Are some people in the room with us right now?
I mean… yeah. The most notorious example of that attitude has posted a number of times in the thread already. Of course, I have them blocked for their general less-than-pleasant demeanour and views, but I’ve seen them quoted.
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There is literally one up-thread, so yes.
Can’t say I’m finding any post of the sort in this thread 
tragedy
also speaking of posters up in the thread atahalni please return to your old mog this new look isn’t you you are not cooking
I get that some people are tired of faction war.
But if you want to have a diplomatic approach and dare i say peace, first you need to give respect to the past tensions and hatred. Instead they are being completely written off as if they werent there at best and at worst, characters who are accurately depicted as still holding to grudges are depicted as villians to be killed by the PC.
Even through peace there will always be tensions with so much loaded history, and yes, degrees of conflict.
If anything something needs to be written to justify the existence of the factions.
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Yes, and no one said “Choosing Renewal” (
) was good either.
‘The Faction War has run its course and grown stale’ and ‘There needs to be more depth given to races/sub factions to show ongoing tensions and their current place in the current world’ are statements that can and should co-exist.
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Unfortunately, you can (and most people often do) say the exact same thing about most of Blizzard’s storytelling. Their lack of interest in fleshing out plots and substantiating the reasons for changes across the board is basically non-existant. The current peace is just another symptom of subpar writing.
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Without naming and shaming anyone in this thread, an example of someone who espouses this point of view is Bellular, who complains that World of Warcraft used to be so much more “metal” and violent and how that was better, and how all of the modern cinematics are too soft and involve too much talking and forgiveness, and there are some people in this thread who seem to agree with his point of view.
I can agree that the peaceful conflict resolution of Dragonflight feels rushed and can and should be done better, but there seem to be some people who are upset with literally any prospect of peaceful resolution at all, and really think that the setting would be better if it was much more violent and “metal,” though this might just be contrarian backlash against Dragonflight’s softer approach.
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Nah, these arguments have been made since long before Dragonflight was so much as announced.
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As mentioned by others, I think one of the problems with the setting is that the lore characters take too much space in the story overall. It wasn’t until Shadowlands (and maybe the end of BfA) where we saw our characters actually do something other than justing standing there. It would actually be nice if they reacted more, drew their weapon when threatened or even select a dialogue option of how do you want to do a thing: Either fight or flee.
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‘Rush’ is the true enemy that must be destroyed.
Give us slow-burn arcs. Give us world building, fleshing out, depth.
Not ‘BFA is going to cram at least three distinct story arcs flat and mash it into a singular expac and you are going to like it, Consumers’ 
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players see the faction war as an event that would have lasting repercussions on the characters and factions involved, shaping relationships from there on out
blizzard sees faction war as soccer matches that sometimes happen and result in basically “man funny how just last week we were fighting”
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“Oh hey! I haven’t seen you since the bonfire!”
“You mean the destruction of the kaldorei capital city that resulted in thousands of lives lost and many more displaced?”
“That’s the one! Ah, good times.”
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I don’t think the problem is that there are peaceful resolutions.
The problem is that seemingly EVERYTHING is having a peaceful resolution.
Vyranoth in the space of 2 minor patches went from ‘unleashing the Aspects darkest nightmares’ to being an absolute coward after she saw her buddy do his job as the villain. Not only this, but there’s seemingly 0 consequences to this decision. She literally rocked up and in 20 seconds became best buds with the dragons again.
Then there’s the absolute boring shambles that is the Dracthyr story that has 90% of the time been about Emberthal wollowing with Ebyssian and chasing after Sarkareth before absolutely fumbling the bag.
I want to play as a hero in World of Warcraft not as some background character to Alexstrasza’s Romcom
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You are absolutely right. And it is definetly part of what I meant when I asked ‘Where did the conflict go?’.
Conflict doesnt have to be open warfare but it has to at least be something that will encourage intetesting character development, overcoming obstacles and justify the existance of the factions (If blizzard doesnt intend on abolishing them altogether).
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I wonder what the popular phrase of that would be. Y’know, the equivalent to Joey’s “How you doin’?” from Friends or “Zimbabwe” from the Bing Boing Theory.
A triumphant roar echoes from atop the Seat of the Aspects as Nasz’uro, the Unbound Legacy is formed.
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This, and I’m very much personally in the camp that it has run its course. I understand it was a big appeal early on, and it was also an interesting part of the setting. But it’s been almost 30 years of Warcraft and almost 20 years of WoW and a large chunk of that has been war and faction conflicts. It feels really done. Atleast for the forseeable future.
I just want to see something else done with the setting and explore newer and fresher ideas.
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WoW’s idea of “slow-burn” is to end a storyline on a cliffhanger by having two characters say “We should talk in private” and not bring anything up again about it until the end of the next expansion.
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Imo some people just word it poorly BUT if there is too much forgiveness and too little conflict it is a problem, no? Narrative should be driven through conflicts and growth.
Instead, it feels like characters since BFA swap between whatever the narrative tells them to be. Suddenly, Voss is a pro-war character after being neutral for ages. As of DF, all of a sudden she’s best buddies with night elves. We don’t see an arc in which she moves from neutral anti-hero to pro-Forsaken, we don’t see an arc in which she moves from a forsaken leader to a diplomat. It is CHEAP to make character development like that and inevitably it will betray the previous character/how it was established.
Take Uther. He has a legit tragic arc and the answer to his unjust fate is to feel bad for Arthas? You’d think it would be about him being murdered, about him having to let go of the pain, of the anger to heal himself, because this grudge is eating him alive. Instead it is about feeling sad for someone who, until the very end, never asked to be forgiven. His arc is literally feeling sorry for wanting to kill one of the guys who tried to kill the entire world and raise them into undeath, and is also already gone from the setting. It doesn’t matter how they want to pull it off, do you think it will be satisfying?
Compassion is a very person-based term, how can you build a relationship through compassion if the other guy isn’t even there?
Since you mentioned the best game I have ever played in more than a decade, I will point out how there all characters are windows that allow me to see both their individuality and their group’s culture at large.
There isn’t Shadowheart’s story, which happens to be in the universe of Faerun. There is her story which, in turn, helps me understand, yes, her character, but also how the sharrans think and act.
World of Warcraft used to deliver that - Garrosh and Thrall were, for example, vehicles to address two visions in the Horde. That of the shaman, and that of the warrior. But as of now you will have a hard time finding cultural variables in characters. Everyone preaches the same thing and values the same thing. Was any orc even happy that Saurfang got a honorable, proud orc warrior’s death? Isn’t Jaina basically a modern woman? Isn’t Baine a progressive man wearing some fur and a couple of horns? etc etc.
Anyway, I’m writing too much. I am just saying…
This line alone sums up what when wrong when the setting did go wrong.
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do you have an example what you would like to see? Because I can imagine that some people at blizzard thought the same but “new and fresh” to them only means pulling the next colour scheme from the cosmic chart.
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