|
Does the game fail to start, it crash when trying to play a mission?Cythereal posted:I recorded mission #33 out of 37 in Reign of Chaos last night, then 25 more missions to go after that.
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2023 16:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 14:06 |
|
|
Gun Jam posted:Does the game fail to start, it crash when trying to play a mission? What it does is start up successfully, but with the wrong resolution - it goes into minimized state, but clearly still running and sounding properly, and the preview image shows a corner of the screen. Here's what it looks like on my screen when this happens:  When I start the game or click on the application the screen flashes black, then goes back to desktop with that running. Diagnosis by goon tech support is that it's an issue with my HiDPI monitor. Running the application in compatibility mode for HiDPI settings did the trick, for a few weeks. Then it started doing this again. Sometimes it does boot up and run properly. Sometimes when I click the minimized application it loads up properly. And when it does, the game works perfectly fine. I've tried loving with every compatibility setting on the menu, and nothing's worked reliably. Notably it was also working fine throughout the first part of the Reforged LP. Then I updated my video drivers for another game, and this started happening and rolling back my drivers didn't fix it. At this point I'm scratching my head, rolling the dice, and hoping I can finish this LP in the home stretch before Blizzard's poorly coded piece of poo poo craps out for good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2023 16:29
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:This would require a :files: solution which I'm not eager for, considering that I lost my own original discs for WC3 (and I never actually owned TFT until I bought reforged) at some point when I was in college. If you have a CD key, then the downloaders/installers for the original game are still available from Blizzard's site, so they're not quite :files:, they're just very obfuscated. I should also have my own copies of those lying around from last year when this LP motivated me to replay WC3 myself.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2023 16:42
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:If you have a CD key, then the downloaders/installers for the original game are still available from Blizzard's site, so they're not quite :files:, they're just very obfuscated. I should also have my own copies of those lying around from last year when this LP motivated me to replay WC3 myself. I do not have a CD key, and never owned The Frozen Throne at all. I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it. Honestly, it feels fitting to me that this would be the state of the final arc of this LP: I had WC1 and WC2 working fine because they were maintained well by a third party (GOG.com), but then I get to the actual first-party Warcraft product on battle.net and the technical stability and playability goes completely to hell. This LP has done at least as much damage to my desire to ever play more Blizzard games than Ian Hazzikostas or Steve Danuser ever did (individually, that was one hell of a one-two punch Blizzard landed), so I don't think it's likely that I'll ever play a Warcraft game again once this LP is done. Much as I still kinda love the night elves, I have RTS games I enjoy more that actually work reliably.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2023 18:35
|
|
|
Your LP is very enjoyable to read and I've looked forward to every new update. I've learned a lot.  The night elves were probably a lot more interesting in WoW. Their first proper zone was pretty cool and included the best looking pet for a hunter in the entire game, the ghost saber. Even better than the amazing vampiric duskbat my level 10 dwarf hunter ran all the way from Ironforge to Tirisfall for.  I suddenly remembered one thing I did like about Tyrande in WC3 which does make her my favorite of the night elf hero characters. They also have a few fun units but you don't get to use them enough unfortunately. Poil fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Sep 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2023 18:47
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Sad part is, WoW isn't even the MMO I've been sexually harrassed in the most. One oddity I've noticed in my time playing MMOs: a lot of people online assume I'm a woman because... I type in complete sentences with good grammar most of the time. Apparently this indicates that I'm a woman, not that my mother was an English teacher. Being right honest, I assumed you were some shade of fem. I know you not, but to me you narrative voice is that of a youthful Hellen Mirren. Also, many kudos on this LP; you have encouraged me to put up my first post possibly ever. If you could write a faction in WoW, with carte blanche freedom so long as it isn't an "A" or "B" plot in present expansion, how would that go?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 12:22
|
|
|
DariusJonna posted:Hellen Mirren "Welcome to Documentary WoW"
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 12:59
|
|
|
DariusJonna posted:Being right honest, I assumed you were some shade of fem. I know you not, but to me you narrative voice is that of a youthful Hellen Mirren. My standard policy is to not correct people whatever gender they assume I am. If I can seem convincing as a gender that I'm not, then that's a useful creative writing exercise. Those who have seen me post and discuss things relevant to my actual gender know, and beyond that it's nothing I hide or advertise. quote:Also, many kudos on this LP; you have encouraged me to put up my first post possibly ever.  quote:If you could write a faction in WoW, with carte blanche freedom so long as it isn't an "A" or "B" plot in present expansion, how would that go? I gave this some thought on the drive in to work this morning, and I think that with those parameters, I'd write a new reputation faction or daily quest group or what have you where the player gets roped into working for the Alliance's equivalent of Health and Human Services, helping out the common people of the Alliance. Say, a young draenei woman is finally getting married, but the wedding she'd always dreamed of as a child requires crystals only found on Draenor. Luckily, the PC happens to be able to readily travel to two different versions of Draenor! Play diplomat for a star-crossed night elf and dwarf who against all odds have fallen in love and face prejudice from their peoples. Provide emotional support to a newly risen death knight who wants to visit her still-living family and tell them the things she never got a chance to in life. Act as security for a state visit by Illidan to Stormwind and keep the lovestruck fangirls and fanboys at bay behind the yellow tape. Investigate a group of weirdo shamans who want to set up a formal Alliance school for shamanism and discover they're a Twilight's Hammer front - and then discover that they're repentant Twilight's Hammer who are trying to go legit and share their genuine love of the elements for the betterment of the world. No grand evils, no sinister plots, just little slices of life from the world of Azeroth. Not fighting evil, just doing some good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 13:05
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:No grand evils, no sinister plots, just little slices of life from the world of Azeroth. Not fighting evil, just doing some good. Little human street-level stories. They're often what a lot of games and settings forget as they escalate towards cosmic threats. Like, yeah, Ultrabad the Gigavillain has extinguished ten stars and is about to turn all the air in the world into wood, but unless we know who we're fighting for and how it affects them, it can be easy to just see it all as numbers to make bigger.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 15:16
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Little human street-level stories. They're often what a lot of games and settings forget as they escalate towards cosmic threats. Like, yeah, Ultrabad the Gigavillain has extinguished ten stars and is about to turn all the air in the world into wood, but unless we know who we're fighting for and how it affects them, it can be easy to just see it all as numbers to make bigger. I'm of the opinion that if Blizzard wants me to really care about Warcraft again, they need to drastically rein things in and make a much more human-feeling game. Let Jaina fall in love for reals this time, with a man or woman who won't turn evil. Open faction restrictions, let the ethnostates blur and fluctuate. Have a running sideplot about a young mage who's getting in way over her head as an adventurer because wizard school's expensive and she's got student loan debt to pay off. It's the same disease that's infected other MMOs I've stopped playing, I feel like Warcraft is so obsessed with being epic and awesome, and so afraid of things like romance (in Blizzard's case, admittedly rightfully so given their history with trying to write love stories) that it forgets to be human and its characters relatable. I have a wide range of choice for what games to spend my time and money on, so a question I ask of any video game is: why should I spend that time and money on your game and your characters?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 18:02
|
|
|
Feel free to shut this down if you don’t want to deal with this in this thread, but Chris Metzen is back again as „Executive Creative Director for Warcraft“ which is apparently above Danuser in the hierarchy: https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/1706715323867541734 You’ve shown that the Pre-Danuser era wasn’t good either, but it wasn’t quite as bad? Maybe? Some of the time?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 18:27
|
|
|
DTurtle posted:Feel free to shut this down if you don’t want to deal with this in this thread, but Chris Metzen is back again as „Executive Creative Director for Warcraft“ which is apparently above Danuser in the hierarchy: I'd prefer to not deal with this in this thread, thank you. Suffice to say that my feeling on the matter is that since Danuser is not actually being replaced or demoted, this is purely a PR stunt that involves no actual change in authority, just a new figurehead. Remember, all the dragon rape poo poo is on Metzen, as is drawing the victim of sexual slavery in a sheer bikini and thigh-highs. He also knew full well about all the human garbage working for and with him at Blizzard and did nothing while going to office parties with rapists. gently caress that shithead and gently caress Blizzard.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 18:34
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Little human street-level stories. They're often what a lot of games and settings forget as they escalate towards cosmic threats. Like, yeah, Ultrabad the Gigavillain has extinguished ten stars and is about to turn all the air in the world into wood, but unless we know who we're fighting for and how it affects them, it can be easy to just see it all as numbers to make bigger. This is why I loved the Astro City comic book series. They focus on the human stories.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 18:47
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I'd prefer to not deal with this in this thread, thank you.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Let Jaina fall in love for reals this time, with a man or woman who won't turn evil. Kalecgos didn't turn evil though, did he?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 20:08
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:It's the same disease that's infected other MMOs I've stopped playing, I feel like Warcraft is so obsessed with being epic and awesome, and so afraid of things like romance (in Blizzard's case, admittedly rightfully so given their history with trying to write love stories) that it forgets to be human and its characters relatable. I recall reading an interview with a Blizzard designer once in which he talked about the tools the developers had made for placing monsters. He said something along the lines of: "They gave us this button that makes the monster bigger, and this other button that makes it smaller. I've never pressed the second button. I'm not sure why it exists." That's always kind of defined Blizzard's approach to storytelling for me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
ApplesandOranges posted:Kalecgos didn't turn evil though, did he? I said for reals, not 'broken up by the writers over twitter.'
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:I recall reading an interview with a Blizzard designer once in which he talked about the tools the developers had made for placing monsters. He said something along the lines of: "They gave us this button that makes the monster bigger, and this other button that makes it smaller. I've never pressed the second button. I'm not sure why it exists." 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2023 21:08
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:I recall reading an interview with a Blizzard designer once in which he talked about the tools the developers had made for placing monsters. He said something along the lines of: "They gave us this button that makes the monster bigger, and this other button that makes it smaller. I've never pressed the second button. I'm not sure why it exists." Ok, but wouldn't a quest line about a tiny race of beings trying to get by in life among the Allaince and Horde be amazing?
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 00:23
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:I recall reading an interview with a Blizzard designer once in which he talked about the tools the developers had made for placing monsters. He said something along the lines of: "They gave us this button that makes the monster bigger, and this other button that makes it smaller. I've never pressed the second button. I'm not sure why it exists." Eh, I'm 99% sure that I've seen tiny versions of monsters as immature monsters, whether they're friendly, neutral, or also aggressive. But yeah, that'd just be a random quest or some enemies in a cave somewhere.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 01:18
|
|
|
Breadmaster posted:Ok, but wouldn't a quest line about a tiny race of beings trying to get by in life among the Allaince and Horde be amazing? That’s just Murlocs.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 01:24
|
|
|
Breadmaster posted:Ok, but wouldn't a quest line about a tiny race of beings trying to get by in life among the Allaince and Horde be amazing? Yes but contractually you have to crowbar antisemitic tropes in there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 01:28
|
|
|
Dirk the Average posted:Eh, I'm 99% sure that I've seen tiny versions of monsters as immature monsters, whether they're friendly, neutral, or also aggressive. Oh, yeah, there are definitely smaller monsters around, and I'm sure that not all their designers literally followed that process. it just felt so on-brand metaphorically that I've never forgotten it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 01:48
|
|
|
Breadmaster posted:Ok, but wouldn't a quest line about a tiny race of beings trying to get by in life among the Allaince and Horde be amazing? Like Quackles said, it's literally post-vanilla murlocs.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 01:55
|
|
|
Breadmaster posted:Ok, but wouldn't a quest line about a tiny race of beings trying to get by in life among the Allaince and Horde be amazing? This should have been the vulpera. Instead we got the purge squads.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 02:04
|
|
|
Night Elf 3: The Scythe and the Clock Fair warning, I make a bit of a mess of this mission. The night elves in general are a high-micro race, and we all know how good I am at that. Moreover, we still do not have the night elves' relatively durable front line units and will not gain them this mission.   The problem at hand is that after the Sundering, the druids have spent most of their time asleep, allowing their spirits to pass into the Emerald Dream and keep watch for danger there as the Sentinels do in the material world. The druids are only to be awoken in times of dire need, and normally Cenarius would sound the call into the Emerald Dream. Thanks to Grom, Tyrande and company have to basically raid Cenarius' house, deal with his security system, and get the magic alarm clock.    Let us make haste, my sisters! Thank goodness the undead didn't bring meat wagons, eh? My new unit is not one I would have chosen for this mission. Dryads are useful for harassment thanks to their poison, and are also an anti-caster support unit with their ability to remove both buffs from enemies and debuffs from allies. They're a situational unit, becoming more useful if your enemy uses a lot of caster units that apply buffs and debuffs (the Horde is a big one thanks to bloodlust).  The hunter's hall is the night elves' general tech building. Night elf upgrades are divided between the Sentinel units we've been using thus far, and the druids and creatures of the forest.   I've been meaning to ask, Isidora, about your timeline's war against the Legion. What united the world against them if not Medivh? Alexstrasza, the Dragonqueen. My timeline was more fractured than this, in that there were many powers that banded together, not just two or three. Alexstrasza offered herself as an impartial mediator.  I do wonder what became of Draenor in that timeline. We never did learn by the time I died forever. They never reopened the Dark Portal. The unit distribution and roles for the night elves do make sense. The traditional actual night elves provide most of your hitting power but are fragile. Their allies from the forest provide the anvil to go with that hammer.  And I do think it makes sense from a story perspective that you start off with just the elves and then get help as it becomes clear that shooting a few people won't cut it.  Here's the PotM's third ability, it's actually a hefty damage boost if you level it up. That costs mana. For a single unit. The entire PotM kit feels kind of lacking to me. They're not really an assassin unit, magic scouting isn't the most useful in the single player campaign, and they have a good buff. Trueshot Aura alone justifies using them in some strategies, but the hero in general feels just kind of there.  I upgrade the tree of life to tier 2 and build an ancient of lore, but just for demonstration. Dryads aren't very useful in this mission and that's all this does right now.  This health fountain is very nice. Nothing I have available is what I'd call durable.  Night elves in general are pretty terrifying in skirmish for their ability to harass, kill expansions, and generally control the map. But that's rarely if ever what campaign missions are about, you don't start on equal footing with the enemy.  Once the  I'm kind of glad you died before you ever met the night elves even in your timeline. And why, pray tell, is that? You have a type and I don't like sharing. Oh please. Just because you are and were a shapeshifting dragon in service to the Old Gods trying to destroy my kingdom and use your influence as queen to do it doesn't mean I ever would have cheated on you. One must have standards when sleeping with the enemy, you know. To be honest, even if I had known I probably would have consented. You can give a hedonistic socialite a throne but you can't keep a disastrous flirt down. I'm suddenly grateful that we never met in your timeline. So here's what happens if your hero dies on a base building mission or in skirmish: you pay a hefty chunk of gold at the altar to revive them. It does take a while, though, which is a concern on timed missions like this.  But I squeak out a win regardless and it turns out the objectives are lying: you just need any unit at the horn, not Tyrande herself.  Now to meet our second hero unit, and my personal favorite night elf hero to start with in skirmish.  Seriously, Reforged. What kind of portrait is that?  Not exactly the last march of the ents, but that will do.  Four missions left in Reign of Chaos.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 11:53
|
|
|
Mystery of the Druids Before I discuss Malfurion Stormrage specifically, I think it better to establish some background on what we're talking about. Today's subject, druids.  Druids are one of Warcraft's two stand-ins for a mishmash of vague pre-Abrahamic European, African, and American (Northern and Southern) religious traditions. Where shamans are of the flavor that does ancestor worship and making deals with spirits, druids are a much broader and more poorly defined spiritual tradition that revere some nebulous idea of nature and draw their magical power from the Emerald Dream. Or maybe from the Gardens of Life, druid lore hasn't caught up to that retcon yet. As such, a lot of questions about how druids work in the lore go effectively unanswered, brushed aside with a vague finger-wagging in the direction of Wild Gods and other, unspecified, nature spirits. In particular, it's unclear if druids represent any kind of intercessory magic. Most, but not all, druid traditions on Azeroth that we know of were originally taught to mortals by powerful nature spirits - Cenarius taught the night elves, the various loa taught the trolls (in particular, the raptor loa Gonk taught the druids of Zandalar), Goldrinn provided the basis for Gilnean druids, Ursoc taught the furbolg, and so on and so forth. Others are question marks, we don't know who taught the tauren how to be druids if there was some particular teacher beyond a vague implication that the Wild Gods taught them during the War of the Ancients, and Kul Tiras' druidic tradition is inherited from the Drust, who had no patron that we know of. Old WoW quests required druid PCs to seek out certain animal spirits to learn from and obtain their blessings in order to use their abilities, but it was unclear then whether this was a power granted to the druids or simply the spirits teaching the druids how to work magic, and these quests have since been removed in any event.  While WoW subsequently expanded the notion of what druids are and established that there are many different traditions of druids across Azeroth, the idea began with the night elves here in Warcraft 3 and throughout WoW's early years remained explicitly linked to them. Cenarius, though no friend of the Kaldorei Empire, encountered and interacted with a small number of night elf peasants who lived and worked in the forests of the Empire. Where the Highborne of the Empire were decadent and arrogant, these peasants had a far more respectful view of nature in light of how their livelihoods depended on the forests and fields. Cenarius took first to teaching a single apprentice, the night elf Malfurion Stormrage, and then a growing number of others - exclusively men. Why this is has never been established in the lore, the Sentinels were all-female because they originated as the priestesses and temple warriors of Elune, an all-female order in the matriarchal Kaldorei Empire, but we do not know whether there was some justification for only night elf men becoming druids or if it was happenstance that became tradition. These druids, as we'll see in this game going forward, learned from Cenarius the main forms of magic that would define their art. Druids are highly adept healers, can call on the magic of the sun, earth, and stars to fight, and most importantly, the ability to shapeshift. This last trick is more or less the defining magic of Warcraft druids: they can take on the form of animals empowered by magical strength. From Cenarius' original teachings, the night elf druids branched into a number of orders based around dedication to a particular form of shapeshifting, each taking a different Wild God as their patron: the Druids of the Claw with their ability to turn into bears learned from Ursoc, the Druids of the Talon with their ability to turn into ravens learned from Aviana, the Druids of the Pack with their ability to turn into wolves learned from Goldrinn, and so on and so forth. Following the War of the Ancients and the deaths of many Wild Gods, Malfurion and Cenarius created an organization known as the Cenarion Circle that would serve as an overarching institutional body for the various druid orders (including, in WoW, the druidic traditions of other races retconned into having always been there), and the druids were interred in barrow dens, freeing their spirits to enter the Emerald Dream and keep watch for threats.  Druids, unfortunately, are uniquely susceptible to that most iconic of Blizzard stories, corruption. Because druids are tied intimately to the Emerald Dream, they are extremely vulnerable to that connection being tainted by magic, and to the Emerald Dream being corrupted - like, say, the Emerald Nightmare that was an on-and-off plot for almost a decade in WoW. When a druid's connection to nature is corrupted, the druid's own mind tends to get derailed along with it and it's a rare druid who can be touched by the Nightmare or other forms of tainted nature and retain their sanity. In extremis, a druid's connection to nature can be forcibly severed to keep them safe, but this is very, very rare. Usually because a druid is seldom corrupted alone and there are multiple orders of fallen druids. Likewise, druids can also have their connection to nature twisted to touch other powers. While still druids, these groups tend to have starkly different powers and shapeshift forms from the norm. The picture above is the leader of a group known as the Druids of the Flame who had their connection to nature overwhelmed with the power of elemental fire and became an apocalyptic doomsday cult allied to the Twilight's Hammer (and I'm told that they've been resurrected in Dragonflight because surely this doomsday cult is the one?). However, these warped druids do not have to be evil. We know that this is the case for the Thornspeakers, the Drust and Kul Tiran druids. Most Drust went batshit, yes, but not all of them did. The Thornspeakers interweave the magics of life and death, seeing them as two sides of a whole. Thornspeaker shapeshift forms tend to look skeletal in nature, and their summoned allies resemble things of wicker and gnarled roots, but the true Thornspeakers are in fact firmly on the side of good despite how creepy they seem. The actually evil Drust drawing on this magic are, in the opinions of me and many WoW players, one of the few really effective times Blizzard's pulled off a sense of disturbing horror, drawing on old-fashioned Gothic horror for inspiration. Hard to go wrong with creepy backwater towns in the deep woods with spooky witches, mysterious curses, and a haunted manor that was once the home of a great and powerful noble family. In general, the thing with druids and corruption is that corruption is the only plot Blizzard regularly has for druids beyond generic nature hero stuff (to be clear, I like generic nature hero stuff, but I do acknowledge that it's decidedly uninspired most of the time), playing with the idea that druids are both the best equipped to fight such corruption and the most vulnerable to it. In the end, you'd struggle to name a single expansion without a corrupted and insane druid or two somewhere in it.  I feel that Blizzard kind of struggles to find a place for druids in the lore that isn't intimately tied to specific racial cultures and stories (night elves, tauren, ,worgen, and Kul Tirans being the prime suspects). Troll druids do exist now and have a decent amount of lore surrounding them, and we've started to see more and more explicitly druidic characters of other races as the years have gone on. Probably the main thing keeping them from being added to more races is simply the requirement for new art assets, given that each race has different looking shapeshift forms. Druids in general are a vague pastiche of various non-Abrahamic 'native' and 'pagan' faiths, and I personally - as someone with a generally lacking knowledge of most non-Abrahamic faiths - feel that they struggle to have a distinct identity from the shaman class beyond the obvious origins here in Warcraft 3 that druids are a night elf thing and shamans are an orc and troll thing. If anyone has any deeper insight in that regard, I'd be interested to hear it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 11:54
|
|
|
Druids' idea of 'nature and shapeshifting' is hardly unique to Warcraft, at least, you see it in a lot of media and a lot of them are D&D inspired. What always appears to be interesting is that there is a separation between druids and hunters/rangers, in that the former can turn into animals and command 'lesser' ones like insects, while the latter befriends and/or fights alongside a larger one like a bear or spider. It's rare that a single class has done both.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 13:03
|
|
|
Having played both shamans and druids, the big difference in lore/mechanics is where their power source is drawn from. Shamans are drawing power from the elements and communing with them directly. And this isn't some vague spirituality - elementals are explicitly creatures in Warcraft. The elemental balance of an area being thrown off will cause elementals to be born from the land and start trying to fix things (or "fix" things if something went horribly wrong/corruption). So shamans end up being very important mediators between those who live in the land and the land itself. Shaman spells are elemental in nature, with healing magic derived from water, offensive magic derived from lightning and fire, etc. Druids are aligned with life, rather than the land itself. I get the sense that they draw their power from life, but it's a symbiotic relationship, not parasitic. Their concern is the inhabitants of the world and the health of its ecosystems. Druid offensive magic is nature/stars, and their healing magic is generally plant growth based. The shapeshift forms are animals that are drawing power from nature. And yeah, there's definitely some overlap there - strip mining operations will piss off both the elements and druids that are upset with the ecosystem being destroyed. But a logging operation will primarily only be an issue for druids, so long as the land itself is relatively unaffected. Similarly, polluting the ocean will piss off the water elementals, but druids aren't quite as interested in the problem.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 13:19
|
|
|
On a very broad level, I guess druids are associated with nature from plants and shamans are associated with nature from landscapes. A big part of this is just the construction of WoW's class system, though. As of this game, Druid is more of a job than a spiritual tradition (hell, the night elves have a priesthood for actual religious practice), while shamans are specifically the orcs' spiritual leaders. Trolls and, in the expansion, tauren both get units based in their own traditions that are referred to differently; witch doctors in the trolls' case. I'm sure the manual or something would have described the trolls as practicing voodoo, that's right in the middle of all the stereotypes Blizzard was playing with for them. The tauren worship the Earth Mother, of course, which would tie in really neatly to the idea of Azeroth as an embryonic god even if they hadn't thought of that yet. It wasn't until WoW wanted to let you play as this kind of character that they needed to actually define what shamans really do, and it all had to merge into being the same thing because giving each race their own unique spiritual class would be a gameplay nightmare. So that's when the "spirits" get a more distinct definition as elementals rather than just being a vague gloss for whatever animistic entities their religions believe in. And they didn't want Druids to be Alliance-only either (they already had Paladins for that) so now tauren are in on that which means they have to have some sort of belief system about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 13:40
|
|
|
Funny thing is that Paladins being Alliance-only got phased out as soon as the first expansion, too, as did Shamans being Horde-only. I think Tauren being Druids fit naturally, as did the later on addition of Trolls into the mix, though the lines between 'Shaman' and 'Druid' did seem to blur a bit at times between the two classes for them. Like it's harder to marry the idea of Trolls giving thanks to nature, it's really the addition of the Loa to their belief that helped tie it together.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 14:07
|
|
|
I found this mission to be one of the toughest in the game on hard. The time limit is extremely strict. If you try to build up to the point that you can a-move into the orc base you won't make it. Instead you have to do a lot of skirmishing near the fountain to keep the orc's numbers down while you build up. It was the first mission I had to come up with a specific build order for in order to complete it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 14:39
|
|
|
sirtommygunn posted:I found this mission to be one of the toughest in the game on hard. The time limit is extremely strict. If you try to build up to the point that you can a-move into the orc base you won't make it. Instead you have to do a lot of skirmishing near the fountain to keep the orc's numbers down while you build up. It was the first mission I had to come up with a specific build order for in order to complete it. Part of the reason for this is because not only do the Undead have more Ghouls on the trees on Hard mode, they have Ghoul Frenzy. Which speeds up the ghouls. So! Reforged fun facts. "Grom" was not the only name excised from speaking lines. Before Frozen Throne, Malfurion was simply called "Furion". For some reason, instances of this name being spoken were removed... but there were very few, and were much easier to clip out of the audio files cleanly, so much fewer people noticed. Also noteworthy, but not actually relevant till next level (but we saw it at the end of this one so I'll include it here). There were two versions of the Furion/Malfurion hero. The one that appeared in Frozen Throne was on foot. In Frozen Throne, he was given a Stag to ride into battle. Reforged did not include a model for the on-foot version of the hero. From what I remember, I think the mounted version on him did have a faster movement speed than the on-foot version, so technically this is a buff! 1.33 didn't do too much special here - they switched out one of the murlocs in the middle of the map for a "Puddle Lord Envoy" as a minor reference to a much later map, but that's about it aside from the usual "Make Hard Mode Harder" changes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 16:00
|
|
|
Tyrande used to mention his name here. It is possible it was removed because base WarCraft III just called him "Furion", not "Malfurion". Unlike Grom, this change happened almost immediately - his name was changed in the expansion. His model was also updated in TFT, but the change was eventually backported to the original campaign - even the non-reforged version. The model we see here is actually a heavily modified version of the Archmage, although that is mainly visible in the animations. The original unit was on foot, and was based on a unit we havent seen quite yet. The same unit was also used a the base for Medivh. Also, I kinda love Malfurion feeling the need to spell out his emotions. e: dammit, this it was happens you type too slowly.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 16:03
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:
I never played wow, so I have less backstory and retcons to look at when contemplating the campaign so far. I mostly agree with your analysis and critics of the game, but I had a different feeling here. That it isn't so much a story that's assigned to the Night elves in particular, more like another variation of a story that's already happened multiple times and has been assigned to every species, just with different flavors. The human campaign has them being led into disaster by one of their own, Arthas, a young man with qualities, flaws and, in particular, a lot of pride. Full disaster is only narrowly avoided by having that mage woman whose name I forgot bail out what was left of them for greener pasture. She goes through a lot of emotional turmoil and has to learn to be humble and work with somebody she used to be enemy with. The Orc campaign has them being led into disaster by one of their own, Gromm, a somewhat less young orc with scant qualities, a Louvre full of flaws with a sidedish of overflowing pride. Full disaster is only narrowly avoided by having a young Thrall wisely beating several layers of poo poo out of that red face until it turns into a healthy green again. He goes through emotional turmoil, learns to be more humble - which in Thrall's case probably means crawling on the ground considering how little spine he shows in his campaign - and learns to work with somebody he used to be enemy with. Night Elves has them being led into disaster by... I don't remember how the rest of the story plays out, it's been too long I looked at any warcraft media. But from the way you worded it, I wager that their pride will do damage, then one of their own will clean up, then they'll learn to team up with the others. I suspect they wanted it to be a deep running theme to the game. Or they were uninspired and didn't know how to bring forth character development any better. Or it's a long running gag, your mileage may vary. Mindopali fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 29, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 16:12
|
|
|
Nostalgamus posted:Also, I kinda love Malfurion feeling the need to spell out his emotions. He just woke up, he isn't thinking too clearly about what he is saying. I always figured the Furion -> Malfurion switch that happened in the original games was more of a title. He's truely the head top druid now so his name gets Mal- appended to it. Instead it looks like it's a classic case of NothingTM.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 16:34
|
|
|
life_source posted:He just woke up, he isn't thinking too clearly about what he is saying. Malfurion does in fact have a formal title marking him as the head druid: Shan'do, stated to be Kaldorei for 'teacher.' Malfurion's just his name, and Furion seems to be what his family call him for short.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 16:38
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Here's the PotM's third ability, it's actually a hefty damage boost if you level it up. That costs mana. For a single unit. The entire PotM kit feels kind of lacking to me. They're not really an assassin unit, magic scouting isn't the most useful in the single player campaign, and they have a good buff. Trueshot Aura alone justifies using them in some strategies, but the hero in general feels just kind of there. But the priestess? one scouting, one passive aura, and one auto-cast (buffing her attack). There is less to do with her than anybody else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBhR4QcBtE
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
Let's Play 30 Years of Warcraft: That Angers Me Greatly
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 18:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 14:06 |
|
|
wologar posted:Let's Play 30 Years of Warcraft: That Angers Me Greatly
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2023 21:45
|
|
