Mists of Pandaria

[Ingmar]

I'm talking about the cinematic too. You know how many times 'player' characters appear in the Wrath cinematic? Zero. Very, very big contrast to the first 2.

It marks the point where they started going whole-hog on the story being about their NPCs more than about the PCs IMO, culminating in Tirion essentially winning the fight for you at the end of Icecrown Citadel.

[Merusk]

Yeah.. I just said that.

[Fordel]

That scene is a little nod to the original War3 trailer, where the Orc and the Footman stop fighting each other to fight the big infernal thing.

[Ingmar]

Well now I'm just confused on what you were correcting me about then.

[Merusk]

Nothing since you clarified you were in fact talking about the cinematic and not the storyline.

I do disagree that's where things went off the rails.  The PCs journey was right there throughout Wrath. You're the heroes, being groomed by Arthas the not-so-great puppetmaster to be his next minions.  The whole Xpac was a journey to me in a way Cata, BC and Vanilla weren't. 

* BC was a hodge-podge of too many story lines, all related to NPCs and never really pulling you in to the greater storyline until the very last zone with Akama and Maiev.  No real build-up of anything but the burning legion and then *fizzle*   You're never even really given a good reason to go in to Karazan.. hell that link to the x-pac was so bad there isn't even a feeder quest to the keying quests.  Just "Hey, you're 70, go see this guy."

* Vanilla - same problem. No over-arching storyline and no real reason given to do the raids (Well, other than BWL was was tied nicely in to UBRS). It was vanilla, though, and I don't think they saw any story beyond "go kill shit" as necessary.

* Cata - We've dissected this enough.  The PCs simply never saw Deathwing enough and his story WAS entirely NPC-centric.  I had more vested in wanting to kill Ragnaros and the crazy-ogre dude than Deathwing and even those weren't all that much beyond the NPCs telling me to do so because "hey look, shitty things. "

[Ingmar]

Admittedly the lack of coherent story in the first two is probably what made it easier to imagine that things were about you.

[Tannhauser]

I agree with Merusk.  I was completely disconnected from the Deathwing storyline.  In WOTLK, I ran afoul of Arthas a couple of times. 

As for the cinematic, I enjoyed it and will buy MoP but I won't last a month.  Cata broke me. 

 

[LK]

Honestly thought it was the best cinematic of them all as every action contributed to developing the characters. There was an actual story playing out before me. Amongst the other top-of-the-industry qualities surrounding this cinematic, like the effects.

Good choice limiting environments and characters to focus on the details and let them breathe more.

[luckton]

I still in the the WOTLK intro was the best.  It set the theme for the whole expansion and let you know what was going on. The speech from Terenas offset by Arthas raising the army of the dead and the dracolich.  Not a single scene related to the PCs but you knew the story from it.  Great intro.

This.  Admittedly, I arrived on the PC gaming scene around the time Starcraft 1 was released, and of what little time I invested in playing Warcraft 1 and 2 was a bit...limited.

However, Warcraft 3?  That was the shit was there.  I loved the story and the over-arcing trials and tribulations of Arthas Menethil throughout War 3 and TFT.  Wrath was not only there first expansion where they really sat down and tried to hammer out a story woven through the dungeons, raids, and Northern itself, but it was pretty damned easy considering the depth they've already gone in digging out Arthas' tale.  For the cinematic, they hit all the high notes for me in doing what Merusk described; a fully corrupted Arthas/Ner'zhul Lich King finally executing his plans of world domination after years of planning and waiting.

Going back to content, this is how I see things:

Vanilla: Was vanilla.  No huge amounts of overarching stuffs, but just setting up the world for us to play around in and get Bliz's feet wet in the MMO scene.  It allowed them to start-up several story/lore threads in the world, and allow PCs to see and experience the places they've only been seeing from a bird's-eye view for the first three strategy games.  It had it's ups, it had it's down, but it got the job done in the end.

BC: To me, this was more a fan-service expansion for the long-time lore-lovers of visiting Draenor and the home of the orcs, while also trying to wrap-up the Illidan story thread from War3.  I still enjoyed the game, but they were still catering pretty hard to the hard-core raider bits.  I was sad to say that I never got to experience the end-game content again, like vanilla, but it is what it is.  Still, daily quests and some casual love started to peek through near the end.

Wrath: IMO, best expansion so far, mostly for reasons already said.  Casual love started to shine through more, and retention for the non-hardcore grew.  While I didn't care much for the whole "old gods" thing of Ulduar or the Argent Tournament, the last patch brought a nice bit of closure for the Arthas arc.  With 10-man raids in full effect, it was nice to finally be able to wade into the raiding fray and not just feel like some random dude punching buttons wantonly as in vanilla's 40-man days.

Cata: Was vanilla 2.0.  All of the story-making art, technology, and gameplay that they developed over the years that went into BC and Wrath was fused into rewriting and updating the original world.  Could they have done something else instead of doing this?  Sure, maybe, but I think for the long term, and in attracting new players when future expansions come out, it wasn't a bad idea either.  Perhaps they did go a bit overboard on reusing/reskinning old content and calling it new, right up to the end in using a couple of hardly-used Wrath outdoor/raid zones as the main platform for most of the final raid.  Story-wise, although Deathwing wasn't seen or heard much in War 3 or WoW directly, it was a valid story arc that I thought was played out well enough.  As has been said before, it would have been better if DW had made more appearances throughout Cata instead of just "Heh, I blew up the world, fags.  Enjoy!" and then being the final boss.

MoP:  Well shit, son, this is all OG content here.  All we know so far is that the Theramore story-arc with Jaina's gonna get either wrapped up or continued, the Zandalar trolls will have some more progress made for their tale, and with DW, Arthas, Illidan, and Kael'thas all dead or "setbacked", we're going back to Horde vs. Alliance, but also exploring a brand new place that has little to no ties to the current Warcraft franchise/history.  I for one am excited to see what's in store.

After MoP?  Who knows...at this point, we've already explored everything on, in, under, and around Azeroth.  We've been beyond it in Draenor.  All that leaves is either some more land-masses that will "suddenly reveal" themselves a la Pandaria, or we start planet/dimension hopping.  I'll actually put some money on a Draenor 2.0, with this time having Sargeras coming to terrorize the area and use it as a platform to invade Azeroth again.

[Sjofn]

Ah, but vanilla had one of the few story things I enjoyed unironically in it. I loved the Onyxia thing for some reason, even though it was a long, irritating questline. :P

I really liked WotLK, although I thought Arthas was a little TOO in our faces, and I didn't really like Tirion powering up and essentially beating the Lich King for us, but that may be part of a hindsight thing, as that was the first time I experienced an NPC eblowing his way into the spotlight at the cost of the PCs. I'm not sure if Maeve butting into the Illidan fight felt similarly, as I've only fought Illidan at level 85 and the fight happens so fast I barely even noticed what was going on before it was over.  I can't even remember what happens at the end of the Sunwell raid, as that one I've only done once and again, it was over so fast I had no idea what parts were "us" and what parts were NPCs doing shit.

[Paelos]

I liked the flow and story behind ZG original. It was a pretty cool zone for the time.

[Sjofn]

We were too small to do ZG!

[Zetor]

I wonder about MOP's lolmetzen quotient. Has green jebus finally transcended into a deity to be worshipped by the panda people? Clearly, more research is needed.

[Setanta]

Ah, but vanilla had one of the few story things I enjoyed unironically in it. I loved the Onyxia thing for some reason, even though it was a long, irritating questline. :P

This line totally sucked as Horde. As someone who was Horde I'm so glad I had my Alliance pally so I could actually see what we were missing out on.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I heard it was assy for the Horde, which is a shame. They've always had trouble with that sort of shit, though, they often don't seem capable of doing a storyline that is roughly the same satisfaction-wise to both sides (unless it is 100% shitty and both sides are filled with contempt).

[SurfD]

Yeah, I heard it was assy for the Horde, which is a shame. They've always had trouble with that sort of shit, though, they often don't seem capable of doing a storyline that is roughly the same satisfaction-wise to both sides (unless it is 100% shitty and both sides are filled with contempt).

Eh, it wasnt so much that the Ony Attunement story sucked for Horde, it was just that the questline itself was REALLY poorly designed, and involved so much "there and back again" repeat travel between a few npcs who were on opposite corners of the earth that it was just tedious to do the questline.

[SurfD]

Random MoP related question for anyone in the Beta:  Exactly how are Pre-Choice Pandaran characters treated with regards to mail privledges from the rest of you Account?  I ask because it seems to me that if you are allowed to mail them anything (gold, items, etc), then that would be a REALLY easy way to do fairly large cross faction trades of liquid wealth.

- Make a Pandaran alt
- Mail it a bunch of money / trade goods / valueable auctionables from your Horde toons.
- Chose to side with the alliance at end of starting area.

Bam, really easy Horde -> Alliance item moving.  Repeat Alliance -> Horde if you want to go that way.

Ayone in Beta able to test to see if you can mail things other then BoA gear to your fresh minted pandas?

[Merusk]

Hm.. I hadn't even thought of that, but other criminal masterminds have.

Google gave me an answer here: http://stormspire.net/speculation/5580-mists-beta-cross-faction-mailing.html

Result?  Pandas are a 3rd faction until they make their choice at level 10.  No mails, whispers, /who, /ginvite or anything except the already-allowed cross-faction mailing of heirlooms can happen until that time.

[luckton]

They don't even have any mailboxes on the Panda starting isle.

[Sheepherder]

That scene is a little nod to the original War3 trailer, where the Orc and the Footman stop fighting each other to fight the big infernal thing. lots of things.

[Merusk]

Man, I knew I regognized that human.

[Rokal]

I tried out Brewmaster spec and tanked one of the new dungeons in the beta. Pretty fun, it's the first Monk spec I really like. I was worried that it would be the annoying leather tank that had to keep up buffs just to mitigate as much damage as plate tanks. Shuffle comes a little close to feeling this way, which you get for (20 seconds?) by using blackout kick. It gives you +20% parry and +20% damage mitigation from Stagger. Fortunately, at least in the dungeon I ran, it didn't feel like I was instantly screwed if the buff ever fell off and it should be easy to keep up with any sort of addon like power auras.

I ended up really liking the stagger mechanic. Your stagger debuff changes colors depending on what % of your health you are taking as stagger damage, and you can clear all stagger damage by spending 1 chi on Purifying Brew (no cooldown). It ends up being this neat mini-game where you are canceling out damage when it gets too high, and they have a lot of neat interactions with other abilities to increase stagger temporarily or stagger damage done to your group.

I also liked dizzying haze (keg toss). It's a targeted aoe with no cooldown that barely cost any energy, which does a high amount of threat and applies your damage debuff (think thunderclap). It made starting fights and managing loose adds in the dungeon very easy. You can use kegsmash throughout most of the fight, which applies the damage debuff but grants chi and doesn't need to be targeted.

[El Gallo]

My immersion of playing an upright, armed, warmongering cow has been similarly ruined forever by this new comedy element.

FOREVER

Clearly, minotaurs and pandbearamen have exactly the same aesthetic/cultural connotations.  Just like dragons and unicorns.  Or orcs and smurfs.  Anybody who doesn't have the exact same aesthetic reaction to both members of any of these three pairs of mythical critters is obviously retarded. 

[tmp]

Clearly, minotaurs and pandbearamen have exactly the same aesthetic/cultural connotations.  Just like dragons and unicorns.  Or orcs and smurfs.  Anybody who doesn't have the exact same aesthetic reaction to both members of any of these three pairs of mythical critters is obviously retarded.  

Because truly, mixing creatures from these different 'cultural connotation' groups haven't happened before, and is an alien concept to the western minds when they witness it in the new WoW expansion.



(would inlude picture of dragons and unicorns in one cartoon too, but some people apparently have allergic reaction to MLP so there's that)

[Merusk]

You're killing my grimdark male fantasies that I need to prove to myself that I'm not even remotely gay!

[El Gallo]

Because truly, mixing creatures from these different 'cultural connotation' groups haven't happened before, and is an alien concept to the western minds when they witness it in the new WoW expansion.

The point wasn't that you can't have a story with both orcs and smurfs in it; of course you can (I'd be shocked if there wasn't a smurfs episode with at least ogres in it).  It's that people have very different (and fairly predictably different) aesthetic reactions to, e.g., orcs and smurfs.  If they added smurfs as a playable race in WoW, I would expect some people to object that they don't like the aesthetic.  Unfortunately, I'd also expect someone to reply HURRRRRR GAME ALREADY HAVE FANTASY BIPED WITH UNNATURAL SKIN COLOR, THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME!!  And I'd feel entirely free to call that reply idiotic.

Note that this doesn't prove anything about whether adding pandabearmen or smurfs to the game is a good or bad thing.  Just that "they are exactly the same as tauren/orcs" is far from a justification for the inclusion of either.  

[Soulflame]

Weren't pandaren in Warcraft 3?  I don't find it unreasonable to add them as a playable race.

[Ingmar]

All those historical connotations I remember about minotaurs totally had them dressing up like Native Americans and smoking enormous bongs, too.

[Merusk]

Weren't pandaren in Warcraft 3?  I don't find it unreasonable to add them as a playable race.

They were. They've also been the #1 request to be added since launch day.

The annoyance is the usual teen-male mindset of anything cute must be for teh gay.   You saw it with blood elves, too, but at least they had T&A factor, rite? 

[Nevermore]

They were. They've also been the #1 request to be added since launch day.

The annoyance is the usual teen-male mindset of anything cute must be for teh gay.   You saw it with blood elves, too, but at least they had T&A factor, rite? 

Yeah, but the lady blood elves were like toothpicks. 

[Sjofn]

Toothpicks with enormous manhands that put mine to shame.

[Fordel]

It still cracks me up the number of women playing dude BE's.

[Sjofn]

The dudes playing dude blood elves in my Moon Guard guild did not like having that pointed out. I accused them all of secretly being chicks once and they got all fussy about it. 

[El Gallo]

The annoyance is the usual teen-male mindset of anything cute must be for teh gay.   

I think the issue is more that it's childish than gay.  Are you saying all gays are ? I've had enough of your homophobia.

You saw it with blood elves, too, but at least they had T&A factor, rite?  

You need A for T&A, and the dranei got all that  

[Nevermore]

You need A for T&A, and the dranei got all that  

No, they just got a totally back-breaking spine.  Like painful looking it's so bent out of shape.