Let me know when you book your flight to Europe to kill all the French and Germans. I’ll be curious to see how that shakes out.
This is a silly argument. Let's stop making silly arguments.
It really isn’t. It’s inflammatory but no less true. I could make even more inflammatory but directly comparable references given the guy I quoted has stated recently that a genocide on a social group is retroactively justified based on future misdeeds they might commit. Boy howdy wouldn’t that make for some “fun” logical conclusions when applied to the real world.
I love it when some minor error or bug makes it live. My Tauren Druid has a bunch of alliance tabards that were briefly available to horde players in Wrath
I don't think the mod is trying to debate whether it was silly with you so much as politely asking all participants in that conversation to cease that conversation.
Let me know when you book your flight to Europe to kill all the French and Germans. I’ll be curious to see how that shakes out.
This is a silly argument. Let's stop making silly arguments.
It really isn’t. It’s inflammatory but no less true. I could make even more inflammatory but directly comparable references given the guy I quoted has stated recently that a genocide on a social group is retroactively justified based on future misdeeds they might commit. Boy howdy wouldn’t that make for some “fun” logical conclusions when applied to the real world.
Wait no not fun. The other thing. Terrible.
Sorry, I suppose I phrased that in too polite language, let's rephrase.
This is a game. Stop drawing silly parallels to real-world mass murder and genocide. That goes for everyone.
man, it's really irritating to me that a lot of this context takes place in some dumb novel rather than ingame, especially since apparently it retcons some of what happens ingame? I don't really care that they use books or comics or whatever to flesh characters out or pursue side stories, but it's frustrating that stuff that directly impacts the ingame story is left to just occur offscreen.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
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.
Well now it doesn't matter whether they had Azerite of Mass Destruction or not, they're out of the picture entirely now.
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
Yeah, like I said, none of it makes any sense.
+2
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
Traveling through the middle ocean is pretty tricky I don't know why gathering at Darnassus would make that easier...except maybe they needed a safer location to mass teleport the stuff?
Or that's where they'd set off on a much longer trip around the maelstrom and its surrounding area.
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
Maybe they are using small coastal vessels to get it to darnassus, sailing up the west coast to avoid orgrimmar and azshara, before packing it on larger vessels?
But then there is no outlet to the ocean on the west coast of silthius.
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
Maybe they are using small coastal vessels to get it to darnassus, sailing up the west coast to avoid orgrimmar and azshara, before packing it on larger vessels?
But then there is no outlet to the ocean on the west coast of silthius.
Also apparently there's azerite fucking everywhere anyways.
I think it's fair to simply say that the horde want to deny the alliance their main kalimdori port; the continental geography doesn't super make sense anyway so getting hung up on how far they'd have to ship the azerite (or for that matter the distance sylvanas' catapults can fire) seems silly to me
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
There's a whole cluster of logistical issues about how goods and food are produced and distributed in Azeroth that we're never going to get answered.
I mean, for example, we've got some wheat farms, a few pig pastures, and maybe half a dozen orchards to feed the entirety of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. At least Pandaria can claim some magically enhanced farms to explain their food.
Dunno if we've seen any shipping at all. Or caravans.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I will also say that I feel like there was a missed opportunity to involve the local draenei in some way; rutheran/darkshore are also azuremyst's only point of contact with... anywhere else, which it seems like they might want to preserve (at least as long as we're entertaining the fantasy that everybody doesn't just teleport everywhere)
or is the idea that they all left during legion and the island is now deserted? It's unclear
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
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
I just read all that stuff..book Greymane is much more level headed and not a dick and sees right through the Horde plan. I don't know how the Horde is ever suppose to win when the Alliance leaders are perfect amazing and super intelligent at all times.
It's frustrating when someone who's character we've only ever seen as "cunning and loyal but also full of rage he can't control" can suddenly control himself
Really I am just not feeling it for various reasons
I really found wow fun and put up with it's less than fun offerings {Cata and WoD} but this I am just not feeling it
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.
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
the actual answer logistics in warcraft don't exist and don't matter except when the plot says they do
the in-universe explanation is there isn't an in-universe explanation because see above
I will also say that I feel like there was a missed opportunity to involve the local draenei in some way; rutheran/darkshore are also azuremyst's only point of contact with... anywhere else, which it seems like they might want to preserve (at least as long as we're entertaining the fantasy that everybody doesn't just teleport everywhere)
or is the idea that they all left during legion and the island is now deserted? It's unclear
It's entirely possible that the local Draenei aren't going to stay local. The bulk of them might be dedicated to hunting down the last of the Legion and trying to restore whatever pieces of Argus that they can.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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
I just read all that stuff..book Greymane is much more level headed and not a dick and sees right through the Horde plan. I don't know how the Horde is ever suppose to win when the Alliance leaders are perfect amazing and super intelligent at all times.
It's frustrating when someone who's character we've only ever seen as "cunning and loyal but also full of rage he can't control" can suddenly control himself
I thought reading that link that it seemed pretty obvious the authors were Alliance (mains or whatever). Everything in which Sylvanas was behaving weird and in inexplicable ways was "cool" because it "hinted at more," and that makes a lot of sense if you view Sylvanas as an other-ed antagonist, but for Horde players, that really isn't satisfactory at all, because great, we just have to keep doing these stupid insane things in the vague hope that the writers will explain it to us at some point.
Even putting aside whether Blizzard can be relied on not to replay Garrosh 2.0, this is a shitty way to engage with RPG players. Nobody wants to play an RPG where you're forced to do quests for someone you know is evil, but is so in some mysterious inscrutable way. Your questgiver should appear good and sympathetic, or unrepentantly evil so you can roleplay that, but setting it up in this way, in which your questgiver is doing evil things, in which the player is supposed to recognize that they're doing evil things and has received hints that there are other forces at work here, but their character is still supposed to be blithely going along with it, severs the connection between player and character, breaking the immersive experience.
I was really jazzed about the new races. But, turns out they are gated behind massive requirements. Shame. Unfortunately, I had spent my 2 months in Legion leveling up different characters and doing dungeons and not really doing much rep stuff. The exalted requirement for the Nightborne is gonna be quite a slog. Ah well. How long does it usually take to go from honored to exalted? I haven't tried doing rep stuff since BC.
could knock it out in a weekend, probably.
I would think a week or two. There are only so many World Quests per day. Unless you know tricks I don't
There's a whole cluster of logistical issues about how goods and food are produced and distributed in Azeroth that we're never going to get answered.
I mean, for example, we've got some wheat farms, a few pig pastures, and maybe half a dozen orchards to feed the entirety of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. At least Pandaria can claim some magically enhanced farms to explain their food.
Dunno if we've seen any shipping at all. Or caravans.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
And then when you come back from letting Zoram'gar Strand know an army is on its way, you return to a town suddenly and mysteriously full of wisps.
Basically right up until the tree burns it seems to be Saurfang behaving with honor and then any time he or the player aren't around things get fishy.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
You mean like the goblin quests in Stormheim that I AM NEVER EVER DOING AGAIN, because it was a stupidly pointlessly evil quest-chain preferred to supposedly good noble heroes??
Role-playing evil is one thing. The confused mishmash of both at once is dumb. As a writer, you can't write Saurfang into what is clearly the noble, heroic role, but then tell the player that no, you can't side with Saurfang, you must keep doing the dumb evil thing - even though you've read in a book that we've put out that Sylvanas is hiding secrets from you and may be working for the Old Gods or whatnot - because we just need you to be dumb and evil to maintain the BFA faction war premise.
People will play RPGs in which they're evil characters - like Vampyre the Masquerade - but not if they're going to be constantly berated about it by the game the whole time, shoehorned into calamitously cartoonish choices,* and know that they're going to be forcibly pushed to the side of good at the end by an inevitable plot twist that they've been told is coming. Nobody plays through the entire Mass Effect series, gets to the end and goes, "Hey, you know what, actually you're right, Illusive Man," but that's what Horde players are going to be forced into eventually, and we all know it.
* Honestly, Sylvanas' original plan was "evil." But it was not nearly as stupid as just burning Teldrassil to the ground cuz some Night Elf said mean things to her.
WoW 2 is never happening. There's absolutely no reason, storywise, gameplaywise, or developmentwise to do it.
I don't think there's a need to release a literal new game. But I wouldn't rule out something like an FF14-style reboot of the world some day (and/or dissolving the faction divide). Blizzard has shown a willingness to reinvent core game mechanics time and time again, even throwing out the old continents that one time. I don't think I'm going to play BFA, but I would be legitimately excited about the game again if they did something really disruptive like that.
In my mind an expansion like BFA is just a continuation of the formula, which will keep the dedicated fans playing and get a subset of fans to return until they clear the content again. But each time they do that, both of those groups will shrink further, and the game is less appealing to new players. That's the path EQ1 took with its yearly expansions that have continued to this day. For real, the last one came out Dec 2017, but nobody even knows about that outside of the most devoted fans.
Blizzard could certainly choose to do that with WoW until the level cap hits 300 and they discover the 20th continent in the year 2150. But to really keep the game relevant you need to occasionally do something that re-energizes the community and makes the game feel like it's still brand new.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
And then when you come back from letting Zoram'gar Strand know an army is on its way, you return to a town suddenly and mysteriously full of wisps.
Basically right up until the tree burns it seems to be Saurfang behaving with honor and then any time he or the player aren't around things get fishy.
That is a perfectly good, common RPG setup. The, "You were working for the bad guys, but you didn't know it," setup is classic. But they can't pull that off in WoW, not with the Alliance seeing the other side of things, nor does it sound like they're really even trying to, what with how Saurfang is being written and the hints they were dropping in those novellas. Deus Ex this is not.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
You mean like the goblin quests in Stormheim that I AM NEVER EVER DOING AGAIN, because it was a stupidly pointlessly evil quest-chain preferred to supposedly good noble heroes??
Role-playing evil is one thing. The confused mishmash of both at once is dumb. As a writer, you can't write Saurfang into what is clearly the noble, heroic role, but then tell the player that no, you can't side with Saurfang, you must keep doing the dumb evil thing - even though you've read in a book that we've put out that Sylvanas is hiding secrets from you and may be working for the Old Gods or whatnot - because we just need you to be dumb and evil to maintain the BFA faction war premise.
People will play RPGs in which they're evil characters - like Vampyre the Masquerade - but not if they're going to be constantly berated about it by the game the whole time, and know that they're going to be forcibly pushed to the side of good at the end by an obvious plot twist that they've been told is coming. Nobody plays through the entire Mass Effect series, gets to the end and goes, "Hey, you know what, actually you're right, Illusive Man," but that's what Horde players are going to be forced into eventually, and we all know it.
There's many more instances where civilians are implied to be dying during fighting you do, those are pretty much the stakes for all the fighting we do come to think of it. What happens if it turns out Sylvanas is just being as ruthless as she's always been?
If we're never tasked with killing her and she isn't deposed?
Is it really that bad that the curtain is lifted on the cost of war we've been waging all this time...let's not play pretend that only now civilians are suffering in war. Especially when so many side quests are you helping civilians during various wars.
I know the immediate response might be "But players have no motivation to take part!" which I think applies to much power on the player to influence the feelings of entire races of people. The factions have plenty of reasons to go to war just from events on broken isles alone.
And it assumes a lot about ALL players. I had assumed we were at war when Greymane ordered us to ambush their warchief...that's kind of a war starting thing.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
You mean like the goblin quests in Stormheim that I AM NEVER EVER DOING AGAIN, because it was a stupidly pointlessly evil quest-chain preferred to supposedly good noble heroes??
Role-playing evil is one thing. The confused mishmash of both at once is dumb. As a writer, you can't write Saurfang into what is clearly the noble, heroic role, but then tell the player that no, you can't side with Saurfang, you must keep doing the dumb evil thing - even though you've read in a book that we've put out that Sylvanas is hiding secrets from you and may be working for the Old Gods or whatnot - because we just need you to be dumb and evil to maintain the BFA faction war premise.
People will play RPGs in which they're evil characters - like Vampyre the Masquerade - but not if they're going to be constantly berated about it by the game the whole time, and know that they're going to be forcibly pushed to the side of good at the end by an obvious plot twist that they've been told is coming. Nobody plays through the entire Mass Effect series, gets to the end and goes, "Hey, you know what, actually you're right, Illusive Man," but that's what Horde players are going to be forced into eventually, and we all know it.
There's many more instances where civilians are implied to be dying during fighting you do, those are pretty much the stakes for all the fighting we do come to think of it. What happens if it turns out Sylvanas is just being as ruthless as she's always been?
If we're never tasked with killing her and she isn't deposed?
Is it really that bad that the curtain is lifted on the cost of war we've been waging all this time...let's not play pretend that only now civilians are suffering in war. Especially when so many side quests are you helping civilians during various wars.
I know the immediate response might be "But players have no motivation to take part!" which I think applies to much power on the player to influence the feelings of entire races of people. The factions have plenty of reasons to go to war just from events on broken isles alone.
And it assumes a lot about ALL players. I had assumed we were at war when Greymane ordered us to ambush their warchief...that's kind of a war starting thing.
I have no idea what you're talking about. It seems like you haven't read the Wowhead link about the books at all, and that you're willfully ignoring the messages that Blizzard is repeatedly trying to send us with Saurfang's character,* with the books, and with the Alliance side of the story.
TL;DR: Blizzard is putting a lot of effort into telling us that siding with Sylvanas is bad and evil. That's not me saying that. That's them. If you want to argue with them that Sylvanas isn't bad and evil, that she isn't being manipulated by the Old Gods, that this is just war, then knock yourself out.
* Also Baine, Anduin, Tyrande, Malfurion vs Nathanos and Gallywix. The battle lines Blizzard has drawn between the major faction leaders and their traditional representations in the story pretty emphatically demonstrate which side Blizzard expects players to be taking. That or they're misexecuting horribly.
Were you asked to do any greater evil then we've done in the past?
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
You mean like the goblin quests in Stormheim that I AM NEVER EVER DOING AGAIN, because it was a stupidly pointlessly evil quest-chain preferred to supposedly good noble heroes??
Role-playing evil is one thing. The confused mishmash of both at once is dumb. As a writer, you can't write Saurfang into what is clearly the noble, heroic role, but then tell the player that no, you can't side with Saurfang, you must keep doing the dumb evil thing - even though you've read in a book that we've put out that Sylvanas is hiding secrets from you and may be working for the Old Gods or whatnot - because we just need you to be dumb and evil to maintain the BFA faction war premise.
People will play RPGs in which they're evil characters - like Vampyre the Masquerade - but not if they're going to be constantly berated about it by the game the whole time, and know that they're going to be forcibly pushed to the side of good at the end by an obvious plot twist that they've been told is coming. Nobody plays through the entire Mass Effect series, gets to the end and goes, "Hey, you know what, actually you're right, Illusive Man," but that's what Horde players are going to be forced into eventually, and we all know it.
There's many more instances where civilians are implied to be dying during fighting you do, those are pretty much the stakes for all the fighting we do come to think of it. What happens if it turns out Sylvanas is just being as ruthless as she's always been?
If we're never tasked with killing her and she isn't deposed?
Is it really that bad that the curtain is lifted on the cost of war we've been waging all this time...let's not play pretend that only now civilians are suffering in war. Especially when so many side quests are you helping civilians during various wars.
I know the immediate response might be "But players have no motivation to take part!" which I think applies to much power on the player to influence the feelings of entire races of people. The factions have plenty of reasons to go to war just from events on broken isles alone.
And it assumes a lot about ALL players. I had assumed we were at war when Greymane ordered us to ambush their warchief...that's kind of a war starting thing.
I have no idea what you're talking about. It seems like you haven't read the Wowhead link about the books at all, and that you're willfully ignoring the messages that Blizzard is repeatedly trying to send us with Saurfang's character, with the books, and with the Alliance side of the story.
TL;DR: Blizzard is putting a lot of effort into telling us that siding with Sylvanas is bad and evil. That's not me saying that. That's them. If you want to argue with them that Sylvanas isn't bad and evil, that she isn't being manipulated by the Old Gods, that this is just war, then knock yourself out.
Also Baine, Anduin, Tyrande, Malfurion vs Nathanos and Gallywix.
I'm actually a bit iffy on these battlelines when it comes to Nathanos. One the one hand he's very loyal to Sylvanas but on the other he had 'WTF' moments during Before The Storm's and The War Of Thorns' climaxes. If they wanted Nathanos to be unquestioningly on Sylvanas' side, I doubt they'd bother showing either.
Blizz is probably treading a gray area they don't want to be. Some need to seriously read up on what happened in Vanilla because the Horde wasn't default evil and the Alliance wasn't default good, both sides where in the neutral area with good and bad elements. Essentially, what it looks like to many players, is that Blizz pulled a bait and switch because many Horde players rolled Horde to play the noble savage and a decade later some shit heads in the Blizz team decide "lol, no the horde have to be the baddie!" Like that is the thing that pisses me off the most about BfA right now. People weren't happy with Garrrosh either, but would have let it slide as a one off thing because sometimes organizations end up drafting a fucking asshole to run things unintentionally. Plus, looking at what Garrosh did, it was at least a logical, but immoral way of doing things. Yet, here we are again where the horde is made the aggressor and so far it seems like the writers are going out of their way to make the horde look cartoonishly evil, which is rather out of character for Sylvanas.
I think Blizz needs to spend less time jacking of try hards, getting rosy eyed over vanilla stuff that didn't work or didn't exist and maybe learn to do some god damn quality control on their product. For starters they need a lore bible, it doesn't need to be in depth, but it should have enough of a frame work to prevent some of the lore fuckups we've seen lately. It should also have a section that locks down certain elements. I think they should do away with the Horde/Alliance setup in favor a self faction setup, but regardless of what they do it should be clear that neither the horde nor the alliance is good or evil and any jackass writer that pushes for that will have their ass kicked out the door. As far as I'm concerned, both factions being a mix of nice folk and assholes is locked down because that's how the game launched and that's what people were sold on.
Blizz is probably treading a gray area they don't want to be. Some need to seriously read up on what happened in Vanilla because the Horde wasn't default evil and the Alliance wasn't default good, both sides where in the neutral area with good and bad elements. Essentially, what it looks like to many players, is that Blizz pulled a bait and switch because many Horde players rolled Horde to play the noble savage and a decade later some shit heads in the Blizz team decide "lol, no the horde have to be the baddie!" Like that is the thing that pisses me off the most about BfA right now. People weren't happy with Garrrosh either, but would have let it slide as a one off thing because sometimes organizations end up drafting a fucking asshole to run things unintentionally. Plus, looking at what Garrosh did, it was at least a logical, but immoral way of doing things. Yet, here we are again where the horde is made the aggressor and so far it seems like the writers are going out of their way to make the horde look cartoonishly evil, which is rather out of character for Sylvanas.
I think Blizz needs to spend less time jacking of try hards, getting rosy eyed over vanilla stuff that didn't work or didn't exist and maybe learn to do some god damn quality control on their product. For starters they need a lore bible, it doesn't need to be in depth, but it should have enough of a frame work to prevent some of the lore fuckups we've seen lately. It should also have a section that locks down certain elements. I think they should do away with the Horde/Alliance setup in favor a self faction setup, but regardless of what they do it should be clear that neither the horde nor the alliance is good or evil and any jackass writer that pushes for that will have their ass kicked out the door. As far as I'm concerned, both factions being a mix of nice folk and assholes is locked down because that's how the game launched and that's what people were sold on.
you kinda dunked your own argument. The horde has never been a band of noble savages. You had the "evil" forsaken, the dumb-as-bricks warmongering orcs, the peaceful pacifist tauren and the "we're trying to quit the cannibalism and voodoo, honest" trolls. The only reason this farce lasted as long as it did was because special snowflake metzen-self-insert Thrall acted pretty unorcy and keep the violence to a minimum.
Just for poops and giggles, I dug up the old WoW manual.
The alliance race descriptions use the word "defend".
The horde races get far more aggressive verbs.
Re: Sylvanas. Given what's written in the novels, I don't think describing what she's doing as "out of character" is fair. Ever since she flung herself off ICC she's been on a steady decline into general murderhoboism. This war she's started makes sense; she doesn't believe in peace. As a result, war is the only alternative, she'd rather be on the winning end, now's a great time to poke the alliance.
I didn't really think about it at the time, but that whole 'Undead living with their living families' probably would have ended up being truly awful, if it had gone through. At best, they'd have an eternity of abuse and being considered the lowest class of citizen.
Blizz is probably treading a gray area they don't want to be. Some need to seriously read up on what happened in Vanilla because the Horde wasn't default evil and the Alliance wasn't default good, both sides where in the neutral area with good and bad elements. Essentially, what it looks like to many players, is that Blizz pulled a bait and switch because many Horde players rolled Horde to play the noble savage and a decade later some shit heads in the Blizz team decide "lol, no the horde have to be the baddie!" Like that is the thing that pisses me off the most about BfA right now. People weren't happy with Garrrosh either, but would have let it slide as a one off thing because sometimes organizations end up drafting a fucking asshole to run things unintentionally. Plus, looking at what Garrosh did, it was at least a logical, but immoral way of doing things. Yet, here we are again where the horde is made the aggressor and so far it seems like the writers are going out of their way to make the horde look cartoonishly evil, which is rather out of character for Sylvanas.
I think Blizz needs to spend less time jacking of try hards, getting rosy eyed over vanilla stuff that didn't work or didn't exist and maybe learn to do some god damn quality control on their product. For starters they need a lore bible, it doesn't need to be in depth, but it should have enough of a frame work to prevent some of the lore fuckups we've seen lately. It should also have a section that locks down certain elements. I think they should do away with the Horde/Alliance setup in favor a self faction setup, but regardless of what they do it should be clear that neither the horde nor the alliance is good or evil and any jackass writer that pushes for that will have their ass kicked out the door. As far as I'm concerned, both factions being a mix of nice folk and assholes is locked down because that's how the game launched and that's what people were sold on.
you kinda dunked your own argument. The horde has never been a band of noble savages. You had the "evil" forsaken, the dumb-as-bricks warmongering orcs, the peaceful pacifist tauren and the "we're trying to quit the cannibalism and voodoo, honest" trolls. The only reason this farce lasted as long as it did was because special snowflake metzen-self-insert Thrall acted pretty unorcy and keep the violence to a minimum.
Just for poops and giggles, I dug up the old WoW manual.
The alliance race descriptions use the word "defend".
The horde races get far more aggressive verbs.
Re: Sylvanas. Given what's written in the novels, I don't think describing what she's doing as "out of character" is fair. Ever since she flung herself off ICC she's been on a steady decline into general murderhoboism. This war she's started makes sense; she doesn't believe in peace. As a result, war is the only alternative, she'd rather be on the winning end, now's a great time to poke the alliance.
I guess you played Warcraft 1 or 2, skipped Warcraft 3, and jumped back in with, like Cataclysm or Pandaria? Or are you just choosing to ignore War3 because you hate Thrall soooo much?
Vanilla WoW was absolutely continuing the threads that had been established in Warcraft 3.
The Horde was mostly just trying to survive, but dealing with an internal Warlock/fel magic problem (hence stuff like the Wailing Caverns). The Alliance was rebuilding, but were pretty aggressive at turning up their noses at anyone the upper class perceived as "below" them (hence stuff like the Deadmines.)
Posts
It really isn’t. It’s inflammatory but no less true. I could make even more inflammatory but directly comparable references given the guy I quoted has stated recently that a genocide on a social group is retroactively justified based on future misdeeds they might commit. Boy howdy wouldn’t that make for some “fun” logical conclusions when applied to the real world.
Wait no not fun. The other thing. Terrible.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Sorry, I suppose I phrased that in too polite language, let's rephrase.
This is a game. Stop drawing silly parallels to real-world mass murder and genocide. That goes for everyone.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
So wait, the Alliance is hauling azerite through ungoro, tanaris, up through 1k needles to sobo, then through stonetalon and ashenvale up to darkshore, passing by basically every major kalimdor settlement? And the brilliant idea for stopping the supply chain is taking out the one part of the chain most heavily defended and farthest away from everything? Isn’t that kind of like medeival China invading Venice to stop trade on the silk road?
Well now it doesn't matter whether they had Azerite of Mass Destruction or not, they're out of the picture entirely now.
missionaccomplished.jpg
The impression I got was they were sailing it from silithus and other locations to Darnassus.
Yeah, like I said, none of it makes any sense.
Then why head for Darnassus and not just sail directly to Stormwind? By going through Darnassus, you're tripling the distance you need to travel.
Traveling through the middle ocean is pretty tricky I don't know why gathering at Darnassus would make that easier...except maybe they needed a safer location to mass teleport the stuff?
Or that's where they'd set off on a much longer trip around the maelstrom and its surrounding area.
Maybe they are using small coastal vessels to get it to darnassus, sailing up the west coast to avoid orgrimmar and azshara, before packing it on larger vessels?
But then there is no outlet to the ocean on the west coast of silthius.
Also apparently there's azerite fucking everywhere anyways.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I mean, for example, we've got some wheat farms, a few pig pastures, and maybe half a dozen orchards to feed the entirety of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. At least Pandaria can claim some magically enhanced farms to explain their food.
Dunno if we've seen any shipping at all. Or caravans.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
or is the idea that they all left during legion and the island is now deserted? It's unclear
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I just read all that stuff..book Greymane is much more level headed and not a dick and sees right through the Horde plan. I don't know how the Horde is ever suppose to win when the Alliance leaders are perfect amazing and super intelligent at all times.
It's frustrating when someone who's character we've only ever seen as "cunning and loyal but also full of rage he can't control" can suddenly control himself
I really found wow fun and put up with it's less than fun offerings {Cata and WoD} but this I am just not feeling it
the actual answer logistics in warcraft don't exist and don't matter except when the plot says they do
the in-universe explanation is there isn't an in-universe explanation because see above
It's entirely possible that the local Draenei aren't going to stay local. The bulk of them might be dedicated to hunting down the last of the Legion and trying to restore whatever pieces of Argus that they can.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I thought reading that link that it seemed pretty obvious the authors were Alliance (mains or whatever). Everything in which Sylvanas was behaving weird and in inexplicable ways was "cool" because it "hinted at more," and that makes a lot of sense if you view Sylvanas as an other-ed antagonist, but for Horde players, that really isn't satisfactory at all, because great, we just have to keep doing these stupid insane things in the vague hope that the writers will explain it to us at some point.
Even putting aside whether Blizzard can be relied on not to replay Garrosh 2.0, this is a shitty way to engage with RPG players. Nobody wants to play an RPG where you're forced to do quests for someone you know is evil, but is so in some mysterious inscrutable way. Your questgiver should appear good and sympathetic, or unrepentantly evil so you can roleplay that, but setting it up in this way, in which your questgiver is doing evil things, in which the player is supposed to recognize that they're doing evil things and has received hints that there are other forces at work here, but their character is still supposed to be blithely going along with it, severs the connection between player and character, breaking the immersive experience.
Mages make all the food duh
It was just a battlefield. Hell Saurfang orders you to capture the civilians alive during the battle. I thought it was interesting that during the pre-emptive stealth attack you're given the option to attack civilians but can totally ignore them...the npc you're with comments on it I think. That's some player choice you don't often see in wow right there.
I feel like we've played different games when people talk like they've been tasked with the greatest evil imaginable in the war of thorns quests.
And then when you come back from letting Zoram'gar Strand know an army is on its way, you return to a town suddenly and mysteriously full of wisps.
Basically right up until the tree burns it seems to be Saurfang behaving with honor and then any time he or the player aren't around things get fishy.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
You mean like the goblin quests in Stormheim that I AM NEVER EVER DOING AGAIN, because it was a stupidly pointlessly evil quest-chain preferred to supposedly good noble heroes??
Role-playing evil is one thing. The confused mishmash of both at once is dumb. As a writer, you can't write Saurfang into what is clearly the noble, heroic role, but then tell the player that no, you can't side with Saurfang, you must keep doing the dumb evil thing - even though you've read in a book that we've put out that Sylvanas is hiding secrets from you and may be working for the Old Gods or whatnot - because we just need you to be dumb and evil to maintain the BFA faction war premise.
People will play RPGs in which they're evil characters - like Vampyre the Masquerade - but not if they're going to be constantly berated about it by the game the whole time, shoehorned into calamitously cartoonish choices,* and know that they're going to be forcibly pushed to the side of good at the end by an inevitable plot twist that they've been told is coming. Nobody plays through the entire Mass Effect series, gets to the end and goes, "Hey, you know what, actually you're right, Illusive Man," but that's what Horde players are going to be forced into eventually, and we all know it.
* Honestly, Sylvanas' original plan was "evil." But it was not nearly as stupid as just burning Teldrassil to the ground cuz some Night Elf said mean things to her.
I don't think there's a need to release a literal new game. But I wouldn't rule out something like an FF14-style reboot of the world some day (and/or dissolving the faction divide). Blizzard has shown a willingness to reinvent core game mechanics time and time again, even throwing out the old continents that one time. I don't think I'm going to play BFA, but I would be legitimately excited about the game again if they did something really disruptive like that.
In my mind an expansion like BFA is just a continuation of the formula, which will keep the dedicated fans playing and get a subset of fans to return until they clear the content again. But each time they do that, both of those groups will shrink further, and the game is less appealing to new players. That's the path EQ1 took with its yearly expansions that have continued to this day. For real, the last one came out Dec 2017, but nobody even knows about that outside of the most devoted fans.
Blizzard could certainly choose to do that with WoW until the level cap hits 300 and they discover the 20th continent in the year 2150. But to really keep the game relevant you need to occasionally do something that re-energizes the community and makes the game feel like it's still brand new.
That is a perfectly good, common RPG setup. The, "You were working for the bad guys, but you didn't know it," setup is classic. But they can't pull that off in WoW, not with the Alliance seeing the other side of things, nor does it sound like they're really even trying to, what with how Saurfang is being written and the hints they were dropping in those novellas. Deus Ex this is not.
There's many more instances where civilians are implied to be dying during fighting you do, those are pretty much the stakes for all the fighting we do come to think of it. What happens if it turns out Sylvanas is just being as ruthless as she's always been?
If we're never tasked with killing her and she isn't deposed?
Is it really that bad that the curtain is lifted on the cost of war we've been waging all this time...let's not play pretend that only now civilians are suffering in war. Especially when so many side quests are you helping civilians during various wars.
I know the immediate response might be "But players have no motivation to take part!" which I think applies to much power on the player to influence the feelings of entire races of people. The factions have plenty of reasons to go to war just from events on broken isles alone.
And it assumes a lot about ALL players. I had assumed we were at war when Greymane ordered us to ambush their warchief...that's kind of a war starting thing.
I have no idea what you're talking about. It seems like you haven't read the Wowhead link about the books at all, and that you're willfully ignoring the messages that Blizzard is repeatedly trying to send us with Saurfang's character,* with the books, and with the Alliance side of the story.
TL;DR: Blizzard is putting a lot of effort into telling us that siding with Sylvanas is bad and evil. That's not me saying that. That's them. If you want to argue with them that Sylvanas isn't bad and evil, that she isn't being manipulated by the Old Gods, that this is just war, then knock yourself out.
* Also Baine, Anduin, Tyrande, Malfurion vs Nathanos and Gallywix. The battle lines Blizzard has drawn between the major faction leaders and their traditional representations in the story pretty emphatically demonstrate which side Blizzard expects players to be taking. That or they're misexecuting horribly.
If you say so.
I'm actually a bit iffy on these battlelines when it comes to Nathanos. One the one hand he's very loyal to Sylvanas but on the other he had 'WTF' moments during Before The Storm's and The War Of Thorns' climaxes. If they wanted Nathanos to be unquestioningly on Sylvanas' side, I doubt they'd bother showing either.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I think Blizz needs to spend less time jacking of try hards, getting rosy eyed over vanilla stuff that didn't work or didn't exist and maybe learn to do some god damn quality control on their product. For starters they need a lore bible, it doesn't need to be in depth, but it should have enough of a frame work to prevent some of the lore fuckups we've seen lately. It should also have a section that locks down certain elements. I think they should do away with the Horde/Alliance setup in favor a self faction setup, but regardless of what they do it should be clear that neither the horde nor the alliance is good or evil and any jackass writer that pushes for that will have their ass kicked out the door. As far as I'm concerned, both factions being a mix of nice folk and assholes is locked down because that's how the game launched and that's what people were sold on.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
you kinda dunked your own argument. The horde has never been a band of noble savages. You had the "evil" forsaken, the dumb-as-bricks warmongering orcs, the peaceful pacifist tauren and the "we're trying to quit the cannibalism and voodoo, honest" trolls. The only reason this farce lasted as long as it did was because special snowflake metzen-self-insert Thrall acted pretty unorcy and keep the violence to a minimum.
Just for poops and giggles, I dug up the old WoW manual.
The alliance race descriptions use the word "defend".
The horde races get far more aggressive verbs.
Re: Sylvanas. Given what's written in the novels, I don't think describing what she's doing as "out of character" is fair. Ever since she flung herself off ICC she's been on a steady decline into general murderhoboism. This war she's started makes sense; she doesn't believe in peace. As a result, war is the only alternative, she'd rather be on the winning end, now's a great time to poke the alliance.
I guess you played Warcraft 1 or 2, skipped Warcraft 3, and jumped back in with, like Cataclysm or Pandaria? Or are you just choosing to ignore War3 because you hate Thrall soooo much?
The Horde was mostly just trying to survive, but dealing with an internal Warlock/fel magic problem (hence stuff like the Wailing Caverns). The Alliance was rebuilding, but were pretty aggressive at turning up their noses at anyone the upper class perceived as "below" them (hence stuff like the Deadmines.)