Those WoW Cinematics – Blaugust 4

Normally each Saturday I post a summary of interesting gaming news and events from my week. But this week, I haven’t seen any gaming stories of interest, and I’ve already posted a number of things about myself for Blaugust.

Instead, this morning I thought I would write about these wacky World of Warcraft cinematics all the kids are talking about. Specifically, Warbringer Jaina, Warbringer Sylvanas, and Old Soldier.

They’re all very good. Personally I liked Sylvanas the best, because it seemed to have the most self-contained story.

But it’s a bit irritating to watch these things. I think to myself, “Where is that game??” Because what I see in the cinematic looks awesome!

Unfortunately I know from experience that if I subscribe to WoW again, the world portrayed in the cinematics won’t exist in-game. In over ten years now, I’ve never seen anything as good in the course of questing.

With the occasional exception of a cut scene, but my memory of WoW is that cut scenes are fairly rare. The story is almost always delivered in little chat bubbles and quest text. I only remember one good cut scene from Legion: A fight between Greymane and Sylvanas at the end of the Stormhiem zone. Two minutes long and then it was gone, never to be seen again. It would have been nice to replay it, but as far as I know the only way to see cut scenes again is to level another character or find them on YouTube.

So I really enjoy these Blizzard cinematics but I wish they would integrate them more into the game, like Final Fantasy XIV does. It reminds me of the kind of marketing trickery that was routine in the early days of video games, where the box covers portrayed this amazing world but when you actually play the game there’s like six green pixels and a few beep-boops.

It’s one of several reasons I still haven’t re-subscribed to WoW or purchased Battle for Azeroth.