Yeah, if anything what we learned about Argus and the Burning Legion in Legion made it fairly evident that Illidan's big plan as it existed during TBC - and for which he justified his despotic atrocities - was doomed to fail due to Illidan's own self-important belief that only he could stop the Legion coupled with a lack of vital intel. Which was itself likely reinforced by his ego. He needed his plan to work, so the idea that his assumptions could be wrong didn't even occur to him.

And as it turned out, the whole thing had hinged upon three huge assumptions on his part that both proved to be false. Losses the Legion suffered on their worlds weren't permanent thanks to Argus' world-soul in Antorus, he no longer had the element of surprise after his raids on Nathreza, Mardum and at least one other Legion world, and thanks to the sheer scale of the Legion's ongoing expansion and the regeneration of their losses, the damage he'd been doing amused them rather than inspiring the sort of fear he'd hoped.

Had he and his Illidari - along with any fel orcs, naga and Broken they brought with them - invaded Argus, they would have been swamped by infinitely renewable Burning Legion reinforcements and crushed like bugs. Nevermind that without the recent events of Legion's questing/instanced content and WoD's ending it's likely that in addition to Kill'jaeden and Sargeras, Illidan's planned assault would have had to overcome the revived Archimonde and Mannoroth along with basically the entire intact hierarchy of the Burning Legion's most powerful captains and lieutenants.

Plus depending upon the actual source and timing of Sargeras' Dark Pantheon plan (which remains unclear to this day) they may have also found themselves having to face the fel-corrupted Aggramar as well.

The only reason his needlessly brutal and narcissistic reign in Outland didn't end in disaster for him and us is because Illidan and the Burning Legion both underestimated Azeroth. Had we not intervened as we did, driving out the Legion and shattering Illidan's hold there - in a few years' time (if not sooner) the Legion would have likely conquered Outland, absorbed Illidan's followers into their own ranks and then used the forces he'd spent all that time amassing for an invasion of Argus to attack us instead.

Agreed.

Sadly Warcraft operates on a "what do the kids like" basis. Hence Arthas overtaking Ner'zul of all people in a mind battle and Illidan getting off Scott free. Unless you are Kael'thas, then you can be popular all you want you still eat shit and die.

Hahaha. Imagine the Shadowlands is indeed the next expansion and Arthas ends up being redeemed.

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Imagine Arthas becoming post-mortem King Arthur

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You get a special questline on your tauren for the Harvest Festival if you've obtained your heritage armor:





Still haven't found where to turn it in once you're done, though.

This gives me Shadowlands expansion foreshadowing vibes.

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Daelin was right.

Jeremy Feasel clarified two bits of information about the War Campaign on twitter:



WoWhead also found two encrypted cinematics in the build, with ridiculously long run times. One is 3 minutes and 18 seconds long, the other is 6 minutes and 18 seconds. For comparison, Rastakhan's death cinematic was 2 minutes long.

However, both of those are only a few seconds off from the runtimes of Lost Honor and Old Soldier. So it could just be those two getting put in game like the Warbringer shorts. It would be pretty strange to include them but not Safe Haven, though.

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I am now a writer for Blizzplanet!

The revolution will not be datamined

Yeah right, but it will be just like it was 6 years ago. The "told you so" lulz helps me but this storyline is pathetic even by Blizz standards so it is a wash at best.

And I know they will asspull something last minute to not make this a 1:1 with MoP but the truth is this story was too much like Garrosh's for two patches already.

But I did say so back when it was still "we don't know who did Teldrassil, could be anyone!" BS they pulled. So I have that "accomplishment."

They knew from last time they suck at making Faction War stories... and somehow they chose to do it again and succeeded in making it worse despite past experience.
That is legit impressive, in a horrible way, but still. Bravo Blizz.

I hope that having the campaign as a patch’s main feature means it will be long and epic. It should top 5.1 Landfall and 7.1 Insurrection campaigns, which were some of the best storytelling Blizzard has done.

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- Sorry for any typos; english's not my primary language.

- A better signature coming soon(ish).

I kinda feel sorry for WOW devs like Jeremy Feasel, who're obviously still very passionate about their job and want us to enjoy the content they're delivering. BFA has poisoned the well to such an extent that, to some, their enthusiasm might be off-putting, at best.

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At least dying from that poisoned well will prepare you for the Darklands Expansion!

With how desperate the cash grabs for live have been, how all over the place the plot has been to try to recapture people and how big of a success Classic is i'd say the 1 good expack > 1 bad Expack trend is the only good will they have with the fanbase left tbh.

Overdramatic it may be but i'm calling it now: If Shadowlands flops again then Wows gonna get a major reboot one way or another. Classic's popularity proves the current model of ultimate convenience, no community interaction and endless rng is not resonating and needs to end.

lol what

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Nah, as long as they're turning a profit they'll never change, community outcry here is fed up but it's not influential enough to affect non lore folks sadly

It should be...

But it just hasn't

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My Worldbuilding:
http://bloodinkworlds.tumblr.com/

People are already getting bored of classic, making claims that Blizzard nerfed it or (if they've finally put down their rose tinted glasses) realizing that all was not peachy in vanilla.

Whatever issues people may have with retail WOW, classic has even less staying power.

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It has been released less than a month and you are already declaring that it won? How about giving some time for people to let their eyes adjust once they take of the rose-tinted nostalgia glasses?

Is it just me or does the rhetoric of WoW Classic advocates eerily remind others of the rhetoric surrounding "WoW killer" MMOs that also faded after a few months or initial burst of activity?

Marlamin found out that apparently we are getting a phased Durotar in 8.2.5:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post51603118

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- Sorry for any typos; english's not my primary language.

- A better signature coming soon(ish).

The thing is, so few people seemed to consider something the Blizzard Devs themselves have pointed out when it comes to raid difficulty, dismissing it out of hand as trying to baselessly handwave concerns or flatter raiders into silence when it really applies to the game in general. Namely, that we're better at the game than we were back then. Things that used to require planning and forethought are second nature by now. Things that used to be convoluted behaviors requiring persistent self-training are practically reflexive at this point. Activities that used to be long and painful slogs fly by without us even noticing.

A lot is streamlined, sure. A lot is easier, sure. But at the same time, players are still generally more experienced and smarter about how they play, and mentally conditioned to proof themselves against feeling the grind like we used to. I've puttered around on Classic just a little bit, and find that despite it being the same level of balance wherein once upon a time more than two mobs meant death and my coffers were always bone dry, now I rarely die and have more money than I ever gathered in such a short time during Vanilla just because I pull smarter, pay better attention to my surroundings and more routinely cash out my trash drops.

All without even thinking about doing it, because those behaviors are habitually ingrained in me from almost fifteen years of playing retail WoW.

It's just weird that so many of the people who demanded Classic because they felt retail WoW had dumbed everything down for the masses (as with those who insist that raid content is too easy) seemed to unwittingly lump themselves in with those "dumb masses," assuming a Classic server would provide the same kind of challenge for them that it did back in the day.

Except it doesn't provide that same challenge, because even in spite of the "casualization" such players disdain, they're better at the game themselves than they were back when they still struggled to attune themselves to each new raid tier. They're better at grinding, better at not getting killed, better at anticipating raid mechanics, and just all-around better at rapidly consuming and exhausting content in WoW.

All that said, I have at least rediscovered how much I missed the slow-text crawl option for quests. Really brought an RPG feeling to the whole experience, and I wish they'd bring back the option to activate it, as stopping to read quest text was a lot easier back when I didn't have to consciously remind myself to do it before clicking the "Accept" or "Complete Quest" tabs. I try my damnedest to read every quest on my main's first play-through of any new area, but after playing on alts for a while, the habit of clicking through things without reading starts to bleed through into my behavior when running on my main. At which point I curse, pull up Wowhead and hope the new quests are posted in a complete enough form to find out what I just missed.

I did not mean to boast that Classic has "won" or anything of the sort. It is just clearly drawing attention though and highlighting a lot of what has been lost from the past to people. Upon rereading it, it definitely comes across that way though. However you're not exactly doing too well yourself...
"You think you do but you don't." Yawn, definitely haven't heard this before. I expect better from you Genesis. For shame.
It's just you.

But to be clear, in my case, you can check my history. I have a large post stating my preference for both games to continue on and focus on what they're better at. That being: Current Wow being an opt-in theme park ride and Classic being a community based rpg.

I enjoy both at times and, when retail Wow next releases an expack with a less painfull story than BFA, have every intention of playing both on an off. Though I do, obviously, prefer Classic.

Things have been lost. Things have been gained. Change happens. All change is a form of loss.

Except this isn't "you think you do but you don't," which was an expression that applied mostly to the whole #NoChanges spiel. I just don't think that WoW Classic provides a long-term sustainable content model regardless of how much of a dud BFA has been.

I also do think that some of the current hoopla comes from a rose-tinted glasses perspective. As you suggest above, it highlights what was lost, and people tend to focus on this over what was gained. My preference is to see how this pans out in the longterm as opposed to "this game that has been out for less than a month proves X." Blizzard will certainly be monitoring the situation and taking notes, but it would be short-sighted to conclude anything from a "freshly released" WoW Classic alone as opposed to looking at the long-term big picture of their franchise.

Thus spoke Sa'danakthrustra.

Agreed, though i'd argue some things are far more definitive than others. Something like convenience of travel or quests that tell you right where to go is something people are always going to debate but things like story quality from then and now is a much harder sell.
I will grant it can have those connotations it definitely did not originate from #nochanges, it originated from a J Allen Brack telling everyone asking for Vanilla servers that they didn't actual want a vanilla server because of the same "rose-coloured glasses" rhetoric. Which, no matter how you slice it, was clearly complete rubbish.

Whether the community and enthusiasm will last or not is kind of irrelevant. It clearly was what a hell of a lot of people wanted.
We won't know truly know that until the next expack releases I imagine.
True, no arguing that its mostly about the past but it also highlights how frustrating Blizzards current "chop and change" and "the only level that matters is the top" style modern design is.

Things like class halls and quests were very popular in legion yet they're just gone for BFA. They're popular again in Classic. Wow used to be about immersing yourself with sprawling, lasting content, now they feel the need to reroute everything all the time to the absolute endgame. When was the last time we had a content patch that added something you didn't need to be max level for?

Wow Classic may not have technically added anything but it gave so much back it may as well have. Levelling is actually part of the game and supported, not just some disjointed wreck that never gets touched because it sells boosts. World pvp exists and thrives because the convenience of getting on a damn flyer and to your destination asap isn't prioritised over actually being part of the world.

Tldr: Retail is all about the destination, Classic gave us back the journey.

Agreed in preference. I do stand by the notion that they'll make changes though, Blizzard has never been anything but overreactionary. They either change everything or nothing, they don't ever do middlegrounds.

Brack was quite right.

Many people jumped on the Classic bandwagon and ended up not really enjoying the ride. We saw plenty of forum and reddit posts like that, and with a moderate amount of upvotes at it.

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No.
https://www.wowhead.com/news=294799/...urrent-viewers

The game absolutely drowned in players and streaming/gaming press attention and still maintains decent numbers. Considering it was just rereleasing content that already existed with just a bit of fine tuning i'd be willing to bet the initial month subs would have well paid for the investment and then some.

Whether it'll last? Who knows but it was certainly a better investment then what most current Blizzard products have been. And that's even factoring in the PR win that modern Blizzard ever so badly needed of recent.

I don't doubt that there are people who genuinely wanted this. People who had already been doing this on private servers undoubtedly did. I'm skeptical of the hype's overall impact. I'm skeptical of its long-term sustainability. And I'm skeptical of all the people who are saying that the launch of WoW Classic is proving some wider point about retail. And, yes, there will most definitely be people going into this with rose-tinted gnomish goggles on who will find themselves disillusioned. I played hybrids during those dark days, so I remember quite vividly what WoW Classic was like, and those days of the hybrid tax can go screw themselves.

I tend to agree about the level cap, but I have largely switch to GW2 as my main MMO of choice. The level cap has remained at level 80 since launch. The gear cap has been Ascended/Legendary since an update about three months after launch. And you get a lot of level boosts just by playing the different game modes.

Part of the problem with leveling has to do with the level cap where people are playing fresh content at the level cap but you are having to level alts or even a new account character through the levels to get to where your friends are playing. The journey is there, but it's only relevant per expansion that makes the prior journey become more of a grind. (Plus, the outdated journey kinda sucks. )

Also, I hated World PvP.

Sure, and Diablo 3 made record sales when it was released, yet Blizzard still considers D3 to be a failure. This Stream is again a shorterm achievement centered around hype but not necessarily indicative of longterm success or sustainability.

These threads are but two of many:

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