MoP and BfA have a couple of similarities...

Sorry, but what planet are you on? We do know the motives behind the burning of Teldrassil. We have two books and a Warbringer that lay the groundwork for why Sylvanas burned down Teldrassil. She hates the Alliance and Shandris Feathermoon made her realise that simply taking Teldrassil would only rally the Alliance, because they still have hope. She tried to kill that hope by burning the tree.

I hoped for some time that this was all a masterstroke of genius by Sylvanas but... How? How do they play that? We've seen that burning the tree was an emotional move by her, not a calculated effort.

You say you find it hard to believe that they wouldn't pull a Garrosh 2.0, but they kept the "Who burned Teldrassil?" question hanging for nearly a year. Turned out it was Sylvanas. The most obvious answer with completely uninspired reasoning. If it turns out that, in a year or so with 8.3, there was some other reason why she did what she did... They've just left their playerbase frustrated with a crappy storyline for a huge length of time with no direct hint that there's more at hand.

You're hoping that they've developed nuanced writing. That there's a hidden narrative that, in a few patches time, will explode into the world giving the true vision of the expansion... Well, to that I say one thing... We're playing the game now. Today. Hidden plot devices and narrative backflips work when the payoff is half a book away... Not when players are paying £9.99 a month to be held in limbo.

There's nothing substantial that anyone can point to and say "when we know what's going on with THAT, then everything will fall together". There's no mystery, no hint that there's something more with Sylvanas, just us hoping that there is.

If there was still a question looming over everything, something like "Who burned the tree?", then I'd ride this storm out... But all we have is "Who whispered "Windrunner" to Vol'jin?"... and that's such a small part of the narrative right now that it feels completely inconsequential, not to mention half the playerbase don't get to see that story.

If they're trying to draw parallels with Garrosh and Sylvanas, they're doing such a mediocre job of it. They either need to not do it, or make it plainly obvious. Have Baine Bloodhoof comment on the similarities "Garrosh, too, wanted to take Teldrassil", "Garrosh tried to kill Vol'jin, look how that turned out!". They shouldn't be leaving the parallels as a subtle backdrop to everything, that's when you get us lore nuts sperging out about lazy writing... Because it DOES feel lazy at the moment.

I wish I could be completely optimistic like you, I wish I could still feel like everything is going to come together and be explosively fantastic... but I've just run out of hope. Nothing on the horizon seems to provide any answers, or even ask more questions!

If you read that and still think that everyone, including myself, are part of the reactive "get better writers fucking lazey blizzard xddd" bandwagon, then I don't know what to say to you.

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