I like WOW and all but I have to wonder if anyone even care about the story of this game anymore. Ever since WoD this game has been a nostalgia ride. Remember Illidan? He’s cool, lets bring him back somehow! Remember Gul’Dan? Hey lets do that again! Khadgar? Sure! Remember the Naaru? Remember Uther? Lets make him blue!
I don’t want people to think I’m trolling but I legit don’t understand the attraction to the lore of this game anymore. It’s just one rehash after another. And desperate ways of shoving old characters long dead or forgotten into the game just to give us some member berries.
I mean, I’ll play SL but the story is just stupid at this point. Lich King was a pawn? The dread lords were the true schemers all along? The jailer is the real LK? It just all seems so moronic now.
…yes, but unfortunately, they are not the game’s writers…
Well, to be a little less snarky-sassy, there may be a bit of a catch-22 going on- Wow’s ‘old’ lore has been pretty much ‘used up’, so they NEEd to come up with new stuff, and almost invariably some of the new stuff will step on the toes of old which will lead to retcons of various competency. At the same time, the writers may be worried about their new stuff not living up to old stuff and then, actively seeking nostalgia value, deliberately tie it in to old stuff (again leading to retcons of various competency).
That WoW’s lore is actually intriguing whereas most of history is violently repetitive and most people’s sufferings never gets a semblance of closure or justice in the moment or centuries later. It provides fantasy and escape while basing itself on themes and histories and myths of real life peoples.
So WoW’s lore is good in that regard, inasmuch a lot of the “fantasies” of real life ethnoracial/religious/regional/national groups get played out in the game.
Take for example the magical city of gold (El Dorado, Cibola, etc) common to many Amerindigenous peoples on the continent (including my own tribe/pueblo). Or the fantasy of a giant super-city that unifies all Africans and the Diaspora (Wakanda, etc). Now look at how those two groups are represented in game: Trolls, both Zanadalari and Lesser Tribes.
I may not have a city of gold or diasporic unity in real life, but the game does, so it’s fun and engaging for me. It makes me happy. Helps me sustain hope for a better future.
But if WoW is no longer serving as that escape, no longer providing hope, no longer helping you imagine things, then perhaps it’s time to walk away or ask yourself, “why? is it the game, or is it me? What do I want from a game?”
I think he means that real life has events that can be just as stupid-sounding as anything that happened in WoW, without the benefit that anyone was actually ‘writing’ it. Well, not counting magical stuff at least.
Well, I fancy myself among “the people”. And while the degree of caring changes, I do care to a certain degree. I guess it comes down to what you consider caring. Sometimes, deep seated rage or an evolved callousness can be products of caring. Hope for a better day can also be a shade of caring, even if it spits on the present.
Have you not played through the faction wars? We literally have whole threads saying Blizzard is racist for white washing colonialism.
Also, and I get it, we want representation in 2020, but you’re not the only poster of color. If I took a drink every post you mention your ethnicity, I’d be in the hospital. It’s like I’m back on tumblr.
(Statement): Unit Exacitor cares in the extent that the World Building of the setting is typically extremely well done, and isolated stories are sometimes told and shared with us that do reach a quality of standard that is approved of.
Other than to laugh at it not really. Shadowlands looks silly to me and I preferred the older what has been called “soft world building”. I still like some of the art and aesthetics though.
I unsubcribed for a while because I hated it so much. Is that not caring? Or too much caring? I guess I do find myself increasingly alienated from the story.
I think most people at this point realize WoW is schlock. While it certainly can be entertaining in many ways, the fact of the matter is, the lore is a byproduct of the game being a service, rather than a story.
When you hear the developers are willing to change just about anything because they thought of something that is cool to them, aka an idea keep the service going, makes caring about the lore difficult.
Or lore being retconned when some “bag” at Blizzard happens to play the game in the presence of their self spawned whelp.
It is very disheartening to see the lore being retconned to match the tastes and whims of who ever the Devs decide to play the game in front of. I guess because they can not parent their own children, we all lose.
This sounds plausible, seeing as how they were the lich king’s jailors, and they were known to be the most manipulative, cunning beings in the universe, being able to make nations fall into civil wars without effort.
