well it’s EA so…all of them.
Every single money.
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Indeed. And that’s sad, because honestly writing stories within the boundary of a world design is part of the thrill of telling compelling stories.
The Lord of the Rings is partly as beloved as it is because Tolkien went the extra continent and designed not only full languages (with syntax and everything) but also millennia of history that, at the time of publication of the series, there was little thought that the average reader would even SEE that beyond vague references.
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I remember. That was an exciting five days.
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It’s far more the nature of the genre than a failing on Blizzard’s part.
You need to produce one of the biggest, baddest villains in the universe every two years for a climactic battle where they will be stomped on by 10 to 30 players.
Oh, and they need to at least seem on par, but preferably stronger, than the previous biggest, baddest villain.
Oh, and you only start with a few decent villains that you immediately begin to burn through because no one really expects the game to last that long.
Writing for an MMO has more in common with writing scripts for pro wrestling than writing a novel.
Blizzard’s inability / refusal / choice to pour resources down the drain and as far away from story telling as possible is very much a failing in their own right.
I’m not going to say that all MMO writing is a cornerstone of innovation but there are competitors doing just fine on the front in ways that Blizzard routinely refuse to emulate. That’s wholly on them and maybe on a more scattered approach, the players who continue to shovel it down.
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I agree and disagree.
Yes, the genre needs a big supply of villains.
But, since it’s a whole world, there can be plenty of places and plenty of plot hooks to draw them from.
One thought I had in Dazar’alor was that it would have been awesome if the faction bosses had been leaders or big names in the faction assaults. And I think that idea could apply to a lot of bosses - show them occasionally in questing, enough that the players will probably remember them, and then they’ll be a much more impactful boss later on.
And while “Enough!” is a meme, I think the game could use more of those types of encounters - ones where we don’t kill the villain, and even if we ruin their current plan, they escape and could try again. Kel’thuzad got beaten up, but he’s become a fairly common name in predictions for future content. I’d love to see more characters like that.
In summary: Yes, MMO writing has a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities that I feel it is not currently taking advantage of.
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Those competitors are much younger games that went into it with far more understanding of how the genre works. Yet even FFXIV is starting to run out of ascians.
I don’t think resources has much to do with it either. The amount of money spent on writers relative to the budget of an MMO is trivial. I doubt FFXIV spends noticeably more on writers than WoW, they just hired people who were better at it.
Same thing with voice acting really. People claimed voice acting sunk SWTOR’s budget but non-celebrity voice actors are really, really cheap.
Blizzards competition seem to manage just fine without having to constently undermine their own settings.
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Blizzard had all sorts of opportunity to course correct. More importantly, because of the genre, they still have time to course correct. The only point as far as it matters is that competitors made the choice to treat their narrative seriously.
Blizzard continues to not.
Resources was a poor phrase. I would agree. My point was more that writing is mnot a priority for Blizzard. They mention it at every opportunity trying to claim that gameplay comes first.
Which is unbelievable because the gameplay also continues to stumble but I digress.
They’ve made their choices and their intents clear.
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…no?
Game of Thrones had only one Big Bad and he was the least interesting part. Cersei, Littlefinger and others were much more interesting threats because there was time taken to give them motivation and develop them as characters.
Hell, we’ve had some of that in WoW, even. Some of our most memorable villains have been comparatively mere. Deathwing was objectively a Bigger Bad than Arthas, but Arthas meant more because we’d had more time to get to know him and his motivation. When we killed Arthas, we were killing a character. When we killed Deathwing, we were killing an Explosion That Flies And Sometimes Talks.
With characterization, time and, you know, writing, Blizzard could make a Quilboar a compelling threat.
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GW2 and FFXIV want a word with you.
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and ESO, hell even SWTOR is no where near as bad as WoW in regards to having enough respect for its setting to at least attempt to have an ounce of consistency.
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Yeah. I’ve never played SWTOR but I’ve really enjoyed ESO so far even if I’ve been playing the expansions out of order. It’s nice to, um, encounter NPCs with steady development, in a consistent world, and arcs I actually care about.
but uuhhhmm hahah silly me its aaahh um ssssssttttill just like pro wrestlinnnngggg
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Are you saying there aren’t character arcs in pro wrestling?
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I’m saying I find contrarians really boring.
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the fact i still can’t pre-order Diablo 4 is boring
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I’ll pre-order you
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i’m gonna make popcorn, drink iced tea, and watch skeletons beat Duriel to death and i promise you pre-ordering gets you exclusive bonuses
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Its probably a coincidence, but your guild name and transmog are reminiscent of the Legion of the Dawn preorder bonus sets for Anthem
https://vulkk.com/2019/02/23/how-to-get-the-anthem-legion-of-dawn-armor-sets/
That was another game that many people preordered. I hope this turns out better for you than it did for them.
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The problem isn’t that we lack for villains, though. The problem is Blizzard has kind of forgotten they exist.
Kel’Thuzad’s a big one. We beat him, sure, but we didn’t recover a Phylactery second go round. While I’ve been informed Chronicles puts him in the Shadowlands for reasons™, he’s by far the biggest of the bads yet that technically (Since none of it was stated in game) is still out there.
Hakkar the Soul Flayer. We freed him in Cataclysm and a near a decade later we’ve heard exactly mum from him. In an expansion that heavily features Trolls.
Azshara deserved her own expansion, not being the mid-tier raid boss of this one.
And it’s not like WoW’s been unable to create those villains from whole cloth when needed. The Sha were a bloody brilliant idea. The Necromancer in WoD was memorable. Godfrey actually killed Sylvanas for thirty seconds!
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