World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[Sykar]

Last good expansion was Wrath imo. Game went into the shitter afterwards. My wife plays Classic only. She has a small merry little band which does raids fridays and saturdays and otherwise she just enjoys the game casually.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Well from a whole gameplay/class design standpoint I think MOP was the last time the game had actual legs to it and still enjoyable even if everything else was retarded.

But yes, Wrath was the last one to hit on all cylinders. Can't wait to see how they plan to fuck up Wrath Classic.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

MoP had:

• 7 zones at launch, 3 added in patches.
• Best grind zone in the game, Timeless Isle, which has never been topped since. Even had a PvP system where you could fight members of your own faction.
• Last time the zones felt like a real world, with lots of little hamlets and secret areas with no quests taking place in them, just existing to make the world feel alive.
• Tons of endgame questlines like the Serpent Riders, the Golden Lotus, the Shadopan, Wrathion, the war, etc.
• Scenarios were fun.
• Stellar music by Jeremy Soule and Russell Brower:

• Best storytelling in the game. 5.4 felt like a pretty decent ending to Warcraft. I prefer to think that everyone lived happily ever after that.
• Expanded the Warcraft universe without going back to the well of Warcraft 3. Even the stuff that is rehashed from the old (Murlocs, Titans, old gods) was done in an interesting way (Murlocs who drank from the magical waters of the Vale became the Jinyu water speakers, the Curse of Flesh wearing down Titan constructs leading to the Mogu empire, Y'shaarj's curse and how it shaped Pandaren society, etc).
• Great aesthetics. Was the last time WoW looked like Warcraft. Starting With WoD, the new less detailed, softer cartoony style began taking over.
• Class design at its apex. Paladins actually felt like holy warriors who decimated the undead. Fistweaver made healing really fun in arenas. Warlocks could summon demon armies and solo world bosses.
• PvP was fun.
• Roleplay was thriving on Moon Guard. Massive server wide events were being organized multiple times a week with turnout in the hundreds. Huge world PvP battles taking place.

• MoP was also the last time the devs interacted with their customers on the forums, rather than talking down at them.

My only real gripe with MoP is how the ingame Pandaren turned out. I wish they had actually resembled Wei Wang's and Bernie Kang's concept art for them, which gave them mean faces and heroic stature. Warcrafty. Little did we know, that the ingame Pandaren were an omen of what was to come, as WoD was when the game began shifting away from Warcraft aesthetics towards a tumblr furry cartoon artstyle, starting with the armors and the redesigns of the old races.

 

[Reever]

My only real gripe with MoP is how the ingame Pandaren turned out. I wish they had actually resembled Wei Wang's and Bernie Kang's concept art for them, which gave them mean faces and heroic stature. Warcrafty. Little did we know, that the ingame Pandaren were an omen of what was to come, as WoD was when the game began shifting away from Warcraft aesthetics towards a tumblr furry cartoon artstyle, starting with the armors and the redesigns of the old races.

It was basically the same for Worgens though to a lesser degree. I know I saw the art and thought Worgens are going to look cool as fuck but than you go in-game and they're just retarded doggos whose whole purpose is to satisfy furries eRPing in Goldshire.

 

[Delterius]

MoP had:

mists of pandaria is really funny in retrospect

1. make an expansion that is actually pretty good
2. people hate it because of muh kung fu panda
3. lessons learned.jpg
4. make an expansion that is terrible
5. but it has COOL ORCS THO

 

[1451]

wow's engine is horrible so it's not their fault if some races look bad.
Chest armor still consists of stretched textures ffs.

 

[Ravielsk]

Well from a whole gameplay/class design standpoint I think MOP was the last time the game had actual legs to it and still enjoyable even if everything else was retarded.

But yes, Wrath was the last one to hit on all cylinders. Can't wait to see how they plan to fuck up Wrath Classic.

I cannot really comment on MoP as at the time I had literary 0 fucks to give about the game but from what I can tell the issue with Blizzard and their design philosophy is that they do not have one. As a warlock player I was basically playing a different class each expansion and it always felt like I was beta testing it rather than playing it. Because at the end of the day Blizzard obviously had no idea what the warlock is supposed to be and so they kept jumping from one thing to another instead of settling on a concept and working with it. This is why the most straightforward classes(Priest, warrior, mage) tended to be the best designed ones because with them Blizz did not need to figure out anything on their own and just focused on making them work.

My only real gripe with MoP is how the ingame Pandaren turned out. I wish they had actually resembled Wei Wang's and Bernie Kang's concept art for them, which gave them mean faces and heroic stature. Warcrafty. Little did we know, that the ingame Pandaren were an omen of what was to come, as WoD was when the game began shifting away from Warcraft aesthetics towards a tumblr furry cartoon artstyle, starting with the armors and the redesigns of the old races.

The problem with Pandaren is that they should have been a feature of a different expansion not the main focus. If instead of Pandaria they made the expansion about dragon isles and simply added pandas as a new race nobody would have bitched or at least very few would.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Played it up to MoP. Wrath was awesome, but the entire MoP Pandare potbellied beer drinking kung fu masters was too preposterous for me, just couldnt get into it.
After that i lost interest and never looked back.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Um

 

[J1M]

MoP did some things right. Mainly timeless isle and the warlock green fire quest.

It was also where they tilted too hard in the direction of everything in the game needing to be thematically linked for 2 years. The new class, race, every zone, and all raids had to be tied to the asia theme. (And also had the bonkers idea that the last major patch of one expansion must be directly tied to the next expansion.)

Probably a consequence of them feeling like they were running out of WarCraft 3 material and a lack of confidence in the ability to create new iconic ideas. (Ironically, Garrosh, their best original character, was something half the team was ashamed of and that misplaced shame led to Siege of Orgrimmar, etc.)

 

[mediocrepoet]

I played WoW more or less seriously up until Wrath and was actually fairly hardcore in Vanilla. Since then, I've played every expansion, but spent less and less time with each new one until I spent roughly 1 week playing this last one and still felt like I wasted my time.
They took what had been a really solid game and drove it directly into the ground.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Last good expansion was Wrath imo. Game went into the shitter afterwards.

I wholeheartedly agree, because even with decline slowly creeping in (homogenizing classes, DF in the form that it was in etc) the atmosphere, art direction etc was WoW at its best.

Although I still have a bit of a soft spot for Cataclysm, because:

- The expansion started off rather strong and challenging
- It felt nice and like a personal significant progress to fly around zones where you remember struggling against mobs as some lvl 20 scrub, even if the redesign of Azeroth was mostly for the worse
- Some of the zones were pleasant (I fondly remember Uldum)
- Transmogrification was added in, which for me is extremely important in this type of game where you stare at your character for literally hundreds of hours, and aside from very few sets, gearing is full-on "Morrowind fashion" of random items but with most designs looking like shit
- Raid Finder is IMO a lot better idea than Dungeon Finder. It's easy find a 4 other people for a dungeon that's relatively quick, at any time of day whenever you can play. However many people can’t or are simply not willing to commit to a guild and reserve a couple of evenings every week etc. The justification is much stronger here. Sure it's a tradeoff of being paired with complete retards who stand in fire vs. being able to see the content that previously, what, Naxxramas was seen by 1 or 2% of players?

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I played the original Warcraft 3 when it came out. The franchise has really gone down hill. In fact, I'm now critical of WC3's writing and lore changes to WC2. The whole "orcs are totally innocent of their war crimes, it was those nasty demons at fault!" now comes across as lazy and insulting to me. That isn't to say WC2 had an amazing plot (it was standard 90s format of bosses expositing objectives at the player character), but (ignoring the extensive technical limitations) most of the time it felt like a believable take on fantasy warfare and politics. The orcs were basically conquistadors, even down to making alliances with persecuted minorities like goblins and trolls to take down the ruling ethnic groups.

I wish there was some other fantasy RTS franchise to get into, but I can't seem to find any because the genre seemingly dried out around 2010.

 

[Tacgnol]

I have vaguely fond memories of MOP because it's the last time the guild I'd played with since vanilla was together. The guild started to fall apart in Warlords, very soon after release in fact.

Also overly thematic or not, MOP had some good end game raids (though Siege went on wayyyyy too long, I think it was 18 months or so from last raid to Warlords?)

 

[Keshik]

I enjoyed Legion a lot, the raids were fun and I really liked the order hall idea even though they didn't do much of it and maybe would have been nice if we weren't the Highlord. The DK one is great in how shady it all is, as well.

I played the original Warcraft 3 when it came out. The franchise has really gone down hill. In fact, I'm now critical of WC3's writing and lore changes to WC2. The whole "orcs are totally innocent of their war crimes, it was those nasty demons at fault!" now comes across as lazy and insulting to me. That isn't to say WC2 had an amazing plot (it was standard 90s format of bosses expositing objectives at the player character), but (ignoring the extensive technical limitations) most of the time it felt like a believable take on fantasy warfare and politics. The orcs were basically conquistadors, even down to making alliances with persecuted minorities like goblins and trolls to take down the ruling ethnic groups.

I wish there was some other fantasy RTS franchise to get into, but I can't seem to find any because the genre seemingly dried out around 2010.

They'd tried to grey things up a bit as I guess trying to have the orcs try to genocide everyone after WC2 wouldn't make much sense - clans on Azeroth are shattered, and their homeworld is gone, the homeworld clans are dead or buggered off to some other planet or dimension (before TBC anyway).

 

[RaggleFraggle]

They'd tried to grey things up a bit as I guess trying to have the orcs try to genocide everyone after WC2 wouldn't make much sense - clans on Azeroth are shattered, and their homeworld is gone, the homeworld clans are dead or buggered off to some other planet or dimension (before TBC anyway).

The problem is that they didn’t “gray” the orcs. They went a full 180 on their characterization and retconned their conquistador culture as short-term demonic corruption. They didn’t reform or try to atone, they reverted to an imaginary heroic past and pretended their war crimes never happened. Which is hugely unfair to all the innocent fictional people they brutally butchered and as far as potential social commentary goes is offensively horrifying.

Judging by what we know of the development process, the story was originally going to be much deeper and nuanced but that got squashed. Pity.

 

[Keshik]

The problem is that they didn’t “gray” the orcs. They went a full 180 on their characterization and retconned their conquistador culture as short-term demonic corruption. They didn’t reform or try to atone, they reverted to an imaginary heroic past and pretended their war crimes never happened. Which is hugely unfair to all the innocent fictional people they brutally butchered and as far as potential social commentary goes is offensively horrifying.

Judging by what we know of the development process, the story was originally going to be much deeper and nuanced but that got squashed. Pity.

I do recall Thrall wanting to reform the Horde and maybe atone, but I might be confusing WoW lore with the stuff in the expansions - namely the TFT epilogue. Always hated how they made Proudmoore act like a psycho when the idea of genocidal invaders running free shouldn't appeal to any human.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The problem is that they didn’t “gray” the orcs. They went a full 180 on their characterization and retconned their conquistador culture as short-term demonic corruption. They didn’t reform or try to atone, they reverted to an imaginary heroic past and pretended their war crimes never happened. Which is hugely unfair to all the innocent fictional people they brutally butchered and as far as potential social commentary goes is offensively horrifying.

Judging by what we know of the development process, the story was originally going to be much deeper and nuanced but that got squashed. Pity.

I do recall Thrall wanting to reform the Horde and maybe atone, but I might be confusing WoW lore with the stuff in the expansions - namely the TFT epilogue. Always hated how they made Proudmoore act like a psycho when the idea of genocidal invaders running free shouldn't appeal to any human.

In WarCraft Adventures, which didn't have the demonic corruption retcon, Thrall actually would have reformed the Horde into a new government and culture. Sort of like a mix of post-WW2 Germany and the Protestant Revolution, I guess.

Even the demons were originally more complex... at least slightly. The eredar were originally a race of magicians who accidentally destroyed their own world with reckless use of magic and became magic-eating space pirate demons to survive the aftermath. Azeroth became their latest target and they didn't appear to have any prior history with it. In the final game, this was changed to the demons just being generically evil and crazy for no reason.

Even the scourge was more complex than the one-note villains they were in the game. Originally, they were the descendants of the Shadowmoon clan who had become a cult/empire that worshiped the monstrously altered Ner'zhul. They had made an alliance with or been enslaved by the eredar, before they developed a plague that infected the dread lords and converted them to the cult, after which the scourge betrayed the legion and left them to rot while they went about conquering azeroth. Since the legion originally had their own campaign, they presumably would have found another means to invade azeroth and compete with the other civs.

Also, the alliance was in the middle of collapse and civil wars which provided the opportunity for the cult of the damned to infiltrate them to the degree they did... a process that would have taken decades rather than the couple of years it does in whatever passes for canon now.

Gosh, I'm astonished that the ideas Blizz discarded on the cutting room floor sound so much more interesting than the final game. This even applies to Starcraft, which is a whole other can of worms that I have strong feelings on.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"reforming the horde" is so fucking retarded I can't even begin to explain how retarded it sounds
any and all variations of it, including the ones that were included in the game

the hack writers who write this garbage are capable of writing exactly one story and one story only, merely changing the characters to fit whatever is being told

 

[Ravielsk]

"reforming the horde" is so fucking retarded I can't even begin to explain how retarded it sounds
any and all variations of it, including the ones that were included in the game

the hack writers who write this garbage are capable of writing exactly one story and one story only, merely changing the characters to fit whatever is being told

The problem is that after Vanilla they started writing the story for the sake of players to the detriment of everything else. For example initially the undead were effectively villains just using the horde as a shield. Their early quests straight up make the point that they are fully developing their own version of the plague to use on the living. But then Blizzard decided that nobody wants to play "as the villain" and started white-washing everyone so that even the undead who had lobotomized humans around their capital became just somewhat edgy bois with a sob story. Thing is this was mostly received well by the community because most people playing WoW did not give two shits about the story and did not want to admit that their orc warlock could be canonically an asshole.

Blizzard took this as a sign of approval(and not ignorance on the part of 12 year olds) and has been applying the same pattern to literary every single character and faction to a point where we have crap like Sylvanas and muh honorable orcs.

The whole "orcs are totally innocent of their war crimes, it was those nasty demons at fault!"

Technically that happened in TBC. WC3 still even if indirectly implied that Guldan was able to "trick" the orcs specifically because their culture was for the most part OK with the whole thing and that they turned against it only after they realized the downsides of being demonic bottoms. They were not straight up absolved they just were given a reason for being more than just a generic "bad guy faction".
But then in TBC they were hard retconned to be good boys that were one with nature until Guldan gave them the green jizz juice.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

But then Blizzard decided that nobody wants to play "as the villain"

I DO.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

But then Blizzard decided that nobody wants to play "as the villain"

I DO.

Ditto. There’s a novelty value to playing as villains, particularly when they’re more complicated than “we is evul!”

Like, the disturbing thing about the original Horde is that they basically behave like colonial Europeans. They want power, gold, slaves, and they have no problem conquering and genociding their way through Azeroth to get it. It’s cathartic to release these natural evil human instincts in a fashion that causes no harm to real people.

Like, I loved the original concept of the zerg as being driven to do all the horrible things they do by their desire to perfect themselves biologically. They’re not causing all this pain and suffering for fun, but because they believe it improves. They’re almost sympathetic. Also, Overmind has really fun faux Shakespearean scenery chewing dialogue. Naturally I am very disappointed that they got downgraded into patsies for a genocidal short-sighted lunatic with daddy/boyfriend issues. It’s pretty much the same way that Star Trek ruined the Borg.

In Emperor: Battle for Dune, it was fun playing as the Ordos and Harkonnen. Their video were fun too. The Ordos chopped their previous strategist’s head off and kept it alive to terrify the player character into better performance. The Harkonnen characters are really hammy and it’s delightful.

I really miss those days

 

[J1M]

They did something similar with Overlord as well. The heroes you hunt and slay are all presented as sinners that are vain, gluttonous, etc.

 

[Ravielsk]

They did something similar with Overlord as well. The heroes you hunt and slay are all presented as sinners that are vain, gluttonous, etc.

Oh, yeah I remember that. It was a pretty good gag the first time but by the end of the game it was just tedious and I believe in the end even you the OVERLORD turned out to be a virtuous hero. It was really cheap but at least Overlord had the decency to not take itself too seriously so it actually did not destroy the game as whole. A comedy game can get away with that sort of thing but Warcraft(which was technically envisioned as a less grimdark Warhammer) cannot.

Like, the disturbing thing about the original Horde is that they basically behave like colonial Europeans.

Nah, the orcs were more like "might makes right". They were a warrior culture with none of the "frills"(and benefits) of the European colonialism. Hence why they accepted the initial offer from the demons as they have both proven stronger than them and ultimately seemed to have wanted the same thing.

What they definitely were not is some sort of a noble savage that just got tricked into drinking green roids like WoW and the Warcraft movie retconned them to be.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If I never have to debate Warcraft morality again, it will be too soon.

The real problem is that Warcraft transitioned to a MMO format, which is not a good method for dramatic storytelling. More specifically, the appeal of WoW is that you are going to create your own character, and you will play as that character indefinitely. The player is sold various racial, factional, and class fantasies with the expectation that those fantasies will remain throughout the course of the game.

Contrast that with singleplayer games like Warcraft 3, where the player plays as a pre-written protagonist who leads a faction that can have an actual end to their story (the living kingdom of Lordaeron being wiped out, or Thrall settling the Horde down in Kalimdor and finally getting disentangled from 30 years of bloodshed).

You can have no such ending or redefining moments for factions or player characters in an MMO. You could theoretically have a playable faction in WoW get defeated (ie, the Alliance wipes out or cures the Forsaken and reclaims Lordaeron), but then that raises the question of how you're going to continue satisfying players/customers who bought into a particular fantasy (ie, being Forsaken) and have built up an emotional investment in that over the years. Do the surviving Forsaken players get absorbed into a non-Forsaken faction that they may not like? Or are all Forsaken hunted down and the player is forced to create a new character as a part of an existing faction? Etc.

Because you can't have meaningful change or ending in an MMO, you can't have tension or payoff. The player knows that the Horde/Alliance will never be destroyed and will never reconcile their differences. Which means that the audience has no investment in the story. From a business standpoint, this is a failure. So Blizzard has to keep promising that there will be change, though by this point I'm sure everyone is wise to it by now.

This was one of the best moments I ever experienced in a videogame. You're being pushed back by the invading savages and begin preparing for a city siege... only for the savages to ignite the very land on fire. You're tasked with saving 982 civilians in 3 minutes. You will save 30 at most. You feel the dread as you see the fire consume the town, the sky darken with smoke, hear the screams of the townspeople, and see the timer in the corner of the screen running out, and the despair when it finally does. The Horde murdered thousands of your people. You know what is at stake. You set out to save the world from these brutes forever. I mained Horde since Cata (I liked the aesthetics), but in BFA I mained Alliance, because the promise of the Alliance storyline was amazing. (The short story that describes the massacre in gruesome detail and the reactions of Genn and Anduin was also motivational). It's too bad that the MMO could never deliver on that promise.