A plea to writers – save Rastakhan!

 

I’m writing this perhaps in vain but I have to give it a try.

A lot of people grown to like King Rastakhan and began to

Satisfying Vol’Jin story?

With the nevest revelations regarding newest expansion I’d like to write about possible way on how to somewhat undo Legion’s bad storywriting. Vol’Jin’s mishnadling caused quite a big outrage, his death was very unsuitable and Sylvanas received her development at his expense, when he was the one who really needed it due to lack of involvement in WoD and overal established presence as Warchief of the Horde a lot of people want this troll back as he was truly embracing Horde values and was meant to be great fighter and tactician. As I wrote in another post – he had a lot of potential, so if devs decided to somehow involve him, they have to give a lot to make up for that Broken Shore fiasco. I don’t think that “Obi-Wan” kind of treatmeant would be satisfying – as a spirit that sometimes gives instructions, because it’s very little compared to what his character was capable to do and still wouldn’t adress the Darkspear leadership issue (well technically he could point someone, but it would feel very cheap don’t you think? No to mention that building up character from point zero takes time). I thought that there was no saving grace for him, because in Broken Shore scenario everything that could possibly be done wrong was exactly done this way. But after reading this article on wowhead. (http://www.wowhead.com/news=274969/next-expansion-predictions-darkspear-and-the-zandalari#troll-icons ). That gave me a spark for somewhat satisfying story. I believe it would be a quite interesting to actually bring back Vol’Jin in his physical form after doing bargain with Bwonsamdi (I believe this is why he asks for 1 milion of souls for trade off). But after coming back to life he could decide to hide his identity and participate in war against Kul’Tiras to protect both Horde and Zandalar, just to reveal himself at the end of expanshion after he gained reputation and recognition. This way he wouldn’t be immediately and abruptly thrown into politics of his faction, he would have time to make up for his abscence and awful writing of Broken Shore. He would really be active “hero of Azeroth” that works for his fame and to solidify his position to perhaps to return as Warchief, and also make up with players that were disappointed with him.I would like this turn of events. It’s not perfect admittedly, but then again Vol’Jin should’ve neved die in the first place, and seeing shadow hunter in action would be something to look forward to (And reaction of everyone once they’d see him coming back should be absolutely priceless).

Zandalari wishlist

I have to admit I’m quite hyped over Zandalar. It’s my dream coming true to finally visit troll civilisation that is intact, where instead of killing trolls we side with them and learn about them. I have to admit I let out huge sigh of relief that Zandalar will not only be friendly to Horde but this will be actual hub for entire expansion.

But here is list of things that would make this experience the best for me.

1. I really hope Zandalaries will have access to paladin class, ever since I saw Praletes in ToT raid infusing power of Loa I wanted one badly. They would look beautiful in golden armor on raptor that is decoated with  various golden medalions. They look aesthetically pleasing and their lore supports it. Horde will have a race that truly stands out as paladin, and while I like concept of Sunwalkers I still feel they were mishandled in a way. It would be great to rename some skills for them aswell (or give original name in brackets in this case). But I feel it would be too much to ask.
2. There is something I’m not a big fan off in Zandalari models – they have glowing eyes. I thought that in MoP it was due to them being infused with Thunder King’s powers as all trolls had normal eyes with pupils. This new design therefore confuses me. Also when you consantly have glowing eyes it’s taking a lot from personality and makes them all look like death knights. So I really hope there will be an option to at least pick type of eye and eyecolour for them. Sylvanas was many times portrayed with glowing red eyes, however in cinematic she had normal ones with red irises – so I suppose you agree that normal eyes are much better to show expressions. I made a sloppy edit to show what I mean:
3. I suppose this one is an error due to game being early shown to exploration and still having it’s issues. In demo we saw Zandalari NPCs to be at height of jungle troll female, – that is quite small for a troll, and this race is meant to be very tall. I realise that due to troubles like being unable to fit through doors their models should be scaled down, but they should be at least by tiny bit taller than Darkspear trolls, and reaching the same height as Tauren male does.
4. This is actually a very important issue for me, and I heard that it will be indeed adressed by devs. Yet to stress it out : I really hope that at least some night elf male animations will be replaced either to typical troll ones or deliver custom ones to Zandalari. I understand that for MoP it could’ve been shrugged off. But now we have a chance to enhance them so they truly stand out…. and because nelf animations looks quite goofy on them. I’m gonna provide my own concepts and say why I think this would be better. (the female one is just optional, and drawn for fun), but the most glaring animations were the sitting one, idle and shooting.
5. Bath house in Zuldazar. I know it’s a weird request and seems to be a non issue, but I think this kind of detail in city would be fantastic, and it would be a nice reference to Shadows of the Horde novel.
6. Trolls had empires not kingdoms, so shouldn’t it make more sense for Rastakhan to have title or emperor then? If not, Guru seems to be a great title for head of Zandalar tribe. Guru is a teacher that often has religious authority, seeing that Zandalari are heavily sholar/ priest society it would fit quite well. But perhaps it’s too late to ask for that.
7. Zandalari druids. So far we were known that the only exclusive form for them would be travel one. That is quite disappointing, considering that they had a record of transforming to direhorns as dinomancers. Personally I believe there is no point of adding Zandalari to be druid class if at least in Guardian specialisation they cannot transform to Direhorns. You could come up with Jaguar for cat form and made up specific Loa for them as it would still fit that Mesoamerican theme. I really hope that developers would at least reconsider this one option, as I personally see no point of investing time and effort into halfproduct. During MoP period creative players came up with ideas to implement for trolls direhorn form instead of bear, with Zandalari it would be one huge waste of oportiunity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbkJSFeXyY

Missed oportiunity: Shadow Hunter

Some subjects are so big that eventually you will return to them to look at it from different angle.  We’re gonna look on how Shadow Hunters should’ve been portrayed in game, and how by killing the most prominent one Blizzard missed oportiunity to release reigns of imagination to show this enigmatic class in action.

Now what is a shadow hunter?

A lot of people confuse it with just another version of in-game hunter class that just uses bow and a bit of black magic. Well, not really.  Shadow Hunter is elite of elites among troll ranks, just like arcmage is a top for magi ranks.  Shadow Hunters are excellent in melee and ranged combat, they’re using voodoo and elemental magic, but what makes them truly stand out is that they have terrific bond with Loas, they can reach out to any of them, become their vessel and carry out their will. This is what puts them above high priests (who are mostly devoted to specific Loa Gods), Witch Doctors (who aren’t that good in melee) or Warlords.

In novel shadows of the Horde we were told that they also bring chaos to battlefield.

Those are some raw informations that we know for sure,  but it’s not something that was truly taken seriously in WoW to flesh out. One would argue- why bother? It’s not like it’s playable class. Many classes have been neglected for years or still aren’t well balanced, and I have to admit that when it comes to set of priorities those people are right.

But here comes cinematics, a wonderful opportiunity to do some small show off just to picture capabilieties of what this class has to offer. This is why I was so hopeful when Vol’Jin became a Warchief – that there was a huge chance he will appear in cinematic and will show what shadow hunter can do.

Ow, how wrong I was.

So I’m gonna give few examples of specific visuals that could’ve been used.

Here is the big one. Few days ago I had a chance to see “The Princess and the Frog” from Disney ( waaaait, lemmie finish : P ). I watched it because there were voodoo motives in it, so I mostly checked it for the sake of imaginative portrayal of voodoo/ shadow powers. And my god, it looked amazing!

Theres is a scene where the bad guy is asking “Friends on the other side” to send to him shadows to do his bidding. Let’s forget the context of it and focus purely on visuals, imagine shadow hunter to have this kind of skill/ spell to use in action (watch from 40th second) :

Creepy, eerie and  looks impressive.

But I believe that also the sounds that said shadows were using adding to the “scary factor” – all of it combined gives a spooky athmosphere that dark misticism is about.

Imagine if shadow hunter had aura similar to Diablo 2 paladins (as it appears on the ground the character is standing) but instead of holy marks you’d have swirling shadows that sometimes whisper.

Another thing that imo should’ve been shown in cinematic would be that “chaos bringer” theme. How should it look like? I imaginated it that by using voodoo he would mess with minds of his oponents, strike fear (as if trolls by looking wouldn’t be scary to other races : P ) or mass confusion.

I think that visuals of Witch doctor from Diablo 3 were quite nice and coul’ve been mimicked in WoW universe.

Maybe there should be some glowing light that surrounds area and shows scary visage that makes people run in fear? Or just simply causes mass panic, this way the crowd would become vulnerable to strike, and this is when the melee combat would become quite handy.  Imagine people running and screaming in disorientation and a huge, lean and agile troll to cut them easily in numbers like wolf assaulting sheeps.

And lastly,  fast paced melee combat. Alas, the in game models even with tweaks to melee animations aren’t exactly showing the combat style that could be comparable to shadow hunter. And demon hunter is imo way over the top.  When I was watching cinematic for Legion I couldn’t feel more than disappointed to see Sylvanas instead of Vol’Jin, it’s not about personal bias, but for the fact that she is just y’know… a ranger. We’ve seen both elves and rangers in action in plenty of franchises, you can’t be truly creative about this combo. Not to mention that both cinematics in classical WoW and TBC were featuring elves in action, so we have rough idea on how do they move. With trolls? They didn’t appear even in in game cinematic to show what they’re capable of – and I’m not counting Vol’Jin being stabbed like rookie, that wasn’t really showing him in any favorable way. So really it was a huge shame that even when troll is put on the highest position in game as a leader of faction, devs refused to use him, to show what he can do, what moves he has, what powers he can invoke.  And so far I haven’t seen any hints that would show anything like that coming, now I know I won’t see troll in expansion intro, nor see him in a way Garrosh was battling Taran Zhu in 5.4. cinematic.

We all can admire Legolas 2.0 tho, should be nice, right?

Lastly, to end this article of mine – Loas. There should be at least one cinematic featuring them appear and intervene. And again, wouldn’t it be thrilling if they shown up, at the Broken Shore to make sure their champion makes out of it safe? Especially when Valkyr’s were featured in Stormheim anyway.

Pity, a huge pity.

The thing about Vol’Jin

I treat this small page as my personal feedback board where I add my concepts and thoughts.  My subscription is out for over a year as I lost connection to this game and I no longer feel I could enjoy it. I was one of those fellows that paid a lot of attention to the story of the game and I was willing to put blind eye on many mistakes but then Warlords of Draenor came where I couldn’t wrap my head around it for many reasaons (I will probably refer to it later), and then Legion expansion event afterwards.

Vol’Jin’s death was the last straw for me. It’s not like I was his biggest fan or just liked him just because he was a troll – I liked his development in Mists of Pandaria and I wanted to see how far he can go with proper spotlight and attention given as he had some cool concepts about him that could be pushed further. His biggest issue was that he was always neglected in favor of ther more popular heroes so I was awaiting to see how it would be to see him getting atention similar to what Garrosh was given or Varian even. But nope, his development ended faster than it began, and the way he was disposed off was so insultingly stupid that it became a meme.

So the question is how can I treat the story seriously when writers themselves don’t? The trailer from 7.3. opened old wound and made me once again ask the screen “What was the point?”. I don’t see it at all. Why building him up from Cataclysm to become leader of the faction, make a book about him and put so many resources to flesh him out just to throw it off like some ragdoll. Why killing him in a way that completely contradicts his development and general characteristic he had so far?

They just thrown whatever reason to kill him and went with it. Forgetting that:

-Vol’Jin had a huge character progression after assasination, he was written to be far more careful and chose to keep the scar from wound on his throat as a reminder to always stay on guard.

– then he was fighting for a really long time head on against Zandalari warriors, showing incredible stamina, agility and caution.

And then on brokenshore he was killed like some unexperienced rookie and not seasoned fighter that he is. Not only that – a beginning priest quest for artifact weapon asks for curing the fel infection. What Vol’Jin had was cureable.

Writers also completely forgot that Vol’Jin had pact with Loas – so not just Bwonsamedi, Loa of the Dead, but other prominent ones like Shadra. He was meant to be their vessel to carry out their will. But nah again – why bother?

And even that broken tusk – this is a bone, it doesn’t break that easily – especially troll one.  Many source materials claim that trolls are extremly sturdy, durable and hard to kill. And yet the game itself is showing something completely different, we faceroll through their capital cities and easily kill their prominent leaders. ( I will also refer that in the future) and the only developed character they kill in very humilating way.

It feels that this plot was written by someone that hates this particular character as even his funeral is handled completely wrong. Not only Darkspears were not in charge of handing it’s Chieftain’s remains but his body was also cremated which is against troll customs as they mummify and bury their dead.

But what is the most insulting is that this whole Broken Shore scenario and cinematics related to this event were focusing mainly on Sylvanas, she was the one who had major spotlight on her, and it was given at Vol’Jin’s expense.  I really don’t mind for other leaders to have their time,  I’m all for it, but not like this. Not when a character that is supposed to have much bigger role (Warchief) is neglected/ ignored so she could be shown as the competent and badass one. What is saddeing the most, even the scene where he finally kicks the bucket is also focusing on her rather to give him honors and show the fate of his tribe- as y’know after 12 years of development devs didn’t bother to build up Vol’Jin’s replacement that could take over the tribe.  But then again, who cares? We have Illidan, Sylvanas, and now Alleria with Turalyon, so people will be thrilled, right? Let’s just forget about that insignificant but playable faction and move forward.

But I can’t.

His death can posibly mean death to a serious troll story development, it’s the end for a dream to unite all troll tribes or have at least some insightful connection to Zandalari. Now we’re at point zero, where once again we need to build a character from scratch to be recogniseable, and that takes time.

Good story writer uses all character’s potential before disposing him off, but Blizzard is more concerned about giving attention to heroes that were lucky to have quite good story about them in Warcraft 3. When they were given time and attention to be built up. You have to give character time to progress if you want for others to like it too, and you do it by writing good story for them.

I will add some conceptual stuff to adress how I think it should be done, but for now this should do.

Edit:

Oh man, I noticed that someone summarised it in much shorter way. Thank you sir.