All his problems began when he didn’t work hard enough to preserve the Wrynn line.
Makes me almost wish that Varian had a “spare” child out there much more driven to getting the throne and cementing their position as an Alliance leader while Anduin was absent.
Also, please do not put Metzen on a pedestal.
tbf this feels very similar to when they first announced Teldrassil was going to burn down so I’d wait and see a bit before sounding the horns of victory. Like, Dalaran survived a direct Legion onslaught several times, subterranean bug people shooting it down seems a little lackluster story-wise.
Agreed. We are fickle, so it’s only gonna take one bad terrible decision (which I don’t wish to happen) for people to go from We are so Back to It’s All Over Bros.
My main concerns for the War Within’s story are that the change of narrative director will not alter the quality of the narrative for the better and that fans of the Horde might be disappointed by the lack of anything tied to the Horde in this expansion.
And so far, the second concern seems to be warranted. Almost all of these major NPCs look like they pander to Alliance themes and narratives, with the exception of Orweyna who may be some sort of troll that we have never seen before?
The only things that suggest that are the female troll model with two tusks, but there’s plenty of features that could make the character some other species entirely, or perhaps some sort of transitionary race, somewhere between dark troll and night elf. I’ve got no idea what such a character would be doing underneath some distant island far from Kalimdor though.
There will always be people who favour one faction over the other and so far, it looks like people who prefer the Horde are going to be left without much that caters to them. I think that’s a shame.
No, they have an answer for that.
Anything good will be because of the return of the glorious Metzen and the departure of the awful Danuser. Metzen is the hero carrying this whole franchise back to a new golden age.
Anything bad will be because Danuser has only just left and he has still left some black marks on the story that poor Metzen has not had the time to get rid of. He’s not superhuman, after all.
And they can tell which writer is responsible for what story decisions based solely off of how they feel about it.
There’s no point for Horde as a faction to exist and/or have any prominence in an expansion if there’s no scheming and/or violence against the Alliance and everything else within 100 yards from the Red Banner.
It’s just red Alliance at this point. Un-neutering the Horde at this point would require Baine and Thrall at minimum to be swept aside/killed, alongside Calia Menethil. Get a new warmonger to lead either one or all of them, a new warchief, and you got the Horde back on track to being awesome.
A datamined item indicates that 11.1 will involve a goblin-centric raid.
For better or worse.
Danuser made a storyline in which Forsaken were one of the main plots of the game for several patches and had several important NPCs wearing Scourge tabards, then went on to make an expansion that had its first major retcon in a post-launch hotfix with a literal in-game sticky note.
We don’t think Chris Metzen is the best writer since Shakespeare, but people trust him to at least have some level of knowledge about what the setting is, considering he’s the one that literally conceptualized the setting as we know it today.
Let’s not get on this bs train when we’ve been talking for several years all about how Danuser has messed up a lot of the basic concepts of this game’s storytelling since day one of taking the reins and start Warlords of Draenor-sing all over the place about how he was really cool and great and epic, actually, just for the sake of going against the grain to seem intellectual.
For some reason he reminds me a bit of Fu from Dragonball Xenoverse and other stuff.
That said, I dunno how to feel about Dalaran’s destruction. On one hand, stuff is definetly happening again, but on the other hand, its another part of old Warcraft that’s going up again. Some friends of mine already aren’t happy.
Not to mention, Khadgar -maybe- ded, and we’re back with the Shadowlands crew, only Tyrande’s replaced for Alleria. Not sure how to feel about that one either.
I do not feel like Dalaran is a great loss. It’s latter iteration of being the Mage Hub and Academy for all races of Azeroth lightly irked me and that’s not mentioning its Alliance-Neutral swapping at a vote by six people.
It’s a good tool for sure to display the danger of the Nerubian and Xal’atath, I can only assume they pulled off a better job than the Legion who tried and nearly succeeded several times.
Whats wrong with this?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLZNRS-XEAAhiw0?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Elves all the way down.
It’s a matter of personal opinion so I don’t think there’s any point in debating it, but I think there’s a lot more to the Horde than just being baddies for the Alliance to beat up.
Could be interesting, could be garbage. Can’t even speculate at this point.
Thankfully, no one’s praised Danuser at any point. I just caution against the hero worship of Metzen and attributing everything good about Warcraft to him, when he’s responsible for some of the worst parts of the Burning Crusade, Cataclysm and funnily enough, Warlords of Draenor.
Zodeyak made a good point, in any case. This could be another case of destroying an important location in the setting for the sake of shock value and creating stakes out of thin air, a decision that the setting might suffer from in the long-term. And I say all of this without knowing who is responsible for this plot development, Metzen or Danuser.
Though if I had to compare it to any other expansion, I’d say that this also has a lot in common with the opening of Shadowlands, with the stakes shooting through the roof when a beloved part of the setting is destroyed in a sudden demonstration of power. Does that mean that this is actually a decision made by Danuser? Who knows.
tbqh they should nuke more neutral hubs.
It’s just a city in the sky. Also has a dungeon in it and Timear. That’s it. I won’t miss it personally, but then again Alliance’s aesthetics don’t really do it for me in the first place.
I also agree there is more to Horde than being saturday villains for Alliance to beat up (in truth, I prefer it when they end up beating eachother up). However, what more do you think there is to Horde?
To me personally Horde used to be and should still be a band of races that often don’t like eachother or who isolate themselves into cliques, but when push comes to shove in the form of Alliance or the rest of the world, they band together and beat the everliving crap out of the opposition. Horde’s also always been the underdog faction out of the two, having to deal with more internal problems than the Alliance does (which I think is a major reason why Alliance isn’t a very appealing faction, since they have no apparent problems within their faction).
I love the destruction of Dalaran because I hate it. That is, for once, it has gotten me emotionally invested after so much.
It is the place from which I fought the Scourge, then the Legion. In many ways, it is a capital city just as Stormwind or Orgrimmar - and far better than the latter.
I really hope it will be a meaningful departure: Dalaran is an icon. It survived the Scourge. It survived the Legion. Why are the nerubians so special? Hm. But damn, it feels cool.
While no one will ever know, in Oribos Khadgar shows up randomly to talk about how he is old, and that he feels like his time may come soon. Perhaps they planned this.
Archmage Khadgar: I suppose I wanted to gaze upon the realms of Death with mine own eyes before…
Lady Jaina Proudmoore: Is everything alright, Khadgar?
Archmage Khadgar: I feel the weight of years upon me, Jaina. The burdens carried. The choices made.
Also looking closer at the screenshots from Dalaran destroyed, it looks like alot is just missing. It seems to be a few towers and that building in the absolute middle for the most.
The thing that I wonder is just - why not show it at TWW announcement? Just as they did with Teldrassil back then.
They killed off Khadgar because he was a racist in that one book.
Let this be a lesson to all racists. Death and the Maw is all you’ll receive.
Possibly the most treasured neutral hub in all of Warcraft’s history, from two extremely popular expansions, Wrath of the Lich King and Legion. It might not mean a lot to you, but I think it’s definitely the most meaningful and important location in the game that they could destroy without wrecking another racial capital.
Many NPCs on the Isle of Dorn talk about being trapped underwater from rubble so it seems like most of Dalaran fell into the ocean surrounding the zone.