@rodeo elf im clambering out of your replies i have Too Many complaints. About SotO AND community reaction to..... community reaction.
hi for the love of god sorry it took me a hot minute to get to this. i was being An Adult which should come after my very important video game analysis.
SO forgive me if this is all out of order or strangely worded but i VERY MUCH like your response here and i want to be sure to give my little comments and nods to very good parts. of course under a read more just in case people don't want spoilers. with that said. soto spoilers. but i try not to talk too much in detail on the newest stuff.
never forget the most important thing which is video games analysis forever and ever
you're incredibly real for all of this and I'm nodding my head non stop... I'm not overly familiar with WoW (my older brother played some 10-15 years ago... maybe longer?) so seeing what the "ok just make sure it doesn't look too similar!" homework was copied from is like. standing emoji. huh. i guess it truly is just The In Thing, and therefore The Only Thing.
full agree that the community response is a HANG ON THAT'S CLOSE TO MY HEART THEREFORE PERSONAL TO ME kind of thing. and I mean I get it too, I started almost 10 years ago. It's not like I've played all day every day during that time period and in fact for a few years I Couldn't, but it's been close to my heart for a decade and rotating in my brain often over that time. so like, I Get the impulse that people have and act on to be like NUH UH, it's good cause I like it! But if baffles me that some people are somehow enjoying this story? Acting like they enjoy it? Genuinely into these updates? I'm struggling to tell where the "put on a happy face so no one knows I hate it here" ends.
i was BANKING on them sorta going through the gyala delve route where we're banking on the commander's emotions being the same as a microwaved egg for 15 minutes rotating around alone.
no but for real? "oh, we kryptis, we feed on emotion, and--" girl say less. commander is chock full of that shit. i know you're already in there with a grapefruit spoon taking bites. do whatever. go nuts show nuts if you must. we could have "commander's horrible decade-plus of trauma and violence and warfare and unresolved SHIT finally becomes so overwhelming and impossible to deal with that it becomes a world-ending mass-apocalyptic event and" nope nevermind. no one's interested in commander's emotions i guess. bad vibes or stinky or something. it's like. turns to gyala delve. looks at how far back that was. that was NOT that long before SotO. did they forget that commander has emotional issues and baggage adnd trauma? or did they decide that chatting with Chul-moo for a minute and a half about Cinder's Tragic Death and then typing /wiki cinder and going "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH RIGHT. WAIT WHAT? WHY?" was the same as handling all those emotions and making them go away forever? like I'll hand them the W where it's due, it's a lot of fun having a nightmare of a commander who has never properly dealt with his emotions in his life and just bottles and buries them en masse but at some point it's like. you guys uh. you set up the shot for this to happen and then you said teehee sike. yoinked the football away before Charlie Brown could kick it. why'd you do that.
(and frankly I wasn't like SATISFIED with gyala delve's wrap up of how The Emotions were dealt with either, it genuinely was just like. ok i discussed three whole things that were kind of bugging me ^_^ all better, no need to worry about me further! very weird choice and I didn't understand it and personally just said fine, I'll do it myself, and rewrote what I needed from it.)
WHY did we go through pack bonding with ALL the guys and even going on a DATE with one if we're NEVER seeing them again. WHAT WAS THE POINT!!
could we discuss it to be honest... like. I'm over here trying to figure out what the point of Gyala Delve WAS if the plan was "well after this the whole plot is over and commander leaves Tyria and all your old allies are gone from your life!" genuinely this + the point above. why bring up "the commander has so much trauma and emotional baggage that it's causing Big Problems to manifest." why spend two chapters of extra story having this ragtag "alright we all care about the commander so let's figure it out as a team" group hype you up and do trust falls and like, remind you that these people even exist TO care about the commander and get them through it all just to be like. well, that was cool. hm. Delete All Tyrian Allies dot exe now running.... why the interim chapters? like it would have made more sense for it to go End of Dragons -> saying goodbye to Aurene -> Slopfest of the Obscure. why'd we go to the company retreat with Rama Gorrik and Yao. filler episode? beach episode is now mine episode? I'm so hung up on this at this point. like I'm GLAD because it was the last good bit of "alright at least I had fun and got SOME story!" but. how come they did all that....
(hiiii canach :3)
hi I'm here at the red duck tea house on a triple date with my shady-dealings cactus boyfriend who's running an illegal club out of a historic site and we're seated next to the head of police and he's getting more and more visibly nervous and saying things loudly about how his perfectly legal establishment which no one needs to look into would NEVER serve soup so tepid-- and frankly, I've never wanted anyone more.... and then they took that away. they took that from us... gets down on the ground and starts punching the dirt. fuck this world take me to "anet didn't fumble with a bad expac" world take me to "sure you can take canach on every mission if you want" world. god damn. years ago, during Season 3 of living world I was genuinely afraid they would kill him off next and was so happy to get all the way caught up and he was still with me. but not anymore :(
I think at this point I've written so far Past the beginning of SotO and have incorporated it to such a degree that it's like. I've accepted that it happens and frankly my Commander is miserable for the vast majority of it. he enjoyed the demon voice in his head telling him whatever he wanted to hear and that was kinda. it.
With how it's been though-- I agree, I wouldn't preorder the next one they churn out, and honestly, if we're not returning to Tyria at all and staying Up Here, idk if I want to play it. maybe eventually on a sale or something, but damn. They bungled this HARD and I don't have faith in them giving me another story that will consistently entertain me or make me think or have anything of substance to it. sad.
i posted on tumblr on sylvaridreams earlier about this same topic and tried to lay it out in a less "it's 1 am and im passionate about this" way and was like whew no one is chewing my ass. but also. the number of people saying "yeah this fucking sucked a lot, idk if i wanna keep going" was like man. they really just fucked it up bad, this is sad... i think i said something over there like if THIS was my starting point for gw2... "oh i'll jump in at the new expac" like SO MANY PEOPLE do, i wouldn't stick with it. i certainly wouldn't say wow that writing and pacing was awful and i want MORE! time to buy the expacs and seasons to get the rest of the story! if i didn't have so much invested in my characters and THEIR story, and if i didn't enjoy the OLD parts of the game, I'd probably just quit now too. feels sad. bummed they fucked it up so much.