The bit I never really liked, story-wise, was how there were robots all over the place but Zerith Mortis especially.
The Afterlife should have been about Life magic and Death magic, the scourge, necromancy etc.
The rebirth stuff in Ardenweald was fine, it fit the theme but robots just didn’t.
Well… it’s not far off. I didn’t necessarily expect that exact action, but I did know that he had gone absolutely nuts to find any source of magic he could, and that he was very attracted to the fel. That’s also why the Sunwell became a font of Fel magic and Blood Elf paladins were very different to their more pure alliance counterparts. He also had the famous four fel orbs floating around his head.
So… if he’s being offered help by practically Mr. Fel himself… yes. Actually. I could totally see him do that.
Yeah the whole sex dungeon thing I have no idea. Blizzard sort of had a thing going in early WoW, if you catch my drift. Ever noticed how all the females look more human and the males look more bestial? Weird that, huh?
I didn’t really have a problem with that in general though.
I would expect Illidan to act hostile to the Horde and the Alliance as well, yes. He was pushed out and betrayed by them both. As he says in the War3 TFT intro: “Betrayer. In truth, it was I who was betrayed.” Then there’s the fact that even if we like his personality, we can’t deny that he’s very corrupted and demonic entities like to follow in his wake - and as alliance and horde we wouldn’t like that. In fact, I was very surprised that we tolerated him at all in Legion.
I wouldn’t expect him to aggressively pursue us since he promised Tyrande he wouldn’t - and as we’ve previously discussed he actually doesn’t. He broods in Black Temple, minding his own business (which we do not know what was until Legion because again, our perspective) of training an army to attack Burning Legion worlds, and then we disrupt him because, to us, he appears to be quite… corrupted. To put it mildly.
Okay, I can’t speak about the Russian localisation. It might’ve been completely trash, I wouldn’t know. Maybe that helps explain our differing experiences?
I mean i already said that it’s not an entirely impossible scenario for him, the thing is we never seen him undergoing this changes and what it took for him to accept kil’jaeden offer.
So basically it’s akin to sylvanas in bfa 360 turn around, and sylvanas going evil was, too, not exactly impossible scenario, but the problem is we never seen hints for her to do so.
Warcraft was a very character driven story back in wacraft 3, you can’t just remove it.
I mean yes i know that explanation for all his shennanigans in tbc is that “he got corrupted by fel duh” and while it’s entirely possible don’t you think it’s lame and isn’t exactly inspiring.
Warcraft must be an epic story with symbolism and cool moments, not just “it happened duh”, characters must have some emotional weight under them, for that you need to do justice for their development and have some satisfactional conclusion
There is a cult around russian localizaiton for warcraft 3 in CIS regions, it was unusual high quality especially for those times and high amount of meme potential.
But yeah it suddenly dropped with wow despite characters keeping same actors.
All i can say is russian arthas surpasses english arthas in every way
What I really didn’t like was the whole premise of “Nothing escapes the maw”, build up to be this menacing place. Except, getting things in and out of the Maw is easier than sending a message to a colleague sitting 2 cubicles away from you. Everything and their mothers can “walk” out of the Maw it seems.
And with that the idiocy of Shadowlands just piles up.
So now that we have established that it is not out of character for them at all, we can finally get back to the meat of this:
In World of Warcraft they do precisely what you just said they can’t do. But of course, they didn’t take anything away because Warcraft 3 is still available (unlike vanilla/tBC, which they actually did take away). They merely made a new game that doesn’t play like Warcraft 3 and therefore does not tell a story like Warcraft 3.
They stopped telling the story of the big characters in a campaign format because, to them, that is not what WoW is. In WoW, you are a character, and that character has agency and every player character will go through their own adventure to some degree, and each have their own perspective, and as a consequence of that it cannot tell a coherent story, and therefore they don’t even try. They just present a world that is a result of some recent events and let you navigate it. And by perspective I don’t mean opinion - I mean it very literally. If your character is a Tauren you start in a certain place and are warmly greeted by some and disdained by others. That is perspective.
Which is of course why, when they ran out of Warcraft 3 material, they were in a bit of a bind. My suggestion at the time was to make a Warcraft 4, but the RTS team had bitten off a bit more than they could chew with StarCraft 2 and therefore it was in development until 2015.
So the WoW team started to try to tell stories, but this railroads your character and removes all individual choices and perspectives. In Dragonflight they tried to restore this, and the storytelling completely breaks. Even if I liked the current story I couldn’t possibly tell you what’s going on because I’m getting story beats out of order and am just generally getting confused.
That is the real problem. That’s why it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if they focus on one or the other - they cannot tell a coherent story around your own character without Baldur’s Gate 3 level storytelling investments with far more permutations than BG 3 has. They are utterly lost. And now they even lost the RTS team. There will be no Warcraft 4; there will never be a Warcraft 4. About the best we can hope for is a restoration of the general vibe of the game.
I would definitely re-roll a Venthyr based class, though.
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Honestly Shadowlands could have been so cool. The theme could have done well. The main word being ‘Could’.
I never play the storylines, I just explore the landscapes…
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We saved the whole of creation/afterlife/existence/universe and all we got is -9 minutes on resurrection sickness.
Hypothetical scenario: In star wars ROTJ Palpatine suddenly dies from heart attack during battle with mace windu, it wont be out of character for him because despite being a powerful sith lord he’s still very old and there is a little probability that he could die from “natural causes”, doesn’t change the fact that it’ll be very out of touch in terms of storytelling and underplay any buildup that was before.
So illidan going all the way from being a very active adversary that builds up his power only to end up as stereotypical villain with literally no redeeming qualities probably makes sense story wise because fEl CoRrUpTs but it doesn’t do any justice to character, absolutely ignores the fact that he resisted fel while being imprisoned for 10 000 years AND also probably would evoke dissonance in warlock players of this time who also are active demon magic users. But yeah it can be handwaved because it “kinda” makes sense.
Sylvanas storyline in shadowlands kinda makes sense too.
Well if it doesn’t tell story like Warcraft 3 does so don’t use characters from Warcraft 3 (atleast don’t end their stories here).
But it wouldn’t sell as good without including characters from better written pieces would it.
You don’t need to tell elaborated stories, in fact it’s much more effective from storytelling point of view if you just throw around hints, I mean people still freak out from gnoll huts being made out of human skin, there were never any cutscene for it, it’s just a little piece of environmental storytelling.
And I mean atleast with kael they literally threw some quotes about him acting delusional and having grudge about unjust fate of his people, it’s form of storytelling too.
But with illidan there are literally no nuance.
How this quality of writing is better than BFA?
You literally don’t have any agency, you cant choose any different outcome besides linear script.
You cant choose different side besides your starting faction, you can’t complete quest by any means other than written in your questlog, you can’t use non-lethal ways of dealing with mobs, you can’t change world by any means other than already decided by blizzard, you can’t find peaceful solutions, you can’t “talk your way” through problems, you are a murderhobo, harry.
So if I literally can’t do anything to change kael’s fate and my opinion literally doesn’t matter, why would I have perspective? There are literally no other perspective than written by devs already, kael is utterly wrong so he will be killed, and illidan too.
Everyone is wrong and I’m right, writers said so.
And kill very important persons.
Not every empyrical evidence is subjective, if I see illidan enslaving people and having spooky sex dungeons I can make conclusion that he’s out of his mind because I will compare it to what he did in Warcraft 3, to counter it you need to have some evidence that will somehow suggest that he’s right, but literally everything that surrounds black temple questlines tell you that he has no redeeming qualities, there is no counter perspective.
It reminds me of this video https://youtu.be/QdAPMIhuY6w?si=NFMc2s0A3z8XXuln
They were developing Warcraft 4 while also simultaneously making diablo 3 and it’s expansions, StarCraft 2 and it’s expansions, project titan, canceled nova game, hots and hearthstone?
I mean, blizzard is a big company, but I don’t think they are THAT big.
Hot guess is that Warcraft 4 was cancelled around wotlk period.
Ffxiv did it without bg3 level investments.
Why would they make RTS in 2024?
A video game or story? Pretty sure in the Dragonlance Saga, Raistlin goes to yhe underworld to rescue Tasslehoff i think? Been 30 years since ibread the series, but i think i remember that part because Tass was never the same after.
I think it would of been a wonderful addition for a patch, like the Emerald Dream. In fact it could have been several patches with all the drama and action taking place in Azeroth and you having to go to the realms of the Afterlife in various stages of the story.
But it was a difficult time in the world in general and a difficult time in Blizzard and I think the expansion does reflect that.
It has def done serious damage to the franchise, but DF has done alot to turn things around…if the next expansion is also a winner then we could be right back on track!
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Absolutely spot on - messing with the Afterlife in any mythos or lore is always a risk.
Revealing too much drops the mystery and shrinks the world entirely. The impact of the unknown is gone because death has been fully explained.
There’s no more high stakes because death has literally been defeated by a bunch of murder hobos.
And so much lore was also ruined by general decisions on characters and what the Afterlives actually are! So many cucked past heroes.
Night Elf afterlife reduced to furryland, anyone who worships the Light gets stuck with clinically steriles Bastion, and then all the warriors stuck with Maldraxxus; the Plaguelands II…
And that’s completely cool.
The Maw didn’t have any redeeming features for me (except for the previously mentioned Korthia area - but I personally didn’t even really consider it as ‘The Maw’ since it was a piece of land dragged next to the Maw).
And I hated horrific visions from the start. Utterly and completely.
They just weren’t fun in the slightest for me. I simply don’t enjoy ‘punishing content’, I suppose.
They are
I mean it’s pretty low budget, Warcraft 4 must be AAA like StarCraft 2
History told us that big budget≠ good game.
Low budget doesn’t equals good either, doesn’t mean that Warcraft 4 isn’t required to be AAA. Warcraft 4 must be AAA for the same reason as metal gear solid franchise always had AAA budgets. Because it’s a standard that expected by community
I’m only really interested in the end product and we’ve seen non AAA budget titles be released as smoother and better experiences then recent AAA budgetted games
The AAA AA A B C ETC ratings haven’t meant anything for players in a while, its just an indicator of the size of the budget at this point
I think the premise is fine, perhaps the execution could have used some work.
It’s a very old idea. In ancient Greek myth going in and out of the Underworld / Hades was similar. But Hercules got in there. Orpheus got out too although his wife didn’t as he looked over his shoulder though he was told not to look back. Odysseus went in there as he had earnt the wrath of Poseidon and wanted to figure out how to appease him.
So this bit didn’t really bother me too much. They could have done it slightly better story wise but they’ve been struggling with story telling for a while now. Even WoD dumped half it’s story (the whole middle chapter) meaning that Yrel goes from Apprentice to Leader in 3 shakes of a lamb’s tail.