draenei and belf starting areas are unchanged since BC. it's definitely a bit trippy jumping around the timeline as you go through quests.
Everything from previous expansions is exactly the same. I tend to just pretend I have GONE BACK IN TIME.
The Belf one at least acknowledged that the Sunwell was a Thing again, and also that Kael'thas was a bag of dicks. I think I'm gonna stick with a Nelf after all because they are familiar to me and on an RP sever I don't want to make a fool of myself x3 I did settle on WRA.
Oh lord, if Sylvanas died, I, um. Okay, when I say that the Forsaken's general disposition towards her is "fanatic devotion", I am not even exaggerating. The standard pro-Horde line from most races that I've heard is "for the Horde!" The standard Forsaken pro-Horde line is "For the Dark Lady and the Horde". And, uh, the general implications you get from quests and various dialogue is that at the very least the plague-creators and quite probably all Forsaken in general have a baseline 'sorta bloodthirsty crazy' above the usual for even Horde. There's no real feeling of being loyal to the Horde specifically from them, just being loyal to it because this is what Sylvanas wants; all of the Forsaken used to be residents of Lordaeron, after all, which means that the majority of them were human. They remember a time when the Horde was their enemy, and they're none too impressed with the living in general - on top of being incredibly paranoid. From all I've seen, they should frigging flip their shit and, quite possibly, split off into another faction that's tenuously neutral with the Horde if Sylvanas actually permanently died. Spoiler She has died once already, after all, in one of the starting-area quests for the Forsaken. It took the voluntary sacrifice of three Val'kyr to bring her back.
...while you sleep. (you open your eyes in the middle of the night and she is there. next to your bed. watching.)
Despite being typically Alliance scum I'm tempted to make a Forsaken toon and straight up name her Seasonaldepression. Which server did y'all say you have a bunch of Hordies on? EDIT: aw damn the name doesn't fit, never mind >.> EDIT X2 COMBO!: Everyone say hi to Seadepres on Moon Guard!! She is cold & tired always. Time to go download some RP addons.
You know, while I share everyone's opinions re: the Xe'ra being an annoying retconning douchebag who doesn't understand how empathy works, the thing that annoyed me the most about the BT scenario thing was just how silly it all was and how hard it doesn't mesh with WoW lore. The raid was fucking incompetent, everyone's running around like a headless chicken and being utterly destroyed by Illidan, and worst of all, you see the raid crying about raid gameplay things like battle resses and soulstones and afk douchebag in the back which doesn't actually apply to how they write shit for this universe. WoW gameplay has never been a thing that applies in lore, otherwise people would just resurrect all the assholes who die. Ugh. I didn't like the previous scenarios, but I HATED this one because of all of that. At least the others were consistent with how WoW storytelling works (and didn't make the players out to be incompetent idiots who suck at the game AND are unreasonable for killing the insanely dangerous evil guy).
Man I did the event from both sides and I'll admit that from the alliance side it looked super bad. but. god. AGAIN MISCOMMUNICATION. Just send someone down and let them know Sylvanus. Or Alliance peeps send someone up. Sylvanus has flying people on her side, a quick 'shit it's time to go my dudes' would have done wonders. Or like, a letter afterward? or SOMETHING??
//drags hands down face pls hire better writers blizz. if they had to widen the divide that was a pretty shitty way to do it, imho. I think if both factions had been mixed together and fighting, that would have made the emotional gutpunch of Sylvanus retreating hit much harder and seem like something closer to an actual betrayal of the tenuous alliance, even if it was still ultimately the right call. She could have been fighting alongside Wrynn like in the cinematic trailer, urge him to call a retreat, and on refusal take Vol'jin and abscond. That'd make Graymane and Jaina's grievance seem more valid too. Instead they went the same route as Dragon Age: Origins with Loghain, where one side sees an Ultimate Betrayal while those on his side know everyone would have died otherwise. It bothered me in that game, it bothers me in this one, and goddamn my feelings about this are way stronger than previously though.
it wasn't even that sound of a /tactical/ decision to split the factions like that. For the ranged attackers to head up top? Sure! But not all the melee fighters, what the shit. Leave a vanguard of the val'kyr to evacuate the dark rangers if they were flanked, and MIX the forces. There was no way they were going to win that fight, but it might have been a little less of a goddamn blood bath and Wrynn might not have died. Also!!!!! STOP YELLING AT THE VILLAIN WITH YOUR FORCES ASSEMBLED AND JUST FUCKING ATTACK, WRYNN. Even Sylvanus was like 'dude. less talk more stab.' earlier on. @Blizzard you could have done all that dialogue in the middle of a battle you know. it would have been a thousand times cooler and have more impact than both sides just yelling at each over across fifty feet of empty space.
I like to imagine that realistically there's no way they could have heard each other. Wrynn: *muffled bragging* Sylvanas: WHAT!? Wyrnn: *muffled yelling* Sylvanas: WHAT??????
FOR REAL. Now i'm all fired up about this, lol x3 Okay but imagine how cool it would have been to be fighting through in a united force at the point where the factions meet, instead of splitting up (who does that? don't split the fucking party yo.) and medivac'ing both horde and alliance troops, really feeling it, goddamn, we can do this, FOR AZEROTH, UNITED WE WILL TURN BACK THE LEGION!! Then you get into the Big Fight with the Big Guy which would have been a fuckton less stilted if he didn't take a good 10 seconds to waddle between points to be attacked, shit starts to go south in the fight with Gul'dan, maybe after a cool moment of acknowledgement between Vol'jin and Wrynn like 'yeah bro we got each other's backs, for azeroth.' Vol'jin goes down, troops start falling, more waves of demons come in, Sylvanus calls for a retreat, Wrynn does a 'If we stand firm then the Light will guide us to victory this day!' thing, and Sylvanus calls him a fool, grabs her warchief, and calls for the horde to follow her. Goddamn. That'd be so much cooler. Sighs.
Gotta say, despite my complaints about a lot of shit, Legion lore has good things about it too. Like retconning away Med'an in that Khadgar animation from the Harbringer achievement so it's like he never existed. Truly the best thing to come out of this entire expansion.
I'm in love with Legion lore just for the Nightborne alone. Everything else is a tasty bonus. Including more interactions with "Sexy Grandpa" Khadgar. *eyebrow waggle*
Holy crap trying to get this bg quest done last minute was a mistake. Horde is SO AWFUL in battlegrounds, holy crap. And I was just in a strand of the ancients that had a demo that literally couldn't attack anything, completely useless and wasted 2 minutes of time trying to get the damn thing killed and waiting for its replacement to spawn. A+ bug. Edit: Also does anyone know if there's some secret to garrison invasions? It seems completely ridiculous how much work they require to trigger, even at 110. What's up with that? Did people really spend 500 years farming for invasions back in WoD?
You used to be able to buy invasions to your Garrison, but idk if that's still around. (Also, I like to think that Varian knew on some level what was up, but trusted Genn way too much to also know what was up and not be blinded with revenge. There's this thing in his face where it looks like he's thinking "Ah shit, we're overrun on all sides," but Genn is... Genn. And I wouldn't put it past him to mix that message up in the telling. See also: "no Anduin totally wants us to attack the Forsaken even though he told us that's not the mission and only do it if there's no other choice NO REALLY THIS IS THE MISSION WHO CARES ABOUT THE LEGION WE HAVE GRUDGES!!")
