Perhaps its a futile attempt but giving my personal ‘hot take’ about what is wrong with the setting these days. Feel free to read.
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- The deterioration of the ‘war’ in warcraft. - why is there no more conflict in my fantasy setting?
- The loss of meaning in factions and loss of faction pride. - their original identities and their collapse into meaninglessness.
I mean, if you want the world to be never-changing, characters never-learning and the whole thing to get stale and boring then, sure, I guess?
Personally, given they botched BFA (Old Gods who?) the last gasp of the faction war as a primary driving force for the narrative has run its course. Given, again, the messing around in BFA it won’t die entirely, but quite honestly it was bordering on background noise by the end of Legion and should have been allowed to retire at the proper time.
Also, I yet again comment on my dislike for the fact that the original devs choosing ‘World of Warcraft’ as a logical meta and IP continuation name for a series/franchise is STILL being used as a clumsy beatstick for inane reasons.
It’s just a name. Complain about ‘World of Peacecraft’ as many times as you need to get it out of your system, but at the end of the day it has nothing to do with the setting and the narrative, as an entirely Meta term.
Also also, we’re still murder-hobo’ing our way across new and exciting lands, so I struggle to see what exactly has changed? As I cut up ten more boar [Rear Ends] to hand in as a side quest.
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Besides, there is plenty of war and conflict going on in Azeroth. Like, constantly.
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I feel my eyes roll to the back of my head whenever someone whines ‘LOL WORLD OF PEACECRAFT!!!’
Like sorry Mr Human Male Paladin #223414 and Mr Orc Warrior #42193 that you’re not getting your constant drip-feed of Horde/Alliance stomping but continuous Faction War themes gets stale.
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What did I do? 
I am not reading all that
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I actually agree with everything you stated except for the faction war. As Kaytlinne said, I think the faction wars have run their course.
But yes, most of what you mentioned is spot on and I appreciate how much time you’ve spent writing it down. Frankly, I don’t think it will change anything and I am losing hope for the setting each passing day, but hey, always nice to see an old diehard fan.
I should at some point stop procrastinating and write my own retrospective on Warcraft in the style of Shamus Young’s excellent Mass Effect retrospective.
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You know what you did.
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Atleast human paladins don’t make me feel like my toon has been tossed into Zootropolis. There, I’ve said it! HUH!
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I think it’s simply the case that… Wherever you got on-board the warcraft train.
For me it was Warcraft 2
For some it was Warcraft 3,
Then wow, and whatever expansions.
Between all of them there’s been a large number of changes, in leadership, in developers, in direction.
Once I felt the game was marketed to me in specific, since basically everything about the setting lined with what I viewed exciting.
And that’s no longer the case. The game is made for players who do enjoy Dragon Aspects stoically mourning for 30 second cinematics, who enjoy Dracthyr for their aesthetics, etc.
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Greetings, fellow old person. I jumped on with Warcraft 1, back when we thought graphics like that were good. W2 was honestly a better game though.
I kinda wish we had days of simple, straightforward plots like that again.
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Whether it’s futile or not, depends entirely on what you want to achieve. Looks to me like you’re interested in starting a discussion, and you’ll probably succeed in that.
There’s a lot to unpack in your long post, and I agree with many things, but as someone said in the general discussion thread - the world must change, the lore must move forward. The faction war has been done to death, there isn’t anything interesting to derive from continuing it. The well-established and beloved villain factions have been utterly defeated, and to resurrect the Legion or Scourge again only serves to diminish them and reduce them to cartoon villains who get blasted off into the distance every sunday.
The Jailer was a wholly unsuccessful villain, and the Primalists didn’t work as well as they could, but at the end of the day, I’d rather have new villainous factions than pick up the old ones and beat them up one more time. This is a symptom of an aging game - there isn’t anywhere else to go but invent new things.
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I’ll be honest, the argument around taking the single Zandalari joining Tyr’s Guard and conflating it as a representative of every Zandalari and the changing of their culture never makes sense to me, doubly so coming from the people who are arguing against the homogenisation of races, classes, and cultures.
You’re shown one (1) individual outlier who I guarantee that OP can’t name off the top of their head without looking them up join an organisation. There’s no evidence of every Zandalari worshiping Tyr, or of any indication that this is a widespread movement in their society. It’s not High Prelate Rata, or any other higher ranking Zandalari who is an actual figurehead of their society. It’s one outlier who you’ve never heard of before who doesn’t utter a single line of dialogue about bringing Tyr worship back to Zandalar.
When you’re blowing it out of proportions and conflating them to represent the whole and crying how Zandalar has fallen and millions must die, you’re inadvertently arguing in favour of that homogenisation (of which there’s no evidence) of their racial identity happening.
it’s highly bizarre
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He is based, that’s what he did.
I feel part of the issue with the conflict between the factions is that Blizzard can only do it at an extreme and has only done it at an extreme from Cataclysm onwards. It has repeatedly been an all-consuming cyclical narrative that everyone is frustrated with because it’s practically the same story we’ve had with a different layer of paint since Warcraft 2. Each time the stakes are raised because nothing else is innovated or changed, the narratives they have told have loosely followed something from 1995. Horde ploughs into the Alliance, magic deus ex machine optional, Alliance takes a beating, Horde splinters and infights, Alliance mop up. I also think what hurts it, is Blizzard’s reluctance to ever paint the Alliance as an aggressor; Varian declaring war being retconned is a good example.
There’s so much more they could do. Conflict doesn’t have to be the factions destroying world trees with demolishers, a close up of a sad orc lamenting that that the war he agreed was inevitable was le bad or faction leaders shouting “ENOUGH”.
It could simply be Stromgarde funding a disgruntled sect of the Stormpike to cause trouble in Alterac and Hillsbrad, all under the table. It could be blood elves conducting a heist on Dalaran to reclaim Felo-melorn. You get my point.
Unironically, a lull of peace and some gentle time-skips is needed to heal the setting and for the world to advance beyond the legacy of BFA/Shadowlands. The setting needs to breathe. With that said, I don’t think the world (Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor) is going to get much development or advancement save for throwaway snippets in painfully mediocre books.
Edit: Because I saw Elly typing, it’s also baffling how they generate conflict and never raise it again - it’s just utterly dropped and forgotten. Death Knights killing red dragons or attacking the Paladin order, for example. Surely, there would have been some lingering repercussions over that? Eh.
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It’s essentially a slippery slope argument.
Observing the limelight these outliers are being given in an expansion determined to smooth over cultural distinctions in the name of renewal and co-operation – thus fearing its a trend of things to come?
I personally get that, but I also agree there’s no concrete evidence.
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TBC when they made the Draenei pretty and restored the Sunwell was when the setting went wrong.
While I don’t disagree with the overarching point, it’s important to understand - unironically - that representation matters.
This is the sole Zandalari paladin we’ve seen do basically anything Paladin-y. The Zealots in BfA, for however much they were hyped, mostly just stood around and looked pretty. It doesn’t help that their status years after Rezan’s death is still a big questionmark in the air.
For those who wanted more Zandalari paladin stuff, this is the only thing they’ve had, and - given the current trajectory of the story - likely the only thing they will have for a long, long time. It’s not hard to understand why some may take that and extrapolate it because they’re feeling their buzz being harshed, much in the same way that NElves were decidedly peeved with Delas Moonfang being the sole representative of Night Elf ‘paladins’.
It’s also not without merit to be concerned about individual faction uniqueness becoming utterly blended into a grand overarching “class” narrative. For however good Legion was, we saw it a great deal - especially with Priests and Paladins. Much has been said about the handling of the Sunwalkers.
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Another example would be orc priests; they only got something unique due to backlash. Blizzard would have, 100%, had them be as generic as can be if it wasn’t for that. You would have had orcs speaking like Northshire monks.
Homogenisation hit fairly hard in Cataclysm, it hit hard in Legion, I think it’s fairly justified for people to be a bit wary.
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Wariness I can understand. Having seven way discord arguments with chronically outraged talking heads over how, no, they havent retconned “all Zandalari lore” is a different thing. The single Zandalari Tyr’s Guard whose name nobody remembers off the top of their head without looking it up is not representative of all Zandalari everywhere, and it doesnt retcon every single piece of lore ever written about them.
“but knowing blizzard…” but until they do, it doesnt matter
i won the 7v1 btw
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