Savagely, with a hint of Green

Yesterday, the cinematic for Warlords of Draenor was released to much excitement.  At the end, was the release date for the game.  If you haven’t seen yet, I’ve thoughtfully provided it here.

It was a really well-done cinematic, but continues the trend of WoW cinematics becoming smaller and smaller in scope.  The cinematics for Vanilla and BC were broad, inclusive.  But then WotLK went small, focused on Arthas ((To be fair, that’s what the whole expansion was about, the ultimate Vanity Project if your name was Arthas.)). Cata broadened back out in one dimension, but we were notably missing. It might have gone big, but it was all about Deathwing.  The MoP cinematic focused on a single moment, by way of introducing kung-fu pandas.

And now, this one … again, we’re focused on a single moment in time.  An important moment, yes, but the scope is, well, small, and doesn’t have us anywhere in it.

This is perhaps the most complicated – or maybe the better term is convoluted – setup for an expansion to date. The problem is that while there is indeed one vector from the end of MoP – Garrosh’s escape and subsequent Marty McFly to Draenor of old – the rest of the setup requires knowledge of lore that has not been on our minds for over a decade.  And, because of this, because Blizz wants us to feel like we’re part of this, regardless, they’ve worked up a huge backstory.  We’ve gotten a comic. We’ve gotten history lessons. We’ve gotten a lot of build-up to the moment that is depicted in the trailer.

But it’s not enough. Because, even if we appreciate the enormity of what we see in this cinematic, we still can’t see ourselves in this trailer. We don’t see our place in this drama that is presented to us. For all the work put into this cinematic, the “intro” trailer of last year’s Blizzcon was actually a lot more exciting.  We’re going to Draenor!  See – there we are!

The scene being depicted in the trailer – as well as in the lead-in comic – is pivotal in Warcraft lore. The whispers around the electronic water fountains is that Blizz – as the 20th anniversary of Orcs vs Humans comes nigh – wants us all to appreciate where it All Came From.  They’re obviously missing the flavor of WOvH and want us all to experience that, to remember where we all came from.

But, as the trailer shows, that’s not going to happen.

Mannoroth has been put down. Gul’dan has been cowed; he’s considered an enemy of the state.  The Burning Legion will not be driving the Iron Horde, and that means that nothing that the Orcs did in the original Warcraft series will be part of this expansion. The invasion’s not even taking place in the same time-period – it’ll be in modern times, for some reason ((Timey-wimey.)) We’re not witnessing history here. The only part of that history that we get to see here is the players – on the Orcish side – themselves. There is no historical significance. There is only the cult of Orcish personality.

Orcs be savage and cool. Yo.

The only real history we can get from this is an appreciation of the significance of Grom dumping the cup of demon blood on the ground, the smugness of Garrosh as he mocks Gul’dan, and the beginning of an oddly-familiar ((I say oddly, since I have no logical reason why two completely different parties are building the Dark Portal to look exactly the same way, especially given the Orcish fondless for spikes on everything including their breakfast cereal.)) portal structure.

And the only reason most of us ‘get’ that is because we were told so. Not by Blizzard, not via any of their story-telling mechanisms. Most of us weren’t paying that much attention when playing, or didn’t care, or – if you’re me – were busy playing other sorts of games. No, those of us that ‘get’ it probably ‘got’ it by reading up on it after the fact, and go, “Oh, that’s interesting” in the same way we noted that Churchill preferred a particular brand of cigar over others as he ordered the destruction of the French Navy.

Yeah, sure, that’s why we’re in Karazhan. Blah blah blah.  Pull, for Metzen’s sake, I’m not getting younger.

In the end, all I can say is this.  10 out 10 for execution, but 1 out of 1000 for relevancy.   And it answers none of the concerns many of us have on terms of relevancy and inclusiveness. The sorts of players that get into the back-slapping, chest-thumping, testosterone-driven culture depicted in that trailer just don’t give two shits about “lore”.

I’m starting to get a strong feeling that part of Blizz’s “getting back to the beginning” includes pushing away people that aren’t into this man-child power fantasy crap, and being okay with that.  I think a number of people that I know and respect have already picked up on that, and left the game for good because of it, which, again, Blizz is apparently okay with.

I may be slow to pick up on this, and I’m still on the fence, but it may be right there and I’m just not looking directly at it. Fortunately, one does not have to actually buy the expansion and play the expansion to figure this out for good. I may decide to wait to see, by proxy, how it’s playing out after release, and then decide whether to buy it or not. 

The upshot is that the cinematic – and thus far, none of the comics – have done nothing to assuage my concerns, or make me want to buy it, or assure me that if I buy it, I’m not contributing to funding a bunch of genetic throwbacks that should be working at a circus instead of a software company. The trailer, while “interesting” and “well executed”, is also … impenetrable.

If I were commissioning a trailer for a product that so many people had expressed doubts – or outright dislike – about, I’d ask that the trailer convey the kind of imagery that would bring those people back.  Instead, they presented one that actually reinforces the doubts and concerns that people have expressed.

I am convinced, at the end of the day, that the Blizzard public relations department is manned by drunken wombats that live in a bubble universe where information flows out, but never in.