Warbomb ยท 849 points ยท Posted at 20:03:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We emerge from the Shadowlands, only to find thousands of years have passed since we entered. Spaceships now float in the skies above a terraformed Azeroth, and soldiers in cybernetic armor patrol the streets, searching for resources.
Welcome... to Starcraft.
hermitxd ยท 158 points ยท Posted at 23:20:13 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
The orcs have now devolved into green morons who talk in cockney accents and are born from fungus, while the humans keep fanatically shouting about Anduin being a "god emperor."
Bjek ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 00:20:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The orcs have now devolved into green morons who talk in cockney accents and are born from fungus, while the humans keep fanatically shouting about Anduin being a "god emperor."
Oh boy, I am not sure a lot of the players who loves Elves are prepared for what the more darker aligned elves has become.
Orisyl ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 09:56:53 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Moon Guard is ready for the Dark Elves. I am not sure if the Dark Elves are ready for them though.
Bjek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:09:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Moon Guard is ready for the Dark Elves.
Every new edition I think I am ready for the Dark Eldar. Then Games Workshop are like: "Here - have these Warp mutated elves who turn themselves into flesh-abominations that makes the Abominations from WoW look like a plush-toys"
I remember watching the dev vlogs, they kept promising a game as open and rich and playable as planetside 2 but they delivered another shitty battlefield style game.
Worst part is, they tried to mimic the control and feel of space marine but kept missing the mark.
man I wish relic was still around and making space marine 2
8-Brit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:20:56 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That was Eternal Crusade. It started as something akin to Planetside but then it became Battlefield.
It was released way too early and had a pile of issues.
I have 2 feelings about it, it would have been awesome, but also what if it was flawed, and what if it just flopped and ended like Warhammer Online, or so many other MMOs.
Literally just finished Flight of the Eisenstein yesterday started reading the Horus Heresy series month by month on Audible. Loved that book so much really enjoyed Garro as a character.
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:36:17 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We've come full circle from people who don't know that Warcraft literally started as a Warhammer game.
Metzen has been ripping off of Warhammer all the way up to his retirement, when he changed the lore so that all demons only die if killed in the Twisting Nether.
Finear ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 23:58:15 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
when he changed the lore so that all demons only die if killed in the Twisting Nether.
we knew that in TBC
and how exactly was he ripping off warhammer (in wow that is, of course the rts games were heavily based on wh) besides a basic theme of basic races?
WarCraft the RTS was originally pitched as a Warhammer RTS. Gamesworkshop declined to give Blizzard the license.
Finear ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 01:33:35 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
yes, i know that and this isn't what im asking about
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:15 on May 22, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If you don't know how the Burning Legion and the Twisting Nether rip off of Warhammer, you don't know Warhammer enough to even discuss this. The Burning Legion and Twisting Nether rip off of maybe one of the most iconic parts of Warhammer.
I'm not going to spend 30 minutes explaining it to you because your lack of familiarity with Warhammer is going to lead to you being offended, and insist on diluting the argument with "well everything is inspired by something" which doesn't change the fact that Warcraft straight lifted concepts from Warhammer and hides entirely the fact that it did so.
Just because everything is inspired from something doesn't make every use of inspiration from another source equally original and creative.
That was only for Dreadlords in TBC. Not all demons.
Plus correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't they also retcon the Testing Nether thing in Legion too? Since Argus just brings then back no matter what now?
Orisyl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:04:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes and no. In BC it was just Dreadlords where known to do it (hence Varimathrasโ whole thing with only a Dreadlord can kill a Dreadlord). The rest of the Demons no one was really able to kill/cared about if that specific Fel Guard was the same one a few years back.
Then in Dreanor it was changed to ALL demons exist in the Twisting Nether and ALL of them come back. This immortality is what lead Sargeras to create a jail planet in the first place (later destroyed with the founding of the Legion) and their endless returning eventually drove him nuts (though this was rapid in the eyes of a Titan, which 100,000 years isnโt an issue).
Legion changed it for the last time that Argus is turbo charging their natural regeneration (and possibly allowing some demons who normally could not, such as Eredar, pull off the reviving thing), and while destroying it didnโt stop the ones that could naturally resurrect from doing so, the Legion could no longer use Infinite army wave tactics which effectively broke them.
Torakaa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:57:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm relatively certain there's a quest in Ogri'la, the one where you open a portal and kill demons near it, that mentions demons eventually just pop back up if you kill them normally.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:05:04 on May 20, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You're confusing retroactive explanations with contemporary intention.
In BC it was Blizzard's intention that only Dreadlords were immortal outside the Nether. The lore specified that Dreadlords did this, not demons in general.
Just because 15 years later they found a new explanation for a lore change that fits retroactively doesn't mean it was the intention the whole time.
Either way the entire Twisting Nether, demons and the Burning Legion are all rip offs from Warhammer. The entire concept is just a distilled version of Warhammer's Immaterium, daemons and Chaos.
And this isn't me criticizing Blizzard, Warhammer is an amalgamation of blatant rip-offs but it's never afraid to admit it and it's never afraid to be bold with the things that make it unique.
Warcraft and Warcraf fans like you are the opposite. You tiptoe around the fact that much of Warcraft was directly inspired by Metzen's self-admitted giant Warhammrt fandom, from the name to the art style to the lore, and Warcraft is weaker for it.
Warhammer and its fans embrace their homages, its pathetic when a fanbase doesn't have the maturity to do that (Warcraft)
Orisyl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:58:51 on May 20, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warcraft and Warcraf fans like you are the opposite.
Buddy, I am a nuts Warhammer fan. I know this shit is Warhammer Light, and I like it more for that. I was just saying the timeline of when we knew about these things (as I was pretty sure it was hinted at that Kazzak was killed in Vanilla and came back too in BC).
I mean, Blizzard had that "Lore Tome" that had basically every explanation of all the stuff happening behind the scenes way back in Wrath (when they started to referencing that it exists, but it was said that it existed before that), for all we know the immortal Legion thing was in there since vanilla. It would line up with the whole Warhammer inspiration.
So get off your damn podium.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:31 on May 22, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, the immortal Legion thing wasn't in there since Vanilla. In Vanilla it was exclusively Dreadlords that revived in the Nether.
Also each "lore tome" they've released has retconned big parts of any previous one that came before, so any lore dump Blizzard made back then shouldn't be taken seriously.
Warcraft 30k. Anduinโs sons are either working with him or flat out betraying him for the legion.
And yet everyone still says fuck Erebus.
11S3r ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:21:48 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warcraft already has an Erebus, its called Magatha grimtotem
scud121 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:21:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
As per 1d4chan, the best place to get 40k info -
"FUCK EREBUS!"
โ The fourth most popular phrase in 40K, right after Blood for the Blood God, Heresy, and WAAAAAAGHH!
He's a slippery, creepy motherfucker and if anyone had an ounce of sense they'd have tossed him out of a fucking airlock the second they set eyes on him.
Not to be a downer or anything but the Night Elves have been around for many thousand years and they have made piss poor technological advances in that time so I wouldnโt get my hopes up, but it would be pretty fun getting a brand new flying car as a mount in future Azeroth ;)
I mean, it could make it even easier too since Humans went through countless generations building on vastly diverse heritages and families to get to where we are now. The night elves are the same people from 10k years ago. Not many night elf babies to innovate and learn from their elders.
Shiruu ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 08:33:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They got lucky then, no generation of millennials :D
We weren't but then we exploded technologically over the course of a millennium from the Roman Empire to the modern day so much mad shit has been invented it boggles the mind.
The reason nothing ever happens on so grand a scale (when Goblins and Gnomes exist for crying out loud) is simply the concept of medieval stasis.
Well that's on my writing it badly, I suppose. But I was talking about in-context.
Look at the faction war. Horde & Alliance have been creating new technological marvels consistently to try and get an edge over their opponent. At this point for like 5-6 expansions.
Yeah, but the draeni MacGyvered up all kinds of cool stuff from a wrecked spaceship on two different planets. Maybe they'll let the elves be park rangers and put the space goats in charge of R&D.
Jsm1370 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:14:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's because the are the equivalent of Luddites.
To be fair when you're immortal hippies, it kinda stunts your development.
It's like.
Military advisor: "Malfurion, we should come up with some advanced military tech in case the legion decides to invade again."
Malfurion: "Oh don't worry about it we have tons of time, but in the mean time we should do a bunch of drugs in this kick ass tree I found in the forest and pretend to be cats."
Sylvanas stands atop a tower, silently staring at the world below as thousands upon thousands of undead creatures float serenely into the evening sky.
Sylvanas Windrunner: Thank you, Nathanos. For everything.
She turns around to stare at Nathanos longingly as she slowly lifts off, on her way to join the innumerable Forsaken in their ascent.
Nathanos Blightcaller: My pleasure, darlin'. Always was.
Sylvanas Windrunner: I now see my true enemy. He waits for me in the void, wielding powers I cannot imagine. I go to face him, having renounced everything - my undeadity, my identity, the man I love. But I will not face this enemy alone - I am the Forsaken.
Vyar ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 04:47:52 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
โThere must always be a Jailer. Tell them only that the Jailer is dead, and that Sylvanas Windrunner died with him.โ
perado ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:39:09 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They better kill her or redeem her because shes awful and bland and if i have to hear her nails on a chalkboard voice another expansion i may quit wow for real... maybe.
She burned hundreds of thousands of men, woman, and children alive. Very few people even like her at all, let alone are about to start cheering for her cause she does one nice act for the first time in her undead life later on.
The writing for sylvanas is terrible but destroying a major war target, even with major civilian causalities, even if they die a horrible fiery death is not a warcrime. See bombing of dresden and Tokyo.
Well it wasn't really much of a war target anymore after the NE army was tricked into being on the other side of the continent and the rest of its defenses were wiped out. There were ONLY civilians left in the world tree.
It's a defensive position, it has the ability manufacture weapons and armour, it's a base for ships and air travel, it's has armed guards/defenders, its a centre of communications/supply lines, it's an alliance war asset civilian presence or not.
Except none of that mattered anymore since the Horde seized the city. The civilians wouldn't be able to run the facilities that make weapons or get them to the alliance armies. The alliance armies wouldn't be able to port at it since it is occupied and defended by Horde. The Horde actually hurt themselves by destroying it because what resources it already had were destroyed instead of taken.
perado ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The number of her fanboys left always shocks me.
JD1337 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:56:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That was The Elder Scrols Lore during the 1st Era, when a fucking Gorilla and a few elven priests used a Staff to BREAK TIME AND THE CONCEPT ITSELF FOR 1008 YEARS! Or not since time itself died and no one really knew how much it passed, since time became Timeless to the point that even nozdormu would cry and mourn Akatosh because of HOW FUCKED it became until everything came back to normal.
in years the empire reached the stars with stone and magisteel spaceships, khajiit made moon colonies, followed By REMAN CYRODILL's moon cum vauts, Daedric Armwrestling due to how everything got fucked royally, and so on.
in years the empire reached the stars with stone and magisteel spaceships, khajiit made moon colonies, followed By REMAN CYRODILL's moon cum vauts, Daedric Armwrestling due to how everything got fucked royally, and so on.
If point out that we already have spacecraft. And bombs. And dimensional travel. And all variety of guns. It would hardly take 1000 years of development to reach starcraft
I unironically think that WoW needs a futuristic/sci-fi themed expansion. Weโve had a little โfantasy sci-fiโ here and there but thatโs not what Iโm getting at. Weโve done plenty of going back in time, going sideways in time, alternate timelines, but no real โgoing to the futureโ.
What I want to see after we get back from Shadowlands is a legion of Alliance lion-themed spaceships and a giant hologram saying โEnlist in the Alliance of tomorrow today!โ
Ive always seen adding scifi elements to fantasy as a bit of a slippery slope to this argument. At what point does it cease to be a fantasy game with scifi elements to a scifi game with fantasy elements?
If we get lion-themed spaceships then we get horde corsair spaceships as well for raiding parties. Do these ships have shields to stop the enemy fire? If ships can have shields, do people get their own? Does that mean suddenly normal weapons are useless? Do we go from swords and guns to lightsabres and phase rifles?
If the scifi elements were an advanced race making a pit stop on azeroth without sharing their tech then leaving after the xpack it could work. But we have had spaceships since BC (Exodar) and it seems odd but pleasant they haven't been touched upon again. Gnomes and goblins have electricity but Orcs and Humans patrol their capital cities at night with torches and lanterns.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's obvious that the old zones need a lot of love. This could very much be their way to transition to a "remastered" Azeroth while having narrative hooks that justify the changes. Plus they could tie it into the core story of the next expansion and if people really hate it they could just scrap it like everything else lol.
I'm honestly okay with that. I don't really care about the general direction of the overall story, at least not anymore, as long as we meet some interesting fellers along the way.
hery41 ยท 603 points ยท Posted at 19:37:23 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
"Whatever's convenient for setting up the next expansion"
That's actually a big point of debate among authors and story writers. Some prefer to write the story as it happens, not blocking themselves in before ever writing. Others prefer to have a solid outline to serve as a backbone for their writing.
If I'm not mistaken, the analogy used most often is "architects vs. gardeners," where gardeners metaphorically plant a seed and nurture it into something, and architects have a solid plan before putting it in motion.
Planning before writing is absolutely not a requirement.
In Stephen King's book On Writing he said it was [his writing process] akin to an archaeologist. Discovering new things as he dug deeper into the story. Whether or not you like his books, can't argue the dude is prolific as fuck and hugely popular.
It's not, but WoW writers are also terrible gardeners. They try to plan but then fail (in cases of clear set ups that they made like with Koltira storyline), but they also fail as gardeners because they follow rule of cool, not characters (they break them routinely) or story logic (it basically doesn't exist in WoW).
No, not really, they are making up on the go along with some vague planning.
There are many abandoned set ups and storylines in Warcraft because of rule of cool. WoD was planned as an expansion where we will see old Orc warchiefs return, but it would be done in whatever manner was fitting - first plan was for Garrosh to find a horn that would resurrect them in Outland
Merosi ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 08:34:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
for how much I hate time travel stories, I think the look at draenor we got in WoD was worth it.
The whole story with time in shadowlands is being set up BECAUSE they need it for the next expansion, otherwise they wouldnโt have mentioned it before Alpha was even considered, back in November.
How does it contradict anything I've written? Of course they have plans for the next expansion, but broad strokes planning doesn't mean that they don't plan at all, or that their plans might be vague in many parts, or that the story changes in development.
D2papi ยท 75 points ยท Posted at 21:25:21 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean.. They plan like 3 expansions ahead right? It's not like they have no idea what's going to happen after Shadowlands... I hope
Yeah that and a theme. They likely wanted Teldrassil too burn, UC too be plagued, HvA, Kul'Tiras, Zandalar, Azshara and N'zoth. The specific of how those all fit together is up too the lore team. But the themes are set by the design team and the writers have too figure out how it all fits.
they're modt likely just holding suspense for the players to drive speculation. I'm sure when we see the story we may be able to hold our predictions though
If I remember correctly, an interview said once that during the live expansion, the next one is being developed, and the one after that is being concepted with considerations on how far along the story team is.
Nite92 ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 20:44:31 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I much prefer this option. It is kind of confirming that there probably will be some kind of time difference if they want to make one but they aren't forcing themselves to do anything specific from the start
I mean if anything the BIG 10.0 sounds like a great time to have a time skip/ world revamp. With the horde having a peace council at the helm, and Anduin slowly becomming more and more jaded. having 10.0 be a big "reset" to renew the trajectory of the storylines etc sounds solid to me.
iCappy_ ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:27:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Don't ever call my boy Anduin jaded, ever, again.
perado ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:37:34 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hes really not jaded. Nzoth was messing with him when he punched DragonBai so hes very much a calm leader. He would never start another war.
Exactly they should already have somewhat of a plan for it. For them to say that it's not an identical passage of time to Azeroth is definitely an interesting statement in that regard. Maybe we get out and Anduin is in his old form that we saw in the comic years from now preparing for some crazy battle.
Maybe time could even pass sporadically from patch to patch?
jtb234 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 04:31:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Although, there's no confirmation that time outside shadowlands passes at all...we could literally be in and back in one day on Azeroth.
This is the answer here. That way, they can change nothing.
jtb234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:44 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Or they go waaaaay in the future to start a new slate and kill off every character at once. We aren't even on Azeroth anymore. The new planet is Htoreza and it was recently invaded by a new race of creatures from a planet called Roneard.
2 years from now: "ION confirms TIME SKIP. INTERVIEW FROM 2020 says it will happen and no current notes say it WON'T! 100 YEAR PLOT ADVANCEMENT PROVEN!"
The ability to travel between Azeroth and the Shadowlands is possible for your characters in lore. It also allows us to take characters from Azeroth into the Shadowlands.
It's definitely all made up, but I won't lie, I always look forward to seeing what they come up with.
Axerty ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 05:51:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It's not? Ah fuck. I did wonder why my history examination didn't go as well as planned.
perado ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:09:22 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Same here. I hate what they do sometimes, but other times i feel they revive a role well. After Malf in Legion (Xavius Fake) people got the idea that he was... soft. He is not. His damn brother is Illidan. He is not to trifled with. Honestly, if anyone leads us to war against sylv in the raid i hope its him and Ty.
The emerald area is there so that gives it a chance he goes to them for aid.
Also he shredded a whole platoon of horde at darkshore and single handedly made that shield. Hes likely only grown stronger
Hydris ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:42:32 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Gonna be Jeremy Bearimy Timeline.
Tovien ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:09:53 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Lore wise, that's how Burning Crusade was. We went through the Dark Portal and spent more time in Outland than passed on Azeroth, so the time between Vanilla Naxx and Wrath Naxx was not very long.
I never understood this, but is the reason we can't get original T3 gear because vanilla Naxx turned into Wrath Naxx? I didn't even get to 60 during vanilla so I don't know
Fatdap ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:47:37 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. With the introduction of Wrath Naxx, Classic ceased to exist and was turned into Wrath Naxx.
Sucks. Would be cool if they somehow brought back T3 gear. It had some of my favorite designs. Didn't they do a kind of redesign a while back with some?
Imagine if, canonically, we stay in Shadowlands the whole expansion - our toons never leaving, so we are unaware of what is happening in the real world. Then, upon fixing the death realm, bringing balance to it - we step out of the portal to find:
N'zoth was never killed. He allowed us to think he was dead - so that he could work uninterrupted - without the champions of Azeroth meddling. When we come back - we come to a fully realised Black Empire - a world completely changed from what we remember. Stromwind destroyed, Org destroyed, those who weren't in the shadowlands driven underground to survive.
The expansion - Hour of Twilight - is the culmination of the Void storyline - with Nzoth resurrecting the old gods all to bring about the final plan- the summoning of the void lords on Azeroth.
This would be a great bridge - the summoning of the void lords - to what I see as the finale of the game - Azeroth itself waking up. Imagine if - because the titan awoke, time went all haywire - and the dungeons and raids of this final expansion were the best hits of all of WoW - revamped and reimagined with enemies from all expansions taking the place of other bosses.
Man, Im hyped for where they could go lol.
E13ven ยท 272 points ยท Posted at 20:34:21 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This sounds cool and all but hear me out....what if when we came back.....the horde and the alliance found some other contrived reason to fight each other again and we put the WAR back in WARCRAFT?!?!?
War never left warcraft. Factions don't need to keep on fighting eachother like bunch of imbeciles ...while outside forces are constantly trying to destroy our planet.
Unless you meant that what he wrote made too much sense and Blizz will just go back to nonsense. Which I still cannot agree with. Everyone just takes expansion as full story, when in reality it's far from over.
I'm really hoping that after we unite in Shadowlands, because obviously we're going to unite because we're basically united now, they ditch factions. The game would be so much better if we could just... not be at war with the other faction for reasons as dumb as:
Azerite
Because we always are
They said we look like poopy heads
xaky05 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:26 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The way they did it I agree it made no sense but that doesnโt mean it is played out. They have never actually legitimately done it right. BFA was god awful. The writing was just terrible. That doesnโt mean the idea was bad. Just the execution
nrrp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:48:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm against faction war expansion mostly because any faction war expansion is inherently a zero sum game between Horde and the Alliance and devs are massive Horde fanboys that will never let that be fair and equitable.
You can see it all over BFA - with the latest info from Ion it is obvious if it wasn't before that they had absolutely no plan for Teldrassil and didn't think much of burning it and they pretty much only burned it to advance Saurfang's story. They cared as much about burning of Teldrassil as they did about sticking the sword in Silithus. There won't be resolution to the plot in Shadowlands, the earliest will be the expansion after Shadowlands, maybe. Those movie quality cinematics take a long time to make so those need to be pre-planned long in advance, and in BFA they managed to make 20-25 minutes of movie quality cinematics of Saurfang being sad without ever mentioning or showing the actual victims. Then the Horde just got more content in BFA, got better content while Alliance content was rushed or afterthought, got multiple questlines and mounts with no Alliance equivalent and got the focus of the story for the entire expansion - BFA was very much the expansion where Horde was the main characters and Alliance afterthought, it was written for people with Horde mains and Alliance alts.
On the other hand, if it's not a faction war expansion then that all gets buried and the relationship between Horde and Alliance isn't zero sum for the most part and there isn't bitterness or anger over it. Sure, for example, Kyrians or Night Fae might suck and become the meme covenant but that doesn't matter since both the Horde and the Alliance will be in them and the covenants are only for one expansion guaranteed so they don't matter as much.
Honestly pandaria was the last time they actually did it and even then they didnโt stick the landing at all. I donโt want a story where one side is all righteous and the other has a tyrannical leader that needs to be overthrown. I want a faction war where both sides believe in their cause and they are both right and both wrong simultaneously. A war with real purpose behind it instead of this made up bullshit. The black and white writing is so simplistic that itโs hard to get in to. We need something where people can actually get behind both sides and really care about the fight. Sylvannas...sorry garrosh ....sorry both of them using the horde for their murderous purposes does not count as a faction war.
The faction war is the core element to Warcraft. We've already proven that we can beat the shit out of any external world ending threat. We've killed the manifestations of 4 old gods. We defeated the Lich King and the Burning Legion. The only true threat to our survival is the other faction.
With the history of fighting and the atrocities on both sides, no amount of banding together to defeat a common enemy will ever reconcile the two sides. When we kill the external threat and we are left in a room together we will always resort to fighting.
In BfA it made perfect sense. Azerite was billed as this world changing substance, of course both sides are willing to fight to secure as much of it as possible. The Cold War has been over for 30 years but if someone discovered some fuel that allows FTL travel I firmly believe the US and Russia would 100% go to war over it.
I the only real way to have faction wars is to split the factions up more. Like, it doesn't make sense for people who idolize thrall to want to go to war with some goody goody like Anduin. But it totally makes sense for the worgen and undead to always be at eachothers throats.
I'd rather have more branching stories like Sylvanas v. Saurfang
Everyone stays in the same faction, but you can pick if you wanna be a warmonger or if you want peace. That way you can still do what you want story wise, but you can still raid with your lame friends that don't want to wipe out the Horde.
But I agree, there needs to be a division in the Alliance, for sure, since two of our main leaders have serious issues with the Horde. Anduin can only realistically hold them back for so long before it gets ridiculous. Especially Tyrande who has shown she doesn't really give a damn what Anduin says and will do things her own way.
My dream Alliance storyline is Anduin being mysteriously incapacitated and Genn and Tyrande form a "council" to rule in his stead that they railroad all the time to start constant wars with the Horde. It would necessarily have to end with Anduin getting rezzed and finding out that G&T tried to murder him so they could plunge the world in war AGAIN. They would have to be banished or executed. That would suck, but it would be worth it to have one glorious expansion where the Alliance gets to fuck some shit up.
Art4261 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:04:02 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly! I've always thought that Blizzard should revisit past locations. And in the scenario I concocted above - imagine if Whole areas of the world were dominated and ruled by the old gods. Imagine a resurrected Cthun ruling from AQ. Imagine a Yogg, fully free in Northrend. Picture Y'Shaarj, made whole once more, terrorizing Pandaria. What if the major beats of the expansion were that we had to slowly defeat these old gods, liberating their fiefdoms, and then, as one Azeroth, assaulting Nzoth proper.
If they ever do announce a final expansion, which I doubt they will, I really hope it will be instead focused on the Infinite Dragonflight and how Nozdormu became Murozond and the events leading up to his death in End Time. The only satisfying way to โendโ WoW, in my opinion, would be to pay homage to every preceding expansion, and the Infinite Dragonflight allows the perfect opportunity to do that.
That said, a post-shadowlands Void Lord expansion as you described it sounds amazing for a non-final expansion as well!
So in my hypothetical final expansion - Azeroth awakening - I did say that time would go haywire. It would be a great way to re-introduce the infinite dragonflight, and even the dragon isles. Maybe, to try and save everyone, we seek out the dragons, who take us to the dragon isles - which will be our Zandalar/Kul Tiras of the expansion.
And maybe, in order to "save" us from our reality ending with Azeroth's awakening - the Infinite dragonflight devises a way to "Reset" time/space/reality. Go back wayyyy before the burning legion, into a firm, no going back, alternate reality. That would lead us to WoW 2
So, what, we become Battlestar Galactica? What about a Dark Souls 3 type deal where a bunch of different timelines converge into one?
zummm72 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:43:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I would love to see some foreshadowing of this throughout the Shadowlands expansion. SPOILER: For example, in Bastion we see that souls have to get rid of their memories before they can become Kyrian. It would be really cool for the players that join the Kyrian covenant to see the old memories of souls that arrive throughout the expansion that have died due to the old gods on Azeroth. Maybe in some later patch we remove the memories of someone that was slaughtered by NโZothโs minions and we think โhuh this soul just arrived, how did he die from NโZothโs minions if we had already killed NโZoth?โ
Edit: this would be assuming that we fix souls going straight to the Maw before the end of the expansion, but you get the idea.
When we come back - we come to a fully realised Black Empire - a world completely changed from what we remember. Stromwind destroyed, Org destroyed, those who weren't in the shadowlands driven underground to survive.
There will be a lot of players who will unsubscribe if that happens. Plus, it's way too much work. It would be like developing a completely new WoW game.
And this is why Nzoth was only a "raid tier" as well as Azshara. People like you (not trying to make this an attack) get bored of X villain so they are forced to try to appease the majority (people like you). Thus, a proper storyline can't be fulfilled. Imagine if Argus was in the expac after Legion.. "No can't take anymore demons/legion" which is why they cram everything and water it down
nrrp ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 21:47:54 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And this is why Nzoth was only a "raid tier" as well as Azshara.
If you go along the theory that Shadowlands will be the last expansion of current WoW and we'll have the timeskip, then the reason they crammed three expansions into BFA (faction war, Naga, Old Gods) is that they were tying up all the loose ends and finishing up all the stories to set up for the timeskip.
Razz94 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 21:35:52 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't agree that people necessarily get bored of content too fast to get a complete storyline fullfilled. Wotlk and Legion both had consistent storylines that kept the players engaged, and even Cata had a fairly good story that lasted the entire expansion.
The issue with Old Gods is that they don't translate well to video games. I think Old Gods would have been far more interesting if they had all been killed before WoW, and the focus had been on their remaining influence on the world as it was with Y'Shaarj.
The idea that you can have a being of such power as an Old God present in the world creates an almost unsolvable issue where the player is expected to defeat it, but defeating it devalues everything about them.
Just their physical scale is so comically large that the boss fights get reduced to killing tentacles and adds, because there is no way a player character could ever defeat, or even wound, such a creature. This ultimately leads to needing help from other lore characters, and using ancient weapons to do our work for us - which often leads to anticlimactic endings.
I think there are plenty of themes that they could create an entire expansion around without players getting bored. The story just needs to be more relatable, it needs to feel like you are actually defending your world against monsters. And players ultimately dont get that feeling from Old Gods. That's why Warcraft became so popular in the first place, because it was all about relatable stories, even if those stories were based in fantasy.
The Undead, the Burning Legion, Orcs, Troll clans, ogres and dragons all feel like something that you could ultimately overcome. A literal God that spawn endless amounts of creatures, who can destroy the minds of thousands in a second does not feel like that. And so the escapism fails, and the game becomes boring.
TLDR; Old Gods makes for great books, not great games.
And players ultimately dont get that feeling from Old Gods. That's why Warcraft became so popular in the first place, because it was all about relatable stories
I don't know if I can get behind this. We killed an Old God in the very first iteration of the game. One of the most popular, if not the most popular, expansion featured an Old God. SoO was, personally and from what I've read, the best raid of Mists. Whether that is because of the Old God or if it even counts because we only defeated someone corrupted by an Old God is debatable.
The point is, killing Old Gods has been a part of the game since its inception and I don't know if we are able to say that it didn't at least have a hand in making it popular.
That said, personally, I agree with you on the fact that literally going up to an Old God and whacking it with my hammer is silly. Even fighting something like Aggramar or Argus felt kind of silly because we barely come up to their knee. The most damage we could do with our weapons would amount to little more than a paper cut and they could probably just pick us up one by one and throw us off their platforms. But I don't really know the solution. We can't keep fighting Edwin Van Cleef and Dagran Thaurissan level threats for 15 years or it would get stale, so we have to fight things that incrementally get stronger.
We didn't actually kill C'thun or Yogg. We barely hit the small parts of them that we're sticking out through the bars in their prison. More like yapping someone over the fingers with a ruler than actually inflicting harm.
Kregoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's been retconned. Canonically, they are all dead.
The problem with your argument is that last expansion we dealt with Sargeras, a being who is, without question, more powerful than any old god. Maybe not the void lords, but certainly the old gods: he can destroy entire planets. He is a far more "unrelatable" being than any old god, and the manner in which we dealt with him worked just fine, imo. Granted, we didn't actually fight Sargeras, like we did N'Zoth, Cthun, and Yogg, but we dealt with him nonetheless. There was no reason we couldn't have done something similar with the old gods.
He was saying that the old gods don't work as a narrative in the game because they are so powerful that they are completely unrelatable. I'm saying that Sargeras and the Legion were even more powerful than the old gods, and thus even more unrelatable, yet how we dealt with them in-game worked just fine. Although I must admit, I don't know his stance on how Legion wrapped up; perhaps he feels the same about that, in which case my point is moot.
Okay but consider this, an old gods expansion would legitimately be horrible to play through because of the fact that their main gimmick (corrupting allies and turning them against you) would be incredibly unfulfilling to have to deal with for anything longer than a single instance.
Imagine how annoying it would become to finish a questline and oops your friend got some void on their skirt and now suddenly they have to be murdered cause they've turned into an insane tentacle'd death machine.
It's the exact reason why the ending of the stormsong valley questline was unsatisfying for me, because it's not fun to constantly have to kill allied characters because they arbitrarily stepped into the mind control goop and were irreversibly turned evil. It's the same reason people were upset with the ending of Val'Sharah in Legion.
Mind control just sucks as a plot device when it is used against the players and an old god expansion could not ignore it the same way that we were able to wrap things up in BFA before anyone important got messed with outside of Nzoth's fantasy-land.
The current storyline is guild wars 2 is basically an old god storyline. Elder Dragon Jormag, who is an ancient god like being from the time before the time before mortals, who is a corrupter and whispers/tempts people into their embrace. They are the Ice dragon, and thematically ArenaNet seems to be pulling from the idea of late stage hypothermia, where you start feeling warm and safe till you die.
I know gw2 storyline has a well deserved meme worthy reputation, but the last few years have been great. They are pulling Jormag off. To the point where despite some truly insane horror elements, the fact that Jormag corrupted factions are the clear baddies, and an obvious disconnect between words and deeds, the question "Is Jormag actually the baddie?" is something that currently has the answer "Well, obviously... maybe..." among both the characters, and the playerbase.
It can be done well. It's just that wow is far too pulpy to do it. Which is fine, I like pulpy, but I think they should stay in their lane.
Not siding one way or the other regarding Old God burnout but,
(not trying to make this an attack)
Then saying... [paraphrasing]
[Blizzard is] forced to try to appease the majority (people like you). [Because of you] a proper storyline can't be fulfilled. [...] which is why [blizzard] waters [the story] down.
If this isn't an attack, I really wouldn't want to know what you consider to be one.
I think constructively finding a mutual point of view might be a better than belittling someone because they dont like a particular trope.
I, for one, didn't play Mists of Pandaria because I don't have interests in the culture they were reflecting (though I respect it). That doesn't mean that Monks were deleted or hamfisted because of people with my opinions. Blizzard makes the choices.
People like me? I would be the first to say Azshara and the Old Gods are important enough for their own expansion. It's just that Blizzard chose this route, and because they've been shitting out old god garbage inadequately over the last decade or so, I'm just tired of it. Had you mentioned Azshara anytime before Legion, I would've said she deserves her own expac given how influential and powerful she is.
What about people like you (not attacking you)? What do people like you want? Thirty old god teaser patches, then an old god expac, then more old gods in the next one after?
I kinda wish they could reboat wow, start from either the start of the warcraft storyline or from where wow started off, go over the plot of every single expansion and change, delete, rework or add anything that they think could make the overall story better.
Basically like a huge clean up game, making sure the game's plot is well coherent with itself, fixing plotholes, upping the writing so it doesn't come off forced or cringy, drop the tropes and make a wow definitive version of sorts, a great foundation for possible expansions or spin offs.
wow needs that, the story is fucked at this point.
It literally makes no sense that my kul'tiran druid is encountering deathwing, or battling the legions demons during the questing experience and will be even worse if/when another batch of new races enter the game.
Say they do it for the xpac after Slands. They could easily make use of Chromie to go "hey, here's whats happened already" and tldr the whole story up until say, the beginning of BFA.
Bfa is somewhat of a refresh story wise. We beat the big bad (sargeras) and the world (was) at peace for a moment until alliance/horde conflict started back up and it ties into shadowlands with the whole bobsalami bit, but there isn't really any direct links between legion and bfa, so its a decent stopping point.
The issue is, to re-use an old joke, it'd cost us a raid tier for them to implement a game wide story cleanup, and while we want that, the cost of current content would likely be too great, and people don't want to go back and re-do the old content as current again either. Fucked if they don't, fucked if they do.
You're in luck, the questing experience is being streamlined for new players to be just the newer bfa stuff right into shadowlands. Then you have the option to go back and do the old content where it doesn't matter if canon makes sense.
We've dealt with other old gods (and/or their influences) in a single patch as well, why should it have been anything different for the canonically weakest old god?
It's fine for an expansion to have more than a single storyline, it doesn't mean they are cramming everything in a single expansion and watering it down. Main theme of WotLK was the Scourge, but we've dealt with Malygos and Yogg Saron as well. Likewise, the main theme of Legion was the Burning Legion, but Emerald Nightmare or Helya didn't feel out of place despite not being connected to the Burning Legion.
Old gods aren't the big boys of the void, they are just one of the many lieutenants of Void Lords. Complaining why N'zoth didn't get an entire expansion dedicated to himself is like complaining why we didn't get an expansion where Varimathras was the main enemy. N'zoth didn't really feel like a huge threat, because he really isn't compared to what our characters have dealt with before, he alone couldn't have lead an entire expansion.
toffi23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:07:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Seeing the same theme for 2 years is too much. I loved Pandaria because there were many different zones with different enemies. We had the mogu, the mantid, the iron horde the sha and they were all connected to the buildup of the final enemy garrosh using the power of an old god's heart. I didn't like the iron horde and mantid theme but protecting the peaceful zones and the mogu theme made up for it.
With an exapnsion going about old gods and aberration enemies for 2 years would burn me out completely. I think I'm not the only one with this.
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:52:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
belro ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:11:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Legion had a ton of variety i didnt get sick of any zone or raid
Yes so much fel green in.. like what 3 zones? Valsharah was a forest green, red black nightmare bits. Stormheim was browns and greys, highmountain was browns grays and moose. Azuna had that one enclave... suramar had bits
Issue is, the void is the "final boss" of WoW so to speak. Everything has been building up to them, even the Legion invasions were caused by the threat the Void poses. There's no chance we won't deal with it eventually. Chances are that'll be us going to the void in person to kill the void lords but I'd much prefer an actual Black Empire expansion to that.
Yes and the void lords are trying to enter reality by corrupting a titan world soul and destroying all of reality. And no, the void lords aren't the void equivalent to the titans. The titans are powerful arcane beings but they exist inside of reality. They're closer to the Naa'ru, Old Gods and Wild Gods than the Void Lords. While there are probably Arcane Lords, they're not the ones trying to destroy all of reality.
i second this. old gods are overused and lame at this point. i don't think i could survive another "cOrRuPtEd By OlD gOdS" plot. they already dropped the ball, they shat the bed, the cake is ruined, the old gods are shit, just move on and bake us something new.
The problem with "The Void" as a BBEG is that its an easy and hollow villain. "The Void"'s only goal is to destroy everything. which means that everything wants to destroy them. (Legion, Naaru, Humans, Titans, Etc.)
When Blizzard wants an unambiguous bad guy, the void is an easy choice, but it's silly to expect it to have any depth or tension. The depth is "destroy this or die".
Which works for a game where anything with a red health bar is evil and needs to be killed.
Its boring as the Burning Legion was literally the exact same fuckin aim.
Both want to destroy the universe; the burning legion only because the void doing it was apparently worse.
It'd be better to hav e the Void wish to "take charge" of creation, as it seems predominantly based on aspects of the magic wheel opposed to it, where void is seen as a cancer. It'd be more interesting to see it have a twisted aim rather than HURR CORRUPT HURR DESTROY HURR THE WOOONS.
While there's something in this, especially the boring sanity meters they keep coming back to, you couldn't really do Lovecraftian monsters in a game. As soon as you see it, it's spoiled.
Jarldir ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:19:39 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Likewise.
If I never heard the word "Old gods" again it would still be too soon.
While it sounds cool it also makes it so nothing we have done mattered. Warcraft is cool when things change over time.
This seems like too much far sweeping changes out of absolutely nowhere. Seems gimmicky and cheap, like a show finale telling everyone "it was all a dream the whole time".
I'm not opposed to the black kingdom or whatever taking over. but I think they have to earn it if they want their story to be taken seriously.
What I think would be more reasonable is a 30 year time jump, and the world is changed, but in a logical way. Sort of like AU draenor with Yrel's light fanatics. And sure, have nzoth involved, but show us that his plan is still underway, not that he already won.
I dunno if I want dungeons and raids to be the 'greatest hits', I'd rather have new content
Kharaaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This could then also lead into an expansion or two of "rebuilding", fighting smaller threats and fixing everything up, with no ultimate "big bad" but rather us having to find a place on an Azeroth after the void corruption.
Embriel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:15:17 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
N'zoth was never killed. He allowed us to think he was dead - so that he could work uninterrupted - without the champions of Azeroth meddling.
And he was Kael'thas all along. Ny'alotha was merely a setback!
toffi23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:58:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I hate the old god style, I hope they will come up with something else, or at least with more diverse zones, not all of them filled with old god stuff.
Nono, silly. This is good writing that would entice the players. That's not gonna happen. We're gonna come back, a few months have passed at best, and we're plunged into another war because... I dunno, Anduin went for a meeting in Ogrimmar, and got an apple that turned out to be slightly off. Him commenting on that will make the Horde start a war again, because y'know, eternal bad guys.
And also, Cairne and Lor'themar dies between the expansions, explained in the books. It's a footnote that goes They fell of a bridge and drowned.
Rysilk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:07:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm reeeaaally skeptical we'll see a significant timeskip (or anything in that regard). People have said this will happen after literally every expansion since WoD. Let's not forget:
WoD: "time passes differently in AU so what if we come back and there's a timeskip?"
Legion: "time passes differently on Argus so what if we come back and there's a timeskip?"
BfA: "maybe time passes differently in Ny'alotha so what if we come back and there's a timeskip?" (before Shadowlands announcement).
Not saying it's impossible. Ion might be implying here that something will happen in this regard. But if you expect a "WoW 2"-like revamp, you'll probably be disappointed.
For all we know, our long time in the Shadowlands will be a split second on Azeroth (as implied by Ion suggesting that certain deceased characters might feel they've been in the Shadowlands for a long time). Maybe that's what Ion is alluding to.
Suddenly the level squish makes perfect sense and no sense at the exact same time
maledin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:42:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There damn well better be a Jeremy Bearimy joke in Shadowlands or Iโll be forced to quit WoW forever.
In fact, I hope there are ALL The Good Place Easter eggs; Revendreth would be perfect place to lampoon the โGoodโ Place, with a Venthyr named Michael endlessly torturing a group of flawed-yet-comical souls.
I hate that they made it ambiguous just so they can shoot themselves in the foot later with it.
perado ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:41:20 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We leave shadowlands and come back to an asteroid field. Azeroth has hatched and now we broken races scatter across the universe in search of a new home.
Only our brave space captain jack o'neal to guide us
Rysilk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:18:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We come out of Shadowlands only to find that....about 5 minutes have passed, Anduin went to make a sandwich and came back to you saving the world, again.
Guy doesn't know what he's talking about and is spitting out buzzwords lol. Literally just the framerate.
iCappy_ ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 19:50:20 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say...im playing with a gsync monitor at 1440p and I'm locked at 144hz and it's buttery smooth.
Raeli ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 19:57:16 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Given the amount of work they're doing on adding customisation options to the current races, I wouldn't expect some crazy revamp of those things.
Texture quality overall has been pretty static for a while, it would be nice to see texture sizes increase - the main increase has been from making more parts of armor contain 3D elements, which has been great and I'm sure they'll continue.
But I think we're still going to have the same races we currently have, with the same clipping issues. Even the Shadowlands armor has clipping issues, so I don't think that's something that'll be fixed any time soon.
Maybe we'll see better back slot options and so on, but I wouldn't expect it to completely change.
144hz and 4k support is a strange thing to say, there's nothing about wow that doesn't already support this.
If anything, we might see a new Azeroth since we'll be coming back after an undetermined amount of time, and we have seen some of the zones they already revamped for warfronts, as well as those that never made it into the game like the Barrens warfront.
So it could for sure be that we'll come back to a revamped Azeroth & Eastern Kingdoms (especially now we can also just talk to zidormi and go back to the old version whenever we want). But I would be surprised if we had something that major.
Given the amount of work they're doing on adding customisation options to the current races, I wouldn't expect some crazy revamp of those things.
This hits the nail on the head. Updating old textures implies that they intend for WoW to last longer. If Blizzard was planning WoW 2, I doubt they would spend resources updating a game they intend to replace.
Personally I suspect that WoW 2 as a separate game would be the writing on the wall that the games either dead or dying. I feel like the only reason they would make a new WoW (WoW2) instead of just updating old WoW is if the game is sinking.
At that point I could see them just annually pumping out new WoW games until it dies. (Ala Destiny 1/2).
But I have a very pessimistic anti-corporate view of Blizzard as a whole nowadays.
I would love updated graphics on everything but I really don't want it to go into a "too realistic" area. I like how it's still cartoony and isn't too real. They still have a lot of improvement that could be done, but if they make it look like some of those high-quality cutscenes I won't be a fan.
About half the armor is unusable because it's so low-res, and even half of the newer armor is unusable on some races since it stretches to the point of looking low-res or just stupid
nrrp ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:30:58 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Night Elves get a new tree, Gilneas gets restored, Gnomeragan is reclaimed, High Elves and Void Elves get a city, Mag'hars get like a district in Orgrimmar or something and everyone lived happily ever after... until patch 1.1 when things start going downhill for the world. But timeskip would give some much needed rest for the world, for the past 10 years every single year there was apocalyptic threat on Azeroth.
Also WoW2.0 would mean new engine, which could mean greater customization, body sliders, aerial combat, verticality in the world, revamp to the combat system, player housing and class order halls integrated from the start.
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
nick152 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:58:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think this'll ever happen. They seem to just be pushing minor improvements here-and-there constantly. They seem to barely have enough time making new expansions, there's no way they have the resources to push a ton of engine/customization/graphics changes at once.
I kind of want them to redo the 'main' world again- the Cataclysm'd world has a lot of storylines that are Cataclysm-specific in the (currently) 1-60 zones and feel out of place now, along with some stories that just haven't aged well.
If there's a time skip, I'd love a new Eastern Kingdoms & Kalimdor telling just general, local, expansion-agnostic stories of what's troubling the different parts of the world post-timeskip, like the original vanilla questing zones had. It'd be a great way of familiarizing people with the 'new' world and what people are constantly dealing with in their lives across it.
But that kind of rework feels less essential with the new leveling system, where you just pick an arbitrary expansion to level in. They could maybe have it be the leveling experience for the post-Shadowlands expansion, but unless they lean hard into the 'explore your new world' angle without an overarching story, I don't see getting around Cataclysm's issue where the world is suffused with a very specific story that the timeline clearly gets past in the next expansion.
Like, I wouldn't want a literal Cataclysm 2.0 where the world is now "Oh, look, N'Zoth didn't die and took everything over while we were gone" and now 100% of the Azeroth we all are familiar with is covered with tentacles and filled with Old God related quests and that's just the way things are now.
I'd rather have quests that aim to feel a bit more timeless, if that makes sense. After playing Classic, I feel like a lot of the quests come across as "Oh, these are just the problems/needs the people here are facing", and we help them with their current problem for a bit. In contrast, several of Cata's zones feel like "These are the problems people are facing because of the current temporary overarching storyline", which leads to it feeling out of date as soon as the current story has moved on.
On a side note, if they wanna do an in-house Warcraft 4 to tell the story of what the kingdoms are doing while we're busy timeskipping in the afterlife, I'd be cool with that.
Merosi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:12:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
But that kind of rework feels less essential with the new leveling system, where you just pick an arbitrary expansion to level in.
the levelling is actually better than just picking whatever. new players do not get to pick whatever, they HAVE to do the new starting zone, then do BfA and then go to shadowlands.
only after that can they choose to do old content on new characters (and of course existing players get grandfathered)
this means that new players get caught up to the current story much quicker, and I suspect that this will be the strategy going forward. do a couple of expansions, do a story squish with new starting zone, previous expansion and then straight into current expansion.
as an altoholic who tends to take very long breaks, this is quite exciting.
Aimnut ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:01:37 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe Azeroth is gone after shadowlands cause you know the sword is still there stabbing the planet
jbnagis ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:46:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If we come out and the beating of Nzoth wasn't a giant hallucination, an the black empire now rules azeroth, and the next expac isn't a gorilla war campaign to take back our home..I'll be dissapointed
So is this where we come back, old Anduinn is leading the charge against the Void lords (please no more legion), Illidan shows up with a cleansed Sargareas (gross) and the rest of the Pantheon, we get our asses kicked, Azeroth wakes up and mary sues (blizzard loves mary sues) us and WoW finally ends? Then a dying Anduinn says "there must always be a king" and WoW2 rolls across the screen?
Could this be a hint that there will be a time-jump at the end of Shadowlands? If there wasn't going to be anything of the sort, I feel like this answer wouldn't have been worded this way. Maybe we'll have an adult Anduin, maybe not old like in the Legion comic: Son of the Wolf, but an adult. Or maybe this is just a red herring and doesn't mean anything.
My hope beyond hope is that they use this to do some major overhauls to the zones and models.
We return to Azeroth some 40 years after we first had entered into the Shadowlands. During this time a sense of uneasiness clings to the air, of hushed whispers that the threads of life and death had been severed. Young men and women who had only known a life of constant war and chaos now enter into their twilight days; while children who grew up under such harsh conditions still cling to the old mindset they grew up under.
King Anduin and Warchief Thrall have mended the broken bonds of the Alliance and Horde, and have created a new life in which peace between the two is the only life known to young orcs and humans.
Calia Menthil has lead the Forsaken into a new era, no longer a cult of death - instead they look to new horizons and building a life with what they have.
Greymane had lead his people back to Gilneas, prior to his passing. Tess Greymane now leads
The Night Elves have returned back to their forests, and the druids slumber once again.
I think doing something like this would help with the lore in general. Things have become a bit stagnant with WoW I feel like, and Blizzard needs to carve out an entirely new story line.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
chaotic
Some areas (read: New and Worked on) will have experienced time passing fast while every other zone is stuck in the past.
Was talking about this time differential with my GF recently. I was thinking it would be a good time to redo Azeroth and bring it up to Wod/Legion/BfA quality because they wouldn't have to redo the entire world at once. It would be like any other expansion as far as play goes -- certain maps are available initially for the story line, with other maps being introduced as patches and even expansions roll out. But consider the difference between Hellfire and Tanaan, and imagine that given to any of Azeroth's maps. (Old Azeroth would, of course, still be around.)
I'm sure they have other, better ideas at Blizzard, but we were just musing.
Hope this means the old world (Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor) gets revamped. Tired of looking at near-decade old zones. I feel bad for new players who see trailers of the new zones and create their first level 1 character and load into Elwyn fuckin forest
Merosi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:14:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Tired of looking at near-decade old zones.
It always trips me up to think cataclysm zones are now older than the vanilla zones where when cata came out.
it means conveniently 1 to 1 time has passed after we hop out. Characters they don't like or don't know what to do with are on their way back but taking a bit more time so they'll be back when they're relevant.
Tecnically, it as been stated that killing the old gods solve nothing because their bodies corrupt Azeroth, that s why they were kept prisoner in the first place.
MoXfy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:57:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean it's the same way that ffxiv did when we traveled to the first, but the exarch managed to summon us during a time where the first and the source has a passage of time that's 1:1
Well, pretty much all old content is in severe need of a update, Outland and Northrend REALLY show their age. The revamped Azeroth doesn't even look that great anymore compared to Draenor/ Legion/ BFA lands.
Its not going to be done because of the changes to levelling though, I guess we are gonna have another Azeroth revamp and Outlands will stay as a 13 year old out of place zone.
I've always wondered if it would be possible to retroactively update textures, say you build a world, and can change the source texture to a higher quality one at a later date and its just kinda automatic, should work for terrain as its essentially just painted with a texture. Updated terrain alone would make Outland/Northend look so much better. I wonder if there would be a way to do the same for models (buildings e.t.c). Update the brickwork texture and bam, all the models that use it now have the better wall texture.
clooud ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:23:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It means they're making it vague enough so that no-one can contradict them when they decide to have creative freedom in something.
hrrrqq ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:44:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Mad Max style expansion with all our equip being gone and starting over again. Imagine Samus losing all her stuff in the beginning of a Metroid Game. Green items are actually good, blue items are RARE and epics are.. truly epic. Legendaries only exist in legends.
Time goes backwards! BFA never happened! BFA story writers as in-game characters found mauled to death by sheep! N'zoth is still locked away and we'll get a full Ny'lotha expansion down the line!
Some NPCs go further back in time! Find new content for old expansions! WoD is actually good past late game!
Screw any anomalies! Give us a genuine Faction War expansion!
Kazzei ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:32:18 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know how I'd feel about a time jump. It makes me uncomfortable to think I missed out on important things while I'm in the Shadowlands. If there is a time jump, I hope it's minor.
Time is reverse. Once you leave at the expac end, you will appear as lvl 1 in WoW Classic.
rolex81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:28 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Final raid before we come out the other end is us going back in time and fighting along side Sylvanas against Arthas while he is attacking Quel'Thalas for the Sunwell. After this moment and our successful aide of Sylvanas we split off into an alternate timeline and deal with whatever shit they come up with.
Sengura ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't understand the point of him saying this when literally a few minutes later he answered a question about portals connecting SL to Azeroth as part of lore and confirmed that there will be... Sooo.. you can literally go from SL to Azeroth at will through out the events of SL.
I'm still not sure what to think of the whole Shadowlands thing. If that's what dead leads to it's basically just level two.
So what would stop people from doing mass suicides to rejoin their loved ones or whatever if there's just another whole world on the other side that's just as good or shit as Azeroth was.
Are we ever going to see what 'level 3' is? If dead has no actual consequences anymore to any of the characters then what's actually the point of it all, we will all get to return to Azeroth anyway at the end of it.
We come out of the Shadowlands following Bolvar's lead, Sylvanas and the Jailer defeated. But wait! Kel'Thuzzad followed us through the way back! We're back home, but something feels off, as if we're in the past..thats right, the ancient war between the Trolls and the Humans...
I commented something like this recently. What if WoW did like Magic: The Gathering does and set new expansions in old areas? Specifically Northrend and Outland. It would give a chance to update those areas to modern production standards and tell a new story in a familiar setting.
Introducing Revenge of the Lich King! A new catastrophe has befallen the north and a resurrected a Lich King has surfaced to lay waste to the land of the living! Return to a remastered and updated Northrend! Help rebuild Valiance Keep! Explore the blighted wasteland that was once Dragonblight! Raid in the ruins of Icecrown Citadel!
I'm unsure who down-voted you, but I agree - we have an entire world at our disposal. Why let it go to waste? They kind of touched on this by having warfronts in old areas, but warfronts were boring. Proper content with new story quests and the like would be fantastic, in my opinion.
Here are 50 pages of detailed conversions between the differentcalendarsystems used by each culture over the course of 10,000 years including time before the sun and moon were used to measure time as we know it.
I wonder which type of world building is more satisfying.
nrrp ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:33:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Ion's answeres were extremely promising on several fronts, he implied we'll see Arthas in Shadowlands and that there'll be a timeskip. My guess is that Arthas will serve a similar role to Illidan in Legion.
Nah, Bolvar is Illidan 2.0. Arthas is just gonna be some shorter storybit imo, they wouldn't wanna involve him heavily if they're specifically saying that they're scared to use him cuz they don't wanna ruin his story.
nrrp ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:58:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, Bolvar is supposed to be Khadgar/Magni role, Arthas will be like Illidan. And based on the interview, I'd say there's good chance for Arthas, Ion seemed to want to specifically point that they'll treat him respectfully and for a worthwhile story and not just a nostalgia bait.
Bringing back Arthas in a significant role would be the straw that broke the camels back and would literally cause me to be done with the game for good. His story is done and it was one of the few actually good character arcs the Warcraft universe has. Giving him an epilogue/ "Where are they now?" via a quest hub or cutscene would be perfect but retconning his story so they can redeem him is just too much.
nrrp ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:04:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
People said the exact same thing about Illidan and reception to him in Legion was good to great. People will grumble that it's nostalgia bait, they'll do cool story beats, Arthas will get some sort of half redemption while probably remaining in the Shadowlands and maybe a cinematic and everyone will love it.
Illidan wasn't dead though and everyone knew he wasn't dead after Black Temple. Bringing back Arthas wouldn't be close to how they brought Illidan back.
nrrp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:01 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We also weren't going to the literal realm of the dead in Legion. Bringing Arthas back in Shadowlands makes complete sense.
I thought they mentioned somewhere that the Arthas storyline is one of the few that had a clear, middle and an end, a satisfying one at that, and that they do not want to bring him back to any big degree.
I could only see him interacting with Calia/Uther and I'm all for seeing him again but Arthas doesn't need a redepemption story like Illidan in Legion (not that you implied it would be a redemption arc obviously). Arthas had a perfect ending and I don't feel we need more from him other than a small cameo.
Oh for sure no doubt. I'm with you there. I really liked the Jaine and Arthas bit during the pride of kul tiras questline and it would be interesting to get a conversation between them. That I'm all for. I just think how they ended his story, I don't think he should feature much more than that.
I would like to see him interact with Calie and seeing his sister be undead etc. I just don't think he should play much of a role in Shadowlands outside of that.
Yah, I wouldn't want too much Arthas, only a little bit, since Blizz would probably wreck it. It would be interesting though if we were in the Maw with people he knew and they were like, 'Arthas...I'm sorry, I can't do this' and ran or something, but went back to it later. It would be interesting to see how they could make it work.
nrrp ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:56:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, Jaina and Arthas and Jaina and Kael'thas reunions would be interesting. Maybe appropriate for expansion centered around death, there are a lot of potential reunions, even something like Arthas and Kael'thas.
This could be a big time skip which an eventual Warcraft 4 would fill up the story regarding what happened during the heroes absence.
Chrzanu ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 09:07:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We will be jumping between Azeroth and Shadowlands 1000 times in 1 day. There will be no BIG time skips. They feed u with such info to not tie hands. But who cares sheeps will be sheeps go waste your time on "timeskips" ideas...
There isn't a fixed amount of time, since we may or may not write ourselves in a corner again and might want this as a "get out of jail free card" to either kill or advance a plot as needed.
What does that mean for the player? Well, what did anything from the story ever mean to the player, really? Different zones being in different timelines has been a narrative problem we have completely ignored so far and will continue to do so.
I just wish they would stop the time travel shenanigans, they have proven time and time again they are terrible at it and it does nothing but make them retcon older lore and the lore they just wrote for the time shenanigans.
this isn't time travel though. Time is different in Shadowlands... we have no clue how long well be in that realm and when we come out who knows how long that timeframe is on Azeroth. For all we know we could come out of the shadowlands and 30 years passes on Azeroth...old man Anduin etc.
So a time leap isnโt time travel. News to me. Also, your example is literally a time travel example. Are we literally time traveling? No, but it is the exact same outcome.
I think they're saying its just time passing faster. It's not like we'll be going forward 300 years, then back to where we came from. At most this could be called a "time skip"
And my point is itโs the same end result and in an area Blizzard has proven time and time again that they are shit at writing. Time shenanigans in their writing/lore are always a shit show. Iโd rather they stayed away from it and just wrote a good story again.
Edit: edited for clarity/coherence
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:21:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
By that logic every expansion involves time travel because the story progresses forwards. Did you get mad at the Cataclysm time travel of the entirety of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms?
The time travel you're talking about is going back in time, like we did in WoD
This is less time travel and more just time dilation. Time goes forward for everyone as per normal but one experiences it at a slower pace so in a sense more time passes for them.
There wouldn't be lore to retcon since that means making changes in the past and acting as if it was always that way (retroactive continuity). As we aren't going to the past, it wouldn't be an avenue to do that (no more so than normal anyway).
I get your complaint but this isn't really time travel shenanigans.
You know damn well they will ruin a time jump and the next expansion was WoW Classic all along, we come out of the Shadowlands to see everything reverted back to Vanilla
Yujiroh ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:57:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
When ion gets vague, that's when bad shit is gonna happen. I'm not talkin lore-wise. I'm talkin global gcd and world of gamblecraft-wise
Saved comment
Warbomb ยท 849 points ยท Posted at 20:03:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We emerge from the Shadowlands, only to find thousands of years have passed since we entered. Spaceships now float in the skies above a terraformed Azeroth, and soldiers in cybernetic armor patrol the streets, searching for resources.
Welcome... to Starcraft.
hermitxd ยท 158 points ยท Posted at 23:20:13 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
Knowing wow writers it won't be 1000 years.
Ten THOUSAND yearrrs.
Taladrac ยท 61 points ยท Posted at 01:35:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That will give you such a crick in the neck...
hermitxd ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 01:46:32 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Rug maaan gimme some tassel!
Kaldricus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 19:08:55 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
๐ถ wah wah waaaah ๐ถ
pocketchange2247 ยท 39 points ยท Posted at 03:03:14 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
But for some reason all the characters who stayed behind will still be alive and just have grey hair and minimal wrinkles
vodrin ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 10:37:54 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Or children of these people with strangely equal personalities and skills... or a name one character apart.
Rysilk ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 10:38:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And Nomie is still the cook.
Icaras01 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:40:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Why not? That worked in Ultima ;)
Kungvald ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 09:25:40 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
In Warcraft lore it has either happened recently, 30 years ago or 10,000 years. There is no between.
mirracz ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:05:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And when Illidan returns (again):
Feel the hatred of ten thousand years! Twice!
Torakaa ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:54:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Meanwhile somewhere in Torghast, a random mob finally has Imprison time out on it.
TeamRedundancyTeam ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:39:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warcraft 10k
sumdeadguy ยท 192 points ยท Posted at 21:20:44 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Game turns into a Warhammer 40k MMO
HumanHarvestingRobot ยท 135 points ยท Posted at 22:09:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The orcs have now devolved into green morons who talk in cockney accents and are born from fungus, while the humans keep fanatically shouting about Anduin being a "god emperor."
Bjek ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 00:20:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Oh boy, I am not sure a lot of the players who loves Elves are prepared for what the more darker aligned elves has become.
Orisyl ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 09:56:53 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Moon Guard is ready for the Dark Elves. I am not sure if the Dark Elves are ready for them though.
Bjek ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:09:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Every new edition I think I am ready for the Dark Eldar. Then Games Workshop are like: "Here - have these Warp mutated elves who turn themselves into flesh-abominations that makes the Abominations from WoW look like a plush-toys"
Notdravendraven ยท 59 points ยท Posted at 22:21:33 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes please. I want a 40k MMO, you could even invite a bunch of free to play players to be orks as a built in mob of undisciplined rabble.
Odarien ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 22:40:13 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
IIRC that was the idea for a potential 40k mmo, the F2P players were the orks. I think the project got canned however
Thrashgor ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 23:07:40 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nope, project devolved into 40k eternal crusade wich is now basically a dead Game
Finear ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:40:45 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
im still angry about eternal crusade, it had so much potential
also i find it funny how it had very similar faction imbalance problem as wow
Real_Lich_King ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:17:07 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I remember watching the dev vlogs, they kept promising a game as open and rich and playable as planetside 2 but they delivered another shitty battlefield style game.
Worst part is, they tried to mimic the control and feel of space marine but kept missing the mark.
man I wish relic was still around and making space marine 2
8-Brit ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:20:56 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That was Eternal Crusade. It started as something akin to Planetside but then it became Battlefield.
It was released way too early and had a pile of issues.
TrueMetatron ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:17:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I have 2 feelings about it, it would have been awesome, but also what if it was flawed, and what if it just flopped and ended like Warhammer Online, or so many other MMOs.
AlbainBlacksteel ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:14:16 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
RED GO FASTA!!! WAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!
WeissWyrm ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:49:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You joke but one of the Mag'har racials is literally that they go faster.
11S3r ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 22:32:34 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Also, Mekkatorque has secretly developed a new generation of paladins: Primaris paladins.
Tbh, the equvivalent of god emperor should be Terenas, since he is the one whise son turned evil.
Finear ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 23:37:35 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I_post_stuff ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:18:45 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Okay fine I'll go start re-reading the Horus Heresy series from the beginning are you happy now?
SugarySupreme ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 04:25:46 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Oh don't be so straight up and down!
I_post_stuff ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 11:44:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I can feel the hand of the ship on me.
Frehihg1200 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 18:01:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Literally just finished Flight of the Eisenstein yesterday started reading the Horus Heresy series month by month on Audible. Loved that book so much really enjoyed Garro as a character.
EntropicReaver ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:23:13 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
book one was so good
[deleted] ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:36:17 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We've come full circle from people who don't know that Warcraft literally started as a Warhammer game.
Metzen has been ripping off of Warhammer all the way up to his retirement, when he changed the lore so that all demons only die if killed in the Twisting Nether.
Finear ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 23:58:15 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
we knew that in TBC
and how exactly was he ripping off warhammer (in wow that is, of course the rts games were heavily based on wh) besides a basic theme of basic races?
novacham ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:25:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
WarCraft the RTS was originally pitched as a Warhammer RTS. Gamesworkshop declined to give Blizzard the license.
Finear ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 01:33:35 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
yes, i know that and this isn't what im asking about
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:33:15 on May 22, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If you don't know how the Burning Legion and the Twisting Nether rip off of Warhammer, you don't know Warhammer enough to even discuss this. The Burning Legion and Twisting Nether rip off of maybe one of the most iconic parts of Warhammer.
I'm not going to spend 30 minutes explaining it to you because your lack of familiarity with Warhammer is going to lead to you being offended, and insist on diluting the argument with "well everything is inspired by something" which doesn't change the fact that Warcraft straight lifted concepts from Warhammer and hides entirely the fact that it did so.
Just because everything is inspired from something doesn't make every use of inspiration from another source equally original and creative.
Vanayzan ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 07:27:15 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That was only for Dreadlords in TBC. Not all demons.
Plus correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't they also retcon the Testing Nether thing in Legion too? Since Argus just brings then back no matter what now?
Orisyl ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:04:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes and no. In BC it was just Dreadlords where known to do it (hence Varimathrasโ whole thing with only a Dreadlord can kill a Dreadlord). The rest of the Demons no one was really able to kill/cared about if that specific Fel Guard was the same one a few years back.
Then in Dreanor it was changed to ALL demons exist in the Twisting Nether and ALL of them come back. This immortality is what lead Sargeras to create a jail planet in the first place (later destroyed with the founding of the Legion) and their endless returning eventually drove him nuts (though this was rapid in the eyes of a Titan, which 100,000 years isnโt an issue).
Legion changed it for the last time that Argus is turbo charging their natural regeneration (and possibly allowing some demons who normally could not, such as Eredar, pull off the reviving thing), and while destroying it didnโt stop the ones that could naturally resurrect from doing so, the Legion could no longer use Infinite army wave tactics which effectively broke them.
Torakaa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:57:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm relatively certain there's a quest in Ogri'la, the one where you open a portal and kill demons near it, that mentions demons eventually just pop back up if you kill them normally.
[deleted] ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 04:05:04 on May 20, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You're confusing retroactive explanations with contemporary intention.
In BC it was Blizzard's intention that only Dreadlords were immortal outside the Nether. The lore specified that Dreadlords did this, not demons in general.
Just because 15 years later they found a new explanation for a lore change that fits retroactively doesn't mean it was the intention the whole time.
Either way the entire Twisting Nether, demons and the Burning Legion are all rip offs from Warhammer. The entire concept is just a distilled version of Warhammer's Immaterium, daemons and Chaos.
And this isn't me criticizing Blizzard, Warhammer is an amalgamation of blatant rip-offs but it's never afraid to admit it and it's never afraid to be bold with the things that make it unique.
Warcraft and Warcraf fans like you are the opposite. You tiptoe around the fact that much of Warcraft was directly inspired by Metzen's self-admitted giant Warhammrt fandom, from the name to the art style to the lore, and Warcraft is weaker for it.
Warhammer and its fans embrace their homages, its pathetic when a fanbase doesn't have the maturity to do that (Warcraft)
Orisyl ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:58:51 on May 20, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Buddy, I am a nuts Warhammer fan. I know this shit is Warhammer Light, and I like it more for that. I was just saying the timeline of when we knew about these things (as I was pretty sure it was hinted at that Kazzak was killed in Vanilla and came back too in BC).
I mean, Blizzard had that "Lore Tome" that had basically every explanation of all the stuff happening behind the scenes way back in Wrath (when they started to referencing that it exists, but it was said that it existed before that), for all we know the immortal Legion thing was in there since vanilla. It would line up with the whole Warhammer inspiration.
So get off your damn podium.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:31:31 on May 22, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, the immortal Legion thing wasn't in there since Vanilla. In Vanilla it was exclusively Dreadlords that revived in the Nether.
Also each "lore tome" they've released has retconned big parts of any previous one that came before, so any lore dump Blizzard made back then shouldn't be taken seriously.
FourteenFour ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:50:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
so they just added an accent, got it.
discodank ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:52:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
ORKS ORKS ORKS ORKS
BatOnWeb ยท 21 points ยท Posted at 22:10:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warcraft 30k. Anduinโs sons are either working with him or flat out betraying him for the legion.
And yet everyone still says fuck Erebus.
11S3r ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:21:48 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warcraft already has an Erebus, its called Magatha grimtotem
scud121 ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 23:21:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
As per 1d4chan, the best place to get 40k info -
"FUCK EREBUS!"
โ The fourth most popular phrase in 40K, right after Blood for the Blood God, Heresy, and WAAAAAAGHH!
He's a slippery, creepy motherfucker and if anyone had an ounce of sense they'd have tossed him out of a fucking airlock the second they set eyes on him.
DatGuy45 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:32:58 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
God. Please.
myndzero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:35:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
considering they originally wanted the license for the IP, it's possible
Lefthandovg0d ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:59:41 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I FEEL THE WARP OVERTAKING ME.... IT IS A GOOD PAIN!!!!
ActualFrozenPizza ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 23:05:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Not to be a downer or anything but the Night Elves have been around for many thousand years and they have made piss poor technological advances in that time so I wouldnโt get my hopes up, but it would be pretty fun getting a brand new flying car as a mount in future Azeroth ;)
progressiveoverload ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 00:42:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean irl humans didnโt get up to much in like 200k years so the Night Elves are doing fine.
Bebop24trigun ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 04:16:03 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean, it could make it even easier too since Humans went through countless generations building on vastly diverse heritages and families to get to where we are now. The night elves are the same people from 10k years ago. Not many night elf babies to innovate and learn from their elders.
Shiruu ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 08:33:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They got lucky then, no generation of millennials :D
Holyrunner42 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 13:52:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So nelves are just boomers? No wonder they are useless.
Kregory03 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:12:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We weren't but then we exploded technologically over the course of a millennium from the Roman Empire to the modern day so much mad shit has been invented it boggles the mind.
The reason nothing ever happens on so grand a scale (when Goblins and Gnomes exist for crying out loud) is simply the concept of medieval stasis.
nobull91 ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 00:06:41 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Warfare drives most technological advances. The elves won their wars with their tech (and magic) so for 10000 years there was no need for improving
[deleted] ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 03:16:49 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
nobull91 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 05:08:54 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm definitely meaning it's 100% true all the time IRL when I'm talking about magic right.
ImmaculateTorus ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:34:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
no you definitely made it sound like a universally applicable principle
nobull91 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:48:35 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Well that's on my writing it badly, I suppose. But I was talking about in-context.
Look at the faction war. Horde & Alliance have been creating new technological marvels consistently to try and get an edge over their opponent. At this point for like 5-6 expansions.
vikingakonungen ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:05:20 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Each expac is like 1-2 years each so it's all been in a 10-ish years period. You're not wrong in that war drives innovation both in game and irl.
MrVeazey ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 23:44:26 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, but the draeni MacGyvered up all kinds of cool stuff from a wrecked spaceship on two different planets. Maybe they'll let the elves be park rangers and put the space goats in charge of R&D.
Jsm1370 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:14:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's because the are the equivalent of Luddites.
descendingangel87 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:47:24 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
To be fair when you're immortal hippies, it kinda stunts your development.
It's like.
Military advisor: "Malfurion, we should come up with some advanced military tech in case the legion decides to invade again."
Malfurion: "Oh don't worry about it we have tons of time, but in the mean time we should do a bunch of drugs in this kick ass tree I found in the forest and pretend to be cats."
Military advisor: "....."
NickeKass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:42:31 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They had magic and strived to live in balance with nature. Real world humans kind of screwed up that balance in only 100 years.
Heybarbaruiva ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 21:18:50 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly, a game set in the futuristic Starcraft universe where you play as a time-travelling Orc from medievel Azeroth sounds cool as hell!
imdrunkontea ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 22:28:30 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The Tauren Marine shall be canon!
xxNightingale ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:56:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Grunty the Marine would like to have a word.
Dawgz ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 21:02:58 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Perfect.
Youmeanmoidoid ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 21:38:15 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Cyborg Sylvannas as the next big bad villain calling it now (cause you know she's not gonna die in Shadowlands)
Regalingual ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 21:51:08 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, no, thatโs so beneath Blizzard.
Theyโd make her transform into the Final Titan.
Asternon ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 22:14:34 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Sylvanas stands atop a tower, silently staring at the world below as thousands upon thousands of undead creatures float serenely into the evening sky.
Sylvanas Windrunner: Thank you, Nathanos. For everything.
She turns around to stare at Nathanos longingly as she slowly lifts off, on her way to join the innumerable Forsaken in their ascent.
Nathanos Blightcaller: My pleasure, darlin'. Always was.
Sylvanas Windrunner: I now see my true enemy. He waits for me in the void, wielding powers I cannot imagine. I go to face him, having renounced everything - my undeadity, my identity, the man I love. But I will not face this enemy alone - I am the Forsaken.
Notdravendraven ยท 35 points ยท Posted at 22:22:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
vomits
Seradwen ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 02:39:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
How different would people's opinion of Nathanos be if he had the exact same role in the story but with the personality and voice of Jim Raynor?
Because I say we'd all love him despite his loyal devotion to a psychopath.
SuddenBag ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:18:46 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wow this just reminded me how terrible Heart of the Swarm campaign was.
DatGuy45 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 03:34:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
She becomes the Jailer calling it right now
Vyar ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 04:47:52 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
โThere must always be a Jailer. Tell them only that the Jailer is dead, and that Sylvanas Windrunner died with him.โ
perado ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:39:09 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They better kill her or redeem her because shes awful and bland and if i have to hear her nails on a chalkboard voice another expansion i may quit wow for real... maybe.
Youmeanmoidoid ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:33:18 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
She burned hundreds of thousands of men, woman, and children alive. Very few people even like her at all, let alone are about to start cheering for her cause she does one nice act for the first time in her undead life later on.
ASlowTriumph ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:50:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The writing for sylvanas is terrible but destroying a major war target, even with major civilian causalities, even if they die a horrible fiery death is not a warcrime. See bombing of dresden and Tokyo.
Snowchain1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:52:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Well it wasn't really much of a war target anymore after the NE army was tricked into being on the other side of the continent and the rest of its defenses were wiped out. There were ONLY civilians left in the world tree.
ASlowTriumph ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:08:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It's a defensive position, it has the ability manufacture weapons and armour, it's a base for ships and air travel, it's has armed guards/defenders, its a centre of communications/supply lines, it's an alliance war asset civilian presence or not.
Snowchain1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:33:21 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Except none of that mattered anymore since the Horde seized the city. The civilians wouldn't be able to run the facilities that make weapons or get them to the alliance armies. The alliance armies wouldn't be able to port at it since it is occupied and defended by Horde. The Horde actually hurt themselves by destroying it because what resources it already had were destroyed instead of taken.
perado ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:16:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The number of her fanboys left always shocks me.
JD1337 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:56:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The power of (undead)elf titties
Real_Lich_King ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:19:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We can call her Robocu... robochief, definitely robochief
PRIME DIRECTIVES
1) SERVE PERSONAL TRUST
2) PROTECT SELF
3) UPHOLD OWN LAWS
4) DELETED
[deleted] ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:42:00 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
V3RD1GR15 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 21:05:01 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
SOS indeed.
Zakkimatsu ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:38:42 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Jacked up and good to go!
ImpulseScreamer ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:51:15 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That was The Elder Scrols Lore during the 1st Era, when a fucking Gorilla and a few elven priests used a Staff to BREAK TIME AND THE CONCEPT ITSELF FOR 1008 YEARS! Or not since time itself died and no one really knew how much it passed, since time became Timeless to the point that even nozdormu would cry and mourn Akatosh because of HOW FUCKED it became until everything came back to normal.
in years the empire reached the stars with stone and magisteel spaceships, khajiit made moon colonies, followed By REMAN CYRODILL's moon cum vauts, Daedric Armwrestling due to how everything got fucked royally, and so on.
EntropicReaver ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 07:24:21 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
yeah i'm not employed by bethesda either, michael
ImpulseScreamer ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 14:25:03 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
ESO made all of it canon.
Greymoor has a few surprises for those who asked why skyrim's nord religion felt so bland compared to what originally is
EntropicReaver ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:48:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
ESO LUL
Snowchain1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:54:29 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The only part of that ESO made canon was that the Khajiit made temples on the moons after traveling there through portals.
vikingakonungen ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:07:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wow needs a pelinal whitestrake to do some pest control.
ArroganceHoTS ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 21:44:23 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
GIVEEEEEE
spellsword ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:54:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If point out that we already have spacecraft. And bombs. And dimensional travel. And all variety of guns. It would hardly take 1000 years of development to reach starcraft
Marvelous_Vegetable ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:18:28 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Welcome to..... World of Starcraft!
I would love to play there.
Jausa ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:00:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Jumalauta vittu joo!
muppetpastor77 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:57:24 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I am 100000% ready for World of Starcraft.
Austilias ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 08:28:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I unironically think that WoW needs a futuristic/sci-fi themed expansion. Weโve had a little โfantasy sci-fiโ here and there but thatโs not what Iโm getting at. Weโve done plenty of going back in time, going sideways in time, alternate timelines, but no real โgoing to the futureโ.
What I want to see after we get back from Shadowlands is a legion of Alliance lion-themed spaceships and a giant hologram saying โEnlist in the Alliance of tomorrow today!โ
Real_Lich_King ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:22:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
that was wildstar,
it didn't go well
NickeKass ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:50:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Ive always seen adding scifi elements to fantasy as a bit of a slippery slope to this argument. At what point does it cease to be a fantasy game with scifi elements to a scifi game with fantasy elements?
If we get lion-themed spaceships then we get horde corsair spaceships as well for raiding parties. Do these ships have shields to stop the enemy fire? If ships can have shields, do people get their own? Does that mean suddenly normal weapons are useless? Do we go from swords and guns to lightsabres and phase rifles?
If the scifi elements were an advanced race making a pit stop on azeroth without sharing their tech then leaving after the xpack it could work. But we have had spaceships since BC (Exodar) and it seems odd but pleasant they haven't been touched upon again. Gnomes and goblins have electricity but Orcs and Humans patrol their capital cities at night with torches and lanterns.
SurrealKarma ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 18:18:55 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Please, like the lazy magic-obsessive people of Azeroth would ever evolve that far.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and magic takes the former away.
Except gnomes. I eagerly await their conquest of the place.
FionaSilberpfeil ยท 160 points ยท Posted at 21:03:17 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So basically "Whatever we think is cool. We may even go back in time!"
Zeemex ยท 100 points ยท Posted at 21:33:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
inb4 we come out in alternate azeroth from WoD
Deztru ยท 27 points ยท Posted at 02:22:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We're summoned away from Shadowlands by Ogres in Farahlon using the world pylon.
Zeemex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:28:43 on May 16, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nope, not enough pylons
Real_Lich_King ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:14:44 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
when did the protoss get there?
Valaurus ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 01:50:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This would actually be so intriguingly cool, IMO. Itโll never happen, but would be cool
salticidae_ballet ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 02:13:43 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah they'd have to build another Azeroth and they just ain't about that
ManceRayder2020 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 15:37:19 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I wouldn't be so sure. It's obvious that the old zones need a lot of love. This could very much be their way to transition to a "remastered" Azeroth while having narrative hooks that justify the changes. Plus they could tie it into the core story of the next expansion and if people really hate it they could just scrap it like everything else lol.
Khaldaan ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 01:56:33 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Next expansion and Burning Crusade servers all rolled into one.
Fucking genius I tell ya.
aliaswyvernspur ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:55:42 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So, vanilla? Wait, dammit.
Jeezy911 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 04:32:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
What's easier to understand, the timeline of the movie Primer or the wow timeline?
Jwalla83 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:54:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Announcing: WoD 2!
SurrealKarma ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:21:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm honestly okay with that. I don't really care about the general direction of the overall story, at least not anymore, as long as we meet some interesting fellers along the way.
hery41 ยท 603 points ยท Posted at 19:37:23 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
"Whatever's convenient for setting up the next expansion"
money_tester ยท 395 points ยท Posted at 20:23:24 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Which...I'm not upset with. Why box yourself in before you have to.
Pugduck77 ยท -81 points ยท Posted at 22:32:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Because they should have the story planned out before making it.
ben5292001 ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 03:04:20 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's actually a big point of debate among authors and story writers. Some prefer to write the story as it happens, not blocking themselves in before ever writing. Others prefer to have a solid outline to serve as a backbone for their writing.
If I'm not mistaken, the analogy used most often is "architects vs. gardeners," where gardeners metaphorically plant a seed and nurture it into something, and architects have a solid plan before putting it in motion.
Planning before writing is absolutely not a requirement.
Arceoxys ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 03:38:36 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
In Stephen King's book On Writing he said it was [his writing process] akin to an archaeologist. Discovering new things as he dug deeper into the story. Whether or not you like his books, can't argue the dude is prolific as fuck and hugely popular.
GloriousNewt ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:53:54 on May 16, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It also helped that during his most prolific period he was drunk and slamming lines of coke constantly.
SlouchyGuy ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 07:20:45 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It's not, but WoW writers are also terrible gardeners. They try to plan but then fail (in cases of clear set ups that they made like with Koltira storyline), but they also fail as gardeners because they follow rule of cool, not characters (they break them routinely) or story logic (it basically doesn't exist in WoW).
OnicoBoy94 ยท 81 points ยท Posted at 22:35:32 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Thats... what they're doing..?
SlouchyGuy ยท -14 points ยท Posted at 07:18:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, not really, they are making up on the go along with some vague planning.
There are many abandoned set ups and storylines in Warcraft because of rule of cool. WoD was planned as an expansion where we will see old Orc warchiefs return, but it would be done in whatever manner was fitting - first plan was for Garrosh to find a horn that would resurrect them in Outland
Merosi ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 08:34:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
for how much I hate time travel stories, I think the look at draenor we got in WoD was worth it.
Testobesto123 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 09:48:40 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The whole story with time in shadowlands is being set up BECAUSE they need it for the next expansion, otherwise they wouldnโt have mentioned it before Alpha was even considered, back in November.
SlouchyGuy ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 10:26:39 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
How does it contradict anything I've written? Of course they have plans for the next expansion, but broad strokes planning doesn't mean that they don't plan at all, or that their plans might be vague in many parts, or that the story changes in development.
D2papi ยท 75 points ยท Posted at 21:25:21 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean.. They plan like 3 expansions ahead right? It's not like they have no idea what's going to happen after Shadowlands... I hope
taiyoukai99 ยท 40 points ยท Posted at 21:30:40 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I think it's just major story beats but I could be wrong
MadeIt2TheH20 ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 01:31:54 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah that and a theme. They likely wanted Teldrassil too burn, UC too be plagued, HvA, Kul'Tiras, Zandalar, Azshara and N'zoth. The specific of how those all fit together is up too the lore team. But the themes are set by the design team and the writers have too figure out how it all fits.
Korvas576 ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 22:27:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
they're modt likely just holding suspense for the players to drive speculation. I'm sure when we see the story we may be able to hold our predictions though
JRWill004 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:47:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If I remember correctly, an interview said once that during the live expansion, the next one is being developed, and the one after that is being concepted with considerations on how far along the story team is.
Nite92 ยท 111 points ยท Posted at 20:44:31 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
What's the problem with that?
Besoffen55 ยท 92 points ยท Posted at 21:11:31 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I much prefer this option. It is kind of confirming that there probably will be some kind of time difference if they want to make one but they aren't forcing themselves to do anything specific from the start
protar95 ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 22:10:25 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
WoW is developed several expansions in advance, so they almost certainly know already whether or not 10.0 will feature a time jump.
Narux117 ยท 36 points ยท Posted at 23:06:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean if anything the BIG 10.0 sounds like a great time to have a time skip/ world revamp. With the horde having a peace council at the helm, and Anduin slowly becomming more and more jaded. having 10.0 be a big "reset" to renew the trajectory of the storylines etc sounds solid to me.
iCappy_ ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 23:27:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Don't ever call my boy Anduin jaded, ever, again.
perado ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 23:37:34 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hes really not jaded. Nzoth was messing with him when he punched DragonBai so hes very much a calm leader. He would never start another war.
Discomanco ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 11:40:49 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Blizz: Hold my ink and paper!
Jk, I don't think they would make him start another war with the horde either
toffi23 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:49:07 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I hope we get more nice and peaceful places to protect like it was with Pandaria instead of already fucked up ones to beat.
RoboMullet ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 23:37:46 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
Exactly they should already have somewhat of a plan for it. For them to say that it's not an identical passage of time to Azeroth is definitely an interesting statement in that regard. Maybe we get out and Anduin is in his old form that we saw in the comic years from now preparing for some crazy battle.
Maybe time could even pass sporadically from patch to patch?
jtb234 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 04:31:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Although, there's no confirmation that time outside shadowlands passes at all...we could literally be in and back in one day on Azeroth.
FrostSquirrelled ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:31:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This is the answer here. That way, they can change nothing.
jtb234 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:41:44 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Or they go waaaaay in the future to start a new slate and kill off every character at once. We aren't even on Azeroth anymore. The new planet is Htoreza and it was recently invaded by a new race of creatures from a planet called Roneard.
vaminion ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:42:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
2 years from now: "ION confirms TIME SKIP. INTERVIEW FROM 2020 says it will happen and no current notes say it WON'T! 100 YEAR PLOT ADVANCEMENT PROVEN!"
Forikorder ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:57:31 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
kinda feel like this is more "thats not happening"
avcloudy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:39:44 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They're so busy not writing themselves into holes that sometimes it feels like they're too busy to write anything.
perado ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 23:36:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Also means in cannon we arent going back and forth to stormwind. Unless its inuyasha rules and time doesnt matter and its all made up anyway.
IntenseIntentInTents ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 00:43:14 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Well, from the interview:
It's definitely all made up, but I won't lie, I always look forward to seeing what they come up with.
Axerty ยท 18 points ยท Posted at 05:51:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
and here i thought wow was based in reality
xXPolarizedXx ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:36:31 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Memories of a Peon: An Autobiography
IntenseIntentInTents ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:33:02 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It's not? Ah fuck. I did wonder why my history examination didn't go as well as planned.
perado ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 04:09:22 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Same here. I hate what they do sometimes, but other times i feel they revive a role well. After Malf in Legion (Xavius Fake) people got the idea that he was... soft. He is not. His damn brother is Illidan. He is not to trifled with. Honestly, if anyone leads us to war against sylv in the raid i hope its him and Ty.
The emerald area is there so that gives it a chance he goes to them for aid.
Also he shredded a whole platoon of horde at darkshore and single handedly made that shield. Hes likely only grown stronger
Hydris ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:42:32 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Gonna be Jeremy Bearimy Timeline.
Tovien ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 20:09:53 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yuuuuuup.
stigmate ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:16:39 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
or wow2
dun dun duuuunnnn
baelrog ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 23:38:35 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
WoW reforged.
It's just classic with higher polygon models, out sourced to a SEA contractor.
Dun dun dun
[deleted] ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:45:27 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
Tanoshii ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 21:59:53 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Sounds super terrible. No thanks.
SkwiddyCs ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:16:03 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
that sounds awful to be honest. WoW is built on class fantasy, removing that would be terrible from both a gameplay and a lore standpoint.
Illycia ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 22:01:31 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I think you forgot the main aspect: mobile.
You're welcome.
mightyenan0 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:07:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They can even keep weird time stuff happening if they want to. We're just one call away from Chromie to put us right back where we need to be.
EXUnForgiv3n ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 14:30:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We gotta see old Anduinn at some point.
https://imgur.com/O8SGFdg
micwini ยท 58 points ยท Posted at 20:40:53 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
What if we come back to azeroth after the expansion ends and find out that while we were gone..... only 5 minutes had passed...
matijwow ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 01:01:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Lore wise, that's how Burning Crusade was. We went through the Dark Portal and spent more time in Outland than passed on Azeroth, so the time between Vanilla Naxx and Wrath Naxx was not very long.
pocketchange2247 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 03:24:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I never understood this, but is the reason we can't get original T3 gear because vanilla Naxx turned into Wrath Naxx? I didn't even get to 60 during vanilla so I don't know
Fatdap ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 03:47:37 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes. With the introduction of Wrath Naxx, Classic ceased to exist and was turned into Wrath Naxx.
pocketchange2247 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:30:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Sucks. Would be cool if they somehow brought back T3 gear. It had some of my favorite designs. Didn't they do a kind of redesign a while back with some?
chikenfurher ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 05:35:15 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You can buy t3 from the black market auction house.
knokout64 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 16:58:13 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Tier 7 (Wrath Naxx) is the same, just recolored.
Maxrokur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:22:29 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Actually it would be the inverse case, Salanar a being from the shadolands that works with the EB says in Legion when we met him again:
"Greetings deathlord, it might had been years for you since last we met but for me from the Shadowlands only a few days passed"
So basically we dealt with Sylvanas in 1 week or less but for Azeroth 1 whole year has passed
Rei-Gadanho ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 22:40:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
...That means we can emerge out of shadowlands into WoD again?
Tangnost ยท 30 points ยท Posted at 23:12:53 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Truly the most cursed timeline
Foobis25 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:32:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We can finally see Garridan Hellrage
TheHeroicLionheart ยท 19 points ยท Posted at 01:08:13 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So its a Jeremy Bearimy.
Got it.
Fermicheese ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:20:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Is the dot classic?
TheHeroicLionheart ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:21:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And 6.1 and pet battles
maledin ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 16:44:40 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Donโt forget Tuesdays... and July.
Gneissisnice ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 13:06:21 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I SAW...THE TIME KNIIIIFE
Clackamass ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 03:04:42 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Let's be real.
There won't be a time difference, this answer is just humoring the question.
Skeptical_Lemur ยท 311 points ยท Posted at 18:43:18 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
Imagine if, canonically, we stay in Shadowlands the whole expansion - our toons never leaving, so we are unaware of what is happening in the real world. Then, upon fixing the death realm, bringing balance to it - we step out of the portal to find:
N'zoth was never killed. He allowed us to think he was dead - so that he could work uninterrupted - without the champions of Azeroth meddling. When we come back - we come to a fully realised Black Empire - a world completely changed from what we remember. Stromwind destroyed, Org destroyed, those who weren't in the shadowlands driven underground to survive.
The expansion - Hour of Twilight - is the culmination of the Void storyline - with Nzoth resurrecting the old gods all to bring about the final plan- the summoning of the void lords on Azeroth.
This would be a great bridge - the summoning of the void lords - to what I see as the finale of the game - Azeroth itself waking up. Imagine if - because the titan awoke, time went all haywire - and the dungeons and raids of this final expansion were the best hits of all of WoW - revamped and reimagined with enemies from all expansions taking the place of other bosses.
Man, Im hyped for where they could go lol.
E13ven ยท 272 points ยท Posted at 20:34:21 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This sounds cool and all but hear me out....what if when we came back.....the horde and the alliance found some other contrived reason to fight each other again and we put the WAR back in WARCRAFT?!?!?
Zakkimatsu ยท 83 points ยท Posted at 02:39:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
stop.
Michelanvalo ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 13:41:49 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
it's been 17 hours, ion already read this and we're all fucked
8-Brit ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 06:23:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nah. It's on a three expansion cycle. Every three expansions when aging WC2 fans start grumbling, put the war back in Warcraft. For real this time!
Lil_Smao ยท 24 points ยท Posted at 01:07:10 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
War never left warcraft. Factions don't need to keep on fighting eachother like bunch of imbeciles ...while outside forces are constantly trying to destroy our planet.
Unless you meant that what he wrote made too much sense and Blizz will just go back to nonsense. Which I still cannot agree with. Everyone just takes expansion as full story, when in reality it's far from over.
Lazer726 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 11:57:32 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm really hoping that after we unite in Shadowlands, because obviously we're going to unite because we're basically united now, they ditch factions. The game would be so much better if we could just... not be at war with the other faction for reasons as dumb as:
Azerite
Because we always are
They said we look like poopy heads
xaky05 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:17:26 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Like fighting the battle for azeroth again?
RikkiTikkisButt ยท -17 points ยท Posted at 22:13:20 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I would actually love it if we got the faction war expansion that was promised instead of that steaming pile of horse shit that we got
12x23 ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 23:54:44 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The faction war story is played out. It makes no sense at this point. It made no sense in BFA which is why it was dumped
RikkiTikkisButt ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:47:25 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The way they did it I agree it made no sense but that doesnโt mean it is played out. They have never actually legitimately done it right. BFA was god awful. The writing was just terrible. That doesnโt mean the idea was bad. Just the execution
nrrp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:48:30 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm against faction war expansion mostly because any faction war expansion is inherently a zero sum game between Horde and the Alliance and devs are massive Horde fanboys that will never let that be fair and equitable.
You can see it all over BFA - with the latest info from Ion it is obvious if it wasn't before that they had absolutely no plan for Teldrassil and didn't think much of burning it and they pretty much only burned it to advance Saurfang's story. They cared as much about burning of Teldrassil as they did about sticking the sword in Silithus. There won't be resolution to the plot in Shadowlands, the earliest will be the expansion after Shadowlands, maybe. Those movie quality cinematics take a long time to make so those need to be pre-planned long in advance, and in BFA they managed to make 20-25 minutes of movie quality cinematics of Saurfang being sad without ever mentioning or showing the actual victims. Then the Horde just got more content in BFA, got better content while Alliance content was rushed or afterthought, got multiple questlines and mounts with no Alliance equivalent and got the focus of the story for the entire expansion - BFA was very much the expansion where Horde was the main characters and Alliance afterthought, it was written for people with Horde mains and Alliance alts.
On the other hand, if it's not a faction war expansion then that all gets buried and the relationship between Horde and Alliance isn't zero sum for the most part and there isn't bitterness or anger over it. Sure, for example, Kyrians or Night Fae might suck and become the meme covenant but that doesn't matter since both the Horde and the Alliance will be in them and the covenants are only for one expansion guaranteed so they don't matter as much.
RikkiTikkisButt ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:51:03 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Honestly pandaria was the last time they actually did it and even then they didnโt stick the landing at all. I donโt want a story where one side is all righteous and the other has a tyrannical leader that needs to be overthrown. I want a faction war where both sides believe in their cause and they are both right and both wrong simultaneously. A war with real purpose behind it instead of this made up bullshit. The black and white writing is so simplistic that itโs hard to get in to. We need something where people can actually get behind both sides and really care about the fight. Sylvannas...sorry garrosh ....sorry both of them using the horde for their murderous purposes does not count as a faction war.
SpicyMcHaggis206 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 03:41:44 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The faction war is the core element to Warcraft. We've already proven that we can beat the shit out of any external world ending threat. We've killed the manifestations of 4 old gods. We defeated the Lich King and the Burning Legion. The only true threat to our survival is the other faction.
With the history of fighting and the atrocities on both sides, no amount of banding together to defeat a common enemy will ever reconcile the two sides. When we kill the external threat and we are left in a room together we will always resort to fighting.
In BfA it made perfect sense. Azerite was billed as this world changing substance, of course both sides are willing to fight to secure as much of it as possible. The Cold War has been over for 30 years but if someone discovered some fuel that allows FTL travel I firmly believe the US and Russia would 100% go to war over it.
DrewbieWanKenobie ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 04:45:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I the only real way to have faction wars is to split the factions up more. Like, it doesn't make sense for people who idolize thrall to want to go to war with some goody goody like Anduin. But it totally makes sense for the worgen and undead to always be at eachothers throats.
SpicyMcHaggis206 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:06:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
I'd rather have more branching stories like Sylvanas v. Saurfang
Everyone stays in the same faction, but you can pick if you wanna be a warmonger or if you want peace. That way you can still do what you want story wise, but you can still raid with your lame friends that don't want to wipe out the Horde.
But I agree, there needs to be a division in the Alliance, for sure, since two of our main leaders have serious issues with the Horde. Anduin can only realistically hold them back for so long before it gets ridiculous. Especially Tyrande who has shown she doesn't really give a damn what Anduin says and will do things her own way.
My dream Alliance storyline is Anduin being mysteriously incapacitated and Genn and Tyrande form a "council" to rule in his stead that they railroad all the time to start constant wars with the Horde. It would necessarily have to end with Anduin getting rezzed and finding out that G&T tried to murder him so they could plunge the world in war AGAIN. They would have to be banished or executed. That would suck, but it would be worth it to have one glorious expansion where the Alliance gets to fuck some shit up.
Art4261 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 05:04:02 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They literally do this every other xpac
Autodeath ยท 73 points ยท Posted at 19:30:36 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
With a Firelands type storyprogression where after each milestone you "reclaim" a part of the world.
Skeptical_Lemur ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 19:35:50 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Exactly! I've always thought that Blizzard should revisit past locations. And in the scenario I concocted above - imagine if Whole areas of the world were dominated and ruled by the old gods. Imagine a resurrected Cthun ruling from AQ. Imagine a Yogg, fully free in Northrend. Picture Y'Shaarj, made whole once more, terrorizing Pandaria. What if the major beats of the expansion were that we had to slowly defeat these old gods, liberating their fiefdoms, and then, as one Azeroth, assaulting Nzoth proper.
That would be dope.
salticidae_ballet ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:19:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Fuckin hire this man.
xXMylord ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:59:39 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Didn't exactly that happen in 8.3 just with uldum and pandaria would be kinda lame to rehash all that again.
toffi23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:01:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Replace old gods with warlords and we are back to draenor story.
Walking_Braindead ยท -9 points ยท Posted at 21:27:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Do you think Activision-Blizzard would actually invest resources into it?
redactedbycop ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:58:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
well, the username fits
Walking_Braindead ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 05:05:41 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yea recent efforts have been great.
Asternon ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 22:18:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Come on, man, that was seriously rude and uncalled for!
You woke up my girlfriend by making me laugh. Why would you do this?
noix9 ยท 26 points ยท Posted at 19:01:39 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wtf, you hyped me so damn right now...
theroamingargus ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:48:44 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And Sylvanasa made us go into the Shadowlands to save us.
"This world is a prison. And I will set us all free"
JusticeJaunt ยท 14 points ยท Posted at 18:53:13 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
!subscribe
Vrazel106 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 00:03:38 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Seeimg nzoth and the other old gods at their true full potential eould be fucking bad ass. Yogg is still doing shit at least
PlatonicTroglodyte ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 20:43:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If they ever do announce a final expansion, which I doubt they will, I really hope it will be instead focused on the Infinite Dragonflight and how Nozdormu became Murozond and the events leading up to his death in End Time. The only satisfying way to โendโ WoW, in my opinion, would be to pay homage to every preceding expansion, and the Infinite Dragonflight allows the perfect opportunity to do that.
That said, a post-shadowlands Void Lord expansion as you described it sounds amazing for a non-final expansion as well!
Skeptical_Lemur ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:51:24 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So in my hypothetical final expansion - Azeroth awakening - I did say that time would go haywire. It would be a great way to re-introduce the infinite dragonflight, and even the dragon isles. Maybe, to try and save everyone, we seek out the dragons, who take us to the dragon isles - which will be our Zandalar/Kul Tiras of the expansion.
And maybe, in order to "save" us from our reality ending with Azeroth's awakening - the Infinite dragonflight devises a way to "Reset" time/space/reality. Go back wayyyy before the burning legion, into a firm, no going back, alternate reality. That would lead us to WoW 2
Darth_Heel ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:36:39 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So, what, we become Battlestar Galactica? What about a Dark Souls 3 type deal where a bunch of different timelines converge into one?
zummm72 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 20:43:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I would love to see some foreshadowing of this throughout the Shadowlands expansion. SPOILER: For example, in Bastion we see that souls have to get rid of their memories before they can become Kyrian. It would be really cool for the players that join the Kyrian covenant to see the old memories of souls that arrive throughout the expansion that have died due to the old gods on Azeroth. Maybe in some later patch we remove the memories of someone that was slaughtered by NโZothโs minions and we think โhuh this soul just arrived, how did he die from NโZothโs minions if we had already killed NโZoth?โ
Edit: this would be assuming that we fix souls going straight to the Maw before the end of the expansion, but you get the idea.
Derzelaz ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 21:16:50 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There will be a lot of players who will unsubscribe if that happens. Plus, it's way too much work. It would be like developing a completely new WoW game.
nakknudd ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 01:24:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Slap a corruption filter on that bad boy and phase out creature spawns
underhunter ยท 41 points ยท Posted at 19:57:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Im so over the void and old gods. Just give us something new..
Armandhino ยท 89 points ยท Posted at 20:32:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And this is why Nzoth was only a "raid tier" as well as Azshara. People like you (not trying to make this an attack) get bored of X villain so they are forced to try to appease the majority (people like you). Thus, a proper storyline can't be fulfilled. Imagine if Argus was in the expac after Legion.. "No can't take anymore demons/legion" which is why they cram everything and water it down
nrrp ยท 20 points ยท Posted at 21:47:54 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If you go along the theory that Shadowlands will be the last expansion of current WoW and we'll have the timeskip, then the reason they crammed three expansions into BFA (faction war, Naga, Old Gods) is that they were tying up all the loose ends and finishing up all the stories to set up for the timeskip.
unstabletable_ ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 23:34:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This is the only theory so far that I've seen that seems the most plausible.
MrVeazey ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 23:57:36 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
"General incompetence" is also a really plausible theory, to be fair.
Platycel ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 05:10:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Also more realistic.
Razz94 ยท 29 points ยท Posted at 21:35:52 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't agree that people necessarily get bored of content too fast to get a complete storyline fullfilled. Wotlk and Legion both had consistent storylines that kept the players engaged, and even Cata had a fairly good story that lasted the entire expansion.
The issue with Old Gods is that they don't translate well to video games. I think Old Gods would have been far more interesting if they had all been killed before WoW, and the focus had been on their remaining influence on the world as it was with Y'Shaarj.
The idea that you can have a being of such power as an Old God present in the world creates an almost unsolvable issue where the player is expected to defeat it, but defeating it devalues everything about them.
Just their physical scale is so comically large that the boss fights get reduced to killing tentacles and adds, because there is no way a player character could ever defeat, or even wound, such a creature. This ultimately leads to needing help from other lore characters, and using ancient weapons to do our work for us - which often leads to anticlimactic endings.
I think there are plenty of themes that they could create an entire expansion around without players getting bored. The story just needs to be more relatable, it needs to feel like you are actually defending your world against monsters. And players ultimately dont get that feeling from Old Gods. That's why Warcraft became so popular in the first place, because it was all about relatable stories, even if those stories were based in fantasy.
The Undead, the Burning Legion, Orcs, Troll clans, ogres and dragons all feel like something that you could ultimately overcome. A literal God that spawn endless amounts of creatures, who can destroy the minds of thousands in a second does not feel like that. And so the escapism fails, and the game becomes boring.
TLDR; Old Gods makes for great books, not great games.
SpicyMcHaggis206 ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 04:10:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know if I can get behind this. We killed an Old God in the very first iteration of the game. One of the most popular, if not the most popular, expansion featured an Old God. SoO was, personally and from what I've read, the best raid of Mists. Whether that is because of the Old God or if it even counts because we only defeated someone corrupted by an Old God is debatable.
The point is, killing Old Gods has been a part of the game since its inception and I don't know if we are able to say that it didn't at least have a hand in making it popular.
That said, personally, I agree with you on the fact that literally going up to an Old God and whacking it with my hammer is silly. Even fighting something like Aggramar or Argus felt kind of silly because we barely come up to their knee. The most damage we could do with our weapons would amount to little more than a paper cut and they could probably just pick us up one by one and throw us off their platforms. But I don't really know the solution. We can't keep fighting Edwin Van Cleef and Dagran Thaurissan level threats for 15 years or it would get stale, so we have to fight things that incrementally get stronger.
Killthebilly ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 12:50:16 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We didn't actually kill C'thun or Yogg. We barely hit the small parts of them that we're sticking out through the bars in their prison. More like yapping someone over the fingers with a ruler than actually inflicting harm.
Kregoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:36:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's been retconned. Canonically, they are all dead.
PlaidBrad90 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:19:27 on May 16, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wait, what? When did that happen?
Kregoth ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 19:22:10 on May 16, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
https://www.wowhead.com/news=296046/are-old-gods-dead-shadowlands-interview-with-steve-danuser-and-r-wow
So they are all dead, but can come back at some point.
Ungoliant187 ยท 8 points ยท Posted at 22:40:16 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The problem with your argument is that last expansion we dealt with Sargeras, a being who is, without question, more powerful than any old god. Maybe not the void lords, but certainly the old gods: he can destroy entire planets. He is a far more "unrelatable" being than any old god, and the manner in which we dealt with him worked just fine, imo. Granted, we didn't actually fight Sargeras, like we did N'Zoth, Cthun, and Yogg, but we dealt with him nonetheless. There was no reason we couldn't have done something similar with the old gods.
_cosmicality ยท -3 points ยท Posted at 23:32:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
How is his argument flawed in that way? Please tell me where he a argued that Sargeras did not fit into a similar category to the old god?
Ungoliant187 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 23:56:32 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
He was saying that the old gods don't work as a narrative in the game because they are so powerful that they are completely unrelatable. I'm saying that Sargeras and the Legion were even more powerful than the old gods, and thus even more unrelatable, yet how we dealt with them in-game worked just fine. Although I must admit, I don't know his stance on how Legion wrapped up; perhaps he feels the same about that, in which case my point is moot.
Hazrondo ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 00:52:49 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Okay but consider this, an old gods expansion would legitimately be horrible to play through because of the fact that their main gimmick (corrupting allies and turning them against you) would be incredibly unfulfilling to have to deal with for anything longer than a single instance.
Imagine how annoying it would become to finish a questline and oops your friend got some void on their skirt and now suddenly they have to be murdered cause they've turned into an insane tentacle'd death machine.
It's the exact reason why the ending of the stormsong valley questline was unsatisfying for me, because it's not fun to constantly have to kill allied characters because they arbitrarily stepped into the mind control goop and were irreversibly turned evil. It's the same reason people were upset with the ending of Val'Sharah in Legion.
Mind control just sucks as a plot device when it is used against the players and an old god expansion could not ignore it the same way that we were able to wrap things up in BFA before anyone important got messed with outside of Nzoth's fantasy-land.
Ultimatepwr ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:22:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The current storyline is guild wars 2 is basically an old god storyline. Elder Dragon Jormag, who is an ancient god like being from the time before the time before mortals, who is a corrupter and whispers/tempts people into their embrace. They are the Ice dragon, and thematically ArenaNet seems to be pulling from the idea of late stage hypothermia, where you start feeling warm and safe till you die.
I know gw2 storyline has a well deserved meme worthy reputation, but the last few years have been great. They are pulling Jormag off. To the point where despite some truly insane horror elements, the fact that Jormag corrupted factions are the clear baddies, and an obvious disconnect between words and deeds, the question "Is Jormag actually the baddie?" is something that currently has the answer "Well, obviously... maybe..." among both the characters, and the playerbase.
It can be done well. It's just that wow is far too pulpy to do it. Which is fine, I like pulpy, but I think they should stay in their lane.
forshard ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 21:23:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
Not siding one way or the other regarding Old God burnout but,
Then saying... [paraphrasing]
If this isn't an attack, I really wouldn't want to know what you consider to be one.
I think constructively finding a mutual point of view might be a better than belittling someone because they dont like a particular trope.
I, for one, didn't play Mists of Pandaria because I don't have interests in the culture they were reflecting (though I respect it). That doesn't mean that Monks were deleted or hamfisted because of people with my opinions. Blizzard makes the choices.
underhunter ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 22:26:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
People like me? I would be the first to say Azshara and the Old Gods are important enough for their own expansion. It's just that Blizzard chose this route, and because they've been shitting out old god garbage inadequately over the last decade or so, I'm just tired of it. Had you mentioned Azshara anytime before Legion, I would've said she deserves her own expac given how influential and powerful she is.
What about people like you (not attacking you)? What do people like you want? Thirty old god teaser patches, then an old god expac, then more old gods in the next one after?
gabriel_sub0 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:11:00 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I kinda wish they could reboat wow, start from either the start of the warcraft storyline or from where wow started off, go over the plot of every single expansion and change, delete, rework or add anything that they think could make the overall story better.
Basically like a huge clean up game, making sure the game's plot is well coherent with itself, fixing plotholes, upping the writing so it doesn't come off forced or cringy, drop the tropes and make a wow definitive version of sorts, a great foundation for possible expansions or spin offs.
krhill112 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 02:11:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
wow needs that, the story is fucked at this point.
It literally makes no sense that my kul'tiran druid is encountering deathwing, or battling the legions demons during the questing experience and will be even worse if/when another batch of new races enter the game.
Say they do it for the xpac after Slands. They could easily make use of Chromie to go "hey, here's whats happened already" and tldr the whole story up until say, the beginning of BFA.
Bfa is somewhat of a refresh story wise. We beat the big bad (sargeras) and the world (was) at peace for a moment until alliance/horde conflict started back up and it ties into shadowlands with the whole bobsalami bit, but there isn't really any direct links between legion and bfa, so its a decent stopping point.
The issue is, to re-use an old joke, it'd cost us a raid tier for them to implement a game wide story cleanup, and while we want that, the cost of current content would likely be too great, and people don't want to go back and re-do the old content as current again either. Fucked if they don't, fucked if they do.
gairloch0777 ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 05:27:17 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You're in luck, the questing experience is being streamlined for new players to be just the newer bfa stuff right into shadowlands. Then you have the option to go back and do the old content where it doesn't matter if canon makes sense.
krhill112 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:30:33 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I knew about that, I was more talking about the actual story that is played through. Itโs just whack now.
Hopefully they smooth it out with the new leveling, because the story mostly is good. If they tidy it up a bit
Armandhino ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 09:16:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Literally donโt care what happens lol just stating why they rush everything
Sorrelon ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:34:26 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We've dealt with other old gods (and/or their influences) in a single patch as well, why should it have been anything different for the canonically weakest old god?
It's fine for an expansion to have more than a single storyline, it doesn't mean they are cramming everything in a single expansion and watering it down. Main theme of WotLK was the Scourge, but we've dealt with Malygos and Yogg Saron as well. Likewise, the main theme of Legion was the Burning Legion, but Emerald Nightmare or Helya didn't feel out of place despite not being connected to the Burning Legion.
Old gods aren't the big boys of the void, they are just one of the many lieutenants of Void Lords. Complaining why N'zoth didn't get an entire expansion dedicated to himself is like complaining why we didn't get an expansion where Varimathras was the main enemy. N'zoth didn't really feel like a huge threat, because he really isn't compared to what our characters have dealt with before, he alone couldn't have lead an entire expansion.
toffi23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:07:11 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Seeing the same theme for 2 years is too much. I loved Pandaria because there were many different zones with different enemies. We had the mogu, the mantid, the iron horde the sha and they were all connected to the buildup of the final enemy garrosh using the power of an old god's heart. I didn't like the iron horde and mantid theme but protecting the peaceful zones and the mogu theme made up for it.
With an exapnsion going about old gods and aberration enemies for 2 years would burn me out completely. I think I'm not the only one with this.
[deleted] ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:52:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
belro ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 21:11:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Legion had a ton of variety i didnt get sick of any zone or raid
Gleemax1 ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:01:36 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes so much fel green in.. like what 3 zones? Valsharah was a forest green, red black nightmare bits. Stormheim was browns and greys, highmountain was browns grays and moose. Azuna had that one enclave... suramar had bits
So, argus zones? Like 2 were super fel.themed
healcannon ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:03:06 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Say no more fam we got more scourge and burning legion for you in just a second.
wOlfLisK ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:57:30 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Issue is, the void is the "final boss" of WoW so to speak. Everything has been building up to them, even the Legion invasions were caused by the threat the Void poses. There's no chance we won't deal with it eventually. Chances are that'll be us going to the void in person to kill the void lords but I'd much prefer an actual Black Empire expansion to that.
underhunter ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:23:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The void isnt the final boss. Look at the chart for the magic in WoW. It doesn't say Void is some super boss.
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Magic#/media/File:WoW_Chronicle_Magic.jpg
The Void Lords are the masters of the Void, like the Titans are the masters of the Arcane.
There's still much, MUCH more to explore.
What or who created the Void Lords?
wOlfLisK ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:48:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yes and the void lords are trying to enter reality by corrupting a titan world soul and destroying all of reality. And no, the void lords aren't the void equivalent to the titans. The titans are powerful arcane beings but they exist inside of reality. They're closer to the Naa'ru, Old Gods and Wild Gods than the Void Lords. While there are probably Arcane Lords, they're not the ones trying to destroy all of reality.
Tacitus_ ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 10:11:33 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The Legion was the final boss until they retconned the Void to be it. They can do it again.
wefwegfweg ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:13:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
i second this. old gods are overused and lame at this point. i don't think i could survive another "cOrRuPtEd By OlD gOdS" plot. they already dropped the ball, they shat the bed, the cake is ruined, the old gods are shit, just move on and bake us something new.
IritantIguana ยท 12 points ยท Posted at 20:26:19 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Its because they made the mind bending gods just fleshy squidpuppets. They missed what made lovecraftian monsters so cool.
forshard ยท 11 points ยท Posted at 21:38:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The problem with "The Void" as a BBEG is that its an easy and hollow villain. "The Void"'s only goal is to destroy everything. which means that everything wants to destroy them. (Legion, Naaru, Humans, Titans, Etc.)
When Blizzard wants an unambiguous bad guy, the void is an easy choice, but it's silly to expect it to have any depth or tension. The depth is "destroy this or die".
Which works for a game where anything with a red health bar is evil and needs to be killed.
IritantIguana ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:20:26 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Its boring as the Burning Legion was literally the exact same fuckin aim.
Both want to destroy the universe; the burning legion only because the void doing it was apparently worse.
It'd be better to hav e the Void wish to "take charge" of creation, as it seems predominantly based on aspects of the magic wheel opposed to it, where void is seen as a cancer. It'd be more interesting to see it have a twisted aim rather than HURR CORRUPT HURR DESTROY HURR THE WOOONS.
forshard ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:29:42 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Fuck That's a good idea. If that was the premise of Shadowlands I'd preorder it right now.
wefwegfweg ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:32:17 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It's because Blizzard can't write for shit
avcloudy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 05:45:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
While there's something in this, especially the boring sanity meters they keep coming back to, you couldn't really do Lovecraftian monsters in a game. As soon as you see it, it's spoiled.
Jarldir ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 20:19:39 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Likewise.
If I never heard the word "Old gods" again it would still be too soon.
Asternon ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 22:20:35 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Ancient deities.
YuinoSery ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:40:33 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
elderly powerful beings
Seithin ยท 15 points ยท Posted at 20:50:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Old gods
joyfulsinner13 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:25:43 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hey Farva whatโs an omnipotent being of advanced age?
Gleemax1 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 21:01:48 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Old gods
krhill112 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:21:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
not young supreme immortals
[deleted] ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:05:40 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Iโm hyped for everything you said expect finale lol I just started playing this year I donโt want wow to end.
Skeptical_Lemur ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:34:02 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There would be a WoW 2.0!
race-hearse ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 01:46:46 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
While it sounds cool it also makes it so nothing we have done mattered. Warcraft is cool when things change over time.
This seems like too much far sweeping changes out of absolutely nowhere. Seems gimmicky and cheap, like a show finale telling everyone "it was all a dream the whole time".
I'm not opposed to the black kingdom or whatever taking over. but I think they have to earn it if they want their story to be taken seriously.
What I think would be more reasonable is a 30 year time jump, and the world is changed, but in a logical way. Sort of like AU draenor with Yrel's light fanatics. And sure, have nzoth involved, but show us that his plan is still underway, not that he already won.
ITellSadTruth ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:03:30 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Is that where old Anduid comes from??
LordInquisitor ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 20:21:46 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I dunno if I want dungeons and raids to be the 'greatest hits', I'd rather have new content
Kharaaz ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:59 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This could then also lead into an expansion or two of "rebuilding", fighting smaller threats and fixing everything up, with no ultimate "big bad" but rather us having to find a place on an Azeroth after the void corruption.
Embriel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:15:17 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And he was Kael'thas all along. Ny'alotha was merely a setback!
toffi23 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:58:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I hate the old god style, I hope they will come up with something else, or at least with more diverse zones, not all of them filled with old god stuff.
Motormand ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:17:10 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nono, silly. This is good writing that would entice the players. That's not gonna happen. We're gonna come back, a few months have passed at best, and we're plunged into another war because... I dunno, Anduin went for a meeting in Ogrimmar, and got an apple that turned out to be slightly off. Him commenting on that will make the Horde start a war again, because y'know, eternal bad guys.
And also, Cairne and Lor'themar dies between the expansions, explained in the books. It's a footnote that goes They fell of a bridge and drowned.
Rysilk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:07:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
As long as we don't need to heal any more woons
DrGuenniferkologe ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:33:43 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Blizz: โwrites it down in silenceโ
Wrylis ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:17:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This would be so awesome. Nice theorycrafting.
It's people like you that make reality so disappointing.
NinjaMidget76 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:17:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
At one point "Rise of the Black Empire" was trademarked by Blizzard, along with "Return of the Lich King". Who knows which could happen, or both.
naota3k ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:37:23 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That would be amazing.
eyesfire2 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:21:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
nah this is too good, blizzard will just settle with manduin 2.0 and another faction war.
AzzyIzzy ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:51:55 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Need to be done with the void. Just like legion over used the literal legion, bfa has reached the point they need to give it a decent break.
ScarReincarnated ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 20:13:01 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This guy just leaked WoW 10.0
Caaethil ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 03:20:03 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm reeeaaally skeptical we'll see a significant timeskip (or anything in that regard). People have said this will happen after literally every expansion since WoD. Let's not forget:
Not saying it's impossible. Ion might be implying here that something will happen in this regard. But if you expect a "WoW 2"-like revamp, you'll probably be disappointed.
For all we know, our long time in the Shadowlands will be a split second on Azeroth (as implied by Ion suggesting that certain deceased characters might feel they've been in the Shadowlands for a long time). Maybe that's what Ion is alluding to.
AnActofGold ยท 43 points ยท Posted at 19:29:41 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'll just leave this here
[deleted] ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 20:15:33 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
[deleted]
hopsandhorns ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 20:36:12 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This broke me. The dot, over the I, that broke me. I'm done.
RandomTheTrader ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 08:03:15 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The way I saw it is that they just live in a giant loop consisting of smaller loops.
ArctikMARC ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 23:11:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Lol you beat me to it.
Rimefang ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 03:36:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Suddenly the level squish makes perfect sense and no sense at the exact same time
maledin ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 16:42:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There damn well better be a Jeremy Bearimy joke in Shadowlands or Iโll be forced to quit WoW forever.
In fact, I hope there are ALL The Good Place Easter eggs; Revendreth would be perfect place to lampoon the โGoodโ Place, with a Venthyr named Michael endlessly torturing a group of flawed-yet-comical souls.
Styvan01 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:08:16 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Dammit was looking for this....
StealthedWorgen ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 00:44:45 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I hate that they made it ambiguous just so they can shoot themselves in the foot later with it.
perado ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:41:20 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We leave shadowlands and come back to an asteroid field. Azeroth has hatched and now we broken races scatter across the universe in search of a new home.
Only our brave space captain jack o'neal to guide us
Rysilk ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 11:18:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Indeed
Redroniksre ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 23:56:04 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We come out of Shadowlands only to find that....about 5 minutes have passed, Anduin went to make a sandwich and came back to you saving the world, again.
Eiliraysia ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 15:53:58 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Players: *running back to the Keep* We're back! How much time has passed? Has it been 10, 5, 30 years?
Anduin: *walks around corner with sandwich in hand* Oh hey, you guys leavin' yet? Where'd you get the new gear?
Players: ...
Katur ยท 71 points ยท Posted at 18:27:09 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm holding out hope we'll get a "wow 2" esque revamp after shadowlands.
VanHalenNotVanHagar ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 01:09:35 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Dont think they'd do a stat and level squish, only to do a sequel.
Merosi ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 09:08:32 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
every time they did a stat squish, it was for the express intent so they could keep making expansions.
you are 100% correct that the stat and level squish is done for the exact same reason.
Autodeath ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:29:05 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
New engine, updated textures, revamped races with armor that doesn't clip into it, 144hz support, 4k support. The sky's the limit.
However after Warcraft 3 we might come out of Shadowlands with a worse version in WoW 2 lmao.
Katur ยท 68 points ยท Posted at 19:33:48 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
144 and 4k res is already a thing.
MstrKief ยท 42 points ยท Posted at 00:14:27 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Guy doesn't know what he's talking about and is spitting out buzzwords lol. Literally just the framerate.
iCappy_ ยท 32 points ยท Posted at 19:50:20 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I was going to say...im playing with a gsync monitor at 1440p and I'm locked at 144hz and it's buttery smooth.
Raeli ยท 28 points ยท Posted at 19:57:16 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Given the amount of work they're doing on adding customisation options to the current races, I wouldn't expect some crazy revamp of those things.
Texture quality overall has been pretty static for a while, it would be nice to see texture sizes increase - the main increase has been from making more parts of armor contain 3D elements, which has been great and I'm sure they'll continue.
But I think we're still going to have the same races we currently have, with the same clipping issues. Even the Shadowlands armor has clipping issues, so I don't think that's something that'll be fixed any time soon.
Maybe we'll see better back slot options and so on, but I wouldn't expect it to completely change.
144hz and 4k support is a strange thing to say, there's nothing about wow that doesn't already support this.
If anything, we might see a new Azeroth since we'll be coming back after an undetermined amount of time, and we have seen some of the zones they already revamped for warfronts, as well as those that never made it into the game like the Barrens warfront.
So it could for sure be that we'll come back to a revamped Azeroth & Eastern Kingdoms (especially now we can also just talk to zidormi and go back to the old version whenever we want). But I would be surprised if we had something that major.
forshard ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 21:43:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This hits the nail on the head. Updating old textures implies that they intend for WoW to last longer. If Blizzard was planning WoW 2, I doubt they would spend resources updating a game they intend to replace.
protar95 ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 22:16:58 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It could just be an Overwatch 2 deal though. Same game, but a new engine, older content bought up to Shadowland's graphical quality etc.
forshard ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 23:43:15 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's true, and it wouldn't be beyond Blizzard.
Personally I suspect that WoW 2 as a separate game would be the writing on the wall that the games either dead or dying. I feel like the only reason they would make a new WoW (WoW2) instead of just updating old WoW is if the game is sinking.
At that point I could see them just annually pumping out new WoW games until it dies. (Ala Destiny 1/2).
But I have a very pessimistic anti-corporate view of Blizzard as a whole nowadays.
JagarTharn3E399 ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 21:40:54 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Don't need a new engine, wows engine is great
ClassicPart ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 00:49:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
"This looks outstanding. But, eh, where's the end-game content?"
"All work went into the engine lmao."
A new engine would be nice but there's a balance to be struck.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:20:01 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Armandhino ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:22:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Shhh donโt tell him that heโll think itโs the art teams fault that the story is bad
wOlfLisK ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 20:59:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I doubt there's going to be a significant engine overhaul but I could definitely see a Cata 2.0 to reboot the entire game.
kejartho ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:16:58 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We got that in WoD with new models for old races, and we got a lot of wow zones revamped in Cataclysm. Both expansions that never were recieved well.
pocketchange2247 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:08:41 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I would love updated graphics on everything but I really don't want it to go into a "too realistic" area. I like how it's still cartoony and isn't too real. They still have a lot of improvement that could be done, but if they make it look like some of those high-quality cutscenes I won't be a fan.
About half the armor is unusable because it's so low-res, and even half of the newer armor is unusable on some races since it stretches to the point of looking low-res or just stupid
nrrp ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:30:58 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Night Elves get a new tree, Gilneas gets restored, Gnomeragan is reclaimed, High Elves and Void Elves get a city, Mag'hars get like a district in Orgrimmar or something and everyone lived happily ever after... until patch 1.1 when things start going downhill for the world. But timeskip would give some much needed rest for the world, for the past 10 years every single year there was apocalyptic threat on Azeroth.
Also WoW2.0 would mean new engine, which could mean greater customization, body sliders, aerial combat, verticality in the world, revamp to the combat system, player housing and class order halls integrated from the start.
Tacitus_ ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:13:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
nick152 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:58:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't think this'll ever happen. They seem to just be pushing minor improvements here-and-there constantly. They seem to barely have enough time making new expansions, there's no way they have the resources to push a ton of engine/customization/graphics changes at once.
Stephano23 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:38:40 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
WoW: Reforged
___ireallydontknow ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 03:56:14 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There will never, ever, be a WoW 2.
Aeghamedic ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 23:55:51 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
"Welcome back. I've redecorated a bit."
-N'zoth, after emerging from the Blade of the Black Empire.
squidick ยท 16 points ยท Posted at 19:43:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It definitely leaves it open to interpretation so when Blizz does/doesn't use a timeskip post Shadowlands we can't blame Ion for baiting us.
Personally I like the idea of a timeskip, but it will be hard to get right. Let's just see how Shadowlands goes first :)
Erathvael ยท 13 points ยท Posted at 20:04:32 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
There have been murmurs of a time-jump between expansions for years now.
Looks like we're finally seeing it.
I wonder what Azeroth will look like when we get back.
Carbohydratedrat ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 21:03:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe we will see the old man King anduin from the vision of the future back in....legion?
Eiliraysia ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:13:41 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't remember that. Can I get a link?
Regalingual ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:53:54 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It was a tie-in comic they posted in the lead up to Legion: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/story/comic/son-of-the-wolf
Eiliraysia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:36:42 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hmm...interesting.
CT_Phoenix ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 01:25:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
I'm torn.
I kind of want them to redo the 'main' world again- the Cataclysm'd world has a lot of storylines that are Cataclysm-specific in the (currently) 1-60 zones and feel out of place now, along with some stories that just haven't aged well.
If there's a time skip, I'd love a new Eastern Kingdoms & Kalimdor telling just general, local, expansion-agnostic stories of what's troubling the different parts of the world post-timeskip, like the original vanilla questing zones had. It'd be a great way of familiarizing people with the 'new' world and what people are constantly dealing with in their lives across it.
But that kind of rework feels less essential with the new leveling system, where you just pick an arbitrary expansion to level in. They could maybe have it be the leveling experience for the post-Shadowlands expansion, but unless they lean hard into the 'explore your new world' angle without an overarching story, I don't see getting around Cataclysm's issue where the world is suffused with a very specific story that the timeline clearly gets past in the next expansion.
Like, I wouldn't want a literal Cataclysm 2.0 where the world is now "Oh, look, N'Zoth didn't die and took everything over while we were gone" and now 100% of the Azeroth we all are familiar with is covered with tentacles and filled with Old God related quests and that's just the way things are now.
I'd rather have quests that aim to feel a bit more timeless, if that makes sense. After playing Classic, I feel like a lot of the quests come across as "Oh, these are just the problems/needs the people here are facing", and we help them with their current problem for a bit. In contrast, several of Cata's zones feel like "These are the problems people are facing because of the current temporary overarching storyline", which leads to it feeling out of date as soon as the current story has moved on.
On a side note, if they wanna do an in-house Warcraft 4 to tell the story of what the kingdoms are doing while we're busy timeskipping in the afterlife, I'd be cool with that.
Merosi ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 09:12:00 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
the levelling is actually better than just picking whatever. new players do not get to pick whatever, they HAVE to do the new starting zone, then do BfA and then go to shadowlands.
only after that can they choose to do old content on new characters (and of course existing players get grandfathered)
this means that new players get caught up to the current story much quicker, and I suspect that this will be the strategy going forward. do a couple of expansions, do a story squish with new starting zone, previous expansion and then straight into current expansion.
as an altoholic who tends to take very long breaks, this is quite exciting.
Aimnut ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 00:01:37 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Maybe Azeroth is gone after shadowlands cause you know the sword is still there stabbing the planet
jbnagis ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 08:46:04 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
If we come out and the beating of Nzoth wasn't a giant hallucination, an the black empire now rules azeroth, and the next expac isn't a gorilla war campaign to take back our home..I'll be dissapointed
EXUnForgiv3n ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 14:28:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So is this where we come back, old Anduinn is leading the charge against the Void lords (please no more legion), Illidan shows up with a cleansed Sargareas (gross) and the rest of the Pantheon, we get our asses kicked, Azeroth wakes up and mary sues (blizzard loves mary sues) us and WoW finally ends? Then a dying Anduinn says "there must always be a king" and WoW2 rolls across the screen?
๐๏ธ zugzug_workwork ยท 9 points ยท Posted at 18:30:03 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Could this be a hint that there will be a time-jump at the end of Shadowlands? If there wasn't going to be anything of the sort, I feel like this answer wouldn't have been worded this way. Maybe we'll have an adult Anduin, maybe not old like in the Legion comic: Son of the Wolf, but an adult. Or maybe this is just a red herring and doesn't mean anything.
The excerpt is from the Wow Chakra interview with Ion that's going on right now: https://www.wowhead.com/news=316065/liveblog-of-the-wowchakra-shadowlands-interview-with-ion-hazzikostas
iCappy_ ยท 22 points ยท Posted at 18:36:56 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Careful with those straws.
cahillross ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:06:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I swear to God Blizzard is gonna hit us with the:
"Get it, guys?! Shadow... as in SHADOWlands.
Katyusha101 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 00:11:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Timey wimey wibbly wobbly
ExiledToTerminus ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:11:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So another expansion where we pretend our characters haven't been able to port back to Stormwind/Orgrimmaron a whim, ala WoD?
Fuzzpufflez ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 07:41:07 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
MY AUCTIONS!
TrueMetatron ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 10:05:05 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nothing. It will mean absolutely nothing.
Ruskih ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 21:59:59 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nzoth fooled us. We come back to see Azeroth fully corrupted and the void lords ruling over all creation.
g3istbot ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 20:53:29 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
My hope beyond hope is that they use this to do some major overhauls to the zones and models.
We return to Azeroth some 40 years after we first had entered into the Shadowlands. During this time a sense of uneasiness clings to the air, of hushed whispers that the threads of life and death had been severed. Young men and women who had only known a life of constant war and chaos now enter into their twilight days; while children who grew up under such harsh conditions still cling to the old mindset they grew up under.
King Anduin and Warchief Thrall have mended the broken bonds of the Alliance and Horde, and have created a new life in which peace between the two is the only life known to young orcs and humans.
Calia Menthil has lead the Forsaken into a new era, no longer a cult of death - instead they look to new horizons and building a life with what they have.
Greymane had lead his people back to Gilneas, prior to his passing. Tess Greymane now leads
The Night Elves have returned back to their forests, and the druids slumber once again.
I think doing something like this would help with the lore in general. Things have become a bit stagnant with WoW I feel like, and Blizzard needs to carve out an entirely new story line.
[deleted] ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:37:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Some areas (read: New and Worked on) will have experienced time passing fast while every other zone is stuck in the past.
twoworldsin1 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:21:56 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
So it IS like the Dark Tower... ๐ค
jamiesontu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:38:39 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Does this mean we will get a Stormwind revamp?
Zakkimatsu ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:41:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
yeah but skybox stays the same
GaryGeneric ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:40:26 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Was talking about this time differential with my GF recently. I was thinking it would be a good time to redo Azeroth and bring it up to Wod/Legion/BfA quality because they wouldn't have to redo the entire world at once. It would be like any other expansion as far as play goes -- certain maps are available initially for the story line, with other maps being introduced as patches and even expansions roll out. But consider the difference between Hellfire and Tanaan, and imagine that given to any of Azeroth's maps. (Old Azeroth would, of course, still be around.)
I'm sure they have other, better ideas at Blizzard, but we were just musing.
Time_Transition ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 23:25:11 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
WoW 2 confirmed
Pony_Express1974 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:18:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville. And this is Shadowlands.
Metridium_Fields ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Interesting when you consider the next expac after SDL is the big 10.0. What surprises could be in store for us in 2022?
Loosed-Damnation ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:22:38 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Does this mean that from a story POV the entire expansion will take place in the Shadowlands with zero communication with the regular world?
SampleShrimp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:38:43 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Hope this means the old world (Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor) gets revamped. Tired of looking at near-decade old zones. I feel bad for new players who see trailers of the new zones and create their first level 1 character and load into Elwyn fuckin forest
Merosi ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 09:14:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It always trips me up to think cataclysm zones are now older than the vanilla zones where when cata came out.
MidAssKing ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:41:22 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Two words: Hell. Yeah.
Barrowolf ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:45:39 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
*Skyrim intro starts playing*
Warzeel ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:32:56 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We come home to find nathanos conquered azeroth 10 years ago
ChipsHandon12 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 03:38:54 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
it means conveniently 1 to 1 time has passed after we hop out. Characters they don't like or don't know what to do with are on their way back but taking a bit more time so they'll be back when they're relevant.
Periwinkleditor ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 04:53:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
9,999 years and 47 minutes.
Jimarilion ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:32:33 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
What if we "return" from shadowlands and we hear "but you just left" and only few seconds passed for them.
myndzero ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:38:12 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Game lore: We need to save Azeroth!
Game lore after we kill n'zoth: its saved! clearly nothing else needs doing!
players: ok bye
players x years later after shadowlands: wtf happened here?
cata 2.0
Stanelis ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 06:51:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Tecnically, it as been stated that killing the old gods solve nothing because their bodies corrupt Azeroth, that s why they were kept prisoner in the first place.
MoXfy ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 06:57:51 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I mean it's the same way that ffxiv did when we traveled to the first, but the exarch managed to summon us during a time where the first and the source has a passage of time that's 1:1
TomLeBadger ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:15:09 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Well, pretty much all old content is in severe need of a update, Outland and Northrend REALLY show their age. The revamped Azeroth doesn't even look that great anymore compared to Draenor/ Legion/ BFA lands.
Its not going to be done because of the changes to levelling though, I guess we are gonna have another Azeroth revamp and Outlands will stay as a 13 year old out of place zone.
I've always wondered if it would be possible to retroactively update textures, say you build a world, and can change the source texture to a higher quality one at a later date and its just kinda automatic, should work for terrain as its essentially just painted with a texture. Updated terrain alone would make Outland/Northend look so much better. I wonder if there would be a way to do the same for models (buildings e.t.c). Update the brickwork texture and bam, all the models that use it now have the better wall texture.
clooud ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:23:23 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm more interested in that tbh.
thebedshow ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:37:55 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
aka they have no plan
SpooderRain ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 07:40:20 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Inb4 nazi Yrel has invaded azeroth and we split into two new factions, void and light.
SnokeKillsLuke ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 08:20:16 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It means they're making it vague enough so that no-one can contradict them when they decide to have creative freedom in something.
hrrrqq ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 10:44:34 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Mad Max style expansion with all our equip being gone and starting over again. Imagine Samus losing all her stuff in the beginning of a Metroid Game. Green items are actually good, blue items are RARE and epics are.. truly epic. Legendaries only exist in legends.
Fleedjitsu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:29:50 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Time goes backwards! BFA never happened! BFA story writers as in-game characters found mauled to death by sheep! N'zoth is still locked away and we'll get a full Ny'lotha expansion down the line!
Some NPCs go further back in time! Find new content for old expansions! WoD is actually good past late game!
Screw any anomalies! Give us a genuine Faction War expansion!
Kazzei ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 12:32:18 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Time is convoluted in Lord
ranaeron.MagnificentClock ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 13:14:43 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Low key hope we come back from the shadowlands 200 years in the future.
JealousBase ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 14:59:15 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I honestly hope we come back out and Azeroth is like 200 years in the future. Would be an awesome way to soft reset the game.
Eiliraysia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:38:06 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I don't know how I'd feel about a time jump. It makes me uncomfortable to think I missed out on important things while I'm in the Shadowlands. If there is a time jump, I hope it's minor.
Phildesu ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 17:33:17 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Knowing the devs when we come back from shadowlands somehow weโve gone back in time to before the sundering
Zealous666 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:22:13 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Time is reverse. Once you leave at the expac end, you will appear as lvl 1 in WoW Classic.
rolex81 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:38:28 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Final raid before we come out the other end is us going back in time and fighting along side Sylvanas against Arthas while he is attacking Quel'Thalas for the Sunwell. After this moment and our successful aide of Sylvanas we split off into an alternate timeline and deal with whatever shit they come up with.
Sengura ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 18:56:48 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I didn't understand the point of him saying this when literally a few minutes later he answered a question about portals connecting SL to Azeroth as part of lore and confirmed that there will be... Sooo.. you can literally go from SL to Azeroth at will through out the events of SL.
Tycoonchoo ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:52:46 on May 16, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Cata round 2. Everything is just overgrown.
Iccotak ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 02:10:08 on May 18, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
does this mean that Shadowlands will be an opportune time to update the landscapes of previous content to be on par with more recent content?
derage88 ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 20:08:33 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm still not sure what to think of the whole Shadowlands thing. If that's what dead leads to it's basically just level two.
So what would stop people from doing mass suicides to rejoin their loved ones or whatever if there's just another whole world on the other side that's just as good or shit as Azeroth was.
Are we ever going to see what 'level 3' is? If dead has no actual consequences anymore to any of the characters then what's actually the point of it all, we will all get to return to Azeroth anyway at the end of it.
kaiser_jake ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:42:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
We come out of the Shadowlands following Bolvar's lead, Sylvanas and the Jailer defeated. But wait! Kel'Thuzzad followed us through the way back! We're back home, but something feels off, as if we're in the past..thats right, the ancient war between the Trolls and the Humans...
10.0 World of Warcraft: Highlords of Arator
Edit: Come on guys /s
mstake21 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:55:25 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
That's the worst idea I've ever heard and you should feel bad.
kaiser_jake ยท 6 points ยท Posted at 22:03:00 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Man, then you'll really love my other idea where we freeze teldrassil and get allied classes!
Dragarius ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:17:50 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This translates to "we don't know if we're going to utilize the canonical passage of time in Shadowlands yet so don't get excited for WoW40k".
CyonHal ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:34:34 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
inb4 WoW: A Realm Reborn
Show_Me_Your_Rocket ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:39:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
A really good segway into a WoW sequel, or HD update for anything pre MoP.
Metridium_Fields ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:18 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I commented something like this recently. What if WoW did like Magic: The Gathering does and set new expansions in old areas? Specifically Northrend and Outland. It would give a chance to update those areas to modern production standards and tell a new story in a familiar setting.
Show_Me_Your_Rocket ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 04:16:08 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I'm unsure who down-voted you, but I agree - we have an entire world at our disposal. Why let it go to waste? They kind of touched on this by having warfronts in old areas, but warfronts were boring. Proper content with new story quests and the like would be fantastic, in my opinion.
iNuminex ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 00:06:54 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Oh boy! I can't wait for this to mean absolutely fucking nothing.
rcuosukgi42 ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 00:26:31 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wow writers
JRR Tolkien
I wonder which type of world building is more satisfying.
oswaldovzki ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 20:23:42 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I am fine with that
nrrp ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:33:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Ion's answeres were extremely promising on several fronts, he implied we'll see Arthas in Shadowlands and that there'll be a timeskip. My guess is that Arthas will serve a similar role to Illidan in Legion.
Encaitor ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:51:41 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Nah, Bolvar is Illidan 2.0. Arthas is just gonna be some shorter storybit imo, they wouldn't wanna involve him heavily if they're specifically saying that they're scared to use him cuz they don't wanna ruin his story.
nrrp ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 19:58:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
No, Bolvar is supposed to be Khadgar/Magni role, Arthas will be like Illidan. And based on the interview, I'd say there's good chance for Arthas, Ion seemed to want to specifically point that they'll treat him respectfully and for a worthwhile story and not just a nostalgia bait.
wOlfLisK ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 21:03:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Bringing back Arthas in a significant role would be the straw that broke the camels back and would literally cause me to be done with the game for good. His story is done and it was one of the few actually good character arcs the Warcraft universe has. Giving him an epilogue/ "Where are they now?" via a quest hub or cutscene would be perfect but retconning his story so they can redeem him is just too much.
nrrp ยท 3 points ยท Posted at 22:04:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
People said the exact same thing about Illidan and reception to him in Legion was good to great. People will grumble that it's nostalgia bait, they'll do cool story beats, Arthas will get some sort of half redemption while probably remaining in the Shadowlands and maybe a cinematic and everyone will love it.
DryVariation1 ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 02:36:29 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
except that Arthas's conclusion was satisfying while everyone including the writers were disappointed by TBC
Chair_bby ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:44:27 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Illidan wasn't dead though and everyone knew he wasn't dead after Black Temple. Bringing back Arthas wouldn't be close to how they brought Illidan back.
nrrp ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 22:56:01 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We also weren't going to the literal realm of the dead in Legion. Bringing Arthas back in Shadowlands makes complete sense.
Hassadar ยท 7 points ยท Posted at 20:11:08 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
I thought they mentioned somewhere that the Arthas storyline is one of the few that had a clear, middle and an end, a satisfying one at that, and that they do not want to bring him back to any big degree.
I could only see him interacting with Calia/Uther and I'm all for seeing him again but Arthas doesn't need a redepemption story like Illidan in Legion (not that you implied it would be a redemption arc obviously). Arthas had a perfect ending and I don't feel we need more from him other than a small cameo.
Eiliraysia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 21:14:47 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I want to see him interact with Jaina. That would be so damn interesting.
Hassadar ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 01:34:47 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
Oh for sure no doubt. I'm with you there. I really liked the Jaine and Arthas bit during the pride of kul tiras questline and it would be interesting to get a conversation between them. That I'm all for. I just think how they ended his story, I don't think he should feature much more than that.
I would like to see him interact with Calie and seeing his sister be undead etc. I just don't think he should play much of a role in Shadowlands outside of that.
Eiliraysia ยท 1 points ยท Posted at 15:14:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yah, I wouldn't want too much Arthas, only a little bit, since Blizz would probably wreck it. It would be interesting though if we were in the Maw with people he knew and they were like, 'Arthas...I'm sorry, I can't do this' and ran or something, but went back to it later. It would be interesting to see how they could make it work.
nrrp ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 21:56:38 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Yeah, Jaina and Arthas and Jaina and Kael'thas reunions would be interesting. Maybe appropriate for expansion centered around death, there are a lot of potential reunions, even something like Arthas and Kael'thas.
Nowhereman50 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 22:07:30 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I bet we return to Draenor after Shadowlands. Just got a feeling.
rafaelf87 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 23:32:10 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
This could be a big time skip which an eventual Warcraft 4 would fill up the story regarding what happened during the heroes absence.
Chrzanu ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 09:07:57 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
We will be jumping between Azeroth and Shadowlands 1000 times in 1 day. There will be no BIG time skips. They feed u with such info to not tie hands. But who cares sheeps will be sheeps go waste your time on "timeskips" ideas...
wintermute24 ยท 0 points ยท Posted at 09:50:39 on May 15, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Well, the more honest version would probably be:
magecraftwow ยท -5 points ยท Posted at 18:48:15 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Wowhead is notoriously bad at paraphrasing and leaving out key important details. I wouldn't use them as a source.
I found MMO-Champ to be much better. https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/9139-Developer-Interview-Ion-Hazzikostas
But what would be best if you go to the actual interview and link the time stamp.
Doomed_Might ยท -15 points ยท Posted at 18:28:18 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I just wish they would stop the time travel shenanigans, they have proven time and time again they are terrible at it and it does nothing but make them retcon older lore and the lore they just wrote for the time shenanigans.
SiriuslyLupin ยท 17 points ยท Posted at 18:33:24 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
this isn't time travel though. Time is different in Shadowlands... we have no clue how long well be in that realm and when we come out who knows how long that timeframe is on Azeroth. For all we know we could come out of the shadowlands and 30 years passes on Azeroth...old man Anduin etc.
Doomed_Might ยท -26 points ยท Posted at 18:35:17 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
So a time leap isnโt time travel. News to me. Also, your example is literally a time travel example. Are we literally time traveling? No, but it is the exact same outcome.
DryVariation1 ยท 25 points ยท Posted at 18:38:56 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
TIL I timetravel 8 hours every night
Doomed_Might ยท -20 points ยท Posted at 18:39:46 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
Sleeping is no where near anything like what was described, quit being disingenuous.
NiceCheetah ยท 10 points ยท Posted at 19:11:43 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
I think they're saying its just time passing faster. It's not like we'll be going forward 300 years, then back to where we came from. At most this could be called a "time skip"
Doomed_Might ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 19:13:32 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
And my point is itโs the same end result and in an area Blizzard has proven time and time again that they are shit at writing. Time shenanigans in their writing/lore are always a shit show. Iโd rather they stayed away from it and just wrote a good story again.
Edit: edited for clarity/coherence
[deleted] ยท 5 points ยท Posted at 20:21:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)*
[deleted]
Doomed_Might ยท -2 points ยท Posted at 20:35:36 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You are fucking dense. Literally ANY time Blizzard has done ANYTHING with time they have fucked it up. Do you really trust them this time?
wOlfLisK ยท 2 points ยท Posted at 21:05:07 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
By that logic every expansion involves time travel because the story progresses forwards. Did you get mad at the Cataclysm time travel of the entirety of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms?
Kii_and_lock ยท 4 points ยท Posted at 19:19:18 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
The time travel you're talking about is going back in time, like we did in WoD
This is less time travel and more just time dilation. Time goes forward for everyone as per normal but one experiences it at a slower pace so in a sense more time passes for them.
There wouldn't be lore to retcon since that means making changes in the past and acting as if it was always that way (retroactive continuity). As we aren't going to the past, it wouldn't be an avenue to do that (no more so than normal anyway).
I get your complaint but this isn't really time travel shenanigans.
Nutcrackit ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 19:45:49 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
calling it now ~5 year timeskip for 10.0
Neramm ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 20:33:25 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
They learned something from the timey whimey clustertruck that happened with WoD it seems.
StarrFawkes ยท -1 points ยท Posted at 21:42:02 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
You know damn well they will ruin a time jump and the next expansion was WoW Classic all along, we come out of the Shadowlands to see everything reverted back to Vanilla
Yujiroh ยท -6 points ยท Posted at 20:57:57 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
When ion gets vague, that's when bad shit is gonna happen. I'm not talkin lore-wise. I'm talkin global gcd and world of gamblecraft-wise
CarrotCowboy13 ยท -4 points ยท Posted at 20:29:26 on May 14, 2020 ยท (Permalink)
It better not be some fucking shit about going back in time