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Funnily enough, by the time that started happening I had already basically lost faith in WoW's ability to tell a story that I liked and certainly didn't credit them for any kind of subtlety, so along with their obvious general regard for Illidan I thought that was basically authorial voice and checked out of that storyline completely. Figures that it actually had a kind of cool payoff, but I do think this shows the peril of not consistently doing story well - you risk people losing the buy-in you need to do something like that.
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Oct 6, 2023 17:59
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Around the time I stopped playing, I lamented that some of my favourite races, like the Draenei and Tauren and Furbolgs, never got much story attention. These days, I'd be glad if my favourite factions were never touched by Blizzard again.
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Oct 6, 2023 18:21
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I will say, Uncritical Illidan fans are not the worst subset in Warcraft. No, I am not thinking of Sylvanus. But this person does show up later in the LP so I won't say anything until then.
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Oct 6, 2023 18:31
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Ultiville posted:Funnily enough, by the time that started happening I had already basically lost faith in WoW's ability to tell a story that I liked and certainly didn't credit them for any kind of subtlety, so along with their obvious general regard for Illidan I thought that was basically authorial voice and checked out of that storyline completely. You honestly wouldn't be able to convince me that the very hilarious mockery of that questline was ever the initial plan and that it wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction to everyone's disdain for literally playing as Illidan soul sucking people for power and then being told we wouldn't be able to sacrifice as he did.
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Oct 6, 2023 19:00
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I've seen a couple of people say it, but Liam O'Brien didn't voice Illidan until Burning Crusade. It was Matthew Yang King who played him before that. He was even in the BC trailers, but was replaced by O'Brien for the game itself.
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Oct 6, 2023 23:18
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On the one hand, updating my drivers didn't fix the technical issues with WC3 after all. On the other hand, I do have what is so far a reliable solution: deleting the War3Preferences text document in the WC3 folder in My Documents. This forces the game to auto-detect your hardware and settings like you're booting the game up for the first time, and does so in the correct resolution. This even fixes the screenshot resolution issues I was having. Just, I have to do this every single time I want to start the game. For whatever reason, the first launch auto-detect works properly but then a wire gets crossed somewhere in the code every subsequent time I boot the game up without deleting that file to reset the game's detection. Blizzard. Polish.
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Oct 7, 2023 00:01
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Reforged!
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Oct 7, 2023 00:03
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FoolyCharged posted:You honestly wouldn't be able to convince me that the very hilarious mockery of that questline was ever the initial plan and that it wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction to everyone's disdain for literally playing as Illidan soul sucking people for power and then being told we wouldn't be able to sacrifice as he did. I don't necessarily think it was intended to be a mockery, but animations take a long-rear end time to make, even the sort that they use for Illidan blowing up Xe'ra, and if you look at most of the story outside Xe'ra it never tries to excuse Illidan or claim he's some actual great martyr. So I'm inclined to believe Xe'ra going down how it did was intentional, even if we are meant to like and support Illidan "I am my scars" (I am me, failures and successes, harm and help) was the intended endpoint of that plot. Basically everyone but Xe'ra still treats Illidan as a dangerous but plausibly useful ally, it is only Xe'ra doing the Illidan was secretly the coolest guy ever and you were stupid for killing him thing. Illidan's biggest doubter dropping out of the story due to real world complications does not help though, not her fault but it still likely derailed some intended narrative pushback. Khadgar does more or less react with shock and horror at Illidan willingly opening the portal to Argus.
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Oct 7, 2023 00:15
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Illidan at least knows what night elf society is meant to be, check him out just walking around without a shirt. Boring Malfurion just draping robes over himself.
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Oct 7, 2023 01:20
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Let's be honest. He does it because he saw Tyrande enjoying that song with the lyric about "being too sexy for my shirt" and decided from then on that he'd go shirtless.
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Oct 7, 2023 03:09
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These three "awaken the druid", "awaken the druids" and "awaken the druids (and release the edgy guy)" missions would probably work better if player was made to use this newly awakened power to destroy the enemy in the same mission. Either by adding this to the end or by making the awakening happen half way to the mission.
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Oct 7, 2023 05:58
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Doesn't even need to be the same mission. Awaken the Druids, leave that the same. Then another base build mission where you fight the Scourge/Legion/Fel Orcs which goes badly for some reason. Even the Druids aren't enough, they need something more... Tyrande actively decides to recruit Illidan rather than just bumbling across him and leaves Malfurion to hold ground unthil she can get back, then the dungeon mission to release Illidan. You wouldn't even need to change that much, that's basically how the mission structure is already, it's just story changes, but it would make it feel more like forward movement.
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Oct 7, 2023 13:11
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Night Elf 6: Head Case Today we discover what happens when you leave Illidan without adult supervision for one mission.   Something something my t-shirt something something demons have no hold over me. WHAT'S A T-SHIRT? Someting I doubt orcs would want, given ya aesthetics.  Er, how did Arthas get here? Where's Kel'Thuzad and Sylvanas? Why have you only shown us the night elves fighting the undead that one time Tyrande was sneaking around?  Come, then. You'll find we're evenly matched.So yeah. The series has never really talked about what happened to Arthas, Kelly, or Sylvanas during Reign of Chaos after the undead campaign. The Scourge that remained in the Eastern Kingdoms marched south and overwhelmed Alterac and Stromgarde before invading Gilneas and being stopped cold by the Gilnean army - at immense cost - in the Scourge's only genuine defeat in the open field during the Eastern Kingdoms campaign (remember that Mal'Ganis and Ner'zhul wanted Arthas to reach Frostmourne).  The dreadlord who commands these undead armies is named Tichondrius. He controls a powerful warlock artifact known as the Skull of Gul'dan.I do find it kind of funny that after all the hype for Illidan in the last mission, the very first time you see him fight in this game it's an inconclusive draw. Against the protagonist of the first two campaigns, sure, but it still strikes me as an odd introduction to the character.   And you wish for me to steal it. Why? Let's just say that I have no love for Tichondrius, and the lord I serve would... benefit, from the Legion's downfall. Why should I believe anything you have to say, little human? Gul'dan's skull is obviously not to scale. Please don't heckle the prop department. I'm filing 'Arthas/Kelly/Ner'zhul covertly trying to help the good guys in the later campaigns defeat the Legion to serve their own purposes' under another missed plot thread that could have been neat.  Illidan is a demon hunter, the last of the heroes in Reign of Chaos. He's the tankiest of the night elf heroes, with a passive skill giving him a chance to dodge incoming attacks. Mana burn is a very nasty ability. His other ability sets him on fire to damage nearby enemies.  Druids of the claw are both the night elves' meaty front line, and also their healers. For the record, druids of the talon are anti-air units when they shapeshift. As the enemy does not use air units on this mission, I will not be making any.  That intro cutscene might lead you to think you'll be facing the Scourge in this mission. You are not. It's the satyrs again.  For the record, there's actually nothing terribly special about Tichondrius in this mission. He's 'just' a level 10 dreadlord with powerful items. But if you try to kill him without the Skull of Gul'dan, at a certain HP limit he'll just go 'Enough!' in patented Blizzard fashion, reset to full HP, and teleport your army away.  Story-wise, there's no reason Illidan couldn't just kill Tichondrius the normal way and be done with it (and indeed Tichondrius is hardly going down for good, just like Mal'Ganis he eventually came back in WoW), but mission triggers demand you stay on the railroad Blizzard created for you.  Personally, I've concluded that this kind of nonsense is a big part of why I don't like this game.  I don't like any of the main protagonists or consider them to be particularly good people (leaving aside the Scourge campaign).  I think I've gone over why I feel that way adequately for each of them.  I like the night elves as a whole, but I'm honestly struggling to think of any single night elf character who's even a B-lister in WoW who I actually feel any affection for.  One of the things I've been reckoning with over the last few years and introspecting on has been that I genuinely don't think of myself as hard to please when it comes to video game stories.  Yet, as I'm sure most readers of this thread would agree, in practice I'm remarkably picky and judgmental.  I don't think that's inherently good or bad, for the record. I don't think there is such a thing as an 'objectively' good or bad game.  Just games that different people do and do not enjoy.  If you're one of the people who still enjoys Warcraft 3 and still feels that all the pieces work together, your feelings are valid.  I don't share those feelings, and I intend to continue running this LP as I see fit, but I genuinely don't mean to call you wrong or 'objectively incorrect' or any such thing for feeling as you do.  Illidan is now juiced up considerably, ala Arthas with Frostmourne at the end of the Alliance campaign.  At the end of the day, I play video games mainly for how they make me feel. If a game doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings inside, or at least a feeling of satisfaction for achieving my goals, I'm probably not going to play it for long.  And, well. I don't think anyone still reading this will be surprised that how I feel can often be quite different from how I suspect the writers intend for me to feel.  Here's where everything starts to go pear-shaped for me in this mission.  My glaive throwers accidentally aggroed multiple packs of demons, including Tichondrius himself.  I'm pretty sure I would have lost this entire army and had to rebuild if I weren't playing on Story difficulty.  So long, Tichondrius the Darkener.   For once, a family that might be even more screwed up than mine. As Deathwing's daughter in law in my timeline, I concur. The Skull of Gul'dan, for the record, was not actually destroyed here and would go on to reappear in WoW.  I really don't know why Tyrande is surprised. This kind of poo poo is what Illidan does.   Actually, Malf is legitimately correct here according to WoW: Illidan's soul has become fundamentally demonic in nature and tied to the Twisting Nether allowing him to be resurrected like a demon.  I can't help but feel like there's a huge missed opportunity in that Illidan never meets the Horde and interacts with them.  Now, normally I would cut the update here.  But the next update is the grand finale of Reign of Chaos so best to get this out of the way.   I hope you weren't expecting some kind of character development leading the night elves to trust anyone.   Or any kind of diplomatic negotiation to find common ground.   I think that Medivh is an awful character, and nonsense like this is a big part of why.  We could have had character development, interplay between multiple strong personalities, and multifaceted characters.  Instead we get a wizard lecturing angrily at people.  I suspect that Blizzard wanted Medivh's identity to be a tantalizing mystery. Who is this guy and how does he know so much?  This is clearly supposed to be a dramatic line, but he delivers it in the same flat, mildly condescending tone of voice that he always has.  Conveniently not mentioned: that he was directly working for the demons and the orcs were just their minions.  As a kid who'd never played WC1 or 2, and barely read the manual, when I first saw this cutscene as a kid knowing almost nothing not conveyed in the game itself, I was really confused.  Medivh's voice actor can't even make a decent ham sandwich out of this role.  See you next time for the final mission of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos! ... No, I'm not cutting anything. That's how the cutscene ends and in the next mission all three factions will be working side by side.
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Oct 8, 2023 14:53
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Thrall the Small Things Now that there's nothing immediately pressing to discuss concerning the night elves, it's time to make due on a promised lore post. Today's subject, Thrall in WoW.  Beyond founding a new homeland for orcs in the arid lands of central Kalimdor and establishing new allies for the Horde, probably Thrall's most fateful decision in Warcraft 3 is his choice to present Grom to the Horde as a martyr, a tragic figure who exemplified the orcs' struggle and the man who gave his life to kill the demon whose blood corrupted their race. Thrall would only learn of the true history of the orcs in full late in vanilla WoW courtesy of the elder shaman Drek'thar, but there's a strong implication that he wasn't the only Azeroth-born orc fed a whitewashed history of their race - no younger orc ever contradicted Thrall until Grom spilled the beans, after all. This lead to Thrall making three important decisions in the first few expansions of WoW. First, when trade negotiations with the night elves for lumber broke down after the events of WC3 (the Horde needed more than their claimed lands could produce, and while the night elves agreed to trade their surplus, they were busy with their own reconstruction and couldn't meet the Horde's needs) and the Warsong clan began to raid Ashenvale to clear-cut and strip-mine the forest, Thrall chose not to take any action against the Warsong. This was, after all, Grom's clan and Thrall was concerned that trying to slap down the Warsong for breaking the treaty would risk civil war within the Horde. And, well, the Horde needed lumber. Thrall chose to turn a blind eye to the skirmishes erupting along the night elf border, and this diplomatic intransigence lead directly to the night elves choosing to pursue closer ties to the Alliance in the wake of WC3, as they decided they needed a counterbalance to the rising threat of Horde aggression out of the Horde's greed for resources. Second, when the draenei ship the Exodar crash-landed off Kalimdor and the draenei refugees immediately established a rapport with the night elves and from there an alliance with the Alliance, Thrall quietly authorized the Horde to prepare for war. Having just been informed of the true history of the orcs by Drek'thar and who the draenei were, Thrall feared that the draenei would not be in a forgiving mood towards the people who had committed genocide against their race, especially once the night elves and humans et al told the draenei about their own experiences with the Horde. Thrall felt that collectively, these races and their history of grievances against the Horde made long-term peace doomed to failure, and that anything Thrall could conceivably do to mend those fences would risk civil war within the Horde over what Thrall believed (probably quite correctly given how events played out) would be seen as kowtowing to outsiders over a past that the Horde had, after all, been built on claiming freedom from. Don't mind that they were still flying the old Horde's flag, wearing the old Horde's colors, continuing the old Horde's government, and Thrall continued to bear the last Warchief's weapon and armor. Third, when the Horde returned to the broken remains of Draenor in The Burning Crusade, Thrall there met Grom Hellscream's son, Garrosh. Garrosh knew full well the weight of his father's sins, and had some more for the pile besides: Grom had been abusive towards Garrosh's mother and Garrosh himself (indeed, the account of Grom's relationship with Garrosh's mother was portrayed as one step shy of rape). Thrall, driven by the memory of his friend, fed Garrosh a hagiography of Grom's deeds and life on Azeroth, trumpeting Grom as the greatest hero the Horde had ever known and persuading Garrosh to take up Grom's armor and axe. Over Garrosh's own objections, Thrall began grooming Garrosh as his successor to lead the Horde, a transition of power that would take place in the Cataclysm expansion when Thrall made Garrosh warchief against Garrosh's own will. Let's just say it ended very, very badly. Garrosh probably deserves a lore post of his own.  Thrall's main reason for making Garrosh warchief was that the return of Deathwing caused the, well, Cataclysm and was threatening to destroy the world. As Azeroth's most powerful shaman, Thrall felt compelled to step aside from the Horde (just as the Horde started careening violently out of control under Garrosh's leadership as war erupted with the Alliance thanks to the Alliance's boneheaded new 'high king' and to Sylvanas Windrunner) and act for the good of all Azeroth. The Aspects revealed that Thrall was their chosen hero to stand against the apocalypse and succeed Neltharion as the Aspect of Earth, which he did, the only mortal who could bear the weight and power of an Aspect. He had a big Hero's Journey, learned his real name that his parents had meant for him (Go'el, for those curious), got a haircut identical to that which Chris Metzen wore at the time, fell in love with an orc-shaped puddle of dishwater named Aggra and married her who immediately pumped out kids, and killed Deathwing to save Azeroth. This is the expansion that saw a lot of the WoW fanbase start to turn on Thrall, mainly due to the sheer amount of hype and attention from the developers Thrall got. People had already been skeptical and some of them irritated by Tirion Fordring in the previous expansion as the big heroic leader dude for the story to center on, but Tirion at least had had a history of standing apart from either faction and working with both. Thrall was... Thrall, and moreover this was the expansion that spent an awful lot of time on the new war between the Alliance and Horde - and a shitload of war crimes. But then Alliance players got quests taking part in Thrall's wedding. Chris Metzen's protests that Thrall was a hero of the entire world, not just the Horde, did not go over very well. The next couple of expansions, centered on Garrosh and his actions, didn't help matters. This was the point in time where, at Garrosh's international trial, Jaina Proudmoore asked Thrall what the Horde intended to do to make reparations to the Alliance and keep something like Garrosh from ever happening again, to which Thrall replied that the Horde did not answer to the Alliance and the matter had been dealt with. The actual quest where Garrosh was finally killed off for good, by the way? Titled 'Justice for Thrall.' No one in the Alliance was involved except maybe an Alliance player character who was just there as window dressing.  These days, Thrall is semi-retired and not heavily involved in the story anymore. He's always around if you play a shaman or a Horde character, but Blizzard seems to have been chastened by the backlash against the character during what I see as WoW's middle period and has so far resisted the temptation to make him anything more than a side character. He remains a bitterly divisive character within the fanbase, probably one of the most controversial with WoW fans past and present alongside Sylvanas Windrunner and Varian Wrynn. In Thrall's case, the backlash continues to center on the Cataclysm expansion and its fallout: Thrall's relationship with Garrosh and the sheer monumental hype and overexposure Thrall got as the ultimate hero of all time. It's pretty rare to find any fan of the Garrosh storyline and the faction war (outside the CLEANSE PURGE KILL nutjobs on either side of the faction divide), and Thrall's character in WoW is heavily tied to that story even if Blizzard themselves keep trying to put distance between Thrall and that period of the game. Besides being a cautionary tale in WoW about the dangers of trying to force the fanbase to love a character, I do find Thrall's history and character in WoW decently interesting in that, if I take the game in good faith, Thrall is just that kind of character who wants to be a hero, always means well, and is horribly bad at it and keeps pissing off everyone and causing shitloads of collateral damage that keeps cropping up in Warcraft's story. Personally, I don't actually mind Thrall in the balance. I see the fundamental error as being Garrosh's character, not Thrall's. Beyond that, self-inserts gonna self-insert, and Thrall is a self-insert for Chris Metzen without shame or apology.
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Oct 8, 2023 14:54
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So....Medhivh tells Tyrande to calm down...and that is that? They were really rushing to close this out!
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Oct 8, 2023 15:14
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I'd add that, the last few years, Thrall's big character motivation has been depression and self loathing due to Garrosh. Ever since Garrosh's death in Warlords of Draenor, Thrall has A) understood that Garrosh's claims that Thrall made him Warchief and then abandoned him to do his own poo poo, were actually mostly correct, and B) He has heavily lost his self confidence. After Warlods, he lost his abilities as a Shaman because he no longer trusted himself, to the point that he gave Doomhammer to a Shaman player, retired to Outland to raise his family, and mostly moped around until Saurfang convinced him to come back and help out with the horde civil war, as people like them didn't "get" to retire. In fact, the main thing he brings to the table after this is an outspoken belief that everything he has ever done is a mistake, that he ruins everything, and his desire for peace is ultimately ruined by everyone (including him) choosing war. Which is, in fact, the point at which Jaina actually softens up to Thrall again. Seeing him as a broken version of her long-time, estranged friend.
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Oct 8, 2023 15:16
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SirPhoebos posted:So....Medhivh tells Tyrande to calm down...and that is that? Hush Tyrande
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Oct 8, 2023 15:16
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Sometimes, I think what things would be like in an alternate world where Thrall died instead of Grom, and Grom was the one going around presenting Thrall as a martyr and a hero to the orcs. You know, instead of hyping Grom up as the greatest hero ever and ignoring all his flaws, it's Grom going "I'm the biggest fuckup ever and you should all be more like this guy instead!" EDIT: Also, it's really funny how, after going through the trouble of freeing him last mission, Illidan is just around for one mission and then leaves the story. I guess that's why he does so much in the expansion. Rhonne fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 15:22
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I always thought it was hugely hosed up how Malfurion reacted to Illidan's transformation. Illidan ultimately did a good thing - several good things, even! He defeated the Satyrs, killed the Demons, and cleansed the corruption. Yeah, he got all hosed up on demonology and now he's in blackface, but that's Illidan's problem, not anyone else's. But Malfurion's in charge, and he don't like it! No discussion, no chance to explain, no nothing - just "I can't believe you did this, gently caress off forever". It struck me as colossally lovely then and it still strikes me that way now.Siegkrow posted:I'd add that, the last few years, Thrall's big character motivation has been depression and self loathing due to Garrosh. Ever since Garrosh's death in Warlords of Draenor, Thrall has A) understood that Garrosh's claims that Thrall made him Warchief and then abandoned him to do his own poo poo, were actually mostly correct, and B) He has heavily lost his self confidence. After Warlods, he lost his abilities as a Shaman because he no longer trusted himself, to the point that he gave Doomhammer to a Shaman player, retired to Outland to raise his family, and mostly moped around until Saurfang convinced him to come back and help out with the horde civil war, as people like them didn't "get" to retire. Huh. That's... actually decent writing. Kith fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 15:46
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Right now Thrall is the leader of the orcs again(because everyone else who could believably hold the position is dead now), but there is no Warchief position anyone and he is instead a part of a council of Horde leaders.
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Oct 8, 2023 15:51
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SirPhoebos posted:So....Medhivh tells Tyrande to calm down...and that is that? I like to think that after the cavalcade of stupid shut Tyrande up Jaina took the moment to step in and say "We're just here to fight the demons and then if we live go home." Thrall: "What she said. Excuse me while I leave out my people currently don't have a home and you have some lovely territory to couchsurf on."
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Oct 8, 2023 15:52
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I think the biggest humbling that Thrall got as a result of his rash decisions is that it cost him one of his dearest friends: Cairne Bloodhoof. Baine ultimately did not blame Thrall, but I think he really beat himself up for a while for that. I think the idea of Thrall is fine (we'll not get into the nitty-gritty of his execution, especially in WoW), and I like the friendship that he and Jaina had. It's ultimately a pity that Blizzard saw fit to drive a wedge between them for the sake of Edgy Jaina Development.
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Oct 8, 2023 15:56
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amusingly, "Arthas is working with the good guys to thwart the demons" is the single plot point they follow up on in TFT.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:00
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Worth noting: Tichondrius in this mission has the "Divine" Armor type, and takes only 1% damage from anything not doing Chaos damage. Also, he uses not just regular Inferno to call down an Infernal, but a special "Rain of Chaos" ability that calls down *multiple* infernals over a wider area. Combine that with two Demon Gates producing powerful Demon units on either side of his hidey hole, and this final battle can actually go to poo poo really quickly if you're careless. Coincidentally, Illidan in his Perma-Metamorphosis Mode after consuming Gul'dan's skull (which is exactly what that form functionally is), is the only source of Chaos Damage available to the player. Nothing interesting changed in this map. At most, the two Corrupted Bases (one makes Satyrs, the other makes Skeletons, and I think both use corrupted treants?) can rebuild some stuff now if you damage their base but don't finish them off. I will have a couple of things to say about the next mission, though. Not a lot, but a couple of details. sirtommygunn posted:Maybe they changed Tichondrius' armor type for story mode because I remember him having divine armor like Cenarius did. Nope, just checked. Cythereal either didn't notice, or felt it wasn't important enough to mention, since it doesn't really affect much beyond forcing you to make sure you use your UberPowerful Illidan in the fight against him. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 16:09
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Maybe they changed Tichondrius' armor type for story mode because I remember him having divine armor like Cenarius did. It's incredible how badly they've managed their time for this campaign. 5 missions of rallying the troops, a mission for what is basically a side story that sets up the expansion, and the final battle where all the good factions align to stop the end of the world. We've learned basically nothing about our main characters except that Tyrande is an rear end in a top hat who will not work with anyone and Malfurion is angered by the destruction of the forest. We have seen the antagonist of our story exactly once, in mission two, and we don't even know what his plan is beyond killing everyone. Thrall and Jaina have not been on screen in this loving campaign until now! Fortunately, Medivh is here to change everyone's motivations in 3 lines of dialogue again so we can reach the finale without any of those dang character flaws we set up at the start.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:11
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Do the Satyrs have any interesting units or abilities or are they all just glorified creeps?
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Oct 8, 2023 16:29
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BlazetheInferno posted:Cythereal either didn't notice It's this. Since it doesn't matter if you fight him, if you don't get the Skull, he just teleports your army away if you get him to low health regardless.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:32
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Cythereal posted:Today we discover what happens when you leave Illidan without adult supervision for one mission.  No, seriously. This is the Night Elf mission I remember most clearly, mostly because it's the one where I was finally having fun with them. They have most of their forces and a hero who's meant to wade in and do poo poo. Add in that Illidan's an actually interesting and memorable dumbass making a very obviously stupid but effective move, and hell yeah, that's the good stuff. It never occurred to me while playing how often the game does the, "Someone reaches for the Demon Stove and gets burned," bit. Arthas's whole huge character arc is built around getting him to a place where he'll plunge his hand in to the fire willingly and never pull it out, but then you get these incredibly perfunctory takes on it with Grom and Illidan. Even now it doesn't particularly bother me, since temptation and subversion have been part of What Demons Do for way, way longer than I've been alive. But it does stand out.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:38
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First, thanks for posting. Bit of a distraction from rough times.Cythereal posted:I'm filing 'Arthas/Kelly/Ner'zhul covertly trying to help the good guys in the later campaigns defeat the Legion to serve their own purposes' under another missed plot thread that could have been neat. Cythereal posted:If you're one of the people who still enjoys Warcraft 3 and still feels that all the pieces work together, your feelings are valid. Cythereal posted:As a kid who'd never played WC1 or 2, and barely read the manual, when I first saw this cutscene as a kid knowing almost nothing not conveyed in the game itself, I was really confused. Cythereal posted:This was, after all, Grom's clan and Thrall was concerned that trying to slap down the Warsong for breaking the treaty would risk civil war within the Horde. Beyond that, self-inserts gonna self-insert, and Thrall is a self-insert for Chris Metzen without shame or apology. Cythereal posted:Beyond that, self-inserts gonna self-insert, and Thrall is a self-insert for Chris Metzen without shame or apology.
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Oct 8, 2023 16:49
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Gun Jam posted:yeah, but the gameplay? I'll talk about this more in the end of game retrospective with the next post. In brief, I think the gameplay is still fun enough... when I can get the drat thing working. I think that, as a pure RTS, it still holds up pretty well. When it's working.
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Oct 8, 2023 17:01
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BlazetheInferno posted:Coincidentally, Illidan in his Perma-Metamorphosis Mode after consuming Gul'dan's skull (which is exactly what that form functionally is), is the only source of Chaos Damage available to the player. Didn't they use the same gimmick in the Grom vs Cenarius map? Where he has Divine Armor and all the Fel Orcs get Chaos damage to hurt him.
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Oct 8, 2023 17:12
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ApplesandOranges posted:Didn't they use the same gimmick in the Grom vs Cenarius map? Where he has Divine Armor and all the Fel Orcs get Chaos damage to hurt him. Yes. Same with Arthas when he gets Frostmorne at the end of the Human campaign
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Oct 8, 2023 17:12
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BisbyWorl posted:Yes. I don't think Mal'ganis had divine armor(because he is a chump). Now I'm wondering how a full Fel'd out Grom would stack up again Arthas and Illidan.
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Oct 8, 2023 17:15
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Rhonne posted:I don't think Mal'ganis had divine armor(because he is a chump). Grom is noted to be very near unstoppable even for an Orc when actually bloodraging (and his son is scarier because his son has that but can also control going into orcish bloodrage perfectly which isn't really normal for them). But I think he'd still end up being beaten, because Grom doesn't think in a fight once he's like that, it's more or less canonically how the trick with the soulstone actually worked. They got him looking the wrong way and ganked his soul out of him. Edit: Orcs genetically have like, super adrenaline rushes when pushed into fight or flight that getting angry enough can trigger, known as "Bloodrage". On Draenor it's really useful (because Draenor is a terrifying deathworld where being Flowerpickers makes you hardened warriors skilled at fighting subversive sometimes parasitic sentien fungus/plant hybrid monsters who want to turn your flesh into seedbeds), but it's also why the Blood of Manneroth was so effective, as it super charged their bloodrage and permanently locked it "on". Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 17:18
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Huh, when I left WoW I thought the story behind Garrosh's accession was that he challenged Thrall for leadership. Doing it in ritual combat where Cairne insisted on being Thrall's champion and was killed in the fight. What actually did go down there? Anyway. After thinking about it for the last few missions, I think it would have been better writing for Malfurion to be the prophet, rather than Medivh. Medivh really comes out of nowhere for this game - there's no explanation for how he is around after explicitly being killed, and he just disappears after the game ends with equal lack of fanfare. As far as WC3 is concerned he's a ghost trying to atone for his past crimes (although it seems WoW filled in an actual reason he's alive later). I guess they wanted him there to provide a bit more continuity with the last games? But what if it was Furion instead? Say he saw the rise of the Scourge through its impact on the environment of Northrend in the Emerald Dream, and saw the writing on the wall. Thought it would be a good idea to recruit the people that fought off the demons' invasion before to help do it again, and starts talking to human leaders in their dreams (with about as much success because, well, who's going to uproot their nation to cross the sea because someone asked you to in a dream?). He finds the surviving orcs too and is easily able to convince Thrall to take the orcs to new lands. He can only talk to people in their dreams, so he can't actually warn the Sentinels about this plan because they don't sleep. Let's say the "oracle" in Stonetalon Chasm is a window into the Emerald Dream that can be used while awake, giving it both a reason for there to be a reputed oracle there (maybe it's normally Malfurion, even) and a reason to bring both the Alliance and Horde there since it's the only place he can talk to both orcs and humans together to tell them to work together. He was able to tell Cenarius that help is coming, but maybe Cenarius is against this plan - especially once orcs start logging in the forest - and believes the Night Elves can fight off the legion by themselves, as they did before. So he attacks them instead, and dies for his hubris. It's only once Tyrande awakens the druids that she can actually be filled in on what her husband was trying to do and stop fighting them. It would help the whole Prophet story tie in better to the factions' motivations, would give a reason that he's so bad at convincing people to come along, and would seed the Night Elves' presence at the start of the story so they feel more involved with what's going on in the first half. At least, it feels neater to me.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:06
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Tenebrais posted:Huh, when I left WoW I thought the story behind Garrosh's accession was that he challenged Thrall for leadership. Doing it in ritual combat where Cairne insisted on being Thrall's champion and was killed in the fight. What actually did go down there? Wait for the Garrosh lore post. I'm anticipating having time to kill for miscellaneous lore posts like Garrosh and Varian in the first campaign of TFT.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:09
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Gun Jam posted:How many of wc3 players returned from previous titles, and how many were new, I wonder? I came in from WC2 (never played the first, and from what I've seen THANK GOD), and I kind of enjoyed WC3, but even in my younger, dumber days I caught on to some of the dumber stuff (I certainly remember thinking "Why am I doing so much stuff for some dumb druids?"), but other stuff like the Native American appropriation went straight over my head (though in my defence, I'm Malaysian, and everything about the Tauren just went straight into 'nature-themed mysticism' for me, same with the Night Elves). Also, I loving MADE IT THROUGH 200+ PAGES AT LAST! Fuuuck, that was a journey!  Man, I knew Blizzard was a shitshow from recent news, but good goddamn I never realized that stuff was displayed openly in their flagship product; I'd have thought assholes like that would have had at least enough braincells to not display their predilections openly, you know?
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Oct 8, 2023 18:13
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Tenebrais posted:Huh, when I left WoW I thought the story behind Garrosh's accession was that he challenged Thrall for leadership. Doing it in ritual combat where Cairne insisted on being Thrall's champion and was killed in the fight. What actually did go down there? It's covered in a novel, but: Thrall had to go leave to Nagrand to figure out why the elements were basically messed up (the Cataclysm). Because he didn't know how long he would be gone, he appointed Garrosh as Warchief due to his rising popularity among the Horde, with Eitrigg and Cairne as counsel. Cairne very much did not approve of his decision and told him so, with their last words to each other being an argument. After some time, Cairne had enough of Garrosh's rather... inflammatory leadership and challenged him to a mak'gora. Cairne would likely have won the fight, but unbeknownst to them, Magatha Grimtotem had decided to act. Volunteering to bless Garrosh's weapon before the fight (part of the ritual, and usually mostly just for ritual purposes that would not give an advantage to either combatant), she instead poisoned his weapon so Garrosh would unknowingly slowly weaken Cairne during the fight, which eventually led to Garrosh's win.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:44
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Garrosh wasn't even Thrall's first pick to be the new Warchief. He was originally planning on handing things over to Saurfang's son, but then he went and got killed in Wrath(twice even), so Garrosh was the next best(worst) choice.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:24
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 19:57 |
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There's the bones of a really interesting story around Garrosh (mostly carried by Patrick Seitz' fantastic voicework) but Blizzard bungled it with weak writing and also the fact that half of it is invisible unless you read novels. But that's something to talk about when a different lore post comes.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:34
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