Don’t misunderstand me, it’s cool to have audio books as well. But we used to get actual drawn cinematics translated into multiple different languages over a single version of an audio book as prelude/lore-extension in a single language.
What I’m trying to say is, for such necessary lore, like with the Heartlands story for the 11.1.7 patch, it is VERY customer-unfriendly for other localizations not to have a respective localization.
I am german, I am able to listen and understand english audiobooks because I used those alongside other media to train my own english. So for me it isn’t that much of an issue. However there are people in my country that aren’t that good at (learning) english. And forcing them to learn a different language to then listen to an audio book which in turn explains crucial backstory for story patches, is incredibly customer unfriendly.
That’s like selling a product but not translating the user safety manual completely from the get-go.
Blizzard, I ask you respectfully to remember that for the future with such audio books and instead put such story into short trailers again that can be rather cheaply translated. Because hiring someone to read an audio book in quality is more expensive than having someone narrate a 3-8 minutes video with some dialogue.
Edit: Not to mention a not so small chunk of players can better identify themselves with characters through “show, don’t tell”.
While I understand that a videogame may not be the best media to show some things, like the inner thinking/motivation of characters, I believe that Blizzard relies too much on outside media to advance the story
Also, making new additions to SoD canon is the thing I hate even more than putting lore in books - now retail+books isn’t enough to know 100% of lore. You need to play a separate game mode to get all of it!
I wouldn’t expect any more of those cinematics because the person who made them left the company.
Current crew in there … I honestly can’t tell what they’re doing.
I don’t know why you’d want to listen to those audio books anyway. They’re pretty awful - not because the reading is awful, but because the story is awful.
So… whatever?
Something I’ve also noticed over the last few expansions is that the language is getting simpler. I didn’t notice it in the English version since I’m fluent, but as I’ve been practicing my Chinese with WoW content I found out that the newer the expansion, the easier it is.
The TWW announcement cinematic (the one with the sword in Silithus) had so simple language that HSK 3 covered it - that’s the 600 first words you learn. There were only a couple of exceptions, one of them being the divine light and the other being the word for a sword.
I noticed that too with some parts in the english. The language becomes more “modern” in some ways, which I hate. It’s a medieval fantasy setting. It should sound like one!
Every time i read something by the OP i feel like i lose a part of my soul, they constantly want to change the game for them and there needs and not care for anyone else.
Skill issue. If they can’t speak English, which is pretty easy for Germans, that’s their problem. English is the global trade language for a reason. It’s 2025. No excuse not to know it.
If you’d won the war, maybe things would be different, but we don’t live in the Man in the High Castle.
