Not 100% accurate, but close enough. I just find it funny that it’s that one mention of something from Shadowlands that’s such a sticking point.
Xal is responsible for the Ethereals in their current form (for better or worse) and has some hand in the Reshii Ribbons that she just laughs you off if you ask her about her involvement with them She even comments on how some of them (highlighting Locus-Walker’s) are so potent with power that they are “begging to be unleashed.”
Chat, are the ethereals compromised?
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The Devourers are the Tyranids to the Voids’ Warp, probably…
Except Blizzard forgot to put it anywhere in the game and then forgot they forgot to put it in so they assume it is known to the players, who are actually in the dark about it…
Is my theory about it.
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Sweatsuits and Forsaken gear galore, though it’s good for death knights too.
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Hmn. So not ALL the recolours of those mounts they datamined?
That’s disappointing. I wanted the Blue one for my Frost DK :<
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This might sound like an odd question, but…
Would you really prefer it if it was?
What would the ideal WoW antagonist look like? What would their means and motives be? Where would you set the limits?
It’s not about being ideal. In fact, the undead, the Legion and the Twilight’s Hammer were all well-done major antagonists in their own right, distinctive from one another and able to be genuine threats in the long term, but since devs took the course on getting us rid of a villain after villain, they eventually ran out of familliar matters to solve. That is, at the end of BfA. Since then we either had things similar to what we know but worse (Primalists, Xal’atath) or the mess that was in Shadowlands. Honestly, if there was a way to see the Old Gods return, bring Archimonde back from the Nether as the Legion’s commander in Sargeras’ absence and finally get the Scourge or other necromantic circles out of oblivion, this would be a far greater development than any villain we had over TWW.
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So, basically. You think they already had a good thing, the problem was- the story moved beyond them, without bringing enough fresh ideas on to the table?
You’d prefer something more established, tried and true. Something not only familiar, but that is the same thing you liked before? Or at very least, rooted in the past, or the writing style of the past.
Theres a singular mention of the void questing in Bastion where it was shown the void has invaded the shadowlands before and completely dunked the kyrians heads in a toilet on a whim. how it relates to the maw is anyones guess
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It’s rather common for the roleplaying community to wish for a more static version of Azeroth, in which none of these major threats were ever dealt with and in which the Alliance and the Horde remained locked in an eternal cold war.
This would be rather bad for the actual gaming experience, as it would limit what expansions could be about, where they could go and what threats they could be about, but in general, it seems like a lot of people would prefer it if World of Warcraft was thrown into maintenance mode back in 2006, with 1.10, with occasional quality of life upgrades and new raids/dungeons featuring minor Scourge, Legion and Old God villains once or twice a year.
No one said the world should remain static. There still are wars to be waged, and the limbo of Cataclysm (or the location’s respective addon) is another bitter meme for a reason. They simply should not have given us personalities like Yogg’Saron, Kil’Jaeden or Azshara as raid bosses, especially if they aren’t the very last of the expansions of their own and the encounters imply an immediate and total defeat. If a major antagonist like that was said to be merely banished from Azeroth and expected to return, they would still be something to be wary of. In fact, Kil’Jaeden’s fight at the Sunwell Plateau was a good example of what I mean. A major villain, known and expected to show his face at some point, was not fully manifested during the battle and thus defeated without removing him from the story permanently. This approach of a raid implying a tactical victory at best should have been a thing from the start, probably more often than not, but we all know how it went.
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I think the first paragraph sums it up better than the second.
It’s not about “We want the old stuff back!”, per se, as much as “The old stuff you got rid of was better than the stuff that’s been flung in since.”
We had a good run with the likes of Twilights Hammer, and the Legion. They had depth, staying power, and credibility as a long running threat.
The Mawsworn being ‘Oh, they’re more powerful than the Legion, and there’s even MORE of them!’ felt like someones godmode one-up self insert.
The Primalists were kinda just… a threat pulled out of nowhere, but they’re totally a huge threat, trust me bro?
New groups and new antagonists are GOOD!
But give them more depth than a puddle, and more staying power than flakey wallpaper.
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I think the Void lords was a fine limit.
Sentient manifistations of anti-matter beyond mortal comprehension, flinging small shards of themselves into real space and terrorforms entire planets into large eldritch flesh tumors, something so horrifying it drove one of the god like titans to pull a stratholm before strathholm was a thing.
They were vague but thier actions was felt all over the game and they even had enough madness to their methods to birth doubt in the titans vision.
considering they made the old gods and the old gods gave a majority of the races flesh and effectivly free will in a round about way.
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A major weakness is that the world doesn’t feel alive when each expansion comes up with a throw-away villain. First and foremost, it gives me no reason to care.
Second, the thing’s that, the likes of the Scourge or the Legion were fleshed out in multiple books and RPGs, and created the beautiful illusion of a consistent world: that over the years, there was a group with [XY] motivations, that they had an identity and a specific method, and would often plague the world for a while.
It is hard to replicate that result if you introduce a new villain that will die in a patch. It can be done right (for example, the mogu were a good new villainous faction!) but it needs to come at the cost of adding some serious substance to the world, and the latest writers failed to deliver in that front, with maybe the exception of the nerubians.
Even Undermine, which I consider a neat patch, kinda came out of nowhere: we have been to space and beyond, it is hard to sell me a world that is so unexplored we don’t know about another mega-continent, or a hidden goblinoid army.
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I think they might be at least somewhat fixing this now. Arathi are a big plot hook and potential antagonist for post-World Soul Saga WoW, and we might find out about other threats in the upcoming two expansions.
WoW right now is unfortunately paying for mistakes of Cata-MoP, which obliterated many factions (black dragons, Defias, Scarlets) or had them join the main factions (Dark Horde). Now, whenever these factions appear, the reaction often is “how are they still alive?”
It didn’t help that Legion-Slands era took same approach to the big existential threats (Legion, Old Gods, Scourge) and broke them so only remnants in conflict with each other are left.
And it will take some time to fix this lack of enemies…assuming they are trying to do so, which I hope they are.
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Good “recent” antagonists:
Lei Shen
The Klaxxi
Helya (Legion era)
Suramar (under previous rule)
Ashvane Trading Company
The Drust
Raszageth
Terrible “recent” antagonists:
Iridikron
The Primalist cult
The Shadowlands era Scourge
The Jailer and the Mawsworn
The Iron Horde (cool aesthetics though)
“recent” antagonists that are somehow both good and terrible:
Garrosh
Gallywix
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I’d go as far as thinking Idikron works, but he is not very compelling.
Being seemingly written out of your own expansion is funny though.
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Needed more screen time in DF. He wasn’t really there, then suddenly buggered off.
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I halfway expected him to show up as a boss in the first raid, considering he is the earth elemental dragon and a majority of TWW is below ground.
but its like they forgot about him.