Was Warcraft 3 historically considered bad?

[tritosine2k]

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Warcraft storyline/lore was shit from day 1 game 1, news at 11. Only impressive for people who had never been exposed to any other fantasy.

That and millennial nostalgia. I see a ton of millennials who I’d have thought have since been exposed to a ton of other fantasy who still remember Arthas fondly and more vividly than, say, Ned Stark, Thomas Covenant, Harry Dresden, Griffith, etc.

 

[ghardy]

Of course we as players had the meta knowledge where this is going so its easy to defend his actions...

This could have been a point to increase tension and raise the emotional pitch.

Suppose that just for Stratholme, the grain was infected such that death followed shortly after infection, but without people becoming zombies. Arthas would have gone on with the culling. However it would have turned out post-mortem that these citizens were just very, very ill, but still human. Arthas would not - could not - believe the evidence of his eyes, so convinced was he of the severity of the problem.

In a state of heightened paranoia he'd still proceed to Northrend, and the story would continue as before.

The kicker being that Ner'Zhul managed to make this grain alteration somehow without knowledge of the Dreadlords. This little stunt falling in character of the Lich King, who already had designs on the Prince for his infernal, ulterior motives.

So, no deep or wide changes, but a bit more of a kick.

 

[Malakal]

I stopped expecting quality twists and turns from writing in games and shows ages ago.

Once we saw zombies sorry Ulther but you are wrong. Guess he didnt watch the walking dead....

 

[Thalstarion]

It's not a position to envy but he was pretty much damned no matter what he did at that point. Lordaeron was effectively already lost - his actions simply sped it along and the Cult of the Damned would have likely found some other useful tool to manipulate.

A lot of people - including the writers - view the morality aspect through a comfortable lens of modern day real world morality rather than that which realistically would apply to the setting itself. It doesn't help that the writers have since let equal or greater reprehensible actions slide for certain characters.

 

[ghardy]

It doesn't help that the writers have since let equal or greater reprehensible actions slide for certain characters.

Do elaborate.

 

[Thalstarion]

Do elaborate.

Sylvanas, for one. She's responsible for some of the gravest (heh) war crimes in the setting across multiple expansions but of course when the time comes to finally confront her for everything that she's done, she's written to be the poor innocent victim who just needs to atone rather than be cut down where she stood.

Wrathion manipulated events in the name of the 'greater good' in such a way as to sacrifice many innocent lives in a war under the pretense of needing to prepare to fight the Burning Legion.

Vereesa gleefully oversaw the torture and murder of civilians during the Purge of Dalaran. I'm not even sure why she's still around, the game doesn't need three Windrunner sisters.

 

[ghardy]

Oh, these must be instances from World of WarCraft. I haven't played any edition, so I'll take your word for it.

I do recall reading a long time ago about Grom Hellscream's son. I believe he bombed a city or some settlement. Did he get a pass from the writers?

 

[Thalstarion]

Oh, these must be instances from World of WarCraft. I haven't played any edition, so I'll take your word for it.

I do recall reading a long time ago about Grom Hellscream's son. I believe he bombed a city or some settlement. Did he get a pass from the writers?

That'd be Garrosh - and no, he at least was killed off in a raid.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

It's not a position to envy but he was pretty much damned no matter what he did at that point. Lordaeron was effectively already lost - his actions simply sped it along and the Cult of the Damned would have likely found some other useful tool to manipulate.

I’ve seen plenty of arguments arguing otherwise. People argue that the scourge could’ve been repelled by smarter choices, or that evacuating to Kalimdor would’ve saved everyone. It’s not clear whether any of that would’ve worked in canon, since the world building isn’t very robust.

The problem is that the story wasn’t written by someone who actually understood military strategy and logistics. Nor are most of the people arguing familiar with those topics. Much less how it would work out in a medieval fantasy world.

 

[ghardy]

People argue that the scourge could’ve been repelled by smarter choices

Such as?

or that evacuating to Kalimdor would’ve saved everyone.

What's the argument presented?

I always thought the plan was to assemble the bulk of the world's nations and mount a joint assault against the Legion and the Undead.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The only good thing about the "lore" in Warcraft 3 is the cosmological structure, which presented a decent canvas out of which the world of Warcraft 3 but most visibly the world in vanilla WoW werre build upon:

It's a decent cosmological structure for a fantasy setting, and the fact the open world in vanilla WoW reflects everything found in this picture made the exploration fairly interesting when WoW still had slow leveling and so you were forced to spend enough time in each zone to absorb all the details they put in them.

That's pretty much it. The "dramatic" story in Warcraft 3 was the definition of mid and all the "mythology" in WoW just got more and more retarded over the years.

 

[ghardy]

The only good thing about the "lore" in Warcraft 3 is the cosmological structure, which presented a decent canvas out of which the world of Warcraft 3 but most visibly the world in vanilla WoW werre build upon

That structure is not bad at all. Is there an associated cosmogony?
Is the literature of WarCraft (novels, short stories, etc.) any good? Because the movie is best not spoken of...

 

[RaggleFraggle]

People argue that the scourge could’ve been repelled by smarter choices

Such as?

or that evacuating to Kalimdor would’ve saved everyone.

What's the argument presented?

I always thought the plan was to assemble the bulk of the world's nations and mount a joint assault against the Legion and the Undead.

It’s been so long that I don’t even remember. I wish I could find a particular post.

The only good thing about the "lore" in Warcraft 3 is the cosmological structure, which presented a decent canvas out of which the world of Warcraft 3 but most visibly the world in vanilla WoW werre build upon:

It's a decent cosmological structure for a fantasy setting, and the fact the open world in vanilla WoW reflects everything found in this picture made the exploration fairly interesting when WoW still had slow leveling and so you were forced to spend enough time in each zone to absorb all the details they put in them.

That's pretty much it. The "dramatic" story in Warcraft 3 was the definition of mid and all the "mythology" in WoW just got more and more retarded over the years.

Honestly, it looks like more overcomplicated fantasy claptrap to me. It’s more complicated than any real mythology that ever existed. For what? Moorcock’s Law/Chaos balance is really all you need. Anything more complicated is just nerd autism OCD brain vomit.

 

[Lyric Suite]

There's nothing complicated about it. It's light and shadow and everything coming out of a combination of the two. It explains pretty much everything that exists in the game which by virtue of being a fantasy RPG (and not a book where you can just focus on whatever you want) must contain pretty much everything. You have to include holy, nature, demons, magic etc, and that cosmology basically explains where all those come from.

Other gaming fantasy settings (like D&D) have likely similar comsomologies since again you have to explain where divine powers, nature powers and magic all come from and so forth.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

There's nothing complicated about it. It's light and shadow and everything coming out of a combination of the two. It explains pretty much everything that exists in the game which by virtue of being a fantasy RPG (and not a book where you can just focus on whatever you want) must contain pretty much everything. You have to include holy, nature, demons, magic etc, and that cosmology basically explains where all those come from.

Other gaming fantasy settings (like D&D) have likely similar comsomologies since again you have to explain where divine powers, nature powers and magic all come from and so forth.

I have the same criticism for D&D. The Manual of the Planes cosmology is overcomplicated claptrap that has negatively influenced imitators like Warcraft.

You have to include holy, nature, demons, magic etc, and that cosmology basically explains where all those come from.

It's overcomplicated claptrap that traces its origin to D&D's nerd autism ocd brain vomit. You don't need a dozen planes to explain that. Prior to Gygax writing the Manual of the Planes, real religions were plenty satisfied with just having Heaven, Earth, and Underworld/Hell.

 

[ghardy]

What game builds on an elaborated cosmology of a real religion, dead or alive?

 

[RaggleFraggle]

What game builds on an elaborated cosmology of a real religion, dead or alive?

Technically, all of these are loose elaborations of real religions. It's obvious in D&D because the outer planes are named after various afterlives in real religions, but you can see it echoed in the various fantasy cosmologies... because they're all inspired by D&D, ultimately.

 

[ghardy]

One more thing that I liked about WarCraft 2: naval combat. I liked that oil was a resource and you were required to build ships to procure and protect it.

In WarCraft 3, the focus moved to the RPG subsystems, and I can see why ships were removed. Navies were charming, nevertheless.

 

[whydoibother]

When WarCraft 3 came out, it was considered great in every regard, and people who think otherwise either weren't even born back then, or are deluding themselves out of bitter spite.

 

[Alex]

When WarCraft 3 came out, it was considered great in every regard, and people who think otherwise either weren't even born back then, or actually had taste.

Fixed.

 

[whydoibother]

When WarCraft 3 came out, it was considered great in every regard, and people who think otherwise either weren't even born back then, or actually had taste.

Fixed.

The taste of baby food in your baby mouth, child? All forums and printed magazines reviewed it favorably, all LAN clubs had it installed, everyone was playing. One of the games you skipped breakfast so you can pay to play it at the cafe, on the new and revolutionary BattleNET system. This is the future, boys! I can feel it!

Fast forward 20 years, and kids are pretending it was always shit, Blizzard was always bad, nobody ever really liked it, because they disagree with what a current day Blizzard employee says about trannies on Twitter. Sad!

 

[Alex]

When WarCraft 3 came out, it was considered great in every regard, and people who think otherwise either weren't even born back then, or actually had taste.

Fixed.

The taste of baby food in your baby mouth, child? All forums and printed magazines reviewed it favorably, all LAN clubs had it installed, everyone was playing. One of the games you skipped breakfast so you can pay to play it at the cafe, on the new and revolutionary BattleNET system. This is the future, boys! I can feel it!

Fast forward 20 years, and kids are pretending it was always shit, Blizzard was always bad, nobody ever really liked it, because they disagree with what a current day Blizzard employee says about trannies on Twitter. Sad!

I played it, I even liked to play as the undead a bit, but it felt like a downgrade in both gameplay and graphics. My opinion may not be popular, might even be wrong, but I assure you it didn't change from back then. In fact, I distinctly remember always checking the custom maps hoping someone fixed the game to be more like Starcraft.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Jena traitor of the race, big booba undead lady, NTR Priest of the moon crazy bitch. Sums up to reduction of features we had on previous game in favor of more micro.

 

[Lyric Suite]

In fact, I distinctly remember always checking the custom maps hoping someone fixed the game to be more like Starcraft.

That's a stupid expectation.