Are the lore criticisms justified?

Community General Discussion
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I’ve seen many discussions from various content creators criticise wow for it’s fragmented lore spanning across books, warcraft franchise, and quests. I especially dislike when people bring up the champion or mawalker. Sure it may be repetitive but that doesn’t make it inherently bad. If you don’t like being called that then so be it so many games and stories do this.

Wow was never built upon the same foundation as FF14. Wow is a sequel to a lore/story rich franchise. Transitioning into an mmo it can’t retain the same story style due to the nature and scale of mmo’s. In classic 95% of quests were more or less side quests, and once expansions started rolling out the introductory quests threw you into the zone, but then it became more of the same.

The game isn’t going to babysit you through 8 expansions for you to understand whats going on as a new player. If you are a new player then welcome to the world of warcraft you only contributed to this world as a character during bfa the middle of a faction war. The game could do a better job at transitioning newer players from bfa zone to sland zone but its an mmo. You can’t enjoy the story if you don’t bring yourself to understand the world and it’s characters. There are so many videos,books, and lore to go through so if you really appreciate stories look into that, don’t expect the game to show you everything since it was never set up that way to begin with.

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I think some criticism is justified. But I also think it’s reasonable to expect someone coming into a 17 year old game might have a bit of homework to do to catch up. The discussion about cross media storytelling is interesting. Are blizzard giving enough of the story in the game? I think yes. Which means the outside media is supplemental, and just a nice bonus for those who want to know more. But I don’t get to make that call for everyone. Plenty of people were unclear about some of the motivations during BfA. And oftentimes it was things that I had read in the accompanying book. So it’s definitely possible for blizz to get it wrong sometimes.

Incidentally, Before the Storm was fantastic! It added so much nuance to the forsaken.

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Absolutely, this game’s lore and story is just terrible. Not even fanfiction tier because there has been better fanfiction written.

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Yes it’s absolutely justified. When you make rules for a universe and blatantly ignore them because you forgot about continuity or simply don’t care, your story has pretty much lost its meaning. People have already pointed out in multiple other threads the inherent flaws with SL on its own, let’s not even bring up garbage like WoD. Issues such as Sylvanas’ logic where people have to justify obtuse mental gymnastics to explain her siding with the Jailer yet despising Arthas when he’s the one who lead the charge the entire time.

Or perhaps Elune’s idiocy where she proved she could communicate with her sister yet couldn’t clarify her “favored children” would arrive there safely. The garbage tier writing night elves have been getting for about 3yrs now. The kyrian mindlessly sending souls to the maw just cause. The odd 4D chess of Mal’ganis and Denathrius predicting Argus and the fall of the Legion. Other stupid plot threads that make no sense when you think of them for more than 5 mins.

Stories can be complex, but there’s a difference between complexity and just not making sense and it’s obvious this WoW team doesn’t go over already established lore beforehand. Just look at how they made Jaina forget she spoke to Uther in Halls of Reflection so people just say the Alliance version wasn’t canon and Sylvanas’ version was or whatever. It’s stupid, ground like that should already be covered, especially since Uther’s relationship with Jaina is far more prominent than his with Sylvanas.

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I’m no lore-bore, so I don’t really think about it enough to pick it apart, I guess. I had enough of literary criticism in college, now I just watch the cut scenes once and skip them thereafter. I thought the exchange between elune and the winter queen was touching, even though when you think about it for even 30 seconds it makes no sense. This is popcorn-movie level storytelling, I get the feeling you aren’t really supposed to think about it, just take it in and move forward.

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There is no more lore!

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It’s not the repetitiveness that makes it bad, it the idea that we are ‘the one’ when our in-game experiences clearly demonstrate we are not.

Just because many games do it does not make it inherent good or fitting for this game.

We are adventures, one of many and that is how our characters should be framed in the story by the NPCs.

You can’t have side quests, if you don’t have a main questtline.

In Classic and Outlands, the questlines are more like a series of short stories, an anthology if you will.

In Northrend, first there is the expansion or overall story, giving the expansion its theme, frame, ect. Then there is the zone stories, giving the expansion its ‘meat’. And lastly there are the little stories, comprised of side quests, giving the expansion its ‘flavour’.

Cata and Pandaria run along the same lines. Draenor, well, they did more of a mix.

I can’t speak to Broken Ilses because I have only run thru it once or BfA and Shadowlands because I have not touched them (and have no intention of doing so at this time).

The problem isn’t that it is a MMO, the problem is that new players are forced into BfA with no background. It’s like handing someone a book with all but the last two chapters torn out and expecting them to understand what is going on and why they should care.

Shoving them into BfA denies them that opportunity.

New players shouldn’t have to invest time, and maybe even money, in outside sources in order to enjoy the game. That expectation is unrealistic and presumptuous.

Blizzard failed on this, terribly. Blizzard was so anxious to get new players into their more graphically advanced expansions and end game content that they took all the other expansion’s amazing content and stories and experiences away from them and made the present content experience confusing and shallow.

So yes, the criticism is justified.

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Then why have any story or characters at all? Why use their names? Let’s just call them Elf A and Queen C and move forward. According to you, that would be every bit as fun.

Seriously, the game uses named characters because they have histories and (supposedly) personality traits that have been established through lore. Junking all of that for short-term dramatic moments isn’t just lazy, it’s actually damaging to the story.

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I think they could just buff exile’s reach. Make it a tad bit longer for truly new players. Like give them an option that’s “hey here’s a lore catch-up version or do you want to do the mechanics version”

Basically a threads of Fate for exiles reach or do you want to go through like a mini campaign that gives like those cartoon animation thingies much like what you get in Diablo 3 that summarizes the story

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I won’t disagree with you. The story is very lazy and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny at all. I just don’t let it ruin the game for me, obv ymmv though.

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The current story is atrocious, the butchering of old lore events is a disgrace, the way they handle the story and key characters too is beyond a joke.

Yes, lore criticisms at this point in time are absolutely justified. All you have to do is think about it for more than 5 seconds to realize how much of a joke the lore is now.

As a side note, for example, the absolute state of DK’s now in the lore is a complete dumpster fire.

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They are justified. The only question we have to ask is if bga or sl has worse story.

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Well, that’s a shame.

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That’s not how any of this works though. you shouldn’t have to do research to understand the story. This is entertainment not AP Calculus.

If Star Wars was so fragmented that you had to buy all the expanded universe books to understand the plot of A New Hope you would be upset. imagine if the first time you saw Darth Vader was when Luke had his showdown with him in return of the Jedi and the entirety of New Hope was talking about the internal planetary conflict on Mustofar.

It’s the same energy.

The medium you are experiencing should be the primary medium you get your story from. I’m fine with the presentation of our characters as grand heroes, but present them as heroes, show them as heroes don’t tell repeatedly oh by the way you’re heroes, when you are in fact actually third wheels to the main cast of Jaina, Thrall and friends.

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Some of it is and some of it isn’t,from the past lore is based on real world lores for a time when man was questioning his existence on a ever changing world most of the lore are related to each other from culture crossing .But that fire is dying out in the conscious collective over time and the generation now can’t seem to understand where and why they exist any more.

So time changes everything those myths are reset for the next generation to come and the imagination that inspire them as lore is vanishing as waves of time whips across the shore the foot prints are gone.

But not to worry,they can change them? Make them anew? Hardly,as in most lores they whine up in another dimensional realm with another reversed role as in multiverses really change much it like superman being a total villain was a good move,come on it’s like someone altered mind game.

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And this is a shame because I just completed my Legion class hall campaign and thought it was rather well done. Least we got better eyes?

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Korthia is nothing but MacGuffins and eastereggs
Raid ends in a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved for a year
Jailer is as undeveloped as Baine
Elune/Tyrande/Sylvanas redemption is nonsensical

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This so much. I’ve had new friends I’ve tried to get into WoW and it’s downright embarrassing how the game shovels them into BFA and they ask “who’s Jaina? Who’s Anduin?” As if they missed something because the game treats you as if you’ve known them for years already.

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As far as Lore is concerned, no, not really. There will be something to criticize, but in general the lore is not a big problem.

The real problem is the way the lore is presented, basically the storytelling, this aspect of the game is not just bad, it is terrifyingly bad. Especially since BfA and when it comes to Sylvanas, her story is so shrouded in mist and scattered in non-game materials that it’s just frustrating to keep track of her.

The Jailer and his story is also terrible, he is a villain out of nowhere about which we have not learned anything, it seems like a children’s story due to the lack of depth it has, it is simply evil and that’s it. Surely there are other characters like him in WoW, but the reason this can be so annoying is because to “establish” it they touched older and beloved characters from the franchise.

Blizzard treats the history of the game with very little respect, they follow the rule of cool and the rule of money, and change what they think is necessary for it.

As if all this were not enough, there is a constant disconnect between the PC and the important NPCs, there is no relationship, despite the years of history, it does not really feel like they know each other.

In short, the lore is good enough, but the storytelling is very bad, at least in my opinion.

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I’m going through this with a focus on the horde.

Mop. Garrosh. Goes crazy we beat him… tons of orcs

Wod… garrosh is beat and we beat archimonde for the third time… tons of fel green orcs. Voljin states I’m da commander mon.

Legion. Voljin killed by a trash mob… tyrande is mean to nightborne… I feel like an alliance cheerleader despite many races having issues with the Legion.

Bfa… bfa burned 2 xpacs worth of villains because the story was that bad. Alliance won everything off screen

Sl… slyv goes crazy and here we are again

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