As most of you will agree, BfA’s story has been @#$% so far. Like real bad @#$%. Horde players are pissed, alliance players are pissed. I don’t know a single person who thinks it’s even in “good enough” category. Now with this expansion coming to it’s miserable end, do you think there’s even a way for Blizz to make it all worthwhile? Some sick plot twist that would make you slap your head and say “Ofcourse! It all makes sense to me now! Brilliant job, Blizzard.”?
For me, i just can’t think of any way out of this mess, other then do like the Simpsons did in episode with Star Wars convention: “Due to fluctuations in space-time continuum, episodes 1 to 3 never existed”. Yea. “BfA never happened, you were in a coma since Vindicar crased on his way back from Argus”.
tyrande trying and failing to kill sylvanas in a duel before saurfang comes in with the assist and finishes her off. then he stands atop the remains of the auberdine pier and yells “TELDRASSIL IS FREEEEEEE!” and we’re all friends again.
I’d say WoD and Legion were as terrible as BfA, story concerned. Personally, I enjoy BfA’s theme much more than Legion’s and I love both Boralus and Kul Tiras, but really, that is down to everyone’s preferences.
The thing that would “salvage” BfA for me is if it doesn’t lead into some dumb one faction game where we are all friends and sing kumbaya all day long.
We can continue fighting, while N’Zot rebuilds his empire. We lost too much soldiers and N’Zot wins killing all of us.
But it appears that all of this is just a vision of the golden dragons. They show it to the Horde and the Alliance. So they reunite instead of fighting, and BFA never happened.
I really think the best way to deal with the overarching story is to end it, once and for all. Stop giving us the soap-opera between some chosen hero characters, and let us make our own story through adventuring. I don’t think the story can be redeemed, nor do I think they should try.
If they can’t stop themselves from creating this stuff, make it an obvious, over-the-top parody. Make the story a joke about how bad the story was before. And I mean that quite sincerely, I really think that this the only way I would enjoy this dumpster fire for itself in the future…
Well, I often enjoy bashing the story, too, but enjoying how bad the story is is quite different from enjoying the story, I think.
Honestly there are enjoyable elements in BFA, but for the story to be redeemed that is difficult, I keep trying to think of an ending that could satisfy everyone, and I can’t find one.
For it to be redeemed they must give Night Elves their vengeance, Muh honor Horde must reorganize the new Horde,Sylvanas must win in her endgame or at least her endgame must make enough sense…
BfA can’t be redeemed because they sold us on a false premise: that the forefront of the expansion would be the faction vs. faction conflict. That conflict is present but they splintered it and damaged it beyond repair by creating constant internal inconsistencies, making the Horde into a mess and honestly leaving us hanging for so long without advancement in the overarching plot.
Azeroth explodes and we flee at the last second to a new planet where we can have a fresh start.
Honestly, blizzard has always been much better at “small” stories and is terrible when they try to be big and epic, just look at what they did with starcraft. In bfa, the war campaign was terrible, but I enjoyed the small zone storylines. If only we could go back to being an adventurer and mercenary instead of the chosen one surrounded by demigod npcs characters. Only way to get this would be a complete restart.
Also, I think the entire power creep kinda needs to be put on a leash. I don’t know, maybe there’s loads of people who love the action packed, flashy magic and cosmic-scale plots with massive armies, but I think Blizzard needs an expansion that’s a bit of a cold shower for the plot and the scale of everything.
Honestly I can’t really think of anything, I keep running over the story in my head and there is basically only one logical way for it to go: We realize friendship is magic and work together to defeat the great evil, then forget all that came before.
That really seems where this story is going… Otherwise they basically have to scrap SO much of what have already been established.
For me, as a Sylvanas-loyalist even, this story can no longer be redeemed.
I fully understand that in order to hide spoilers that the story has to be vague, but it’s gone too far and they used wrong characters.
Sylvanas never should have become (or accepted the function of) warchief. She, as a character, works best in the background scheming her own thing while keeping up appearances to the leaderships.
Saurfang with his false sense of honor, rather getting himself killed by the enemy than fight for his ‘honorable’ beliefs. There is nothing honorable about letting yourself be killed on the battlefield. Now likely he’s thinking he would never be able to win mak’gora honorably from Sylvanas, as she is the kind of character to not play by the rules to win and Saurfang is the kind of character that wouldn’t want to win by using dishonorable methods. So he knows Sylvanas would win, either physically or mentally (because his honor would be lost of he did win, which would still for Saurfang feel as a loss to him) And I get that. But that’s still no reason to simply give up and get oneself killed/captured by the enemy.
This story could have been good if it wasn’t Sylvanas and Saurfang.
The only way this can even have the slightest resemblance of satisfaction at the end, is if Vol’jin made Sylvanas warchief only to put her in the spotlight because he knows as long as Sylvanas stays hidden in the background she will grow out to be this powerful entity that will completely obliterate Azeroth. Vol’jins idea was to capture her in plain sight. Putting her away would never work so exposing her to all of Azeroth seemed the best option to him.
This means that Sylvanas won’t be redeemed at the end of the line, and I’m fine with that. Her character is ruined, the forsaken are ruined.
I think it’s excellent. So now you know of at least 1 person.
An expansion is always built on 3-4 layers of story.
There’s the introduction with the Burning of Teldrassil and the Siege of Lordaeron. This is hands-down one of the most emotionally impactful and all-out cases of pre-expansion event storytelling Blizzard have ever done. Criticize this for being lackluster and you’re an idiot who’s forgotten past expansions where you just stood in front of a portal and bashed a bunch of demons until you completed your quest and got your tabard.
There’s the zone-specific storylines, like the witches in Drustvar and the sneks in Vol’dun. In my opinion the quality of these range from unacceptable (Stormsong Valley) to amazing (Drustvar, Zuldazar). The collective experience definitely errs toward the positive.
Then there’s the faction-specific storylines, you know, the war and all that. For the Horde it’s about the Zandalari and the problems with Zul and securing the throne and so on. And for the Alliance it’s about Jaina and the Kul Tirans and Lady Ashvane.
And then there’s some cross-over conflict between the two factions, notably told through the War Campaign.
For the most part this is also solid. The Horde storylines are definitely better than the Alliance ones, but again, the collective storytelling definitely has more positive than negative.
And then you have the over-arching storyline with G’huun, N’zoth, Azshara, Azerite, Vol’jin, and so on.
And this is stellar so far. Best storytelling ever. Because everyone is curious about what will happen. No one knows. The possibilities are many, and Blizzard are good at giving lore nerds small clues for speculation.
And the themes are cool. Old Gods, Titan souls, Naga, and so on. This is de facto the cool parts of the Warcraft lore.
Of course it’s all personal opinion in the end, but I don’t think most will agree that BfA’s story is bad. On the contrary, I think Blizzard have managed to make the story far more compelling than ever before, and thus gotten more people engaged in it. I mean, fact of the matter is that the cutscenes and cinematics are viewed like crazy, new quests in patches are discussed like never before, and people are eager for more epicness with their favorite characters, be it Jaina or Tyrande or Vol’jin or Sylvannas or whoever.
The response definitely doesn’t seem to be that people think it’s boring and dull and uninspiring and predictable and lame.
