BfA to me just feels like it was written by committee.
At least when Metzen was at the head, there was a pretty clear direction and vision, even if people didn't always agree with it.
But now, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like we have multiple ideas all happening at once, and even from a creative perspective it feels like there's this unholy tension where everyone is trying to make their concept the dominant idea.
We have a serious world threat. Azeroth (the planet) is dying. It got stabbed right in the anus by a giant space sword. Simultaneous to that, we have this escalating faction war that none of us can really figure out why it's happening, other than because Blizzard says it's happening. But their justifications are weak and don't make much sense. And on top of all of that, we have this arms race to collect magic earth rocks that have this genericly vague power to them. What the fuck is Azerite anyway? They have not adequately explained that. At all. There's also a thing going on with the old gods, with Azshara, with the Loa, and all these other problems. There's just way too much going on here and a very clear lack of focus and direction.
That sounds like the beginning of every expansion to me.
BfA to me just feels like it was written by committee.
At least when Metzen was at the head, there was a pretty clear direction and vision, even if people didn't always agree with it.
But now, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like we have multiple ideas all happening at once, and even from a creative perspective it feels like there's this unholy tension where everyone is trying to make their concept the dominant idea.
We have a serious world threat. Azeroth (the planet) is dying. It got stabbed right in the anus by a giant space sword. Simultaneous to that, we have this escalating faction war that none of us can really figure out why it's happening, other than because Blizzard says it's happening. But their justifications are weak and don't make much sense. And on top of all of that, we have this arms race to collect magic earth rocks that have this genericly vague power to them. What the fuck is Azerite anyway? They have not adequately explained that. At all. There's also a thing going on with the old gods, with Azshara, with the Loa, and all these other problems. There's just way too much going on here and a very clear lack of focus and direction.
That sounds like the beginning of every expansion to me.
Previous expansions in the pre-patch didn't go beyond:
TBC: We're going to fight the Legion!
WoTLK: We're going to fight the Scourge!
Cataclysm: We're going to fight Deathwing!
MoP: Explore Pandaria! Fuck Garrosh!
WoD: We're going to fight Orcs!
Legion: We're going to fight the Legion!
It was really obvious and in your face about what was going on. There were no unanswered questions, we have an enemy to fight and we're gonna go over there to fight it. The simplicity of it was golden.
This time is different because the writers have set up a lot of story hooks and cliffhangers. A lot of hints at a greater hidden enemy (hint hint OLD GODS).
To me it seems like Blizzard does simple stories with good world building a lot better than complex stories, as their story beats are really fucking hamfisted a lot of the time (see: Diablo 3).
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Funny Reddit meme made me think, what do you think the Nightborn think about all this?
The Highmountain Tauren don't know much about elves, so they might not care, but the Nightborn? This has to look real bad
Tyrande made it clear she thinks the nightborne are little better than demons.
nah
You really weren't paying attention during Insurrection. Tyrande explicitly states she's there to defeat Elisande and doesn't give a rat's ass whether the Nightborne live or die. She pointedly calls it "the city of my birth" and refuses to acknowledge the modern day society inhabiting it for a reason. This is reinforced in Alliance side world quests: When Tyrande arms rebellious citizens in Suramar, her stated reasoning is that she wants to use the citizens of Suramar as expendable cannon fodder to soak up attacks that might harm her own troops. When Thalyssra elects to let the Nightwell die, she still treats the Nightborne as dangerous criminals/addicts at best. She does not value Nightborne life, full stop, and she is not shy about saying as much.
Tyrande's judgement is colored by the War of the Ancients. She 100% cannot see past it, even when something as blindingly obvious as how Thalyssra's role parallels her own is standing right in front of her (idealistic rebel fighting to overthrow an evil Legion aligned Queen gee when has this happened before). A better question would be why would the Nightborne want to align with someone who dehumanized them every single step of the way when the other side was nothing but empathetic and supportive?
To be clear, this is a good thing. This is the kind of characterization the Alliance needs to actually be worthwhile as a story element. Tyrande WAS an ethnocentric violent bigot in Warcraft 3 and having her actually act like it again instead of the long time WoW default of Night Elves being sorta Vaguely Generically Good Elves is a GOOD THING.
Alternatively, we could all stop trying to kill each other for a minute and worry about the fact that azeroth herself is dying and being besieged by the void lords rather than being concerned about what particular flavor of magic your favorite elves are addicted to.
Real question: Have the Void Lords even been directly referened in game yet? We know of them because of Chronicles but is there any reason to believe anyone on Azeroth really knows there’s anything concrete behind the Old Gods?
Void Lords were mentioned in TBC I believe (Netherstorm questing with the Consortium).
I think the Titanic Watchers at least are aware of the link (at least, based on outside media).
I believe there are some references in a couple other places. Usually when the Naaru are involved. I am pretty sure we actually see a Void Lord, or perhaps a fully developed Old God, during the Star Augur fight in Nighthold.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
BfA to me just feels like it was written by committee.
At least when Metzen was at the head, there was a pretty clear direction and vision, even if people didn't always agree with it.
But now, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like we have multiple ideas all happening at once, and even from a creative perspective it feels like there's this unholy tension where everyone is trying to make their concept the dominant idea.
We have a serious world threat. Azeroth (the planet) is dying. It got stabbed right in the anus by a giant space sword. Simultaneous to that, we have this escalating faction war that none of us can really figure out why it's happening, other than because Blizzard says it's happening. But their justifications are weak and don't make much sense. And on top of all of that, we have this arms race to collect magic earth rocks that have this genericly vague power to them. What the fuck is Azerite anyway? They have not adequately explained that. At all. There's also a thing going on with the old gods, with Azshara, with the Loa, and all these other problems. There's just way too much going on here and a very clear lack of focus and direction.
That sounds like the beginning of every expansion to me.
Previous expansions in the pre-patch didn't go beyond:
TBC: We're going to fight the Legion!
WoTLK: We're going to fight the Scourge!
Cataclysm: We're going to fight Deathwing!
MoP: Explore Pandaria! Fuck Garrosh!
WoD: We're going to fight Orcs!
Legion: We're going to fight the Legion!
It was really obvious and in your face about what was going on. There were no unanswered questions, we have an enemy to fight and we're gonna go over there to fight it. The simplicity of it was golden.
This time is different because the writers have set up a lot of story hooks and cliffhangers. A lot of hints at a greater hidden enemy (hint hint OLD GODS).
To me it seems like Blizzard does simple stories with good world building a lot better than complex stories, as their story beats are really fucking hamfisted a lot of the time (see: Diablo 3).
It's specifically pretty close to the Pandaria setup. The actual big-bad will be revealed over the course of the expansion like the Sha threat, and then end with everyone sacking Orgrimmar again to kill the Warchief, probably.
Like I agree it's bad but it's not worse than it was under Metzen.
I don't think Metzen was the problem. I think its that when you make the story too complex, and then build a video game around it, you can't come back later in production and say "hey we want to change this" because its already been 3-6 months down the development pipeline and you can't make major changes to it without pushing it back another 3-6 months.
It takes a lot of editing to get a story right, and they're pushing themselves to get this out the door quickly without that editing.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I don't think Metzen was the problem. I think its that when you make the story too complex, and then build a MMO around it, you can't come back later in production and say "hey we want to change this" because its already been 3-6 months down the development pipeline and you can't make major changes to it without pushing it back another 3-6 months.
It takes a lot of editing to get a story right, and they're pushing themselves to get this out the door quickly without that editing.
metzen was lead franchise developer.
He had to sign off on the broad strokes of the development.
At some point, "ultra space saiyan kerrigan" had to have landed on his desk to which his response was "awww yis".
Anyway, I don't get the hubub over the new quest chain specifically since if you've leveled as horde you've already committed multiple acts we'd consider war crimes and it's probably the same for alliance
Anyway, I don't get the hubub over the new quest chain specifically since if you've leveled as horde you've already committed multiple acts we'd consider war crimes and it's probably the same for alliance
Well an Unholy DK is a unliving biological weapon.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Anyway, I don't get the hubub over the new quest chain specifically since if you've leveled as horde you've already committed multiple acts we'd consider war crimes and it's probably the same for alliance
I don't really care about burning down the tree or sylvanas deciding to be villainous, I care about some stuff orbiting it story wise that I don't really get.
The big thing for me is the alliance fleet. It's supposed to be the major motivation for the attack on darnassus, but it's only ever mentioned in passing in the very beginning of the horde quest. It doesn't even seem like there's an actual reason for this fight in the first place. There's azerite involved somewhere, but that didn't seem like it was known about until darkshore was already invaded. I wanted to assume that the fleet was just an excuse sylvanas was throwing around to give her a reason to attack, but the fleet's existence seems to be backed up by jaina's movie short.
If the fleet does exist though, why isn't the attack on kalimdor/durotar ever mentioned in the alliance questline? If they are planning on trying to invade kalimdor, why have darnassus essentially undefended and filled with noncombatants? Why weren't they evacuating the civilians before starting the war?
Other things that don't make a lot of sense are what Sylvanas' motivations for changing her plans and burning darnassus are. She had a plan to capture the city to prevent the fleet from having a place to get a foothold in kalimdor. It was successful. A big part of that plan hinged on her finding and defeating Malfurion, which she did, but then proceeded to let him live for some reason and then shift gears when she was victorious. Is she just going insane? Hopefully there is something more going on in the background but they haven't done a good job of showing any metaphorical ripples beneath the surface so I'm worried that there aren't any.
the fleet sylvanas is talking about is darnassus' fleet specifically, not the whole alliance's. It arrived back pretty quickly after the assault is stalled in darkshore for a week. On the alliance side you can see a few ships phased in at the end of the first week's quest chains and that's supposed to be The Fleet. The world quests around night elf ships are also part of The Fleet.
the fleet sylvanas is talking about is darnassus' fleet specifically, not the whole alliance's. It arrived back pretty quickly after the assault is stalled in darkshore for a week. On the alliance side you can see a few ships phased in at the end of the first week's quest chains and that's supposed to be The Fleet. The world quests around night elf ships are also part of The Fleet.
Are you sure about that? Isn't that fleet always there? Why is that fleet a cause for concern now? If that is the fleet in question, why was jaina's warbringer's short all about her stepping into her father's shoes?
apparently all the exposition that the game lacked for the War of Thorns can be found in the Collector's Edition™ novella. Also there's some BfA content mentioned too, so beware of the link
Another thing that bugs me is that I've yet to witness the strength of Azerite. For all the talk so far about its potential to change the world, I've only seen it in the end of legion cutscene and that one time in the pre-BfA event that super-powered the goblin flying machine. I get that its the replacement for the artifacts in BfA and you experience that firsthand but up till now there's no reason for me to give a care
the fleet sylvanas is talking about is darnassus' fleet specifically, not the whole alliance's. It arrived back pretty quickly after the assault is stalled in darkshore for a week. On the alliance side you can see a few ships phased in at the end of the first week's quest chains and that's supposed to be The Fleet. The world quests around night elf ships are also part of The Fleet.
Are you sure about that? Isn't that fleet always there? Why is that fleet a cause for concern now? If that is the fleet in question, why was jaina's warbringer's short all about her stepping into her father's shoes?
The fleet is in the South because of Silithus. Its a concern now because Sylvanas is trying to cement horde control of Kalimdor, especially down its western coast.
I don't get what Jaina has to do with anything here.
apparently all the exposition that the game lacked for the War of Thorns can be found in the Collector's Edition™ novella. Also there's some BfA content mentioned too, so beware of the link
Another thing that bugs me is that I've yet to witness the strength of Azerite. For all the talk so far about its potential to change the world, I've only seen it in the end of legion cutscene and that one time in the pre-BfA event that super-powered the goblin flying machine. I get that its the replacement for the artifacts in BfA and you experience that firsthand but up till now there's no reason for me to give a care
Honestly it seems like they should have left the War of Thorns out of the game and left it to the novella, instead of half assing it in game and leaving all the context out from the short.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
They said Darnassus is being used as a hub to transport Azerite to the Eastern Kingdoms. That's the main reason Sylvanas wants to take it. To disrupt their flow of Azerite.
But that is a total case of Telling not Showing. They tell us that Darnassus is a major port for Azerite. But there aren't any boats moving around to illustrate that. And if an Alliance player visits the docks at Rut'theron Village, which is not "docks" but rather "dock" there are not piles of crates of Azerite, nor is there any indication that it's a port at all.
One ship that drives a loop between Rut'theron and Auberdine does not constitute a major port.
Telling not Showing is a major problem I have with their execution of BfA in general.
Too much of our lore and in-game info has come from word of mouth Q&A sessions from Ion and other game devs, and the stuff they are telling us is not actually represented in the game.
We got a cutscene showing that we go to the sword and power up our weapon and super charge it to crazy levels. And that part was actually represented in the game. But then instead of showing us that our weapon breaks, they just tell us it did in the patch notes and in a little footnote at the bottom of the artifact pane. But it's a clear example of something that they just told us and expected us to accept it, without showing us.
And one of the fundamentals of storytelling is the opposite of what they are doing. "Show, don't tell."
Telling not Showing is a major problem I have with their execution of BfA in general.
Too much of our lore and in-game info has come from word of mouth Q&A sessions from Ion and other game devs, and the stuff they are telling us is not actually represented in the game.
We got a cutscene showing that we go to the sword and power up our weapon and super charge it to crazy levels. And that part was actually represented in the game. But then instead of showing us that our weapon breaks, they just tell us it did in the patch notes and in a little footnote at the bottom of the artifact pane. But it's a clear example of something that they just told us and expected us to accept it, without showing us.
And one of the fundamentals of storytelling is the opposite of what they are doing. "Show, don't tell."
I'm not usually an advocate of killing players for random effect, but I would've been happier to login and see my characters weapon "explode" and kill me due to the overloaded power rather than just read it in a patch footnote.
Telling not Showing is a major problem I have with their execution of BfA in general.
Too much of our lore and in-game info has come from word of mouth Q&A sessions from Ion and other game devs, and the stuff they are telling us is not actually represented in the game.
We got a cutscene showing that we go to the sword and power up our weapon and super charge it to crazy levels. And that part was actually represented in the game. But then instead of showing us that our weapon breaks, they just tell us it did in the patch notes and in a little footnote at the bottom of the artifact pane. But it's a clear example of something that they just told us and expected us to accept it, without showing us.
And one of the fundamentals of storytelling is the opposite of what they are doing. "Show, don't tell."
I'm not usually an advocate of killing players for random effect, but I would've been happier to login and see my characters weapon "explode" and kill me due to the overloaded power rather than just read it in a patch footnote.
What bugs me about it is that you see the same 'weapon is broke due to absorbing too much of sword's power' message before you've actually gotten to that point in the story.
Mostly my point is that we're 3 weeks out from the launch of the expansion, and literally everything they have done has failed to impress. I'm going in with 0 goodwill right now.
The list of things they have botched is just so long.
--The stat squish and all associated world changes was a buggy mess and they're still sorting it out, because obviously it didn't spend enough time in development
--The War of Thorns quest chain itself is terrible drama featuring characters acting either A) Out of character or Cartoonishly exaggerated to the point of absurdity
--They force the main character into a situation that a lot of people are uncomfortable with, but since this is an "on rails" story, there's no room for the player to do anything other than witness it --They hand waved the whole Artifact breaking thing without so much as a cutscene for why our weapons all say they're broken. We just log in one day and that's that. Nothing at all to explain why.
--They released a few specs that are so busted that they might as well not even exist until 8.1. My condolences to shadow priests and all the other gimped specs.
--Class balance that feels awful because I'm sure everything is balanced around Azerite armor that we don't have, and an artifact necklace that we don't have, so everything just feels bad right now.
This actually happened in Silithus already, when you sucked out the powah from the sword at Magni's quest. It just didn't actually break the weapon then, because the pre-patch wasn't being pushed out yet. He does explicitly say there is a cost to drawing out the power to stop the sword from killing the planet.
Mostly my point is that we're 3 weeks out from the launch of the expansion, and literally everything they have done has failed to impress. I'm going in with 0 goodwill right now.
The list of things they have botched is just so long.
--The stat squish and all associated world changes was a buggy mess and they're still sorting it out, because obviously it didn't spend enough time in development
--The War of Thorns quest chain itself is terrible drama featuring characters acting either A) Out of character or Cartoonishly exaggerated to the point of absurdity
--They force the main character into a situation that a lot of people are uncomfortable with, but since this is an "on rails" story, there's no room for the player to do anything other than witness it --They hand waved the whole Artifact breaking thing without so much as a cutscene for why our weapons all say they're broken. We just log in one day and that's that. Nothing at all to explain why.
--They released a few specs that are so busted that they might as well not even exist until 8.1. My condolences to shadow priests and all the other gimped specs.
--Class balance that feels awful because I'm sure everything is balanced around Azerite armor that we don't have, and an artifact necklace that we don't have, so everything just feels bad right now.
This actually happened in Silithus already, when you sucked out the powah from the sword at Magni's quest. It just didn't actually break the weapon then, because the pre-patch wasn't being pushed out yet. He does explicitly say there is a cost to drawing out the power to stop the sword from killing the planet.
This is a case of "Show don't tell."
Magni saying "There's a cost" is different from showing your sword explode because it is overloaded.
Especially when there's like a 3 week gap in there. People go do the Magni/Silithus quest, then they enjoy 3 weeks of overcharged super weapon. Then there's patch notes and a footnote that says "sorry your weapon is broken now."
Mostly my point is that we're 3 weeks out from the launch of the expansion, and literally everything they have done has failed to impress. I'm going in with 0 goodwill right now.
The list of things they have botched is just so long.
--The stat squish and all associated world changes was a buggy mess and they're still sorting it out, because obviously it didn't spend enough time in development
--The War of Thorns quest chain itself is terrible drama featuring characters acting either A) Out of character or Cartoonishly exaggerated to the point of absurdity
--They force the main character into a situation that a lot of people are uncomfortable with, but since this is an "on rails" story, there's no room for the player to do anything other than witness it --They hand waved the whole Artifact breaking thing without so much as a cutscene for why our weapons all say they're broken. We just log in one day and that's that. Nothing at all to explain why.
--They released a few specs that are so busted that they might as well not even exist until 8.1. My condolences to shadow priests and all the other gimped specs.
--Class balance that feels awful because I'm sure everything is balanced around Azerite armor that we don't have, and an artifact necklace that we don't have, so everything just feels bad right now.
This actually happened in Silithus already, when you sucked out the powah from the sword at Magni's quest. It just didn't actually break the weapon then, because the pre-patch wasn't being pushed out yet. He does explicitly say there is a cost to drawing out the power to stop the sword from killing the planet.
Yes, but if you did the Silithus quest when it was first available, there is no actual 'breaking' in game, you just log in and it's broke in the patch notes.
...We got a cutscene showing that we go to the sword and power up our weapon and super charge it to crazy levels. And that part was actually represented in the game. But then instead of showing us that our weapon breaks, they just tell us it did in the patch notes and in a little footnote at the bottom of the artifact pane. But it's a clear example of something that they just told us and expected us to accept it, without showing us.
And one of the fundamentals of storytelling is the opposite of what they are doing. "Show, don't tell."
That was extremely frustrating to me. It still bugs me how they handled the Artifact breakage, or rather, how they didn't handle it at all and completely ignored it.
What I also don't like is that the whole cut scene didn't really work for me. It didn't really explain at all why all 3 of my artifacts ended up getting overloaded, especially when the artifact that I held up to the sword happened to be the underlight angler...
I understand that they needed to turn the artifacts off for balance reasons, but that whole scene just didn't feel it fit in with the rest of the quests in silithus.
What I also don't like is that the whole cut scene didn't really work for me. It didn't really explain at all why all 3 of my artifacts ended up getting overloaded, especially when the artifact that I held up to the sword happened to be the underlight angler...
I understand that they needed to turn the artifacts off for balance reasons, but that whole scene just didn't feel it fit in with the rest of the quests in silithus.
The idea that ONE druid, out of everyone in the order, is hogging four incredibly powerful artifact weapons of legend was kind of a silly thing to start with. I've always just assumed that canonically the player character had one artifact weapon and someone else had the other specs' weapons as far as story was concerned.
Oh my god, every time we change spec, we go to a different dimension.
I'm going to reserve judgement until I see the story progress a bit further. Pre-expansion stuff has always been pretty bare-bones and hamfisted. I will be pissed off if Sylvanas ends up being just a repeat of Garrosh, because Horde is already running out of interesting faction leaders. Having said that, I've always thought that Sylvanas of all the Warcraft characters deserves a proper ending to her story, and I am vaguely glad that they seem to be moving towards one -- even if the ending might suck. Hell, if Garrosh hadn't already happened, I'd be all for Sylvanas becoming the main villain of the expansion. With her history, and the desperate future ahead of her, her willingness to turn to extreme measures and atrocities would at least seem earned in her case. Not acceptable, but understandable in a way.
You could also use the other factions portals in Shattrath. A guildie at the time used it to portal to Silvermoon so she could tame one of the red cats in the Blood Elf starting zone at low level (instead of corpse running it through Plaguelands at like, level 10 or whatever)
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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That sounds like the beginning of every expansion to me.
Previous expansions in the pre-patch didn't go beyond:
TBC: We're going to fight the Legion!
WoTLK: We're going to fight the Scourge!
Cataclysm: We're going to fight Deathwing!
MoP: Explore Pandaria! Fuck Garrosh!
WoD: We're going to fight Orcs!
Legion: We're going to fight the Legion!
It was really obvious and in your face about what was going on. There were no unanswered questions, we have an enemy to fight and we're gonna go over there to fight it. The simplicity of it was golden.
This time is different because the writers have set up a lot of story hooks and cliffhangers. A lot of hints at a greater hidden enemy (hint hint OLD GODS).
To me it seems like Blizzard does simple stories with good world building a lot better than complex stories, as their story beats are really fucking hamfisted a lot of the time (see: Diablo 3).
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I believe there are some references in a couple other places. Usually when the Naaru are involved. I am pretty sure we actually see a Void Lord, or perhaps a fully developed Old God, during the Star Augur fight in Nighthold.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
It's specifically pretty close to the Pandaria setup. The actual big-bad will be revealed over the course of the expansion like the Sha threat, and then end with everyone sacking Orgrimmar again to kill the Warchief, probably.
Like I agree it's bad but it's not worse than it was under Metzen.
It takes a lot of editing to get a story right, and they're pushing themselves to get this out the door quickly without that editing.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
metzen was lead franchise developer.
He had to sign off on the broad strokes of the development.
At some point, "ultra space saiyan kerrigan" had to have landed on his desk to which his response was "awww yis".
Well an Unholy DK is a unliving biological weapon.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I don't really care about burning down the tree or sylvanas deciding to be villainous, I care about some stuff orbiting it story wise that I don't really get.
The big thing for me is the alliance fleet. It's supposed to be the major motivation for the attack on darnassus, but it's only ever mentioned in passing in the very beginning of the horde quest. It doesn't even seem like there's an actual reason for this fight in the first place. There's azerite involved somewhere, but that didn't seem like it was known about until darkshore was already invaded. I wanted to assume that the fleet was just an excuse sylvanas was throwing around to give her a reason to attack, but the fleet's existence seems to be backed up by jaina's movie short.
If the fleet does exist though, why isn't the attack on kalimdor/durotar ever mentioned in the alliance questline? If they are planning on trying to invade kalimdor, why have darnassus essentially undefended and filled with noncombatants? Why weren't they evacuating the civilians before starting the war?
Other things that don't make a lot of sense are what Sylvanas' motivations for changing her plans and burning darnassus are. She had a plan to capture the city to prevent the fleet from having a place to get a foothold in kalimdor. It was successful. A big part of that plan hinged on her finding and defeating Malfurion, which she did, but then proceeded to let him live for some reason and then shift gears when she was victorious. Is she just going insane? Hopefully there is something more going on in the background but they haven't done a good job of showing any metaphorical ripples beneath the surface so I'm worried that there aren't any.
Are you sure about that? Isn't that fleet always there? Why is that fleet a cause for concern now? If that is the fleet in question, why was jaina's warbringer's short all about her stepping into her father's shoes?
Another thing that bugs me is that I've yet to witness the strength of Azerite. For all the talk so far about its potential to change the world, I've only seen it in the end of legion cutscene and that one time in the pre-BfA event that super-powered the goblin flying machine. I get that its the replacement for the artifacts in BfA and you experience that firsthand but up till now there's no reason for me to give a care
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The fleet is in the South because of Silithus. Its a concern now because Sylvanas is trying to cement horde control of Kalimdor, especially down its western coast.
I don't get what Jaina has to do with anything here.
Honestly it seems like they should have left the War of Thorns out of the game and left it to the novella, instead of half assing it in game and leaving all the context out from the short.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
But that is a total case of Telling not Showing. They tell us that Darnassus is a major port for Azerite. But there aren't any boats moving around to illustrate that. And if an Alliance player visits the docks at Rut'theron Village, which is not "docks" but rather "dock" there are not piles of crates of Azerite, nor is there any indication that it's a port at all.
One ship that drives a loop between Rut'theron and Auberdine does not constitute a major port.
Telling not Showing is a major problem I have with their execution of BfA in general.
Too much of our lore and in-game info has come from word of mouth Q&A sessions from Ion and other game devs, and the stuff they are telling us is not actually represented in the game.
We got a cutscene showing that we go to the sword and power up our weapon and super charge it to crazy levels. And that part was actually represented in the game. But then instead of showing us that our weapon breaks, they just tell us it did in the patch notes and in a little footnote at the bottom of the artifact pane. But it's a clear example of something that they just told us and expected us to accept it, without showing us.
And one of the fundamentals of storytelling is the opposite of what they are doing. "Show, don't tell."
I'm not usually an advocate of killing players for random effect, but I would've been happier to login and see my characters weapon "explode" and kill me due to the overloaded power rather than just read it in a patch footnote.
What bugs me about it is that you see the same 'weapon is broke due to absorbing too much of sword's power' message before you've actually gotten to that point in the story.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
saurfang's showing in the book is also waaaay better than him being the mopey goose we get ingame.
ah well.
This actually happened in Silithus already, when you sucked out the powah from the sword at Magni's quest. It just didn't actually break the weapon then, because the pre-patch wasn't being pushed out yet. He does explicitly say there is a cost to drawing out the power to stop the sword from killing the planet.
This is a case of "Show don't tell."
Magni saying "There's a cost" is different from showing your sword explode because it is overloaded.
Especially when there's like a 3 week gap in there. People go do the Magni/Silithus quest, then they enjoy 3 weeks of overcharged super weapon. Then there's patch notes and a footnote that says "sorry your weapon is broken now."
You mean not living....eh eh?
Yes, but if you did the Silithus quest when it was first available, there is no actual 'breaking' in game, you just log in and it's broke in the patch notes.
That was extremely frustrating to me. It still bugs me how they handled the Artifact breakage, or rather, how they didn't handle it at all and completely ignored it.
It was bad timing on the patch vs when the quest was available. Doing that quest I fully assumed my artifact weapon would no longer work.
Just got to use it for a few more weeks.
I understand that they needed to turn the artifacts off for balance reasons, but that whole scene just didn't feel it fit in with the rest of the quests in silithus.
The idea that ONE druid, out of everyone in the order, is hogging four incredibly powerful artifact weapons of legend was kind of a silly thing to start with. I've always just assumed that canonically the player character had one artifact weapon and someone else had the other specs' weapons as far as story was concerned.
Oh my god, every time we change spec, we go to a different dimension.
This is a silly argument. Let's stop making silly arguments.
I genuinely regret missing that one.
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I know of at least one person who used it to get Alliance pets to her Horde main.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.