World Of Warcraft

I can't quite remember. ^_^;;

Christie Golden is joining Blizzard.

She's one of the better aoutors to write WoW books. Still, she can't disclose her role in Blizz for now.

edited 16th May '17 4:10:58 AM by googlebot

So whoever designed this week's weekly needs to be fired. Find 10 chests on the isle, Rare spawn chests that only stay up for 2 seconds because everyone on the server is looking for them...

A full hour of looking and I have 2 out of 10...

edited 16th May '17 2:16:50 PM by Memers

I consider Christie Golden to be the worst book author Blizzard has ever commissioned, so I'd be considerably more worried, personally.

If I recall correctly she was the one who tried to fix Jaina's personality after Mists but ended up getting overruled by Legion. Hopefully she's going to try it again only this time in the game itself.

So, no Dreadlord!Jainna? That's a shame.

Jesse Cox will be disappointed

Well if it means no more warmonger Jaina and back to HOTS style Jaina, sure...

That will likely just mean that she will be pushed into the background and then Greymane will continue to be the main alliance character as gotta have the war mongers.

Make another character to fulfill that, then. Another Garithos will do fine. Don't ruin legacy/legendary characters.

Worse than Richard A. Knaak? Harsh, man. Harsh.

edited 17th May '17 7:15:19 AM by math792d

You'd need an act of god to find a worse writer than Knaak.

I'm not sure God is the guy you should be petitioning.

No thanks. Another Garithos? I could hardly stand the first one. x_x

That was his purpose: Be as obnoxious as possible that no one else has to fill in the void of 'obnoxious warmonger'. Not especially respected characters.

Could also be argued that was Garrosh's role in Cataclysm and Pandaria.

Greymane is not as annoying as Jaina in my opinion. At least his hate is (for now) pretty much solely focused on Sylvanas and for good reason.

Garithos actually worked as a character - he was an arrogant piece of shit and an unabashed human supremacist.

And for some reason Blizzard decided to give him some backstory so he can have a Freudian Excuse for his xenophobia.

Seriously, Blizzard, stop meddling witch character stories that really don't need meddling. :/

They either turn moderate characters into raging dickwads for no reason or they give characters who are by design unrepentant dicks a backstory that makes them more relatable - for example, I always liked Gul'dan as a character because he wasn't really bothering with any higher calling or pretending to have lofty ideals. He was out for power and screw anyone in his way.

His new backstory actually caused me to have some sympathy for the guy as well - because he essentially was the fantasy equivalent of a bullying victim snapping and going on a killing spree. That said, my sympathy is for the poor guy who got ostracised and bullied every day by his peers because of a physical deformity - not so much for the "killing everyone, including the guy who actually tried to be nice" part.

What I'm trying to say, it still transforms the image of a character. I see both Garithos and Gul'dan as cases of Love to Hate - not to mention they're both Smug Snakes who get themselves killed.

Giving them a Freudian Excuse kinda diminishes this effect - granted, I still like Gul'dan's backstory a lot more than I like what they tried to do with Garithos. And I still think the franchise over all needs characters like Garithos - people who aren't actually fighting for some higher goal, who aren't manipulated behind the scenes.

People who are just plain and simple arseholes. But for some reason Blizzard rather tries to mack previous arseholes sympathetic while turning more sympathetic characters into Garithos Lite - not to mention the atrocious Character Derailment thing they had going on with Garrosh. :/

Still think Cataclysm Garrosh was the best Garrosh we ever got - he was still a warmonger, but he wasn't a supremacist douchenozzle who pissed on everything he was supposed to believe in.

Another thing: You want to know what you get when you want a more relatable (i.e. sympathetic) version of Garithos? You get Jaina's father.

edited 17th May '17 9:13:55 AM by DrunkenNordmann

I much prefer villains that I can sympathize with, even to a slight degree, to villains with no obvious reason for being total dickwads. It's much more believable. "Good writing" is presenting believable characters, not archetypal "heroic heroes" and "dastardly villains".

Gul'dan should have stayed as just 100% vile. I had no idea Garithos has a backstory, part of Chronicle 2 I haven't reached yet?

Me neither.

When did Giul'dan ever stop being 100% vile? At most, you have his backstory of him jumping in with the Fel because nobody wanted him, up to and including the elements.

edited 17th May '17 10:26:33 AM by sgamer82

Garithos was given a bit of backstory in "Ask CDev". It essentially boils down to "If only we hadn't sent troops to the Elves, my father might still be alive" because apparently his family's home town got attacked by a Horde warband while he himself was fighting with the Alliance in Quel'Thalas.

It's not so much that he became less vile as that he became more relatable - because Gul'dan is essentially a former bullying victim now. You can understand to some degree why he's so hell-bent on seeking power. His backstory turned "Darkness Incarnate" into a tragic figure, you could say.

edited 17th May '17 10:46:50 AM by DrunkenNordmann

I'd flip it personally, a tragic figure became darkness incarnate.

"Darkness Incarnate" is one of Gul'dan self-styled nicknames. What I was trying to say was that he became more tragic - or better said: tragic at all - because of the backstory they gave him.

Before Harbingers Gul'dan was just "this guy who used to work for Ner'zhul before he backstabbed him for power".

We already knew Gul'dan as this power-hungry Quisling who couldn't care less about his people's heritage or their future - but we never knew why or how he became this way before.

Gul'dan is, after all, pretty atypical for an Orc.

edited 17th May '17 11:10:19 AM by DrunkenNordmann