If that was their intention, and I have a feeling you’re on to something, I don’t think they did a very good job.
That cinematic is about two things:
First, it introduces how we got from War3 to WoW. It explains that the alliances formed at the tip of Mount Hyjal have mostly disappeared, leaving an alliance and a horde and that they are now at loggerheads with war being just around the corner.
And then it displays a bunch of players. The characters in the vanilla WoW cinematic are players.
TWW cinematic, by contrast, is a walk through a bunch of zones with no context. There’s no explanation as to why we’re there, and we aren’t represented. It’s just a look at Khaz’Algar and its underground caverns.
I think the release date announcement trailer was far better, and I think the best cinematic was somewhere in between the two. Cut out all the story about what we did in the past, use some of Xal’Atath’s voice lines from it, introduce these zones while allowing Xal’Atath to give them context, and then close out with the same voice line she had in the release date cinematic.
For me, the main issue here was just the storyboarding. The animation and music were both fantastic.
I especially like the graphics. I’ve kept saying the lighting looks like it’s outside in TWW proper, and everybody keeps mistaking it for me meaning that it should be so dark nobody can see anything; no. This is what I meant. The core issue here is that in-game there’s a lot of raleigh scattering in places where it doesn’t make sense (it does make sense in Hallowfall) and the lighting is directional rather than point based, making it look like the sun is shining into the cave.
I don’t like it at all. What is Avatar’s NAVI race doing in WoW and why Diablo 4’s Cathedral of Light’s knight armour and human models are in WoW. The black woman reminds me of Reverend Mother Prava from D4
Ignoring that long stretch of the old cinematics, but taking what’s at the end and stretching it, with a sprinkle from Hurricane’s cinematic, as voicelines over the trailer they released, and then add a few clips of the player character races.
Although the one by Hurricane has even better storyboarding.
But yeah I think the best cinematic is some combination of the three. This one was boring, honestly. Because of the storyboarding.
I might very well be in the minority here, but I don’t really care anything for or about her. She’s a very run-of-the-mill bad guy to me. I don’t get the hype.
Yeah there was always the troll/gnome issue… and it was considered a weakness of that cinematic.
I guess for me the vanilla cinematic had a more meaningful introduction to our characters, but now that you pressed me on it I actually can’t explain to you why. I know how I feel, but the rationale needs some time in the oven.
But I’m not backing down on it being better due to the short exposition, like tBC and vanilla has - and you agree, so yeah. xD
Well, obviously those of us who played back then didn’t. It plays before the login screen opens and Warcraft’s cinematics were famously amazing. Everybody wanted to watch the latest one.
Good graphics, doesn’t tell the viewer anything, bad trailer. The lack of words actually threw me more than anything else if I’m being honest. Very odd.
Also, this has got to be the expansion with a legendary shield, right guys? right?! :sadwarriorface:
would have been better if they treated it as a movie trailer to catch the attention of the audience. most of us don´t even read the pre novels so we don´t even know what’s going on.
1 - There’s never been a legendary for shield users.
2 - You could add a cool ability to the shield.
3 - Make shield users happy.
4 - Perhaps a legendary shield will be allowed to exceed the tiny texture budget of the N64 looking shields in this game.
