I’ll admit that the epic moments were relatively few and far between – but they were there.
And I don’t think it’s a problem that the epic moments are few and something the game builds up towards – it’s a problem when the build-up doesn’t result in an epic moment.
And I think that’s been the case for a while now, where the epic moments turned out to be rather anti-climatic instead. N’zoth. The Jailer. Fyrakk.
Blizzard were perfectly capable of delivering an epic end boss with Argus in Legion. Even the cinematic was epic!
I also think there’s something about a spectacle being epic the first time, but each subsequent time doesn’t result in the same epic feeling. Blizzard can recreate the game experience, but they can’t recreate the feeling, and they seem a bit naive for thinking they can.
I think the first time Deathwing flew over a zone you were in and incinerated everything (including yourself) was a pretty epic and cool experience. Trying to recreate that epic feeling with Fyrakk in Dragonflight was failed from the start – you only get the thrill once.
There’s some elements of the world-building that are intriguing but a lot of it we’ve seen many times before. I think the Arathi are particularly guilty of stepping on the toes of both the Scarlet Crusade and High Elves/Blood Elves.
The vast majority use a slightly altered human or Kul Tiran model with some longer ears stuck on whilst being a less zealous version of the Scarlet Crusade and taking something commonly associated with the various elven races - cat mounts - and taking it as their own even though by their own admission they don’t really consider themselves to be elves or half elves with some very few exceptions.
I like the Nerubian stuff a lot more but again it was fairly ‘safe’ and not much was accomplished by Queen Ansurek beyond providing a cool raid encounter.
The game suffers deeply from the lack of a meaningful faction rivalry/divide. The majority of characters one interacts with are deeply tied to the Alliance and in some cases even responsible for slaughtering friends and relatives of Horde characters…so to have everything be pushed aside is quite odd.
The fact that the anniversary event encourages players to boo for Garrosh but Vereesa is given a dialogue option via Alleria to ask if she’s ‘okay’ is really tone deaf. Especially as a Blood Elf player, I’d like nothing more than to see Vereesa pinned down and have her skull crushed like a duck egg for her horrific torture and murder of innocent Blood Elven civilians during the Purge of Dalaran.
She’s a female character in a modern RPG though, so accountability doesn’t exist as tiresome as that is.
They both committed what is described as war crimes within the setting, the torture and murder of innocent civilians. The developers - and sections of the community - will actively turn a blind eye the moment the war criminal happens to be a woman and seek to downplay it.
It isn’t a problem exclusive to this setting, either.
WOW developers cannot write a good story anymore. They transformed this game in World of Peacecraft, unicorns, emotions, etc. I think soon I will stop paying the subscription.
I do feel like it was a good thing that we the players and the horde/alliance came togather to heal the wound of Azeroth but i agree she should have awakened the moment she was stabbed.
I share this feeling with many of my friends. We are not sure if it’s because we have been in the gaming-sphere too long or if it’s because the games are designed different now. Maybe there are external factors at play as well, like getting older, kids, chores, wars, polarization etc.
Idk how to explain it… But i feel like the cool epic factor has been gone for a while as well.
The coolest moments in war within was Alleria and Xalathat exhange moments. But thats it… They where not really impactful. Not gonna lie, Sylvanas was way more epic with the bow and arrow than Alleria currently is.
However… I also think that this is a story that is in its beginning phase. This story is supposed to last 3 expansions so I do hope it is building up to some epic moments down the line.
That cutscene where Alleria tries to snipe Xalathat in a huge city crowd and missed was just it for me -_- Like girl what did you think would happen.
I understand that Blizzard’s intention is probably to make The War Within basically like The Fellowship of Lord of the Rings as a setup for the dramatic epic escalation. However, I’m not sure, if Blizzard even has the staff for this. Is their narrative team capable of a “the Two Towers” version in Warcraft? I haven’t seen any evidence so far other than Metzen joining them again, and he alone is not gonna be able to do what’s needed. In the end, their staff overall needs to have the right mindset and talent to write a story epic and cool enough to justify two set-up expansion.
I also hate to say that nothing in this last patch appears to bring back that epic vibe of a game that once appeared to have no boundaries. Its all gotten very pedestrian. That opening Anduin scene really does sum up the mood of this game for me. More like a soap given that this little saga has dragged out since BfA. It really isn’t interesting any more. I much preferred it when Horde and Alliance were at each others throats and our leaders were something to be feared. I do prefer a time when if I strayed too close to the enemy I was flagged PvP, it added a tension to the zones and a mystery of what our enemies world was like. They should never have given up on faction wars it was what made WoW… well WoW.
I used to wish for a wow2 my self… Bigger larger scaled world? Better graphics? Better gameplay?
But would it really be an upgrade? I am not so sure… A wow2 has to be better and meet everyones expectations of what a wow 2 is. And if its not? It will cause allot of damage to wow.
With that high an risk I think… I will just ride with current wow for as long as it lasts.
I mean, garrosh did more than just a few warcrimes. yaknow, merging with old god essence and trying to usher in the black empire is bit more of a problem than warcrimes we all commit on a daily basis lets be real. We don’t check if those npcs were innocent we just assume they’re not cus their name is red.
i’m not saying vereesa is innocent, i’m just saying that comparing her to garrosh isa bit of a strawman approach to make a point about women being some protected status.
note that this has all happened since their famous ‘’scandal‘’ They are afraid to do anything that might offend people even a little bit (People complained about the beginning in the mists of pandaria remix, where you had to kill the opposing faction, as if this was something unheard of in WARcraft). The result is a bland and boring pulp. For everyone - for no one = boring and generic.
Seems to be oriented on very safe themes, in order to appeal to cozy carebears who will pay 90$ for a mount.
My worry is that they are going with the announced trilogy now, so they know that they need to save anything truly epic for the final expansion. 2 years is a long time and there should definitely be at least a couple of awesome moments in every expansion, but I am concerned that we won’t see anything staggering in TWW or in Midnight at all.
It’s not a strawman. Garrosh was written to do terrible things, yes, though there were comments in older interviews promising that he wasn’t going to be unceremoniously corrupted and killed off - which is exactly what happened.
I’m not a fan of him and I believe he deserved to die, my point is that when a female character does anything remotely similar to him - or equally as bad as him - the story is predictably written to excuse them.
Vanessa murdered two elderly farmers in cold blood and plunged Westfall into chaos - her death was retconned so she could be brought back and later she was given the ‘i am the real victim’ treatment.
Sylvanas went even further than Garrosh and has countless crimes stacked up across multiple expansions. When the time finally came to confront her, she was written to be the real victim in the mess and quietly shuffled off to the Maw rather than actually eliminated. She’ll be back at some point, likely to save the day in the desperate hope her past crimes are forgiven and forgotten.
Then there is, of course, Vereesa. It’s a pattern at this point.
It’s why the faction war crumbled, a lack of actual consequences for certain characters are the forefront of it and more recently the insistence that players of the opposite faction are meant to happily accept quests from such individuals.
Based on what we know, Midnight will be the final ultimate war against the Light and the Void. Basically it seems to me like Blizz wants to make something similar to Battle of the Helmsdeep from “The Two Towers” in Midnight between the Light and the Void.
Again though, if the same people are gonna write this, who wrote The War Within, I think it might be bad. I found most quest texts and dialogues, I’ve seen in the current expansion, very boring, monotone, and shallow. It sometimes basically feels similar to Star Field, where every dialogue and text gives the impression that it was written by the P.R. department of the company to be as safe, clean (almost sterile), and non-controversial as possible.
I think that’s only partly the issue.
WoW is designed for every type of player and because of this it lacks cohesion.
Open world isn’t as interactive as in a sandbox, the story isn’t as interesting as in an RPG (nor as immersive) and exploration doesn’t feel as rewarding or engaging as in an adventure game.
The funny part was that in the first few weeks when they didn’t release the content, instead of playing the open world stuff people went off and played other games for a better experience.
Many players spit on those of us who focus only on raiding or M+, but in truth, the rest of the game is just…bad, and you can get the same type of experience, just FAR better, in other games.
