The Warcrafter

JoshuaSweetvale · Apr 18, 2019

Can you plural quit it with the ad-hominems?
How much of canon to follow is a meat and potatoes argument for any story. And nuance is lost on the internet.
Don't get snippy, and don't attack people's moral character when you're supposed to be arguing their points or not doing anything.

I say this now so a moderator doesn't show up fangs-out to do some moderating. I don't wanna lose this story here.

Unrelated question: How the snek do I delete emoticons? [EDIT: Yay top-right wrench!]

ptbptb · Apr 18, 2019

So, I found this story today. Liked it a lot, but ... it went downhill from around chapter 14.

You're a Warcraft character, and You're a Warcraft character and You're a Warcraft character.

Up till then there was all this stuff about how many points Mr ROB had to cash out to get the MC his build, all the loophole finding and rules-lawyering to get Taylor fixed, and now it's just being handed out like candy. The writing quality went down around the same time, IMO.

JoshuaSweetvale said:
Unrelated question: How the snek do I delete emoticons? Yes this one>>>

When you can't get rid of stuff, or formatting is messed up and you can't work out how to fix it, click the icon at the top right of the post edit screen for 'Use BB Code Editor'

to get the plain-text-with-markup view.

BomeranG · Apr 18, 2019

Yes please. Let's stop this.

Yes, plenty of us have things we don't like about every story. I would have preferred if MC didn't start antagonistic with Armsmaster and local PRT then look buddy buddy with them. Or have a second wave of Wow empowerment (unless it's a fusion I always prefer the crossover thing to be a single unique event) but ultimately I very much like this story. Among with I'm sure many others.

If you don't, why are you even wasting your time here. Go find one that you like. Let's agree to disagree.

BungieONI · Apr 19, 2019

warning This is a thread warning.

Hi all, I'm here to tell you all to chill out on the argument you're having here.

Samael said:
Lame arguments

How is any character supposed to change things in Worm without cutting back on Contessa's god mode Mary-Sue bs without wanking their OC to Eidolon tier or otherwise giving them some no-sell power. Can you name a single Worm fic that satisfactorily handles bs like Contessa? And it isn't like powers don't exist that can counter it. More importantly it follows naturally from the themes of order vs. chaos and spirituality vs. materialism. The entities and their shards are contending with forces they can't even comprehend. I also find it weird how you're complaining about how a Sue defeated a Sue.

You call it a power fantasy but it's pretty clear that apart from Lung (who was a group effort with half a dozen others all the people he's beaten so far should lore wise be well below his level anyway and it's almost a shame you can't see past it to realize that Bayleaf has been well a support character whose central role in what's to come is largely limited to tinkering up ways to power up capes. In that sense I find Bayleaf interesting.

The Taylor romance? Why is this odd? Bayleaf is handsome, has a super sense of humor, is a complete supporter of Taylor to the best of his abilities, and is generally a charming, confident person who is more heroic than 99% of the actual heroes. I thought the transformation thing happened nicely and was well built up and maybe you didn't read it well but only 2 undersiders transformed for pretty good reasons on their own.

Is there a lack of narrative tension? Yes I would have to agree but at the same time the fun of fics like this is the catharsis.

No it serves to draw parallels between Cauldron and the Entities and as a foil for Bayleaf. The Entities rely so heavily on their shards they're emotionally immature (hence Scion's rampage) Contessa relies so heavily on her shard she hasn't matured or really thought much beyond her own primitive society's notions. By drawing parallels the story further points out the utter stupidity of their plan. Frankly, there are enough well-intentioned extremist types I don't really consider her interesting. Again with the use of "plot device" to describe her at least Bayleaf's plot device is interesting (chaos as a force for good).

@Samael this argument had already halted and restarting it after it was generally agreed to be halted is disruptive and butts up against Rule 4: Don't be Disruptive. You're getting a staff notice under Rule 4 to not drag the argument further along.

As for the rest of what I need to say there are some Rule 3: Be Civil concerns in regards to how the argument was carried out on all sides. Rule 3: Be Civil has to do with the idea that Sufficient Velocity is meant to be an inclusive site where everyone is welcome so long as they interact with each other with civility. Where civility in this case is not engaging in behavior which crowds out people with differing opinions. You don't even have to like someone or their views, simply be respectful when engaging them.

sdwood said:
....Interesting?

INTERESTING?!

Contessa is the least interesting character in the entire story except for possibly Coil! Hint: "I win" is, in fact, exactly the sort of power a five year old would invent. There's nothing interesting about it. Tacking on half a dozen restrictions really doesn't change that at all.

People who like Worm canon are annoying.

@sdwood the final line of this post above butts up against Rule 3 Be Civil's provision of attacking the argument and not the person by attempting to push Wobulator out, in the context of this argument.

sdwood said:
Ah. Well, let me clear that up for you: You weren't giving helpful advice, you were just insulting the author, enough that it took me a bit to decide it didn't cross the line into reportable.

Might take that into account in the future.

Relatedly do not use "I almost reported you" as an argumentative bludgeon as you did above. This is against Rule 5 Don't Make our Jobs Harder. This is your staff notice under Rule 3 and Rule 5 to not do either again.

SolarLion said:
Everyone rejoice with me about how much we love this god tier canon Mary Sue who can predict and see anything except the entities and end bringers. Yes, let us rejoice the fact that path to victory is so broken almost every worm fanfic has some form of blind spot for the main characters. Yes, let us rejoice these butt hurt fans that are mad that contessa is no longer their op goddess of worm. Completely ignoring the fact she never lost to anybody who doesn't have precog immunity. Literally the only time she actually was on the back end was the irregulars which has anti precog fields. Also like I have said before. If you hate the way the story is or is going. Don't read it. Everyone has different tastes and opinion in stories so not all stories are going to be exactly the way you like it. Some people actually like stories where the good guys aren't being punished cause the universe hates hopes and good people.

In much the same vein as sdwood, @SolarLion do not obliquely attack another poster like this as it is just another example of crowding out those with differing opinions and butts up against Rule 3. This is your staff notice to not do it again.

Wobulator said:
Yes, she never lost. Right up until, you know, the Cauldron base got attacked by the Irregulars and she was shown to be able to form plans and react just fine to her power suddenly not working.

Given that she can interact just fine with Eidolon, who's another precog blind spot, you're just flat-out wrong.

Or the Irregular attack.
Or post-canon, where she stopped using her power and continued to be a functional human being.

Hmmm. It appears that a universe revolving around giant space whales and superheroes doesn't hold up well to rigorous examination.

Truly, this is a surprise.

Well, I'm glad you know what you hate.

I mean, it has no relationship to canon whatsoever and was, as best I can tell, invented wholesale from your own fever dreams, but hey. You do you.

Wobulator said:
The Irregular attack was like... one of the two times we actually saw her fight. This isn't a big deal.

Well, this was an incredibly broad statement that almost certainly has no bearing on reality.

Because it gives me a perverse sense of joy to point out actual flaws?

You clearly have not read enough fanfiction if you think this.

Wow! Way to strawman! Congratulations, you win a lollipop.
My criticism is not, fundamentally, that you nerfed Contessa. It's that this entire fic is a poorly-written, poorly-planned excuse for a powerwank that has very little in the way of redeeming factors.

Aaah, name-calling. Truly, you are a shining example of constructive debate to the rest of us.

Also: The reason people like Worm is not that it's a new deconstruction of the superhero genre. It's that it's an interesting universe with compelling characters.

Frankly, I haven't had the time to read Ward, so I can't really comment on that.

Really? And here I was thinking that I was, in fact, giving meaningful advice. It's not in the format that you want, but... too bad.

@Wobulator these are both examples of spaghetti posting, and are not acceptable on SV. Take a staff notice not to do it again. Furthermore, tone down the exchange of mockery.

Thefanficreader said:
You know making a comment like this might not be the best idea where everyone can look back through your history and see your own shit taste.

@Thefanficreader, don't do this, it butts up against Rule 3 Be Civil. Take a staff notice.

Everyone please have a nice night and or day, depending on timezone.

B00ki5h · Apr 19, 2019

Good work as usual the only complaint I really have is on the formating. While you start off breaking up the lines between characters, descriptions, and action the last several chapters could be at least double spaced to make it easier to read.

RHJunior · Apr 19, 2019

Passing thoughts:

1. Holy carp. Boom goes the dynamite, and I got no clue how I lit the fuse.

2.And a special no-prize of three hundred Quatloos to Samael for being literally the second person anywhere I've ever seen use the word "Naff" in a sentence. Or at all. The other time was a Harry Potter fanfic. Is it a british thing?

3. Lung... you know, that guy seriously suffers from Worf Syndrome (the big, bad, super-strong warrior dude who only exists to get his butt kicked by the menace of the week. To, you know, show how SERIOUS it is.) Getting whomped by the Undersiders and the Alliance isn't even the worst he's gotten it. Granted, I had him get his arse kicked by a My Little Pony in another fic. But there are plenty of writers who surpassed that.
There was one fanfic I read where the crossover character was a reformed super-genius supervillain... he landed in Brockton Bay just as Lung was scaling the building to come after Skitter-- so he did some quick calculations, picked up a broom handle and jabbed it in Lung's chest just as he came up over the edge of the roof. Lung lose his grip, faw down go boom. five stories, On his head. The protagonist/narrator pointed out there were CERTAIN DOWNSIDES to adding all those tons of mass to the human body...

In another fic Taylor "triggered" with the powers of a D+D sorcerer. And killed him with a Ray of Frost. By accident. (It was her WEAKEST spell.)

In yet another, Taylor's "power" is that she has three little tiny friends who help her become a superhero. On her first patrol one of them falls through a skylight and lands in Lung's takeout chinese. Lung is naturally upset by this. He gets a lot MORE upset when Taylor's "tiny friend" gets mad and starts growing... seems Taylor has become the Master of the Endbringers, and the one that landed in his moo shu pork was Behemoth...

Then there's Taylor Varga, where after one confrontation with one of Taylor's alien lizard demon alter egos, Lung's power basically just goes "Nope Nope Nope Nope" and shuts down completely.

Basically, if Lung makes an appearance in most fanfics, it's a short wait till he gets a buttwhoopin'.

4. Contessa. As she is in canon, I don't understand why anyone finds her 'fascinating' or 'interesting.' In canon she's a one-note plot device with no personality and no purpose outside of letting the writer say "Cauldron wins no matter what, so there, nyah nyah."

Not to say I haven't seen a few fanfics where Contessa was actually made an interesting character. Such as .... I forget the name, "Path To Baking?" "Path to Deliciousness?" "Path to Flavortown?" ... eh. Something like that--- where because Contessa is undercover as part of the staff in Winslow, Taylor triggers with a copy of Path to Victory... with the odd caveat that every Path she asks for has to involve food in some fashion.

At one point she figures out how to destroy the Empire 88 with nothing but pies.

Yes. It gets STRANGE.

Bring munchies when you read it. You WILL get hungry.

Samael does make a valid point though... unless you want your fanfic to go EXACTLY as the original story did (you know, with 90% of everything dying at the end), the writers more or less HAVE to either give their OC some No-Sell ability or ramp their powers up to insane God Mode Sue levels to get around the utterly broken abilities of Contessa, Cauldron, the Endbringers and Scion. About the only stand-out exception would be "Security!" Even then, the self-insert character effectively arguably had an utterly broken power of his own: an encyclopedic knowledge of Worm from cover to cover-- basically making him the most powerful Thinker in the Wormverse. (being a lesser writer, I cheat and give my protagonist both a broken powerset AND an outsider's foreknowledge.)

Introducing new Warcrafted to the story-- that was a tough decision. Lots of people like it, quite a few hate it. But once the idea of turning a few canon characters into WoW empowered capes took hold, I just had to write it... and let's face it, I write these stories for my own amusement first. I would make a very poor B.R.O.B.... because I would manage to stay cryptic and enigmatic and begrudgingly giving dribs and drabs of help to my chosen champion for all of five minutes before I'd be calling him on his cellphone, yelling clues, dropping magic macguffins at his feet and picking a few dozen other people to work with him. That IS sort of the plot thread pushing Agent along... he's supposed to be one of these mysterious cosmic entities and he's TERRIBLE at it. He's supposed to be a cryptic and enigmatic and wise and enigmatic figure, but he's more like the manager of the Mighty Ducks or the Bad News Bears. A shyster with a heart of gold, always broke, always trying to game the system... because he does his 'gigs' according to his conscience rather than by the book.

And yes, I'm correcting the formatting on all the chapters. Slowly. By hand. One at a time.

It'll be a while.

Twilight666 · Apr 19, 2019

RHJunior said:
Not to say I haven't seen a few fanfics where Contessa was actually made an interesting character. Such as .... I forget the name, "Path To Baking?" "Path to Deliciousness?" "Path to Flavortown?" ... eh. Something like that-

......

RHJunior said:
Bring munchies when you read it. You WILL get hungry.

Ironically it is actually Path to Munchies (complete) | Sufficient Velocity

RHJunior · Apr 19, 2019

Twilight666 said:
......

Ironically it is actually Path to Munchies (complete) | Sufficient Velocity

AHA, thank you!

...Darn it, I like "Path to Flavortown" better.....

Sagittarius · Apr 19, 2019

RHJunior said:
AHA, thank you!

...Darn it, I like "Path to Flavortown" better.....

All aboard the bus to flavortown. Also one thing that I find weird in most stories is that they usually lack experimentation. They never really question why this thing does what it does which sucks since I love when stories actually experiment and create new things.

Nitronorm5688 · Apr 20, 2019

RHJunior said:
"BUTTHEAD ERADICATION PROTOCOLS ENGAGED," it growled. "MUNITIONS OPENED: ONE CAN OF WHUPASS."

I've been giggling about this for three days. Still funny.

Demonianism · Apr 20, 2019

Sephri said:
Why dear god why, have you censored the curse words, it ruins every scene with Skidmark. if you cant write actual profanity then dont write it but dont substitue it for BLEEEEEEEEP or #¤!"#!%!. christ sake, you are better than that.

RHJunior said:
I AM better than that. That's why I censored that.

I grew out of the "screaming DOODY is FUNNY" phase when I was four.

Damonlancer said:
But part of writing Skidmark is coming up with the most creative invective you can...

I forget the name of the fic, but the best way I've seen this issue solved in hilarious fashion was when the author cut in and had some very English actors in very proper Queens English do Skidmark's, Squeeler's, and Mush's lines. They even had their mouths moving silently after the "voice overs" were done. I think I nearly broke a rib reading it.

EDIT: autocorrect can eat my BLEEEP

Aurora Moon · Apr 20, 2019

RHJunior said:
That is sort of an issue translating a GAME world to a STORY world... game logic usually isn't. Logical, that is.

Consider that in WoW proper, your level 1-5 character can conceivably be killed by an angry frog.
No lie. An angry frog. Not even a giant frog... just one of the wandering critters in the forest.
Actually happened to one of my first characters. I wasn't paying attention because heck, it was a FROG the size of my foot. I looked away to mess with something IRL, looked back and I'd been consigned to the hereafter..

If it makes you feel better, I was once killed by a bee in Everquest. (the first MMO way back in the day, when I was like 13). and I wasn't even away from the keyboard. I was so busy forging for plants in game that I didn't notice the bee there... and it litterally stung me once, and my hp dropped to zero. I was like level 2 at the time.

I just sat there numb with shock. I didn't even know they had bees in the game, and it was so tiny I didn't see it until it started stinging me. only way you could zoom on it was to target-lock on it. Talk about embrassing deaths in online games... one of my friends witnessed this too and didn't let me live it down for a while there. heh.

Cyberwere · Apr 20, 2019

Aurora Moon said:
If it makes you feel better, I was once killed by a bee in Everquest. (the first MMO way back in the day, when I was like 13). and I wasn't even away from the keyboard. I was so busy forging for plants in game that I didn't notice the bee there... and it litterally stung me once, and my hp dropped to zero. I was like level 2 at the time.

I just sat there numb with shock. I didn't even know they had bees in the game, and it was so tiny I didn't see it until it started stinging me. only way you could zoom on it was to target-lock on it. Talk about embrassing deaths in online games... one of my friends witnessed this too and didn't let me live it down for a while there. heh.

Oh god. Everquest. I haven't thought about that game for, well, decades at this point, I think.

You're right, the number of deaths I had to really, really stupid shit was astounding. I remember in particular having made the mistake of starting as a wood elf and dying/watching others die from falling off the home city. The easiest way to find the wood elf home city was to look for the piles of bodies at the bottom of the trees.

Aurora Moon · Apr 20, 2019

@Cyberwere

I remember that too. once I made the mistake of making my character get so drunk. They had this game mechanism where if your character got drunk enough, they would have this special bloom effect pop up. and your character would uncontrollably sway side to side every time they walked.
Being a stupid teen, I thought that making an alcoholic wizard and roleplaying as that would be funny as hell.... but I made the mistake of making him a wood elf too... and well.... yeah. I'd try to walk to the bank to stash my stuff, but my tispy wizard would sway to the side and fall right off. got annoying and old really fast. So naturally, I ditched that roleplaying gimmick and the character himself after a week of that.

Cyberwere · Apr 20, 2019

@Aurora Moon
LOL. Yeah, I remember some of the guilds in the server I was on would run drunken newbie races. You'd make a brand new wood elf, they'd provide the alcohol necessary to get you as drunk as the game would allow, and the one who survived the run from the newbie elevator to the bank would win. People really do have too much time on their hands, don't they?

Akallas v. Aerok · Apr 22, 2019

Cyberwere said:
@Aurora Moon
LOL. Yeah, I remember some of the guilds in the server I was on would run drunken newbie races. You'd make a brand new wood elf, they'd provide the alcohol necessary to get you as drunk as the game would allow, and the one who survived the run from the newbie elevator to the bank would win. People really do have too much time on their hands, don't they?

Wish i took part in something like that.

And speaking of guilds and servers, i spent most of mine in Korean ones, and yall know how toxic they are. Were. Still are. Hmmm....

And I know you're probably not happy reading this.. but when is the next update?

inverted_helix · Apr 23, 2019

So I'm still reading through the story, it's taking a while (currently in chapter 14). However I've seen Bayleaf say over and over that Azeroth never developed protection against Fear effects. Which is blatantly untrue. Fear Ward Fear Ward was exactly that, and was around for most of the time the game existed (removed in patch 7.0.3). However he's clearly demonstrated he still gets abilities that were removed from the game.

That is the most applicable to this situation, though there are several other abilities that accomplished it in other ways. Lichborne or Anti-Magic Shell for Death Knights (these also block Seduction effects), Divine Shield for Paladins (blocks almost everything, including mental effects), Ice Block for Mages, or Berserker Rage for Warriors. Tremor Totem might be even more useful since it removes Fear and Charm effects from party members in an aoe around it every couple seconds. That's before getting into the PVP trinkets which are commonly available items that break any mental effects with a cooldown.

Given such a plethora of mental defense abilities him saying repeatedly that they never developed any makes no sense. Is this ever addressed? I did a quick search of the thread and it doesn't seem to be.

Granted the Azeroth he's connected to doesn't have warlocks or demon hunters so isn't the standard one. But still for this AU version to be lacking such a large chunk of abilities that it has in canon and him to be criticizing it for a lack that he created in his AU is pretty annoying.

RHJunior · Apr 23, 2019

inverted_helix said:
So I'm still reading through the story, it's taking a while (currently in chapter 14). However I've seen Bayleaf say over and over that Azeroth never developed protection against Fear effects. Which is blatantly untrue. Fear Ward Fear Ward was exactly that, and was around for most of the time the game existed (removed in patch 7.0.3). However he's clearly demonstrated he still gets abilities that were removed from the game.

That is the most applicable to this situation, though there are several other abilities that accomplished it in other ways. Lichborne or Anti-Magic Shell for Death Knights (these also block Seduction effects), Divine Shield for Paladins (blocks almost everything, including mental effects), Ice Block for Mages, or Berserker Rage for Warriors. Tremor Totem might be even more useful since it removes Fear and Charm effects from party members in an aoe around it every couple seconds. That's before getting into the PVP trinkets which are commonly available items that break any mental effects with a cooldown.

Given such a plethora of mental defense abilities him saying repeatedly that they never developed any makes no sense. Is this ever addressed? I did a quick search of the thread and it doesn't seem to be.

Granted the Azeroth he's connected to doesn't have warlocks or demon hunters so isn't the standard one. But still for this AU version to be lacking such a large chunk of abilities that it has in canon and him to be criticizing it for a lack that he created in his AU is pretty annoying.

Chalk it up to his own newness to being a Warcrafted-- he has all the knowledge of a maxed-out druid downloaded into his brain, along with the basic lore of Azeroth-- but he's not intimately familiar with it all, and has to sit down and meditate on it. It's rather like trying to remember your old home phone number from a few years back, or the name to an old song-- he's gotta sit there and pummel his brain a bit to dredge it up.

In the meta sense, blame it on the author's unfamiliarity.

I've played WoW on and off for several years, but I'm not intimately familiar with all the abilities of each class.... especially ones that Blizzard has changed over the years.

.... that and the fact that for all this "plethora" of mental defenses I've never actually seen them used effectively to any worthwhile degree.
Ever.
By anyone.

IN nearly every PVP mach I've been in however, I've seen Warlocks and the like bloop "FEAR" spells into the middle of crowds over and over, sending EVERYONE running amuck like their heads were on fire and their asses were catching. All the defenses against fear effects listed are pitifully intermittent, of dismally brief duration, and heinously slow to recharge, rendering them almost useless. (And ice block only counts on a technicality-- it keeps you from running away in a panic BECAUSE IT FREEZES YOU IN A BLOCK OF ICE.) Kind of a poor showing for the people of Azeroth who've supposedly been dealing with such magical combat methods for thousands of years.* And a really LOUSY defense against something like the Simurgh's song... all in all, a fairly good reason for him to have subconsciously catalogued such cantrips and trinkets as "Damn near useless" and stick them in a box in the back of his mind.

*(It's almost as sad as the fact that these people can't even design a helmet that protects you from getting conked on the back of the head with a sap!)

grubleafeater · Apr 23, 2019

RHJunior said:
*(It's almost as sad as the fact that these people can't even design a helmet that protects you from getting conked on the back of the head with a sap!)

Actually, if you hit the helmet hard enough, it's not the sap that you need to worry about, it's the helmet.

The purpose of IRL armor is to spread impact force across such a area that it does not pierce the skin and does less damage. A hard enough strike and the armor itself will do the damage, or your body will move within the armor fast enough to cause the damage.

TLDR, there is literally no armor in the world that could protect someone, for instance, from the club of a Skyrim Giant. Any armor would deform and cause the damage itself, and/or not prevent your body from being accelerated away from the club in such a way that your body gets mashed against the armor and causes damage that way.

In other words, they don't need to design a helmet to protect against a light hit with a sap, they need to somehow design a helmet that defends against a sap at Sufficient Velocity.

inverted_helix · Apr 23, 2019

RHJunior said:
Chalk it up to his own newness to being a Warcrafted-- he has all the knowledge of a maxed-out druid downloaded into his brain, along with the basic lore of Azeroth-- but he's not intimately familiar with it all, and has to sit down and meditate on it. It's rather like trying to remember your old home phone number from a few years back, or the name to an old song-- he's gotta sit there and pummel his brain a bit to dredge it up.

In the meta sense, blame it on the author's unfamiliarity. I've played WoW on and off for several years, but I'm not intimately familiar with all the abilities of each class.... especially ones that Blizzard has changed over the years.

.... that and the fact that for all this "plethora" of mental defenses I've never actually seen them used effectively to any worthwhile degree.
Ever.
By anyone.

IN nearly every PVP mach I've been in however, I've seen Warlocks and the like bloop "FEAR" spells into the middle of crowds over and over, sending EVERYONE running amuck like their heads were on fire and their asses were catching. All the defenses against fear effects listed are pitifully intermittent, of dismally brief duration, and heinously slow to recharge, rendering them almost useless. (And ice block only counts on a technicality-- it keeps you from running away in a panic BECAUSE IT FREEZES YOU IN A BLOCK OF ICE.) Kind of a poor showing for the people of Azeroth who've supposedly been dealing with such magical combat methods for thousands of years.* And a really LOUSY defense against something like the Simurgh's song... all in all, a fairly good reason for him to have subconsciously catalogued such cantrips and trinkets as "Damn near useless" and stick them in a box in the back of his mind.

*(It's almost as sad as the fact that these people can't even design a helmet that protects you from getting conked on the back of the head with a sap!)

This makes it pretty clear whatever PVP you did either wasn't ranked, or was very low rank. In even the middle ranks of PVP fear will be broken almost instantly by various counters. (Another sign is considering ice block that way, when a simple macro will let you use iceblock to break or block a CC and then end the iceblock immediately after. Which is another strike against some sort of temporal effect as you wouldn't perceive the time passing to end it at your discretion.)

The idea that he categorized these things as useless is pretty silly given he's actually making serious use of things Azeroth considers toys. Remembering all the hundreds of toys actually seemed a pretty good indicator that the database loaded into his head was very artificially clear and searchable compared to normal human memory.

Duration and speed of recharge are entirely game balance things, which you've ignored in a lot of other cases. Whenever you use roots to secure someone they last until cut instead of ending in 8 seconds for instance. PVP trinkets for instance you could carry literally dozens and keep breaking effects. The only reason you can only use one in game is for balance reasons.

Magical combat has evolved. Thousands of years of advancement doesn't just advance defenses though, it also advances offenses. One person develops a stronger defense, another develops a better penetration mechanism, and you're back where you started. It doesn't help that entire civilizations are wiped out pretty often in Azeroth setting back advancement

As grubleafeater points out a sap against a helmet works just fine because it's conveying blunt force impact through the helmet. Raw kinetic energy is one of the ways armor was defeated in the real world. You always need to protect your head even with a helmet. Though as your own story attests pretty much every ability in Azeroth is using magic in some way. The sap is essentially an incapacitation spell with a bunch of limits.

RHJunior · Apr 23, 2019

inverted_helix said:
This makes it pretty clear whatever PVP you did either wasn't ranked, or was very low rank.

GUILTY!

Again, though, "you go with what you know." Just take it as a given that the protagonist played World of Warcraft to some degree-- but he wasn't exactly a hardcore user.

You should've seen me with my first character. Got him all the way to max level, but seriously did NOT have a clue the entire way.... didn't even know about glyphs (this was back when they provided some actual useful boosts and tweaks), fumbled around blind with crafts (again, back when they were still a bit useful), had to be TOLD at random about auction houses, didn't have a guild or understand how they worked, didn't play pvp at all-- and even now with all of the above, I STILL barely flounder my way around.

And I still say it's damned ridiculous that a rogue can pop you on the noggin right through a helmet. HATED those little @$%ers.
*clonk* "ow!"
*clonk* "dammit!"
*clonk*"AGain?"
*clonk*"I'll find you and set everything you love on fire!!"
*clonk* "ARRRGH"

Every pvp match I spent playing the role of a baby seal in an eskimo village. Thousands of years of that crap and nobody designs a helmet with padding, seriously... But then again, designed for "gameplay balance," not realism. So it's probably for the best that Adrian isn't a former World of Warcraft prodigy... he'd be building and organizing things based religiously on his encyclopedic knowledge of the GAME, then standing there going "But it's supposed to work like THIS, why isn't it working??" till Behemoth stomped on him.

Repeating the obvious: the anti-Fear tools and tactics in the game are great for use in the GAME (if you're a ranked PVPer, anyway) but would be suicide to use against the monsters and villains of Worm without some serious alteration.

inverted_helix · Apr 23, 2019

RHJunior said:
Again, though, "you go with what you know." Just take it as a given that the protagonist played World of Warcraft to some degree-- but he wasn't exactly a hardcore user.

You should've seen me with my first character. Got him all the way to max level, but seriously did NOT have a clue the entire way.... didn't even know about glyphs (this was back when they provided some actual useful boosts and tweaks), fumbled around blind with crafts (again, back when they were still a bit useful), had to be TOLD at random about auction houses, didn't have a guild or understand how they worked, didn't play pvp at all-- and even now with all of the above, I STILL barely flounder my way around.

I get that. Though having the whole thing downloaded into your brain really should have provided more about the systems instead of just the toys. Really from reading this story I get the impression you spent like 75% of your warcraft time playing with the in game toys and crafted pets.

RHJunior said:
And I still say it's damned ridiculous that a rogue can pop you on the noggin right through a helmet. HATED those little @$%ers.
*clonk* "ow!"
*clonk* "dammit!"
*clonk*"AGain?"
*clonk*"I'll find you and set everything you love on fire!!"
*clonk* "ARRRGH"

This is what ground targeted AoEs are for. Setting the ground on fire is the obvious way to stop ninjas. (This is a reference to the meme, but it does work.)

RHJunior said:
Every pvp match I spent playing the role of a baby seal in an eskimo village. Thousands of years of that crap and nobody designs a helmet with padding, seriously...

Helmet padding doesn't help as much as you think. Even with a theoretically ideal padding there's a limit imposed by physics on how much it can reduce an impact based on how thick the padding is. While you can make padding thick enough to protect against a blow to the head it would result in a helmet so large that you would be presenting a larger target allowing more blows to connect. Sufficiently large and it could even impair balance and mobility.

These same issues plagued armor design in the real world and are why a heavy blow to the head was the most effective way to penetrate platemail basically since its inception until the development of practical firearms.

RHJunior said:
Repeating the obvious: the anti-Fear tools and tactics in the game are great for use in the GAME (if you're a ranked PVPer, anyway) but would be suicide to use against the monsters and villains of Worm without some serious alteration.

I don't really see that. I'd just stack a ton of pvp trinkets and use them as needed to kill the target. Simurgh would actually be pretty easy to deal with since in her standard 'holding back' state she takes 15 minutes to master someone so I could use a single pvp trinket with a 2 min cd on cd to continuously clear her mastering. If she's not holding back then she's just going to blender your brain with telekinesis and master protection isn't really what you need at all. Likewise with Vicky's aura taking a long time to build up any mastering effect it would be trivial to clear it.

PVP trinkets are really the solution for most bits of mastering in worm with a little thinking about it. Because you can use them while mastered, you just use it when the master can't immediately reapply it. Most master effects in worm have some sort of application restriction (range, touch, eye contact). So you can just break it when they can't immediately reapply it. Most masters can't actually tell when you've broken free even so you could do it immediately after they mastered you and just let them assume it's still applying right until you kill them.

Or if you want to be a bit paranoid you take the enchantments used in PVP trinkets and just start applying them to all your stuff on a timer. So that you're cleared of influence every minute even if you aren't aware of it. You've already shown you can use enchantments in ways they aren't in the game.

You don't really need master immunity if you get the cycle time on master influence removal low enough. It ends up effectively the same thing. Far easier to work with something that already exists than reinventing it from first principles.

RHJunior said:
So it's probably for the best that Adrian isn't a former World of Warcraft prodigy... he'd be building and organizing things based religiously on his encyclopedic knowledge of the GAME, then standing there going "But it's supposed to work like THIS, why isn't it working??" till Behemoth stomped on him.

Bah, you aren't a proper gamer if you aren't looking for any advantage (exploit) possible.

kosievdmerwe · Apr 24, 2019

On helmets and armor, one of the reasons Iron Man's armor (as an example) is unrealistic is because he doesn't have some kind of inertial dampener, so if he gets knocked hard enough his organs should get messed up and he should die from internal bleeding, even if his armor were perfectly rigid. Acceleration (and g-forces) kills because your organs can move independently from your body, in particularly your brain.

However, we're dealing with WoW magic. I don't know much or near anything about it, but presumably armor that protects against various physical effects (blunt force damage or being staggered) should have components that cancel inertia. Making armor that's better than would be possible under our modern understanding of physics. Maybe, depending on the exact nature of the magic structures, our modern understanding of physics might allow us to better optimize the magic. Newton's three laws are not that obvious after all. The Greeks didn't invent them, for instance.

JoshuaSweetvale · Apr 25, 2019

kosievdmerwe said:
Newton's three laws are not that obvious after all. The Greeks didn't invent them, for instance.

Or maybe the Warcraft universe has entirely different laws of motion. /shrug

The protagonist and his band of teenagers with attitude are being fed prepackaged meals of magic and powers by the Q. It doesn't need to be consistent with the Warcraft world itself, wherever it might be out there, but DOES presumably need to not be overpowered in the Q's little game.

The Manton limit might be artificial, but the specific details on what powers do might not be as easily malleable.
Maybe the 'power' part of Leviathan's Shard complex is set up to only generate and control liquid water.
Maybe the equipment to do that is so complex and specific that it can't be reconfigured on the fly to suddenly affect other stuff.
An Endbringer that does probably have a very versatile power Shard is Groudon. Unlike either Kyogre, Ziz or the new crew, he can mess with every kind of energy. He's Assault But More. He's Accelerator without the magic metaphysics.

The existence (and prominence) of Behemoth's ridonculously broad ability hints against the Endbringers hiding parts of their power, just hiding how much power they have. Their range, wattage, etc.

Leave it to the fnecking burbwoman to actually leverage even that nerf as an intimidation tactic with her Ziz bomb spam, of course.

By the way, there's a Worm story called 'Working As Intended' in which Taylor pretty much does the Patch Notes for Brockton Bay every few weeks. It's a Shard Admin power, ofc, but the patch-notes-esque writing style is hilarious for fans of WoW (vanilla, pvp) and games like it. And other casual readers, ofc.

kosievdmerwe · Apr 25, 2019

inverted_helix said:
Magical combat has evolved. Thousands of years of advancement doesn't just advance defenses though, it also advances offenses. One person develops a stronger defense, another develops a better penetration mechanism, and you're back where you started. It doesn't help that entire civilizations are wiped out pretty often in Azeroth setting back advancement

So I've been thinking about this argument. Presumably the Entities would never have had to worry about defeating magical mental defenses. This means their mental attacks probably lack the subtlety to defeat even "weak" mental defenses. So it's not impossible that the simurgh can be no-selled.

At least if you liken it to what I've heard about the risks for alien diseases infecting humans and vice versa. Our immune system is pretty good; however, diseases have evolved specific counter measures to it by being constantly exposed to it and trying to defeat it.

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