With the quarantine up and ready, I decided to play through the storylines on both sides of the battle through the last 3 expansions. Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and the Battle for Azeroth. I missed out on Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria due to my previous account being hacked at the end of my active duty service and me sacrificing it because it gave me an excuse to just focus on my training for SERE. By the time I left active duty, I was sick of most everything electronic, seeing the web of information everywhere I walked.
But now I'm back, and I decided to walk the roads my old self had once walked. I grew up playing the original WarCraft, along with my favorite WarCraft 2: beyond the dark portal. With the failed release of WarCraft 3, completely below any decent standard of promise/delivery, I got to thinking of "what would I have done had I been the one making the decisions?" Since getting my desktop back after having it in storage since 2011, I built it in 2010 to play Skyrim at max setttings, I put Unity's free program on it to give it a go and see what it is that I would create, given the chance. The WarCraft story is the first to be broken apart and digested. Since WarCraft is a mishmash of so many other science fiction/fantasy/mythologies, I'll review it as a player and a mythology and history scholar.
While I will get into what World of WarCraft has done wrong, mainly not giving every expansion it's own set of parameters and boundaries that interact with another as a part of evolution instead of taking away something that we already have and giving it to us in a different skin. Though I have been impressed with the streamlining and qualities of life, there is so much content to be explored and chances for growth that it would be a failure of Blizzard as a company to not utilize all the knowledge at its disposal to create a playable "museum of blizzard" kind of Game for the WarCraft series.
To reference the failure of the WarCraft 3 Remake, it was barely an upgrade in character models. One of the laziest money grabs that I had ever seen by a once respected company. I say that not to belittle them but to recognize that a good product is the sign of a good company. A poor product is the sign of a greedy and lazy company. We're only here for a small amount of time and there is no reason for us to not put our effort into all that we create on this earth. I had really hoped for an updated map creator, much like the game for ps4 Dreams. The way that the stories went in my head is so different than the ones that played out it would be like creating my own "What IF?" When I had made that decision I got arrested and spent 31 days in the county jail. Much of these ideas are what I was thinking about pre-arrest, and what I've been dwelling on since the quarantine began.
Warlords of Draenor:
Okay, I played through Warlords as a Worgen Guardian Druid. I loved the idea of the classes that can play all roles, and since I had played a Blood Elf Paladin in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, I decided to play one from either goblin or worgen as I missed their introduction and I really don't like the pandaren, so it turned me off to Monk. Since neither goblins or worgen can be monks I chose the druid.
There are two things that I learned from this, that I didn't play any of the Alliance quests in either Burning Crusade nor in Wrath, and the ability to shape change while falling is amazing. In my playtime I got to finally make a character that I got to look however I wanted in this world. I didn't level up this character from level 1, as I hated low leveling in Classic-Wrath, and I wanted to get straight into the story. I did also remake a Blood Elf Paladin but I only got him to 60 before I decided that I didn't want to level up anymore and I wasn't really into remaking a toon that I lost. Getting to Draenor was like going through the portal again in the WarCraft 2 expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal. Not seeing it in it's science-fantasy broken world, but seeing it fresh and green and full of primitive life. I felt it was a hearken to Conan and the savage fantasy worlds. For the most part I enjoyed it. The Garrison felt only halfway done. I felt that they could have expanded the alt system by allowing you to share the Garrison on each realm, as they had made the upkeep super tedious for each character. They could have also done missions as standard WarCraft RTS story missions where you send a team into a map for certain accomplishments. The current way is just sending your recruits on a percent chance auto complete missions.
I would keep that option, but the reward is only the standard. Taking personal control of the missions would allow one to find extras as well as making those recruited characters more than simple paper dolls. It would also break the monotony of the game type, adding more depth rather than taking away anything. Sea missions would have been amazingly fun!
I do very much dislike the Talent system. The 3 pillars are not organized in any way shape or form. There is no, attack, defense, or support options, they're just things that were previously given in the past and then placed into a strange array of choices. Even the weapons that they added in Legion, only gave us back things that we already had in the guise of "weapon progression" It was not fun to grind out and it was not a fun part of the game. it could have been done automatically for how well it was implemented.
I did enjoy the story in both Warlords and Legion, though I only played it on my Druid, and when I unlocked the Void Elf race, I made a hunter because I played a Survival Hunter in Classic and I had always wanted a melee hunter character. I didn't play my Druid much anymore in Battle. I got halfway through the story before I gave up and went through it on my Blood Elf Paladin, then to get the other side of the story I completed the Battle story I with my Void Elf Hunter. I leveled up through player versus player (PvP), and did the Mists of Pandaria story on my hunter, which, after completing I'm really sorry that I missed that Expansion. It is very beautiful.
I did not enjoy the Battle story. It seemed too rushed and holds very little depth. I have enjoyed the PvP. While I was unlocking the Vulpera, a small fox like race, I was thinking of creating a monk for the first time. While I was grinding out the reputation I made an Undead monk and decided to go through the Forsaken storyline for the first time. I realized how much I missed out. In WarCraft 3, they were humans that had been unwillingly raised into the state of undeath. Not really my favorite story, but they had broken free to decide their own fate. I had never played one and they finally got the golden 3 of a class. I went for it and I really regret not making one before. It reminded me of why I like this game. I had preconceived notions of all the other classes. Not knowing what to expect with this class made me appreciate the mechanics a lot more, I believe.
So for the rest of the game I decided to go back and complete everything I missed on my monk, The Draenor and Legion horde story, first. After putting time into those with my Druid, doing it again on my monk was not something that i wanted to do since it was the same thing. In Legion, I got my druid the "hidden weapon" skins, I have no interest in doing that with my monk, as I don' t like the skins for the WindWalker specialization. I have no interest in dungeons or anything else in Battle, except for the PvP, and that is extremely fun. I do not like the gear level making the difference between a win and a loss, and it is easier to gain gear levels in the Player versus Environment side of the game.
I've gone through some of the old stories in some zones to make connections with some of the stuff going on in Battle/Legion/Warlords, and I'm not sure I would have continued in the direction that they went. Warlords was huge and streamlined, but Legion and Battle seemed to be rushed. And not in a "you played to fast" rush through, but everything is go go go go go go, emergency, emergency, emergency and you're the only person that can stop it. Here is where I would have made the case for alternate toons affecting the same world as your main character. There is so much to do that one character cannot handle it all, and if we're going to be gaining in power levels to destroy old gods, then we're going to run into the Raymond Feist dilemma of once you've defeated everything the only one left to defeat is Chaos itself.
Not to rag on the RiftWar Saga, I just would like a different direction for the World of WarCraft. Even if we keep the idea that there is one main hero, the ability to do other things and affect the same state of the world with other toons allows for more interaction with the world. I thought that is what world quests were supposed to simulate, but having to redo parts of the game on other characters can be too much for those not dedicated to the game. It would allow me to enjoy more of the story instead of the same over and over again.
My only complaints are the repetative nature of the games leveling mechanics/story and the gear level monstrosity that once you fall behind in the game you can never truly catch up, and in PvP that's an ender for anyone new wanting to enjoy the game and try to get better at it, until, like the highlander, there will only be one.
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