Ok, so blizzard writing time baby, we all know they have issues, but i feel we need to help redefine what the issues are.
Rule of Cool is not good for writing a coherent narrative. The Rule of Cool on its own is not inherently bad, but it fits some settings better then others. the More disconnected a setting is, the better you have of rationalizing it. Stuff like Comic Books and 40k can do it because they are vast enough that it won’t make as many waves. WoW is far, far to streamlined for RoC to work, as cool moment after cool moment can make a plot lose its tension, and is just not good writing. It also can lead to massive plotholes if they change something to be cooler, looking at you Brennadam
Whenever they write, they write for one faction, while i think this is the proper way to write for exclusive content (Horde decimating the Alliance in Azshara and Hillsbrad in Cataclysm, Alliance humilating the Horde in alliance questlines (Don’t play alliance so in not sure exactly where tbh)) it should be kept to EXCLUSIVE content, Andorhal having the alliance loose in the very last quest in what is honestly a deus ex machina, that is bad, as is forcing the horde to help Alleria then having her immediately insult them. It’s a major reason why the “Good Horde” characters like Baine and the Goblin Golden writes are so anti-horde pro alliance, blizzard doesn’t get how to make a character on one side sympathetic to the other, so their idea of making a “Good Horde” character (as morality is defined by the alliance) is to make them just an alliance character.
Nothing is built up, everything is destroyed. This is where the setting becomes unsustainable long term and the other 2 problems merge together into one. Rule of Cool tends to involve a lot of collateral, with Teldrassil and Undercity being the two big ones this expansion. However since they refuse to write a story that both sides can enjoy, they decide “Faction Parity of Pain” is a good method. This leaves a very unsatisfied fanbase who begin loosing interest in the setting. They never, ever try to build up the old zones or races, the only tear them down.
Retconning events and character motivation isn’t ‘building up,’ it’s actually just restructuring, especially when new characters are thrown in later who were apparently there all along.
That’s one of the big issues with WoW, it tried to establish everything in the beginning, but clearly didn’t give themselves enough material to work with, so they just have to keep making it up. Another problem is most of the stuff they do make up, they just toss it away immediately.
One, if it was build up then it was very, very poor build up, with them constantly trying to backpedal and pretend it wasn’t happening, as they effectively assassinated her character (Character Assasination does not mean she was not evil before, because evil is not a character trait) two, i didn’t even mention sylvanas, nor do i really care about if she’s killed or not, because my point is to find issues with their way of writing, not just the things that happen in it, three, even if her going full villain was destined to happen, the way they handled it was so poor that it should still be open to critique.
There was build up that’s my point there was massive build up since cata and you all ignored it cause blue side bad. Hell you can say there it started in wc3. Valid criticism I see with this situation is that blizzard didn’t have to give us mop 2 they could have done it differently even if mop two makes more sense for Sylvanas
“massive build up”
Yeah, Massive…
Anyway, my main point is that her acting as a villain was out of character, not because she is not evil, but because of the ways she shown her evil. Before Golden decided every female character needed to have the emotional maturity of a 5 year old, Sylvanas while i’d say she was emotional, was a lot more stoic and less likely to want to be the center of attention (And was also not Hope Bad Death Good and more Death Bad Sylvanas Good) She’d do stuff to prolong her own survival, not just kill everyone for the sake of it, nor go destroy an entire city filled with people ruining a military campaign because a random elf did the equivilant of blow a raspberry at her.
If Sylvanas needed to burn Teldrassil, she should have done it because she figured she had something to gain from it, not because she is an emotionally immature 5 year old in a grown elves body. That would have been in character and shown how little she cares about other people to pursue her goals, which makes for a more engaging villain in my opinion, similarly, if she needed to leave the horde, instead of just blurting out the horde is nothing in the middle of the street, she should have either taken enough actions that harmed the horde in favor of herself the horde wanted to get rid of her, or had saurfang do a spec ops operation to expose her. She is still equally evil, but is more in character with her pre-golden self.
She did have something to gain form it lol it’s like everyone ignored the reveals, even in the book she says she always planned on burning it she just moved the date to demoralize the alliance. She needed death and she caused it she didn’t even need to win the war for that even though she tired “but Kat she’s suppose to be a sneaky spider” well she was but now she is warchief and she has to be in the spotlight but it also lets her be more destructive and she still tricked the horde it was all a game to her and by the time we found out her true plan well the veil is already broken
This, the way she treated veressa in the book should have been the biggest red flag to everyone, I feel most people just took her side despite of what a insane POV it was cause blue character BAD
There are at least 100 other threads to complain about Sylvanas in. The OP didn’t even mention her. How about we focus on the fact that Blizzard has structural writing issues beyond the Sylvanas controversy, and stop being baited into the 1000th re-argumentation of it?
1. Rule of Cool. Its rather obvious that Blizzard writes a few cool cut-scenes and then painfully tries to stitch them together. All the while thinking they are writing a comic book.
2. Selective Faction Bias: They write for one faction first, then hastily throw something together at the last minute for the other. I believe that its been Horde-First since Cataclysm (since they admitted it then) due to higher polish and attempts at depth in horde storylines, while the Alliance’s has been the same banal Lawful stupid overdrive ad nausem after consolidating everyone under the Wrynn dynasty. It really feels like Golden is the only writer that has any interest in the Alliance story or its characters while everyone else in the room is screeching “Loktar Ogar!” or “YAS QUEEN!”
3. Shock Value or “sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS”: You know one the first bad things a new creative director or author does when they take over a established setting? Shake up the status quo with hamfisted shock value. This is often done to show that “they are serious this time!!” Or as we’ve seen in WoW when the faction war clowns stop drooling long enough to shrill “WAR back in WARcraft!” before their futile attempts to load Warcraft 2 on Windows 10. Well, until they give up trying to figure out how to use DOSbox.
They blow all their effort on shaking up the setting, then realize that Status Quo is God and sloppily stops everything with some “greater threat” if not flat out Deus Ex Machina to reinstate the status quo since dissolving factions or worse, wiping out the Horde is off the table.
Long Story Short: Blizzard is in dire need of more diverse writers and a editor for once.
I think if we added amazing writers to the writers’ room it wouldn’t really do much. I think the problem might be a their approach as a group or even their philosophy.
Their group management is definitely a problem. Its painfully obvious that teams that should be communicating aren’t, but the faction stories overall just aren’t good. I suggested in another thread that they could probably use a better director guiding the story, but its also clear that the writing room is a giant echo chamber.
I have to wonder if part of the issue is that the “editor” or director is also a story writer him or herself. Even if it’s not intentional, this probably causes bias issues - I feel like they need someone a step removed from the process, so that person can be impartial and get a better feel for how things go together lacking the knowledge of how it’s “supposed” to be.
Cause he said there was no build up, sylvanas is the perfect example that there is heh. Admit that and we can talk about how rule of cool is dumb
Or how he thinks morality is a alliance thing, that would be fun so many horde players have a very terrible sense of morality.
this has not happened, alliance victories aren’t show ingame.
even our suppósed big wins often comes at “big costs”.
i think that really their biggest problem is shock value they want to raise the stakes by destroying stuff but not really capitalizing on that “emotional investment” by not delivering a good pay off for it because well, it would be a problem if the alliance payback with the same coin and the ones alienated for revenge would be horde players.
They also seem to be keep pushing for dumb faction wars when is clear that most of the leaders already think that is dumb while at the same time being forced to work togheter to defeat a big bad, so why we are even at war? the faction war should have been over in MoP. in legion both factions fought the legion.
