So the new expansion has been released, at least in a beta stage… And after 15 mins of playing, something feels… wrong.
I don’t know how I can describe the feeling. But the contrast is visible if you play Cataclysm and compare it to, let’s say, Dragonflight. In Cata you feel threatened. Deathwing is obviously menacing. But the Dragonflight dragons were… fluffy.
And that was the previous expansion. When I saw the Isle of Down, I saw that the design feeling is somewhat … different. Like with the fluffy dragons. It seems like the devs have paid too much attention to the very tiny details and it passes to the point it no longer feels real. Like World of Warcraft has always been cartoony, and whimsical, but you could immerse itself. But somehow The War Within goes one step beyond that.
It’s like if you play Frozen in World of Warcraft. Can I call it the Disneysation of game design? Maybe feels accurate.
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I would pay extra If they have wow characters burst into songs during cutscenes.
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So… you don’t like… the art style?
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Mh. That would be quite a problem if you want to play the expansion.
I felt this since Shadowlands. The zones are too crowded.
Take an example, Maldraxxus is the “death” zone with way too many skeletons, undead creatures and other decorations that in the end becomes too much and makes it bland.
Contrast this with an older zone, where you might come upon a skeleton and a mysterious backpack left in a forlorn house in the woods.
Much more eerie!
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I feel that is unrealistic if there is a boss in a dungone and planet that let you wait to attack them, watch you get your group ready to attack them ! Reality the dragon must chomp the your head off, and poop you and then eat your friend when they are not ready too .
Im not sure what you mean.
The isle of dorn and dornogal might just be my new favourite place in all of wow.
Its incredible there. Especially the coast.
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Isle of dorn is very spacey like dragonflight zones, complaint looks very outdated, more like something to say about SL or BFA or Legion
The zones did feel way too crowded least from Legion, BFA and SL.
Like so many infamous cases in Val’Shara where there are undiscovered problems around every tree.
I can Thrall spitting some beats like Eminem…
I’m not sure I get this, but to me the art style went from rough cartoony to refined cartoony because they got better at it and because this is 2024 and we can afford more polygons. I’m not sure what to take away from TWW feeling more “Disney” or “Pixar”: those people are absolute gods of animation, and the fact that WoW’s art feels like their movies should be meant as a compliment.
But I don’t see how dragons are fluffy. Fluffy is a word I’d use for scrambled eggs, if cooked properly, not Alexstrasza.
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WoW never felt real to me.
Ehm… No he wasn’t. Big moustache twirling nonsense type of bad guy. Couldn’t take him serious.
Anyway… I haven’t played Beta; I quit when I remembered I would have to set all settings, mods, transmog and whatnot all over again and I didn’t feel like doing that. So I’m just going to wait until the expansion is released.
I’m not worried about the stuff you mention at all. I’m worried about other things. Like having 3 underground zones.
you can compare it to cata. I mean sure that’ll be “not really deepholm” and the temple of the earth more like “temple close to the surface”.
i’m kidding, but yeah… it’s a good idea the whole centre of the earth if we didn’t already you know fight the earthwarden whose main base before he flew out was supposedly deep deep underground.
which it turns out wasn’t that deep at all.
But you know what i like thrall being thrall and anduin. And the half machine sounding but earthen clay feel. plus… it’s not warlord of draenor or the afterlife. that’s a win for everyone.
WoW was a dark comedy; a warhammer rip off.
If you want to see how far warcraft has fallen from it’s roots, look to Warhammer’s style. Because warcraft originally used to have the same vibe.
This is what they seem to misunderstand… You can’t be woke and a dark comedy… It doesn’t work. The wokeification of wow has robbed it of it’s core vibe… So that is what everyone is feeling; except all of the kids playing the game now, where they think it is normal everything should be like fortnite.
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The difference your feeling OP is that in the past… Azeroth had one world ending doom threat big bad guy after the other… Imagine being a citizen of Azeroth and how traumatized you’d be if you actually lived in Azeroth.
Ever since the third war Azeroth has faced one doom world ending threat after the other… the people has never known how too chill ever since Arthas became the litch king…
Blizzard is trying something new now… Xala’that is by all means a big world ending threat… But the story is developing differently and building up now over the next 3 expansions…
Things are gonna get allot… lot worse for us all I imagine
It’s just not told too us as a big bad in our face terror threat coming for our world as it has been in the past… But It will get there. 
The story telling and the threat we face is allot more subtle now… Our main characters are aware of the threat… But it will definitely get there. The story is just not as simple anymore.
WOW has become a Disney game.
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What are you talking about, of course you can. In fact, Warhammer’s satirical hyper-stylized depiction of Neo-fascism including authoritarianism, xenophobia and racial supremacy could be interpreted as dark comedy - that’s pretty woke if you’d ask me 
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