#1 - Nov. 30, 2011, 7:19 a.m.
The explicitly sinister Illidan, despite this being before he absorbed the skull of Guldan, and even before he was imprisoned and chained for 10,000 years, is worse.
The pre-Deathwing Neltharion model complete with body ruptures and metallic jaw/plates is just laugh-out-loud ridiculous.
They could have just used a generic black dragon model and it would have been less out of place. This is akin to if we'd gone to Culling of Stratholme, and instead of the unique Arthas-as-paladin model we found there, they just used the Lich King, complete with Frostmourne for weapon.
I swear, every time I think I'm over caring about the lore of this game, Blizzard finds a new low to reach in breaking my sense of immersion. One of the dungeons i was looking forward to the most turns out to be one I can barely stomach.
The rest of it was so well done, it just makes these specific things all the more glaring for some reason. Probably just me.
Edit:
Finally caught up on every post in this thread (didn't expect it to explode like it did, but then I didn't expect a Blue post either, and one invariably follows from the other), and I'll respond as broadly as I can:
1) Whether the voice actress for Tyrande is the same or not is irrelevant. Why is voice acting being treated any less important than actual, "real" acting? If in the middle of a series the exact same character played by the same actress suddenly switched from a vaguely eastern European accent, to a strong, guttural Caribbean one, for no explainable reason, would people just say "Eh it's the same actress, who cares?" I find it amusing how many people try to excuse it with "It's 10,000 years ago." No one else has this different accent 10k years ago, or even sound anything like her, and even if they did, she ALSO has the odd accent in the End Time instance, so that argument falls apart in two different ways.
2) It's not so much Illidan's actions or lines that bothered me as, again, his voice acting. He growled his words out like he was auditioning to be the next Batman, and hissss ssss's were sssssssibiliant enough to win him honorary membership in the Slytherin House for snake-tongued evil villains. It just seemed to reinforce to me that Blizzard has lost all capability of writing subtlety in their characters and stories... how is it that Illidan sounds MORE bitter and MORE bloodthirsty before his 10k year imprisonment than he does after? Why is he so pissed off at Malfurion that he's willing to let him die (pay attention to dialogue: he says that he'd tried to teleport Tyrande and himself away from the exploding well, not Furion), before his brother even imprisons him? Can't he be arrogant and powerhungry without sounding like a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain that just happens to be on your side? I was really hoping this instance would give us a chance to see Illidan "as he could have been," arrogant and hungry for glory, yeah, but plenty of perfectly flawed heroes can have those things without telegraphing with every sentence that they're a hairbreadth away from megalomania.
3) Every excuse for the model just falls flat in the face of logic and contrary evidence. For one thing, people drawing a comparison between the damage he had at the time and how much he has now are painting in rather broad strokes: how are a few fissures in his chest covered by metal plates in any way comparable to his entire abdomen barely held together, and completely replacing his lower jaw? I find it hard to believe resources were strapped this patch in terms of graphic design... after all, the raid is filled with even more reskinned bosses and mobs, and even uses completely recycled environments (for understandable reasons). A large portion of the time and effort clearly went into the 3 5-man dungeons, but not enough to reskin Deathwing's hide and jaw? An entirely unique humanoid model was made for ONE QUEST in the BADLANDS that most people haven't even seen, but a reskin of an existing model is too much? Look, someone else even did it for you back in August! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKW1SBFgfs
I'm a lore fan first and foremost. Gameplay gets old, mechanics can only be innovated so much in such little time, and graphics aren't as important as artistic consistency. Stories change though. Stories evolve. I'm not one of those people who dislikes change for the sake of change; but it's got to be consistent with the story so far. Without the story, the lore, the characters, all bleeding through as authentically and vibrantly as possible in every aspect of the game, it does worse than lose my interest, it repels me away.
Flanderization of all the strong "good" female characters, trivialization of many previous central characters, cartoon vilification of most major Big Bads... it's hard to imagine at this point Blizzard ever finally learning from their mistakes and making the breakthrough they need to tell a good story in an MMO medium, but little things like the mistakes in this dungeon (and others) just sends a message to me that getting content out is more important than getting content right, because if it's good enough for 90% of the audience that only wants to zoom through it for loot, who cares about the other 10%, or whatever the number is?
Except of course that it's the story that ultimately is going to be remembered. Not the "epic lootz."
