“There’s never been feelings in WoW until recently!” Go in classic, and actually read the quests. The feelings were always there. Yall just prolly face rolled your keyboard thru the leveling process instead of paying attention to the lore. Sure there was a lot of ass kicking to be had…. Dude. Mankriks wife…. She was slaughtered by pigmen and we help him get vengeance. One of the first quests in Darkshore we help a nelf kill his dead wife’s ghost and retrieve her amulet and she come to him as an apparition saying she’ll always be with him or some shit…. A dwarf in thandol span drowned after the dark irons broke the bridge…. We find his letter to his wife and deliver it to her and she cries to king magni that the war has taken her loved one…. Hell…. In BC we find Sylvanas’s locket from her sister and she ends up remembering the past and singing to us. There has always been touchy feely shit in this game…. Even orcs have there moments. Thrall mourning Grommash after he killed Mannoroth… it wasn’t all loktar ogar then…. Sure during the fight it was… but after the fight thrall started bawling. You can’t tell me orcs don’t have feelings. Undead constantly fight with their feelings. Yeah I’m over the whole “the game is no longer Warcraft” crowd. It’s still Warcraft…. It’s just not RED VS BLUE any more. Or at least right now.
Bros when they think not engaging with the story deeply because they were 12 years old means there was no story. If you read 0 quest text then your memory of vanilla will be only manly warrior men killing shit, what else could you glean? very shallow and dissonant take. Reading Wowwiki as a kid is what got me into fantasy in general, trying to figure out the connections between forces and characters and places, it's always been there.
this if frankly a symptom of how the game itself "trains" the players to ignore quest text, by tossing a wall of text at the player, that HINDERS gameplay. So they train players to ignore reading anything, and instead skim to find clues related to the quest objective as fast as possible, rather than ever want to be involved in the story. wow and ff14 are opposite on this. ff14, includes the player in dialogue, and makes the player involved in the story with gameplay and CHOICE. Meanwhile wow completely ignores the player in almost any way it can
Asmon's comments about the lore being cool on a surface level reveals what his actual complaint is. The complaint isn't about the actual lore. He's never engaged with the actual lore. The complaint is actually about aesthetics and general vibes. It's the same reason why Asmon has complained about how Pandaria looked, the Night Fae's whole vibe, etc. It doesn't mesh super well with the iconic "metal" vibes of old school Warcraft, which is the entire appeal for Asmon. The image of Arthas sitting on the frozen throne has the vibes of some goofy early 2000s metal album art. Nothing in Dragonflight captures that vibe, mostly because it's all just too "pretty." I genuinely think that if you took the entire general story of Warcraft 3, but instead of it looking like Warcraft 3 it looked like Dragonflight, I think a decent number of people on Asmon's side of the argument would say the story sucks. If you took Fyrakk's entire deal, but told it in a setting that looked more like Wrath of the Lich King, they'd eat it up. It's an entirely vibes based take. Using music as an analogy, yeah the sappy lyrics may have always been there but they were always accompanied with a sick riff on an electric guitar. You back the same lyrics with a ukulele and a slide whistle, and it's not going to feel quite the same.
Woah woah woah, are you out here actually observing and thinking logically about what you saw with your brain?? Where’s your ‘you vs them’ mentality or your vitriol to spill onto the internet?
this so much, for story in a game, presentation is everything. And it will give the player a tone and feeling to match itself. Old wc3 and wow story presentation, followed the basic rules of storytelling pretty well, and coated it all in a brutal fight for survival. One of the oldest conflicts in writing, man vs world, man vs man, and man vs god/destiny/self-determination. Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music. DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing. It's a symptom of bad writers that cant tell a nuanced involved story, without constantly telling the reader, rather than show the story and how actions lead to reaction, it's just tell and if done wrong, comes off as preachy and condescending. And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented. The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories. Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows. The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games. Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
You know Warhammer exists right? The main thing Warcraft copied oh and DND? That has silly whimsical shit that is outlandish too. He's complaining about Warcraft being Warcraft and not being more Warhammer. The game already exists Warcraft is keeping its Warcraft identity otherwise you could just go play idk Warhammer or Guild Wars 2 instead. IF ANYTHING its just Warcraft engagement bait, hes out of content again. Taking this guy at face value is already a mistake.
There's no denying that old Warcraft that I grew up with has some classic masculine archetypes that are staples of the Fantasy genre. Doomhammer holding up Blackhand's head in Chris Metzen's rugged concept art in the manual, Grom's epic self sacrifice against a massive demon that enslaved his people, his atonement, these are iconic moments in the franchise that we grew up with that have set the bar for our expectations.
Aah the OG warcraft of the blizzard north days 😍 You wouldnt understand it if you started playing warcraft in MoP tho. its just nostalgia that makes me love the lore att this point but The return of Metzen gives me hope for the future
I get your point especially as I grew up on Warcraft 2 and Metzen's early art/lore however the art you described as well as many others, was pretty silly. Yes, it was brutal but Blackhand was making a stupid face and the Doomhammer design was just 90s cringe. It was a SMALL Warhammer with a broken sword jammed into it for some reason. The designs post Warcraft 3, especially Doomhammer were so much better as Blizzard and society had grown up past that late 90s edgelord bullshit. There's a reason why the details in Warcraft 1 and 2 were basically all tweaked and/or retconned.
@@AmplifymagicThank you, I should amend that I meant Warcraft 3 and beyond as Through the Dark Portal was a rushed mess and Warcraft Adventures did so much character assassination Classic Tyrande would blush.
I think a good example of badass and nuanced all at once is the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic. It's slow and emotional in a lot of points. Arthas has a slumped, tired posture, before he visibly steels himself, straightening his shoulders and raising his weapon. There's the layers of depth with what his father is saying and what he has actually become. At the same time, there's a dude in cool armor with a big badass dragon. Tons of reaction videos of people watching wow cinematics for the first time completely miss the emotion and nuanced storytelling, but absolutely love the cinematic all the same. Modern wow has an issue having both depth and super cool badass stuff at the same time.
This is a symptom of shit writers in modern day frankly. Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music. DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing. It's a symptom of bad writers. And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented. The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories. Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows. The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games. Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
I feel people would've had less of a hissy fit over Anduin having PTSD over what the Jailer made him do, if they had shown more in the game of what the Jailer made Anduin do. Horrifying things, as tearing their souls out, etc etc. Because they lack the imagination of knowing what the Jailer made Anduin do, as being told what he did, rather than seeing it by their own eyes.
but that require writers with more skill and passion. The main reason the writing is seen as shit nowadays, is related to both presentation and style. warcraft, vent from action complementing intrigue and emotion. To almost never ever showing, but just telling. The old writing style of warcraft, was classical, in theme and tone, it was about man vs nature, man vs man, and man vs god/destiny/self-determination. The modern warcraft story, completely shifts writing style, to one that you almost only find in female romance novels, female focused tv dramas, and fanfiction, as that is where that writing style fits. It's also bad writers that is a problem, with them constantly telling, almost never showing anything. And if executed poorly, breaking the show don't tell rule of writing, just comes off as preachy and condescending to the reader. And that is the style modern wow writing is using. Then we come to how that again conflicts with how tone in warcraft writing used to be, and what it is now. The "tone" of the story, used to be classical in man vs nature/man/god/destiny/self-determination. And the tone of this, was very masculine in expression of action complementing feeling. The wrath Arthas cinematic has plenty feelings and deep story telling, but it is all complemented with intriguing visual action in reaction to the narration of Arthas father. But in DF, you have a completely different tone, that constantly tells the story, as if it's a blend of how to train your dragon along with pixar and disney, and contained in a female tv drama show
@@gampie13 Story has changed on how they tell, yes, as tell not show. Is very obvious that it isn't working on it, and hopefully they stop doing that, because when playing a game, you want to experience it, not just hear characters in the game talk about it. Or at least see the effects from said actions. Be it a war, a conflict between two powerful beings, etc. Ghostlands did a good job showing the effects of what Arthas did, yes we played it in Warcraft 3, but not many did, nor ever will do that. And yeah their focus on what to tell has changed, for worse, and sometimes better. But main problem is, in my opinion, is they tell more, and show/experience less for the players. Personally giving a pause between conflicts, especially Anduin and what he experienced I thought was a good thing, because even today people tend to forget conflicts have a effect on people. Sure not many care, and want an escape, however, if you tell it properly, and show it, as said, I feel people would accept it more. I mean, Varian as Legion cinematic happened, he did have a heartfelt moment, and showed his feelings, thinking about Anduin, and how he could've been a better father. How he tried to be a better father, yet he failed on many occasions, being stuck in his old ways. Then had a bro moment with Genn, basically giving a dying wish for him to deliver a message to his son. And people just cheered on, and still thought he was this awesome dude, even if he did get emotional. Because they showed it, and did it well. Same with Anduin taking up his fathers sword and restoring it, people generally loved it, because it was emotional, but done well and properly.
I get the general sentiment that people are expressing here. Yes, Warcraft has its roots in brutality and badasses. We need more of that feeling, Dragonflight in particular did a poor job capturing that sensation. But it doesn't need to be mutually exclusive. We can have a complex and emotional story that is also manly as fuck. We just need writers capable of straddling that line, and metzen was always pretty damn good at it.
@@lloydgush I don't see Thrall as being too butchered since now he's more of a retired warrior but we haven't really seen much of him since his green Jesus days. Tyrande is too one-dimensional, malfurion is just a plot device that never does anything cool anymore, and sylvanas... was completely butchered, gobbled up and spat out into the maw.
we just want 'badass' it doesn't need to be 'manly' make a female dwarf character covered in blood slaughtering enemies and theyll be just as hype as if it were a male dwarf, he wants a godzilla movie without human drama, all monster fights all the time, and i can't blame him there isn't an mmo on the market that does that right now
When Saurfang's son died in Northrend, he cradled the body in his arms, took his necklace as a keepsake and pressed his forehead against his son's with tears in his eyes. Then turned his head to the sky and screamed in visceral agony and rage. If this had been done in modern WoW, it would have had Saurfang sniffling over his son's body whilst all the other characters stood around him in a sad circle. Then he'd track down whoever killed his son, get to the point he was about to cut the b@stard's head off only for Alexstrasza to catch the blade with her claws and deliver a 5 minute-long speech about how he should instead heal and forgive the murderer in order to preserve his honor or some sh!t. Then Saurfang walks away angry and decides to pick up a hobby like trimming Bonsai trees in order to channel his grief into something that brings new life into the world. The latest expansion has been a frigging hugbox.
My thing is... did anduin forget he whole Pandaria adventure? And why didnt he go back for some help afterwards? Litterally everything hes going through, Pandaria would help him again.
I just feel like there is this zeitgeist from old school players that never actually paid attention to the story and just mentally filled in the blanks themselves as to what the themes of the game were. Classic WoW is full of touchy feely afterschool special shit. Its also full of breadcrumbing and foreshadowing. This idea that classic was just violence porn with no story behind it is an absolute brain rot opinion to have.
I think the real difference is recently there's been very little show dont tell. In Pyromancer's other examples, people are talking about their feelinngs, but it's also fed into and being told by the flow of action onscreen. When it's just people standing around telling you things it doesn't have the same punch as Saurfang walking into an army alone to show you how he feels.
I think it's a difference in what you want out of a game narrative and characters. Some like the introspective and thoughtful stuff, while lots of others (like Asmon) are looking for more larger than life heroes and villains that do big things instead of talking about things. There is a place for games exploring things that are difficult in human life, but I think a lot just want to be take a break from that in fantasy games like WoW and I think that's ok too. I think Pyro's take from about 15:00 is exactly it, the "doing badass stuff" is - and always has been important and it's kinda been missing for a while
I just wanted to write a comment about this but then found yours. We can play Sims or Final Fantasy any time. Warcraft had a different vibe what is missing now. Plus gaming is escapism in a way. What if I don't want to experience certain situations when I play?
@@Ordo1980 FF14 got more "doing badass stuff" now and wow's got a lot more depth in their characters but I never understood complaining about that or whimsy, the silly and sad shit has always been in the game but they could do with adding more "doing badass stuff" but if that's ALL you're doing then it becomes less badass and more of a chore, like farming the same raid
@@JJJ42069 Thats not how I see it. Plus I like FF and I've played a lot of Sims as well. But when I want to play Warcraft it should feel Warcraft. I don't remember that Warcraft3 become boring. WoW feels like chores however.
@@Ordo1980 That IS Warcraft, its never been too serious or too silly or too sad its just a mix of everything like a living world is. The complaint about it not being serious enough or whatever is moot. THAT'S the identity they wanted carved out, sure it was a lot of Warhammer rip offs but they can't just go off that for a decade they made their own niche.
@@JJJ42069 My take on that is that emotional scenes felt "earned". Grom killed a Burning Legion lieutenant, and then he had a hardfelt moment. Varok had a big fight against Sylvanas and exposed her, and then he had an emotional send off with Thrall & the gang carrying him. There were no such epic moments in Shadowlands or in Dragonflight. It didn't feel like the characters earned their emotional moments in the story. Thrall had the same theme for 4 expansions now. For Anduin, it was never shown what he did outside of stabbing (and NOT killing) the Archon. Alleria's story was never shown in the game, only in novels. Alextrasza barely did anything in Dragonflight, but at the end she holds a monologue like she is some hot shit.
I just feel like for Anduin's PTSD we didn't had enough cutscenes where we see him going on a rampage, the lack of gore compared to wrath also plays a role imo. Imagine a scene where we see him killing innocent people and you see him going in and out of the jailers control with real facial expressions of terror. (And yes I know not everything has to be gory to be PTSD) But personally if they would have had done something in that direction people would maybe understand.
I agree, it could've really hammered home that Anduin is a tortured dude. We hear him say "Oh I murdered innocents, there's blood on my hands!" But we never see it. We see him stab 1 eternal one, Kyrestia, who's arguably a horrible, awful person that allowed millions of souls to pour into the maw. So, to me, the viewer, that's all I have seen when Anduin goes "Oh I hurt innocent people." Which isn't very convincing, as once again, Kyrestia is horrible. I hope I am making sense by the way, I just woke up a while ago, so I may be a bit incoherent.
True. I also feel like the whole mindcontrol storyarc was bullshit to begin with. During the events of BFA and Blizzard talking about "morally grey" storytelling i allways imagined Aduin goin all out revenge arc and becoming just as bad if not worse than Sylvannas in the process and ending up being an Arthas like figure in the process. Would've also fit better with those arthas connections they tried to make with the legion intro cinematic imo. Cause Arthas wasn't mind controlled into doing bad things, he did those bad things because he thought it was the right thing and then ended up sort of being mindcontrolled because of those decisions.
Fucking hell watching this compilation with Pyro's comments made me tear up a bit, rekindle my love for WoW, goddamn thanks Pyro for being here on UA-cam and Twtch, ya've been helping me through some tough times and i've started playing WoW precisely because it was part of some of my fondest memories. Peace and thanks, brother
Presentqtion matters i think we can have emotional things but it needs a good "cover" over it, melancholy and sadness can be presented in a noble and beautiful way (WotLK cinematic) and the problem is that some scenes seems to be shown as a Television drama show, which people have the right to like it, but thats not what most people got hooked to the Warcraft universe initially.
The key that people seem to miss is that the people who make these games have grown up. When you grow up you realise how empty and meaningless the epic scale of things is without the smaller, subtle moments that add feeling and reason. We change as we mature. Our perspective’s shift and we learn to see the world and those within and around differently. We also see ourselves differently. We aren’t two dimensional. We aren’t simple archetypes. And the characters and worlds we imagine and create aren’t either, while they may have been simplistic when we were younger. My biggest concern with TWW and the World Soul Saga is that Metzen is a good ideas guy, but he isn’t a good writer. I hope he has matured in his time away and learned nuance and understands the importance of the feels and the vibes amidst the mega scale blockbuster action.
Hard agree. Its completely understandable tbh it meant a lot to them. Its also clear people just want him to react to WoW stuff to have their "game is bad" takes validated, and he just seems tired of it and says the same things every video to appease them.
Old Soldier has similar vibes and themes to the War Within trailer, I guess the difference is the additional accumulated distaste (or disdain) towards the forced agenda pushing and softness that plagued both Shadowlands and Dragonflight. Feelings can hit harder when they come from a rugged veteran instead of a prince that's percieved as a soft crybaby, especially if it follows what we've had the last couple of expansions. It's easy to get tired of too much of the same shit, be it good or bad.
yes, exactly, the cool stuff must be layered on the emotional stuff for it to land, otherwise it just comes across as sappy soap opera dialogue. that was what made all the old content epic.
Hey all im saying is Saurfang was one of the baddest around, ever. And he cried. He suffered trauma and had to overcome it with, get this.. the power of his friends and friendship. And then he went out like the GOAT he was. Yeah.. real pu$$y shit
the claim that there was never feelings in the past ( assume they ment uptil wotlk. maybe cata) then i bet those players dont read the quest lore. it seems to me that people beleave feelings got introduced as soon as they became cutscenes/voice acted.
One thing about Asmon is that he's extremely, extremely confident in everything he says... The other thing about him is that he's extremely, extremely wrong about a lot of what he says... Unfortunately, a certain demographic tends to equate confidence with correctness.
Asmongold says the game changed not him, and in some ways that may be true. However, I think it is truly sad that Asmongold never changed because I think a lot of the stuff Pyro hit on in this video would help him a lot. Though, you can bring a horse to water, you can't make it drink. Asmongold is stuck in toxic masculinity stereotypes that he himself cannot represent or produce in life. It is a toxic cycle that needs to be broken.
I think the problem lies mainly in Dragonflight, even shadowlands had that badassery and grittiness and brutality that warcraft always had Dragonflight even though i like it it still feels abit too soft to me atleast, but i don't hate it too much
I think the huge divergence from the more subtle emotional aspects of wow into a major focus on it is why when people like Asmon, when reflecting on past wow, see it in the way that they do. It's a lot less noticeable when it's lightly peppered in as oppose to drenched in"feelings"
I think after shadowlands weird greyscale vibes we all needed the friendly colorful dragonflight, and I hope this was a design intent from blizzard to lead into a heavier trilogy upcoming personally.
You know. I do agree to some degree but as always much of the failure is based on presentation. I liked DF cinematic. It felt like taking a serene breath after long long time. I thought we were gonna get small stories and low stakes to wind down and kick everything down a notch. Unfortunately the initial quests while low stakes, lacked the necessary gravitas and quickly spiraled to your classic world in peril narrative. They didn't feel like the small quests in vanilla with some local dangers. Add to that the feeling of "lameness" and we got a toxic mixture that felt like a Dragon themed theme park rather than a RPG. Say what you will but (as someone who started playing in early BFA) the dragons from vanilla, TBC and even cata (a little) felt dangerous and alien. New locations and people felt more real with either earthly or more esoteric problems. If I were to look for an example. I hoped for Witcher's Blood and Wine dlc and got something much worse. PS. At the same time DF was a great expansion in the matters of mechanical progress. There is much to repair still but comparing it to BFA nad SL. Goddamn we got out of some dark place.
I think the game's dialogue has just been crippled because people care more about how we receive the dialogue. Also, I assume (could be wrong) that most dialogue is probably written by people who are in their 20s, and their vocabulary doesn't expand as much as the old people who have been promoted, fired, or quit. Lot of dialogue during the "Golden Era" was written by people who weren't on the internet and constantly out there learning, not just doing their job because its all the time they have for it. I mean, the dialogue in an end expansion raid cinematic is unironically, "because we came together as a family". Could be to save cinema budget, or something else, but I feel like theres a way to say the same concept or feeling through a deeper and more meaningful way.
i think if you’re into the lore as much as Pyro you can appreciate the story and see how the themes are not as far removed from old wow as some people say it is… but for someone who just experiences the stories through cutscenes in game (like me), it’s easy to see there is a huge difference in the tone of Dragonflight cut scenes vs. what i’ve seen in previous expansions. i wouldn’t say it’s all bad tho
At this point I think a lot of people get the image of "Blizzard sucks" and "WoW is dead" stuck in their heads, so they can't see anything else and turn the page to other things. (They already "killed" the game in their minds) But with all the speculation, alpha spoilers, and features to come, I'm very excited about the game. I hope everyone can take their time and come back.
Honestly I think Asmon just makes statements on what his audience wants to hear and not what he really thinks at this point; Gotta stay at the top somehow right?
Asmon-like people don't want manly story lines, they just want to "return to monke". Just one dimensional fighting 24/7 with burly guys killing each other with sticks and stones. For all his love of LOTR, I have no idea how he read the books or watched the movies without being bored because 90% of them are just a bunch of men talking and walking. It's like Aragorn just fights and becomes king, but the rest of his story is forgotten.
100% True! Anyone that looks at Aragorn and his journey that calls him masculine in the same toxic masculine ways that Asmon speaks of is either blind and deaf or truly media illiterate. Aragorn is 100% a perfect representation of positive masculinity while being able to show true emotions and compassion that his audience would find "sissy" or w/e.
I think wow, vanilla, wow as an mmorpg was never highly focused on the type of lore and storytelling they have now in retail until maybe cata/mop. Maybe wrath arguably.
wow just trained it's players to ignore story with UI, by tossing a wall of text at the player, then hindering gameplay with it. This trains the player to not care for any text and reading in the game, as it hinders gameplay. ff14 on the other hand, includes the player and story in dialogue options, and makes the story part of gameplay, which trains the player to be personally involved in the story. When it comes to presentation though. wow defiantly shifted to a feminine writing style. Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music. DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing. It's a symptom of bad writers. And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented. The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories. Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows. The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games. Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
I get a lot of "people dont talk like that" vibes from WoW. But it's changed a bit. Where as older dialogue has that over the top 80s one liner x medieval epos vibe, newer stuff is ... drunk bar dude! The drunk dude at the bar who exposition dumps his whole life and yell-cries his deepest inner feelings to complete strangers (Kalecgos is an alcoholic adult toddler). Older lore is cringe as well but it is the cringe I expect from an entertainment medium. It works for 80s action movies and it works for LOTR. Also most of the lore simply flew over peoples heads. Do the Windsor jail break escort and tell me you don't cringe like Homer Simpson eating a lemon. Newer lore is trying to be a lecture in captain obvious. Family is important, I watched Fast & Furious. Working together yields better results, planet of the apes. Cringy "Avengers Assemble!" scene number 357833, literally how did Marvel not sue you yet? And why doesn't my character ever tell anyone about the things they witnessed? If Alex-fucking-strasza gives me another lecture on the importance of anything I will embark on a personal crusade to exterminate every single red dragon. I know you are basically just an amalgamation of trauma BUT STOP BEING A KAREN! There are many great aspects of modern WoW lore. Complex issues, difficult situations, being handled by characters with real ... uhm character! The War Within cinematic is too good to be real. But I have monkey brain. And my monkey brain sees a bar of gold only to get mad at a stain on it.
I enjoy watching Asmon, but his views on "masculinity" isn't very healthy nor realistic. Anduin is 100% a better character for having trauma and dealing with it, unlike his father who had trauma but denied it until he was FORCED to deal with it. And Anduin has ALWAYS been a sensitive character. Empathic and kind. And then he had to deal with evil, unjust treatment, early kinghood, not being able to properly mourn his father, being forced to be a king rather than a person throughout all of BFA. That's NOT being "soy" or a pussy. That's being human and it needs to be seen in more male characters in general imo.
Sad part is. Asmon actually went more into his grievances in the part of the video that Pyro skipped. As for all the "it's not woke parts". Lets be honest. The game is made in California, by a bunch of Californians with Californian life style and Californian views. I'd find it really damn strange if the game didn't become soft and hippy when it's made in a world capital of corpo-modern-soft-syntethic-narratives. I mean there is a reason why Witcher felt Polish and had a lot of bleak grit typical for this part of the world for example. On the whole emotions and deeper meanings part. I cannot agree with the method Blizzard and most American companies use for that matter. It's not that I don't want deep feelings. What I don't want is goddamn therapy sessions. They are unnatural. A product of modern world and progress. Useful and necessary but completely out of place in a fantasy world. If the characters have demons to fight then have them fight those demons in a natural way. Have them fail or succeed. Not just talk and whine. There is a reason why Saurfang worked and DF utterly failed in emotions department even though the former had to contend with lackluster bite size quest content. Even the good parts of DF like Blue df. I found the finale of that quest really mid, especially Kalecs speech. Only Grandpa dragon's death pushed it up a notch for me in combination with the small piece for Tarecgosa. As for Asmons hated Blonde boi. I loved Anduin TWW cinematic for what it was. It showed how broken Anduin was while being ready for action. But I hated it for what it had to contend with and that is a botched, fragmented story. Let's be honest. It's hard to take Anduin seriously when the main reason for his PTSD has hardly been shown in game. Had he actually been given more in-game time to show his triumphs, failures and then a good amount of more failures under control even Asmon would take him more seriously. Right now for your Sunday player and even book readers like me he looks like a whiny little bitch and that is all Blizzards fault. No amount of love for Sylvanas book will change the fact that we got maybe two cutscenes of Anduin suffering under Jailer's control.
California is not a soft state lmfao. People who don't live here love eating up the slop that is conservative media's portrayal. In reality I grew up in the midwest and live in CA now and CA is easily more conservative and has much more farmland per capita
People say what they say about Zack and Asmongold being his persona or whatever, but this guy is genuinely unhinged in many aspects of living and opinions, not to mention he's basically a nostalgia dick-rider who cannot mentally accept the fact that time exists and he's getting old and is unable to play the game and enjoy the game in the same way he did 15 years ago, the problem is not the story, or the lack of "masculinity" that was present, the problem is people whom are unable to deal with the fact that they are getting older, they are trying to chase feelings and things that are in the past which they look at through rose tinted goggles because back then they had no worries and used to be happy and enjoyed things more. I've been playing Warcraft franchise games since I was 6 years old, since 2001, I still enjoy the story, I enjoy where its going, are some things a bit cringe and bad? Sure, but they always have been no matter at what time period of this franchise you look at. Point is, most people crying about the story, it not being masculine enough and so on, are just simply miserable unhappy people that have no joy left in their lives and all they do is spend circle-jerking their own memories and bygone happiness that they will never feel again no matter how successful or accomplished they are in their lives. When it comes to people like Zack, and listening to their opinions on these things is pointless.
I love the gameplay, I have been playing WoW since 2007 and I think you’re pretty delusional if you think the art style and storytelling lens has not changed since the early era. Starting with goblins and worgen in cataclysm, some rounder edges and more cartoony designs were being added, and they really full sent the Disney/Pixar in almost every element of the game by Pandaria, and the last bastion of the old art style(the player models) was eradicated by WoD. The art style is just a clear physical depiction of the same type of change that the storytelling has undergone. I don’t know why that man-child that doesn’t know how to even take care of himself is going on about “masculinity”, but if that word was removed from the discussion, he’s got valid point and opinion that seems pretty reasonable to me. They have definitely taken a more Disney/Pixar approach to art and storytelling, and why wouldn’t they, it sells to a wider audience. The being said, of course many people will not appreciate this change. All that stuff you said about wanting to be 15 again kinda comes off as projection also, because it’s too big a generalization for a pretty common sentiment among many different types of players or people that don’t play anymore. Xaryu for example has the same take about the art and story, but of course he’s a bit more well spoken than asmon is, and he still plays the game pretty much everyday and overall loves it, as I do as well. I’m not looking for Diable or Disney, but those are two extremes, Warcraft used to be about war and strife between factions(not meaning horde and alliance, just military controlling groups of entities). They try to portray faction leaders as 1 dimensionally doing good for all Azeroth, til they want them to be a villain then it’s abrupt change to cut and dry mustache twisting villain heinous acts, as to not confuse the viewer morally(same stuff they do in children’s movies like Disney/Pixar). Hope this helps for you to see other perspectives, and not just shutdown/shut them out. Even when people suck at communicating, when a lot of them feel a certain way it usually will have some sense to it and doesn’t have to be some baseless unhinged banter
The problem with Anduin is: He is in a constant low-point and should have started a real character arc several expansions ago. Maybe this time we will finally get one.
Pyro, you played FFXIV, yes? Picture Shadowbringers, but without all the character studies we go through for both the heroes AND the villains. Using PTSD without a proper justification for the audience just feels cheap and insulting for those who actually have it, and yes I will say it: Anduin has as much depth as Zovaal did as a villain from someone who only plays the game and doesn't read the books.
@@theflawlessflaw23 a single jailor flash and a hand twitch would have fixed everything, show that the jailors control isn't fully gone and everyone would be okay but as it is its too forced
Watch "Sixtens" video on Anduin. Anduin had been even in game going through a lot since he was a child. Losing his mom at birth, his dad as a teen who instantly was thrusted into his position. He was there for MoP? Which even if a lighter theme on the surface, had TONS of innocents getting slaughtered on both sides of Horde and Alliance. Plus whatever happened in BFA (which even if not focused on him entirely, it still is a lot to have to fight a war/whatever main bad of the expac. And then on top of it, the ShadowLands domination of him commiting acts he would never do on his own. On top of that, he's always been a very soft/pacifist type of person even from childhood. Idk, Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime/Manga) used that kind of plot device of an innocent being taken control of physically/spiritually and then being made to commit heinous acts with the said Innocence/good guys hands. That broke the MC of that show, and I'd say rightfully so. All in all, I'd say he has plenty of reason to be mentally torn and to experience some forms of PTSD, even just from what has been shown in game. Even if obviously it would be even easier to expect/accept if they showed and put more of a focus then they actually did in the game itself. It's all there, but it's rarely been the "talk of the town"/focus of the story. Just my personal opinion. Fair enough if you don't agree, as not everyone has played and experienced every expac to a certain extent to know every last instance of what's happened to Anduin just in game. But check out that one dudes vid I recommended and I think he does a great job of explaining why he thinks Anduin is acting how someone would probably expect after what he has actually experienced.
Anduin never knew his mother and was made King Regent of Stormwind when he was just a kid and used by Onyxia. Then later on all his bones were shattered by Garrosh and the divine bell. Then his dad died and he was made high king of the alliance when he probably wasn’t ready and had to conduct a war against Sylvanas’s horde. A lot of shit happened before the Jailor and all of it is in game and reasonable to assume he has PTSD.
What these people don't understand os this isnt even softness...this is the struggle everyone goes through just to an extreme. These people that think that character resolving struggle are feminine? Fixing your issues and working through them to become healthier when your world is on fire is literally textbook masculinity.
The game lore has always been about cosmic forces and feelings lmfao ALWAYS… Sargeras FELT MAD and started a cosmic force torwards War against another? Too soft and mundane ?😂 the story has literally never changed people’s whiny ass entitlement has though😂
Without Light - there is no dark. Without happy times, you don't feel the heavy weight of bad times. Why can't this be mirrored in a game? I mean... the story of Warcraft is a big Epic Legendary, if one recalls everything we did in the game. But you can't always have strong characters, they need to have weaknesses too. Those weaknesses make them the characters we love. I came to like Anduin a lot during Shadowlands, it started with BfA. Now I can somehow relate to him and therefore can accept my flaws and weaknesses as a mentally ill person. DF was soft, but the lessions we can learn from it are there. In all those wishes for action and badassery, people tend to forget the lessions. Some things need to happen to have other things happening. Pyro I really like your way of viewing things, keep this up!
I'm on a wait list right now seeking therapy and holy shit man it took me 3 years to get over my fear and I honestly feel proud of myself for taking that step it was a big deal for me
i used to like him a little more a while ago. He has gotten rich and i am very happy for him, thats great, i know he went through some stuff too and recently he just turned into this way too arrogant of a person. And i cant believe im saying this because im usually am not expecting some sissy soft talk from anybody but recently he really been talking down on lots of people. I really wish he would at least shut up about money. Hes literally bashing people for struggling sometimes. Besides that - he is alright. We dont have to agree with everything hes saying but man.. he really is out of his shell.
That's the most ironic part. He's literally 100 pounds in real life and attempts to act hard when playing a video game by making nothing but warrior characters lmao.
@@GrotesqueN hes king of the neets, he attracts a certain audience and he knows it. you can catch him fence sit and back track on plenty of topics to gauge which side his audience is on before joining them. i dont even think he only dislikes wow because it "went woke" but because he cant play the game like he used to before becoming as big as he is. years of being given countless handouts, carries, being followed around where servers lag out, probably made him finally burn out but he saw it as an opportunity to engage his audience by just regurgitating spew spam in chat. thats just one of my theories at least. which honestly is a shame since i too prefer the gritty shit, but dragonflight is an all around amazing expansion and i think he would have really liked it.
I love hearing how wow’s story is to emotional and the characters are little bitches from a guy who can’t stream on his main channel because it stresses him out. Definitely a guy you should listen to on quality of a story and character growth. /s
Nobody complained about the Legion cinematic because is well written and we'll done, honestly, stop being disingenuous. When Illidan or Varian speak about emotions it's different than what we have today with Anduin or the Aspects and we all know it, wether "you" want to acknowledge it or not. Also the fact that the lore is mostly unknown,miss interpreted or perceived wrongly is ALL Blizzard's fault. When all the cool stuff is hidden and all the emotional crying stuff is the only thing that gets a spotlight people just see what Blizz wants to show.
people like Asmon are the same kind of schmucks that think the War in Warcraft is a Race War. Warcraft has always had some softness and it was never about the Race War as Taran Zhu called it back in Mists, it was the Legion; an army of Demons led by a Titan that arranged their meeting, so that they would weaken Azeroth's protecting forces, since they got their collective asses beat in the War of the Sundering. we HAD a Race War type expansion once, it was called Battle For Azeroth, and most players hated it, yet we got einsteins pushing the Race War now that the two factions have been at peace for 5 years.
Fake fan spotted. Warcraft literally began with a race war. Orcs kept humans as slaves and vice versa. The road, the Path of Glory, to the Dark Portal was paved with the skulls of human civilians. You are factually incorrect.
@@picklefathernurgle2719 they're not wrong, you are. Orcs and humans ended up at war with each other because of the Legion it was never simply about race
@@hyperstimmed Actually, I'm pretty sure you're all wrong. Go back and play Warcraft 1. See any mention of the Legion? See any over-arcing plot? Any expanded lore or setting info? No? Oh yeah, that's right, all of the lore surrounding the Legion was made after the franchise became popular in order to facilitate sequels. Its almost like WoW actually just began with a straight up race war between humans and invading orcs. You lorebeards are trying way too hard to not admit reality.
Warcraft storytelling has lost a lot of its own unique way of doing things. Your whole point about Illidan's badass moments running along side with the deep backstory like Valen and KJ worked well. Dragonflight had very few badass moments, any badass moments were tainted by leaning too hard toward talking. Saurfang's cinematics were some of the best they have produced - exceptional storytelling, emotional, and badass all rolled in to one (more than once!). Same with Varian and Legion. Yes WoW has had some very weak storytelling of late (some of it awesome among the weak) but Dragonflight just leaned too much in one direction. We had dragons, how much of it did we get to see them be Regal ancient beings just let go and be actual dragons - the closest was a brief battle between Alex and Raz early on. There should have been a brutalness to it too. I want both, I want the feelings and emotions, the natural reactions to events mixed along side "dude, that was fucking awesome" badassery that we know they can pull off. I generally fully agree with you dude, plenty of reasons to get invested.
Wasn’t the peak of Warcraft story a broken prince who in order to save his own people followed a dark path and became corrupt by the very thing he was trying to fight? Wasn’t the greatest story of old time a mother who died trying to save her orc son from an evil corrupted warlock? Wasn’t a good story an elf that wanted to share the magic with everybody and was jealous of the relationship between his crush and his brother, to the point of becoming a semi demon? And what about a dragon queen imprisoned, coerced to give her body away and being forced to lay eggs in a dungeon? What about a titan who tried to fight an evil and the more it fought the more he became corrupted by it, to the point of turning to the very thing he swore to protect? Warcraft has always been deep, not just dudes fighting.
An arrogant prince who stopped at nothing to gain power in a bid for his kingdoms survival Parents slaughtered by demons only for their baby to be taken by the enemy and raised as a gladiator slave An elf who was willing to destroy his mind body and soul to destroy a legion of demons The last two are pretty dope as is. See how that works? It's not about it being deep its about it turning away from a brutal adult story to a kids psa about the powers of family and friendship.
@@babelincoln2092 not sure about the first one 😅😅 in 2020 couple of people at the government kept us locked in our houses for a year 😂😂 for the greater good right? 😉
@@Mindy_T that's the issue i have with the current story, I'm not saying it's a good thing morally, its a game why does it have to be a moral story. I'm saying it's a good story.
@@Mindy_T like that comment encapsulates what alot of us have a problem with. Who the fuck cares what our government did in relation to a fictional story. Why insert that garbage into wow
Oh being basically a half ginger, therefor not being able to handle the sun means that you aren't masculine now? Makes absolutely sense. Peak arguementation and intelligence.
@@Zantetsudex Yeah, its not like this whole thread is basically that but with asmongolds opinion instead, weird when other people start doing it as well to show how stupid it is hu?
I think both sides have a point. Anduin suffering PTSD and pushing through that, yes it can be impactful storytelling. However, every expansion with anduin he's always got something going on that makes him act "soapy" I guess is the word I'll use. His inner character in general just feels like it hasn't evolved since MOP and it's getting kinda old. With that being said, being dragged along with that same character can understandably make one reminisce of other days such as the badassery that was arthas, the lich king, uther, gladiator/Liberator thrall, etc.
I enjoyed Dragon Flight for what it is, a great adventure. But I would love for their story to be a little less Marvel and a lot more Arcane. That show gave us an example of modern grit and stakes.
I have been a HUGE lore nerd ever since WC3. I have no idea what asmon is talking about and I dont think he has ANY idea what he is talking about either.
How do you go from "We will never be slaves!" to Chromie talking about her feelings and not perceive a shift in the game's writing that doesn't appeal to the older fans?
@@tekamer6566 Do you have to be a loremaster to perceive a tonal shift in a piece of media? You can deflect all you want by insulting my knowledge of the game, but WoW's writing team has been gutted by the lawsuit, resulting in all the new hires and writing staff being younger people who are now using the game's plot as a form of therapy. Grow up, dude.
@@picklefathernurgle2719 You bring up writer change, and lawsuits yet you get your lore from cutscenes which those "Lore writers" barely have anything to do with. You only look at surface level stuff and get offended when your "critisism" gets called out. Im gonna bet you know Nearly NOTHING about the writing team that you try and talk sht about.
@@tekamer6566 You keep saying my lore is wrong: refute the points I brought up. What about the story am I wrong about? Oh, that's right. Nothing, because I didn't bring up the lore, I brought up a tonal/presentational shift in the way the game's narrative is presented. You're just trying to shut me down because you don't like what I'm saying. And you don't like what I'm saying because you know I'm right about this for whatever irrational, emotional reason.
WoW has always had some soft tender elements to it, but it wasn't the foundation behind the whole narrative. there's no doubt that WoW has become more like a disney movie than ever before. it's lost a lot of the darker grit it used to have.
It’s crazy how they don’t like people coming together. Yet they cry about raids and dungeons being able to be cued eroding the social norms. I think it is really pathetic. The mmo is originally all about coming together and support each other. How is this hard to grasp.
It’s always frustrating to me when people are very loud about their opinion of the story being lame, but they don’t read ANY quest text and never have, and don’t really care about the characters just wanna see Michael Bay come in and blow stuff up 💀
I think my issue with this is that its one sided. The people like asmongold or more accurately, his average viewer, get annoyed by anything but the most basic levels of thought or depth, and can only ignore it when people are smashing shit on the screen at the same time, but as someone like you or me who really enjoys both types of things, we dont complain when there is nothing going on but basic manly man shit, I keep saying these people dont understand plot more than whats directly infront of them, and it doesnt matter how you deliver it to them, they arent going to care, ever. It's unfortunate because i think hes just been catering to his audience for too long, i know hes not stupid, and i like him a lot on most topics that arent wow lore or certain current events, but its bothersome that these people just keep getting louder when the viewers of his or new warcraft fans are not going to stick around either way, they arent bringing anything positive to the discussion, they want it their way, ONLY.
I love pyro, and i do like some elements of the wow lore & storytelling, but i’m sorry - the current story is far too disney-ish. The amirdrassil cinematic negates a lot of good work done via characters like iridikron. Also, Anduin’s *specific* trauma is a shit writing choice. It doesn’t hit right. Losing a daughter/a brother/ a friend as a result of his choices - for example - would have been better choices for his trauma if thats the story they wanted to tell
The perception warcraft is a soft emotional atm, but in classic+ it was all war/fun and tough is objectively wrong. The people who are accusing blizzard to put their worldviews in to the game are hypocrites. Wow was always like this but it just doesnt have their worldview and they are kinda projection it. They never mention the history how different races are created. All are inspired by stigmatic and simplified old views/perceptions of different human cultures from the early 2000. This was a broad mindset common in the western world. They didnt knew better but that doesnt mean it should stay this way. For example the strong difference between alliance and horde races(Look at the first 2 cinematics for proof) Humans diplomates who serve the light from medieval western europe(france/english), Pandarian asian/chinese, dwarfs scottish/irish and now horde from vanila: troll vodoo canibals from carabien, orcs brutes from africa and tauren tribe culture from mongolia. Clearly i can see some worldviews here... The devs atm are trying to make a true'er version. They hired real cultural antropologist and their imput are just classing with their mindset. I think wow tries to tell the story about war on a bigger and local scale, the cost of war and the war inside. I dont play wow at this moment because i dont like the dragon fantasy trope and i tried df. Back then being a armchair keyboard warrior I forced my personal taste to the internet and mostly on the forums. But i became ware of this toxic behavior(starting to think i shouldnt comment xD)i chose to wait this expansion out and try other games. I suggest to do the same for those people.
I think its another thing that characters dont have enough diversity of personalities. people are just different or rather archetypes of people matter especially in fiction and narratives. later on in the video i found it interesting when you were talking about how people are drawn to different things. In earlier times, there was a theory of personality temperaments: melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. There's another version of from India of 4 types. I'm sure in China and Japan they have their own things whether its chinese zodiac, elements like feng shui or blood types. Carl Jung of course notorious for MBTI and the 16 archetypes. I'm not fully sure but maybe WoW has just lost some of the characters that really stand out to be badass, noble, imperfect but noticeable as well as those epic action oriented scenes. Think about it, we lost illidan for now, we lost varian, thrall has changed, (although is a badass is more like a badass that is in touch with our humanity, something like INFJ from MBTI). Probably more. Man this video was great, hope he reacts to it
Saurfang lost his child twice because he got ressurected as an undead. Anduin got temporarly mindcontroled and basically was forced to do nothing except fight his friends once. Being mind controled has happened to inumerous characters in WOW, it's not the be all end all of "dark". He does look like a pussy if he has PTSD seeing as he is surrounded by characters who went through much worse
Can you point out those characters? Anduin’s been through a hell of a lot throughout his story arc and to just boil it down to oh he got mind controlled he’s a pussy is disingenuous. He never got a chance to process any of the fucked up shit he’s been through. He lost his mother in the defias riots, onyxia literally got close to his father and split his soul in to two halves when he was kidnapped. He was a PoW during Garroshes reign, and we all know PoW’s wouldn’t have been treated with any decency under garrosh. His body was broken as a child when garrosh slammed him against the divine bell. His father was killed in legion and the mantle of king immediately thrust on to him before he was even ready to accept it. The events of BFA and the amount of lives lost is definitely something I feel like he takes on his self. And then to top it all off, you had the jailer and sylvanas literally dominate him and turn his memories and his faith in the light against him. Do you not think all that warrants PTSD? Every badass “hyper masculine” character ever has an extensive back story if you just look deep enough.
@@Spartavian95 Yeah and that backstory meant nothing because he was controled by the Jailer for one raid, it's nonsense. Other characters? You're already making my point, yeah every "hyper masculine" character (stop saying masculine like it's a bad thing), went throught a lot, worse than Anduin. It makes no sense that this is the event that breaks him. It's like if Thrall randomly started having PTSD from being a slave for the alliance
I think asmon is right on that surface level. I have been playing since Vanilla and I did not care about the story at all at first, TBC did not make much sense to me but I loved the gameplay. Wrath was cool and titan lore was when I began to read about it more BUT it was those insane cinematics that kept me hooked, Arthas teasing players throughout leveling was well done. For me and imo most players WoD was 1st expansion that had amazing storytelling without player ever needing to read those quests, NPCs were talking to you, quests lined up to each other and cutscenes were amazing. Cutscenes and voice acting are the most important delivery techniques for vast majority of players and those suck then whole game kinda sucks too...atleast this is my understanding of asmongolds view.
Bearing witness to trauma, and needing to talk with someone about it, AND DOING SO... is the exact opposite of being weak. Being strong enough to ask for helping bearing that load is noble, and is to be emulated (agreeing with what I understood Pyro to be reacting as!) - but what do I know, I'm just a former FF/EMT who's seen a few things. Look after each other, folks. Good vid, Pyro.
It’s very important for the surface level story to be cool. The majority of players don’t look deep in the story. DF cinematics and quests has focused a lot on the pussy sh!t parts of the story instead of the dark parts of it. Also, the graphic design of the dragon aspects look a lot more smooth and moisturized. Just look at how tougher the older models looked. It very clearly seems like they’re softening up the game as if they’re catering to kids. Just the existence of Chromie’s character is proof of it.
There have always been and ever shall be soft spots in WoW. What you have shown here proves that. People who forget that, will end up with empty shells and sorrow. Soft spots are pivotal to the entire story lore and world of Azeroth. Even real life has its soft spots. People need to chill the F out.
If Asmon has an argumentation flaw it's that it often becomes everybody, nobody, one extreme, other extreme. Like, the game isn't worse if you have some of the "soft stuff" as expressed, and the game could also be better if it has some of those iconic epic characters or moments; above all it's better if it's actually told well. I think with Asmon it's basically just the visual vibe that resonates, since that's one of the redeeming qualities of Garrosh, an oft-cited paragon of WoW characters from him. I remember large parts of that character's existence, he was disliked by the community at large, and personally I think he's a good example of being woefully written to force expansion plots. It's really silly tbh, I think a lot of people would agree that Cairne was a great and visually iconic horde character for example. Where would he fit right in? That's right, Dragonflight, but also literally every other expansion. That's because he was cool, had a soft side, and just worked as a character. I don't think they succeed all of the time for sure, but they do sometimes, and it has nothing to do with the manliness imo.
You know what the problem is with your statement? And why I dont like the Anduin story: Its because we have been seeing Anduin "HAVING HIS BADASS GROWING MOMENT" over and Over again THE SAME MOMENT since Legion... HE NEVER GROWS JACK SHIT, He has SEEN SO MUCH SHIT, AND SUDDENLY because some Bald Motherfucker in the afterlife mind controlled him THAT was the thing that "Traumatized him" So fucking much, BECAUSE AT THE END OF BFA HE WAS FINE!!! its just BAD WRITING the fact that Anduin is NEVER actually achieving ANYTHING, and at the end of every expansion everything that happened before means jack shit. this is why Anduin is seen as a BITCH, and also because he keeps getting compared to all the characters that where all grown battle hardened men before him. Yes I get it he is the Youngest character to this date to be in a fucking war, but Still... He SHOULD´VE been over it by now, this is why the whole PTSD shit doesnt get through, because it has been presented in a SUCKY way.
If WoW didn't have a bit of "softness" and "boringness" and was all about brutality, action and badassery then I don't think it would have survived for very long. Characters like Arthas, Illidan, Garrosh and so on are only as Badass as they are BECAUSE they have some deep and sometimes tragic lore.
Dragonflight's introduction cinematic was definitely lacking the classic WoW touch. Felt like it was moreso blizzard saying "We're going back to our roots". I mean, Wrath cinematic is chilling, Cata sets the scene of, "This Dragon has decided to destroy what we know, and hes succeeding." Pandaria was "Yes we fight, but we need to fight something thats worth fighting.". Coming together to overcome the new threat, which has been the theme since TBC. WoD was setting the scene of the Iron Horde, and just how Hellscream (both of them) lead their people. Legion was once again forgetting the previous problems, it was to show Varian accepting he may die, and he has Anduin to thank for people able to trust people from the Horde. BfA was introduction to the WAR, how both sides follow their leaders, and for different reasons. Shadowlands was to setup the fracturing of what we know to be real, and to show us the Shadowlands. Every single expac before Dragonflight got me to feel some way about the lore and the implications, but dragonflight, even though i care about the Dragons, was hey, we're GOING BACK! And it really just felt like "The watchers have withered, but someone lit the fire"
Warcraft is "PTSD: The Game" pretty much. You analize all the big names on the lore a bit and you find so many of their actions being fueled by some form of trauma or stress that comes from either war itself or the consequences of it. Grom and Garrosh, Varok Saurfang, Thrall, Jaina, Sylvannas, Arthas, Tyrande, Anduin and so many others. I would agree that there are more interesting ways to show how much the main characters are struggling, as in better to just having them being so "in your face" about talking about their emotions, but outright saying that WoW has always been this "boring lame paste" of a story where all it used to be was just "muscular hairy sweaty men fighting each other" is just pure bs.
also there is a big perception filter in our brain that makes you reflect on things far in past in more positive light than when you lived it ... unless it is some deep trauma that you cant process till today... nostalgia glasses are especially strong with wow players and thats why they milk the classic and remix and all and it works
W fucking take. As a fan of the goblin king it is frustrating to hear his view on narrative sometimes. Just because he is unwilling to engage with the aspects of the narrative that he thinks is infecting the current one does not mean they havnt been there the whole time. He's a smart guy and can critically engage with those aspects but willingly chooses not too. Its disappointing.
I actually really like the PTSD story it adds depth. But. What I don't like is how sudden that came to be. He could've tried to return as a ruler and kind of fail there.
@@SeralyneYTreally now? In an god damn fantasy world like WoW you gonna bring garbage like this were it doesn’t reflect at all how the game had been on about? Garbage about feelings about muh mental HEEEEEAAAAAAT like now are you gonna have an quest about Therapy? LITERALLY no one played WoW for god damn PTSD mental health talk, and feeefees cuz we need an therapy session !!!
@@RavenL1337 What is the most common after affect of war, death aside? PTSD. Depicting the personal darkness is more gritty than Warcraft has ever been, if you ask me. Ah. Right. Dark to you guys can only mean people committing genocides. Got it.
BTW All these viewers including Asmon loves Elden Ring and SUPRISE SUPRISE !! That games lore is so intragated with emotions, betrayal and love. He just seems siding with the "popular" opinion...
how you present the story, is EVERYTHING when it comes to the gaming media. You can have a below average story, but as long as your presentation is on point within your game, a below average story, can be elevated to abow average. And modern day wow presentation, is just a bad way to get the player to like the story
Pyro "You have to pay attention to the story to be aware of it." Dude, that's the issue. Not everyone is loremaster. It's BOOORING ... "The Fyrak. Who's that? Iridicron? I already forgot... Nightelves tree far away from Kalmdor, that's big "boring," bro.Aren't they in Moonglade or something. Why isn't tree there. Imagine they had like those mountain hanging monorail made from leaves a wood that goes from Moonglade tree to Mt.Hyal tree or something like that, and they build New Darnassus in Moonglade. The lore that makes sense keeps attention.
Asmongold is absolutely right on this topic. Warcraft 2 has the essence of Warcraft. Warcraft 3 refined it into an epic story. After WoW it was already a downhill regarding the style, but until Wrath it was ok as the old material was still there.
Honestly, I don't believe the issue is the subject matter itself, but the saturation of it. The truth is that feminine archetypes (in the literary sense) of storytelling are more pervasive now in media, and some people really want to have *something* that's more action-oriented. Warcraft used to be that kind of intellectual property. It was about *doing* instead of processing, and for many people, contemplative storytelling is just not all that interesting. They want to see things happen.
I met azmongold once in real life at blizzcon.. he had a circle of dudebros around him, all of them in pure ecstasy while azmongold told them why he hadn't showered in a week... since that day i've blocked his channel and anything that shows his face.. it still surprises me that he managed to gather such a large following.
“There’s never been feelings in WoW until recently!”
Go in classic, and actually read the quests. The feelings were always there. Yall just prolly face rolled your keyboard thru the leveling process instead of paying attention to the lore.
Sure there was a lot of ass kicking to be had….
Dude. Mankriks wife…. She was slaughtered by pigmen and we help him get vengeance.
One of the first quests in Darkshore we help a nelf kill his dead wife’s ghost and retrieve her amulet and she come to him as an apparition saying she’ll always be with him or some shit….
A dwarf in thandol span drowned after the dark irons broke the bridge…. We find his letter to his wife and deliver it to her and she cries to king magni that the war has taken her loved one….
Hell…. In BC we find Sylvanas’s locket from her sister and she ends up remembering the past and singing to us.
There has always been touchy feely shit in this game…. Even orcs have there moments.
Thrall mourning Grommash after he killed Mannoroth… it wasn’t all loktar ogar then…. Sure during the fight it was… but after the fight thrall started bawling. You can’t tell me orcs don’t have feelings.
Undead constantly fight with their feelings.
Yeah I’m over the whole “the game is no longer Warcraft” crowd.
It’s still Warcraft…. It’s just not RED VS BLUE any more. Or at least right now.
Bros when they think not engaging with the story deeply because they were 12 years old means there was no story. If you read 0 quest text then your memory of vanilla will be only manly warrior men killing shit, what else could you glean? very shallow and dissonant take. Reading Wowwiki as a kid is what got me into fantasy in general, trying to figure out the connections between forces and characters and places, it's always been there.
this if frankly a symptom of how the game itself "trains" the players to ignore quest text, by tossing a wall of text at the player, that HINDERS gameplay.
So they train players to ignore reading anything, and instead skim to find clues related to the quest objective as fast as possible, rather than ever want to be involved in the story.
wow and ff14 are opposite on this. ff14, includes the player in dialogue, and makes the player involved in the story with gameplay and CHOICE. Meanwhile wow completely ignores the player in almost any way it can
Asmon's comments about the lore being cool on a surface level reveals what his actual complaint is. The complaint isn't about the actual lore. He's never engaged with the actual lore. The complaint is actually about aesthetics and general vibes. It's the same reason why Asmon has complained about how Pandaria looked, the Night Fae's whole vibe, etc. It doesn't mesh super well with the iconic "metal" vibes of old school Warcraft, which is the entire appeal for Asmon. The image of Arthas sitting on the frozen throne has the vibes of some goofy early 2000s metal album art. Nothing in Dragonflight captures that vibe, mostly because it's all just too "pretty." I genuinely think that if you took the entire general story of Warcraft 3, but instead of it looking like Warcraft 3 it looked like Dragonflight, I think a decent number of people on Asmon's side of the argument would say the story sucks. If you took Fyrakk's entire deal, but told it in a setting that looked more like Wrath of the Lich King, they'd eat it up. It's an entirely vibes based take. Using music as an analogy, yeah the sappy lyrics may have always been there but they were always accompanied with a sick riff on an electric guitar. You back the same lyrics with a ukulele and a slide whistle, and it's not going to feel quite the same.
great observation
Woah woah woah, are you out here actually observing and thinking logically about what you saw with your brain?? Where’s your ‘you vs them’ mentality or your vitriol to spill onto the internet?
This is probably the best and most correct comment on this video right now.
this so much, for story in a game, presentation is everything. And it will give the player a tone and feeling to match itself.
Old wc3 and wow story presentation, followed the basic rules of storytelling pretty well, and coated it all in a brutal fight for survival. One of the oldest conflicts in writing, man vs world, man vs man, and man vs god/destiny/self-determination.
Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music.
DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing.
It's a symptom of bad writers that cant tell a nuanced involved story, without constantly telling the reader, rather than show the story and how actions lead to reaction, it's just tell and if done wrong, comes off as preachy and condescending.
And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented.
The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories.
Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows.
The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games.
Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
You know Warhammer exists right? The main thing Warcraft copied oh and DND? That has silly whimsical shit that is outlandish too. He's complaining about Warcraft being Warcraft and not being more Warhammer. The game already exists Warcraft is keeping its Warcraft identity otherwise you could just go play idk Warhammer or Guild Wars 2 instead. IF ANYTHING its just Warcraft engagement bait, hes out of content again. Taking this guy at face value is already a mistake.
There's no denying that old Warcraft that I grew up with has some classic masculine archetypes that are staples of the Fantasy genre.
Doomhammer holding up Blackhand's head in Chris Metzen's rugged concept art in the manual, Grom's epic self sacrifice against a massive demon that enslaved his people, his atonement, these are iconic moments in the franchise that we grew up with that have set the bar for our expectations.
Aah the OG warcraft of the blizzard north days 😍 You wouldnt understand it if you started playing warcraft in MoP tho. its just nostalgia that makes me love the lore att this point but The return of Metzen gives me hope for the future
Cata/mop babies really don't have the same perspective
I get your point especially as I grew up on Warcraft 2 and Metzen's early art/lore however the art you described as well as many others, was pretty silly. Yes, it was brutal but Blackhand was making a stupid face and the Doomhammer design was just 90s cringe. It was a SMALL Warhammer with a broken sword jammed into it for some reason. The designs post Warcraft 3, especially Doomhammer were so much better as Blizzard and society had grown up past that late 90s edgelord bullshit. There's a reason why the details in Warcraft 1 and 2 were basically all tweaked and/or retconned.
@@maxpower7113 even then, Thrall’s reformed WC3 Horde is way cooler than whatever we’ve been getting in WoW.
@@AmplifymagicThank you, I should amend that I meant Warcraft 3 and beyond as Through the Dark Portal was a rushed mess and Warcraft Adventures did so much character assassination Classic Tyrande would blush.
I think a good example of badass and nuanced all at once is the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic. It's slow and emotional in a lot of points. Arthas has a slumped, tired posture, before he visibly steels himself, straightening his shoulders and raising his weapon. There's the layers of depth with what his father is saying and what he has actually become. At the same time, there's a dude in cool armor with a big badass dragon. Tons of reaction videos of people watching wow cinematics for the first time completely miss the emotion and nuanced storytelling, but absolutely love the cinematic all the same. Modern wow has an issue having both depth and super cool badass stuff at the same time.
This is a symptom of shit writers in modern day frankly.
Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music.
DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing.
It's a symptom of bad writers.
And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented.
The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories.
Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows.
The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games.
Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
I feel people would've had less of a hissy fit over Anduin having PTSD over what the Jailer made him do, if they had shown more in the game of what the Jailer made Anduin do. Horrifying things, as tearing their souls out, etc etc. Because they lack the imagination of knowing what the Jailer made Anduin do, as being told what he did, rather than seeing it by their own eyes.
but that require writers with more skill and passion. The main reason the writing is seen as shit nowadays, is related to both presentation and style.
warcraft, vent from action complementing intrigue and emotion. To almost never ever showing, but just telling.
The old writing style of warcraft, was classical, in theme and tone, it was about man vs nature, man vs man, and man vs god/destiny/self-determination.
The modern warcraft story, completely shifts writing style, to one that you almost only find in female romance novels, female focused tv dramas, and fanfiction, as that is where that writing style fits. It's also bad writers that is a problem, with them constantly telling, almost never showing anything. And if executed poorly, breaking the show don't tell rule of writing, just comes off as preachy and condescending to the reader. And that is the style modern wow writing is using.
Then we come to how that again conflicts with how tone in warcraft writing used to be, and what it is now. The "tone" of the story, used to be classical in man vs nature/man/god/destiny/self-determination. And the tone of this, was very masculine in expression of action complementing feeling. The wrath Arthas cinematic has plenty feelings and deep story telling, but it is all complemented with intriguing visual action in reaction to the narration of Arthas father.
But in DF, you have a completely different tone, that constantly tells the story, as if it's a blend of how to train your dragon along with pixar and disney, and contained in a female tv drama show
@@gampie13
Story has changed on how they tell, yes, as tell not show. Is very obvious that it isn't working on it, and hopefully they stop doing that, because when playing a game, you want to experience it, not just hear characters in the game talk about it. Or at least see the effects from said actions. Be it a war, a conflict between two powerful beings, etc.
Ghostlands did a good job showing the effects of what Arthas did, yes we played it in Warcraft 3, but not many did, nor ever will do that.
And yeah their focus on what to tell has changed, for worse, and sometimes better. But main problem is, in my opinion, is they tell more, and show/experience less for the players.
Personally giving a pause between conflicts, especially Anduin and what he experienced I thought was a good thing, because even today people tend to forget conflicts have a effect on people. Sure not many care, and want an escape, however, if you tell it properly, and show it, as said, I feel people would accept it more.
I mean, Varian as Legion cinematic happened, he did have a heartfelt moment, and showed his feelings, thinking about Anduin, and how he could've been a better father. How he tried to be a better father, yet he failed on many occasions, being stuck in his old ways.
Then had a bro moment with Genn, basically giving a dying wish for him to deliver a message to his son. And people just cheered on, and still thought he was this awesome dude, even if he did get emotional.
Because they showed it, and did it well.
Same with Anduin taking up his fathers sword and restoring it, people generally loved it, because it was emotional, but done well and properly.
Bro exactly, for all we've fucking seen, anduin ONLY kills the Archon, and she's a goddamn ROBOT.
I get the general sentiment that people are expressing here. Yes, Warcraft has its roots in brutality and badasses. We need more of that feeling, Dragonflight in particular did a poor job capturing that sensation. But it doesn't need to be mutually exclusive. We can have a complex and emotional story that is also manly as fuck. We just need writers capable of straddling that line, and metzen was always pretty damn good at it.
Absolutely
I wish that they represented stoicism a bit more as well, it can be a great tool to write something emotional by showing rather than telling
@@lloydgush I don't see Thrall as being too butchered since now he's more of a retired warrior but we haven't really seen much of him since his green Jesus days.
Tyrande is too one-dimensional, malfurion is just a plot device that never does anything cool anymore, and sylvanas... was completely butchered, gobbled up and spat out into the maw.
we just want 'badass' it doesn't need to be 'manly' make a female dwarf character covered in blood slaughtering enemies and theyll be just as hype as if it were a male dwarf, he wants a godzilla movie without human drama, all monster fights all the time, and i can't blame him there isn't an mmo on the market that does that right now
When Saurfang's son died in Northrend, he cradled the body in his arms, took his necklace as a keepsake and pressed his forehead against his son's with tears in his eyes. Then turned his head to the sky and screamed in visceral agony and rage.
If this had been done in modern WoW, it would have had Saurfang sniffling over his son's body whilst all the other characters stood around him in a sad circle.
Then he'd track down whoever killed his son, get to the point he was about to cut the b@stard's head off only for Alexstrasza to catch the blade with her claws and deliver a 5 minute-long speech about how he should instead heal and forgive the murderer in order to preserve his honor or some sh!t.
Then Saurfang walks away angry and decides to pick up a hobby like trimming Bonsai trees in order to channel his grief into something that brings new life into the world. The latest expansion has been a frigging hugbox.
My thing is... did anduin forget he whole Pandaria adventure? And why didnt he go back for some help afterwards? Litterally everything hes going through, Pandaria would help him again.
"My son... a terrible darkness returns to this world" One of m fav lines in any cinematic along with "WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!"
I just feel like there is this zeitgeist from old school players that never actually paid attention to the story and just mentally filled in the blanks themselves as to what the themes of the game were. Classic WoW is full of touchy feely afterschool special shit. Its also full of breadcrumbing and foreshadowing. This idea that classic was just violence porn with no story behind it is an absolute brain rot opinion to have.
I think the real difference is recently there's been very little show dont tell. In Pyromancer's other examples, people are talking about their feelinngs, but it's also fed into and being told by the flow of action onscreen. When it's just people standing around telling you things it doesn't have the same punch as Saurfang walking into an army alone to show you how he feels.
I think it's a difference in what you want out of a game narrative and characters. Some like the introspective and thoughtful stuff, while lots of others (like Asmon) are looking for more larger than life heroes and villains that do big things instead of talking about things. There is a place for games exploring things that are difficult in human life, but I think a lot just want to be take a break from that in fantasy games like WoW and I think that's ok too. I think Pyro's take from about 15:00 is exactly it, the "doing badass stuff" is - and always has been important and it's kinda been missing for a while
I just wanted to write a comment about this but then found yours. We can play Sims or Final Fantasy any time. Warcraft had a different vibe what is missing now. Plus gaming is escapism in a way. What if I don't want to experience certain situations when I play?
@@Ordo1980 FF14 got more "doing badass stuff" now and wow's got a lot more depth in their characters but I never understood complaining about that or whimsy, the silly and sad shit has always been in the game but they could do with adding more "doing badass stuff" but if that's ALL you're doing then it becomes less badass and more of a chore, like farming the same raid
@@JJJ42069 Thats not how I see it. Plus I like FF and I've played a lot of Sims as well. But when I want to play Warcraft it should feel Warcraft.
I don't remember that Warcraft3 become boring. WoW feels like chores however.
@@Ordo1980 That IS Warcraft, its never been too serious or too silly or too sad its just a mix of everything like a living world is. The complaint about it not being serious enough or whatever is moot. THAT'S the identity they wanted carved out, sure it was a lot of Warhammer rip offs but they can't just go off that for a decade they made their own niche.
@@JJJ42069
My take on that is that emotional scenes felt "earned". Grom killed a Burning Legion lieutenant, and then he had a hardfelt moment.
Varok had a big fight against Sylvanas and exposed her, and then he had an emotional send off with Thrall & the gang carrying him.
There were no such epic moments in Shadowlands or in Dragonflight. It didn't feel like the characters earned their emotional moments in the story.
Thrall had the same theme for 4 expansions now. For Anduin, it was never shown what he did outside of stabbing (and NOT killing) the Archon. Alleria's story was never shown in the game, only in novels. Alextrasza barely did anything in Dragonflight, but at the end she holds a monologue like she is some hot shit.
I just feel like for Anduin's PTSD we didn't had enough cutscenes where we see him going on a rampage, the lack of gore compared to wrath also plays a role imo. Imagine a scene where we see him killing innocent people and you see him going in and out of the jailers control with real facial expressions of terror. (And yes I know not everything has to be gory to be PTSD) But personally if they would have had done something in that direction people would maybe understand.
I agree, it could've really hammered home that Anduin is a tortured dude. We hear him say "Oh I murdered innocents, there's blood on my hands!" But we never see it. We see him stab 1 eternal one, Kyrestia, who's arguably a horrible, awful person that allowed millions of souls to pour into the maw. So, to me, the viewer, that's all I have seen when Anduin goes "Oh I hurt innocent people." Which isn't very convincing, as once again, Kyrestia is horrible.
I hope I am making sense by the way, I just woke up a while ago, so I may be a bit incoherent.
True.
I also feel like the whole mindcontrol storyarc was bullshit to begin with.
During the events of BFA and Blizzard talking about "morally grey" storytelling i allways imagined Aduin goin all out revenge arc and becoming just as bad if not worse than Sylvannas in the process and ending up being an Arthas like figure in the process. Would've also fit better with those arthas connections they tried to make with the legion intro cinematic imo.
Cause Arthas wasn't mind controlled into doing bad things, he did those bad things because he thought it was the right thing and then ended up sort of being mindcontrolled because of those decisions.
I think he has a problem with the vibe and let's be honest, the vibe of Dragonflight so so much worse than Legion for example
Fucking hell watching this compilation with Pyro's comments made me tear up a bit, rekindle my love for WoW, goddamn thanks Pyro for being here on UA-cam and Twtch, ya've been helping me through some tough times and i've started playing WoW precisely because it was part of some of my fondest memories. Peace and thanks, brother
Presentqtion matters i think we can have emotional things but it needs a good "cover" over it, melancholy and sadness can be presented in a noble and beautiful way (WotLK cinematic) and the problem is that some scenes seems to be shown as a Television drama show, which people have the right to like it, but thats not what most people got hooked to the Warcraft universe initially.
The key that people seem to miss is that the people who make these games have grown up.
When you grow up you realise how empty and meaningless the epic scale of things is without the smaller, subtle moments that add feeling and reason.
We change as we mature. Our perspective’s shift and we learn to see the world and those within and around differently. We also see ourselves differently. We aren’t two dimensional. We aren’t simple archetypes. And the characters and worlds we imagine and create aren’t either, while they may have been simplistic when we were younger.
My biggest concern with TWW and the World Soul Saga is that Metzen is a good ideas guy, but he isn’t a good writer. I hope he has matured in his time away and learned nuance and understands the importance of the feels and the vibes amidst the mega scale blockbuster action.
I'm not even trying to be mean but I think you can tell he doesn't want to play bc of his mom and he just refuses to say so.
Hard agree. Its completely understandable tbh it meant a lot to them. Its also clear people just want him to react to WoW stuff to have their "game is bad" takes validated, and he just seems tired of it and says the same things every video to appease them.
This is probably the most accurate take.
Old Soldier has similar vibes and themes to the War Within trailer, I guess the difference is the additional accumulated distaste (or disdain) towards the forced agenda pushing and softness that plagued both Shadowlands and Dragonflight. Feelings can hit harder when they come from a rugged veteran instead of a prince that's percieved as a soft crybaby, especially if it follows what we've had the last couple of expansions. It's easy to get tired of too much of the same shit, be it good or bad.
yes, exactly, the cool stuff must be layered on the emotional stuff for it to land, otherwise it just comes across as sappy soap opera dialogue. that was what made all the old content epic.
bro likes unbridled masculinity... honestly, i get it, me too! (im gay)
Hey all im saying is Saurfang was one of the baddest around, ever. And he cried. He suffered trauma and had to overcome it with, get this.. the power of his friends and friendship. And then he went out like the GOAT he was. Yeah.. real pu$$y shit
the claim that there was never feelings in the past ( assume they ment uptil wotlk. maybe cata) then i bet those players dont read the quest lore. it seems to me that people beleave feelings got introduced as soon as they became cutscenes/voice acted.
One thing about Asmon is that he's extremely, extremely confident in everything he says...
The other thing about him is that he's extremely, extremely wrong about a lot of what he says...
Unfortunately, a certain demographic tends to equate confidence with correctness.
Folding Ideas pointed out at some point that Asmongold never really developed a good coping mechanism. And Anduin is reminding him of that.
what people like asmon need is fighting cinematics, but then he hated the sylvanas vs anduin fight cinematics so there is no winning.
Asmongold says the game changed not him, and in some ways that may be true. However, I think it is truly sad that Asmongold never changed because I think a lot of the stuff Pyro hit on in this video would help him a lot. Though, you can bring a horse to water, you can't make it drink. Asmongold is stuck in toxic masculinity stereotypes that he himself cannot represent or produce in life. It is a toxic cycle that needs to be broken.
I think the problem lies mainly in Dragonflight, even shadowlands had that badassery and grittiness and brutality that warcraft always had
Dragonflight even though i like it it still feels abit too soft to me atleast, but i don't hate it too much
Mist of Pandaria was way cooler than Dragonflight. The expansion with Panda people!
I think the huge divergence from the more subtle emotional aspects of wow into a major focus on it is why when people like Asmon, when reflecting on past wow, see it in the way that they do. It's a lot less noticeable when it's lightly peppered in as oppose to drenched in"feelings"
wasnt arthus crying in the end when he was mind controlled?
I think after shadowlands weird greyscale vibes we all needed the friendly colorful dragonflight, and I hope this was a design intent from blizzard to lead into a heavier trilogy upcoming personally.
You know. I do agree to some degree but as always much of the failure is based on presentation. I liked DF cinematic. It felt like taking a serene breath after long long time. I thought we were gonna get small stories and low stakes to wind down and kick everything down a notch. Unfortunately the initial quests while low stakes, lacked the necessary gravitas and quickly spiraled to your classic world in peril narrative. They didn't feel like the small quests in vanilla with some local dangers. Add to that the feeling of "lameness" and we got a toxic mixture that felt like a Dragon themed theme park rather than a RPG. Say what you will but (as someone who started playing in early BFA) the dragons from vanilla, TBC and even cata (a little) felt dangerous and alien. New locations and people felt more real with either earthly or more esoteric problems.
If I were to look for an example. I hoped for Witcher's Blood and Wine dlc and got something much worse.
PS. At the same time DF was a great expansion in the matters of mechanical progress. There is much to repair still but comparing it to BFA nad SL. Goddamn we got out of some dark place.
I think the game's dialogue has just been crippled because people care more about how we receive the dialogue. Also, I assume (could be wrong) that most dialogue is probably written by people who are in their 20s, and their vocabulary doesn't expand as much as the old people who have been promoted, fired, or quit. Lot of dialogue during the "Golden Era" was written by people who weren't on the internet and constantly out there learning, not just doing their job because its all the time they have for it.
I mean, the dialogue in an end expansion raid cinematic is unironically, "because we came together as a family". Could be to save cinema budget, or something else, but I feel like theres a way to say the same concept or feeling through a deeper and more meaningful way.
someone didn't interact with the book about Arthas, I see
They should do themselves a favor and read all Conan material written by Robert E. Howard. It is the vibe they're looking for.
i think if you’re into the lore as much as Pyro you can appreciate the story and see how the themes are not as far removed from old wow as some people say it is… but for someone who just experiences the stories through cutscenes in game (like me), it’s easy to see there is a huge difference in the tone of Dragonflight cut scenes vs. what i’ve seen in previous expansions. i wouldn’t say it’s all bad tho
At this point I think a lot of people get the image of "Blizzard sucks" and "WoW is dead" stuck in their heads, so they can't see anything else and turn the page to other things. (They already "killed" the game in their minds) But with all the speculation, alpha spoilers, and features to come, I'm very excited about the game. I hope everyone can take their time and come back.
Honestly I think Asmon just makes statements on what his audience wants to hear and not what he really thinks at this point; Gotta stay at the top somehow right?
love hearing about lore from people who've never read the books or original games
Asmon-like people don't want manly story lines, they just want to "return to monke". Just one dimensional fighting 24/7 with burly guys killing each other with sticks and stones. For all his love of LOTR, I have no idea how he read the books or watched the movies without being bored because 90% of them are just a bunch of men talking and walking. It's like Aragorn just fights and becomes king, but the rest of his story is forgotten.
100% True! Anyone that looks at Aragorn and his journey that calls him masculine in the same toxic masculine ways that Asmon speaks of is either blind and deaf or truly media illiterate. Aragorn is 100% a perfect representation of positive masculinity while being able to show true emotions and compassion that his audience would find "sissy" or w/e.
I think wow, vanilla, wow as an mmorpg was never highly focused on the type of lore and storytelling they have now in retail until maybe cata/mop. Maybe wrath arguably.
wow just trained it's players to ignore story with UI, by tossing a wall of text at the player, then hindering gameplay with it. This trains the player to not care for any text and reading in the game, as it hinders gameplay. ff14 on the other hand, includes the player and story in dialogue options, and makes the story part of gameplay, which trains the player to be personally involved in the story.
When it comes to presentation though. wow defiantly shifted to a feminine writing style.
Storytelling like the wrath cinematic, follows the show don't tell pretty well, even with the telling, it is showing related action/reaction with nuanced visual and music.
DF on the other hand, tells, then tells, then preaches at the player, while almost never ever showing anything nuanced in it's writing.
It's a symptom of bad writers.
And then we come to "tone" how the story is presented.
The tone of wow, vent from action immersion nuanced intrigue. Where emotion was linked with action. This is a classical way of telling stories.
Then you how the way they present the story nowadays. Where it is a bunch of talking, almost never showing, and is in a completely different writing style, one that generally only fits fanfiction and female drama softcore porn romance novels, or female television drama shows.
The presentation of how you tell your story, matters WAY MORE than what your story is about when it comes to games.
Even a terrible story in a game, can be decent IF executed properly with tone and presentation. But that takes a HUGE amount of skill, creativity and passion. Something blizzard is in low supply on
I get a lot of "people dont talk like that" vibes from WoW. But it's changed a bit. Where as older dialogue has that over the top 80s one liner x medieval epos vibe, newer stuff is ... drunk bar dude! The drunk dude at the bar who exposition dumps his whole life and yell-cries his deepest inner feelings to complete strangers (Kalecgos is an alcoholic adult toddler).
Older lore is cringe as well but it is the cringe I expect from an entertainment medium. It works for 80s action movies and it works for LOTR. Also most of the lore simply flew over peoples heads. Do the Windsor jail break escort and tell me you don't cringe like Homer Simpson eating a lemon.
Newer lore is trying to be a lecture in captain obvious. Family is important, I watched Fast & Furious. Working together yields better results, planet of the apes. Cringy "Avengers Assemble!" scene number 357833, literally how did Marvel not sue you yet? And why doesn't my character ever tell anyone about the things they witnessed? If Alex-fucking-strasza gives me another lecture on the importance of anything I will embark on a personal crusade to exterminate every single red dragon. I know you are basically just an amalgamation of trauma BUT STOP BEING A KAREN!
There are many great aspects of modern WoW lore. Complex issues, difficult situations, being handled by characters with real ... uhm character! The War Within cinematic is too good to be real.
But I have monkey brain. And my monkey brain sees a bar of gold only to get mad at a stain on it.
I enjoy watching Asmon, but his views on "masculinity" isn't very healthy nor realistic. Anduin is 100% a better character for having trauma and dealing with it, unlike his father who had trauma but denied it until he was FORCED to deal with it. And Anduin has ALWAYS been a sensitive character. Empathic and kind. And then he had to deal with evil, unjust treatment, early kinghood, not being able to properly mourn his father, being forced to be a king rather than a person throughout all of BFA. That's NOT being "soy" or a pussy. That's being human and it needs to be seen in more male characters in general imo.
Sad part is. Asmon actually went more into his grievances in the part of the video that Pyro skipped. As for all the "it's not woke parts". Lets be honest. The game is made in California, by a bunch of Californians with Californian life style and Californian views. I'd find it really damn strange if the game didn't become soft and hippy when it's made in a world capital of corpo-modern-soft-syntethic-narratives. I mean there is a reason why Witcher felt Polish and had a lot of bleak grit typical for this part of the world for example.
On the whole emotions and deeper meanings part. I cannot agree with the method Blizzard and most American companies use for that matter. It's not that I don't want deep feelings. What I don't want is goddamn therapy sessions. They are unnatural. A product of modern world and progress. Useful and necessary but completely out of place in a fantasy world.
If the characters have demons to fight then have them fight those demons in a natural way. Have them fail or succeed. Not just talk and whine. There is a reason why Saurfang worked and DF utterly failed in emotions department even though the former had to contend with lackluster bite size quest content. Even the good parts of DF like Blue df. I found the finale of that quest really mid, especially Kalecs speech. Only Grandpa dragon's death pushed it up a notch for me in combination with the small piece for Tarecgosa.
As for Asmons hated Blonde boi. I loved Anduin TWW cinematic for what it was. It showed how broken Anduin was while being ready for action. But I hated it for what it had to contend with and that is a botched, fragmented story. Let's be honest. It's hard to take Anduin seriously when the main reason for his PTSD has hardly been shown in game. Had he actually been given more in-game time to show his triumphs, failures and then a good amount of more failures under control even Asmon would take him more seriously. Right now for your Sunday player and even book readers like me he looks like a whiny little bitch and that is all Blizzards fault. No amount of love for Sylvanas book will change the fact that we got maybe two cutscenes of Anduin suffering under Jailer's control.
California is not a soft state lmfao. People who don't live here love eating up the slop that is conservative media's portrayal. In reality I grew up in the midwest and live in CA now and CA is easily more conservative and has much more farmland per capita
People say what they say about Zack and Asmongold being his persona or whatever, but this guy is genuinely unhinged in many aspects of living and opinions, not to mention he's basically a nostalgia dick-rider who cannot mentally accept the fact that time exists and he's getting old and is unable to play the game and enjoy the game in the same way he did 15 years ago, the problem is not the story, or the lack of "masculinity" that was present, the problem is people whom are unable to deal with the fact that they are getting older, they are trying to chase feelings and things that are in the past which they look at through rose tinted goggles because back then they had no worries and used to be happy and enjoyed things more. I've been playing Warcraft franchise games since I was 6 years old, since 2001, I still enjoy the story, I enjoy where its going, are some things a bit cringe and bad? Sure, but they always have been no matter at what time period of this franchise you look at. Point is, most people crying about the story, it not being masculine enough and so on, are just simply miserable unhappy people that have no joy left in their lives and all they do is spend circle-jerking their own memories and bygone happiness that they will never feel again no matter how successful or accomplished they are in their lives. When it comes to people like Zack, and listening to their opinions on these things is pointless.
I love the gameplay, I have been playing WoW since 2007 and I think you’re pretty delusional if you think the art style and storytelling lens has not changed since the early era. Starting with goblins and worgen in cataclysm, some rounder edges and more cartoony designs were being added, and they really full sent the Disney/Pixar in almost every element of the game by Pandaria, and the last bastion of the old art style(the player models) was eradicated by WoD. The art style is just a clear physical depiction of the same type of change that the storytelling has undergone. I don’t know why that man-child that doesn’t know how to even take care of himself is going on about “masculinity”, but if that word was removed from the discussion, he’s got valid point and opinion that seems pretty reasonable to me. They have definitely taken a more Disney/Pixar approach to art and storytelling, and why wouldn’t they, it sells to a wider audience. The being said, of course many people will not appreciate this change. All that stuff you said about wanting to be 15 again kinda comes off as projection also, because it’s too big a generalization for a pretty common sentiment among many different types of players or people that don’t play anymore. Xaryu for example has the same take about the art and story, but of course he’s a bit more well spoken than asmon is, and he still plays the game pretty much everyday and overall loves it, as I do as well. I’m not looking for Diable or Disney, but those are two extremes, Warcraft used to be about war and strife between factions(not meaning horde and alliance, just military controlling groups of entities). They try to portray faction leaders as 1 dimensionally doing good for all Azeroth, til they want them to be a villain then it’s abrupt change to cut and dry mustache twisting villain heinous acts, as to not confuse the viewer morally(same stuff they do in children’s movies like Disney/Pixar). Hope this helps for you to see other perspectives, and not just shutdown/shut them out. Even when people suck at communicating, when a lot of them feel a certain way it usually will have some sense to it and doesn’t have to be some baseless unhinged banter
I agree with Asmon. The comparison of Tyrion's story with Anduin's is a good example. I am not even sure what Anduin is crying about.
The problem with Anduin is: He is in a constant low-point and should have started a real character arc several expansions ago. Maybe this time we will finally get one.
He cries about his feelies.
Pyro, you played FFXIV, yes? Picture Shadowbringers, but without all the character studies we go through for both the heroes AND the villains. Using PTSD without a proper justification for the audience just feels cheap and insulting for those who actually have it, and yes I will say it: Anduin has as much depth as Zovaal did as a villain from someone who only plays the game and doesn't read the books.
His PTSD feels magically induced by domination magic rather than actually induced by seeing so much death in war.
@@theflawlessflaw23 a single jailor flash and a hand twitch would have fixed everything, show that the jailors control isn't fully gone and everyone would be okay but as it is its too forced
Watch "Sixtens" video on Anduin. Anduin had been even in game going through a lot since he was a child. Losing his mom at birth, his dad as a teen who instantly was thrusted into his position. He was there for MoP? Which even if a lighter theme on the surface, had TONS of innocents getting slaughtered on both sides of Horde and Alliance. Plus whatever happened in BFA (which even if not focused on him entirely, it still is a lot to have to fight a war/whatever main bad of the expac. And then on top of it, the ShadowLands domination of him commiting acts he would never do on his own. On top of that, he's always been a very soft/pacifist type of person even from childhood. Idk, Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime/Manga) used that kind of plot device of an innocent being taken control of physically/spiritually and then being made to commit heinous acts with the said Innocence/good guys hands. That broke the MC of that show, and I'd say rightfully so.
All in all, I'd say he has plenty of reason to be mentally torn and to experience some forms of PTSD, even just from what has been shown in game. Even if obviously it would be even easier to expect/accept if they showed and put more of a focus then they actually did in the game itself. It's all there, but it's rarely been the "talk of the town"/focus of the story. Just my personal opinion. Fair enough if you don't agree, as not everyone has played and experienced every expac to a certain extent to know every last instance of what's happened to Anduin just in game. But check out that one dudes vid I recommended and I think he does a great job of explaining why he thinks Anduin is acting how someone would probably expect after what he has actually experienced.
Anduin never knew his mother and was made King Regent of Stormwind when he was just a kid and used by Onyxia. Then later on all his bones were shattered by Garrosh and the divine bell. Then his dad died and he was made high king of the alliance when he probably wasn’t ready and had to conduct a war against Sylvanas’s horde. A lot of shit happened before the Jailor and all of it is in game and reasonable to assume he has PTSD.
I'm pretty sure asmongold is the reason so many WoW players seem to forget that their opinion is not fact, because that's all he does lmao
Loved your video, Thank you for making it. : )
What these people don't understand os this isnt even softness...this is the struggle everyone goes through just to an extreme. These people that think that character resolving struggle are feminine? Fixing your issues and working through them to become healthier when your world is on fire is literally textbook masculinity.
The game lore has always been about cosmic forces and feelings lmfao ALWAYS… Sargeras FELT MAD and started a cosmic force torwards War against another? Too soft and mundane ?😂 the story has literally never changed people’s whiny ass entitlement has though😂
Without Light - there is no dark. Without happy times, you don't feel the heavy weight of bad times. Why can't this be mirrored in a game? I mean... the story of Warcraft is a big Epic Legendary, if one recalls everything we did in the game. But you can't always have strong characters, they need to have weaknesses too. Those weaknesses make them the characters we love. I came to like Anduin a lot during Shadowlands, it started with BfA. Now I can somehow relate to him and therefore can accept my flaws and weaknesses as a mentally ill person. DF was soft, but the lessions we can learn from it are there. In all those wishes for action and badassery, people tend to forget the lessions. Some things need to happen to have other things happening.
Pyro I really like your way of viewing things, keep this up!
Asmon’s schtick is so tired.
I'm on a wait list right now seeking therapy and holy shit man it took me 3 years to get over my fear and I honestly feel proud of myself for taking that step it was a big deal for me
Ah yes, peak masculinity Asmongold
i used to like him a little more a while ago. He has gotten rich and i am very happy for him, thats great, i know he went through some stuff too and recently he just turned into this way too arrogant of a person. And i cant believe im saying this because im usually am not expecting some sissy soft talk from anybody but recently he really been talking down on lots of people.
I really wish he would at least shut up about money. Hes literally bashing people for struggling sometimes.
Besides that - he is alright. We dont have to agree with everything hes saying but man.. he really is out of his shell.
That's the most ironic part. He's literally 100 pounds in real life and attempts to act hard when playing a video game by making nothing but warrior characters lmao.
@@GrotesqueN hes king of the neets, he attracts a certain audience and he knows it. you can catch him fence sit and back track on plenty of topics to gauge which side his audience is on before joining them. i dont even think he only dislikes wow because it "went woke" but because he cant play the game like he used to before becoming as big as he is. years of being given countless handouts, carries, being followed around where servers lag out, probably made him finally burn out but he saw it as an opportunity to engage his audience by just regurgitating spew spam in chat. thats just one of my theories at least. which honestly is a shame since i too prefer the gritty shit, but dragonflight is an all around amazing expansion and i think he would have really liked it.
Oh no someone doesnt like the things you do so lets insult his appearance like some little fckn bitches
I love hearing how wow’s story is to emotional and the characters are little bitches from a guy who can’t stream on his main channel because it stresses him out. Definitely a guy you should listen to on quality of a story and character growth. /s
"its such soft crybaby cinematic, watching Varion writing a letter in the deck of the ship, not action filled enough"
Go ahead and point out a single person who has ever expressed that other than yourself. Nice straw man, smooth brain
@@rosspritchett8423 if you can’t identify an very clear satirical joke, similar to the ones he was making in the video, you need help.
Nobody complained about the Legion cinematic because is well written and we'll done, honestly, stop being disingenuous. When Illidan or Varian speak about emotions it's different than what we have today with Anduin or the Aspects and we all know it, wether "you" want to acknowledge it or not.
Also the fact that the lore is mostly unknown,miss interpreted or perceived wrongly is ALL Blizzard's fault. When all the cool stuff is hidden and all the emotional crying stuff is the only thing that gets a spotlight people just see what Blizz wants to show.
people like Asmon are the same kind of schmucks that think the War in Warcraft is a Race War. Warcraft has always had some softness and it was never about the Race War as Taran Zhu called it back in Mists, it was the Legion; an army of Demons led by a Titan that arranged their meeting, so that they would weaken Azeroth's protecting forces, since they got their collective asses beat in the War of the Sundering.
we HAD a Race War type expansion once, it was called Battle For Azeroth, and most players hated it, yet we got einsteins pushing the Race War now that the two factions have been at peace for 5 years.
Fake fan spotted. Warcraft literally began with a race war. Orcs kept humans as slaves and vice versa. The road, the Path of Glory, to the Dark Portal was paved with the skulls of human civilians. You are factually incorrect.
@@picklefathernurgle2719 they're not wrong, you are. Orcs and humans ended up at war with each other because of the Legion it was never simply about race
@@hyperstimmed Actually, I'm pretty sure you're all wrong. Go back and play Warcraft 1. See any mention of the Legion? See any over-arcing plot? Any expanded lore or setting info? No?
Oh yeah, that's right, all of the lore surrounding the Legion was made after the franchise became popular in order to facilitate sequels. Its almost like WoW actually just began with a straight up race war between humans and invading orcs.
You lorebeards are trying way too hard to not admit reality.
Warcraft storytelling has lost a lot of its own unique way of doing things. Your whole point about Illidan's badass moments running along side with the deep backstory like Valen and KJ worked well. Dragonflight had very few badass moments, any badass moments were tainted by leaning too hard toward talking. Saurfang's cinematics were some of the best they have produced - exceptional storytelling, emotional, and badass all rolled in to one (more than once!). Same with Varian and Legion.
Yes WoW has had some very weak storytelling of late (some of it awesome among the weak) but Dragonflight just leaned too much in one direction. We had dragons, how much of it did we get to see them be Regal ancient beings just let go and be actual dragons - the closest was a brief battle between Alex and Raz early on. There should have been a brutalness to it too.
I want both, I want the feelings and emotions, the natural reactions to events mixed along side "dude, that was fucking awesome" badassery that we know they can pull off.
I generally fully agree with you dude, plenty of reasons to get invested.
Wasn’t the peak of Warcraft story a broken prince who in order to save his own people followed a dark path and became corrupt by the very thing he was trying to fight?
Wasn’t the greatest story of old time a mother who died trying to save her orc son from an evil corrupted warlock?
Wasn’t a good story an elf that wanted to share the magic with everybody and was jealous of the relationship between his crush and his brother, to the point of becoming a semi demon?
And what about a dragon queen imprisoned, coerced to give her body away and being forced to lay eggs in a dungeon?
What about a titan who tried to fight an evil and the more it fought the more he became corrupted by it, to the point of turning to the very thing he swore to protect?
Warcraft has always been deep, not just dudes fighting.
An arrogant prince who stopped at nothing to gain power in a bid for his kingdoms survival
Parents slaughtered by demons only for their baby to be taken by the enemy and raised as a gladiator slave
An elf who was willing to destroy his mind body and soul to destroy a legion of demons
The last two are pretty dope as is.
See how that works? It's not about it being deep its about it turning away from a brutal adult story to a kids psa about the powers of family and friendship.
@@babelincoln2092 not sure about the first one 😅😅 in 2020 couple of people at the government kept us locked in our houses for a year 😂😂 for the greater good right? 😉
@@Mindy_T that's the issue i have with the current story, I'm not saying it's a good thing morally, its a game why does it have to be a moral story. I'm saying it's a good story.
@@Mindy_T like that comment encapsulates what alot of us have a problem with. Who the fuck cares what our government did in relation to a fictional story. Why insert that garbage into wow
This is the same dude that can’t handle the sun. Peak masculinity
It's funny how the least masculine men speak the loudest on what's masculine.
Oh being basically a half ginger, therefor not being able to handle the sun means that you aren't masculine now?
Makes absolutely sense.
Peak arguementation and intelligence.
@@Skid235 It's genetics it's not masculine if you crumble to the sun bud. Just like it's not masculine to be short. Yeah it makes absolute sense KEK.
Easier to attack the person than their points when you can't argue with them.
@@Zantetsudex Yeah, its not like this whole thread is basically that but with asmongolds opinion instead, weird when other people start doing it as well to show how stupid it is hu?
At this point people like asmon would be fine if garrosh and arthas came back and ended up making out. That’s peak wow story.
I think both sides have a point. Anduin suffering PTSD and pushing through that, yes it can be impactful storytelling. However, every expansion with anduin he's always got something going on that makes him act "soapy" I guess is the word I'll use. His inner character in general just feels like it hasn't evolved since MOP and it's getting kinda old. With that being said, being dragged along with that same character can understandably make one reminisce of other days such as the badassery that was arthas, the lich king, uther, gladiator/Liberator thrall, etc.
There are enough "butch" wargames on the market. Leave WoW alone. Go find another game that's more up your alley
WoW is growing right alongside us and part of growth is dealing with hardship in ways that aren't self sabotaging
best part made my day 26:07
Apples and oranges.
That is exactly what the problem might be.
He wanted apples
And now it’s an orange?
Idk.
I like both. 🤷🏻
I enjoyed Dragon Flight for what it is, a great adventure. But I would love for their story to be a little less Marvel and a lot more Arcane. That show gave us an example of modern grit and stakes.
I have been a HUGE lore nerd ever since WC3.
I have no idea what asmon is talking about and I dont think he has ANY idea what he is talking about either.
How do you go from "We will never be slaves!" to Chromie talking about her feelings and not perceive a shift in the game's writing that doesn't appeal to the older fans?
@@picklefathernurgle2719 Lmao another noob that gets his lore from cinematic trailers
@@tekamer6566 Do you have to be a loremaster to perceive a tonal shift in a piece of media? You can deflect all you want by insulting my knowledge of the game, but WoW's writing team has been gutted by the lawsuit, resulting in all the new hires and writing staff being younger people who are now using the game's plot as a form of therapy. Grow up, dude.
@@picklefathernurgle2719 You bring up writer change, and lawsuits yet you get your lore from cutscenes which those "Lore writers" barely have anything to do with.
You only look at surface level stuff and get offended when your "critisism" gets called out.
Im gonna bet you know Nearly NOTHING about the writing team that you try and talk sht about.
@@tekamer6566 You keep saying my lore is wrong: refute the points I brought up. What about the story am I wrong about?
Oh, that's right. Nothing, because I didn't bring up the lore, I brought up a tonal/presentational shift in the way the game's narrative is presented.
You're just trying to shut me down because you don't like what I'm saying. And you don't like what I'm saying because you know I'm right about this for whatever irrational, emotional reason.
WoW has always had some soft tender elements to it, but it wasn't the foundation behind the whole narrative. there's no doubt that WoW has become more like a disney movie than ever before. it's lost a lot of the darker grit it used to have.
Man, I'd love to see the two of them actually talk to eachother about what they think about the story
It’s crazy how they don’t like people coming together. Yet they cry about raids and dungeons being able to be cued eroding the social norms. I think it is really pathetic. The mmo is originally all about coming together and support each other. How is this hard to grasp.
It’s always frustrating to me when people are very loud about their opinion of the story being lame, but they don’t read ANY quest text and never have, and don’t really care about the characters just wanna see Michael Bay come in and blow stuff up 💀
Dude the legion cinematic was so fucking good
I think my issue with this is that its one sided. The people like asmongold or more accurately, his average viewer, get annoyed by anything but the most basic levels of thought or depth, and can only ignore it when people are smashing shit on the screen at the same time, but as someone like you or me who really enjoys both types of things, we dont complain when there is nothing going on but basic manly man shit, I keep saying these people dont understand plot more than whats directly infront of them, and it doesnt matter how you deliver it to them, they arent going to care, ever. It's unfortunate because i think hes just been catering to his audience for too long, i know hes not stupid, and i like him a lot on most topics that arent wow lore or certain current events, but its bothersome that these people just keep getting louder when the viewers of his or new warcraft fans are not going to stick around either way, they arent bringing anything positive to the discussion, they want it their way, ONLY.
I love pyro, and i do like some elements of the wow lore & storytelling, but i’m sorry - the current story is far too disney-ish.
The amirdrassil cinematic negates a lot of good work done via characters like iridikron.
Also, Anduin’s *specific* trauma is a shit writing choice. It doesn’t hit right. Losing a daughter/a brother/ a friend as a result of his choices - for example - would have been better choices for his trauma if thats the story they wanted to tell
The perception warcraft is a soft emotional atm, but in classic+ it was all war/fun and tough is objectively wrong.
The people who are accusing blizzard to put their worldviews in to the game are hypocrites. Wow was always like this but it just doesnt have their worldview and they are kinda projection it.
They never mention the history how different races are created. All are inspired by stigmatic and simplified old views/perceptions of different human cultures from the early 2000. This was a broad mindset common in the western world. They didnt knew better but that doesnt mean it should stay this way.
For example the strong difference between alliance and horde races(Look at the first 2 cinematics for proof) Humans diplomates who serve the light from medieval western europe(france/english), Pandarian asian/chinese, dwarfs scottish/irish and now horde from vanila: troll vodoo canibals from carabien, orcs brutes from africa and tauren tribe culture from mongolia. Clearly i can see some worldviews here...
The devs atm are trying to make a true'er version. They hired real cultural antropologist and their imput are just classing with their mindset. I think wow tries to tell the story about war on a bigger and local scale, the cost of war and the war inside. I dont play wow at this moment because i dont like the dragon fantasy trope and i tried df. Back then being a armchair keyboard warrior I forced my personal taste to the internet and mostly on the forums. But i became ware of this toxic behavior(starting to think i shouldnt comment xD)i chose to wait this expansion out and try other games. I suggest to do the same for those people.
I think its another thing that characters dont have enough diversity of personalities. people are just different or rather archetypes of people matter especially in fiction and narratives. later on in the video i found it interesting when you were talking about how people are drawn to different things. In earlier times, there was a theory of personality temperaments: melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. There's another version of from India of 4 types. I'm sure in China and Japan they have their own things whether its chinese zodiac, elements like feng shui or blood types. Carl Jung of course notorious for MBTI and the 16 archetypes. I'm not fully sure but maybe WoW has just lost some of the characters that really stand out to be badass, noble, imperfect but noticeable as well as those epic action oriented scenes. Think about it, we lost illidan for now, we lost varian, thrall has changed, (although is a badass is more like a badass that is in touch with our humanity, something like INFJ from MBTI). Probably more. Man this video was great, hope he reacts to it
Saurfang lost his child twice because he got ressurected as an undead.
Anduin got temporarly mindcontroled and basically was forced to do nothing except fight his friends once. Being mind controled has happened to inumerous characters in WOW, it's not the be all end all of "dark".
He does look like a pussy if he has PTSD seeing as he is surrounded by characters who went through much worse
Can you point out those characters?
Anduin’s been through a hell of a lot throughout his story arc and to just boil it down to oh he got mind controlled he’s a pussy is disingenuous.
He never got a chance to process any of the fucked up shit he’s been through.
He lost his mother in the defias riots, onyxia literally got close to his father and split his soul in to two halves when he was kidnapped.
He was a PoW during Garroshes reign, and we all know PoW’s wouldn’t have been treated with any decency under garrosh.
His body was broken as a child when garrosh slammed him against the divine bell.
His father was killed in legion and the mantle of king immediately thrust on to him before he was even ready to accept it.
The events of BFA and the amount of lives lost is definitely something I feel like he takes on his self.
And then to top it all off, you had the jailer and sylvanas literally dominate him and turn his memories and his faith in the light against him.
Do you not think all that warrants PTSD?
Every badass “hyper masculine” character ever has an extensive back story if you just look deep enough.
@@Spartavian95 Yeah and that backstory meant nothing because he was controled by the Jailer for one raid, it's nonsense.
Other characters? You're already making my point, yeah every "hyper masculine" character (stop saying masculine like it's a bad thing), went throught a lot, worse than Anduin.
It makes no sense that this is the event that breaks him. It's like if Thrall randomly started having PTSD from being a slave for the alliance
I think asmon is right on that surface level. I have been playing since Vanilla and I did not care about the story at all at first, TBC did not make much sense to me but I loved the gameplay. Wrath was cool and titan lore was when I began to read about it more BUT it was those insane cinematics that kept me hooked, Arthas teasing players throughout leveling was well done. For me and imo most players WoD was 1st expansion that had amazing storytelling without player ever needing to read those quests, NPCs were talking to you, quests lined up to each other and cutscenes were amazing. Cutscenes and voice acting are the most important delivery techniques for vast majority of players and those suck then whole game kinda sucks too...atleast this is my understanding of asmongolds view.
Bearing witness to trauma, and needing to talk with someone about it, AND DOING SO... is the exact opposite of being weak. Being strong enough to ask for helping bearing that load is noble, and is to be emulated (agreeing with what I understood Pyro to be reacting as!) - but what do I know, I'm just a former FF/EMT who's seen a few things. Look after each other, folks. Good vid, Pyro.
It’s very important for the surface level story to be cool. The majority of players don’t look deep in the story. DF cinematics and quests has focused a lot on the pussy sh!t parts of the story instead of the dark parts of it. Also, the graphic design of the dragon aspects look a lot more smooth and moisturized. Just look at how tougher the older models looked. It very clearly seems like they’re softening up the game as if they’re catering to kids. Just the existence of Chromie’s character is proof of it.
There have always been and ever shall be soft spots in WoW. What you have shown here proves that. People who forget that, will end up with empty shells and sorrow. Soft spots are pivotal to the entire story lore and world of Azeroth. Even real life has its soft spots. People need to chill the F out.
asmon said wow needs more characters like fyrak
If Asmon has an argumentation flaw it's that it often becomes everybody, nobody, one extreme, other extreme. Like, the game isn't worse if you have some of the "soft stuff" as expressed, and the game could also be better if it has some of those iconic epic characters or moments; above all it's better if it's actually told well. I think with Asmon it's basically just the visual vibe that resonates, since that's one of the redeeming qualities of Garrosh, an oft-cited paragon of WoW characters from him. I remember large parts of that character's existence, he was disliked by the community at large, and personally I think he's a good example of being woefully written to force expansion plots.
It's really silly tbh, I think a lot of people would agree that Cairne was a great and visually iconic horde character for example. Where would he fit right in? That's right, Dragonflight, but also literally every other expansion. That's because he was cool, had a soft side, and just worked as a character. I don't think they succeed all of the time for sure, but they do sometimes, and it has nothing to do with the manliness imo.
People complaining about the whole Anduin thing has no idea that this dude is about to become the real hero they want during the World Soul Saga
You know what the problem is with your statement?
And why I dont like the Anduin story:
Its because we have been seeing Anduin "HAVING HIS BADASS GROWING MOMENT" over and Over again THE SAME MOMENT since Legion...
HE NEVER GROWS JACK SHIT, He has SEEN SO MUCH SHIT, AND SUDDENLY because some Bald Motherfucker in the afterlife mind controlled him THAT was the thing that "Traumatized him" So fucking much, BECAUSE AT THE END OF BFA HE WAS FINE!!!
its just BAD WRITING the fact that Anduin is NEVER actually achieving ANYTHING, and at the end of every expansion everything that happened before means jack shit.
this is why Anduin is seen as a BITCH, and also because he keeps getting compared to all the characters that where all grown battle hardened men before him.
Yes I get it he is the Youngest character to this date to be in a fucking war, but Still... He SHOULD´VE been over it by now, this is why the whole PTSD shit doesnt get through, because it has been presented in a SUCKY way.
If WoW didn't have a bit of "softness" and "boringness" and was all about brutality, action and badassery then I don't think it would have survived for very long. Characters like Arthas, Illidan, Garrosh and so on are only as Badass as they are BECAUSE they have some deep and sometimes tragic lore.
Dragonflight's introduction cinematic was definitely lacking the classic WoW touch. Felt like it was moreso blizzard saying "We're going back to our roots". I mean, Wrath cinematic is chilling, Cata sets the scene of, "This Dragon has decided to destroy what we know, and hes succeeding." Pandaria was "Yes we fight, but we need to fight something thats worth fighting.". Coming together to overcome the new threat, which has been the theme since TBC. WoD was setting the scene of the Iron Horde, and just how Hellscream (both of them) lead their people. Legion was once again forgetting the previous problems, it was to show Varian accepting he may die, and he has Anduin to thank for people able to trust people from the Horde. BfA was introduction to the WAR, how both sides follow their leaders, and for different reasons. Shadowlands was to setup the fracturing of what we know to be real, and to show us the Shadowlands.
Every single expac before Dragonflight got me to feel some way about the lore and the implications, but dragonflight, even though i care about the Dragons, was hey, we're GOING BACK! And it really just felt like "The watchers have withered, but someone lit the fire"
Warcraft is "PTSD: The Game" pretty much. You analize all the big names on the lore a bit and you find so many of their actions being fueled by some form of trauma or stress that comes from either war itself or the consequences of it. Grom and Garrosh, Varok Saurfang, Thrall, Jaina, Sylvannas, Arthas, Tyrande, Anduin and so many others. I would agree that there are more interesting ways to show how much the main characters are struggling, as in better to just having them being so "in your face" about talking about their emotions, but outright saying that WoW has always been this "boring lame paste" of a story where all it used to be was just "muscular hairy sweaty men fighting each other" is just pure bs.
also there is a big perception filter in our brain that makes you reflect on things far in past in more positive light than when you lived it ... unless it is some deep trauma that you cant process till today... nostalgia glasses are especially strong with wow players and thats why they milk the classic and remix and all and it works
W fucking take.
As a fan of the goblin king it is frustrating to hear his view on narrative sometimes. Just because he is unwilling to engage with the aspects of the narrative that he thinks is infecting the current one does not mean they havnt been there the whole time. He's a smart guy and can critically engage with those aspects but willingly chooses not too. Its disappointing.
I actually really like the PTSD story it adds depth.
But.
What I don't like is how sudden that came to be. He could've tried to return as a ruler and kind of fail there.
The story doesn’t need to be soft as fuck to make sense. It could make sense in dark ways too.
Depicting fairly accurate PTSD is pretty much the antithesis to being soft. Yet that's what people are crying about.
The last two expansions were dark and people hated them lmao
@@SeralyneYTreally now? In an god damn fantasy world like WoW you gonna bring garbage like this were it doesn’t reflect at all how the game had been on about? Garbage about feelings about muh mental HEEEEEAAAAAAT like now are you gonna have an quest about Therapy? LITERALLY no one played WoW for god damn PTSD mental health talk, and feeefees cuz we need an therapy session !!!
@@RavenL1337 What is the most common after affect of war, death aside? PTSD. Depicting the personal darkness is more gritty than Warcraft has ever been, if you ask me.
Ah. Right. Dark to you guys can only mean people committing genocides. Got it.
@@RavenL1337 you sound like you got your own ptsd bud. It's a game.
19:00 The moment he says "awesome" it seems his IQ drops by 50 points.
And "I didn't change" might also mean that he is stuck at being 13 years old.
BTW All these viewers including Asmon loves Elden Ring and SUPRISE SUPRISE !! That games lore is so intragated with emotions, betrayal and love. He just seems siding with the "popular" opinion...
But yet they don’t present it in a soft way…
how you present the story, is EVERYTHING when it comes to the gaming media.
You can have a below average story, but as long as your presentation is on point within your game, a below average story, can be elevated to abow average.
And modern day wow presentation, is just a bad way to get the player to like the story
Wow has kinda become a bit soft. They still have the “bad guys” but it’s not what it used to be
The entire thrall storyline was an obvious allegory for racism from the very start... This is like people complaining about RATM going political.
12:36 yes sir, that’s a speech
Pyro "You have to pay attention to the story to be aware of it."
Dude, that's the issue. Not everyone is loremaster. It's BOOORING ... "The Fyrak. Who's that? Iridicron? I already forgot... Nightelves tree far away from Kalmdor, that's big "boring," bro.Aren't they in Moonglade or something. Why isn't tree there. Imagine they had like those mountain hanging monorail made from leaves a wood that goes from Moonglade tree to Mt.Hyal tree or something like that, and they build New Darnassus in Moonglade. The lore that makes sense keeps attention.
ty my fellow Oregonian
this PTSD shit is super real and hardcore
Asmongold is absolutely right on this topic. Warcraft 2 has the essence of Warcraft. Warcraft 3 refined it into an epic story. After WoW it was already a downhill regarding the style, but until Wrath it was ok as the old material was still there.
Honestly, I don't believe the issue is the subject matter itself, but the saturation of it. The truth is that feminine archetypes (in the literary sense) of storytelling are more pervasive now in media, and some people really want to have *something* that's more action-oriented. Warcraft used to be that kind of intellectual property. It was about *doing* instead of processing, and for many people, contemplative storytelling is just not all that interesting. They want to see things happen.
I met azmongold once in real life at blizzcon.. he had a circle of dudebros around him, all of them in pure ecstasy while azmongold told them why he hadn't showered in a week... since that day i've blocked his channel and anything that shows his face.. it still surprises me that he managed to gather such a large following.