The Cataclysm Ending (Spoilers!)Follow

MMO-Champ had this up on their site as well, but I'll mirror it here:



I actually didn't watch it on YouTube, I saw it in game for the first time tonight (that is a fun fight, by the way, and seeing Deathwing go into Jellyfishmode is kinda funny. If it weren't also kinda scary)

But what do you think? Major things from the video:

Spoiler1. Dragon Aspects are depowered and presumably stepping aside for the remainder of WoW, having "accomplished their goal".
2. Aggra's pregnant.
3. It is the "dawn of the Age of Mortals" as if it wasn't already.

Anywho, compared to the ending of Wrath, I felt like it wasn't very good. I mean, it was kind of just "Yeah, you beat the boss. Woo hoo. Take your loot and get out."

And what was up with the SpoilerDragon Aspects losing their powers? Not only did they not explain why, but how the crap is SpoilerNozdormu going to eventually become the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and ***** with time if he doesn't have the required time powers?

A lot of it just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, sure, the "There must always be a Lich King" thing was an asspull out of nowhere too, but at least they hinted at that in the dungeons leading up to the raid.

Ah well. I think they just did this to remove the one group that could probably prevent a war between the Alliance and the Horde, paving the way for MoP and it's villain, "war itself" (gag).

So what did you guys think? Did you enjoy the ending? Did you wait until the fight to do it? Was the fight itself fun?

Edited, Dec 2nd 2011 2:03am by IDrownFish

Meh.

The ending just made me want to figuratively gag over how cheesey it is/was. Unoriginal too. :/

The questions already raised in this thread don't help much either.

If you talk to Nozdormu after the fight, he says Spoiler"With my powers gone, the Dragon Soul has returned to its place in time.

I saw this by flying over and talking to Chromie, without knowing what she was going to show, earlier today. I sat there and thought, "Okay, well, I guess I basically just saw the climax of this whole expansion already." And it's the 'already' bit that really hit me. It feels so soon, without much having occured. And now Deathwing is dead, with however long to wait for the next expansion.

I don't want to sound like a negative person and I'm certainly not saying that I haven't had fun this expansion. The world changes have been great, I've enjoyed leveling with alts, doing PvP, chatting, getting gear, etc. But - story/drama wise - this expansion hasn't felt as compelling as I expected or wanted it to be. Arthas was a major presence in Wrath. Not just visually but emotionally. Blizzard made you feel the threat of him even when he wasn't around. Deathwing, though, has been some nebulous idea that exists somewhere.

Granted, the ideas are different here. Arthas was gradually coaxing you into his arms the whole time, where as Deathwing doesn't give a flying f*ck who or where you are. You're an ant to him. But I still don't fear him like I did with Arthas. I don't get the feeling that Deathwing could be over my shoulder. I get told by NPC's, "Repent! The end is near! Deathwing is loose, he's going to kill us all! Seas will boil, the sky will drop down and the earth will melt under his power!! ... But, never mind that right now. Do these things for me instead." Sure, we've tackled the Twilight's Hammer and people have taken down Ragnaros - which are all connected to Deathwing, lorewise. They just don't feel connected. I don't feel like I'm rescuing the world - or building up to rescuing the world. I feel like I'm killing some mentally imbalanced mages that lots of the NPC's I get my quests from could handle.

And it feels like, after months of mopping up some demented cults and irritating upstarts, we've suddenly jumped - out of nowhere - to, "NAO YOU FIGHT DEATHWING!! Okay, now you killed him. All done."

I feel like I've been flirting with someone at a party for an evening and we've finally both agreed that we'd like to adjourn to a bed together. Then, when we're on the way, they have some spontaneous ****** by themselves and say, "wait, I'm okay now. It's been good. Bye!" while I'm just unbuttoning my jeans.

/agrees with Smallsword.

I recall some blue post ages ago where they stated that they were quite excited about how Arthas was always involved in the story line throughout Wrath and that they wanted to continue that with the next expansion. I did enjoy how he was involved and showing up.
So aside from a couple quests in Cata, the most obvious being the end of the quests in Twilight Highlands, Deathwing was an aspect that was largely forgotten for being the supposed center of attention.

*aspect pun somewhat intended*

I'm guessing we won't see him at all until the expansion after MoP, at the earliest.

Yes. I hope they bring back Bolvar at some point.

Speaking of the Lich King. Arthas was all frosty and so was his armies. Now that Bolvar is the fiery Lich King, does this mean he controls a... burning... legion?

I'll settle for Deathwing appearing to randomly toast whole areas from time to time, glowing claw marks on the gates of Stormwind and constant reminders that the whole landscape was changed. Deathwing doesn't really care about me; I'm a spear carrier for a host of NPCs (who somehow still keep needing me to bail them out). I didn't particularly like: "look, it is the Lich King and he could crush you all like worms but he didn't (again)" as a running theme.

That would have been EPIC.

EDIT: Then again, I think they have other plans as to what they have in store for Bolvar.

Edited, Dec 4th 2011 1:42am by ekaterinodar

There is also a bunch of unresolved story line in Cata that really annoys:

I also play Alliance so if I missed something Horde Side just let me know.


- Did we ever see a resolution to internal strife in Horde, Trolls & Taurens being angry with the new Warchief?
- The Dwarfs & their inner turmoil is unresolved.
- The entire Vashjir story line cut short because Blizz wants to forget Cata happened.

This. A lot. This is part of what I meant about things being lacking in the story department. Dramatic threads have been built up this expansion with little purpose. Even their introduction was anti-climactic. You know that quest line where Thrall gets split in four parts by Staghelm and you have to go calm his emotional a$$ down and put him together like shamanistic lego? Yeah, it's simple and everything but, still, that's a story element that we witness. We take part in it, since we're characters in that world. The introduction of Cata skipped that idea though. Look back at our Wrath selves, learning about what Cata will bring:

The world of Azeroth will be shattering. Regions will be breaking open or being flooded, dried out or whatever. War is going to be triggered. Garrosh is becoming Warchief, he's going to start being a **** and sparking massive amounts of resentment in the other Horde leaders and groups by being a raging idiot. Big things are going to be happening over time, right? I thought it would be epic.

But what happened? I get the expansion, make some characters and login. Then race introduction movies tell me that - out of the blue - Cairn has been killed, sh*t's gone down with factions, people are grumpy, here's the new world. No build up, no in-game introduction of Garrosh as Warchief. No gradual signs of tension among the races, or in-game witnessing of mistakes made or accidental assassinations. Everything is just suddenly in the past tense and I'm just told, "Oh, by the way, you didn't see it but some people died and crazy things happened. Now, start killing boars!"

When I quested through Vash'jir (after I got over wanting to kill myself for being in an entirely water filled zone), I was astounded by the quest lines Blizzard had made. Naga history, racial and political conflict, influences of an Old God creeping in. It felt like I was being lead somewhere great. Maybe I had no right to expect it but I was looking forward to the talk of Queen Azshara there to lead to her eventually being unveiled as a major story element this expansion. That the discussion about her ancient political maneuverings and power grabs in Vash'jir would go somewhere. It doesn't though. I hear that she existed and that some sh*t went down ages ago and then that's it. All past tense again!

What about the Old God that influenced Deathwing? Deathwing's dead but what about the root cause? In Vanilla, we discovered C'Thun and ended his madness. In Wrath, we uncovered Yogg-Saron, clue by clue and destroyed him. Forgive me if I just happened to miss learning about it being featured somewhere but I haven't seen this third Old God that exists. Are Jaina, Thrall, Malfurion and the dragon Aspects really just not caring about this?

I haven't even got the sense that these are deliberately being left open for resolution in a story they have planned for later. The Old God, the trolls, the taurens, the dwarves, the naga, etc. It doesn't feel like the end of one chapter, which is overtly hinting that these events will have consequences as soon as you flip over the page. It feels more like this is some story elements Blizz tossed together to give this expansion form and content for itself, regardless of if it means anything for Azeroth in general. Like young, inexperienced writers thinking that describing a person as "blonde haired, blue eyed, with a green sweater and a love of jelly beans" passes for character development. It's all a skin and nothing more. And, however much fun individual quests, battlegrounds or dungeons have been, it's pretty depressing that that's all the storyline overall amounted to.


Edited, Dec 5th 2011 3:56am by Smallsword

That was N'Zoth, the force behind the Emerald Nightmare (at least behind it this week, everybody and their grandmother seems to have had the Nightmare as part of their schemes in their day), Deathwing escaping, Cho'gall and thus the Twilight Hammer, Staghelm's corruption, Ragneros, et cetera. Apparently he was defeated in a book, thus robbing us of all of that. The same book in which we found out that all our morrowgrain turn-ins were being used to poison Malfurion. An Emerald Dream 5-man instance for early Cata (replace BRC) where such things were revealed and Staghelm gets to go turncoat and get captured would have been an INCREDIBLE instance. Too bad that didn't happen.

Tensions are high within the Horde, but in the Troll intro quests Thrall asks whatshisface'Jin to try not to kill Garrosh, and the Tauren understand their beef is with the Grimtotems even if other people don't. Too bad Magatha flew off at the end of Thousand Needles and hasn't been heard from again. She's off chilling with Neptulon in the land of "resolved" plotlines.

So, I just completed Dragon Soul in LFR and this is my take... (to reiterate...spoilers)


1) The dragon aspects are now going to die? What? "Our purpose has been served." No it hasn't. You weren't created to fight Deathwing. You were created as keepers of Azeroth.

2) You've spent four full games trying to convince me that the Horde are bad and yet you insist on including Thrall as the only major character involved. Excuse me, but Thrall has been leader and mortal enemy of my faction since the start. I am in no way shape or form moved. Yes, I play Horde, and as a horde player I would definitely have a different view of it. But as an alliance character, your story about Thrall is unmoving. Here you are trying to hammer out an expansion about how the Horde and Alliance are at war and you choose THRALL as the main character and hero?

Obviously, this wasn't well thought out. Nor has the whole Alliance vs. Horde conflict. Since Burning Crusade its been obvious that both sides have been slowly working together. Yes its a tumultuous relationship that breaks out into skirmishes, but the purely artificial attempts at convincing us they are sworn enemies has failed. Stop trying to interject it.

3) LFR is laughably easy. Did I say laughably? I mean, easier than regular 85 dungeons. I expected it to be easy, but this was flatout laughable. I spent most of the 8 bosses spamming Holy Radiance and occasionally hitting my cooldowns to get mana back. I found the only real challenge was not falling asleep while I waited for the boss to die. I understood you wanted to make it easIER, but this is a joke. I've been a casual raider since BC, and my list of downed bosses at level is pathetic. I am by no means a super hardcore elitist raider...and I found this so easy it hurt. I have not been so disappointed in this game in a very long time.


4) The Deathwing finale was touching. I almost felt sorry for him...almost. But unlike Arthas, Kael'Thas, and Illidan there was no real build up. For them, we had years of development...for this...like a year at most. He died. Whatever. Okay. Can we get to a real enemy now? One that I actually care about?


Conclusion:

I'm so disappointed I'm thinking of trying SWTOR now...and I don't like Star Wars.