PTR Spoiler/Discussion Thread (Part 2)

This is a known old bug and happens when you soar between zones. Also seems to happen when soaring in older zones now.

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Flying mounts are a dangerous device, in that they indeed make the world feel small.

I wonder if we were supposed to have more naval involvement this patch. They added docks to Amirdrassil and Stormglen that are not used for anything in this patch — instead the Alliance army assaulting Gilneas boards some ships offscreen and disembarks in Keel Harbor. Given that you fly to Keel Harbor from Stormwind Harbor, I wonder if the original plan was to use ships, but they run out of time to implement them. It would fit with how rushed the rest of the questline is.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506731910/

Chronicles 4 on Amazon

Stunning artwork and ancient mythos abound in the fourth installment of the bestselling World of Warcraft Chronicle series!

In the wake of cataclysmic events across Azeroth, new adventures and old dangers await those willing to meet them. From the rediscovery of lost lands to a demonic invasion that sees Horde and Alliance banding together to a journey into the Shadowlands themselves, fans won’t want to miss this comprehensive volume packed with fresh story insights, gorgeous original artwork, maps, cosmology charts, character
family trees and more!

Encompassing lore from five expansions: Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands!

Part of me will want to buy it for the art and to ensure the ‘collection’ is complete, but after Exploring Kalimdor/Northrend…mmm…maybe I don’t

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Oh great, they can write down the much beloved Shadowlands lore!

That is sure to draw in buyers!

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As people on Twitter have said "Oh yay, now they can hyper focus on even MORE bad Troll writing! : D "

Ugh…

I don’t get it?

Sure, BfA Troll lore wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that bad, was it?

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Exploring Kalimdor got a good panning for being that special brand of Casual Instituionalised Blizzard/American Racist towards Trolls in particular. The whole ‘primitive savages’ thing slipped past the mask, it seemed.

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What part about the troll lore in BFA did you feel was lacking?

I mean, finally introducing Rastakhan to fridge him, making Bwomsamdi a generic All Trolls Loa instead of kind of a Darkspear thing, and barely even touching on the Darkspear and their whole schtick of being Horde aligned rather than wider-Troll-Empire-wannabes, off the top of my head?

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Ohh that part. I thought they were talking about Troll lore in the expansions!

The part where they killed of King Rastakhan and the Loa of Kings, Rezan…

Plot, not lore

Always was. Shadow of the Horde established that he holds dominion over the souls of all trolls, not just Darkspear. Majority of the troll lore in BFA was an homage to that novel, or a sequel to its unresolved plot threads.

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potato, potato :weary:

After killing Vol’jin for No Good Reason, killing Rezan AND Rastakhan off was… well, it was weak writing imo. And could have been done any number of ways better.

The distinction is really important because one concerns worldbuilding and has connotations of ruining or retconning it, the other is a matter of personal preference for the story. The two walk hand in hand, but they’re distinctly not the same thing.

See above. I’m specifically asking about the troll lore that was ruined.

I’m gonna say “Everything bad the Zandalari ever did was exclusively under the orders of Zul and anyone else can’t be blamed” didn’t sit right with many people. Also Zandalar was never in danger of sinking at all, suddenly.

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The first Chronicle volume not co-written by Chris Metzen. I’m skeptical.

On the other hand it’s written by the guy who wrote the Halo books which are thought to be particularly excellent by that fandom to the point there’s a notable group of fans who prefer the books to the main games in terms of writing.

I mean, it’s a thing Blizz does often… remember how it was suddenly all Sylvanas’ fault and the Horde was not complicit in what she did at all?

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The Zandalari Empire portrayal was kind of a joke, especially when contrasted against Kul Tiras in-game. Zuldazar had little in the way of settlements, Nazmir was a swamp, Vol’dun was a desert. The ‘sinking’ aspect of Cataclysm never showed up, and instead it’s always apparently just been a single jungle zone plus an uninhabited swamp plus a barely inhabited desert.

The zone design of Zuldazar as a barely inhabited jungle is incredibly hostile to believing it as a seat of power for an Empire, especially one that is only recently going into decline. While undeniably really pretty and kinda cool, the narrative of appearance and narrative of the story don’t mesh. It needed more room for ‘friendly’ areas that weren’t used for questing or specifically travelling for questing.

While Bwonsamdi may have been ‘all trolls’, tying him so directly to specifically the Zandalari royalty when previously he’d been more strongly associated with the Darkspear meant that the Darkspear lost one of the few notable aspects of their lore, which was bad because
a) they never had much to begin with
and b) They still don’t have anything else to fill the gap
and and c) Vol’jin also got moved into being more associated with the Zandalari than the Darkspear, with the implication he’s getting Loa’d into the next Loa of Kings.

This is bad, because it makes one of the core playable Horde races feel like they’re playing second fiddle to an allied race.

Zul was wasted, Rastakhan was wasted (and his family was ankle-deep, apparently having fathered only a single child in over 200 years of rulership).

Much has been said about the Night Elves getting revenge for Teldrassil (so much) but comparatively the slaughter of Dazar’alor and killing of God-King Rastakhan barely got a blip of attention, with Zandalari players then being forced to buddy-buddy up with Jaina barely a patch later without so much as a dialogue option.

Also they didn’t make Zandalari warlocks playable, like what the actual eff?

It’s not all doom and gloom. Generally I still think the leveling experiences in BfA were the peak of the expansion, and Zandalar’s zones had a lot to like - the loa (Paku+Gonk and Akunda were standouts), the Zandalar aesthetic itself, Vulpera and the Sethrak - but there were problems with it, some of which (Darkspear losing their ‘niche’) still have yet to be properly addressed.

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There’s also the “Zandalari trolls are a Titanic cargo cult even if they are not Titanic creations” bit of Nazmir. I personally appreciated that trolls were one of the few races that weren’t the result of Titanic intervention, so I found it a bit sad when it turned out that their culture was inspired by and built around the three great seals of Uldir and their watchers.

I’m personally alright with Zuldazar, though it took some mental gymnastics for me to get to this point. The dinosaur-infested jungle feels like some a giant sacred garden that the Zandalari are able to live in harmony with - the dinosaurs are a natural resource that they happily exploit rather than predators to be feared. Not only that, but the sheer number of temples scattered all over the place is pretty impressive too. It’s not quite the temple-city that Chronicles advertised the entire zone as, but I think that they could’ve done worse.