I like to believe the interview set is just Metzen's office. Blizzard just has him sit in the black void all day where he meditates on the meaning of Warcraft. Meanwhile everyone else is just wondering why there is a black cube in the middle of the building.
When Chris speaks about pulling your personal experiences into the game, it directly reminded me of a quest the have in beta on the main isle. Its literally a direct reflection or metaphor for having to care for a family member who has Alzheimers. More importantly, the quest shows us what preparing for their "passing" and letting go of them amidst their warped reality looks like. I remember playing it for the first time and that quest had me in pure tears. I had to log off for a bit honestly and take it all in.
I just did that quest a few days ago and it kind of hit hard in that I have had family rhat have had alzheimer's. My uncle I dont know if it was advanced but his short term memory was crap. But if yoh talked to him about hunting or fishing many years ago he could recall it without much trouble. Yet you could walk into his room tell him who you were and he would kind of remember and then piece it together. You could then walk out and back in and he would forget you had just been in the room. So that quest hit hard. I think the reason it is so good is that just about anyone can relate to that kind of experience. Or know of someone who has.
Yeah, I'm hearing that Midnight is where his work really gets running, and we're going to feel a lot more of the "Dragonflight finale cinematic" vibes of, "Wait was this changed from something else?" Maybe he was able to get at it early, maybe they were able to polish it up and not all of the quests or the patch content was totally laid out. Who knows how much was already set in stone.
They even said at Blizzcon, which I found strange, that "Midnight is the expansion that will have all the features players will be excited about". I take that to mean player housing or class order halls coming back. No idea what they meant, but it doesn't make me feel like TWW will be all that different to Dragonflight.
My friend and I were talking about this yesterday. We both believe that by Midnight we will see Metzen's influence full on, and maybe even before, but it will be obvious when his story and influence kick in.
design by "incompetent committee". We really need structured storytelling back instead of random people passing around the script and making useless additions to the story for no reason. Hopeful for this new saga.
i think that preach saying he has to forget whats happened before with the story and characters in order to enjoy whats to come says A LOT about the WoW story
my hubs worked at blizzard for a couple years. while there I met a fellow family who's daughter is a "Jaina", and knew of another girl who's second first name is Sylvanas. So, yes, that is a thing with some of them. XD
Now that they’ve re-experienced the original world and leveling in Classic, I think the player base is craving a new adventure where everything isn’t already solved. WOW 2 could do that
We're already in WoW 2. We dont need a WoW 2 label to make it a new game. The old leaders are dead. Cairn is dead, Voljin is dead, Garrosh is dead. The torch has been passed for the Worgen, for the Humans of Stormwind, for the Night Elves, for the Horde. The problem with this type of thinking is why people become so disallusioned with the game. The game is not for those people that played Classic WoW. The game is now for a wider variety of people who want to play WoW as well. If you don't feel like retail WoW is for you, I hate to break it to you, but you've gotten older and your interests have changed. WoW 2 is already out.
I was thinking more about the leveling process and the Vanilla zones that no one that started after cataclysm ever saw: getting to experience the world anew and progressing your character being an actual gameplay purpose rather than just something you need to grind through to get to the endgame content.
They should have 1 person driving the narrative. But they can have a group of people handle different parts. If you are writing a complex story you have to have someone who is the one who keeps the group focused on the narrative goal.
I'd say just do what TV shows do, have a "writer's room" with just those who craft the stories. Edit: To elaborate, instead of a large democracy of people inputting into the story.
You're describing exactly what Metzen is doing. Obviously they changed direction when he came back in. He's steering the ship, but that doesn't mean that others have zero input. That's what he described. I thought at least, after watching this video.
@@hobosnake1 Whoa whoa whoa, are you suggesting Metzen is listening to advice and critism of professionals? No! HARD NO! Metzen should write the story in solitary confinement!
I think we have to wait a few patches or maybe even 12.0 before the story really gets better and we can feel and see Metzens influence. But still. Looking at this interview I like his vibe and think it will make the story better.
A fun content to watch would be just you asking questions to Nobbel about what one needs to know to keep up to date on the story, and just let it flow. Similar to what you were doing at the end of the video.
When Mike mentioned that Blizz cant add housing, but GW2 added it ... guess what... GW2 is running on same engine that GW1 was running which came just year later than WoW ... and if Anet with their spaghetti code can do such a complex housing then Blizz should be able as well...
I would not be too Cynical. Dragonflight was without Metzen and the start was great, the story is pretty fine too. The only thing that was weird was "oh now Vyrnoth is suddenly good and everyone's gonna give the pass". And thats just nit picking. My guess is, there is going to be a weird shift 1/3rd into expansion story. It wont be too much of a shift , but probably something Red shirt guy or Nobble would go "hey wait a sec".
I always listened to the instance but never saw what Scott looked like. I had a different image of him in my head so its weird having his voice come out of that guy.
I’m feeling a bit baited and switched tbh Metzen comes on stage last year. Says loads of stuff about new story focus. You buy in because he was the one who made the fun thing you loved years ago. Blizz marketing executives know their job well. Gets all the preorders. Then 3 days before he does this interview saying he hasn’t been able to change everything that fast and to be patient for later in the expansion. 'Setting expectations' but they were happy enough to not set them and hoover up the money.
Most likely he couldn't change the first patch or first half of the story, since too much was already built by that point. But nobody ever remembers the first half of an expansion, just the second half. He probably campaigned for the trilogy of expansions when they were still focused on just one. Luckily for us, even if the first half of TWW isn't too amazeballs, it's still coasting off the good will that DF has and how they started to fix the problems from the last 2 expansions.
How are you baited an switched? The people at blizzard did so much damage to the story structure that it is actually going to take 3 expansions to unfuck it. This is Metzen's way of fixing all the different random glitter that the idiots at blizzard threw out and force the story down a resolute path.
The biggest thing I felt from this interview is that Metzen doesn't think TWW will be good.... He mentions multiple times that they were already working on it while he joined not taking ownership of it but the biggest red flag was when he said "just remember this is only part one and it builds to bigger and better things". He basically said, it gets good later
Or he just does not want to take credit for other people's work. Imagine if you worked on something for a year, Metzen swoops in and starts saying that he was the one who did it. Yea every story (especially trilogies) start slower and then pays off the setups.
@@lukaskonecny9992 Since where has there been an interview with a prominent storyteller in the last who knows when when it comes to WoW? It doesn't matter if Metzen takes credit or not. No one's coming out of the Blizzard story team claiming that this story was their idea. Also, did you not listen to the interview? Metzen clearly stated that his main purpose is guide the general path of the story, not to nitpick the small bits of the story that the TEAM works on. Its a team effort.
I think, while you could be right, that's not what he's saying. It's like with the fellowship, while good, it doesn't reach the highs of two towers, and then the peak in return of the king.
The changes to the Levela are as such. The Main campaign is short compared to the past, but if you do it with may afew side quests you can shoot right into max level. If you are looking for story and lore. The overwhelming majority of that is in the side quests. So you don't care about the story and you just "skip, skip, skip." They helped you with how the Main Campaign runs. If you do love story, and don't mind taking a slower time. Then do the side quests, because you will see alot of stuff and have alot of fun with those quests.
The problem with the WoW narrative started when it launched. Having players split into two separate factions with separate characters they interact with is not going to lead to a strong narrative format. If you play one faction, there are certain characters that you have only interacted with once or twice that are very important to the other faction, and may end up important to the overall narrative later down the road. But you will have no idea who they are or care what happens to them cause they haven't been in your story for 15 years. If WoW had launched with both factions, but your character is a sort of mercenary that interacts with both, then the game could have had a very compelling story from the start. The faction barriers are just recently starting to be taken down. Pair that with a cast of new characters that both factions are meeting and interacting with equally, and eventually you can shift it into a solid cohesive story. But they are coming up from very far behind by having a bisected player base and story for at least 16ish years.
Disagree. Being invested in a character's faction is a good way to get attached to a faction leader, especially because your start to see them as your actual leader. Hence why so many people in real life are invested in how a their leaders act and behave and their charisma. WoW's story didn't have a problem. The problem was the departure of people who were guiding the story down a central path, to then have millions of people creating forked roads in the story, just like Metzen mentioned. He called it the democratization of storytelling. There's too many cooks in the kitchen now. That's why Metzen's here. He's going to kick the people burning the toast out of the kitchen so he can make apple pie. Simple as that.
I don't envy Chris's position. The creative face of three expansions in one of the most critical periods in WoW's history. How do they tackle the empty world syndrome? Fake players running around doing questing? Inviting you to quest with them a la NPC dungeons? Maybe. Maybe WoW 2 fixes all of this in a grand gesture of good will from the company that has lost so much in the previous decade. All I know is it's both eerie and comforting to have Chris temper expectations, even in a fluff interview with nothing but softball questions. I'm currently waiting for text reviews to come out, and the internet seems oddly devoid of them seeing as the game was released early last night.
a bit concerning when he emphasized that the War Within should be looked as only part 1. Some what implying that part 1 is going to sink or that his effort wont be felt until part 2 or 3
That’s not what I got. It sounds like he took over the patches. At least the second, maybe the first. 10 months is basically enough time for the initial leveling and max campaign
Yeah I took it as the initial campaign is still the old team and then maybe toward the end it'll kinda blend some Metzen in then build over the patches
than you didn't listen. he's been working on it all of over a year. the part where the team had been working on wwi for 10 months might have only been up to the 2nd patch.
At the end of Cataclysm they drained their Titan-granted Aspectral powers into the Dragon Soul, which Thrall wielded to bring down Deathwing. Basically a repeat/reversal of what Neltharion did with the Demon Soul back in the War of the Ancients, when he betrayed them and became Deathwing. At the end of Dragonflight and the awakening of Amirdrassil, they were granted new powers but from a different source - Azeroth itself, it seems, instead of the Titans.
Anduin can't die since he's seen as an old man, leading the forces of Azeroth in the final battle in "Anduin: Son of the Wolf" comic. Anyway, just hoping that we finally get playable ogres because since TBC scrap is too long a time.
I think you characterizing people who don’t like the way Anduin has been written as stupid alpha male types is a bit unfair. The reason I haven’t enjoyed him as much lately is just that he is so mopey and hadn’t really gotten much progression beyond that for so long. The cutscene with thrall makes me very interested in him now, though, as his pain isn’t passive but he is more angry about it or tormented as opposed to just depressed and mopey. It gives him somewhere to go and I’m really interested in it.
I would love if Jaina, Tyrande, and malfurion died or were retired I’m honestly sick of all three of them. Shandris can be the new Nelf leader she’s awesome and Taelia, Bolvar’s daughter, can replace Jaina. I know she isn’t a mage but she was a much better character.
Mike's discussion on the later half about changing engines has funny timing. From what I gather it's a bit of a herculean task for devs to pull off, but an old 20 years MMO called Dofus is moving from fucken FLASH to Unity and it had been like five years in the making. The people working that game is relatively small (the entire company is 500 employees and they have three MMOs and other games running). Huge task or no, Blizzard really has very little to no excuse with their resources. I really don't want to hear ever again in my life that the first bag slot can't be changed because of some ancient mystery spaghetti code that apparently would destroy the game. Work this shit out, man.
I haven't ordered The War Within yet but I am going to. I love stories so I do want to see it since this time its actually a story that I am interested in.
The sad thing is people still trust everything Blizzard says, it's like they haven't learned at all from hundreds of times Blizzard lied and got their players angry and quit the game lol. Don't believe nothing until we see it first
true, this sounds like they are more planning out the details instead of the general direction though. I doubt they had the idea for maldraxxus during warlords of draenor
But in the past, they just knew what expansions were going to be created. They didn't really get down to specifics about a whole saga over multiple expansions. They were just like "welp, next we tackle Arthas. I guess somehow we just quickly pivot over to that" which never felt good. It never made the game feel like it had direction.
Taking a peek at these videos coming out to watch the games progress. We’re being told they’re trying to make it better but I believe this will take several expansions. This expansion it sounds like they’re working on story telling and how to do it going forward. It’s going to be a slow road forward and I’m not giving a penny until it’s worth playing.
To be fair, ARR was the same way in terms of storytelling. Ok actually scratch that it wasnt until Heavensward when people started to shit on ARR's narrative for being slow never to realize every story needs its setup for you to start giving a shit later down the road (aka Shadowbringers). So while I'm still being skeptical with this, at least I know Danuser is gone so whatever The World Soul Saga is cant be worse than Shadowlands.
40:18 That is exactly my expectation. The bits I've seen of TWW and the marketing hasn't felt like proper Metzen at all except for the announcement trailer with Thrall and Anduin. It seems preferable to Dragonflight, but the tone still feels like Danuser to me.
Setting aside the story and the boredom of previous expansions. What they have done graphically with the engine is phenomenal really. However, running on a 9900k with a 3080Ti, I shouldn't really be seeing 8fps anywhere on a 20yo game. A new engine would be fantastic. Imagine if wow1 ran alongside wow2 and they made it easy to switch back, via a timeline, to hunt the old stuff, and slowly integrate all the old stuff into wow 2 via remixes and stuff.
It would be some wild bullshit if they went full "subvert expectations," and not only does Azeroth die, we kill her because actually she's the end of everything. Lends credence to the "she's the creator god" theory. Everyone wants her for the power to remake reality.
spoiler alert, Illidan killed all the titans and took their power, he is now the last titan and will pull the sword from azeroth at the end of part 3 of the worldsoul saga, killing azeroth and starting WoW 2.
I've never dropped below 50fps in the event are you sure it's not a mod or even the hardware conflicting... Optimising for all set ups these days is near impossible and if you have a pc in the minority of what people have it will not be prioratised
You keep talking about player housing. Have you ever played around with The player housing on rift? I really liked it. You could build your house from the ground up which was really fun. It was instanced which was nice because I could go there from any place in the world and I could invite people to come and see my dimension that's what they called them I could make it private in invite only or open to anybody to go and visit. After my experience with player housing there I was excited for Garrison's in wow but it felt cookie cutter I had no control over anything. When I think of player housing in games where it's just a building that I decorate it doesn't excite me at all because I liked the creativeness of building my own house just another perspective I thought I'd bring to you
There's something about the Warcraft IP that just feels so... tapped... at this point. It feels like Star Wars or Marvel where they've already told their big story, and the rest is just scraping the bottom of the barrel for fanfiction tier plot threads no one except the most fanatical people really care about. I actually would prefer if they want back to smaller scale stakes because some kind of cosmic, universe-wide villain really isn't doing it for me anymore. It's tiresome.
6:35 What he said is "Hey you have a big story arc that you want to squeeze into one expansion - that's not going to work, it's too much, we have to split that into several expansions". 49:18 "Housing has to be instanced" yeah that was already proven wrong over 25 years ago in Ultima Online.
Housing doesnt have to be instanced because of a technical reason, more because of a practical reason. (Ofc i mean, having blocks that are instanced with several houses in each) If you had them in the open world (zone instances) you would be limited to the space itself. And you def dont want a player that wants a house to be unable to get one. House limits is prob the most disliked things when it comes to housing systems. So in that way they basically need to be in their own instance. I know older mmos and even some modern ones have done it in the openworld, but all of them has had dissatisfaction with that system. And for the older games, they were made when the expectations and the design philosopy was different.
No the problem with Danuser and the previous writing team is that they didnt plan for shit AT ALL. Considering how obvious a lot of major story beats got changed in the last second So everything was a disconnected mess. You can still have a writing team sprinkle their own ideas, its how you can better connect with whatever tickled your fancy but you got to focus on the main plot first and foremost. Its how the FFXIV writing team have been doing this and hell ANY competent writing team in general would do this most basic of practices
4:28 That is the exact same look on Metzen's face as Emilia Clark when she was asked about the final season of Game of Thrones. They can have Metzen put as many coats of paint on it as they want, dig a bit and the Activision rot is quickly exposed. 30 years and still no player housing, it's such a bad joke. Oh hey and those aerial battles we were promised on the box of The Burning Crusade, 17 years should be long enough to have that about ready to go shouldn't it? Do people have so much extra money that the absolute abortion of a game that is Warcraft 3 Reforged is so quickly forgotten? Never again with these greedy corporate pigs with their microtransactions and broken promises.
What I picked up is that there is goingto be an entire clusterfuck of design the players are going to get smacked in the head with, and it geniunely sounds like it was meant to be BFA 2.0, where the working title War Within was meant to be more about destroying the factions from within and betrayal. I am going to keep an open mind as it is, but the sheer amount of ...'weirdness' in class design so far has me uneasy.
Holly is the wow head, basically classic and retail. And each of them have a director (Ion for Retail for example) Then you have the head of warcraft (cant remember his name atm) which would include anything within the warcraft IP like, hearthstone, wow, rumble, etc.
I'm not sold on The world soul saga if wow keeps doing what it always does "connections to the last expansion? Why would you want that here's a whole ton of new characters to learn about and understand their motivations. Emotional connections, PFFFT lame here's new player power, get grinding"
Nope. I still don’t trust them. The game’s story is still in shambles, all over the place, with no way in game to properly play through it without knowing about a bunch of esoteric systems.
50€ + 15€ is a bit steep! Imean exp + sub. they really should sell it for 35€ or less to get more people interested. 65€ to resub and buy is just bit too steep!
Having left WoW in the twilight weeks before the darkness of Shadowlands choked the enthusiasm out of so many players and cast them into the Maw I have to say I'm not really feeling a super strong pull to return. It's not something I can put a finger on either, maybe I'm just older so my tastes have changed, maybe other MMOs like FF14 and GW2 are filling my needs that I don't need a third MMO. That being said, I do hope this three part saga is good, even if I don't play it. WoW being in a good state is good for MMOs in general.
10:58 It is an extremely stupid take. EVERY game, hell, every movie and TV show, has a team of story writers. And in the cause of, not just WoW, but EVERY MMO that's still going strong, it is especially impossible to have one guy do ALL the writing.
I agree with you, but there are definitely shows out there written by a single person. Great ones too. And while i don't think wow should only have 1 writer, there should be 1 head writer who is in charge of the overarching story and has veto on everything that doesn't follow their vision.
@lastelite3967 Like Mike said, WoW never had to try to make their stories good or cohesive, and so they got complacent and arrogant. XIV was the kick in the balls they needed.
Scott Johnson ran away from WoW and stopped his podcast when Blizz started going through the sex scandals so he wouldn't have to cover negative media about Blizzard. He's back now for the good times, since it's safe a again. A coward and a shill.
Except he literally said, "You have the perfect storm for a lot of players to hang up their Azeroth gear for good and stake out for a new place to play." He made a point to stand against the sexual harrassment. Try ragebaiting somewhere else troll.
My son, Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker is going to love World of Warcraft. He's only 1 now but soon he'll get into it.
Did someone say?
Attendance at school is gonna take forever, every day
I like to believe the interview set is just Metzen's office. Blizzard just has him sit in the black void all day where he meditates on the meaning of Warcraft. Meanwhile everyone else is just wondering why there is a black cube in the middle of the building.
Metzen is the void lords
That made me laugh 😂😂😂
He sits inside the mistery box from cardboard Silvermoon ☠
When Chris speaks about pulling your personal experiences into the game, it directly reminded me of a quest the have in beta on the main isle.
Its literally a direct reflection or metaphor for having to care for a family member who has Alzheimers. More importantly, the quest shows us what preparing for their "passing" and letting go of them amidst their warped reality looks like.
I remember playing it for the first time and that quest had me in pure tears. I had to log off for a bit honestly and take it all in.
I just finished that one too and it was hard to finish but glad I did, then some elf flew next to me screaming about how its 5th grade writing.
I just did that quest a few days ago and it kind of hit hard in that I have had family rhat have had alzheimer's. My uncle I dont know if it was advanced but his short term memory was crap. But if yoh talked to him about hunting or fishing many years ago he could recall it without much trouble. Yet you could walk into his room tell him who you were and he would kind of remember and then piece it together. You could then walk out and back in and he would forget you had just been in the room.
So that quest hit hard. I think the reason it is so good is that just about anyone can relate to that kind of experience. Or know of someone who has.
I'd give a solid amount of gold to know Metzens inner thoughts when he saw what Danuser & co did to his baby since Legion like holy shit
Last time I saw these two share a screen in a video, Metzen had hair and Preach did not. Time is wild.
Naming your daughter the jailer 😂
Yeah, I'm hearing that Midnight is where his work really gets running, and we're going to feel a lot more of the "Dragonflight finale cinematic" vibes of, "Wait was this changed from something else?" Maybe he was able to get at it early, maybe they were able to polish it up and not all of the quests or the patch content was totally laid out. Who knows how much was already set in stone.
They even said at Blizzcon, which I found strange, that "Midnight is the expansion that will have all the features players will be excited about". I take that to mean player housing or class order halls coming back. No idea what they meant, but it doesn't make me feel like TWW will be all that different to Dragonflight.
My friend and I were talking about this yesterday. We both believe that by Midnight we will see Metzen's influence full on, and maybe even before, but it will be obvious when his story and influence kick in.
I will enjoy the journey in my way and avoid rushing til the end.
I like how he almost explicitly said Dragonflight was "design-by-committee", which explains a LOT.
design by "incompetent committee". We really need structured storytelling back instead of random people passing around the script and making useless additions to the story for no reason. Hopeful for this new saga.
Given dragonflight was pretty good, seems like it worked out.
@@DarkDiamondInc I wouldn't say the story was a success.
@@Xfacta12482 well it was by far the best story since legion, which to be fair, isnt really saying much.
i think that preach saying he has to forget whats happened before with the story and characters in order to enjoy whats to come says A LOT about the WoW story
my hubs worked at blizzard for a couple years. while there I met a fellow family who's daughter is a "Jaina", and knew of another girl who's second first name is Sylvanas. So, yes, that is a thing with some of them. XD
"I would name my pet a WoW name" well, my cats are Sir Hemet Nesingwary and Sylvanas xD
Our 2 cats are named after Sylvanas and Lilith (D4) they were just modded closer to Finnish sounding names so Sylvi and Lili
Now that they’ve re-experienced the original world and leveling in Classic, I think the player base is craving a new adventure where everything isn’t already solved. WOW 2 could do that
We're already in WoW 2. We dont need a WoW 2 label to make it a new game. The old leaders are dead. Cairn is dead, Voljin is dead, Garrosh is dead. The torch has been passed for the Worgen, for the Humans of Stormwind, for the Night Elves, for the Horde. The problem with this type of thinking is why people become so disallusioned with the game. The game is not for those people that played Classic WoW. The game is now for a wider variety of people who want to play WoW as well. If you don't feel like retail WoW is for you, I hate to break it to you, but you've gotten older and your interests have changed. WoW 2 is already out.
I was thinking more about the leveling process and the Vanilla zones that no one that started after cataclysm ever saw: getting to experience the world anew and progressing your character being an actual gameplay purpose rather than just something you need to grind through to get to the endgame content.
@@sccampbell If they made a "wow 2" people would still rush to max level
My sons name is James Anduin Llane Wrynn Smith. My daughter? Jessica Etrig Sourgrammar Rexxall'jin Smith
They should have 1 person driving the narrative. But they can have a group of people handle different parts. If you are writing a complex story you have to have someone who is the one who keeps the group focused on the narrative goal.
I'd say just do what TV shows do, have a "writer's room" with just those who craft the stories. Edit: To elaborate, instead of a large democracy of people inputting into the story.
You're describing exactly what Metzen is doing. Obviously they changed direction when he came back in. He's steering the ship, but that doesn't mean that others have zero input. That's what he described. I thought at least, after watching this video.
@@hobosnake1 Whoa whoa whoa, are you suggesting Metzen is listening to advice and critism of professionals? No! HARD NO! Metzen should write the story in solitary confinement!
The risk of taking no risks is one very large risk in itself.
I think we have to wait a few patches or maybe even 12.0 before the story really gets better and we can feel and see Metzens influence. But still. Looking at this interview I like his vibe and think it will make the story better.
You are not prepared for the yanking of the sword from Azeroth.
Welcome back Mr Light Titan Illidan
A fun content to watch would be just you asking questions to Nobbel about what one needs to know to keep up to date on the story, and just let it flow. Similar to what you were doing at the end of the video.
I fucking love Chris Metzen. My god, I am so glad he's back.
When Mike mentioned that Blizz cant add housing, but GW2 added it ... guess what... GW2 is running on same engine that GW1 was running which came just year later than WoW ... and if Anet with their spaghetti code can do such a complex housing then Blizz should be able as well...
I would not be too Cynical. Dragonflight was without Metzen and the start was great, the story is pretty fine too. The only thing that was weird was "oh now Vyrnoth is suddenly good and everyone's gonna give the pass". And thats just nit picking.
My guess is, there is going to be a weird shift 1/3rd into expansion story. It wont be too much of a shift , but probably something Red shirt guy or Nobble would go "hey wait a sec".
Does the pros of being able to, as a kid, say "My name is Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion!", out weigh the cons?
You could just go by Jara in normal life and break out the Burning Legion rizz when needed.
I have a customer who’s kids middle name is Ilidan
I always listened to the instance but never saw what Scott looked like. I had a different image of him in my head so its weird having his voice come out of that guy.
I’m feeling a bit baited and switched tbh
Metzen comes on stage last year. Says loads of stuff about new story focus. You buy in because he was the one who made the fun thing you loved years ago. Blizz marketing executives know their job well. Gets all the preorders.
Then 3 days before he does this interview saying he hasn’t been able to change everything that fast and to be patient for later in the expansion. 'Setting expectations' but they were happy enough to not set them and hoover up the money.
Most likely he couldn't change the first patch or first half of the story, since too much was already built by that point. But nobody ever remembers the first half of an expansion, just the second half. He probably campaigned for the trilogy of expansions when they were still focused on just one. Luckily for us, even if the first half of TWW isn't too amazeballs, it's still coasting off the good will that DF has and how they started to fix the problems from the last 2 expansions.
How are you baited an switched? The people at blizzard did so much damage to the story structure that it is actually going to take 3 expansions to unfuck it. This is Metzen's way of fixing all the different random glitter that the idiots at blizzard threw out and force the story down a resolute path.
The biggest thing I felt from this interview is that Metzen doesn't think TWW will be good.... He mentions multiple times that they were already working on it while he joined not taking ownership of it but the biggest red flag was when he said "just remember this is only part one and it builds to bigger and better things". He basically said, it gets good later
Or he just does not want to take credit for other people's work.
Imagine if you worked on something for a year, Metzen swoops in and starts saying that he was the one who did it.
Yea every story (especially trilogies) start slower and then pays off the setups.
@@lukaskonecny9992 Since where has there been an interview with a prominent storyteller in the last who knows when when it comes to WoW? It doesn't matter if Metzen takes credit or not. No one's coming out of the Blizzard story team claiming that this story was their idea. Also, did you not listen to the interview? Metzen clearly stated that his main purpose is guide the general path of the story, not to nitpick the small bits of the story that the TEAM works on. Its a team effort.
I think, while you could be right, that's not what he's saying. It's like with the fellowship, while good, it doesn't reach the highs of two towers, and then the peak in return of the king.
My son, Crafted Dreadful Gladiator's Leather Footguards of Meditation is gonna love WoW one day
The changes to the Levela are as such. The Main campaign is short compared to the past, but if you do it with may afew side quests you can shoot right into max level. If you are looking for story and lore. The overwhelming majority of that is in the side quests. So you don't care about the story and you just "skip, skip, skip." They helped you with how the Main Campaign runs. If you do love story, and don't mind taking a slower time. Then do the side quests, because you will see alot of stuff and have alot of fun with those quests.
I'm also coming back to War Within with a somewhat clear slate, trying to give it a fair shot on its own merits.
Yoooo! Scott's a legend! I loved the instance back in the day!
After playing beta, I wonder if Metzen had more of a hand in Dorn and Hallowfall?
I will probably do the same, i bought the game, so i am planning on trying to enjoy it. might as well give it a shot to see where it goes
The problem with the WoW narrative started when it launched. Having players split into two separate factions with separate characters they interact with is not going to lead to a strong narrative format. If you play one faction, there are certain characters that you have only interacted with once or twice that are very important to the other faction, and may end up important to the overall narrative later down the road. But you will have no idea who they are or care what happens to them cause they haven't been in your story for 15 years.
If WoW had launched with both factions, but your character is a sort of mercenary that interacts with both, then the game could have had a very compelling story from the start. The faction barriers are just recently starting to be taken down. Pair that with a cast of new characters that both factions are meeting and interacting with equally, and eventually you can shift it into a solid cohesive story. But they are coming up from very far behind by having a bisected player base and story for at least 16ish years.
Disagree. Being invested in a character's faction is a good way to get attached to a faction leader, especially because your start to see them as your actual leader. Hence why so many people in real life are invested in how a their leaders act and behave and their charisma. WoW's story didn't have a problem. The problem was the departure of people who were guiding the story down a central path, to then have millions of people creating forked roads in the story, just like Metzen mentioned. He called it the democratization of storytelling. There's too many cooks in the kitchen now. That's why Metzen's here. He's going to kick the people burning the toast out of the kitchen so he can make apple pie. Simple as that.
No, the most important moment in Dragonflight was when Iridikron got the artifact from DOTI
Vibe im getting is Stormblood vs Post-MSQ Stormblood
I don't envy Chris's position. The creative face of three expansions in one of the most critical periods in WoW's history. How do they tackle the empty world syndrome? Fake players running around doing questing? Inviting you to quest with them a la NPC dungeons? Maybe. Maybe WoW 2 fixes all of this in a grand gesture of good will from the company that has lost so much in the previous decade. All I know is it's both eerie and comforting to have Chris temper expectations, even in a fluff interview with nothing but softball questions. I'm currently waiting for text reviews to come out, and the internet seems oddly devoid of them seeing as the game was released early last night.
Yea, sounds like Metzens hand won't be felt for awhile still.
a bit concerning when he emphasized that the War Within should be looked as only part 1. Some what implying that part 1 is going to sink or that his effort wont be felt until part 2 or 3
That’s not what I got. It sounds like he took over the patches. At least the second, maybe the first. 10 months is basically enough time for the initial leveling and max campaign
Yeah I took it as the initial campaign is still the old team and then maybe toward the end it'll kinda blend some Metzen in then build over the patches
@@slanderpop8771 But he describes The Worldsoul Saga as "the bridge" just to get to the story he WANTS to tell.
than you didn't listen. he's been working on it all of over a year. the part where the team had been working on wwi for 10 months might have only been up to the 2nd patch.
Do you know if Ghosty will be playing TWW?
"The dragon aspects have their powers back" I'm going to regret asking this, but which McGuffin in which expansion caused them to lose their powers?
At the end of Cataclysm they drained their Titan-granted Aspectral powers into the Dragon Soul, which Thrall wielded to bring down Deathwing. Basically a repeat/reversal of what Neltharion did with the Demon Soul back in the War of the Ancients, when he betrayed them and became Deathwing.
At the end of Dragonflight and the awakening of Amirdrassil, they were granted new powers but from a different source - Azeroth itself, it seems, instead of the Titans.
You expecting a last minute rewrite on some level like shadowlands?
Everquest had armor you could dye back in 1999
Anduin can't die since he's seen as an old man, leading the forces of Azeroth in the final battle in "Anduin: Son of the Wolf" comic.
Anyway, just hoping that we finally get playable ogres because since TBC scrap is too long a time.
He could get old faster like Khadgar did for example.
I think you characterizing people who don’t like the way Anduin has been written as stupid alpha male types is a bit unfair. The reason I haven’t enjoyed him as much lately is just that he is so mopey and hadn’t really gotten much progression beyond that for so long.
The cutscene with thrall makes me very interested in him now, though, as his pain isn’t passive but he is more angry about it or tormented as opposed to just depressed and mopey. It gives him somewhere to go and I’m really interested in it.
I would love if Jaina, Tyrande, and malfurion died or were retired I’m honestly sick of all three of them. Shandris can be the new Nelf leader she’s awesome and Taelia, Bolvar’s daughter, can replace Jaina. I know she isn’t a mage but she was a much better character.
Mike's discussion on the later half about changing engines has funny timing. From what I gather it's a bit of a herculean task for devs to pull off, but an old 20 years MMO called Dofus is moving from fucken FLASH to Unity and it had been like five years in the making. The people working that game is relatively small (the entire company is 500 employees and they have three MMOs and other games running). Huge task or no, Blizzard really has very little to no excuse with their resources.
I really don't want to hear ever again in my life that the first bag slot can't be changed because of some ancient mystery spaghetti code that apparently would destroy the game. Work this shit out, man.
Damnit il give it a go with new eyes
I really like the black void set
My daughters name is Hogger Magni Windrunner turns 4 today. Only parses a 40 though, I'm disowning her.
It takes 1 captain and many hands to guide & steer a ship.
I haven't ordered The War Within yet but I am going to. I love stories so I do want to see it since this time its actually a story that I am interested in.
My first thought when they announced 3 expansions at once, it had to be this end of WoW and lead to WoW 2.
The sad thing is people still trust everything Blizzard says, it's like they haven't learned at all from hundreds of times Blizzard lied and got their players angry and quit the game lol. Don't believe nothing until we see it first
illidan gonna come out of that prison with sarg absorbed
So is Metzen still doing his warchief gaming thing?
I have heard "We're planned out multiple expansions ahead" and "We're already working on the next expo" from Blizzard numerous times before. 14:30
true, this sounds like they are more planning out the details instead of the general direction though. I doubt they had the idea for maldraxxus during warlords of draenor
But in the past, they just knew what expansions were going to be created. They didn't really get down to specifics about a whole saga over multiple expansions. They were just like "welp, next we tackle Arthas. I guess somehow we just quickly pivot over to that" which never felt good. It never made the game feel like it had direction.
because it's true
Before they did huge Cuts and no overarching story throughout multiple expansions.
27:10 lauch of WoW in general and vanilla was launched in november
Taking a peek at these videos coming out to watch the games progress. We’re being told they’re trying to make it better but I believe this will take several expansions. This expansion it sounds like they’re working on story telling and how to do it going forward. It’s going to be a slow road forward and I’m not giving a penny until it’s worth playing.
To be fair, ARR was the same way in terms of storytelling. Ok actually scratch that it wasnt until Heavensward when people started to shit on ARR's narrative for being slow never to realize every story needs its setup for you to start giving a shit later down the road (aka Shadowbringers).
So while I'm still being skeptical with this, at least I know Danuser is gone so whatever The World Soul Saga is cant be worse than Shadowlands.
WoW2 would be great. If they did it with a new engine and everything. I'd pay out the nose for that.
Illidan was always good in his own eyes. Haha
40:18 That is exactly my expectation. The bits I've seen of TWW and the marketing hasn't felt like proper Metzen at all except for the announcement trailer with Thrall and Anduin. It seems preferable to Dragonflight, but the tone still feels like Danuser to me.
Setting aside the story and the boredom of previous expansions. What they have done graphically with the engine is phenomenal really. However, running on a 9900k with a 3080Ti, I shouldn't really be seeing 8fps anywhere on a 20yo game. A new engine would be fantastic.
Imagine if wow1 ran alongside wow2 and they made it easy to switch back, via a timeline, to hunt the old stuff, and slowly integrate all the old stuff into wow 2 via remixes and stuff.
It would be some wild bullshit if they went full "subvert expectations," and not only does Azeroth die, we kill her because actually she's the end of everything. Lends credence to the "she's the creator god" theory. Everyone wants her for the power to remake reality.
My dear son thrall lothar wrynn would never be bullied in school
Called my son Auron from ff10. How I pulled that off 😂
I've been bought into the WoW story the whole time. Through thick and very thin. I'm very excited and hopeful for the vision of the Worldsoul Saga!
People are being too negative, and that comes from someone who wont even play TWW. The man just said "Dont expect to get all the answers immedietly".
Thrall dies during this Saga, calling it now.
It’s definitely his destiny ever since he killed Garrosh.
He said he was already thinking about 17.0 just before you did a 50 sub gamba on wow 2.
spoiler alert, Illidan killed all the titans and took their power, he is now the last titan and will pull the sword from azeroth at the end of part 3 of the worldsoul saga, killing azeroth and starting WoW 2.
I've never dropped below 50fps in the event are you sure it's not a mod or even the hardware conflicting... Optimising for all set ups these days is near impossible and if you have a pc in the minority of what people have it will not be prioratised
You keep talking about player housing. Have you ever played around with The player housing on rift? I really liked it. You could build your house from the ground up which was really fun. It was instanced which was nice because I could go there from any place in the world and I could invite people to come and see my dimension that's what they called them I could make it private in invite only or open to anybody to go and visit. After my experience with player housing there I was excited for Garrison's in wow but it felt cookie cutter I had no control over anything. When I think of player housing in games where it's just a building that I decorate it doesn't excite me at all because I liked the creativeness of building my own house just another perspective I thought I'd bring to you
There's something about the Warcraft IP that just feels so... tapped... at this point. It feels like Star Wars or Marvel where they've already told their big story, and the rest is just scraping the bottom of the barrel for fanfiction tier plot threads no one except the most fanatical people really care about. I actually would prefer if they want back to smaller scale stakes because some kind of cosmic, universe-wide villain really isn't doing it for me anymore. It's tiresome.
maybe just getting old lol not as young as u once was lol
Yall put wayyyy to much care about a fking game 😂
6:35 What he said is "Hey you have a big story arc that you want to squeeze into one expansion - that's not going to work, it's too much, we have to split that into several expansions".
49:18 "Housing has to be instanced" yeah that was already proven wrong over 25 years ago in Ultima Online.
Housing doesnt have to be instanced because of a technical reason, more because of a practical reason. (Ofc i mean, having blocks that are instanced with several houses in each)
If you had them in the open world (zone instances) you would be limited to the space itself. And you def dont want a player that wants a house to be unable to get one.
House limits is prob the most disliked things when it comes to housing systems. So in that way they basically need to be in their own instance.
I know older mmos and even some modern ones have done it in the openworld, but all of them has had dissatisfaction with that system.
And for the older games, they were made when the expectations and the design philosopy was different.
@@TheDwagonHD I didn't say that having the houses in the open world is the best system, only that it is possible.
He said they were thinking about 17.0. WoW 2 wouldn't start at 14.0 lol.
Wasn’t that the problem with danuser though that people brought their ideas and he never said no
No the problem with Danuser and the previous writing team is that they didnt plan for shit AT ALL. Considering how obvious a lot of major story beats got changed in the last second So everything was a disconnected mess. You can still have a writing team sprinkle their own ideas, its how you can better connect with whatever tickled your fancy but you got to focus on the main plot first and foremost.
Its how the FFXIV writing team have been doing this and hell ANY competent writing team in general would do this most basic of practices
Arthas, my son
4:28 That is the exact same look on Metzen's face as Emilia Clark when she was asked about the final season of Game of Thrones. They can have Metzen put as many coats of paint on it as they want, dig a bit and the Activision rot is quickly exposed. 30 years and still no player housing, it's such a bad joke. Oh hey and those aerial battles we were promised on the box of The Burning Crusade, 17 years should be long enough to have that about ready to go shouldn't it? Do people have so much extra money that the absolute abortion of a game that is Warcraft 3 Reforged is so quickly forgotten? Never again with these greedy corporate pigs with their microtransactions and broken promises.
What I picked up is that there is goingto be an entire clusterfuck of design the players are going to get smacked in the head with, and it geniunely sounds like it was meant to be BFA 2.0, where the working title War Within was meant to be more about destroying the factions from within and betrayal. I am going to keep an open mind as it is, but the sheer amount of ...'weirdness' in class design so far has me uneasy.
i wish they didnt hype up the story so much cuz i was expecting to be blown away but it was just decent
you're not blown away 1 patch in to a 15 patch story?
Isn't Holly on WoW Classic?
Holly is the wow head, basically classic and retail. And each of them have a director (Ion for Retail for example)
Then you have the head of warcraft (cant remember his name atm) which would include anything within the warcraft IP like, hearthstone, wow, rumble, etc.
My boys middle name is Doomhammer :)
My cats named Arthas
I believe Chris is back to sunset what's left of his patrilocal characters.
We shouldnt pretend that he is good writer at all.
Azeroth doesn't die, she isn't real cause it's all a sceme by the titans.
I'm not sold on The world soul saga if wow keeps doing what it always does "connections to the last expansion? Why would you want that here's a whole ton of new characters to learn about and understand their motivations. Emotional connections, PFFFT lame here's new player power, get grinding"
I hate the DID YOU HAVE CHALLENGE DOING X question with a burning passion. Who other than the developers cares?
Damn I it when the interviewer is glazing... This got me not hyped for TWW. Let's hope Midnight and forwards steers the ship..
Nope. I still don’t trust them. The game’s story is still in shambles, all over the place, with no way in game to properly play through it without knowing about a bunch of esoteric systems.
The game will evolve into WoW2 just wait
50€ + 15€ is a bit steep! Imean exp + sub. they really should sell it for 35€ or less to get more people interested. 65€ to resub and buy is just bit too steep!
you are out of your mind if you think triple A companies will sell a game like WoW for 35 Euros LMAO
Having left WoW in the twilight weeks before the darkness of Shadowlands choked the enthusiasm out of so many players and cast them into the Maw I have to say I'm not really feeling a super strong pull to return. It's not something I can put a finger on either, maybe I'm just older so my tastes have changed, maybe other MMOs like FF14 and GW2 are filling my needs that I don't need a third MMO.
That being said, I do hope this three part saga is good, even if I don't play it. WoW being in a good state is good for MMOs in general.
my daughters name is Kil'jaeden
10:58 It is an extremely stupid take. EVERY game, hell, every movie and TV show, has a team of story writers. And in the cause of, not just WoW, but EVERY MMO that's still going strong, it is especially impossible to have one guy do ALL the writing.
I agree with you, but there are definitely shows out there written by a single person. Great ones too.
And while i don't think wow should only have 1 writer, there should be 1 head writer who is in charge of the overarching story and has veto on everything that doesn't follow their vision.
Yet it clearly wasn’t working was it?
@lastelite3967 Like Mike said, WoW never had to try to make their stories good or cohesive, and so they got complacent and arrogant. XIV was the kick in the balls they needed.
WoW will forever be a game launched in 2004. Trying to "modernize" it will never work.
Scott Johnson ran away from WoW and stopped his podcast when Blizz started going through the sex scandals so he wouldn't have to cover negative media about Blizzard. He's back now for the good times, since it's safe a again. A coward and a shill.
Except he literally said, "You have the perfect storm for a lot of players to hang up their Azeroth gear for good and stake out for a new place to play." He made a point to stand against the sexual harrassment. Try ragebaiting somewhere else troll.
Not first.
2:13 its funny because my wife and i have agreed to call our first child Anduin if its a boy or Jaina if its a girl
Congrats assuming she's prego
Submitting Gul'dan as an option as well