After flip flopping so many times between "Kill the Horde" and "Work with the Horde" that it seems like mental illness...she's flopped again. In Legion when the entire planet was about to be destroyed, she threw a hissy fit and AFK'd the entire expansion rather than ally with the Horde. Now in BFA, with the Horde actively genociding and trying to wipe out her people, we get this Jaina:

???: Hold on... Are you suggesting we lay down our arms and fight beside them? After all they've done?!
Jaina: No. Merely that we direct our efforts against Azshara instead of the Horde.

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Blizz really needs to stop flipflopping her.

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Speaking of flops:

Eh, they ruined her character so badly it's hard to care at this point.

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It is annoying, yes. But most of the time she has reasons for her actions.

In Legion, it was believed that the Horde had betrayed the Alliance, so her unwillingness to continue working with the Horde was completely understandable. She was not advocating starting a war with the Horde. She was merely unwilling to enable perceived fair-weather allies or, at worst, traitors to endanger the Alliance more than it already was, in the face of a Legion invasion.

In 8.2, her actions are the result of Baine's actions reminding her that not all Horde members are deserving of her hatred and that, despite appearances, there is still some good in the Horde.

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That was beautiful.

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BFA Jaina seems to be the perfect continuation to TFT Jaina

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bad writing!!

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The polish on the writing has never been better. I don't understand this criticism. The narrative is too similar to MOP and is relying on its third act reveal too much, but I just don't see what others are seeing.

WoW's characters have ALWAYS changed to suit the needs of the devs. Why are people acting like this is such a sudden change?

Remember when Garrosh was a depressed pacifist in BC and then suddenly an uber-aggressive human-hater (HE'D NEVER EVEN SEEN HUMANS!!!) in the Wrath pre-patch? Then he was all ruggedly honourable in Cata and a psycho in MOP?

Remember when Saurfang the Younger flinched from the sight of blood and made the player character kill his enemies because he couldn't, then was suddenly the baddest ass on the planet at the Wrathgate?

Remember diplomatic ex-slave Thrall making a warmongering psycho war chief and a SLAVER the head of a Horde faction?

Why are people acting like BFA is written extra poorly? Where was this level of scrutiny in Legion, where space gods trap Satan in a chair with absolutely no set-up????

That was never a thing for Dranosh at all

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From the quest 'Once were warriors':

<Saurfang turns to face you.> Is it blood that I smell? I regret being unable to lend assistance. How proud you must be. My chest swells just knowing what you have done. Are there others like you? Where you come from, do more heroes exist?

That's hardly the uber-confidant berserker we see at the Wrathgate.

But I concede there are much better examples.

... Literally none of that indicates he's unable to go because he doesn't LIKE blood, he's INJURED.

From killing so many Murkbloods he was BURIED under them, did you even read the quests you're purporting to cite?


Also this is his non-quest dialogue



He's in bloody bandages for crying out loud

Forgive me if this seems blunt but between your misreading of the situation and your claims that people didn't cry out about shit writing in previous expacs when it's really never stopped I have to wonder what planet you live on.

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Was a rude to you, or something buddy? I concede that you're right and I'm wrong - no need for the snark.

I do, however, feel like the whining is much worse this xpac. Bleating out 'bad writing' and 'mOrAlLy gRey' are not discussions.

1. No I'm just frustrated, my apologies.

2. Because Blizz has made it clear they think they're doing a great job while continually making things worse. They are retreading a story arc no one wanted for the Horde the first time.

It's upsetting because a lot of people like me WANT to at least be able to palate the game and enjoy the franchise they grew up with.

But Blizz has made the characters so stupid, and the plot so nonsensical that it's impossible.

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I dunno. I think people are forgetting the Cata days, when whole zones were just Indiana Jones parodies and Thrall acted like an idiot and Deathwing's plan made no sense when he could just fly back to the Maelstrom and try again. This is poetry compared.

Intercontinental Catapults are dumb.

Thrall's STILL dumb and I'd argue he, Eitrigg, and Saurfang have been made even dumber.

Sylvanas tearing the Horde apart by being stupid evil is EVEN DUMBER.

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Technically speaking, Battle for Azeroth has better writing than the last five expansions (I'd also put the Burning Crusade in there personally, but that is because of my personal distaste for its worldbuilding, story writing was actually rather alright). Its problem is that this writing is either depressing, offending or both for many, many people.

Well, also the two primary plot threads - faction war and saving the planet - have a really hard time coexisting as tandem primary foci of an expansion. Like how the player's mission to hoard Azerite in the HoA while taking down anyone who's otherwise harvesting the stuff for their own use is directly contradictory to the player's mission to help their own faction collect and militarize the Azerite. Or how until 8.2 that seemed at least marginally - if sloppily - "addressed" by nobody tied to the faction war really seeming to acknowledge the existence of the Heart of Azeroth or its purpose, suggesting maybe Magni and the player weren't filling in the faction leaders on the details to prevent conflicting loyalties from compromising the mission. Only for previously faction war-attached characters to be shunted off into the Azshara story where they spontaneously know about it and incorporate its presence into their plans and observations in Nazjatar.

WoW always had the issue of perpetual faction infighting making every major threat seem less than immediate as we stomped its face at our leisure in while simultaneously killing each other. BfA exacerbates that by taking the faction war front-and-center in parallel to its global threats rather than keeping it an already uneven sideline, and in so doing it becomes glaringly obvious that when they try to make the world stories and the faction conflict equally prominent, both suffer because neither can properly account for the other.

It's also kinda damaged by the way that the whole destruction of both fleets (with the Alliance one being predominantly Stormwind ships for some reason; they must have trouble rendering more than three or four Kul Tiran ships at a time or something) feeling like a big ol' "hahaha, everything before 8.2 was a big fat waste of time!" Which ironically is almost like a meta reference to how the HoA has previously worked out, but nonetheless seems kind of hollow. I can't bring myself to care about losing all those ships because we never saw what was so great about having them in the first place, a circumstance worsened by both factions constantly whipping out stuff like airships in every other zone throughout the faction assaults anyway, which frankly should have already removed most of the factions' reliance upon naval power.

Worse, the fact that the factions both can open portals back home - a necessity for the story in this case given the HoA quest stories rather than just a game mechanic convenience - undermines the whole idea of Azshara "trapping" us. Why are we wasting our time taking down this showboating second-tier villain? We could all have immediately headed home to deal with more important things and left her to continue twiddling her thumbs at the bottom of the sea with a still-imprisoned N'zoth like she has for the past 10,000 years, and what could she do? Use the Tidestone to be a pain in the ass for naval shipping lanes or something? Meh. It makes N'zoth's seeming imminent escape at our unwitting hands seem less like a clever trap by the looming threat of Azshara and more like a sloppy contrivance born of a Raid that doesn't even need to happen. Why do we care about Azshara? She and the naga have had 10,000 years to get around to becoming a real danger, and that ship sailed when Cataclysm cut short the one time they finally came across as gearing up to become threatening. If she could truly do something to us outside her kingdom that was serious enough to merit treating her like a massive and impending global hazard, she already would have done it. But she hasn't. She and her elf-serpent-people have basically been little more than a smarter brand of murloc or snakier brand of kvaldir, harassing fishermen on random shorelines like some aquatic irritant. Even the Tortollans throughout BfA have spoken of naga the way most NPC's talk about kobolds or virmen, like this annoying nuisance that just needs needs to be beaten up whenever they make a nuisance of themselves.

It all just feels overly pre-scripted without proper lead-in (incidentally one of the problems with the latter portions of a certain popular show that ended this year.) Between the Old God(s), Sylvanas and Azshara they're leaning hard into this implication of the bad guys foreseeing everything, which means them basically having a copy of the expansion's script and is one of the worst ways to write a story. Diablo already exhausted the viability of the "bad guys really meant to lose all along" trope; at this point it just comes across like the villains are either incompetent or indifferent until the story arbitrarily decides they suddenly need to have retroactively known exactly what they were doing the whole time.

Yup, you've both said it beautifully. I feel like the writing this xpac is the best its ever been on a technical level, which is why I really don't like this catchcry of 'bad writing'. If anything it is bad management of the narrative - they need a group editor like Marvel or DC books.

The two concurrent storylines - one that is a replay of MOP that relies entirely on a third-act reveal of Sylvanas' plans that is designed to make us go 'ooooh I see' and a very basic, tried-and-true save the world plot' are exactly as you said - confused. But, I don't think an expansion has ever been this interesting and jam-packed full of ideas (cept maybe MOP). I'm enjoying the richness of this xpac's lore, but not the the clashing themes.

BTW Azshara put down a teleportation block.

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I'd say that Battle for Azeroth's greatest issue and damn shame is that the general story idea is not particularly suited for an MMO, yet would have been perfect in an RTS game. Not only would an RTS serve better for this sort of story, but more importantly, the story would not have to be adapted and constructed to fit Blizzard's patch cycle and general expansion structure, so it could be more fluid, organic, and ultimately sensible.

It's kind of debatable where the deviation came from.

I TEND to think that the "out of character" bits are the ending cinematic to MoP (i.e. "End the Horde") and her weird scene in Legion. (Sure, the whole world is in danger, but you just throw your hissy fit Jaina while Khadgar patronizes you like you're a twelve year old.)

To me, her stuff in MoP and BfA proper are all mostly internally logical. Jaina tries to make the best of what happened at Theramore, is betrayed so she unleashes her fury on the traitorous Sunreavers, then comes to the conclusion that there can be no peace so long as Garrosh is WarChief (totally legit conclusion). She even seems to find common ground with Lor'themor.

Then BfA features her mostly coming into focus as an important link to Kul Tiras, she helps lead an invasion against the Horde, but Baine basically offers her an olive branch by helping to rescue her brother. Then Thrall (her close ally and old friend shows up) and the two have a little chat, and she remembers who she is.

It's only flip flopping if you're not paying attention to what's happening. I don't think it's great or anything, I don't really like it (I miss my snarky smart-ass nerd Jaina from Reign of Chaos) but I don't think it's particularly spotty.

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Wasn't it just for the player, because we have the HoA? Everyone else is trapped, and it's not like it's a good idea to let a villain have a PoC. Then there's the slaves.

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A thread on MMMO-C made me realize that teleporting out of Nazjatar would almost certainly kill the player from the bends.

It sure doesn't stop Magni from using it to come fetch the players for our next set of Artifact quests.

The fact she has the Tidestone in the first place is just a sloppily written contrivance anyway, snowballing the rest of the patch's story premise into ever more sloppily written contrivances.

The Kirin Tor, Legionfall, some autonomous Class Hall (the Valarjar come to mind) or whoever else one would expect to be keeping an eye on the Pillars should have come ringing to warn us the moment a bunch of naga showed up and took the Tidestone. But no, it has to be a big "surprise," so Azshara herself reveals after the fact that the defenders of Azeroth evidently followed up the Legion's defeat by immediately leaving the Pillars of Creation unguarded so any schmuck with gills or a boat can just waltz over to the Broken Isles and steal them.

Never mind that according to Magni the Pillars are supposedly needed to keep the felstorm portal closed, meaning if one was taken away there should already be another demonic invasion of Azeroth underway.

And the entire time they keep ignoring that flight exists on Azeroth, canonically, among damned near every faction playable or otherwise, but since this is "the boat expansion" being stuck at sea is spontaneously made into this insurmountable obstacle.

Ever since Rise of the Lich King predicted Nazjatar's rise from the sea, the idea has carried a billion problems with it, not least of which is that the naga would be deliberately disadvantaging themselves against everyone else by turning their domain into our domain. And sadly with the time finally here they've struck every beat when it comes to poorly justifying it, right down to Azshara and Sylvanas basically following their own respective advance copies of the BfA script so the bizarre and ridiculous things they do can be dictated by forced and convoluted foresight rather than them actually being characters who act certain ways because of how they, as the characters they are, would logically act.

Well no, that'd only be the case if Nazjatar were still submerged, and therefore still under increased atmospheric pressure.

The logical fallacy is instead that Nazjatar isn't coated with millions of dead fish. For whatever reason, it would seem carp are the only native life forms in Nazjatar that can't also survive on land. No whales, no sharks, no threshadons; seemingly everything in the place is amphibious. There are hardly any truly marine animals living there.