Some of the moderators on these forums are either biased or incompetent at their jobs. I was recently banned for literally a thousand years because the moderator either intentionally ignored the post I was replying to or did not think to look opening it up to be interpreted the wrong way.
I had it appealed successfully thanks to a chill GM who understood the issue as he was capable of reading.
You are probably right about this and it is a sad truth. However, I would say that any little thing we say make an impact on the world no matter how minor it is. Even if this place has been destroyed by the parasites infiltrating these franchises there is always hope for a better future, if not here then somewhere else.
Before my sub runs out as well I can say posts both made by you and Asjon on these forums have made an impact on me. They’re not worthless, and many clearly share the same sentiments.
Not necessarily… I mean, I’m explicitly hoping for some near-monopoly. Sure, that’s a possible outcome of capitalistic competition, but hardly the only one. There will be other MMOs. And one might unite the playerbase instead of dividing it. But I don’t really believe that. While many people might feel displaced right now, others have already found their “new home”. And any reasonably good game will be somebody’s game of choice…
Trolololo! What a circus that place is. I used to check there to feel out how DF was received but stopped after reading so many retarded comments, it was making my brain hurt.
Most of the people there must have that famous American lead poisoning.
The original concept of what WoW was and represented died a very long time ago.
World of Warcraft as a game will probably be around for another 20 years I imagine. But it isn’t what it was. There are some vague remnants of it here and there if you look enough, but it’s just the skin, being worn by someone else.
This franchise used to be Metallica, somewhere along the way it morphed into Harry Styles. It was once dark and gritty with a sprinkle of humour in places. It’s now become Animal Crossing with the occasional mildly dark theme, around Disney villain level.
Activision and their obsession with moulding WoW into a modern day political platform is who you can thank for this.
WoW was never dark and gritty. This ain’t Warhammer. What are you playing? This story always been a disney movie. There are good guys and bad guys and the bad guys always lose.
Going to the realm of death where the unjustly damned souls are tortured until no identity but suffering remains wasn’t exactly Disney-esque, either. Might even be some kind of metal. That didn’t stop it from sucking, though.
I distinctly remember them being memed on, because it was thematically outdone by Riot’s metal music event.
But that’s kind of down to Blizzard’s chronic inability to hold thematic integrity and sell the story. We’ve already been over this many times, but nobody really bothered to behave like they’ve just spent undisclosed amount of time getting tortured in unimaginable ways, which lead us to the “Tell and show complete opposite” kind of storytelling.
Eh, to be fair, the Maw was pretty much a depressing hellscape, as advertised. Which is why it sucked to play there.
So “Darkness” really isn’t everything. The fun kind of power metal where people sing about blood and murder and comoradeship and glory in cheery tones was closer to the tone that worked for WoW. Not exactly disney, not exactly coherent, but masculine and fun.
Not really, there have always been some parts of the story that were pretty dark and gritty.
From the burning of Teldrassil to the Scourge, Alextrazsa’s imprisonment and the first/second/third war all of this is pretty dark.
Not really, many things played into it ending up sucking, while it admittedly did overstay it’s welcome due to shall we say production difficulties. (that lawsuit) I don’t believe that it’s because the tone was dark(or supposed to be anyway), as we’ve seen over a variety of other franchises like DMC, Doom, Diablo, Warhammer(any incarnation) and so forth that very thematic being done well.
To my reckoning they tried to play it straight, but it turned out somewhat farcical, as it was rather obvious who had the plot armor and admittedly it was mostly the same-ish boring stuff to the extentthat they somehow made it look generic. (The mechanical side of things falling apart, with abusive fomo systems was also rather disasterous to that end)
What have you been playing. Your posts about Alliance bias are actually funny sometimes. Maybe you should stick to making those if this is the level of knowledge you have on Warcraft.
Because it was still made by people who cannot write if their lives depended on it. It’s like asking a child to write a children’s story. It’s still going to be bad because it’s a child… they can’t write well enough to write a good children’s story.
Oh, me neither. I was just commenting on the idea that WoW wasn’t dark relatively recently. The tone was by far not the only or most relevant story-problem in SL. It might even have worked, we’ll never find out. But it was quite dark and gruesome. And that wasn’t hidden away in the quest text, it was as in-your-face as the cuddly animals are now. You couldn’t help a giggle-fairy without helping her slaughter her mind-controlled friends or preparing her to sacrifice herself for the greater good. The owl guys in Bastion might have been the exception, but their working morale as ideal, artificially created slaves was a wholely different kind of creepy…
What i referred to was the general contrast between what the characters say (dielogue/text) and how they actually end up behaving. Particularly agregious with the plot armor squad.
Overuse of self sacrifice, undermining the narrative with mind-control, giving the “good” guys custom artificial slaves, etc. are failings of narrative structure and worldbuilding. What I’d agree with is the sentiment that the dark elements felt disposable, superficial and not earnestly comitted to. (or at least my opinion of their abilities isn’t THAT low) The same fundamental problems are present within Dragonflight, even if they take on different forms.
I actually liked the maw idea overall , especially at the start , where it really was dangerous . Getting high level of notoriety and having those annoying effects constantly happen was really cool . You couldn’t even eat , because the moment you stopped you got blasted , or attacked by assassins . It fit perfectly in the idea .
What failed to my sense was the blandness of the zone . Gray on top of gray, with everyone dressed in gray , with no good soundtrack at all , got bland really fast .
Some of my favorite zones in wow are the Vanilla Silithus , Plaguelands and Burning steps/ Searing Gorge . They too are basically blasted hell-scape , but somehow well done. You enter and suddenly their great music hits you and sets the mood . You enter the maw and you enter grayness + infinite . The same kind of gray gets boring , especially if you are force stuck in it with the de facto “end zone” .
Shadowlands was also done poorly .Fording says " be ware shadowlands are dangerous and nothing looks s it should" . In my mind I see ever shifting terrain and buildings that vanish in-front of your eyes . Things that look like fairies , suddenly turning into soul-sucking monsters . Winged angels suddenly turning to banshees and possessing people . I see a Winter Queen , who rules over a frozen land , with merciless grip and puts to “sleep” any soul which enters her domain . A land of blood field with crucifed souls being tortured for nothing but the pleasure of their tormentors . A field of endless war , with burning cities and cries for mercy .
Instead in shadowlands we see , sunny grass or slime , populated by comical or mentally damaged characters which pick daisies 24/7 , play games and are somehow always whining about something .
Not once did I feel like the pray in that supposedly alien and hostile land . The mortal surrounded by the dead . Instead I felt as straight guy stuck in the middle of a Pride Parade . You think : well that’s weird … now where is the closest exit .
When you enter Vanilla Plaguelands , you feel like you are wandering into some place where you definitely shouldn`t be , but you are still pressing on , because you will not be pushed out .
The foundational problem is that they decided to make it Icecrown+, instead of trying to create their own take on what essentially is the Pit of Tartarus in concept. A place that is essentially hell to hell, where no mortal is ever meant to tread and nothing is meant to escape.
Not even getting into how the whole thing doesn’t fit the memo established within the chronicles, which at this rate have been retconned so hard it not only betrays their purpose, but makes the titans look like they were sniffing glue the whole time.
One reason I hated the Shadowlands (that I’ve not seen anyone mention in the story forums yet) is summed up in the intro quest; you have to click on various pieces of the Crown of Domination to open a portal, and whilst holding a piece you move at like 20% of your regular movement speed. They use this “clever” time of gameplay to bombard you with uninteresting dialogue and the whole thing serves as one large unskippable cutscene. This was repeated many times on our way to max level, and since they opted to go for full linearity you’d go through this process with every character.
Story is important, but so is gameplay. And in a perfect world, narrative and gameplay are married in such a way that they complement one another. Blizzard did the exact opposite of this. I don’t know whether they still do this in Dragonflight, but if they do they need to reverse it asap.
shame daybreak cancelled everquest next ; ;