Please respect your characters more

Community General Discussion
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Hello Blizz Team and Forum Experts,

I am Pestek, and its my first forum post since 2004 where I started playing WoW. I am part of that Silent Majority that enjoy this game and plays more casually as I am getting older. I would like to talk about each expansion and feeling I had about it and its problems, like not respecting major characters.

  1. Vanilla - was there even one main character ? I cant remember, on the other hand my english sucked a lot and I was not able to understand quests very well. I still wait for Polish version of WoW ! In general, great game, such a quality leap from Neverwinter Nights a played a lot. Good job here.

  2. Burning Crusade - all good here.

  3. Wrath of the Lich King - here starts the problem. I see that Jailer mimics Arthas from this expansion. Lich King was everywhere, cheesy one liners etc etc. It was not good because of content of expansion, it was good because of Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne. Arthas said much enough in that games, he did not have to have elaborate dialogues. Jailer on the other hand was invented recently and he could not follow the same path, as he did not get 2 games dedicated to him.

  4. Cataclysm - from time perspective, very good expansion. People whine about Deathwing fight, I think it was very good fight. People dont understand that Deathwing is waaaay to powerful to players to fight equally. I raided whole expansion, loved Dragon Soul raid and its incredibly good music. Good approach to end boss, even if we did not spoke to him. PS For years I imagined following scenario in my head, listening to DS music. After Deathwing is defeated, an egg gets released from his body and when it touches ground, it submerges in it. After some time rumors start to spread about earth shaman (earth bender ;)) that is helping people on his jurney, and he is going north, always the north. At annual meeting of dragonflights in dragonblight, all flights take their place in designated area around tower, and black dragonflight space is empty. But one human approach tower from that direction and then asks for audience. Intrigued, aspects allow it and at the top of tower where they discuss their plans, earth shaman is revealed to be Neltharion. (alternative, small black dragon flies to top of tower). He takes his rightful place as head of black dragonflight and orders his ambassador for a tea. He reveals that all of this was a plot to reveal Old Gods plans, but it went very badly. Together with Malygos he planned to fall into madness to learn Old Gods plans, but he did not expect it will cost him whole flight. Malygos created a copy of his brain, inside Neltharions body, that will serve as a backup, in case madness goes too far. Plan backfired but after Deathwings death, Neltharion was able to recreate his body as an egg. He learned Old Gods location, plans, ways of communication and history.

  5. Mists of Pandaria - i do not like Asian style of story, architecture etc. Overally good expansion.

  6. Warlords of Dreanor - loved lvling experience and finding treasures. Also liked a lot history, time travel. People say it was bad expansion, I liked it. Content was a problem, but still good idea.

  7. Legion - best expansion, really good one. Borrowed power was fresh, we got many things we wanted for many years. And very nice redemption story of Illidan that I would like to point out, as contrast to how Arthas was treated in Shadowlands.

  8. BfA - did not like it that much, how a longer breaks then ever. Still played whole content, but did not like another Warchief going bad guy. One note, it was decent story, great cinematics like Old Soldier. We dont need such quality cinematics, we dont even need this as cinematic, it can be ingame quest, but Old Soldier was really good. But Sylvanas ā€¦ people liked here, I never did. But I feel that you missed one opportunity here. In final cinematic, makā€™gora with Saurfang, she could reveal more. Lash out, get really angry, spill few secrets. But only the closest ones would hear it. But what really made Horde dislike her, would be not killing Saurfang with Jailers magic, but loosing to Saurfang and to safe herself, turn into banshee, klill Saurfang dishonorably and fleeing.

  9. Shadowlands - pinnacle of story. Jailer very bad boss, mimicing Lich King from WotLK. Not good, but its not that bad either. What is really bad is how Arthas was treated. I LOVE Uther and Bastion ā€œwarbringersā€ style cinematic. Increadible music, great plot, a lot of emotions. But also a promise of seeing Arthas again, at least talking to him. This promise was broken and we could have same end result, not that much of work and such a different result. Lets imagine this. 9.0 after Castle Nathria, we find a waystone in remaining posession of Denathrius. Its a Torgast key that we use to rescue soul of Arthas and keep him in cage, or iced to a chair, mocking him that its his Frozen Throne 2.0 :wink: We can speak to Arthas and have few moments of between him and others. Arthas reveal that he was just a part of Lich King, he regrets all of this. And his big regret that he was denied Arbiters judgement as in his own eyes he did notthing wrong and it was Jailer via Frostmourne all the time. Or NerZul later. In Sanctum of Domination he gives us some more dialogue, hints and ideas about Jailers plans but sits frozen oon his throne. Finally in Seplucher raid, we believed that he was not that bad, he and Sylvanas help us through the raid, finally we reach Jailer and defeat him. And here many things happen in the same time. Many heroes speak to each other, loot for Jailer is distributed, but players are still in combat. Everyone rejoice and speak, except Arthas that is silently comming to center of room and almost touches the stream of azerite, still being transferred from Icecrown. And he gets empty chat bubble over his head. Players are unable to teleport out, heartstone, still in combat, unable to ressurect fallen ones. When players speak to Arthat he says ā€œSo much powerā€ and touches stream. His etheral soul instantly turns into body, his Lich King armor is back, even Frostmourne in his hand. In LK voice he reveals that they were fools, so easily manipulated, that it was him all along. One last fight with real Lich King, not that shade during Anduin. during fight we not only have to fight Arthas, and players killed during Jailers encounter, that get ressurected by Arthas. We also have to damage Azerite Sucking Machine and close rift between Icecrown and Togast. After we do this, we defeat Lich King and only a glimmer of his soul remains (same as in cinematic) and we say final goodbye to Arthas. That would be respectful.

Please respect your characters more. If you really wanted to kill him forever, that is fine. You could make similar redemption story as with Illidan, but Arthas betraying us at the last moment and subverting out expectations. Arthas deserved more.

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Original writers were passionate about the story, because it was their story which they were telling.

Unforunately, for the team writing at the moment they are just working a job, and probably have dreams of a better job or even telling their own story one day. They donā€™t have the passion for the story or the game, that the original team did. They just want their pay check.

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Donā€™t know, Lei Shen couldā€™ve been an interesting bad guy to have about long term, especially for one of the old guardians from those that made Azeroth in the first place and brought more tension/war type issues within Pandaria but was just brushed aside to get to Garrosh as soon as possibleā€¦

Which led to Warlords which was just meh to me. This going back to appease some still stuck in the past for the franchise. Really didnā€™t like the expansion after Mists at all and still think Mists did it better story wise. Also Warlords did one massive wrong thing and didnā€™t let Volā€™Jin stretch his legs as Warchief at the time. So not ever going to forgive the Story Writing Team at Blizzard for that one.

They can redeem themselves by making a game that tells what happened on Azeroth during the time everyone else was off in ā€˜alternative universeā€™.

The main issue here is that Blizzard hasnā€™t done a good job at the story side of things, especially when it comes to characters and would rather put most stuff inside novels outside of the game, than put the stuff inside the game itself.

And while not perfect by any means, Bethesda does it better with their Elder Scolls games. Sorry Blizzard Story Team, the Elder Scrolls story/lore team is light years ahead of you on this one. In fact, now that both are under Microsoft Iā€™m hoping you listen to that other side and get some to do some work on this game to fix a fair few issues.

The way certain characters that were introduced in an expansion, then not used properly has always been the mistake within this game, annoyingly so. Now whether thatā€™s due to lack of staff, time restraints, upper management pushing for faster turnover of content, players of the game pushing by always going on and on about no content to do. I think it all adds up really.

Most of these issues could be fixed if only Blizzard would set another team up and do a offline, single player full RPG game like Morrowind, Skyrim and set it someplace in the timeline in this franchise and really start to flesh a fair bit of stuff out, not in comic books, novels but in an actual game that players can experience. And to bring it out when itā€™s ready, not when players want it to be.

Thatā€™s the direction Warcraft should be heading now, games like that which tell a story, have you be part of that story and itā€™s open enough to make changes in the world based on your actions and be considered as canon for your own gameplay.

Like the Elder Scrolls which allows two different outcomes to be lore but they can pick one as official lore, Blizzard could do that by the Caverns of Time system, that dragon flight that tell a story that works like the scrolls.

The Bronze Dragonflight Warcraft Tales, maybe as the title or something else.

You could flesh out some stuff, bring more to various characters, concentrate on one area in time, larger more detailed part of Azeroth and again, really fill things up which the MMO really doesnā€™t do, it just doesnā€™t. The MMO is a mess when you look at it from a story point of view.

It needs more of an official game account to fix some of the issues. I just not sure Blizzard is capable of making a RPG type game like this though. Skyrim seems to be the gold standard at the moment for that, same for Red Dead Redemption.

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Unfortunately itā€™s even worse. The current writing team actively hates most of the old lore and wants to destroy it to make room for their own stuff. Thatā€™s why they are in overdrive to kill off / banish so many major characters in such a short time.

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yeh, basically youā€™re right.

Theyā€™re trying to make it their own. But in doing so, killing off everything we loved about the game.

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Thatā€™s really sad if actually true, but I donā€™t doubt it judging how the WC3 lore has been kinda destroyed by Shadowlands.

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Ehmā€¦

No not really, if we are talking lore TBC is one of the biggest disrespects to pre-established characters. Illidan was not villain in WC3 he was an anti-hero, Kaelā€™thas was not villain either and was more of a prince willing to make sacrifices for his people. And since we are on the topic of Blood elves it makes absolutely no sense for why they should join a faction with orcs, trolls and Lordaeronian undead when in the past they have had trouble with the same orcs, a different tribe of trolls, undead and Lordeaonian people.

But the Arthas we see in WotLK is not exactly the same Arthas as in WC3 is he? Also the cheesy one-liners worked and there are some really good ones that bring out flesh out his character more, a favorite of mine being ā€œHere I stand, a lion before the lamps and they do not fear. They can not fear.ā€.

Except they butchered Deathwings character. You see Deathwing is a schemer and a mastermind, Deathwing was someone who tricked his brothers and sisters to create an artifact in order to save their world from the legion invasion when in reality he wanted itā€™s power for himself, someone who overthrew a lazy and cowardly ruler only for him to be able to get a seat of power in the Lordaeronian Alliance and later in the SW Alliance (by proxy of his kids) due to his previous actions, someone who made a deal with the orcs to be given a place in outland for his brood (aka army). What we got in Cata was just ā€œMe corrupted, me destroy planet grrrā€.

My point being that WoW has always had story problems (not to the extend they are now though) and when the story actually did work was in small quest chains (not entire zones even), the actually good parts from the lore/story we got from books.

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OP dumps on WotLK and MoPā€¦ nothing to see here.

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to be honest nidhogg had a better story than DW lol
and the better theme(the dragonsong)
myths of the realm has 4 bosses but azeyma and nald thal are my favourites
i mean casters can get golden soileret boots as a drop from the raid
and usually these kind of boots are drops/quest rewards for the maiming classes and the tanks
but its also rng done it the second time all loot is of aiming/striking/healing/fending lol

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Legion was extremely overated tbh, it had a awful legendary system and the artifact system was extremely grindy and endless and if you wanted to play alts as an mythic raider it would be extremely time consuming, though class identity was something at least and the pvp templates etc was a good idea imo

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