LOTR is that way------>

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Good. The sci-fi and steampunk elements were starting to get overdone imho. The tech level in vanilla WoW was just fine for me, and I have no problems with tinker gnomes which thanks to Dragonlance were already a fantasy staple, nor do the early guns bother me... cannons for example started showing up as early as the 13th century.

I like my fantasy in a dark ages, medeival, or rennaissance based setting for the most part... and the inclusion of alot of the sci fi elements in TBC (ethereals bug me to no end... they could just as well be a Star Trek or Star Wars race) were starting to grate on me.

I like what I am seeing thus far from Northrend and a return to traditional fantasy.

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I totally agree. I'm not a big fan of the direction the game went in TBC. I'm not really interested in playing World of Startrek. I'm looking forward to getting back to the axes, castles, forests and mountains of Azeroth.

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Draenei were a poor concept I think. (I still have one, since I wanted a shammy on alliance side). They're like squids mated with a satyr...ewww...

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I agree that some places in WoW are a little overboard but overall I like the current feel of the game. Warcraft has always had a different kind of fantasy feel to it with the portals to different realms, etc. And I wouldn't consider guns to be uncommon in fantasy (thinking along the lines of warhammer..). But I do like how WotLK is shaping up to look.

Jeff

http://www.wowdungeon.com

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"I'm definitely hoping WotLK will return World of Warcraft to a more "High Fantasy" - Burning Crusade IS "high fantasy." Pre-bc is gothic/medieval fantasy.

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I think Burning Crusade is great! I really like the sci-fi element that Burning Crusade brought. Netherstorm is one of my favorite zones because it's so much different than anything we've seen in Warcraft before. I think it's great that Blizzard isn't stuck adhering to a very typical "magic and steel" tone. It's one of the things that makes this game great. I'm in favor of the variety, and I think it's working for them well. Wraith of Lich King should give us a hybrid norse/goth tone that will flip the setting yet again. Keep up the good work imo!

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From what I have heard, WotLK will follow a much more gothic-magic art style (sort of like Devil May Cry).

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I didn't mind the little tangent into the Sci-Fi genre that TBC brought to the game. After all, the techno-geeky stuff was centered around an entirely different planet. Dev's for Blizzard, which also produce Starcraft, were probably sitting around one day tossing around "what-if's" in a board room when deciding where they wanted to take the game next and someone said, "What if we kinda mix in a little Starcraft in Warcraft? What if an alien race crash landed on a fairly midieval society? What would they bring to the table? And what if there was an ability to teleport back to their home planet? What kind of weapons would they have? What kind of races would they be?" I think it is a great use of imagination, the kind that gives Warcraft a little more character. If it weren't for these little tangents WoW would be just another vanilla fantasy game with no personality of it's own.

I don't see how this screws with lore, it just adds to it. OK, I agree that some of the armor and weapons are patently silly, but the devs did have to give the "same ol' same ol" an alien look and feel. After all, the word "fantasy" implies that there is a broad range of imaginative license given to the story developers. Just because LoTR was a fine set of books doesn't mean that every fantasy story to follow had to fit within it's cookie cutter construction. Terry Brooks has flying boats in more recent additions to the Shanara series, and even tied them with his Knight of the Word series. Robert Jordon, author of The Wheel of Time (may he rest in peace,) was adding colleges with inventors, who although human, wheren't much different than the engineers in WoW, yet had knights and witches and warlocks and demons, etc. That is the great thing about fantasy, is that you can mix it up to give it new flavor.

I expect WotLK will fit into everyones idea of what they usually associate with Fantasy because everything will be on or from the home planet. It won't feel very alien. Yea, echo-spheres feel out of place, because DUH they are from another planet. They're supposed to. Although they fit in perfectly in Outland.

Visually, I just don't know how they will top Outland though. How do you top Blades Edge or a giant mushroom forrest? Not to mention floating islands.

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Hmm..am I the only one who quite enjoyed Outlands? Azeroth might not be the first place to be populated in the universe? I don't really see any "startrek"-like objects in outlands. I don't see ppl fly around in spaceships nor any hi-tech machinery other than what the engineers make.
If WoW was meant to be "medieval" we wouldn't have goblins or gnomes now, would we?
I bet if the draenei race was already a playable race when WoW was first released, no1 would complain about it not fitting in.
When it comes to items that some calls "hi-tech" in WoW, many of these already existed in the old WoW. I think it's nice to see some new scenery and items that glow.
The most futuristic place in Outlands is Netherstorm and Mana Tombs and yes I do agree that the ethereals looks abit space'ish, but as I wrote earlier, Azeroth might not be where the beginning of life found it's place.

I enjoyed Outland very much and think we got some nicely new written lore along with it...but ofc some ppl enjoys only what's within their 4 walls, what's beyond that is of no interest.

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How exactly is Auchindoun outside the realm of traditional fantasy? It's a bone waste filled with ghosts...

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So, if Icecrown is a old fashioned Ice Fortress... all we need is a few fire mages and warlocks, right?

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On the contrary - what set Wacraft II apart from all the other games in the RTS genere were battleships and cruisers, zeppelins and gyrocopters, submersibles, explosive goblin sappers, dwarven mortar teams, transport ships. In fact, War II was successful largely because of its naval elements and pioneering. So it has a very long history of 'technology' in the fantasy environ and in fact owes it much of its success.

True, the Naaru and their technology are clearly a stretch in a fantasy setting, but they are only one of the many denizens of Blizzard's universe. The blood elves have panicked in their addiction to magic and built an out-of-control industrial nightmare using high technology - which is really just huge magic-based machines. The only thing that sets that apart from traditional magic is that the magic is "manufactured" and harnessed by a machine built and sustained by many rather than wielded or channeled by a single entitity (Warlocks - portals) or inherent in a static environment (Karazhan - lay lines).

Some of those same themes are present in LotR. Tolkein flavored Saruman's contraptions as the infernal war machine - technology interfering in the natural order and backfiring.

In the end it's somebody else's brand and property. I've always thought of the Silithid as a long-lost splinter race of the Zerg and Draeni as another incarnation of the Protoss race. While the two are physically much different, the progenitor race in Starcraft (the guys that travel the universe ordering worlds... sound familiar?) abandoned the Protoss to move on once they began to squander their natural perfection. I almost want to look 5 years ahead when Blizzard may be grappling for new ideas and see the cinematic with some Draeni chopping wood in a forrest when a meteor falls in the forrest, he runs out to meet what he thinks is an Infernal but finds a crash-landed Protoss observatory. The Protoss emerges from the ship, the Draeni makes some ancestral greeting sign and the Protoss returns the oddly familiar gesture.

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WoW has balance, range and depth. The fact that they can introduce remote control tonks and harvest threshers WITHOUT breaking the whole feel of the game exposes WoWs true strength.

The lore is elastic. It has a strong central theme and history. Strong and consistent art direction. And there is still room within the whole for space ships, crystal entities, giant constructs, and flying zeppelins. The amazing part is that we don't feel that a crystal powered, space ship flying alien somehow 'breaks' the game balance.

I mean, if Captain Kirk and his jolly band of red shirts landed in durotar, his phasers would be set on roast Orc cutlets. And i don't give a fig what your Def rating is, a phaser will turn you into instant goo.

But the Dranei? They are still limited by steel and magic, just like the rest of us.

Except for the goblin death ray. that can go away ;-).

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I have to agree with this sentiment.

I understand that from WC2 on there's been a storyline loosely revolving around how the Eredar built the world and the Burning Legion screwed it over, but do we really have to crash-land a bunch of alien dudes with a weird planet in the sky? Seems like a bit much just to add new races and different zones.

Keep it simple, IMO. Add an island off the coast of the mainlands [like Northrend] and add more fantasy races. I'm not saying bring in the Iksar and Frogloks, but something a bit more believable in a fantasy environment.

LASERS BELONG IN STARCRAFT.

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