Already soft rectoned in the Illidan novel
Yeah, I know. And for good reason. Should be hard rectoned though.
didn’t Legion retcon it with Illidan surviving and Illidari being misunderstood
Legion did some retcon yes, but BC did so much damage that the only thing that can fixes all the messes would be to reveal that it was a fever dream of Maeiv or something like this.
Lol, she dreamed Illidan died only for the Legion to come and remember “Oh yea, I had to imprison him.”
Still, every retcon is possible as long as it fits the next expac and would improve the game.
Most of the damage is already done at this point, unfortunately. I think it’d be better of the development team just kept things as they are and used something like Season of Discovery to take the game in a different direction.
For me, the issues with the game go right back to the first expansion where Kael’thas, Lady Vashj and Illidan were unceremoniously killed off and hit with the villain bat. It was the portrayal of Blood Elves in Warcraft 3 that made me want to invest in the game and they were very swiftly ‘redeemed’ in a way that eroded away a lot of their grit and appeal.
YES. I second this.
The treatment of the Illidaris at BC was pure garbage. All of them are so out of character. It’s just… not them. They’re nothing like the characters in Frozen Throne we used to like.
That’s a shame. An Illidaris faction with Vaash, Kael’thas and Illidan at Legion would have been so cool.
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DF is terrbile too and feels really out of touch if we go directly from BfA. We had total war, lots of people killed on both sides. And next expansion everything is all sunshine and daises?
Night elves being buddies with Forsaken
Worgen being buddies with Forsaken
Zandalari Gushing over night elves, yes, these Zandalari. The ultimate racial supremacists among trolls.
Darkspears babysitting Kul’Tirans - of all people.
Blood elves gushing over humans (wait, that’s nothing new).
And all the leaders coming together by the end Avengers style.
And everyone acting as if they were lobotomized.
Delete it all.
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To be honest, at this point I don’t even care anymore that they threw all faction animosity out of the window. I just want them to replace it with… well, any conflict that’s not based on people just being randomly evil like Primalists, Firedruids and the current iteration of Scarlets, or easily resolved by having an emotional talk about it, like the Black Dragon succession, the Dragonkin rebellion and Vyranoth. And it would really, really help, if those conflictes weren’t just resolved in one expansion and then forgotten.
That might be the most valuable thing the factions brought to the story: A long-term conflict where the devs at least attempted to write two sides to every story. I guess that they made sure the players were primed to justify everything their team did, even if the devs hadn’t included the justification, had some part in it, too.
Now everything is just hollow. We have “let’s go adventuring and having fun!” and “cosmic forces are shifting the balance, heroes like we want to stop such things”, and pretty much nothing in between. And where a Classic+ could have delivered a more oldschool style Warcraft story, Season of Discovery instead builds in stuff like Xal’athath to prime us for their retail plot. Jay.
Right now, I’d be pretty willing to accept any halfway good conflict story they could think of, without looking at the continuity too much… But I think even with those meager expectations I am bound to be disapoointed, since the discontinuities in the story only seem to be used to make any conflict less plausible and relevant, not more.
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Although a pure adventuring expansion that focuses on local quest zones and building up mechanics without any overarching plot could be good. Maybe use it to set up plot lines that can branch out and create their own expansions down the line.
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I think they believe that that is what they did with Dragonflight. Yes, there was a “main plot”, but almost all of it was irrelevant. Most of the content was exploring the islands, getting to know their stories, helping with their problems, and defeating some random evil. It’s just that the locals were mostly the dragon swarms. The real main plot is supposed to restart with the Worldsoul Saga, as I understood it, and I don’t really expect much beyond Iridikion to carry over. Blizzard heard what you said, and that was their attempt to answer you.
I don’t mean to say that doing the localized adventuring was the problem here… but it certainly isn’t the solution, since that’s already in there.
I kinda like feeling like an adventurer in the story , but DF failed to deliver that .
Classic is THE example of good on the ground adventure plots .
Every zone is unique and has it’s own story and you really feel like you are just a guy traveling and showing up to get some quick gold / thrills .
Killing the Defias , putting down Zanzil in STV , doing the safari quest with Nessigwary , uncovering secrets and finding bones of washed up creatures in Darkshore . All of that felt far more interesting than whatever plots all DF zones had .
I think it boils down to the following :
In classic you do not crusade for good . You help out and find things . Some are shady others not . Everyone has their own problems and they are just trying to solve them
In DF you are JUSTICE incarnate . You have come to put ORDER in things and get everyone TOGETHER .The game tells you those guys are bad - FETCH- and you go do it . Good boy , now we are all friends . Not to mention all that pseudo emotional sap , that any 3rd rate movie tries to fill the gaps in it’s story telling . Do the story writers really think that showing a close up of someone’s face sniffing , crying and ALL SO TORN by the IMMENSE BURDEN of his/her useless soul dilemma , gonna make for a compelling and enjoyable story? That is literally what a soap opera does to fill 3000 episodes .
To me DF feels like a gap filler .
It’s like the devs / story writers are told by management :
“Fill these 2 years with something , ANYTHING and finish up the current plots . I Do not care how . Just do it .”
Hopefully they are doing this to actually buy time so that they can write a good plot and make a great game for the next expansion . We had something like this in WoD , when we had huge content draught and cut corners with the story . After that we got Legion , which was fairly neat .
Naturally we can’t forget the whole accusation by Microsoft thing , which is bound to create a lot of problem as things are reorganized and new management enters the picture .
To me personally , if the next expansion fails to deliver , this will mean that WoW is basically done for .
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Far too much damage has been done to the World of Warcraft for it to ever be undone.
The Helm of Domination was turned into a Fairy Burger King Crown.
Arthas was reduced to a wisp. Sylvannas legacy was destroyed removed agency from her with her redemption story. Forcing the jailer into the WoW setting. That he was the mastermind behind everything. Devastated over a decade of story telling.
Just have to learn from it’s mess and try to improve.
A healer is not the same as a necromancer. Once the person died there is nothing left to be done. Accept your limitations.
Honestly I don’t entirely mind parts of Shadowlands. Ardenweald and Revendreth, those two afterlives I’m alright with them keeping around and referencing, it’s more Oribos, Bastion and the place that looks like they expanded Naxx’s plague quarter to a zone wide extent that I want them to forget.
There were genuinely some fun characters in those zones along with afterlife aspects that don’t utterly break the Azerothian belief systems but instead compliment them and I did feel like the story was at it’s strongest in those areas. So I don’t mind seeing Moonberry come calling or seeing the odd cowled figure from Revendreth visiting the mortal planes now that the way has been opened because they do just feel like they belong in the greater setting.
Bastion and Maldraxxus though? Yeah, those areas I will happily forget exist.
The concept of visiting the realm of the dead as a physical place and reintroducing dead characters was already the dealbreaker for me. It just devalues the concept of death in general. That they tied it to Warlords-level transdimensional nonsense was the icing on the cake. The zones themselves were never the main problem, from a story perspective.
Funnily enough, I enjoyed how unapologetically Metal Maldraxxus was most, followed by Bastion, that at least tried top look like it had depth. Ardenweald was my biggest letdown. Instead of a magical fairy forest my experience was with dusty bug holes. Jay. But just like with WoD, this addon had already failed me with its premise, so the rest of the story didn’t matter that much to me.
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Shadowland was and still is the best expansion, too bad they had to cut it so much, and then put chuncks of it into Dragoflight. Id rather have Shadowlands 2 expansion.
Hmm, maybe if they implemented Shadowlands over a few expansions it would have given it more depth. Every zone there has potential to be an expansion of it’s own due to potential scale and the fact its the afterlife. As side zones we could have had some minor afterlifes for the rest of the souls.
I’d say retcon BfA, Shadowlands and Dragonflight and have The War Within Start post Legion.
DF isn’t that bad but it still has ties dating back to BfA and Sl so it kinda has to go.
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