I don't hate calia, but man does she not feel like a part of the game AT ALL. She doesn't feel woven into the fabric of the world or like she's a part of the story.

She's just... showing up now. And it's weird.

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"The Demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were."

Admittedly a far cry better than the "wait, what?" moment anyone unfamiliar with out-of-game materials probably had to Anveena at the Sunwell, but yeah, they haven't really done very much in-game to properly established and familiarize undead, post-BtS Calia as a "thing" for players who don't read the books or at least keep up on them through the wiki's and such.

The problem is this flies in the face of their "unless we force 90-100% of the playerbase to use it then its not worth the development" design idealogy. Everything is shaped by this single-minded focus now. Otherwise there would be literally no reason why we don't get a "No thanks" option for participating in some of the incredibly divisive story moments or that warfronts gear was pushed higher and higher over and over to force people do it even when they hated it or that we only ever have Humans mattering on the Alliance. Etc etc. Its all part of the laser focus design.

Even if we pick the simplest option (split the Horde and Ally in half with one side for peace and one side for war for a total of 4 factions) then I guarantee you the end result would be the end of big cinematic moments like BFA's starting point or, more likely, the differences between the "good" and "bad" just fading over time to unnoticeable.

I mean, do you really think Blizzard would be prepared to provide alternate content for the half of the Horde playerbase that wanted to tell Sylvanas to go fuck herself when she asks for their help to launch an assault on Darkshore? Or the half Alliance who wanted to assist Tyrande in Darkshore over assaulting the Zandalari with Anduin? They're never going to bother.

If we have no factions, we essentially have more factions.

Because if there's no big Alliance, and the Horde is pretty much a loose coalition, every race and capital is out for themselves. Night elves can fight humans AND orcs, tauren can fight goblins over mining and natural exploitation, etc.

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On the 8.2.5 cinematics:

It's weird to see something of pretty darn good quality that sorta makes you squirm inside, wishing you could like it and appreciate it the way it obviously wants you to.
But I can't.
My thoughts can be crystallized in this little edit of my favourite part, follow me on this if you will:

Now replace Jaina with Shandris Feathermoon.
Or Tyrande. Or that kid who was "the last night elf to escape Teldrassil with their life", as the story goes, holding his hand, looking up at him with silvery eyes.

Now write me Anduin's line.
I fucking dare you Blizzard. Write me Anduin's goddamn line, or whatever the hell happens instead for this version of the scene.


Sorry.

You get the idea folks.

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There are Night Elves NPCs talking in-game about how they should get their revenge. And some other bits, like the Night Warrior going out for them.

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Kind of beside the point of me explaining how I felt about the cinematics. That night elves were absent wasn't really my point.

But sure, lets talk about what you brought up. Thanks to the internet I'm well aware of what you mention. And that they make it very visibly obvious that Tyrande herself didn't care to show up. On it's own, that's all fine.

What bothers me, and what I want to know, is where the hell did Greymane and Shandris with their crews of fighters come from? Last I heard, they were fighting at Darkshore. Or stranded in Najatar? What, did they take Jaina's flying ship to Durotar? Who knows.
All joking about fantasy logistics aside, the real problem with these two and all the "the Night Warrior will hunt them down" -talk is that not a single one of these opportunities is ever taken to say a single word about how that whole 'taking back their home' thing is going. Are we supposed to assume that the two notables who arrived at Durotar rampaged their way there through all of the occupying forces in Ashenvale? If so, why not mention such a delightful little fact to all the worgen and night elf fans who are known to be mad as hell these days?

Thing is, missing all of these opportunities to mention the occupation of the night elf homeland being over, or anything at all to that effect, now that Sylvanas went and ragequit her job leaves me to guess at why. Not even an epilogue scene about some night elf confronting the kid with the glowing sword about any of this, because apparently a couple of undead are still more important than all that. Even in the alliance epilogue.

And my guess is that the only reason to withhold such an answer at a time like this, where we're apparently supposed to feel relieved that a villain got taken down at least a notch, is that they already know the answer is not what people like me want to hear.

They really should've been a whole lot clearer about whether those vengeful elves were merely discussing the potential merits of going on a random orc shooting spree across durotar, or whether they were meta-protesting to their ongoing fight to liberate their homeland getting called off when they weren't done with it yet.

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The bulk of the night elves and worgen are indeed committed to the Darkshore campaign.

Shandris and Genn, via the War Campaign installments and Mission Table, are specifically attached to the Boralus end of things along with limited contingents of worgen and Sentinels (presumably their personal retinues of elite soldiers or something), so story-wise they tend to go wherever the player goes. Which is why they're both also present for faction assaults and Nazjatar.

It indeed doesn't make much sense within the greater story arc, but then when it comes down to it, Anduin and Tyrande's whole exchange doesn't really add up to much. Despite the mutual refusal of reinforcements, the players get sent by Anduin to both Warfronts, and Darkshore lacking footmen or Arathi lacking Sentinels doesn't really matter because the presence of the players always comes across as the real reason any given prolonged conflict in WoW is won or lost anyway.

It would only end up meaningful if we'd found out that canonically the Arathi and Darkshore Warfronts were both decisively lost to the Horde because the Alliance's armies didn't fully cooperate on either front to secure them. Which seems an unlikely thematic outcome for the story to pursue when the current faction war is made out to be concluded with Saurfang's death and Sylvanas' departure.

Also lets not forget that as per the script we were given in 8.1, Tyrande's primary objective, as loudly stated over and over from Anduin's office to the shore with the laughably badly shoehorned double animation in front of her nose, was always to take back her people's home. Even on the hippogryphs with Maiev asking about Sira, she mentions her people's future being at stake when she gives the warden command of the battle of Darkshore.

And now all of a sudden all of that -appears- to have been substituted for a straightforward manhunt for the now-former forsaken leaders. No mention of any of the other stuff is made at all, and Maiev and Malfurion are both unaccounted for as far as anyone knows.
As I already said, seems like this stuff would've been rather important to address given the nature of what went down in Durotar and how they specifically make a point of drawing attention to Tyrande in particular, as opposed to coming across as though they just forgot.

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And Anduin says the Alliance is wiining every front in 8.1.5, so...

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

- A better signature coming soon(ish).

The whole 'Sylvanas has the only army capable of defeating N'zoth' or whatever is kind of weird. Hasn't the Alliance been winning this conflict so far? Weird that she'd have the superior army, and by a significant margin at that.

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I imagine the Black Moon crew might be excluded from that equation as of the moment their leader(s) walked out on Anduin in 8.1. On top of the fact that the same scene where Alleria makes that statement is also your first chance to find out from Anduin that Tyrande is officially a no-show, unless I'm mistaken.

As for how the king's remaining force is so small? You can be winning fronts and still lose manpower in the process. Also, the last thing that happened was Azshara's trap. If Sylvanas is indeed in cahoots with the naga, she probably only sent enough people to convince Lor'themar that she meant business, whereas Shaw's intel by that line of logic was a trap designed to cause as much death as possible.

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Especially since really it more specifically doesn't make much sense for her to have available forces to deal with N'zoth. Anduin's whole "if we lose at Orgrimmar, we're done" bit indeed contradicted his prior statements about winning on all fronts at the very least, but at least mae a tiny sliver of theoretical sense if the intended implication was that he'd be spending all of the Alliance forces not already engaged against the Horde around Azeroth in the assault and losing them would mean eventually losing on the other fronts for lack of reinforcements as Orgrimmar could then redeploy more of its standing army to reinforce those abroad.

Yet somehow apparently Sylvanas is sitting on this huge reserve of unoccupied forces that could be solving the N'zoth problem instead of repelling the assault on Orgrimmar? How?

Honestly the whole faction war's conclusion feels extremely rushed and disjointed, like they'd counted on having one or two more patches to shift around the disposition of the war and slow-reveal Sylvanas' intentions, but hit the wall of 8.2.5 and had to wrap things up so we can go deal with off N'zoth in 8.3. Even the hints of other potential Warfronts being planned suggests they had significantly bigger plans for building it up and winding it down at one point.

I've never been a fan of the whole faction war, but still, 8.2 and its 8.2.5 subsidiary carry the same unpleasant vibes that 7.2 did. As with Legion, the midpoint is rapidly proving to be the undoing of what cohesiveness this expansion's story had, as much of what came before is simply ignored and cast aside to completely switch things up and cram a bunch of different themes down our throats halfway through instead. Things that were big deals just get shunted off and forgotten. Environs and events that really should have served as stages for the final confrontation of the expansion get hastily tied up to make room for the big "surprise, this is where the real ending will be!" setup. It feels increasingly impersonal, as entire swathes of previously central plot points are scraped away in short order to simplify the conclusion and make room for the final patch cycle's inevitable seeding of the next expansion.

WoD also scrapped a lot of story lines.
The team has some production planning problems.

Maybe this is just me being misinformed from streamers and the like, but maybe part of all that is that warfronts in particular aren't exactly the most gripping, popular content out there from what I've heard?

Kind of in a similar vein to how the burning of Teldrassil seems to have gone sideways in terms of what they expected audience reactions to be on average, resulting in a number of, what seems like at least partial rewrites of some stuff that followed.

Although here I'll admit that I'm just spitballing off of a few, potentially very opinionated pieces of information.

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I believe it's specifically referencing the Undead, or something else that the Horde possess that the Alliance doesn't.

Agreed. I've been saying this in every single possible place I'm able to: the 8.0 zone stories (Drustvar, Tiragarde Sound, Nazmir, Vol'dun, Zuldazar) and some others (Vol'jin, Mechagon, Ankoan, Gilblin) are way more interesting than the bigger plots.

It's a shame that most of them, if not all of them, are going to be scrapped, first in favor of the current overarching plot, and then for the following expansion's premise.

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I think its just the next logical extension of them doubling down on "Play the patch" style design. Sudden shocking twists and big artistic centrepieces are a huge crux in short term marketing.

In that sense treating each patch like its a mini expansion instead where they try to sell you a sub rather than a game makes perfect sense.

I am honestly a bit worried that Blizzard are going to flip flop and have Alleria and Vereesa join Sylvanas.

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@arn nice post
What i've noticed is during Cataclysm analytical lore fans were ragging about how unrealistic the horde numbers were compared to aliance. But now i don't see anyone talking about it. Everyone seems to accept that the horde and alliance start BFA just as strong. Is their some truth most now just look at it like strongholds/land = might?

Talking about rushed content, Did i miss something in between, how did the alliance become so buddy buddy with another resistance of the horde? never seen any info about that?

They've always done that, while it's fine when they cut sidestories like Titan stuf, or a nerubian content in wrath as an example.

The issue is:
1. This is about the main plot, Faction War
2. This is a faction war, a toxic subject that should be done more carefully and not rushed.

Her plan right now seems to be to stay out of it and wait for everyone to kill each other, then show up to pick up the pieces. I think her role in 8.2 is kind of getting misinterpreted.

I've never really felt like Blizzard had a good grasp on what it's expansion structure should look like. Classic and TBC are just kind of all over the place because they were still learning but WotLK and beyond there's a clear attempt to create a sort of three act structure like a movie.

Which... doesn't really work. I don't think any of the WoW expansions have had entirely cohesive storytelling and to be honest, I think BfA has actually done it the best and most consistently. Primarily because the stakes are so low and they haven't introduced a crap ton of new characters and concepts in the interim. This has primarily always been a story about Anduin & Sylvanas (and Saurfang and Jaina) and their battle for Azeroth.

The Baine scenario essentially. More or less... Thrall came back, and Thrall & Jaina are buddies.

I mean... trying to reason out or logic this out, or find realism in it is pointless. Thrall's horde took their entire population of internment camp refugees across the ocean in whatever ships they had docked at that internment camp in Arathi.

It's a computer game. Logistics are not going to be coherent, and it's honestly kind of a ball and chain if they try to do that. It takes away from the poignancy and emotional impact of the storytelling in my mind.

It's like that silly line from Greymane about "they'll be calling up farmers next". As if everyone is just lined up ready to go to war and they're calling everyone up by occupation or... what? It's so weirdly half-assed.

Like the point is that there's an endless waging war and countless citizens of Stormwind have been losing their lives for a decade over it or some other conflict. That's where the focus should be. Not "oh our population is running out".

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"The Demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were."

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Worgen and goblin heritage armor spoilers:

-Worgen: Tess wants to become a worgen, Genn won't let her. You go into an Emerald Dream version of Gilneas City and replay the battle of Gilneas from Cata except with the worgen winning and killing Nathanos (who come to think of it wasn't even there) Tess realizes that she and her people aren't worgen, they're Gilneans and that she doesn't need to become one since the curse isn't who the are..

-Goblin: You go to Kezan, where Gallywix has taken over and usurp him to make Gazlowe the new Trade Prince of the Bilgewater Cartel.

Also, even bigger spoiler about the future of the Horde: Calia joins the Horde to become the new leader of the Forsaken. Derek Proudmoore, Delaryn Summermoon and Lilian Voss are her assistants/followers. Together they seek to change the Forsaken's society.

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So Wrathion is corrupted by the old gods and a boss in the back empire raid

What a waste of time this character was.

Good news! He's the first boss and you end the fight by freeing him of corruption, he then helps you in the N'Zoth fight.

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Delaryn...? She's not with Sylvanas?

So, the raised night elves just switched sides and fought for their murderers on their own will?

That sucks major balls unless there's some explanation about mind-control somewhere in the plot...

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

- A better signature coming soon(ish).