Thread: The Road to 5.0

Originally Posted by Fenral

You've sort of unintentionally proved my point, though. People are sad about it, and much dialogue is updated to reflect how sad people are, but nothing actually happens. Part of that is due to death generally only impacting characters with nothing staked on their survival. To contrast with A Song of Ice and Fire, people die and create power vacuums, factions split, complicated revenge plots spiral out of control, and five volumes in people are still figuring out just how much Ned Stark meant to Westeros. I'm not saying we need that kind of body count, just that individual life can and should be shown to have value beyond making people sad when it ends.

That would have flown right in the face of one of Heavensward's central theme of dropping cycles of vengeance because they're ultimately pointless, at best short lived satisfaction but always at the cost of long term harm. You don't need a grim and violent nihilism bent to explore loss.

Edit: There's gameplay reasons for this too. If we were to ever sit and stew on a subject like that, get to that level of scrutiny of a single loss and the ripples on it, we'd never go anywhere. We'd never do anything. It makes for a fine drama in text or on television but it doesn't work when gameplay is a fact.

Originally Posted by Fenral

To contrast with A Song of Ice and Fire, people die and create power vacuums, factions split, complicated revenge plots spiral out of control

I mean, didn't all of this essentially happen in Garlemald after Solus' apparent "death"? They had the whole war of succession, broke into two political factions, and it's very much implied there was likely some dirty play involved in this whole situation, we just didn't actually witness it. Sure it was all basically made moot by the Ascians involvement, but to the Garleans who aren't aware of them or their machinations it was all real enough. While I wouldn't mind more details on the events that occurred there, I don't think we needed to actually be there and watch it all happen. The WoL had their own stuff to deal with during all that.

Besides, a character's death doesn't have to have widespread implications to the world around them to have meaning. For example, Haurchefant's death had impact, not because he was important, but because he was a good, loyal man who forged strong bonds with a great many people and laid down his life many times for them. It's obvious that a lot of people in Ishgard trusted him and held him in high regard, and he returned that respect in earnest. Sometimes a character's death also helps to develop them as a character. Haurchefant's death showed us exactly how deep his loyalty was, and how much he cared for his comrade. And even in his dying breaths he couldn't stand the idea of the WoL being sad for him, and instead asked them to show him a smile before passing on. That moment solidified exactly the kind of person he was.

All I'm going to say on the subject is that killing off characters, while useful for emotional torque, can actually be detrimental in the long run; and as MMOs are designed to run for a long time with an expansive cast, might not be in the best interest of the story.

WoW's latest expansion, while bland gameplay-wise and lacking the "grey morality" so many people assumed it would have, is narrative-wise very compelling precisely because of the history behind the majority of the cast. That wouldn't be possible if a big chunk of the characters were killed off every couple expansions. There are major character deaths, but they are done only occasionally, and they have meaning (Varian's death in the prologue of Legion is one of the greatest Heroic Sacrifices I've ever seen).

I don't agree a lot of characters need to be killed off to illustrate what the stakes are. One or two, done well, should suffice.

That said, I'm still not sure how much we're going to be fighting the Empire in 5.0 - what we saw in the Shadowbringers teaser suggests our primary enemies will be agents of the Light, for whatever reason, so while it was the most logical conclusion before I'm not sure the Empire is going to be our center-stage antagonists past 4.5(5).

It is kind of strange that the Garleans got zero focus in the Shadowbringers teaser despite the synopsis stating the main objective is going to be putting an end to the threat of Garlemald. They did mention that it wasn't the entire trailer, though.

I have no idea how the story is going to pace itself when it seems like we're going to be dealing with both Garlemald and the flood of light in separate conflicts, though. Rushing the defeat of an entire empire vs. simply liberating two countries would be even more awkward, but if they're planning on resolving Garlemald in 6.x, I'm not sure how they'd end 5.x on a satisfying note, either.