Just wondering what everyone’s take is on the newer direction Blizzard has been heading with the lore?
Originally, the stories of WoW focused on small-scale personal conflicts, bandits, corrupt officials, conspiracies, betrayals, and war. Once in a while we’d fight a particularly strong villain, but they weren’t the norm.
We knew little of the cosmology of the universe, just tidbits of Titan knowledge, only finding out a good bunch of our origin in Wrath. However, Blizzard has been moving in a new way lately, making every villain much grander than the first, and explaining more and more of the cosmic forces of the universe.
My main issue with this is that fantasy universes can lose their appeal if too much is explained, if you lose that mystery and are told how every single part of the universe functions, it doesn’t seem as interesting anymore. I’d honestly prefer smaller, more relatable stories rather than fighting the next cosmic god and then fighting a god++ in the following expansion.
But I know this viewpoint may not be popular, so I was wondering what all of your takes were on this? Would you rather the lore return to smaller-scale conflicts and character driven stories, or do you prefer the large-scale cosmic battles and lore?
So far, they want to borrow the concept of Godhood from RS while using Warhammer lore(War between every warp type of energy and other deities like Old Ones, Elves deities, etc) while going full comic and introducing the classical case writing syndrome of "My character is stronger and more power than the ones of my predecessor "
World-Building has been one of the things Blizzard has always done a good job with, so I’m open to exploring the greater cosmology to see what they can do with it. Power creep is something that worries me a lot about the story lately, but I’m not sure we can ever really go back to how things once were.
I think they tried to have a character driven story in BFA. There was dilemmas and difficult choices. Saurfang turning back at “Old soldier”, sparing Anduins life, going against Sylvanas, Anduin opening the door, not helping Tyrande in Darkshore , Bane freeing Jainas brother. All of the above didn’t go so well with the player base. A good character driven story requires some controversy, i get the feeling we are not really ready for that.
I think BFA would’ve been a lot better if the characters weren’t always portrayed as so uselessly incompetent, but were made to shine. I’d rather lose a battle with my leaders making a really strong showing, than because of some cheap shot or they had a senile moment and forgot the other side’s commonly used tactic was still a commonly used tactic.
I’m in the same boat as OP. I prefer the more down-to-earth storytelling. It also seems like the more they explain every little facet of the cosmology, the more and more confusing the lore gets. Like now we can some how go to the afterlife and defeat the forces of death? How’s that work?
I can agree with that. They had a story they wanted to tell. They used Characters as crowbars to force that story down our throats.
“Good”? … that is another thing. I would add that controversy for its own sake does not make every story “good”.
That is the feeling that you get. I don’t think it is that simple.
Just because Blizzard stokes controversy to feed a story does not make the story good. If many fans found the story lacking, it could be the direction of the story, since they were fans of the story itself before hand.
I’ll be more okay with the expanding of the universe and lore if the writers are willing to restructure the lore. Right now it seems they don’t want to change the old, despite it not fitting into the story anymore.
It’s the pill we all have to swallow. Warcraft isn’t a story. It’s a service that has a story tacked on. The majority of players are clinging to their transmog and mounts that they have been mustering for 16 years, they don’t care much about the story, just so long as they can collect more pets.
Good direction. Gotta run out of established ideas somehow - also doing OC stuff doesn’t always have to take a backseat to established ideas and whatnot.
What I’d prefer, and frankly what everyone here would prefer doesn’t really matter. I’d prefer it be more like Vanilla, where it’s putting out spot-fires. The game’s going in the opposite direction, but I don’t dislike it. Large scale cosmic issues are cool af as well.
It’s a game, at the end of the day. Going this route is more fitting for the type of gameplay (and, frankly, the design philosophy) we’re seeing atm.
Personally, I liked it better when the Titans were these powerful, almost mythological, beings that we could discover hints about from their left-behind tech, and when our threats were more down to earth…or down to Azeroth, rather. I’m not a big fan of amazing cosmic forces and fighting a god every Tuesday becoming the norm.
RS is short for Runescape. Though I would say they are not borrowing from that. Since the concepts of that godhood that RS uses, predates RS’ founding company.
Personally, and I’ve made this statement before in another thread, I am in a weird place. You see I love the idea that Warcraft is more than just a single planet. I love that Warcraft is a universe. You can jump into a spaceship, travel through the cosmos and discover alien civilizations, old facilities maybe from the titans maybe from another species. You have races coming from all over the galaxy from the orcs to the draenei or the ethereals a species so advanced that it conducts business throughout the galaxy.
I love Thiernax the first night warrior. I absolutely love the idea that Elune is not bound to a single planet, but instead is worshipped by others. Maybe at one point we discover another civilization who worship something akin to loa or wild gods. There is so much potential out there, so many options and possibilities. So what are we waiting for? Let’s get the crew back together, jump into the VIndicaar and explore the galaxy! Pretty sure we will find something of interest!
Yet, while I adore the science-fiction aspect of Warcraft, all of this super-god-related-stuff leaves me cold. I don’t care about the First Ones. I don’t care about the Jailer or all these other super-powerful-beings. I’d rather learn more about Thiernax. What was his homeworld like? What were his people like? Their culture? They worshipped Elune…so are they just as connected to nature as the night elves maybe? What’s their history? From from we learned…maybe their world isn’t all that different to Azeroth. Adventures and heroes traveling it…I want to know more!
So, let me explore the galaxy and discover all of these worlds and planets, but leave me alone with these god-like-beings.
I’m not a big fan of the new lore direction, but it’s not because big scale, high stakes stories are bad. It’s because Blizzard has been less than stellar in their execution. On the other hand, more often than not, they tend to do well with smaller scale, zone based storytelling.
In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, it might be because they’re good at small scale narrative that the big, overarching stories falter. They require different toolkits to pull off in satisfying ways.
Heading away from BfA seems like a good thing IMO. Too many loose ends, too many things, no meaningful conclusion for anything other than sidestories.
Also, Ion Hazzikostas became the lead of the team some time during Legion iirc, so this will actually be the first properly made expansion to evaluate how they handle things. I am cautiously optimistic. But time will tell.
Well, to be honest, having story about Shadowlands being a home to a powerful enemy does not exclude possibilities of small personal dramas, side stories, etc. Now, will it happen or not, I have no idea, but it I don’t think those are mutually exclusive conceptually.
Conceptually both are possible. And small conflicts and personal interactions could sometimes play crucial role in big events.
Define “character-driven”. They all seem like j-rpg to me. My character is a tool to flip a page of predetermined story. Some are interesting, some are boring, some feel out of place.
TL;DR: depends on the execution. I would prefer the team to just use 1 patch to tell 1 chapter of the story. Full chapter, not bits of different narrative lines. Coherent, focused on doing few things well.
