Someone on the forums mentioned that he managed to get into some pre-PTR testing of the 5.4 patch. It was a fairly interesting read as he told it from the alliance side of things to come. The main issue wasn’t the storyline specifically surrounding the alliance but the actual raid on Ogrimmar.
Like anything, quite a few people doubted what the person stated but the write up sounded quite legitimate. For myself, I felt that the upcoming raid, if indeed this is what is being planned, sounds like a huge let down. For the most part, the new raid meets expectations from a very basic story plot. But it’s very one dimensional in how it ends and how the story evolves.
Obviously, the big thing is that both horde and alliance will be raiding Ogrimmar with Garrosh as the end boss. As I had speculated before, he is, indeed, possessed by a Sha and after beating Garrosh down, you end up facing another Sha creature. After defeating this creature and Garrosh, Green Jesus (Thrall in case you haven’t heard his updated name) makes his late-as-usual return to chastise a groveling/humiliated Garrosh, who is carried off to some unknown spot while the alliance back off from assaulting the horde.
This story is just….horrible. It’s horrible because it’s so basic and obvious with almost no depth. You can easily look to other famous movies or games to see similar parallels. One I noted was Ultima 5. But Ultima 5 had a lot of depth in developing the key villain, Lord Blackthorn. Lord Blackthorn, like Garrosh, had his mind manipulated by others (the Shadowlords) such that his sense of virtue was twisted, leading him to persecute people who didn’t follow his law to the letter. As you go through Ultima 5, you slowly grow to despise this replacement for Lord British as his oppressive regime forces you to hide or do things that may not be entirely virtuous. Possibly, the most dramatic moment in the story is where one of your companions can end up getting terminated permanently from the game if you get caught in his castle. It’s such a nefarious act that you savior the moment for the rescue of Lord British.
Garrosh started to have color too in Cataclysm. The best quest in the game as a horde player involved a near execution of an innocent tauren. At that moment, Garrosh comes in to defend the tauren, finding his orc subordinate as a blind blood thirsty zealot. After tossing the subordinate from the cliff in a rare moment of poetic justice, Garrosh cites Saurfang’s speech about honor back in the fight in the Icecrown Citadel. This moment made you respect the possibility that Garrosh had potential to lead the horde as a burgeoning chief.
Yet Mist of Pandaria and this particular raid just throws everything down the drain.
While the Sha aspect is something that was foreshadowed from the start of expansion when we saw General Nazgrim having a Sha creature expelled from him as well as the fight with the alliance captain who turned out to be a Sha, we never truly understand how this mechanic works. It feels as though Garrosh just out of nowhere become a bad guy. And he became a bad guy just because the people over at Blizzard stated just before the expansion that he was going to be the end villain.
My feeling at this point is pretty apathetic. I feel that there isn’t a point in this expansion as opposed to what was being questioned from the start (i.e. “Why do we fight?”) Garrosh is simply going to be demoted from a bad ass horde leader to a loot pinata. And it’s quite sad from a storyline perspective. This is just like how Gollum goes from a colorful, slightly complex persona in Peter Jackson’s Two Towers to a one dimensional bad guy in Return of the King. Samwise Gangee outward tells the audience (and Frodo) that Gollum is a villain. How blatantly terrible story writing does that have to be? Shouldn’t the audience have the option to decide for themselves if Gollum deserves the hatred rather than the de facto good guy imposing his will on everyone? And what happened to the more complex persona? It simply vanishes and we no longer have any sense of possible redemption for his character. And this is a significant thing too as the speech that Samwise Gangee gives at the end of The Two Towers shows Gollum seemingly empathizing with Sam. To me that means that Gollum still is a character with a great deal of internal conflict. But in Return of the King, he goes straight back to a one dimensional villain.
In the case of Garrosh, it’s the same deal. But that’s what makes it frustrating. You read on forums how horde members want to refuse to fight Garrosh but rather be given the option to side with him. And why not? At the end of the day, Garrosh still is a member of the horde. Perhaps, horde members enjoy this aggressive side. They might respect someone who has a Steve Jobs-like vision and strength when it comes to defining what the horde ought to be.
Yet the only reason we’re really given to fight Garrosh is that he’s a dickhead. In Cataclysm, he just wanted to run things efficiently. He wanted to polish the horde fighting machine. If you examine his actions, he was more like a robot attempting to stick to a certain policy. Also, he wanted to bring glory back to the horde in expanding the horde empire through aggressive tactics against the alliance. He might’ve been annoying but there hasn’t been a lot of reasons to really hate this guy outside of him having high blood pressure (well don’t all orcs have that issue?)
Now, we’re back to the whole “he’s out of control!” character model with his lust for power. And of course that’s due to him being infected supposedly by a Sha. Yet how did this all happen? More importantly when did this all happen? See, these are great questions that ought to be answered through a quest chain, scenario or dungeon.
Another thing that really baffles me is why does the horde for this upcoming encounter require the alliance once again to ally with? You had the Lich King and Deathwing who seemed more insurmountable with their armies. Those cases made me believe the two factions needed to join up. By suddenly the horde has gained so much power that it rivals the Lich King and Deathwing? You’re telling me that one section of a faction alone requires both factions to combine strength? Where the hell did all these warriors on the horde’s side appear? Did Garrosh suddenly offer a massive orc orgy for two decades to increase the population? On top of that he kicked everyone who wasn’t an orc out of Ogrimmar practically!
The thing that really irks me with this story is that it’s just so South Park-ish in that we have this new calamity out of nowhere that we must collectively face. But the calamity is just more of the same with a ton of loopholes that makes a craterous zit infested teen look like a new born baby. And it’s the same issue that is at the core of Blizzard and World of Warcraft: too much dependency on raiding!
All of this just feels so arbitrary. I don’t mind having Garrosh be an enemy. But the way they’re setting him up to be some epic foe isn’t coming off very well. Instead, it’s cheap and the lead up feels extremely cheap. It makes K-Mart look like Saks Fifth Avenue.
The worst part in the spoilers came when Garrosh pretty much had the Lord Blackthorn ending. So he’s a war criminal in some ways but Garrosh gets a pardon because he was possessed. In turn, he gets banished. So now we’re supposed to feel guilty for the poor bastard. What happens to him? He just disappears from reality after having a slow build up over three expansions?
The thing I hope is that they don’t just throw Garrosh into the trash. And if they do bring him back they have to make him interesting. Compare the Ultima 5 reference of Lord Blackthorn to his comeback in Ultima 9. There he’s just the Sheriff of Nottingham in terms of evil and his entire back story is tossed out and promptly forgotten. Spoony made a huge deal when he talked about reading in Ultima 7 one of the books that discussed Lord Blackthorn’s fate. And it was a good ending as the guy reached a new level of enlightenment and found peace after the crimes he committed.
I wouldn’t want to see Garrosh thrown into some correctional facility either. You could always do the redeemed hero but you don’t want to make him repeat the same mistakes nor path of his father. If that occurred then it’s far worse because Blizzard (or Chris Metzen) would just be reusing the stuff they’ve already written.
The thing you have to ask is why did the Sha possess him in the first place? Is it because they saw him as weak and easily manipulated or perhaps strong and capable of carrying out their will? What if he willingly wanted to be possessed because he wanted something greater? I think that aspect would make him far more interesting and slightly less predictable.
The other aspect I talked about in the discussion was the bosses leading up to Garrosh. I think many people (especially the alliance) want to have epic encounters with famous characters from the Horde. I mean, who doesn’t want to have a duke out with Saurfang? Or how about General Nazgrim? Why not a massive Lord of the Rings style charge against the army of orcs? And let’s not at all forget Gamon. If anything Hogger and Gamon should be bosses at part of the raid.
Outside of Garrosh, I didn’t see one boss that looked familiar. And that’s highly disappointing. This is going to be a cathartic moment for the alliance. They deserve it (and this is coming from a horde player) And why can’t the horde want to try their hand against some of these guys? I know everyone on the horde wants Gamon to be a boss. I mean, we’ve been punching him around for years, even his updated form.
The thing is that it would be nice to have some emotional investment in this upcoming raid. The raids from Mist of Pandaria were interesting but they really didn’t have much purpose overall and felt somewhat disjointed. Instead, they felt as though the developers were trying to create a purpose. Now, I would’ve preferred if they lacked any purpose outside of something interesting to kill. But they had this middle ground type of definition.
At any rate, I’m pretty disappointed that this expansion will end in Ogrimmar rather than Pandaria. It really is silly if you ask me. The thing is why build up this continent only to move away from it? I suppose the developers were looking towards Lord of the Rings in trying to create a “what I learned from my experience” type of deal in having the horde return to their capital and handle their home. But it’s so one sided. If you look at what Jaina Proudmoore is going through, wouldn’t it make sense to have a parallel raid with her as the end boss? Isn’t she acting a bit suspicious? Wouldn’t it make sense for both sides to experience Sha infected leaders so that they learn “why you fight?”