Q & a #4

[TcheQuevara]

Yes, Hawki. Release your anger. Only through hatred you can destroy us. (Wel)Come to the Rant side.

I think you're mixing two different things. You previously said Blizzard is "nerfing Terrans" in lore because of the fandom. It is debateable if such really happened but I agree with you that if it did, this wouldn't be good.

Now Kindregan is (at least) saying that everything they did in the story was a good idea, but maybe something went wrong in the execution.

He's agreeing with you that there's nothing to be changed in WoL! And about the execution not being perfect... myself, I do believe in relativism. Actually I'm quite radical about it. But when a large portion of your audience didn't get what you meant, you objectively failed to communicate. Regardless of our subjective opinions, that's a fact, and he's apologizing for it.

I really want them to start talking about Protoss reproduction and such things. But the as Turalyon said he's literally answering fan questions. Go check the questions thread: at least in the US forum, a third of the questions are about criticism.

----

Now back to Kindregan's question: do anyonw really think that Raynor should be the "same person" after 4 years? I think no one does. That's really not what people were ranting about. Raynor wasn't a drunk nor a anti-Dominion guerrilla fighter in BW, and people were ok with it. But Raynor's vow against Kerrigan was a big moment; if he's going to feel the opposite of it, the lack of exposure or mention to the transition hurt the narrative.

But yes, going from hate to grief is a good thing, that made Raynor a better, more complex character.

[Hawki]

Only just got home, and looking back, I realize I probably entered rant territory. So, that being said, I'll try to clarify the issues I have with the latest Q&A in a more concise manner.

1) It's no longer a Q&A, or at least, in the old style of the Q&As. The previous Q&As were fact driven. This is clarification driven. It feels reactionary while the other Q&As were more pro-active, in that submitted questions aside, they felt like their own agenda. This feels like a deviation from said agenda. If they wanted to 'clarify' WoL, you'd have thought it would have come first. Instead, it feels like a detour when it wasn't needed. And this doesn't bode well when looking at the questions, many of which have already been answered anyway (e.g. the cerebrates) or are obviously not going to be answered anyway (e.g. "what is Duran?")

2) It's a useless Q&A. Or at least...well, I'll put it this way. In the past, we've had 'clarification' before (e.g. the whole prophecy 'issue'). And yes, I'm putting the apostrophes there because whether it's an issue or not is up for debate. But at least they mixed that up with factual information, stuff that didn't stem from interpretation, but facts. Here, it's entirely 'clarification.' We have three questions - Raynor, Dominion, and "what problems does Blizzard think WoL introduced?" (which is a supposition...go figure). The third question is useless, and the first two I never thought to ask in the first place because they never occured to me.

Is this elitism? Maybe. But like I said, if people want stuff clarified, and it's deemed it needs to be, then at least mix up the types of info. It feels like fan entitlement because we've got a complete swing in the types of answers given. It's not a good sign when I look at a Q&A and find the most fulfilling thing to be the artwork.

3) It's indicative of a trend I've noticed - Blizzard seems to be approaching "lore noob" territory. Now this isn't a bad thing in itself, and my argument mainly stems from Diablo III, which is another kettle of fish entirely. But it's another indication of my misgivings for HotS, where the content I can expect is "let's clarify everything because people are stupid like that." The thing is, this can be done right. D3 did it right at times. But other times, it didn't, and if HotS goes down the same route, I'll be a sad panda. This is the most minor of the gripes, and it's not inherantly bad in itself, but I think a balance has to be struck between WoL (which many have argued felt too seperate from EU lore, the lack of Tal'darim background being an example) and D3 (where many times in conversations and journals I was being told what I already knew, and it wasn't often where what I knew was actually expanded on).

[mr. peasant]

Only just got home, and looking back, I realize I probably entered rant territory. So, that being said, I'll try to clarify the issues I have with the latest Q&A in a more concise manner.

1) It's no longer a Q&A, or at least, in the old style of the Q&As. The previous Q&As were fact driven. This is clarification driven. It feels reactionary while the other Q&As were more pro-active, in that submitted questions aside, they felt like their own agenda. This feels like a deviation from said agenda. If they wanted to 'clarify' WoL, you'd have thought it would have come first. Instead, it feels like a detour when it wasn't needed. And this doesn't bode well when looking at the questions, many of which have already been answered anyway (e.g. the cerebrates) or are obviously not going to be answered anyway (e.g. "what is Duran?")

2) It's a useless Q&A. Or at least...well, I'll put it this way. In the past, we've had 'clarification' before (e.g. the whole prophecy 'issue'). And yes, I'm putting the apostrophes there because whether it's an issue or not is up for debate. But at least they mixed that up with factual information, stuff that didn't stem from interpretation, but facts. Here, it's entirely 'clarification.' We have three questions - Raynor, Dominion, and "what problems does Blizzard think WoL introduced?" (which is a supposition...go figure). The third question is useless, and the first two I never thought to ask in the first place because they never occured to me.

Is this elitism? Maybe. But like I said, if people want stuff clarified, and it's deemed it needs to be, then at least mix up the types of info. It feels like fan entitlement because we've got a complete swing in the types of answers given. It's not a good sign when I look at a Q&A and find the most fulfilling thing to be the artwork.

3) It's indicative of a trend I've noticed - Blizzard seems to be approaching "lore noob" territory. Now this isn't a bad thing in itself, and my argument mainly stems from Diablo III, which is another kettle of fish entirely. But it's another indication of my misgivings for HotS, where the content I can expect is "let's clarify everything because people are stupid like that." The thing is, this can be done right. D3 did it right at times. But other times, it didn't, and if HotS goes down the same route, I'll be a sad panda. This is the most minor of the gripes, and it's not inherantly bad in itself, but I think a balance has to be struck between WoL (which many have argued felt too seperate from EU lore, the lack of Tal'darim background being an example) and D3 (where many times in conversations and journals I was being told what I already knew, and it wasn't often where what I knew was actually expanded on).

I dunno... I see the Q&A as becoming more insight-driven. Instead of being told "A is B" or "C is untrue", we are getting "we did X because of Y". Instead of receiving confirmation about meaningless fluff, we are hearing the writers' insight to their writing process and their reflection on their work. All in all, there's much more of a dialogue going on; with Kindregan giving his thoughts and rationale and opening it up to the audience to provide feedback.

As such, I disagree that this is being more 'lore noob' territory. If that was the case, the questions would be retreading established canon from the original games. Rather, I see this as being a more critique-oriented territory; with people commenting on areas of the story that they felt Blizzard did not do an adequate job of explaining within the game's narrative itself.


Which, if you ask me, is the right direction for the Q&A to go. Instead of asking 'what', we should always be asking the writers 'why' - specifically why they did what they did with the story; be it the good or bad parts. Not only does it provide us with good insight into the story and the writers' creative process, it also makes it useful for them as it gives them the opportunity to reflect on their work and better understand their own decisions.

[Pr0nogo]

The fact that we have the amount of negative comments we do is a testament to how poorly the interns "writers" did with the game itself.