|
I remember a blood elf that showed up during the War of Thorns that had a personal grudge against the night elves because he remembered when he and his parents were banished from Kalimdor when he was a kid and his parents ended up dying in the harsh winter or something soon after landing in the Eastern Kingdoms. I also believe there was an undead high elf dark ranger you encountered during the Alliance War Campaign that personally knew Shandris Feathermoon(a minor night elf character we'll meet later) from thousands of years ago. In conclusion, long lived races are dumb. No race should live longer than 200 years at best outside of special circumstances. Rhonne fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Sep 6, 2023 |
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 15:12 |
|
|
Actually why didn't the Tauren tell Thrall about the night elves, the two races have been around pretty much the same amount of time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:06
|
|
|
ApplesandOranges posted:Actually why didn't the Tauren tell Thrall about the night elves, the two races have been around pretty much the same amount of time. Because at the time WC3 was written the tauren didn't know about the night elves either, and for Reforged to try to deal with that plot hole would have been more effort than Reforged made. The tauren and night elves being ancient allies was an invention of WoW to give tauren access to the druid class. That we're having this debate at all is bringing later lore from WoW into it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:08
|
|
|
I mean the tauren didn't even need to have been allies with the elves to know they exist, they live on the same continent and not even that far apart. They would probably know that there are fiercely territorial elves in the forests.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
ApplesandOranges posted:I mean the tauren didn't even need to have been allies with the elves to know they exist, they live on the same continent and not even that far apart. They would probably know that there are fiercely territorial elves in the forests. You're thinking about this harder than Blizzard did.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:20
|
|
|
I mean, fiercely territorial elves could also explain why Tauren are nomadic plainsfolk, and why so many species are competing so fiercely over land.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:23
|
|
|
IthilionTheBrave posted:I mean, fiercely territorial elves could also explain why Tauren are nomadic plainsfolk, and why so many species are competing so fiercely over land. The elves are clearly entitled to THEIR ethnostate
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:30
|
|
|
IthilionTheBrave posted:I mean, fiercely territorial elves could also explain why Tauren are nomadic plainsfolk, and why so many species are competing so fiercely over land. They coexist quite happily with the furbolg and dragons, and the only races they're typically at war with are the species-wide insane-from-a-blood-curse harpies, the naga (former Highborne), and the trolls. Per all later lore, the tauren and centaurs were always nomadic plainsfolk who never even tried to settle the forests, and I don't think there's been any canon interaction between the night elves and quilboar, ever. As it stands, I feel that everyone involved has said their piece on this subject and this thread can enjoy a time out. The WoW lore thread is thataway if you want to carry on with trying to rationalize Blizzard's writing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2023 21:34
|
|
|
Folks, I have never made a secret about approaching Warcraft from a particular point of view. I neither expect nor ask that anyone agree with my takes on Warcraft. I do ask that y'all refrain from bickering endlessly about it, and yes I acknowledge that I fed the flames on this point as well. If folks just want to relitigate the faction war, the lore thread is over in the WoW subforum. I call them as I see them in my own play and analysis of the game. If you don't agree with my opinions, fine. But if all you're going to say is something to the effect of 'well, actually', this isn't the place for that. If I have to ice this thread between updates, I will. I don't particularly want to, but if you really want to present an alternative take on Warcraft, the new thread button is in the lower right hand corner of the forum screen. Personally I make my screenshots 1024x[autosize] in MS Paint for sizing when making these updates, if you want to go that route. I don't trust for a moment that this matter is settled, but please at least try to keep this from deteriorating into the same red vs blue circular arguments that drove me out of the WoW subforum's lore threads.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:30
|
|
|
If talking about the events of the mission that just happened is off limits, then I don't know what the point of having the thread open between updates is.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:33
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Personally I make my screenshots 1024x[autosize] in MS Paint for sizing when making these updates, if you want to go that route. I don't know if MSPaint can also do it (I don't think it can), but if you grab Irfanview it can resize all your images in batches and save you a bunch of work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:38
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I don't know if MSPaint can also do it (I don't think it can), but if you grab Irfanview it can resize all your images in batches and save you a bunch of work. I know, and I have Irfanview. I prefer to adjust screenshots individually as long as the update isn't too big, it goes better with my workflow since I often grab slices of screenshots for other purposes before I resize. I used Irfanview extensively in my Star Trek Online LP in particular.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:40
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I know, and I have Irfanview. I prefer to adjust screenshots individually as long as the update isn't too big, it goes better with my workflow since I often grab slices of screenshots for other purposes before I resize. That's fair, I just wanted to offer some advice in case you, like me, were doing things the hard way for a long while. Don't ask me how long it took me to figure out that I could copy-paste more than one image URL at a time from ShareX.  For all of my Antara LP I was individually copy-pasting URL's from LPix after uploading.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:46
|
|
|
I respect that you're presenting your view on Warcraft 3, and I apologise if anything I've done has come across as "well actually". But I don't think this recent discussion was at all close to the Red vs Blue circular argument you're describing, it seemed a) very tame for any sort of argument to the point that it was more or less quite a reasonable discussion from my point of view and b) like most people were agreeing that the Horde were loving up in this story and you were the one who brought up Horde apologism. People are going to want to discuss what is happening and your point of view on it if you're letting the thread discuss, and to an extent there's going to be disagreements or alternative takes. If it gets heated I absolutely understand telling people off, and it's your thread to do with as you will, but what was happening there did not seem to be going anywhere bad, especially compared to how awful the lore thread used to be (and that awfulness is not allowed in the lore thread either anymore).
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 13:49
|
|
|
I'm going to agree that the discussion was pretty civil. I don't know if it was because people were slanting arguments against the night elves and/or Jaina, factions and characters that you like, or that people were defending the actions of the Horde (a faction you very much do not like), but I don't think the freeze was warranted. There are going to be plenty of lore discussions and character motivation chat in this thread. It's a given, and people discussing the variables in lore (which has definitely fluctuated over the years). And the thread can go off topic at times and that's a sign to tell people to tone it down, but if the direction is either 'go to the lore thread' or 'well I'm gonna ice the thread until later' then people have no idea what to even talk about because then what's allowed? I think there are a few options that you could go for the thread, though I'm not saying they're a must: * Restrict discussion to gameplay and mechanics only. Keeps the thread civil, if a little sanitized. * Let the people discuss, and trust that the mods will be alerted and/or step in if people get too heated. If you think you have a bias that prevents you from being objective, that's fine (we all have our favourites and that's allowed), it's okay to just not participate for that particular part and focus on updates instead. * Just freeze the thread in between updates. Bear in mind this is nothing against the LP itself, it's a fine enough job and like you said, it's your direction to take it. Running of the thread though has been a bit up and down at times, because if you're going to not be happy about people actually discussing the story, then it's just going to feel like 'if you don't agree with my views on Warcraft lore, then don't say anything'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 14:08
|
|
|
I probably did overreact. I've been feeling like crap in real life lately and not getting as much sleep as I need to. I suspect, though, that I'm more frustrated because this is an argument that I've had before, in other places, and there's no conclusive resolution to it, then or now. So yes, I did overreact in cracking down on the thread. It's all just poo poo writing from a poo poo company and we're presently dealing with one of the races and factions I despise most in the setting.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 14:16
|
|
|
One thing I want to point out - this thread is very different than the warcraft lore thread. Here, we're discussing only what we know up to this point, with occasional extra lore being added for context. I thoroughly enjoy talking about warcraft lore in this thread in a way that I would never want to discuss warcraft lore in the main thread, simply because I am not privy to much of the lore past WotlK. It's neat to see how things unfold as we go through the missions and see snippets of where the franchise took the concepts introduced in the RTS games, for better, or for, frequently, much worse.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 14:49
|
|
|
I only ever played Warcraft 2 and 3, and that was long ago. I had no idea about WoW lore, nor much interest in opening the can of worms that I suspect reading a WoW-focused thread would be, and I've enjoyed this LP and the discussions around it. I understand other folks don't necessarily come from that same place and respect Cythereal's right to run the LP and the thread how they want to, but I wanted to raise my hand as someone who's found all this to be new and interesting.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
Dirk the Average posted:One thing I want to point out - this thread is very different than the warcraft lore thread. Here, we're discussing only what we know up to this point, with occasional extra lore being added for context. I thoroughly enjoy talking about warcraft lore in this thread in a way that I would never want to discuss warcraft lore in the main thread, simply because I am not privy to much of the lore past WotlK. It's neat to see how things unfold as we go through the missions and see snippets of where the franchise took the concepts introduced in the RTS games, for better, or for, frequently, much worse. If nothing else, with the full context of WoW lore, the answer to "why did the Warsong clan and the Sentinels fight here" is just "because the Jailer wished it to be so", and if that's not the most boring possible answer...
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 16:30
|
|
|
I'll reserve my full lore post on Grom for after his arc concludes, but right now I think the core of my analysis is this: Grom is a terrible leader, and he knows he's a terrible leader. I think Grom really would be happier just as a grunt or an adventurer, not having to think about what he's doing or why, just fighting because he understands fighting and enjoys it and is good at it. Traditional orc culture means that being the best fighter means you're put in charge of everything, though, and Grom has never understood how to back down. I think that Grom represents a scathing indictment of orc culture. He's not cut out to be a leader in any but the most simplistic times, and he knows it, but orc society and values have pressed him into a role he's unfit for with tragic consequences. I think that in another story, Thrall would have been better served by Eitrigg or Saurfang (who are canonically around, just off-screen) playing the part of the older, veteran mentor, but Grom's character flaws - and, I argue, the flaws of orc society and culture in general - are central to the story that's playing out. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Sep 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 16:37
|
|
|
Grom is also a really good rebel war time leader, but that absolutely doesn't translate to any other time. If you need to run a guerilla campaign against an overwhelmingly superior force looking to enslave or wipe you out he's great. Just uhhhh, not when trying to establish a new home via a semblance of peaceful communication. I do suspect I know exactly when Grom worked out he's a terrible leader, but we'll get there when we get there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 16:47
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:They coexist quite happily with the furbolg and dragons, and the only races they're typically at war with are the species-wide insane-from-a-blood-curse harpies, the naga (former Highborne), and the trolls. I’m pretty sure Night elves are actually neutral with the trolls. At least the dark trolls since they’re territory overlap with each other and both side aren’t fighting each other all the times.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 17:02
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I'll reserve my full lore post on Grom for after his arc concludes, but right now I think the core of my analysis is this: Grom is a terrible leader, and he knows he's a terrible leader. I don't think that the writers of this story would disagree with you, for whatever it's worth.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 17:32
|
|
|
Gun Jam posted:I don't think that the writers of this story would disagree with you, for whatever it's worth. This. For all their other faults, they acknowledge that Grom hosed up, and then when he was sent on punishment duty, he hosed up again and oopsied into another war. Maybe the horde would have ended up at war with the humans in this new land and/or at war with the night elves anyway, but Grom took whatever fleeting chance for peace there was and slaughtered it with his axe.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:07
|
|
|
huh. didn't catch that before. they're actually trying to do a parallel here. back in the human campaign, an impetuous youth was told to go do some minor poo poo by his more important elder despite some weird power dynamics between them, it turned out he was given the important thing to do and handled it less well than he could have, with terrible results. over here, an impetuous old man was told to go do some minor poo poo by his more important junior despite some weird power dynamics between them, and he is in the process of procuring terrible results. they're doing the run-up to Stratholme again.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:22
|
|
|
Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:41
|
|
|
I just wish the Horde would stop killing so many innocent people as they act out external metaphors for internal conflicts for the soul and future of their civilization (and, arguably, mental illnesses of the main cast), expressed in a way that can be played and interacted with. Not that Blizzard's alone in that, really. Looking at you, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 18:58
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I just wish the Horde would stop killing so many innocent people as they act out external metaphors for internal conflicts for the soul and future of their civilization (and, arguably, mental illnesses of the main cast), expressed in a way that can be played and interacted with. you have just described pretty much the entire sci-fi/fantasy genre, yes Isaac Asimov in particular, 'man wouldn't it be hosed up if *insert internal conflict here* escalated to the point it was killing people' is an easy majority of his robots stuff.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 20:33
|
|
|
Sorry if my post may have contributed as well. It was mostly a poorly phrased idle musing of "huh, wonder if one could make the case that the elves making an exclusion zone of the forest lead to nearby species competing fiercely over the resource sparse plains nearby because the resource rich forest is firmly off-limits?" And honestly didn't have much deep thought behind it. Personally I'm very non-invested in Warcraft and think the lore from WoW is mostly an interesting case of watching them jump the shark as they try to find new content and story for the ancient MMORPG. It's more a thing I look at from a distance and ogle at the absurdity than anything.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 21:16
|
|
|
IthilionTheBrave posted:Sorry if my post may have contributed as well. It was mostly a poorly phrased idle musing of "huh, wonder if one could make the case that the elves making an exclusion zone of the forest lead to nearby species competing fiercely over the resource sparse plains nearby because the resource rich forest is firmly off-limits?" And honestly didn't have much deep thought behind it. I mean it's not an entirely impossible idea, it's pretty distinctly true in human history that civilisations, especially the major ones of the 'empire' variety, spring out of resource rich areas and often displaced other people groups towards more marginal areas of land that are less resource rich. But that would require a series of Blizzard writers with both the general desire and historical grounding to write that and they are, at best, significantly more interested in the pop culture version of history. At this point they're still very much in the broad strokes style of RTS history, and as we'll see, Blizzard is heavily uninterested in trying to provide the idea of nuance to the interactions between factions we're about to witness. We're also struggling with multiple decades of retcons at this point, and well... we'll see.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2023 23:06
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I just wish the Horde would stop killing so many innocent people as they act out external metaphors for internal conflicts for the soul and future of their civilization (and, arguably, mental illnesses of the main cast), expressed in a way that can be played and interacted with. You lost me there. How's SMAC a representation of external metaphors for the future of civilization expressed as killing many innocent people? Not trying to troll, I don't understand and I like understanding points when they're made.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 11:13
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:You lost me there. How's SMAC a representation of external metaphors for the future of civilization expressed as killing many innocent people? This isn't a SMAC thread.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 11:56
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:This isn't a SMAC thread. then why did you bring it up?
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 13:48
|
|
|
Mazerunner posted:then why did you bring it up? I assumed that I could make references to other media without needing to explain every comparison in detail like I'm back in grad school writing a paper.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 13:53
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I assumed that I could make references to other media without needing to explain every comparison in detail like I'm back in grad school writing a paper. Lmao
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 15:03
|
|
|
I understand and enjoy your perspectives and really appreciate this LP. I've not dealt with WoW or really anything Blizzard in ages but thank you for doing this and giving your views Cythereal.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
Mr.Misfit posted:You lost me there. How's SMAC a representation of external metaphors for the future of civilization expressed as killing many innocent people? To very briefly go into it, there's a lot of atrocities that are committed if you read between the lines of the technology quotes and the wonder videos. There's an AI-run colony that executes dissidents, nerve-stapling dissidents, unleashing psionic worms on civilians and using their still-living flesh to incubate more worms, breaking the minds of civilian populations by invading their dreams, planet busters, chemical weapons, etc. And each of the factions represents a different view on the future of humanity, with various technologies and secret projects "canonically" being built or researched by a specific faction and the scale of the warcrimes involved expanding exponentially as the technology matures. To bring things back around to Warcraft, I'm surprised at how disappointed I am with the campaign from an RTS perspective in retrospect. Starcraft has 3 factions, and you go up against your own faction and the other two factions during the course of each respective campaign. Warcraft 3 doesn't do a good job of this - the human campaign never interacts with the night elves, and really only fights the Scourge. The Scourge fights humans, similarly. The Orcs are fighting humans and night elves. And we have yet to see who the night elves fight. Combined with the tech gating, the campaign is doing a very poor job of teaching the player to play the game. Part of that is that it requires so many more missions to properly tutorialize a faction and then also provide full tech tree fights up against 4 factions (mirror matches are important!). In retrospect, perhaps that's why I never viewed Warcraft 3 as a competitive RTS in the same vein as Starcraft or its sequel, or even Warcraft 2. I only really ever played custom maps, and the campaign playing like an extended custom map where you follow a set of heroes that you level up and equip with gear was a big part of that. The game taught me to seek out more content that was similar (and, to be fair, I was playing games like that in Starcraft even if it required extremely kludgy trigger stuff to pull off properly).
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
Pretty sure you could have answered that in a PM after OP said to stop talking about SMAC
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:21
|
|
|
Dirk the Average posted:To bring things back around to Warcraft, I'm surprised at how disappointed I am with the campaign from an RTS perspective in retrospect. Starcraft has 3 factions, and you go up against your own faction and the other two factions during the course of each respective campaign. Warcraft 3 doesn't do a good job of this - the human campaign never interacts with the night elves, and really only fights the Scourge. The Scourge fights humans, similarly. The Orcs are fighting humans and night elves. And we have yet to see who the night elves fight. Screw the mentality that an rts campaign is a tutorial for the skirmish mode and has to teach faction match ups. That said, even viewing the campaign alone all of those match-ups being absent is a ton of variety and interesting interactions just left completely out. Hell, there's an entire units that don't see any play in the campaign, friendly or enemy. Part of why we're still getting extreme tutorialization for each race this far in is that we've only fought orcs a handful of times so there hasn't been much learning through exposure on what these units do.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 15:12 |
|
|
FoolyCharged posted:Screw the mentality that an rts campaign is a tutorial for the skirmish mode and has to teach faction match ups. That said, even viewing the campaign alone all of those match-ups being absent is a ton of variety and interesting interactions just left completely out. Hell, there's an entire units that don't see any play in the campaign, friendly or enemy. Part of why we're still getting extreme tutorialization for each race this far in is that we've only fought orcs a handful of times so there hasn't been much learning through exposure on what these units do. I genuinely am tired of the model of gameplay where every single mission introduces a new unit or mechanic until only the very last couple of missions are playing with the full complement. I always found that to be one of the most tiresome design decisions and almost every RTS rolls with it, it feels like.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2023 20:40
|
|