So, I was listening to the Blizzard watch podcast and they hit several nails on the head with this expansion that has been a problem. The two most relevant where that out characters felt like side characters this time around watching events unfold, and that when we where done here in "the alternate Draenor," Nothing we do will have any relevance to Azeroth afterwards, other then stopping the invasion.
I'm not sure how to fix the first one. Being the side character is not a good feeling. In the past expansions we have felt that we were the ones driving the story forward. Feeling we are more witness or bystanders isn't fixed by everyone in your garrison calling you general or captain. This may actually be part of the problem. It is great to have characters recognize you after all you have accomplished, but a general is normally someone who sits back planning the war, not fighting it.
The other problem is that things don't feel like they will effect the long picture of the game. All the people we are meeting here, will never step foot in our world. Everything we do just changes a different universe that we have no long term investment in at all. For those who love Wow' lore and stories this is also a negative feeling. Woot! We saved Yrel and watched her grow into a mighty hero. So what? What is the relevance in another expansion. This one I have two suggestions Blizzard could (or might) go with on this one.
My first suggestion is the least likely. What if, once we finished our mission we went back and found that our actions had changed Azeroth. What if by changing this alternate timeline it caused a ripple effect that changed our past. Or what if we found out that it wasn't an alternate timeline at all, but that we had changed the very history of our world, and now we have to figure out what that means for each race going forward.
That first suggestion I find very unlikely. It would take a lot of extra work to explain why things had changed, what that meant for each race, and to essentially re-create a bit of the world to reflect this. With how many people where confused by traipsing off to an alternate Draenor in the past, this would not work well, but it would give us something that felt like it would last going forward.
The second suggestion or hope I have is that we see a reflection of what happened in past Draenor happen again. What if after the last raid Gul'dan, mad with power simply ripped the world apart. What if in the chaos we were forced to evacuate the Draenei and Orcs and whoever else we could to our Azeroth to save them from destruction. If that were to happen then we would suddenly have all these new faces and characters in our world and the ripple from these events would be felt for expansions to come.
Imagine a suddenly full Exodar, that now hosts massive numbers of Draenei instead of a few scattered remnants with Yrel joining Velen to rule. An Ogrimmar suddenly bolstered by a bunch of new Orcs and Ogres and no watched over by Durotan. We also could have a group of Arrokoa trying to carve their way out into our world, Oggron suddenly sharing the land. This would bring about many new story lines and the growth of the world could be immense. I love this idea so much I hope Blizzard considers it, or is planning something like it.
So what would be your idea to make the events we are witnessing and the stories now matter in an expansion or two. I really don't want to walk away from this one with no lasting changes to our own world of Azeroth.
Lag/Lazyeye.
No comments:
Post a Comment