I always took that, for Baine, it was a matter of morality rather than honor. He knew the war was wrong, went with it until his breaking point and can't tolerate it any longer. But he mentioning the Earthmother is awesome and makes his position a tauren thing rather than just a Baine thing.

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I'll admit I'm glad someone acknowledged the planet is dying, I'd like if he brought ot up to other members of the Horde in front of Sylv more

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So.

Do we all hate BfA yet?

I hate the faction war's stupidity, but I like the two new continents/islands and most of the allied races.

As someone who loves trolls, vanilla human zones and playable races, I could never hate BFA. But some of the faction war content makes it really difficult not to dislike this expansion to some extent.

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I don't have a reason to hate Battle for Azeroth. It's certainly one of my more favorite expansions.

So . . . what's Vol'jin's status now?

It originally took a powerful ritual to get him to manifest, and then in 8.1 he was travelling around with us, and now in 8.1.5 he just pops into Talanji's coronation to wave hi?

Eh...

It's fine for what it is, I just don't like any of the current gear designs and will probably let my sub sit until 8.2.5.

I'm pretty sure his "death" is an elaborate tax avoidance scheme.

Over the course of the 8.1 questline it was stated that his spirit was growing stronger and summoning him was getting easier each time it was attempted (at the Broken Shore, Orgrimmar and so on).

By the end of it, he says he will keep an eye on Sylvanas.

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Same.

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I'm kinda interested in BfA. It's not the best expansion, but nowhere near as bad as people paint it as. I think the problem with BfA is that is has a lot of features but none truly shines above what we've seen before.

I do think Blizzard is doing a better than average work on the story, but the plot has some flaws that make it not as enjoyable as I'd hope. Still, I'm invested in it and I think it will pay off in the end.

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Battle for Azeroth is far from my favorite expansion, but its nowhere near my least favorite or what I would think is the worst. I don't like to assess my overall judgment of where an expansion fits into my overall ranking until all the patches are out and there's been some distance to look back on it, but so far I definitely like it more than Cata and WoD at least.

For reference, my "best to worst expansion" list at the moment is:

MoP - Wrath - Legion - TBC - Cata - WoD (though honestly I have a soft spot for WoD whereas I find Cata forgettable, but WoD's post launch abandonment makes it objectively worse)

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So, there's something rather odd I noticed at the end of "A Gathering of Foes," the quest where Alliance players witness Baine getting arrested.

Part of Jaina's text for the turn-in is as follows:

"Sylvanas has made a bold move. We'll go after her, but she's cunning. We need to push back the naga and gather our forces for a final strike."

Strange that she'd say such a thing, considering the naga aren't really present in the central narrative or overtly moving against the Alliance and Horde yet, and presumably won't be until the very end of 8.1.5 or the start of 8.2.

Halford mentions being busy fighting the naga during the quest to to go Stormsong to spy on the Horde as well. I wonder if these quests were supposed to come around the same time as the Crucible of Storms questline originally. It would explain the day long mission already dividing the war campaign neatly into two parts.

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We need to give expansions three scores rather than one lump score.

1. Lore Score

2. Gameplay Score

3. Style Score (Art, Music, etc)

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All of WoW's expansions would get the following;

Lore Score: Meh, bland and spread thin at best.
Gameplay Score: Alright. Possibly heavily addictive at times.
Style Score: Top notch. Pretty much spot on at all times.

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Eh, certainly not spot on at all times. Icecrown felt rather underwhelming and generic, for example. Instead of a white hell full of strange Scourge-Nerubian architecture, we got ourselves a blue Mordor.

Every expansion has had boring and lackluster zones or dungeons. So I say not at all times, but pretty much.

And prior to unlocking the riding skill to fly in Northrend, with the towering walls and clusters of high levelled and some elite monsters, I think Icecrown had, if nothing else, an imposing and oppressive atmosphere that was very befitting. But sure, it was a pretty lackluster zone compared to a lot of others WotLK delivered, and the imposing atmosphere was gone when the Argent Crusade set up a massive tournament arena in the mountains.

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Running WoD dungeons for mogs made me realize WoD's main issue was just not being finished. If it was finished and given a proper patch cycle instead of throwing resources at garrisons it would've probably ended well like MoP did.

Cata though was fundamentally flawed on a story, design, and systems level though. It's like the design document was cribbed from a teenage Horde fanboy from the forums. "We'll have every zone be about how COOL the Horde are, they'll kill tons of Alliance in every town. The Horde will be super strong and honorable because Alliance are gay 12 year olds lol. Dungeons will be SUPER hard because scrubs don't deserve epics, only RAIDERS can gear lol. Then Thrall will be the strongest Shaman EVER and be given ALL the power of the Aspects and defeat Deathwing!"

Even the moments that were supposed to be badass for the Horde felt weird.

Like the dozens of demolishers hitting maestra's post just felt... dumb.

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I leveled my first Horde character since vanilla through the Cata revamp recently, and I’ve rarely felt so... dirty playing a game.

Every zone is just you slaughtering Alliance forces for the horrible act of, I dunno, defending themselves against the Horde’s attacks and genocide I guess? Literally, genocide. They have death camps and the carpet bomb with plague canisters. I mean the Alliance fights the Horde to defend itself and not be killed, while the Horde fights the Alliance just to kill the Alliance.

Seriously, there’s no motivation. You can tell this was when the devs were at peak Horde bias. They just assume you agree the Horde is Right and Honorable and Cool and that’s enough motivation to hate the Alliance.

It would be like if GTAV painted the playable characters as unironic heroes because they killed any pesky cop for the horrible injustice of shooting at them while they were going on a public rampage.

Some random thoughts:

I think Sylvanas’ actual master is Helya since the pact in Helheim. Blizzard made us kill Helya to throw us off that trail, but the Island Expeditions make it clear Helya’s not quite dead.

Also, Sylvanas’ powers over undeath seem to be getting stronger but kept hidden from players. In “Dark Mirror” it’s stated the val’kyr can’t create greater undead without a power source (such as the Lich King), unless they sacrifice some of their own power. But now not only Sylvanas is creating more dark rangers than ever, she also made Derek a greater undead.

Beyond that, the Horde has been showing a lot of death knights, specially as elite quest mobs in faction invasions. Where are these death knights coming from?

And let’s not forget the attempted alliance with Dreven and his san’layn.

Either Sylvanas is using azerite to empower her val’kyr, or she’s getting power from somewhere else (Helya?).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Helya was the one that killed Vol’jin and tricked him into placing Sylvanas in power. Then she contacted Sylvanas and revealed about Eyr, thus tempting Sylvanas into their pact.

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Pretty much why I unsubbed when it became clear that Sylvanas's "Kill them for resisting us!" nonsense in BFA wasn't going to be questioned by... anyone in the Horde.

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One of the worst parts was how the way she kills Zelling reflects on the Horde leadership's bizarre inaction. The fact that Baine's arrested is allowed to completely overshadow the fact that by taking responsibility for Derek's "escape," he was in effect saying he really did the thing they'd just accused Zelling of doing. And yet in spite of that, she has Zelling killed anyway.

Meaning to the other observing leaders, it should have looked like Sylvanas just arbitrarily had Nathanos execute Zelling anyway, right after - from what they'd just witnessed right before - he'd seemingly been exonerated by way of Baine's confession.

With said execution punctuating her "there's no room for weakness" statement, as if not actually being a traitor (again, seemingly) somehow paints Zelling as weak. Amidst their reactions to Baine's arrest, none of the leaders say a thing about the fact that Sylvanas basically made her "point" by offhandedly murdering one of her own people who (to their eyes, based on what they knew and Baine's admission) turned out to have not actually done anything wrong.

I guess you missed the quest "The War of Northwatch Aggression" in southern Durotar where Alliance forces where making a base in to attack Sen'jin village, Orgrimmar, and The Valley of Trials. If that doesn't merit aggressive response, I don't know what does.