Well
“I think the role of the content designer should be to provide compelling hooks for player storytelling. And by compelling, I mean both interesting and well-executed. Players should be drawn in by the quest and incentivized to undertake it, but the quest itself should be mere manipulation to get players interacting. It might be through cooperation, competition, or some kind of symbiotic relationship where both sides benefit in different ways.”
I got this attributed to Danuser in the
https://ilkohall.blogspot.com/2021/02/shadowlands-empty-manipulations-with-no.html
If this is the case, then the approach is practicaly “payoff is not relevant, being true to the marketing either - just throw in enough stuff to people keep speculating and they will stick with the game to keep themselves busy guessing stuff”.
The goal is to keep people “engaged”, not to make good story / foreshadowing / pay off. But I have only limited knowledge of how true the sources are.
We have alterations to W3 in the reforged version. W3 are the events that we “saw”. Yet here we are.
gl hf