I know that when I did hair for a living in my early 20’s I would go yearly to a convention in Orlando to keep up on the industries latest techniques and information, and on-going education in my field was a major thing in the salon I worked for. On-going education should be mandatory, in my opinion, for way more professions and careers.
I try not to be too harsh towards their creative team but I share the sentiment that many people here have. As someone above put it, you can’t teach someone to be creative if they don’t have that spark.
Just remember that pretty much everything they do has to pass muster in China. Thus the infatuation with robots as villains and no one really “dying” anymore. Just little fart clouds of “anima.”
Is that true, or does China regulate their own version of WoW? Did the US team turn body parts and whatnot into bread or was that whatever team they have in China? I only ask because from what I’ve heard about the Chinese version of WoW, it is vastly different and even run differently in other aspects. Like, they give away TCG card mounts to their playerbase.
China only allowed WoW back into their country after the modifications to the client were made. But that was years ago.
China has significant investments in a lot of the entertainment industry as a whole. Blizzard is among them. It would be remiss to not see the awkward shift in theme as a compromise to our communist overlords.
Right, I knew that part, I just figured from what I knew about the Chinese version, I assumed they did the editing and alterations to make it “legal” or whatever, themselves.
Keep in mind that China’s gaming scene was built off of free to play, addiction driven, gaming. They are aiming for lowest common denominator type experience. Just “winning” over and over again.
The formula for WoW expansions has been pretty much written. The message from the censors is pretty clear; the more mundane - the better. Crank out the usual zones, dungeons, raids, etc. Add context as needed … or don’t. It’s ok. The gamers won’t really care. They’re addicted. They’ll buy the box and sign up for 6 month blocks for a mount, and we can hem and haw about what could have been done better and make promises next time around.
They just need to realize that among all the people who play this game is a good number of people who are here for the RPG aspects.
A lot of those people read or have read a lot of fantasy and a lot of these people have invested in the almost 20 years of lore in the game.
Ruining that, butchering characters and long running plots alienates the players who care about that stuff, and who are well read enough to know what’s good and bad story telling.
Maybe they just want the game to collapse into raiders vs. old content farmers, but they have been leaving a lot of us in the middle a bit underwhelmed… and not just with the story.
Honestly, as someone who has BEEN to college, we wouldn’t even need to put them through the creative writing courses, necessary course like 3 English classes and one elective like Theatre Appreciation would help them better understand the basics of writing a story…
Heck even HIGHSCHOOL English would help with this…
Wouldn’t being able to write a sensical, well connected plot be part of technical writing skills?
No one would be considering a good writer if they disregarded all the previous books in their work when writing a new story. Let alone disregarding the chapters ahead of what they just wrote in their new book as well. Shadowlands has so many plot holes its almost comical, if not just depressing to witness.
I don’t think this is a case that the story is just subjectively bad. Its clearly objectively bad too.
I couldn’t agree with you more and feel this is a really excellent point. There will always be stories that some people enjoy while other people can’t stand - that alone doesn’t make a bad story. Here, though, especially with the treatment of main characters in this expansion (see Sylvanas’s complete turnaround that took approximately 30 seconds in the 9.1 end cinematic, as well as just about anything involving the Jailer in 9.2.), there are just multiple major story moments which simply do not make any sense whatsoever. To me, that qualifies as objectively bad.
That said; writing is a craft rarely elevated to an artform. If I told my dad that I was a writer, he’d ask “Can you write a Denny’s menu?” And, I think, WoW needs craftsmanship when it comes to writing.
The “creative” stuff makes me nervous like “I know, what would happen if Batman would kill Superman?” or “What if Superman killed?” Horrible ideas that come from fans sitting around like “Could Ironman beat Captain America?” Fans enjoy the idea and discussion, we never would want to really see it on the screen or in a book. Getting creative or thinking outside of the box sucks and it means you should have exhausted everything in the box, you know; the stuff that works.
Simple craft, knowing A and given B, the audience can anticipate and be satisfied with C. Know your audience, give them what they want.
I think this post gets it right. If searching for skilled writers with creativity, the product of modern humanities departments are not where anyone should look.
