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Dirk the Average posted:He turned himself into a demon. Kind of a big deal when your enemies are demons, and demonic corruption is a thing. And as we're seeing with this mission, merely existing has Illidan causing damage to everything around him. Malfurion almost certainly just straight up did not trust Illidan anywhere near the world tree, especially when the Legion was so interested in taking it at that moment. And especially especially when Illidan had attempted to create a new well in the past. That feeds into my point though. I can take your point about Malfurion not wanting Illidan near the thing. But.... as I said, if you're going to go with the stance that Illidan is dangerous, don't just have him leave. The choice to just tell him to go away is the worst option. And Tyrande was being seriously irresponsible in the first place for releasing him, then just leaving him to his own devices. Why wasn't she with him? It adds to my point where their collective follow-through is absolute poo poo.
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Oct 17, 2023 13:34
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As soon as illidan got free he started mass murdering innocents, gently caress that idiot. Most of what I know about warcraft lore is from 1, 2, 3 and early wow and so very much of anything added beyond that just seems like stupid nonsense (not that the early stuff is anything great) and that's not even accounting for the trashfire of shadowlands that's barely worth soiling a garbage bin with.
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Oct 17, 2023 13:35
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Keldulas posted:That feeds into my point though. I can take your point about Malfurion not wanting Illidan near the thing. But.... as I said, if you're going to go with the stance that Illidan is dangerous, don't just have him leave. The choice to just tell him to go away is the worst option. And Tyrande was being seriously irresponsible in the first place for releasing him, then just leaving him to his own devices. Why wasn't she with him? It adds to my point where their collective follow-through is absolute poo poo. Illidan was leading his own night elf army in the last campaign - presumably Tyrande sent them with him, ostensibly helping him fight the demons but they'd also be there to keep an eye on him. Certainly he doesn't have any night elf followers now. I think with Illidan specifically, Tyrande and Malfurion are just too personally close with him. He's Malfurion's brother, obviously, and I get the feeling his advances toward Tyrande weren't entirely unwelcome given how forgiving she is toward him now. They're the last people who should be sentencing him for what are clearly capital-level crimes in their society (not to mention the straight up slaughter he's doing now, or at least that's being done in his name now) but I guess they're the only ones with any authority to.
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Oct 17, 2023 13:44
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I barely remember the TFT campaign and I don’t think I ever finished it, but Maiev was one of those characters who stuck with me and I can still hear her voice lines. That said, I remember thinking she felt a bit off as a character when I first played this. A lot of that comes down to one of her voiced lines when you issue her orders, “Illidan must be around here somewhere” or whatever it was. She’s just constantly talking about Illidan while she’s doing anything. I didn’t know the term “Bechdel test” as a kid, but today that feels like the elephant in the room here… you’ve got this powerful, driven female leader with a majority-female faction and she just never stops talking about some dude. Granted that dude is a legitimate threat and she’s trying to stop him, but still.
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Oct 17, 2023 14:15
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Tenebrais posted:and I get the feeling his advances toward Tyrande weren't entirely unwelcome given how forgiving she is toward him now. Fun fact, according to Dragonflight, one of the Infinite Dragonflight's plots was to cockblock Malfurion prior to the War of the Ancients, leading Tyrande to get together with Illidan. This lead to unspecified doom for Azeroth and the Bronze Dragonflight hires adventurers to go back in time and ensure that Tyrande and Malfurion get together on schedule.
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Oct 17, 2023 14:24
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Cythereal posted:Fun fact, according to Dragonflight, one of the Infinite Dragonflight's plots was to cockblock Malfurion prior to the War of the Ancients, leading Tyrande to get together with Illidan. This lead to unspecified doom for Azeroth and the Bronze Dragonflight hires adventurers to go back in time and ensure that Tyrande and Malfurion get together on schedule. This sounds comical, I feel like the Infinite Dragonflight could stand to be played a bit more for comedy. Then again I feel like a lot of Warcraft expanded lore(i.e. post-3 or in secondary media) ideas are inherently goofy as poo poo and could stand to be a bit more self-aware.
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Oct 17, 2023 14:39
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Keldulas posted:That feeds into my point though. I can take your point about Malfurion not wanting Illidan near the thing. But.... as I said, if you're going to go with the stance that Illidan is dangerous, don't just have him leave. The choice to just tell him to go away is the worst option. And Tyrande was being seriously irresponsible in the first place for releasing him, then just leaving him to his own devices. Why wasn't she with him? It adds to my point where their collective follow-through is absolute poo poo. Malfurion can't afford the loss of life from apprehending Illidan after the Skull of Guldan mission. He is fully aware that letting him go will become a problem for future Malf but trying to catch/imprison him will leave them unprepared for the Legion right now. But agreed on the lack of follow-through. Tenebrais posted:I get the feeling his advances toward Tyrande weren't entirely unwelcome given how forgiving she is toward him now. But well, he did earn his Betrayer moniker time and time again.
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Oct 17, 2023 14:40
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PurpleXVI posted:This sounds comical, I feel like the Infinite Dragonflight could stand to be played a bit more for comedy. By all accounts, Dragonflight was precisely this kind of goofy, light-hearted story. Until they made a quest where players become complicit in sexual slavery. That's one of the frustrating things about Blizzard. They make all the promises in the world to do better, do better for a while, then make a quest about timeline-critical rape that players have to ensure happens.
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Oct 17, 2023 14:51
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Cythereal posted:That's one of the frustrating things about Blizzard. They make all the promises in the world to do better, do better for a while, then make a quest about timeline-critical rape that players have to ensure happens. Alright, dream scenario. You have suddenly attained all of the rights to Warcraft as a franchise, but aren't just allowed to hoard them and keep them for yourself, you have to pass them on to a group of developers and/or writing team. Who would you toss them at to make the kind of good stories you'd like to see? They will also have full retcon power to excise anything exceptionally stupid from the past.
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Oct 17, 2023 15:01
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PurpleXVI posted:Alright, dream scenario. You have suddenly attained all of the rights to Warcraft as a franchise, but aren't just allowed to hoard them and keep them for yourself, you have to pass them on to a group of developers and/or writing team. Historical? Bioware during their classic period (Baldur's Gate 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect), minus the homophobic executives. Classic Bioware is still my gold standard for story-focused RPGs with queer characters and themes and awesome female protagonists. Good drama at home with knowing when to be melancholy and when to be cheesey as hell. The Mass Effect trilogy is still my all-around favorite video game series ever made. Boot the :speculation: shitheads from the 3 team and the meddling EA executives who insisted on an action-packed Earth starting sequence instead of the originally envisioned start of Shepard being on galactic trial, and you'd probably have gold in my eyes. There's other developers I admire a lot for certain parts of game development (i.e. Firaxis for turn-based strategy game design as long as you're getting their A-team, but I wouldn't want them writing the story), but Bioware's golden age produced games that in my eyes still haven't been seriously challenged as far as personal enjoyment goes. Shame that EA (and Bioware's own boneheaded executives) ate the company and wore the skin as a suit. There is not a company that exists today that I would unreservedly trust to turn out a quality product. I only buy games now after careful research or a compelling LP showcasing the game that I decide I like. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Oct 17, 2023 |
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Oct 17, 2023 15:13
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Cythereal posted:For the majority of WoW's run time to date, Maiev was then built up by books as a looming threat who was probably going to drop purples. She became a serial killer of Highborne, tried to assassinate Malfurion, and plotted to destroy Teldrassil and topple Tyrande's reign. The Night Elf heritage armor quest in Dragonflight further retconned this away, with Maiev going from "serial killer of the Highborne" to now just "vehemently protesting the return of the Highborne". They're pretty lucky that all of those Evil Maiev plot beats were just in the books, makes it much easier to just ignore and retcon in the game.
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Oct 17, 2023 15:53
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Maeiv, serial killer of high borne would be a way more fun character. I'd prefer that to "cop a little too obsessed with her target"
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Oct 17, 2023 16:11
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I know you probably aren't interested in searching the map, but the Night Elf campaign has a lot of goodies to reward exploration with Maiev's Blink, at least for the first four missions.
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Oct 17, 2023 16:50
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sirtommygunn posted:I know you probably aren't interested in searching the map, but the Night Elf campaign has a lot of goodies to reward exploration with Maiev's Blink, at least for the first four missions. I did in the first mission. I cut it all because there was nothing interesting, just inconsequential creeps and meaningless items.
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Oct 17, 2023 16:51
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Cythereal posted:Fun fact, according to Dragonflight, one of the Infinite Dragonflight's plots was to cockblock Malfurion prior to the War of the Ancients, leading Tyrande to get together with Illidan. This lead to unspecified doom for Azeroth and the Bronze Dragonflight hires adventurers to go back in time and ensure that Tyrande and Malfurion get together on schedule. lol
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Oct 17, 2023 16:51
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Funniest part of that DF quest is that the reason Illidan won over Tyrande is because the Infinite Dragons went slightly further ahead in time and stole a poem Malfurion wrote for her and gave it to Illidan. Turns out the only way he could get the girl is by copying his brother.
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Oct 17, 2023 17:24
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Explopyro posted:I barely remember the TFT campaign and I don’t think I ever finished it, but Maiev was one of those characters who stuck with me and I can still hear her voice lines.
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Oct 17, 2023 17:58
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I remember that in the original version (not sure about Reforged), this is called the Sentinels Campaign. But in fact you play an entirely separate Night Elf faction, who now have reason to be hostile toward the one it's named for, or at least their leader.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:21
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Alpha3KV posted:I remember that in the original version (not sure about Reforged), this is called the Sentinels Campaign. But in fact you play an entirely separate Night Elf faction, who now have reason to be hostile toward the one it's named for, or at least their leader. This is still the case in Reforged. Another fun detail a friend of mine who has the Shadowlands lore book mentioned to me, Maiev is canonically the victorious commander of the Darkshore warfront in Battle for Azeroth and was given the honorary rank of general by the Alliance for her deeds. Danath is the canonical commander and victor of the Arathi Highlands warfront.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:34
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Maiev never really grabbed me as an engaging character, and probably still wouldn't, but she is absolutely the most clear-eyed and rational person around about Illidan. I was along for the ride because of that - Mr. Disaster Elf really is only out for himself even when he tries to tell himself it's for others, and is already causing so many problems. Me liking him more as a character doesn't change that someone really should be stopping him.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:39
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Poil posted:Probably related, in SC2 heartburn of the swarm Kerrigan spends the entire game going on about Mensk through her regular voice lines. Kerrigan has very personal reasons for wanting to do horrible things to Mensk
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Oct 17, 2023 19:43
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Cythereal posted:This is still the case in Reforged. Speaking of books, have you read any of the wc novels?
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Oct 17, 2023 19:47
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Gun Jam posted:Speaking of books, have you read any of the wc novels? I read some that were in a public library. I was not impressed by any of them. My stance on WoW books now is "That's nice. Have you done anything about the genocide of my favorite Warcraft race yet? No? gently caress off, then."
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Oct 17, 2023 19:47
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Tyrande never really does face any consequences for murdering all of those Watchers, does she? No wonder Maiev hates her guts.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:48
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Cythereal posted:My stance on WoW books now is "That's nice. Have you done anything about the genocide of my favorite Warcraft race yet? No? gently caress off, then." That's very monkey paw-able request. I mean - I got the feeling that if they to something about it, we'll all go "not like that, go back", y'know?
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Oct 17, 2023 19:54
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Cythereal posted:Another fun detail a friend of mine who has the Shadowlands lore book mentioned to me, Maiev is canonically the victorious commander of the Darkshore warfront in Battle for Azeroth and was given the honorary rank of general by the Alliance for her deeds. Danath is the canonical commander and victor of the Arathi Highlands warfront. Slightly veering off-topic, but I will say, I really enjoyed the Arathi warfront in a way that I didn't quite enjoy the Darkshore Warfront. It just didn't feel the same. As an aside, there's one much larger Naga unit in that final fight that didn't get mentioned, and is possibly even *absent* on Story difficulty? Or possibly just not notable enough to mention. Either way, it is their main frontline melee unit, and he is chunky. EDIT: Just to put the information out there, the upcoming WoW patch appears to involve the Night Elves getting a home again, it immediately being threatened with Fire again, but this time the players actually *stop* said fire in the form of there actually being a Raid dungeon against the perpetrators. Lots of Night Elf NPCs appear to be moving into said new home, to the point where most of the crowds of refugees are gone from Stormwind. Several NPCs that escaped Teldrassil now sport burn scars on their face. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 17, 2023 |
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Oct 17, 2023 19:54
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Gun Jam posted:That's very monkey paw-able request. I mean - I got the feeling that if they to something about it, we'll all go "not like that, go back", y'know? I wouldn't be making this loving LP if I expected anything good out of Blizzard.
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Oct 17, 2023 19:59
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One thing that becomes very clear in these games is that Blizzard doesn't actually see people dying as like...that big a deal. Chalk it up to the RTS nature of the games but it's jts considered standard that a whole lot of people are going to die and everyone at most goes "grrr! That's bad!" Maiev is rad as hell, and I agree with others that it's great that the first mission immediately tells you why freeing Illidan is a bad idea wrt collateral damage. You get a cool main character and you're immediately told and shown that Illidan is up to no good. Unfortunately, Blizzard most definitely does not stick this landing, and their love affair with Illidan causes them to get real mealy mouthed with Maiev and both her actions and her cause.
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Oct 17, 2023 20:11
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Rhonne posted:Tyrande never really does face any consequences for murdering all of those Watchers, does she? No wonder Maiev hates her guts. Where was she when Tyrande was trashing the joint?
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Oct 17, 2023 20:43
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Feldegast42 posted:Where was she when Tyrande was trashing the joint? Canonically, off inspecting the Wardens' other prison in the Broken Isles where they keep a bunch of high-ranking demons locked up. That was Maiev's solution to the whole 'demons keep coming back' thing during the War of the Ancients: lock them up so they can't die and respawn, then throw away the key.
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Oct 17, 2023 20:45
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Cythereal posted:Canonically, off inspecting the Wardens' other prison in the Broken Isles where they keep a bunch of high-ranking demons locked up. If you can't kill them anyway, theoretically not a bad idea. What's the like... delay on demons coming back to the fighting, anyway? Transport time? Reforming their bodies? Is it ever explained why demons don't just respawn in the exact place they got flattened instantly if they're technically immortal?
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Oct 17, 2023 20:47
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PurpleXVI posted:If you can't kill them anyway, theoretically not a bad idea. They respawn either on Argus or in the twisted nether (can't remember which and it's probably been retconned) so they have to get back to Azeroth somehow, usually by being summoned by a warlock which requires souls as fuel for all but the weakest of them. I'm sure there's a bazillion exceptions to this in the lore somewhere though
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Oct 17, 2023 21:03
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Keldulas posted:. Malfurion was just on a hair trigger to judge him. Everything I have seen of Illidan and Maiev so far (not a lot, granted!) paints them as the polar opposite of Tyrande and Malfurion. Extremely competent, if prone to making not-quite-the-right-choice at times, hate each other but apparently actually work pretty well together. None of which seem to be able to be said about the other two.  AtomikKrab posted:Kerrigan has very personal reasons for wanting to do horrible things to Mensk She seemed pretty ok with it as of the end of the Starcraft zerg campaign. Shastahanshah fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 17, 2023 |
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Oct 17, 2023 21:12
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Educational Games posted:They respawn either on Argus or in the twisted nether (can't remember which and it's probably been retconned) so they have to get back to Azeroth somehow, usually by being summoned by a warlock which requires souls as fuel for all but the weakest of them. Respawn on the twisted nether by default, but that is supposed to take "a long time", they were using argus as a turbo engine to do it as soon as they died.
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Oct 17, 2023 21:17
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It also varies depending on how powerful the demon is. Imps, for example, come back near instantly.
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Oct 17, 2023 21:41
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Oh boy, Maiev at last. To this date she's still probably my favorite Warcraft character by a wide margin, and that's only partly because I know a lot about being a moody, autistic lesbian . Her voice actor(s) and direction also contribute to that a lot, I'm a sucker for a husky voice. Based on her backstory, I feel that Maiev and the Watchers as a whole would be a perfect excuse to give night elves access to the Paladin class in WoW. Slap a moonlight-colored coat of paint on their abilities, and the theme of a monastic order of rigid, law-abiding warriors slots pretty neatly into place. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Oct 17, 2023 |
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Oct 17, 2023 22:20
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Even though we know it's (probably again) due to drinking, it's nice to see Grom back to his yelling antics. Bloody Pom posted:Based on her backstory, I feel that Maiev and the Watchers as a whole would be a perfect excuse to give night elves access to the Paladin class in WoW. Slap a moonlight-colored coat of paint on their abilities, and the theme of a monastic order of rigid, law-abiding warriors slots pretty neatly into place. That's still not a thing even in DF? They've set up that particular possibility since Legion, more than half a decade ago for Elune's sake. Didn't expect to get Eredar skin tones before that but here we are. Gun Jam posted:That's very monkey paw-able request. I mean - I got the feeling that if they to something about it, we'll all go "not like that, go back", y'know? Place the bets, folks - The souls of the dead Kaldorei offering themselves to make an even bigger, better world tree? That ends up corrupted for X reason two or three expansions after? Burnt again after X Horde character goes evil? Both at once? Go figure with Blizzard.
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Oct 17, 2023 22:35
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Honestly, my dream solution would have been for the Bronze Dragonflight to pop up and go "You know what? gently caress it, we're breaking the rules. Nozdormu be damned, we're changing history and saving those people!" You could have a raid, a patch's worth of content, or even a whole expansion about unforeseen consequences and dealing with what players set in motion! And it's worth it because Elune drat it what good is being able to travel through time if you can't make the world a better place with it.
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Oct 17, 2023 22:48
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FrenchBen posted:That's still not a thing even in DF? They've set up that particular possibility since Legion, more than half a decade ago for Elune's sake. Didn't expect to get Eredar skin tones before that but here we are. They're slowly opening up all the classes to all the races, right now shaman, paladins, druids, and demon hunters are the only ones left to open up. Those classes also have race specific assets that will take a little longer to make than the rest of the classes(shaman totems, paladin mounts, druid animal forms, and demon hunters demon forms). They will most likely be in the next expansion.
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Oct 17, 2023 22:53
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sirtommygunn posted:I know you probably aren't interested in searching the map, but the Night Elf campaign has a lot of goodies to reward exploration with Maiev's Blink, at least for the first four missions. Such a stark contrast to Starcraft 2 where Zeratul and Protoss Stalkers have the same ability but it never gets used for anything but teleporting over holes in terrain as pseudo checkpoints in fixed force missions.
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Oct 17, 2023 22:58
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