Burning Crusade was a very good expansion. While it retained some of the unfortunate relics of an earlier era (such as designing raid fights around having specific classes in your raid or making certain specs essentially unplayable) it introduced a very different sort of environment, two new races (one of which is awesome while the other I've grown to grudgingly accept now that Tauren can be Paladins and the Horde looks like the Horde again) that effectively introduced a new class to each faction. Also, the gear in BC (despite complaints about "clown suits") was very cool. Tier 6 may still be the most consistently awesome-looking set of gear they've ever made (I did not raid at that time, but my guild has done many old-school raids and I am the proud owner of a full set of tier 6 Paladin armor for transmog purposes.)
However, one place that things fell quite short was story. We had heard from the beginning that Illidan was the big bad of the expansion. We were going to Outland to deal with him. The problem, of course, was that the motivations were not terribly clear. Much as Wrath and Cataclysm began with a pre-expansion invasion event, BC began with demons pouring out of the Dark Portal and Doom Lord Kazzak attacking the major cities (I remember trying to get out of Ironforge on my level 14 paladin and instantly dying over a pile of skeletons.)
It was pretty unclear to someone like me, who had only started playing a few months earlier, what Illidan's deal was. When I saw the cinematic, I figured this guy was the head of the Burning Legion or something - the big bad of Warcraft. How wrong I was!
The thing is that BC was largely about the Burning Legion. But Illidan was not a member of the Burning Legion. He'd had dealings with them, for sure, but after his failure to kill Arthas and the Lich King, Illidan was basically just trying to hold on to Outland as his kingdom in exile. Now, sure, he did have the Fel Horde at his command, trapping Magtheridon in Hellfire Citadel as a source of demon blood to corrupt the orcs. The Horde had plenty of reason to be pissed about this, especially considering that some of their own heroes (like Kargath Bladefist, who was granted the title of Warchief) were corrupted in this way.
The thing is, Illidan is barely in control of things. Sure, he's got Lady Vashj's forces in Zangarmarsh (though they are probably really working for Azshara) and Kael'thas in Netherstorm (though as we find out, Kael is working for Kil'jaeden) but other than that, he's basically just trying desperately to hold of the Burning Legion from storming the Black Temple and gutting him like a fish.
The biggest problem in all of this is that we never freaking see him at all. There's very little menace to a guy who is hiding out on his roof. The demonic invasion was the work of the Legion Proper.
Not only that, but there was also the difficulty in figuring out a good patch rhythm. As of Wrath, Blizzard realized that the right way to do WoW was release one tier's worth of raiding at a time. The expansion will ship with the first tier, then a few months later you'll get the next tier, and then a bit later you'll do the next.
In BC, they tried to get it all out there as quick as possible. Tiers four and five shipped with the expansion, and Black Temple, which was meant to be the final raid of the expansion, shipped with 2.1 - the very first content patch.
The result was that by the time BT was out, practically no one was even near the point where they could get in there, as they were all still working on tier 5 (or tier 4, for that matter.) But worse, once they did get to Illidan, many raiding guilds had the guy on farm for like a year, with no new content to look forward to (Zul'Aman was introduced in 2.3, though for those decked in tier 6, this was a step down in difficulty and rewards.)
The entire existence of Sunwell Plateau was the result of this miscalculation. They'd jumped the gun, and so they introduced a new raid as the "real end" of the expansion.
The problem is that from a story stand-point, this only served to sweep Illidan under the rug even further.
Illidan's an interesting character (even if he is a bit emo,) and I actually think it's been cool to see his character rehabilitated since his death. If you do the quests for the Demon Hunter in Felwood, for example, you can see that most of Illidan's initial motivations were for the benefit of his people - it is only his exile that really led to his being a bad guy. We even get to see the end of the War of the Ancients from his perspective and, yeah, you know what? The guy kind of saved the world.
A lot of people seemed to complain that you ran into the Lich King too many times in Northrend, and he seemed to let you live the way a cackling cartoon villain would. I think that's a valid complaint, even though his decision to let you live does get paid off big-time at the end of the fight in ICC. Still, I would far prefer that to an absent antagonist. There was a serious emotional payoff when I killed Arthas finally. Just like good screenwriting is all about setting up things and paying them off later, the more we get to know an antagonist, the more satisfying it is to finally confront them.
Now, admittedly, Mists is doing something a little different (though Garrosh is in the process of becoming that main antagonist,) but I wonder what things would be like if we'd actually had a chance to see what Illidan was up to while we were fighting our way across Outland.
The good news is that this is a fantasy world. Bringing folks back from the dead is a time-honored tradition. But rather than having Illidan yell "Black Temple was only a setback!" the intention seems to be to redeem him in some way. That's quite the breath of fresh air, if you ask me. The story of Warcraft is so often the story of corruption. Sargeras, Deathwing, Arthas, Kael'thas - it is so often about good people whose minds are broken by the evils they face, only to become even greater evils. So the notion that someone might, finally, get to come back from that edge, well, it's a nice twist on the formula.
Also, if Illidan comes back, can we get Demon Hunters? I want to make a Worgen Demon Hunter. Please? Pretty please?
No comments:
Post a Comment