In Battle for Azeroth we had one every 5 minutes. Sure, some re-used assets since most of them featured Saurfang. But still.
I was expecting one at the end of Sanctum of Domination, but all we got was a cutscene-style clip. 
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Iâm just as surprised as you, especially after we waited for so long.
But the sylvanasâ fate was not even the worst, Iâm okay with that, although it would have been nice to get a proper cinematic like âold soldierâ.
The one that featured garrosh was unbelievably garbage. Itâs a joke that this is the quality that blizzard can provide in 2021. It truly feels like a time travel to play with this game. 2004 called and wants his animations back.
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I wonder if it is Covid related. I believe those live action cinematics require actors in those body tracking suits if I recall from the Anduin interview when they did the BfA one.
With everyone in lockdown I guess it hasnt been possible so maybe they switched over to in-game asset cinematic when lockdown hit.
Plus I wonder if WOWâs budget has been hammered as well. I would hope not considering WOW is still making a profit I believe but you never know.
I doubt weâll have that kind of quality in SL.
Something they finally managed to do in BFA was to involve your character in the cinematics (back in 8.3 iirc) and I think thatâs their focus for SL. (We killed Nzoth, not a lore character like in legion & older xpacks)
Thatâs a shame really, despite the dubious quality of the war campaign the cinematics were amazing
âWith everyone jabbed already and half of the world reopening borders and facilities and officesâ you mean? 
we are not at the levels of last year and remember that in 2020 they gave us 8.3 exactly during the early stages of the pandemic and they worked on Shadowlands as well
Yes but it takes months sometimes even years to make the live action cinematics. That is why they are so costly. Considering we were in lockdown for most of 2020 I can see how it would be difficult to make live action cinematics and why they would switch to in-game ones as a result.
I dunno if that is the case, I could be wrong. I just know the live action ones are costly and time consuming to make.
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Good point, actually. I hadnât thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. Major corporations couldnât even get their employees equipped with decent webcams for WFH during 2020, so not being able to use a full studio for these kinds of cinematics seems right.
I wish theyâd make make up for it with other material though, like that Legion radio play they did. VA is pretty easy to do from home. Maybe more comics?
Personally I prefer the in game ones, they feel more connected to the game. The cinematic characters never look like the in game models.
Much of the states in USA had weak lockdowns compared to Europe, even the more liberal minded states didnât have tough ones. In the UK actors could go out and do their business.
Those things are planned way, way in the future. When they started doing the BfA stuff no one knew, a corona was something you drunk.
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I agree.
I thought the sylvanas one was very good. Didnt think anything of it.
First time i saw the garrosh clip, i thought it was some meme vid some kid made. I did not realise it was legit. Awful quality.
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I think WoW got a treat in Battle for Azeroth because Blizzard didnât really have much else that demanded the cinematics teamâs attention, so WoW could just gobble it all up.
Now itâs different. Now the cinematics team is working on remastering the Diablo II cinematics. Theyâve made those announcement cinematics for Diablo Immortal and Diablo IV. And Diablo Immortal has its own in-game cinematics, and Diablo IV will likely have that too.
So WoW gets to share the cinematics team with the other games now. That means less cinematics.
What will release first: Star Citizen or Diablo Immortal?
Diablo players are patient when it comes to title releases. Itâs a taught virtue. Painfully taught.
I found the animation in that one to be pretty poor overall for a Blizzard cinematic. In BFA they added extra animations for the likes of Malfurion for the in-engine cinematic for Darkshore. But the Garrosh clip looked like it was quickly cobbled together with a minimal amount of effort. That bit with the chains on his wrist⌠Urgh⌠At least the voice acting was great.
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Fiasco* Immortal. Although bits of Star Citizen are technically playable now so it really depends on your definition of âreleasedâ.
* Autocorrect did that with my swipey keyboard but I found it funny so Iâve left it as is.
I was not the only one then. I couldnât stop looking at the mouth animation, like 
Do they not have axcess to their studios or⌠what happened? It is so bad.
There sure is a LONG way between the AMAZING cinematics in BFA, and this⌠abomenation.
I have just discovered this:
It makes me wonder why there was just one person assigned to create this cinematic.
It was probably a last minute idea.
Indeed.
Was it just me or were all the cut scenes poor quality? Like mouth movement seemed worse than ever, Sylvanas turns into a blob when she does a backflip⌠felt like Blizz have fallen on hard times, no decent devs and no money.
Not just cut scenes, you can see where theyâve seriously cut corners to rush 9.1 out. Look at the Anduin/jaina/Thrall fight during sylvanas fight. We were watching limit doing it on heroic all the guild on discord. Iâve honestly never laughed so hard in my entire life, we were all in tears on discord.
They just run a round in circles really wonky swinging weapons. Trying to run off the platform but getting pinged back from the invisble wall. Half the time they were running opposite directions for no reason. It legit looked like a fight scene from the ps1 days, just awefully scripted and coded.