… so I played it, and I wonder - why was so hard to implement something like this 10, even 5 years ago? It’s not super complicated gameplay-wise.
Don’t get me wrong, I still support the game financially, won’t unsubscribe, but I’m most sticking to WOTLK Classic these days and I’m looking forward to replay Cata and MOP. Not because they were the best expansions - in the case of Cata it really wasn’t, but these were the times that I most invested emotions in the game, especially the lore.
In the meantime the storytelling took directions that should have never been taken. The Shadowlands lore and that Jailer crap was too much to bear, and even though Dragonflight was actually a good expansion kind of, I don’t think it can erase the blemish Shadowlands inflicted (and it still treats the SL storylines as cannon, Ysera, Ardenweald etc…).
So yeah… Sylvanas is gone, Calia has returned as a queen kind of, and Gilneas has been retaken… these were all things many of us, myself included, wished… but the pathway to these has been frustrating and in the case of SL immersion-breaking.
I’ll keep an eye to The War Within, but unless it buries the SL crap so deeply it can be forgotten (that means, if it isn’t mentioned at all), maybe I’ll develop some interest in the storyline, especially the Arathi.
Mostly because these particualar Scarlets aren’t engaging enemies to anyone. They are just random bad guys with a very, very vague theme, and no character at all. I thought the same thing, when they revived them for the Forsaken heritage. There they should have been the right enemy, but just popping out from nowhere, without much more of an explanaition than “Eh, there will always be more bigots.” made them feel about as threatening and “real” as Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition jumping out from a shrubbery. Putting them into Gilneas just reinforced that impression to me.
The problem I have with this questline is how they use the Scarlet Crusade, not as a threat, but as an excuse to make Gilnean and Forsaken working together.
It’s just… kind of lazy. It’s not necessarily inconsistent, because I can imagine the Scarlet Crusade being so zealous that they go after the Worgens too. But… I mean… as a forsaken, I beat them so many time and they still here ?
They get demolished every time they appear, but we have to believe they still exist, somehow.
Like I said in another thread, they’re like Team Rocket. Nobody can take them seriously. Things is, the real Team Rocket is not supposed to be taken serously. Scarlet Crusade is.
The writers use them just to make forsaken looks good in comparison. They’re not real characters, just punching ball.