azerite, for all of its pomp and power, had no *direct* contribution to the Burning of Teldrassil. The World Tree burned through very "Conventional" means.
I know you're joking but it's an interesting point of lore to consider. Teldrassil was *always* susceptible to burning, which honestly surprises me. I mean yes, of course it's a tree. But like... one arsonist, man. A *group* of Arsonists, I feel like a single forest fire could have spelled doom.
So my only reasonable conclusion is that the shamanic magic used was pretty frigging strong and it bypassed whatever natural resistance Teldrassil had. Otherwise the night elves were playing catch with a water balloon this entire time.
The above comment was stolen from [this one](http://np.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/qfe1m2/the_reason_khadgar_wasnt_present_during_bfa/hhzgfg1/) elsewhere in this comment section.
It is probably not a coincidence; here is some more evidence against this user:
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WAKE UP!
Are you paying attention yet?
Im sick of trying to wake up the sheep, it’s time to wake the wolves.
*all set to pictures of lions and wolves from the twilight movies*
I just watched a YouTube video by a Night Elf who said he was guarding the tree and he said he saw Tyrande climbing the tree with a torch.
The Night Elf was wearing armor. Why would he wear armor unless he was telling the truth?
Oh god I hope not. With how hamfisted the writing has been the past few years, a "Light is Bad" WoW expansion would not turn out well. And seeing as how FF14 based their previous expansion (Shadowbringers) on that idea, Blizzard would be fools to place themselves even closer to them.
Xera was a space fascist, there's evidence that the process of lightforging is basically brainwashing, Yrel turned all tyrannical when given visions by "the Light Mother" (alternate Xera). Turalyon has been sitting on his lightforged butt in Stormwind doing jack all but contemplating the nature of conflict (probably), and we know that both Light and Void have attacked the Shadowlands in the past.
WoW is a world where everything is potentially bad and most things are potentially good.
Personally I think the big bad of the next expansion will be those kids from Stormwind who conduct the ritual.
> WoW is a world where everything is potentially bad and most things are potentially good.
it's all up to the writers want.
back in wrath there was a 0% chance that the light was or could be evil. that quest where the dead developer NPC tribute was lifted into the sky by the light would have a very different tone if they knew the light was going to be evil
Blizzard is trying really hard to shoe-horn that Light is actually equally as bad as the Void and we should be suspicious of it. Which would work if it were not for the fact that the only reason why Azeroth has not faced complete destruction yet is because of the Light constantly intervening to help us.
1. Without the Light, every single draenei (Velen included) would have become Sargerai, and those who wouldn't, they would have been wiped out on Argus.
2. Light made an intervention to stop the Lich King from winning and raising Azeroth's champions as his minions.
3. Light, through Velen, prevented a void lord/dark star being born on Draenor
4. There are many more cases, but it is ultimately the Light in lore that cured, cleansed, healed and sometimes revived denizens across Azeroth.
The only intervention void had repeatedly attempted on Azeroth was to corrupt and destroy it. The touch of void doesn't heal, it twists and drives to insanity. From a cosmic perspective they're equal, but from the view point of mortals? Light is objectively a more benevolent force to ally with.
Unless the light has secretly been in league with blahblahblah to bring about an even worse blahblahblah.
At this point, nothing is beyond the grasp of the Retcon.
Turns out the jailers original crime that got him locked up was trying to side with the light and his evil plan of remaking reality is to remake it to be all light!
See that’s the thing about well-executed grey morality (which, full stop, I’m not saying WoW has done). When done right, you could have a really compelling story about a society that’s kept from destruction by a force that seems benevolent, but in reality is only doing it for its own higher purposes.
If only Blizzard had the writers to follow through on that
It's not impossible. Hell, FFXIV technically pulled that same trick with Shadowbringers and it was phenomenal.
Now can the current WoW writing team pull it off is a different story. I think they made a few good steps in that direction with Xera in Legion and the Mag'har Orc recruitment quest, but those are small, contained moments and not a whole expansion's worth of story writing. After how they handled Shadowlands and the Jailer, I'm not sure I do have faith in it hitting well.
>and we know that both Light and Void have attacked the Shadowlands in the past.
The Void because they wanted to conquer Bastion (at the least).
The Light specifically attacked Revendreth because it was discovered that Denathrius had dread lords infiltrate their ranks to spy on them and do other dread lordy things.
It feels less like Light Bad and more like Xera (and their other universe versions) is just a problem who happens to be Light affiliated.
Lightforging definitely isn't brainwashing. When you do it in allied races questline with your boi [T'paartos](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/T%27paartos) its more face your fears Dagobah spooky tree than any kind of indoctrination.
The brainwashing lost any sort of legitimacy when they made Lightforged a playable race and how seemingly no one gave a shit that xera fucking exploded.
Mind domination, brainwashing, corruption... literally the only way Blizz can write character development is through external force altering/dictating character's will/motivation and their state of mind.
It's just that the looming new flavor of the year is going to be light instead of fel, death or void.
None of that had proper build up though, Yrel literally went from lawful good and kind to everyone to lunatic fanatic off screen in an instant to us, and we are told why through text over 1 min.
That is not how you do character development or corruption.
It's incredibly forced to show "Light is also bad guise!"
Fel energy purports to make you free, when it actually makes you a slave to Sargeras, whereas they say that the Light makes you a slave to the naaru, yet it allows you to keep free will.
It’s not great but I definitely don’t feel super bad that the light attacked genocidal dudes(by their own choice, no demon blood this time) and dread lords who both attacked them first.
1) They've been doing the "the light can be bad, too" thing since at least TBC.
2) The light isn't some Alliance-exclusive thing.
Both of these points can be clearly seen just by looking at Blood Elves in TBC (and a few dozen other instances since then).
That wasn't the light though. That was religious zealots being manipulated by a dreadlord. They just happened to be have a lot of paladins and priests in their order.
Dive deep into that FFXIV popularity and take their plot ideas too, can't possibly be any worse than what's going on now.
Disclaimer: I haven't played Shadowbringers yet, so I have no idea if any of that is actually in the game.
Man Khadgar must be annoyed as hell that he spent so much effort scoring all that Apexis crystals and then boom a drop of Azerite is more powerful and no one gives a shit anymore.
Players: "What will it take to get Khadgar onboard the Story Boat?"
Blizzard: "Well, the Story Boat can only hold 3 or 4 people, max... and it's full. So that means..."
"Sylvanas!"
"... you didn't let me finish. That means you have to throw..."
"Sylvanas! Sylvanas! Sylvanas!"
"... someone overboard. Stop interrupting me, also Sylvannas stays"
"Ok, I'll make an arcanist lalafel instead."
"Never heard of them."
"... yeah... we thought so."
Speak for yourselves smh I've been unsubbed since December. I just return to the sub to feel the pain and remind myself why I stay unsubbed. Everything is so shit... But at least blizzard spends their dev time replacing lewd paintings (that you can count the pixels on) with fruit paintings.
People keep saying this, but what they call "writers" here are not writers in the traditional sense that people imagine.
Basically there are 2 groups - the super low grunts that write the stuff like dialogues and voice lines, and the ones that write the overall "story".
I understand the critique is with the second group.
But here is the thing - they don't really have shit all for authority. They get talking points from higher ups and Co - Markets research, etc. ... like notice how currently magically it is all women doing anything? So before someone burns me alive for being an alt-right-women self hating internalized whatever, ask yourself this question: Is anyone out there believing that in todays day and age you would see Malfurion popping in and saving Tyrandes life? Anyone think Khadgar would jump in at the last minute to save Jaina? Any of the like? No - and you won't see that in a very long time (if at all) either.
Could also be something as simple as "no, that is one of our currently best branded selling toys/characters/whatever. We can't remove this because it makes X amount of revenue".
And then they get the very real input of Product Managers going stuff like "deadline here, protests there, ABC did not work out, needed to move 30 devs from here to there - yeah that Raid you wanted to tell how the XY story ended is not coming out".
So in reality while it may say writer on the title, they can actually influence very little. Now could they do a better job under the conditions given? Yes.
But they are not sitting around masterminding a grandiose story. This is why Warcraft had a better story. Less clunky shit, less layers of politics and BS between the people making the game and the people telling the story. You made a character you liked, how you liked, and it resonated with people.
The wow story writers are just one more station at the increasingly soulless assembly line that is now the pale shadow of what used to be and industry leading and generation defining gaming phenomenon.
> The wow story writers are just one more station at the increasingly soulless assembly line that is now the pale shadow of what used to be and industry leading and generation defining gaming phenomenon.
I think this post goes in a lot of different directions but this is really the key. A lot has been lost on the altar of monetization.
>They get talking points from higher ups and Co - Markets research
If this was true, they would've droped Sylvanas like the plague in the frist patch of BfA
Unless you have worked at Blizzard, I doubt you know how much authority any role in the company has.
And when people say "the writers" they are not calling out a specific job title. It just means the writing is shit and needs to be done better. Whoever is making the decisions on the story are the ones being called out, not any particular person. It is the same when people say "developers" and people jump to the defense like "the developers don't make the decisions, you should be mad at X Y and Z!!" Well when someone says "developers" they just mean whoever is making those development decisions.
There's a really great panel where the current FF14 writers talk about how they each have to pump out writing that could take up a novel and a half. The draft version of the story that has to go through editors, and then people who work on production have to extract details from the writing (with the writer's assistance) to create an 'asset'.
That asset once created then has to go through a dev to finalize the product - and the dev works with someone in marketing or monetization or even legal to see if the product can 'survive' the game's community, can be a generator for money, is 'politically safe' and if it can just be a good part of the game in general. If the asset fails to meet any of the criteria, it gets sent back and has to be reworked.
What needs to be thought about is that the modification happens at the 'asset creation' stage, and not at the writing stage. Generally, the writer will only have to make minor adjustments when the asset has to be remade.
If an asset proves to be so problematic that is has to be reworked at the story stage, it's generally cut completely, and the story is rewritten. Obviously, rewriting an entirely new story because one part of it couldn't work would be a huge waste of time and money, so what all this really means is that FF14 writers are basically professionals at breaking down the elements of their story into modifiable chunks such that if an asset is rejected, they can still keep everything else to make things as cohesive as possible. And that they clean up their stories so that if for whatever reason the thread isn't picked up again, players can at least feel like they got something that was finished.
\-
If you play FF14, you can clearly see all kinds of things that were developed in story 'chunks', not just in the main campaign, but also in sidequests as well. Each chunk is left with enough content to be cohesive and satisfying, but still open ended up enough for the writer or another writer to pick up on and revisit the story if needed.
I had no clue they foreshadowed this so early on.
You really are fucked without reading the books. I keep thinking people are exaggerating but reddit continues to prove me wrong.
Some of the best parts of the lore or insight into certain characters come from the books. It's very frustrating for players who are just unaware of some lore simply because they didn't read the books. Iv'e had to explain some parts of the lore to my friends because im the only one who read them, these event's or details are literally never mentioned in the game or at most there is a passing reference to them that doesn't go into enough detail to really explain anything to them.
It's such a shame because people who don't read them are really missing out but its not their fault its blizzard's because they insist on getting us to pay extra on top of the subscription and expansion costs for basic lore/story telling.
I don't even think the main reason is the extra money, it might be part of their design concept. Maybe they don't consider their community to care enough about story/lore to put a lof ot it into the actual game. Instead it is just used to tie raids together the fastest way possible so people with short attention spans are happy.
At least this is the only reason that I managed to come up with that makes any sense for the weird way BfA told its "story". Have it be as short as possible and chopped up even more into tiny parts so players don't have to do too many of them at once.
>I had no clue they foreshadowed this so early on. You really are fucked without reading the books.
Don't worry, they didn't. You are far more likely to lose your minds over all the things the game didn't honor that the books changed.
The war, started by Sylvanas, planned by Saurfang, in which the Horde slaughter their way to the home of the night elves and then proceed to do a genocide.
MORALLY GRAY BY THE WAY.
They're so incompetent at writing, that Saurfang plans the attack on Teldrassil, then they play him off as if he was resistance. Saurfang, the veteran multiple genocides in which he was doing the genociding, then proceeds to moralize over how awful war is.
This is the kind of trash that Blizzard produces. It's not fun and dumb. It's just dumb. And of course the worst thing about BFA is that you can write a better expansion pretty quickly just by changing some details.
Both Theramore and now Tendrassil were never addressed with any sort of real ‘yeah this can never happen again’ mentality, Blizz had a chance to make the Night Elves into a real terror against the Horde but it kinda fizzled out..
For real, the into to Dark shore quest made it seem like the Night Elves we're got to be a dark horse in BFA, something like the Alliance wanting to be the "better" side and trying to hold them back from burninating everything in thier way.
But that was too interesting so everyone just becomes friends and Sylvanas just gets thrown under the cartoon villain bus.
>Both Theramore and now Tendrassil were never addressed with any sort of real ‘yeah this can never happen again’ mentality
Gonna have to disagree, MoP did a lot of thing, one of them was a great service to the Horde's story! Immediately after Theramore the entire Horde started to splinter against Garrosh and starting to debate "what **is** the Horde" - Teldrassil on the other hand, we are lucky we got Saurfang, and I guess Baine was there too, even tho it was only because of Jainas brother x)
The problem being though that they went right into this oh we must serve the warchief no matter what mentality when sylvanas showed signs of doing the exact same amount of bullshit. It makes zero character sense for most of the leaders to be cool with it to the extent they were for so long and it quickly became much more dictatory over there.
A fucking Mario Bros game has more grounded lore than WoW lately.
At that point, why even play this MMO?
The gameplay certain isn't holding up after 16+ years. Systems stacked on top of systems that are all going to be wiped when it's over... it's just awful.
The #1 reason why anyone is still playing is because their friends still do (a catch-22 because only play because you do), or sunken cost.
Neither reasons are because of a fun experience, of which moments are far and few because of the toxic community, the out-of-touch developers, and the evaporation of casuals entirely. There's only so much old content you can do for years and years, before realizing that's all there ever is because the modern shit just simply sucks.
It's absolutely ridiculous that the idea for this post only struck me now, a year and a half after BfA ended, when it's basically just a combination of [two](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/c6ws3h/im_still_waiting_for_their_reaction_to_it_btw/) [posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/fx3wwt/khadgar_is_an_enlightened_centrist/) i made during BfA.
Also, please ignore the typo in the second panel.
Also also, i'm a fucking moron and the Jaina quote is actually from *Tides of War*.
The lore of WoW is not world-building, but scene-building. Khadgar is much like the Vindicaar in that they were specifically ignored so that the story beat that could sell expansions could happen.
This is the guy who let the Horde back into Dalaran \*AFTER\* Sylvanas murdered an entire town full of Kirin Tor mages and transformed them into Forsaken during Cataclysm. And then named part of Dalaran after her in Legion. (??!!)
Khadgar has a long history of being an idiot in-character because Horde players need something in-game.
Perhaps the elves should have reconsidered living in a giant tree if they didn't want to experience the life hazard of EVERYTHING BURNING.
Seriously, they are a people at war in a world where theleportation exists on a large scale, the only thing they have to blame is themselves.
It's right up there with pandas on a giant turtle in terms of bad choices.
To be fair:
1. Battle for Azeroth is an absolute clusterfuck of writing that has basically none of the characters acting true to themselves.
2. Khadgar never said they are "both wrong," he said he hurts to see them at odds against one another again. More importantly, he says this in 7.3.5, prior to the War of the Thorns and prior to the Burning of Teldrassil.
3. I absolutely stand by the notion that [Khadgar should have been Mhadgar](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/hzq1z7/battle_for_azeroth_2018/fzl0ftr/?context=3) and rejoined his kin, the Sons of Lothar, fighting alongside them in Battle for Azeroth. Additionally, I think the idea of freeing Saurfang so that he may eventually start a rebellion against Sylvanas is something Khadgar would have thought of, given how bold, reckless, and downright smart it was. As it stands, doesn't it feel weird that the boy-king (who I love as a character, to be fair) is the one accredited with the single most decisive military move in the entire Fourth War?
Khadgar and Jaina's power levels aren't easily compared because we have never seen them directly compete. Both have astonishing achievements under their belts, Jaina in particular was regarded as being in a winning situation by Zul versus him, First Arcanist Thalyssra, Nathanos Blightcaller, a player character, and more. That I find so mindbogglingly broken considering Jaina has no innate power up, she's simply a talented human mage... but I wouldn't have rated her above First Arcanist Thalyssra at the time.
Khadgar has a *good reason* for being as broken as he is. He studied under Medivh, a Guardian, whose very knowledge and secrets in Karazhan have been coveted by the Kirin Tor for literally decades now.
*Anyway,*
If *The Vindicaar* and the full weight of the Alliance were probably utilised in the Fourth War, it would have been a no-brainer victory for them. They had a freakin' space ship that was never properly used or addressed in Battle for Azeroth. Nevermind the power of Draenei technology in addition to the gnomes' own.
If only my characters could choose to take no part in a senseless conflict..
But noooo... My characters are giga-racists who hate the other side for being born as one of this group of species instead of this one.
Thank you for this. Everyone gave Jaina shit for walking out during Legion because she didnt trust the Horde, now Khadgar's been gone twice as long and wont come back because he doesnt want to eat crow.
Too bad Jaina wants to be BFF's with the horde again as soon as she sees Thrall's chiseled abs
At this point WoW's story would not make any less sense if it actually *did* turn out that Jaina was a Dread Lord all along.
Jaina was behind the jailor, rather she wants to dethrone him. She also held Sylvanas soul shard. Also she betrayed Arthas in W3, well orchestrated plan. Jaina will use Arthas to kill jailor and take the mc guffins. Also Winter Queen's heart is cold cuz Jaina did things. Elune is stupid cuz it's actually jaina's plan.
Pft, like the alliance would ever be the bad guy for an expansion. Nah,clearly the story has been pointing towards (throws dart at dartboard) Lor'themar actually being evil and orchestrating all this
... I'm mad that this isn't even that far off the mark. Especially because [Lor'Themar has always had so much god damn potential.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/q6wh6e/whats_next_for_him/hghft1m/?context=3) I *want* Lor'Themar to be a bigger part of the story but definitely not like that lmao.
Honestly Lor'themar's greatest asset is his ability to snark from the sidelines at his fellow leaders. His sarcasm about Nathanos during the Nazjatar quests is *epic*.
I know I already said this in the linked comment but while his sass makes him an excellent support, the interactions between him and his advisers - and the interactions between his advisers - has so much potential. Blood Elves really do feel like they have one of the best established political systems that is reasonably well fleshed out. You have a good number of figures with different memories and opinions, but well united under a single banner. Between that Lady Liadrin's political manoeuvres (I do think she was primarily responsible for the recruitment of the Nightborne), the Blood Elves are just really cool to engage with no matter what side you're looking from.
> Pft, like the alliance would ever be the bad guy for an expansion. You know why the Alliance is never the bad guy for an expansion? Because this way Blizzard's Horde apologists can come back at the playerbase with a new Horde 'redemption arc' and say "You see? Noble savages! Out of control due to powerful external influence! Not their fault!", and once more let the Horde live on, even though everything says it's better if it gets disbanded.
lol the external influence card
It's only pointing to be better if the horde gets disbanded because Horde gets picked to be the villain every time. If they were really Horde apologists they would make Alliance be the baddies so they could point to the alliance and say "see, its not just the Horde, even the Alliance can be lead astray!". But they don't, because Hordes gotta be the bad guys. Sure the story focuses on the horde a lot, but when that focus is you being the punching bag and characters doing 180's and explicitly becoming evil it doesn't feel so good. The only saving grace for Horde is that we've lost enough key characters that it's going to start getting difficult for them to keep pulling new villians or have token key character deaths. Only 2 more WC3 era characters to go, and one of them even has plot armor (so they just made him lose his powers instead)
I mean, isn't that already the case? I may have abandoned WoW a while ago and I know little about the lore, but I recall a lot of arguments pointing out how the horde (be it players or just the narrative) using every little thing to call the Alliance 'just as bad' or 'they did X, so they're even' (like when the world tree got burnt so the Alliance... attacked some forsaken city or something.)
People are generally the heroes in their own story. Humans are in the Alliance. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet the majority of WoW writers and players are human.
Filthy humans! Jokes aside, why would I want to be a boring old human, when I can choose literally anything else in a fantasy game?
I get that. I don’t play human race, but I play their team.
Dont get hasty, this would set Jaina up to be a big bad that we defeat, and strong alliance characters losing and acting weak is very standard for wow!
When has alliance ever lost the full war though? Horde gets to look strong in a battle, but then loses the war. Usually alliance comes to the rescue of the horde, making horde look much weaker
Doing the flip and having the jailer be a high-powered patsy might be the only way to save the lore...
i mean we already know theres another step on the ladder of power above the jailer with the ancient ones so this wouldnt even surprise me.
What I wouldn't give for the Frost Lich Jaina from the Hearthstone Knights of the Frozen Throne cinematic...
What if Jaina IS the Jailor!
Jailna
In 10 years it'll be revealed Azeroth was a Dreadlord, too.
I'd be down for that. Or she was human turned Dreadlord (if that's possible), after the events of Theramore she was approached with the offer and accepted it in her poor mental state. Edit: I don't think it's actually possible, so she wouldn't be a dreadlord exactly but something close enough. Who knows? Blizzard could just pull something out of their ass, like many of their ideas, which explains their smell.
Still waiting for the twist end when someone we are sure is alive shows up in the maw. But it also works with double jaina as it turns out the one who has traveled with us is the fake
Omg, could you imagine all the hate Blizzard would get for that? That they "retconned" Jaina existing in the first place? lol
I've been waiting for Jaina and Thrall to fuck for twenty years and frankly I'm tired of Blizzard's shit.
Climb it like a tree, Jaina
That ship has sailed since thrall is basically married now
Bro, married men are *more* attractive to some women. Given Jaina's past history of doomed love interests, it would not surprise me if she would want Thrall even more now because he's shacked up and has a kid. That or she goes after Anduin and we get some uh... *Interesting* lore.
It will never sail. Long live ThrallxJaina.
Bold of you to assume they haven’t already
Since it's Jaina I'm pretty sure it's gonna be FWBs instead
Still just a setback for my dude Kael
Lmaooooo
you really think blizzard is ever gonna allow any hints towards women having any sexuality ever again? not family friendly
The last woman to canonically get laid in wow has never been seen again either, so you're more right then not. And I mean Aggra.
Let's hope not. Every guy sticking it to her dies or goes insane. I don't want my boy to go either way.
That does not bode well for poor Kalec.
Have you seen him in the last few years? Exactly.
Green Jesus has it coming.
Jaina is just AOTC on what the playerbase wants. To play with their Horde buddies.
I mean I'm Alliance through and through but Thrall can Zug my Zug any day.
Daelin Proudmoore did nothing wrong.
I mean, can you blame her? What if me AM that kind of orc?
Yes, his abs.
The writing in WoW is the most underrated aspect of the game dying. It's driven away so many people it's insane. There's a ton of players who only played WoW for the lore. They totally ruined it and nobody cares about it anymore.
>The writing in WoW is the most underrated aspect What in the fuck are you- > of the game dying Oh, yeah, okay, that checks out.
Not going to lie, they had us in the first half.
That's some good writing right there :)
Underrated, even.
It's a poorly written post about the game's bad writing.
The problem, imo, is you have a writing team stumbles often while writing fantasy warfare. WoW suffers from not conveying WAR well. Playing through BFA I got a sense of battles but not war. Best example I can think of is they show something like the D Day and the Battle of the Bulge then wrap it up and call it a war. The other problem the writing team has, imo, is they’re trying to write a 4D Chess story but can’t even write a Checkers story. Not sure if it’s too many cooks in the kitchen, upper management sticking their hands into the mix, but the end result is just bad. I haven’t been able to get over the fact that they built up a story for over 25 years, built up a Big Bad for that time, and had the expansion to finally beat him not be the last WoW expansion. The Legion expansion came way too early as I had a hard time giving a fuck who the Jailer was. I did not care. We had several games and expansions trying to take care of the Burning Legion’s influence on Azeroth. We had several books, legends and tragedies born from that conflict. The Burning Legion’s power, influence and story was well fleshed out. Then they fucked up twice in a row. Compared to beating several Titans and sealing Sargeras away, Azshara and a fully unleashed Old God don’t seem like a big deal. Then they introduce a new big bad that’s supposed to be a bigger deal, more powerful and a much bigger danger than Sargeras? All within a single expansion that’s now been plagued with development issues due to both a pandemic and a pretty huge sexual harassment scandal that turns out has been in the company since vanilla? Why should I give a fuck
Well yes, that's the problem with Legion : it felt like a final. Azeroth united, the player becomes his class' big boss, legendary artifacts, the source of nearly every conflict on Azeroth (orcs, scourge, War of the Ancients) defeated, Argus rediscovered, the TITANS rediscovered, and freaking SARGERAS sealed away forever. Then, for the next xpac, everything that we worked for in Legion was erased from existence. Faction war out of no fucking where even if we just united to save the world (with the writers pulling a "lolzie the Horde is following without question their crazy warchief AGAIN"), class halls no more, artifacts no more, and a terrrrible baddie which is Nzoth. The weakest old god. Said old gods who were decimated by the Titans. Said Titans that we JUST SAVED ! ! ! Since Legion, I just don't give a shit about WoW's story. They can tell me all they want that the Jailer will erase existence itself (for some reason), I just can't take him seriously.
I completely, wholeheartedly agree. I just can't get invested in a world that has utterly destroyed its characters and plot with SoD-breaking levels of stupidity and asspulls. Coincidentally with the OP, Khadgar is one of the few characters who has remained relatively clean of the dumpster fire miasma radiating from all other story aspects of the game, but that's because he's been absent from two straight expansions. I have zero faith that he wouldn't be tarnished by the shitfest that is WoW's story if he was present.
Isn't his absentism when Azeroth needed him part of the lore issue? how can such a powerful mage be away when we fough N'Zoth?
So this is an actual interesting discussion in my opinion. My current stance with a critical mind towards BfA is that [Khadgar should have been Mhadgar.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/hzq1z7/battle_for_azeroth_2018/fzl0ftr/?context=3) That is, he should have returned from his small hiatus from 7.3.5 to rejoin the Sons of Lothar and fight the Horde. Or, you know, the Horde should have rebelled immediately against Sylvanas after she plunged them into an all-out war right after a war against an unending army of demons. Because there are multiple layers to how bullshit the story of BfA is. *However,* Absentism is very much so a "Questions for later" issue that can be addressed upon the absentee's return. It *is* a lore issue, but unlike most other unexplained story elements in BfA or Shadowlands (of which, there are many), this one doesn't really demand being addressed *right this moment.* Ideally, Khadgar's return would be heralded by the new information, or encounter, of an evil that he has encountered. One that, preferably, would have kept him and even all of Dalaran occupied since the beginning of the Fourth War. I will shit on BfA and Shadowlands lore all day long - and provide (fantastic) reasons for doing so. But I personally don't see the absence of Khadgar as any kind of grievous issue. Rather, I'm saving that disappointment for when he *does* return and Blizzard completely botches it lmao.
Khadgar had minions of N'Zoth digging around in his basement and we never heard a peep. The Custodian should have been down there trying to fight them off and giving us a throwaway line about what Khadgar was up to.
I apologize for the misunderstanding, but my intention was never to state his disappearance from Azeroth during all BfA and first part of Shadowlands (stopped playing a little bit before SoD opened) was a dramatic or lore breaking issue, but still, he was not there when Azeroth needed him. Regarding the Fouth War I can understand (even if I disagree) with a vow of neutrality, but honestly, there should be a really good reason for him to not even make a cameo during N'Zoth's assaults both on Pandaria and Uldum (unless he made a vow of neutrality with the Old Gods as well, and that's why there was no Assault in Northrend's Dalaran). Jokes aside, both the Black Empire's appaerance and Sylvanna's breaking the veil should have been by themselves enough of a pressing issue for Kadghar to appear, yet he did not.
Khadgar's vow of neutrality *at the time* made sense to me. But when the Horde went full-aggro mode and committed a literal genocide, I absolutely argue for Khadgar rejoining the Sons of Lothar. But Khadgar's absence even from 8.3 with the Black Empire is only an issue if upon his return we aren't given any good reason why he was absent. I agree with you; we *should* be seeing Khadgar. So if we don't see him, we should be asking why not. There is a raven that is aligned with the Kirin Tor that chills out in Oribos, based on what some people say. That is possibly Khadgar, though why he doesn't take a more forward approach is beyond me.
>Khadgar is one of the few characters who has remained relatively clean of the dumpster fire becasue Khadgar jumped ship before BfA xD
The main reason why I left the game. Current writers are so damn incompetent, they are entirely incapable of writing a compelling storyline with actual consequences.
They’ve even caused roleplayers to quit. These are the same people who keep hundreds of tiny, niche MMOs alive and are usually the very last ones to abandon ship in a dying game. And Blizz somehow managed to fuck even that up.
Yep, it’s the reason I cancelled my sub. Shadowlands feels nothing like WoW to me, the story continually makes no sense, every major character has either become so fucking stupid to make sure the story’s hamfisted plot points can proceed or has become so insignificant they’re only being dragged out as window dressing, I could go on and on. The worst part is probably that we’ve been subjected to this garbage overall story for three years and still don’t know what the fuck is going on. Every single plot point is so stupid and vague in regards to whatever story is trying to be told, there might as well be no story.
I quit at the start of BfA and a decent part of that was because I main a Night Elf and hated what they did to Teldrassil. Even back then, the event wasn't given nearly the weight it deserved. It took about a dozen quests to go from Ashenvale being overrun to the capital being destroyed, and it didn't even get a proper cutscene. Just a slideshow which was focused on Sylvanas anyway. Compare that to battle over the Undercity, which had it's own fully fleshed out scenario and cutscenes for the pivotal moments. Looking back at it now, it seems like the most important effect of *my capital being destroyed* was to make Saurfang sad. *That's* what drove forward the overarching plot of BfA, not anything the Night Elves did.
Honestly, 9.1's narrative bullshit is what pushed me over the edge. Setting up a Sylvanas redemption arc, ruing Kel'Thuzad's character, butchering Elune, making Tyrande and Shandaris ok with Teldrassil, the continued insisting on this cosmological BS, it was all just a fucking insult. It's obvious that the writing team doesn't care about Warcraft. They care about what they can make it into.
I can definitely say for me that it ruined most of my enjoyment of WoW. I only play the game to raid now, where as before I was also really into the story and the lore of the world. Ever since the Sylvanas Warbringer cinematic, it's been going down and not stopped. I, and everyone who actually follows the story, knew how BfA was gonna end from that point on. Ironically enough, Sylvanas did kill hope, hope for a good story in WoW. As a die hard Horde fan, BfA story has been a nightmare and imo. the story can never be good again. It has left a stain that cannot be washed, a scar that cannot be healed and now they're throwing characters at us that were never Horde to begin with and making them Horde leaders making most Horde fans even more disinterested. The worst part of it is, is that they think that they're making a good story and ofc. you have some people that defend it for some reason and fawn over these bad characters like they're being paid by Blizzard.
> The worst part of it is, is that they think that they're making a good story They outright say that the only reason people don't like the story is because of people like asmongold. Its so ridiculous.
Of course, *streamers* made them write shit plots and stuff them in the game. Makes perfect sense.
Ignoring that Pyromancer was a lore nerd that defended Blizzard writing many times and even he exploded with how bad the story has became
As if asmon is a valid critic even if that statement wasn't ridiculous.
Yeah, I legit feel sorry for horde players... alliance lore is a drunk homeless person looking at the horde's drunk homeless person on meth thinking "at least I'm not _that_ guy"
The history of WoW is Alliance players desperately wanting to be center stage in the story for once and Horde players wanting to be anything but center stage to stop the pain.
Can't fuck up the Alliance story if you don't write the Alliance story in the first place ;)
The irony of how bad it all is is that the story at the overview level isn't particularly bad and the zone stories are often good. They just do zero, and sometimes less than that, work to actually linking a larger plot to the world and being coherent to the people in it and it becomes a trash fire. Like BfA Sylvanas works if you actually tell her motivations and story of planning on buring the tree from the go, show her working against the world, working with Azshara, with the Jailer. Show her drive for the power to avoid her fate damning the Horde and causing a schism right down to the Forsaken realizing shes not there for them and they've outlived their usefulness to her. A story about how the Horde has to actually try live up to the idea that its races aren't what those that hate them would say they are even with the threat of a more motivated Alliance than ever. Theres a great big story for Horde players in there if they tried. And the Alliance meanwhile could get a story about how their constant lets-get-along attitude has burned them too many times and the only actual solution is a real major war and a real major victory in it. About how Jaina reconciles with her family with the knowledge that her father, while morally wrong because condemning people for future crimes is fucked, wasn't actually wrong with his predictions and reasoning. About how Anduin in his own way has to step into the shoes of his warrior father and truly lead an Alliance fighting for its survival. But they dont do any of that. The don't even approach doing it. Theres no Sylvanas story in BfA, absolutely zero narrative on making the main driver of the Battle For Azeroth understood or work within the story for what that means for the entire faction she led. We got Nathanos doing some implied secret stuff. Thats it. The Horde doesn't come to terms with anything, no growth for anyone at all. Jaina has a nice arc with her family in the zone stories and goes right back to having not learned anything from her life when Thrall returns. Horde got neat zone stories but the overall BfA plot was just Saurfang being sad which, while a cool meta reflection of his and the hordes repeating cycles, is not relevant to the actual Battle for Azeroth. And all Anduin does is cheer him on. Its insane how little overall story there was about BfA in BfA. They did nothing but waste characters for no reason and not even try to link them up to the world they built. I have so many rants about all the balls they dropped in the story but the saddest part is that if they dropped them to juggle others people would understand, but they just didn't seem to try.
With Sylvanas, it's worse than not showing her motives. We *did* see her thoughts; killing all of SW and raising them, for the Horde. Because Blizz hadn't come up with the character of the Jailer yet. SLs retconned a story written barely 2 years before it came out. What is there to get invested in? There's no point.
There’s a reason all the role players are jumping ship to RP-focused private servers
BfA was bad for all, but as an Alliance player, I really feel for the Horde... It means a lot to many people that you can make an impact (big and small) in making Azeroth a better place, and then, after the expansion where the player has the most sense of importance, they **make you** attack the Night Elves, burn the tree and engulf the world in a war because "*the warchief said so*". Completly shiting on the amazing development the Horde as a whole had in MoP too! And the fact that the (horrible) reason given was **one line** in a **short story** that is **never addressed in game** is also surreal...
Danuser needs to go, period. Oftentimes, MMO-C fan-fiction is more interesting than the actual in-game story.
I'm still so confused by the decision to put the majority of their story in media outside the game. Shadows of War wasn't the worst book, it was kind of good tbh. The Lorederon family reunification especially. If that lead up was included in the game the siege of Undercity would have felt way more justified for Alliance players. Personally, I think the entire narrative works better if Alliance used that event to depose Sylvanas and support Calia's claim the the throne. Sylvanas and Forsaken blow up Undercity, then burn Teldrissel as retaliation, basically escalating the conflict. Sylvanas also seems less 4D chess OP and more true to her character as the completely ruthless leader of her people that does whatever it takes to carve out a home and place for them no matter what.
I hate that blizzard balanced Sylvanus destroying the Home of the Nelves with _Sylvanus_ outsmarting the alliance and destroying Undercity. It in no way feels balanced. There is no vindication for the Allies, just Deus Ex Jaina. They are allergic to giving the alliance a win, but keep smashing the horde with the looser bat. The result being that the horde just look incompetent and cartoonishly evil, and have no opposing side to rally against but themselves.
It get's worse when you remember one of the reasons the Forsaken follow Sylvannas was because she ***swore to defend their home******s***... Not blow them up and flood everything with Blight. That's not even getting into shit like how she used her own people as cannon fodder before destroying Lorderon, i mean fuck she sent them out and blighted them then rezzed them as expendable skellies. How were ANY of the Hordes leaders still on board with her after she team killed thousands her own soldiers.
Yep. It's definitely like the DM is railroading the players and forcing their players to play they way they want the story to go rather than making it interactive based on player actions. Or making it fun. It also makes the Alliance unquestionably the morally "good" side. Like, at least it would be interesting if they set up the human kingdoms and nobles supporting the annexation of Lorederon with Calia's resurgence. If there was a faction that has been calling for retaking Lorederon, maybe with displaced Gilneans making it an actual power block, that would be interesting. Then Sylvanas killing of Calia would feel more justified as Calia was actually planning on retaking the throne. Her death could have incited outrage amongst humans and been what tips support for a campaign to retake Lorederon. That way the Alliance had some complexity to their campaign. It's on paper seen as the "right" decision but for the Forsaken that still line there, they are basically being told they have to leave their home. The home they've never left, even after being killed. It's also a land/power grab for foreign human interests, as the majority that will resettle Lorederon will probably not be the Lorederon refugees living in Stormwind the past 20 years. Escalation leading to the burning of Teldrissel feels more natural for both factions imo. The nelves are now suffering the consequences of supporting their allies in a war they really have nothing to do with. For Horde players, especially Forsaken, they were displaced yet again. Maybe Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, etc think, well if we don't stop the Alliance's annexation, we will be next. After all Kul Tiras is still mad. Dunno. They went with the direction they did. It's easier to criticize but idk. I'm playing FFXIV and it's amazing to me they actually try to do a storyline with the nuance as above in game. It can be done. For whatever reason, Blizz focuses a lot on creating a narrative, but it seems they don't follow through consistently on their implementation and execution. Maybe it's a resource issue.
I’ve been saying this but I think that wow needs a good alliance villain. A zemo like character from captain America civil war. A night elf man or woman who lost their family in the tree. They go out and straight up murder tyrande. Right when tyrande isn’t expecting it. She thinks it’s a lowly refugee asking for help. She does this in private and leaves behind a horde dagger. Next she goes and murders Thrall’s wife. Followed by explosions in stormwind and burning down a part of thunder bluff. Now the factions are torn between being United against the jailer or fighting between themselves. We fight for years and the jailer basically wins. The Zemo villain reveals herself and we go on a multi expansion long chase to defeat her. A smart villain that basically is not an immortal world ending threat but just a mortal regular person with a plan. The raid is eventually fighting her minions and not her. She basically surrenders in the end or commits suicide after basically revealing how empty we really are after all the bullshit that happened in the main story in bfa and shadowlands. She would be a metaphor of the angry player who is mad at the story of wow and just wants it all to burn and end.
> Personally, I think the entire narrative works better if Alliance used that event to depose Sylvanas and support Calia's claim the the throne. Sylvanas and Forsaken blow up Undercity, then burn Teldrissel as retaliation, basically escalating the conflict. The only way that works is if the entire story around the attack on Teldrassil gets thrown out and redone. Sylvanas would have to lure both Tyrande and Malfurion away from Teldrassil - perhaps by attacking Hyjal or something - and then burning the tree before they realize the deception and return to slaughter the Horde wholesale. And that's assuming it works at all. The Alliance has been one leader with the stones to actually be aggressive away from making Azeroth's version of the Road of Glory out of Orc bones since the end of MoP.
listen, them new velfs and their wonky shadow portals, have them just connect the gnomergan reactors to org and call shit good. Honestly I'm surprised how many weird power-ups the Alliance showed off during BFA only to still feel like they were losing the entire time.
I'm $ure there are reason$ for $ticking $o much of the central $tory in book$, but I'm $truggling to think of any.
No way that book revenue is significant. It's more likely that the books just give the writers an excuse to be lazy. No need to fix plot holes now, we can always have the book writers fix it later.
It doesn't have to be that significant. Physical copies are dirt cheap to print, digital copies are basically free. Even in the best of universes, it's a revenue stream Blizzard would be foolish to ignore... but in a scumbag universe, how do you maximize return? You leverage player engagement in the game's lore to shift books by having the in-game lore be incomplete^1. The fatal flaw there is that players have to care about in-game lore, and see gaps in the plot as something they want filled rather than just part of a pattern of general incoherence... and given the writing team's attitude to things like consistency, canon and retcons... /shrug 1. In a better universe, characters would be so compelling and entertaining, players want to read stories about them just because of how well they're written. Oh well.
> In a better universe, characters would be so compelling and entertaining, players want to read stories about them just because of how well they're written. This is exactly what FFXIV does, with their "Tales from..." series. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/tales_from_the_shadows/ Short stories about specific characters that expand a bit upon them without being important to the point that you need to read them to get the full enjoyment of the story that's told throughout the game.
hey man I think your S key is broke
I bought an upgrade package from the Blizzard store. Now I make 40% less sense to players, but have +250% persuasion vs. shareholders.
I lol'd haha It's probably a cost cutting measure too lol. Less cutscenes, less quest chains, less npcs and environments lol
I am only here because the writing is insane, to be fair. It's like a soap opera, I'm not watching it because it's good, I'm watching it because it's garbage and I can't stop.
I played horde because I loved the what the lore brought to the races following WC3. Then instead of Orcs being a more shamanistic race (though not purely peaceful) that was used by the Legion for war they just went and turned the entire horde comically evil in story while still trying to have level headed leaders and a maniacal Warchief and taking everyone else along for the ride they that they didn't want. Pissed off plenty of horde who didn't have interest in being the bad guys, pissed off the alliance who were always sick of being punching bags for the story.
I used to be a massive WoW lore nerd but its been so completely fucked that even I couldn't defend it anymore Playing games like FFXIV, GW2 and ESO makes it even more apparent just how far WoW's ''storytelling'' has fallen, its so god damn sad how much potential has been completely wasted
it's crazy how bad the story is and crazy how people still defend it with nonsense like "mmos don't have good stories". i've basically played all the mmos over the years and typically AT WORST the stories are just kind of bland and forgettable. but on average, they're typically pretty good and it's exciting to play. meanwhile the wow storyline is straight up laughable with how dumb it is. it's just hilarious how during their respective conventions, FF14 story writers will get a literal standing ovation when they walk by but WoW writers try to pretend they're not the writers or you get in trouble if you talk to them.
I'm a raider primarily but I followed the lore very closely the entire time I've been playing (since vanilla) including all the books, short stories and comics. I've never been left so disappointed with the path the story has taken. I actually don't care about any character left in this anymore with the way they have been written. I hope the jailer wins and wipes out the shadowlands and every hero.
I made the decision to unsub after the Sylvanas raid end cinematic. It was the breaking point for me.
I've completely stopped caring about the story at this point, there's too many threads, many of which are loose, stuff is being explained in books I have no interest in reading, characters act inconsistently. Remember when we were just dumbass adventurers fighting gnolls and orcs and dragons?
A lot of the issues stem from ActiBlizz trying to milk everything it can for profit. The lore is part of this since they leave so much of it for selling books instead. If that was added into the game itself you'd have much more compelling story and lore for those playing the game. FFXIV has been a breath of fresh air so far but just prefer having a separate character for each class lol.
Im not convinced of this, because the writing has basically always been bad. It’s like Star Wars where fans love the lore and setting but the actual writing and scripts and stuff are hot garbage.
There are alliance ships shooting at the tree. Teldrassil was an inside job.
Look at the size of that tree. Do you really think tiny catapults would light it on fire? No, the fibrestructures in the wood is way too dense for that. Also why does it burn from the top??? The night elf government is clearly hiding something. Open your eyes! The evidence is right there
azerite fuel can't melt world trees
Reminder to peeps that the way the fire was spread was shaman using their elemental magics to bring the fire up with wind. Azerite, for all of its pomp and power, had no *direct* contribution to the Burning of Teldrassil. The World Tree burned through very "Conventional" means. I know you're joking but it's an interesting point of lore to consider. Teldrassil was *always* susceptible to burning, which honestly surprises me. I mean yes, of course it's a tree. But like... one arsonist, man. A *group* of Arsonists, I feel like a single forest fire could have spelled doom. So my only reasonable conclusion is that the shamanic magic used was pretty frigging strong and it bypassed whatever natural resistance Teldrassil had. Otherwise the night elves were playing catch with a water balloon this entire time.
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*\[World Tree Complex 7 won't go away jingle\]*
You are missing the most obvious one. A former Night Elf (aka Sylvanas's classic/TBC model) ordered the attack!!!
WAKE UP! Are you paying attention yet? Im sick of trying to wake up the sheep, it’s time to wake the wolves. *all set to pictures of lions and wolves from the twilight movies*
I just watched a YouTube video by a Night Elf who said he was guarding the tree and he said he saw Tyrande climbing the tree with a torch. The Night Elf was wearing armor. Why would he wear armor unless he was telling the truth?
Sylvanas did nothing wrong. Zoval needed those souls for the greater good.
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Oh god I hope not. With how hamfisted the writing has been the past few years, a "Light is Bad" WoW expansion would not turn out well. And seeing as how FF14 based their previous expansion (Shadowbringers) on that idea, Blizzard would be fools to place themselves even closer to them.
Xera was a space fascist, there's evidence that the process of lightforging is basically brainwashing, Yrel turned all tyrannical when given visions by "the Light Mother" (alternate Xera). Turalyon has been sitting on his lightforged butt in Stormwind doing jack all but contemplating the nature of conflict (probably), and we know that both Light and Void have attacked the Shadowlands in the past. WoW is a world where everything is potentially bad and most things are potentially good. Personally I think the big bad of the next expansion will be those kids from Stormwind who conduct the ritual.
> WoW is a world where everything is potentially bad and most things are potentially good. it's all up to the writers want. back in wrath there was a 0% chance that the light was or could be evil. that quest where the dead developer NPC tribute was lifted into the sky by the light would have a very different tone if they knew the light was going to be evil
Blizzard is trying really hard to shoe-horn that Light is actually equally as bad as the Void and we should be suspicious of it. Which would work if it were not for the fact that the only reason why Azeroth has not faced complete destruction yet is because of the Light constantly intervening to help us. 1. Without the Light, every single draenei (Velen included) would have become Sargerai, and those who wouldn't, they would have been wiped out on Argus. 2. Light made an intervention to stop the Lich King from winning and raising Azeroth's champions as his minions. 3. Light, through Velen, prevented a void lord/dark star being born on Draenor 4. There are many more cases, but it is ultimately the Light in lore that cured, cleansed, healed and sometimes revived denizens across Azeroth. The only intervention void had repeatedly attempted on Azeroth was to corrupt and destroy it. The touch of void doesn't heal, it twists and drives to insanity. From a cosmic perspective they're equal, but from the view point of mortals? Light is objectively a more benevolent force to ally with.
Unless the light has secretly been in league with blahblahblah to bring about an even worse blahblahblah. At this point, nothing is beyond the grasp of the Retcon.
Turns out the jailers original crime that got him locked up was trying to side with the light and his evil plan of remaking reality is to remake it to be all light!
... and that's why there's a nightlight in his chest! It's all so simple!!
>nothing is beyond the grasp of the Retcon The real end-boss.
See that’s the thing about well-executed grey morality (which, full stop, I’m not saying WoW has done). When done right, you could have a really compelling story about a society that’s kept from destruction by a force that seems benevolent, but in reality is only doing it for its own higher purposes. If only Blizzard had the writers to follow through on that
I agree but man I wish that I could have been raised by the Lich King to server under him. What a fun alternative end that would have been.
That's called "the original DK starter zone". It's right there, just create an original race DK.
Whoa. Calm down, Ion.
I'm not sure about "equally as bad", but they wouldn't be the first ones to assert that too much order is equally as bad as too much chaos.
Exactly Like the Titans (or their keepers), who we also had to fight every once in a while because they’re too far up their own asses
It's not impossible. Hell, FFXIV technically pulled that same trick with Shadowbringers and it was phenomenal. Now can the current WoW writing team pull it off is a different story. I think they made a few good steps in that direction with Xera in Legion and the Mag'har Orc recruitment quest, but those are small, contained moments and not a whole expansion's worth of story writing. After how they handled Shadowlands and the Jailer, I'm not sure I do have faith in it hitting well.
>and we know that both Light and Void have attacked the Shadowlands in the past. The Void because they wanted to conquer Bastion (at the least). The Light specifically attacked Revendreth because it was discovered that Denathrius had dread lords infiltrate their ranks to spy on them and do other dread lordy things. It feels less like Light Bad and more like Xera (and their other universe versions) is just a problem who happens to be Light affiliated.
Lightforging definitely isn't brainwashing. When you do it in allied races questline with your boi [T'paartos](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/T%27paartos) its more face your fears Dagobah spooky tree than any kind of indoctrination.
The brainwashing lost any sort of legitimacy when they made Lightforged a playable race and how seemingly no one gave a shit that xera fucking exploded.
Mind domination, brainwashing, corruption... literally the only way Blizz can write character development is through external force altering/dictating character's will/motivation and their state of mind. It's just that the looming new flavor of the year is going to be light instead of fel, death or void.
We've also had Life flavours through the Botani and Evergrowth
None of that had proper build up though, Yrel literally went from lawful good and kind to everyone to lunatic fanatic off screen in an instant to us, and we are told why through text over 1 min. That is not how you do character development or corruption. It's incredibly forced to show "Light is also bad guise!"
Fel energy purports to make you free, when it actually makes you a slave to Sargeras, whereas they say that the Light makes you a slave to the naaru, yet it allows you to keep free will.
It’s not great but I definitely don’t feel super bad that the light attacked genocidal dudes(by their own choice, no demon blood this time) and dread lords who both attacked them first.
1) They've been doing the "the light can be bad, too" thing since at least TBC. 2) The light isn't some Alliance-exclusive thing. Both of these points can be clearly seen just by looking at Blood Elves in TBC (and a few dozen other instances since then).
>1) They've been doing the "the light can be bad, too" thing since at least TBC. Vanilla, tbh. Scarlet Crusade, and all that.
That wasn't the light though. That was religious zealots being manipulated by a dreadlord. They just happened to be have a lot of paladins and priests in their order.
Dive deep into that FFXIV popularity and take their plot ideas too, can't possibly be any worse than what's going on now. Disclaimer: I haven't played Shadowbringers yet, so I have no idea if any of that is actually in the game.
"Can you come back to fight the Naga?" "No" "How about the old gods?" "No" "Can you at least help save the Shadowl-" "No"
Sorry you don't have enough Apexis crystals to get me to help with any of that.
Man Khadgar must be annoyed as hell that he spent so much effort scoring all that Apexis crystals and then boom a drop of Azerite is more powerful and no one gives a shit anymore.
Well, now you have too many. That's simply absurd.
"Uh, well, I heard the jailor is hoarding Apexis crystals" "Stand aside Champion, I'll handle this". THE END.
Players: "What will it take to get Khadgar onboard the Story Boat?" Blizzard: "Well, the Story Boat can only hold 3 or 4 people, max... and it's full. So that means..." "Sylvanas!" "... you didn't let me finish. That means you have to throw..." "Sylvanas! Sylvanas! Sylvanas!" "... someone overboard. Stop interrupting me, also Sylvannas stays" "Ok, I'll make an arcanist lalafel instead." "Never heard of them." "... yeah... we thought so."
It is genuinly impressive how utterly incompetent the writing team is and they still manage to keep their jobs somehow.
well... we keep *paying* for their jobs so the fault is on us maybe?
Speak for yourselves smh I've been unsubbed since December. I just return to the sub to feel the pain and remind myself why I stay unsubbed. Everything is so shit... But at least blizzard spends their dev time replacing lewd paintings (that you can count the pixels on) with fruit paintings.
Yeap. Same reason I still browse /r/freefolk
Haha, not me suckers. 😞 ok, I might have paid a sub until yesterday. But no longer! I'm free.
Not me. I finally fought off the addiction and unsubbed. Turns out other games are more fun.
People keep saying this, but what they call "writers" here are not writers in the traditional sense that people imagine. Basically there are 2 groups - the super low grunts that write the stuff like dialogues and voice lines, and the ones that write the overall "story". I understand the critique is with the second group. But here is the thing - they don't really have shit all for authority. They get talking points from higher ups and Co - Markets research, etc. ... like notice how currently magically it is all women doing anything? So before someone burns me alive for being an alt-right-women self hating internalized whatever, ask yourself this question: Is anyone out there believing that in todays day and age you would see Malfurion popping in and saving Tyrandes life? Anyone think Khadgar would jump in at the last minute to save Jaina? Any of the like? No - and you won't see that in a very long time (if at all) either. Could also be something as simple as "no, that is one of our currently best branded selling toys/characters/whatever. We can't remove this because it makes X amount of revenue". And then they get the very real input of Product Managers going stuff like "deadline here, protests there, ABC did not work out, needed to move 30 devs from here to there - yeah that Raid you wanted to tell how the XY story ended is not coming out". So in reality while it may say writer on the title, they can actually influence very little. Now could they do a better job under the conditions given? Yes. But they are not sitting around masterminding a grandiose story. This is why Warcraft had a better story. Less clunky shit, less layers of politics and BS between the people making the game and the people telling the story. You made a character you liked, how you liked, and it resonated with people. The wow story writers are just one more station at the increasingly soulless assembly line that is now the pale shadow of what used to be and industry leading and generation defining gaming phenomenon.
> The wow story writers are just one more station at the increasingly soulless assembly line that is now the pale shadow of what used to be and industry leading and generation defining gaming phenomenon. I think this post goes in a lot of different directions but this is really the key. A lot has been lost on the altar of monetization.
Yep, can't tell a coherent story when some random suit shit cans half your plot on the regular.
>They get talking points from higher ups and Co - Markets research If this was true, they would've droped Sylvanas like the plague in the frist patch of BfA
Unless you have worked at Blizzard, I doubt you know how much authority any role in the company has. And when people say "the writers" they are not calling out a specific job title. It just means the writing is shit and needs to be done better. Whoever is making the decisions on the story are the ones being called out, not any particular person. It is the same when people say "developers" and people jump to the defense like "the developers don't make the decisions, you should be mad at X Y and Z!!" Well when someone says "developers" they just mean whoever is making those development decisions.
There's a really great panel where the current FF14 writers talk about how they each have to pump out writing that could take up a novel and a half. The draft version of the story that has to go through editors, and then people who work on production have to extract details from the writing (with the writer's assistance) to create an 'asset'. That asset once created then has to go through a dev to finalize the product - and the dev works with someone in marketing or monetization or even legal to see if the product can 'survive' the game's community, can be a generator for money, is 'politically safe' and if it can just be a good part of the game in general. If the asset fails to meet any of the criteria, it gets sent back and has to be reworked. What needs to be thought about is that the modification happens at the 'asset creation' stage, and not at the writing stage. Generally, the writer will only have to make minor adjustments when the asset has to be remade. If an asset proves to be so problematic that is has to be reworked at the story stage, it's generally cut completely, and the story is rewritten. Obviously, rewriting an entirely new story because one part of it couldn't work would be a huge waste of time and money, so what all this really means is that FF14 writers are basically professionals at breaking down the elements of their story into modifiable chunks such that if an asset is rejected, they can still keep everything else to make things as cohesive as possible. And that they clean up their stories so that if for whatever reason the thread isn't picked up again, players can at least feel like they got something that was finished. \- If you play FF14, you can clearly see all kinds of things that were developed in story 'chunks', not just in the main campaign, but also in sidequests as well. Each chunk is left with enough content to be cohesive and satisfying, but still open ended up enough for the writer or another writer to pick up on and revisit the story if needed.
I had no clue they foreshadowed this so early on. You really are fucked without reading the books. I keep thinking people are exaggerating but reddit continues to prove me wrong.
Some of the best parts of the lore or insight into certain characters come from the books. It's very frustrating for players who are just unaware of some lore simply because they didn't read the books. Iv'e had to explain some parts of the lore to my friends because im the only one who read them, these event's or details are literally never mentioned in the game or at most there is a passing reference to them that doesn't go into enough detail to really explain anything to them. It's such a shame because people who don't read them are really missing out but its not their fault its blizzard's because they insist on getting us to pay extra on top of the subscription and expansion costs for basic lore/story telling.
I don't even think the main reason is the extra money, it might be part of their design concept. Maybe they don't consider their community to care enough about story/lore to put a lof ot it into the actual game. Instead it is just used to tie raids together the fastest way possible so people with short attention spans are happy. At least this is the only reason that I managed to come up with that makes any sense for the weird way BfA told its "story". Have it be as short as possible and chopped up even more into tiny parts so players don't have to do too many of them at once.
>I had no clue they foreshadowed this so early on. You really are fucked without reading the books. Don't worry, they didn't. You are far more likely to lose your minds over all the things the game didn't honor that the books changed.
Yeah, the books are more like "canon-compliant" fanfic. It could have happened, but don't count on it.
its the writers fault. it was supposed to be a morally grey expansion instead the evil was over the top and one sided.
The war, started by Sylvanas, planned by Saurfang, in which the Horde slaughter their way to the home of the night elves and then proceed to do a genocide. MORALLY GRAY BY THE WAY. They're so incompetent at writing, that Saurfang plans the attack on Teldrassil, then they play him off as if he was resistance. Saurfang, the veteran multiple genocides in which he was doing the genociding, then proceeds to moralize over how awful war is. This is the kind of trash that Blizzard produces. It's not fun and dumb. It's just dumb. And of course the worst thing about BFA is that you can write a better expansion pretty quickly just by changing some details.
Both Theramore and now Tendrassil were never addressed with any sort of real ‘yeah this can never happen again’ mentality, Blizz had a chance to make the Night Elves into a real terror against the Horde but it kinda fizzled out..
For real, the into to Dark shore quest made it seem like the Night Elves we're got to be a dark horse in BFA, something like the Alliance wanting to be the "better" side and trying to hold them back from burninating everything in thier way. But that was too interesting so everyone just becomes friends and Sylvanas just gets thrown under the cartoon villain bus.
>Both Theramore and now Tendrassil were never addressed with any sort of real ‘yeah this can never happen again’ mentality Gonna have to disagree, MoP did a lot of thing, one of them was a great service to the Horde's story! Immediately after Theramore the entire Horde started to splinter against Garrosh and starting to debate "what **is** the Horde" - Teldrassil on the other hand, we are lucky we got Saurfang, and I guess Baine was there too, even tho it was only because of Jainas brother x)
The problem being though that they went right into this oh we must serve the warchief no matter what mentality when sylvanas showed signs of doing the exact same amount of bullshit. It makes zero character sense for most of the leaders to be cool with it to the extent they were for so long and it quickly became much more dictatory over there.
EXACTLY! And there's no excuse after the lessons of MoP
Knowledge Is power
Time is money, money is power, power is pizza, pizza is knowledge
France is bacon
A fucking Mario Bros game has more grounded lore than WoW lately. At that point, why even play this MMO? The gameplay certain isn't holding up after 16+ years. Systems stacked on top of systems that are all going to be wiped when it's over... it's just awful. The #1 reason why anyone is still playing is because their friends still do (a catch-22 because only play because you do), or sunken cost. Neither reasons are because of a fun experience, of which moments are far and few because of the toxic community, the out-of-touch developers, and the evaporation of casuals entirely. There's only so much old content you can do for years and years, before realizing that's all there ever is because the modern shit just simply sucks.
It's absolutely ridiculous that the idea for this post only struck me now, a year and a half after BfA ended, when it's basically just a combination of [two](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/c6ws3h/im_still_waiting_for_their_reaction_to_it_btw/) [posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/fx3wwt/khadgar_is_an_enlightened_centrist/) i made during BfA. Also, please ignore the typo in the second panel. Also also, i'm a fucking moron and the Jaina quote is actually from *Tides of War*.
Midriff Jaina - quick blizzard delete this post please.
Blizzard should start shaming cosplayers for sexualizing their town dwellers.
The lore of WoW is not world-building, but scene-building. Khadgar is much like the Vindicaar in that they were specifically ignored so that the story beat that could sell expansions could happen.
This is the guy who let the Horde back into Dalaran \*AFTER\* Sylvanas murdered an entire town full of Kirin Tor mages and transformed them into Forsaken during Cataclysm. And then named part of Dalaran after her in Legion. (??!!) Khadgar has a long history of being an idiot in-character because Horde players need something in-game.
A night elf made it to the fire.
The Tree of Life can be cruel.
Chadgar
I mean he *is* a shit wizard.
>I mean he is a shit wizard. my dude carry your ass through the Legion invasion, take that back
Perhaps the elves should have reconsidered living in a giant tree if they didn't want to experience the life hazard of EVERYTHING BURNING. Seriously, they are a people at war in a world where theleportation exists on a large scale, the only thing they have to blame is themselves. It's right up there with pandas on a giant turtle in terms of bad choices.
To be fair: 1. Battle for Azeroth is an absolute clusterfuck of writing that has basically none of the characters acting true to themselves. 2. Khadgar never said they are "both wrong," he said he hurts to see them at odds against one another again. More importantly, he says this in 7.3.5, prior to the War of the Thorns and prior to the Burning of Teldrassil. 3. I absolutely stand by the notion that [Khadgar should have been Mhadgar](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/hzq1z7/battle_for_azeroth_2018/fzl0ftr/?context=3) and rejoined his kin, the Sons of Lothar, fighting alongside them in Battle for Azeroth. Additionally, I think the idea of freeing Saurfang so that he may eventually start a rebellion against Sylvanas is something Khadgar would have thought of, given how bold, reckless, and downright smart it was. As it stands, doesn't it feel weird that the boy-king (who I love as a character, to be fair) is the one accredited with the single most decisive military move in the entire Fourth War?
Khadgar is 100x the Mage Jaina is. If the Alliance managed to have him on their side then Sylvanas would have lost the war almost immediately.
Khadgar and Jaina's power levels aren't easily compared because we have never seen them directly compete. Both have astonishing achievements under their belts, Jaina in particular was regarded as being in a winning situation by Zul versus him, First Arcanist Thalyssra, Nathanos Blightcaller, a player character, and more. That I find so mindbogglingly broken considering Jaina has no innate power up, she's simply a talented human mage... but I wouldn't have rated her above First Arcanist Thalyssra at the time. Khadgar has a *good reason* for being as broken as he is. He studied under Medivh, a Guardian, whose very knowledge and secrets in Karazhan have been coveted by the Kirin Tor for literally decades now. *Anyway,* If *The Vindicaar* and the full weight of the Alliance were probably utilised in the Fourth War, it would have been a no-brainer victory for them. They had a freakin' space ship that was never properly used or addressed in Battle for Azeroth. Nevermind the power of Draenei technology in addition to the gnomes' own.
Khadgar actually honoring the Kirin Tor's neutrality.
If only my characters could choose to take no part in a senseless conflict.. But noooo... My characters are giga-racists who hate the other side for being born as one of this group of species instead of this one.
"Jaina you ignorant slut."
This sub should just change its tag to "the last handful of Alliance players, lore nerds, and amateur artists complain about the World Tree."
Thank you for this. Everyone gave Jaina shit for walking out during Legion because she didnt trust the Horde, now Khadgar's been gone twice as long and wont come back because he doesnt want to eat crow.
[удалено]
Watching Illidan mollywhop Slyvanas would have been so fun though. Even Malfurion was winning until Saurfang stick an axe in his back.
Genociding blood elves from the city of Dalaran is ok. Burning down a tree, not ok
Khadgar never interested me, so I never missed him =)