World of Warcraft: Retail, Classic and Private

[mynameismortis]

For fucks sake Arator

These people are CANNIBAL, HUMAN SACRIFICING SAVAGES who have been preying upon your people for ten thousand years!




These savages have just crossed the border over the mountains, wiped out a village off of the face of the earth, and are stealing your stuff!

Literally FIVE MINUTES AGO you just watched from behind a corner their leader acting like a ruthless savage whipping out his knife to torture and execute captives




But now you are stopping dad from burning out the bad? "Oh no we must all get along!" **** you **** you

I need BG3 "kill and remove any character from the story" freedom to be implemented in all games STAT!

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LOP THEIR HEADS OFF ARATOR NOT SAVE THEM!




It's also frustrating that we are now getting GW2 End of Dragons "beat the bigot" ******** where you are railroaded into trying to stop the counterattack to drive the invaders out, and instead tell your people to lay down their arms because le invaders are misunderstood! This is civilizational suicide!

NOOOO, don't attack these troll bloodsuckers, i know they killed your whole village but they aren't the bad guys! YOU ARE FOR ATTACKING THEM BACK

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I finished the first two zone storylines, Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman. Overall enjoying it.

► lots of images

Silvermoon is much more appealing than Dornogal (grey blocky squares, I didn't like the texturing/layout of the central ground floor you spend 2 years looking at). I like how there are a lot more townspeople NPCs walking around, which helps make it feel a little more lived in than prior cities. However, this Silvermoon runs into the Crystarium problem from FF14 where it has humongous plazas, but nowhere near enough NPCs to fill them, so it can feel a little empty. Dornogal I think still has the edge in music, though. I quite liked that harp, and the airy track that played.



The skybox artists did a good job with the 3D-esque changing perspective of the wall of clouds surrounding the void portal over the Sunwell as you get closer or further away from it.









In Silvermoon, I noticed a couple neat linedrops of reactivity to my character. One was a random Blood Guard mocking me for being a Death Knight (95% of the Blood Elf race was wiped out by the Scourge in WC3).




Though it is odd that he calls for me to run to my "dark master". Almost all surviving Death Knights on Azeroth are members of the Ebon Blade (with the EB hunting down "rogue" Death Knights), and the Ebon Blade's reputation was rehabilitated 15 years ago by the Northrend campaign. And then seven years ago, the Scourge broke loose again when the Helm of Domination was destroyed, and the Ebon Blade were instrumental in stopping them. The Ebon Blade don't have a "dark master" anymore either. Maybe this guy is just being spiteful.

Next, Soridormi in the Silvermoon inn points out that I am playing a MoP Remix (alternate lore start. You are an adventurer who went back in time with Eternus) Pandaren Death Knight (Panda DKs canonically did not exist until Shadowlands). Which is pretty funny.





Zul'aman I think wound up being the more entertaining one as it has the spectacle of fighting in a big battle, the thunderous drums, and then the four Loa pilgrimage is pretty fast paced. Neat zone based on the Sierra Nevada mountains.

[Finarfin]

Did you do the Murder Row Questline?

[sheet]

>send a General to engage in war(craft)
>they defect

Why do millennials think this is good writing?

Peace isn't negotiated by soldiers or even their officers, btw.

[LeAmphibian]

A bit difficult to even touch retail WoW when they have characters like this in it.

[sheet]

Trying to normalize "pride in your disability" is kind of ****** up. For every ****** blind person that's like "You betrayed the blind 'community' by getting your vision surgery!" there's probaby 999 other blind people that find it encouraging.

[Maledict]

Trying to normalize "pride in your disability" is kind of ****** up. For every ****** blind person that's like "You betrayed the blind 'community' by getting your vision surgery!" there's probaby 999 other blind people that find it encouraging.

They should've made him a fat **** who refuses to walk out of gluttony

[J1M]

For fucks sake Arator

These people are CANNIBAL, HUMAN SACRIFICING SAVAGES who have been preying upon your people for ten thousand years!




These savages have just crossed the border over the mountains, wiped out a village off of the face of the earth, and are stealing your stuff!

Literally FIVE MINUTES AGO you just watched from behind a corner their leader acting like a ruthless savage whipping out his knife to torture and execute captives




But now you are stopping dad from burning out the bad? "Oh no we must all get along!" **** you **** you

I need BG3 "kill and remove any character from the story" freedom to be implemented in all games STAT!

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LOP THEIR HEADS OFF ARATOR NOT SAVE THEM!




It's also frustrating that we are now getting GW2 End of Dragons "beat the bigot" ******** where you are railroaded into trying to stop the counterattack to drive the invaders out, and instead tell your people to lay down their arms because le invaders are misunderstood! This is civilizational suicide!

If they conclude by turning it into an after-school special about why you shouldn't do this, would that redeem it in your eyes?

[mercerxiv]

Then stop playing Retail if this is pissing you off THAT MUCH. Christ

Some people actually enjoy it, or enjoy the sensation of being exposed to it. They engage woke slop for the express purpose of that weird gratification, otherwise there's no rational explanation as to why would someone do it to themselves. I'm convinced it's a fetish.

[DemoGraph]

Then stop playing Retail if this is pissing you off THAT MUCH. Christ

Some people actually enjoy it, or enjoy the sensation of being exposed to it. They engage woke slop for the express purpose of that weird gratification, otherwise there's no rational explanation as to why would someone do it to themselves. I'm convinced it's a fetish.

I did retail two years ago, because it was free. Leveled my dwarven hunter to 20 and dropped it, when I've realized that autoleveling removes all challenge from the game.

[mercerxiv]

Then stop playing Retail if this is pissing you off THAT MUCH. Christ

Some people actually enjoy it, or enjoy the sensation of being exposed to it. They engage woke slop for the express purpose of that weird gratification, otherwise there's no rational explanation as to why would someone do it to themselves. I'm convinced it's a fetish.

I did retail two years ago, because it was free. Leveled my dwarven hunter to 20 and dropped it, when I've realized that autoleveling removes all challenge from the game.

They have added what now? Autoleveling?
I rest my case.

[rusty_shackleford]

They should just add the korean MMO autoplay feature already

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Did you do the Murder Row Questline?

Not yet. I finished Zul'Aman and came back to the Sanctum of Light, and then went to bed. Is that the one about the elf mage who wants you to go vacuum up people's Anguish?

[Finarfin]

Uhhh no, that's the one where a demon hunter is investigating legion activities and fel magic and unlocks the murder row dungeon.

[Finarfin]

This has to be a joke right? The ******* trolls attack the blood elves and then Arator that *** says to be nice? **** that, lemme genocide the **** out of these inbred filth.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Chapter 3: Harandar

► Show Spoiler

Harandar is overall a neat zone. It is large and high fantasy, so I prefer over the claustrophobic and mundane Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman. This is also the first time that I have noticed the music.




If I do have a nitpick, it is that I do not like the theme of its inhabitants. The Haranir come across as elves (the people in tune with nature who know what's really going on, unlike those civilized folk who forgot everything important), but this time they are a layer behind the elves we already know! Just like with how Shadowlands inserted the First Ones as a retread of the Titans but somehow on a higher layer than them. And then you combine that with the aesthetic of the Ruutani and their plant houses, which calls to mind many other generic countries in other MMOs like the Sylvari in Guild Wars 2, TERA, Perfect World, etc. I have been to these houses before.

The story is okay. I am starting to get a little peeved about how I can't go 30 minutes without the NPCs being wracked by self doubt about what they are doing. When they are trying to save their people from being wiped out. Why should you feel bad or hesitation about that?

Chapter 4: Arator

Oh dear *laughs* Hahahaha

► Show Spoiler

Where to even begin?

The entire questline is about Arator struggling with being a "paladin". Except by this point, nobody writing this story is a Christian (or has the authority to get his worldview through unchanged). So the whole thing comes off as a funny mockery.

First (unrelated to the actual messaging of the story), Alonsus Faol - an undead bishop - shows up near the Sunwell and reminds us that undead will be vaporized if they get anywhere near it. Yet I, a Death Knight, can literally walk inside right next to the Sunwell handing out holy artifacts to the paladins so they can recharge, and I am inexplicably unaffected.






Next, we fly to Light's Hope Chapel. Apparently almost all of the paladins got teleported to the Sunwell, leaving hardly anyone back home to defend it. Apparently, despite this being year 42 and being 17 years since Vanilla, the Plaguelands have somehow not been mopped up of all of the Scourge zombies. So the few paladins who got left behind called in the Ebon Blade to help them out.

Now we have to confront the elephant in the room. In the Legion Death Knight class order hall campaign, Bolvar the Lich King ordered the Death Lord (my orc DK) to invade Light's Hope, slaughter anyone in his way, steal Tirion's dead body, and raise it as the last Horseman. Which we did. Only for Bolvar to go "nah, I was just testing you. Dairon, you're the last Horseman!". We should have been labelled as an enemy of Azeroth for that. "This just in: the Ebon Blade who turned against the Lich King and fought with the Argent Crusade in Northrend, turns and murders their once comrades!"

Well here apparently it's all just water under the bridge, no biggie. What!?!?




Next, Alonsus Faol talks ********:

Arator: I can scarcely believe that the Light answers their call (the Scarlet Crusade).
Arator: I was always taught the Light was good. The Crusade is... unconscionable.
Alonsus Faol: The Light Seeks a path. It does not dictate the way.
Alonsus Faol: Look at all the cultures across Azeroth that channel the Light. From Elune, to Gral, to An'she.
Alonsus Faol: Philosophically different from our Church of Holy Light, but with the same ability to channel the energy.
Alonsus Faol: The Light needs a lens to focus its power through the wielder. The Light brings certainty, and it responds to one's conviction.
Alonsus Faol: But the Light cannot distinguish between love and hatred.
Arator: So that is why the Scarlet Crusade claims it acts according to the Light's will.
Alonsus Faol: And why they were able to pervert my teachings of fellowship and protection into something you and I recognize so clearly as evil.
Alonsus Faol: The Scarlet Crusade was founded by a paladin I personally anointed. For a long time, I saw them as my own misjudgement made manifest. Perhaps I still do.

This goes back to the Chronicle retcons in 2016, which turned The Light from being intrinsically good and God-like - basically not-Christianity, into being just a yellow coloring of magick cereal. But now we have a problem where with not-Christianity has been retconned out, we have to justify how it works with the moral relativism of the setting. Which is to say, it does not.

In that very same conversation, Faol contradicts himself. He says that the Light is just a materialistic force that responds to anyone's willpower. But then right after, he says that it has a "will", as if it was like the Force. Or God. So, which is it?

And if the Light is not God, and really is just fantasy atoms to be molded and shaped into bursts of offensive force... then how does Faol justify any of his decisions? What is the source of right and wrong in the Warcraft universe if there is no God? If the Light is not actually God, then in whose name was Faol anointing people? If the Light can apparently be used to do "evil" by the Scarlet Crusade, then who determines what is good and evil? Is it just Faol and Arator FEELING that the crusade is evil? Where does this universal, objective morality come from? What is popular in their Eastern Kingdoms countries at the moment?

Also, with my other WoW main being a Tauren Sunwalker, and having read the Bleeding Sun short story about Dezco, I am once again peeved at Sunwalkers being shoved into this not-Christianity framework. Sunwalkers have nothing to do with The Light (capital L, as in the God). Sunwalkers are simply druids who worship the other eye of the Earthmother (who might be Azeroth when worldsouls were retconned in with Chronicle), the sun An'she instead of the moon Elune. So religiously, Tauren sunwalkers are just more heathen pagans rather than not-Christians. And power wise, again they are sun druids. Fire wielding shamans. In our short story Bleeding Sun, there is absolutely zero indication that An'she or Dezco's powers have any connection to the holy Light whatsoever. I know Sunwalker lore like the back of my hand. I RPed one in Horde Moon Guard guilds for years.

Sunwalkers were only mechanically classed as "paladins" for gameplay reasons. The playable "paladin" class in WoW is the Silver Hand paladin. Just like how the playable "shaman" class in WoW does not represent all shamans, but is thematically the Tauren and Orc shamans. Or how the playable "Monk" class is really the Pandaren monk class, and is not a generic monk class that includes that scarlet crusader monk from the revamp monastery dungeon, who was not channeling Xuen or Chi-Ji or practicing kung-fu from another continent. But the revolving door of WoW writers and apathy towards the lore has led current Blizzard to actually trying to slot in these native american cows into this paradigm that they don't belong.

Next, we go to Scarlet Monastery. Apparently, despite having cleared this place out twice during Vanilla and Cata well over a decade ago, the scarlets are still here. We waltz in and reenact the Revenge of the Sith scene of cutting down initiates. How heroic. It's funny because they are yellow, neutral mobs who won't aggro, but the quest objective is to fill up the bar by killing as many as you can find. With other people camping the halls for spawns, I am having to force grip anyone I can find across the monastery.






To teach Arator what being a real "paladin" means, Alonsus Faol takes us to Hammerfall in the Arathi Highlands, where Dezco is doing "charity work" putting up fences. For aliens who invaded from another planet and decided to squat here in a human nation rather than choosing anywhere on Kalimdor south of Ashenvale. Dezco tasks us with picking up liter, handing out donated clothes to those poor orc invaders farmers, etc.




We then get some sermonizing. Apparently, Faol doesn't think Uther and co were real paladins, because they pick up weapons to fight, and fighting is bad. Instead, Faol thinks that Dezco's group are real paladins, because they do charity work. (Reminder: the paladins came into being because A GENEOCIDAL ALIEN HORDE FROM ANOTHER PLANET INVADED AND WIPED OUT A KINGDOM. Priests decided that they had to take up arms and save their people by fighting on the frontlines).




Next we go to Blackrock Mountain, where... wait, what the ****? Why is Etrigg considered a "Son of Lothar" now? That's just for the heroes who fought with Lothar. Turalyon, Khadgar, Alleria, and Kurdran. The Alliance heroes who have the statues that you see when you enter Stormwind! Etrigg wasn't with them, he was the enemy! Get out of here.




Anyway, at Blackrock Mountain, we fly around killing more Dark Horde to collect pieces of dad's shield. As if we hadn't already wiped them all out in Vanilla and Cata over a decade ago.

Flashback time. "Oh no! Turalyon became angry after seeing his general die, and that began his descent into ZEALOTRY! You mustn't give in to your hate and become like him Arator!"




Etrigg and co give us a key that allows us to teleport to the Arcantina. Apparently, Khadgar and his buddies have been visiting this place ever since Beyond the Dark Portal, and we are only JUST now learning about this and getting invited. Khadgar didn't invite me - the Alliance general in charge of the Draenor campaign - to this place when we worked together during WoD? Or during Legion when? Or during Dragonflight?


Turalyon became angry saving civilization from alien invaders. Turalyon is beyond redemption.

Apparently I need to be level 86 to continue the main story, but the campaign only gave me enough exp to get to level 85. Guess I have to go do sidequests now.

[J1M]

You care about the story more than anyone writing it. Sorry.

[LemonDemonGirl]

inbred filth.

Trolls are so horny I wouldn't be surprised. Just look at their flirts


Also, there's non zero chance that Rastakhan is NOT inbred

[Finarfin]

Got to the quest where Arator is crying and bitching about the amani not being the baddies (even though Zul'jan literally getting a boner killing that one dude and sounding like exactly a villain)
What was nice is the choice they gave you here, either telling the belves to stand down or outright killing them (the trolls) and driving them back.
Ofcourse the ****** just had to get in the way of his father (fine, I suppose he ain't a ****** or ****. Just don't be hostile to the belves. Though he was surprisingly neutral to friendly so far, even if Lor'themar is quite distrusting)
Who cares if the Amani are not the "bad guys"? They literally cut down trees which resulted in the lightbloom killing off an entire village/town. Arator, do you care so little for these elves?

[J1M]

inbred filth.

Trolls are so horny I wouldn't be surprised. Just look at their flirts


Also, there's non zero chance that Rastakhan is NOT inbred

"I looked for flirts."
"Look at how flirty these lines I found are."

Amazing post. Thanks for contributing.

[buttfucker 3000]

So one of the freaks from my old guild tracked down the GM of my current guild and is now trying to get me gkicked. Bros I may actually be getting canceled. I'm part of a pretty prominent mythic raiding guild so they have a lot of HR types too

[Stack of Turtles]

So one of the freaks from my old guild tracked down the GM of my current guild and is now trying to get me gkicked. Bros I may actually be getting canceled. I'm part of a pretty prominent mythic raiding guild so they have a lot of HR types too

Well, hope they don't find this post then

[J1M]

So one of the freaks from my old guild tracked down the GM of my current guild and is now trying to get me gkicked. Bros I may actually be getting canceled. I'm part of a pretty prominent mythic raiding guild so they have a lot of HR types too

"Yeah, my old guild keeps trying to recruit me back. Hope they didn't bother you too much"

[buttfucker 3000]

So one of the freaks from my old guild tracked down the GM of my current guild and is now trying to get me gkicked. Bros I may actually be getting canceled. I'm part of a pretty prominent mythic raiding guild so they have a lot of HR types too

Well, hope they don't find this post then

I smooth-talked my way out of it. Had to dip into some PR-speak, unfortunately. But I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of getting me gkicked.

[Oyster Sauce]

So one of the freaks from my old guild tracked down the GM of my current guild and is now trying to get me gkicked. Bros I may actually be getting canceled. I'm part of a pretty prominent mythic raiding guild so they have a lot of HR types too

Well, hope they don't find this post then

I smooth-talked my way out of it. Had to dip into some PR-speak, unfortunately. But I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of getting me gkicked.

just don't be in a gay guild

[buttfucker 3000]

Well, hope they don't find this post then

I smooth-talked my way out of it. Had to dip into some PR-speak, unfortunately. But I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of getting me gkicked.

just don't be in a gay guild

I'm done with WoW tbh, I may linger around in the guild a bit longer just so they don't think they won, but I'm definitely quitting soon. I’ve noticed that the more competitive the guild is, the more zest-and-Skittles types it seems to attract.

[Finarfin]

@Val the Moofia Boss What do you think about THAT new Blood Elf NPC voice?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Val the Moofia Boss What do you think about THAT new Blood Elf NPC voice?

Pretty sure there was always a high pitched blood elf npc voice.

[Finarfin]

Not like this. There are 3 new male voices and 3 new female ones. This one is from Scott Menville and he sounds like a major homo. Blizzard is literally turning them into sissy elves.

[Norfleet]

Blizzard is literally turning them into sissy elves.

Turning them INTO? You say this like this is not the default state of elves. Their lack of BEARDS makes them functionally a mono-gender race of women.