World Of Warcraft

I dunno if I came off saying that, but regardless of how realistic the character acted, I still find Jaina's current actions really annoying the hell out of me. Therefore, she fell down from my favor. Just because it's realistic doesn't mean I always have to praise it. There are some touches of realism that I can appreciate, and there are also some touches realism that I thought getting too drawn out it's getting annoying, the current Jaina more or less fell to the latter.

So I'm getting that your answer is "No I don't like it, this has been drawn out for way too long. I hope Blizzard develops her in any way."? (and by 'develop' I don't always mean 'get over her grief'. She can end up being antagonistic, but if she does some action, I'd be like 'not perfect, but okay')

If there was a trope page for that, I'd appreciate getting linked. I ended up having to Google search 'Watsonian Perspective' only to find out there's a trope page for it.

edited 19th Aug '16 7:34:56 AM by ChrisX

My answer is, "I don't like this new Jaina because I am upset that she's turning away from rationality. However, I'm intrigued to see where this is going to go." My upset is from a Watsonian perspective, not a Doylist one.

Watsonian vs. Doylist is our article, and I love citing it since it's so applicable to a lot of commentary and criticism.

I have an emotional investment in Jaina as a character, and so when she disappoints my expectations, I feel upset, but the upset is not at Blizzard for daring to change something I like, but rather at Jaina herself. "Dammit, you are a better person than this!" I am not pulled out of the story, losing my Willing Suspension of Disbelief, because it is a plausible direction for her character arc to go.

The analytical part of my mind is not thinking, "FU Blizz for messing with my GF;" it's thinking, "Okay, so does this mean we get to fight her at some point in Legion?"

edited 19th Aug '16 7:40:12 AM by Fighteer

Well that was quite similar with "It hasn't lost its charm". You don't like it, yes. But you can stomach the dislike while seeing it getting drawn out even longer, and see where it takes her.

At least that's what I'm getting at from you. My bad, I should've been more flexible and separate the options, like if you pick 'It hasn't lost its charm', it doesn't mean you must hate it.

Yes, exactly. I am invested in the story, even if I would prefer a different outcome than what it seems to be heading to. Not all endings are happy, and sometimes characters must go through Tragedy to reach Resolution. What makes Tragedy compelling is when it's based on a character's own flaws.

edited 19th Aug '16 7:42:59 AM by Fighteer

I don't think she's going to become an active antagonist.

I suspect what's gonna happen in Legion, and maybe even going forward, is that outside of zones like Stormheim where faction conflict is the whole 'point', the Horde vs. Alliance conflict is going to be based more on both sides having active war agitators fanning the flames while others try to keep order. In Legion, the whole idea seems to be that the people who go and lead their Class Halls in the PvE world are the people trying to work past their faction conflicts to deal with the demons, while the Pv P combat is more about having loyalty to 'faction' over the common good of Azeroth.

I resent this idea that just because a character is agitating for war, that makes them somehow stupid or actively evil when Blizzard have had plenty of warmongers in the past who were sympathtic people. Sure, there's just as many times where the people agitating the population are either Stupid Evil or just plain hiding their own agenda (or protected from the consequences by fan popularity), but I don't think Jaina's gonna become a villain.

Honestly though, I was thinking BOTH. Yelling at Jaina for dwindling like that while cursing that someone in Blizzard thinks this is such a wonderful idea. This is why everytime I came across images of her being grumpy or texts of her proposing 'hate the Horde', I was screaming from the inside, like you won't believe. I don't wanna post the exact thing, it's too tiring and making me... look immature.

But, like you, I can appreciate realism. Jaina's is just one of those things I felt too drawn out it's getting really tiring. Probably this is something Doylist, but there is something that Blizzard has written, about similar tragedy that might be quite similar, but I ended up appreciating its tragedy. It's written in another place outside Warcraft but Blizzard wrote that too.

I'm not demanding that Jaina gets a happy ending, but I just have to say that this phase is getting really annoying if drawn out for way too long, so I am hoping that Blizzard make her move to the next phase, and we'll see how it goes from there (but hopefully it'll be better, no matter how happy/bad the outcome is).

I've seen some people hating certain arcs or tragedies because it gets a little too long and padded along the way. What happens to Jaina throughout WoD and Legion felt like padding after her development in MoP, or so I thought...

Yeah, basically... remember Marvel's Civil War? About the thing like "I'm with Cap" or "I'm with Tony" whereas there's some like Deadpool being "I'm with Stupid"? Pretty much sums up my thought about 'Alliance vs Horde'. 'For the Alliance' 'For the Horde' my ass. 'For the Stupid' sounds like my kinda style. That's it, if I'm getting into WoW because of my Tempting Fate gone wrong as stated last page, I'm still looking for a way so I don't have to pick a side. I rather be fighting the common enemy... Is there any way to do that? Or don't tell me I have to go for a Death Knight??

edited 19th Aug '16 7:54:38 AM by ChrisX

You make some good points. When I suggest that she might become an antagonist, I'm not talking about becoming an actual villain, like Garrosh. Rather, I am WMG'ing that she will at some point take a faction of the Kirin Tor that believes that the Horde must be destroyed and the Alliance is an enemy because they aren't actively helping do that, and go on some sort of renegade path that will damage both sides. In the course of stopping her, we'll have to fight her. (I also have a more fanciful WMG that she's going to be corrupted by the Legion, but I'm reserving that for more evidence.)

That said, they could just be setting her up to be the driver of the PvP story line, which is okay as far as it goes, I guess. Seems a bit limited in scope, but I suppose I can tolerate them being thrown some bones. Silly little PvPers.

Depending on your perspective, all the story in WoW could be seen as padding, as part of a way to sell us new content expansions. If you go pure Doylist, all stories are excuses to get us to spend our money to support a creator's lifestyle. But that's a deeply cynical point of view and not one that I'm willing to subscribe to, although I acknowledge it.

Fundamentally, Blizz has to make its storylines last through an entire expansion and then segue into future ones. If that leads to some plot points seeming to be "drawn out", that's an inevitable consequence of the genre.

In response to your edit, we are fighting the Legion. Unless you're achievement hunting, PvP is entirely optional, and you can focus your play on PvE content. Sure, the story line might intrude in ways you don't like from time to time, but that's the roller coaster we're riding. Might as well see it through to the end.

edited 19th Aug '16 7:58:12 AM by Fighteer

The way I see it there are more or less three ways for Jaina to go: 1. She regains her sympathy for the Horde without becoming a villain. 2. She dies an inglorious death as a raid boss. 3. She becomes a raid boss but she gets talked down by someone (probably Anduin) before she goes too far.

The padding I was talking about is the padding on Jaina's development. So after getting her idealism shattered in MoP she's now grumpy and becoming this annoying obstructive woman. After that, what would be the development? Recover and get an epiphany? Or becoming antagonistic like the scenario you described? Any of them would be moving her arc forward, but then Blizzard chose to stagnate her in the 'annoying grumpy obstructive woman' stage. That's why I considered WoD and Legion (so far) are just padding to her character.

What you said about padding is true, yes. But that wasn't the padding I was referring to.

All right, in order to make you understand what I meant about the 'tragedy' part that I end up appreciating, I might as well tell that part. It's about Overwatch and the tale of how a certain Soldier: 76 came to being. He used to be a super idealistic, super babyface soldier, quite similar to the peaceful Jaina, until reality hits him hard, his ideals turned against him, his best friend attempted to kill him and it seemingly 'succeeded' with both of them considered dead, and after recovery, he became embittered with and discarded all notions of idealism and becoming a very cynical person who's using all the dirty tactics in the book to get to his admittedly good goal in what he called 'a neverending war'.

This would have counted as a tragedy, yes, but for some reason, I actually LIKED his character and progression (he's the guy being my avatar btw, though I am using a memetic version that's not to be taken seriously). Maybe because they weren't as drawn out as the case of Jaina or I didn't get to enjoy his days as the super idealistic self to feel betrayed in how he does things at the moment...

This is why I felt conflicted about 'tragedy' and 'realism'. And probably another of my Doylist things acting up, it makes me ask, "If they could write about S76's tragedy nicely, why would they think what they wrote about Jaina's tragedy that gets so drawn out in an annoying manner to be a wonderful idea?"

More or less, the question is now being 'How long do we have to wait until she reaches any of those phase? And do you feel like her current self still has enough charms to be drawn out any longer than from WoD to this part of Legion?'

edited 19th Aug '16 8:14:14 AM by ChrisX

Well, I assume we'll see some sort of resolution to Jaina's arc in Legion, given that she started this break in Cataclysm, and we're three expansions down the road from there. The thing is that she's lost the one person she counted on the most for emotional and political stability: Varian Wrynn. She doesn't trust Anduin: even though he hasn't done anything specifically to offend her, she thinks of him as too naive to make the necessary decisions. Anything could happen now.

edited 19th Aug '16 8:22:51 AM by Fighteer

That sucks. Anduin used to think of Jaina as his aunt. :(

I really don't see her getting some resolution in Legion. IIRC, when the Legion promotional site was open, we were given details on who gets to play a major story there. Illidan, Maiev, Sylvanas, Gul'dan, Khadgar, and even Varian, and maybe Vol'jin... all of them were listed as major players. (I could be wrong about Varian and Vol'jin though. But I do remember the first 5 being there)

Jaina is not one of them.

That's how I believe Legion will do nothing about her except rage quitting because someone is making her Dalaran a neutral zone again.

edited 19th Aug '16 8:31:32 AM by ChrisX

Keep in mind that Legion is looking like a pretty long expansion. There could easily be a patch down the road that adds a Pv P storyline or similar where she plays a prominent role along with a Horde agitator.

...Actually, considering there seems to be a pretty hefty side plot going on with the Guardian of Tirisfal and Aegwynn (there's a mention that Aegwynn set up a sanctum in Suramar, one of the artifact weapons is her greatstaff, the Tomb of Sargeras had her wards on it and Khadgar was offered the powers of the Guardian), she could maybe be trying to gather some of that power for herself in a belief that if Khadgar doesn't want it, the world still needs a Guardian.

It's just that maybe we can't trust someone with Alliance sympathies to have that much power, so we might try (in ways that, for a change, don't involve murder) to dissuade her/sabotage those efforts. That'd be an antagonist-y way to resolve her story arc without completely shitting the bed and making her a megalomaniac.

So we won't have to worry about saying "Wait, what do you mean 'it's over'?" this time?

In what way about 'dissuading'? As in 'You wanna be a Guardian? Go throw your hatred to the Horde away as far as possible! Or else you're not even worthy for that position! What will it be, woman??'

Of course, I expect something like this for reply: "Oh really? Then why don't YOU be the Guardian in my stead?"

(Because seriously, that's just what crossed my mind when you say about 'Guardians' and the players not letting someone with too much Alliance side take that position)

edited 19th Aug '16 8:51:42 AM by ChrisX

I'm thinking along the lines of trying to keep her from the Forge of the Guardian or any knowledge of the Council of Tirisfal through sabotage or something, not actually confronting her.

It kinda makes me wishing that there is a scene where you confront Jaina, she tells you how much the Horde has taken from her... and you shove her with pretty much Quit Your Whining and tell her to stop being unreasonable and put aside the Horde hate for the moment (yes, um, in case Sylvanas is planning to blight the Alliance after the Legion is done for? Do that LATER, not BEFORE the Legion IS done for). Or just shove up to you-know-where.

I dunno if this'll make her psyche worse or maybe she even gets a clue that she's being unreasonable (one out of ten chance). But I think it would go down as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome... Quit Your Whining is often a recipe for that after all...

... Second thought, forget that. It looked overly demanding and me being too entitled. Too immature.

edited 19th Aug '16 9:00:47 AM by ChrisX

Sooo apparently there will be no tokens in legion, tier pieces will only drop for a specific class.

That is a huge huge change that ruins pretty much group/master loot in raids completely, more so for small guilds.

What about this?

I think someone's confusing their information. When you roll bonus loot, you get the tier piece, not the token, but group/master loot should still be tokens.

That doesn't sound too different from how it worked in HFC.

EDIT: That's exactly how it works now. Apparently this issue is from some interviewer asking someone not involved with the end game items about item drops and the interviewee saying they don't know the answer because it's not their department.

edited 19th Aug '16 2:11:12 PM by stingerbrg

In other news: Grimrail Depot is hell as DH.

Why's that? :S

Demon Hunters are extremely mobile, to keep up DPS you gotta vengeful retreat and Fel Rush back. In such small places it doesn't work too well and the camera gets stuck, not to mention that you can Vengeful Retreat right off the train.

Tanks have a hard time getting LOS as well.

I have also seen Demon Hunters Fel Rush off the arena on the Raven boss in Skyreach and Warlord Zaela on Blackrock Spire.

I could easily see a DH fall off the platform while fighting some old bosses like Ultraxion.