#wrathgate

Uh so either this is potentially one of the biggest retcons in Warcraft history OR Afrasiabi is talking out of his ass. Even though the Battle for Undercity questline/scenario isn’t available anymore, it’s pretty fucking clear that Varimathras and Putress were Legion collaborators trying to deflect blame onto the Forsaken/Horde. Varimathras literally starts talking about ‘The Master’ during the climactic battle where he’s holding open portals to the Twisting Nether for demons to come through. There’s no grey area in this.

If Sylvanas was actively involved, it was only in setting things up (moving Blight production to Northrend), then allowing Putress and Varimathras to do what she expected them to. That’s still far from ‘ordering’ the attack itself. Afrasiabi is full of shit. We were there, we played the questline, we saw what was going on. Blizzard, please stop trying to support your awful writing retroactively.

EDIT:

I read the article that THIS article was quoting, and something really struck me, a quote from Afrasiabi.

"Any time we get a player base that's divided in their support for a character, I feel like we're doing our jobs. Any time it's one-sided to the point of 'this is clearly the right direction', it's not as interesting.”

I’ve bolded the important part, because it potentially says a lot about Blizzard’s story choices and philosophy, the philosophy of keeping things ‘interesting.’

I literally took a class on this, and it can be summed up in one phrase:

A leg wound is interesting.

In that class, we learned to differentiate between interest and entertainment - they’re both close to each other, but there’s some distinct differences, differences to be aware of when writing and designing games/stories/etc. There’s only one requirement for something to be interesting, and that’s this: it has to hold your attention. For entertainment, there’s more complex requirements: it has to provoke a response that the viewer wants to revisit, see more of, and/or continue experiencing. Obviously, all entertaining things are interesting, but not all interesting things are entertaining.

When I’m talking about ‘wanting’ to experience something, that’s not just referring to positive experiences. Schindler’s List isn’t a movie that most people ‘want’ to see in the basic ‘looking for a good time’ definition, and yet people intentionally choose to sit down and watch it. They want to have that experience, even if that experience entails grief and horror. The bottom line is that the brain is craving a certain experience, whether naturally or because it was surprised by novelty and desired more input. That’s what I mean when I’m talking about want and entertainment.

Interest, on the other hand, is completely devoid of any emotional charge. It can produce an emotional charge, but it is itself a neutral word. Someone in a hockey mask hunting you through your house is interesting. So is a pair of socks you’ve never seen before. An interesting thing holds your attention by virtue of its difference from everyday existence, not because of any content.

This leads me back to Afrasiabi talking about things being not as interesting when everyone’s agreeing. This sort of thought process is pretty dangerous, in my opinion, because it only attaches value to interest, not entertainment. This design philosophy doesn’t care how the game makes you feel, only that it makes you play; every event, no matter how triumphant or horrendous, has the same transactional value - it keeps you in the seat, so they’ll keep doing it. There’s no care for the emotional arc, character fidelity, or narrative weight - just ‘push button, receive attention.’

In my opinion, this is a terrible - and furthermore lazy - way to write a story. If you view your players as just reserves of attention to endlessly mine, then all narrative accountability goes out the window. You’re writing a narrative with the mindset that setting the house on fire is as valid a choice as cooking a surprise dinner - and, more insulting, you’re expecting that players should want to be interested instead of entertained; you’re expecting that they’ll put up with any nonsense you vomit out because they want their attention to be held, not because they actually give a shit about anything or anyone in the game world. And if you’re designing/writing a game with that mindset knowing that your players are wanting to be entertained, it’s even more irresponsible, because you’re taking characters and places and worlds that people have serious attachments to and you’re disregarding any narrative context as you bang these elements together to produce loud noises.

It was quiet.

Tyr finished the dishes, then his hands.  He checked on the dough set aside for the morning’s bread, then left the pantry. He limped down the hall, his steps quiet as he moved to the infirmary.  He walked its wooden floors, the rows between empty beds with their fresh sheets and clean blankets.  He nodded slightly to the medics on duty, stopped by his desk to sort through and restack some papers, then headed out again.

Most of the garrison was already asleep, at least those that would be going to sleep before the current watch ended.  The halls were dim, the lamps and witchlights turned low.  He wandered those halls toward the barracks, slow, silent.  He could hear the Knight-Lord pacing in the command room, footfalls unmistakable.  He paused for a moment, listening, then continued.  His uncle-in-law’s mental state was best left to others, at least unless or until his services were requested or undeniably needed.

Something was weighing on him, something he couldn’t quite shake.  It was the same sort of odd feeling that had weighed on him months ago, the diffuse kind of feeling, formless, without reason.  He’d been trying to shake it for the better part of the day.  He knew that it had nothing to do with Wyn’s decision.  It had started well after that.

It was something, but nothing that he could put his finger on.

The barracks were as quiet as everywhere else—quieter, even.  He padded across the smooth wood of the floor, eyes adjusting to the dim. His wife was already asleep, curled on her side.  He leaned in, kissing her jaw gently, as he started to unlace the cuffs of his shirt. Senithvia stirred slightly, then burrowed deeper into the blankets.  Tyr smiled faintly, brushing her hair back from her face, then started changing for bed.

It was only a few minutes before he stretched out next to her in bed, sliding beneath the covers and settling his arms around her.  His eyes slid closed as he wrapped his arms around his sleeping wife, pressing his face into the hollow where her neck met her shoulder, inhaling deeply.  He relaxed, slowly, and eventually, the warmth and the quiet, familiar sounds of the nighttime garrison lulled him into sleep.

 The wagon bumped and creaked along a familiar ice road.  They were late, thanks to some marauding jormungar and some Scarlets, less the numbers they’d hoped to bring.  The bitter chill of Northrend had settled over them, and they were all quiet as their small caravan moved along, outriders in leather and chain and plate surrounding the wagons crowded with medics and mages and supplies.  This was only one of the Argent Crusade groups headed to Wrathgate, though he couldn’t help but think that none of them could be very big, considering their commitments across the continent as well as back home.  Things still hadn’t entirely settled down just because the latest invasion had been turned back.  There were still dangers to face, things the Argent Crusade guarded against.

And yet, here he was, like so many of the others.

The sound of metal on metal, the jeers and cries and shouts of volunteers and soldiers at war, reached his ears as they crested a rise, echoing over the slopes, already tapering away and fading even as they reached him.  He half rose from his spot, squinting against the wind.

Even as the sound tapered away and he strained to see, bracing himself against one edge of the wagon box and the back of the driver’s bench, he could hear the sound of great doors moving on rusted hinges.  They came over the last rise in time to see the gates finally opening.  Through them, he could see Icecrown—but there, too, stood their quarry.

He emerged in his blue-black armor, glowing eyes visible at this distance.  The words the Lich King spoke could not be heard at this distance, but they could be felt down to the very marrow of bones.

Time compressed.  There was Arthas, speaking his words, there were Saurfang and Fordragon, facing him, confronting the enemy they’d all come to fight, to end once and for all.  New dead began to rise among the armies gathered there, before the armies gathered there.

Then the creaking, the sound of wheels and pullies.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

Whssst.

Boom.

Green bloomed and he fell back, stumbling and falling into a crate and a bale of rags for bandages.  He gasped in a pair of breaths, righting himself.  The rest of the contingent stood silent, shocked and still, watching in horror as a sickly green plume rose, that same green spreading like oil on glass over the battlefield before the gates.  It flowed like fog, like a hungry, ravenous thing, clawing, gliding, consuming.

He gagged, pressing his sleeve across his mouth and nose.  At this distance, they should be safe—at least for now.  But down in the field—

There.  A familiar helm.  His throat seized as the figure turned.

As the helm oriented toward him, he knew somehow that the helm’s wearer had met his gaze.

A hand lifted.

The fog was growing close, would swallow him if he didn’t move, and quickly.  Words caught in his throat—he couldn’t shout the warning to his friend, a man he hadn’t met in this time but would someday call his brother.

There was a bright flash, shadow and silver braiding together, a dark shadow striding along the leading edge of the blight cloud, her magic clawing at it even as the blight struggled to consume it, instead recoiling as if burned.

Another figure eclipsed his view of Corey Dawnchild, a woman in the armor of a Warden, though the colors were wrong.  She swept through the spot where he had been standing and after she’d passed, he was gone, leaving only his helm where he’d stood.

He could hear her shout something back toward the shadow striding behind.  The shadow called back, then turned.

A chill shot through him, then calm.

She spoke, and somehow he knew she spoke to him.

The world went black.

 He pitched awake with a quiet gasp, sitting up quickly.  Tyr looked around for a second, gaining his bearings even as Senithvia slowly sat up alongside him.

“Love?” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep but alarmed at the same time.  “What’s the matter?”

Tyr shook his head slowly, reaching for the arm she’d wrapped around him.  “I’m all right,” he whispered.  “Go back to sleep.”

“Was it a nightmare?” she asked, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“No,” Tyr said softly, reaching for a small, leather-bound tome on his nightstand.  “A vision.”