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ApplesandOranges posted:There are the Cult of the Damned, who aren't so much mind controlled as uh, just really disillusioned fanatics. What's funny is that in Cataclysm, we learn that after the fall of the Lich King, a bunch of Cult of the Damned members just went and joined the Twilight's Hammer cult. These guys just keep moving on from one death cult to the next every time we kill their dark masters.
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Aug 22, 2023 04:45
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Wonder if there's any kicking around as Elementalists now.
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Aug 22, 2023 06:51
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Rhonne posted:What's funny is that in Cataclysm, we learn that after the fall of the Lich King, a bunch of Cult of the Damned members just went and joined the Twilight's Hammer cult. These guys just keep moving on from one death cult to the next every time we kill their dark masters. I mean, what else are you going to do when your CV has "evil cultist" for the last ten years? Doesn't exactly help you land a retail job.
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Aug 22, 2023 08:03
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean, what else are you going to do when your CV has "evil cultist" for the last ten years? Doesn't exactly help you land a retail job. Retail manager, easy.
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Aug 22, 2023 08:26
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Death cultist isn't just a job, it's a career
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Aug 22, 2023 09:01
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Loel posted:Retail manager, easy. Don't have to pay Ghouls wages or give them mandatory breaks! The real question is why stores aren't already using undead labor.
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Aug 22, 2023 09:09
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BisbyWorl posted:Don't have to pay Ghouls wages or give them mandatory breaks! I dunno, anyone who works retail for a period of time seems to lose their souls...
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Aug 22, 2023 09:42
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Human kingdoms have just been bad at keeping the populace happy, apparently. Stormwind had the Defias, and Lordaeron/Dalaran had the Cult of the Damned. And Terenas was, by all accounts, a good ruler, too.
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Aug 22, 2023 09:44
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Doctor Zaius posted:Wonder if there's any kicking around as Elementalists now. I mean in the latest expac there is a side location with a whole bunch of Deathwing cultists (even with Deathwing being you know all dead and stuff.)
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Aug 22, 2023 11:29
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Yeah, the Scourge are not, say, the Vampire Counts from Warhammer Fantasy, chanting "Kill them! Raise them!" because their leader has a theoretically sort-of legitimate claim to the throne and resents that he was considered disqualified based on him being an undead blood-drinking monster. They're an anime style "We will destroy the world and remake it in our image of PERFECT DEATH AND ORDER!" threat.
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Aug 22, 2023 13:03
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BisbyWorl posted:Don't have to pay Ghouls wages or give them mandatory breaks! There's some amusing arguments for necromancy in various RPGs along these lines. Graveyard Keeper has some particularly funny moments around it in particular. And, of course, there's also the evil wizard empires that run on an entirely undead/golem/etc. labor because that frees the wizards up to do research without having to worry about all of the mundane upkeep.
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Aug 22, 2023 13:16
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Cythereal posted:They're an anime style "We will destroy the world and remake it in our image of PERFECT DEATH AND ORDER!" threat. So are you saying that the Jailer has the power of Danuser and Anime on his side?
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Aug 22, 2023 13:17
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Dirk the Average posted:So are you saying that the Jailer has the power of Danuser and Anime on his side? I think that Warcraft has been heavily influenced by anime since around Warcraft 3. The 90s was when anime first started to make it big in the US, and the higher-ups at Blizzard during this time were nothing if not massive nerds. See the samurai stylings to orc blademasters and the pandaren of this time, and I think a character we'll meet before too much longer named Illidan Stormrage has some very strong anime stylings to him. The orcs' whole STRENGTH AND HONOR thing, to me, also feels heavily inspired by at least the weeb idea of Bushido style honor codes and whatnot, much more than the Mongol and Norse influences on the orcs' redesign. I don't think Warcraft 3 or WoW are anime games wholesale, but I do think there's a noteworthy influence there.
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Aug 22, 2023 13:20
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Cythereal posted:I think that Warcraft has been heavily influenced by anime since around Warcraft 3. The 90s was when anime first started to make it big in the US, and the higher-ups at Blizzard during this time were nothing if not massive nerds. See the samurai stylings to orc blademasters and the pandaren of this time, and I think a character we'll meet before too much longer named Illidan Stormrage has some very strong anime stylings to him. The orcs' whole STRENGTH AND HONOR thing, to me, also feels heavily inspired by at least the weeb idea of Bushido style honor codes and whatnot, much more than the Mongol and Norse influences on the orcs' redesign. I wonder how touchy Blizzard is when you point out the anime influences. I'm guessing not as bad as 90's White Wolf, but in spitting distance...
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Aug 22, 2023 13:28
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SirPhoebos posted:I wonder how touchy Blizzard is when you point out the anime influences. I have no idea. I'm not very familiar with anime, and my associations with it are mostly negative, so while I believe there's a marked anime influence on Warcraft I can't point to specifics beyond the samurai fetish that the artists have an on and off thing for and the STRENGTH AND HONOR nonsense. I suspect that there are readers who can make a more informed argument either way.
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Aug 22, 2023 16:20
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Cythereal posted:I have no idea. I'm not very familiar with anime, and my associations with it are mostly negative, so while I believe there's a marked anime influence on Warcraft I can't point to specifics beyond the samurai fetish that the artists have an on and off thing for and the STRENGTH AND HONOR nonsense. I dunno - samurai are a bit too mainstream, to conclude that a random appearance of one is anime. Their honour ain't exactly bushido - no more than its klingon, or any other noble savage culture (ain't familiar with this trope in relation to japan, tbh). And if you're looking to anime references - only one I can think of is the yamato cannon, from starcraft. Not much in Wc3 "stop selecting me" quotes. Of course, this is pre-WoW. After?
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Aug 22, 2023 17:12
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Undead 8: Rite of Winter Time to bring this story arc to a close.  The raid in the previous mission hurt Dalaran but did not destroy the city, and now reinforcements from the rest of the Alliance have arrived.  Were the Scourge's goal to destroy Dalaran wholesale, their job might be very difficult.  This line is, by my understanding, what was used as the basis for later lore making the Guardian of Tirisfal a super-mage empowered by a secret ritual, rather than just a fancy title. Part of Kelly's backstory, recall, is that he was suspicious of the Order of Tirisfal and the evidence he found that they had knowledge and magic that was kept secret even from the Council of Six that governed Dalaran.  The lack of ever getting to use a Dreadlord is one of the things contributing to my dissatisfaction with the undead campaign in Reign of Chaos.  This campaign concludes with a hold the line mission, losing access to Kelly as well. This, however, will be helpful. A fountain of power acts as both a mana fountain and a health fountain. Ignore the dialogue about goblin land mines, I don't need them.   Because I'm playing as the undead. Necropoli having an attack when upgrades kind of makes this mission a joke. A black citadel costs significantly more than a spirit tower, but attacks more quickly, deals double the damage per shot, and has four times the HP. There are three Alliance factions. The Mages' Guild (blue) mainly attacks to the west and chiefly favors dwarven units, including gyrocopters and steam tanks. The Alliance Defenders (brown) mainly attack from the east and favors knights, footmen, and mortar teams. The Kirin Tor (purple) mainly attack from the north and field a lot of casters and gryphon riders. All three have archmage heroes who will regularly join attacks.  But there is some good news. About every five minutes, I get a trio of hellhound reinforcements from the Legion. Appropriately, they're useful mage hunters, but I wish you could set mana burn to autocast.  Look, this mission is as dull as almost every example of this type of mission in RTS history is. You could strike out against the Alliance bases, but you wouldn't gain anything by it. This is the last level of the campaign so you can't even get any loot to carry over into the next mission.  Aside from the land mines, which I don't need or use, there are no secondary objectives or bonuses of any kind in this mission.  The Alliance has nothing new up their sleeves.  If it weren't for the hellhounds and one other thing, I'd call this a straight filler mission. And that's a hell of a way to describe not only the final mission of this campaign, but the finale to Arthas' story in Reign of Chaos.  At ten minutes left on the clock, that other thing arrives.  The thing from the intro movie and Thrall's nightmare in the prologue, the symbol of the Burning Legion's coming, has finally arrived. ...You'd think there'd be a little more ceremony to that long-promised moment finally arriving, that giant monster that served as the visible symbol of the series' new direction now finally happening thanks to your actions. Infernals are pretty nifty, at least. They're roughly equivalent to an abomination, complete with their own version of the abomination's disease cloud upgrade, and are immune to enemy magic.  Aside from the interplay between Arthas and Kelly (and you'd better believe there are people in the fandom who ship them!), the whole undead campaign has felt rather tepid to me. Simultaneously very drawn out yet with not a whole lot really happening.  The bulk of Lordaeron is destroyed off-screen, half the campaign is spent meandering through the woods of Quel'thalas, you never get to use Tichondrius, and Sylvanas is only usable for half a mission. Then you call the boss, hit Dalaran, and this.  The only vaguely interesting moment of the mission is when Dalaran launches a massive attack at the one minute mark.  Even aside from my dislike of story campaigns for what I see as evil sides, I just don't care for the undead campaign as a production or a story.  I think that the Scourge are one of Warcraft's best recurring villains, but to me that has nothing to do with Arthas.  I tend to like my villains enjoying themselves greatly, and the Scourge are among the few baddies in Warcraft who seem to be having any fun.  This mission just bored me and I couldn't muster anything interesting to say with the peanut gallery.  This is an iconic line from Warcraft 3, but I just can't take the Legion seriously as villains and never have. They feel exceedingly generic to me.  They are what they were meant to be: a new super-evil threat to be more evil than the villains before.  As a rule I struggle to care about generic evil cosmic forces out to destroy the universe.  For 'evil' to work as a personality trait and motivation, in my opinion, you need a certain gravitas and stage presence that the Burning Legion never achieves.  David Warner pulled it off as Jon Irenicus in Baldur's Gate 2.  Jack Ritschel as the Overmind in Starcraft 1.  Whoever voiced Cylostra Direfin in Warhammer: Total War (google couldn't turn up a name for the actress).  For all of Blizzard's theatricality, the Burning Legion just doesn't do much for me. Although this next bit is pretty neat.    We open with Archimonde inscribing a glyph in the sand.  What we're seeing is a type of magic that, as far as I know, has never been seen or referenced again in Warcraft.   At this point in Warcraft, all magic was stated to be drawn from the And just like Lordaeron City, these cutscenes show a much more arid environment for Dalaran than the games have ever depicted. Also like Lordaeron City, the Arabic vibe to the architecture is striking to me.  I get that these are supposed to be wizards' towers, but they look an awful lot like minarets to me.  A thought I've had time and again throughout this LP: "I know this isn't intentional, but this suggests something that could be really interesting had Blizzard cared to play it this way."  Now, do I want Blizzard trying to seriously portray a Middle Eastern themed culture as more than a bit part like the tol'vir were?  Probably not, considering their track record.  Archimonde rips into the sand model of Dalaran.  And the city crumbles in unison.  Then he sweeps his arms through the entire thing.   And the sounds of Dalaran's destruction echo through the background of Archimonde's words.  Credit where it's due, I've never seen a city destroyed like that in any other media.
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Aug 23, 2023 00:45
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Undead Campaign Retrospective: On Thin Ice So, the undead campaign. In a sense, it's a smooth continuation of the Alliance campaign in that this is Arthas' story. So in consideration, does this story work for me?  No, for reasons that I think merit some explanation. I am, by nature, an extremely judgmental person (and I can hear the cry of 'No poo poo, Sherlock!' from my regular readers all the way over here in Florida).Early into most stories or story arcs - movies, games, storylines within games, books, etc - I usually make a judgment call about whether I like or care about these characters and what's going on. I have sometimes persisted with stories I didn't care for, and have on rare occasion been delighted to find that I'm wrong. Contrariwise, I'm seldom so upset with video games as when I do initially get emotionally invested by my understanding of the story at first and later discover that I'd been wrong about how I thought this would go - whether that's because of deliberately deception by writers looking to pull a twist, or because I fundamentally misunderstood what I was dealing with. I do not like plot twists, at least not without advertising that there is a twist and some indication of what that twist will be. I do not appreciate creators playing with expectations, those expectations are how I judge whether to spend my time and money on a product. In Arthas' case, as a child, I believe I realized where his story was going during the defense of Hearthglen mission. I felt, accurately as it turned out, that this was in fact the story of Arthas' fall and descent into evil. All the heroes and places I'd met so far were being served up just so they could be torn down later. Jaina at least survived, but it was that point in the Alliance campaign that I accurately predicted most of what was going to go down. My reaction was to mentally and emotionally check out of the story. I do not like stories of what I see as villains winning, and my reaction to Arthas' story was to simply stop caring about Arthas and everyone else in the campaign. I don't like feeling sad or angry, and I certainly don't like feeling challenged by a story - I get enough of sadness, anger, and 'You're wrong and I'm gonna tell you what's right' in real life.  As such, my feelings about the undead campaign fittingly mirror Arthas' own words: I feel nothing about it, because I don't give a poo poo. I got upset when I saw the dragon roosts in mission 6, and that was about it. Beyond that I was just going through the motions in this campaign. I see no point in getting invested in clearly doomed characters and setting elements, and the net result is that I feel thoroughly meh about the entire first half of Reign of Chaos exempting Jaina. That kind of judgment is why I typically spoil myself so thoroughly before buying a book or game or ticket to a movie, as it happens. I want to gauge whether I think I will enjoy this or not, and thus whether I want to spend my time and money on it, particularly in light of how differently I often see characters and events from many people. I have a habit, I suppose, of readily crossing wires between my perception of a game by its own merits, and my perception of a game as a product sold to me by people. In stories that I snap out of caring about narratively, like Arthas' story, my reaction is not in-narrative 'Arthas' fall is tragic.' My reaction is 'I see what you're doing, Blizzard, and I don't care for it.' Is this unfair of me? Perhaps. I've been told before by goons that I have to respect the authorial intent of the creators, that games and stories have artistic value that supersede any individual judgment and it's manifestly unfair of me to say 'I don't like this because it offends my personal values or doesn't hit my particular buttons to make me like it.' Personally, I disagree. By my lights, the first and greatest question I have of any game is this: did I have fun?  I do respect the work that went into the first two campaigns of Reign of Chaos. The Alliance campaign delivered one of my favorite video game characters of all time. But for me, personally, Arthas' story and that of the first two campaigns fell flat for me. I don't like to get invested in characters and places when I know that only bad things await them, and I don't like following the story of characters I deem to be evil. For me, one of the most important asks of a story is getting me to care, and Blizzard entirely failed at this task. That, at least, isn't really Blizzard's fault. I do not like the fundamental premise, and thus I'm absolutely the wrong audience for Arthas' story. There are games that won me over despite my initial skepticism, and one of them, a game on my Switch that I got simply because there was an inbound hurricane and I was expecting to lose internet access for a while, has even made it into my top ten video games of all times (well, one particular story path at any rate). I got into Warcraft 3, and then into Warcraft as a whole, for reasons that had nothing to do with Arthas, the undead, or this entire first half of the game. We'll see whether the second half holds up in my eyes.
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Aug 23, 2023 00:45
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Cythereal posted:This is an iconic line from Warcraft 3, but I just can't take the Legion seriously as villains and never have. They feel exceedingly generic to me. They also have that kind of... Chaos from Warhammer issue, where they're innumerable, functionally indestructible or untouchable. You can temporarily dunk on a big ol' warlord-man and slow down their plans, but you can't ever really shut them down as a threat, properly counter-invade, deny them any permanent resources or abilities, etc. they're just an infinite grind that keeps pooping out more demons and monster men. The only interesting stories you can really tell is from the other side trying to survive their onslaughts against the limited forces currently present in the fighting zone or shutting down an entry gate providing more monster men, but that's about it. They're more like a natural phenomena that shows up sometimes and fucks up people's lives, like a weird rain of frogs that has more fire in it.
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Aug 23, 2023 01:04
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Until you do in fact, counter-invade the Legion and win. Which is the end of the Legion expansion (generally considered one of the best, especially compared to how bad the two following expansions were).
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Aug 23, 2023 01:09
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PurpleXVI posted:They also have that kind of... Chaos from Warhammer issue, where they're innumerable, functionally indestructible or untouchable. You can temporarily dunk on a big ol' warlord-man and slow down their plans, but you can't ever really shut them down as a threat, properly counter-invade, deny them any permanent resources or abilities, etc. they're just an infinite grind that keeps pooping out more demons and monster men. Until BtDP you could have said the same of the orcs. It's a pretty inherent part of the evil-alien-invader kind of story. WoW obviously got there eventually but you totally could have had a hypothetical Warcraft 4 involve going on the offensive against the Burning Legion, hopping to new worlds to find their centre of command. They're a vast force, for sure, but their leaders are still a handful of named beings that can be killed. Anyway, on the Scourge campaign, I was the kind of kid that grew up playing Dungeon Keeper and loved when the bad guys win, so I was all over this story. It might not be emotionally complex but you sure did get to go kick over a bunch of sandcastles as the bold heroes make their noble last stands. It would have been nice to have Tichondrius playable for this mission. I can kind of understand Blizzard not wanting to have a hero unit only playable for a single map though, especially at the end when everyone should be at full power. Maybe another mission to do something with the orcs between the existing one in Alterac and the invasion of Dalaran, so Tichondrius could join us for that whole arm of the campaign would have worked.
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Aug 23, 2023 01:17
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The Alliance campaign's story of "here's how the heroic protagonist falls to become evil" may or may not be enjoyable for any particular player, but it's got to be better than "here's how the fallen protagonist does some chores for his new evil masters." At least the Alliance campaign Arthas goes through a character arc, he makes decisions and is changed by the impact of those choices - does any of that happen in the Undead campaign? Maybe one could claim that Arthas' realization in the final seconds that the Legion won't be looking out for his best interests is some kind of new character development, but that feels super weak to me, especially in comparison to the legitimately transformative story arc he's just been through. The whole campaign he's just going around doing tasks that other people have told him to do, because that's his job, and at the end of mission 8 he's pretty much the same character that he is at the start of mission 1. And so slowly! Quel'Thalas going on as long as it does is the worst, but everything is stretched way out.
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Aug 23, 2023 01:18
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That one elven incel went "no, just closing the portal is kicking the ball down the road, next time they invade we won't survive" and just- REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED
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Aug 23, 2023 01:19
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One detail that's kind of amusing: Reforged didn't completely rebuild this map, but it did... fix a bit of terraining laziness. If you look at the original version of this map, the north half is very, very lazily terrained and clearly never meant to be explored. Despite the fact that there is a hidden vault in the northern-most base that drops a thing that lets you just steal control of up to three units. Like I said, the Reforged version fixed up this lazy terraining, though. Also, that Fountain of Power in your base were two separate fountains, a fair distance apart, one of health, and one of mana. Otherwise, the mission isn't changed much in Reforged, other than the Frozen Throne balance changed being ported backward. I'm not actually sure, but didn't the change to the Halls of the Dead/Black Citadel's attack? It became weaker with a slow effect, like the Nerubian Tower added in Frozen Throne, so it's actually less potent than the Spirit Tower in terms of raw damage. 1.33 did something interesting here. The Archmagi here used to all use generic Archmage names. The randomized list has been replaced here with a different list - and in fact the list of names is one longer than the number of Archmagi actually present on the map, so not all of them will be present on the map. The list includes, Karlain (survives the battle, Current Member of the Council of Six), Ansirem Runeweaver (another current member of the Council of Six), Ericon (Name not used elsewhere, likely means he dies here), Dalar Dawnweaver (member of the Forsaken; canonically dies here and is resurrected into the Scourge), Ulrik von Stromhearth (Survives, offers a breadcrumb quest in Northrend to send players to Dalaran), Pascal Spellbinder (does not appear elsewhere; likely dies here), and Relios the Relic Keeper (Survives only to be killed in Cataclysm in the Forsaken's assault into southern Lordaeron/Silverpine; stated to be Dalar Dawnweaver's pupil) For the record, when I found this, I went NUTS trying to figure out where the hell Ericon and Pascal Spellbinder are from - Pascal Spellbinder seems to be related to Peril Spellbinder, one of the Randomized Generic Archmage names, but outside of that, Peril never appears anywhere either. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 01:33
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I like playing as the Undead but this campaign is poo poo overall. It peaks in mission 2 and then has nothing going on the rest of the way, to the point that just not fighting humans in a pointless filler mission is the highlight of the latter half of the campaign. And yeah, as you mentioned there's just nothing happening character wise. They could have have Arthas and Jaina speak at Dalaran, have Tichondrius put a little more pressure on Arthas throughout, whatever. I don't know how you make this campaign good, the demands of the story, the characters, and the missions are all at odds with each other. Spending 8 missions trampling over the alliance city states is going to make the gameplay stale, but the undead are all under the command of a single person, the important orcs hosed off before this campaign even began, and the night elves weren't there to begin with. Arthas has to lose any semblance of free will or personality right away because otherwise he wouldn't listen to Tichondrius in mission 1, so for the rest of the campaign he's just a guy who follows orders. His friendship with Kel'Thuzad is the only interesting development in his character but KT has to drop a ton of exposition so we don't even get to see that really. The only notable thing about this final mission is that it is extremely hard on the higher difficulties. The enemies are often timed to send their attacks simultaneously with pretty strong forces (including waves made up entirely of steam tanks sent to the main section of your base). I think there's also an archmage in the center lake area that drops a +2 tome of strength.
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Aug 23, 2023 01:55
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Yeah I agree with the consensus, the human campaign holds up fairly well aside from some quibbles but even though a bunch of important stuff happens here it kind of feels like a filler campaign outside of Archimonde's awesome cutscene.
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Aug 23, 2023 02:20
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On the retrospective so far, I'd say that the human campaign actually has held up reasonably well, but the undead campaign is something of a wet fart. It's oddly truncuated in some places and stuffed with filler in others. The undead campaign hasn't managed to put in any gravitas for any of its climax moments, the most impactful moment is Sylvanas's turning. Whereas the human campaign is full of dramatic moments, and Arthas actively taking actions that drive the narrative and story. If Arthas wasn't there, the human campaign wouldn't exist. If Arthas wasn't there for the majority of the undead campaign, it doesn't feel like much would've changed.
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Aug 23, 2023 02:20
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Seriously though, Tichonderous is right there. Literally just sitting to the side and watching this battle to summon his Supreme commander and kick off the giant demonic invasion. It's clearly not an important battle he'd want to pitch in on at all! There's a bunch of times where it would make sense to let you control him on a mission and they didn't, but this one is hands down the most  of them all.
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Aug 23, 2023 03:47
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It's especially baffling because the Undead campaign is the ONLY one where the player never gets to use the third hero type. I believe the expansion almost fixes this, but gives you a unique dreadlord with different spells to the multiplayer hero. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 03:51
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Bloody Pom posted:It's especially baffling because the Undead campaign is the ONLY one where the player never gets to use the third hero type. Half and half - he does retain two dreadlord abilities, but the other two are taken from another hero instead. (specifics will wait, we're a long ways off from that.)
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Aug 23, 2023 04:29
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Question, Cyth: On the TW: Warhammer forum, you seemed to be having fun playing the Skarbrand campaign. What was it about that which overcame your reluctance to play "Bad Guy stories."
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Aug 23, 2023 04:41
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FoolyCharged posted:Seriously though, Tichonderous is right there. Literally just sitting to the side and watching this battle to summon his Supreme commander and kick off the giant demonic invasion. It's clearly not an important battle he'd want to pitch in on at all! To be fair, he could be part of why you get demonic reinforcements in the first place, or perhaps his faith in the Scourge is such that he knows they will win and he is making preparations elsewhere for the next part of the plan. But yeah, they should have let you have all 3 heroes at some point. Even if they just did a mission with Tichondrius on his own (or as a smaller section of one of Arthas's missions), that would have been a big help. Come to think of it, a mission where Tichondrius attacks the Nerubians and that's how they join your forces would have been neat and a show of how Arthas isn't the only iron in the fire for the Legion.
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Aug 23, 2023 05:07
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Been replaying ahead of Cyth for the sake of having fresh vanilla WC3 notes to chime in on and…. Yep, the Undead campaign is the worst one by a mile. Some baffling spacing in the undead army comp over the course of the missions, you’re stuck with one hero for the majority of the time and never even see the last one at all, the plot grinds to a screeching halt as Arthas is made to be a chore boy, and the missions barely make me feel anything gameplay wise. The last few moments at least hold a lot of promise though, between Kel’Thuzhad assuring both Arthas and the audience that this is far from the last you’ll see of the Scourge, and Archimonde’s rad sandbox play session to kick us off into the second half of the game. Overall ranking so far, Human>>>>>>>>>>Undead, and we’re getting into my favorite campaign next so I’m very excited to get into that.
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Aug 23, 2023 05:44
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This is just an incredibly lackluster campaign, both in the context of Warcraft 3 itself, and especially when compared to, say...the Zerg in Starcraft. The pacing is strange, Uther gets unceremoniously dumpstered in Mission 2, then we spend 3 loving missions faffing about in Quel'Thalas with Sylvanas before getting a half-assed mission against the Old Horde Orcs and then it's time to wrap things up by invading Dalaran for a macguffin. Nothing much happens, no one has a character arc, the only good part is Archimonde showing up to stomp a sandcastle at the very end, because it actually successfully sells him as a bad rear end, albeit one without any other discernable character traits (unless you count "evil").
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Aug 23, 2023 05:54
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I love villain campaigns, Brood War Zerg Campaign is one of Blizzard's all time best, but Undead RoC is really weak and doesn't really have much of anything going on outside of the excellent Archimonde cutscene. Undead TFT is a gigantic step up and one of Warcraft 3's best campaigns if not the best.
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Aug 23, 2023 06:00
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SirPhoebos posted:Question, Cyth: On the TW: Warhammer forum, you seemed to be having fun playing the Skarbrand campaign. What was it about that which overcame your reluctance to play "Bad Guy stories." Warhammer Fantasy, bluntly, is a dead setting that Games Workshop already killed off. Playing as the bad guys in that game doesn't have the same weight, in my eyes, and it's played from a far removed level. It's a grand strategy game where you never really see the consequences of your actions for people, they're just numbers and flags on a map. And half the time I'm killing people I have no issue with whacking like the orcs and vampires. I never got invested in Warhammer Fantasy as a setting like I did Warcraft, and CA did them no favors. I once considered a TW3 LP and concluded that if I ever was of a mind to do this, I'd allow a vote between factions with a woman LL (or a gender-neutral-but-coded-and-referred-to-as-feminine). I realized that that struck half the factions in the entire game from the list. And, well. The Warhammer fanbase scares me. I like TW3 (CA themselves not so much nowadays), but it's not a game I want to try spinning a narrative about. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 12:03
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I wonder... swap the Undead and Orc campaigns, and then set half the Undead on Kalimdor against the Orcs and the Night Elves. Start with Quel'thalas, pare it down to two missions and merge it with Uther, then off to Kalimdor for four missions, then finish off with Dalaran. It gives you a break from Arthas to go and see how Thrall is doing. Play out Orc as normal mostly, but weave in a reason for the Scourge to need something on Kalimdor. (Do you ever face the Scourge in the Orc campaign? Maybe put in a Orcs vs. Scourge forward staging force or something if not, to give you that match-up). Sure, some stuff would get lost in the shuffle; the Fall of Lordaeron would be even more offscreen, and your main bad guy would arrive into the plot properly even later, but it gets you variatey, gets you back to the other half of the story faster, and brings in the fourth side to all this before the two-third mark of the whole game.
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Aug 23, 2023 12:20
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You could also just split the undead campaign in two, and then make demons an actual part of their forces for the second part.
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Aug 23, 2023 13:26
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There are a few signs Tichondrius was supposed to be a player unit at some point - among other things, he has a full set of unique dialogue if you place him in a custom scenario. In comparison, a player-controlled Sylvanas has lines for selected/annoyed, but no lines for move/attack commands.quote:The only vaguely interesting moment of the mission is when Dalaran launches a massive attack at the one minute mark.
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Aug 23, 2023 15:06
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 23:27 |
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One thing I like about Archimonde is his voice in this game. Dude sounds loving awesome. He's kept the same voice actor throughout all his future game appearances (in a real rarity from Blizzard), as the player character goes back in time to fight him as a raid boss in WoW on two separate occasions. He is voiced by David Lodge in all of these appearances, but given the 5 or so years between recording for WC3 and for Burning Crusade, his voice actor obviously forgot how to do the voice, or just didn't remember the character (he was quite prolific and was getting a lot of work at the time) and Blizzard seemingly didn't give a poo poo about coaching him to anything resembling his old voice. He gets somewhat close with some of his line reads in Warlords of Draenor, but he has a subtle echoey filter on his voice in Warcraft 3 that they've never brought back so it just isn't the same. 
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Aug 23, 2023 16:03
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