Gracie has thoughts

More thoughts on WoW’s story

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With all the continued discussion of WoW’s story lately I wanted to spend a couple more minutes working through my feelings. I want to try to convey a bit more clearly why I am so unhappy. Spoilers for WoW’s current story, cinematics, etc. ahead.

Say what you want about Blizzard’s choices for WoW lately, but they sure have people talking about the game. Amongst my friends and people I follow on Twitter I’ve seen many different reactions and perspectives. A small few seem to love this story, but most seem unhappy with it for one reason or other. Quite a few of my Horde friends are going through the same kinds of feelings we all experienced when Garrosh was warchief. This isn’t my Horde. Why would the other faction leaders go along with this? These feelings touch on one of my biggest problems with the current story: we’ve been here before.

The Horde has had a blatantly evil leader who went against tradition and honor and needed to be overthrown. As a Horde player it felt crappy then, and it feels crappy to see the same wheels in motion now. I hated practically everything about Garrosh’s story, from the moment Thrall chose him, through Cairne’s death, to the confrontation in SoO, and Thrall’s final kill steal in Nagrand. The only good thing that came of all of it was that Vol’jin ended up in charge. He was a cool lore figure, a pragmatic leader, and of course he barely got to do anything before he died.

Vol’jin’s death at the start of Legion felt almost like an afterthought. It was something to balance Varian’s more noble and cinematic end, and it was a plot point to cause faction strife. The circumstances of his death were designed to give the Alliance cause to suspect betrayal, and to put the most divisive figure possible on the throne. And Sylvanas didn’t even want to be there.

Forgive me for being bitter after seeing the Horde led into ruin, our capitol city sacked, our most promising leader killed in service of faction conflict, and our most interesting (IMO) leader stripped of all complexity and turned boring, rash, and ready to re-live the mistakes of the past.

And here’s the piece that frustrates me about the folks asking for calm, to wait and see, to trust that it will get better. I’ve done that. It got me through Garrosh, with hope that things would change and there was room for more interesting story to grow. It got me through pissed-off Jaina, obnoxious orc bros, and Illidan the chosen one, and it left me here, exactly where I started.

Even if this all turns out to be (insert lore conspiracy theory that fixes this somehow), it doesn’t change that Blizz chose to set things up this way. They chose to tell this story that they’ve already told me before. They chose to stoke faction-based strife that I never cared about much and am actively sick of now. It doesn’t change the fact that since MoP I feel like they keep putting up bigger and bigger warning signs that this game is not for me. All I can do is try to figure out if this is the moment that I finally start heeding them.

Blaugust: Topic Brainstorming Week

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Blaugust: Topic Brainstorming WeekBlaugust is off to a strong start! This week’s theme is Topic Brainstorming, to help generate some ideas that everyone can mine for posts for the rest of the month.

First I want to talk a bit about three categories of blog posts that it is useful to think about if you’re a newbie blogger. I like to mix and match different kinds of posts so I don’t burn out too much. The three main types are:

Diary: These are the easiest kind to start with. They’re the catalog of what you’ve been up to, in-game or irl. They can be as simple as a few screenshots with captions, or as detailed as the full RP write-up of what your character was thinking as they explored their world.

Dialog: The meat of most blogs. These are where you expound on a topic of interest, or respond to something you saw elsewhere in the blogosphere. Share those opinions and hopefully you’ll start a discussion.

Deep-Dive: Guides. We all love them. We should all show their creators a little love too. Writing guides and walkthroughs is time-consuming but it can be really rewarding. You don’t have to be an expert to write one, either. Your creative solution to a problem might be exactly what someone needed to help them succeed.

Now let’s brainstorm some topics for Dialog posts!

  1. Talk about the first game system you remember playing, or a favorite game from childhood.
  2. Single-player or multiplayer games? Why? What are the exceptions?
  3. What gets you hyped about an upcoming game?
  4. Do you have gaming insecurities? Something that makes you feel like a “fake gamer”?
  5. What is your gaming environment? A messy desk? A comfy sofa? What would your perfect gaming setup be?

War of the Thorns part 2

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Spoilers for the WoW War of the Thorns questline.War of the Thorns part 2

Welp.

Other folks have talked about this more eloquently. I can only express my hurt and rage.

I went into this knowing what would happen to Teldrassil. I kept hoping that Blizz would surprise us, that something actually interesting would happen, that someone unexpected would be responsible for the burning of that tree. But no. Blizz took what was hands-down my favorite character in the game, stripped away all her depth and complexity, and made her a boring villain. While the Jaina animated short was cool but filled me with unease, the Sylvanas one just made me sad. Not sad at the story, but at having to mourn my fandom. I can’t get excited about my favorite character anymore. Not because she’s evil, she’s always been evil. Because they turned her into something boring and lifeless in service of a faction war that I actively hate.

War of the Thorns part 2

The flaming wreckage of any fucks I had to give about WoW’s story.

After the long quest chain last week, we barely had anything to do this time around. As much as I didn’t really want to be complicit in burning Teldrassil, having everything reduced to the cutscene and taking away any player agency* doesn’t feel good either. At least the Alliance side got to spend a few moments trying to help people evacuate.

I’m just heartbroken and disgusted by this whole thing. Even WoD didn’t make me want a refund on my pre-order so badly. This pre-expansion event has effectively killed any desire I had to actually play the expansion. If this is what we can expect from the storytelling in BfA, count me out.

*I mean they could have at least let us kill Malfurion!

Blaugust Prep Week: What’s in a name?

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Belghast kicked off Blaugust prep week with a discussion of what makes a good blog name. He talked about some regrets he had choosing his name and gave some advice to help folks choose a good one. I want to use this as an excuse to talk about my blog name too.

Bel’s advice boiled down to choosing a short, catchy name that vaguely connects to the blog theme, but isn’t so specific that you can’t change your direction later without changing the name. I’m not really sure whether I succeeded or failed.

Blaugust Prep Week: What’s in a name?

Did you think I was kidding about the moonshine?

I created this blog just prior to the launch of WildStar. My goal was to talk about the game in general, and also emphasize the housing system, which I still enjoy the most of any MMO I have ever played. Fans of the game might remember that one of the default housing “plugs” you could place on your land gave you a mini-game that let you make moonshine. I thought the contrast between a fabulous hand-built plot with tons of decor and the moonshine still out back was amusing, so I tapped it for my name. Moonshine Mansion was born.

Over the years I’ve drifted away from WildStar and turned this into a more general gaming blog. The name Moonshine Mansion wasn’t explicitly tied to WildStar, so it survived the transition just fine. On the one hand, I sometimes wish I had chosen a name that had more to do with gaming. On the other hand, this way I feel free to talk about other geeky things I love when I feel the urge. At this point I think of Moonshine Mansion as my digital home. It’s a welcoming place where I keep all my stuff and can invite my friends over to talk about games and things. If someone offered me the chance to go back in time and pick a different name, I would decline. There’s way cooler things to do with a time machine anyway.