It really sucks because that mindset suffocates the writing before they can create anything with stakes or real intrigue. If writers fear a couple unhinged extremists on twitter who are looking to cause problems for anything but the utmost puritanical sanitized storyline, then blizzard frankly either needs to get some courage, or hire new writers that aren’t afraid to tell an authentically meaningful story. If all we get from now on is stories handpicked by human resources, this game will never recover narrative-wise.
1 Like
It also makes you want to take less from real life cultures because anything you take now could be an issue. Or if you do, you need to make them safe and somewhat boring.
The Centaur in DF are based off of the Mongols, but because of that they need to be safe and friendly now. I love learning about the Mongol Empire, and the Centaur in DF are a pale comparison and I think most people found them boring. They had no pizazz.
To fix that, I would’ve made Ohn’aran plains a warzone between the clans. You choose which clan you want to support and make sure their leader becomes the Great Khan, in return for their support.
-
Ghengis Khan found hospitality to be sacred after his father was allegedly poisoned at a feast, make it so the first clan we come across kicks us out immediately if we did the wrong thing.
-
Different clans would raid and steal other’s wives, maybe don’t go that far but maybe raid and kidnap valuable people like a blacksmith or shaman for their expertise. One of the reasons that Ghengis Khan was so successful because he realized people’s expertise was valuable, especially any expertise the Mongols had no experience with. He would spare teachers, siege engineers, and others to further strengthen his Empire.
-
One of the reasons the Mongols raided their neighbors was because Mongolia was awful real estate. All they had were their horses and hard animals, and the grass to feed them. Mongolia was harsh during winter and summer, and wasn’t great for agriculture. Make Ohnaran plain be a little less lush and a little more barren, and emphasize the struggle for resources. And show them raid other cultures on the Dragon Isles.
3 Likes
There is also an unintentional comedy to the way saurfang dies, the music hyping him up only for him to get blasted was very funny. But even aside from that saurfang doesn’t land cause he was all for telda until he hit malfurion in the back, that was his turning point and then instead of actually doing anything about it, he just moped in a cell until anduin gives him a pep talk.
3 Likes
100 freakin percent. They write characters like everyone is stormwind human #1, stormwind human #2, stormwind human #3 now. Just with an accent maybe here and there. I guarantee they have real fear when it comes to applying even the slightest negative trait to a derivative culture, or even a novel one that might be mistaken to be a real world culture. Like they’re walking on razor sharp eggshells now with every line they put into a script and pen into a quest.
1 Like
So, look. I think I know what you’re trying to get at, but… Dalaran, a city we’ve had since Wrath, was destroyed this expac. Blown up, gone, no more, living that Theramore life. Impactful story beats like Teldrassil certainly can and are happening.
But yeah, Dalaran’s destruction isn’t gonna hit the same after you’ve been in a genocide war that culminated in a tree city burning with civilians still inside.
But that’s part of the actual issue in a post-Teldrassil world. It’s not that the writing is necessarily sanitized; pre-BfA wasn’t exactly a place of real edgy writing (except the forsaken), and Azeroth was only grimdark if you tried to apply real world logic to a setting that isn’t pretending it has real world logic.
But after something like Teldrassil happened, everything else that isn’t close to that level of visceral is going to feel sanitized by comparison, unless it tries to match it.
What was the thing before Teldrassil that really made you feel the game was riding an edge? A storyline that provoked real emotional impact?
This isn’t some trick question. There’s a lot of things that could have made you feel that way. There’s a lot of moments that did make me feel that way. Crusader Bridenbrad comes to mind from Wrath. Ysera’s death from Legion (and I freaking dislike dragons, gosh darn you Ysera!!!). Just about everything Plaguelands.
None are “oh my god, we can never come back from this” like Teldrassil was. They’re smaller in scale, typically more personal, and in a lot of cases relate to things people have dealt with IRL.
Shadowlands had those too. So did Dragonflight. So does TWW. And… They’re written just as earnestly as those older, pre-Teldrassil questlines. The Earthen losing his memories, and his (wife? daughter? I’m 85% sure it was the daughter.) getting us to help try and get him to remember, just a little bit. If you’ve known someone going through alzheimer’s and you didn’t feel, then I just don’t know. The Kyrian campaign, when you go and ask the night fae for help and you deal with that annoying little bug person, doing dumb chores… And suddenly he’s actually having you help give him the best final day of his life, because he is going to help you by sacrificing his life. That hurt.
But the impact just isn’t the same anymore. Because we were brought way too high up with Teldrassil.
Even if the Burning didn’t make you feel anything at all personally, you no doubt dealt with the community. The outrage, the shock, the glee, the bewilderment. And then the war that followed, and the backlash against it being great enough to “force” Blizzard to give Horde players an option to play as the rebels. Even if the Burning didn’t affect you directly, it affected you indirectly as a player of a game that is part of the broader community.
And nothing else is going to have that same level of impact. Nothing will ever come close. Because we waited for two years to get closure, or at least resolution, and instead we got a sad old orc doing suicide by Sylvanas, who told us we’re nothing and flew away.
Rather than a catharsis for the emotional burden of Teldrassil, we got a “wait, wtf” moment, and the story moved on with nothing answered or resolved.
So now when an emotional moment happens, we’re already trained to expect it might not be resolved. The weight of it might not mean anything. And if it’s a big moment, it’s probably just another pointless spectacle meant to force a reaction.
It’s not that WoW has been sanitized; WoW was always pretty sanitary, beyond skimpy dressed women, poop quests and some mildly off-color jokes. Warcraft’s writing has never even been that deep; Arthas was a man-child who got gaslit into being evil by a dreadlord effectively saying “you can never catch me, nyah-nyah” until Arthas decided pick up the big evil sword, and murder his dad and his nation.
But as relatively clean and shallow as Warcraft’s writing has been, it’s always been great at evoking emotions, through writing and through visuals.
But again, Teldrassil changed all that by showing us all that investing emtionally is just way too risky when the writers may never pay off that investment.
The writing has changed, but not by that much. We’ve changed.
1 Like
You keep using the burning of teldrassil like it’s my pinnacle of storytelling or defines a “good” story to me.
Nope. That’s not at all what I think or meant. I admitted multiple times that the tree was handled badly actually. I brought it up to highlight that it was a huge reason the plot has taken an absolute dead turn into fuzzy craft going into dragonflight onwards after the lawsuit.
I did not change. I know wow had stupid quests like the punching Deathwing ones from Cata and many more. And I thought they were just as stupid when I was 12 as I do now. But they were quirky and part of what Warcraft always was. They even have you pick up poop in the new K’aresh eco-domes.
Maybe you changed, but I did not. I know what I like and have liked from WoW. The game clearly has very recently had a huge personality and tone shift and anyone can see that. And many people agree on the very same things on this topic. It’s not just me “growing up”, or me changing.
Also, edgy is not a word I ever really used so I’m not sure why that’s being equated to “cool”. Which is a word I’ve used here frequently. I want the cool-factor back. I want epic with a balance of the goofy WoW has always done. Not therapy sessions and life lessons spoon fed to me like I’m 6 years old. I’m so sorry to have to be this blunt.
What?
No, seriously, what?
Did you even read what I wrote?
You couldn’t have, because there is no rational way you could have read that post and concluded anything remotely implying that Teldrassil was good writing.
4 Likes
You’re insinuating that I think it’s good writing. Or that I define cool as edgy. And conflate the two things somehow. When I do not at all actually.
I am not.
You just are not reading what I actually said.
So, cool I guess.
2 Likes
This whole thing right here implies that I personally think the burning of teldrassil was a pinnacle of storytelling. That everything before it was not as good because this was so much more of an intense event, and that anything that now happens on the future probably doesn’t seem like it lights a candle to teldrassil.
I find this assessment flawed because I deeply believe that the story from Dragonflight on has been nearly unlike anything that ever came before in WoW. Like revenge of the bodysnatchers level identity crisis.
The destruction is Dalaran was nearly emotionless for me. It felt like budget cable TV. Khadgar was the biggest loss and he just miraculously survives anyway. Then we get a weird vigil quest with sad Aethas and some really oddly written dialogue about how the Kirin Tor are going to be decentralized now.
A cinematic or storyline that made me feel something before the burning Teldrassil? Wrathgate and Rejection of the Gift. Two of the best and coolest WoW moments a fan can ask for.
Sigh
Sure. If you go all the way out of your way to read something talking about the size and scale of a moment and decide it must be an accusation regarding your personal opinion towards said event.
So. Are you saying the Burning of Teldrassil was not a large event? That it did not have a big impact on the player-base? That it was not something that riled people up in ways nothing else really has in WoW?
Do you think only something you feel is good storytelling can upset people?
I’m literally speaking for myself lol.
Tons of people feel similarly to me that WoW’s story throughout Dragonflight was unrecognizable. I know I’m not just imagining that up because I’m trying to somehow get them to craft the story to specifically my liking or something.
With Danuser gone and Metzen back, I’m not over here praising him like he’s going to save the story or anything like it was in years past. But at least maybe we have someone back that understands the essence of Warcraft again instead of making the game into their own personal happy place.
1 Like
I do just find this funny considering that’s always what this game has been. That’s genuinely the way Metzen treated the setting. It was his baby, his personal d&d campaign which became a large franchise. People hated it for that back in the day, too. Green Jesus Thrall and all that.
That’s cool, and did not answer a single question I asked.
I give up. I just have to assume you just cannot read, will not read, or will read but choose to interpret things by random roll of the dice. Nothing else can explain these last couple posts.
2 Likes
Maybe I should have said personal therapy session then. Because that’s how Dragonflight felt. Dragons became Spyro and everyone had feelings to share in every piece of dialogue.
I think World of Warcraft has never been very good at character driven narratives, in fact if you look at Vanilla and TBC there are basically NO character driven narratives. We’re left in a lot of cases to assume and speculate on certain characters actions and such, since we don’t really interact with the various characters all that much.
I’m a massive fan of MoP, I think it’s where this game peaked narrative. But even within that, a lot of the characters did feel fairly one note.
Dragonflight, IMO, was a rough first step in the right direction. They did their best to expand on what characters they introduced. And I’ll admit, it didn’t always land. But it didn’t always NOT land either. I found Wrathion and Sabellion to be kind of fun, and their story ended in a decent way. I thought a lot of the Blue dragonflight stuff, while corny sure, was acceptable enough and I’ve always liked Kalecgos due to the Sunwell Trilogy being one of my favorite pieces of Warcraft media.
TWW has done a better job, IMO. They’re slowly getting more into the flow of writing their characters. You can say Metzen gets credit for that or not, we don’t really know for sure, but I’d say the writing between DF and TWW hasn’t changed THAT much.
2 Likes
Genuinely failing to find where you’re asking me something to answer specifically.
I’ve re read your post multiple times and you’re telling me about side quests (which I’ve read extensively) and already know about. My whole thing is I’ve been talking about the A plot. Which is why I’m not sure why you’re trying to get me to remember side quests which I already know of and love anyway. It’s like a non-point to me.
For all the disdain I feel for Dragonflight, the one side quest they did that actually made me cry was the Taiven one. Anything with dogs like that just gets you. And yes I also liked the Alzheimer’s one in TWW. Totally appreciate good writing when it’s there.
But again my focus was on overall feeling and tone of the main narrative.
I actually don’t entirely agree with this, but I think it’s a good discussion to be had either way. I think I’d LIKE them to lean more into the taking from real world cultures, because if they did it right it would be a very nice change of pace. I think more than having to worry about sensibilities, you’d just want to make sure you’re paying respect by doing it right. Hell, Blizzard is a very rich company, if they REALLY wanted to they could easily hire experts on historical cultures and real world people from modern cultures to make sure they nail down certain aspects.
This is sort of what I mean by that. Mongol and other steppe peoples have a long history with their own customs, traditions and societal structure which is no less complicated than our own as sedentary people in the West. The Maruuk Centaur are given the noble savage treatment, their society is depicted as simple and pure - with the exception of the necessary dedicated evil clan.
This is a common thing. Clan based societies are broken down into… Oh, this is the hunting clan. This is the war clan. This is the spiritual clan. Blah, blah, blah. It’s always the same crap.
Some dedicated research into the history of steppe nomads and writers who were genuinely interested would have made the Maruuk Centaur something unique and cool. But they weren’t interested, just more noble savage tropes.
2 Likes
I think blaming the people who are upset with the representation of their cultures is giving blizzard the easy way out. Cause you’d rather blame the people you see as unreasonable instead of blaming the multi million dollar corp for not putting in the effort.
8 Likes
I mean nobody was really doing that but go off I guess.