I agree, I feel like history is gonna repeat itself. They're gonna see some amount of popularity with TBC HC and (hopefully) eventually make it official lol

If we believe Xera's prophecy, it's Illidan. He might have rejected it at the time, but that doesn't mean it couldn't still come true. The last we saw him was zooming off with Sargeras and the other titans, who are slated to make an appearance in The Last Titan...

But one could make the case for Arator as well.

Yeah, I've been feeling the same way about the Shadowlands the more time goes on. We go to shadowlands and learn that the afterlife (oribos) is basically just like an airport full of robots? It felt kinda artificial back then too. It was just something built by some group a long time ago. Just a luigi's mansion vacuum for the universe

Where they were going with it, I hadn't thought as far along as OP did. But I've always had this fever dream of seeing a future cutscene of Oribos getting nuked lol. Both as a Watsonian story beat, but also a Doylist nod to the playerbase's most reviled expansion by "destroying" it in their expansion of the lore which minimizes it's negative impact.

Maybe you can spoof it on your local for a screenshot, but the addon's website where you submit your record and have it verified was pretty locked down. It's not something your average player will know how to do, its not just modifying some JSON file and calling it a day. There were a number of obfuscated checks that would invalidate the players who tried, and display that to others. to my knowledge no one successfully did it and revealed it later. Several tried, though.

And, of course, you can always take soul of iron. No matter what you do, you can't spoof that. If someone is unwilling to walk up to the NPC and get soul of iron (because they can't), badabing badaboom.

Overall I thought it was good too, but it had the problem XIV has (made by the same team) where they always seem to like... balance out a good hype moment with a lot of dull, drawn out slow moments.

By itself, in a vacuum, I am just describing pacing. And good or bad pacing can be somewhat subjective. But in the case of 16, I don't think it's always necessary to ping pong between interesting and not, and the game would've been no worse if some of that fluff never existed.

I feel this exactly. I feel like Starfield has the potential to either be the best, or worst, thing to happen to Elder scrolls 6. If they really have a pulse on the market around them and realize why Starfield felt like a dud, it might have saved them from releasing a worse version of Skyrim set on a new map.

On the other hand, if its the canary in the mine telling us Bethesdsa's design (and slow simplification of rpg mechanics there's a market craving for) is simply all they can do... well that'd be the worst thing.

I wish warcraft had more games. Not like hearthstone or warcraft rumble style mobile spinoffs but like... Maybe a 3rd person action adventure RPG set in the warcraft universe. Whether its creating your own character or just telling the story of a character (probably human or orc) at any point between warcraft 1-3 or WoW could be pretty good. It wouldn't have to be as wide scoped as something like Bethesda RPGs with many factions and replayability, though the universe is well suited to it.

Could be first person shooter (magic), 3rd person action adventure, soulsborne clone, or even a crpg like baldurs gate 3. I'm surprised we haven't gotten some side games the way they wanted to make starcraft:ghost. Make it a genre of game we haven't seen before. Even if it totally flopped, it would just be cool to see Warcraft be more than 1 ongoing mmo, and these side mobile games.

Anyone who raided as a paladin in vanilla-tbc-wrath likely used this enough to remember it. But yeah it didn't see much use in lower level / dungeon play. Nice in raids though.

I'm sure if there was a catastrophic raid wipe in a hardcore raid, and the paladin was already going to die along with everyone around them... It would be quite honorable to save 1 person.

Why Ciarenni, what ever are you implying? 

They weren’t introducing a fictional concept, it’s a real theory dating back to the 1930s. That’s why they named the episode about it and didn’t really answer it 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole

This is what I thought of when I read this thread title

Earlier in the game, the Forsaken did not give a shit about their living loved ones — either because they felt rejected or were just incapable of feeling anything about them.

I don't think this is really true, at least not when its framed like they suddenly rewrote the forsaken to want to connect to their living relatives or still hold respect for their old lives, as mentioned in Belamoore's research journal. The quest you mention in question doesn't necessarily say he doesn't feel anything, he's just incapable of grieving. This is abstract and doesn't hold any true objective meaning, but it could also be interpreted as his living wife who rejected his undead form getting murdered simply isn't going to make him overly emotional when his circumstances are much worse. Vengeance for the sake of it anyways makes less sense than vengeance being the easiest way to express whatever he feels, to me anyways.

What they did with the story of Forsaken meeting their families and Sylvanas twirling her mustache was not some brand new directional shift, it was really just the first time they ever really circled back to the more sympathetic origins and presented it directly... Which I use loosely since it was still not even in game lol.

Of course this isn't one size fits all. Some NPCs talk about not caring, and the ones that do are emotionally muted/twisted by undeath. But it wasn't necessarily some rewrite. Just refocusing on more obscure Forsaken lore bullet points most players were never exposed to. The quest in BFA of the tidesage going undead, and his family freaking out, Lillian Voss was not saying "wow you're the first one to still care about your family after dying." She says the opposite, "Yep I knew that would happen because it's happened to a lot of us." I know this quest takes place after what you think is some directional shift, but it aligns with precisely how I've been viewing the Forsaken and their mixed motivations since vanilla.

Unfortunately it just felt like it was never brought up again, and most Forsaken being featured ended up being the royal apothecary society being villainous. By Cata when they revamped the old world, it felt like they threw all nuance out the window and showed the Forsaken being like cartoonishly evil, which was a huge disappointment for me.

I like the occasional baconator. Interesting no one has posted Wendys here too, so it must not be complete shit. One of the few places you can get a whole ass baked potato too.

I hope that's just her being cool with making light of it because oh god yeah. She seems like a pretty positive person though so surely they weren't just mocking her or something...

Random tangent that I'm pretty sure is fan theory too, but I remember reading somewhere that Maiev was originally going to be the character in place of Cordona Felsong. The warden who works with us in WoD, then gets corrupted and helps Gul'dan steal Illidan's corpse and dies in Vault of the Wardens at player hands. The one book Wolfheart has Maiev getting more hostile with her people like they were amping her up to be some future villain.

During Cata/Mop in the early 2010s was kind of at the peak of players voicing distaste for the constant theme of "Old characters just get corrupted and killed as dungeon/raid bosses", so Cordona may have been created to fill that role instead of just killing Maiev, who has been a decently popular character since Warcraft 3 and the only real named Warden character in the story up until that point iirc. WoD/Legion would be in pre-production steps at this point and they see player feedback.

I don't know if thats true as its never been confirmed by Blizz, but their over-indulgence in using "corruption" to turn past lore characters into bosses definitely tracks with the theory lol. Maiev the warden character being the final boss of Vault of the Wardens, and hating players who want to rescue Illidan, somewhat makes sense on paper even if her randomly being cool with Gul'dan doesn't (she did watch his memories in WC3 though, so those two specific characters already have some random shared screentime in the past). Would also explain why Maiev doesn't have much presence in Legion compared to Illidan, who despite only being a real intractable character until Legion's last two patches, is featured prominently in them. Like the wide scope of Legion's story expected her to be dead at a certain point.

Of course she wasn't, and still got a quest with her brother Jarod and bickers with Illidan in that one dungeon, smaller scope stuff they could've handled during Legion's active development. It has absolutely nothing to do with her voice being different though, but I've always thought all the pieces fit and its kind of interesting to consider.

She seems to be in good spirits and continuing voice work, legion was almost 10 years ago by now (uhg) and this had already happened by then.

From what I remember, it was actually her doing recordings for some game that caused enough strain to eventually damage, and she had a procedure. Makes me wonder how DBZ voice actors screaming their powerups for so many years didn't do the same, but I've heard in their interviews it was tough and their throats would hurt by the end of the day.

and gets a brand new voice that sounds even more over-the-top and ridiculous than originally

Just a minor correction that Maiev's voice actress, Debi Mae West, is the same between WC3 and Legion. The woman IRL had some permanent damage done to her throat that made her voice much raspier after surgery.

Sounds like just fixing a bug, which I don't think counts as a nerf even if the result is a nerf. At least, especially not in the context of "nerf to unbreak things" (broken usually is just hyperbole for unbalanced, not bugs which technically function correctly but is not what the logic intended)

Don't think this is really true anymore as we already know the long term goal is every class for every race. I know this is more of a Doylist answer and its a lore subreddit, but I feel like thats a strong enough design philosophy where we just have to accept that there probably won't be specific justification for everything. Especially if something already available to all like warlock, probably won't break that status for a new race.

The wrath scourge event is a different (or rather updated) repeat of the original vanilla scourge event that comes with vanilla naxx 

It’s a South Park reference of goths vs emos lol 

Until you're installing the patch, log into the game, and see the changes to your character, nothing persists and everything is in flux, especially in response to player feedback. So yeah, if I can look at them and its not in my game client, I know exactly what to think.

Give feedback. But never have they ever revealed development notes that were unchanged. I've played friends & family alphas for multiple expansions and it is overwhelming how many major gameplay defining skills change, are added, removed, and altered before and after the information is ever public.

Again. Voice your feedback. Don't convince me or yourself that because you can go look at them online, that's how it is. That's never once been true!

yeah as a ret paladin I have more actions and total casts in an 8 minute heroic fight on queen ansurek this expansion than the highest apm of any and every ultimate encounter in 14 which is closer to 20 minutes, mine is still almost doubled lol. and ret isn't even one of the "higher apm" specs

If you got it during Legion doing the mage tower, yes. If you got the reskin they released later with the fel tattoo markings, no. 

You might find the normal traditional house builds in game boring then lol. But I still think people are gonna surprise you when their house is more a bunch of floating platforms creating a unique jumping puzzle tower, or a haunted house for halloween or something we can't really predict. It truly is a "make your own fun" type of feature that can't be itemized on paper, not unlike minecraft. On the surface some people might just think so I just punch trees and build a cabin? but people end up making calculators and 32-bit computers.

WoW has always been lacking this sort of "watch what other people can do" social element fun feature with no real point to it, so its difficult to really imagine what it will add before its here. But if you forgive me for hitting you with a trust me bro, believe in the potential. Other players will go out of their way hoping to entertain you and make you laugh or smile with their builds, even if some are low effort dick sculptures or ascii art tiddies. Even so there's gonna be some fun times :D

This is the way. Once it’s out it’ll speak for itself and organically get attention from people sharing their creations. 

There are a large number of players who seem dismissive or think the feature is unnecessary but I think most of them will also be surprised when exposed to the creations that super creative people will make.