So what?
She twirls her moustache, she should have had some inner dialogue regarding her plans for shadowlands and her alliances.
Shouting “oh I am so mad and evil” is no replacement for actually developing a story.
Grab a book (not wow books) and read it.
You will see what I am talking about.
she didnt do that, she did put out her plans of destorying stormwind and then raising the bodies to then destory the horde, did you not read it?
Did she say why? Other than “i hate everything!”?
Any mentions of the Jailor? Needing souls as fuel? Instigating a war for a ritual? Breaking the boundries of the world? Manipulating the Horde and Alliance?
Etc…?
No? Ok.
what are you talking about? All that are just steps for her master plan of mastering death which we already knew about for a long time. you should read more of the books, you’d know if you did. Did you know the light is actually evil crazy huh its in one of the books.
What fantasy books have you read besides wow?
I’ve seen many threads on the WoW subreddit unhappy with the story, most of them highly upvoted. Speaking as someone who is in a lot of discords with people who are focused on WoW lore and roleplaying, but also don’t post much on the Story Forums or the Forums in general (because they value their sanity more than I value mine), there really aren’t many people to whom the story actually matters who are happy with it right now, at least not in a general sense. Everyone has parts of BfA they actually enjoyed, story-wise, myself included.
People on the forums complain more because that’s how people work. Rarely does someone talk about the good parts. Good is easy to overlook. Personally, I focus on the negative because I don’t need to fix the good things. Additionally, the bad things weren’t the flashy things. Everything about BfA, taken in small bites, is good. But, on the whole, that’s where things fall apart.
I don’t hear too much praise for the story outside of the few commentators that I listen to. Besides a few die-hard Sylvanas fans, most of my friends really hate the direction WoW’s story has gone. A few have left the game over it.
Most of the commentary I hear is centered around gameplay and hot topics. In terms of story, Blizzard are the long-time reigning champs of big, flashy story moments. And, given the ratio of story:not-story analysis on Youtube, I’d agree that storytelling approach is probably sufficient for most players.
“Oooh! Here’s a shiny cinematic! That’s at least seven hundred reaction videos with Asmundgold’s face plastered on the thumbnail, five Bellular speculation videos, three Nobbel lore discussions, and one Taliesin analysis.” It’s analyzed as a singlular thing (outside of maybe Nobbel, and he can be sassy sometimes), rather than a part as a whole.
As a metaphor, I care most about the story. My opinion on Azerite armor? It’s alright. 7/10. My opinion on the story? Ehh… 3/10. Whereas, outside of this forums and RP realms, I imagine the exact same thing can be said in reverse.
Maybe becuase this is rubber story forum and the people here are invested in the story that goes along with the game. We like to be drawn into what’s happening and with bfa it’s just been a mess. We like raids and pvp but we all want to be pulled until the ongoing story and we’ve been disconnected becuase it’s so bad. Maybe those outside of this fourm don’t put nearly as much stock into the storyline as we do.
I think that’s kind of the thing. As popular as WoW is, ranting about a MMO isn’t as marketable as ranting about something like Star Wars. I just feel like people on the outside won’t really care why the story is bad so content creators don’t bother ranting.
This reminds me of how much of a missed opportunity Kul’Tiras was for Sylvanas. She only resurrected important people, instead of using her Val’kyr to get more soldiers for the Horde.
Care to expand on that? Do you mean the flashy things were not story things?
I for one feel that the flashy things were the worst parts of the BfA story, and the best parts of the story were the non-flashy things (like leveling zone quest stories).
What are some examples of bad things that you didn’t think were flashy, or flashy things that you didn’t think were bad?
Honestly the story is not the biggest disappointment of BFA for me. The bizarre decision to replace PvP Vendors with a chest killed my motivation to play that much- which is a problem since thats mostly what I do.
Azerite Armor is terrible. I’ve no idea who decided it’d be fun to have to do a little fox chicken worm puzzle where I’ve gotta reorganize my traits in Dazar’Alor every other time I get an upgrade.
And essences have made this the least alt friendly experience I’ve seen. I’ve so many toons near or at 120 collecting dust as the time commitment to get them ready for competitive play is just galling.
Like I’ve a Priest, DK, Warrior, Hunter, Mage and Lock at 120 and I pretty much just play this guy. I did play the DK and hopefully I can get her up soon but about midway through the grind to get Rank 3 Memories of a Lucid Dream again I realized what spectacular amounts of fun I wasn’t having and gave up.
The story at least had some things I think were very well done. Dazar’Alor and Boralus are some of the best realised fantasy cities of all time - not just in WoW. They’re a real achievement that reminds me extremely talented and passionate people clearly still work there.
Rest of the actual nuts and bolts of the game though? Let me put it this way I do not try to get any IRL friends into WoW at this junction as I would never have gotten into WoW if BFA was my first experience with it. The truly abysmal gearing system coupled with what feels like hostility to alts is just terrible design. I almost feel like they made it deliberately terrible so anything in SL has to feel like an improvement.
I think as many have said, there are more people that are unhappy. Though perhaps unhappy for different reasons. I see glad players quitting because they need to go run Mythics and heroic raids to stay competitive. Remember when Gurthalak was a must have for any melee class? The lack of PvP venders, randomization of gear, removal of tertiary stats like resilience, corrupted gear, the imbalance of classes, are all valid complaints for them.
Similarly with raiders, warforging and titanforging, corrupted gear again, needing to run Mythics and raids to keep up, droughts of content, needing to constantly grind Azerite, essences, and corruption currency for visions, the social issues with things like Raider IO. All very valid complaints.
There are RPers who, similar to us complain about lore but also world mechanics. Sharding, warmode issues, open and welcoming spaces to participate in (particularly Horde side), customization. Equally valid complaints.
Then there is us, who is probably the smallest group who care primarily about the story, lore, and its development. We are listened to last unfortunately. If a shocking story and sleight of hand gets more people into the game instead of a genuinely welcoming and cohesive story because it will make more money, they will. Beyond that though it isnt ever so much the story as it is the mechanics, raids, class changes, and settings that people care about. We’re honestly just in our own little echo chamber that Blizz doesn’t really check on often, if at all.
There is also something to be said about being upset in the moment and looking at a previous expansion (like people have with MoP) but typically people’s feelings at the time are warranted and solidify themselves. MoP was the worst ever because it was up to that point, then MoP was redeemed when WoD came out. WoD was redeemed when BfA came out. Not because we criticized each of them unfairly, though certainly some did, but because what people were currently experiencing were objectively worse off.
BFA is the first time i really get into WoW and its lore, and is my first expansion, being honest while i see some major wtf momments, i liked this story a lot, though there is a lot of unfinished business
MoP? Worse than Cataclysm? I don’t know how often I’ve seen that expressed these days.
Heck, even a lot of people are coming back to Burning Crusade and asking, “Was it really THAT good?” And of course there’s all of us who’re still playing retail even when Vanilla, the best expansion before Blizzard ruined WoW, is but a click away. 
People aren’t just saying MoP is pretty good/one of the better ones because the other ones are so terrible. It’s praised for its story. It’s world building. It’s class design. It’s content. A lot of the reasons people ripped on it back when it came out.
There is of course still some personal bias in all of it and you begin to split some hairs. I see more complaints and comparisons about MoP, though probably because of the parallels of BfA, than I do Cata. Though I do completely agree that cata fell flat and MoP is probably the better of the two. I was speaking in off the cusp generalities. Again, probably because of all of the BfA comparisons to MoP.
Right?
I consider myself a lore freak of a sort… and even I place my story concerns behind much more personally pressing issues.
Indeed. Do not even get me started.
When I think of my complaints with WoW… the story is there. But its underneath a lot of other things.
Listing complaints seems like being in a room with a rotten fish, a soiled diaper, and a slightly overly ripe banana. One smell just can not break past the others, even though it is bad.
Well of course personal biases are involved when we’re talking about how people receive expansions. There is no objectively ‘best one’, and even perceptions of what was better/worse or good/bad can change over time.
I’m just commenting on my observations regarding how MoP has come to be one of the more well regarded expansions- often being ranked right behind Wrath and Legion. One can type ‘best/worst WoW expansion’ into Google and see the general trend in all the various polls, forum threads, and other discussions in the past couple of years.
I didn’t play Cata through WoD so MoP has been interesting. When I heard about it my reaction, which seemed common, was “Blizz has jumped the shark”. It sounded so dumb on paper. World of Warcraft Kung Fu Panda edition. Hell Pandaren Express was an old April fools joke. It was a weird gag race that seemed insane to try to build a game around.
But then I actually saw the content and man - it’s gorgeous. It was as good as an excuse as any to put in Asian styled fantasy into their otherwise very Knights and Castle styled game.
I also was impressed with the quests. Someone finally decrying the Horde and Alliance conflict as a deranged race war felt kinda necessary and I really liked the bit where you work to build a friendship with the Hozen.
Like - yeah - it is pretty f’ed up our knee jerk reaction to an abrasive humanoid race is just kill them all. Even if it was a little unfair from a player perspective it’s not like you gave me an option to diplomatically resolve issues with a Gnoll tribe, Blizz. But lamp shade hanging like that was kinda neat I thought.
By “flashy things”, I’m mostly referring to the cinematics.
The art team did a fantastic job putting the cinematics together. They look fantastic. As isolated scenes, they’re actually all pretty cool. In fairness, I didn’t really care too much about Saurfang, so I definitely see Horde/Saurfang fans not liking the content on the onset. However, for me, they were awesome, “Wow, look at that” moments.
So, if you just take each cinematic by itself, I liked them.
Then, there were the individual zone quests. I liked Vol’dun and Drustvar. Flynn Fairwind is amazing, and I genuinely got myself a drink while stumbling around with him in Tiragarde. I haven’t done 90% of the Horde quests, but they seem cool.
In terms of bad things that weren’t flashy… I don’t like the high-level decisions that were made. I don’t like the narrative arch of the War Campaign, basically being “Saurfang’s Honorable Death”. I feel like they smashed two full expansion plots together, rather than a single, complex one. I don’t like that the night elves were used as cannon fodder, then given half a patch wherein they accomplish a stalemate. Slotting Nightborne, HM Tauren, LF Draenei, and Mechagnomes into the factions, forcing them to fight their allies is still grating. I fully acknowledge the irony of it, but I hate that we got Void Elves over High Elves. (Seriously, it’s like they hadn’t met their Forums Ban quota, so they made the most inflammatory decision they could get away with.) Ion “Back to the Same” Hazzikostas 1v1’ing Jaina “What’s Different: We Are” Proudmoore. They hard-core foreshadowed the destruction of Stormwind and Thunderbluff, and those threads went nowhere. (Maybe they will, but honestly, that’s just piss-poor pacing.)
It feels like one hand didn’t know what the other was doing, and neither hand was reaching out to the player base’s interest.
So… Like I said, the cinematics were great in-and-of themselves, so long as you didn’t consider the overall story that was trying to be told with them. In a lot of ways, it feels like they made the cinematics, then said, “okay, now how do we link them together?”