Breakfast Topic: Has lore prevented you from enjoying content?

From a purely game mechanics point of view, I should love Battlefield Barrens. One of my favorite things to do in Vanilla WoW was head out to the plaguelands and mindlessly grind scourgestones while I read guild chat or watched TV. Sometimes, you don't really want the dedicated direction of dailies or quests, you just wanted to get some progress done on your terms, when you feel like it. Battlefield Barrens, with the ability to grind resources to use for a single weekly quest or for currency for some decent gear and vanity items, would seem to be perfect for that.

But I can't go back to the Barrens, because I'm Alliance. When I go to the Barrens, I've heard from outside sources and little story snippets that I'm supposedly infiltrating the Horde to sew chaos and dissension. Despite that, the actual quest dialogue and gameplay tells a different story. From the moment I hit Durotar, I have to put up with trolls taunting me about the loss of Theramore and trolls threatening to kill me. Even Vol'jin makes me "earn his trust," and threatens to feed me to Sylvanas if I question him. To top it all off, it's not clear that I'm getting anything in return but the vague hope that Vol'jin's Trolls might kill an extra orc or two before the Alliance starts their main offensive.

Vol'jin hasn't offered me any concessions if his rebellion is successful and he or someone he supports is the new head of government. I haven't even done some real espionage stuff like, say, planning Rebellion daggers in Kor'kron bodies to provoke Garrosh into putting more pressure on the rebellion and less on alliance forces. No, all I do is turn in resources to the trolls the exact same way a horde player would, resources that the Alliance army could likely use, simply on an unbacked, unsupported, unprovable gamble that the rebellion might kill an extra orc or two for us and might, after we kill Garrosh, remember that it owes us one.

That doesn't sit well with me. I don't think it's worth the verbal abuse my character received, and it's not worth bolstering a group of Horde that are just as much my enemies as Garrosh's people. Vol'jin helped destroy Theramore too, after all. If I felt like I was doing actual espionage or that I was able to cow or negotiate Vol'jin into actual post-war concessions, that would be one thing, but all I'm doing is bolstering his army, an enemy army, with no attempt at securing any lasting benefits for the Alliance.

So, in short, I did the opening quest chain, I got my Ghaz'rooki, and I haven't been back to Barrens since. It's just not enjoyable for me because I cannot stand the storyline and how awfully my Alliance characters get treated for a little or no return, lore-wise.

What about you? Has there been content that, gameplay wise you like, but has become less fun or even unbearable for you due to the lore surrounding it? Tags: battlefield-barrens, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, grinding, rep-grinding, scourgestone, voljin, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

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