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Roderick

Mists of Malaria, more like

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I never thought this day would come, but Warcraft movies/cutscenes have become completely intolerable and objectionable to me. I couldn't even finish watching one of the patch movies for Cataclysm just now. It at the same time takes itself way too seriously with sighing orcs spouting horrible clichés and cringeworthy writing, but also starts taking its jokes too seriously.

This is Mists of Pandaria, an entire new World of Warcraft expansion that saw its origins in an April Fools joke from about a decade ago. If only it had remained a joke. But no, this is Warcraft and everything in it must be coolified and made Big.

This is Warcraft, jumping the shark. Warcraft used to be so cool. It was a kooky, sweaty universe. Warcraft II was great. Warcraft III as well. But ever since World of Warcraft there has been such an enormous increase in lore, and with that in bullshit, that you just couldn't know everything about it anymore and that sapped the fun away for me.

Look, I'll play Mists of Pandaria, of course I will. It'll be exciting and beautiful and fun. But Warcraft as a universe has lost its appeal completely. I can still enjoy it as a casual spectator, but I've long since stopped being a fan.

And, yeah, those terrible cutscenes... It's a shame. I just can't enjoy it at this point anymore. At least there's still Starcraft and Diablo, worlds that are for the moment still plausible, believable, enjoyable, understandable. Not milked to death to such a degree that even the fucking April Fools joke gets its own expansion.

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Well WC3 was a charmless husk compared with 2 in my rose tinted eyes (though I played a lot of multiplayer mods) and then WoW barely had any perceivable connection so I never played it. Always hated the blurry photoshop low poly graphic style as well, which was an imprisonable offence back when there was still a buzz about that game.

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I like Pandarens. :3

The things that offend me are the constant pop-culture references and idiots riding around on rockets and all that shit. They jumped the shark a long, long time ago. As far as I'm concerned, Pandarens are bringing it back to the good stuff. They were awesome in WC3, and they're gonna be awesome here. Probably.

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Oh sure, there are tons of reasons and moments to point out where Warcraft jumped the shark. I'm not saying Mists of Pandaria tipped the bucket, it's just plainly symptomatic, a real eyecatching 'there you have it' moment. Everyone will have their own.

I'm not so much bothered by the enormous amount of wacky stuff in Warcraft. Goblins riding rockets, or giant zeppelin turtle stuff, why not? Where it becomes a drag for me is how goddamn serious Blizzard takes all of it. They can't just let a Goblin on a rocket be a cool thing, nooooo, it has to be completely incorporated in the lore and made really serious and intense. That's a disconnect between what is happening in the fiction and how Blizzard is treating it. That's why all the brooding orcs from cutscenes being super serious with the most trite oneliners is so awful. If Blizzard would just simply own the fact that this is all grade A pulp, it wouldn't be so bad. But they're treating it like it's so great and profound and that's painful to watch.

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We had a pretty good discussion about this stuff last year (I think)

http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7349&highlight=warcraft&page=3

Warcraft has been dead to me since WoW... or maybe around the War3 expansion pack. I didn't really play WoW, but was really anticipating it, but slowly the nonsense just sort of deluded everything and the vibe completely changed.

Now, I don't know even know wtf is going on with it, but most of everything I see just makes me roll my eyes.

I don't know if Warcraft1/2 were handled better or the fact that they left it so open my imagination filled in the gaps; which I can understand why I'd prefer that over someone else filling that stuff in for me.

I liked old Warcraft for the art and vibe, nothing was overly serious and while it might have stuck closer to "ye old medieval fantasy" I rather enjoyed it. I liked the art Metzen was doing at the time too and how it was pretty hilarious that it had a little sprinkle of Heavy Metal vibe to it all... which might have been the start of its actual downfall with the shitty pop culture reference bs.

On a slight side note; I started up WoW for 5 minutes a few months ago because, what the hell, I haven't played it since release. It's a lot different and all trolls are Jamaicans and the graphics look really bad. That's my summary of that experience.

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I think it's a pretty huge stretch to say that rocket-riding goblins is taken "seriously" in any way...

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I figured it's not worth a new thread, but these are worth taking a look at. If you've played WoW, you know how it takes a good ten minutes to run from one end of the Barrens to the other. Look how small it is. :erm:

http://imgur.com/a/XH1gS#0

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I loved Warranty for a long time, as in I'm that guy who has spent hours reading lore on Wowwiki, read some of the books years ago, ect., but I stopped caring about the story a long time ago. Haven't followed the new expansion in any capacity and am done with WoW completely, but if they make WC4 in 10 years I might care again as I played the crap out of wc2/3/tft

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But Warcraft as a universe has lost its appeal completely.

This is pretty much the best summary of where I stand. I don't play WoW because it's me getting to explore Warcraft more in-depth. I play WoW because of the mechanics and tuning of the game. Which is why, as soon as my new PC is complete (the setbacks I'm suffering on that are killing me), I'm going to play TOR. WoW with a new face? Okay, that's fine with me.:getmecoat

But really, Metzen doesn't have people telling him, "No, try harder. No, that's a shit idea." It's George Lucas' Disease. I've never been outspoken about the writing in Warcraft, usually shrugging off the bad points and tolerating things in general. But Cataclysm, the end of it at least, brought about something that finally made me change my mind. Let me explain briefly:

The event, the Cataclysm, was originally something that occurred when Deathwing came out of hiding back into the world. It was so mega-ton that it broke the world. Fast forward to the fight with Deathwing; throughout the fight, the dragons assisting you occasionally shout for you to interrupt Deathwing, because, "HE'S CASTING ANOTHER CATACLYSM." I'm not extrapolating. The line is literally, "Deathwing is casting another Cataclysm!" Suddenly, it went from being a unique event to some goddamn spell he could just cast at whim.

I'll play Pandaland most likely, though I'm really just waiting to see how the 'race revamp' (which is a vague term at the moment, it could either be the greatest thing we imagine or it could just be higher-res textures) pans out. The only thing that has me into WoW is routine "I'll play this when I'm bored of everything else."

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I think Deathwing is a pretty cool guy. Eh cataclysms and doesnt afraid of anything.

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What killed WoW for me was when raids became something everyone just did with pubs. What I loved about vanilla and BC was the sense of achievement at progressing through things with a guild. I was in the same guild for all of vanilla and we worked through everything. I joined when I hit level 60 and they were a new guild trying to do dungeons and get people attuned to start doing Molten Core and with the same people we worked week after week, and slowly worked through every raid in the game as they came out, all the way up through AQ40 and Naxx 40. This was when you would spend sometimes weeks (at least for us as we only raided on weekends) trying to progress past certain bosses and each new boss was a significantly greater challenge than the previous one. I know that theres a large amount of people that don't find it fun wiping continuously for sometimes hours on a single fight, but the level of satisfaction and reward at beating a boss for the very first time, or even getting it down to 25% when before you only got him to 50%, that just does not exist in any other type of game. The fights where my guild ended up finally beating bosses like Blackwing, C'Thun, and Kel Thuzad are some of the most indescribably amazing experiences I've ever had. The level of tension in the fight, especially when the boss gets so low that you start to think that this fight might actually be THE fight, combined with the unparalleled sense of accomplishment and also pride as a group... I don't really know what else to say, it's just something that I loved and is no longer really in the game.

That said, that was years ago and at this point I'm not sure that type of game is something that I want anymore. I don't really have the time I did and that type of experience isn't what I actively seek in games. I'll probably play Guild Wars 2 because it looks fun and has no fee so I can play it super casual, most likely only with real life friends so I will for sure be playing that for completely different reason than why I played WoW.

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What I loved about vanilla and BC was the sense of achievement at progressing through things with a guild.

I hate to be 'that guy' but you can still do this y'know.

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I miss Karazhan. Karazhan was fun. Soon after hitting 85 i just decided that i didn't want to play anymore. I just lost all sense of fun in the game. My guild used to be awesome, but they were getting less intactive as time went on, and a lot of the older members i knew moved on or left the game. While considering moving guild or looking for more raiding options, i realised i just didn't actually enjoy the game anymore and very abruptly bailed right after a holiday. Also, i was already sick to death of the level 85 dungeons a few days after my ding. looking at them for another 2 years would have baked my noodle.

Anyhow, not playing any more, not going back for pandas. I got a months sub back in november to try it out again and played for around 3 hours before quitting.

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I played again early Cataclysm after quitting early in Wrath. Had fun for a while but my schedule stopped me from raiding with my guild, and I was losing interest anyway. The nail in the coffin for me was when arena went from needing 5 wins no matter what to the worst sliding scale in history. Each match took me and my partner 20-30min usually, 5 a week was fine with me. At our rating with the new rules it would take 10-15 which was not cool at all. Ultimately though I would have quit again soon enough, as I'm just not all that into mmos anymore. The only exception really might be planetside 2, and that's as different as it can be from the typical MMO experience.

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