It’s been a few days, and no one posted something, but I assume most uf us have seen, that they are doing some pre-addon story cinematics again.
So here was the first one:
So… anything interesting in there for you guys?
To be honest, while I appreciate the art, the music, and don’t mind the simple story, my first impression was just “so spider people are just humans with a spider-skin, like everyone else, great”. There is a lot of confirmation bias involved on my part, of course, since at this point I am mostly expecting world-building decisions that annoy me, so I instantly notice them when I look, but well… bias confirmed, I guess.
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Hope they don’t humanise the nerbians too much. They’re supposed to be a cruel and malevolent race for the most part from what I remember from WC3 through Wrath. I do like the way the faceless envoy was disposed of by Queen Neferess at the begining. It is in keeping with that original concept.
If they’re portrayed like mantid society then I don’t really have any qualms. I think they were done well personally. They behaved more like you’d imagine some insectoid hive would with some human like traits mixed in. My worry is the nerubians might end up the other way round as we learn more about them juding from what i’ve seen in the cinematic. Although, maybe it’s just the elite of their society and those in command that act more human like.
The last few xpacs and, noticably in Dragonflight, theres been a current tendancy for Blizzard to make characters talk about their feelings more openly and express that emotion a lot in a very overt way, especially when trying to overcome some personal demon, doubt or fear. This isn’t inherently bad and can add additional angles to a character’s development in a beneficial way. But, I do feel they’re overcooking it a bit with everyone and the story could do with a little less talk and a bit more stoicism injected to help balance it out and give it more teeth. It’s also something I don’t think mixes well with a race of bug people that should behave with a mindset more akin to one that’s predatory, calculative and cold. Especially a race and culture that originates from the Black Empire and by extention the void. Otherwise, we’re just getting humans again but this time cosplaying as spider people as you said above.
That said, we’re still going to have to wait and see how the xpac presents and shapes them overall.
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I heard we’re helping OG Nerubians out just like in wrath and find out what the new queen and her people lost when they succumbed to the void. So I’m quite poitive that it will be a very interesting questline, it’s also cool to see their evolved version and how a living Nerubian society would look like approximately.
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When it comes to feelings in a story…show, dont tell.
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SURELY there is another animated short like this one showing us how Xalatath was put into the blade and stuff like that…?! They needed to show us Xalataths backstory more than anything else considering the fact that we know fekk all about her…
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This is going to be the worst expansion ever.
It can’t get worse than BfA.
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My first though was “Oh no another loser Villain going for the obvious bait …” Meh …
Would have been more fun if they tried to devour the old god messenger and Xal’atath’s messengers along with it , only to slowly fall to the corruption and play right into Xal’atath’s hand .
They are freaking spiders . Spiders eat anything that is in their net . Even other spiders .
My second thought was : At least they are not talking about feelings and PTSD anymore .
These are civilized spiders, maybe the OG’s evolved these creatures far enough to think about morals and ethics 
I guess that the spider-people are jus people isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. That there isn’t really anything more interesting than that in the cinematic kinda is, though. What did we learn about our next raid-boss? She is an evil creepy crawly that would (and did) sell out her own mother for power. What did we learn about Xal’atath? That she is an evil manipulator without moral boundaries. The dialogue wasn’t fun, no one was intimidating, and it wasn’t even campy enough to leave much of an impression. It did its job of telling a very basic story… and nothing more.
They are running out of options for making new villains it seems.
I think it’s fine for what it represents. I’d say it’s on par with Warbringer: Azshara.
Warbringer: Azshara was a much more cinematic spectacle and gave us a window into the past we sort of already knew about. Even though they more or less tell the same story of an evil being making a bargain with someone in a desperate situation, I’d personally rate it higher.
Also, the fall of Zin-Azshari and the deal Azshara struck has much more heavy lore implications supporting that event. We’d sort of already new about it in game beforehand, whereas this new one with the nerubians has to stand on it’s own merit.
And here is the next one.
“Me villain, me evil!”
“Me hero, me stop you!”
“Me stronger, you puny!”
“Ooops.”
I guess I argued for an unremarkable story told with basic competence and no risk-taking before… and that’s what I’m getting. So… fair enough.
So we are beating up old man Khadgar to bring the point home how powerful Xal is. That’s fine, though it doesn’t feel very interesting considering we still don’t know squat about her. She still feels a bit too much like Sylvanas 2.0 to me, but that might just be me.
(And the dialogue was still delivered with too much slow-talking pathos for me, I think… At least there were still a few of those kinda awkward pauses between words that stuck out so much in the last addons. But that’s probably confirmation bias at work, it didn’t feel that bad.)
RIP Khadgar. It is hard to miss you after you made racist comments about trolls.
And the next one already. An anime summary of Alleria’s story so far…
I guess there is not much to say about the story, since it’s not giving us anything new, just bringing everyone up to speed. Which is reasonable enough, since making the novella/audiobook required study for the addon would be a bit unnecessary.
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Seeing Amani and Orcs together wakens my nostalgia. This is what Blizzard took from us.
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Finally a cinematic that feels decidedly Warcraft.
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I don’t get what happened here though . This cinematic feels like a soft retcon .
I remember Alleria and Turalyon were pretty close in Legion ( and she had her shadow powers there) and frankly they were ready to take the bullet for each other . Here it looks like the moment she awakened her shadow powers , Turalyon straight abandoned her .
Also wasn’t it Locus Walker who thought her . Or she just ZAP ZAP shadow powers out of nowhere , like in the cinematic .
What the hell is going on here .
I found this mediocre at best. Why is it so black and white?
Alleria and Sylvanas are extremely close BUT Alleria wants to fight the Horde proactively so now there is a rift between them.
Turalyon and Alleria love each other BUT Alleria uses her shadow powers and suddenly Turalyon rejects her. Not to mention it seems to be a retcon because she didn’t suddenly have shadow powers out of nowhere (Special mention because of the girlbossy moment while Turalyon gets destroyed by random demons).
And the theme of “Look at me I’m so tragic I sacrifice everything to protect others even if they hate me but I keep going” has been used so many times, it’s really getting boring and predictable.
