I mean you can think Shadowlands was a bad expansion and that the story was cringe… But what did it really destroy? In oribos we see that there are several Afterlife portals to several different realms besides Bastion and revendreth, Ardenweald and Maldraxxus.
Sylvanas opened the rift between the afterlife and the living. But its not like the after life was a mystery to people living on Azeroth like it is too us on Earth.
They have undead. spirits and ghosts. They already know the afterlife is real on Azeroth. Its a little different when compared to earth. Most people on Azeroth propably already knew the afterlife existed in one shape or the other.
People on Azeroth probably believed in Heaven and hell already as we do on earth.
But it wouldn’t be the Shadowlands that confirmed to them the Afterlife was a real thing or myth or not. The fact that people of Azeroth already deal with ghosts and spirits and undead as it is. Is proof enough that the spiritual world exists to anyone living on Azeroth.
Could’ve done that with pandas too. Pandaren have shaman.
But it doesn’t matter. It’s just a fun fact for me. I don’t think Pandaren in tBC would’ve done the game much good. I just hear a lot how Pandaren ruined the vibe of WoW because of the concept of them, and I just don’t think that’s true at all. It’s the huge shift in art style going into that expansion. It went far beyond high resolution or the asian theme. It became soft and much more muted.
I think afterlives mystery was unraveled a bit too much.
Oribos should have been the gateway to the “real” afterlife.
And the zones be purgatory.
The real end of souls would have still been better a mystery.
I see danger in knowing you go to bastion.
What value has the sacrifice of a paladin on the battlefield, when he knows where he goes?
“I go flesh shield, because who cares?”
Luckily no one ever felt like playing this way.
On the other hand…
“Why should i care for my life? I just go maldraxus after death and can continue fighting!”
…is badass kinda. xD
But I don’t think everyone just knows where they will go on Azeroth… Propably allot of Paladins who think they will go to Bastion who are either due for the Maw or Revendreth for example.
We players got to choose in Shadowlands where our character ended up. We weren’t judged by the arbiter.
Pandas are shamans when they were out. But there originally was no lore attached to them being “connected” with the elements. Sort of like Goblin shamans. Its one of those things they add for gameplay and give some excuse for its existence. Which is OK dont get me wrong.
On the other hand, the broken (Akama) in WC3 reign of chaos were.
They had this vague lore of them being broken draenei… aliens from Outland…
And they took that, expanded it into a crashing space ship in Azeroth. And then, somehow made “peace” with outland broken draenei and are magically Shamans.
Then they wrote some novels or whatever to expand that subject.
Dont get me wrong. It would have been 1000 times easier just to make mages give BL (which they eventually did when it became absurd to justify any more shamans out there).
But 2005 was another time in the history of the game. And they did what they thought was right at the time.
Hypothetical irrelevance. WoW is not a movie. WoW is not an RTS. Hypotheticals that apply to one do not apply to the other. WoW is not a storytelling vehicle for linear stories. Blizzard likes to think it is, but it does a terrible job of it.
It’s set in Warcraft 3’s world, I mean… what else are they gonna use?
They did need more games to continue the story. I think BfA should have been an RTS for sure - it did not fit the format of WoW.
That’s not storytelling, that’s worldbuilding. I know some people have started calling it “environmental storytelling” but the truth is no story was told. These people are just wrong. You can’t put it in a book and call it a fictional tale. It doesn’t have a beginning, middle, or end. It doesn’t have characters.
Same thing with a game like Skyrim. You might enter a house and see it is full of empty beer bottles. This is often billed as “environmental storytelling” but no story has been told. A character has been described in terms of personality. It’s very important and very good, but let’s not attribute something to it that it isn’t. You being told to visit Paarthunax - that’s storytelling.
It isn’t - tBC doesn’t tell much story. Its strength lies in world building and letting you piece it together. And I think the same about BfA, except BfA tries to have a story but it’s not very good.
I know. Blizzard thinks this game is something else than it really is.
That wasn’t always the case all the time. Vanilla actually does give you some choices, but the important choice that we lost is: You can choose not to do it.
If you choose not to do something in retail you just get blocked from even entering an area at all.
True - because quite frankly he is very bad. I mean think for a second about what he actually did in Legion. He literally opened a portal into the twisting nether in order to attack the Legion head-on, putting the entire world in peril even after it was well established that we could handle what they were sending, not knowing whether Antorus was emptied out. Illidan is directly responsible for the sword in Silithus and therefore directly responsible for the 4th war. That’s his legacy.
They weren’t making WC4. I merely suggested they do.
SC Ghost wasn’t made by Blizzard and HearthStone was a very small team by the way.
Because RTS is awesome and well alive. This year we’re getting 2 high profile RTS in Homeworld 3, Stormgate, and of course AoE2 is raking in the money with expansions coming out this year as well, and of course the Total War games are super popular as always.
The RTS genre is completely alive. It could use a smash hit though.
But that wasn’t the type of Draenei they added due to the retcon.
I dont like draenei. Simply because they link the lore to some “cosmic” war that is going on.
I would have preferred demons to just appear from some unknown “plane”. You know its there, but you cant do squat about it.
And Lightfored draenei are even worse than that.
And even Mag’har Orcs have sketchy lore. I always hated time travel things. I just wish the Lightforged and Mag’har were the survivors of Outland (TBC, not timetravel) that rebuilt after the events of TBC and come in to lend a hand.
Much better than whatever cosmic war the Naaru are crusading about.
I mean demons can actually appear out of nowhere from a plane and we can indeed do nothing about it. The Legion is just a force that harnesses this fact, creating a strictly ordered hierarchy out of the chaos of the fel. That’s Sargeras’s whole schtick, being a titan and all.
They know their TA, plus in this last years have been filled with underdog project dismissed before release as “unsuccessful” and in the end they got a large success.
World builвing is technical and geogprahical fluff, human skin on gnoll huts doesn’t tell much in terms of world, but it can add to reasons why you want to kill gnolls and create some shock in player.
You are talking about plot, plot must have three-act structure, story can be told in many ways, from environment to pictures on mural
it’s world building is shallow, badly written, and doesn’t do any justice to the previous themes established by previous games, vanilla world building is good on other hand
well alive by perspecitve of who? Compare sales of AoE to something from mainstream industry, just because it sold “higher than expected” doesn’t mean that it sold on par, all the games that you described are very low budget with target audience being a small amount of people who are actually interested in playing rts game, they don’t expand, they don’t try to make their games more appealing to masses.
He wasn’t shown like this in warcraft 3, it isn’t consistent.
It showed that he is utterly reckless and ready to risk everything to achieve his singular goal of defeating legion which is CONSISTENT with his warcraft 3 description, it also shows that he is very proactive, using sargerite key is anti-hero move, not villain move.
Sargeras is responsible for sword, not illidan
Tbh, wouldn’t be surprised that in the future we get a reboot in this way, with new tech adapted to better fit the age. Maybe with AI advancement or something we don’t have yet as a way to keep up with competition in the MMO market and to pull in new players.
Also we need some loosing done correctly. Like how in Infinity war Thanos achieved his goal, which now with the new expansion model we might actually have a chance of.
