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Bellular & Matt discuss the Community Council & Shadowlands
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Watching Pyro lose his shit over the Sylvanas/Shadowlands story, it's not hard to see the exasperation about beloved lore being overridden with new higher-level explanations. The lore drives and constrains the storyline, the storyline drives our immersion and investment … if you start dicking with stuff at the upper end in a major way, that then inevitably flows down as a torrent.
Nothing about the Shadowlands made any sense to me, nothing about the behaviour of any of the NPCs made any sense (ie: search our your heroes and recruit them..?). They should have kept the storyline simpler and less bombastic, and focused more on the implication of SL/death/undeath and relationships.
Every time I was told I had to do all the work there were 20 uber-powerful NPCs just standing around having a meeting or watching me do all the heavy lifting. And that's something where FF14 does a pretty good job of making it seem like you're working as a team to achieve things, even if you're mostly playing solo – the other characters are explicitly achieving other goals and you're all contributing, so you don't build up an implicit seething resentment against the NPCs and their lack of impact.
WoW is like anime, it follows 3 expac arcs. Vanilla-Wrath is the core old school slow gameplay arc, Cata-WoD spammy fast combat oriented arc, Legion-SL borrowed power big picture arc…lol
Havent cared about the lore since Pandaria, remember that expansion with great memories, most imortant for me is they need to stop adding system no one wants and removing systems we like
Blizzard care more about their deep cosmic lore than their characters.
WHY THE FUCK DOES SYLVANAS SERVE THE JAILOR????? He is literally the character behind everything bad that's happened to her, and the only reason we are given that she was working with him is that she was somehow under the impression that he would make death fair?
Shadowlands is awful. The story sucks. Asmongold has made the same point I have since the beginning, why is the jailer bad? What happened? Tell the fucking story. Why is Pelagos, some guy ive seen twice from my covenants view, going to be the arbiter? And zerith mortis and korthia are the same thing except you can walk on the water. It sucks! Hunt 'rares' and do nothing. Took 2 hours. Fucking Thrall finds his mom who he never knew! And you get a 2 minute scene! Its THRALL. Talia sees her dad is the lich king and its NOTHING.
Shadowlands was just the current dev team's selfish attempt to usurp the story. Instead of them perpetuating the established lore for the benefit of the fans, their conceite and egos lead to a compulsion to mark it as their own. They hoped you'd forget Chris Metzen and the old guard and attribute this amazing universe to them.
The whole vid is so true…
Too much focus on systems and gating content that they're not putting enough concern into the story and it's cohesiveness.
I just wanna roleplay as a brain damaged demonhunter who thinks he is an orc in peace
I actually can't wait for the next expansion only cos I want to see how much they are going to fucked up 😆
also if your toilet is clogged with so much shit talk you can call Bellular he also know how to be a plumber, a story teller a game designer and so much more…do not hesitate call him now!
denathrius was nice.
Shadowlands to me just feels meh, it completely lost me, I've just lost interest in the story and could not care less about this expansion at all.
Is it just me or is 9.2 feel like time gated boring nothingness
Crap lore. Crap and lame content. Crap narrative. Devs trolling Elune, Tyrande, Baine, Thrall, Bolvar and players. Null Horde/Alliance pump fist moment and redeemer genocide Syl. Cross faction = no more Ally identify. No perspective to 10.0. Crap grind, RNG and stupids timegate. Warcraft satisfation = dumpster fire.
No link to the post you referenced? I can't find it easily online.
Most of this discussion is "Everything in the Shadowlands story is meaningless." Add on to that that all the systems the player grinds through is meaningless. It is obsolete in the next patch. Long grindy systems that are quickly obsolete. It's all meaningless.
I canceled my sub the same week 9.1 was released. First time I canceled my sub since i bought in 2005. That's how boring Shadowlands is.
Shadowlands failed because it was built on fundamentally flawed systems, lacked content, an utter refusal to respond to issues in any meaningful amount of time, and had a story that was actively contrary to the gameplay experience. It was a perfect storm of failure. That said, if you want to focus on the narrative part, the lack of individuality within story elements is honestly very surprising these days. To me it stems from pre-instanced game design. With individually instanced content there is absolutely no reason NPCs shouldn't actually use the character's name in conversation. But even beyond that, they spent SO MUCH DEVELOPMENT TIME on SHIT NOBODY WANTS. Making covenant's a "meaningful choice" destroyed this expansion. They forced themselves to spend ages trying to balance 900 spinning plates, which meant they didn't have the time and resources to make interesting content.
Shadowlands is going to end up with just 9 dungeons and 3 raids, tied with Warlords for fewest raids and only one better than it's dungeon count. Legion by comparison had 13 Dungeons and 5 raids. These numbers matter because a LOT of the story telling in WoW occurs within or around dungeons and raids, either directly inside via the fights and scenarios or in the quests that lead up to them. Cutting dungeons and raids means cutting out story. Warlords lasted a little less than two years, for Shadowlands to not end up running longer they would need to release the next expansion by the 2nd week of September, which seems absolutely impossible.
TBC had 16 dungeons and 8 raids, Wrath (when wow was at it's peak numbers) had 16 dungeons and 9 raids. Ever since then we have seen a steady decline in the amount of content created until it cratered in Warlords, forcing them to abandon the expansion and causing a boost in Legion. This to me is irrefutable proof that over time the WoW teams resources have been drained, the scope of their development designs has failed to be maintained, and the team lacks proper leadership.
I’m with Matt on what he said about taking forever on 10.0 bc at the end of the day I don’t care if it takes a year or two of delay. Make it fucking good and make it better. Completely overhaul I don’t care but I love this fucking game
I’m a new player, only level 52 and I was starting to think I was just missing a crazy amount of context for the story. It’s both relieving and disappointing that I’m not missing anything, it’s just bad writing
You have to remember one thing about WoW compared to other MMO's. In all of the other MMO's the creators are trying to tell you a new story focused around you the player. In WoW, Blizzard is ALLOWING you to experience their story about their characters. It's just that simple.
This Expansion was extremely false hyped to the ground. On top of the lack of Customization Options, There was no new class which could have been a better time for Necromancers but didn't, very lacking zones, no more dungeons only less, no bgs of any kind or just removed, boring gameplay systems, and of course the Story flat out sucks. Compared to WoD this is easily the worst.
I gotta say, as a newcomer without any prior knowledge of the Warcraft lore, I kinda enjoyed questing to Level 60 in Shadowlands, but I understand where all the criticism for the Shadowlands story is coming from.
I don't get how people still consider MoP to have been a success. Blizz still made the number of active subs public during MoP and quick check of the number of subs at the time shows the number going from about 9.5million at the time of launch and about 6.5million by the time the last patch of MoP. So WoW lost roughly a third of its subs during MoP. Sure, its not as bad as WoD, BfA or Shadowlands, but it still was pretty bad
I think a bigger problem is bad gameplay on top of bad story. If the gameplay and systems in BFA and Shadowlands were top notch then people could forgive the "meh" story.
You have bad story on top of bad systems. . . .it's a recipe for disaster.
Listening to the conversation about the Tauren made me realize that it was the decision to kill Cairne that was the first step in me abandoning WoW. Bottom-of-the-barrel writing.
MoP was better expansion on how can Blizzard comparing to Shadowlands. MoP did not have the crazy borrowed power systems, terrible stories that wrecked some the main characters like Sylvanas and Tyranda. MoP predated the terrible command table, where Shadowlands carries from WoD. MoP was OK with Garrosh as the main villain, where Shadowslands has the jailer. True Mop introduce had the Thunder forge, while Shadowlands had many crazy borrowed power systems that players have to do.
They could have done so much more with the SLs and they could have taken their time on it so we could know about the stories such as Baine/Cairne, Anduin/Varian etc. Instead they rushed it out as if to say, oh well its f-ed now, so lets just get it over with and many of the players want to get the hell out of there because we are sick of it. So much of the story and lore is great and was great up until BfA and SLs and it just seems like they are cranking the money machine just to get it out so it is good enough. I hope it gets a little more personal when it comes to the player character and their role in WoW cause what will we be called next time, the inbetweener, traveler, adventurer, or multi dimensional azeroth lovin nobody gives a s**t what your name is anyway do the dirty work guy/girl.
Maybe Jaina doesn't care for the player because the player perspective is canonically horde lol
Thing is I'd love to be just a disposable mercenary – I feel like Warcraft is at it's best when it isn't doing character-driven narratives and instead relying on worldbuilding for you to just explore as some nameless questing adventurer… the problem is that recent expansions (at least since WoD) decided to go down a path of making you "the main character" and constantly praising the player as "General", "Champion", "Hero", "Maw Walker", etc. – so we simply can't ever go back to having "evergreen adventures on Azeroth" because we''re now "cosmic big shots" in the story that are supposed to be personally connected to characters like Jaina, Sylvanas, Anduin, Thrall, etc. – and yet, why be connected to a character who may either simply sit out the next expansion entirely or take a massive heel-turn to fit whatever the next story is?
If people want a more world-oriented story with less personal character elements: Shadowlands invalidates too much of the established world, cultures and practices and made it so established Azeroth lore simply doesn't matter anymore and didn't build on it or even offer it's own new but familiar stories, cultures, etc. – like Pandaria did much more successfully; Personally I'd love to see some kind of great reset and go back to being a jobber/quester and for the story to focus on Azeroth, it's people, their cultures and their local problems and conflicts between opposing factions (not just alliance and horde but defias vs nobility; lordaeron undead vs scarlet crusade; etc.) – a more evergreen fantasy tale rather than a grand character epic in cosmic planes, but Blizzard hasn't been designing the game that way since at least WoD where we become "The General"
If people want a more character-driven story: Well Shadowlands fails there as well, since characters are paper thin, their motivations often unexplained and changed mid-way through an expansion; your player character is simultaneously really important and powerful but also never directly having their actions acknowledged beyond the current patch; characters are added to fill out a roster but never developed or given storylines to complete over the course of the expansion – heck, BFA did this better with Jaina in Boralus, Talanji & Rastakhan in Zandalar and even Wrathion in 8.3 – yet none of that mattered going forward, it's no longer current content so it never gets used, mentioned or referenced (and we're lucky it hasn't been retconned like so much else)
It feels like they simply have too many cooks in the kitchen, people pulling the plot a million different ways with no clear vision of the story they want to tell – do they want to tell a character driven story with strong interpersonal relationships and dynamics between characters? Do they instead want to tell a story about new peoples and regions of the greater world/universe and how they influence each other and the established world so far? Do they want us to be jobbers/adventurers or "The Highlord, Slayer of Deathwing, Helper of Jaina's Family Trauma, Wearer of a Nice Necklace given by Azeroth to fix that giant sword problem"? Do they just want to sell more "Lore Bibles" to be replaced by "Lore Bibles" released 2 years later?
I'm going to wait until they figure out what they want to do with the world, it's characters and "our" characters; and are able to communicate it clearly to everyone, preferably without Ion saying they always "intended it" this way
Bwomsandi? He is in Shadowlands? I don't remember seeing him.
In the Tauren heritage armor quest line Carine appeared before Baine with his wife and basically tells him "we will speak again another time" He could have had a quest line where he saves his father's and other ancestors souls from mawsworn. Jaina got alot of Story in BFA but she could have been reunited with her father now as Lord Admiral and prove she was right all along as the alliance and horde stand together to save the Shadowlands. Instead she's litteraly just a plot device for us to teleport. Bolvar was such a let down and hearing Talia berate him after all of his sacrifices was unbearable.
In short. It failed because Blizzard put a huge Di.. In the salad.
It's honestly a crime that we not only don't see Varian, but this was a great chance to bring in Tiffin as well. Hell, I can list so many missed chances with death characters, like Vol'Jin seeing his father.
At this point they need to throw everything away and make a WoW 2 💀
Professions continue to loose their unique fulfillment and enjoyment. Rip Engineering.
dev: "why should we even be subtle about it anymore? let's just throw our players into a literal hell with prisons and torture and a big bald man with nipples who wants you to serve him"
The Garrosh cinematic was horrible tho.