more like pvp contacts and old pve lads but i'd love to dump them in groups instead of scrolling the thing. I tried an addon but the font size is uncomfortable
Finally got Ky'veza ?? down. Never before have I been more locked in. I had to disable DBM and hide her health bar (shoved the target frame into the corner under some other UI junk) because they were too distracting and kept trying to gaslight myself that the 4rth/5th shell game was only the second and I had way more to go.
Also I didn't realize this until fairly shortly before the kill but the shadow around the edge of the room slowly closes in and acts as a soft enrage lol.
Anyone know how to stop having all the action bar abilities reset when converting a time runner to retail? It’s driving me insane as sometimes when I transfer a character all my abilities are kept there, and other times everything is completely wiped to having nothing.
Just another one of those weird UI quirks. I had a similar bug where the UI kept resetting itself to a different config that started happening in TWW and fixed itself at some point then broke again.
I think the UI team have bigger issues going into Midnight rn.
I love how people keep going "do you think we'll get a new wow" without realizing DF up is basically already new wow. Like there's a reason blizzard is funneling new players into dragonflight, and well not ignoring the past expansions, the new ones are certainly more isolated, and more focused on creating new lore compared to the old ones.
lol speaking of UE5 wow, that 'new and improved, doing what blizzard is incapable of, there will even be an android version' UE5 client that twow was advertising has given up and stopped development
His "appearance" in SL wasn't even meant to be a continuation of his story or an ending. That was already done. It was a tie back for the sake of Syl's story. He was a plot device that's it.
Especially with blizz straight up saying "no Arthas isn't going to be in SL" before the expansion launched, people were delusional thinking he was going to be there and get anything other than maybe a name drop. Him showing up as an anima whisp was already more than I thought he would have.
i dont know if this is a hot take. but blizzard did Arthas good in SL in my opinion. having him just appear as a small speck of a souls really sells (to me at least) how damaged Arthas had become after being the lich king for so long.
When they first announced the expansion, I was worried they'd have some big "DAE REMEMBER ARTHAS???" nostalgia moment since it dealt with undeath, but instead they were very restrained in how they used his character. His legacy loomed pretty heavily over the expansion, but when he finally shows up on screen (when the Jailer uses his soul to forge Anduin's runeblade), he's just a broken fragment being used as a tool much like Nerzhul before him. Then, when Anduin is defeated and breaks from the Jailer's control, Sylvanas' opening line in the post-Anduin fight cinematic is such a perfect capstone for his legacy: "No crown, no throne, not even a soul left for judgement." It almost feels like the writers' commentary on players' demands for him to come back, there's nothing left of him and it's best to just let him fade away into history.
I rewatched the Anduin/Sylvanas cinematics for this and man, those cinematics are so good. Anduin calling out Sylvanas for giving him the opportunity to willingly submit to the Jailer just so she could justify her own actions, Varian/Saurfang showing up to inspire Anduin to break free, and then the final fragment of Arthas fading away. The use of music, specifically the blending of Arthas' WOTLK death cinematic music into the Lamnent of the Higborne, was so well done and even the quiet reactions on Jaina/Uther's faces say so much about how much they are still affected by his fall. Shit like this is why I'll always be a Shadowlands defender.
I also really enjoyed these cinematics, the suspense they created through dialogue alone was great to see, nowdays cinematics have felt pretty safe or unimportant resulting in them being forgettable, with some exceptions of course like whenever iridikron talked...
It almost feels like the writers' commentary on players' demands for him to come back, there's nothing left of him and it's best to just let him fade away into history.
For me at least it was. It was a big "THIS IS OVER, MOVE ON". But algo I felt it was very special after the whole lawsuit thing and stuff being removed.
I thought it was perfect, too. I don't know what other people wanted, redemption I guess? But it's hard to think of a way to do that without it being forced or fan service-y.
Since Blizzard has referenced back to Shadowlands multiple times since it ended (including literally visiting the Maw in the most recent patch questline) it's getting hard to even jokingly try to write the expansion off as a hallucination.
I thought it was hilarious when the Winter Queen and the Night Fae popped up pretty early on in the Green Dragon quests from DF. It just completely deflated the "LOL SHADOWLANDS NONCANON" narrative and made it clear that the Shadowlands was very much canon lol.
Nah well the joke might be getting old years later, that absolutely deserved to be clapped on. It was such a tone deaf statement lol when people were understandably dissapointed when the hyped up diablo announcement was a phone game and not D4.
There was someone complaining about that in the newcomer chat the other day, using the same talking points you see on Reddit. Eventually they shut up but it was annoying seeing it in the wild.
You could argue theres been a shift from less bombastic, action heavy set pieces and more towards talky, thinky character drama. Ive certainly argued that, and i think its been to the storys detriment simply due to pacing issues. But wows always leaned towards "this guy is so badass and cool" over wallowing in darkness.
Fucking arthas commits genocide and makes jokes and quips the whole way. When he turns sylvanas he seems more miffed than anything
When the most recent patch came out with the Windrunner questline, I was very curious about who the "Familiar Soul" following Sylvanas in the Maw was. I assumed it was Nathanos until they made a very concrete appearance in the background, but it just clicked that it's probably Saurfang.
Sylvanas, as a raid boss, dropped an "Old Warrior's Soul" trinket so she already kept him around with her throughout her evil time in the Maw and it makes sense that he would keep an eye on her while she fulfilled her duty. Either out of a sense of duty to keep her in-line to save his son's soul or out of an unspoken sympathy for her after watching his own son also get twisted into a monster by the Lich King (or both most likely). Maybe just a fun headcanon, but I kinda hope he's still around in a subtle way.
Edit: have now seen the newest "WoW used to be edgy" circlejerk, it's honestly hilarious that the top comments are all pointing out that WoW has never had the style of the Warcraft 2 manual art in its entire lifespan lol.
Holy fuck, another post about how “grimdark” Warcraft supposedly used to be and how “Disneyfied” it is now. Warcraft was never dark. It has always been cartoony even back in the Warcraft II days. The franchise never had a truly dark tone, and it was never about that. If you want Warhammer, just go play Warhammer.
At this point, either these people never played the older Warcraft games, or they’re just blinded by nostalgia. And now they say modern WoW is all “power of friendship”… like, yeah? WoW is an MMO it has always been about working together. Even Warcraft III literally ends with everyone coming together to defeat Archimonde and the Legion, with Medivh delivering a monologue about how the world doesn’t need a guardian because its people will defend it together.
WC2 was the game that had Turtles with Cannons on their back as Warships man, how can somebody play that and not realise that its not supposed to be some giga serious dark fantasy setting
and like, Warhammer is also not "omg deep despair grimdark its so mature omg" all the time, it has a LOT of goofy things going on, the Skaven one of the most Evil groups in the entire setting of Warhammer Fantasy and they are literally acting like cartoon villains 80% of the time which is part of their charm and what makes them awesome lol, Warhammer is only "sooooo grimdark" for the people that translate "warhammer" into "i only watch EPIC SPACE MARINE KILL XENOS SHORTS" and nothing else
I don't know a whole lot about Warhammer, but one of my favourite things about it I do know of are the orks who can make anything true with the power of belief. Like they think red is the fastest colour so they paint things they want to go fast red, and it works. Its just so goofy.
Warcraft's artstyle reminds me of Banjo-Kazooie stuff. Always been like that, and I love it. Recently saw the new Blood Elf houses and they look a little like the Jinjo houses.
As you said, WoW never was dark like those people say, it is some weird revisionism to hate on modern WoW.
They should add the AH robot from garrisons to housing, but don't change anything about how it gets acquired so people are forced to farm random WoD shit for parts like I did.
Who am I kidding? I didn't even finish it back during WoD
unless they add litterly everything to your house, herbs, mining, fishing etc houses will not "kill" main cities. that was the problem with garrisons. there was no reason to leave because
there was no content to do so there was no reason to leave
you could litterly do everything from your garrison. that is not the case with housing
This has always bothered me so I'm just gonna drop something unrelated to TWW here. Why the hell is it when some people in the main sub bring up Battle for Azeroth, they say that the N'zoth stuff should have been its own expansion?
Like... that's what BFA is? BFA IS an old god-themed expansion. On the Horde side you have Ghuun, but also normal old god aberrations in Vol'dun. Meanwhile Kul Tiras has a LOT of N'zoth influence as the corruption of the Tidesages is part of the main story there. There's also the Crucible of Storms and the Tidesage dungeon that I forget the name of that are both N'zoth-related.
Queen Azshara and the naga are DIRECTLY related to N'zoth and serve as an escalation from corrupted humans to THE servants of the final Old God. N'zoth only shows up once his plan is properly in motion and most of his servants are dead.
N'zoth is the weakest of the four original Old Gods, that's why he's such a schemer. It doesn't make any sense for him to make his presence known to us immediately when he has entire armies and plans within plans to rely on. Like there's a lot I can say BFA lacked and didn't do good but I do think the N'zoth plot was a good through line for most of the story.
I really like BFA, it's my all time favourite expansion. I'm just saying this to make it clear I'm not going "hurr durr BFA BAD"
There are about 3 expansions that got smooshed into one for BFA. They tie together but the main issue is all three could have been the premise for entire expansions on there own. 2/3 had even been pretty big asks for a while as far as "what do you want the next expansion to be". (Azshara and the Black Empire)
You had launch to the first patch, which was all about the faction war. Yea there were small threads here and there about old gods, but the focus was on Alliance vs Horde. This probably was the most developed out of all three, and even in the following patches they kept themes of it at least.
The second was Azshara and Nazjatar. This is a big one. Azshara and her Naga have been a huge presence in wow, and people had been asking for "the naga" expansion for a looong time, and wanting to go to Nazjatar, expecting it to be something more like a surumar or even undermine as far as scale goes. Instead we don't really get the sunken capital city, and it was turned entirely into a patch zone. Blizzard basically blew the naga expansion on a single patch.
And the last was N'zoth and the black empire. This is the same issue. A premise that could have been an entire expansion but was reduced to a single patch, but with the added bit that it retconned what nyalotha was, and reused two old zones instead of at least adding a new one. I thought it was cool going to old zones myself, but it doesn't change the fact that it felt a little like reuse.
N'zoth in particular was done pretty dirty for a villain that was being built up since cataclysm (though I don't think we learn his name until later.).
I see your point, but I'm not entirely sure I agree.
Alliance side has a lot more ties to N'zoth, but the Ghuun stuff isn't related to N'zoth at all on the Horde side. Even though it's Old God themed, it's a completely different (and previously unknown) Old God that was created. It definitely doesn't feel tied to anything related to N'zoth to me. Horde side felt very non-related to N'zoth until Crucible.
It's also, as others have mentioned, the fact that the premise of BfA was the faction war. The intro was faction war, the reason we were on the two islands was faction war, two of the major features of the expansion were faction war (the faction assaults and warfronts), one of the raids was faction war... and even within the zones there was a decent amount of faction war stuff going on (things like Brennadam come to mind).
So for me, the expansion felt like a disjointed mess of various storylines where N'zoth only really had a small part of until half way through. Horde leveling felt like it had nothing to do with him, Alliance leveling outside Stormsong felt like it had nothing to do with him (Drustvar especially as it felt like it's own self-contained storyline with nothing to do with the rest of the expansion), and there was a focus on the Horde versus Alliance for so much of the expansion that then shifted over to N'zoth halfway through.
There's also the Crucible of Storms and the Tidesage dungeon that I forget the name of that are both N'zoth-related.
Not just "related", N'Zoth (or a part of him) shows up at the end of Crucible and talks to you throughout the end-boss fight. I don't know how much more blatant Blizzard could have been.
Because a major part of BFA was the Horde/Alliance war even though there actually wasn't enough of that in BFA itself. Like the primary cinematic, the driving force behind the start, the second raid were all about the Horde Alliance war. They had warfronts be a new content thing which isn't tied to old gods at all really
Id say the main issue is marketing. People were sold on a faction war, which ended up as a whole being relatively unimportant to the expansions story as a whole, and also did a worse job at creating interesting stories about a faction war than the expansion that did a lot of the same beats exponentially better, mists of pandaria.
So when people think bfa, they think a faction war solved primarily in mission tables and saurfang cutscenes. Really, by the time battle for dazaralor is done, the faction war is 80% done. Bfa is more of an old god expansion, yes, but unlike the way the mystery of the sha unfolded, and was a direct consequence of the faction war, nzoth just kind of...happens. the flimsy tie of "sylvanas just wants to kill everyone for the jailer so thats why she works with azshara" is actually such a hackneyed plot point it wraps back around to being funny.
While I agree that it's all thematically coherent and the general idea behind BFA's narrative flow was good, in the end the N'zoth plot does feel kinda rushed. They were too ambitious trying to cram faction war AND N'zoth in the same expansion, even if it made perfect sense.
So we got big levelling campaigns for 8.0 that were mostly focused on faction war with Old god foreshadowing in the background. The problem is, with how the game and its patches are structured, 8.0 represented already 80% of the questing content of the expansion (content patches are always on the shorter side, campaign wise, narrative content is frontloaded on expansion releases, also part of TWW's issues tbh).
Then we get more faction war in 8.1, a cool but short old god questline in 8.1.5, Nazjatar and Azshara in 8.2 (very cool zone and raid and themes, but narratively, it was still condensed in like two hours of questing), and N'zoth in 8.3 (again, two hours of questing and a raid and it's done).
So yeah it all boils down to a lack of "narrative time" in post-expansion patches. Either you do side self-contained stories like Undermine, or if you want to have a big sprawling narrative it needs to be properly built up during the main expansion release.
Really not too happy with some of the decor being locked behind needing an alliance and horde toon with the same reps to exalted...
Like i did my time grinding out wod i really dont want to push council of exarchs to max again.
Theres just really no consistency on the level of time/resource investment for some decor rewards vs the quality of the item. Like have yall seen black lotus prices?
I just realized I'm finally going to finish the purple protodrake holiday meta achievement with this year's Winter's Veil. I never really focused on it and had been working on it VERY casually since achievements were added, but now it's kinda crazy that such a daunting achievement is now just a few easy achievements away from being done with lol
Also, this is completely unrelated to that, but it is so funny how absolutely bothered some people are by the existance of housing in WoW.
I was skimming insta reels (don't judge me) during my break and decided to check the comments on a video of someone showing off their house. Holy shit, the supposedly "le wholesome" Classic fans sure love lobbing slurs at people who simply enjoy housing and want to show off their houses.
Saw one that was basically "cant wait til tbc is out, so tired of this f*ggy retail housing shit on my feed, go play Sims retailtards" on a video of someone just showing off a tree house they made. I'm not even offended, because it literally read like something a 12 year old would type but yet their profile pic was a 40+ year old man with a family, shits just sad to me lmao.
And the "Classic fans" part isn't even me being hyperbolic to work in an easy dunk, they literally described themselves as such in their comments lmao. The non-Classic ones are just as bad because they seem to think "I don't care about housing" is the ultimate gotcha, like damn, I don't interact with mythic+ or rated pvp much but it doesn't mean they should just delete those systems because I don't use them lol.
I'm amazed at just how diverse and divisive the WoW community is. A week ago, it was "WTF are you talking about? Everyone likes housing! Stop making up strawmen to fight!", in response to supposed anti-housing opinions.
Now, these strawmen have materialized into real people, and the "let housing mains have fun" comments actually makes sense.
Saw one that was basically "cant wait til tbc is out, so tired of this f*ggy retail housing shit on my feed, go play Sims retailtards" on a video of someone just showing off a tree house they made. I'm not even offended, because it literally read like something a 12 year old would type but yet their profile pic was a 40+ year old man with a family, shits just sad to me lmao.
Ahhh congrats on the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been achieve! Back when they added it to the game I think I was the first and for a while only person in my (granted, smallish RP-oriented) guild to get the violet proto-drake, and it's always held a special place in my heart.
r/CompetitiveWoW has changed quite a bit over the last few/several years.
It was originally extremely moderated and had a very niche focus and anything that was not directly related to improvement or optimising high level content was removed.
Now it is basically what r/wow used to be but for dungeon/raid content. All the highest posts are just wowhead posts where the comments are dooming and people threatening to quit the game.
CompWoW was so much better when they actually kinda enforced some elitism because it was the point of the sub: a place to actually talk about challenging fighs and how to improve your own gameplay at the higher end of gameplay, and not people that have no clue or just parrot something they saw on a stream as "advice" with no context
but like the other guy allready said: during late legion/BfA the sub kinda turned into shit because it got absolutely flooded with people that reached KSM and then thought they are "high level competitive players" now, and the Moderators gave in after some time and allowed that stuff instead of removing it, and the rest is history: its a place where AotC-with-2-mythic-kills Pug Lords and 3,1k r.io m+ andys gather and complain about not getting Mythic Gear for running a +13 key, how Raidbuffs ruin their sacred m+ mode and are the only reason they cant time a +14 key and make the ussual "my class weak and needs buffs, other class OP and needs nerfs" comments under the weekly ussules WoWhead dmg overall post because they dont even understand how ussules they are and how little they tell
all the people that actually know stuff dont bother with compwow for like 7 years at this point and it all got relocated into Class Discords instead
all the people that actually know stuff dont bother with compwow for like 7 years at this point and it all got relocated into Class Discords instead
Hey this isn't entirely true, there are people that post there against their better judgment (this is less than 1% of the population)
On a serious note, a big issue with the sub is no one is required to have receipts or any sort of proof of credibility, so on any given post you don't know if it's being made by a guy that knows wtf they're talking about or not
Last time I honestly remember it being good was WoD. Legion was when it sort of just became low-rank haven, but BFA onward just changed the makeup entirely. It really is just all M+ers whining nowadays.
It's like what Alton Brown said: "Once a region believes that it's got the lock on something, the quality almost immediately starts to go downhill. (...) if you really want great buffalo chicken wings, you don't go to freakin' Buffalo"
So now that we are officially done with tww's story i wanted to discuss it briefly.
I think on the whole it was decent. Some solid moments and some really good side stories, with what seems to be increasingly poor cutscene direction, which is par for the course post legion.
Ultimately, though, as much as everyone, including blizzard, use the "its the first part of a trilogy" phrase to excuse weaker moments, i kinda fail to see how the pacing and writing is any different from most expansions.
Xalataths vague motivations and mystery box identity are no different than the stringing along we got for sylvanas legion to shadowlands. The goblin stuff was super out of place, but no more out of place than mechagon, and while thats fine, longer running narratices tend to build up and progress characters and elements introduced early, and i see no real indication goblins or nerubians will play ANY part in the next two expansions. Earthen, maybe, arathi, obviously. But i really dont see their place in the narrative as any different than other wow faction. Blizzard teases shit for next expansions all the time. Lets not forget how many people were expecting a lich king centered story far back as legion. Or a legion return during mists of pandaria.
If "The War Within" was a book in a store, and i picked it off the shelf and read it, id say "this feels like a compliation of an ongoing comic book from 2 years picked at random" than an actual book 1. Which is how wow has always felt: More interested in showing the next cool setpieces and content than writing an escalating narrative. Its nice that they think calling it a trilogy will change things. But its written like most other expansions.
Even the whole "dark heart" plotline (which was rather boring) being the impetus for midnight is not new. Only last time they did this the dark heart was a whole ass person called guldan.
Im always willing to change my mind. Maybe midnight will prove me wrong. Maybe its really gonna end on a dark note and show that the trilogy label was worth it. But like.
What was stopping you from doing that at any time?
You're right that it's not different from before. I think the only difference between the "trilogy" we have now and what they've done in the past is that they just made it open information that the overarching story is supposed to be over multiple expansions.
Like they obviously had the storyline planned multiple expansions in advance to get from Garrosh becoming Warchief to his death in WoD. They obviously had planned the WoD-Legion storyline in advance. They just didn't say "the story is going to span multiple expansions." They've essentially been doing the same thing since Cata (or WoD at the latest) where the expansion storyline was clearly not the end of the overarching story. They just didn't say "this is a trilogy."
im gonna be real, "its the first part of the trilogy" is both true but also a kinda bad "excuse" that is a bit overused
if you ever look into actual literature, a trilogy doesnt mean that the first part is ONLY setting things up all the time, things are supposed to happen at the same time, there are supposed to be payoffs allready that build into new things for the future etc.....
and like you said, TWW is extremely disconnected and akward patched togheter and its very noticable
like, yehs the Haranir get used in Midnight, but its VERY obvious that they where supposed to play a bigger role in TWW allready and instead they just exist for a single optional questline and then complettely vanish from the game
The Black Blood was very clearly build up as the "main bad force" of TWW, EVERYTHING at the beginning of the expansion when we reach the Nerubias is about the Black Blood, how it drives people insane and lets them see a strange otherworldy reslm, how it mutates people and how Xalatath can use her Void Powers to complettely controll them, the Black Blood was even used by Xal in an attempt to corrupt/enslave the Hallowfall Crystal and they made it clear that its apperantely slowly spreading everywhere and is a huge problem
and then just.......nothing, never even mentioned again, its just gone, same with the Nerubians who immediately vanished from the game with 0 things ever mentioning them again
if they really wanted TWW to be a part of a trilogy that only exists to build up stuff (which would be horrible writing by itself), they did a extremely bad job at it by making those weird disconnected plot jumps
Exactly, i dont think tww is bad at all. But it doesnt feel fundamentally different from the way theyve always told stories, ESPECIALLY in recent years. Maybe black blood comes back. But if this was a book, then your main character alleria was absent for almost a whole third, and all the time spent on earthen and nerubians dont even fucking extend to the end of the expansion
Legion fucks up the smaller details and has tone issues but the escalation from guldan and the nighthold directly leading to the 2nd attack on the tomb, directly leading to argus is pretty near the best story pacing weve had.
The faction war, mogu, mantid, pandaren, and sha managed to remain relevant through all of mop. You take out the thunder king and you completely fuck over the third act because you lose key characterizations and growth moments for major characters. You take out the mantid and the yshaarj/paragons reveal is weaker.
The point of the goblins was the repair of the Dark Heart and getting us to have a reason to go to Karesh (as well as continuing the involvement of ethereals and learning they were not part of Xal's group). I know it's not as big as what you mentioned, but get rid of the goblin patch and you still fuck over the final act of the expansion as you have no reason to suddenly end up fighting a Void Lord and "fixing" Karesh. Not saying it was good writing, but they do connect to the rest of the story.
Getting goblins to fix a thing that really has nothing to do with goblin Technology is such a easy plot point to assign to almost any other group, Which is why I say it's easily replaceable. The whole dark heart getting damaged in the first place was such an uninteresting plot point
You could replace the Thunder King with something else and still have character growth and development too. Which is to say, that logic works for almost any "necessary" plot point.
Goblins are known to dabble in a lot of questionable technology, as was mentioned below they were part of the creation of the Dragon/Demon Soul and have a history of being involved in Old God stuff with their involvement with Deathwing. And you still have the Ethereals coming in and finding out they don't work with Xal and thus leading us to Karesh. Could it have been written to get us there anyway? Yes, but again that could be said for a lot of "necessary" plot points.
The whole dark heart getting damaged in the first place was such an uninteresting plot point
That's obviously completely subjective. I thought it was an awesome moment to have her shoot the DH instead of trying to kill Xal'atath again.
Youre right in saying that its all mostly subjective but you cannot seriously tell me that the undermine patch flows as well in the overall narrative as the thunder king? The buildup and payoff alone would beg to differ
The Thunder King patch was a rather jarring "where did this come from" moment, especially if you didn't do Kun'lai summit (which you could have easily entirely skipped with how MoP leveling worked). What was the overall narrative? "The Thunder King is back, we're needing to fight him and the Zandalari now instead of the Sha, so we assault the island and take him down while we continue to kinda-sorta fight each other about Garrosh." And this on the heals of Landfall which I think is one of the worst patches narratively to exist, but that's a different conversation.
As far as their flow, I think Undermined was fine, it told a coherent story for the zone that made sense to me. It was as jarring to me as Thunder King was as far as it disrupting the flow of the expansion's story, but personally I found finally making Gallywix shut the hell up was a much bigger reward than killing off a boss that I'd had almost no knowledge of prior to that patch. The only thing I didn't like about it is the DRIVE system, which I could never get the hang of and just didn't have fun with.
But again, all this is subjective, I can understand completely why people didn't like it, or why they did like Thunder King's patch (the raid was baller for sure).
But I was mainly commenting on what you said: "You take out the thunder king and you completely fuck over the third act because you lose key characterizations and growth moments for major characters." My point is that it still played a role in the overall story that if you take away leaves something out that is needed for the overall story. And just like how they'd have had to have rewritten the story for the character development in Thunder King, they would have had to figure out a different way to get the Dark Heart back, justify the ethereal's involvement, and get us to Karesh.
Yeah but jaina and lorthemar growing from taran zhus sppech directly ties into seige of orgrimmar and taran zhu defending the horde's honor against garroshes. Zandalar seeking to rebuild troll empires was set up from cataclysm, and the mogu/the thunder king was set up in several zones and a raid, while goblins dont have nearly as much direct set up in the actual expansion. Gallywix finally losing is good. But they werent a prescence like the mogu and taran zhu.
Gazlowe and goblins stop mattering the moment ethereals take over.
I don't know why you're so defensive about this, so I'm going to call it just a difference of opinion. As I said at the start, I'm not saying it was good writing (Undermined), but we could start making similar comparisons to the goblins and their background as well (as we've stated previously, their involvement in this type of technology and Old God stuff goes way back).
But we're just going to go in circles. You clearly have something big for the Thunder King patch, i don't. That's OK. They're subjective. Anything can be re-written to get story beats and character growth in a different way.
Isn't the dark heart supposed to be similar to the dragon soul? And the dragon soul was made by goblins, so it would make sense that goblins are the assigned group to fix it.
so i know that game awards show is just last week . but at least bg3 is someow won the best commnity award but i dont get how ffxiv warrants a best community support even its somehow on best communtiy award like last year too ..? cause dawntrail expansion wasnt that good..
The award lists are nearly always rage/reactionbait.
That said, WoW and FFXIV getting into a contest over who has the most mid expansion right now is hilarious.
I wrote this at the time. I also joked that the people who nominated FFXIV were Weakaura fans.
For a more serious answer, I think it's hard to describe the impact BfA followed by SL had on the zeitgeist. In large community servers I'm in that have a gaming channel or MMO channel just...don't talk about WoW. There's not even any negativity, there's simply nothing said.
I can only speak for myself but BfA/SL decimated my guilds and virtually all the people I know who quit during that period haven't returned and are now scattered between FFXIV, Guild Wars 2 and other multiplayer games like Warframe (also Destiny but rip to that one). I don't know if this is different because I played on RP servers, which tend to have pretty dedicated player populations until the story really shits the bed (see also: WoD), but the lack of discussion about WoW across any other of my social feeds just seems to suggest that despite record subscriber numbers, WoW practically exists in a sort of bubble.
I think this contributes a bit to the more recent push to get newer players into WoW through things like the addon changes and the additions of things like lorewalking, but I guess I'm not really seeing this work to bring new people in, just engage existing players and maybe tempt some people to return to catch up.
yeah shockingly.. theres nothing in ffxiv is worth subbing to when the game is just stagnant itself.. and meanwhile WoW has like stuff to go back to like delves
we got some new trials for the midnight raidroster, and 2 of them have no prior Mythic Experience but we wanna give it a try anyway
and ngl, its always a bit funny when people show up so confident in themself because they are used to be the "super star dps" in their heroic runs, and then suddenly are at the bottom
but hey, they are willing to learn and listen to advice, cant complain there
Back in WoD we got a sibling of a guild member to join. He was pretty casual and had terrible gear. The dude was a mechanics god and would hardly ever die because of it. He started to get gear and suddenly was better than over half our DPS roster, it was great.
no i didnt play during legion so i didnt see that we drained the entire sword of energy and removing a planet sized sword would probably just kill azeroth stop telling me im wrong what about THE SWORD
Golly its almost like they announced this story as a trilogy too and it might still get addressed down the line in a certain expansion explicitly name dropping Titans.
The WoW community's complete inability to comprehend a continuing story is one of the funniest parts of modern lore discourse. They were given advanced notice, by Christ Metzen himself, that these expansions would be a trilogy and yet are still mad that every plotline hasn't been wrapped up in the first entry lmao.
Back when the trilogy was announced, I remember seeing people whine that the 3 expansions should be cheaper "because we're just getting one story". It makes sense why they had to announce the trilogy ahead of time, because we're only 1 entry in and the community still doesn't understand that just because a story element is open ended at the moment doesn't mean it's "forgotten".
The worst part is I guarantee that certain parts of the community are going to act like they did something when the Sword inevitably comes back into the focus, as though their incessant posts about it reminded the writing team it exists lmao.
yet are still mad that every plotline hasn't been wrapped up in the first entry lmao.
Shoutout to the whinging that "Blizzard completely forgot about the Harranir, hurrdurr bad writing" because they weren't around for the last raid tier, before Midnight's full announcement revealing they're getting their own zone, raid, and being made playable.
There's a significant amount of WoW players that seemingly can't comprehend that setting something up and not immediately paying it off is NOT 'bad writing'. Cough cough, Arathi storyline, cough cough.
I remember seeing people whine that the 3 expansions should be cheaper "because we're just getting one story".
Reminding me of the Starcraft 2 complaints because the base game only featured a Terran campaign instead of having one for all three factions. Except that the SC2 Terran campaign was almost as long as the original game's entire campaign. SC1 had 10 missions for each for a total of 30, and Wings of Liberty had 27, + 2 missions that were different depending on the choice you made.
The year is 2026 you need an addon to sort your friendlist.
Friends?
You guys have friends??
more like pvp contacts and old pve lads but i'd love to dump them in groups instead of scrolling the thing. I tried an addon but the font size is uncomfortable
Finally got Ky'veza ?? down. Never before have I been more locked in. I had to disable DBM and hide her health bar (shoved the target frame into the corner under some other UI junk) because they were too distracting and kept trying to gaslight myself that the 4rth/5th shell game was only the second and I had way more to go.
Also I didn't realize this until fairly shortly before the kill but the shadow around the edge of the room slowly closes in and acts as a soft enrage lol.
Oh shit, i didnt notice that. Wonder how many people have killed her without realizing it because we're all hyperfocusing on her mechanics
Anyone know how to stop having all the action bar abilities reset when converting a time runner to retail? It’s driving me insane as sometimes when I transfer a character all my abilities are kept there, and other times everything is completely wiped to having nothing.
Just another one of those weird UI quirks. I had a similar bug where the UI kept resetting itself to a different config that started happening in TWW and fixed itself at some point then broke again.
I think the UI team have bigger issues going into Midnight rn.
I love how people keep going "do you think we'll get a new wow" without realizing DF up is basically already new wow. Like there's a reason blizzard is funneling new players into dragonflight, and well not ignoring the past expansions, the new ones are certainly more isolated, and more focused on creating new lore compared to the old ones.
i feel like we're on WoW 3 or 4 at this point
if we go by "core desing changes", yeha you can more or less say that since DF we are in "WoW4"
Yeah but wow in UE5!!!!! WOW 2 THO!!?
lol speaking of UE5 wow, that 'new and improved, doing what blizzard is incapable of, there will even be an android version' UE5 client that twow was advertising has given up and stopped development
I saw lol. It was so cringe
Not restricting the sharing of public housing neighbourhoods on RP realms to other RP realms is certainly a choice.
This is gonna turn out great (some chud streamer is gonna ruin RP events with their fans I guarantee it)
"Blizzard HATES and desecrated Arthas' memory!"
Can redditors grow up please, stop with the hyperbole & imagination
Arthas's story ended in WotLK.
His "appearance" in SL wasn't even meant to be a continuation of his story or an ending. That was already done. It was a tie back for the sake of Syl's story. He was a plot device that's it.
Especially with blizz straight up saying "no Arthas isn't going to be in SL" before the expansion launched, people were delusional thinking he was going to be there and get anything other than maybe a name drop. Him showing up as an anima whisp was already more than I thought he would have.
i dont know if this is a hot take. but blizzard did Arthas good in SL in my opinion. having him just appear as a small speck of a souls really sells (to me at least) how damaged Arthas had become after being the lich king for so long.
Its a perfect way of showing his suffering
I loved Arthas' ending in Shadowlands
When they first announced the expansion, I was worried they'd have some big "DAE REMEMBER ARTHAS???" nostalgia moment since it dealt with undeath, but instead they were very restrained in how they used his character. His legacy loomed pretty heavily over the expansion, but when he finally shows up on screen (when the Jailer uses his soul to forge Anduin's runeblade), he's just a broken fragment being used as a tool much like Nerzhul before him. Then, when Anduin is defeated and breaks from the Jailer's control, Sylvanas' opening line in the post-Anduin fight cinematic is such a perfect capstone for his legacy: "No crown, no throne, not even a soul left for judgement." It almost feels like the writers' commentary on players' demands for him to come back, there's nothing left of him and it's best to just let him fade away into history.
I rewatched the Anduin/Sylvanas cinematics for this and man, those cinematics are so good. Anduin calling out Sylvanas for giving him the opportunity to willingly submit to the Jailer just so she could justify her own actions, Varian/Saurfang showing up to inspire Anduin to break free, and then the final fragment of Arthas fading away. The use of music, specifically the blending of Arthas' WOTLK death cinematic music into the Lamnent of the Higborne, was so well done and even the quiet reactions on Jaina/Uther's faces say so much about how much they are still affected by his fall. Shit like this is why I'll always be a Shadowlands defender.
I also really enjoyed these cinematics, the suspense they created through dialogue alone was great to see, nowdays cinematics have felt pretty safe or unimportant resulting in them being forgettable, with some exceptions of course like whenever iridikron talked...
For me at least it was. It was a big "THIS IS OVER, MOVE ON". But algo I felt it was very special after the whole lawsuit thing and stuff being removed.
I thought it was perfect, too. I don't know what other people wanted, redemption I guess? But it's hard to think of a way to do that without it being forced or fan service-y.
they wanted Arthas to smash through the roof doing a superhero landing on sylvannas and say "missed me" and the one shot the jailer or something
And then everyone would clap
Arthas was one of those villains they kind of accidentally made immortal/unkillable in WC3
So in reality they fucked him up in wrath.
Really minor but the "What Shadowlands? That must've been a N'Zoth vision." bit was funny like the first two times.
Since Blizzard has referenced back to Shadowlands multiple times since it ended (including literally visiting the Maw in the most recent patch questline) it's getting hard to even jokingly try to write the expansion off as a hallucination.
Literally the whole last patch of this expansion is a giant callback to SL with tazavesh and the brokers lol.
I thought it was hilarious when the Winter Queen and the Night Fae popped up pretty early on in the Green Dragon quests from DF. It just completely deflated the "LOL SHADOWLANDS NONCANON" narrative and made it clear that the Shadowlands was very much canon lol.
like the chuds who clap for "do you not have phones?" eight years running
Nah well the joke might be getting old years later, that absolutely deserved to be clapped on. It was such a tone deaf statement lol when people were understandably dissapointed when the hyped up diablo announcement was a phone game and not D4.
Fandoms run every joke into the fucking ground.
Theyre like middle schoolers using the outdated slang of their seniors
Its fucking embarassing. every time i see the "fruit bowl joke" i die inside
Edgelords are very whiny and annoying about demanding edge in every little thing
Dae miss the dark vibes the series arguably never had? No? Just me then?
There was someone complaining about that in the newcomer chat the other day, using the same talking points you see on Reddit. Eventually they shut up but it was annoying seeing it in the wild.
You could argue theres been a shift from less bombastic, action heavy set pieces and more towards talky, thinky character drama. Ive certainly argued that, and i think its been to the storys detriment simply due to pacing issues. But wows always leaned towards "this guy is so badass and cool" over wallowing in darkness.
Fucking arthas commits genocide and makes jokes and quips the whole way. When he turns sylvanas he seems more miffed than anything
nah dude, Arthas clearly played guitar in the WC3 credits in a fucked up and dark way!!1
When the most recent patch came out with the Windrunner questline, I was very curious about who the "Familiar Soul" following Sylvanas in the Maw was. I assumed it was Nathanos until they made a very concrete appearance in the background, but it just clicked that it's probably Saurfang.
Sylvanas, as a raid boss, dropped an "Old Warrior's Soul" trinket so she already kept him around with her throughout her evil time in the Maw and it makes sense that he would keep an eye on her while she fulfilled her duty. Either out of a sense of duty to keep her in-line to save his son's soul or out of an unspoken sympathy for her after watching his own son also get twisted into a monster by the Lich King (or both most likely). Maybe just a fun headcanon, but I kinda hope he's still around in a subtle way.
Edit: have now seen the newest "WoW used to be edgy" circlejerk, it's honestly hilarious that the top comments are all pointing out that WoW has never had the style of the Warcraft 2 manual art in its entire lifespan lol.
Holy fuck, another post about how “grimdark” Warcraft supposedly used to be and how “Disneyfied” it is now. Warcraft was never dark. It has always been cartoony even back in the Warcraft II days. The franchise never had a truly dark tone, and it was never about that. If you want Warhammer, just go play Warhammer.
At this point, either these people never played the older Warcraft games, or they’re just blinded by nostalgia. And now they say modern WoW is all “power of friendship”… like, yeah? WoW is an MMO it has always been about working together. Even Warcraft III literally ends with everyone coming together to defeat Archimonde and the Legion, with Medivh delivering a monologue about how the world doesn’t need a guardian because its people will defend it together.
None of these people played the old Warcraft games. They're just repeating what other people say about the game.
WC2 was the game that had Turtles with Cannons on their back as Warships man, how can somebody play that and not realise that its not supposed to be some giga serious dark fantasy setting
and like, Warhammer is also not "omg deep despair grimdark its so mature omg" all the time, it has a LOT of goofy things going on, the Skaven one of the most Evil groups in the entire setting of Warhammer Fantasy and they are literally acting like cartoon villains 80% of the time which is part of their charm and what makes them awesome lol, Warhammer is only "sooooo grimdark" for the people that translate "warhammer" into "i only watch EPIC SPACE MARINE KILL XENOS SHORTS" and nothing else
I don't know a whole lot about Warhammer, but one of my favourite things about it I do know of are the orks who can make anything true with the power of belief. Like they think red is the fastest colour so they paint things they want to go fast red, and it works. Its just so goofy.
Warcraft's artstyle reminds me of Banjo-Kazooie stuff. Always been like that, and I love it. Recently saw the new Blood Elf houses and they look a little like the Jinjo houses.
As you said, WoW never was dark like those people say, it is some weird revisionism to hate on modern WoW.
These are very insecure men who demand all media cater to them
When I saw the “desecrated Arthas” post I really thought I was on this sub. Alas.
I wonder how many people know you can use flightmaster whistle toy on Argus to get back to the teleport pads faster.
mailbox housing objects will work as real mailboxes in 12.0.
The garrisonificiation of housing has started and this is the death of main cities
E: oh guess i'll make the sarcasm more obvious next time
They should add the AH robot from garrisons to housing, but don't change anything about how it gets acquired so people are forced to farm random WoD shit for parts like I did.
Who am I kidding? I didn't even finish it back during WoD
unless they add litterly everything to your house, herbs, mining, fishing etc houses will not "kill" main cities. that was the problem with garrisons. there was no reason to leave because
there was no content to do so there was no reason to leave
you could litterly do everything from your garrison. that is not the case with housing
if there is a place that deserves a mailbox, its your own House lol
Sir, this is the unjerk thread.
This has always bothered me so I'm just gonna drop something unrelated to TWW here. Why the hell is it when some people in the main sub bring up Battle for Azeroth, they say that the N'zoth stuff should have been its own expansion?
Like... that's what BFA is? BFA IS an old god-themed expansion. On the Horde side you have Ghuun, but also normal old god aberrations in Vol'dun. Meanwhile Kul Tiras has a LOT of N'zoth influence as the corruption of the Tidesages is part of the main story there. There's also the Crucible of Storms and the Tidesage dungeon that I forget the name of that are both N'zoth-related.
Queen Azshara and the naga are DIRECTLY related to N'zoth and serve as an escalation from corrupted humans to THE servants of the final Old God. N'zoth only shows up once his plan is properly in motion and most of his servants are dead.
N'zoth is the weakest of the four original Old Gods, that's why he's such a schemer. It doesn't make any sense for him to make his presence known to us immediately when he has entire armies and plans within plans to rely on. Like there's a lot I can say BFA lacked and didn't do good but I do think the N'zoth plot was a good through line for most of the story.
I really like BFA, it's my all time favourite expansion. I'm just saying this to make it clear I'm not going "hurr durr BFA BAD"
There are about 3 expansions that got smooshed into one for BFA. They tie together but the main issue is all three could have been the premise for entire expansions on there own. 2/3 had even been pretty big asks for a while as far as "what do you want the next expansion to be". (Azshara and the Black Empire)
You had launch to the first patch, which was all about the faction war. Yea there were small threads here and there about old gods, but the focus was on Alliance vs Horde. This probably was the most developed out of all three, and even in the following patches they kept themes of it at least.
The second was Azshara and Nazjatar. This is a big one. Azshara and her Naga have been a huge presence in wow, and people had been asking for "the naga" expansion for a looong time, and wanting to go to Nazjatar, expecting it to be something more like a surumar or even undermine as far as scale goes. Instead we don't really get the sunken capital city, and it was turned entirely into a patch zone. Blizzard basically blew the naga expansion on a single patch.
And the last was N'zoth and the black empire. This is the same issue. A premise that could have been an entire expansion but was reduced to a single patch, but with the added bit that it retconned what nyalotha was, and reused two old zones instead of at least adding a new one. I thought it was cool going to old zones myself, but it doesn't change the fact that it felt a little like reuse.
N'zoth in particular was done pretty dirty for a villain that was being built up since cataclysm (though I don't think we learn his name until later.).
I see your point, but I'm not entirely sure I agree.
Alliance side has a lot more ties to N'zoth, but the Ghuun stuff isn't related to N'zoth at all on the Horde side. Even though it's Old God themed, it's a completely different (and previously unknown) Old God that was created. It definitely doesn't feel tied to anything related to N'zoth to me. Horde side felt very non-related to N'zoth until Crucible.
It's also, as others have mentioned, the fact that the premise of BfA was the faction war. The intro was faction war, the reason we were on the two islands was faction war, two of the major features of the expansion were faction war (the faction assaults and warfronts), one of the raids was faction war... and even within the zones there was a decent amount of faction war stuff going on (things like Brennadam come to mind).
So for me, the expansion felt like a disjointed mess of various storylines where N'zoth only really had a small part of until half way through. Horde leveling felt like it had nothing to do with him, Alliance leveling outside Stormsong felt like it had nothing to do with him (Drustvar especially as it felt like it's own self-contained storyline with nothing to do with the rest of the expansion), and there was a focus on the Horde versus Alliance for so much of the expansion that then shifted over to N'zoth halfway through.
Not just "related", N'Zoth (or a part of him) shows up at the end of Crucible and talks to you throughout the end-boss fight. I don't know how much more blatant Blizzard could have been.
Wow players have the media literacy of a potato
Because a major part of BFA was the Horde/Alliance war even though there actually wasn't enough of that in BFA itself. Like the primary cinematic, the driving force behind the start, the second raid were all about the Horde Alliance war. They had warfronts be a new content thing which isn't tied to old gods at all really
Id say the main issue is marketing. People were sold on a faction war, which ended up as a whole being relatively unimportant to the expansions story as a whole, and also did a worse job at creating interesting stories about a faction war than the expansion that did a lot of the same beats exponentially better, mists of pandaria.
So when people think bfa, they think a faction war solved primarily in mission tables and saurfang cutscenes. Really, by the time battle for dazaralor is done, the faction war is 80% done. Bfa is more of an old god expansion, yes, but unlike the way the mystery of the sha unfolded, and was a direct consequence of the faction war, nzoth just kind of...happens. the flimsy tie of "sylvanas just wants to kill everyone for the jailer so thats why she works with azshara" is actually such a hackneyed plot point it wraps back around to being funny.
While I agree that it's all thematically coherent and the general idea behind BFA's narrative flow was good, in the end the N'zoth plot does feel kinda rushed. They were too ambitious trying to cram faction war AND N'zoth in the same expansion, even if it made perfect sense.
So we got big levelling campaigns for 8.0 that were mostly focused on faction war with Old god foreshadowing in the background. The problem is, with how the game and its patches are structured, 8.0 represented already 80% of the questing content of the expansion (content patches are always on the shorter side, campaign wise, narrative content is frontloaded on expansion releases, also part of TWW's issues tbh).
Then we get more faction war in 8.1, a cool but short old god questline in 8.1.5, Nazjatar and Azshara in 8.2 (very cool zone and raid and themes, but narratively, it was still condensed in like two hours of questing), and N'zoth in 8.3 (again, two hours of questing and a raid and it's done).
So yeah it all boils down to a lack of "narrative time" in post-expansion patches. Either you do side self-contained stories like Undermine, or if you want to have a big sprawling narrative it needs to be properly built up during the main expansion release.
Really not too happy with some of the decor being locked behind needing an alliance and horde toon with the same reps to exalted...
Like i did my time grinding out wod i really dont want to push council of exarchs to max again.
Theres just really no consistency on the level of time/resource investment for some decor rewards vs the quality of the item. Like have yall seen black lotus prices?
I'm literally on that, questing gets you halfway into Revered, I'm pumping TW badges on the rest because fuck that.
I just realized I'm finally going to finish the purple protodrake holiday meta achievement with this year's Winter's Veil. I never really focused on it and had been working on it VERY casually since achievements were added, but now it's kinda crazy that such a daunting achievement is now just a few easy achievements away from being done with lol
Also, this is completely unrelated to that, but it is so funny how absolutely bothered some people are by the existance of housing in WoW.
I was skimming insta reels (don't judge me) during my break and decided to check the comments on a video of someone showing off their house. Holy shit, the supposedly "le wholesome" Classic fans sure love lobbing slurs at people who simply enjoy housing and want to show off their houses.
Saw one that was basically "cant wait til tbc is out, so tired of this f*ggy retail housing shit on my feed, go play Sims retailtards" on a video of someone just showing off a tree house they made. I'm not even offended, because it literally read like something a 12 year old would type but yet their profile pic was a 40+ year old man with a family, shits just sad to me lmao.
And the "Classic fans" part isn't even me being hyperbolic to work in an easy dunk, they literally described themselves as such in their comments lmao. The non-Classic ones are just as bad because they seem to think "I don't care about housing" is the ultimate gotcha, like damn, I don't interact with mythic+ or rated pvp much but it doesn't mean they should just delete those systems because I don't use them lol.
I'm amazed at just how diverse and divisive the WoW community is. A week ago, it was "WTF are you talking about? Everyone likes housing! Stop making up strawmen to fight!", in response to supposed anti-housing opinions.
Now, these strawmen have materialized into real people, and the "let housing mains have fun" comments actually makes sense.
average classic gamer
oh you're a classic gamer?
name every slur
For real if you say slurs you are cringe
Ahhh congrats on the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been achieve! Back when they added it to the game I think I was the first and for a while only person in my (granted, smallish RP-oriented) guild to get the violet proto-drake, and it's always held a special place in my heart.
r/CompetitiveWoW has changed quite a bit over the last few/several years.
It was originally extremely moderated and had a very niche focus and anything that was not directly related to improvement or optimising high level content was removed.
Now it is basically what r/wow used to be but for dungeon/raid content. All the highest posts are just wowhead posts where the comments are dooming and people threatening to quit the game.
CompWoW was so much better when they actually kinda enforced some elitism because it was the point of the sub: a place to actually talk about challenging fighs and how to improve your own gameplay at the higher end of gameplay, and not people that have no clue or just parrot something they saw on a stream as "advice" with no context
but like the other guy allready said: during late legion/BfA the sub kinda turned into shit because it got absolutely flooded with people that reached KSM and then thought they are "high level competitive players" now, and the Moderators gave in after some time and allowed that stuff instead of removing it, and the rest is history: its a place where AotC-with-2-mythic-kills Pug Lords and 3,1k r.io m+ andys gather and complain about not getting Mythic Gear for running a +13 key, how Raidbuffs ruin their sacred m+ mode and are the only reason they cant time a +14 key and make the ussual "my class weak and needs buffs, other class OP and needs nerfs" comments under the weekly ussules WoWhead dmg overall post because they dont even understand how ussules they are and how little they tell
all the people that actually know stuff dont bother with compwow for like 7 years at this point and it all got relocated into Class Discords instead
Hey this isn't entirely true, there are people that post there against their better judgment (this is less than 1% of the population)
On a serious note, a big issue with the sub is no one is required to have receipts or any sort of proof of credibility, so on any given post you don't know if it's being made by a guy that knows wtf they're talking about or not
Last time I honestly remember it being good was WoD. Legion was when it sort of just became low-rank haven, but BFA onward just changed the makeup entirely. It really is just all M+ers whining nowadays.
It's like what Alton Brown said: "Once a region believes that it's got the lock on something, the quality almost immediately starts to go downhill. (...) if you really want great buffalo chicken wings, you don't go to freakin' Buffalo"
So now that we are officially done with tww's story i wanted to discuss it briefly.
I think on the whole it was decent. Some solid moments and some really good side stories, with what seems to be increasingly poor cutscene direction, which is par for the course post legion.
Ultimately, though, as much as everyone, including blizzard, use the "its the first part of a trilogy" phrase to excuse weaker moments, i kinda fail to see how the pacing and writing is any different from most expansions.
Xalataths vague motivations and mystery box identity are no different than the stringing along we got for sylvanas legion to shadowlands. The goblin stuff was super out of place, but no more out of place than mechagon, and while thats fine, longer running narratices tend to build up and progress characters and elements introduced early, and i see no real indication goblins or nerubians will play ANY part in the next two expansions. Earthen, maybe, arathi, obviously. But i really dont see their place in the narrative as any different than other wow faction. Blizzard teases shit for next expansions all the time. Lets not forget how many people were expecting a lich king centered story far back as legion. Or a legion return during mists of pandaria.
If "The War Within" was a book in a store, and i picked it off the shelf and read it, id say "this feels like a compliation of an ongoing comic book from 2 years picked at random" than an actual book 1. Which is how wow has always felt: More interested in showing the next cool setpieces and content than writing an escalating narrative. Its nice that they think calling it a trilogy will change things. But its written like most other expansions.
Even the whole "dark heart" plotline (which was rather boring) being the impetus for midnight is not new. Only last time they did this the dark heart was a whole ass person called guldan.
Im always willing to change my mind. Maybe midnight will prove me wrong. Maybe its really gonna end on a dark note and show that the trilogy label was worth it. But like.
What was stopping you from doing that at any time?
You're right that it's not different from before. I think the only difference between the "trilogy" we have now and what they've done in the past is that they just made it open information that the overarching story is supposed to be over multiple expansions.
Like they obviously had the storyline planned multiple expansions in advance to get from Garrosh becoming Warchief to his death in WoD. They obviously had planned the WoD-Legion storyline in advance. They just didn't say "the story is going to span multiple expansions." They've essentially been doing the same thing since Cata (or WoD at the latest) where the expansion storyline was clearly not the end of the overarching story. They just didn't say "this is a trilogy."
im gonna be real, "its the first part of the trilogy" is both true but also a kinda bad "excuse" that is a bit overused
if you ever look into actual literature, a trilogy doesnt mean that the first part is ONLY setting things up all the time, things are supposed to happen at the same time, there are supposed to be payoffs allready that build into new things for the future etc.....
and like you said, TWW is extremely disconnected and akward patched togheter and its very noticable
like, yehs the Haranir get used in Midnight, but its VERY obvious that they where supposed to play a bigger role in TWW allready and instead they just exist for a single optional questline and then complettely vanish from the game
The Black Blood was very clearly build up as the "main bad force" of TWW, EVERYTHING at the beginning of the expansion when we reach the Nerubias is about the Black Blood, how it drives people insane and lets them see a strange otherworldy reslm, how it mutates people and how Xalatath can use her Void Powers to complettely controll them, the Black Blood was even used by Xal in an attempt to corrupt/enslave the Hallowfall Crystal and they made it clear that its apperantely slowly spreading everywhere and is a huge problem
and then just.......nothing, never even mentioned again, its just gone, same with the Nerubians who immediately vanished from the game with 0 things ever mentioning them again
if they really wanted TWW to be a part of a trilogy that only exists to build up stuff (which would be horrible writing by itself), they did a extremely bad job at it by making those weird disconnected plot jumps
Exactly, i dont think tww is bad at all. But it doesnt feel fundamentally different from the way theyve always told stories, ESPECIALLY in recent years. Maybe black blood comes back. But if this was a book, then your main character alleria was absent for almost a whole third, and all the time spent on earthen and nerubians dont even fucking extend to the end of the expansion
Legion fucks up the smaller details and has tone issues but the escalation from guldan and the nighthold directly leading to the 2nd attack on the tomb, directly leading to argus is pretty near the best story pacing weve had.
The faction war, mogu, mantid, pandaren, and sha managed to remain relevant through all of mop. You take out the thunder king and you completely fuck over the third act because you lose key characterizations and growth moments for major characters. You take out the mantid and the yshaarj/paragons reveal is weaker.
You take out goblins and uh.
The point of the goblins was the repair of the Dark Heart and getting us to have a reason to go to Karesh (as well as continuing the involvement of ethereals and learning they were not part of Xal's group). I know it's not as big as what you mentioned, but get rid of the goblin patch and you still fuck over the final act of the expansion as you have no reason to suddenly end up fighting a Void Lord and "fixing" Karesh. Not saying it was good writing, but they do connect to the rest of the story.
Getting goblins to fix a thing that really has nothing to do with goblin Technology is such a easy plot point to assign to almost any other group, Which is why I say it's easily replaceable. The whole dark heart getting damaged in the first place was such an uninteresting plot point
You could replace the Thunder King with something else and still have character growth and development too. Which is to say, that logic works for almost any "necessary" plot point.
Goblins are known to dabble in a lot of questionable technology, as was mentioned below they were part of the creation of the Dragon/Demon Soul and have a history of being involved in Old God stuff with their involvement with Deathwing. And you still have the Ethereals coming in and finding out they don't work with Xal and thus leading us to Karesh. Could it have been written to get us there anyway? Yes, but again that could be said for a lot of "necessary" plot points.
That's obviously completely subjective. I thought it was an awesome moment to have her shoot the DH instead of trying to kill Xal'atath again.
Youre right in saying that its all mostly subjective but you cannot seriously tell me that the undermine patch flows as well in the overall narrative as the thunder king? The buildup and payoff alone would beg to differ
The Thunder King patch was a rather jarring "where did this come from" moment, especially if you didn't do Kun'lai summit (which you could have easily entirely skipped with how MoP leveling worked). What was the overall narrative? "The Thunder King is back, we're needing to fight him and the Zandalari now instead of the Sha, so we assault the island and take him down while we continue to kinda-sorta fight each other about Garrosh." And this on the heals of Landfall which I think is one of the worst patches narratively to exist, but that's a different conversation.
As far as their flow, I think Undermined was fine, it told a coherent story for the zone that made sense to me. It was as jarring to me as Thunder King was as far as it disrupting the flow of the expansion's story, but personally I found finally making Gallywix shut the hell up was a much bigger reward than killing off a boss that I'd had almost no knowledge of prior to that patch. The only thing I didn't like about it is the DRIVE system, which I could never get the hang of and just didn't have fun with.
But again, all this is subjective, I can understand completely why people didn't like it, or why they did like Thunder King's patch (the raid was baller for sure).
But I was mainly commenting on what you said: "You take out the thunder king and you completely fuck over the third act because you lose key characterizations and growth moments for major characters." My point is that it still played a role in the overall story that if you take away leaves something out that is needed for the overall story. And just like how they'd have had to have rewritten the story for the character development in Thunder King, they would have had to figure out a different way to get the Dark Heart back, justify the ethereal's involvement, and get us to Karesh.
Yeah but jaina and lorthemar growing from taran zhus sppech directly ties into seige of orgrimmar and taran zhu defending the horde's honor against garroshes. Zandalar seeking to rebuild troll empires was set up from cataclysm, and the mogu/the thunder king was set up in several zones and a raid, while goblins dont have nearly as much direct set up in the actual expansion. Gallywix finally losing is good. But they werent a prescence like the mogu and taran zhu.
Gazlowe and goblins stop mattering the moment ethereals take over.
I don't know why you're so defensive about this, so I'm going to call it just a difference of opinion. As I said at the start, I'm not saying it was good writing (Undermined), but we could start making similar comparisons to the goblins and their background as well (as we've stated previously, their involvement in this type of technology and Old God stuff goes way back).
But we're just going to go in circles. You clearly have something big for the Thunder King patch, i don't. That's OK. They're subjective. Anything can be re-written to get story beats and character growth in a different way.
Isn't the dark heart supposed to be similar to the dragon soul? And the dragon soul was made by goblins, so it would make sense that goblins are the assigned group to fix it.
hi
Meowdy
i will end you
everypony
so i know that game awards show is just last week . but at least bg3 is someow won the best commnity award but i dont get how ffxiv warrants a best community support even its somehow on best communtiy award like last year too ..? cause dawntrail expansion wasnt that good..
I wrote this at the time. I also joked that the people who nominated FFXIV were Weakaura fans.
For a more serious answer, I think it's hard to describe the impact BfA followed by SL had on the zeitgeist. In large community servers I'm in that have a gaming channel or MMO channel just...don't talk about WoW. There's not even any negativity, there's simply nothing said.
I can only speak for myself but BfA/SL decimated my guilds and virtually all the people I know who quit during that period haven't returned and are now scattered between FFXIV, Guild Wars 2 and other multiplayer games like Warframe (also Destiny but rip to that one). I don't know if this is different because I played on RP servers, which tend to have pretty dedicated player populations until the story really shits the bed (see also: WoD), but the lack of discussion about WoW across any other of my social feeds just seems to suggest that despite record subscriber numbers, WoW practically exists in a sort of bubble.
I think this contributes a bit to the more recent push to get newer players into WoW through things like the addon changes and the additions of things like lorewalking, but I guess I'm not really seeing this work to bring new people in, just engage existing players and maybe tempt some people to return to catch up.
oh wait i'm srs posting in wcj fuck
Simple, FFXIV (good) isn't WoW (bad)
Jokes aside, I'm shocked the turnaround from SL through DF and TWW didn't at least get WoW nominated
yeah shockingly.. theres nothing in ffxiv is worth subbing to when the game is just stagnant itself.. and meanwhile WoW has like stuff to go back to like delves
we got some new trials for the midnight raidroster, and 2 of them have no prior Mythic Experience but we wanna give it a try anyway
and ngl, its always a bit funny when people show up so confident in themself because they are used to be the "super star dps" in their heroic runs, and then suddenly are at the bottom
but hey, they are willing to learn and listen to advice, cant complain there
Back in WoD we got a sibling of a guild member to join. He was pretty casual and had terrible gear. The dude was a mechanics god and would hardly ever die because of it. He started to get gear and suddenly was better than over half our DPS roster, it was great.
hey guys! the sword!
ha! its so funny!
no i didnt play during legion so i didnt see that we drained the entire sword of energy and removing a planet sized sword would probably just kill azeroth stop telling me im wrong what about THE SWORD
I just hope they eventually give us TEH SWORD as a housing decor. 1:1 scale of course I want to ruin the neighbourhood
as a housing decor? nah. fuck it. make it THE house. just live inside it. little door on the side, maybe
The "Blizz forgot about the sword" thing is really funny when you consider that TWW's last boss was last seen in fricken TBC.
At least a lot of the responses in that thread are calling it out instead of agreeing with it.
legion ends with draining the sword
BfA is about mending the Wounds caused by the Sword
TWW starts at the Sword
smh blizz totally forgot it
nah dude, if they don't randomly have characters go "hey remember that big sword" in every scene even when they have no reason to it means they forgot
Golly its almost like they announced this story as a trilogy too and it might still get addressed down the line in a certain expansion explicitly name dropping Titans.
The WoW community's complete inability to comprehend a continuing story is one of the funniest parts of modern lore discourse. They were given advanced notice, by Christ Metzen himself, that these expansions would be a trilogy and yet are still mad that every plotline hasn't been wrapped up in the first entry lmao.
Back when the trilogy was announced, I remember seeing people whine that the 3 expansions should be cheaper "because we're just getting one story". It makes sense why they had to announce the trilogy ahead of time, because we're only 1 entry in and the community still doesn't understand that just because a story element is open ended at the moment doesn't mean it's "forgotten".
The worst part is I guarantee that certain parts of the community are going to act like they did something when the Sword inevitably comes back into the focus, as though their incessant posts about it reminded the writing team it exists lmao.
Shoutout to the whinging that "Blizzard completely forgot about the Harranir, hurrdurr bad writing" because they weren't around for the last raid tier, before Midnight's full announcement revealing they're getting their own zone, raid, and being made playable.
There's a significant amount of WoW players that seemingly can't comprehend that setting something up and not immediately paying it off is NOT 'bad writing'. Cough cough, Arathi storyline, cough cough.
Reminding me of the Starcraft 2 complaints because the base game only featured a Terran campaign instead of having one for all three factions. Except that the SC2 Terran campaign was almost as long as the original game's entire campaign. SC1 had 10 missions for each for a total of 30, and Wings of Liberty had 27, + 2 missions that were different depending on the choice you made.