When did Blizzard writers cross the line for you?

Im perfectly correct, if you see its only you and 1-2 people more that actually do care.

Yep i do, how about use some logic yourself and stop replying nonsense?

What are you trying to do now?
Make us care for the lost FICTIONAL NPC in teldrassil BBQ ?
What is your masterplan :rofl:

During BFA when they showed the Horde as evil while the Alliance was the peacekeepers, protagonists, and saviors of the world instead of just an opposing faction with its own interests and ambitions.

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Why only during BfA?

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I meant they crossed the line during BFA
The line is still crossed to this day with their sh#tty writing.

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Very end of Legion/start of BFA is when I stopped caring.
I knew what was going to happen. I knew the corpse wasn’t going to be Warchief by the end of it - I just knew and it was just so telling.

I knew the Horde was going to be villain-batted again, so what was the point in getting worked up about it? I mean, so many Horde posters were upset about 8.2.5 and Windy going “Laters ya’ll.” I was like, “you guys didn’t see that coming…? :woman_shrugging:

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There was not an event that made me think “oh, now that is too much”, but a string of odd decisions and lore inconcistencies that made me think
“why bother learning anything about this backstory, if any part of it might be thrown away on a whim”.

A first really big event that solidified the “I do not really care much at that point” mentality was the beginning of Cataclysm. Placing aside that IMO the whole “revamped world” seemed to me more like a marketing speech with a lot of problems under the hood, there was a particular character - Sylvanas.

Sylvanas and the forsaken were pretty upfront about who they are, and how the see the world. For the forsaken, Sylvanas gave them the new chance in (un)life, gave them the reason to exist. Yes, taking down Arthas is not too big of a reasons, and in the grand scheme of things might seem petty, but in the context of people who were trapped in their bodies, and were forced to commit a lot of horrible stuff, sometimes against those who were most dear to them - in such context she truly saved some bits of their sanity, and helped to move on, at least somehow. And “somehow” sometimes is a lot by itself.

And Sylvanas never really hid (originally at least), that the forsaken are just a tool for her, to achieve her goal to hunt down Arthas. Such was their dinamics. No excessive sentiments. Clear and straightforward.

And what do I see in Cataclysm?

“Without val’kyr my race…” - wut? Your race? Where is that coming from? Ending heir miserable existence was one of the original points.

She loathed what was done to her. She hated the path that was thrown upon her. And now supposedly in character she is going to force others through the things she hated the most?

Those changes, in her behavoir, from being enigmatic leader which it would take a while to meet, to someone running next to the player charater, who suddenly goes 180 on both mutual view shared with the forsaken, and on the damnation of being undead.

So, currently I do not like Sylvanas. Nor I hate Sylvanas. At that point my view of the character became “she is going to be a narrative tool and will do and say (or not say) whatever would be needed for the story”. It’s not a character to me, but a voiced over tool, like a shovel, or a fork. And with fancy animations.

The only part of her story I still was interested in, were val’kyrs, but the devs instead of progressing their story will chop it away it seems.


Nowadays the thing that is “no go” for me is how they handled the aftermath of the tree™ story. Not because I am a fan of elves (I found their W3 iteration interesting, and WoW one might not even exist). Or overly obsessed with morality or something.

But because in my irl experience I saw quite a few times when people were mislead, or assured in something, only than to reveal a scam. And I saw how people’s lives were ruined in the process. Some recovered. Some are no longer alive. And I myself was at one point working on a project based on the info I got from a credible at one point source. Only to see a part of management bailing out with the funds of it, and seeing how people who, some of them, changed the place where they live, moved to other city, dropped other career paths, to participate. And I was there. Pulling the team together only then to see how it all crumbled, and technically it was me who dragged a convinced a bunch of people to get into this start-up.

So, with the silly backstory off the way, when I see :poop:-like bait-and-switch marketing based on suffering and selling a story as “seek for justice”, with the devs having no troubles taking money for that, and how then they just decided “you know, we sure did took money already, so no necessity to actually deliver for what the people payed”, all I can say is

“however bright that story team burns, they deserve it”.

So, it’s a personal, and maybe overreacting, and such. And I won’t rush ahead until the expansion is over. But if that is the approach they stick to, I will be happy to cancel subscription and not invest a single penny in any product created in any collaboration with activision-blizzard while that narrative team would remain.

/rant_off

[oh yeah, almost forgot, there was also an odd wiggling around with the Calia Menethil story; who IMO is so out of place among the horde, that the suggestion seems comical. But nothing happened so far, so, mentioning it as an example of ridiculousness of the dev team is too early. But that would’ve been a “I don’t even” moment too]


gl hf

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For me first step was Cataclysm. They vanish at once all the classic feeling and story and replace it with worse version. It’s like we start WoW 2 on story and vision.

Next one is burning the world tree. Not because of nelves, not because of allys, just because I knew what way Sylvanas will go. Here again writers for the “WOW” effect vanish another iconic part of WoW.

We can’t be sure what path will story can go, if Saurfang wasn’t betray Sylvanas to kill Malfurion, another iconic character in WoW. And actually BFA was last go to ignore story. Promised war and all the WOW beginning was thrown to horde inner war.

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When did they cross the line? It has happened twice, I would say.

First of all, I am very much in line with many opinions that have already been voiced. The narrative has been on a downward sloping trend for a long time. For me, personally, it began late WLK. I was not satisfied with how Arthas met his end. It felt a bit unceremonious, and the whole “there must always be a Lich King” never vibed with me.

Cataclysm was pretty bad. Cataclysm streamlined a lot of content which made the game as a whole feel less meaingful, and the narrative became more bombastic. I believe it was in Cataclysm when we got the new loading screens for Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms – the ones that showed the faction leaders rather than the generic representations for the various races, and that to me is a subtle but significant marker of Blizzard’s new philosophy when it came to narrative. It became less about the player’s story and more about cool cutscenes and VIP characters.

But for me, the line was not yet crossed in Cataclysm, and overall I am somewhat fond of the story in Mists of Pandaria. No, the line was first crossed in Warlords of Draenor. While I really liked the zones in Warlords of Draenor I couldn’t get behind the narrative at all. This was perhaps the first time when I found the narrative to be so appalling that it actually had a negative impact on my overall immersion into the world. So I quit.

I would come back later in Legion, and I wasn’t a big fan of Legion but it was nice to leave time-travel land. I originally liked the idea of Battle for Azeroth and I was cautiously optimistic about the expansion, but the theme that was promised was not the one that was delivered and BFA truly turned out to be the worst expansion that I have played.

The second time Blizzard crossed the line was with Shadowlands. And this time it was a lot worse than in Warlords of Draenor. I hated the concept of WoD, but like I said I did enjoy the zones. I loved to explore the areas and draw parallels to the zones in TBC. WoD also had a few new ideas that I thought were interesting, such as the Garrisons (even though they were pretty hated at end game I never really got to the point where I experienced them as something negative). Shadowlands had no such thing. Also, WoD was largely contained, whereas the Shadowlands recontextualizes everything. It also has the most linear narrative experience when it comes to questing. They touted so much about the importance of player agency, and yet I have never felt less agency in an expansion.

I got to max level with my rogue and I had to pick a faction, and I honestly couldn’t make a choice. I never picked a faction because I thought they were all bad. Then I quit. I am only now returning because I want to reexperience the TBC nostalgia.

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Update : I just completed the Stay of execution scenario where we rescue Baine and that was so bad I don’t even know what to say, that looked like a parody
I might not have to wait for long before I reach that “I don’t care anymore” point after all

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thinking back now and remembering how dumb this was and how out of the blue it came.

Arthas’ story should’ve ended after Frostmourne shattered and he was confronted by Terenas’ spirit. Bolvar’s should’ve ended along with it. but no - they’re too precious about their characters to let anyone actually die, so we get Barbecue Bolvar as Good Guy Lichie for a decade.

then Halion appeared and became the real final boss. some random chromatic dragon becomes the final boss of Wrath of the Lich King. holy moly.

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Activision should take charge and fire all of these writers. Get new ones with no experience they will do better.

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They only did it as a way to deny the alliance the already existing High elves and the established lore, so purple elves it is. The lore did come out of nowhere and i hate how Alleria ended up becoming a cheap version of Sylvanas. they ruined her for me

but Void elves have potential (if you ignore lore) and i would love to see where it goes

I’m more annoyed that they actually made the velves proven failures that had to be saved from their own incompetence, but we are just supposed to trust that they can control the unconttollable forces of the void without going mad. The basic idea of velves was stupid. The way they were introduced was just insulting.

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wow lore tends to change sometimes, I remember a long time ago (maybe MOP) reading that Alleria got her bow from her father. Skip to legion and now i read Thas’dorah is from her mother

like…what?

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At least VElves may introduce some form of… internal dissension within the Alliance ? That’s not too much to ask I think is it ? I mean it would be absurd for their presence not to raise any sort of opposition whatsoever from the LF Draenei (and arguably Humans) for instance

I mean on paper I get that I should be on the side of the devs against some greedy corporations, etc. Yet when see this (some strong-ish language included):

I sadly think “well, the financial part of the company actually is the one that might change things”. I mean, it could become worse, sure, but it’s not a good enough reason to keep what is there currently.


gl hf

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You’d think. But that might actually be interesting, and we’re talking about the alliance here. Internal dissent is not allowed :wink:
Velves have special dialogue when they enter Stormwind’s cathedral but it doesn’t go further than that.

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Pretty sure Jaina was disgusted with Alleria’s way of torture. That’s another Interesting thing. They got In a huge argument over it.

But yeah the lore is a mess. They should’ve just given alliance high elves with unique hairstyles and blue tattoos. The whole “void” thing is a mess.

Now I only See Alleria as the new “Sylvanas”. The dark lady Windrunner leading a group of unwanted people, who are hated “almost” by both factions. Gee where did I read this story before?

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She was in Shadows Rising, true. But things that happen in books might never come up again. And in the end, Anduin convinced her that it was necessary and for a good cause…
tbh I quite like Void Elves. They are shady as they come, always reeling at the edge of insanity, did some quite messed up things in bfa. And Umbric has a pissed quote about Turalyon and Alleria that isn’t too friendly…

But yeah, probably nothing will come of it. Void Elves will be as tame as Worgen, practically High Elves with purple skin and nothing else. Pity.

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Oh the moment really made me give up when Ion said high elves are the same as blood elves then shoe horned in void elves for the alliance and then gave them the dam high elf options like it was all part of their plan.
clearly they do not understand their own lore anymore and dont care so i gave up, boid elves are intresting yes but to be a entire race, no they are not in any shape way or form big enough to be their own faction.

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