Something WoW constantly does terribly compared to other MMO’s is the pacing of the story and lore. You get all this useless fluff for weeks and maybe one prominent moment that lasts 20 minutes by the end. You wait months for a prominent moment in a 2minute cutscene. Why do this? Is it possibly to keep players interested in the story subscribed longer?
Well I think it’s having the opposite affect. Drip feeding us the lore and story is driving people away (along with a plethora of other reasons) and it’s even worse when the story itself is abysmal. Other games waste no time giving you TONS of lore to enjoy and delve into, big prominent moments left and right to the point at times you feel you’re playing an amazing single player game. Majority of the narrative matters and there’s twists and turns not only in the big raids but the smaller quests as well. How hard is it for a multi billion dollar company to do this?
Legion is the last time I felt love for the lore in this game. The big feels at the Broken Shore. Amber’s death in the Order Hall quests. Every Order Hall having big moments in small quests too like death knights fighting Liadrin and trying to raise Tirion. Turalyon and Alleria reveal finding the Naaru shard etc. Lore was a constant and much of it was good imo!
Compared to those days it feels like we get something cool every couple of months. And what we do get is just terrible.
I do agree that drip-feeding a story is generally a poor experience.
I can understand using it for the “big picture” story, that sometimes takes years to unfold… but nothing sucks the life out of a good story quest chain than parsing it out with various gating mechanisms.
I know its dumb to be triggered but seriously blizz ya’ll just had the runecarver go “pick up this thing from a mob and bring it to me for legendaries” AND NEVER ELABORATED ON IT
So many plot holes with that…what is it, how did he learn it, how did he cast the spell in captivity without anyone noticing, and why is Jaina the only one that detected the spell?
Also, it appears that he has self control while hanging out…why didn’t he put actual important information in the spell instead of a goodbye note. Sort of selfish really
I think this is what bothers me most. In other games this stuff sort of casually comes up in the numerous amounts of dialogue and conversations the characters have like real people. It’s pretty much expected and natural. In WoW you’re just left with nothing… no broad discussion between multiple NPC’s or your character etc delving into these issues or explanations. It’s like “the best we can do is 3 sentences of voice acting and maybe a 1 minute cutscene for this week.”
I think a good way to fix this would honestly be to stop doing the monster patches that they do (2-3 per expansion) and instead utilize the X.5 patches better as more story patches. Like if we had had a 9.0.5 that gave us Korthia and the new Renown levels, where we were able to finish the story up to seeing that cutscene (and have the compass be from somewhere else), and THAT then leads to the raid being released a few weeks/months later, that would help the pacing. And then a 9.1.5 could be us dealing with the information that we know and preparing to go after the Jailer, maybe arriving at the new zone and trying to find story beats there, and 9.2 is the raid patch.
I just feel like we need a far more consistent story than what we’ve been getting, and a lot of that is how much Blizzard batches together those content patches.
I’m so weak. I see Hazbin Hotel and immediately like the post.
Yeah I definitely this contributes too but I also think a lot of people love this game for the lore primarily. Or at least did until they got fed up with the fact the only way to experience the lore was through a book or get drip fed bits of it over the course of 2yrs where overall lore equals up to less than 2hrs of actual substantial story.
Yeah bfa and shadowlands felt bad storywise and I sort of attribute that to the world quest system plus the story feeling way more streamlined than it used to be throughout the zones. Everything is too on the tracks, feels like less to discover out in the zones even if it’s there I’m not looking. I’m trying to get it done so I can keep moving on to the next thing. Bfa - and I believe shadowlands also - will feel more fun to play once it’s older content.
