In your opinion. Thanks for sharing.
That doesn’t mean my opinion is now invalid.
Dark has more meanings than just ‘absence of light’.
This has already been discussed.
It was disgusting and ugly. Imo.
And humour can definitely be dark too.
Let me give you an example of such a thing:
The series Wilfred, starring Elijah Wood.
It was a dark comedy. But so dark that I frequently was just down and drained after an episode (this started occuring during season 2, it hadn’t bothered me in season 1).
So I just stopped watching.
Yep! There’s also the simple fact that some of us quite like darker aesthetics as a personal preference. You’re right, though - Oribos, Zereth Mortis, Bastion and Ardenweald all boasted fairly bright and pleasant aesthetics. That’s four zones.
We’ve never had an expansion where everything is always dark and dreary. WOTLK took us to Northrend which was the heart of the Scourge forces yet that didn’t mean that the entire continent was swarming with death and decay.
Entire norvandtr in FFXIV boasts pleasant bright aesthetics, and in context of story it’s horrifying, most of SL context has grime implications to zones too.
All you see is surface
it’s not about zones, zones should be magic and all, it’s fantasy game, it’s about terrible story and cringe cinematics, it all should be reverted to at least legion level of lore, cinematics from legion all were just soo good
I was more talking about the looks of the zones, I adressed the story elements later in the post (I think or in an other response). There are attempts at “darker” stories in SL, but for nothing really resonated because I didn’t find a reason to care for the new characters, the story overall didn’t make much sense and they ruined the continuity for the characters I did know.
I do remember stories not resonating with me, but overall atmosphere was really opressive and bleak tbh, maw is prime example.
You don’t need good stories to make oppresive environment, and to be fair, first patch stories and world building was decent
Again It is down to personal preference and individual experiences. I can’t feel sad for something I don’t care about. It was depressing for me because I didn’t find the gameplay fun, I found it soulless. I was angry not because of the story beats, but because of the horrible writing and butchering of pre-existing lore. Am I supposed to get excited that Kael’thas v3.0.5 is interacting with character I barely know? Am I supposed to feel sad if random Andy from Bastion gets killed because he is a moron?
I have brought this example before and I will keep using it again and again. In the RotLK novel we have a more detailed fight between Arthas and Uther, in the book it is explained that Uther actually had the upper hand and was about to defeat Arthas but he hesitated because he saw Arthas as what he was and not what he is now. In SL we get told that actually that didn’t happen, Uther the first paladin, he who is holier than all actually forgot about compassion and just wanted to zugzug.
Or take the Night warrior Tyrande arc as another example. When I saw it in BfA I was “finally Night elves can badass again”. It even brought a darker side to Elune as well, maybe she isn’t a benevolent as she seems if she is capable of her priestess the power to destroy her enemies in exchange for her life. Lol nope, Elune decides to turn the lights off at the 11th hour because even she has a Sylvanas body pillow, also Tyrande had to learn the lesson of… idk forgive attempted genocide.
I can go on but we all know what the other examples will be. Why should I care or feel anything when the writers themselves didn’t care? The book I mentioned RotLK was written by Golden, who also worked on the story for SL, Blizzard didn’t even care to fact check the Uther stuff with her when she was right there working on the story, and that’s the best case scenario, worst case is she actually did work on that quest and she didn’t care enough to fact check her own work.
I didn’t find the environment oppresive. Ardenweald felt really light hearthed (excluding the story), Bastion felt hopeful (excluding the story). There are arguments to be made about MAld and Raven but the maw over just felt like generic hell.
God, I hope not.
It just needs to be balanced out. It doesn’t have to go one or the other way in extremes.
TWW’s launch zones look to be an okay mix:
One pretty zone with green and some foresty stuff and nice dwarven architecture.
One slightly darker zone, but with cool smithing/forging and mining themes.
One zone that is quite literally ‘light’ or ‘dark’ and with a bit of a militaristic/paladin order feel (?)
One dark, creepy evil looking zone.
Seems like an okay mix?
Of course there’s also the tone of the storylines and such that we encounter there. So this is just a simple surface level view of things.
go to caverns of time and watch all the cinematics there if you don’t agree with the OP. the difference is very clear. WoD ones look like they were disney version of the game and DF looks like it’s Disney JR
When I was younger I enjoyed watching Naruto. I loved the early stuff.
As it got further along it started getting silly with the 4th ninja war and everyone coming back as Edo tensei and the power levels being Dragonball-like.
But I wanted the ending. I wanted the conclusion to the story that was begun so many years before.
And eventually Naruto got to its end, I watched it, felt it was conclusive, and was done with it. I haven’t watched any of the Boruto stuff since.
And I think that’s where I am with Warcraft these days.
I just want the conclusion to this main cosmic story.
I’ll stick around until it comes, and then I’ll be done.
Blizzard will spin more Warcraft story of course, but I’m just here for that main narrative conclusion.
And it’s slowly coming closer.
I think that’s where a lot of people are in terms of story. They’re just holding on for the resolution.
Honestly, I can’t wait to move away from the cosmic story. I was never interested in it in the first place and the more they developed it the more off put I felt with the story as a whole. I was more interested in things like the legion and the Lich King.