World of Warcraft: Current Year

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SimSimSalabim

SimSimSalabim

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They sell a lot of boxes because they come with a high quality sales pitch, Shadowlands was obviously no exception. Blizzard developers may be shit at actual game development now, but the company knows how to market to the masses who are ready to gobble up their product. The only hope (depending on point of view) is that enough people see through the veil that they stop consuming product until product is good again (probably never going to happen). I was at one point someone who purchased, even pre-purchased, any game with the Blizzard logo, but now I get uneasy feelings just watching their presentations. Until more people feel this way, they will probably continue to sell massive amounts of copies, and of course they'll continue to rake in cash in the game store from whales and the like.

When I watch their video introducing their Community Council or their 9.2 intro video I do not feel like I'm watching developers reaching out and talking to players. Instead, I feel like I'm watching salesman trying to sell their game. Of course that's what they're doing, but that isn't how I should feel. Its fake, its scripted, its not personal. They're reciting what the PR and Sales teams have told them to say and written for them.

In contrast, watching videos of Yoshi P interviews with Asmongold or other streamers, or their announcement about delaying their next expansion, all of it comes off as genuine. It actually feels like him and his team are attempting to communicate with the players beyond just trying to sell more copies.
 
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BoozeCube

BoozeCube

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SimSimSalabim said:
They sell a lot of boxes because they come with a high quality sales pitch, Shadowlands was obviously no exception. Blizzard developers may be shit at actual game development now, but the company knows how to market to the masses who are ready to gobble up their product. The only hope (depending on point of view) is that enough people see through the veil that they stop consuming product until product is good again (probably never going to happen). I was at one point someone who purchased, even pre-purchased, any game with the Blizzard logo, but now I get uneasy feelings just watching their presentations. Until more people feel this way, they will probably continue to sell massive amounts of copies, and of course they'll continue to rake in cash in the game store from whales and the like.

When I watch their video introducing their Community Council or their 9.2 intro video I do not feel like I'm watching developers reaching out and talking to players. Instead, I feel like I'm watching salesman trying to sell their game. Of course that's what they're doing, but that isn't how I should feel. Its fake, its scripted, its not personal. They're reciting what the PR and Sales teams have told them to say and written for them.

In contrast, watching videos of Yoshi P interviews with Asmongold or other streamers, or their announcement about delaying their next expansion, all of it comes off as genuine. It actually feels like him and his team are attempting to communicate with the players beyond just trying to sell more copies.
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Everyone feels pretty much the same. you will be hard pressed to find anyone who will give praise to Blizzard at this point in time. The fact that the base game was so amazing that it took this long for them to completely buttfuck it is a testament to the men who poured blood sweat and tears into making such a good baseline game.
 
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Chris

Chris

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SimSimSalabim said:
They sell a lot of boxes because they come with a high quality sales pitch, Shadowlands was obviously no exception. Blizzard developers may be shit at actual game development now, but the company knows how to market to the masses who are ready to gobble up their product. The only hope (depending on point of view) is that enough people see through the veil that they stop consuming product until product is good again (probably never going to happen). I was at one point someone who purchased, even pre-purchased, any game with the Blizzard logo, but now I get uneasy feelings just watching their presentations. Until more people feel this way, they will probably continue to sell massive amounts of copies, and of course they'll continue to rake in cash in the game store from whales and the like.

When I watch their video introducing their Community Council or their 9.2 intro video I do not feel like I'm watching developers reaching out and talking to players. Instead, I feel like I'm watching salesman trying to sell their game. Of course that's what they're doing, but that isn't how I should feel. Its fake, its scripted, its not personal. They're reciting what the PR and Sales teams have told them to say and written for them.

In contrast, watching videos of Yoshi P interviews with Asmongold or other streamers, or their announcement about delaying their next expansion, all of it comes off as genuine. It actually feels like him and his team are attempting to communicate with the players beyond just trying to sell more copies.
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Yeah I think it's two different products.

1) Hardcore full time play until you burn out.

2) Levelling experience for a month and then maybe another month for endgame if it's any good, quit and come back to do a month in big patches.

I had playing pattern 1 in Classic, Burning Crusade and up until the first content drought in Wrath between Naxxramas and Uldaur.

I've been playing pattern 2 ever since, but I'm never coming back now. WoD nearly permaquit me but BfA got me back because the Jania Warbringers was so good, so I did Legion in the BfA prepatch theb I did BfA.

Shadowlands has likely got me permaquit now.
 
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Fucker

Fucker

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SimSimSalabim said:
They sell a lot of boxes because they come with a high quality sales pitch
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A long sales pitch at that. SL was on sale for over a year before the expac went live on top of everyone being stuck at home because of covid. Their two games (Classic/Retail) for the price of one approach has kept their asses out of the fire....I wonder if that will save them this time.
 
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BoozeCube

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Fucker said:
A long sales pitch at that. SL was on sale for over a year before the expac went live on top of everyone being stuck at home because of covid. Their two games (Classic/Retail) for the price of one approach has kept their asses out of the fire....I wonder if that will save them this time.
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Classic saved their asses for a bit, thing is even though the old game is fun, you can't milk it for 4 years. There isn't a good reason they aren't on Wrath yet.
 
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Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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So Blizzard is introducing a male succubs that looks like a power bottom twink wearing nothing but a skimpy loin cloth;

1637311735842.png


Compared to a updated female succubus they released in SL;

1637311825584.png
 
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Qhue

Qhue

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Pelagos becoming Arbiter makes some sense from the Kyrian covenant story, but no one else will have a clue.
 
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SimSimSalabim

SimSimSalabim

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Qhue said:
Pelagos becoming Arbiter makes some sense from the Kyrian covenant story, but no one else will have a clue.
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Yeah, it's almost like segmenting your story so that players only get a piece of the whole thing is fucking retarded.
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Truly a fitting end for such a grand story that pulled together the threads woven so many years ago. A random NPC they just added that a decent amount of the playerbase don't even know will become the new super important role they just added, so they can safely forget about it all and never mention it again once it's done. Them weebs writers at Furry Fantasy could learn a thing or two about storytelling from this.
 
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Rime

Rime

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Pelagos does not even make sense from the Kyrian story. The only thing Pelagos does/is known for is being a coward/unreliable, always needing reassurances and help from everyone else... so that is who is going to preside over all of life/death? Yeah, good luck with that.

It seems like they intended it to be Sylvanas, but every fan has been saying they 'saw that coming', so Steve Danuser (narrative lead of the game) decided to 'subvert expectations'. Seriously, this is the guy who claimed to love the final season of Game of Thrones and claimed the ending was perfect. How could we expect anything else? Instead of Bran the Broken, we get Pelagos the Transgendered as our figurehead.

If they wanted something other than Sylvanas, they should have gone with Uther. Someone who has had character development, is a known figure from lore, and people actually have some sort of connection with.
 
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Chris

Chris

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Rime said:
Pelagos does not even make sense from the Kyrian story. The only thing Pelagos does/is known for is being a coward/unreliable, always needing reassurances and help from everyone else... so that is who is going to preside over all of life/death? Yeah, good luck with that.

It seems like they intended it to be Sylvanas, but every fan has been saying they 'saw that coming', so Steve Danuser (narrative lead of the game) decided to 'subvert expectations'. Seriously, this is the guy who claimed to love the final season of Game of Thrones and claimed the ending was perfect. How could we expect anything else? Instead of Bran the Broken, we get Pelagos the Transgendered as our figurehead.

If they wanted something other than Sylvanas, they should have gone with Uther. Someone who has had character development, is a known figure from lore, and people actually have some sort of connection with.
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Uther is such an obvious and good pick. What is wrong with these people?
 
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Neranja

Neranja

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Rime said:
It seems like they intended it to be Sylvanas, but every fan has been saying they 'saw that coming', so Steve Danuser (narrative lead of the game) decided to 'subvert expectations'.
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More like: Danuser still needs his waifu for the next expansion.
 
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Qhue

Qhue

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Uther as a choice would work, but it falls even further into the "this is just Warcraft III fanfic" that has sadly dominated the game since its release nearly 20 years ago. Azeroth already has too much influence in the 'universe' and you run the very real risk that everything goes full Ouroboros and you start cannibalizing yourself.

I agree that Pelagos is not the most logical choice BUT it does capstone the overall 'heroes journey' of the character who is a royal fuck-up at the start of the expansion and grows steadily throughout the campaign. It also ties into a possibly-non-Azerothian backstory which provides a new thread to tug down the road. I had actually forgotten about the whole male/female business and so can see how people might roll their eyes at that.
 
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Chris

Chris

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Qhue said:
Uther as a choice would work, but it falls even further into the "this is just Warcraft III fanfic" that has sadly dominated the game since its release nearly 20 years ago. Azeroth already has too much influence in the 'universe' and you run the very real risk that everything goes full Ouroboros and you start cannibalizing yourself.

I agree that Pelagos is not the most logical choice BUT it does capstone the overall 'heroes journey' of the character who is a royal fuck-up at the start of the expansion and grows steadily throughout the campaign. It also ties into a possibly-non-Azerothian backstory which provides a new thread to tug down the road. I had actually forgotten about the whole male/female business and so can see how people might roll their eyes at that.
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Well yeah the whole thing is shit, Uther is just the best choice in a bad situation.

Talking about having other characters take roles... they should have had The Jailer be Tichondrius the Dreadlord leader and Shadowlands be the Dreadlord homeworld where he's usurped the flow of souls for whatever reason.

He was in Warcraft 3 pupeteering The Scourge (and creating The Lich King in the first place) so having him revealed as the mastermind behind everything is literally what we were told in Warcraft 3 AND in the Draenai retcons in Burning Crusade (Dreadlords corrupted Sargaras).

The plot thread of Dreadlords being immortal, reforming and coming back was interesting and established in Vanilla WoW in Stratholme Scarlet Crusade side.

Sylvanas being in thrall to the Dreadlords was established with her undead character in Warcraft 3 being overseen by Varimathras.

Legion/Scourge fighting each other was established in Warcraft 3 with the power struggle between Ner'zhul and Tichondrius, with his first death being Arthas tipping off Illidan to his location.

You could have Oribos/Bastion/Ardenweald be a friendly light aligned planet (add in some Naaru to Oribos) and Maldraxxus/Revendreth/Maw be the Dreadlord planet (add some Demons to The Maw).

It's MINIMAL changes and now the story makes sense without retcons. What the fuck.
 
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Runnen

Runnen

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I concur that picking an Azerothian to become the new Arbiter wouldn't be a good idea because most of the stories around Shadowlands already revolve around Azerothian characters and I agree that Azeroth is already too much in the universal focus (even if it's understandable for a story to happen).

As far as Pelagos goes, there could be worse characters even though Kleia had a much better arc, but she was already picked to be promoted to be the new Polemarch of Bastion.

However, the main issue I have is that there should NOT be a new Arbiter. The stories of all the covenants have shown repeatedly that the old system is incredibly flawed, souls are sent to places that they are not happy with and don't understand the reasons why they are sent there, and this led to most of the issues we have to tackle in the covenants and their respective zones.. this plus the reveal in Zereth Mortis that all the deities of the Shadowlands are basically constructs from an assembly line should lead them to understand they can't have a single mind determine where EEEEEEERRYONE is going in the afterlife... there should be a council made up of Kyrians, Maldraxxi, Venthyr, Night Fae and any other death realms to decide, as they can see all the angles of a soul and a personality, and not just the sins, or the need of renewal, or the honor.. individuals are complex.

But I guess they already used the council idea for the Cucked Horde, so it would be a repeat.
 
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