When did the trogg invasion of gnomergan happen?

[Psyren]

I agree with Glyphstone - they've had some stellar cinematics, especially lately. Granted, a good cinematic does not mean a good story.

Like, "let's turn our game in a long succession of short movies turning everything the actual players do into background noise at best"?

If Overwatch is any indication, I sometimes think Blizzard would just rather be an animation studio at this point. Imagine, all that Pixar money, and nobody screaming at you because PvP is unbalanced.

Eh, the number of people who seek out MMOs for the plot is probably in the single digits. I'm willing to settle for "not actively offensive with its stupidity" if its pretty.

While plot isn't my biggest concern either, I definitely notice if it's bad. Just about everything in BFA's plot was a steaming pile, and it actively hurt my enjoyment of even the good parts of the expansion (like the cinematics, as noted above.)

[Spore]

I have long since accepted that WoWs major NPCs are ****ing gloryhounds. They let their armies do every little bit of dirtywork, then jump into the frame at the last second and steal our thunder.

[Winthur]

I have long since accepted that WoWs major NPCs are ****ing gloryhounds. They let their armies do every little bit of dirtywork, then jump into the frame at the last second and steal our thunder.

Sometimes to the point of warping reality. According to canon, it wasn't a glorious band of mercenaries led by an exasperated general yelling MORE DOTS and THAT'S 50 DKP MINUS at his hapless companions that had Onyxia slain; instead, Varian Wrynn just showed up and solo'd her.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm now morbidly curious - what were the plot beats of BfA that had people so upset, other than the entire basic premise of Faction War Here We Go Again?

[Keltest]

I'm now morbidly curious - what were the plot beats of BfA that had people so upset, other than the entire basic premise of Faction War Here We Go Again?

Well, the war of Thorns (ie the attack on Teldrassil) was totally pointless from a tactical standpoint, Sylvanas' actions made 0 sense in the context of the story given so far, the Old Gods showed up again even though we were told they wouldnt, people were explicitly promised that Sylvanas wouldn't become Garrosh 2.0 and yet here we are, the Horde needed the Alliance to come in and remove their warchief for them, again. The Night Elves get thoroughly shafted here, with them losing their homes, their greatest champion being unable to kill one of the writer's self-insert characters (literally) even though she's empowered by Elune, and then she gets no further characterization even when Azshara shows up, somebody the Night Elves should logically have very strong feelings on.

Basically, Sylvanas picks a fight with the Alliance for no reason, and the Horde just follows along with her, complaining about it being dumb the whole time without doing anything about it, until eventually the Alliance wins, at which point the plot takes a real 90 degree change into even dumber territory.

[Resileaf]

Well, the war of Thorns (ie the attack on Teldrassil) was totally pointless from a tactical standpoint, Sylvanas' actions made 0 sense in the context of the story given so far, the Old Gods showed up again even though we were told they wouldnt, people were explicitly promised that Sylvanas wouldn't become Garrosh 2.0 and yet here we are, the Horde needed the Alliance to come in and remove their warchief for them, again. The Night Elves get thoroughly shafted here, with them losing their homes, their greatest champion being unable to kill one of the writer's self-insert characters (literally) even though she's empowered by Elune, and then she gets no further characterization even when Azshara shows up, somebody the Night Elves should logically have very strong feelings on.

Basically, Sylvanas picks a fight with the Alliance for no reason, and the Horde just follows along with her, complaining about it being dumb the whole time without doing anything about it, until eventually the Alliance wins, at which point the plot takes a real 90 degree change into even dumber territory.

Personally, there's also the whole 'Allying with Kul Tiras and the Zandalari for their navies' that is negated almost literally the second those navies join their respective factions. The Zandalari navy explodes, courtesy of the Alliance (And Rastakhan dies for the sole purpose to get his less interesting daughter on the throne), then the Kul Tiras navy is drowned by Azshara, with assistance from Sylvanas and Nathanos.

Oh, and the storyline with Xal'athah (iirc), the shadow priest dagger, which requires the player character to be the dumbest person (especially if you were a shadow priest in Legion) in the universe and ends with you helping N'zoth in his plot to get free. That was so disgusting to me that I refused to even start it.

[Psyren]

he Night Elves get thoroughly shafted here, with them losing their homes, their greatest champion being unable to kill one of the writer's self-insert characters (literally) even though she's empowered by Elune, and then she gets no further characterization even when Azshara shows up, somebody the Night Elves should logically have very strong feelings on.

TWO of their greatest champions actually One of whom became an avatar of their goddess, and the other being the most powerful druid on the planet.

More disappointingly though, the Warfronts all this narrative was created to explain didn't mean anything. They boiled down to a gimmicky game-mode that would rotate every couple of weeks between factions that combined the worst parts of both MMO Warcraft and RTS Warcraft, and whose rewards generally stopped being worth it after the first fortnight. They could never get the PvP versions working (not that I would have participated anyway) so it ended up being a toothless participation-trophy mode with no challenge and no interesting gameplay.

More dumbness:

1) The Alliance only "won" the war because Saurfang, Lor'themar and a few others rebelled. The game makes it pretty clear they were actually losing conventionally. Keep in mind that canonically the Alliance have starships with orbital lasers, on top of being the only faction with a decent navy, until Azshara showed up again. Speaking of which...

2) Apparently we left the Pillars of Creation just lying around in the Broken Shore. Keep in mind that wasn't even the last patch of that expansion, so it's not like we got distracted by the planet-stabby climax or anything. You'd think Azshara stealing back the Tidestone of Golganneth would have been noticed by someone, but apparently not.

3) The way the Horde lost their navy was pretty dumb (they sent their entire army into the swamp), but the way the Alliance lost theirs was somehow even dumber. They sent the whole thing onto open water chasing after 2-3 Horde ships?

4) The navies never ended up mattering anyway - not to the warfronts where the fighting was supposedly thickest (one of which was landlocked anyway), and certainly not to the island expeditions.

5) N'zoth never ended up mattering either. An old god breaking loose is the kind of thing that should have had effects all over the world. Say what you will about Cataclysm's missteps, at least Deathwing could show up and burninate you no matter where you were or what you were doing - it felt like much more of an event. N'zoth took over two old zones, set up corrupted versions of just two of our capital cities, dropped a few obelisks into the same dungeons we'd been running for months at that point and... that was it.

[Lord Raziere]

TWO of their greatest champions actually One of whom became an avatar of their goddess, and the other being the most powerful druid on the planet.

More disappointingly though, the Warfronts all this narrative was created to explain didn't mean anything. They boiled down to a gimmicky game-mode that would rotate every couple of weeks between factions that combined the worst parts of both MMO Warcraft and RTS Warcraft, and whose rewards generally stopped being worth it after the first fortnight. They could never get the PvP versions working (not that I would have participated anyway) so it ended up being a toothless participation-trophy mode with no challenge and no interesting gameplay.

More dumbness:

1) The Alliance only "won" the war because Saurfang, Lor'themar and a few others rebelled. The game makes it pretty clear they were actually losing conventionally. Keep in mind that canonically the Alliance have starships with orbital lasers, on top of being the only faction with a decent navy, until Azshara showed up again. Speaking of which...

2) Apparently we left the Pillars of Creation just lying around in the Broken Shore. Keep in mind that wasn't even the last patch of that expansion, so it's not like we got distracted by the planet-stabby climax or anything. You'd think Azshara stealing back the Tidestone of Golganneth would have been noticed by someone, but apparently not.

3) The way the Horde lost their navy was pretty dumb (they sent their entire army into the swamp), but the way the Alliance lost theirs was somehow even dumber. They sent the whole thing onto open water chasing after 2-3 Horde ships?

4) The navies never ended up mattering anyway - not to the warfronts where the fighting was supposedly thickest (one of which was landlocked anyway), and certainly not to the island expeditions.

5) N'zoth never ended up mattering either. An old god breaking loose is the kind of thing that should have had effects all over the world. Say what you will about Cataclysm's missteps, at least Deathwing could show up and burninate you no matter where you were or what you were doing - it felt like much more of an event. N'zoth took over two old zones, set up corrupted versions of just two of our capital cities, dropped a few obelisks into the same dungeons we'd been running for months at that point and... that was it.

Wow, I really jumped off that sinking ship. glad to know I was right to do so.

its a shame really. I actually like the grey vs. grey kitchen sink set up for a fantasy world WoW has where orcs and such aren't necessarily evil but neither are they on humans side. it has a lot of potential for good conflicts, plots and so on, it just that a lot of times the plots they do with it are poorly executed. like they have good foundation, its just that they keep screwing up what they build on top of it. wish I could take WoW or at least its premise and do something better with it. like this whole Battle for Azeroth thing is just a good example of poor execution of the general premise all around.

[The Glyphstone]

BfA does, to what little credit it gets, appear to have cleaned out the last name on the list of Big Bad Whatevers that infested the setting - all of the Old Gods, Azshara, Gul'Dan, Deathwing, Arthas, even Sargeras is gone. Despite its terrible opening cinematic, Shadowlands looks to be the first step WoW will be taking into genuinely "new" story. Does anyone have hope left of its ability to tread new ground successfully? Or will this just end up as a 'Greatest Hits of Dead Famous NPCs' parade, where we fight through the raid bosses Ghost of Gul'Dan, Ghost of Arthas, and Ghost of A Successful MMO Franchise?

[Rodin]

BfA does, to what little credit it gets, appear to have cleaned out the last name on the list of Big Bad Whatevers that infested the setting - all of the Old Gods, Azshara, Gul'Dan, Deathwing, Arthas, even Sargeras is gone. Despite its terrible opening cinematic, Shadowlands looks to be the first step WoW will be taking into genuinely "new" story. Does anyone have hope left of its ability to tread new ground successfully? Or will this just end up as a 'Greatest Hits of Dead Famous NPCs' parade, where we fight through the raid bosses Ghost of Gul'Dan, Ghost of Arthas, and Ghost of A Successful MMO Franchise?

Maybe they should poach the Hearthstone writing team. Rafaam stealing Dalaran by strapping rocket engines to it was far more entertaining than any of the stuff I just read up there.

At least, I assume Hearthstone is a separate continuity and Dalaran didn't go rocketing into the sunset in the MMO...

[Psyren]

BfA does, to what little credit it gets, appear to have cleaned out the last name on the list of Big Bad Whatevers that infested the setting - all of the Old Gods, Azshara, Gul'Dan, Deathwing, Arthas, even Sargeras is gone. Despite its terrible opening cinematic, Shadowlands looks to be the first step WoW will be taking into genuinely "new" story. Does anyone have hope left of its ability to tread new ground successfully? Or will this just end up as a 'Greatest Hits of Dead Famous NPCs' parade, where we fight through the raid bosses Ghost of Gul'Dan, Ghost of Arthas, and Ghost of A Successful MMO Franchise?

Azshara isn't gone. We saved her from Nya'lotha, she handed us an empty dagger, and then she went off to continue scheming elsewhere.

As for Sargeras - he's locked in a Titan jail with Illidan of all people. Yeah, that'll end well.
(Not to mention, his sword is STILL sticking out of the planet.)

Maybe they should poach the Hearthstone writing team. Rafaam stealing Dalaran by strapping rocket engines to it was far more entertaining than any of the stuff I just read up there.

At least, I assume Hearthstone is a separate continuity and Dalaran didn't go rocketing into the sunset in the MMO...

In theory, most of the stuff in Hearthstone could have happened at some point in Azeroth's history while our attention was elsewhere. There were after all three expansions between Wrath and Legion where stuff could have been going down in Dalaran that didn't need Azeroth's resident ass-kickers.

The Lich King expansion was definitely non-canon though.

[Lord Raziere]

BfA does, to what little credit it gets, appear to have cleaned out the last name on the list of Big Bad Whatevers that infested the setting - all of the Old Gods, Azshara, Gul'Dan, Deathwing, Arthas, even Sargeras is gone. Despite its terrible opening cinematic, Shadowlands looks to be the first step WoW will be taking into genuinely "new" story. Does anyone have hope left of its ability to tread new ground successfully? Or will this just end up as a 'Greatest Hits of Dead Famous NPCs' parade, where we fight through the raid bosses Ghost of Gul'Dan, Ghost of Arthas, and Ghost of A Successful MMO Franchise?

that isn't really the problem. the problem is, that even if they tread new exciting ground, they're not going to handle it well. they're perfectly capable of coming up with new characters and new exicting things, the question is whether they will handle the plot and decision-making of those characters and those things in way that will lead to a good story. because the problem with all those you just list weren't that they were there, its that they were used up like garbage and thrown out one after another getting brief doomsday villain moments out of nowhere where they cackle evilly before getting stomped on, instead of being continual players in an evolving story to influence this and that. thats the problem with a lot of WoW storytelling, they bring up a character you haven't seen in forever to suddenly do a thing then throw them away.

like just look at how they handle Warchiefs: first there was Thrall for vanilla, BC and WotLk then Garrosh for Cataclysm and Pandaria then Vol'jin for Warlords of Draenor then Sylvanas for Legion and BFA. thats like four different warchiefs in a shockingly small amount of time in universe, we're talking people who rule only a couple years at best in universe, and two expansions at most. thats not a good thing. though apparently there is now a Horde council instead? also apparently Gallywix and Sylvanas is no longer a leader? thats a few steps in a better direction.

but still the problem is that they get an awesome idea for something epic, then they botch how it actually goes in practice. because they get hyped on some big actiony scene or event and such which they do well, its just that they don't think of how to set it up or how to make things lead to it, they just force characters to make it happen. thats why we get Sylvanas getting away with stuff she shouldn't and revolts happening later than they should, because by rights Syvlanas should not have gotten as far as she did. but they required the plot to happen, so they had Varok run into hiding rather than start the revolt himself and stop this before it really got going. like you'll see it all over WoW writing that people just do things without much explanation because they need them to do something stupid for the plot to happen, rather than figuring out the most plausible way to lead up to that decision being made.

because when characters do something, its in service to some greater all controlling plot that Blizzard wants to make happen no matter how artificially they have to force it. they're not the decisions that should naturally be made by the characters, they're the decisions that being force for them to be made no matter little sense it is for them to make them, by the plot. sure it will be a new plot, but people will just continue to make decisions that don't make sense for them in service to it rather making it natural for them to make those decisions and thus create the plot from them.

[Rodin]

Most of the problems can be traced back to the factions. Having only two sides for the players to be on makes storytelling difficult. If Garrosh or Sylvanas or whomever goes nuts, half the world has to wind up following them because the only two choices are Horde or Alliance. Heck, it even goes back to vanilla. The Forsaken being part of the Horde is nonsensical and always has been. Thrall wouldn't be interested in allying with them, the Forsaken are on a different continent and have radically different goals and ethics. They just got thrown together because "good guy faction vs bad guy faction".

This same problem shows itself in the Raid bosses. Every Raid boss must be hated by both sides to make it so all the players can participate in the Raid. Hence the endless procession of Old Gods, demons, dragons, and other generic "end of the world" monsters. Hence why all the nuance was sucked out of Illidan when he became a Raid boss - he needed to be an unambiguous bad guy for the player to fight.

I don't think the writing for WoW has gotten worse. I don't think it was ever good. The format of an MMO is not conducive to telling a good story, and WoW's format of "two sides, and both must always win" is particularly bad.

[Amechra]

1) The Alliance only "won" the war because Saurfang, Lor'themar and a few others rebelled. The game makes it pretty clear they were actually losing conventionally. Keep in mind that canonically the Alliance have starships with orbital lasers, on top of being the only faction with a decent navy, until Azshara showed up again. Speaking of which...

I stopped caring about Warcraft after Frozen Throne, so... what? When did that happen?

[Lord Raziere]

I stopped caring about Warcraft after Frozen Throne, so... what? When did that happen?

somewhere about the time they started acquiring Draenei as a playable race, who are basically blue space goat anti-devils that devils are made from by corrupting them, who worship beings of light and symbol aaaaaand basically travel in spaceships, then acquired even better Draenei from an alternate timeline who have functioning spaceships that can do things that are not "be broken wrecks/makeshift homes". by going up to them and saying "hey you having trouble with those orcs? let us help you with that." while the orcs in the horde was basically going "we gotta save our mothers and fathers from being corrupted by demons".

[Resileaf]

somewhere about the time they started acquiring Draenei as a playable race, who are basically blue space goat anti-devils that devils are made from by corrupting them, who worship beings of light and symbol aaaaaand basically travel in spaceships, then acquired even better Draenei from an alternate timeline who have functioning spaceships that can do things that are not "be broken wrecks/makeshift homes". by going up to them and saying "hey you having trouble with those orcs? let us help you with that." while the orcs in the horde was basically going "we gotta save our mothers and fathers from being corrupted by demons".

Just a correction, the Lightforged Draenei are not from an alternate timeline.

The Mag'har orcs the Horde got are, though.

[Spore]

I stopped caring about Warcraft after Frozen Throne, so... what? When did that happen?

You know Burning Crusade and the Draenei crashlanding with their ship/city Exodar? Well, as turns out (read: was retconned) the Draenei built another spaceship, the Vindicaar. It is technically not part of the Alliance but it is manned by Lightforged Draenei (basically elite Draenei baptised by a Naaru), so close enough. The ship was able to bring the armies of both factions to Argus where they killed Kil'Jaeden.

[Amechra]

You know Burning Crusade and the Draenei crashlanding with their ship/city Exodar? Well, as turns out (read: was retconned) the Draenei built another spaceship, the Vindicaar. It is technically not part of the Alliance but it is manned by Lightforged Draenei (basically elite Draenei baptised by a Naaru), so close enough. The ship was able to bring the armies of both factions to Argus where they killed Kil'Jaeden.

Those are words, I guess.

[The Glyphstone]

People like to throw around 'retcon' a lot, but the Vindicaar was explicitly built more or less from scratch on Azeroth in-setting. It even says that in the wiki article...

[Psyren]

Yeah, it's not a retcon - they built it (or maybe just finished building it) after Rakeesh attacked the Exodar and killed O'ros.

[Resileaf]

I think the retcon they refer to is that the Exodar was explicitely repaired in a pre-Cata story (the Shattering, maybe?) and could have took off at any time but during Legion, the Exodar was suddenly broken beyond repair.

[Spore]

People like to throw around 'retcon' a lot, but the Vindicaar was explicitly built more or less from scratch on Azeroth in-setting. It even says that in the wiki article...

Which was what? Like 3ish months before it was finished? Come on, this is a hilariously stupid short amount to build a spaceship that can house TWO ARMIES.

[The Glyphstone]

Improbably fast construction still doesnt make it a retcon. It just makes it unrealistic, which is not something we want in our magical dimension hopping spaceship piloted by alien space goats.

[Lord Raziere]

Improbably fast construction still doesnt make it a retcon. It just makes it unrealistic, which is not something we want in our magical dimension hopping spaceship piloted by alien space goats.

*laughs in bilgewater cartel construction times*

Orc: Silly Alliance, we have a rocket train system, a new city, entirely new weapons of war for our entire military, new reinforced walls for all our buildings and a giant statue of an ugly goblin head blasted into a mountainside from rescuing a bunch of goblins from a jungle island shipwreck with very little resources like yesterday, all the while an apocalypse was happening! orbital spaceship weaponry? pfffh, give the eggheads at bilgewater port some soda and they'll make their ridiculously big cannon flight-worthy and ready to counter it by tomorrow on less money. realism, who needs it? we have goblins

look construction times went bonkers-fast the moment cataclysm dropped and goblins and gnomes started pulling tons of inventions out of nowhere for the new quests and make the alliance and horde more modern military warlike. Alliance constructing that ship that fast, is nothing new. whats puzzling is why the goblins haven't constructed a starship to counter it yet, but then later WoW is heavy on plot and epic actions scenes and light on logic in general.

[Rodin]

The introduction of literal starships and the Protoss "Draenei" to the setting was about the time I completely checked out on Warcraft lore. Hell, I wasn't even happy about them changing their mind about the Draenei and making them holy goat men. They were far more interesting as the surviving natives of Draenor. I'm not sure you can call it a retcon but it's pretty darn close, as "this race has a spaceship and looks nothing like this" was clearly not in the minds of the people who wrote Warcraft III.

[Psyren]

look construction times went bonkers-fast the moment cataclysm dropped and goblins and gnomes started pulling tons of inventions out of nowhere for the new quests and make the alliance and horde more modern military warlike. Alliance constructing that ship that fast, is nothing new. whats puzzling is why the goblins haven't constructed a starship to counter it yet, but then later WoW is heavy on plot and epic actions scenes and light on logic in general.

Goblins got spaceships as far back as Burning Crusade - but none of those were Bilgewater Cartel. Judging by the GMOD, I suspect that Gallywix's insistence on extravagance and greed is an obstacle to the Horde goblins' progress; if/when Gazlowe ends up taking over, goblin technology will probably allow the Horde to catch up to the Alliance somewhat.

[The Glyphstone]

The whole Dranaei thing was unambiguously a retcon. It's just that it somehow colored opinions of the franchise perpetually, when 99% of the other issues are just the inconsistencies you'd expect from a franchise that has gone on for 20+ years longer than its original writers ever expected it to.

[Rodin]

The whole Dranaei thing was unambiguously a retcon. It's just that it somehow colored opinions of the franchise perpetually, when 99% of the other issues are just the inconsistencies you'd expect from a franchise that has gone on for 20+ years longer than its original writers ever expected it to.

I think it's because the Draenei were so counter to everyone's expectations. I remember that the Draenei being the next playable race was either leaked or guessed well in advance of the announcement. This got people interested, because the Draenei were "The Broken Ones". They would have been an ugly Alliance race to pair nicely with giving the Horde a beautiful race in the Blood Elves.

Then people saw them. They weren't recognizable as Draenei. They hadn't been through any of the hardships that made the Draenei compelling. And they had a starship in a setting that had previously been medieval high fantasy with a sousant of steampunk.

The discussion about retcons got me looking at the Warcraft 2 manual again. It's fascinating reading. Some stuff has aged pretty well, like Kil'jaeden making contact with Gul'dan and corrupting the Horde.

Other stuff has changed radically. The Draenei were wiped out and "not one life was spared" according to Gul'dan. This all happened prior to the corruption of the Horde by Kil'jaeden and Gul'dan. The Horde were unambiguously evil - bloodthirsty warriors who would wipe each other out with no external threat. Their shamanism channeled the Twisting Nether, and warlocks were doing their thing with no demons involved. Medivh was evil because he went insane, not because he was possessed by a demon.

It's a different universe to the one we see even in Warcraft III, let alone a decade into an MMO storyline.

[The Glyphstone]

That is interesting. I always credited Blizzard with inventing the 'noble warrior savage orc' archetype that's been riffed on to no end now, but even they weren't that original to begin with.

[Morty]

Warcraft 1 started out as Warhammer Fantasy with serial numbers filed off. Retcons were inevitable once the setting started to grow beyond a paper-thin "good humans vs. evil orcs" premise. And on average the setting was retconned into something more interesting, rather than less. I think the draenei retcon is just more obvious than others and with rather questionable motives.