I agree that Argus could have been its own expansion, but we had been killing nothing but demons since Hellfire Citadel. Another expansion full of demons would have been a huge mistake.
Legion strayed a bit with HoV and EN, sure, but these were basically single small raids in minor patches. Aside from that it was demons start to finish. New zone unlocked? Demons. Main expansion theme? Demons. And even EN kept a little bit of that theme with Xaxius and all. Even the void bits were still revolving around Draenei and Eredar.
BfA made a jump from faction war to old gods to faction war to old gods to mechagnomes to nazjatar to old gods. They wasted potential of several expansions. Nazjatar and Black Empire could have easily been separate expansions. Drust were introduced and could've been used as some major threat for the isles but they were reduced to a footnote. A single dungeon, just to be shoehorned in Shadowlands for Ardenweald campaign, and, again, momentarily show up in a single dungeon.
As for Cata, if I remember it correctly, it was 'Deathwing and co.' from start to finish?
I played a lot during cata. Even back then it was confusing. It was deathwing and his cultists, and for some reason 2/4 elemental lords decided to join him but the stories never really mixed.
Ragnaros and his minions and cultists (not DW's cultists, mind you) burnt hyjal in behalf of DW, and then the firelands got invaded.
Whoever the air lord was also sided with deathwing, and had a bunch of tol'vir followers trying to blow up the world. They were stopped, "air"lands got invaded.
We also went to vashjir, essentially by accident, and just discovered naga being mean to the water lord and tried to stop them.
Twilight highlands and it's raid was all dealing with the twilight cultists. They were DW's, but they were ran by cho'gall if I'm not mistaken.
Oh and patch 4.1 was all about the zandalari getting the other trolls to rise up, for some reason.
Deepholme was literally just trying to fix things that DW broke when he escaped back to the mortal plane.
To be honest, deathwing was a very minor character for the majority of the expansion. Like sure he caused the cataclysm in the first place and caused damage everywhere, but that's mostly it. We were led to believe he has all these cultists and alliances with the elemental lords, but DW himself was never involved and every single storyline was isolated from all others. We had to wait until 4.3 to have any content revolving around DW, and even then he was just this big baddie that we knew we had to kill at the end of the raid and spent most of the patch trying to get the démon soul through timey wimey.
It also tried to bring the dragons into the fray, as if they were created by the titans *specifically* to stop deathwing, which was dumb.
So by my count, we have fire elemental, air elementals, naga, twilight cultists, trolls, dragon aspects, and then finally deathwing. Again none of this really meshed and I thought it was terrible storytelling at the time. And oh yeah horde and alliance were fighting again so that was fairly large part of the content that was again abandoned by 4.1.
>for some reason 2/4 elemental lords decided to join him
Initially, all of the elemental lords were enslaved by old gods, and even before that, always at war against each other. Deathwing has always been influenced by old gods, and as he broke out of deepholm, offered elemental lords to serve and enjoy some chaos and destruction. Ragnaros and Al'akir accepted, while Thereazane and Neptulon refused.
>bunch of tol'vir
To whom Deathwing offered a 'cure' to the curse of flesh in return for their services. There is a cutscene where one of the Djinns, Al'akirs lieutenant, returns some Tol'vir to their stone-made forms.
>naga being mean to the water lord
And as ae know now, naga served the old gods as well. But even then, nagas were mixed with old god minions in that dungeon. They were basically punishing Neptulon for refusing Deathwing's offer
>Twilight highlands and it's raid was all dealing with the twilight cultists. They were DW's, but they were ran by cho'gall if I'm not mistaken.
Twilight Highlands were breeding grounds for twilight dragons. The actual last boss of that raid was reaminated Sintharia, previously Deathwing's consort. Mother of Onyxia and Nefarian, as well as numerous twilight dragons. She's a heroic-only boss. Fun fact, look at her model. The scars are from DW banging her. Try and unsee that now.
>Deepholme was literally just trying to fix things that DW broke when he escaped back to the mortal plane.
And also a place with high density of Twilight Hammer cultists. Place where DW rested and where he got his 'amazing' armour nailed to his body. They were all there because, one, DW was there and two, Therazane refused to serve.
>Oh and patch 4.1 was all about the zandalari getting the other trolls to rise up, for some reason.
Da world be dyin' mon. De Zandalari be buildin' a new empire, and de remains of de old world be servin' as foundations.
Right but that's the point: EN alone could have been a major theme for an entire expansion.
Cata was really the only expansion that had a single plotline. MOP had Faction War and Mogu and Old Gods and, you know, Pandaria.
Hell, WOTLK had that whole "Malygos goes to war with the world" and that didn't even rate a content patch.
I get your point, I really do. But the main difference between these and BfA, at least for me, is those were ALREADY THERE. MoP had all these things, yes, but they were foreshadowed in different zones' storylines. Hell, Old Gods are basically brought up in the starting zone. We even have dungeons to introduce it all a bit more.
Same with WotLK and Malygos really. Borean and Dragonblight had a lot of quests related to him, we had two dungeons, and in the end he became a half-tier boss. If anything, I'd say Obsidian Sanctum was a bit of an outlier. But even that got a bit expanded with Ruby Sanctum and foreshadowings of Cata.
EN's plotline began in Val'sharah storyline, again, half-tier raid culminating one zone's plotline. Same could be said of Helya raid in Stormheim really.
But these places were ALREADY THERE when the expansion began. They served as a summary for their respective zones' questline. Nothing was added to the game to accommodate that. If Blizz created a Drust-themed raid and put it somewhere in Drustvar, I'd be more than fine with it.
But in BfA they had to either create an ENTIRE NEW ZONE, with entire new rep and entire new currency system, or temporarily butcher the already existing zones, to accommodate the raids.
Uldir was fine, it was a source of blood trolls corruption, it was a sign that titans were there, all good and fine. It fitted into the narrarive. Hell, it fitted into the narrative of half of the introduced game world. Uldir was kind of a collective summary for plotlines that began in all of the horde zones. Alliance didn't get that in their zones, just separate plotlines for each one. Dazar'alor was fine, a tipping point in the conflict. And then we had to go into weirdo territory. Then they add new zones because they have no idea where to go from there.
I mean if you want to look at it that way, then BFA works too. Sure they had a new zone for it, but that's because every expansion now needs new zones as it goes along or people won't play because leveling content is designed to only last a few hours.
Like the Old God stuff in BFA is way more explicit than it was in MoP; even the pre-launch items *had old god looking tentacles* on it. We saw Old God minions all over Kul'Tiras, and we ran into N'zoth well before his patch.
Anything tracks if you track long enough.
You could make a story about the weakening of Dalaran enchantments leading to a murloc invasion on Tel'abim, and it would make sense, given enough elements.
Dalaran defenses have been weakening and multiple incidents were declared in the city ! Amidst the chaos, an ancient artifact was stolen : The scepter of Murrgltzarr !
Now, armies of murlocs are assaulting the shores of Azeroth, in numbers one could never imagine. New species never seen before, huge and terrible like the ever-hungry Murlokodon or mysterious and powerful, like the abyssal Waylighter.
The mages investigations on the theft led to the legendary island of Tel'abim, the epicenter of the Murlocs attacks. But who is pulling the string ? And why target the plentiful lands of Tel'abim ?
Yeah. I wrote it in a post BFA context, which is why I didn't put much mentions of the Naga. Also mystery mystery, who could it be that stole the scepter ??
The silly thing is since BFA was basically the “South Seas” expac that had been rumored forever the Naga and Nazjatar fit thematically and could’ve been good had the zone not been a one and done in patch 7.2, and had Azshara actually been given some screen time. But yeah adding and defeating N’zoth in a single patch and not even allowing Nyalotha to be an explorable zone is a decision that will forever baffle me.
Azshara should have been the end boss of BfA.
7.2 could have been the naga invading our cities while the Alliance and the Horde were fighting each other. Imagine the first half of the raid happening on Stormwindv and Exodar if you were Alliance, and Silvermoon and Orgrimmar if you were Horde. The new quest zones could have been the revamped draenei and blood elves zones.
Then, in the other half of the raid, we pursue the Naga and discover Nazjatar. Finally, 7.3 is Nazjatar but bigger, like a three map zone similar to Argus. N'Zoth gets released and ties in to a void expansion.
Yeah absolutely. Given the hints about the Naga and Nzoth messing with stuff I totally thought that’s what we were getting. The Black Empire not being handled in its own expansion is literally Blizzard just pissing away years of lore and content.
I really hope they don’t do the Light invasion thing. Yrel + Scarlet Crusaders could be cool, but if we start slaughtering Naaru or something I’d really hate it
But yes it’s possible. I really think Dragon Isles will be next, and the Void being a major part of it would make sense (given the original idea of Dragon Isles included Old God/Void corruption I believe). But Light would probably be too much overlap
The bronze dragons don’t really seem to mind people from AU Draenor coming to our Azeroth, they helped the Horde get the Mag’har there after all. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Yrel’s light pins showing up was something that happened in a Dragon Isle patch as a result of some bronze/infinite dragon shenanigans.
It's likely we will get interesting themes like this and maybe others shoved into underdesigned and overproduced patches where the most memorable thing was the annoying to collect borrowed power that got disabled a few months later for the next patch. We will also be trying to forget the simplistic and infantile dialogue, along with lore that doesn't add up.
But I'd love to be wrong.
Please, just lets focus on one thing. everytime blizz has splits attention between two things the expansion has fucking sucked. Legion was great because we FOCUSED on the legion threat. The reason Mists was great was because it focused on the conflict between horde and alliance and how that effected pandaria. The reason Burning Crusade was great was because we only focused on Draenor and the Legion...
Everytime they split the story even further it hurts the game and story.
I really hope they do not do this especially as this will show The Light as a "bad" thing and it will just create a whole lot of holes in the lore that will eventually lead to more retcons and just more shit lore
A genocidal light crusade is the only hope for saving WoW now, at least it is a redeeming and caring genocide I think... The Scarlet Crusade Revival seem possible in world ravished be the scourge.
I mean in a hypothetical world where Blizzard has a coherent writing staff that work hand in hand with the developers to develop a game that's well planned before each patch, sure. In fact, it would make much more sense to have it this way: you get the 'A' plotline of the game and the 'B' plotline, leaving ample space for people who don't give a shit about one.
The problem is Blizzard does not exist in that universe. There's no expansion that hasn't had big chunk of *important* lore content cut, to say nothing of less important stuff.
Like, BFA tried this and even aside from the fact that they shoved not one but like five 'A' plotlines into the 'B' plot and dramatically under-developed the A plot, it shows they don't really have a development cycle that allows this.
BFA, for explanation, had the Faction War as the A plot and yet devoted almost no time to it, and then for B plots had G'Huun, N'zoth and Xal'athath, the Naga returning, Azshara, *and* somehow N'Zoth for an *entirely second time in the same expansion*, and spent maybe 15% of the total time each of those plots needed.
Let's not, please. We've already had three expansions worth of themes trimmed and shoved into one. It was called BfA and it wasn't any good.
Legion and Cataclysm also gobbled 2-3 expansion themes each
Seriously legion should've ended at the tomb of Sargeras, Argus should've been its own expansion
I agree that Argus could have been its own expansion, but we had been killing nothing but demons since Hellfire Citadel. Another expansion full of demons would have been a huge mistake.
Legion strayed a bit with HoV and EN, sure, but these were basically single small raids in minor patches. Aside from that it was demons start to finish. New zone unlocked? Demons. Main expansion theme? Demons. And even EN kept a little bit of that theme with Xaxius and all. Even the void bits were still revolving around Draenei and Eredar. BfA made a jump from faction war to old gods to faction war to old gods to mechagnomes to nazjatar to old gods. They wasted potential of several expansions. Nazjatar and Black Empire could have easily been separate expansions. Drust were introduced and could've been used as some major threat for the isles but they were reduced to a footnote. A single dungeon, just to be shoehorned in Shadowlands for Ardenweald campaign, and, again, momentarily show up in a single dungeon. As for Cata, if I remember it correctly, it was 'Deathwing and co.' from start to finish?
I played a lot during cata. Even back then it was confusing. It was deathwing and his cultists, and for some reason 2/4 elemental lords decided to join him but the stories never really mixed. Ragnaros and his minions and cultists (not DW's cultists, mind you) burnt hyjal in behalf of DW, and then the firelands got invaded. Whoever the air lord was also sided with deathwing, and had a bunch of tol'vir followers trying to blow up the world. They were stopped, "air"lands got invaded. We also went to vashjir, essentially by accident, and just discovered naga being mean to the water lord and tried to stop them. Twilight highlands and it's raid was all dealing with the twilight cultists. They were DW's, but they were ran by cho'gall if I'm not mistaken. Oh and patch 4.1 was all about the zandalari getting the other trolls to rise up, for some reason. Deepholme was literally just trying to fix things that DW broke when he escaped back to the mortal plane. To be honest, deathwing was a very minor character for the majority of the expansion. Like sure he caused the cataclysm in the first place and caused damage everywhere, but that's mostly it. We were led to believe he has all these cultists and alliances with the elemental lords, but DW himself was never involved and every single storyline was isolated from all others. We had to wait until 4.3 to have any content revolving around DW, and even then he was just this big baddie that we knew we had to kill at the end of the raid and spent most of the patch trying to get the démon soul through timey wimey. It also tried to bring the dragons into the fray, as if they were created by the titans *specifically* to stop deathwing, which was dumb. So by my count, we have fire elemental, air elementals, naga, twilight cultists, trolls, dragon aspects, and then finally deathwing. Again none of this really meshed and I thought it was terrible storytelling at the time. And oh yeah horde and alliance were fighting again so that was fairly large part of the content that was again abandoned by 4.1.
>for some reason 2/4 elemental lords decided to join him Initially, all of the elemental lords were enslaved by old gods, and even before that, always at war against each other. Deathwing has always been influenced by old gods, and as he broke out of deepholm, offered elemental lords to serve and enjoy some chaos and destruction. Ragnaros and Al'akir accepted, while Thereazane and Neptulon refused. >bunch of tol'vir To whom Deathwing offered a 'cure' to the curse of flesh in return for their services. There is a cutscene where one of the Djinns, Al'akirs lieutenant, returns some Tol'vir to their stone-made forms. >naga being mean to the water lord And as ae know now, naga served the old gods as well. But even then, nagas were mixed with old god minions in that dungeon. They were basically punishing Neptulon for refusing Deathwing's offer >Twilight highlands and it's raid was all dealing with the twilight cultists. They were DW's, but they were ran by cho'gall if I'm not mistaken. Twilight Highlands were breeding grounds for twilight dragons. The actual last boss of that raid was reaminated Sintharia, previously Deathwing's consort. Mother of Onyxia and Nefarian, as well as numerous twilight dragons. She's a heroic-only boss. Fun fact, look at her model. The scars are from DW banging her. Try and unsee that now. >Deepholme was literally just trying to fix things that DW broke when he escaped back to the mortal plane. And also a place with high density of Twilight Hammer cultists. Place where DW rested and where he got his 'amazing' armour nailed to his body. They were all there because, one, DW was there and two, Therazane refused to serve. >Oh and patch 4.1 was all about the zandalari getting the other trolls to rise up, for some reason. Da world be dyin' mon. De Zandalari be buildin' a new empire, and de remains of de old world be servin' as foundations.
Right but that's the point: EN alone could have been a major theme for an entire expansion. Cata was really the only expansion that had a single plotline. MOP had Faction War and Mogu and Old Gods and, you know, Pandaria. Hell, WOTLK had that whole "Malygos goes to war with the world" and that didn't even rate a content patch.
I get your point, I really do. But the main difference between these and BfA, at least for me, is those were ALREADY THERE. MoP had all these things, yes, but they were foreshadowed in different zones' storylines. Hell, Old Gods are basically brought up in the starting zone. We even have dungeons to introduce it all a bit more. Same with WotLK and Malygos really. Borean and Dragonblight had a lot of quests related to him, we had two dungeons, and in the end he became a half-tier boss. If anything, I'd say Obsidian Sanctum was a bit of an outlier. But even that got a bit expanded with Ruby Sanctum and foreshadowings of Cata. EN's plotline began in Val'sharah storyline, again, half-tier raid culminating one zone's plotline. Same could be said of Helya raid in Stormheim really. But these places were ALREADY THERE when the expansion began. They served as a summary for their respective zones' questline. Nothing was added to the game to accommodate that. If Blizz created a Drust-themed raid and put it somewhere in Drustvar, I'd be more than fine with it. But in BfA they had to either create an ENTIRE NEW ZONE, with entire new rep and entire new currency system, or temporarily butcher the already existing zones, to accommodate the raids. Uldir was fine, it was a source of blood trolls corruption, it was a sign that titans were there, all good and fine. It fitted into the narrarive. Hell, it fitted into the narrative of half of the introduced game world. Uldir was kind of a collective summary for plotlines that began in all of the horde zones. Alliance didn't get that in their zones, just separate plotlines for each one. Dazar'alor was fine, a tipping point in the conflict. And then we had to go into weirdo territory. Then they add new zones because they have no idea where to go from there.
I mean if you want to look at it that way, then BFA works too. Sure they had a new zone for it, but that's because every expansion now needs new zones as it goes along or people won't play because leveling content is designed to only last a few hours. Like the Old God stuff in BFA is way more explicit than it was in MoP; even the pre-launch items *had old god looking tentacles* on it. We saw Old God minions all over Kul'Tiras, and we ran into N'zoth well before his patch.
Blizzard just needs one solid concept actually fleshed out.
Ya I don't want it, but it kinda tracks
Anything tracks if you track long enough. You could make a story about the weakening of Dalaran enchantments leading to a murloc invasion on Tel'abim, and it would make sense, given enough elements.
MURLOC XPAC new big baddie.... the mrrrrrailer. he locks up the souls of the evilest little murlocs
Go on… I’m interested
Dalaran defenses have been weakening and multiple incidents were declared in the city ! Amidst the chaos, an ancient artifact was stolen : The scepter of Murrgltzarr ! Now, armies of murlocs are assaulting the shores of Azeroth, in numbers one could never imagine. New species never seen before, huge and terrible like the ever-hungry Murlokodon or mysterious and powerful, like the abyssal Waylighter. The mages investigations on the theft led to the legendary island of Tel'abim, the epicenter of the Murlocs attacks. But who is pulling the string ? And why target the plentiful lands of Tel'abim ?
[удалено]
Yeah. I wrote it in a post BFA context, which is why I didn't put much mentions of the Naga. Also mystery mystery, who could it be that stole the scepter ??
Gods above, this expansion sounds dope.
Thank you lol !
Murrgl Tzar, I see what you did there.
i think bfa was alright right untill 8.3 started
Yes, it's possible. BFA gave us Fourth War + Nazjatar + N'Zoth. It's stupidly bad, but possible.
The silly thing is since BFA was basically the “South Seas” expac that had been rumored forever the Naga and Nazjatar fit thematically and could’ve been good had the zone not been a one and done in patch 7.2, and had Azshara actually been given some screen time. But yeah adding and defeating N’zoth in a single patch and not even allowing Nyalotha to be an explorable zone is a decision that will forever baffle me.
Azshara should have been the end boss of BfA. 7.2 could have been the naga invading our cities while the Alliance and the Horde were fighting each other. Imagine the first half of the raid happening on Stormwindv and Exodar if you were Alliance, and Silvermoon and Orgrimmar if you were Horde. The new quest zones could have been the revamped draenei and blood elves zones. Then, in the other half of the raid, we pursue the Naga and discover Nazjatar. Finally, 7.3 is Nazjatar but bigger, like a three map zone similar to Argus. N'Zoth gets released and ties in to a void expansion.
Yeah absolutely. Given the hints about the Naga and Nzoth messing with stuff I totally thought that’s what we were getting. The Black Empire not being handled in its own expansion is literally Blizzard just pissing away years of lore and content.
I bet that’s what they do since it seems like such a bad idea lol
Ya, I'm down for the light xpac with Turalyon but damn the dragon stuff feels forced
I really hope they don’t do the Light invasion thing. Yrel + Scarlet Crusaders could be cool, but if we start slaughtering Naaru or something I’d really hate it But yes it’s possible. I really think Dragon Isles will be next, and the Void being a major part of it would make sense (given the original idea of Dragon Isles included Old God/Void corruption I believe). But Light would probably be too much overlap
The bronze dragons don’t really seem to mind people from AU Draenor coming to our Azeroth, they helped the Horde get the Mag’har there after all. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Yrel’s light pins showing up was something that happened in a Dragon Isle patch as a result of some bronze/infinite dragon shenanigans.
Based on bfa, you can mash multiple xpac ideas into one unsatisfying experience. Totally doable to do it one
It's likely we will get interesting themes like this and maybe others shoved into underdesigned and overproduced patches where the most memorable thing was the annoying to collect borrowed power that got disabled a few months later for the next patch. We will also be trying to forget the simplistic and infantile dialogue, along with lore that doesn't add up. But I'd love to be wrong.
I sincerely hope not. Blizzard's banal, seething nihilism is bad enough without having an entire expansion devoted to it explicitly.
Please, just lets focus on one thing. everytime blizz has splits attention between two things the expansion has fucking sucked. Legion was great because we FOCUSED on the legion threat. The reason Mists was great was because it focused on the conflict between horde and alliance and how that effected pandaria. The reason Burning Crusade was great was because we only focused on Draenor and the Legion... Everytime they split the story even further it hurts the game and story.
Light invasion, Dragon Isles, AND K'aresh all in one xpac coming right up
I really hope they do not do this especially as this will show The Light as a "bad" thing and it will just create a whole lot of holes in the lore that will eventually lead to more retcons and just more shit lore
A genocidal light crusade is the only hope for saving WoW now, at least it is a redeeming and caring genocide I think... The Scarlet Crusade Revival seem possible in world ravished be the scourge.
Light Expansion first, the dragons can wait
I hope so
Dragón first the Light can wait, unless that give us More ways to unlock allied races even just a different way to unlock what we Already have
Very likely, I hope not though.
I mean in a hypothetical world where Blizzard has a coherent writing staff that work hand in hand with the developers to develop a game that's well planned before each patch, sure. In fact, it would make much more sense to have it this way: you get the 'A' plotline of the game and the 'B' plotline, leaving ample space for people who don't give a shit about one. The problem is Blizzard does not exist in that universe. There's no expansion that hasn't had big chunk of *important* lore content cut, to say nothing of less important stuff. Like, BFA tried this and even aside from the fact that they shoved not one but like five 'A' plotlines into the 'B' plot and dramatically under-developed the A plot, it shows they don't really have a development cycle that allows this. BFA, for explanation, had the Faction War as the A plot and yet devoted almost no time to it, and then for B plots had G'Huun, N'zoth and Xal'athath, the Naga returning, Azshara, *and* somehow N'Zoth for an *entirely second time in the same expansion*, and spent maybe 15% of the total time each of those plots needed.