This was a delight and I really appreciate when they picked games less covered on the site. F-Zero and Mario are astounding games but we've seen (and played) them many a time.
Man, @brad@rorie, I've gotten by 12 years of playing this game as primarily a quest reader (and collector) the overarching story is great. I've never been in it for the loot or raiding. This video is way too dismissive. I get that questing isn't what a lot of players come to the game for. It's not worthless, as you make it out to be.
A big part of it may be how I've watched it grow and evolve over the years. Slyvanas hasn't gone crazy, she's the same character she's always been, she's just been playing the long, political game for years and now she has the chance to make her move. We've watched the little boy in the throne room of Vanilla grow into the King of Stormwind. These are complex characters with motivations and character arcs that have developed in real time since the game has come out.
But still, the individual quests are full of great character moments and usually play into a larger narrative. I haven't played the quest involving witches Brad spoke of yet, but you might not get your answers right away. Think of each area like a little hint that unveils a larger mystery. The full arc of the narrative won't be fully unveiled until the last raid of the expansion comes out. I've never seen a game world as expansive and immersive and it keeps growing.
Thank you for writing this.
I really dislike how reductive and dismissive the GB crew can be sometimes about games.
Especially so when I see people take Crew assumptions as actual facts.
I'm not going to bat for or against WOW in this instance. But i do agree with that last line in your post. I lost count on the myriad of things they have completely gotten wrong over the time. It happens to all of us, but because they have such a large audience it can tarnish a game quite a lot.
Given a little time to think back on what I said (it's difficult when three people are talking in a video), I'll say that while I do often quest with something on the side monitor, I have been doing my best to pay attention to the primary quests in BfA so far. They are OK, but they do lack a lot of the intensity of what I came to expect from Legion. It's probably unfair to expect that level of pop to be replicated every expansion, but at the same time, Legion set a pretty high bar with the deaths of Tyrion, Varian, Ysera, etc., teasing at Illidan being back, and so forth. What's more is that a lot of these events were in the actual expansion or its starting quests/scenario (so far as I recall), whereas a lot of the big dramatic stuff in BfA happened in the pre-patch quests and cutscenes. There was some intense shit going on in the pre-patch, and going from that to "here are some new zones and characters you've never met before" has felt like a bit of a damp squib so far.
I can't say that I've met any really intense new NPCs thus far aside from Katherine Proudmoore, and thus far she's only been in a cutscene. I've had very little interaction with any other characters that seem important to the overall WoW storyline thus far, which is a little disappointing after the buildup to this expansion. It's fun enough to hang out with pirates and all that but without a stronger connection between the zones I'm questing in and the actual Sylvanas/Anduin stuff that is seemingly what is going to drive the next phase of the expansion it feels a bit like I'm treading water. There have been some cool moments and some fun cutscenes but I'm still waiting for that death of Ysera/Wrathgate kind of moment to keep me interested and so far I haven't found it. I like killing witches as much as the next guy but it feels like those quests are a slide back into generic fantasy rather than pushing me forward in the WoW story.
But hey, it's only been a few days since everything launched and I'm sure my opinion will change as time goes on. I'll hopefully be streaming some dungeons on Monday at 120 and we'll see if anything becomes clearer then.
While the expansion is moving along and it might not hit the same highs and lows for some, that's fine. It's very different from the previous expansions and I understand why some people are excited and some aren't. I'm just more so irked about the part where someone says something like "I killed a witch but I didn't learn why she was being mean and that's just bad writing" when clearly, if you get deeper into the story of the zone, you do learn this. It just rattles my brain a little. You can say you don't like a game but making assumptions as to why you don't like it just feels dismissive and mean. A better version is "The game so far hasn't been able to peak my interest lore-wise so I might have missed or not reached some plot points yet." Like, you wouldn't start reading a book and throw it aside because the murderers intentions weren't revealed on page one. Then address the masses of fans and say "The book was poorly written!" -- I mean that's what it came off like but I might be remembering a little. There was a lot of voices.
Now I don't want to get into spoilers and WoW was spouting this happening long before it did much like the death of various faction leaders in previous expansions but - TELDRASSIL IS NO MORE! The home of the night elves is but cinders and you had to be there with the (literally) impossible mission of saving all their citizens from certain death. It doesn't take you long to realize it's hopeless so you try and save as many as you can before it overtakes you and..well, I got 14 out of 7000. The rest are dead and the game mercilessly moves on. Was it another "kill 14 bears quest"? I guess, but given the story's context it means so much more than that.
Sylvanas' arch has been very interesting and the current slaughtering of her own kind has a huge impact on some of us - especially me and my partner who read the most recent book and were both moved to tears by the attempted short-lived "reunification" of Alliance and Forsaken families. The daughter who just wanted to see her dad one more time, the woman who brought stuff to cover the scent of her rotten, decaying body - so sorely clinging to hope that maybe someone will recognize her and maybe accept her as a person just one more time before she and her sanity withers away completely. Safe to say Sylvanas wasn't very pleased when she heard that her supposed precious forsaken had gone along with this for the chance of pretending to be human just one more time. We saw the ramifications of this as well.
Also Genn's tail thrashes with anger in that book, I mean, that's something I wish the game actually would show. Oh well.
Book and in-game BfA intro-scenarios aside, I personally think that the story in BfA can get a lot more personal than more recent expansions. The intimate stories of the people on the ground can move me more than a moon-sized sword stabbed into the core of a planet-being ever could (though that stuff was really intense and cool too). Like Vinny said, where's the game about young Garrus solving crimes on the citadel in Mass Effect? While this isn't the major focus of BfA, I find it's shining in the more "personal" area so far. As for major impact, we're at danger of losing Azeroth herself. She has received a grievous wound and once we settle the current problems with our allied races, I'm a very excited dog to see where the story goes next.
Man, @brad@rorie, I've gotten by 12 years of playing this game as primarily a quest reader (and collector) the overarching story is great. I've never been in it for the loot or raiding. This video is way too dismissive. I get that questing isn't what a lot of players come to the game for. It's not worthless, as you make it out to be.
A big part of it may be how I've watched it grow and evolve over the years. Slyvanas hasn't gone crazy, she's the same character she's always been, she's just been playing the long, political game for years and now she has the chance to make her move. We've watched the little boy in the throne room of Vanilla grow into the King of Stormwind. These are complex characters with motivations and character arcs that have developed in real time since the game has come out.
But still, the individual quests are full of great character moments and usually play into a larger narrative. I haven't played the quest involving witches Brad spoke of yet, but you might not get your answers right away. Think of each area like a little hint that unveils a larger mystery. The full arc of the narrative won't be fully unveiled until the last raid of the expansion comes out. I've never seen a game world as expansive and immersive and it keeps growing.
Thank you for writing this.
I really dislike how reductive and dismissive the GB crew can be sometimes about games. Especially so when I see people take Crew assumptions as actual facts.
I had a good time, both me and my partner enjoyed this a lot and it's really cool to have Jan in his first(..I think?) feature. The intro is really good too and it'll be fun to see more party queues!
Every time that horrendous Riptide zombie torso is mentioned, I smile proudly and stare back atop one of our displays where it is situated next to a Totoro lamp and a Kiki's Delivery Service music box.
Then my smile cracks and I bite my lip as I start to feel >dumb< because I spent money on a collectors item for a game we didn't play. Also we only got it in silent protest of the negative publicity it got.
Now of course it's a busty and bloody reminder of poor choices and whenever I think about buying something on impulse, I glance back at it again, and it reminds me that, maybe, if money is burning in my pockets so badly - Why not donate that money to a charity instead?
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