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No, this was my fuckup. Blizzard isn't quite as bad as I thought. Hell of a way to find out I'd been wrong about this for years.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:35
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No worries, it was an honest mistake, and Blizzard has done enough vile poo poo for that particular rumor to be easily believable.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:41
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:No worries, it was an honest mistake, and Blizzard has done enough vile poo poo for that particular rumor to be easily believable. I'm just kicking myself hard because I hold myself to high standards for writing, and it stings a little every time the thread has clarified that I've gotten some of my information about the game wrong. It is to some degree inevitable with a subject this big, I know, but I've generally tried to hold back my genuine anger at Blizzard except over the subject matter of Teldrassil and I don't like knowing that my anger was in part misplaced. But sincerely, thank you for correcting me on this one. I'd stopped playing Shadowlands by the time of Zereth Mortis and so all I've had to go on is hearsay and what gets put on the wikis and whatnot. So for anyone I offended, I am sorry for working under a wrong impression about this particular point. On a note some people may find amusing, I've been playing around with another RPG recently and did something silly pertaining to this LP.   
Cythereal fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 15:45
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I mean, Blizzard still had one of the two factions in the game engage in a genocide with warcrimes and then swept it under the rag. Making players of that faction not forced to have commited warcrimes canonically ain't really that exonerating. As you said, you apologized for your mistake and acknowledged you reacted in anger to incomplete/misinformation. Now you can just react in anger/cold dissapointment to everything else Blizzard did do wrong.
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Jan 18, 2024 17:16
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True enough, and at the end of the day in my revised analysis this change doesn't change anything else about Teldrassil and how they handled it. They made it go down smoother than I thought for Horde players. My stance remains unchanged. If Blizzard does not retcon Teldrassil or explicitly un-happen it or resolve it in a way I find satisfying (say, by actually returning all the dead to genuine life), then I do not give a drat who's running the show at Blizzard or what stories they might tell, it's all meaningless trash to me. I've heard tell that I'm impossible to please. I disagree. I'm just not mollified that a few expansions after writing a short story calling Teldrassil genocide that damned the night elves to die out, the current writers decided that isn't the story they want to write and deal with anymore. Not the least because they might well arbitrarily decide to bring it back up another expansion or four down the road like the loving sword.
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Jan 18, 2024 18:34
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I will say, outright retconning or "un-happening" something like that is absolutely never going to happen. For all Blizzard's failings, they don't just go back and undo massive story points like that. They do a lot of retconning, but primarily of background details, and stuff we haven't directly witnessed happening right in front of our eyes in the middle of the primary story. And, while Cyth may potentially disagree, this is to their credit as writers. They wrote it, it's part of the story, it happened, they can try to ignore it, they can try to do better in the future, but they will not just rip it out of the story and crumble it up and say it never happened. There's no point. The people who want them to would still remember that it happened in the first place and will hold onto that resentment no matter what happens, and the people who don't want them to retcon it would see them weakened as writers because of their unwillingness to stick by what they wrote, for good or ill. Hot take, I honestly think outright undoing it considering its significance to the story over the past half-decade of real-life development and story, would be a worse move from a writing perspective than the fact that it happened in the first place, and doing so would serve no purpose beyond bald-faced pandering to the people who were angry about it in the first place, no matter how justified that anger. Stopping something from hitting live servers due to public backlash is one thing, but undoing a major story point, no matter how horrific and terrible, after 6 years, is not a good move. What I do think they will, and honestly, are in the process of doing, is soft-retcon the "doomed to die out" stuff. The Night Elves' story beats in Dragonflight have undeniably been those of hope, renewal, and recovery. The Night Elves, despite the losses at Teldrassil, are recovering as a people, and Amirdrassil and Bel'ameth are serving as a beacon of hope. I honestly do expect that trend to continue, and for whoever claimed that the Night Elves were doomed to dwindle to extinction post-Teldrassil to simply be outright wrong going forward. They will remember what happened (and in fact there are a number of wisps hanging around Amirdrassil that share names with NPCs from around Teldrassil), but they will continue moving forward. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 19:16
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BlazetheInferno posted:I will say, outright retconning or "un-happening" something like that is absolutely never going to happen. [For all Blizzard's failings, they don't just go back and undo massive story points like that. They do a lot of retconning, but primarily of background details, and stuff we haven't directly witnessed happening right in front of our eyes in the middle of the primary story. I don't think the evidence presented in this thread backs this up. Blizzard has time and again re-written the story to suit its needs despite in-game evidence to the contrary. Starting just in vanilla, Balnazzar goes from dead to just fine. Between Guardian of Trisfal and Warlords of Draenor, Khadgar goes from wizened elder to fashionable grey streaks. We are told that there must always be a Lich King, until that no longer mattered. Blizzard released a comprehensive guide to the setting's cosmology, and then two years later said "lol no" and tossed it out. The players kill Onyxia, until Blizzard said that Varian did it. To act like any given plot point is too ingrained for a re-write is disingenuous. Put in a miraculous rescue. Who, how and why are new plot points to explore. This is a fantasy setting that has thrown in new elements and important characters at every opportunity. So why not this?
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Jan 18, 2024 20:26
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SirPhoebos posted:I don't think the evidence presented in this thread backs this up. Blizzard has time and again re-written the story to suit its needs despite in-game evidence to the contrary. Starting just in vanilla, Balnazzar goes from dead to just fine. Between Guardian of Trisfal and Warlords of Draenor, Khadgar goes from wizened elder to fashionable grey streaks. We are told that there must always be a Lich King, until that no longer mattered. Blizzard released a comprehensive guide to the setting's cosmology, and then two years later said "lol no" and tossed it out. The players kill Onyxia, until Blizzard said that Varian did it. To act like any given plot point is too ingrained for a re-write is disingenuous. Balnazzar still being alive was a reveal, not a retcon of his initial supposed death; that still happened, but now we know it was faked - or possibly simply irrelevant due to Demonic regeneration in the Nether. Khadgar's aging has never been really consistent. Even as early as the Beyond the Dark Portal novel, it was hinted to be purely aesthetic anyway, as he was stated to be every bit as fit and active and agile as a man his real age should have been, despite his appearance. The reason "There must always be a Lich King" was to prevent the Scourge from running amok. The Lich King was removed, and guess what - the Scourge ran amok. The Cosmology guide was, frankly, never given a chance to really be presented and adhered to in-game before it got tossed out so I don't count that to begin with. And Onyxia still died; what changed is who did it, and even the change to say Varian did it has been, in recent years, suggested to be an official spin on the story to bury true events, with multiple NPCs commenting on how there are multiple different versions of the story of what the hell actually happened. None of those involve Major, Plot-Central events being outright removed from history. Recontextualized, perhaps. Situations changed later on in the story, or general confusion presented about "official" stories versus true history with the lines between the two blurring as to which was which. But all of those major events still happened. What Cyth is asking for is for them to change their mind entirely and declare that it never happened in the first place, at all. THAT is what I am saying Blizzard doesn't do. It's the difference between the Balnazzar-is-still-alive reveal, and simply saying "no, Varimathras never stabbed him in the first place, Balnazzar just walked away" If Blizzard wants to add a story saying a few more Elves got away from Teldrassil than it seemed, then I wouldn't be opposed. But aside from slapping a very lazy band-aid on the issue of Teldrassil, it doesn't really accomplish anything that simply showing the Night Elves recovering and getting back on their feet doesn't do just as well. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 21:00
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BlazetheInferno posted:What Cyth is asking for is for them to change their mind entirely and declare that it never happened in the first place, at all. THAT is what I am saying Blizzard doesn't do. Or to have the Bronze Dragonflight change things, or Elune to flat out resurrect everyone, or something. I will not pay a red cent to a company that invokes the name and language of genocide and the extinction of a people, then three expansions later acts like it wasn't so bad when they want to tell a different story. Saying the person who called it genocide was wrong, several years later, means nothing to me. Blizzard was happy to ride that and let it stand - and still is. Changing that when it becomes inconvenient, without actually changing what happened, means nothing to me if Blizzard even does that much (which they haven't). As far as I'm concerned, this is a problem of their own making. And if it means I never buy another Blizzard game again, well, that's their problem. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 21:03
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Cythereal posted:Or to have the Bronze Dragonflight change things, or Elune to flat out resurrect everyone, or something. To be perfectly honest, I'm not asking you to. I just honestly wish you would stop talking like you'll genuinely consider it if they do the thing we all know they never will. Just be open and honest; you're never gonna pay them another cent again. And that's okay. I just wish you'd stop being coy over something we both know will never happen.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:07
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BlazetheInferno posted:What I do think they will, and honestly, are in the process of doing, is soft-retcon the "doomed to die out" stuff. The Night Elves' story beats in Dragonflight have undeniably been those of hope, renewal, and recovery. The Night Elves, despite the losses at Teldrassil, are recovering as a people, and Amirdrassil and Bel'ameth are serving as a beacon of hope. I honestly do expect that trend to continue, and for whoever claimed that the Night Elves were doomed to dwindle to extinction post-Teldrassil to simply be outright wrong going forward. They will remember what happened (and in fact there are a number of wisps hanging around Amirdrassil that share names with NPCs from around Teldrassil), but they will continue moving forward. I agree on this - the notion that the night Elves are doomed to die out is easily retconned and appears to be in that process, and it would be well within their power to write new events that effectively undo the massacre and bring all those elf souls back to life, even back as original night elves if they want to take a more boring way out. But Blizzard just up and saying "actually Teldrassil never burned down, none of those elves died at all" would be much worse than any of the other writing decisions they've made. There's a broader problem of binding their game's basic concept to Horde Vs Alliance. Whatever Blizzard chooses to do with the players' direct complicity in this and the various other war crimes that have happened over the story, they're still stuck with the polities that did them. They can cycle out the leaders responsible, but the factions themselves can never face any real reckoning, because they need to maintain continuity for the sake of player mechanics. If they did a full-on story reset, actually start a new instalment - whether that's Warcraft 4 or WoW 2 or whatever other direction they might want to take - they could make some genuine change to what the factions are beyond just adding new races to them. The Horde and Alliance at the start of WoW are not in any meaningful way the factions that were at war in Warcraft 1 and 2, after all, even if they contain a lot of the same people. But as long as they're trying to just maintain a continuous history they're going to end up with more awkward plot tumours as the room fills with elephants.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:11
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BlazetheInferno posted:To be perfectly honest, I'm not asking you to. I think they're being pretty open and honest lol
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Jan 18, 2024 21:13
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titty_baby_ posted:I think they're being pretty open and honest lol Oh, absolutely... I just despise the "Well, I might consider if their skin spontaneously turned red and pink and blue polkadots" argument. I'll grant that's not a perfect analogy, but it's about as likely to happen. So why make it in the first place? Just say you're not gonna do it. EDIT: Just to clarify, just in case: I am not defending the Initial Decision to put the Genocide into the game. At all. Not in the slightest. I simply think suggesting it be ripped out of the lore several years later and simply undone is... well, dumb. I don't have a better word to describe it. It's a bad move from a writing perspective, and I'd rather a bad event be left in the lore than simply torn out and act like it never happened in the first place. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 21:17
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BlazetheInferno posted:Oh, absolutely... I just despise the "Well, I might consider if their skin spontaneously turned red and pink and blue polkadots" argument. I'll grant that's not a perfect analogy, but it's about as likely to happen. So why make it in the first place? Just say you're not gonna do it. I have this irritating habit of hoping that people will change for the better and do good things.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:18
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Cythereal posted:I have this irritating habit of hoping that people will change for the better and do good things. If that's all you were asking for, I wouldn't be making a fuss over it. But what you're asking for is basically for them to toss what little dignity they have as writers into a woodchipper and prostrate themselves before you with a pleading apology... because you didn't like the plot they wrote in their fantasy game. I think that's a bit much. (Again, not defending the plot in question... just trying to put things in perspective)
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Jan 18, 2024 21:38
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They never had dignity.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:48
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BlazetheInferno posted:I think that's a bit much. I agree. I know my stance is ridiculous. But in my eyes, it is what it is. I think that Blizzard should toss what little dignity they have as writers into a woodchipper and prostrate themselves before the audience with a pleading apology after the poo poo show that was War of Thorns - Battle for Azeroth - Shadowlands. And tack on another for that God drat Alexstrasza quest in Dragonflight even if for once management stepped in and kept that from going live. If you disagree, that's fine. Do what makes you happy and I can't tell you what that is. For me, that loving Alexstrasza quest is why I don't give a poo poo about Dragonflight. I would have considered Dragonflight a promising step forward if not for that. But that one quest convinced me that nothing meaningful has changed at Blizzard. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 00:09
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FWIW, in the live version of the Alexstrasza quest, PCs are tasked with ensuring that she gets rescued from Grim Batol.
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Jan 19, 2024 00:19
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:FWIW, in the live version of the Alexstrasza quest, PCs are tasked with ensuring that she gets rescued from Grim Batol. If they can do that and retroactively remove/mitigate one of the worst parts of the Second War, I'm sure they can do another one where we sabotage the Horde's siege engines and Teldrassil pops back into existence unharmed. or at the very least has its destruction delayed enough to allow people to escape. They'll never do it, but still 
Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 00:24
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:FWIW, in the live version of the Alexstrasza quest, PCs are tasked with ensuring that she gets rescued from Grim Batol. I know. I also know what was on the PTR and only got pulled after the internet flipped its poo poo. That sort of thing should have been strangled at the 'Hey I've got an idea!' stage. Prior to Dragonflight, my stance was 'If the next two or three expansions are good and have nothing problematic and show a clear pattern of improvement, I'll probably give this another shot.' Instead a quest about keeping a woman in sexual slavery got made and hit the PTR. So now my demands are higher. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 00:25
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Having grown up playing Warcraft 1 to 3 but bouncing off of WoW pretty much immediately and never paid any attention to it since.. This thread -- particularly the lore -- has been a, uh, wild ride. Blizzard Huge thanks for taking the effort of both playing all the maps and making the lore + analysis posts, it's a pretty monumental task!
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Jan 19, 2024 09:04
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BlazetheInferno posted:But what you're asking for is basically for them to toss what little dignity they have as writers into a woodchipper and prostrate themselves before you with a pleading apology... because you didn't like the plot they wrote in their fantasy game. Gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you write interactive fiction in which players are encouraged to engage in genocide against a native species - and in fact, one of the world's few actual native species - then you didn't have a lot of dignity as a writer to begin with.
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Jan 19, 2024 22:49
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BlazetheInferno posted:the Initial Decision to put the Genocide into the game. The usage of the term "genocide" and the claims about the night elves going extinct is - unless tucked away in some obscure dialogue that I never encountered playing through the event nor searching for the transcript the wiki after - entirely confined to a single short story that is actively contradicted by the event itself. I'd go as far as to say Elegy and A Good War were likely written in isolation from the actual world event and very few, if any, of the developers working on it were even aware that Christie Golden was going to describe it as a genocide. Cythereal posted:But in my eyes, it is what it is. I think that Blizzard should toss what little dignity they have as writers into a woodchipper and prostrate themselves before the audience with a pleading apology after the poo poo show that was War of Thorns - Battle for Azeroth - Shadowlands.
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Jan 20, 2024 02:35
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Asehujiko posted:The usage of the term "genocide" and the claims about the night elves going extinct is - unless tucked away in some obscure dialogue that I never encountered playing through the event nor searching for the transcript the wiki after - entirely confined to a single short story that is actively contradicted by the event itself. I'd go as far as to say Elegy and A Good War were likely written in isolation from the actual world event and very few, if any, of the developers working on it were even aware that Christie Golden was going to describe it as a genocide. Blizzard management, not sanity checking stuff those working for them are churning out and not employing editors?! Say it isn't so!
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Jan 20, 2024 02:38
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Undead 7: Drums in the Deep This is the start of what the titles call a mission in three parts, but each is treated as its own short mission.   I left many of my warriors at Icecrown before I came to find you, death knight. They will hold the line for as long as they are able to. Tell me, where are all your people? Shouldn't there be Nerubians around - undead or otherwise? I've been wondering about that myself. Something must have driven them off.Is it weirder than normal that I kinda love how Anub'arak, undead warrior-king of an empire of spiders, talks and acts like he's just a dude? Most of the games I've been playing lately the bad guys are ridiculously overwrought and grandiose.   Second time this entire LP I've legit laughed when recording an update. Arthas' line here has been a meme with one of my best friends for years and I never understood the context beyond that it was something to do with Warcraft.  We have no time for this! Sapphiron, attack! Huh. Wasn't expecting that to come up again. The champions of Azeroth did not enjoy tangling with Sapphiron the first time. Some of them sacrificed everything to find magical protection against the cold because they didn't really understand what they were doing. Well done, mighty Sapphiron. I wish we could take you with us, but the confines of the dark earth are no place for you. The Lich King's time grows short. We must hurry. Oh come on, there's plenty of room in those tunnels. What, can the stage master just not make fliers look convincing underground? Shut up. As you probably guessed, it's dungeon time.  Arthas gets temporarily trapped in a pit, but there's a gimmick to this level.  And no, the dwarves will never learn to not stand next to the explosive barrels.     And this is an underappreciated part of why I left the Alliance. Dwarves, mon. There are other passages through the labyrinth, death knight. We will find another way. WHERE IS YOUR MAGIC ICE BRIDGE NOW, MISTER 'NOW, FROSTMOURNE!' Baelgun returned in World of Warcraft as a ghost, incidentally, one of Arthas' many victims who haunted Icecrown Citadel after Arthas' death.  Destroying barrels revealed a gold drop that Arthas comments on. Given that there's no use for gold in this mission, I'm assuming that this is meant to carry over into a future mission. Here's hoping that works better than the pandaren I was supposed to get in Kael's campaign.  This charming area is full of egg sacs and imprisoned dwarves who explode into piles of Nerubian hatchlings when approached.  It's widely believed, though I've never actually seen a credible source, that Azjol-Nerub was planned to be a fully fledged zone in Wrath of the Lich King before time and budget forced it to be condensed into just a couple of dungeons. I guess if anyone is still clamoring for that, The War Within will answer your call.  There actually is one possible expansion concept that might get me to put aside my anger, spite, frustration, and general hard feelings about Blizzard, but it doesn't appear to be on the radar.  Namely, an underwater expansion. Vashj'ir is my single favorite zone in any MMO I have ever played and it's not a close contest.  Azshara and Nazjatar were completely wasted in Battle for Azeroth.  It's me. I'm the water level enjoyer.  A fully underwater expansion with Blizzard's art team would be something I'd have an awfully hard time turning down despite everything.  For all the poo poo I give Blizzard in general and World of Warcraft in particular, I still think WoW is the best looking MMO around.  Give me an underwater expansion, playable naga or some other suitable new aquatic race, a gay main character or ten, and that might just win the contest against my perverse spite.  Given how vocally an awful lot of people hated Vashj'ir, though, I doubt I'll be updating my credit card information on battle.net anytime soon.  As best I can tell, I seem to have a better head for 3-d navigation than a lot of people and the complete opposite of thalassophobia.  Get over it already. I won't let ye through this door, traitor. The recent quakes have awakened dark things under the ice... ancient, horrid things. We've vowed to keep them locked where they are. We'll take our chances, dwarf. We're going through that door one way or another. I think I know what the dwarf is talking about. Alleria's friends. I have a sneaking suspicion that this could be a really hard fight on normal and hard. Baelgun's a level 10 mountain king, one of the meanest combat heroes in the game. Arthas and Anub'arak are both level 5 and don't have much backup. But I'm on story so that doesn't matter.  If the dwarf's story is true, there's no telling what awaits us in the darkness. This stairwell leads into the heart of the fallen Nerubian empire. We must be cautious. You first.I like this snarky, rather casual Arthas. Honestly this LP has kind of ruined Arthas in WoW for me.  Until next time.
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Jan 20, 2024 02:45
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Canon Fire Well, the essay I posted earlier this week, that was meant to accompany this update, certainly proved a mess. Credit to the thread, I was wrong about a major (as I define it) bit of modern WoW's writing. I had stopped playing WoW by that point in Shadowlands and did not verify that the hearsay I had heard was accurate. I had been primed to believe any negative thing I heard about Blizzard and did not question it. This was a failure of research and work on my part, and I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings with my error. Folks have been correcting and clarifying my mistakes from the start of this thread, I acknowledged at the very beginning that I couldn't hope to keep every detail 100% straight. Still doesn't mean I don't kick myself whenever it happens, especially when I've given openly to invective against Blizzard and Warcraft. I have in the past been criticized for my way of writing, that I sound very judgmental and at times come across as asserting something to be fact when my intent is instead to voice my opinion and feelings, and throughout this LP I have been making a conscious effort to distinguish between reporting facts to the best of my knowledge and conveying my personal feelings and opinions. I also acknowledge that yes, I am being a bit ridiculous being so hung up about the story in a video game. More than a bit, probably, given that WoW is not the only MMO I quit under similar circumstances due to my utter abhorrence of the story that they wrote. I do take these things much too seriously and it's a fair cop to make fun of me for doing so. There is, however, one point about that criticism I received that I feel bears further examination and discussion. I have come, over the years, to strongly dislike the concept of 'headcanon.' That might sound strange coming from such a prolific writer of fanfic, but please bear with me. I first started really thinking about the concepts of headcanon, fanfic, and literary analysis of video games some time ago, but my feelings crystallized last year during a conversation with another subforum luminary, Sanguinia, when our conversation touched on LGBT representation and portrayals of same-sex romantic relationships involving the player character in MMOs (SWTOR and Palia fans, please disregard, those games have actual same-sex romance storylines with NPCs that the player can pursue). I won't speak for Sanguinia on any specifics, but I for one generally will have a strong personal idea of the character I'm playing in an MMO, their background and personality and beliefs, and this is a common practice for MMO players. What our conversation illuminated for me is that for some or many MMO players, the stories they spin in their heads as they play carries as much or more weight as the actual factual quest text and dialogue presented by the writers. I've compared MMOs to tabletop gaming in previous essays and I think this approach continues in that venue. For some people, part of the value of a game is the springboard it provides to their own imaginations and the stories they create independently and with other players. I am not, at all, condemning this! I believe it's a completely fine way to experience and play a game! However, I concluded that I personally do not share this approach. Not any more, at any rate, and I think this difference is for my case personally rooted in my typical feeling of being a minority and an outcast in a lot of social circles. I'm used to holding minority interpretations of things, and I do emotionally crave validation. So when I spin narratives in this vein, it more often than not flies in the face of the text presented by the game. The term I've rather bitterly used is 'I don't believe in giving them credit for my fanfic.' Yes, there's an enormous range of problems with this, and the fact that many things that appeal to me probably wouldn't appeal to many people. I can imagine events playing out differently than they do in a game, in ways I prefer, but at a certain point as I see it, I'm effectively playing a completely different game from what is presented. Enter this bit from the reasonable and accurate criticism I received this week that got me thinking. Rogue AI Goddess posted:You can pretend that dialogue is there if you wish. 'Headcanon' it in. But that won't change the fact that this dialogue is not in the game. It doesn't exist. This is the story that you told, not Blizzard, these are the words you put in the mouths of every single player character for half of the game's player base. This is, I feel, and accurate and valid criticism. Headcanon is not canon. I was wrong, and I'd based my emotions on something that proved to be a mistake. I could dwell on this and let 'headcanon' fuel my anger the same way other ideas I can spin might make me feel better about a subject. Neither, I feel, is honest to the source material. By the same token as I was wrong to condemn Horde player characters in that essay, I also feel vindicated in my personal decision to not, say, consider Maiev Shadowsong to be an LGBT character - that's not what's actually written, so I won't give Blizzard points for it, even if the source material could be considered ambiguous. As an example of how ridiculous this kind of thing gets, in this LP I've somehow wound up writing a love story between an OC and Onyxia of all characters. It started as a joke back in the WC1 part of this LP. Then I brought it back for another joke. Now I'm here in this position and I'm still puzzled how I got here. What I've written in this LP does not matter in the slightest to Blizzard, neither my analysis I've set out to make with an even hand nor my fanfic nor what I could call 'headcanon.' Am I going to stop this LP? Tempting, but not when I'm so close to the end. Am I going to stop writing fanfic? No, of course not. But I will continue to try to distinguish between what I personally feel and what is actually written, and I appreciate it when people correct my errors with the latter.
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Jan 20, 2024 02:46
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Cythereal posted:As best I can tell, I seem to have a better head for 3-d navigation than a lot of people and the complete opposite of thalassophobia. I have crippling thalassophobia and that's a great part of why I enjoy games like Subnautica. Sometimes it's fun when the rollercoaster is scary. Cythereal posted:I also feel vindicated in my personal decision to not, say, consider Maiev Shadowsong to be an LGBT character - that's not what's actually written, so I won't give Blizzard points for it, even if the source material could be considered ambiguous. I know some folks on the LGBT spectrum who get even more upset about "ambiguous" representation than non-existent representation. Does that mirror your feelings on this or is it just a no-points-awarded? Cythereal posted:As an example of how ridiculous this kind of thing gets, in this LP I've somehow wound up writing a love story between an OC and Onyxia of all characters. It started as a joke back in the WC1 part of this LP. Then I brought it back for another joke. Now I'm here in this position and I'm still puzzled how I got here. Well, I'm invested in your fanfics now, so I'm happy you're writing them for us.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:01
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Cythereal posted:Blizzard management, not sanity checking stuff those working for them are churning out and not employing editors?! Say it isn't so!
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Jan 20, 2024 03:23
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I will say, that one Dwarf saying "This here treasure belongs to the Dwarves!" is... kind of an idiot. He is literally talking to the (undead) King who ruled the very tunnels he is currently in. By definition, "that there treasure" belongs to Anub'arak. Who has, given his undead servitude to the Lich King, donated it to the Scourge. Which he helpfully points out in response to said idiot dwarf. Interestingly, there is a named enemy in this level who only appears on hard difficulty; a Nerubian Queen named "Nezar'Azret". A Scepter named after her can be found in World of Warcraft via Archeology. As for the gold... you are correct, it will carry forward, until you have a use for it. EDIT: I didn't mind the ocean levels, and I didn't have trouble with the 3D navigation... I honestly just didn't enjoy the zones. Maybe it was the sheer size of the zones combined with the fact that, even with the underwater mount they gave you, travel simply felt like it took forever compared to above-water areas. It just felt slow - especially when you consider that Vashj'ir itself was split into three sub-zones, which just made it feel all the bigger. Getting from Point A to Point B just felt like it stretched on into eternity. On the note of Thalassophobia... I don't consider myself to have it, but I will admit to feeling uneasy when things reach the point of getting deep enough that all you can see is the inky darkness of the deep. Pokemon Snap 2's "deep ocean" level was... unpleasant in that regard. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jan 20, 2024 |
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Jan 20, 2024 03:28
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Cythereal posted:
Casual Naxxramas reference. Classic WoW, before the mechanics were all modeled and crunched statistically, sure was a time to raid. So much insisting on stacking various resistances at the cost of anything else.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:30
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I'm with you in missing DK Arthas' snarky shithead personality, replaced by generic dark lord in WoW.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:40
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Some of the best LPs I've ever read had the equivalent of fanfiction written into them. You're fine. It helps break up the monotony of gameplay sometimes.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:43
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Asthas just seems so much happier and relaxed as an evil, murderous lord of death than he ever was when he was a paladin.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:56
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PurpleXVI posted:I know some folks on the LGBT spectrum who get even more upset about "ambiguous" representation than non-existent representation. Does that mirror your feelings on this or is it just a no-points-awarded? As I noted back in my essay on LGBT representation, I feel that this is a deeply subjective (and culturally loaded) question. I am fortunate enough to live in a place where being openly gay is publicly acceptable and have a supportive family. A great many people do not. As such, with this line of questioning I feel that I have to draw an explicit distinction between what I personally like and what I think might be called good. With regards to my personal feelings, it depends heavily on whether I feel that a game has no issue depicting same-sex romance and has chosen to leave a character ambiguous (Maiev Shadowsong comes to mind, I do feel that Blizzard has genuinely gotten pretty good about LGBT representation all things considered) or whether I feel that a game is trying to lay claim to being LGBT-friendly without actually committing to it (for an example that won't immediately start a nerd war, Knights of the Old Republic and how Juhani's character was almost entirely cut from the game because LucasArts of the era was against it). I do not consider Maiev to be LGBT representation. In my mind she probably is, but I will never actually describe her as such or give Blizzard points for her in that respect.
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Jan 20, 2024 03:59
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Just Winging It posted:Casual Naxxramas reference. Classic WoW, before the mechanics were all modeled and crunched statistically, sure was a time to raid. So much insisting on stacking various resistances at the cost of anything else. It might just be cargo culting, but everyone even top tier guilds use resist gear for three fights I can think of, Sapphiron as referenced, the wasp boss in AQ, and Hydross the first boss of Serpentshrine Caverns. Incidentally, my compulsion at being prepared for future resistance fights meant I had a full set of the best frost and nature gear you could get just in case there was a fight that needed them. Despite being a resto druid at the time (the only viable druid spec in Vanilla), I got to tank that fight and discovered I love playing tanks.
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Jan 20, 2024 04:44
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Xenoborg posted:It might just be cargo culting, but everyone even top tier guilds use resist gear for three fights I can think of, Sapphiron as referenced, the wasp boss in AQ, and Hydross the first boss of Serpentshrine Caverns. I was wondering if that's still true in Classic WoW as opposed to simply back in the day? My understanding is that the numbers were simply stacked to such an extreme in those particular fights that Resistance gear was mandatory, otherwise it simply wasn't numerically possible for healers to keep up.
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Jan 20, 2024 04:52
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BlazetheInferno posted:I will say, that one Dwarf saying "This here treasure belongs to the Dwarves!" is... kind of an idiot. He is literally talking to the (undead) King who ruled the very tunnels he is currently in. You will find that all treasure in and under the ground belongs to Dwarves. They certainly seem to think so given they were digging up Tauren Lands in Classic. It's actually, seriously speaking, a somewhat intentional flaw of the standard Warcraft Dwarves.
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Jan 20, 2024 04:55
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Drakenel posted:Some of the best LPs I've ever read had the equivalent of fanfiction written into them. You're fine. It helps break up the monotony of gameplay sometimes. Writing FanFiction of the Exile Trilogy probably helped me through that massive slog. I'm not ashamed of it all. Nor should Cyth.
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Jan 20, 2024 05:43
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kujeger posted:Having grown up playing Warcraft 1 to 3 but bouncing off of WoW pretty much immediately and never paid any attention to it since.. This thread -- particularly the lore -- has been a, uh, wild ride. What is "World of Warcraft"? Never played it. Sounds like a terrible idea, to be frank.
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Jan 20, 2024 06:56
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For what it's worth, as someone who is very bad at RTS games I would recommend playing all missions but the first one of the orc campaign (such as it is) on normal difficulty rather than story, once you get up to them. They're entertaining gimmicks that don't really push you.
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Jan 20, 2024 10:27
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