Especially with the current generation writers who pander to everything.
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Because Blizzard advertises themselves as good story tellers, that encourage us to buy books, watch expensive cut scenes, and scour the game for lore.
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That plays a big part, but the point is that the “content drought” of WoD was not so dry mid-expansion, people just didn’t want to participate in forms of content that didn’t award current end-game gear or alternate power progression (which didn’t exist at the time).
People say they get sick of Mythic+, but the playerbase has proven that if they get bored of the current raids and don’t have dungeon content to fall back on… they just quit. That’s how they behave. They say they don’t want to feel obligated to play, but FOMO has been a consistently strong motivator for two expansions in a row now.
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I think you’re getting far more snorting in derision, but you be you.
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Hard disagree with this.
I think WoW’s story is amazing, up until WoD. Diablo has a good story too.
But these days their story telling is God awful.
What annoys me is when you see content creators like Pyromancer and Bellular predictable these symbolic hidden messages and 200 IQ plot links etc.
Like no, you’re just wishful thinking / making up your own story.
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In three patches more, Lor’themar will have a new love, Valtrois.
blame steve danuser
he has a sylvanas body pillow
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yea, I can see that happening. Who knows, its Blizzard right?
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In my fan-fic that dragon stud is mine okay?
I think they were doing Ok on writing story until they getting into WoW. All their RTS games had pretty decent lore.
Define “story”.
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Vanilla WoW abandons its own story half-way through its life in favor of “threat of the patch” until Burning Crusade comes out to try to force a story. The closest Vanilla WoW had to an actual story were Onyxia and Nefarian getting into shenanigans, which I would say are the only redeeming factors for Vanilla WoW in terms of story. After BWL was finished, the story was completely aimless, going from patch to irrelevant patch. Oh look, Trolls! Oh look, bugs! Oh look, Zombies! Score: C
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BC, as much as I love it (possibly my favorite expansion, at least in the top two), butchered the lore of several characters, introducing the concept of the “villain bat” to World of Warcraft and spawning dozens of memes (“Only a setback”). The story is also just completely incoherent, jumping from place to place and conflict to unrelated conflict, then ending with a big battle with a spooky red demon and that’s it. It’s much less of a story and more of a blood romp. I love the visual style, the zones, the art, the Draenei/Blood Elf background lore stuff (they both have fun starting zones that set the tone of their races), but the actual end-game story is mostly nonsense and the significance of the raid on the Black Temple had to be retconned in order to fix Illidan. This is also the expansion that introduced time-travel to WoW itself (although it existed in the books before this IIRC), so that’s kind of a strike against it in a sense from a story-telling perspective as well. Great game in terms of gameplay, but story-wise just totally all over the place. Blizzard threw everything they could into the game and we got a mess in terms of story-telling as a result. Score: F
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WOTLK was great although Lich King twirled his mustache a bit too much for my tastes. Probably the first time the WoW team really found their footing. I can’t complain too much, Wrath Gate was the first moment the story-telling team actually pulled their own weight, although I’m going to knock them slightly for not having the cojones to kill Sylvanas when it would have made the most narrative sense. Score: A-
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Cata was… I guess an expansion? I have hard time thinking about what the story of Cata was. A few things happened, then Green Jesus saved us. Score: C-
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Mists of Pandaria was very solid. A good expansion in terms of story. From start to finish it had some idea where it wanted to go and actually had concepts and themes it explored in its story. Score: A
Final verdict: C+. They had some peaks, but they also had some real low valleys. The lack of consistency is a big hurdle that they STILL haven’t overcome. Legion is sandwiched on both sides by WoD and BFA for instance. I don’t see anything that distinguishes pre-WoD from post-WoD in terms of their ability to be consistent in telling a story. Their story-telling has “changed” but there’s still a glaring lack of consistency in quality. If Shadowlands is a “good” expansion like many predict, then I would say pre-WoD and post-WoD will be roughly equal to each other, suggesting that their structure of the WoW story-telling team has likely remained the same throughout.
The only big noticable jump in story-telling from Blizzard was the jump from Warcraft 3: TFT to World of Warcraft. Blizzard went from 7 great campaigns and 1 meh WoW-like campaign to a history of ping-ponging on their quality for years.
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It’s jarring coming back after 6 years. It’s really hard to stay motivated to play a game with a story with this little effort put into it.
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I’m not sure the story was ever any good, with brief exceptions for wotlk and mop; the ultra-hero intervention in the Arthas fight was annoying for WOTLK, though.
Their utter abandonment of the Shas after MoP was stupid. The cosmology in the game is an utter mess, layer upon layer of retcon held together with duct tape, baling wire, and players that want it to hold together.
WoW is falling down on both plot and world building at this point. It’s sad. Character development has been terrible since forever, but it’s still bad too.
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To be fair, there was ample reason they should hook up. As I said Kalec is prone to magic girls…
Anveena was an avatar of the Sunwell, Which the Sunwell is just remnants of the Well of Eternity. The Well has massive arcane powers and was the world’s lifeblood.
Jaina was such a powerful mage that she was the leader of the Kirin Tor at one point and time. We all know Kirin Tor houses the most powerful wizards in Azeroth.
Thalyssra practiced the arcane at an early age herself and is a powerful Arcanist. Also her people had knowledge of the leylines. Suramar was built on anicent ley lines. Same with the Sunwell the Highborne built it on nexus of ley lines. Ley lines are like blood vessels carrying arcane magic.
This is why I am a bit surprised why Kalec has never been with an Elf woman yet. As we all know how Highborne loved their magic.
So I thought they would make a cute little couple. Plus if Thalyssra wants to ride a dragon, after saving her people from the addiction of the Nightwell and starting a revolution. Well I think she should get a dragon.
I understand where this is going and they don’t really hold true to the material they write.
Yea, I can’t disagree with that. Came to think of it WoW’s story was never any good, such as the bad character development of Keal’thas or Illidan during TBC. The only good story they made was only during RTS games.
Diablo 1 and 2 were great for the era, 3 was pretty ok, too.
The story doesn’t have to be Tolkein, but it does need to drive things along in a consistent manner that can’t be pulled apart by going back 2 expansions. And doesnt read like a fan fiction love story for x character.
I don’t mind them developing relationships for the characters, but some consistency would be appreciated
Better question is who gets mommy Mayla?
Tolkein wasn’t even a very good storyteller; but his stuff is still better. His cardboard characters annoy far less, too.
The worldbuilding can’t hold a candle to Tolkein.
Great Worldbuilding covered for alot. I would argue that Tolkein’s central story in LOTR was worthwhile, got to be a slog in Two Towers though.