Chains of Domination: Apathetic Domino Effect

Chains of Domination Fallen King Key Art.

It's fitting to start this post in similar manner to its first part of this series. While I'm slowly making some improvements in personal side of things, my observation of current developments in Warcraft series goes on. Without much enthusiasm and actual dedication, but at the end of a day I set myself a goal to see this mess from start to finish, and I commit to it.

Let's get "Battle for Ardenweald Finale" out of the way here as I talked about Tyrande in Shadowlands and there's nothing really new. Just more mockery of High Priestess of Elune that's forced to roleplay Demon Hunter cosplay with this "scary power of the Night Warrior" that is there, but it's not. Blizzard's cinematic team can do a great job, but it's clear that narrative really hurts their work. From boring anime-like fighting scenes to cringe dialogue/writing and conclusion is just pure humiliation of Tyrande. It's just... eh?

By the way, did you notice how they reused Wrathion's jump from "Ny'Alotha: Wrathion's Scene" in "Kingsmourne"? Alright, that's funny.

Dragon Hook.

One of my main points of criticism towards Shadowlands is how detached is it from Warcraft. That's why I haven't dive deeper into storylines of its zones and such: I just don't care, and I'm not the only one. However, I wanted to take a look at certain boss from Tazavesh, the Veiled Market: a new dungeon in Patch 9.1 centered around "not Ethereals". Allow me to introduce Timecap'n Hooktail, a Pirate Queen from Infinite Dragonflight. This is not a joke... Well, it is, but it's real. Now even these corrupted dragons that were always portrayed seriously in their mission to change the timeline are mischaracterized. However, that's not what I would focus on at this point. Instead, I would like to mention her origin.

We know how Blizzard came up with this boss thanks to Steve Danuser, who was eager to tell this story on Twitter. Of how he "dared" encounter designers to make that dragon infinite instead of explaining to them why it's not a good idea from lore standpoint. You know, this "cool guy" that doesn't ruin the fun for his coworkers and encourages their creativity... No. That's just yet another moment that perfectly shows current Principle Narrative Designer's approach to Warcraft... Yes, he got a raise in March 2021. Oh boy.

I don't think I need to mention that things like that are more fit in Hearthstone and even then that card game is more faithful to this franchise than current World of Warcraft is. Or was, I don't really know much about its latest expansions. Maybe it changed for the worse since I think some stuff from Shadowlands started to get its way there.

More Victums of F.O.I.

As I've mentioned in previous post, it's no surprise that Sanctum of Domination feels like a combination of Antorus and Icecrown Citadel since it's part of Torghast. In contrast to Castle Nathria, this raid brings in a bunch of already existing characters in order to make it more importance for Warcraft fan. At least that's how it feels to me.

Players encounter Eye of the Jailer that Odyn gave to Mueh'zala in order to see Shadowlands. After that they face The Nine... Seriously, Blizzard? Did you forget how many people called Ny'Alotha's Finale Cinematic a rip-off of Lord of the Rings? Total lack of shame. Like, you're actually proud of it and wanted to make sure that everyone knows that! And then, we see Garrosh again... Well, the boss is another Fel Lord Zakuun or something like that, but you get what I'm saying. We see him only to just disappear "forever", but I'll get to that a bit later. However, to be fair, that in-game cutscene made by one guy was actually alright.

Remnant of Ner'zhul. Taken from Blizzard.

I can't say the same about next two characters. Ner'zhul has been very unlucky since Wrath of the Lich King or maybe even early. Not only he was defeated by Arthas after they merged together as the Lich King because Menethil is really popular among fans, Jailer's lazy introduction into the mix made it only worse as now orc suffered from him as well. So remnant of his soul was planned in the Sanctum as a variation of Lord Marrowgar with terrible weapon, which to me seems like yet another mockery of the character. Because I like Ner'zhul and wish he stayed as The Lich King all the way instead of what we got at the end.

Kel'Thuzad was another nice character I enjoyed. "A loyal friend", as Arthas called him in The Frozen Throne. This cool lich faithfully served the Lich King and carried on Ner'zhul's plan over the course of Reign of Chaos. And you-know-who just had to ruin him too:

"For too long I've had to disguise my true motives. Pretend to serve false masters. When all the while, it was I who helped architect Azeroth's end!"

So yeah, he "actually" served the Jailer. Also his voice got way worse, damn... On top of all that, Archlich brought his own phylactery there and it, obviously, get destroyed. As a result, Kel'thuzad and all previously mentioned characters are currently  gone for good, like demons if they're dealt with in Twisting Nether. You know, until it gets retconned in half a year or something like that. Why bring all of them to kill off? In a desperate attempt to make you care about the story.

Sudden Turn.

At this point, I have to address an elephant in the room. Originally this post was supposed to be released on July 8-15 before I was "suddenly cut off from civilization". My previous post regarding base Shadowlands was written 2 months after it's release and, in hindsight, same should've been done here... However, even at the time things took an interesting turn and I shouldn't ignore it. Especially now.

I always knew that discussing Sanctum of Domination Raid Finale Cinematic would be kind of difficult and the reason for it is simple: I don't care. I'm not surprised that Zovaal has boring "Lich King-like" armor. I don't care about Sylvanas in all of this. It's obvious that Anduin's forced in cosplay of Arthas wouldn't have any effect on the character after he gets free from it. I don't care about Shadowlands, what's going on there and the shallow threat to all existence that's been presented at the moment. It's all the same previously mentioned issues that just grow exponentially.

However, the new hope is rising. Players are actually realized how bad things really are with the story, lore... Narrative as a whole. Not just with the game itself. And they began to voice their dissatisfaction: from content creators to gaming media with the likes of PC Gamer and Polygon. Conflict between community and developers was growing with latter antagonizing the players and playing the victims in this situation. At first, I wanted to go over that and point out how shameless it is...

But I wouldn't do that. I returned to the Internet on July 16. Around a week before Jason Schreier broke the news about the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard by California and everything that was going on behind the scenes. This situation is absolutely horrible, and I hope this story will have a happy ending. That really set me back: it gave me another reason to abandon a certain subject for a time being and just wrap up this post in its current form.

Conclusion.

I don't think I'm the person to comment on issues that's arose from revealed problems within Blizzard. I'm just a dumb guy on Internet that likes to talk about games. What I'll do is just take a backseat and see how it goes as time goes on: more stories being told, names be named and all that kind of stuff. Stay vigilant as there's been many situations where someone was wrongly accused of terrible things, like Chris Avellone. Someone may as well try to achieve something similar.

There's probably going to be a small post about (probably final) Patch 9.2 for this expansion. I gave myself a promise to endure this monstrosity all the way, and I'll stay true to it. Who knows what it's going to be about, but I don't care. Arthas Menethil? We all know that he has to appear and this is going to be awful. But there wouldn't be much anger or much sadness about any of that. Only tiredness.

On that note, I'll just share a few words regarding "By Our Hand"...  Well, not really. It's just another terrible Shadowlands cinematic, nothing unusual at this point. The only reason I even looked at it was that perfect comment from YouTube pointing out a rather interesting message in light of recent events. It puts Steve Danuser in very awkward position as a Principle Narrative Designer.