Amaxe

I find myself wondering why Blizz thought it needed to be done. Personally I would have thought it would have gone the way of the Dance Studio or the Path of the Titans, but it seems to be something which will make it to live. Was there a lot of demand for such a system? Is Pokemon still popular?

I'm just curious because to me the whole thing seems to be a "Where the hell did that come from?" concept.

To be honest, the talent tree changes are the biggest minus for me. I don't care about pet battles and world pvp either.

Aside from the Medieval Asian theme, the xpac doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that just means that WoW and I have irreconcilable ideas on what a game should be?

Well, with Tauren and Draenei, Gnome DKs, etc. it seems it's too late to complain about a Pandaren race.

However, while I originally supported it, I have become less enchanted by the whole thing. A Medieval China/Japan is a good idea, but the Pandaren themselves seem kind of goofy now. For me, it seems like Ranma 1/2 meets WoW. For younger players, Kung Fu Panda seem to come to mind. Though it is not from either one, the whole thing makes it harder (for me anyway) to suspend disbelief.

Still, I suspect we and not Blizz take the blame for this one. A majority of us either wanted it or at least accepted it and Blizz gave us what we wanted in this case.

I guess ultimately Blizz seems to have taken the game in a direction that I personally don't like and I feel like the game has changed too much for me.

That's not a "OMFG WOW SUX" comment. If enough people like that, then the game can go that way. Not every game is for every person, and just because I dislike it doesn't mean it's a bad game.

Seems to me the issue would be that once again, the story is Horde centered, with the Alliance thrown in as the tools to boot Garrosh and then just turning it back over to the orcs.

I mean the theory sounds good -- that we have a war with a victor and the Horde aggressors becomes the defeated -- but any more when Blizzard has a "good idea" I start to cringe: Vehicle quests, Paladin Holy Bar, revamped questing (on the rails), emphasize the capital cities... they all sounded good, but ultimately were botched in execution.

As for all the "Kill Varian" comments, I really don't see it. When he was brought back, Blizzard utterly botched it. **BINK** I'm back -- and I really hate orcs! ARRGH BLARGH! He had no character development in game. He was simply a 1 dimensional figure.

In contrast, Garrosh did at least have an established character from TBC on. I don't know if it was intentional, but watching the TBC questline, I was struck by the impression that Garrosh suffered the same affliction as his father, but suppressed it. Then once Thrall told him, "Your dad was really good" he seemed to be willing to unleash that madness. In Northrend he struck me as a popular leader because he appealed to the savagery of the orcs (which concerned Varok Saurfang). He then gets appointed to Warchief by Thrall... which is the prime evidence that Thrall is an idiot ;)

Unfortunately, Blizz wanted the idea of a war between Horde and Alliance, so we had Garrosh vs. Varian, while downplaying (Jaina, Vol'jin) or getting rid of leaders (Cairne, Magni) who might actually object reasonably to the war. Garrosh gets appointed by idiot Thrall which has no reasonable basis except for Metzen to avoid having Thrall be responsible for the conflict.

IMO, Blizz utterly botched this war. Really now. Jaina goes /AFK for the entire damn expansion? Does she show up at the destruction of Theramore going, "Sorry, Bio break... what did I miss?"

So really, the whole story doesn't give us a real reason to hate Varian. It's really superficial. "We need a reason for the Horde not to look like the villains... hmm, lets make Varian into a frothing racist!"

To sum up this overlong and rambling comment, I guess I would say while the idea for the raid on Ogrimmar sounds interesting, Blizz does not have a good track record in turning good ideas into good stories.

"One faction or the other had to be on the $500 dollar bill. "

Many neutral factions they could have run with.

But, even though I believe Blizz has Horde bias, I really don't think this is proof of it. I think the selection is because Thrall is Metzen's Mary Sue

/Duck

Oh FFS, when will WoW Insider fix this @#$%^&* comment system?

Well I must say that whenever I am ready to give up on WoW Insider and walk away, I get pleasantly surprised.

@Noyou

Perhaps I did not express myself as well as I thought I did... I was intending to include those reader comments which were based on the pedophilia scandal. Whether or not Holisky intended that inference, other readers did and ran with it.

Hope that makes my post more clear.

I have had comments show up in the wrong place, appear, vanish and reappear with each refresh.

WTB edit button for sure.

@Terrant

I think if someone had made a joke about the homosexual community instead of Catholic priests, the response from the readers and WoW Insider would have been very different.

Both would have been offensive, but WoW Insider tends to be rather partisan on which offensive comments they police.

((Let's put the comment in the proper place))

Please Downrank or delete the previous response to Deb. I confused which post I was replying to and did not do the double check before directing my comment to Deb. My apologies.