We don’t really write here with the expectation that some lead dev will personally come to read it, but perhaps someone on their team can point to these posts of discontent as evidence that things have gone wrong. Literal free feedback.
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That’s ridiculous to say.
It’s in Blizzard’s best interest that the players are happy and satisfied with WoW. That’s inevitably the goal they work toward every day. If the players are happy and satisfied with the game, then they’ll stay subscribed. What’s good for the players is good for Blizzard. No one stands to gain anything from turning the story into crap, so that’s obviously not what anyone – the playerbase or Blizzard – desires.
And it’s not like the effort isn’t there. Battle for Azeroth has as many quests as ever, as much high-profile voice acting as ever, and as high-quality cinematics as we’re used to from Blizzard.
They obviously care.
I gotta admit, Jito, if these posts of yours across the various forum areas are part of an elaborate troll scheme dating back years, you have my sincere respects. You outclass us all by orders of magnitude. I am but a mere ant with Iambaine, next to your skills. Salutes
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Not being a doomsayer doesn’t mean you have to be a troll. There are other perspectives one can approach a forum discussion from. But I understand that the perspective of Blizzard not being evil is foreign to you, so I shall endeavor to be more vocal about it.
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This also. Sums up how I feel truly. The treatment of the night elves, with all the nightborne going horde which was so unnecessary and with a little development could have had nightborne models on the horde but the rest of Suramar joining the night elves as healed back to Kaldorei bringing them both a city and land wasn’t done.
The legion stuff that started so well left them out of the finale they should have been hand in hand with the Draenei, even the last push on Azeroth at the tomb, the night elf temple, on kites them and the iconic Order of a Elune that could easily have worked with the Order Halls as a new reputation, the Order that should have also had its own separate role in helping fight off demons in Suramar and rescuing night elf kin instead anhigh Priestess made to look like she remembers the alliance more than she does Elune herself all to sell the nightborne on the horde which was unnecessary and had better options that could have both seen an effective sisterhood of Elune campaign and both the alliance and horde gaining allies from Suramar - the alliance in the form of shal’dorei who regain their Kaldorei forms with arcane tunes and hairstyles distinguishing them from regular Kaldorei and the horde gaining. The shal’dorei sub race.
Then the unnecessary War of a Thorns for shock factor as if forgotting the night elves had already had a major genocide in their story one CER powerful and substantial followed by wc3 events where they lose so Moluccan to gain victory, followed by the cataclysm where they are devastated the most both by the cataclysm, cultists and then the horde and naga
And talking about naga who are the evil Night elves that started all their woes, and whose return as naga basically plagued night elves the most, given the history, no attempt at continuity for such an iconic night elf related villain especially after revealing more of Azshara’s cruelty when they showed the cool story of the farondis Highborne.
I feel the pain of the other dwarf poster with the wasted potential neglect of properly developing the plight and plots of the other races.
The Legion was the night elves great great enemy. The entire reason for the long vigil, abstaining from their arcane heritage and talent and the reason they didn’t rebuild civilisation, had 10k years of war, lost their lives to a watch, put away so many things, then sacrifice more lives again and their immortality and nature connection - all thenosychology based on false assumptions Legion reveals that exonerates Illidan original action of restoring the well, proofmof the Legions true goal being Azeroth itself therefore exonerating their Well ofnpower and magic as the source of evil they may have thought, not to mention the healing discovering a cure for arcane addiction and how to prevent that comes with Farodin and the Arcan’dor and the implications that and the return of Suramar thought lost and a pristine Night elven city the night elven heroes all come from tied to their lore and what this and the cathedral being cleansed means. The insult of having all the nightborne side horde with highborne and high elves present in the alliance and the failure to use this to unite both the dark elf arcane part of the night elves which includes highborne, Moonguard, Nightborne and Illidari with the nature half which includes Druidic orders, the forest hunting sentinels and rangers finally at last coming together alongside priests in what could have been the biggest positive move for the night elves ever in wow and since their ancient civilisation. But instead they gave a second genocide and felt that Darkshore warfront was enough compensation. Seriously!? This is why I’m fed up with Warcraft now and it’s leading me to hate and not care about it anywhere near as much.
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The Community Manager reads tons of posts, you can check that yourself by going to https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/groups/community-manager?desc=true&order=last_seen_at on workdays and see how much Aerythlea is active everyday.
The problem has never been with the CMs, they simply pass the feedback on to the developers. If feedback is ignored or waved off, well that’s where the problems start.
That being said… a little more interaction from the Blues would be welcome… although I prefer actual answers instead of the we-are-working-on-its that we’ll get then.
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Maybe you should go and tell them that in person. The game has been utter **** every since the end of MoP and the subscription numbers prove it. Blizzard’s devs ignore player feedback constantly. The BfA open beta was proof of that - literally EVERYBODY told the devs that they disliked the Azerite Traits system, yet they implemented it anyway, completely ignoring the testers’ feedback.
The players want PvP wendors with currency - no PvP vendor for years.
The players want better storytelling - garbage storytelling revolving around Sylvanas’ elaborate 4D chess.
The players want more character customization - screw that, you get what we tell you.
The players enjoyed tier sets and their bonuses - removed.
The players enjoyed cosmetic toys - put 10h CD on a 5min duration toy.
This game is literally Blizzard doing w/e they want and hoping that some players actually play it. And they don’t even care that much about revenue, since Overwatch and Hearthstone are making them SO much money, they literally cba putting any effort into other games atm.
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Activision-Blizzard is a entertainment company. The first motivation for any business is the bottom line. If the bottom line can be maintained with low customer satisfaction -they’ll do it. Just look at EA and the sheer amount of microtransactions in their games, and even Activision. Destiny running away from Activision, with the devs cheering there on tape, really should be a warning siren.
And evil? No, not evil. Incompetent (I’m sure those new junior devs they hired to replaced let-go experienced devs will go well), Greedy - Increasing Cash Shop content (always popular with the fans. New mount!), Diversification away from PC and into Mobile where the major growth is. People have phones to play with more than they have advanced PCs. As for evil? I suspect most people here don’t even know the meaning of the word.
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The problem with Q&A in regards to story and lore is that it tends to invoke spoilers.
I remember years ago Blizzard did a Creative Development Q&A and one of the top questions from the community was whether Elune was a Naaru.
Blizzard gave a clever non-answer, but it did illustrate that most of the community’s concerns and curiosities reside in the realm of spoilers.
But ultimately, the story is better served with being told through it’s intended mediums, rather than being spoiled in a Q&A.
Correction, Night elf, Draenei, Gnome and Forsaken fans.
Tauren while nearly wiped out by the centaur weee not only saved but upgraded from Nomads to a budding society, and founding members of a powerful empire giving access to resources, improvements and boosts, and 2 of their 3 sub races Taunka and Highmountain also join the horde. While more development can come for them, they have certainly recovered from their tragedy and improved significantly from where we met them to the best state they have ever been in the lore’s recorded history of them.
The dark spear tribe, while not reflecting the best of the trolls yet are also in a better position than where we met them nearly wiped
Out by naga. They gained new lands, in a better area with greater strength and stronger allies than before that they have both been an asset too unlike victim night elves always needing alliance help) as well as Darkspears have grown in power and strength over where we met them. They led the horde empire for a season, developer cleaner and more honourable standards, their shadow hunter powers were developed and their influence grew to the extent they were beating Gurunashi, defying Zandalari successfully.
The only ones not in a better state than they started off are the Lordaeron citizens that become the Forsaken, but they like the goblins though not recovered to where they were before, same as blood elves made significant improvements to the state they kicked off inand have shown improvement.
It’s Night elves and Draenei. But NElves
Mainly, that haven’t neither come together, nor improved but suffered and being dashed the most.
However I don’t want to divide us. We should unite together. Even if you don’t agree Night elves have had the worse treatment, the fact is they don’t show races and recovery or development anywhere near as prolific as they weave destruction nor as good as they build personal character power level or legendary character developments.
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I was mostly talking about Blizzard in general, and not only about the lore team.
Nevertheless, I agree with you on that point. Q&A’s, writer’s Tweets and such are great for lore trivia, but the main problem that immediately surfaces is that the amount of canon sources will become too much, and makes the lore even more messier than it already is… not only are there novels, comics, cinematics, both on YouTube and in-game, but there are also Tweets and Q&A sessions that you have to delve through.
The Wowpedia community has done an amazing job at archiving all that information though.
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Yes, but it is inevitably better served with high customer satisfaction, that goes without saying.
It’s not like Christie Golden goes to work every day with the goal of writing the worst possible story she can think of. Obviously her motivation – just like anyone else’s – is to do the best job she can.
Pretending that Blizzard don’t care about their own product, their customers, or that they have an agenda of making deliberately bad decisions, that’s ridiculous. There’s no logic behind that.
This has nothing to do with the story and the lore of the game. I mean, I will criticize Blizzard as much as anyone for their outrageously high prices and various business decisions they make, but I’m certainly not going to lump all that together with the story and lore of one of their games that I enjoy. I can separate the two.
I doubt most of the community cares about the lore as much as we here do. Like, you can go read the facebook comments on WoW’s official page. Most people barely know the basics. Or care to know them.
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Taunka aren’t Tauren. Not to mention that the current Tauren have been reduced to Baine & Friends, with zero knowledge of how the rest of the Tauren have developed themselves.
Yeah, they recovered from the tragedy, somewhere back in WC3, and… well, that’s it. The only development the Tauren got was in Cata, with the totally not controversial Seers and Sunwalkers.
EDIT
Oh, and in terms of the Darkspear, I’ll make sure to point Zakkaru to this thread.
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Most of these development concerns – and it’s the same for the other races – just comes down to sheer production limitation.
Even with a patch as big as 8.2, then it still only provides a sliver of all the story and lore development players want for the various races and characters. There’s just so much, and Blizzard can never hope to satisfy all the requests in a timely fashion.
Even when you invoke cinematics, novels, short stories, it’s still not enough. There’s a constant demand for more, because the universe is just so damn big.
It’s just how it is.
This would be the night elf equivalent of the Draenei example above.
Night elf example involving many of their currently un-involved groups coming together, restoring their immortality, Well of Eternity, World Tree connection to the Emerald dream as well as gaining their own territories and actually rebuilding both their great cities and forests that have been ruined - click hear for more details
The night elven arcane, nature, fel and Elune groups coming together - Farondis highborne, Moonguard, some nightborne, Illidari, Ravencrest undeads, druids, sentinels, Moon Priestesses, Wardens, Unseen Path huntresses, Emerald dream night elf worgen - all eventually allying in an alliance of night elves.
The legion revelations and defeat prompting and enabling the psychological and philoosphical differences to heal and allow an allegiance as well as a new purpose - with the legion dead - they can actually go back to the heart of what it meant to be kaldorei - children of the stars and how that is exempllified in the arcane, in nature, in the Moon goddess and in the star demon hunting Illidari.
Resulting in eventually regaining thei immortality, some of thier ancient cities and rebuidling like Suramar, whether with rebel nightborne or forming some sort of alliance, rebuidling and repairing both ruined cities and forests like Nar’thalas, Val’sharah, Ashenvale.
THe night elves once more using and accessing hteir well but much better than before with the Well used for both arcane and nautre purposes boosting htem, and their connection to the emerald dream and world trees restored.
Whether it means they have a small kingdom in the broken isles and fight for their former holding in kalimdor over the next few expansions or they get their zones in Kalimdor back and those along with their zones in the broken isle become their new power base/mini fedaration - even better if they not only do it themeslves, but also become totally self sufficient with having each of their aspects able to match the alliance, horde or other groups (e.g. the highborne/defected nightborne/moonguard are their magical wing more than equal to the human/high elf kirin’tor or the blood elf/nightborne magic, their druidic orders more than a match for the horde shaman/druids and the alliance shaman/druids and dwellers. Their priesthood powerful enough to hold their own against the horde blood knights and alliance church of the light, their rangers and huntresses more than a match for the alliance 7th legion and high elf farstriders, elite horde farstriders and beast masters and shadow hunters, - their Illidari fel users a match for the warlocks of alliance and horde and their Ravencrest undead Dks a match for ebon hold knights… this can be something they become in the future, their own self contained unit - a bit apart and separated from others in their territory… and though maybe not even part of the alliance eventually, they still have some adventurers join them as well as some of the former nightborne deciding to help the horde. This is only for the player character, the rest of the race is now its own faction. This would be an amazing development, that could have the night elves still play a major part as faction/race in Azeroth affairs, without having to do it through the alliance (as kaldorei) or the horde has (shal’dorei)
They could have fooled me, with that Q&A of how brilliant things are. Perhaps they truly do think their work is fantastic, until Upper Management states that the current cash generating strategy isn’t working.
The teams are all connected. Nothing the art team does, is without the mechanics and coders being in the loop. For something to be rendered, it must also have a place in the story or you end up with artefact like appearances that are jarring in their placement. No matter how good the art team and coders are, if the thread connecting it all is terribly done - it’ll get noticed. We can see that in responses praising the artwork of BfA. Unfortunately both the gameplay and story are awful, which is a bridge too far for many. 1/3 bad, even I could overlook, maybe even with the current state of nelves. But 2? Nah
But as I’ve said earlier, this game has a hardcore set of fans who won’t leave even when treated terribly. This is effectively a ‘captive market’ and like a monopoly, immensely incentivises lower standards and development costs.
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Oh i’m not saying they are, nor am I saying hte Tauren havne’t suffered either, or are treated well, there have been sloppy developments to for them, and a lot of ignoring without a doubt. I was just correcting the earlier point about all the other fans sympathising and realising that actually some are better off than before even though it’s not exactly being done justice as it should.
Taunka/Yaungol are a Tauren sub-race just like nightborne are night elven and void elves are Thalassian. That is what I meant.
Knowing these limitations and the great desire out there for more, you’d have thought they’d have invested in providing a way of giving more. Especially if it matters that much to players and they’re hungry for it.
Why don’t they do race campaigns and make it a thing, that has the raace developing and building up, acuqiring resources, building up zone/city which the players contribute oto,a nd this is somethign that goes beyond an expansion but is an ongoing thing, allowing them to give development to each race? (develop allied races wit their core race - it’s not hard to weave void elves into the blood elf story, or nightborne into the night elf story - thes eare the races they are a part off even if they have different ideologies and friends, it could make for an even more interesting campaign for them. they did give 13 class campaigns in Legion, they can handle a continuous development for each race and give race fans exciting things to look for.
There they can explore and fill out many of the things we expected, and show involvement, explore conseuquences and most importanlty, give developments and drama both of lows and ESPECIALLY the HIGHS!!
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Sure, but I think that Blizzard might be at fault here for putting so many resources in one enormous storyline that only involves a few races and characters, and neglects the rest.
I have said it earlier, but BfA is one of the best expansion to highlight the differences between the races of the Horde, with the “Honourable Horde” vs. the Horde Sylvanas has created. Blizz could’ve highlighted how the Tauren or Darkspear or Orcs are holding up, and what the Forsaken and Blood Elves think of it. It doesn’t have to be an epic questline, it can simply be some dialogue in Thunder Bluff or Orgrimmar. Like a few Tauren talking about what the tribes think of Sylvanas, and another talking about the Tauren orders (Seers, Sunwalkers, etc.) and their relationship with the current Horde.
It’s impossible for Blizzard to keep up with everything, but I think that the playable races are the bare minimum.
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Blizzard’s fault reaslly, there failure to make a great media show of thier story in their main game, - refusing to voice quests and animate npcs accordingly even if it was with voice boxes that we now finally have, but were the staple of story telling in the RTS, that would have gotten many people involved with the story.
Most gamers don’t wanna read essays or text, they wanna shoot stuff or hit stuff or grab stuff, when the game is appealing and addictive, with social pressure to rush through to max level to gain gear to show off, you are going to sacrifice reading an ugly text box and miss most of the story.
However if it was properly voiced, enhancing hte atmosphere, you’d have the millions more much more invested in the story, a movie or tv series would be far more ancitipated too as they would rope their friends/family and others into your franchise who would or could in turn join the game to carry on the story - because the stoyr keeps going on in the game. The races keep getting developed.
But if you don’t do that, and you’re lazy about it, only the few who remember when it was good (i.e. the RTS or the few who got so into it they wanted to know more) are going to be interested - blizzard the ones responsible for people not being interested in their lore and it comes back to bite them … because there is only so long and so much getting a new helm is going to keep you excited or caring about warcraft.
And imagine if you come to the game now, and see your favourite night elf race or human race portrayed like imbeciles, described as great , but shown as rubbish in game, you’d be like…wtf is this?
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