@MrVilgefortz no they have frogs called "hornswogs" and there's a couple you can interact with that are gay. You can probably find the video here on UA-cam
I’ve enjoyed every expansion to date. WoW’s problem isn’t story line it’s gearing. To grind and grind over and over again for a piece of gear most people simply do not have the time to do that. Running Underrot 100 times for a weapon and still not seeing it makes no sense. Give me a system which allows me to pick the item or get a token to buy the item. RNG gods simply kill this game.
Fuck no to bringing yrel and the army of light going to an different universe was already dumb bringing them back as a villain is even worse idea. Players didnt like wod for many reasons why bring that story back
Yea same feeling. I stay with warhammer fantasy. Heard they MAY make a fantasy mmo. But not sure. Love the gotrek and felix books. I love the skaven as villains. Scary but funny
Even Disney is more adult than this. If Disney were made by current WoW we would need a narrator to explain that murder is bad when the mum gets shot in Bambi.
There's a strong push against "wisdom/strength from the elders" in stories these days. A lot of games are depicting them as old, feeble, and misguided. The only people who can save the world are young people who've never experienced anything and know better than anyone because the old traditions are so horrible that you should never follow them and the new ways of thinking are the only way to save the world because the elders are too stupid to think in the "proper" way.
@@betelgeux6010 Not anymore when every kind of re ta rd can reach old age. When i was a teenager i was wiser than my parents, who did all they could to make life worse, starting by behaving like irresponsible stu pid children. Thats why im the only one who escaped poverty.
@@everforward5561there’s your problem. You automatically assume they’re not wiser. When you should assume they are. Now once you hear what they’ve got to say or do you can judge.
@@TheSeventhOutlaw MoP felt more like the pandas wanted nothing to do with the war between horde and alliance rather than "Together with the power of friendship we will take down the baddies" like Dragonflight does. The only outlier was Taran Zhu who wanted the war to stop cause it was creating Sha, and even he didn't want friendship with either side cause he hates both sides, he even gets corrupted by Sha for a bit because of it.
My only huge gripe with Dragonflight is that it feels too sentimental. It feels like everything is about these quirky NPC's and how they all just need a big hug to solve their problems. I just don't care about the Dracthyr having daddy issues, or the blue dragonflight having granddaddy issues or Deathwings two disappointing spawns having daddy issues. This expansion feels like a sidequest for the RP community. All about sitting down and talking about our feelings rather than stopping some impending doom. And sure. It might be cool with a change of pace, but this is such a overcorrection and sadly I don't see the three (four) Dragon Power Rangers as a credible threat. We don't feel driven to deal with them because as Bellular says, everyone is preoccupied with their own weakness and weeping endlessly. The writing feels like the writers living vicariously through the characters with the principal characters having moments of doubt going "I don't know if I have the strength, UwU, I have so much doubt in my heart doing all of these awesome things" only for some wiser character to put their hand on their shoulder saying "You are awesome and can do nothing wrong." And its funny how one of these characters they tell "Did nothing wrong" is Wrathion, who ensued two wars and genocide.
Not only this. The actual drachtyr character we can play looks like a femboy, Meanwhile the guards in valdrakken looks like conplete chads. Why cant my MALE drachtyr look like the guards in town? Like wtf
Personally while I agree with your final point, my issue with the way the game has gone has also been the fact that everything is all "Go fast!". My best memories of WoW are when me and some friends were taking our time overcoming difficulties without worrying about how long we were taking. But now everything seems to be a race.
Agree, but everytime they throw in a feauture to "explore" and take it slow, it gets neglected and hated, like Mechagon and Tazavezsh, where most people just wait for it to be split into m+ rinse and repeat
It could have been so cool to have the DF cinematic be Razageth giving her "down with the Titans" monologue, or even a speech that cuts between the primalists and the aspects sides, her and Alexstraza both giving their sides and both ending with a "the dragon isles are ours" or something about both ultimately believing they represent Azeroth, setting up the main conflict while also hinting that even the bad guys might have a point.
I'd be fucking furious if the bad guys have even a slight point. If anything, the most reasonable outcome is the reveal that the conflict all started thanks to the old gods and void sowing discord to undermine the Aspects, ie giving the Djaradin shadowflame and leading to the death of Neltharion's beloved son, leading to his madness, giving Iridikron whispers of advice to fight the aspects to deprive Tyr of reinforcements and aid later against Yogg-saron's c'thraxxi lieutenants.
One-sided conflict is so boring, they can have a point and still go down the wrong path. The same way Arthas had a point with culling of Stratholme and refusing too come back so that he could get rid of Melganis the one who kicked it off. We are not talking about the shit show of shades of grey they have been attempting and failing miserably for the most part
Exactly, there is no balls in it. No Masculine Challenge. The best eras ALL had the same theme. "Come and take it" or "Fight me!" Coming from a serious threat. They sapped all the masculinity out of the game's narratives. It's called World of WARcraft, ffs
Eh Idk, Wrath was great obv but the BC cinematic wasn't really anything special. Just a riff on the vanilla one. If you were around during WoD, the community was absolute losing their mind when that trailer dropped. BFA trailer was epic as hell too.
As someone who hasn't completely checked out of the story, because it was the story that drew me into WoW from the old strategy games, I agree. It doesn't really have the grit that gave the old plot stakes anymore. There is a lot of moping around. There is a lot of pining for peaceful times. Doesn't really feel like Warcraft.
It ended when ICC opened up. After Lich King, everything else is just shitty fan fiction if you ask me. Arthas is the threat to end Azeroth. That's why there was such a narrative crisis after that story reached the conclusive the end. That's why they invented deathwing and he destroyed the entire game. As soon as I heard that, way back when it was announced. I held a vigil for WoW. Every new DLC I'm proven more right. Sad.
@@Moe_Posting_Chad I think what you are describing is most true for MoP, WoD, BFA and, obviously, Shadowlands. Cataclysm and DW concept was pretty cool, but it was poorly executed. However, I can agree that Cataclysm strategy of storytelling with over emphasis on pop culture (Uldum and etc) references began the downfall of WoW storytelling. To me, the biggest problem is the lack of faction characterization and not establishing new leaderships after the mass murder of iconic characters that Blizzard did, especially with Horde leaders. It is crystal clear in Legion. As a Horde player, I feel a deep lack of identity with the places I had to lock my hearthstones throught new expansions. I give 0 f**cks if I'm interacting with giant headed foxes in the middle of a desert.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮people dont want to play a game that has the same similar feeling to the old content, WHY would anyone want to play the game if it was the same re-released content over and over. Stupid Comment.
@@zelashizzz1278 I have always despised what they did with Sylvanas. Should have been a Hero of the Horde, not some backstabbing "Oh woe is me" villain being used by some greater big bad. Should have had her be dark but not evil and willing to do what she believed was necessary to keep the Horde in it's entirety alive and free. I don't know, hell at the end of the day I wager that any thing I write up would be infinitely worse then what we got.
I've said it before and I think it still applies. WoW used to be Metzen Metal and is now Danuser Jazz. Nothing against it other than the fact that it's not the WoW I signed up for.
This video perfectly articulates what we all knew but couldn't quite say for years. Ever since Legion even WoW's highlights felt dim for some reason and it's 100% because of of how they handled the heroes from that point on.
Characters weren't interesting in WoD or Pandaria or Cataclysm either. However, in those expansions those heroes didn't get in the way of the game. Only from Legion on the game turned into a soap opera.
@@Trazynn You are right. It NEEDS to be part action movie, part thriller, and less soap-on-a-rope. Perhaps Blizzard needs to think "what is our target audience's core vision of WoW"... and ask them?
If your game has to rely on one or two major lore characters doing cool things in a cinematic, then your game has a problem. People are treating the main-character syndrome epidemic in WoW expansions as if it's a good narrative tool. It isn't. It never is.
@@Tazytots And it's a vicious cycle because it's the easiest thing for people to respond to compared to all the nitty gritty gameplay stuff. Which makes Blizzard believe that we're really invested in what the main characters are doing, which prompts them to invest more into the cut-scenes, more soap drama, and so on.
The people who created the cool, badass, "warcraft" stuff have all left. Now, you have a lead narrative designer who thinks that Garrosh calling Sylvanas the "b-word" in Silverpine Forest was too insensitive, and censored it from the game. This man, Steve Danuser, is the guy designing your story and lore now. This is why the story and game just feel "lame" now. There is no masculine energy; nothing badass. Just woo woo feelsy moments and the "power of friendship".
KInda the reason why I loved having Thrall as the Warchief, he inspired the players. When the developers asked people at Blizzcon during the reveal of WoD ¨What do you guys think about this guy wearing some armor again?¨ there was a huge roar of cheers. Thrall has been moping for years now but we need our Warchief back. Hell if some rumors are true then Y'shaarj might be coming back in full force, and if so I wauld love to see some of that old ¨Beer and heavy metal¨ Thrall action in a cinematic. War is called and the Horde needs a Warchief during a war. I just want to hear that Lok'tar Ogar at full burst. The council is a good idea but I think a Warchief should be chosen for wartime actions by the council. I just want Chris to deliver that epic speech as he has done before, I miss those times.
Oh man, we haven't heard a good ol lok'tar ogar bellow in a while huh..... i mean, what could be more warcrafty than that, and they refuse to do it... because 'violence bad'.. Wokeness will be the end of everything good remaining in this world.
I don't think the council is a good idea. The tribes are not so united that they have any narrative reason to work together "just because." They worked together because they trusted their leaders, and *_their leaders trusted Thrall._* A council is just a committee, and the acceptable course of action for any committee who's members were not already committed to the same course of action before the question is posed, is always the "lowest common denominator. No... The council is crap. The Horde needs a Warchief.
Yes! Exactly this, imagine Thrall becomes a custom class, half warrior, half shaman, comes in with two massive axes, lighting, fire, and earth blazing on his armour, blasting elemental magic as he slams the ground and kills old god minions.
I've always felt that Thrall was overplayed, and shoe-horned, but that's just me. WoW is full of self-insert characters and almost none of them are interesting. At least Thrall has some real character development and motives but the whole "Wah, the elements dont answer to me" arc was zzzzzz. All that said, I'm just not of the opinion that you need orcs and humans slaughtering eachother for Warcraft to be engaging, or interesting, nor do you always need some super-powered male character solving all of his problems with strength and masculinity instead of actual good writing. People who look to thrall, Illidan, Malfurion, Varian, the Lich King for what "WoW" is, never really paid any attention to basically any of the rest of the game's narratives because WAAAGH. People think this is good story telling because of nostalgia; not because of quality writing. With Dragonflight, they seem to be trying to carve out a new narrative direction and I see no issue with the lack of strong burly men who hold the world on their shoulders constantly harping at you to solve all of their problems, and then turning around to look cool in a cinematic with you nowhere to be found.
There's an American Indian tribe -- I want to say Apache but I'm not %100 -- that has a triad leadership: a day-to-day leader, a spiritual leader, and a war-leader. I always thought that could be a good set-up for the Horde.
The opening cinematic was pretty, but I was definitely underwhelmed. The Wrath and Legion ones still give me chills no matter how many times I've watched them.
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Their cinematics were always good and usually still are. Its the only thing blizzard does well anymore. I havent played wow since cata but i still watch every cinematic that drops for the expansions because they are still some of the best best game cinematics being made.
it didnt help they hyped up dracthyr, and made only one class for it that a lot of people just don't like. Also of course the focus is weakness. Victim-hood is what the people working at blizzard understand best. Traditional heroes are seen as problematic, so we get heroes that just mope and whine. Its also why nightelves aren't savage badasses, instead they are perpetual victims.
Also even if you do like evoker it locks 1/3rd of the player base from playing as them DF sold on the motto of “be a dragon” but doesn’t really let anyone be a dragon lol
You absolutely nailed it. This is exactly what the game is missing and what it needs badly to survive. There was no more visceral moment in WoW for me than when Garrosh poisoned the Vale. And Legion was full of these moments. It's that sense of heroic, epic good v. evil that's needed. Well done. Let's hope it's heard. Or, you can make your next game with this sort of story...
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@@AlexanderOkwali Because it's still boring, just a different taste of boring. There just isn't enough characters/premises being established early enough to actually have anyone care about the narrative. Even if it's not a 'big bad threatening the world' situation, it's still a whole bunch of new characters coming out of nowhere that we're supposed to care about. Writing just doesn't work like that, they need to be established over a period of time to make things like that believable. Legion was the last expansion that actually nailed this premise, having pre-established enemies that we have been dealing with for a while, but despite all its glory, Legion is around the time where the writing team stopped thinking ahead about how to prepare new characters/storylines. It has lead to these latest few expansions where all the new 'enemies' and scenarios as a whole have just come out of the blue and not felt grounded in the Azeroth that we used to be in as recently as Legion. The Dragon Isles at least had 'some' build-up from slight hints throughout BfA, but nothing serious enough was released from those plotlines that it still feels like the Dragon Isles came out of the blue and therefor unestablished.
Didn’t realize how right you were about this until I revisited the old patch cinematics - they’re all so insanely hype and cool and bad ass. There’s emotions, drama, violence, it’s like John Wick but with WOW
Those old patch cinematics had passion and dedication to them, they were dedicated to being emotionally commanding. The newer patch cinematics are missing that because they feel like they're dedicated to being finished instead. There's no heart in them. They're just another conduit to push forward the story's A-plotline.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮So you don't like the story that means you can't like the reality? LAME. Go to a different game then.
The old stuff was made by actual gamers that went to school and learned how to make games. The new stuff is being made by feminist, soy boys and people that think playing nothing but games like candy crush make them a hardcore gamer. You also now have the problem of basically every large game dev studio and publisher being led from the top by shareholders you give zero fucks not only about the consumer like with most companies but these people dont even give a shit about video games. They dont even play them. All of this combines to create the death and destruction of video gaming as we have known it. Yes, indie devs are holding the line but i fear its only a matter of time before the large corporations find some way to fuck all of that up too.
We have also take into account that they have tried to bring the “cool” and failed in doing so with poor execution. N’Zoth was a big manipulative villain faced by mainly Wrathion, mostly portrayed as hero at that point, and they did it in the worst way possible. I think you are right but I’m afraid is not only the what but the how.
MMO's will never be the same as they were in the interconnected, social media thriving world we live in now. Part of the charm of old WoW was you shared the experience with people all over the world and it was fascinating to interact with so many people on such a large scale as it was impossible to do in any other medium, sure there were other online games sure, but you didn't really have many shared experiences in Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament, at least not to the depth and scale that WoW brought. Now we have Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Tik Tok where people can constantly share their discoveries and interact with each other which fills a niche the MMO's used to cover. A core part of the experience is now catered to in everyday life and it wasn't like that when MMO's became popular, the closest we had was AOL/MSN messenger.
I would counter this by saying FFXIV is thriving and growing, even after having a super rough launch where they quite literally nuked the original game world.
@@michaelkovalsky4907 but is reaching the same numbers Fortnite does? LoL? Valorant? no it's not, no matter how many Game awards they win in a row, MMO numbers just get thwacked compared to every other genre
@@Fabriciod_Crv what's the point of this comment? That guy was saying FF is still growing despite that "magic" of interconnectedness no longer being new so clearly there is a way to give people a feeling similar to that in the current age still. Pointing out a bunch of random completely unrelated games in different genres get more numbers is just so irrelevant
You missed the entire point of the questline. And yes yes i know stupid to have the option if you cant follow it but....yeah. If you werent able to tell by now, thats not *that* kind of expansion.
@@tompatompsson Eeeh a true RPG would let you do it. Sure there should be in game consequences for it, but ah well. Given... WoW is a themepark MMO and doing a branching narrative where choices actually matter in those is extremely difficult, hell I'd say even impossible
Would have preferred they never learn from their mistakes, remaining a static construction to fulfill design goals over characters capable of changing over time?
@@silentverity4975 it has only been a few hundred years of this type of world in wow, in real life it took humans thousands of years to stop having kings and empires and slaves and to learn peace and working together, even now, too many countries still fight too often, so yes, I would rather them stay like this
@@MichZilla90 "It took thousands of years for humans to get along" Yeah. We don't have thousands of years. This is a video game, and the whole "The horde and alliance are fighting (again)" is pathetically tired, and a vast majority of players are over it. They were over it after Legion. The Alliance and Horde have now fought, stopped, and fought again four different times over the course of 38 ish years. It's extremely boring, and every time it starts up again, it's the Horde doing it with no actual legitimate reasons to do so. Players who are still attached to this archaic narrative obviously has no idea what engaging narrative can be and are choosing to live in a realm of nostalgia instead. It's over. The faction divide is being removed. The Faction War is not intrinsic to WoW being WoW and if you think that, then you've not bothered playing a good chunk of the game's quest zones.
@Vistyr you are speaking the gospel my friend, which is also why I kinda hope the story team doesn't listen to Bel. I'm sorry but I'm actually preferring the nuanced and emotional discussion of legacy and redemption from Ebyssian rather than rewriting groom's sacrifice for the 11th time
Lorewise Reasoning Shadowlands, I think the main lore reasonn that made it cool for people to buy the expac was not "Slyvanas, you know her, she's cool" I believe it was "Slyvanas, you hate her, this expac is the last for her" that is one of the main reasons for story folk, And for me I was just about to get Shadowlands but when I saw that they're going to give her redemption arc I just skipped it, I know a whole guild with 200+ people in Silvermoon EU also skipped just because of that reason and switched to classic.
I was hyped up about Arthas making an appearance, maybe seeing old heroes again. Instead we got the charade with Arthas, we got the "muh queen" sylvanus and the only other old character that had me excited was uther but he was not the uther we knew he was uther the lost soul. And of course the villain was just awful.
When I saw the SL cinematic, I didn't really think it was cool. I mean, yeah, well executed, but I didn't much like it. By then, I was sick and tired of Sylvanas (sorry Sylvie fans). BUT we didn't even get to kill her and they let her BRUSH OFF Arthas like he meant nothing at the end of SL.
Dragonflight doesn't focus on good and evil, heroes and villains because those themes are no longer acceptable by modern media--Instead we see equity and inclusion. We see this in most recent media. Disney re-tells the story of Cinderella, but this time leading to empathy from Malificent's perspective. Even if you select oppressive options in the most recent storyline chapter, the outcome is still acceptance. While there is a place for these concepts in our social structures, they do not stir the deep-rooted feelings in the hearts of all of us. We long to cheer for the underdog that struggles and, through sense of will and duty, learns the skills necessary to overcome evil. Today, our media tries to convince us that there is not true good or evil, but people with with their own truth that need to be accepted. I applaud your description because if reveals that we do not resonate with the "Meh" of modern media. Each of us does recognize good and evil, heroes and villains and we we won't be entertained by the "Meh".
I agree and disagree. The big issue in my view, and this goes back to Game of Thrones and WoD/Legion at the time when WoW PR was putting out the same talking points, is this idea of "Grey" characters, whereby villains are "believable" in the sense that what they're doing is for some greater purpose than just because they're evil. What this mentality has always ignored is that the motivations of such characters can be inherently evil by nature. Yes, a villain who just wants "world domination" is a cliché and shallow character that, in the right setting, can be fun to root against. But you can also have people who are trying to prolong their own life, or increase their personal wealth/position, inherently selfish traits, that aren't taking it to the maximum extreme of "ruling the world" or becoming gods. Those are the actual interesting villains. Beyond that, another issue WoW has had for a while is that it's so old now it's run out of established villains from the previous games to leech off, and it's not done itself any favours in building up replacements. They've wasted opportunities in the past such as killing off potential candidates like Lady Vashj as mid-level stepping stone bosses, and they've already fallen back on resurrecting a couple of big names like Illidan. But the reality is that an epic end boss can't just be introduced and killed at the end of an expansion like the Jailor and not come off as a joke. It's just a shame that the only time they feel to do this (Garrosh and Sylvanus) they opt to make them Warchiefs of the horde, which is inherently going to piss half the playerbase off when they game is meant to be factionalised and you're writing into the canon how one faction is ultimately going to be defeated before the big reset button is pressed because the game must go on.
@@davidbates3057 Your last paragraph is so spot on. Absolute chef's kiss. Blizzard's formula can't do worldbuilding or villain-building, because it's inherently destructive (aka using the material from the lore as fodder for encounters in the game). The only time they even tried was the old gods, and that's super YMMV due to the retcons of the old gods going from being pushed back to being truly dead in BFA. It's also just sheer age. I'm at the point where I can't take villains seriously because my character has already killed Deathwing, Argus, Archimonde, Kil'Jaeden, Garrosh, Arthas, several old gods, Hogger, and everything else in the setting that's a threat. There's literally nothing left that poses a realistic challenge to the player character, and any time they try to make something out to be it just feels plastic and forced. Like, "oh, yeah, another lame cutscene where the villain that my character should be able to backhand into the dirt with casual ease goes about being 'OH SO POWAHFUL', where's the skip button?"
@@davidbates3057 Great Points, and I agree with @ASNS117Zero--I really sync with your last paragraph. What I take from your comment is an issue of Character Development. Martin is a master of developing complex, layered characters that require more from the reader. It is easy to cheer Luke Skywalker. Do I love or hate Tyrion? Your discussion of Character is a deeper view than my 'easy mode' for classic good and evil.
Or perhaps the modern human is no longer so dimwitted to see the world as good and evil, that is way too boring. Arthas as a villain was interesting precisely because he wasn't evil, rather started with good intentions. Even more so for Illidan. So stop whining about media outgrowing your sensibilities.
Compare the 9.1 trailer to what I think is the oldest patch trailer "Gods of Zul'Aman". ZA one really shows its age in animation and limitation but that final "we gonna bury you here" line still has it blowing the primalists breaking into Abberus out of the water. And Zul'Jin was not a big known villain but the epitome of villain of the patch. A catch up patch at that. Look where he is now. The power of a challenge or call to arms beat the mystery of what evil scheme team Rocket might be up to next. Sitting back too see can't be the most interesting option, it had to be to take action
Vanilla dungeon bosses for lvl 20 have more intimidating presence than the Primalists. All of their dialogue is is soft-spoken theory-crafting bait for people like Accolonn and Bellular. Boring monologues that showcase that they haven't learned their lesson from Shadowlands and BFA. A villain whose entire motives and goals are hidden untill the very end tends to be a boring villain.
Could someone tell where the other two infinite dragons went there been nothing on them at all..just fraytt..so I'm confused are they waiting for end of season 3..kinda mad about tyr..storyline..so now what??I just don't know where there going with this story..,??..and the black dragon flight..what a horrible..thing.I wanted wrathion to win so he could cause some more mischief...really don't care about the blue..next pat h is all about the bronze timey whimey stuff we already did how many times do we have to deal with the timelines please come up with something different.
This video hit the nail on the head. I hate how many of the faction leaders have either become villains, been given barely any screentime, or have just been humiliated by the writing. As a Night Elf fan since WC3 it hurts to see how they have treated both Tyrande and Malfurion. Why can't these characters just be cool?
I think too many players have been away for too many expansions for the story to just be the selling point, there needs to be a radical new feature to draw in players and flying dragons was NOT it. The last expansion that really suckered people in was Legion, because of the Artifacts. It neatly wrapped up cosmetic, class lore, progression and tied nicely with the general story of the game... you wanted to upgrade, collect all the shinies, you felt Blizzard was invested in "your lore, your experience" and not the lore of the world. Then the problem became after Legion that every system after that was a pale copy and paste comparison to Artifiacts with no real value... we weren't invested in Azerite, or Covenants etc. I think the game is missing player agency, player creativity and player investment. It NEEDS player and guild housing with a full suite of cosmetic, trade, progression options, account bound... more advanced that the combined efforts of both SWTOR player housing, Wildstar and Everquest Next... a Sandbox for players to open up in, rather than be closed off by the game.
I stopped playing Retail for many reason, one of the big ones being not enjoying the combat, too many spells too much going on and it doesn't feel satisfying to press them, i hate using three globals on my lock and the mobs health has barely move, gearing is boring and poo has been for a while. have no interest in mythic plus raiding is too hard unless you want to do heroic (I don't) So now i just play classic, it's what i want from the game and it's what i get. i want my games to be fun not stressful.
The only thing that would get me to pay for wow again is if they gave me control of the narrative team. They wouldn’t do that because I’m entirely unqualified but that’s how little I think of their staff that I’m sure I could do better.
@@izicadet9819 BFA was bad but nothing that couldn’t be walked back until N’zoth. I would’ve had an entire old god expansion filled with IRL gaslighting. I’d have staff do interviews and mid conversation start babbling nonsense between each other and if called out on they’d ask the interviewer if they were feeling ok. There’d be a big centerpiece next blizzcon of an alliance lion that’s cool to the touch with very faint whispers coming from it, so quiet you can’t hear what it’s saying but you know it’s there. Wrathion would’ve been seemingly immune to show how many precautions he’s set up and how seriously he’s taking the threat but he’s already hearing whispers in DF so that’s a wash Anduin temporarily flipping shadow priest before he’s saved could’ve been interesting but since he was just turned in SL that ideas been played out…
@@shnorkeythefourth4572 i still have hopes that everything that happened since BFA, is an alternative reality that N’zoth has put us into to make us believe we won🤣
@@shnorkeythefourth4572 i had an idea a few weeks ago. What if, at the end of DF, Nozdormu will have a role like Dr Strange in Infinity war; let me explain, he will doom our timeline because the threat would be too powerful, and the only option to win is to leave our timeline, gather allies in another timeline, and comeback to our to defeat the threat and take our home back. This could lead to a new Warcraft so they can rework properly the world as they wish, and then boom new WOW xpac where we win and get back to our timeline. My imagination works too much🤣
As a vanilla player who left during 9.1, I'm happy to hear about the state of the game: that the gear treadmill is more fun, that PVE content is enjoyable, that quest stories are more interesting. I'm happy that folks are having a good time. But I have no desire to pick it back up again. Nothing they've done has gotten me excited. Maybe you're right and there's just no spine-tingling, heavy metal energy anymore. I just know I haven't felt hyped.
The problem is that BFA and Shadowlands, not to mention the creative decisions in regards to the cosmic forces (And the god-awful idea of cosmological charts.) have ruined the lore beyond repair. Any heartfelt side story with the Blue Dragonflight is too little, too late. Scourge has been ruined, Old Gods have been ruined, Factions have been ruined, almost all Legacy characters have been ruined, the worldbuilding is crumbling. I tried giving Dragonflight a chance, but every time I am almost starting to enjoy myself, something reminds me "Oh yeah. Shadowlands is canon." or "Right, this ties in to BFA." As I am exploring the Green Dragon are, I am reminded of what they did with Night Elves, Ysera, Malfurion... The atrocious Night Warrior questline and the netire existance of Ardenweald, when Neltharion is mention I shake my head at how they robbed all character traits from Nefarian and plastered them on Deathwing, not to mention the bad idea that are the Dracthyr. When I see void mentioned I cannot help but groan in frustration over N'zoth, as if it happened yesterday. There is no way to save Warcraft except of massive retcons that would wipe away entire expansions now. A massive reset. You could forgive old lore being ruined if it was replaced by something new and better. but Dragonflight has little of that to offer either. Warcraft is now just a cluster of melodramatic, over-acted monologues plastered over layers upon layers of old, regurgitated lore that tries to pretend it's new and exciting, despite the fact that it barely advances the plot or invents anything original. Nothing new ever happens, no new forces emerge, all we have are constant additions to old lore that "Were always there, but no-one ever mentioned them for super special reasons!" Just old ideas stolen, repeated, and forcefully wedged into the established timeline.
I think the problem is when they lean into overly complex lore that is completely niche to Warcraft. What got me to start playing during Lich was the incredibly immersive and easy to understand story of Arthas. It's a story that we are all familiar with and you don't need to know the details of how he was corrupted to engage with it. They loose my attention when the core plot is based on the less intertextual stories. Since Legion ended, I've felt like I'm constantly playing catch up with the lore and I'm much less curious about it.
As someone who didn't start playing until late Mists, I agree with this. Of all of the lore I engaged with as I slowly leveled up (and I really took my time with that), Arthas story was the most fully developed and clearest in-game. I've started reading the novels and I'm like "Oh, so that's when that happened" or "Oh, that explains that quest chain I vaguely remember."
I liked both Dragonflight cinematic trailers fine, but I have to agree they don't compare to most of the previous trailers in terms of "epicness". Still, I'd like to argue this kind of chill, optimistic, and adventurous theme was something WoW desperately needed after Shadowlands. Shadowlands had more hype because of Sylvanas, but for differing reasons. Most players at that point saw her as a villain that needed to be put down for her crimes, while the loyalists didn't want her to be killed off like Garrosh, wanting instead to join her and the Jailer in breaking down the system. What we got was something of a compromise, as we didn't kill Sylvanas, but she didn't get away with her crimes either, and the Jailer was still the main villain. The whole Sylvanas debacle, along with the many narrative blunders, the massive retcons, the cut content, and the overall bleak theme of Shadowlands got old quickly, so many players wanted something more lighthearted for the next expansion, slowly introducing us to new threats and new villains. Speaking of which; The Primal Incarnates have already proven to be way more interesting villains than the Jailer, and I'm sure the next major patch will have even more epic moments with them. Mists of Pandaria lacked a lot of hype for much of the same reasons as Dragonflight, and was even considered by many UA-camrs at the time to be a failed expansion just like Cataclysm, but is now looked back on fondly. I'm sure Dragonflight will end on an epic note too, leading to an even more epic cinematic trailer for the next expansion.
I talked about this with friends in the past as well, particularly Tyrande and the Night Warrior. Warcraft is always about the War; Horde and Alliance will float back and forth between armistices and fighting because there will always be causes, old wounds, that lead them back into conflict and this is an awesome core for the story to have. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, after the burning of Teldrassil was perfectly poised to be that next cause for conflict; struggling with her rage it was a perfect and cool lead-in to future events; but then it just ended. They just took it away from her having her decide "oh no, being angry is bad." and all that potential was gone.
What I crave for is Trolls that are NOT the Zandalari to actually have a win at long last, with a cool gigachad doing something action packed and based.
You mean claim the heritage over the Gurubashi empire and make Stranglethorn their home? DS Trolls are just Gurubashi trolls that did not agree with the direction their empire was doing, afterall.
Yeah, The Zandalar are already at their peak and always have been. Despite what their ruins implied. Meanwhile all the other trolls are outcast pariahs living on the fringes of Azeroth, inside said ruins. They're way more interesting than Zandalar. Their uprise could be an interesting excuse to revisit all these old zones, create new local conflicts without having things escalate to the usual cosmic scale.
Actually I'd like to see an xpac where we get our collective asses kicked and have to scramble just keep the people of Azeroth alive before going into a follow up xpac reclaiming our lands.
@@ShadowsOfThePast Imagine having a father figure in Saurfang, and becoming Thrall's prodigy (If he did). If they wrote him like that, and make him smart but ruthless and not that wet noodle they made him be he'd be a great future hero.
Very much agree. We have a council of the most powerful of each of the dragons, and for the most part the choose to sit on the sidelines and watch/lead. You can have emotionaly interesting leaders that also know how to throw down, and i feel like we could have pretty much all of the same storylines going on right now AND have super strong dragons beating the crud out of each other.
The Aspects and the dragons aren't immortal anymore though. They have to fight tactically, otherwise we get another Ysera ending for the Aspects. The dragons lorewise tend to let the mortals do most of the work, guiding and manipulating. It is why Alexstraza didn't show up in Wrath as a powerful dragon until Wrath Gate and then never again until the final battle with Deathwing after which they immediately lost their immortality and most of their power. Because of this they need to sit on the sidelines leading and manipulating like a strategizing general, only fighting when it is a threat that the mortals could in no way face. Until we completely restore the Oathstones, they will be basically just giant flying lizards that can guide the players and use their very limited power to help the players complete their mission.
Like Alexstrasza and Raszageth? Alexstrasza seemed to take just about every opportunity to throw down with her. Not sure how much more violence you can expect from the Aspect of Life.
@@alexistaylor969 They were made and taught by Tyr. The Titan Keeper of Guidance and background shenanigans. Not surprising that their main way to do things is indirect. Ontop of which, the whole reason they lost their home and civilization boils down to getting directly involved to clean up the messes of the elves. They aren't powerless though, Alexstrasza held her own against Raszageth despite her adversary being thoroughly infused with elemental power. It's a little more complicated than aspect powers or no aspect powers imo
Why does nobody realize that the Dragonflight trailer had the least views by a mile compared to ALL other cinematic expansion trailers? Dragonflight had a boring crappy cinematic with terrible marketing/advertising and because of it's garbage reach on people it had a bad launch. I know it sounds TOO simple but yes the trailers lack of views and hype unrionically matters way more than people realize. Look at WoD's hype and the crazy amount of attention it got, and the launch had a lot of people too.
Bear in mind that WoD's trailer came out when WoW was still somewhat mainstream. Four years after the peak of Wrath, when the Chuck Norris commercials were still in recent memory. By the time of Shadowlands, WoW was certainly no longer in the public consciousness. Even if Dragonflight's trailer was as hype as possible, it came out almost a decade and a half after the peak. There is just no way it'd get anywhere near a comparable level of engagement.
I think in today's current zeitgeist, a strong, heroic male figure like Saurfang, Varian or the like just isn't feasible. And the Light will invariably be portrayed as evil, because everything is relative nowadays. It's not an age of heroes in the game anymore, like the real world, it's become a age of aggrievements and narcissistic identity.
lol shut up, its possible, its just that the wow team is 500% woke now, they cant do epik thing, they just pushing their stupid political trans agenda everywhere:P itsa why 99% of the normal people just quitted that garbage the solution is to fired io and his team, take real devs who know how to do a game with no woke shit in mind and WoW will come back to was it was, a good game
The light has always represented security, stability, order. Which has been good momentarily, as many villains have brought death and destruction over the world. But we have been shown time an again that the light and those wielding it can go too far, which is exactly where Yrel will come in.
They took the wrong cues from FFXIV. They thought having approachable, emotionally mature characters meant no conflict could ever happen or conflict has to always be about huggy family feelings. They turned the game into a technicolor soap opera.
This seems to be the problem. They thought that people wanted all the emotional stuff and nothing else. So now it's all just that. They didn't understand that you're supposed to alternate between the emotional stuff and the big cool stuff. The emotional stuff is the downtime to relax before another big cool thing. You need both in measure.
@@omegaxtrigun I don't really think there needs to be much of alternation. If anything what need to be there is pressure. Ever rising one. So that when the time comes to cry and talk about feelings it will be earned. Say what you will about BFA but there was one moment that personally hit like a brick. Seeing the amazingly animated roar of Saurfang over his sons dead body. Same with Anduin finding his fathers sword or even better. Theramore. All amazing moments with lots of feelings to process and feel and talk about. All however built beforehand.
@@WaywardHex "Just as there is no shadow without the light, without the shadow, there is only searing, mind-numbing, unrelenting brightness." Contrast is necessary.
In the end gameplay is raid-centric, after completing the lore all you can do is raiding. And since major auditory are casual players that have own job doing another job is too much. It seems hardcore jobless players is not a good choice for profit.
It's funny to me that on one hand players are screaming that they're tired of fighting world ending threats and being the heroes, and on the other hand they're uninterested in casual adventures.
WoW these days is about emotional feminine characters, and forced lgbt on players. WoW used to be all about releasing that testosterone filled rage, kiling /slaying enemies, not fucking cry babies. Bought the expansion, played for a month, I just really couldnt vibe with anything in the game anymore, Shadowlands was so much better vibe wise.
Weak people consumed by envy and spite cannot comprehend either heroism or villainy, and therefore cannot write heroic adventure stories worth a damn. That's the writing team at Irvine now.
For me it has less to do with the settings and appearance of the protagonists. *They are all just too dull and passive.* Khadgar is the only pro-active character and he is just doing busy work during the Fyrakk Assault.
I haven't played retail since Warlords. I don't think there's anything they can do to bring me back, as in terms of gameplay and systems and whatnot the game is just so fundamentally different from the game i came to love, but having a rousing story I actually care about would help a lot I'm sure.
I left game in dragon flight do to other reasons, i hated trade chat, was very toxic, people became more mean in the game during raids, game became more of a business with the selling of runs etc, i was mainly a farmer, i loved spending hours on my druid just farming, it was was happy in game, now with the realms put together and the boxing accounts and being put in a spot of i could only use certain mounts to fly took the fun away for me, seeing the people exploit the farming, like garnhowl where someone plants a toon there set on attack on auto swinging or putting druid toons set on auto in areas killing everything when they spawn, i loved mount farming to which i spent a really lot of time an years to farm just to have a expansion make them pretty useless to use, i can go on an on on my thoughts of why i left game, (i do miss the game) but i come home from work, pay my bills an want to sit an play stress free but game just got more stressful at my age, I'm almost 60, played game from beginning, did leave for a few years at cata as that was bad, came back, loved all expansions, hated some of the changes blizzard took away from the playing style of the toons but lived with it, but now its all business an not much fun, riding the new mounts never sat right with me, perhaps i just got use to my mounts to much
Well, I think people just got burnt with SL That's the main reason. I for one am loving this expac. Yes, it doesn't have that story impact but the game itself is fun as hell to play and that is what is really important to me.
14:32 yes, and i assume one of the reasons for that is that nobody really knows what the underlying greatness of that concept is. why do heroic old dudes work? In my opinion the whole theme of warcraft just fit so well with high fantasy. Immersion is key! having to train up your weapon skills was immersion. having to drink and eat during levelling was immersion. also the population of the cities make a big aspect of that. just compare todays exodar with todays stormwind. in exodar territory you feel at home like youre one of the draenei. in stormwind meanwhile, everybody and their mother chills out, it doesnt really feel like a human stronghold. or another example, when you get to northrend, immediately you have to defend against nerubs or vrykul, the whole expedition is at some kind of risk. in the dragon isles, you get railroaded by some hyperactive band of cartographers and a weird dragon lady. most interactions are with female characters of any race who constantly mention how fun and exciting all this is so jeah, immersion
You nailed it. It's missing the "WTF" moment. DF feels like the dragons inviting some bored adventurers to maintain their land. No big threat or hero needed moment.
Just like Asmongold says WoW needs to go back to big strong sweaty men trying to kill each other. We are beaten to death with the weakening of society day to day, give us back our world where we can escape and being strong isn't looked down upon.
My Forsaken rogue wants to do some dirty, not watch a bunch of scalys winge. The plot is too sappy and positive, the elementalists are weak villians, there are no stakes. Testosterone levels are at an all time low. All the strong characters have been killed off or neutered like Thrall. Where is a Garrosh to stand on his airship, yell, and kill dragons with his axe like a boss?
I was really mixed feeling about Shadowlands. I was not really hyped about going to the afterlife but was excited to have more lore about the Vampires. I waited for the story to unfold a little and found that I really did not care about where it was going and thought the Jailer was just a poorly written fan fiction villain. Then the Dragonflight cinematic hit and it reinforced that I had made the right choice to quit at the Shadowlands launch. Storytelling really does matter and being consistent to your established world.
you nailed it. When I think of (the old) WoW I remember Illidan, Arthas, Garrosh, Varian, Sylvanas but now? It's not important, there is no focus and no epic villains. Heck even non-wow players knew the "flying green and purple demon" or the "ice king" so good was their focus on the story and the excitement to interact with them in the game.
Old WoW would have had the Black Dragonflight cause a giant civil war that tore the Dragon isles to shreds and had Alliance and Horde fight for one leader to benefit their side, only for it to all go tits up and a third leader take it's place. Modern WoW had the leaders squabbling light a married couple and I believe recently they made amends and gave leadership to a third party.
You actually described it perfectly! I liked very much the new expansion but as you said it doesn't have the epicness of the old Warcraft. It went from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter. Both good in their way but LotR is several scales above! P.S. Bring bada$$ Malfurion back!
I think iridikron can have that big badass villain moment that can somewhat bring back the Warcraft vibe. He has that potential of making dark bargains to keep his cause alive
I think it is not about the villain. It is about the emotions - Take warlords, the story of Hellscream, the sheer dazzling WHAT IF of not drinking that cup. Were staggering. The video of Varian's conversation with a certain Draenei - depicting the sheer loss and tragedy of the fall of Shattrath, along with guilt the survivors carried. of course we wanted to leap in. Take Legion - Varian's musings, we know him, we've seen his story unfold, and damn, even as a Horde player, you were on his side in this video. And when in-game he went down like that, I think we all were in to make the Legion pay. It got to us, the players, because we cared about the characters. That's also what worked when Saurfang died. It doesn't have to be about a villain, but it must be something we care about, that draws us in. I loved Pandaria (and yes, getting drowned again with Nazgrim had me grin) but Draenor had that huge vibe, the What If, and they dropped the ball on fully delivering on the tragedy among Orcs.
16:08 . . . THANK YOU!!! I've been saying this for years but inevitably get told I don't know WTF I'm talking about. Thank god Anduin isn't in Dragonflight because between him and Kalec...yeesh. These two certainly aren't the only cases but to me absoluty feel like the worst offenders.
I think the issue is WoW went too big last expac, and now the scope and scale is miniscule in comparison. Think about it, despite Shadowlands being a piece of flaming garbage narratively, it was still massive in scope of the impending doom and the BBEG (Even if the BBEG was handsome squidward, and dull). The issue now is, the primal dragons, despite the danger they bring to the table and the world, it's not big enough in comparison to prior expac. I get people aren't super into sentimental story telling in WoW, cause half the time the story telling is "unga Bunga warfare", with a bit of character storytelling. Personally I'd rather experience more sentimental, grounded story telling, but mix it in with the actual warfare. Show the toll of what fighting does to a person, especially decades of fighting. But show in a way All Quiet on the Western Front, tells the story. Yeah All quiet is an Anti-war novel/film, but it's storytelling remains impeccable. And WoW could do something amazing if they took that approach, while also going back to a formula that works.
WoW went from being savage Orcs against the relentless humans. Political plots to collect each others heads and bring them back. Revenge in blood. The art style was rough but it had character. Now its like a Disney movie. I'm just waiting for the dragons start singing. Its kinda cringe. It lost me lol.
I hear often about the problems with Legion and wonder what on earth they are talking about. It did so much right. We had clear villains and heroes, we had sadness and grit just in the leveling quests. Some of my favorite raids since Ulduar are in Legion. The classes played smooth and felt good with less global cd’s. The world was beautiful, interesting and fun to explore… The mage tower was challenging. Artifact weapons looked freaking cool and motivated you to unlock all of them. Even the trees within the weapons were fun. And even the borrowed power was not really an issue until they introduced far lesser versions of it in BFA. A necklace you can’t see? Who cares? The problem is they did it quite well in Legion. The class hall quests were some of the best and made each class feel distinct. The last raid was one of my favorite in the game. I’d put Legion up there with Wotlk and TBC. I think you nailed your conclusion and why I’m not playing Dragonflight. It’s good, plays well mechanically, etc. The story is not very wow. Has no appeal to me. I don’t know what my core motivation is. Stakes seemed low. It just left me feeling like someone went through a lot of trouble for something I didn’t ask for.
I like the vibe of Dragonflight right now. Its different. Feels like we are in a "calm before the storm" period. I dont feel you need to burst out of the gate with the world falling apart and all hope is lost every single expansion.
I haven't given much of a damn about the main storyline in dragonflight. I haven't be bothered to even do the campaign to the end, I did some and all I remember is just going on top of the tower occasionally and having the dragons gather for alexstraza to delivery some "by the power of friendship" speech. I just can't be bothered with thr aspects, now we got the Tauren becoming the aspect of earth, OK nice, he has a developed character and what not nice but he is not cool. None of the aspects are cool. I watch any other in a cinematic and I don't expect them to do or say something cool, like say how Illidan was, where you saw him in a cinematic and you expected him to do or say something cool and he delivered. From what I priced together we are trying to power up the aspects again since back in cataclysm they sacrificed their power for the dragon soul, but what I don't get is, if they are weak now, why did those primal dragon not come to valdraken and fight them? What are they afraid of? With the new Tauren becoming the new aspect of earth, doss that mean he gets a power up or it simply a title? Didn't the original dragon leaders become strong after the titans buffed them? Who is buffing him? Same for the blue drake, how strong is he? In general I do not understand what the power level of thr dragon aspects are right now. Thank God the raids and dngs are good and the developers finally listen and implement class changes fast.
For me this is not the issue I have with the game, my issue is that the has become challenging to play and not that the game itself is the challenge. Also season system sucks very hard reseting my gear is just a big joke.
Last time things felt really cool was the Legion Xpac. BFA could've brought back the OG Warcraft feeling but failed, Shadowlands was weird, and the last one just feels meainingles and directionless. WOD sucked but it felt cool. You're right about needing a main villain to focus on with its real threat and power
The biggest problem is that WoW became too expensive because it is not too much better anymore than the other options out there. The 2nd thing is that you have to do, not want, but have to do too many things to experience the end game (M 16+, HC raids and above) in order to get even just considered to join a party: - Farm gold for repair, food, pots, elixirs, wpn enchants on weekly basis - Farm gold for gems, enchants, profession for gear multiple time a season - Farm huge amounts of gold for profession gear, BIS gems/enchants - When you are done with gold, then farm some kind of tokens for profession - Farm tokens for various features out there to min/max - Farm gear, M+, LFR/Normal raids. - Farm tokens to improve the gear. - I probably missed a few "have to do" activities. I could spend entire nights trying to get into a M 16+ groups with a 2100+ rating, or a HC raid to kill the last boss (GL without having the HC kill). And if you want to farm perks, like mounts/titles/pets etc., you pay for a 2nd job that you do not enjoy, that you have instead want to do. Because of that, how i play the game, I wait for an expansion to be free, i pay for 2-3 months the subscription so I can experience the story, some new mechanics/features and I am done. I tried with DF by purchasing the expansion but I got exhausted already by 10.1. An yep, then the 10.1. comes and you get to do it alllll over again.
Why do you not your own group for your own key? Why don't you make your own group to kill the last boss on hc and invite people who are 8/9. People by now just want to farm thr boss not spend hours with others who need to learn the fight. Then you also complain about crafting and pots/food/flasks but these have always been in wow, you always had to have your flasks, food and potions for the raid. Nothing changed there is if anything it's now far cheaper to buy them since you get a lot more gold from quests. You can get 3.5 in less than an hour twice a week by doing the dragon races ,these will be more than enough for your raid consumables. For gear crafting, you don't have to craft the bis item week one and at 447 item level if you don't have the gold, you also don't need it to drop Sark hc or to do 16s. Just join a guild and lost of your problems will be solved.
I disagree on one front. The Aspects are also one of Warcraft's oldest AND coolest larger-than-life characters. Dragon lore is also among the best WoW has ever had. Not mentioning them in a good light even once doesn't sit right with me. Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Nozdormu, Ysera + Merithra and Neltharion's heirs SHOULD bring hype. The issue is... If you aren't a Warcraft fan, all you'd see are some differently coloured dragons in the cinematic. No way to grip new players by only showing the most overused (They work lovely but not like this) creatures in fantasy fly around for a couple minutes.
Disney/Pixar present _World of Warcraft_ Ive been saying this for years. Hell its degraded to looking like Fortnite with its perfect smooth surfaces like everyone is a living action figure. No smudges, no scuffs, no loose threads, everyone is perfectly molded, from armor to skin textures.
Writers. Plain and simple. I feel like I'm playing a kids game with Dragonflight and the cutscenes are incredibly lazy. There's just no effort anymore, everything is ingame and is rigid. Everything narratively is watered down and just isn't exciting to play.
WoW just feels woke now, boring and softball. Diablo contrasts it nicely by being a dark fantasy full of blood, gore, demonic, rituals, and gritty atmosphere. Meanwhile in dragonflight you are playing a twinky dragon in your magical adventures through dragon island. Legion was straight up like "The demons put people's souls into giant soul engines" and Dragonflight is "help the dragons deal with their emotional issues"
The problem is across entertainment in general, I've noticed that most modern writers, be it movie, TV, comics or computer games don't seem to grasp self sacrifice, selflessness and humbleness, all important aspects of heroism imo.
I’ve been saying this for years! WoW is only loosing players because it has no value in its lore. The game needs to revolve around the lore because the lore is amazing
Blizzard devs showed how much they hate their audience through their insane twitter rants, and that was enough to turn me away from ever trying DF. It can be as amazing as it wants, I don't want to give money to someone who says to my proverbial face that they despise me.
I like that dragonflight isn't big bad end of the world scenario, I love this breather chill, but sadly majority aren't :/ I love how emotional is dragonflight so far for me, I wish they will not abandon it in future, let's just combine all that dragonflight is with Big heroes and villains
Making everything mopy is part of the current social engineering we are being subjected to. Our opponents are fixed on dealing us really crushing blows, and they want us firmly demoralized before they dare go about it.
The jew naming has increased to levels never before seen in the USA, so while they are trying to demoralize us before implementing full on communism, there is another side that is gaining momentum in epic proportions just like what happened in the Weimar Republic before a famous mustached painter revived his countrymen.
The thing that killed Warcraft for me wasn't anything you mentioned. It was that I felt like my time was being wasted. As you yourself said in a recent video, "I don't feel like the game is wasting my time now". This is why I came back and am enjoying the game. I have grown up, as has a lot of their playerbase, and we have real life shit to do. I'm not going to log into something only for it to jerk me around and waste my time at various unfun things. I hope the way this expansion has been means that Blizzard has learned their lesson in that regard, but only time will tell.
In Classic, I was an Orc Warrior standing tall against well defined villians. That Vanilla video made the classes look cool. You mentioned Illidan yelling, "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!" Know what I remember from that cinematic? The Orc Warrior yelling in defiance as he gets hit with arrows, fighting on until he breathes his last, only to get resurrected by a Blood Elf Priest. Eventually the game turned into borrowed power. I'm not the BAMF, it's whatever convoluted mechanic they fever dreamed up. Eventually, my Orc Warrior was little more than a witness to everyone else affecting the world... Nevermind the phone game retention mechanics, and FOMO they added, or the in game shop. You can sell cosmetics in an FPS game. In an RPG game, earning awesome gear is part of the class fantasy.
They do need more cinematics. They also need to bring back their marketing and hype. They dropped the ball after the Warcraft movie. They could have done cartoons for yrs. Toy lines and much more. They just lost all excitement from high up in management. Good episode, guys!
Cool and interesting characters took a back seat so they could push the narrative that the player was the true hero. BFA and Shadowlands especially were big on this with the heart of Azeroth and the Maw Walker but Legion started it off with the Artifacts. Blizzard things that they need to treat the player like the main character but that just can't work in an MMO. The players need someone to look up to, someone to aspire to be. There's no point in trying to be Thrall if the game makes you better than Thrall and hands you his weapon. There's no point in trying to be Malfurion if he's just some sleepy guy locked in a dream. If everyone is the hero of the story then nobody is, that's why we need actual heroes.
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@@MrVilgefortz What the f*ck are you on about mate
@@MrVilgefortz blizzard even went and proved Alex Jones right because they literally made the frogs gay in DF
@MrVilgefortz no they have frogs called "hornswogs" and there's a couple you can interact with that are gay. You can probably find the video here on UA-cam
I’ve enjoyed every expansion to date. WoW’s problem isn’t story line it’s gearing. To grind and grind over and over again for a piece of gear most people simply do not have the time to do that. Running Underrot 100 times for a weapon and still not seeing it makes no sense. Give me a system which allows me to pick the item or get a token to buy the item. RNG gods simply kill this game.
Fuck no to bringing yrel and the army of light going to an different universe was already dumb bringing them back as a villain is even worse idea. Players didnt like wod for many reasons why bring that story back
After playing classic for the past few months and coming back to Dragonflight, it feels like a Disney game. Just the overall tone and voice acting.
This, so much this.
Yea same feeling. I stay with warhammer fantasy. Heard they MAY make a fantasy mmo. But not sure. Love the gotrek and felix books. I love the skaven as villains. Scary but funny
Exactly! Modern era wow looks and feel like disney. And not the good old kind of the disney. But the new... one.
Spot on.
Even Disney is more adult than this. If Disney were made by current WoW we would need a narrator to explain that murder is bad when the mum gets shot in Bambi.
There's a strong push against "wisdom/strength from the elders" in stories these days. A lot of games are depicting them as old, feeble, and misguided.
The only people who can save the world are young people who've never experienced anything and know better than anyone because the old traditions are so horrible that you should never follow them and the new ways of thinking are the only way to save the world because the elders are too stupid to think in the "proper" way.
Just being older doesn't necessarily mean you're wiser.
@@everforward5561 but it is mostly a damn good indicator
@@everforward5561 a brilliant young person is competing with a brilliant old person, with a lifetime of wisdom. Impossible to compare.
@@betelgeux6010 Not anymore when every kind of re ta rd can reach old age.
When i was a teenager i was wiser than my parents, who did all they could to make life worse, starting by behaving like irresponsible stu pid children. Thats why im the only one who escaped poverty.
@@everforward5561there’s your problem. You automatically assume they’re not wiser. When you should assume they are.
Now once you hear what they’ve got to say or do you can judge.
Dragonflight has always just given me that whole "With the power of friendship" vibe...
care bear vibe
The soundtracks and furrydragons also reflect this but the gameplay and mechanics are better than in BFA / SL imo.
This right here
Felt that way more with MoP then DF.
@@TheSeventhOutlaw MoP felt more like the pandas wanted nothing to do with the war between horde and alliance rather than "Together with the power of friendship we will take down the baddies" like Dragonflight does.
The only outlier was Taran Zhu who wanted the war to stop cause it was creating Sha, and even he didn't want friendship with either side cause he hates both sides, he even gets corrupted by Sha for a bit because of it.
My only huge gripe with Dragonflight is that it feels too sentimental. It feels like everything is about these quirky NPC's and how they all just need a big hug to solve their problems. I just don't care about the Dracthyr having daddy issues, or the blue dragonflight having granddaddy issues or Deathwings two disappointing spawns having daddy issues.
This expansion feels like a sidequest for the RP community. All about sitting down and talking about our feelings rather than stopping some impending doom. And sure. It might be cool with a change of pace, but this is such a overcorrection and sadly I don't see the three (four) Dragon Power Rangers as a credible threat. We don't feel driven to deal with them because as Bellular says, everyone is preoccupied with their own weakness and weeping endlessly.
The writing feels like the writers living vicariously through the characters with the principal characters having moments of doubt going "I don't know if I have the strength, UwU, I have so much doubt in my heart doing all of these awesome things" only for some wiser character to put their hand on their shoulder saying "You are awesome and can do nothing wrong."
And its funny how one of these characters they tell "Did nothing wrong" is Wrathion, who ensued two wars and genocide.
Ugh the Niffen are nails on chalkboard. A lot of derpy and quirky races in this expansion...
I don't know. Maybe those wars and the genocide were defensive? I think that's pretty fucking based.
It feels like a game made for chicks.
Not only this. The actual drachtyr character we can play looks like a femboy, Meanwhile the guards in valdrakken looks like conplete chads. Why cant my MALE drachtyr look like the guards in town? Like wtf
@@eliotness107 You WILL play as the developer's gender self insert. You WILL pay monthly. To refunds.
Personally while I agree with your final point, my issue with the way the game has gone has also been the fact that everything is all "Go fast!". My best memories of WoW are when me and some friends were taking our time overcoming difficulties without worrying about how long we were taking. But now everything seems to be a race.
Your fault then
@@rahundsigma No its game desing fault
Agree, but everytime they throw in a feauture to "explore" and take it slow, it gets neglected and hated, like Mechagon and Tazavezsh, where most people just wait for it to be split into m+ rinse and repeat
Meh, i think people get better at the game, that’s why slow things now can be kinda boring the second or third time around
@@Afonso160 mechagon and tazavesh were awesome, I think there's room to take the game slow just don't feel pressures by everyone else to go fast
It could have been so cool to have the DF cinematic be Razageth giving her "down with the Titans" monologue, or even a speech that cuts between the primalists and the aspects sides, her and Alexstraza both giving their sides and both ending with a "the dragon isles are ours" or something about both ultimately believing they represent Azeroth, setting up the main conflict while also hinting that even the bad guys might have a point.
I'd be fucking furious if the bad guys have even a slight point. If anything, the most reasonable outcome is the reveal that the conflict all started thanks to the old gods and void sowing discord to undermine the Aspects, ie giving the Djaradin shadowflame and leading to the death of Neltharion's beloved son, leading to his madness, giving Iridikron whispers of advice to fight the aspects to deprive Tyr of reinforcements and aid later against Yogg-saron's c'thraxxi lieutenants.
One-sided conflict is so boring, they can have a point and still go down the wrong path. The same way Arthas had a point with culling of Stratholme and refusing too come back so that he could get rid of Melganis the one who kicked it off. We are not talking about the shit show of shades of grey they have been attempting and failing miserably for the most part
Wow that would have been even more boring than what we got. Nothing gets me less hyped than a bunch of dragon grannies bickering about titans.
legit good idea
Exactly, there is no balls in it.
No Masculine Challenge.
The best eras ALL had the same theme. "Come and take it" or "Fight me!" Coming from a serious threat.
They sapped all the masculinity out of the game's narratives.
It's called World of WARcraft, ffs
No cinematic has ever come close to the feelings the BC and WotLK cinematics gave me. Absolutely iconic.
I still get chills whenever I see the Wrath trailer.
WoD is a solid 3rd behind those two. Too bad blizzard gave up halfway through that expansion.
Eh Idk, Wrath was great obv but the BC cinematic wasn't really anything special. Just a riff on the vanilla one.
If you were around during WoD, the community was absolute losing their mind when that trailer dropped. BFA trailer was epic as hell too.
i used to rewatch cinematics all the time during Cata - WoD period.
The black temple patch cinematic will always give me chills
As someone who hasn't completely checked out of the story, because it was the story that drew me into WoW from the old strategy games, I agree. It doesn't really have the grit that gave the old plot stakes anymore. There is a lot of moping around. There is a lot of pining for peaceful times. Doesn't really feel like Warcraft.
It ended when ICC opened up. After Lich King, everything else is just shitty fan fiction if you ask me. Arthas is the threat to end Azeroth. That's why there was such a narrative crisis after that story reached the conclusive the end. That's why they invented deathwing and he destroyed the entire game. As soon as I heard that, way back when it was announced. I held a vigil for WoW. Every new DLC I'm proven more right.
Sad.
@@Moe_Posting_Chad I think what you are describing is most true for MoP, WoD, BFA and, obviously, Shadowlands.
Cataclysm and DW concept was pretty cool, but it was poorly executed. However, I can agree that Cataclysm strategy of storytelling with over emphasis on pop culture (Uldum and etc) references began the downfall of WoW storytelling.
To me, the biggest problem is the lack of faction characterization and not establishing new leaderships after the mass murder of iconic characters that Blizzard did, especially with Horde leaders. It is crystal clear in Legion. As a Horde player, I feel a deep lack of identity with the places I had to lock my hearthstones throught new expansions. I give 0 f**cks if I'm interacting with giant headed foxes in the middle of a desert.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮people dont want to play a game that has the same similar feeling to the old content, WHY would anyone want to play the game if it was the same re-released content over and over. Stupid Comment.
@@Moe_Posting_Chaddeathwing wasn't invented though he's from wc2
@@aaronlo9589 I'm sure he had expansive lore and plot involvement. And wasn't just shelved and later retconned?
I still watch the Legion Varian cinematic occasionally, it was a masterpiece.
Killed off one of the most popular characters (varian) and played up one of the most hated (sylvanas).
@@zelashizzz1278 That part came later, the cinematic was just Varian writing to his son and lots of cool explosions and shit.
@@zelashizzz1278 I have always despised what they did with Sylvanas. Should have been a Hero of the Horde, not some backstabbing "Oh woe is me" villain being used by some greater big bad. Should have had her be dark but not evil and willing to do what she believed was necessary to keep the Horde in it's entirety alive and free. I don't know, hell at the end of the day I wager that any thing I write up would be infinitely worse then what we got.
I never loved such character in this game more than Arthas but Varian, when these two died the game died with em.
@@Moftoo True and when Guldan died the same way it was comming in my pants
I've said it before and I think it still applies.
WoW used to be Metzen Metal and is now Danuser Jazz. Nothing against it other than the fact that it's not the WoW I signed up for.
This video perfectly articulates what we all knew but couldn't quite say for years. Ever since Legion even WoW's highlights felt dim for some reason and it's 100% because of of how they handled the heroes from that point on.
Characters weren't interesting in WoD or Pandaria or Cataclysm either. However, in those expansions those heroes didn't get in the way of the game. Only from Legion on the game turned into a soap opera.
@@Trazynn You are right. It NEEDS to be part action movie, part thriller, and less soap-on-a-rope. Perhaps Blizzard needs to think "what is our target audience's core vision of WoW"... and ask them?
If your game has to rely on one or two major lore characters doing cool things in a cinematic, then your game has a problem. People are treating the main-character syndrome epidemic in WoW expansions as if it's a good narrative tool. It isn't. It never is.
@@mogalixir This is observably untrue.
@@Tazytots And it's a vicious cycle because it's the easiest thing for people to respond to compared to all the nitty gritty gameplay stuff. Which makes Blizzard believe that we're really invested in what the main characters are doing, which prompts them to invest more into the cut-scenes, more soap drama, and so on.
The people who created the cool, badass, "warcraft" stuff have all left. Now, you have a lead narrative designer who thinks that Garrosh calling Sylvanas the "b-word" in Silverpine Forest was too insensitive, and censored it from the game. This man, Steve Danuser, is the guy designing your story and lore now. This is why the story and game just feel "lame" now. There is no masculine energy; nothing badass. Just woo woo feelsy moments and the "power of friendship".
KInda the reason why I loved having Thrall as the Warchief, he inspired the players. When the developers asked people at Blizzcon during the reveal of WoD ¨What do you guys think about this guy wearing some armor again?¨ there was a huge roar of cheers. Thrall has been moping for years now but we need our Warchief back. Hell if some rumors are true then Y'shaarj might be coming back in full force, and if so I wauld love to see some of that old ¨Beer and heavy metal¨ Thrall action in a cinematic. War is called and the Horde needs a Warchief during a war. I just want to hear that Lok'tar Ogar at full burst.
The council is a good idea but I think a Warchief should be chosen for wartime actions by the council. I just want Chris to deliver that epic speech as he has done before, I miss those times.
Oh man, we haven't heard a good ol lok'tar ogar bellow in a while huh..... i mean, what could be more warcrafty than that, and they refuse to do it... because 'violence bad'.. Wokeness will be the end of everything good remaining in this world.
I don't think the council is a good idea. The tribes are not so united that they have any narrative reason to work together "just because."
They worked together because they trusted their leaders, and *_their leaders trusted Thrall._*
A council is just a committee, and the acceptable course of action for any committee who's members were not already committed to the same course of action before the question is posed, is always the "lowest common denominator.
No... The council is crap. The Horde needs a Warchief.
Yes! Exactly this, imagine Thrall becomes a custom class, half warrior, half shaman, comes in with two massive axes, lighting, fire, and earth blazing on his armour, blasting elemental magic as he slams the ground and kills old god minions.
I've always felt that Thrall was overplayed, and shoe-horned, but that's just me. WoW is full of self-insert characters and almost none of them are interesting. At least Thrall has some real character development and motives but the whole "Wah, the elements dont answer to me" arc was zzzzzz.
All that said, I'm just not of the opinion that you need orcs and humans slaughtering eachother for Warcraft to be engaging, or interesting, nor do you always need some super-powered male character solving all of his problems with strength and masculinity instead of actual good writing. People who look to thrall, Illidan, Malfurion, Varian, the Lich King for what "WoW" is, never really paid any attention to basically any of the rest of the game's narratives because WAAAGH.
People think this is good story telling because of nostalgia; not because of quality writing. With Dragonflight, they seem to be trying to carve out a new narrative direction and I see no issue with the lack of strong burly men who hold the world on their shoulders constantly harping at you to solve all of their problems, and then turning around to look cool in a cinematic with you nowhere to be found.
There's an American Indian tribe -- I want to say Apache but I'm not %100 -- that has a triad leadership: a day-to-day leader, a spiritual leader, and a war-leader. I always thought that could be a good set-up for the Horde.
The opening cinematic was pretty, but I was definitely underwhelmed. The Wrath and Legion ones still give me chills no matter how many times I've watched them.
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Their cinematics were always good and usually still are. Its the only thing blizzard does well anymore. I havent played wow since cata but i still watch every cinematic that drops for the expansions because they are still some of the best best game cinematics being made.
it didnt help they hyped up dracthyr, and made only one class for it that a lot of people just don't like. Also of course the focus is weakness. Victim-hood is what the people working at blizzard understand best. Traditional heroes are seen as problematic, so we get heroes that just mope and whine. Its also why nightelves aren't savage badasses, instead they are perpetual victims.
NAILED IT!!!!!!!
😂
Bingo!
Yep pretty much. It's not a game for men anymore. The story is way too feminen to be an epic.
Also even if you do like evoker it locks 1/3rd of the player base from playing as them DF sold on the motto of “be a dragon” but doesn’t really let anyone be a dragon lol
You absolutely nailed it. This is exactly what the game is missing and what it needs badly to survive. There was no more visceral moment in WoW for me than when Garrosh poisoned the Vale. And Legion was full of these moments. It's that sense of heroic, epic good v. evil that's needed. Well done. Let's hope it's heard. Or, you can make your next game with this sort of story...
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@@OneshotOneshotOneshotOneshot Looks like someone forgot to equip their intelligence gear.
You all spemt last 10yrs complaining your tired of good vs evil vs big bad stories. Now its diff u back to complaining. My god
@@AlexanderOkwali Because it's still boring, just a different taste of boring.
There just isn't enough characters/premises being established early enough to actually have anyone care about the narrative. Even if it's not a 'big bad threatening the world' situation, it's still a whole bunch of new characters coming out of nowhere that we're supposed to care about.
Writing just doesn't work like that, they need to be established over a period of time to make things like that believable.
Legion was the last expansion that actually nailed this premise, having pre-established enemies that we have been dealing with for a while, but despite all its glory, Legion is around the time where the writing team stopped thinking ahead about how to prepare new characters/storylines.
It has lead to these latest few expansions where all the new 'enemies' and scenarios as a whole have just come out of the blue and not felt grounded in the Azeroth that we used to be in as recently as Legion.
The Dragon Isles at least had 'some' build-up from slight hints throughout BfA, but nothing serious enough was released from those plotlines that it still feels like the Dragon Isles came out of the blue and therefor unestablished.
Didn’t realize how right you were about this until I revisited the old patch cinematics - they’re all so insanely hype and cool and bad ass. There’s emotions, drama, violence, it’s like John Wick but with WOW
are you shitting me?, 90 fansservice anime have more drama than this
Its nothing like john wick
Those old patch cinematics had passion and dedication to them, they were dedicated to being emotionally commanding. The newer patch cinematics are missing that because they feel like they're dedicated to being finished instead. There's no heart in them. They're just another conduit to push forward the story's A-plotline.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮So you don't like the story that means you can't like the reality? LAME. Go to a different game then.
The old stuff was made by actual gamers that went to school and learned how to make games. The new stuff is being made by feminist, soy boys and people that think playing nothing but games like candy crush make them a hardcore gamer. You also now have the problem of basically every large game dev studio and publisher being led from the top by shareholders you give zero fucks not only about the consumer like with most companies but these people dont even give a shit about video games. They dont even play them.
All of this combines to create the death and destruction of video gaming as we have known it.
Yes, indie devs are holding the line but i fear its only a matter of time before the large corporations find some way to fuck all of that up too.
We have also take into account that they have tried to bring the “cool” and failed in doing so with poor execution. N’Zoth was a big manipulative villain faced by mainly Wrathion, mostly portrayed as hero at that point, and they did it in the worst way possible. I think you are right but I’m afraid is not only the what but the how.
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MMO's will never be the same as they were in the interconnected, social media thriving world we live in now. Part of the charm of old WoW was you shared the experience with people all over the world and it was fascinating to interact with so many people on such a large scale as it was impossible to do in any other medium, sure there were other online games sure, but you didn't really have many shared experiences in Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament, at least not to the depth and scale that WoW brought. Now we have Facebook, Discord, Twitter, Tik Tok where people can constantly share their discoveries and interact with each other which fills a niche the MMO's used to cover. A core part of the experience is now catered to in everyday life and it wasn't like that when MMO's became popular, the closest we had was AOL/MSN messenger.
This is the realist and most honest response here. Throw away all the fluff and this it what it really boils down to.
I would counter this by saying FFXIV is thriving and growing, even after having a super rough launch where they quite literally nuked the original game world.
@@michaelkovalsky4907 but is reaching the same numbers Fortnite does? LoL? Valorant? no it's not, no matter how many Game awards they win in a row, MMO numbers just get thwacked compared to every other genre
@@Fabriciod_Crv what's the point of this comment? That guy was saying FF is still growing despite that "magic" of interconnectedness no longer being new so clearly there is a way to give people a feeling similar to that in the current age still.
Pointing out a bunch of random completely unrelated games in different genres get more numbers is just so irrelevant
Younger generation would rather play on tablets. With fast-paced games. They don't have the patience or care for mmo.
Legion was one big fkn hype train. I used to go crazy on those cinematics.
During the latest quest line, I tried my hardest to get Alexstraza to execute all of the rebels and she just wouldn’t oblige.
You missed the entire point of the questline. And yes yes i know stupid to have the option if you cant follow it but....yeah.
If you werent able to tell by now, thats not *that* kind of expansion.
@@The86Ripper and that is the point of this video as well
Execute all the former slaves for no reason🤔
@@tompatompsson Eeeh a true RPG would let you do it. Sure there should be in game consequences for it, but ah well.
Given... WoW is a themepark MMO and doing a branching narrative where choices actually matter in those is extremely difficult, hell I'd say even impossible
@@cctakedown333 "My car can't drive over the river" "A boat could do it".
Yes a "true RPG" would let you do it but it's apples to oranges.
What did warcraft lose? Um the war. The "heavy metal" art direction of the RTS games was left behind for llama mounts, jingles, and cute ducks.
You knew it was bad when they removed the Warchief title and gave the Horde a peace-council of completely friendly people with 0 grit.
Would have preferred they never learn from their mistakes, remaining a static construction to fulfill design goals over characters capable of changing over time?
yes.
@@silentverity4975 it has only been a few hundred years of this type of world in wow, in real life it took humans thousands of years to stop having kings and empires and slaves and to learn peace and working together, even now, too many countries still fight too often, so yes, I would rather them stay like this
@@MichZilla90 "It took thousands of years for humans to get along"
Yeah. We don't have thousands of years. This is a video game, and the whole "The horde and alliance are fighting (again)" is pathetically tired, and a vast majority of players are over it. They were over it after Legion. The Alliance and Horde have now fought, stopped, and fought again four different times over the course of 38 ish years. It's extremely boring, and every time it starts up again, it's the Horde doing it with no actual legitimate reasons to do so.
Players who are still attached to this archaic narrative obviously has no idea what engaging narrative can be and are choosing to live in a realm of nostalgia instead. It's over. The faction divide is being removed. The Faction War is not intrinsic to WoW being WoW and if you think that, then you've not bothered playing a good chunk of the game's quest zones.
@Vistyr you are speaking the gospel my friend, which is also why I kinda hope the story team doesn't listen to Bel.
I'm sorry but I'm actually preferring the nuanced and emotional discussion of legacy and redemption from Ebyssian rather than rewriting groom's sacrifice for the 11th time
Lorewise Reasoning Shadowlands, I think the main lore reasonn that made it cool for people to buy the expac was not "Slyvanas, you know her, she's cool" I believe it was "Slyvanas, you hate her, this expac is the last for her" that is one of the main reasons for story folk, And for me I was just about to get Shadowlands but when I saw that they're going to give her redemption arc I just skipped it, I know a whole guild with 200+ people in Silvermoon EU also skipped just because of that reason and switched to classic.
I was hyped up about Arthas making an appearance, maybe seeing old heroes again. Instead we got the charade with Arthas, we got the "muh queen" sylvanus and the only other old character that had me excited was uther but he was not the uther we knew he was uther the lost soul.
And of course the villain was just awful.
Uther was still the best character of Shadowlands though. He was the only one that actually felt thought out.
When I saw the SL cinematic, I didn't really think it was cool. I mean, yeah, well executed, but I didn't much like it. By then, I was sick and tired of Sylvanas (sorry Sylvie fans). BUT we didn't even get to kill her and they let her BRUSH OFF Arthas like he meant nothing at the end of SL.
Dragonflight doesn't focus on good and evil, heroes and villains because those themes are no longer acceptable by modern media--Instead we see equity and inclusion. We see this in most recent media. Disney re-tells the story of Cinderella, but this time leading to empathy from Malificent's perspective. Even if you select oppressive options in the most recent storyline chapter, the outcome is still acceptance. While there is a place for these concepts in our social structures, they do not stir the deep-rooted feelings in the hearts of all of us. We long to cheer for the underdog that struggles and, through sense of will and duty, learns the skills necessary to overcome evil. Today, our media tries to convince us that there is not true good or evil, but people with with their own truth that need to be accepted. I applaud your description because if reveals that we do not resonate with the "Meh" of modern media. Each of us does recognize good and evil, heroes and villains and we we won't be entertained by the "Meh".
I agree and disagree. The big issue in my view, and this goes back to Game of Thrones and WoD/Legion at the time when WoW PR was putting out the same talking points, is this idea of "Grey" characters, whereby villains are "believable" in the sense that what they're doing is for some greater purpose than just because they're evil.
What this mentality has always ignored is that the motivations of such characters can be inherently evil by nature. Yes, a villain who just wants "world domination" is a cliché and shallow character that, in the right setting, can be fun to root against. But you can also have people who are trying to prolong their own life, or increase their personal wealth/position, inherently selfish traits, that aren't taking it to the maximum extreme of "ruling the world" or becoming gods. Those are the actual interesting villains.
Beyond that, another issue WoW has had for a while is that it's so old now it's run out of established villains from the previous games to leech off, and it's not done itself any favours in building up replacements. They've wasted opportunities in the past such as killing off potential candidates like Lady Vashj as mid-level stepping stone bosses, and they've already fallen back on resurrecting a couple of big names like Illidan. But the reality is that an epic end boss can't just be introduced and killed at the end of an expansion like the Jailor and not come off as a joke. It's just a shame that the only time they feel to do this (Garrosh and Sylvanus) they opt to make them Warchiefs of the horde, which is inherently going to piss half the playerbase off when they game is meant to be factionalised and you're writing into the canon how one faction is ultimately going to be defeated before the big reset button is pressed because the game must go on.
@@davidbates3057 Your last paragraph is so spot on. Absolute chef's kiss. Blizzard's formula can't do worldbuilding or villain-building, because it's inherently destructive (aka using the material from the lore as fodder for encounters in the game). The only time they even tried was the old gods, and that's super YMMV due to the retcons of the old gods going from being pushed back to being truly dead in BFA.
It's also just sheer age. I'm at the point where I can't take villains seriously because my character has already killed Deathwing, Argus, Archimonde, Kil'Jaeden, Garrosh, Arthas, several old gods, Hogger, and everything else in the setting that's a threat. There's literally nothing left that poses a realistic challenge to the player character, and any time they try to make something out to be it just feels plastic and forced. Like, "oh, yeah, another lame cutscene where the villain that my character should be able to backhand into the dirt with casual ease goes about being 'OH SO POWAHFUL', where's the skip button?"
@@davidbates3057 Great Points, and I agree with @ASNS117Zero--I really sync with your last paragraph. What I take from your comment is an issue of Character Development. Martin is a master of developing complex, layered characters that require more from the reader. It is easy to cheer Luke Skywalker. Do I love or hate Tyrion? Your discussion of Character is a deeper view than my 'easy mode' for classic good and evil.
Or perhaps the modern human is no longer so dimwitted to see the world as good and evil, that is way too boring.
Arthas as a villain was interesting precisely because he wasn't evil, rather started with good intentions. Even more so for Illidan.
So stop whining about media outgrowing your sensibilities.
Compare the 9.1 trailer to what I think is the oldest patch trailer "Gods of Zul'Aman". ZA one really shows its age in animation and limitation but that final "we gonna bury you here" line still has it blowing the primalists breaking into Abberus out of the water.
And Zul'Jin was not a big known villain but the epitome of villain of the patch. A catch up patch at that. Look where he is now.
The power of a challenge or call to arms beat the mystery of what evil scheme team Rocket might be up to next.
Sitting back too see can't be the most interesting option, it had to be to take action
Oldest to use ingame assets was pre wrath launch trailer (not the cinematic), oldest actually ingame was Ulduar launch.
Vanilla dungeon bosses for lvl 20 have more intimidating presence than the Primalists. All of their dialogue is is soft-spoken theory-crafting bait for people like Accolonn and Bellular. Boring monologues that showcase that they haven't learned their lesson from Shadowlands and BFA. A villain whose entire motives and goals are hidden untill the very end tends to be a boring villain.
Could someone tell where the other two infinite dragons went there been nothing on them at all..just fraytt..so I'm confused are they waiting for end of season 3..kinda mad about tyr..storyline..so now what??I just don't know where there going with this story..,??..and the black dragon flight..what a horrible..thing.I wanted wrathion to win so he could cause some more mischief...really don't care about the blue..next pat h is all about the bronze timey whimey stuff we already did how many times do we have to deal with the timelines please come up with something different.
@@Human.33i just feel when i play just being a puppet weapon. Then they ignore you and talk to their real friends XD
Bfa was cartoon AF . And it was a good travel experience , if u don’t go out much irl
This video hit the nail on the head. I hate how many of the faction leaders have either become villains, been given barely any screentime, or have just been humiliated by the writing. As a Night Elf fan since WC3 it hurts to see how they have treated both Tyrande and Malfurion. Why can't these characters just be cool?
I think too many players have been away for too many expansions for the story to just be the selling point, there needs to be a radical new feature to draw in players and flying dragons was NOT it.
The last expansion that really suckered people in was Legion, because of the Artifacts. It neatly wrapped up cosmetic, class lore, progression and tied nicely with the general story of the game... you wanted to upgrade, collect all the shinies, you felt Blizzard was invested in "your lore, your experience" and not the lore of the world. Then the problem became after Legion that every system after that was a pale copy and paste comparison to Artifiacts with no real value... we weren't invested in Azerite, or Covenants etc.
I think the game is missing player agency, player creativity and player investment. It NEEDS player and guild housing with a full suite of cosmetic, trade, progression options, account bound... more advanced that the combined efforts of both SWTOR player housing, Wildstar and Everquest Next... a Sandbox for players to open up in, rather than be closed off by the game.
I stopped playing Retail for many reason, one of the big ones being not enjoying the combat, too many spells too much going on and it doesn't feel satisfying to press them, i hate using three globals on my lock and the mobs health has barely move, gearing is boring and poo has been for a while. have no interest in mythic plus raiding is too hard unless you want to do heroic (I don't)
So now i just play classic, it's what i want from the game and it's what i get. i want my games to be fun not stressful.
The only thing that would get me to pay for wow again is if they gave me control of the narrative team. They wouldn’t do that because I’m entirely unqualified but that’s how little I think of their staff that I’m sure I could do better.
Their staff doesn’t seem that much qualified either 🤣
@@izicadet9819 BFA was bad but nothing that couldn’t be walked back until N’zoth. I would’ve had an entire old god expansion filled with IRL gaslighting. I’d have staff do interviews and mid conversation start babbling nonsense between each other and if called out on they’d ask the interviewer if they were feeling ok. There’d be a big centerpiece next blizzcon of an alliance lion that’s cool to the touch with very faint whispers coming from it, so quiet you can’t hear what it’s saying but you know it’s there.
Wrathion would’ve been seemingly immune to show how many precautions he’s set up and how seriously he’s taking the threat but he’s already hearing whispers in DF so that’s a wash
Anduin temporarily flipping shadow priest before he’s saved could’ve been interesting but since he was just turned in SL that ideas been played out…
@@shnorkeythefourth4572 i still have hopes that everything that happened since BFA, is an alternative reality that N’zoth has put us into to make us believe we won🤣
@@izicadet9819 I’m hoping the bronze dragon flight will take us to a better timeline!
@@shnorkeythefourth4572 i had an idea a few weeks ago.
What if, at the end of DF, Nozdormu will have a role like Dr Strange in Infinity war; let me explain, he will doom our timeline because the threat would be too powerful, and the only option to win is to leave our timeline, gather allies in another timeline, and comeback to our to defeat the threat and take our home back. This could lead to a new Warcraft so they can rework properly the world as they wish, and then boom new WOW xpac where we win and get back to our timeline.
My imagination works too much🤣
Yes, this had to be said. WoW has gone safe and soft, it seems that heroism is offensive now. Thanks for this, it was cathartic.
As a vanilla player who left during 9.1, I'm happy to hear about the state of the game: that the gear treadmill is more fun, that PVE content is enjoyable, that quest stories are more interesting. I'm happy that folks are having a good time. But I have no desire to pick it back up again. Nothing they've done has gotten me excited. Maybe you're right and there's just no spine-tingling, heavy metal energy anymore. I just know I haven't felt hyped.
The music in the legion cinematic was a certified banger
The problem is that BFA and Shadowlands, not to mention the creative decisions in regards to the cosmic forces (And the god-awful idea of cosmological charts.) have ruined the lore beyond repair. Any heartfelt side story with the Blue Dragonflight is too little, too late. Scourge has been ruined, Old Gods have been ruined, Factions have been ruined, almost all Legacy characters have been ruined, the worldbuilding is crumbling. I tried giving Dragonflight a chance, but every time I am almost starting to enjoy myself, something reminds me "Oh yeah. Shadowlands is canon." or "Right, this ties in to BFA." As I am exploring the Green Dragon are, I am reminded of what they did with Night Elves, Ysera, Malfurion... The atrocious Night Warrior questline and the netire existance of Ardenweald, when Neltharion is mention I shake my head at how they robbed all character traits from Nefarian and plastered them on Deathwing, not to mention the bad idea that are the Dracthyr. When I see void mentioned I cannot help but groan in frustration over N'zoth, as if it happened yesterday.
There is no way to save Warcraft except of massive retcons that would wipe away entire expansions now. A massive reset. You could forgive old lore being ruined if it was replaced by something new and better. but Dragonflight has little of that to offer either. Warcraft is now just a cluster of melodramatic, over-acted monologues plastered over layers upon layers of old, regurgitated lore that tries to pretend it's new and exciting, despite the fact that it barely advances the plot or invents anything original. Nothing new ever happens, no new forces emerge, all we have are constant additions to old lore that "Were always there, but no-one ever mentioned them for super special reasons!" Just old ideas stolen, repeated, and forcefully wedged into the established timeline.
I think the problem is when they lean into overly complex lore that is completely niche to Warcraft. What got me to start playing during Lich was the incredibly immersive and easy to understand story of Arthas. It's a story that we are all familiar with and you don't need to know the details of how he was corrupted to engage with it. They loose my attention when the core plot is based on the less intertextual stories. Since Legion ended, I've felt like I'm constantly playing catch up with the lore and I'm much less curious about it.
As someone who didn't start playing until late Mists, I agree with this. Of all of the lore I engaged with as I slowly leveled up (and I really took my time with that), Arthas story was the most fully developed and clearest in-game. I've started reading the novels and I'm like "Oh, so that's when that happened" or "Oh, that explains that quest chain I vaguely remember."
I liked both Dragonflight cinematic trailers fine, but I have to agree they don't compare to most of the previous trailers in terms of "epicness". Still, I'd like to argue this kind of chill, optimistic, and adventurous theme was something WoW desperately needed after Shadowlands.
Shadowlands had more hype because of Sylvanas, but for differing reasons. Most players at that point saw her as a villain that needed to be put down for her crimes, while the loyalists didn't want her to be killed off like Garrosh, wanting instead to join her and the Jailer in breaking down the system. What we got was something of a compromise, as we didn't kill Sylvanas, but she didn't get away with her crimes either, and the Jailer was still the main villain.
The whole Sylvanas debacle, along with the many narrative blunders, the massive retcons, the cut content, and the overall bleak theme of Shadowlands got old quickly, so many players wanted something more lighthearted for the next expansion, slowly introducing us to new threats and new villains.
Speaking of which; The Primal Incarnates have already proven to be way more interesting villains than the Jailer, and I'm sure the next major patch will have even more epic moments with them. Mists of Pandaria lacked a lot of hype for much of the same reasons as Dragonflight, and was even considered by many UA-camrs at the time to be a failed expansion just like Cataclysm, but is now looked back on fondly. I'm sure Dragonflight will end on an epic note too, leading to an even more epic cinematic trailer for the next expansion.
I talked about this with friends in the past as well, particularly Tyrande and the Night Warrior. Warcraft is always about the War; Horde and Alliance will float back and forth between armistices and fighting because there will always be causes, old wounds, that lead them back into conflict and this is an awesome core for the story to have. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, after the burning of Teldrassil was perfectly poised to be that next cause for conflict; struggling with her rage it was a perfect and cool lead-in to future events; but then it just ended. They just took it away from her having her decide "oh no, being angry is bad." and all that potential was gone.
Who actually follows WOW RP. It's nonsense that nobody cares about, press ESC-Continue when Cinematics pop-up because the games better that way.
What I crave for is Trolls that are NOT the Zandalari to actually have a win at long last, with a cool gigachad doing something action packed and based.
You mean claim the heritage over the Gurubashi empire and make Stranglethorn their home?
DS Trolls are just Gurubashi trolls that did not agree with the direction their empire was doing, afterall.
Yeah, The Zandalar are already at their peak and always have been. Despite what their ruins implied. Meanwhile all the other trolls are outcast pariahs living on the fringes of Azeroth, inside said ruins. They're way more interesting than Zandalar. Their uprise could be an interesting excuse to revisit all these old zones, create new local conflicts without having things escalate to the usual cosmic scale.
Actually I'd like to see an xpac where we get our collective asses kicked and have to scramble just keep the people of Azeroth alive before going into a follow up xpac reclaiming our lands.
Zappy-boi could do some cool shit..?
@@ShadowsOfThePast Imagine having a father figure in Saurfang, and becoming Thrall's prodigy (If he did).
If they wrote him like that, and make him smart but ruthless and not that wet noodle they made him be he'd be a great future hero.
If Tyrande just snapped Sylvanas's neck, Shadowlands would've been exponentially cooler.
Very much agree. We have a council of the most powerful of each of the dragons, and for the most part the choose to sit on the sidelines and watch/lead. You can have emotionaly interesting leaders that also know how to throw down, and i feel like we could have pretty much all of the same storylines going on right now AND have super strong dragons beating the crud out of each other.
The Aspects and the dragons aren't immortal anymore though. They have to fight tactically, otherwise we get another Ysera ending for the Aspects. The dragons lorewise tend to let the mortals do most of the work, guiding and manipulating. It is why Alexstraza didn't show up in Wrath as a powerful dragon until Wrath Gate and then never again until the final battle with Deathwing after which they immediately lost their immortality and most of their power.
Because of this they need to sit on the sidelines leading and manipulating like a strategizing general, only fighting when it is a threat that the mortals could in no way face.
Until we completely restore the Oathstones, they will be basically just giant flying lizards that can guide the players and use their very limited power to help the players complete their mission.
Like Alexstrasza and Raszageth? Alexstrasza seemed to take just about every opportunity to throw down with her. Not sure how much more violence you can expect from the Aspect of Life.
@@alexistaylor969 They were made and taught by Tyr. The Titan Keeper of Guidance and background shenanigans. Not surprising that their main way to do things is indirect. Ontop of which, the whole reason they lost their home and civilization boils down to getting directly involved to clean up the messes of the elves.
They aren't powerless though, Alexstrasza held her own against Raszageth despite her adversary being thoroughly infused with elemental power. It's a little more complicated than aspect powers or no aspect powers imo
Hey but we got dragon nursery right? 😂 So f’ing lame lmao
@@rsmith8113 Don't shit talk the dragon day care you heartless bastard.
Why does nobody realize that the Dragonflight trailer had the least views by a mile compared to ALL other cinematic expansion trailers? Dragonflight had a boring crappy cinematic with terrible marketing/advertising and because of it's garbage reach on people it had a bad launch.
I know it sounds TOO simple but yes the trailers lack of views and hype unrionically matters way more than people realize. Look at WoD's hype and the crazy amount of attention it got, and the launch had a lot of people too.
Bear in mind that WoD's trailer came out when WoW was still somewhat mainstream. Four years after the peak of Wrath, when the Chuck Norris commercials were still in recent memory. By the time of Shadowlands, WoW was certainly no longer in the public consciousness. Even if Dragonflight's trailer was as hype as possible, it came out almost a decade and a half after the peak. There is just no way it'd get anywhere near a comparable level of engagement.
I think in today's current zeitgeist, a strong, heroic male figure like Saurfang, Varian or the like just isn't feasible. And the Light will invariably be portrayed as evil, because everything is relative nowadays. It's not an age of heroes in the game anymore, like the real world, it's become a age of aggrievements and narcissistic identity.
'Nowadays'? Light being hinted at as being able to be used for evil is a nearly decade old story point now.
@@TheSilvershadow200 doesn't invalidate his point
I think he's saying it's trending towards being the MAIN portrayal.
lol shut up, its possible, its just that the wow team is 500% woke now, they cant do epik thing, they just pushing their stupid political trans agenda everywhere:P itsa why 99% of the normal people just quitted that garbage
the solution is to fired io and his team, take real devs who know how to do a game with no woke shit in mind and WoW will come back to was it was, a good game
The light has always represented security, stability, order. Which has been good momentarily, as many villains have brought death and destruction over the world. But we have been shown time an again that the light and those wielding it can go too far, which is exactly where Yrel will come in.
Bro these writers actually think this expansion is cool that's the problem. They systematically destroyed every cool character
They removed every single trace of masculinity and cool shit.
They took the wrong cues from FFXIV. They thought having approachable, emotionally mature characters meant no conflict could ever happen or conflict has to always be about huggy family feelings. They turned the game into a technicolor soap opera.
This seems to be the problem. They thought that people wanted all the emotional stuff and nothing else. So now it's all just that. They didn't understand that you're supposed to alternate between the emotional stuff and the big cool stuff. The emotional stuff is the downtime to relax before another big cool thing. You need both in measure.
@@omegaxtrigun I don't really think there needs to be much of alternation. If anything what need to be there is pressure. Ever rising one. So that when the time comes to cry and talk about feelings it will be earned. Say what you will about BFA but there was one moment that personally hit like a brick. Seeing the amazingly animated roar of Saurfang over his sons dead body. Same with Anduin finding his fathers sword or even better. Theramore. All amazing moments with lots of feelings to process and feel and talk about. All however built beforehand.
@@WaywardHex "Just as there is no shadow without the light, without the shadow, there is only searing, mind-numbing, unrelenting brightness." Contrast is necessary.
@@WaywardHex You just illustrated what I was talking about though. Those emotional moments are contrasted by or alongside the big "cool" moments.
You are reading my mind. I was really pissed off how dirty they did Thrall and Voljin in the Legion.
In the end gameplay is raid-centric, after completing the lore all you can do is raiding. And since major auditory are casual players that have own job doing another job is too much. It seems hardcore jobless players is not a good choice for profit.
It's funny to me that on one hand players are screaming that they're tired of fighting world ending threats and being the heroes, and on the other hand they're uninterested in casual adventures.
WoW these days is about emotional feminine characters, and forced lgbt on players. WoW used to be all about releasing that testosterone filled rage, kiling /slaying enemies, not fucking cry babies. Bought the expansion, played for a month, I just really couldnt vibe with anything in the game anymore, Shadowlands was so much better vibe wise.
Warcraft now is just the pride month version of warhammer
Weak people consumed by envy and spite cannot comprehend either heroism or villainy, and therefore cannot write heroic adventure stories worth a damn.
That's the writing team at Irvine now.
For me it has less to do with the settings and appearance of the protagonists.
*They are all just too dull and passive.* Khadgar is the only pro-active character and he is just doing busy work during the Fyrakk Assault.
I haven't played retail since Warlords. I don't think there's anything they can do to bring me back, as in terms of gameplay and systems and whatnot the game is just so fundamentally different from the game i came to love, but having a rousing story I actually care about would help a lot I'm sure.
It's even worse now so you're not missing out on anything :)
like asmongold said BIG SWEATY MEN KILLING BIGGER SWEATIER MEN thats what we need
I left game in dragon flight do to other reasons, i hated trade chat, was very toxic, people became more mean in the game during raids, game became more of a business with the selling of runs etc, i was mainly a farmer, i loved spending hours on my druid just farming, it was was happy in game, now with the realms put together and the boxing accounts and being put in a spot of i could only use certain mounts to fly took the fun away for me, seeing the people exploit the farming, like garnhowl where someone plants a toon there set on attack on auto swinging or putting druid toons set on auto in areas killing everything when they spawn, i loved mount farming to which i spent a really lot of time an years to farm just to have a expansion make them pretty useless to use, i can go on an on on my thoughts of why i left game, (i do miss the game) but i come home from work, pay my bills an want to sit an play stress free but game just got more stressful at my age, I'm almost 60, played game from beginning, did leave for a few years at cata as that was bad, came back, loved all expansions, hated some of the changes blizzard took away from the playing style of the toons but lived with it, but now its all business an not much fun, riding the new mounts never sat right with me, perhaps i just got use to my mounts to much
Well, I think people just got burnt with SL That's the main reason. I for one am loving this expac. Yes, it doesn't have that story impact but the game itself is fun as hell to play and that is what is really important to me.
14:32 yes, and i assume one of the reasons for that is that nobody really knows what the underlying greatness of that concept is. why do heroic old dudes work?
In my opinion the whole theme of warcraft just fit so well with high fantasy. Immersion is key! having to train up your weapon skills was immersion. having to drink and eat during levelling was immersion. also the population of the cities make a big aspect of that. just compare todays exodar with todays stormwind. in exodar territory you feel at home like youre one of the draenei. in stormwind meanwhile, everybody and their mother chills out, it doesnt really feel like a human stronghold.
or another example, when you get to northrend, immediately you have to defend against nerubs or vrykul, the whole expedition is at some kind of risk. in the dragon isles, you get railroaded by some hyperactive band of cartographers and a weird dragon lady. most interactions are with female characters of any race who constantly mention how fun and exciting all this is
so jeah, immersion
You nailed it. It's missing the "WTF" moment.
DF feels like the dragons inviting some bored adventurers to maintain their land. No big threat or hero needed moment.
You aren’t wrong. I don’t even like that the alliance and horde get along. Boring.
Just like Asmongold says WoW needs to go back to big strong sweaty men trying to kill each other. We are beaten to death with the weakening of society day to day, give us back our world where we can escape and being strong isn't looked down upon.
My Forsaken rogue wants to do some dirty, not watch a bunch of scalys winge. The plot is too sappy and positive, the elementalists are weak villians, there are no stakes.
Testosterone levels are at an all time low. All the strong characters have been killed off or neutered like Thrall. Where is a Garrosh to stand on his airship, yell, and kill dragons with his axe like a boss?
I was really mixed feeling about Shadowlands. I was not really hyped about going to the afterlife but was excited to have more lore about the Vampires. I waited for the story to unfold a little and found that I really did not care about where it was going and thought the Jailer was just a poorly written fan fiction villain. Then the Dragonflight cinematic hit and it reinforced that I had made the right choice to quit at the Shadowlands launch. Storytelling really does matter and being consistent to your established world.
you nailed it. When I think of (the old) WoW I remember Illidan, Arthas, Garrosh, Varian, Sylvanas but now? It's not important, there is no focus and no epic villains. Heck even non-wow players knew the "flying green and purple demon" or the "ice king" so good was their focus on the story and the excitement to interact with them in the game.
Old WoW would have had the Black Dragonflight cause a giant civil war that tore the Dragon isles to shreds and had Alliance and Horde fight for one leader to benefit their side, only for it to all go tits up and a third leader take it's place.
Modern WoW had the leaders squabbling light a married couple and I believe recently they made amends and gave leadership to a third party.
Black Dragons wouldn't....they were on the side of Dragons before been corrupted.
They know civil war wouldn't benefit them, the uncorrupted ones.
You actually described it perfectly!
I liked very much the new expansion but as you said it doesn't have the epicness of the old Warcraft.
It went from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter. Both good in their way but LotR is several scales above!
P.S. Bring bada$$ Malfurion back!
The last "cool" moment in was the Garrosh moment when he said "fuck you, i'd do it again" before deleting himself from the game.
My Warchief
Only cowards kill themselves for themselves.
Warcraft is just focusing on weakness as you pointed, like the current generation tbh.
I think iridikron can have that big badass villain moment that can somewhat bring back the Warcraft vibe. He has that potential of making dark bargains to keep his cause alive
Yeah Iridri is a cool guy
Never thought I'd see Warcraft of all IPs forgetting that it needs a WAR.
I think it is not about the villain. It is about the emotions - Take warlords, the story of Hellscream, the sheer dazzling WHAT IF of not drinking that cup. Were staggering. The video of Varian's conversation with a certain Draenei - depicting the sheer loss and tragedy of the fall of Shattrath, along with guilt the survivors carried. of course we wanted to leap in. Take Legion - Varian's musings, we know him, we've seen his story unfold, and damn, even as a Horde player, you were on his side in this video. And when in-game he went down like that, I think we all were in to make the Legion pay. It got to us, the players, because we cared about the characters. That's also what worked when Saurfang died. It doesn't have to be about a villain, but it must be something we care about, that draws us in. I loved Pandaria (and yes, getting drowned again with Nazgrim had me grin) but Draenor had that huge vibe, the What If, and they dropped the ball on fully delivering on the tragedy among Orcs.
16:08 . . . THANK YOU!!! I've been saying this for years but inevitably get told I don't know WTF I'm talking about. Thank god Anduin isn't in Dragonflight because between him and Kalec...yeesh. These two certainly aren't the only cases but to me absoluty feel like the worst offenders.
You saying “mid” is starting my villain arch.
I think the issue is WoW went too big last expac, and now the scope and scale is miniscule in comparison. Think about it, despite Shadowlands being a piece of flaming garbage narratively, it was still massive in scope of the impending doom and the BBEG (Even if the BBEG was handsome squidward, and dull). The issue now is, the primal dragons, despite the danger they bring to the table and the world, it's not big enough in comparison to prior expac. I get people aren't super into sentimental story telling in WoW, cause half the time the story telling is "unga Bunga warfare", with a bit of character storytelling.
Personally I'd rather experience more sentimental, grounded story telling, but mix it in with the actual warfare. Show the toll of what fighting does to a person, especially decades of fighting. But show in a way All Quiet on the Western Front, tells the story. Yeah All quiet is an Anti-war novel/film, but it's storytelling remains impeccable. And WoW could do something amazing if they took that approach, while also going back to a formula that works.
WoW went from being savage Orcs against the relentless humans. Political plots to collect each others heads and bring them back. Revenge in blood. The art style was rough but it had character.
Now its like a Disney movie. I'm just waiting for the dragons start singing. Its kinda cringe. It lost me lol.
I hear often about the problems with Legion and wonder what on earth they are talking about. It did so much right. We had clear villains and heroes, we had sadness and grit just in the leveling quests. Some of my favorite raids since Ulduar are in Legion. The classes played smooth and felt good with less global cd’s. The world was beautiful, interesting and fun to explore… The mage tower was challenging. Artifact weapons looked freaking cool and motivated you to unlock all of them. Even the trees within the weapons were fun. And even the borrowed power was not really an issue until they introduced far lesser versions of it in BFA. A necklace you can’t see? Who cares?
The problem is they did it quite well in Legion. The class hall quests were some of the best and made each class feel distinct.
The last raid was one of my favorite in the game.
I’d put Legion up there with Wotlk and TBC.
I think you nailed your conclusion and why I’m not playing Dragonflight. It’s good, plays well mechanically, etc. The story is not very wow. Has no appeal to me. I don’t know what my core motivation is. Stakes seemed low. It just left me feeling like someone went through a lot of trouble for something I didn’t ask for.
I like the vibe of Dragonflight right now. Its different.
Feels like we are in a "calm before the storm" period.
I dont feel you need to burst out of the gate with the world falling apart and all hope is lost every single expansion.
I haven't given much of a damn about the main storyline in dragonflight. I haven't be bothered to even do the campaign to the end, I did some and all I remember is just going on top of the tower occasionally and having the dragons gather for alexstraza to delivery some "by the power of friendship" speech.
I just can't be bothered with thr aspects, now we got the Tauren becoming the aspect of earth, OK nice, he has a developed character and what not nice but he is not cool. None of the aspects are cool. I watch any other in a cinematic and I don't expect them to do or say something cool, like say how Illidan was, where you saw him in a cinematic and you expected him to do or say something cool and he delivered.
From what I priced together we are trying to power up the aspects again since back in cataclysm they sacrificed their power for the dragon soul, but what I don't get is, if they are weak now, why did those primal dragon not come to valdraken and fight them? What are they afraid of?
With the new Tauren becoming the new aspect of earth, doss that mean he gets a power up or it simply a title? Didn't the original dragon leaders become strong after the titans buffed them? Who is buffing him? Same for the blue drake, how strong is he?
In general I do not understand what the power level of thr dragon aspects are right now.
Thank God the raids and dngs are good and the developers finally listen and implement class changes fast.
Drinking game: take a sip everything Michael mentionts the Blue Dragonflight questline.
For me this is not the issue I have with the game, my issue is that the has become challenging to play and not that the game itself is the challenge.
Also season system sucks very hard reseting my gear is just a big joke.
Last time things felt really cool was the Legion Xpac. BFA could've brought back the OG Warcraft feeling but failed, Shadowlands was weird, and the last one just feels meainingles and directionless. WOD sucked but it felt cool. You're right about needing a main villain to focus on with its real threat and power
The biggest problem is that WoW became too expensive because it is not too much better anymore than the other options out there.
The 2nd thing is that you have to do, not want, but have to do too many things to experience the end game (M 16+, HC raids and above) in order to get even just considered to join a party:
- Farm gold for repair, food, pots, elixirs, wpn enchants on weekly basis
- Farm gold for gems, enchants, profession for gear multiple time a season
- Farm huge amounts of gold for profession gear, BIS gems/enchants
- When you are done with gold, then farm some kind of tokens for profession
- Farm tokens for various features out there to min/max
- Farm gear, M+, LFR/Normal raids.
- Farm tokens to improve the gear.
- I probably missed a few "have to do" activities.
I could spend entire nights trying to get into a M 16+ groups with a 2100+ rating, or a HC raid to kill the last boss (GL without having the HC kill).
And if you want to farm perks, like mounts/titles/pets etc., you pay for a 2nd job that you do not enjoy, that you have instead want to do.
Because of that, how i play the game, I wait for an expansion to be free, i pay for 2-3 months the subscription so I can experience the story, some new mechanics/features and I am done. I tried with DF by purchasing the expansion but I got exhausted already by 10.1.
An yep, then the 10.1. comes and you get to do it alllll over again.
Why do you not your own group for your own key?
Why don't you make your own group to kill the last boss on hc and invite people who are 8/9.
People by now just want to farm thr boss not spend hours with others who need to learn the fight.
Then you also complain about crafting and pots/food/flasks but these have always been in wow, you always had to have your flasks, food and potions for the raid. Nothing changed there is if anything it's now far cheaper to buy them since you get a lot more gold from quests. You can get 3.5 in less than an hour twice a week by doing the dragon races ,these will be more than enough for your raid consumables.
For gear crafting, you don't have to craft the bis item week one and at 447 item level if you don't have the gold, you also don't need it to drop Sark hc or to do 16s.
Just join a guild and lost of your problems will be solved.
I disagree on one front. The Aspects are also one of Warcraft's oldest AND coolest larger-than-life characters. Dragon lore is also among the best WoW has ever had. Not mentioning them in a good light even once doesn't sit right with me. Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Nozdormu, Ysera + Merithra and Neltharion's heirs SHOULD bring hype.
The issue is... If you aren't a Warcraft fan, all you'd see are some differently coloured dragons in the cinematic. No way to grip new players by only showing the most overused (They work lovely but not like this) creatures in fantasy fly around for a couple minutes.
Next expansion needs to have medhiv in the cinematic facing off against a horde of void stuff and talking about redemption.
Disney/Pixar present _World of Warcraft_
Ive been saying this for years. Hell its degraded to looking like Fortnite with its perfect smooth surfaces like everyone is a living action figure. No smudges, no scuffs, no loose threads, everyone is perfectly molded, from armor to skin textures.
The game has NO soul. It’s an mmo with a WoW skin. Nothing more.
DF announcement cinematic could be much more appealing if it had a speech narrated by Alexstrasza about return of the dragons
i think dragonflight wanted to go back to the roots. being a world full of adventure and not an anime edgelord story.
Writers. Plain and simple. I feel like I'm playing a kids game with Dragonflight and the cutscenes are incredibly lazy. There's just no effort anymore, everything is ingame and is rigid. Everything narratively is watered down and just isn't exciting to play.
WoW just feels woke now, boring and softball. Diablo contrasts it nicely by being a dark fantasy full of blood, gore, demonic, rituals, and gritty atmosphere. Meanwhile in dragonflight you are playing a twinky dragon in your magical adventures through dragon island. Legion was straight up like "The demons put people's souls into giant soul engines" and Dragonflight is "help the dragons deal with their emotional issues"
0:50 "Gear looks better than ever..."
Bold statement, since only Priest's set looks awesome!
'Intersectional politics' is what is slowly killing WoW.
The problem is across entertainment in general, I've noticed that most modern writers, be it movie, TV, comics or computer games don't seem to grasp self sacrifice, selflessness and humbleness, all important aspects of heroism imo.
I’ve been saying this for years! WoW is only loosing players because it has no value in its lore. The game needs to revolve around the lore because the lore is amazing
well is kinda to late, now they receieve backlash all die hard fan already leaving and blizard more focus trying to get new fanbase
Blizzard devs showed how much they hate their audience through their insane twitter rants, and that was enough to turn me away from ever trying DF.
It can be as amazing as it wants, I don't want to give money to someone who says to my proverbial face that they despise me.
I like that dragonflight isn't big bad end of the world scenario, I love this breather chill, but sadly majority aren't :/ I love how emotional is dragonflight so far for me, I wish they will not abandon it in future, let's just combine all that dragonflight is with Big heroes and villains
Making everything mopy is part of the current social engineering we are being subjected to. Our opponents are fixed on dealing us really crushing blows, and they want us firmly demoralized before they dare go about it.
The jew naming has increased to levels never before seen in the USA, so while they are trying to demoralize us before implementing full on communism, there is another side that is gaining momentum in epic proportions just like what happened in the Weimar Republic before a famous mustached painter revived his countrymen.
The thing that killed Warcraft for me wasn't anything you mentioned. It was that I felt like my time was being wasted. As you yourself said in a recent video, "I don't feel like the game is wasting my time now". This is why I came back and am enjoying the game. I have grown up, as has a lot of their playerbase, and we have real life shit to do. I'm not going to log into something only for it to jerk me around and waste my time at various unfun things. I hope the way this expansion has been means that Blizzard has learned their lesson in that regard, but only time will tell.
In Classic, I was an Orc Warrior standing tall against well defined villians.
That Vanilla video made the classes look cool. You mentioned Illidan yelling, "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!"
Know what I remember from that cinematic? The Orc Warrior yelling in defiance as he gets hit with arrows, fighting on until he breathes his last, only to get resurrected by a Blood Elf Priest.
Eventually the game turned into borrowed power. I'm not the BAMF, it's whatever convoluted mechanic they fever dreamed up. Eventually, my Orc Warrior was little more than a witness to everyone else affecting the world...
Nevermind the phone game retention mechanics, and FOMO they added, or the in game shop.
You can sell cosmetics in an FPS game. In an RPG game, earning awesome gear is part of the class fantasy.
They do need more cinematics. They also need to bring back their marketing and hype. They dropped the ball after the Warcraft movie. They could have done cartoons for yrs. Toy lines and much more. They just lost all excitement from high up in management.
Good episode, guys!
Cool and interesting characters took a back seat so they could push the narrative that the player was the true hero. BFA and Shadowlands especially were big on this with the heart of Azeroth and the Maw Walker but Legion started it off with the Artifacts. Blizzard things that they need to treat the player like the main character but that just can't work in an MMO. The players need someone to look up to, someone to aspire to be. There's no point in trying to be Thrall if the game makes you better than Thrall and hands you his weapon. There's no point in trying to be Malfurion if he's just some sleepy guy locked in a dream. If everyone is the hero of the story then nobody is, that's why we need actual heroes.