Can we send the writing team to college?

[Sarique-stormrage]

@Goodberry-nazgrel

Just to clarify: I was talking of novels at large, not of the WoW books.

Wait, what? Game of Thrones book series? Could you imagine if WoW had the same character as Books One-through-Three?

Shame, shame!

[Goodberry-nazgrel (Goodberry)]

In my opinion, the WoW storytelling team has always been carried by other people: the art team, the music team, the core gameplay team, often the quest design team. In this moment this is more painfully obvious than ever.

[Fastrada-sisters-of-elune]

Just, like, have them go to Udemy or something.

[Vaderv-shandris (Vaderv)]

OH GOD please no. Have you seen what comes out of college today?

[Rita-velen]

C’s get degrees! The problem is that C is the new D, so you get a bunch of D students with degrees they can’t explain.

[Oscilus-tichondrius (Oscilus)]

@Spagooter-hyjal

I aint payin

Pffft

Blizz has millions, let them pay for it themselves.

[Oscilus-tichondrius (Oscilus)]

@Rosenivy-area-52

Here’s the kicker

You need 6 years experience to work for Blizz.

Makes you wonder what the water chick from the dev vid did for 6 years to get in…

[Rosenivy-area-52 (Rosenivy)]

I meant for writing. I dunno the limits for others. And I can’t nag on that woman too much. Laugh a bit for the meme but anything farther just feels rude

[Aihashi-lightbringer]

They have gone to college. They all graduated at the top of their class from Clown College.

[Pyromor-shandris (Pyromor)]

Op,you mean creative school ,I’m sure they all came from some college or university.

[Vincent-nathrezim]

@Rita-velen

C’s get degrees! The problem is that C is the new D

In nursing school we needed a B+ or better, or it was an F.
I think that really should be the standard for adults in college.

[Mërlina-azuresong]

I am an author myself and I don’t think sending the writers to college will fix the issue.

You cannot teach creativity, that is something that comes from inside.

I also wanted to say that it isn’t just the writers that are at fault. Working at a profession level you have editors who help you, so if the writing is this bad the editors are not doing their job as well making sure that the work is the best it can be. My editors helped my novel out immensely.

[Moredrasia-thrall]

You know the writing is sub-par when you have Baine Bloodhoof didn’t have any major role in the whole expansion.

And the Night Elves get shafted again and forced to go on the forgive and forget route.

MOP was out of complete left field, but the story telling was really enjoyable.

[Vaeana-area-52 (Vaeana)]

@Goodberry-nazgrel

The moment “creative writing” was invented good writing died.

Please, explain this.

[Goodberry-nazgrel (Goodberry)]

I mean there is no recipe for good writing. Trying to teach creativity only creates clones.

[Lannislight-tichondrius]

I would just prefer if the devs had a better idea for the story but didn’t themselves write it and let the writing team do their thing.

Like it seems like a lot of story decisions end up at the whims of a dev who decides “this will be cool lol” and it’s something like not cool and ruins the story, and the expansions are like barely strung together in connection but past that there doesn’t feel like a greater connection to the story like does SL feel like it’s been built up from MOP? Not really and why is that because they only plan one expansion ahead?

Why did the writing team who did a good job in Cata w Garrosh get him “wrong” on some “oh well he wasn’t supposed to be that way” way, their the writing team?

I watched a small thing from what ever the ffxiv like event is where they brought out the lead writer and like I think the person I was watching was saying like how they were emphasizing how good of a job they did to plan from like ARR all the way to what ever the current thing is. And I thought tbh does shadowlands feel like it was planned from that far back in regards to wow? And if not why? What’s the issue and why are devs who aren’t writers writing so much when it comes to wow

For what it’s worth I kinda asked this question in another thread a bit back and the answer was very good so I bookmarked it

@Baalsamael-turalyon

The CDev team is visibly under staffed and the Quest/Encounter Teams have a lot of leeway in what goes into the text.

There is ONE (1) Historian and he does not have a sub team that serves as Lore Editors for all quests

Now, according to Questifer in a tweet a few months back, every sub team has a WoW Writing and/or CDev person

But that doesn’t necessarily translate to Editorial Purview.

So unlike Every Other Major Game, where they have IN-HOUSE IRL HISTORY TEAMS and ACTUAL WRITERS having a chokehold on the world building

The Devs™, who are not Professional Writers nor Trained Historians Or Academics Otherwise, are allowed control over world building

Ergo why we get odd hyperspecific references (there’s a venthyr couple at the ember court to the side that have names but aren’t interactable that are references probably to a fairly popular Filipino soap opera that even Christie Golden is watching because other Blizzard people are watching it, or how the four mini bosses in front of Lady Darkvein in CN are four Romanian words that form a half sentence) or incredibly basic western hegemonic references (eg Muh Dracula’s Castle, Muh Angel Psychopomp, Muh Thanos Lucifer Sauron Zovaal)

Because it’s all to the whims of individual devs who do the material labor of building the game world and have been loaded with the creative labor of world building

I will not have faith in WoW’s writing team until:

• They admit the monster races based on POC are representation
• Say they are working on adding more phenotypic diversity to the races in general, eg curly hair for all
• Add an inhouse historian team, or at least 3 historians in CDev
• Add at least 5 subhistorians with editorial purview
• Take world building eg quest text out of Game Dev hands, or at least have mandatory editorial approval

[Feldot-kiljaeden]

Oh please don’t…just don’t.

[Cryptopsy-moon-guard]

Our narrative dev lead’s storytelling really reminds you of someone who watches a lot of blockbusters but hasn’t picked up a book

[Zyhuna-shuhalo]

Do you think the Harry Potter series is a good novel?

[Vaeana-area-52 (Vaeana)]

@Goodberry-nazgrel

Trying to teach creativity only creates clones.

Wait. Do you think that the world would be full of brilliant and new ideas all the time if only it weren’t for those darn creative writing classes? You really think that’s why everything is a clone of other things?