I think the big cinematic narrative they trying to make in the last couple of expansions is really bad. IMO, wow’s story works better when its minimal. All these timegated campaings and character cinematics are just… not ideal. I think the game would be better if the focus of the narrative team was put more in the worldbuilding rather in this convoluted stories where we spend almost four years without knowing some of the characters motivations and everything is a mystery after a mystery after a mystery.
Just give up on telling these wannabe-complex narratives. My toon being the main character and a central piece of the narrative is really strange when I don’t have any agency on the story. Just keep the narrative simple and make intresting zones so we can “write our own stories”. These overarching stories told through multiple expanions work great in final fantasy xiv, but not in wow.
I like the greater stories, they’re interesting and personally I have no trouble following or understanding them. Even BfA and SL, I totally get what’s going on. Though a lot of players seem to have difficulties with anything more complicated than “baddies must die.” So maybe just for that Blizz should simplify it even more.
Some mystery is good though. Really every fiction story has mysteries and questions throughout them. It’s what keeps you reading and wanting to know more, and often answers don’t come till the end. Like Harry Potter lied to you about Snape for seven entire books and didn’t actually tell you the truth till the very end.
With WoW it seems like players don’t really appreciate mystery at all and just want everything answered explicitly right off the bat. I get Blizz could have gone a little more into things, but still. There’s nothing wrong with question marks.
But I like when expansions actually have an overarching story to follow throughout it mixed in with all the smaller other side stories they usually do. With a main enemy of some kind. Keeps it more epic and tied together. For me at least I think it’d be kind of boring if all we’re doing is minor things scattered around with little relation to each other. Blizz can build the world and tell a central story at the same time.
I’m not sure what you mean by “greater stories” but we can’t just do simple stuff anymore because of our history. We are in the realm of death right now fighting some supernatural being, as much as I would like to we can’t go back to fighting the Defias
I think several games do good storylines without cosmic bosses: Witcher 1-3 is just Gestalt vs regular people (sometimes a whole country) and usually inhuman lesser monsters, Kingdom Hearts borrows a major big bad and even a god here and there but isn’t really cosmic either, Castlevania, Legend of Zelda, etc.
It’s just not necessary and WoW’s new writers and story tellers have showna gain and again through Legion to SL that their STRONGEST suite is in the small detailed local micro campaigns and side quests over large scale longwinded space operas.
That’s pretty much how you tell a 20 year story. Everyone wants it all wrapped up in a half hour like a sitcom and rage when the next year of the story takes a year.
Good mysteries involve “I think X will happen because Y” buildup as an audience, and then when Z happens there are clear story threads to point back to justifying what happened.
WoW’s stories are resolved by retcons and plot contrivances.
Exactly. The problem that most of us are annoyed by. This is lore that has been present since before Warcraft was an MMO and now you tell me that lore that old is irrelevant now because…reasons. Stuff like that ticks a lot of people off.
This is not a 20 year story. They went back and retconed the ordering of the cosmos, bring the Jailer and First ones out of nowhere in a way that Warcraft 3 dosen’t make sense anymore. None of these plotlines have any conclusion, they just drag they on and build up and build up, no payoff.
I think they should stop embedding the stories within anthologies and novels. They should all be in the game. The novels aren’t pulitzer quality material but they are better than what gets into the game. Those stories should be quest lines in the game though.
And I realize that not everyone likes to do quests and stories so I think that dungeons and battlegrounds should give equivalent amounts of experience, gold, and leveling rewards. Then players can choose how to level. Just give every player in this content experience and a box after the content that contains gold and and item or two. Even if they lose the battleground. Winners might get an extra item and more gold.
i’m actually okay with god slaying, but it was some comfy playing the first quest chain of the kyrian campaign. chopping wood, making love to my wife and drinking my daughter’s lemonade was wholesome and some nostalgic.
take me back, general forums. I want to be a nobody that hunts wolves for copper while aspiring to someday become a city guard and earn enough silver to buy my wife fine linen.
Yeah, this bit about how this is “the final chapter of the Warcraft 3 saga” makes even less sense than Palpatine suddenly coming back in The Rise Of Skywalker… and that’s a low standard to live down to, indeed.
I remember… at least six years ago, when Sylvanas was first showing signs of being the mustache twirling villain she turned out to be… people said:
“Please don’t make her Kerrigan. Nobody wants to see Sylvanas become a villain and then get redeemed and save us all.”
There was nothing mysterious about Sylvanas. Nothing was surprising, nothing was unpredictable, nothing about her story was well crafted.
It’s not that we don’t enjoy mystery, suspense, or complex motivations… it’s that Blizzard’s current writers are terrible at representing those aspects within a story.
If people accurately predicted the entire trajectory of Sylvanas over six years ago because it was that predictable and telegraphed by the writers, well… that’s not the fault of the player base.
I hear ya, but such is life. The parallels between the two are so similar sometimes.
Never played WC3 or any of the Warcraft series until Wow, so honestly I’m not gonna go all Chromie time on myself and read the origins just to scratch my head at it all.
