So, they released a new ad for the game last week.
It’s fun enough, it sets a nice mood, focusses on the escapist element of gaming, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Fair enough.
But it has been nagging me a bit, when it probably shouldn’t have. I know this isn’t meant to be lore or anything… But I do feel that the ad does in its way depict the world that the devs would like WoW to be now. A fun place to chill out, some bloodless violence, and races and classes mostly as a way to express yourself, and not a dividing factor.
And it certainly does sound more appealing than the half-baked melodrama hey were going for, and could never convincingly sell. It’s not exactly far from what they always did to some degree, either. But I do smell a large dose of “continuity is to enhance the story, not to tie the hands of creators” behind a concept like that.
I mean, that might even be the right move. The nerdy and few that are willing to talk about elven populations and indulge Erevien’s repeated claims aren’t exactly representing a large portion of the playerbase, and for most of the rest “escapist fun” seems like a pretty good idea. But I do feel a bit iffy about the lack of substance or gravitas that this might bring. The world in clips like these looks unconvincing to me. A “save” product that’s not likely to create much exitement, but won’t push players away, either.
I mean, I am most certainly projecting quite a lot of my bias here, but I thought this might be something to share. Any thoughts on any of this?
you weren’t the legendary superhero of every faction with artifact weapons chilling in the bank, who was expected to go along with the Major Characters on their adventures to save the world from universe-eating Nipple Satans. you were some goober in a clown suit just trying your best to explore (and get less flamboyant gear) in a world that let you experience stories of drama and tragedy and heroism and whatnot, but never really got po-faced or self-regarding about it, and never made you a tag-a-long for the adventures of Anduin And Friends.
If the various distinctions don’t have meanting then there is no point to them existing, when the cornerstones of what makes this a high fantasy RPG are rotted away they may as well put race change into the barber shop.
Different races, cultures, etc. is what gives the world a sense of scale, but if everything is homogenously diverse then there is no substance to speak of. It’s not the kind of thing a casual audience member would think about consciously, unless it’s brought to their attention somehow, however they’re not stupid and still notice, when these things blatantly don’t add up.
(Don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be able to tell someone messed up, when it goes off course and explodes/crashes somewhere…)
Hm, doesn’t seem like we got the same impression from the ad then. What I saw was’t grounded adventurer fantasy, it was pretty much heroes that might well just come from slaying any god hanging around in a bar, made up of all kinds of mixed up fantasy concepts. I certainly agree that making the player a renowened slayer of gods is a problem for the story, but it isn’t something that really touches on the topic. The blurring of distinctions Belodine mentioned is more like it. It’s not that I had a problem with the role of the player heroes here, but the setting felt quite superficial and not serious at all. And as I wrote, I might be projecting some fears into that ad, but what I did feel is that this might be the improvement we might be up for in the future. Less stupid drama, that’s meant to be deep, and more stupid, escapist fun, that is meant to be exactly what it looks like without any hidden depths.
And as someone who very much enjoyed the world-building of vanilla, that does seem like a bit of a shame, even if it might be an acceptable move as a mass entertainment medium and an improvement to the depths they wrote themselves into in the newest addons.
They should do one of those for the Horde. I would love to know what Trolls and Orcs would look like in similar costumes like the night elves in the video did.
that was vanilla all over iirc. a world full of silly joke items, silly costumes for your dude to wear, and constant references to other games & TV shows & films & song lyrics. all of these things added character and colour to the world, and none of them stopped Azeroth being immersive to me. it also never stopped the game generating an unsettling, dramatic or suspenseful atmosphere at times, or telling engaging stories that could sometimes be genuinely moving.
…in vanilla? WoW Classic? I don’t think we had the same experience there, and I mean, it’s not that long ago that I played around in Classic. That sounds more like the Cata remake to me. And yeah, Cata questing did at several occasions heavily hurt my immersion.
a non-exhaustive list of un-serious things i remember from vanilla:
Savory Deviate Delights.
Noggenfogger Elixir, and just… Marvin Noggenfogger and his whole thing.
actually, anything to do with the Steamwheedle Cartel or goblins in general.
and like 90% of anything to do with Gnomes
Engineering gadgets that randomly malfunction & give your character silly debuffs (the Teleporters), explode and leave your dude barefoot (Rocket Boots) or backfire and kill you (the Death Ray thing)
the furbolgs between Winterspring and Felwood who sell you a trinket that turns you into a furbolg.
the Witch Doctor in Sen’jin Village.
the numerous items and NPCs which are direct references to other media (The Lost Dwarves in Uldaman, the Seven in BRD, Jom Gabbar, The Six-Demon Bag, etc etc)
the numerous NPCs who spout song lyrics or lines from cartoons/ films (“I am the serpent king, I can do anything!”, “Me Grimlok, king!”, “Remember, Rajaxx, when I said I’d kill you first? I lied…”, Marduk in Scholomance talking like a magic 8-ball for no reason, etc etc)
… and loads more besides. i loved all this stuff. it added texture to the world and knocked the dust off the dry high fantasy setting, ensuring it could never get too far up its own backside.
Cataclysm was actually where this kind of flavourful, silly world-building ended imo. the game started getting po-faced and taking itself too seriously, adding in clench-jawed militaristic stupidity all over the place and things like turret sections and helicopter gunship battles. if they’re taking a step back from that, i’m all for it.
…we obviously aren’t talking about the same things. And I have no idea what you are talking about, if you think the addon that gave us CSI Westfall, Redridge Rambo and a whole Indiana Jones campaign wasn’t “a world full of silly joke items, silly costumes for your dude to wear, and constant references to other games & TV shows & films & song lyrics.”. It certainly has nothing to do with my comments on the ad. I wasn’t objecting to things being funny sometimes.
no, you’re worrying that the setting may become more frivolous and less cohesive, and suggest this is a pivot away from WoW’s narrative tradition.
i’m suggesting the opposite. Azeroth was never a hard high fantasy setting. it was always a bit cartoonish, always willing to embrace its own absurdity and let players have fun within it, without trying to give comprehensive explanations for every little aspect of itself.
the attempt to impose cohesion on the setting began around the time of Cataclysm when the Thrall/ Garrosh thing they’d set up during WotLK kicked off, and it’s been ongoing ever since. going back to a world without multi-expac narratives centred on Major Characters is not a pivot away from WoW’s traditions, it’s a return to them. and i reckon it’s a good idea.
Hm, I don’t think that’s it, no. I think I’m worried that the world might become devoid of any unique character, and the game just a platform to express your irl self. The world was never cohesive, but it was made up out of mostly coherent themes that had their own area The tone and content of gnome quests certainly is hard to combine with the tone of a nelven druidic quest, but that’s why they were in their own little areas of the themepark, preventing the clash. And some areas were more frivolous than others, but they usually had their own character, even if that might have been loosely inspired by irl references, just like the setting itself was inspired by Warhammer. And I’d very much like to see that back.
Maybe I’m getting the impression that they’re going for a unified “Warcraft” feeling that crosses all boundaries here? I’m not against very softcore escapist plots and zones, but maybe if it would feel empty to me if that came at the expense of the needlessly gory, the laughably masculine or the thickheadedly aggressive that’s always been there as well. MCU style violence and quipping is fine and all, but I don’t want it to be the one and only tone here.
I was mostly sharing my impressions and feelings on this. Really, how it was before doesn’t much matter to that. The feelings come before their resoning. And I can tell you what I saw in the ad seemed hollow to me and worried me, if it was a reflection of how the devs wanted the world to be. That’s the premise, not the argument. If you think my view of WoW as it was is wrong… well, good for you, but that only matters in this context if you have an alternate theory of what might have felt so wrong to me here.
And you’re talking with a vocal crtitic of WoW’s attempt at linear plots around “major characters” apart from the player, so I just don’t think you’re on the right track, if you’re suggesting that that’s what I’m missing here.
I read this thread yesterday and kind of scratched myself on the head, not seeing what it was about, really. I saw the ad as a cheeky video with one “clever” fourth wall breaking joke without any real substance. However, re-reading your first post and then this:
I might be zoning in on what the issue you want to bring up is, but I do think it is rather vague. Do you think their new idea of removing class/race restrictions is part of it? Because that I see as something that kind of breaks the narrative establishment between the races, the world building and the game’s mechanics. It is not unthinkable that a Blood Elf could learn the druidic arts or that an Orc could … take the cloth. But once you open that flood gate then that one unique Blood Elf druid or Orc Priest will not be so unique anymore and the overall aesthetic is tarnished.
Forgive me if I’m kind of derailing the thread. I know there’s another thread for this topic but I felt as though it was related.
It wouldn’t have to be. But in all probability… it will be, yes. They could either declare class to be a gameplay thing that has nothing to do with the lore, and I’d be fine with it, or they could fit new class combinations to the racial cultures and make unique new versions like the Sunwalkers. But well… we saw what happened with the Sunwalkers when Legion came about, and they have the horrible tendency to treat everything that’s possible ingame as lore, so keeping the gameplay apart from the lore probably isn’t what they’ll go with, either. And having an orc priest just be an orc priest, because the player wanted to play an orc with the class priest and the lore bending around it, destroying all meaning behind the decisions, probably is what I’m dreading.
They have done a good job, in BfA distinguishing the Zandalari and the Kul’tiran Druids, from the Cenarion stuff. Between the wicker monsters and dinosaurs they both look fantastic and have good distinct reasons to be remarkably different, bust still considered under that classification. That to me is the healthiest way to treat the classes, as classification, which various distinct groups could fall under.
Kind of comes back around to the conflict between open self expression and “Know your damn role jabroni”, which all rpgs have to tread carefully.
i can kind of see what you mean here. the game world does feel more homogenised than it used to especially when it comes to the cultures of the two factions. i don’t think that’s a conscious design decision tho. i think it’s a consequence of the narrative devs wanting to impose themselves on the setting rather than writing for the pre-existing lore. also because they are not very good lol
blizz have said they want Dragonflight to feel more like old-school WoW, which might be reason for optimism. they might try to reign in the DC superhero Main Character trash a bit and let Azeroth be Azeroth again.
then again it’s still the same people doing the writing, so maybe not.
