Having again watched the opening cinematic and levelled a number of chars to 80 I just feel there is something missing. Maybe the dragon flying just makes the new expansion feel a little on the small side. Maybe it’s the dry luckluster story line so far. Dunno. I found myself firing up the opening cinematic to Legion, and that thing just knocks spots off anything I have experienced so far.
Probably start picking up pace after this mini patch. Hope so.
Well older games (for mmo= expansions ) were created for gamers-players.
The current style of games is for show off~ skins~mounts and basically that you have money .
Practically the expansions of many games is very cheap and some skins~mounts it have 2/3/4 x the amount of the price of the game .
Well, primary reason is their new hires. Their last years hires. So, they prefer to focus on many contemporary things but epic. Like for example to promote “inclusiveness” or “diversity” etc.
For example, even in little quest stories like this https://postimg.cc/4KXQNNcj, where it s about how a clever, competent body type 2 person how it is undemined by a type 1 (of course) person and all you have to do, following the story, is to help it to achieve its goals and beat type 1 person, so as the body type 2 person to become a leader of the others.
This is where the epic character of the game lost. in these political correct trivialities and nonsense.
There were 1-2 questlines in hallowfall that somewhat peaked my interest but overall I found leveling quite dry.
The little girl who wants me to slaughter some nagas or whatever was cool.
And the story about the mage who tried to learn portals was also interesting.
Nothing else really stood out for me.
It missing more dark story.
Back in the day an expansion had 10 zones. You were limited to ground mounts. The story wasn’t on rails so you had to go explore and find quests.
Now it’s all on a campaign that takes you through it and if you stick to the story and just go through it you’re done in a couple of days. You get 3 or 4 zones (even if they’re quite big now they don’t really feel like it due to dragon riding).
We know what we’re getting these days. 4 zones, 8 dungeons (all roughly the same size for M+), two major patches with 3 or 4 minor patches.
I think they just ran out of ideas. I mean, where do you go after killing planet destroying titans, intergalactic legions, old gods, new gods and everything else in between? You reset the world so that it’s meaningful (again), which it will never be. Someone should read Kierkegaard XD
The story of wow is fairly straightforward but has an obvious ending by how it was setup: You start the story in wc1 and wc2, orcs bad, humans good, fight! Build around it, get to WC3+FT where you really flesh out the world, the peoples, the factions etc. You could consider this the ‘ancient history’ of the game (prehistory is obviously just D&D). World of Warcraft is the cannon interpretation and resolution of ancient history → establishing of the factions, worldbuilding in the true sense and eventual defeat of every single canonical villain that was set up in ancient history.
Up until and including legion, you were literally fighting the enemies of legend, come back for one final showdown. You were the hero, the one who stood against the ancient enemy, the one who would finally prevail, once and for all and free this world from danger. Of course it felt epic. World of Warcraft ended in Legion. You were never more canonically powerful than in that expansion. Afterwards, World of Warcraft just became a corporate cashgrab and mmo experimental theme park.
BFA tried to recapture the shine of discovery and the origins of the Horde and Alliance by meeting new peoples and slowly integrating them as new races within the political organizations that are now the Horde and Alliance. A call to the old days, but with the slick new ways of the new world. Legion needed to leave behind a new villain, a trace of evil of some kind and Sylv was obviously an easy target, which then manifested in BFA and SL. SL is obviously (for me) a love letter to TBC, that moment when Blizzard were like, let’s try to be epic! But SL was a super controversial expansion both in game and outside; the math nerds had taken control of the game and you needed to be one to play, which was not fun. Exploring the greater realms of reality is indeed a step up from fighting intergalactic legions, but a bit to high minded for many people who just do not care for this game’s worldbuilding. It was epic in its own way, but an epic looking car that is too complicated to drive doesn’t really feel epic, it only kind of looks epic, which sucks. Unfortunately, SL, the pandemic and the lawsuits taught blizzard one valuable lesson: being epic doesn’t pay; people do.
As such, the atrocities known as TWW and it’s predecessor DF were born. DF was a timid attempt to make an expansion that setup other expansions, systems and features; in a way it was cataclysm all over again in the worst ways. Directionless and just a cutesy budy budy family picnic like expansion, DF will probably be many people’s first time playing WoW and they will expect the game to be more like that in the future and it shows. TWW is just DF all over again with literally everything that made wow feel epic completely stripped away, a Cataclysm’s Cataclysm where they are trying to reset again for the World Soul Saga. Is WoW so silly it takes 3 expansions to course correct? Will it finally become more epic in Midnight when we go back to Icecrown or maybe in the Last Titan in 4-6 f-in years when we get Silvermoon back? Are we going to get some epic plottwists after this next story filler patch? Doubtful.
There’s been an obvious design and tone shift since Legion. A couple of months ago, Day9 played retail for the first time and explained that the BFA intro quests were like “the characters from Frozen yelling at each-other”.
Yep. In hindsight, they seemed to try and bargain their way into more expansions after Legion. Legion was the obvious ending. Yes, the Old Gods were always considered to be the bigger threat, but the expansion itself had THAT “Avengers: Endgame” feel to it. We came full circle with our characters in the Order Hall questline - truly doing the zero to hero thing and we went to space and started fighting the Legion.
If you told 13 year old me that we’d be fighting the Legion in space, you couldn’t convinced me that wasn’t the last ever expansion.
They tried to draw it out. BFA > Shadowlands > Dragonflight in retrospect feel like a barren space where the game just sort of shed it’s roots unintentionally. What they needed to do was TWW > Midnight > The Last Titan after Legion. What’s funny is that it would make a lot more sense than what we got. Why wouldn’t Azeroth immediately wake up after the sword tried to stab her?
The game felt “epic” last when I was a child. Also, having yet another island in the middle of nowhere with miraculously untouched cultures is awfully convenient. They’re running out of map space at this point.
Well, so I played the first 5 missions of the new Black Ops 6 today, and bro, this game just pumps my testosterone up…
WoW also used to be like this in WotLK, WoD, and maybe Legion. The tragic thing is that the WoW Gameplay has probably never been better than TWW in terms of class-design, but the vibe is very lame. I am still curious about the story, because I read the old story of warcraft and loved it. However, Metzen is gonna be involved in the next expansion, midnight, so let’s see if he can lead his team to make wow as badass as it was before, or at least close to it. Afaik TWW was already almost done before Metzen got in charge, so that’s why it feels like Dragonflight.
The majority of my time playing WoW atm is spent in Legacy Content. Especially in Legion.
You are still a child… If you still drinking water…
Water is disgusting! Water is full of germs!
Whiskey or Beer or both! Thats the solution!
What I miss is the slow reveal, the exploration, adventure and jaw dropping enormity of the project. Wrath was an incredible journey and I recall the day I got to Icecrown and it scared the whatsits out of me. Even the barrow dens in Felwood and the Night Elf starter have more complex networks of caves than a Delve.
Sadly these last two expansions have been so underwhelming. I realised this when I clocked that the first four areas were in fact the whole expansion. I thought it was just the first area.
It’s just you. It’s called personal preferences.
I am actually quite impressed, and I have been underwhelmed for a few expansions now. Skyriding is also boosting my experience with it, but so is the story and all the details.
Not at all… Centaur gay couples was one …
Wow definitely feels epic, you’re just the average normal ungrateful complainer that this game has billions of.
I think your definition of billions is an epic over exageration. And to be clear I never said WoW wasn’t epic, I said the latest expansion doesn’t feel as epic as previous expansions. The comment is not a complaint but a subjective comment based on my experience in the overall game which spans 16 years. If you would like to contribute then maybe you could make a valid comment giving your reasoning instead of just being insulting like ‘some’ , not all, and certainly not the billions of the more shallow on these forums.
World of warcraft was successful because of Warcraft 1/2/3 .
Up Until Wotlk they followed the story that the rpg Warcraft has give to us. From areas to lore character and was amazing .
After that the decline because they got more money that they could handle and become greedier of what was to give to players .
Epic… lol. The game doesnt even feel average these days…
I have noticed that I have the same routine with every new expansion since… WoD. I play at launch few months, then I get bored and take a break, at least 6 months. Then I get back and play until next expansion is released.
I just cancelled my sub again, because I haven’t logged in in a week
You’re desperately holding on to some nostalgia of things that never happened. The game was never epic to begin with you were just younger.
Time to face facts instead of sniffing that copium