Well you didn’t specify this in your original post. I agree with you on this.
Perhaps the audience of this game is now too young and sheltered to understand this.
Sorry I didn’t experience the cold war.
But just because our generation didn’t experience it, doesn’t mean we don’t have similar hardships to deal with. Just take a look at the UK and their horrific government, Germany’s weak, new chancellor, Russia-Ukraine etc. The list goes on.
You say it adapted to a modern audience? Wrong. The old audience is very much still around. The game choose to cater to younger, more spend-happy audience with lower standards. And it pays the bills so that’s where we are.
Factually speaking, I’d say that obviously the old audience is still around, not all of them are dead yet; but fact of the matter is that more people are born every day, more potential WoW players every single day. So, wouldn’t you say that that’s what the franchise has to do in order to survive today?
Just look at the crappy new mobile game that’s coming out; who tf of us WoW players actually cares? Well, I’ll tell you who. The kids that grew up on clash of clans and whatnot. They’ll play it and pay for all the micro transactions.
Yes, that’s where we’re headed and where we are, and one might say it’s sad, but we should be at least a little thankful. Without people like them and us, the game would be dead.
And let’s face it, you’re still gonna play the game, no matter what happens to it. Because you’re addicted like everybody else. Like, how many times has Asmongold complained about the state of things for example? And I’m just gonna go ahead and call him “old audience”. He’s still playing.
Anyways, I’m just gonna write this off as another “wow is dead” and “dragonflight will be the last expansion” forum post and happily unsubscribe from this forum. Jesus christ.
DF seems to do fine with expanding on historical lore, the teasy bits and ingame texts are intriguing enough for speculation that goes beyond the “see what they are ruining now” that we had during the whole of Shadowlands.
DF’s main plot seems fine so far, but we are only on the first patch, and most of the max level content was deliberately kept encrypted, so we’ll see about that. There will likely be surprises, for good or ill.
DF’s side quests… well, that’s where the discussion about the tone comes in. Cute animals and children are a very, very common part of the experience, as is helping lovers with their courting or their weddings. Remember that side quest where you saved that cute little Tuskarr and carried it on your back during the Dracthyr starting experience? That’s the first example DF has given the life game now, but it really is very far from the only. People who like it find it charming. People who liked more war in warcraft find it offputting. And that seems inevitable.
The side quests and daily/world quests seems like a hard thing to balance thematically. There is nothing wrong with having a heartfelt thing here and there, but the concern here is probably that they’d overdo it. Blizz is really hit and miss on what the PC is trying to accomplish or why they even care, if they nail it the grumbling won’t be nearly as bad from the less than pleased side.
We’ve seen the beta, though. And the side quests weren’t kept hidden. So I am quite confident in saying that at least as far as I’m concerned, they don’t.
I’ve admittedly kept myself fairly light on beta details outside some of the really big stuff, but that sucks. Just got to hope it won’t be as bad as the Tortollan dailies xD
No, it wasn’t. There were dark parts to it, but you’re talking about the game in which Samwise inserted himself as a panda. Among other things. Warcraft has always been a rather goofy game, a lighter copy/paste of Warhammer. And the cringe has always been part of it. Starting with the design of weapons and armour. We were just younger and less aware of certain things, finding it easier to enjoy them. Though the story telling was slightly better, there was more focus on the overall setting and games like the RTS series offered better means by which to tell a story and create characters. But I’ll get back to that later.
Gender stereotypes would also say men should rather hit the gym than play, but eh.
Though this is the part in which you might actually have a valid point. There is a certain ignorance of the world in which these characters are supposed to be living in. A world tormented by war, almost destroyed on a number of times by different kinds of magic and all that breeds a certain type of people. And it only shows how much do the people writing these stories and these character fail to comprehend how people work. Such a world would not breed many happy pacifists. There would also be a lot of distrust for magics (like in Knaak’s books, for example) and people who are different or outside the tribe. Tribalism would be a big thing and even in real life we have people hating on each other for nationalities and ethnicities due to historical conflicts and deep anxieties, nevermind actually different races in a fantasy setting afflicted by war between said races.
‘Representation’ does seem to be the only thing that modern Blizzard focuses on. You see it as a keyword in most interviews and all.
It is what it is, however, as Blizzard is a company and their purpose is to make money. That also means appealing to a larger audience. It’s also the fact that an MMO like WoW doesn’t offer particularly the best tool for story telling or building solid characters, especially after most of the characters we used to care for have been killed. And that’s the affliction of an MMO focused on end game content and killing the biggest badie every expansion to get the nicest, shiniest loot. It might also be worth noticing complains like these are more common on the European forums and uncommon on the American ones, which is a voice Blizzard listens to more often.
I did enjoy your post , and smiled a bit , but you have to understand things do change(generations of gamers ) in so many years .
I was born in 1983 and i game since 1991 .
Your opinion is like a blast from the past , bluntly said but pretty accurate .
Drama and all of the above sadly sell more then the old fantasies (axe to the head ) .
Well while Warhammer is dark it doesn’t take itself too seriously either it simply hasn’t become a parody of itself, for the most part. And the devs have enough self awareness to realise the boundary between fiction and reality, which in turn allows them to write good villains, who do despicable things. Blizzard used to strike that balance, as well.
As for the whole “representing the real world” thing… it hasn’t been nearly as bad for WoW as it has been for some other fictional franchises outside videogames, however it kind of falls down to them trying to portray everything everywhere all at once like it’s downtown LA instead of having a variety of unique and meaningfully distinct species/cultures populating the fictional world.
Sylvanas missing half her soul is irrelevant to this fight. Kyrian Uther is missing half his soul as well and that doesn’t change the fact he is still Uther.
God forbid if a character wants vengeance for the genocide of her people. God forbid we have some good fight choreographies in some cinematics.
Seriously, people will complain about anything these days.
That duel was sort of cursed from the get go, because Tyrande didn’t have enough setup to genuinely establish herself as a threat to Sylvanas, while Sylvanas was already booked for the SoD raid.
