I’m leery of being super critical of the writing since it’s been a Perpetual narrative for 15+ years and it’s only been the past 5 or so that the wheels are starting to come off.
With the revelation that quests are being written by programmers with little oversight and no though to overall cohesion to the plot/zone story…its honestly impressive as hell the main lorekeepers have managed to keep things kind of coherent if you squint.
People have fun posting/reading these but I do not. Personally, I’ve never taken a crack at WoW lore in any serious way.
Plot isn’t even the big problem. Plot isn’t what a story is. WoW has way bigger story problems than silly plots e.g. major, critical components of narrative structure just missing (and always have been).
I say this self-aggrandizingly as well, I know if I posted a serious “they should do this” I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors because Blizzard can afford Danuser so that’s what they – and all of you – will get bahahaha
I’d like to play Enekie’s version, though.
Right around the time Ion and Danuser took the reins. But that’s entirely coincidental, I’m sure.
edit: oh lol i just found out a senior quest designer, the guy behind drustvar, just quit
everything’s fine, everyone!! i’m sure all these high-up people behind much beloved parts of the game are just coincidentally quitting at the same time and it has nothing to do with management
I love all of you!
Oh no. My favorite zone from that expac!
cries
I follow an ex-quest designer who left around a year ago (who shall not be named) and watching them go from “working at Blizzard has been great, best of luck to my talented ex-team members!” to “I’m not in the correct emotional state to talk about leaving Blizzard yet” to “is this what it’s like to not be under constant crunch and have a manager who appreciates your talents?” has certainly been…revealing, I guess.
every time a blizz veteran leaves the company certain people love to point at stuff like and this and go “see, they LOVED working at blizzard and everything is fine behind the scenes!!” and it never ceases to be funny
Poor Jeff Kaplan didn’t even capitalize his “resignation” letter he just rushed that statement out and left. I wonder what the final straw for him was…
Probably when Ion came in and asked why there wasn’t a hot dead elf with a bow that did the most DPS and why everyone didn’t love her morally grey story.
Or whatever.
I almost hope at this point that someone is sitting over there going, let’s just get on with WoW 2.0 and leave WoW 1.0 as it is. Let’s wrap a few things up, leave 3 servers running so we can bring in some pocket change each month and move on.
That way, I can quietly continue to play here in WoW 1.0 without further destruction and sadness and yet we can all move over and hope for more hats and tea.
It’s the same kind of funny as the people who try to find every external rule in the book for why someone dislikes WoW, but the simple admission that the systems might be badly designed is never even mentioned. It is far more likely that you are just a troll who hates WoW with a deep passion for “killing your MMO and being successful” than the systems and new lore being less than entertaining.
How strange it is that everyone I know has gotten “burnout” on WoW in the same patch across the same two months after playing for wildly different times between two and fifteen years. How strange that eight senior designers called it quits in the same year after being in their positions for two months to a decade. How strange that many roleplayers I know who made it through the big WoD content drought are leaving. They played when there was no content, but are now leaving when there is content on the horizon with 9.1.
That’s all just a coincidence though. Move along, there’s nothing to see here. It’s all just irrational people and burnout…
MGG Interview with Steve Danuser and Morgan Day It is purposeful that we have yet to see Nathanos in the Shadowlands, and a reference to this plotline will take place in one of the cutscenes that has yet to be seen.
If he swoops in and saves Sylvanas as we are about to deal a death blow I am so done.
Why I’m waiting for the decrypted cinematics before I’m willing to resub, in one sentence.
If I had to try to make myself angry, not only would he swoop in and save her but it would be a fatal blow for him and when asked why he sacrificed himself for her he’d have some 12 year old’s attempt at making a poignant statement about true love and instead of getting a true-true-true death a Naaru or something will come down and go LOVE IS LIGHT and he’ll become our wholesome white angel companion for the rest of the expansion.
I can’t believe how low effort they’ve become with regards to their story writing.
Story
- The Sylvanas encounter is on a scale that exceeds a vast majority of what has ever been tried in past raids.
- Ion looks forward to seeing the community discuss and dissect what is next for Sylvanas after the events in Chains of Domination.
- The specific details of the patch, such as twists and turns, raid bosses, and even some major narrative moments came together at the end of last year and the beginning of this year.
They literally have no idea where they’re going with the story and were only planning it out after the expansion released. That’s a big RIP.
Not to mention the implication that there’ll even BE an “after” for raid boss Sylvanas. Redemption arc here we come.
i was literally just about to post the “we didn’t plan out major narrative moments or twist and turns until after the expac launched lol” because
oh
my
god
also here’s the article where that comes from
https://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3635679
it’s full of good stuff, like how torghast being boring is the ptr players fault, and ion thinking that the formation of friendships and communities is all down to rewards and incentives
I’m sure they had ideas of where to go, just different ideas that were being debated or weighted for way too long. Not that that’s a good sign at all.
Bad dev, bad narrative design.
It’s a sad state of affairs tbh.
But I said it before, even in this thread, and I’ll say it yet again – Blizz didn’t want to pay for top-tier storytelling and it’s so beyond simple fixes that they’d need to hop on the retcon railroad to make any sort of reboot remotely good.
The dev, well that’s the squeeze really starting up in SL. They DON’T CARE if they lose players. 29% of Blizz Activision’s player base, down over 3 years yet the money is up.
This scenario is way more possible than I ever wanted to admit, even working in these industries and knowing full well why people left immediately when Activision stepped in, the cash shop went up, all that:
They will lose more players and continue to see profits go up.
Then, they will squeeze too hard and profits will go down.
They will either part it out or sell it in full and Bobby will fly off on a golden jetpack.
Is Christine Golden not working for Blizzard as its head story writer any longer? Do they HAVE a head story writer any more?
I think she still is, yeah. Danuser’s the narrative lead still iirc. You can check the credits of BfA, there aren’t that many story people or writers involved – at least not as many as people here have claimed in the past.
Sylvanas statue in SW, incoming.