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SirPhoebos posted:If that was the intent, then they shouldn't have muddied the waters with stuff like this: Yeah would it really have been so hard to say "everything you experience yourself is true, everything you experience second-hand from an NPC telling you is muddled"?
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Jun 9, 2022 13:55
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Random lore detail: from this book I talked about in the LGBT post: I mentioned that one of the short stories was about a transgender night elf. I looked into the short story a bit more, and it had an interesting detail: according to this short story, at least, potions of permanent sex change not only exist in Azeroth, an alchemist describes it as an easy to make potion that any apothecary worth the name can make. The drama in the story is about familial and societal expectations for gender, and the protagonist's own dysphoria. The actual transition is portrayed as a quick, easy, painless thing, and easily available to anyone who desires it.  I'm also editing the ToC in the OP to state what the lore posts are actually about. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jun 9, 2022 |
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Jun 9, 2022 14:20
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Qwertycoatl posted:Holmes was mostly written before the "rules" of mystery fiction got solidified, so it's very inconsistent about whether clues are conveyed in advance Yeah, he pulls culprits and solutions out of his rear end all the time. And a fair few of the stories are more about Holmes and his eclectic personality than the actual mystery. Again very inconsistently.
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Jun 9, 2022 14:24
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FoolyCharged posted:Yeah, he pulls culprits and solutions out of his rear end all the time. And as well as the actual core mystery, there's the thing Holmes does where he deduces someone's entire life story by looking at their hat
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Jun 9, 2022 14:56
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SirPhoebos posted:If that was the intent, then they shouldn't have muddied the waters with stuff like this: WoW always had a few faction-specific storylines or zones, but usually the overarching storyline was available no matter which faction you followed, but BFA turned that up from like a 2/10 up to 11 because we have to put the WAR IN WARCRAFT and part of that is that you wouldn't know anything about what the other side of the war is doing. Good news though, they learned their lesson in Shadowlands and didn't split the storyline into two parts requiring two different characters to understand because they split into four parts instead.
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Jun 9, 2022 15:05
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MagusofStars posted:It's not just this raid, the entire BFA storyline for the first couple patches relies on you either (a) having multiple characters of both factions or (b) getting stuff relayed by others. They designed BFA's entire story under the assumption that you'd play characters of both factions. It's a faction war, so of course players are going to have characters of both sides to see both sides of the war. And if you only played one faction or (gasp) one character only? You just straight up missed half the story. End-game events have no real context because the NPC's or enemies weren't people you understood, you'd walk into dungeons and have no idea why you were even there because the entirety of the storyline underlying said dungeon was for the other faction only, you'd go into the raid and face critically important enemies and go "who the gently caress are you?". I play only a single character, I indeed walked in and was like "ok why am I here?"
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Jun 9, 2022 15:05
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Qwertycoatl posted:And as well as the actual core mystery, there's the thing Holmes does where he deduces someone's entire life story by looking at their hat So I can frustrate Holmes by not wearing a hat? 
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Jun 9, 2022 15:15
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AtomikKrab posted:I play only a single character, I indeed walked in and was like "ok why am I here?" Loot and Blood. Embrace the inner Murderhobo.
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Jun 9, 2022 15:39
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There’s also some events that happen during one faction’s campaign that you’d think would be major enough to come up in the other’s, but they almost never did. Like in the BfA Alliance campaign, where the capstone to the initial campaign involves blowing up a massive, four-story tall Zandalari troll battleship near their capital city, but as a Horde player, you neither hear about it nor see any evidence of it in-game.
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Jun 9, 2022 15:40
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achtungnight posted:So I can frustrate Holmes by not wearing a hat? Understanding Holmes’ trick is entirely based on the rigid class structures of Victorian London, where he could actually peg someone’s life story from the dirt on their boots because: 1. That dirt would be from a particular neighborhood 2. Which basically defined and was defined by your class 3. Which in turn limited your possible choices of employment and likely life events. The whole thing relies on a bunch of “-isms” bundled up in showmanship and picking out the things which separate the characters from the stereotypes. Which brings us back to Warcraft, which is writing based on a whole bunch of “-isms” expect relying solely and entirely on stereotypes.
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Jun 9, 2022 15:50
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Cythereal posted:Random lore detail: from this book I talked about in the LGBT post: Ha, nice, a lore explanation as to why you can just change your gender at any barber shop now.
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Jun 9, 2022 16:32
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Rhonne posted:Ha, nice, a lore explanation as to why you can just change your gender at any barber shop now. Fun fact: There's also a "reverse gender" potion in-game that Alchemists can make, but that one only lasts 5 minutes. It was added to the game in Warlords of Draenor. I guess the Barber shops have a monopoly on the permanent versions :P And yes, it is easy to make.
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Jun 9, 2022 22:52
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Tenebrais posted:In the beginning, Warcraft was created. This made a lot of people very unhappy and is widely regarded as a bad idea.
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Jun 10, 2022 01:31
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FoolyCharged posted:Now the doctor curing infestation or not depending on if Jim believes in her on the other hand...... well gently caress it, torch the planet and merc her, curing infestation was a stupid plot point anyway. Is there any confirmation she succeeds though? I always thught of it as just giving her the chance. Any epilouge might be the story of how she failed to cure them while the planet was slowly overtaken by infection.
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Jun 10, 2022 09:56
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Human 6: Civil Warcraft Note: As with Orc 6, and what will probably be the norm from here on out, this update is stitched together from multiple failed attempts and some cheating was involved in the successful run.  Hmmm. I wonder who else besides the Prestors are going to make a proposition to you. Are my marital prospects and love life really that fascinating, Taria? You have to admit, you're unusually old for a noblewoman of your stature to not be married. If I may? What happened in the war after Raven Hill? Thank you. With the Bleeding Hollow clan cut off from the main horde, I left a garrison force and contingent of engineers to build proper fortifications and keep the mountain pass closed. My intent had been to withdraw to Goldshire to resupply and determine our next move. We knew there were still orc attacks coming from the east, and reports were surfacing with disturbing frequency of an orc warlord garbed in a top hat, cloak, and monocle he had likely plundered from some unfortunate lord.* Really? I hadn't heard about that. He sounds memorable. A story for another time. We had barely reached Goldshire when a messenger arrived from Northshire. They were under attack... and not by orcs. Llane could hardly believe it. His own subjects, siding with the invaders? I could have believed an opportunistic bandit raid while the army was away. But this... This business wouldn't start to truly make sense for some time yet, unfortunately. We knew the orcs were not as united in purpose as they had initially seemed. The soldiers were as confused as my officers and I were. But when we arrived at Northshire, the tactical situation spoke for itself. Back in the realm of places actually on the map however briefly!   Well, what do you know. A similar setup to a previous orc mission, and it's humans against humans! Warcraft 1 is set up to only allow 1v1, red vs blue missions and multiplayer/skirmishes. Humans are always blue, unless it's humans vs humans in which case the second humans are red and labeled Northshire Brigands. Fighting our own people didn't sit well with any of us. After years of fighting orcs and ogres, to cross swords with fellow humans felt... wrong. Anduin had to talk Llane out of riding out there personally. I think he believed he could have talked down this... rebellion. Llane is a gifted orator, but the fighting at Northshire proved very bloody.  I hate to disrespect the dead, but I ordered a search of the fallen for personal effects. I wanted something, anything, that could tell us the motives behind this attack. Did you? I know Llane talked to Benedictus and Anduin about this battle, but I don't know what they said. Not from this skirmish. There's a gold mine near where your army starts, on what turns out to be a little island behind the bridge.  And another immediately north of the town.  Appropriately, Northshire Abbey has a church, and I start making healers immediately. What we learned quickly from the priests was that most of the orcs in the region were from what we could now identify as the Twilight's Hammer clan, and that in just the past year or so the Twilight's Hammer had started to take a particular animus against the clerics. They had even begun telling prisoners and slaves that the clerics were heretics, and priests of a false Light. That sounds... religious. I knew that the necrolytes were trained at temples, but I didn't know they went so far as to hate the Light specifically. From what we learned later, I don't think it's universal to the orcs, just the Twilight's Hammer. According to Griselda, the leader of the Twilight's Hammer, the ogre sorcerer Cho'Gall, was one of the Shadow Council who used her father as a puppet. Attacks are notably less frequent than in Orc 6, and this mission gives you a large base, but conjurers and Those Things are here, too.  I muttered 'oh no' at my screen when I saw this. Speaking of which, how is Griselda? She's still in a very comfortable cell in the Stockades. She understands that we can't just let her go, but Llane and Anduin seconded your orders that she be treated with respect. Take it from me, you're treating her better than her own family ever did. That was an uncommon act of mercy, Isidora. The long term consequences will be interesting. I didn't think to check what this red dot on the map was until it was too late.  I hate these loving things.  Attempt #4, which was successful, I did with just two cheats: saving the full town at the start, and giving myself a bunch of wood and gold to speed up the development phase. I was intent on trying to do this vaguely fairly, and also decided to try this far seeing spell. You can see the area it reveals here, which isn't big.  But there's no fog of war in this game, and you get a lot of casts for your magic juice. Daisy chaining far seeing casts back along the path of enemy attacks proved to be highly useful, risk-free scouting!  With both speed upgrades, knights can efficiently dodge catapult fire and take these goddamn things down! At least when they're unsupported... We'd taken a few prisoners by this point, and learned that this was indeed one of those bandit groups that keep surfacing in the north now and then. They'd been hired by the Twilight's Hammer to stage this attack. Please don't tell me they're still parading the Blood Lords around or whatever. Honestly, I wish it was that kind of garden variety faux-legitimate idiocy. I'm starting to really appreciate far seeing.  On the surface, this army I've built is formidable.  Doubly so with how the AI's army only activates in chunks. I can move ahead with an archer, aggro three or four units, and kite them back into the kill zone to be shot and exploded.  But one enemy catapult could kill half this army in a single shot with how bunched up it is, and I'd have very little recourse beyond rushing knights forward to try to kill it. Now, there should be a counter to a deathball like this, but I don't think catapults feel good as that counter with how utterly binary they are. Either you are prepared to deal with catapults, or you aren't and then you die.  I beat this mission with legitimate tactics after cheating to give myself a full starting base and income, but I'm also very aware that I only saw a single catapult in this run. I suspect that this army, and my splitting up the AI army into chunks that can be kited and bombed piecemeal, would not have held up to catapult attack. Having clerics in the back to heal whatever chip damage does happen makes this army an even harder nut to crack.  The AI may have perfect reactions and control of its units, but its habit of stopping ranged units to attack or heal gets them blasted by my own catapults.  It's not the most exciting play style, but the AI has a lot of units guarding its town, and this strategy grinds through them with ease.  Shorn of its defenses, the barracks goes down quickly and it's all mop-up from there.     Well, it was cleaner than Orc 6 at any rate.  Although I’m not sure what’s going on with my ranking. It was what we found when storming the tower that cracked this mystery wide open. How could a gang of bandits have trained mages of that skill? They had better magical support than we, the royal army, did! The orcs taught them? Not the orcs, according to the prisoners. When an orc spy made an overture to the gang, their leaders met Cho'Gall in a neutral ground. Cho'Gall... gave them visions, apparently. Of magic? Whatever it was, the leaders of the gang started screaming. One reportedly clawed his own eyes out. The bandits were about to attack, when the blinded man suddenly cast magic that he'd never known previously. That cannot possibly be a good thing. Most of the documents we found made no sense whatsoever. Cho'Gall gave others in the group similar visions. A whole lot of nonsense about darkness, eyes, and something called 'Yogg-Saron.' Best guess, some god Cho'Gall worships. That's... one way to describe Yogg-Saron, yes. It's real? Very. Cho'Gall takes their orders from beings you should pray you never meet. Goody. The only piece of actionable intelligence we recovered from this whole mess is that apparently these bandits were just a diversion. The real Twilight's Hammer offensive was to the south, at Sunnyglade. We wished the priests of the Abbey well and rode for Sunnyglade immediately, hoping we weren't too late.* Written and posted with permission from Azzur, thank you! Thread note: I hope folks don’t mind the continued use of cheats. I’ve clearly hit my limits of skill with this game, not that I’ve ever claimed to be good at RTS games. As it is, we are now officially halfway through Warcraft 1! Cythereal fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Jun 10, 2022 |
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Jun 10, 2022 11:50
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As Opposed to the New Gods I've mentioned them often enough in the lore posts, so let's have a look at one of WoW's most iconic additions to Warcraft as a setting. Warcraft 3's expansion briefly encountered what were described as 'faceless ones' and 'a forgotten one.' World of Warcraft would give these beings proper names, and created what is a good shout for the most important addition to Warcraft as a setting. Today's subject, the Old Gods.  From the alternate dimension of the Void, the Void Lords hurled countless spores into reality's deep space, seeking planets to turn to the Void's purpose - and ideally, an infantile world soul not yet emerged. Four of these spores struck Azeroth, burrowing deep into the planet's crust and growing into the entities known to Warcraft as the Old Gods. Old Gods are immense beings, the size of mountain ranges embedded deep in the planet. When Aman'thul physically ripped Y'Shaarj out of Azeroth, it almost killed the sleeping Titan within the planet. Old Gods in general play firmly to the Cthulu angle of bad guys: there's tentacles, eyes in places where there shouldn't be, Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, insanity, and so on and so forth. Old Gods in general are portrayed in Warcraft as far beyond the power of players to defeat: players merely forced C'Thun and Yogg-Saron into dormancy, and a whole lot of things had to line up just so (in ways that, frankly, don't make much sense, but it's Warcraft) to kill N'Zoth. Alongside the Burning Legion, the Old Gods and their Void Lord masters have been World of Warcraft's two primary existential threats to the world.  All of the Old Gods share a few things in common. First, they command nigh-limitless armies of servants originally formed from tiny shed bits of the Old Gods' own organic matter. Above is one of the original archetype of this sort, a Faceless, known more formally these days as a N'raq. N'raqi are sentient and completely subservient to the Old Gods' wills, and most are both physically powerful and instinctively wield the magic of the Void. The other archetype is a race of hive-minded insectoids known as the Aqir. Both of these have numerous variants, and most of the Old Gods eventually specialized their particular servants. Second, Old Gods are of course immensely powerful Void entities and command immense magical and psychic strength (side note, am I the only one a little puzzled by the fact that neither WoW nor FF14 has a psionic or psychic based class after all these years? GW2 at least has mesmers...), and can lend this power to others, or teach such. Doing so invariably turns the subject insane, but most were already insane in the first place. Yeah, Warcraft is replete with Cthulu cults lurking in the shadows. Third, at the time of the RTS games, all of the Old Gods are dead or imprisoned, and to most in the setting at this time they and their armies are either completely forgotten, an old legend, or a dark chapter of history they'd prefer to forget. Unwilling to risk further endangering Azeroth's world-soul by killing the remaining Old Gods, the Titans imprisoned them deep beneath the earth and set sentries to guard them. Of course, after tens of thousands of years without maintenance or supervision, these prisons have gotten rather leaky...  Y'Shaarj the Defiler, the Beast of Seven Heads Y'Shaarj may be long dead, but its power haunts Azeroth still in the form of the Sha that plague Pandaria. In WoW's fourth expansion, the then-Warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream, would tap the last remnants of Y'Shaarj's power and seize control of its remnants. Officially, Garrosh was never corrupted by this and was completely in control of himself, and by consuming the last of Y'Shaarj's essence destroyed the last remnants of the Old God forever.  Pictured: not corrupted. I took this screenshot back when I still played, it felt to me like a perfect example of the absurdities surrounding Garrosh's narrative. Besides the Sha, Y'Shaarj is still served by its own custom variant of the aqir, the mantid. The mantid continue to plague Pandaria, believing fervently that one day Y'Shaarj will return. They're notably much less magically inclined than other aqir variants, preferring alchemy and magical genetic engineering to traditional magic. Instead, they're organized and disciplined along the lines of actual military forces, and are far more technologically developed than other armies of the Old Gods, replete with artillery and heavy explosives.  C'Thun the All-Seeing, the Terror of the Shifting Sands C'Thun is the one WoW players likely remember if you quit before Wrath of the Lich King. C'Thun was entombed beneath what would become the continent of Kalimdor, and was the first to break free from its prison. The first time, C'Thun and its armies broke the Kalimdor empire of the desert trolls but were forced to retreat. The second time, about a thousand years before the RTS games, C'Thun almost brought the night elves, dragons, and other races of Kalimdor to their knees in the War of the Shifting Sands before being imprisoned again. In vanilla World of Warcraft, players invaded C'Thun's prison/fortress and beat C'Thun into dormancy. It's currently not active in Azeroth. We think. Unusually among the Old Gods, C'Thun has very little interest in corrupting or subverting mortals or Titan facilities. It does happen every now and then, but C'Thun appears to be a fan of the brute force approach with its overwhelming armies and sheer physical and magical strength - those who have played Warcraft 3's expansion likely recall the Obsidian Statues and Destroyers used by the Scourge. These were in fact of C'Thun's design and inherited by the Nerubians later. C'Thun is served primarily by an aqir variant known as the Qiraji, who tend to be significantly more humanoid in appearance than other aqir variants. In fact, judging by various Qiraji bosses, it seems like C'Thun tried to split the difference between aqir and n'raqi to create one servant race with the strengths of both that could produce a variety of specialized forms as needed.  Yogg-Saron the Hopebreaker, the Fiend of a Thousand Faces Yogg-Saron is the Old God responsible for the Curse of Flesh, and thus the existence of many of present-day Warcraft's races. It was imprisoned beneath the icy wastes of what is now Northrend, within the Titan city of Ulduar, and in truth broke free from its shackles forty thousand years before the events of the Warcraft games. Yogg-Saron is happy where it is, because it has managed to turn its prison into its fortress. Yogg-Saron's ability to corrupt and manipulate the servants, magic, and technologies of the Titans goes far beyond what any other Old God has demonstrated, and is a particular master of psychic illusions that it can use to dominate others without anyone realizing there's foul play at work. In fact, in terms of sheer damage inflicted to Azeroth, Yogg-Saron is probably the most dangerous of the entire lot. Yogg-Saron not only created the Curse of Flesh, but also something WoW players know as the Emerald Nightmare (even if N'Zoth hijacked it later), had influence and power over the Lich King, and corrupted Neltharion, the Aspect of Earth, into his modern identity as Deathwing, among other things. Players eventually penetrated Yogg-Saron's prison during WoW's second expansion and defeated it, sending it into dormancy as they did C'Thun. Like C'Thun, Yogg-Saron is still very much alive, but probably not currently active. Uniquely among the Old Gods, Yogg-Saron's aqir offshoot, the nerubians, actually managed to break free from its control and turn against it. Rather than try to replace them, Yogg-Saron opted to use its armies of corrupted Titan servants instead to serve as the bulk of its forces on Azeroth, particularly the iron dwarves and iron vrykul.  N'Zoth the Corruptor, the Lord of the Deep N'Zoth is the most recent Old God to appear in WoW's story, and the first since Y'Shaarj to be outright killed. N'Zoth had been considered by the Titans and its peers to be the weakest of the Old Gods, but it was likely the most magically powerful of the four. Nyalotha was a pocket dimension that seems to have been created by N'Zoth as an alternate reality depicting a vision of Azeroth where the Old Gods were victorious. By placing much of its power, minions, and apparently even body mass into Nyalotha, N'Zoth was able to wait out the ages since the Ordering in relative freedom and obscurity, awaiting the correct hour to strike. While this obviously didn't work out for N'Zoth in the end, and in fact ultimately made it quite vulnerable once the players opened a proper gateway for some suitably heavy Titan firepower, it was a nice idea. Just, rather underwhelming in practice for players - Nyalotha had been hinted at for some time in WoW and was widely speculated to be a future expansion, instead getting reduced to just one patch of content and a raid (giving a high five to fellow long-awaited-expansion-turned-into-a-patch Argus) that was itself generally considered underwhelming. 'Underwhelming' is kind of a theme with N'Zoth ultimately. It had no truly unique minions, relying instead on original strain aqir and n'raqi, and one race of corrupted mortals it created: the naga. That the naga have never been perceived as threatening in WoW (not helped by Blizzard utterly wasting Queen Azshara as a villain) outside of one very special zone probably contributed a lot to the general 'wait, that's it?' reception and conclusion of N'Zoth.  G'Huun the Pestilent, the Blood God Wait, five Old Gods? G'Huun is not a true Old God in the vein of the others, but was dangerous enough in its own right. When the Titans were active on Azeroth, they created an artificial replica of an Old God to study and run tests on - circumstances of the raid suggest that they were studying how to kill Old Gods more efficiently without risking harm to Azeroth's world-soul, or similar situations in the future. Then when the Titans departed Azeroth, they left G'Huun locked up in its prison, beneath what is now the Empire of Zandalar. Players managed to kill G'Huun before things got too out of hand. G'Huun was mainly served by the blood trolls, a corrupt offshoot of the Zandalari that are so unbelievably racist that I don't want to talk about them right now. Seriously, Blizzard, who the gently caress signed off on this unironic Dark Continent poo poo?
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Jun 10, 2022 11:51
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I don't think anyone here really cares. Could be wrong, but for my part I'm just happy to see you show the old thing off. I'd hardly want you to become frustrated getting footage for your update and deciding its not worth the trouble.
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Jun 10, 2022 11:57
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Yeah, we’re here for narrative, not any concerns over “correctly” playing any of these games.
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Jun 10, 2022 12:22
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Yeah, I agree, this is a really good LP. If you want to cheat to get through the early economy side of the missions, then do so. I completed Warcraft 1 when I was a kid, it was a hard game then. I can't imagine how tough it is without all the QoL features added to RTS games since its release. The narrative and the lore are the main thing anyway.
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Jun 10, 2022 12:31
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So did anything ever come of the hints that there was an Old God sleeping under Tirisfal?
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Jun 10, 2022 12:51
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quote:Wait, five Old Gods? G'Huun is not a true Old God in the vein of the others, but was dangerous enough in its own right. When the Titans were active on Azeroth, they created an artificial replica of an Old God to study and run tests on - circumstances of the raid suggest that they were studying how to kill Old Gods more efficiently without risking harm to Azeroth's world-soul, or similar situations in the future. Then when the Titans departed Azeroth, they left G'Huun locked up in its prison, beneath what is now the Empire of Zandalar. Players managed to kill G'Huun before things got too out of hand. So, a fun fact for those unaware: G'huun here is from BFA, and it was the first final raid boss of the expansion. It was also more or less completely unmentioned to any Alliance players. People have already talked about how the writers decided to give different storylines to the Alliance and the Horde, but this was a particularly egregious case. The Alliance storylines were either about a lady betraying Kul Tiras (a place I'm sure will come up later), an incredibly tone-deaf storyline about subjugating the vengeful spirits of the native inhabitants of Drustvar (which was otherwise arguably the highlight of the expansion for the alliance, writing-wise), and stopping some cultists/killing evil hedgehog people/some other bits. Absolutely nothing about G'huun. There was no mention whatsoever of this guy for half the playerbase, so, you'd think Blizzard would look upon this as a failure, right? Nope! In Shadowlands (the followup expansion to BFA) they did a better job introducing the villain...but then consigned half of the storyline leading up to the raid to one of four factions. Jen X fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jun 10, 2022 |
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Jun 10, 2022 12:52
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Tenebrais posted:So did anything ever come of the hints that there was an Old God sleeping under Tirisfal? Yup. Dealt with in Legion and it wasn't an Old God, just a particularly powerful Faceless.
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Jun 10, 2022 13:07
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And what exactly was the Forgotten One from that one Frozen Throne mission?
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Jun 10, 2022 13:39
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Carpator Diei posted:And what exactly was the Forgotten One from that one Frozen Throne mission? Just weird Old God poo poo, there's a lot of strange nonsense they deploy now and then like what are legally not in fact sarlaccs from Star Wars, what are legally not sandworms from Dune, and other stuff. It was some creature or emanation of Yogg-Saron.
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Jun 10, 2022 13:42
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Cheat all you want. If I’m fine with doing it myself, how can I not excuse it from an LP writer? I think cheating reduces your score in WC though. I recall in WC2 it gave you the rank Cheater. Not sure if it does anything else negative. Good to see Nigel mentioned. Also nice you gave the Brigands more of a backstory than they ever got in the actual game. I doubt the dead Old Gods are actually dead. They can eternal lie, after all. 
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Jun 10, 2022 14:16
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They're a lazy plot feature.
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Jun 10, 2022 14:19
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The old gods only got loose because the titans had to go distract Sargareas from finding Azeroth and weren't around to maintain their stuff Even so their technology most held up until more recent times for Deathwing, I am fairly certain he was corrupted by N'zoth not Yogg, and Yogg only got loose (in general senses) 4000 years ago, not 40000, 40000 was well before the titans even showed up For C'Thun and Yogg, the containment really keeps them from digging deeper into azeroth to try to reach the core, which is why their raid fights are close to the surface, the players are basically punching the portion of themselves they got loose back into the wards. N'Zoth also thematically is much more a deal maker and corruptor, the issue is his "allies" tend to turn against him and try to stab him in the back see, the naga. Which is why the third final raid fight in is also stupid, but I would explain my thoughts on that later since it involves a lot of other lore and a certain rear end in a top hat Queen whom mostly... mostly just made things worse for everyone every time she got involved in stuff.
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Jun 10, 2022 14:36
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AtomikKrab posted:for Deathwing, I am fairly certain he was corrupted by N'zoth not Yogg, and Yogg only got loose (in general senses) 4000 years ago, not 40000, 40000 was well before the titans even showed up Nope, Chronicles confirmed that Yogg-Saron was the main being responsible, and also the one who came up with the idea for this annoying little artifact called the Dragon Soul. We also have no idea when the Titans were on Azeroth. The earliest known date we have for anything happening on Azeroth in Chronicles was 16,000 years before the events of the games, and was the time when the Zul Empire of the trolls fought and defeated C'Thun's first rising after breaking free. Yogg-Saron is described in a timewalking quest as having been free for forty thousand years.
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Jun 10, 2022 14:47
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Cythereal posted:Nope, Chronicles confirmed that Yogg-Saron was the main being responsible, and also the one who came up with the idea for this annoying little artifact called the Dragon Soul. One of the timewalking raids they did? so more retcons to the timeline?
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Jun 10, 2022 15:42
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AtomikKrab posted:One of the timewalking raids they did? so more retcons to the timeline? Yup. The framing device is "Uh, Yogg-Saron's been free for forty thousand years now. He wasn't supposed to be free that early. Go gently caress his poo poo up, please."
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Jun 10, 2022 15:43
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I'm mildly disappointed you haven't mentioned the Knife Wife, as there have been hints she was an old god that got sublimated by the other 4.
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Jun 10, 2022 16:40
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Well, I just binged this, and I have to say I'm thoroughly happy I never played WoW further than level 40 as Dwarf Pally back in vanilla WoW. Looking forward to the madness that Blizzard's lore is at this point, though.
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Jun 10, 2022 17:25
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So I'm only on page 13, but let me just say, Cythereal, I'm really enjoying the Human campaign narrative so far, and I'm eagerly awaiting the end of the Human campaign when they ask the totally-a-real-dragon-not-a-stripper what happens in the real timeline, and she gives them a several paragraph long summary, culminating with her realizing what the gently caress came out of her mouth, then asking if she could crash in their timeline and if they could recommend a good seamstress. That being said, as far as the actual plot and character summaries go... WHAT THE gently caress BLIZZARD? At what point did they realize women were more than baby factories, creepy fetishist wank material, or could wear more than just lingerie, because God drat those concept arts and renders piss me off. And the background is a shambling mess that Blizzard sounds like they didn't even do the courtesy of TRYING to justify their pile of retcons. Just... what the gently caress.
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Jun 10, 2022 19:38
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Randalor posted:WHAT THE gently caress BLIZZARD? At what point did they realize women were more than baby factories, creepy fetishist wank material, or could wear more than just lingerie [?] Last year, when the sexual harassment allegations started coming out.
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Jun 10, 2022 19:42
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Randalor posted:So I'm only on page 13, but let me just say, Cythereal, I'm really enjoying the Human campaign narrative so far, and I'm eagerly awaiting the end of the Human campaign when they ask the totally-a-real-dragon-not-a-stripper what happens in the real timeline, and she gives them a several paragraph long summary, culminating with her realizing what the gently caress came out of her mouth, then asking if she could crash in their timeline and if they could recommend a good seamstress. Actually, the original art I found and used for Validormi is pretty reasonable.  There's been more than a few pieces of art for female characters I've passed on because they have bare middriffs or their tits out or the like.
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Jun 10, 2022 19:49
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I think the general reason there are no "psionic" classes in WoW or FF14 is that psionics are generally associated with science fiction more so than with fantasy. Plus, generally the sort of things that would differentiate Psionics from Magic would work fine in a single-player RPG with lots of choices and social interaction, but less so in a more linear MMO focused on combat. Stuff like mind reading, mind control, etc. and even if you fluffed those as conditions, FF14's design, I know, isn't very heavy on that, usually the only conditions you deploy are DoT ones. It's more in line with Guild Wars' very condition-heavy design where they're as important as, if not more important than, raw damage numbers. So what's left is stuff like telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, etc... which are functionally indistinguishable from being a wizard except you don't get to wear a big hat.
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Jun 10, 2022 20:10
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I'll wear a big hat if I want to wear a big hat 
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Jun 10, 2022 20:15
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goatface posted:They're a lazy plot feature. Their introduction was basically the turning point where seemingly every villain going forward was corrupted by some higher evil power. At one point during BFA, there was an optional questline that served as the introduction for a minor two-boss raid, and part of it involved your character inadvertently getting a blessing from N’zoth (represented by one of his eyeballs on your head). It was purely a cosmetic thing that could be removed with another quest, but if you kept it, you could see everyone else who had the blessing, including tons of minor NPCs littered throughout all of the cities that didn’t openly act like the lunatics that Old God worshippers usually are.
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Jun 10, 2022 20:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I think the general reason there are no "psionic" classes in WoW or FF14 is that psionics are generally associated with science fiction more so than with fantasy. Plus, generally the sort of things that would differentiate Psionics from Magic would work fine in a single-player RPG with lots of choices and social interaction, but less so in a more linear MMO focused on combat. Stuff like mind reading, mind control, etc. and even if you fluffed those as conditions, FF14's design, I know, isn't very heavy on that, usually the only conditions you deploy are DoT ones. It's more in line with Guild Wars' very condition-heavy design where they're as important as, if not more important than, raw damage numbers. Another strange absence from Warcraft while we're talking about it: bards. They've been an April fool's joke once, and that's it. I actually considered making Isidora one, if not by name, when considering making this LP before deciding to keep things restrained. Still, I like WoW's class selection in terms of story and aesthetics a lot more than FF14's, and that's part of why I think it's such a shame that WoW went so completely to poo poo. I like WoW's fundamental world, aesthetics, and class selection a lot more, and there are races that actually go beyond 'human, short human, tall human, tall human with pointy ears, furry human, scaly human, human with bunny ears, and hrothgar.' My strong distaste for both games is a big part of why the only MMO I still play regularly is Star Trek Online. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jun 10, 2022 |
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Jun 10, 2022 20:25
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WoW is no stranger to sci-fi stuff at this point - I think really the only reason psions (and for that matter bards) aren't classes is they're pretty set in the aesthetics of their magic system. The monk is the only class that isn't doing stuff that units and heroes in Warcraft 3 were able to do. Personally I liked the Old God elements as they were by the time I left off the game in Wrath - they had interesting potential as a faction and I liked the aesthetics of their bug people. I also enjoyed the implications at the time that they were the native power in Azeroth that all the playable civilisations had been built on top of, although in retrospect it's probably better they didn't stick with that. I wouldn't really trust Blizzard with what that situation would be saying about colonialism. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jun 10, 2022 |
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Jun 10, 2022 20:34
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