But it feels its just going to go downhill, with Metzen saying everything is “democratic” so every little blue haired hormonal goblin in the studio shoves their DEI stuff into the lore.
Faerin is painful to listen to, all of her lines are horrid, and the Hallowfall main questline is a joke.
I am an undead which is:
Giving emotional support to Alleria: “you can count on us if you need to talk” sht
Serving drinks to the Alliance leaders
Playing with orphans
Seeing Faerin be all proud of her missing arm and saying no to a practical improvement
Listening Anduin cry about everything and basically… saying he isnt really the king of Stormwind? WTF
Oh and lets not forget witnessing the family failure Magni and Moira are…
Can’t we just stage an uprising, kill Calia, and blight the whole of Azeroth?
Does not matter what he or anyone else says, Blizzard won’t function if the money does not keep flowing in. The DEI stuff, it was a mistake. The erroneous assumption that this stuff brings in revenue, which was, in fact, the opposite. Simply said, not sustainable.
So unless they want to market the game exclusively to the California crowd, then they have to change it up.
Feelings in hallways have been a writing trope emerged in the last decade or so this is what some do when they want to use someone else IP to tell their own story.
Feelings in hallways tends to slow things down instead of addressing one issue or another, lengthy discussions into “how it makes you feel”. A lot of Anduin and Faerin Lothars interactions are Feelings in Hallways.
Netflix version of Resident Evil 2022 is an example of this and yes it is another Woke failure as they race swapped Albert Wesker.
Resident Evil is meant to be about the epic struggles of the survivors against powerful zombies and endless Hordes of Undead.
Be thankful. Although you are an Undead abomination nobody is calling for DEI undead. No LGBT Undead or pushing for more “Diverse” Undead. Instead of calls for “Death to the Living!” they can talk about intersectional feminism and how Undeath is not an excuse to push for patriarchal norms or something.
I am waiting for catch up mechanics at this point. Will get geared then spend the expansion killing Horde players in Orgrimmar or something.
Honestly, thats why I guess they have abandoned undead lore, cause they’re not easily made into DEI without an even greater exodus from the game.
But we also got our DEI hire Calia, undead of the light and mary sue that seems to lead the council. Just her model shows how she’s bigger than others and aways places at the centre…
But they did DEI the hell out of the Forsaken. Just like they did to the orcs. They were too threatening, becasue the forsaken were, are, insane and I guess they tought it was racist or something, I don’t know, basically it had the potential of offending someone so they turned the Forsaken into sad zombies who just sort of exist and not much else, when before the Forsaken were hated undead who used the corpses of their enemies to replenish their numbers and that was not ok with… someone. So Calia came along to fix the Forsaken. Now, everyone accepts them, they aren’t crazy, just sad zombies who fear hugs.
Same with the orcs. Golden got on them the moment she came to power. Too much testosterone. Toxic masculinity. And if Golden hates something more than the Horde it’s toxic masculinity. She said it on social media, go look. Baine was her man of choice to fight toxic masculinity and that character ended up as a pathetic, Alliance loving, double-crossing coward.
So yeah, while they don’t ask for diversity among the Forsaken, they already DEI-ed them in another way.
I admit I was not ever into Forsaken so with their Lore I am out of my depth.
The Menethil name has been hated since Arthas and the Scourge destroyed Lordaeron. But the living survivors of the Forsaken has been ignored. Except for the book “Before the Storm” (before the 4th war started during Battle for Azeroth) where Anduin and Sylvannas let the Lordaereons and Forsaken family members have a pow wow before the Forsaken thought to make a break for it and then taken out by Sylvannas. It was there that Calia Menethil was murdered by Sylvannas.
Seems that the Forsaken power scaling was up and down for a bit. They went from needing the Horde to be saved from annhiliation and convincing a reluctant Thrall to let them in. To being powerful enough to mess with Stormwind - Gilneas rivalry - Kul Tirans.
The Orcish clans as they exist now. Not the Maghar newcomers. They seem…Domesticated somehow. Like a once proud wild horse whose spirit has been broken and wont leave the stable without its owners permission even with the stable door open and unattended.
The Orc Heritage Armour quest all but confirmed that.
But Lilian Voss was viscious in Battle for Azeroth as she and Rexxar made the war against Kul Tirans personal.
A long time has passed from the fall of Lordaeron. Calia the new comer won’t be widely accepted even if the Forsaken reject Sylvannas.
The desolate council was a terrible idea though. As is the Horde council.
It’s a shame. As Scourge the Forsaken are supposed to be threatening. I think they killed of the Scourge in Northrend or something. How they ruined the Helm of Domination still gets to a lot of people. the Fairy Princess Tiara…
This is the issue. This “modern audience” that activists that infiltrate and infest industry after industry trying to appeal to. Why can’t they save the IP that is dying in their absence??
You can point to example after example but some just think you’re gloating.
Concord dead 14 days after release. Sony pulled the plug and gave refunds. Meant to be a “hero shooter” but Duchess is an old Chinese woman. Who wants to play an old Woman in what is supposed to be a Hero shooter?
Its Pregnant Spiderwoman all over again White and Black Women. Yeah that’s exciting an 8 month pregnant lady webslinging and fighting crime.
Dustborn mechanics is literally removing the “disinformation” from people’s brains and calling people r4ci$ts…
Why play FANTASY races just to be reminded of everyday people? These “diverse” Elves are becoming more common. Like Dragon Age Veilguard just has Black and Asian humans with pointy ears. Nothing Elf like among them.
Activists that call themselves games devs do things without thinking of the audience or that it actually has to sell.
Why should the WoW players maintain their subscriptions? A lot of Final Fantasy 14 players moved from WoW. Even if they don’t go to Final Fantasy what are WoW players sticking around for?
Hope that there will be a course correction? People tend to quadruple down on DEI and ESG until they kill the game / intellectual property / brand name.
Not everything can be repaired either. For example Disney’s idea to bring back Luke Skylwalker can not work. Not after the Last Jedi 2017 where they thoroughly ruined Luke Skywalkers character.
That is sad but I can see this happening. My first main was an orc warlock then i jumped to maining undead warlock as a teenager and stayed as such for the rest of vanilla wow.
When they introduced blood elves to horde I swapped to alliance thinking elves dont belong to the horde and their savage image is being tarnished(yes, ironic im posting this on a semi active blood elf character i know).
Side note about Baine
There is one particular moment that stuck with me from Shadowlands.
In Shadowlands you rescue both, Baine and Jaina from Torghast.
Except there is a bit of a flavour added to the scenes once you free them. Jaina breaks herself free and looks at you as if she did not need your help in the first place.
Baine is drugged and needs to be almost carried out. WoWs writing and storytelling is riddled with these little “details”. But this one stuck with me because… Baines meant to be a tauren chieftain but of course the girlboss is the one who cannot be held down by chains. Not the literally closest thing we have to the Hulk.
You’ve got a solid point here. I’m just wondering, how do you deal with these kinds of things? I love WoW and in no small part due to nostalgia (and I’ve got old questlines that I still need to play through, like all of Legion), but it bothers me they’re destroying the old WoW culture in favour of woke bs, and at times feel like I should unsub and leave, but again, I do like playing WoW looking beyond the new woke narrative.
You can, I mean for a while, but this won’t last forever. This woke stuff, it’s been proven it does not work. The people that get off on this crap are not that many and the rest are rather annoyed by it. Not a winning formula. I think we haven’t started seeing the change because the stuff coming out today was worked on during the woke period, if that makes sense?
The question is that how many titles - studios - intellectual properties have to die before they understand it does not work.
Point to Concord - Dead in 14 days. It won’t work. People doing redesigns of Concord characters won’t ressurect a dead game.
Saint’s Row Reboot - Ubisoft might not survive if both Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a stinker - Bethesda’s reputation did not really recover from Starfield, Not even Elder Scrolls can pull them from that whole. Volition studios is gone. Dustborn and Flintlocke won’t have paying customers lining up.
Have seen this happening with the Comics Industry in the West. Comic stores owners desperately needed Comics to sell. But Woke activists kept putting out garbage that won’t. Many comic book stores closed forever.
Disney removed the Acolyte from their merch store as that does not sell.
DEI / ESG does not sell. They refuse to accept this.
I think the fact that most of the woke crap sunk is a clear message that it’s not a working formula. I think the stuff that’s being worked on, today, is either free of this woke crap, or reduced it a lot.
The smartest thing Blizzard could do now is to focus more on non-human characters to avoid all the mine-fields. For example: Elves are pretty much matriarchies, and nobody cares. Draenei seem to lean on the more patriarchic side, and nobody cares. Orcs also tend to have male leaders, and it’s not an issue, because if someone cares about DEI for Orcs, they’re not gonna be happy with anything in life, as every wolf pack or bee hive is gonna upset them. Zandalari Trolls also seem to have stronger women than men, and nobody complains.
That’s why I recommend Blizzard to really focus on the fantasy races in the game, because they allow for creative freedom without all these political guidelines. If so many creative decisions have a political undertone, it is just destroying the fantasy-aspect, so better to just completely avoid it, and ignore the human characters, until this weird culture war is over. Both sides are weird here btw, not only one side.
I suspect Faerin was toned down. Obviously I have no real proof of that but the cinematic version carried a much different vibe to what we ended up getting in-game. I think she was ‘softened’ and the amount of prominence in the story was scaled back at some point in development.
It doesn’t help that these characters are very often just a fetish and/or self insert. The Elder Scrolls Online recently revealed a ‘non-binary’ companion that will be added to the game in the coming months.
I highly doubt players asked in large numbers for that and the reaction was very mixed - but of course on both the official forum and the game’s sub-reddit the discussions were locked to prevent further feedback from being left.
To Blizzard’s credit, this thread has at least been left open.
I didn’t realize a lot of people took issue with this until I came to the forum. But honestly - I have noticed it . The females are all strong, powerful, girl-bosses, with deep voices and aggressive lines, and the males are mainly silly, evil, stupid or much more chill. If it weren’t for Thrall and others being established characters, I think they would have been written the same. If this was an effort to combat stereotypes, I think it failed, because it’s jarring and parodic.
Purchasing trends shows that people are purchasing old games and not new or “modern” titles. The same thing happened with the Comics industry. Purchases of older comics the before the rise of Wokeness stuff, older comics outselling the new or “modern” titles.
Orcs are actually incredibly masculine so this is not what they are aiming for. Elves are not Matriarchal at all. Male Night Elves were almost all Druids they were away in the dream so the female Sentinels held the fort but Malfurion Stormrage took charge. Draenai followed Velen and the Naaru.
No no Zandalari Trolls did not have stronger females at all. Blizzard is about to do to the Zandalari Trolls and turn them into the Blood Trolls. Talanji might be queen but it should not be a Matriarchy.
The Blizzard development team seems openly hostile to masculinity and masculine themes.
This is the death of escapasism. Allegedly the Forsaken have fallen victim to DEI/ESG initiatives. The Gnomes - Dwarves - Blood & Void Elves have been “diversified” fantasy races now clear reminders of the real world.
Faerin looks to be more at home as part of the roster of Concord. The Lothar name was made famous with the accomplishments - sacrifice of others through extraordinary times. It feels like a DEI race swap. To explain from the Halo franchise the Keyes family are well known among the playerbase. However in the failed tv show they race swapped the Keyes family.
If what you said is true that Wokeness came to Elder Scrolls. Then there is nothing left that can redeem Bethesda as a games studio.
They are already on life support but chose to quadruple down.
some comments have already been removed though. But an echo chamber will not help.
The failure of the Woke activists is that they can not see the world outside of their politics and ideology.
Strong females can exist without making them masculine.
Sarah Connor from the terminator franchise before 2015 was a strong feminine character.
The “modern” day perception of “strong female character” are just males with female bodies. The gender swapped Mr Freeze type of Su1c1de squad kills the justice league type.
A land full of girl bosses and they are as subtle as a sledgehammer to the nose.
In the past - you had lines of SI7 soldiers humans gnomes elves dwarves a mix of males and females in all roles as you salute them.
Now the female Earthern Dwarves to the front while the males are essentially at the back of the bus. The Blood Trolls openly oppressed the males of their society. Bit more subtle with Earthern Dwarves the few males you do see look like they could have come from a Pride parade.
