So… in 9.2 we are going to a place where worlds like Azeroth and its afterlives are created. Including alpha versions and stuff like that. I kinda feel like this will be a constant reminder that this is just a game, which will make it quite hard to actually feel immersed into the world. It feels as if I’m more likely to find a first one recording in Ion’s voice, where he explains Azeroth’s design philosophy, than an exploration of how denizens of the world actually feel about meeting the creators of their creators, the gods of their gods.
…why? Why would they think that’s a good idea? Do they feel that this is some great philosophical twist? That we will ponder the real life implications and be enriched by the experience? Is this just their sense of humour, inserting the development process into the game that they are developing, because… irony, I guess? Or is there really any way this can actually feel good to play in, without just turning your brain off and skipping the flavour text?
I can only assume someone over there really loves Destiny 2. Because all of this, down to the visuals of the environment and the mobs, scream Destiny 2 to me. Sadly forgot the names of the planet in question, but it was one of the ones with the robot people in them.
I have no idea what made them think that this would actually get people interested. I want to believe that by now they have already realized that players are lamed out by the direction they’ve taken with Shadowlands but they had their patch plan ready from the start and they just wanna stick with it until the very end (which we know is very close now, at least).
What’s worse I’m certain the artistic team is talented and all, but they NEED to get in touch with Warcraft’s identity, with the vibes and aesthetics that people have in mind when they’re thinking about WoW. What the hell is that
I’m not just baffled about style or theme here… I just don’t understand in what way this could ever be good. I can see why people would like the strange robot planet, but the world factory of the First Ones that makes everything within the game feel like nothing more than the game it is? It’s not just “not Warcraft”. It’s just a creative dead-end. Nothing to grab onto there and no way out of the estrangement from the world it creates. It’s just too “meta”.
Aye, I agree. It takes the mystery away too you know in the past we had questions like. “Who created the Emerald Dream, was it Azeroth dreaming, Ysera, Eonar?” or are the afterlives created by the eternal ones, it was hinted trhat Ardenweald might have been created by the Winter Queen…but now it’s like…
See that floating orb thingy? Yeah…We use that to create afterlives. Universe is our toy…Gl
After seeing this, it feels as though nothing actually matters. If they wanted to make all our adventures on Azeroth feel small and meaningless by having us visit the literal forge of creation, then they have succeeded. I have never felt so empty regarding the lore.
In the past, no matter whether I was happy or upset about the directions of the story, I was always passionate about it. Now I feel absolutely nothing, because nothing matters anymore.
Perhaps I am being silly, but having every last bit of mystery being completely removed from the setting killed it completely for me. Like you said, the world feels like a machine or a game, which is wrong and extremely meta. How does one get immersed in something like that?
I kinda agree. I hated BfA’s story. I’m totally apathetic towards Shadowlands. I’m just waiting for it to finally end. And I was never so close to quitting as I am now, alas, the damned social game doesn’t just let me take my friends with me if I do…
Really, my best hope is that after this addon they just totally ignore everything they did in Shadowlands and never mention it again. If they really, really close that horrible book, I might be able to forget about it as well.
I mean, they even said “we are walking on water, for some reason”…I’m pretty sure that’s just a metaphor for what Jesus, the Son of the Creator God, did in the Christian religion as well…lol. Or also a reference to the fact that water is where the primordial life was generated on Earth billions of years ago for science.
(Also they said water is the most important element in the creation, both for Azeroth and real-life Earth, but I think that’s wrong. Fire is the most important element of the creation as without the light and heat of the Sun our Earth and Azeroth too would just be a frozen ball devoid of life despite the presence of water (ice)
No you’re absolutely right about that, I agree that the devastating philosophical consequences of that setting are way more of a problem than the awkward design choices. I think both are connected though… it’s all about having completely lost the sight of your own game’s identity.
Just today I was questing in Northrend with the Sons of Hodir, and after you repaired their relationship with Thorim by crafting the giant helm, there’s a dialogue when clicking the anvil that says something like “Looking at this, you’re amazed at the impact you just had on the world”. And that merely referred to the fact that you helped reconciliate the frost titan-forged who had parted ways following a drama.
Then I remembered that the next patch will be us visiting the very edge of existence and doing mini-quests in the mega gods’ workshop from which every single world in the universe originates. Not gonna lie, from a WoW lore perspective, the cynicism and the sense of vanity that arouses in me are endless.
That being said. Just like you, if they somehow find the wisdom to pretend everything they did in SL never existed once we return to Azeroth, I’m completely willing to just pretend as well. As bad as the writing of BFA might have been, it addressed things that I cared about and I’m actually an easy audience to satisfy LMAO
The sheer audacity to claim that Shadowlands’ story "pulls together threads that started in warcraft 3 " lol.
If you give a crap about the warcraft lore and universe and just want to do your own, totally different thing, at least be honest about it.
This wasn’t planned long in advance. It’s just some sloppily cobbled together soulless nonsense that pretends to be great, mysterious and meaningful. It has nothing to do with warcraft.
And no, I’m not excited about it. Not one bit.
The Jailer in Warcraft 3 was probably “the Darkness” that Death Knight Arthas and the Dreadlords talk about when you click on them several times and they get angry
also Arthas in a vision after reforging the shards of Frostmourne in Legion makes references to “the Darkness” in WoW as well talking about the fact that “he” never dies and they are still doing his bidding despite their free will, so this is probably not completely a joke after all…
I thought a bit about what makes this theme so different from, say, exploring the Titan “laboratories” from Wotlk. I think it’s the revelation that the gods and pantheons themselves are 3D-printed, and individual gods aren’t even unique, but have copies. Wotlk had all those interesting Lovecraftian horror themes about the curse of flesh. The gigantic 3D-printer of gods seems more like a gag from Rick and Morty. Maybe we’ll find out that the Warcraft universe is just a tinyverse created to power Ion’s car battery.
I for one refuse to call them Gods because anyone that relies on technology is not a god just like the Titans are not gods much like rick their clearly just a bunch of mad scientists a real god would not need to relay on parlor tricks like a 3d printer to create universes
That’s a good question! But I think it’s more than just including the gods in the printing machine…
The Titan machines operated strictly within the universe we cared about. The First Ones stuff is explicitly outside of it.
The Titan facilities actually showed us the limits of the Titans, the First Ones stuff has no limits within the realms we care about. If we can “reorder reality” from there, we’re not operating on a scale where Azeroth really matters.
The Titans actually didn’t create anything we care about by themselves for some purpose. They tried to order a world that was already there. And they created constructs that became us. But what made us us, and what made Azeroth Azeroth were actually influences they had no control over. Mechagnomes and Earthens may have been made for some purpose by the Titans. But WE weren’t. The Titans were thwarted by other equal Forces. The First Ones seem to be supreme.
hmmm ff 14 touches on this with the ascian leader not seeing the people of the source and the 13 reflections as not people so murdering them is totally ok morally because they are simply fragments of a greater whole
i personally don’t see the problem with the wow universe simply being printed the thing that ultimately matters is that it’s important to us and it don’t matter what some creators think about it the Alliance and Horde will fight simply because from our pov we matter … and if any God like being says otherwise the murder hobo’s will kick their rear
if anything it makes me re-think what the void is … is it like a computer virus trying to delete our save
Okay. I guess an “I don’t care”-approach is entirely feasible. It just doesn’t exactly solve the problem. If what I care about is on a much, much lower level, I don’t care about the high level plot and will feel out of place at every moment I spent in these zones. Which is exactly the lack of immersion I was talking about. It doesn’t have to irrevocably destroy the world-building to be a terrible idea. It’s enough if it totally takes you out of the world you actually want to play in. And I don’t really see how it could not do that.
I’m more the type who gets super invested in pieces of the lore rather then the great whole in my opinion wow’s overall story has always been pretty bad yes even the “glory days” of wolk was pretty terrible this is because a lot of the important parts of the story is only told in books there a severe lack of consistency in the story as well writing etc expansion as a stand alone has not done wonders for the story
for example if blizzard wrote a story where 99,9 % of the horde and alliance died they’d still have enough troops somehow to wage another faction war
Well, I can’t argue with that. That doesn’t stop me from being baffled by new writing mistakes anyways. Indeed, criticising the writing decisions is about the most fun the story content gets for me these days. So I’m certainly not saying “without that the lore and the story would be fine!”. I’m saying “in what world could this possibly have sounded like a good idea?”. I don’t have to think the story is salvagable to expect the story team to treat it as if it were.
Edit:
…or to officially give up on that. I have mentioned multiple times that I would think the story could become quite entertaining, if they went all-in on a “self-aware parody” idea.
