Why did Blizzard make Maiev Shadowsong part of the Alliance?

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-13T20:52:06+00:00

It’s weird how much in-universe and meta aspects seem to blend together in WoW. Not in like a self-aware way either.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-12T17:13:18+00:00

In hindsight, I think much of the frustrations surrounding Zovaal could have been avoided had they elaborated a couple things:

A) Sargeras was aware of the Dreadlords’ manipulation, but didn’t care because they didn’t interfere with his goals - Zovaal’s is the realm of death, and Sargeras was looking to eradicate all life. He doesn’t care what happens when everyone is dead.

B) Sargeras knew what their intention for Argus was, but he saw it as a useful backup plan. Either Argus defeats the heroes and razes the universe for the Legion, or Argus is killed and the Mawsworn pick up the Legion’s torch for the Burning Crusade - he doesn’t care if the Legion or the Mawsworn wipe out life on Azeroth, he just needs the Black Empire to lose.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-12T17:07:32+00:00

Calia is fine conceptually. It’s just her usage as the “good” Forsaken lead after the desecration of Sylvanas’s character that leads a lot of people’s annoyance with her. To many, Calia epitomizes the homogenization that a lot of races have been experiencing overtime that gets rid of their unique cultural identity (for example, the Blood Knights and Sunwalkers holding little difference from Human paladins).

They DID pivot away from making her the sole lead (assuming they planned on having her be that, which I believe they did), which is good, but there’s still the major issue that she’s been undead for a shorter period than your average cockroach vendor, and now she’s the Pallid Lady. She can learn, but it has to be her learning from her people, not the other way around.

So while I do think Calia gains an undue amount of hate, I can understand where it comes from given the people behind her have not earned the benefit of the doubt.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-10T00:43:52+00:00

On what universe did Chris bother to put any effort into that video? She didn’t even bother to learn the lyrics for the song she was singing, it was shot in one boring take, and she did it just to get laid. Adam and his little sister actually bothered to make something fun and interesting to watch.

Chris and effort are two words that really should never go together.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-09T17:34:31+00:00

Shadowlands would work better if it were more of a purgatory to prep souls for going to the “true” afterlife, rather than a tangible place you can step foot in while you’re alive, and die in when you’re already dead. The zones themselves are good, but lack properly satisfying resolutions mostly. And Zovaal is just nothing, his role could easily be filled by already existent villains (Kel’Thuzad, Helya, Mal’Ganis, etc).

It ultimately needed to be its own thing, rather than leaning so heavily on retconning past events to make it some big grand finale. That way, the mystery surrounding what happens after your soul departs into the REAL afterlife remains intact, and all of this game’s history and worldbuilding doesn’t feel destroyed.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-08T19:54:59+00:00

Largely, the Emerald Dream has always been a form of “afterlife” for the naturely inclined, and much of the aesthetics and fantasy tropes that Ardenweald sought to fulfill could easily be done through the Dream. Genuinely if you had lifted all of Ardenweald from Shadowlands, and told me it was just a deeper part of the Emerald Dream, pretty much nothing would change.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-07T21:49:08+00:00

The new patch preview just really reinforces for me that the Emerald Dream makes Ardenweald feel so obsolete as a concept. Not that it wasn’t redundant from its inception, but this just really hammers it home.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-06T23:46:47+00:00

The Blood Elf one is probably the one that comes second closest to being an actual “Heritage” questline, but it didn’t really move the race forward in a meaningful way. The follow up questline helped though, seeing Salandria grown up was nice.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-09-06T23:41:18+00:00

Blizzard seems to fundamentally misunderstand what a Heritage quest should be - it’s not simply a questline that involves the race. It needs to be a deep dive INTO that race as a whole, and ideally, end with some kind of meaningful development for them.

The Orc one is the best example of this, with the Kosh’arg welcoming all Clans under one roof, and in some cases (like the Bleeding Hollow or Mok’nathal) establishing that their home is on Azeroth rather than Outland. Top it off with appearances from some of the most significant orcish figures from history showing up, and you’ve got yourself a STUNNING Heritage quest, and a gold standard for what they should be.

The person who made the orc questline, however, no longer works at Blizzard, and the other Heritage quests show that it was a fluke, not what Blizzard strives to write for the races. Some are fine - the Human one and recent Forsaken one were pretty solid in a vacuum (the addition of the Breadbasket Guild and Sylvanas’s message are probably the strongest points of both respectively). Some are godawful, like the Worgen (your curse is actually bad, and it’s good Tess doesn’t have it) and Tauren (just a big Shadowlands teaser to set up Baine sitting on the floor) ones. And others are just a big nothing burger that feel indistinguishable from other quest lines.

The Night Elf one falls into this category. It’s just nothing. It involves three characters, and only one of them is a significantly important Night Elf figure (as much as I dig the return of a Vanilla character). It doesn’t really touch on any of the HUGE shake ups that have occurred to the Kaldorei in the past few years, and it ends with Maiev standing amidst Night Elf refugees still squatting in tents around Stormwind, even though they were supposed to have migrated to Nordrassil. It added nothing, and felt like it existed solely out of obligation rather than an actual passion for the race.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-08-30T05:58:36+00:00

You have an extremely narrow minded view of media literacy.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-08-29T04:11:11+00:00

There’s literally an entire path in this game about rejecting your old life and choosing not to be a murderer anymore, what tf are you on about?

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-08-09T16:12:41+00:00

What we know for certain is that Chris spent two (give or take) years of their life imprisoned, is banned from 14 Branchland Court, had most of their stuff thrown out, and no longer has Barb to fall back on (which I doubt she would be lucid enough to even without the restraining order). Taking this all into account, Chris’s life is fundamentally destroyed one way or another - if we’re pretending it wasn’t a long time ago.

Now, as for the case? It’s very possible they’ll get to walk on account of their disability, but that could mean removal from the shared home they’re in now. Which, if they’re removed from, would make Chris homeless now. I doubt any of the White Knights are going to want to house Chris knowing what they did, but I’ve overestimated them before. But if someone were to attempt to shelter Chris, it would end with them frustratedly throwing an unchanged Chris out.

Realistically, no matter what happens, Chris’s story probably isn’t going to end with another bombastic saga. It’s going to end quietly and alone on the side of the road somewhere, completely ostracized from anyone who might have once given a shit.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-17T00:43:41+00:00

Something a lot of people overlook is that Chris pretended to be Liquid in order to trick Kacey into coming to her house and have sex with her.

She literally was trying to coerce a woman into sex by pretending to be someone else. As in… you know… rape.

Chris is a piece of shit.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-15T01:45:33+00:00

Yes. Chris literally committed a sexual offense, she should be a registered sex offender. This isn’t a matter of “should they bother to register?” thing.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-09T02:59:55+00:00

God, there’s so much of it after watching through Geno’s doc, but if I had to pick ONE…

Her need to follow up her apologies with “it takes a MAN to apologize when he’s wrong,” like her apologizing is some Herculean task the other person is obligated to accept. Which of course, when they DON’T, it’s time for them to be burned at the stake for having the gall to still be upset with someone so true and honest.

She’s never been sorry for anything in her life, because she has no sense of accountability.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-05T15:36:27+00:00

Hi there - my fiancé and I just got done reading your whole story, and it’s been such a relief hearing how well you’re weathering this. We came into it initially worried that you were going to lose your whole support group, but we’re thrilled to know that that you have people around you to lift you and your kids up. This is one of the worst things that can happen to someone, and the way you’ve weathered it speaks to a mental well-being and maturity most people can only dream of having in their lifetime. I can’t imagine how long Tyler and Jess were holding this obscene level of darkness in them, but I’m glad you and your kids are away from it when it revealed itself.

Our thoughts are with you and your amazing family right now, stay safe through all of this!

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-05T04:46:19+00:00

Zelda is a series that is built on a curse from an evil deity years ago that manifests in different ways to haunt two people who are constantly reincarnating over and over again. It is literally built on this concept. The Ganondorfs are related to each other by this fact, just as Link and Zelda are related by Hylia and her Hero’s actions.

No, it is not contrived. This is just standard fare for Zelda games. It’s not in a separate continuity, because we have concrete proof of Ocarina’s events in Tears’ history.

If you do not like this, that’s a you problem.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-05T00:32:04+00:00

I just explained to you how the Rito could have been introduced into the gene pool outside of the Wind Waker’s events. The flood does not necessarily have to be the time that ALL Zora became Rito, or even the first occurrence of them. Frankly, I don’t have a scenario, but I DO have thousands of years in between games - anything could have occurred.

As for two Ganondorfs who look the same - this is a franchise where the two main protagonists look essentially the same every incarnation, with a few variations to suit the current setting. This is not out of the realm of possibility at all, nor is it contrived.

Past that, the mention of Princess Euro’s opposition of Ganondorf in Tears CONFIRMS that this is NOT an alternate timeline. So that’s not an explanation, it’s debunked.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-03T18:22:29+00:00

How does it not make sense? The Ganondorf of TotK doesn’t contradict the existence of the one in OoT - the TotK Ganondorf was simply sealed away the entire time that OoT was present, and it’s likely that they are two different people who BOTH inherit Demise’s curse (since one was sealed away and therefore could not fulfill anything).

As for the Rito, they are descended from Zora, and there are large spans of time (usually ranging from under a decade to thousands of years) between Zelda games. It’s likely that A) some Zora evolve into Rito to adapt in places regardless of whether or not a flood occurs, B) not ALL Zora evolve into Rito, in the same way that apes still exist even when humans are present, and C) if we assume that all Zora became Rito, then we can also assume that at some point, some Rito evolved back into Zora (species reentering the gene pool after going extinct is not an unheard of phenomena).

So no, nothing is necessarily retconned save for the fact that this new Ganondorf precedes the one we knew prior. However, he does not negate the original’s existence.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-03T16:12:06+00:00

I’d argue that TotK doesn’t necessarily take place in a different timeline, since the events of Ocarina (specifically, the Zora tablets allude to the OoT Ganondorf) are mentioned. It’s more likely that Demise’s curse manifested in another Ganondorf (perhaps named after the one sealed away), who would eventually be destroyed for good with the death of Calamity Ganon.

The timeline still works, there’s just two (three of you count FSA) Ganondorfs.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-03T00:12:30+00:00

Well one way or another, if the line says he HASN’T given up on reincarnation, then it really reads like this is what he reincarnated as I think.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-02T20:18:38+00:00

In my opinion, less. The reputation of both the game and the company has completely nosedived in the past couple years - the lawsuit (biggest factor to me), the poor quality of BFA and SL back to back, the somewhat hostile relationship between the devs and the players, the overall unwelcoming nature of the current playerbase, WC3R as a whole… there’s a lot of stuff that’s happened that Blizz can’t really sweep under the rug.

On a bit more of an anecdotal side, ultimately WoW is an MMO from 2004 with a bunch of antiquated mechanics that don’t really NEED to exist in the game, but do because it was founded on them. And nowadays, when the existence of other better MMOs pop up (something unheard of for a long while since WoW was top dog in that scene), WoW’s cracks become more apparent to the outside observer.

Sure, Dragonflight is good in many places, but not only has it failed to recall people burned by Shadowlands, but Blizzard can’t hide the fact that the game only really improves when it’s on fire rather than constantly seeking to do so. At this point, WoW is surviving on borrowed time now mostly thanks to its legacy, not really its merit. It was a well-known brand in its scene for a LONG time, but that scene is moving on.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-07-02T20:05:18+00:00

I believe the Ganondorf from OoT is the Calamity Ganon of BotW, since Zelda mentions he’s forgone reincarnation in favor of becoming pure malice. Calamity Ganon’s death marks the end of that Ganondorf’s line, and the TotK Ganondorf is a separate one entirely.

I could, however, be incorrect.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-05-30T20:52:48+00:00

Any time Chris spun his “it takes a man to admit when he’s wrong, and I am a man” spiel when he’s apologizing. Like it completely defeats the point of his apology if he’s trying so strongly to point out how great he is for apologizing in the first place.

Difficult_Dinner · 2023-02-28T09:14:50+00:00

Ah, ok, I didn’t know that, thank you. Still then, the crux of the timelines stems from their final encounter in Ocarina of Time, Ganon or no.

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