World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Psquit]

yeah, I know. it's just that it bothers me that I know how it all ends (all story plots).

 

[Talby]

The Horde would be more interesting if they weren't always chaotic evil demon worshippers, but even under Thrall's "good" leadership they still had darkness and do things the humans would consider abhorrent, like goblin sappers, ritual sacrifices and slavery. You can still have a faction that is striving to be good while being held back by their dark nature.

The Alliance would be more interesting if they were more jingoistic and imperialist, looked down on the lesser races, etc. Leaders like Garithos and Daelin Proudmoore are more representative of the Alliance I like than Anduin and Jaina.

 

[Popiel]

The Horde would be more interesting if they weren't always chaotic evil demon worshippers, but even under Thrall's "good" leadership they still had darkness and do things the humans would consider abhorrent, like goblin sappers, ritual sacrifices and slavery. You can still have a faction that is striving to be good while being held back by their dark nature.

Hell, even W3 itself disproves the notion that Horde was supposedly wholly retconned into bein' noble savage tribes misled and thus corrupted. Grom spits it out for Thrall: orcs are brutal by nature and that’s why they work with fel power so effectively. It was nicely expanded upon in some WoW material, even in WoD (which, when it comes to its lore contributions, is somewhat underappreciated IMO).

PS Yes, you can say that Grom is not a good example ‘cause he was already previously corrupted, but that’s circular logic, there were no uncorrupred orcs at some point save some extremely rare exceptions (them being mag’har, and guess what, mag’har produced Garrosh... which is a whole another subject).

The Alliance would be more interesting if they were more jingoistic and imperialist, looked down on the lesser races, etc. Leaders like Garithos and Daelin Proudmoore are more representative of the Alliance I like than Anduin and Jaina.

Yep. Truth be told they sort of are touchin' upon that from time to time: Night Warrior storyline brings back some familiar nightelven beats from W3 (Tyrande tossin' severed orc head into a moonwell to please Elune, fuck yeah, please do that more) and worgen in general are on the verge of goin' apeshit against the Horde under Genn (who is wholly justified in his actions BTW). It's just Anduin who drags the faction down and will continue to do so.

I don’t mean to say that in general WoW-era lore is a net positive: it’s not. It just has some nice things in it, which is a given considerin’ the amount of lore it’s spoutin’.

PS Yrel-Hitler and Light-Nazism can prove to be a nice contribution if they ever decide to expand upon what's goin' on in the alternate Draenor.

 

[J1M]

It works for warhammer.

Warhammer also has a dozen factions (if not more) which gives it a lot more leeway. Warcraft has 2. Always Chaotic Evil faction isn't too hammy when you have other factions that inhabit all the shades of grey - but it's boring when you only have the opposite. Popiel put it well.

Alliance
Horde
Undead
Night Elves
Naga

All playable in the campaign.

You could also argue that Demons and other races serve as other factions too.

 

[Popiel]

Alliance
Horde
Undead
Night Elves
Naga

All playable in the campaign.

You could also argue that Demons and other races serve as other factions too.

But you do know that almost all (almost 'cause you could argue that orcish deathknights were undead) of these were added as a part of the retcon done in W3 in order to broaden the world.

You could make night elves, naga and undead + keep orcs as WE ARE EVUHL, but that would probably end with Blizzard receivin' polite yet stern copyright infringement lawsuit from Games Workshop...

 

[Beastro]

But it was a good retcon to be honest. How interesting is a setup in which GOOD GUYS IN ARMOUR beat BAD GUYS WITH GREEN SKIN WHO WORSHIP LITERAL DEMONS (that's W1 and W2 is you didn't get me meanin'). Come on guys.

Issue I ultimately have is how after WC3 they tried to have the Horde be both the evil faction and be the misunderstood noble savage. It caused a disconnect in original WoW that made them wind up being the runner up good guy faction with a little edginess to them.

 

[GarfunkeL]

J1M as Popiel said, those were added in the W3 retcon. You cannot simultaneously argue that W3 lore retcon fucked things up AND expanding things in a satisfying way. Furthermore, aside from Naga, all those are actually either part of Alliance or Horde.

Issue I ultimately have is how after WC3 they tried to have the Horde be both the evil faction and be the misunderstood noble savage. It caused a disconnect in original WoW that made them wind up being the runner up good guy faction with a little edginess to them.

Well, that's a problem that WoW created because they went with maintaining 2 opposing factions instead of 3:
Humans + dwarves vs Orcs + trolls vs Night elves + tauren, with more added in expansions. That would leave the Undead as the mundane CHAOTIC EVIL faction alongside the Burning Legion and the Old Gods while also allowing plenty of room for Cold/Hot War-style shenanigans between the factions. But they kinda fucked that up in the W3 orc campaign plot already, not that anyone could see the issues before WoW came out.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Honestly by being MMO the series lore will be fucked anyway because the needs for the player to feel awesome by being in decisive battles so all the plot development moves into "villain of the expansion" format so it will caters the players wish to become AWESOME.

Vanilla WoW is kinda OK. With Burning Crusade it starts to unravel. And every single expansion since follows the format of "which major lore character will we make a raid for the players to kill."

 

[J1M]

Honestly by being MMO the series lore will be fucked anyway because the needs for the player to feel awesome by being in decisive battles so all the plot development moves into "villain of the expansion" format so it will caters the players wish to become AWESOME.

Vanilla WoW is kinda OK. With Burning Crusade it starts to unravel. And every single expansion since follows the format of "which major lore character will we make a raid for the players to kill."

The assumption that raiding needs to be the primary cooperative activity and reward mechanism of every expansion is flawed.

They should have attempted to create variety in the endgame experience instead just options that offer worse rewards than raiding.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

just options that offer worse rewards than raiding.

this is probably the real problem, the pervasive mentality that if content doesn't give the best possible rewards, it's not worth doing.

they could offer many end game alternatives to raiding, but if they give rewards equivalent to raid rewards, raiders will cry that some 'single player noob' has just as good gear and they might as well not put effort into raiding. And if alternatives give worse rewards, nobody will participate.

because, at the end of the day, the players only give a shit about having a slightly higher number on their screen, and care nothing for actually engaging with the damn game. blizzard could release a patch that rewards the best gear to players who players who stay logged off for the longest amount of time, and everybody would stay logged off precisely so that when they log in they'll get a big reward

 

[J1M]

just options that offer worse rewards than raiding.

this is probably the real problem, the pervasive mentality that if content doesn't give the best possible rewards, it's not worth doing.

they could offer many end game alternatives to raiding, but if they give rewards equivalent to raid rewards, raiders will cry that some 'single player noob' has just as good gear and they might as well not put effort into raiding. And if alternatives give worse rewards, nobody will participate.

because, at the end of the day, the players only give a shit about having a slightly higher number on their screen, and care nothing for actually engaging with the damn game. blizzard could release a patch that rewards the best gear to players who players who stay logged off for the longest amount of time, and everybody would stay logged off precisely so that when they log in they'll get a big reward

No, it is just a problem with the designers. They like the safety net of claiming any failure was not a failure because that content was targeted at a mythical demographic that actually loved it, and they also made a raid so stop complaining.

They could easily have decided that helms drop from content like the mage tower challenges or that Chromie single player instance and cloaks require pvp. By just not awarding cloaks and helms in raids you now have 3 vastly different endgame experiences that all matter.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

This thread title...

 

[Avarize]

just options that offer worse rewards than raiding.

this is probably the real problem, the pervasive mentality that if content doesn't give the best possible rewards, it's not worth doing.

they could offer many end game alternatives to raiding, but if they give rewards equivalent to raid rewards, raiders will cry that some 'single player noob' has just as good gear and they might as well not put effort into raiding. And if alternatives give worse rewards, nobody will participate.

because, at the end of the day, the players only give a shit about having a slightly higher number on their screen, and care nothing for actually engaging with the damn game. blizzard could release a patch that rewards the best gear to players who players who stay logged off for the longest amount of time, and everybody would stay logged off precisely so that when they log in they'll get a big reward

The most challenging content has to have the best rewards, though more single player options wouldn't be a bad idea. Visions currently and the tower in Shadowlands seem to be an attempt at expanding endgame outside raids and m+. You can get 470 gear every week by clearing the vision with all masks up, which is only 5 ilvl below mythic.

 

[J1M]

just options that offer worse rewards than raiding.

this is probably the real problem, the pervasive mentality that if content doesn't give the best possible rewards, it's not worth doing.

they could offer many end game alternatives to raiding, but if they give rewards equivalent to raid rewards, raiders will cry that some 'single player noob' has just as good gear and they might as well not put effort into raiding. And if alternatives give worse rewards, nobody will participate.

because, at the end of the day, the players only give a shit about having a slightly higher number on their screen, and care nothing for actually engaging with the damn game. blizzard could release a patch that rewards the best gear to players who players who stay logged off for the longest amount of time, and everybody would stay logged off precisely so that when they log in they'll get a big reward

The most challenging content has to have the best rewards, though more single player options wouldn't be a bad idea. Visions currently and the tower in Shadowlands seem to be an attempt at expanding endgame outside raids and m+. You can get 470 gear every week by clearing the vision with all masks up, which is only 5 ilvl below mythic.

There is no reason that top end gear for every slot needs to all come from the same activity.

 

[Metro]

I suspect most people stop playing because they just don't give a shit about +1 stats and would rather not do the same thing five times for a remote chance at said underwhelming upgrade. The content in BFA is the worst in the history of WoW by a wide margin.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I stopped playing because I like PVP and WoW continues to alienate this side of the playerbase by completely gutting the item rewards awarded from PVP activity, instead opting for forcing everyone to slog through their braindead PVE content in an attempt to RNG their way into the appropriate ilvl / corruption for them.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

WoW PVP hasn't been good since WOTLK. Well, before ICC came out and Shadowmourne ruined everything.

 

[Norfleet]

this is probably the real problem, the pervasive mentality that if content doesn't give the best possible rewards, it's not worth doing.

What, are you implying this isn't true? Because that's how it is. In a typical MMO, the binding constraint is pretty much always equipment slots. You can't compensate for qualitatively inferior gear simply by using more of it. So if it's not best in slot, it's worthless trash. If the game were designed such that you could compensate for using cheaper, inferior gear, by using the savings to deploy MORE of that gear, then maybe this would matter. But it's pretty much always fixed equipment slot counts on a fixed head count. So if it's not best in slot, it's worthless trash.

It's kind of hard to justify the existence of something that serves no practical purpose.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So no one pvps with no or base gear with no perks other than level? Is that possible? I enjoy watching skilled competitors on relatively even ground though, i must say i love underdogs winning as well.

 

[Metro]

Arenas ruined PvP -- that happened in TBC.