PTR Spoiler/Discussion Thread (Part 2)

I wonder if Skullfox is drunk-posting again. If so, mate, last time you did so you promised you would’t do that again. So sober up and get off the pc until you have.

I am not that wrong tho! Come on! >< I’m not on mars over here.
And i am not being mean or a bully? this is a fair view of the story telling. I am allowed to see it as such.

Reeee!!

I guess I just haven’t seen enough uniquely Gilnean characters, since most non-worgen Gilnean characters I’ve encountered can be thrown into a general “north rp” box, full of bitter and jaded humans from the northern kingdoms who want to reclaim their lost lands.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all, I’ll add. It’s a perfectly acceptable character archetype and has been played well by a lot of people. Similarly, I understand what you mean about not wanting to have to deal with the worgen part if you don’t want to, especially since the lore is full of unafflicted Gilneans.

All I’ve got is my anecdotal experience that I haven’t seen people do anything that feels all that Gilnean to me with their Gilnean humans, and I’m not sure what something “uniquiely Gilnean” would even look like. Some horrible stereotype of a posh Englishman? If so, I’m glad I haven’t run into one.

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Something akin to the final boss of Tol Dagor I’d say, gunpowder and all.

Skullfox, the anti-SJW ship sailed in 2017

I am not anti Sjw… Come on. My opinion didn’t even go that hard

Screw it. Just forget I was here. Misogynistic evil Skullfox never said anything.

To be honest by reading what he was writing (at the beginning) I had the impression that Skullfox’s joke does not imply such a black-and-white judgement, and maybe people are reading a bit too much into it.

They used the terms of “mom” and “dad”, which usually encapsulate roles that are more specific than masculine or feminine, and indeed may just be a call to a father and a mother’s more typical roles, the latter often being that of a more caring and protective archetype, and the former usually being about teaching to a kid certain responsibilities.

Is this joke charged with typical social norms and expectations? Yes, and most likely it’s also bound to their lived experience, so, yes, biased, but in no way it looked like they argued that all women have to be like that. As long as these roles are not pushed onto other people unwillingly, then there is no need to bash him so hard.

__

And to clarify where I stand. For the record. I believe a lot of women are excellent writers and we have a long record of women being capable of diving into dry realism to great extent - Elsa Morante being a prime example of a writer who describes the realities of war without any form of sugar-coating.

And no, I do not think all moms and all dads have to cover traditional roles, I was just referring to a popular image which is not representative of all situations.

That being said, there is an entire paradigm of thought, initiated by Carol Gilligan, a feminist that likely today might be considered a little bit outdated, which claims that women have a tendency to be more caring and loving than men. This is contested by others, but it’s worth noting that these thoughts do exist out there and are not necessarily in opposition to feminism itself, for example, but can also be a side of it.

Lastly, I am writing all this because I believe we should be a little bit more generous when discussing with others, and it’s not ideal to “correct” others every-time a joke isn’t perceived as enough inclusive for what someone else has in mind. Otherwise everyone would have to walk on eggshells everytime they think of a joke.

Attributing stories to specific gender roles such as “its clear a women/mother wrote this” is not that great though, even if its not in a negative light.

By labelling the way different stories are written by different authors, but attributing it to gender only helps enforce stereotypes. It’s also quite a risk and bad thing to do in regards to men, not just women.

Basically, by putting it that a softer or caring story obviously had to be written by women and not by men, only further pushes toxic masculinity and that men cant and should not be more emotional or tender.

Vice versa it also pushes that women can and only should be that, and gets them frowned at for not doing “cooler” stuff.

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Worded like that, I would agree with you. You’ve made the comment much more strict and definitive than how the other post sounded in my head. Are you right, in that a comment like yours pushes toxic masculinity? Likely. But a comment like that in the story I did read above? It felt more open-ended, and I’d be less inclined to read it that way.

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Hi. So I’m fairly new here but I’ve been attempting to read the whole of the World of Warcraft story from Start to Current and I thought I’d share my fledgling view on this… take.

It’s certainly a take and it reminds me a little of a video I did not see too long ago from a World of Warcraft YouTuber (Nixeom or something like that.) that had a rant video about why the Dragon Flight storytelling lacked Tetostone and therefore it now lacked lustre because it.

And I do feel that just your take that the story is ‘female’ is a weird/hard miss or at the very least just a very surface-level look at what the over-arching problem of the issue is with World of Warcraft Storytelling is because making the story more ‘male’ or told as a father would of isn’t gonna make a huge difference. - Likewise the lack of ‘testosterone’ isn’t what is currently doing the story in either.

If anything, at least from my outsider’s view looking in it seems that the testosterone, action-packed storytelling with excitement and following the rule-of-cool cause heck yeah it’s cool has done more damage than it has good for the simple factor that when you sit back now and think about it, the game(s) or expansions are a tonal mess of inconsistent storytelling that forgets key World Building elements and or complete contradicts established lore for the rule of cool of going “heck yeah LESS GO”.

And that’s what I think really is the problem for the current writers and the writers of the past, is the tonal inconsistency of each expansion (Possibly between each patch as well?) which leads to these jarring situations where you are getting a pay off that doesn’t really feel right because it’s all just become a big jig-saw piece where the pieces have been mashed together.

But that’s just my two cents on it.

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I mean… those were some good two cents. You are not wrong.

I wouldn’t take what I said and go that deep into it about it tho… Testosterone and all all that. But yes… We followed a tone of story telling for over a decade and it definitely changed drastically in Dragonflight.

Old Wow story telling was allot more Nhilistic and grim and dark. I find dragonflight to be allot more sensitive and careful.

I do feel like the story took a more femenine turn after the Blizzard scandal happend. All the lead characters are female. the story is allot more… Yeah like you said. The tone has changed. Didn’t think my view or take was that radical though. But I’ll answer for what ive said ((Granted im not banned come tomorrow morning)

Not surprising at all to hear he is still a massive tool.

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It really felt weird to start this quest chain on the back of a gryphon flying all the way to Gilneas. I was expecting some kind of sea landing. How did all the other troops get there? Things like this make the world feel even smaller. Similar how Game of Thrones destroyed any sense of world grandness by teleporting the armies around the continents.

And then the only thing that stopped our troops getting into Gilneas was some flimsy metal fence that we just opened by hand? The quest before gave me the impression we’d blow it out of its hinges.

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I think you’ve nailed it to be quite honest. (long rant below)
My main problem with all of Dragonflight isn’t the major themes (which were actually long overdue), but the fact that they feel like they descend from above, exactly like the Fourth War in BFA.

The heroes had, in Legion, gone beyond the limits of their factions to unite for a greater cause. You’d think the story would acknowledge this in future expansions, also because this is what happened in the past - after the heroes of old united and fought the Legion, they realized the value of their unity. That they were not so different after all. That was a consequence of Warcraft III’s Eternity’s End, a narrative thread that kept going for basically several expansions, and became a central dynamic in a good chunk of books and stories from then on.

I was really hyped for this development because I believed the story wanted us to go beyond faction limitations and cultural divides to tell us that there was something greater that connected us all, and perhaps have us explore different identities than red and blue.

But in Battle for Azeroth this whole narrative thread was shut down, with plenty of characters that previously were talking about the limits of their faction suddenly going “duh, huh, my faction is the best, the other sucks!”. It felt like these characters did not have genuine motivations to change their heart, so the writers decided to tell us that they absolutely did, because that’s the story they wanted to tell at that moment.

Then arrives Shadowlands, a disaster where there is absolutely no respect for the original source material. And there, too, the writers are given freedom to rewrite any form of consistency.

With Dragonflight I believe we are improving but we have not reached this point in time where writing strives for internal consistency. This is a major point of what I want from WoW, because until we won’t have it, what makes us really think that the writers won’t wake up tomorrow and decide: “Okay, the forsaken are invading Gilneas. Again. You thought they were friends? Nah, that’s only what they wanted you to believe.”

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I’d say this started as far back as Legion, where artifact acquisition quests would take you to Northrend or Tirisfal Glades, only for NPCs to say “sure, I’ll take you there, hop on my gryphon,” despite the fact that your order hall is based on the Broken Isles.

It’s great to be instantly transported to and from places in a quest chain, but this is the sort of instantaneous travel that portals are supposed to be for. “Let me just take you to another continent real quick on the back of this flying bird” is absolutely something that makes Azeroth feel way smaller.

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Well, shadowflame does corrupt.

Gods, what a low T thing to say…

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Might just be me, but anyone else has a problem with lag ever since the update?

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Not so much lag, but there’s a weird thing where, while soaring around the Dragon Isles, my Dracthyr will randomly and suddenly lose all flight momentum, even at a dive angle?

The only thing I think may be a common point is transitioning into a zone where the Dream stuff is active? As I get the green aura flare up, then suddenly Im slowed? Not sure.

No lag, but the game has crashed thrice thanks to read/write issues to memory.
Could be out of date addons, though. They’re disabled now.

I’m late to the party but

I actually believe Ysera’s return de-humanized Merithra and Ysera.
When you lose someone close to you there is a new sense loneliness, a world that already moved on while you did not, and the fact that the person that died is no longer with you. You know, in our mind, there are neurons that activate only with specific individuals we are familiar with. Only when we see them. Once these people gone, these neurons will never fire again. A part of us is gone with them. It doesn’t feel right that people just come back from the dead to help us deal with a sense of loss.

On top of that. With the red dragon suffering from depression, they acknowledged there was no easy way out of depression. I think they missed an opportunity here to do that.

Instead, I prefer the way they handled Genn. (SPOILERS) He goes to his son’s tomb and begins to talk with him as if he was there. I think it is a sweet moment and in many ways, I had the impression this is the first time Genn begins to truly heal.

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