Hello everyone.
I was reading some US forums and this seemed very spot on.
But there’s also a link to Ion’s interview, which is interesting.
"In Vanilla/Classic WoW you get the feeling that your efforts from leveling genuinely assist the race you chose at the login screen. You fight off bandits, gather supplies for settlements, root out corruption, uncover Defias and Burning Blade conspiracies. Stop Dark Irons from bombing dams and bridges, confront the Horde’s dark past in Blackrock Mountain. Etc. You roll a character and become a hero to that race.
What you don’t intend to do is become a hapless victim for an over-dramatic cut-scene where your homeland is invaded, most of the people you help are butchered, and your capital reduced to ashes. You don’t intend to roll a character of Thrall’s new Horde and then be forced to go along with Garrosh or Windrunner’s asinine plots to murder innocents and ransack the land. You don’t play World of Warcraft to have the World be ravaged by a D-List villain in the form of Deathwing just so a bastardized version of Thrall can come in and save the day.
Victim of a fruitless faction war. Victim of inconsistent and theme-destroying cartoon villains for leaders. Victims of the writer’s obsession with tearing down a world in order to garner a cheap shock from their playerbase. I want to be a hero of Warcraft, I rolled a character to be as such. People did not roll Night Elves and Worgen to be refugees. People did not roll Orcs, Trolls and Tauren to be mindless henchmen for cartoon villains. People want to play Warcraft to save Azeroth, not be victims."
44 upvotes.
"On the other hand OP, you don’t want a stagnant and never changing world (or if you do that’s why Classic is here). Races shouldn’t be immune to negative storytelling just because they are playable. If players identify so strongly with their played race that’s a credit to the game’s immersive qualities such as they are.
I think what really bothers you and bothers a lot of people (quite rightly) is that Blizzard should not have broached the topic of genocide the way they did (very cavalierly), especially a genocide perpetrated by playable races on playable races, especially not the way they went about it, and especially not the way they have treated that topic for going on an entire year since it happened. I believe Ion was being very wise when he called it “exploitative.”
I’m not sure how they will get themselves out of this, but I hope they approach story beats like that with a little more forethought next time."
15 upvotes.
" When I ask Hazzikostas about the developer’s intent on putting this on Horde players, and if they think it can go too far, he briefly hesitates.
“It’s a heavy responsibility, and it’s not one that anyone on the team takes lightly,” he says. “Our aim in storytelling is always to evoke emotion. If that goes too far, it can feel exploitative, it can feel like players are caught in a situation they don’t want to be in. We want people to stick around, to play with their friends, and to see the end of the story we’re telling.”
For players, they’ve spent months dealing with the burden of Darnassus. For characters like Tauren druids, or Blood Elf paladins, this can feel like an overwhelming loss of agency. Many Horde players are also concerned because a similar tale played out two expansions ago in Mists of Pandaria , with Garrosh Hellscream. For these players, the second corrupt Warchief in under five years might suggest that the Horde they have been playing under for a decade or more is broken, and not worth defending.
Hazzikostas is aware of the parallels to Garrosh’s story, and he says that the Horde is too.
“There are a couple of references here and there,” he says. “There are more coming. Members of the Horde leadership will remember going down dark paths before.”
I added the rest of the polygon interview:
"He also notes that Garrosh’s motives were different; they were an attempt to restore a lost vision of the Horde at the expense of everything else. Sylvanas’ goals are still unclear, but Hazzikostas notes, “There will not be a trial where she is in chains. Sylvanas is not a character who would find herself in that situation … ever.”
As for player choice, more decisions will come in the future. “It won’t be something we do lightly,” he says. “We do it when the story makes sense, and we do it when there are real consequences and real follow through.”
The team intends to avoid “false” choices, or the illusion of a branching narrative. Hazzikostas also hints at an interesting possibility for the Alliance’s future narrative: “In this case, it felt right for the Horde. Alliance don’t have that same division in their ranks just yet, and there isn’t that same natural point of choice.”
What’s your opinion ?
Thanks for your attention.
Cheers.
