This reminds me of how often "mature" media is often ironically the most immature media one can consume because they just put in mindless gore and profanity just for shock value.
What gets me is the double standard of "muh media is serious art and needs to be respected" along side "it's just a ***** bruh!" Dismissal of any critiques, critiques that are an ingrained part of anything being taken even moderately seriously as media.
Like I can't stress it enough that most people AREN'T upset that war and dark elements exist in the setting but what is upsetting is with how little maturity Blizzard handled these kinds of topics.
My main problem was having to be a direct party to genocide solely by playing a Tauren, with no real ability to have any kind of dissent against it. Hell, 90% of Sylvanas's war playbook would qualify as war crimes lol.
The detail about druids and shaman helping fan the flames of Teldrassil made me age 10 years ngl. (Also, Sylvanas is very much not alone there, especially if we're counting the PC)
@@khanlusa of course, I'm not saying shes unique by any means, Garrosh is guilty too, but as far as track records are concerned I think shes got the worst record. Edit: Out of faction leaders I mean And ya, it really ticked me off, I main as a Tauren Sunwalker, yet the things I was forced to be a party to on behalf of Sylvanas since Legion has left me appalled, before even getting into the genocide I had wonder if it was worth playing a Tauren (my favorite race) if i was going to constantly be a party to these things.
this is one of my biggest problems with how BfA pushed the PC into in-universe political boondoggles; there's no opportunity to dissent, in either direction, for either faction. as an Alliance player it kinda sucked that i never got the choice to side with Anduin or Tyrande over Darkshore, or object to the peace, or just... anything at all. if you can't do a war story properly, just don't do one. make it Azeroth vs N'Zoth/ Azshara. don't railroad me into shit i hate just because you want to split the continents by faction (which they also failed to do due to Azuremyst and Silvermoon lol)
I genuinely think they shouldn't of tried to go for a genocide storyline as they clearly never had the chops for it. The stuff the orcs did to the draenei? I guess that was one was atleast explained decently (fel blood corrupted orcs enough and probably heightened their paranoia). The high elves getting genocided by Arthas? That was played decently well I think but was ruined not long after when you have the PCs and some elves being all for genociding the Amani. And then theres the treatment of all the fodder races. The trolls, the gnolls, the kobolds, the harpies, and so many more. Like I get it its a game so you need enemies to kill but the game never tries to make you question what you are doing to those fodder races, or if it does its like maybe one quest out of thousands. And then when Garrosh and then Sylvanas are written to commit warcrimes now we are suppose care, actively play through them and hate them? If you can't take the topic of genocide seriously before and keep destroying or killing off characters for your clumsy attempts at writing it then why should I care about it? They can't write stories about genocides because they got increasingly worse and worse at writing them. It felt like they were just being like ''Oh what are some cool enemies we can give the players to get loot from'' and didn't think of the disturbing implications from a story perspective. It's frustrating too as I know theirs plenty of good stories in WoW. Blizzard just churns out so many awful ones that the potenial out of such an expansive world with differing cultures and races is all wasted. My issues with how awful Blizzard is as a company aside, my god they always waste potential. It's not even just with WoW either. Look at Overwatch. There is barely any lore on it after 6 years and none of the stuff they did actually release touched upon the implications of how the omnics are sapient and were likely brainwashed into war on a planetary scale. Instead you just get dripfed ''Wacky adventures of old Overwatch''
Oh... my... Gawd! It's a game. From the get-go of Warcraft, the concept of Total Annihilation warfare has been a premise (hello General Sherman). No one committed genocide on the Night Elves. Conquering or destroying an opponent's capital is in nearly every game set in conquest games, especially fantasy games. It's the number one way to force an enemy into submission. Fodder races? Pick a race that *isn't* fodder. As players, we kill everything. Trolls, humans, orcs, elves, draenei, demons, bunnies, bears, birds, tigers, etc. Non stop. En masse. If that bothers you, why do you even play? During the Warcraft 3 (and maybe 2, I can't remember) strategy games, killing merc camps was the norm to gain experience. Go wipe out everyone. The orcs from Outlands destroyed their entire world but that's ok because they drank demon blood? Even in WoD without the demon blood they were seeking to destroy and conquer the Draenei. I guess no one should like playing orcs. Saying that orcs who destroyed their world are excused because they drank demon blood, by that logic Sylvanas was perfectly within her rights as she was being misled by the Jailer. Besides, we're talking about someone who wanted to drop plague at the Wrathgate to kill everyone, namely the Lich King. But everyone thought Wrathgate was "awesome!" Now, the concept of being a part of these events or not, I agree with that. But that expands the game immensely, and with phasing involved, may completely divide your player base. What is being asked for in that regard is a single player game, not an mmo. This is not just *Warcraft*, it's in a *fantasy setting* with people from different worlds, destroyed worlds, demons, controlling the elements, raising the dead, etc. As players, no one hesitated to commit "mass genocide" on the scourge, but as the Forsaken have aptly shown, it is possible to break free of the Lich King's hold. Especially now that the Jailer is dead and they openly said "scourge leaders are vying for control"... How many of those leaders did we wipe out? Happily, I should add. So much so that WotLK is considered the best expansion.
I personally have no issue with including the sorts of horrible actions that are shown in the story of Warcraft, rather the way that it's treated and the motivations behind it. Taking this nonsensical approach to storytelling where you just throw heinous actions around with absolutely zero self-awareness. If you're going to include these storybeats (and want them to be impactful) you need to examine how they fit into the overall narrative; afterall, why should the burning of Teldrassil get any more screentime than the massacre of nearly every single Amani city? These problematic events and themes would hopefully be addressed regardless of something like the burning of Teldrassil, but it's even more hypocritical and tone-deaf when you do include such an event. Sorry for my little rant, your video was amazing! You make some of the best points out of any Warcraft youtuber I watch, always super concise and fair with your criticism c:
Exactly, I don't want the bad things removed, I just want them to actually have meaning and weight behind them. And no worries at all, thank you for your comment! 😀👍
The Amani you slaughter down several times. Hell even the Zandalari have you kill them in their capital for ''rabble rousing'' which is basically them being angry and desperate because they are lower caste trolls that lost everything and the Zandalari aren't helping. The Amani had some genuine big grievances against the high elves and humans in that area as they were steadily losing land overtime. Zul'Jin himself says when he joined the Old Horde that he feared that his people were going to be genocided (which pretty much happened in the WoW era) so he joined to try to prevent that. The Zandalari has you kill any remaining ones. The Frostmane were already in that area before the dwarves and gnomes showed up through no fault of their own (they were separated from the Drakkari via the Sundering) and its very likely first contact went horribly. Their was small lore stuff that the Frostmane killed an dwarf princess sometime before the game started but that was years after first contact and colonization started on that region. Blizzard has you kill Frostmane troll children though which is somehow....a-okay. The Drakkari will have some background lore blurbs that claim that they are savage conqueror types but thats not reflected in the game at all. By the time the PC murderhobos through them they lost nearly half their CAPITAL CITY to the Scourge whilst also losing every other city outside of Zul'Drak was also slaughtered by the Scourge. The Drakkari were so desperate that they started killing their own loa for power in a desperate attempt to survive the Scourge....and then the PC shows up and seals their fate. The Zandalari also has you kill remaining ones in their own city for rabble rousing. The Farraki, jesus chrised these guys were doomed from the start. Background lore claims they were savage and cannibalistic even towards eachother but in the same breadth also tells the story that they were seperated from the rest of the trolls and stuck in a region with little food and water where survival was hard. They used to be jungle trolls. The Farraki's situation was bad moreso due to where they were located then outside elements but even before the PC was sent to murderhobo them they were already getting attacked by ogres and bandits. So to the Farraki you were just more bandits looking to kill them for no reason (which was pretty much the case). You kill them off AGAIN in Cataclysm with some dumb storyline that some of them decided to follow the Old Gods which makes LITERALLY NO SENSE considering one of the Farraki troll bosses in Zul'Farrak is Theka the Matyr, a undead veteran of the Troll vs. Aqir war. The lore tries to play them off as savages that deserved their fates but contradicts itself a lot or doesn't consider other details such as ''Hey they were struggling and getting murdered by bandits before you even showed up''. The Farraki for some really dumb reason appears again in BfA as being in cahoots with Zul and the Old Gods only to be slaughtered AGAIN. The Dark Trolls, whichever ones that remained after most got uplifted into night elves, were all slaughtered by the Twilight's Hammer. This is never really acknowledged in-game barring their Speaker being present in Zandalar and being understandably bitter. The only trolls I can't really defend as much is the Gurubashi and Blood Trolls. The Gurubashi were following Hakkar and hated Stormwind for a long time. I guess you can make the argument with them that they were losing territory to colonization too and that they feared Hakkar enough to follow them. The blood trolls were a race of trolls that were created by Old God madness partially and Hakkar. My main complaint with them is that I wish they were more interesting rather than a same repeat of the ''savages'' trope just with some Old God flair in it. I remember seeing a fan writer try to rewrite them as still really evil but more like Nurgle cultists from Warhammer were they are cheery and nice but in a scary way as they are still doing horrible things despite acting nice. I wish their was more too them then just ''swamp savage natives'' which the game literally spells out to you. So yeah, your suppose to take genocide seriously only when Blizzard wants you too. If your a fan of trolls or other races that areon the backfoot already? Well good luck on finding nuanced writing there. They are just fodder for more genocides that the story won't acknowledge much.
I don't think some of them really understand what they're even saying either when they say, "It's WARcraft though!" When Warcraft 3 itself pushed the ideas forward that maybe the Horde aren't just a murderous band of monsters. Maybe they're a people! Maybe humanity itself can be monsters at times? It pushes a lot of questions for us to think about and instead of saying that they have nothing more to say than just, "But it's got War in the name. Deal with it."
I'm playing this game since many years and I feel like the biggest problem of the narrative is, as you said, consistency. Not only in the races we can play, but also over all. That the entire game world is stuck in 2007 and is not reflecting anything of current time lore is very bad too. In BfA we actually had quite a few small stories that reflected the atrocities of war quite well. Thinking of that one farmer that lost his child and wife to an attack of quillboar (again lol). But the over all narrative is lacking. A war story in a fantasy world needs to either focus on big events and how it affects everyone else or focus on small events that happen during a war. Instead Warcraft has 1 big event, the "main story" follows it but nobody else in the world cares? I'm sure all the tauren druids were cool with burning Teldrassil, right? There are no uprise by any pandaren about the zandalari joining the Horde, yeah?.... It's just a massive disconnect everywhere. The people who say "but it's WARcraft" straight up don't pay attention. We are waging war against 99% of all times against everything. Unless of course those people are obsessed with the conflict Horde vs. Alliance, to which I say: that story should've been over with Legion.
I know this in super off topic but your night elf looks so cool :) Also yeah, I still find it super weird that the whole horde during the war of thorns was just like "yeah this is chill" including druid and shaman player characters for the most part, with only the exception of a few npcs, it still bothers me and made it feel impossible to rp as a horde character during bfa
I've only seen the "It's called WARcraft" argument mostly when someone talks about the Horde and Alliance getting along. As if the war in Warcraft only meant the HvA conflict, and they never admit that in every expansion, including the rts games that gave us the MMO, that was always the theme of this game setting. We always end up working together, and there's always things we "war" with....old gods, rouge humans, space robot gods and demons, I could go on and on.... Point being when I see this argument, it's 90% about HvA. It's asinine.
I'm going to try and shed a little light on why people feel so strongly about maintaining the faction animosity, as one of said people. Working together to face overwhelming odds or cosmic threats is all well and good, but the strength of such story beats comes from the context of these VARIED and DIFFERENT races and cultures overcoming their LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES to fight said greater threat. The threat and the tendency people have begun to notice with the current direction of WoW is the "unification project" that the writing staff is implementing. That being, that this coalition of ideologies and cultures is in fact the norm, not the exception, where both Alliance and Horde, Zandalari Troll and Stormwind human, ultimately have the same values of justice, peace and unity and democracy, even though this line of thinking only should realistically apply to 60% of the playable races. Conflict exists even in our today's world where the ideals of democracy and a global community have widely succeeded, so it just feel hamfisted to try and justify that the leadership's of EVERY RACE ON THE PLANET have forgotten atrocities, war-crimes, acts of aggression and genocide that happened less than half a decade ago. Even if we disregard the darkest and most extreme examples of war and prejudice, legitimate geopolitical interests still exist. For example, the Zandalari trolls WILL attempt conquering the world again, because they're trolls, that's how their culture is written as, that's why people like them in the first place. The Lightforged WILL attempt to convert all of Azeroth, that's who they are as a people. The question of Lordaeron still exists, as the Forsaken will eventually expire -- or heck, the Forsaken still haven't figured out how they're not going to die out without resorting to mass murder again; because that's the singular most important conflict that DEFINES THEM AS A FACTION; that's why people liked the Forsaken in the first place The point of having dozens of playable races shouldn't be having them all be reasonable, democratic or ethical. The appeal of the World of Warcraft is having the tribalistic conquerors, the creepy undead, the ambitious elves, the zealots, the spirituals, technocrats and imperialists living in the same world and the INEVITABLE CONFLICT that rise from these contrasting interests. This is also what separates the (note: THEORETICAL) idea of faction conflict from the "expansion enemies" we face like demons, tentacle-monsters or what have you. Since they are so unambigiously a bad deal, evil, destroyers of all, there's no ambiguity to them. Killing N'zoth was never going to be half as interesting as the geopolitical conflict over Ashenvale's resources, for example. Pretending that this isn't the case, that we live in a world where Stormwind wasn't turned to a pile of rubble 30 years ago or Teldrassil didn't burn with the Horde cheering across the shore, isn't believable. It's inherently unsatisfying, milquetoast even. (Btw, would love to hear your thoughts on this, @Khanlusa).
@@Dreamfillah I touched on Teldrassil in the Sylvanas video I did a while ago, where I said that the moral high ground has been permanently and irrevocably handed to the Alliance. Writing the Alliance to also Do A Genocide to balance things out would just create the same problems of having the player characters directly complicit in something heinous with no way to back out or resist it, as many players did not want to be party to the Burning of Teldrassil. The Horde were written to be on a new path after Garrosh, swore they would uphold honour and not give the Alliance a reason to cut them down, and then the writers decided to completely fuck them over (and Sylvanas) because they needed an excuse for a faction war and they chose the laziest possible way of going about it. If BFA were sparked by Azshara/N'Zoth doing Teldrassil and pinning it on the Horde so the Alliance goes attack mode, that would have been far, far more interesting to me as the Horde tries to figure out what the fuck just happened while trying to defend themselves from an Alliance motivated by the likes of Genn Greymane and Turalyon, pushing Anduin to be more and more ruthless because look what they did! They can't be tolerated! They killed your father! etc etc I don't mind conflict, it's necessary for stories to persist as more than just coffee shop AUs, but god damn these writers do it in the most ham-fisted way.
@@khanlusa The set-up of BfA doomed it from the get-go. The Horde's identity crisis had never been worse, and now the situation was unwinnable. One faction cannot be utterly and totally eradicated or assimilated into another, which forces the Alliance into a situation where they'll have to forgive the Horde for genocide TWICE in a single generation.
Always adore seeing you read the player base for filth with stuff like this. I love how their 'logic' dictates that it's more mature not to analyze any of the media you consume. Not a damn lick of it. Especially not when it comes to war. Also, I would love a video of you just talking about Bloodlines. I've been playing the crap out of that game and would love to hear your takes on it.
Honestly I think a video on Bloodlines would be in the same vein as RagnarRox's love letter video to the game which was very good and captured a lot of the things I love about it 👍
internet would really be a better place if some people understood that liking a morally gray or even an evil character does NOT equal supporting all their deeds and agreeing with their morals😮💨 there's no need to shame people for this or feel personally attacked whenever someone says your fav is not a good person when it's absolutely true (and i'm saying this as a villain enjoyer myself lol) oh and also there's absolutely no problem with liking a piece of media and being critical about it at the same time! anyway great video and great point!! i 100% agree with you
The problem is that the lore always comes second to what the main game is , WoW is a theme park of sorts . The story started as a Warhammer nod (since the original warcraft was meant to be a Warhammer Fantasy game , this is why the orcs are also green in the original games ) , but then they made the best game in the series Warcraft III as a marketing product for the MMO , the story was developed then but because the game is so theme parky , it will never be able to follow it properly and apply consequences. Think about the fact that the factions always must have the same number of "races" , about how despite High-Elves being a part of the Alliance they were never made playable , about how despite that in Warcraft III you could play through 4 viewpoints (minimum , there were internal splits too ), you are stuck with 2 radical ones in the MMO . Also if we want to talk about war , that is a plot line that is almost never done properly , it's either full on this race vs this race , or faction , or now that they worked together there is no reason for them to fight against one another , even though if you look at IRL examples even to this day you would see that foreign affairs are a total mess , countries fighting on one front fighting together on another one at the same time . The problem I have most with WoW lore is how Cosmic focused it has become , every threat is now a universal (if not multiversal ) size threat .
I agree they're hamstrung by their origins, and the longer it lasts the worse it will age compared to other MMOs, it's a big part of why I believe they should have just pulled a World Reborn situation when Sargeras stabbed the planet, clean slate 500 years later or w/e with WoW 2 Electric Boogaloo As to the cosmic stuff... yeah. Like having the Burning Legion and the Void was neat, but Shadowlands just felt... so. Unearned.
"It's called WARcraft, what do you expect?" Now announcing the next major expansion, Consequences! Return to Ragefire chasm to arrest disgruntled former soldiers who couldn't reintegrate into peaceful society, explore Karazhan, home to an archmage driven mad with vengeance for the people who killed his family, and experience the Molten Mind raid, where you delve through Alexstrazsa's menories of her captivity to alleviate her chronic depression. I might actually get back into the game if that was a thing.
Warcraft 2 Nostalgia and Warhammer fanboys have been a disaster for the WoW. Warcraft 3 and the novel retellings of Warcraft 2 are the foundation of this franchise. A shame they forgot that so thoroughly while making BFA.
One retort i say to people who go "War crime can't exist cause the game is set in another timeline/dimension/setting" is to point out that laws regarding adultery, stealing and even murder weren't codified till the modern era. If you play a game where there are laws against stealing or senseless murders, you are in a setting that can have conventions on war crimes. Morality always existed since the beginning of the human race so why isn't there a moral on war crime in this setting?
This is very well said - and a LONG time coming. I've never been able to really articulate exactly how frustrating it is when people just completely misunderstand the point of analyzing these stories and chalk it up to just being disgusted with the dark themes, but you really hit it on the head with this one. I'm really glad you made this video. Great job! 💙
I don't have anything to say that you didn't already perfectly say in your video, but I'm so so SO glad your channel exists, I am once again saying me and my rare opinion on this game finally feel seen by your channel :}
@@khanlusa well shoot if it isn't obvious I just binge watched half your channel today. In more words, I want warcraft. Not horde vs alliance. I want something closer to wc3 where the night elves had an agenda and goals. Where stormwind could very well declare war on gilneas if there was a reason to much like the lorderon alliance did to alterac when they let the horde pass. I want factions all playing the game instead of just stormwind and ogrimmar throwing blows and trying to justify the tauren joining in on the burning of teld just because they're horde.
4:19 some of the first laws about war and torture were literally established during the middlesages, e.g. Maximilianische Halsgerichtsordnung (1499) or the lwas about how the field hospitals of certain orders ( religious orders) were NOT to be attacked during war. Like soldiers who broke this or similar laws / trietys were literally executed by their own people for doing so.
I mean, the reason I said it was mostly out of... cynicism? 'It's called WARcraft' because... your means of interacting with the world are pretty limited. Especially in World of Warcraft itself, which suffers from the MMO problem of everything continues forever and nothing matters. There are ways to tell stories about war while still having nuance, but real wars tend to end. Maybe with peace, sometimes with desolation but they end. Warcraft cannot end. It can only escalate. Every race, every character, can ultimately be seen only through crosshairs. (On the other hand, like, you can have a game about war without continual atrocity escalation. I just don't think World of Warcraft, specifically, is a good medium for... nuance. Also, there's like. Demons and shit, that should probably count.) 7:40 A lot of people doing this are conflating 'political' and 'partisan'. When they say 'not political' they mean 'we have not taken a strong stance relevant to the current environment'. 'Democracy is good' is a political stance but not partisan (usually, in the modern Overton window), 'Candidate X is bad because they are threat to democracy' is a partisan stance. 9:15 Well, this is where it comes back to: Why can't they be reasoned with? Because if they could, then you could reason with them. And then you wouldn't have mobs to grind. The system - the actual game mechanical system - cannot support reason and needs enemies. So. Warcraft it is. Or to put it another way: A group of creatures that can be reasoned with is one the player cannot interact with, or can only interact with weakly. 11:00 This is all quite fair, but I think that making the game with more roleplaying and choices would practically require World of Warcraft 2, and definitely require a strong divergence from how the game is now. Maybe that would be better, I think it would, wish I could play it, but it would require a complete rewrite and redesign from the ground up... ... of what is one of, if not the, most lucrative MMO in the world. 12:26 Why? Because if there were, it would be unfun. The Death Knight Starting Quest doesn't last the whole game. The story is secondary to the gameplay, and gleefully separated where it becomes inconvenient.
6 :15 if anybody reading this is willing to watch a very deep anime and thoroughly think about it i recomened " Saga of Tanja the evil" (english name not literal translation).
I don't mind dirty acts like war crimes happening in Warcraft. What bothers me when there is little to no consequences for it. Jaina went on a killing spree against the Blood Elves and forcibly relocated them; and all that happened to her was King Varian yelling at her but she DGAF. Say what you will about Sylvanas burning Teldrassel, EVERYONE was now gunning for her.
Why hello, video I've been waiting for forever but stopped even thinking about writing after I finally couldn't stand the game anymore during Shadowlands. I still have the footage of my druid at the burning of Teldrassil, because I'll never get over the whole vibe of, "Christ, Tyrande, why can't you just be cool about the genocide and let us get on with our cool new proxy war?" in the BFA Alliance. Jaina is cRaZy after a nuke gets dropped on her city, Tyrande is crazyyyy after Teldrassil gets war crimed and needs to hug it out in a circle of Strong Female Characters... idk man, I'm out of the loop, I just play FFXIV now.
Great video. Only thing that i'd criticize is that the Scarlet Crusade aren't fascist. There is no outgroup they try and use for their own gain, they don't try and recruit others to further their agenda and are pretty isolationist. If anything Nazis is probably the most correct thing to call them because of their extreme focus on race.
In reference to the Quilboar torture quest, isn't it possible to perceive the actions taken up by your character as the actions of an agent of an imperialist force where violence against individuals belonging to certain races (in this case the Quilboar) is too normalized to the point no one was going to point out the moral problems in question ? In our own human history that was very common against our fellow Humans, I bet if we had boar people speaking with grunts, summoning scary thorns wherever they went and regularly attacking us we would have easily considered them as an "other" that can't be reasoned with and should only be treated with violence, a group so dehumanized that most wouldn't really care if they are tortured to extract information.
Just a shower thought, since this whole video was based on that one statement "Well that is why its called Warcraft", but wouldn't peak warcraft be whenever they are having nautical or at least nautical-themed warfare? Like when Jaina used her magic on a ship for the siege of lordaeron for one example. As by the definitions of warcraft from different dictionaries: 1) The Art of War 2) Knowledge and skill in the conduct of military operations 3) A military or naval ship or plane. 4) the skill of directing a war 5) nautical; a ship used in war 6) The art or skill of conducting a war. 7) A warship. 8) The science or art of war. 9) nautical; A warship (or warships collectively)
Very true, lots of good points. I always had a similar view on the quillboar in particular. (There is something extra messed up about the fact that that the people inflicting colonialism on the Barrens natives are they themselves painted with the noble savage brush.) Kind of the same feeling I get about the Reachmen in ESO, altough at least in that game they get some depth to them.
I've turned my brain off when it comes to WoW. Slowly over the years it's disinterested me with its writing, especially with the Hack Queen herself Golden, and the writing team making the most lazy and poorly told stories, not knowing the definition of fucking salvage (BFA/SL). WoD was a content drought of an xpac with a lot of promise but shot themselves in the foot by giving us the infamous empty patch 6.1, that said- as of BFA I have given absolutely 0 fucks about what the story is doing anymore. I loosely follow it and mostly play for gameplay nowadays. Between GW2, FFXIV, WoW, ESO and SWTOR I have 5 MMOs that play entirely different and the only similarity is that with the exception of GW2 there's a trinity and that's it. WoW has significantly fucked with how much I care about its story, to the point I really don't care anymore. They fail with good characters, bad characters, characters with potential, retcon out the ass rather than present recontextualized story (FFXIV has done that well with the Warriors of Darkness story for Heavensward). And I'm not asking for a fucking masterpiece, just something that's enjoyable, that makes sense, without each patch feeling like a Saturday morning cartoon saying "Next time on Dragon Ball Z!" because that's not what WoW was. Was it always a little cheesy? Fuck yeah, but now it's playing into this stupid trope without an actual roadmap and just throw shit at a board until it kinda sticks then falls off and say "Good enough." Dragonflight has been a fucking breath of fresh air when it comes to WoW, but only in how it plays. Story wise... they brought back favorite characters, got rid of one I hate finally (fuck off Malfurion you abusive tool) but beyond Malfurion finally getting shelved, I don't care. I've loved Alexstrasza since Day of the Dragon, Ysera, the aspects in general. I KIND OF like what they're doing with Deathwing, too bad they're basically just telling a dead man's story which makes it too little too late but thanks I guess? It's recontextualization done right (so far) but doesn't redeem the story still, especially with that shit ending of "What is yet to come" from fucking Baron von Nipples the Edgelord. Until they can present a story that feels like they care again, I'm going to focus on what good there actually is, the dragonriding, the combat, the updated crafting/gathering. Dragonflight's story is going in a better direction but for characters I love, I just don't care because I kinda feel they're gonna ruin it anyway. And yeah that's pessimistic but have the Blizz writers earned "give them a chance"? For me, not yet.
I 100% feel you on this, I was already frustrated before BFA but Teldrassil broke me on two fronts as someone who loves Sylvanas and someone who has been playing Night Elf since Warcraft 3 (and TBC when I finally got my hands on WoW). Tearing down the last place the nelves had left and making them hysterically powerless to do anything about it (Cenarius, would you like to do fucking anything, please?) vs having a genocide survivor commit genocide out of what seemed to be just pure spite AND THEN turn around and make it about serving Nipples McGee, the boss of the guy who ruined her life to begin with. I don't think "tentatively hopeful" is the right way to describe how I currently feel about WoW's story, there's a fair amount of Dragonflight I have enjoyed but I still have my guard up because they haven't yet proven they won't just run into the wall with a bucket on their head again. I *want* them to improve, I *want* things to get better, but until they do I will continue crafting my own version of things just so this frustrated energy can go somewhere constructive.
@@khanlusa And it's so disheartening to feel that way! Warcraft was one of the big things to get me into writing. And my love of writing and stories comes from Castlevania, Star Wars (old EU and games) and Warcraft! Long stories with history behind it, cascading for millenniums with a rich world built around countless lives, moving pieces everywhere, tales that tie to even a single event just make for such engrossing stories and old WC/WoW did that. That's the upsetting part, they used to do it, not to some great extent that we'd see elsewhere but it was respectable at the least. Then it just all kind of disappeared. The franchise doesn't respect itself. Illidan was a great anti-hero, Arthas was well enough without the stupid fucking book that actually made me despise him by making him more Anakin than he already was (I swear Golden just doesn't know wtf she's doing). Tyrande being probably the 2nd best followed closely by Jaina as 3rd best for strong woman done right cause Sylvanas just can't be topped. Funny enough those same 3 women went from being some of my favorite characters to characters I hated either in Legion or BFA because the writers are just garbage. Though MoP kind of started my Jaina hate train, she was an early bloomer for me there lol. And let's be real, characters like Garrosh? Fucking Garrosh, wasn't even the character he ended up becoming until a fucking 180 at the start of MoP. Meanwhile we can't have Varian be Mr Racist fuckhead so he's gotta be good because HUMAN. The orc has to be bad because reasons! And I'm not sure if that's cause of the community getting pissed about him killing Cairne (because they didn't fucking read the book, and I had people legit hate Garrosh REGARDLESS of knowing he had nothing to do directly with Cairne's death and say "Well he still fucking sucks) yet this is the same man that saved alliance soldiers stranded at sea, executed a high ranking officer for attacking innocents and children, and created a stronger horde, only to have him be "Fuck you if you ain't orc" There is just such an enormous list of character assassination the writing team goes with and for whatever absurd reason they do it, it just doesn't make sense. They shoehorn plotpoints and say "It's always been this way" (remember how that fucker said he'd been writing Sylvanas from the beginning and Wrathgate was her entire plan?!) The team just constantly disappoints so yeah "tentatively hopeful" is probably too strong lol
I know GW2 kinda does a misstep with the Charr/Ascalon War writing wise and a few other smaller things. But that does not even come close to anything WoW has done when it comes to fucking up characters and storylines. Atleast the Charr got an actual decent storyline where their more problematic parts as a culture heavy on war and their habit of infighting got analyzed in the Icebrood Saga recently to a decent degree. I genuinely really liked the Charr Civil War storyline in GW2 as it made sense and it felt like a internal conflict done right.
This is why I prefer the Alliance to the Horde spirit-wise. The Alliance gets more flavor text that suggests nobility and peaceful-approach-first mentality. Love the Horde as I might for their character designs, I don’t want to be on the side that is mostly written to be butchers.
I appreciate that, it's incredibly frustrating to be told one thing, that the Horde is about honour and comradery between disparate peoples seen as monsters but aren't really, only for the writing team to turn around and crack it over the head with the villain bat when they need a faction war to happen.
@@khanlusa The Horde definitely gets mistreated by Blizz. The races’ themes are so inconsistent. Orcs are honorable, but actually it doesn’t take fel for them to become butchers who make bloody space goat sacrifices (WoD). The Forsaken respect free will, but actually they force undeath on people or threaten them with it malevolently (Sylvanas in Cata, her and undead mobs in BfA).
Oh yeah, and both mentioned races were the (temporary but still, 1st Act if you will) main villains for their respective expansions (WoD & BfA). How interesting.
@@khanlusa It's important not to generalize. While it's true that the Horde is definitely more villianous of the two factions, you're also pretty much always shown that there indeed is that "honourable" part, such as Vol'jin, Baine or Zek'han. But as for the war crimes itself, while it may be annoying for Horde players to always be the ones to do those things, the problem is that the Horde was literally *founded on doing those things* . So in a way, it's also about actually getting rid of that legacy, though it's true that this "getting rid of that legacy" has been done like 3 times already, so I can understand some frustration.
It would be easier if the writers had truly embraced the notion of the old 'evil horde' with blood sacrifices, genocide, consorting with demons, destroying their homeworld etc. Instead of appropriating the 'noble savage' tropes and pissing on and on about 'honour'. Own it. Not everyone is redeemable.
I disagree, Warcraft distinguished itself and is at its best when it subverts those old fantasy tropes of Evil Orcs and Hippy Forest Elves, but there's a contingent of people on the dev team who just want to recreate the tired, overdone fantasy tropes they grew up with, that Chris Metzen spent most of his time trying to pull the reigns on because it was boring and trite. The problem is that it resulted in the story getting pulled in two opposing directions which made it a mess of jarring contradictions.
The people who complain about in depth discussion of a game's story, and use these retorts , feels about as silly and ludicrous (and generally frustrating) as the people who yell at social media devs at blizzard posting on twitter to fix server lag as if they are the same teams.
There is something to be said for those of us who played the whole, awful Burning of Teldrassil as a soldier forced to follow orders they hated. This happens in the real world all the time, going back to the start of actual war, and is a legitimate story beat. That being said, I've long felt that the "story" of WoW is far too linear. Players should be able to choose ANY faction they like to associate with, and quest for. There should also be multiple ways to complete a given quest, with the actions a player takes DIRECTLY impacting various factions they've met and have begun to have reputation with. IMO this would make for a far more complex and interesting game and story, and don't tell me they can't do it. It's BEEN done.
Hmmm... K, this will probably fall into the "annoying guy comment" and look really fucking weird at the end but... 5min in, something that I haven't seen you address, yet, is that some of the 'fucked up shit' is intentionally fucked up as a narrative tool to say "hey, look this was bad" or "this person/group is bad due to x or y". How well it's done, or effective as a tool/means to develop the story, is up to debate (and let's be honest here, it's bad), but the implied rape with the original horde and the draeni in draenor (what a string of words), I mean yeah it's gross, but it was used to ilustrate "hey, orcs were fucked up barbarians that should be purged with fire", but in narratives that "demands" more... idk... humane, morally ok... depictions of orcs, or other often villanous groups, are often less savage or gross, but idk despise the blunt tools I kinda like the world they created with it. ( 9min in and nvm, you did actually address this later in the video, cool!) Also, 'Das muß den Ersten Seelord doch erschüttern' is kinda playful and has a fun spirit to it...? But yeah it raises some eyebrows with good reason, but idk that together with 'Teufelslied' sorta plays into the dark side of humanity and how the most dreadful aspects of nazis is that they were way too humans and how the banality of evil can really let some fucked up shit happen, but meh no one would care about my takes about this shit anyways, lmao (these are the only two nazi songs I know) However I totally get what are you saying given the current political/cultural/social climate ._.
It may perhaps be prudent to watch the entire video before commenting 😜 But yeah, to the music side of things, nuance can be found in most things IMO, it's just super dependant on context and the people involved. There's academic/historical value to preserving and studying things created by terrible people, because as you say one of the most horrible things about the Nazis is just... how normal they were. It's very comforting to think that evil will be obvious and ever present, but that's often how abusive partners get by. Normal and nice to everyone else, and a monster to their victim.
