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Cythereal posted:Metzen's official reasoning at the time was that he felt that "This race is a race of evil, violent savages" was a racist and colonialist storytelling trope, which is a decision I do respect. I just don't think he executed the change well in the orcs' case. What did they do to your beloved night elves after WC3?
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Sep 14, 2021 21:59
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Beartaco posted:What did they do to your beloved night elves after WC3? Removed their teeth and spines, mostly, in favor of making them generic wood elves who walk around almost naked all the time. Their stories in WoW are 90% them getting slaughtered by the Horde and the rest of the Alliance (which they joined because of the Horde slaughtering them) having to bail them out. They also have a tendency, even by WoW standards, to go insane and get corrupted. Then in the most recent expansion the Horde straight up genocided (Blizzard's word, not mine) them, and their goddess Elune descended to tell the leader of the surviving night elves - Tyrande, high priestess of Elune - that she needs to let go of her anger and hatred against the Horde because Elune allowed the genocide to happen and didn't know that the souls of all the thousands upon thousands of dead night elves were going to be damned to turbo-hell and enslaved into states of unspeakable torment as foot soldiers for Thanos (er, the Jailer) to conquer the universe and claim the Infinity Stones (er, the Sigils).
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Sep 14, 2021 22:08
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I myself hated Tyrande in WC3. (I never played WoW so I have no opinion on things there) I'd call her vicious and short-sighted, and would agree with Maiev that she belongs in prison for her mass murder.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:26
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That was what made the night elves fun, though - they were savage and extremely territorial. Tyrande was a hotheaded jerk who would shoot first and not really ever ask questions. WoW sadly made them into really just "elves, but purple", leaning far more into the hippie woodsman stuff than their brutality. And Tyrande herself was just a gentle elven lady if she ever got anything to do at all.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:40
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Yeah, people liked them because they were a bunch of angry women that shot first and asked questions later. Especially then it was a refreshing take on elves. Plus the fact that it was a race where the women had all the agency. Look at our guy night elves: one had to be woken up to do his job because otherwise the lazy bastard would have slept through the apocalypse and the other was a no good delinquent that needed his bail posted again. Really that second bit is kind of amazing for the time and especially so in the light of recent news.
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Sep 16, 2021 01:20
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Melth posted:I myself hated Tyrande in WC3. (I never played WoW so I have no opinion on things there) Counterpoint: Maiev is a cop, and ACAB. Seriously, in hindsight and especially in light of having watched your videos, I think Tyrande may be the worst hero in any of the campaigns. She doesn't bring anything really useful to the table for the Night Elves except her HP and item slots. Bonus damage (her fire arrow skill) sucks for reasons you've pointed out plus it drains her MP; her aura gives bonus damage when it's armor most Night Elf units really need; Scouting owl is more or less made obsolete as soon as you get hunters, and her ultimate skill is just too-little-too-late AoE damage that takes her out of the fighting when she should be tanking damage for the rest of her (fragile!) troops.
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Sep 16, 2021 02:03
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Meaty Ore posted:Counterpoint: Maiev is a cop, and ACAB. Maiev doesn't really bother me the way Tyrande does because the narrative acknowledges that Maiev is awful. I would agree that mechanically Tyrande is the worst hero in the campaign and I hate the levels where you basically just have her + a few archers. Relatedly, her hero type (Priestess of the Moon) was never played back when I was on ladder. The one time I did see an elf pick PotM I ran him over, whereas night elves were usually my worst matchup at that time. Still, Starfall and Trueshot Aura are great in the final battle. FoolyCharged posted:Yeah, people liked them because they were a bunch of angry women that shot first and asked questions later. Especially then it was a refreshing take on elves. Plus the fact that it was a race where the women had all the agency. Look at our guy night elves: one had to be woken up to do his job because otherwise the lazy bastard would have slept through the apocalypse and the other was a no good delinquent that needed his bail posted again. I would like that if I agreed that the women had all the agency. I'm not sure I agree with that though. It's true that Tyrande has all the agency in the first couple of chapters. My take on things though is that her plan is just to go wake up her husband and the other men and then follow her husband's lead since he immediately comes up with a plan and she doesn't. Maybe I'm being uncharitable or just forgetting something, but I am failing to think of any contribution she makes to their plans after waking Furion up. Except for going to get the other man (former love interest) out of jail. She does defy her husband on that one. But then it turns out to be a really bad decision (with one good outcome by sheer luck but almost no other relevance). That said, I agree that WC3 did a lot better than many other games of the time, which was also something I liked about it. Melth fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 05:59
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Whatever you may think of the night elves in WC3, personally I feel that there's a huge narrative problem when your story tells a survivor of genocide (again, Blizzard's word, not mine) that she's wrong to be angry, the genocide needed to happen, she's never going have peace as long as she's mad about this. It's especially galling because it's the exact same line the story took on Jaina after the Horde nuked Theramore off the map with a magic bomb so powerful it became a fixed point in time in all timelines and alternate realities and almost killed her. The story told her that she was wrong to be angry about it, she'd only be happy if she let go of her anger. WoW in general has serious problems with making female characters into villains because they have the gall to be angry about horrific events, which always corresponds with a sinister physical change in their appearance to go with it, and then the story asserting that the only way forward is for them to heal by letting go of their rage, while completely disregarding the notion that they might be correct and justified in their anger. Also the whole 'well actually the orcs' genocide of the draenei was wise and good because the draenei really were planning to go on a crusade to convert or kill everyone.' Cythereal fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 15:50
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Blizzard storytelling  I wonder how much it was shaped by the poo poo going on in their studio.
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Sep 16, 2021 18:12
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How does WoW treat Sylvana? (The high-elf archer who Arthas turned into undead and whose race got genocided). Kinda strange how many times this characterization seems to happen in Warcraft.
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Sep 17, 2021 06:54
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Banemaster posted:How does WoW treat Sylvana? (The high-elf archer who Arthas turned into undead and whose race got genocided). That... that is a very loaded question, and I choose NOT to be the one to detonate that particular nuclear warhead. (Because "pull the pin on that grenade" does NOT adequately describe the fallout of that particular question)
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Sep 17, 2021 07:03
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BlazetheInferno posted:That... that is a very loaded question, and I choose NOT to be the one to detonate that particular nuclear warhead. (Because "pull the pin on that grenade" does NOT adequately describe the fallout of that particular question) I also call not it.
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Sep 17, 2021 11:52
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Banemaster posted:How does WoW treat Sylvana? (The high-elf archer who Arthas turned into undead and whose race got genocided). Poorly. Very very very poorly. Some very big but brief spoilers to follow. There is info missing here, but this is the very broad strokes. For the first two expansions she was a nobody and used a generic model. In wrath of the lich king she got a model rework and was also treated poorly (she had nothing to do with the arthas kill, she lost her capital to an uprising and required alliance and horde aid to recapture it, out of game after Arthas died she killed herself by throwing herself off ICC, but she got better). After wrath, she was again treated poorly by the new warchief Garrosh, however at this point she was running some sort of game and he was "right to be suspicious", she spearheaded an invasion of gilneas and plagued it to death, the gilneans survived by migrating to darnassus. She was then promptly a nobody again for several expansions until legion cropped up where she suddenly became the warchief of the horde. In legion, she again got a new model, she's shown to be scheming behind the scenes by doing... something. A bunch of alliance and horde die needlessly, she's clearly trying to gently caress over some of alliance and hordes mutual allies (specifically the valkyrie and Odyn) by aligning with a malignant god of death) - there is no specific reason given. In BFA at the end of legion, azeroth gets a big sword stabbed in it by the lead of the burning legion that causes the planet to start bleeding azerite - basically world blood. turns out that world blood is great for warcrimes. Sylvanas uses azerite to burn down darnassus killing millions of civilians for no appreciable reason that we know of yet. This results in the official fourth alliance / horde war, which the horde categorically loses. Turns out that sylvanas was working hand in hand with n'zoth, an old god due to reasons not yet explained. By the end of BFA sylvanas loses - she is out of power, out of friends, has no control over the forsaken and being actively hunted. She returns to ICC to face the new lich king who took over from arthas and kicks his rear end up and down the citadel using bullshit powers from nowhere, destroys his helmet which rips open the door to the afterlife. It's at this point that its revealed that she's been actively working since the end of wrath for an rear end in a top hat in the afterlife all along, and has been feeding souls into the metaphysical woodchipper for reasons - what reasons? we don't know. As of the most recent patch, she's a raid boss, and when you beat her, you lose because of plot reasons, she finally decides to rebel against her boss because we don't know why, and he responds by giving her back her soul and leaving her to everyone she hosed over. So they're going to Kerrigan her to redeem her. Again. Blizzard only knows one story.
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Sep 17, 2021 12:54
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tithin posted:10/10 storytelling, Blizzard clearly has a modern Shakespeare on their WoW writing team. This is why I'm glad I never played after WC3 (and expansion) and just pretend the story ended there.
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Sep 17, 2021 15:49
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scavy131 posted:This is why I'm glad I never played after WC3 (and expansion) and just pretend the story ended there. Also, much of that isn't seen in-game. A lot of her story is confined to online short stories, books (there's another coming out next year that promises to reveal *her side of the story* from the last few expansions), and events that just plain aren't in the game anymore like the genocide of the night elves. Now when you hit the relevant level, the night elf homelands just automatically switch to plagued, burning ruins with no explanation or fanfare.
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Sep 17, 2021 16:00
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scavy131 posted:This is why I'm glad I never played after WC3 (and expansion) and just pretend the story ended there. Me too. Every time I hear anything from WoW, it just sounds dumb. Also I second the Kerrigan-Sylvanas comparison. I never played SC2 so I have no idea how things went in that game, but it seemed obvious to me even in middle school that Blizzard rehashed a huge number of story elements and characters between SC and Warcraft 3.
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Sep 17, 2021 16:20
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Melth posted:Me too. Every time I hear anything from WoW, it just sounds dumb. I'm sure they thought it was clever when they gave Widowmaker a Nova skin (in Overwatch) and Nova a Widowmaker skin (in HotS).
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Sep 17, 2021 17:18
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I liked Sylvanas as a character in wc3. I do not like Sylvanas as a character anymore.
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Sep 18, 2021 02:09
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Is the game still trying to say genocide and warcrimes Mcgee is actually cool and good? I guess not if they made her a raid boss.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:28
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FoolyCharged posted:Is the game still trying to say genocide and warcrimes Mcgee is actually cool and good? I guess not if they made her a raid boss. Interesting question, and the answer is extremely unclear because blizzard is incapabale of writing a coherent and cogent storyline. They are literally on record as saying none of their stories are set in stone and they're making poo poo up as directed by the people who run the company and so they go out of their way to make things fit, even if it means retcons aplenty.
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Sep 18, 2021 08:14
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FoolyCharged posted:Is the game still trying to say genocide and warcrimes Mcgee is actually cool and good? I guess not if they made her a raid boss. Were they ever trying to say she was good? One of the things I liked about her campaign was that they made no attempt to make her seem better than any of her enemies, even Arthas. If anything, I thought they were a little too heavy-handed about it. We got the idea over the course of 3 missions of endlessly doing bad stuff to people for convenience or Sylvanas's sadistic whims. We didn't need her to end her final speech by saying something as goofy and grimdork as "We'll SLAUGHTER anyone who gets in our way!" Melth fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 16:06
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In wow during legion there was a lot of, "but maybe she was justified in (comical atrocities here) hmmmm?" I'm WC3 she's just Kerrigan 2.0 and that's fine.
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Sep 18, 2021 17:09
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In early WoW she's better because it's a more smooth transition from TFT "Slaughter anyone who stands in our way." to "... because everyone sees us as undead monstrosities and wants us dead so we're in a constant uphill battle just to exist."
life_source fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 18:04
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FoolyCharged posted:Is the game still trying to say genocide and warcrimes Mcgee is actually cool and good? I guess not if they made her a raid boss. Here goes: is that After lying to herself all along that The Jailer is not just a Bigger Badder Arthas and that clearly he really does want to make reality better, she finally clued in when he outright says "ALL WILL SERVE ME" after we beat her in a fight but he gets what he wants. So she turns against him, and he gives her the piece of her soul that Frostmourne stole back, at which point she faints and gets left behind with all the people she screwed over. Will be... interesting to see where she goes from here.
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Sep 18, 2021 21:11
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My new video is out now: Orc 3: Cry of the Warsong (a different approach) This was a fun one to make!
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Sep 26, 2021 19:01
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Well that was certainly a way to do that mission. I'm kind of sad that they programmed in Grom going hostile to the player but didn't go all the way and make killing him a win condition.
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Sep 26, 2021 20:45
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Cry of the Warsong, in which we give the Warsong something to cry about.
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Sep 26, 2021 21:10
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Finally Thrall makes a smart decision
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Sep 26, 2021 21:41
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FoolyCharged posted:Well that was certainly a way to do that mission. I'm kind of sad that they programmed in Grom going hostile to the player but didn't go all the way and make killing him a win condition. That could have been interesting, having a 'pacify warsong' quest to go with the 'pacify humans' one. Maybe the next mission could have differed based on your choice, blizzard has done a couple of forked missions like that in Starcraft and so forth. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel as clever for thinking of a way to do it if they'd actually built it in!
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Sep 26, 2021 22:34
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so this mission confuses me a little bit, the "don't lose any units or allied units" challenge solution is that you wall off Grom's base. Ideally, this solution also is good for someone who wants to take their time building up a huge gently caress-off army and not worry about attacks until engaging with the human bases directly. The thing that I've had trouble with is that playing it on...whatever version the CD I own is is that Grom is really bloodthirsty and as soon as you start walling off his base, he and his units will set to destroying the buildings you are constructing. Is Grom always set to be hostile in that way or was that something that got patched out later? Seeing as how the above mentioned challenge runs are being done on the recent Reforged patches and they never mentioned this problem I wondered if it was an AI thing that got changed over the years
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Sep 27, 2021 00:52
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Aces High posted:so this mission confuses me a little bit, the "don't lose any units or allied units" challenge solution is that you wall off Grom's base. Ideally, this solution also is good for someone who wants to take their time building up a huge gently caress-off army and not worry about attacks until engaging with the human bases directly. The thing that I've had trouble with is that playing it on...whatever version the CD I own is is that Grom is really bloodthirsty and as soon as you start walling off his base, he and his units will set to destroying the buildings you are constructing. Is Grom always set to be hostile in that way or was that something that got patched out later? Seeing as how the above mentioned challenge runs are being done on the recent Reforged patches and they never mentioned this problem I wondered if it was an AI thing that got changed over the years I have no idea what would cause this. Even in Reforged, to my knowledge he will not go hostile to the player unless you attack his stuff. Simply blocking him off should not cause him to attack. In fact, GiantGrantGames who does the Deathless series used the "wall Grom off" strategy in Reforged without issue.
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Sep 27, 2021 02:04
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I have definitely seen grom attack buildings built on his turf, but I haven't figured out the cause and it doesn't always happen. One time I tried building my great hall next to his mine and just stealing the mine from him, but he attacked.
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Sep 27, 2021 03:16
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Well yeah, of course he is going to react to you trying to steal his gold.
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Sep 27, 2021 07:50
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Poil posted:Well yeah, of course he is going to react to you trying to steal his gold. I'm giving his peons a much-needed break! He should thank me
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Sep 28, 2021 20:09
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Those peons should be out fighting for glory and the horde, not mining things 
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Sep 28, 2021 20:49
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Slaan posted:Those peons should be out fighting for glory and the horde, not mining things That's right! They've got the Pillage ability afterall, take those picks and hit the enemy buildings with them!
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Sep 28, 2021 21:23
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The Orcs are now noble savages, strong of arm but strong of spirit too. Respect and Prowess are the utmost importance in our society. but also lmao its a two tier system if you arent that your a second class citizen go chop some wood you filthy peon
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Sep 28, 2021 21:59
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Yeah, once again it seems like most of the orcs are complete jerks (Thrall being the sole exception). And for that matter, the trolls and tauren and whatnot are complicit in this exploitation of course! One completely inconsequential thing that always irked me was this: peons/peasants clearly have both picks and axes. If ordered to fight, why do they use the picks instead of the axes? I realize of course that a woodcutting axe is not the same as a battleaxe, but it still seems more suitable than a mining pick.
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Sep 29, 2021 19:38
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Yeah, they didn't even have the grace of going Star Trek's route with the Klingons where they assert that miners, engineers, artisans, etc are highly valued because they make the warrior caste possible. Warcraft goddamn loves its noble savages.
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Sep 29, 2021 19:42
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Cythereal posted:Yeah, they didn't even have the grace of going Star Trek's route with the Klingons where they assert that miners, engineers, artisans, etc are highly valued because they make the warrior caste possible. They also love savage nobles, with the list including Prince Arthas, Lord Garithos (he was right though; he should never have trusted an elf!), pretty much all the named death knights, and the list goes on.
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Oct 3, 2021 06:33
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