I actually like the current writing more often than not. Not the overall cosmic plot of lore characters mind you, but the quests and zones we play through. Solid quests, solid narration of the new peoples we met along the way.
Also the dialogue quality in the cutscenes and cinematics. The callbacks used to be very hamfisted with Blizzard’s writing, but I’ve found them to be a little more subtle or implied this time around.
Now we just need the core story of our expansion to get out of the muck as well. I can deal with it being predictable, nothing new there, but at least there used to be a spectacle to it. BfA has not really delivered on that front (Darnassus being the one exception).
1 Like
I mean… how many of the night elves do you Think is still alive at this Point? Most civilians lived in Teldrassil, and the majority was killed off. So I don’t Think it’s that many that is bothering the Stormwindian civilians.
That’s the thing though… the leveling zones and stories have Always been fairly good, it’s the story that comes after all that that tends to get worse.
1 Like
It’s funny. You can tell who is standing in stuff they shouldn’t because of a very visible stacking damage debuff to discourage you from facetanking mechanics. And resses slash your damage by 25% each time in a fight.
1 Like
If there’s ever a peeve of mine, it’s how people have taken this line and run with it. I did the same for a while too, so I understand, but it still makes me despair.
I implore people who haven’t heard anything beyond that phrase to read the interview.
https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/08/14/a-look-inside-how-blizzard-maintains-world-of-warcrafts-lore
“We’re trying to build epic worlds, epic experiences,” Hazzikostas explains. “And yes, we do find ourselves fettered by something that was a small piece of a campaign in an RTS game when no one ever imagined for a moment this was going to be taken and built into a world of this scale – and it gets in the way of telling the story we need to tell.” When that happens, things are “flexible.”
“It’s something that we do very sparingly and only as a last resort,” he adds. “It’s almost always possible to make the facts fit or write in between the lines. Like, ‘Well yes, this was said, but there’s this whole other piece of the story that’s never been covered. Let us tell it to you!’”
Except the novel stated that the Stormwindians, en masse, opened thier homes to the refugees and Stormwind was being flooded by fleeing night elves, with the portals of the Highborne and Stormwindian mages remaining opened to the last second.
It was a continues stream and the mages where only able to maintain their portals by living on conjured food and the blessings of the priests.
Huh, must’ve been more refugees then I thought.
Well, thanks for that Sir Beardgnome.
Well, you know, even 5% of the total population of the night elves suddenly arriving in your city is alot.
Besides -all- the Gilneas where evacuated safely, and as far as I know, the majority of their population lived in Darnassus too.
2 Likes
I read it at the time and it made sense. But the reality is retcons upon retcons, characters behaving wildly out of character, characters caring deeply about something one minute and then being indifferent about it the next patch without any clear clue as to why, things happening where I scratch my head, things happening where I feel the big lore characters should be scratching their head but aren’t, things happening with very little to no reaction or response which make them fall flat on their face… it’s a big confusing mess, and it doesn’t manage to appeal on an emotional level regularly because it’s so inconsistent. It would make more sense by now if we had 20 parallel Azeroths and we’d be jumping around between them, at least that would explain the wild ride!
Not saying I want that btw. WoD was painful enough :D. But I get that people run with it, because in the end if you take that statement at face value, it explains better what is happening with the story than the nuanced explanation.
4 Likes
The sheer T H I C C of this thread is breaking my phone browser
It is most likley because of what we learned from cata with the whole diffrent portrayal of Garrosh. They got diffrent writers for the zones/stories, while the overarching narrative “main plot” is written by the leaders/managers, and they are god-awful at their jobs in most aspects as we’ve seen over the years.
2 Likes
Another big factor that’s changed over the years is their more corporate approach and well, buisness managers too. In Blizzard’s early days, and even up to WoW’s development and first launch, the core team at Blizzard, like the names you knew, the project leaders etc, were all just big nerds who liked games. Even with WoW, alot of the management were old EQ players themselves.
But with WoW’s popularity and Blizzard skyrocketing from big and popular to massive, things changed. Some people left over the years, some got greedy, new mangament and CEO’s took over, and in the current times with people like Bobby Kotick at the very top, most of the project leads and management are really just buisnessmen with no interests in games themselves beyond money. And while the people they employ to work on the games are talented, they are also routinley replaced because that’s the standard practise in big game corporations, to fire and employ hundreds of people on a whime or just as routine when they finish their work, so there is pretty much always new and diffrent people on every Blizzard game.
TL:DR there is no consistent and central core team making the games anymore, with the intention to make it cus they likes games.
6 Likes
That’s what I mean by the ‘‘No Passion’’, they aren’t paid for passion, they’re paid to make what they’re told. Ofc there’s some passion there, else the game would be done, but the top-dawgs are ruining it!
3 Likes
Pet Peeve: Legion raids still aren’t on full loot yet.
I have solo’d LFR Antorus for about four weeks in a row and not gotten the two drops I need in order to complete the transmog set I’m aiming for with my undead warlock. Every reroll I’ve used just gives wakening essence, a currency FROM THE LAST EXPANSION THAT IS ALMOST ENTIRELY USELESS NOW
Spoiler alert guys - LFR Antorus is still pretty tricky to solo. I have to use my Imp’s singe magic on cooldown while fighting Imonar just to stay active in the fight (because every 10 seconds he throws a sleep canister at me that puts me to sleep for 10 seconds, and if singe magic is not on cooldown when that happens its cooldown resets for fifteen seconds, making the entire fight have a weird rhythm where I can’t even DPS all of the time but my damage is fine it’s just the mechanics that are a real pain someone kill me).
1 Like
Welcome to my world ever since 8.1.
Kinda why I don’t bother really hoping anymore. The luck is just that bad… RNG even in old raids is pure cancer.
For example, I got my full Priest ToS mythic set by using two cloth users in two weeks… Whereas my Druid took over 7 weeks on herself… Don’t talk to me about monks because Blizz seems to have a sexual thrill by making leather users always miss a piece or two of their set completely random trash drop.
I can’t wait till nexr expansion to solo all Legion raids… Perhaps Antorus will be too tricky to solo but friends who understand your needs will fix that and have a steady stream of mogs (Monks, again, have their shoulders coming from world drop in Antorus).
I was missing the hat and belt for that… you know where the hat drops. Got lucky with a group I found in the LFG thingy. Belt is still missing but that’s mostly because I can’t be bothered to run to Vari for something so small.
Best method is probably getting a group together to farm that stuff. With lots of people who can trade stuff to each other.
1 Like
Essences are not accountwide.
Come ON, blizzard. Why? Every time I go on an alt I realise I have to do the god damn essence farm all over again and I am just no
8 Likes
Because they want you to run that treadmill/stay subbed as much as possible.
Anything that would be convenient or allow a possible “end” to busywork has been removed.
1 Like
Switching mains has always been a pain but doing it mid-expansion/mid-patch just seems designed to suck, nevermind trying to maintain concurrent alts.
At least back in like… mid/late MoP (when you no longer needed most of the daily quests) all you needed was gear.
You didn’t need AP, essences and so on.