As any good writer will support, a good story needs a good ending. I use two examples two demonstrate bad writing when it comes up, because they shine a light on how a good story can be ruined by the ending.
The Elder Scrolls (and to a lesser extent Fallout) is a story that, since Morrowind, has been telling a story behind the main plot of the game. A cool idea to tie games together without them sharing a bad guy. But, it’s being dragged on so long there is an increasing chance that regardless of how Bethesda ends the story the fan base is going to be upset. Dragging a story out will disconnect the audience with any connection they had to the story
And Attack on Titan was a great story, then the author decided to change their ending to appease fans. Ultimately writing an ending that was less than satisfactory for a decent portion of their fans. Stick to your guns and write the story you wanted to write, without letting your audience determine your decisions.
This brings me to WoW (sorry for taking a bit to set the stage) and the fact that their is definitely a story being told. Some expansions have blurred the story a bit or put it off seemingly entirely. We’ll have to wait and see how the WSS wraps things up. But, this is what worries me. I know I know I know, I’m fretting about something that isn’t even a thing yet 
but this is a game. And a successful one at that. How could Blizz write an ending that will keep us engaged for an entire patch? How do you end the story of the World of Warcraft (or end the current arc and fluidly transition to a new arc) without people checking out immediately after the final raid boss is downed?
To ease the worries a bit, there are rumors floating that they are developing stuff for patch 15.0 which should be two expansions after The Last Titan (seemingly the end of Metzan’s original story). Am I the only one worried about how this story will come to an end without ruining my time invested in the World of Warcraft?
I dunno. How have they done it every patch and expansion? People still come back after we’ve resolved those. 
My time invested is not only the story, but the friends I play with and the gameplay of it, along with transmog, RP, etc.
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Story has been garbage for years. Not sure why people are acting like this 3 expansion thing is something new, ongoing story between expansions has been a thing many times lol.
All I know is that the feet people are eating good.
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“Somehow… Zovaal has returned”
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you have existential dread for 15.0? that’s in 8 years.
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No, you’re not the only one. But you need to remember most people don’t play for story anymore. It takes the back seat to gameplay and has been for years. People will continue to play even if the story is garbage as long as the gameplay is still fun.
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Are you only playing to read through the story? Is everything else done in the game an entire drag that you dislike doing?
If not, then its not ruining time invested.
This. Gameplay > story
I don’t really have that much hope for the main storyline. That hasn’t really been my core interest for a bit, although I do play for it. I feel as soon as WoD hit and everyone was made free, there just wasn’t any going back.
And indeed there wasn’t! I think it came to ahead with Shadowlands. That’s when I knew, for sure, it was long gone.
Dragonflight tried to calm things down, and TWW is ongoing, but I don’t know if the main story will ever recover.
That said, individual patch stories have been pretty solid so far. 11.0 was okay, really enjoyed Undermine. Side quest stories have long been the highlight, and 11.1 itself has some really good ones. There’s a lot of neat little details and notes scattered around, and helps with worldbuilding.
Besides, the benefit of being on an RP realm is that us characters shape a story ourselves, using the world as a backdrop and supporting anchor. Even if the main story gets a bit wacky, we can manage with our own.
So it’ll be fine.
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I play the game for m+ and socializing with friends.
I honestly barely pay attention to the story. It has virtually no impact on my wow experience.
I try to read the quest stuff but I don’t always do that either.
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To be frank, I am not playing WoW for story content. I think the story is important. I think WoW generally handles it pretty poorly and there’s a ton of room for improvement there. But it’s not why I’m here.
Which is why there is no scenario in which I kill the big bad and then immediately check out. “Story” is week 1 content of any given patch. That’s it. The rest is grinding power, achievements, rating, whatever. Improving my parses.
FFXIV is the story game.
WoW is very much game first story second.
I cant think of a single expansion in WoW where I thought “that was an ok story”. Its always been bad.
They have never tried. Ever. For whatever reason.
They could say, “and viola, this was all the fever dream of a 13-year-old child with a horrible disease that finally recovered and woke up, ending the World of Warcraft”, and my time wouldn’t have been ruined. I still played all those characters and did all those quests and killed all those mobs and dungeoned all those dungeons and raided all those raids, and I had a good time while I was doing it.
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Characters have an end to their story eventually, but worlds don’t. As long Azeroth isn’t destroyed, there will be stories to tell. There are so many things left to be mined in Warcraft.
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This is not a novel, it’s a video game. And it is an “open world” video game at that. It is a series of related stories. Each expansion there is the WoW story involving their NPCs and the player’s story doing what ever we want to do.
So it would be hard to have one ending to all those stories.
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Only games i played for story was nes and snes RPGs, and some ps1
Folks have already covered most of it that folks play the game for gameplay and such. But, it is worth noting another element to this: most people who complain about the story are also lore-illiterate and don’t know how storytelling works.
Does WoW have amazing story from expansion to expansion? No. But folks take that and read that as if WoW or the Warcraft universe doesn’t have good storytelling within an expansion or that somehow they cannot make compelling characters or stories.
But in reality… the people who complain about WoW’s story is largely folks who think “shirtless screaming orc” is all that’s necessary for a good story. So for the overwhelming majority of ‘critique’ the story receives, both fairly and unfairly, a lot of it can just be ignored.
The fair points shouldn’t be of course, but so much of what folks complain about in regards to the story or characters in the story is utter nonsense.
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Role-playing games don’t have endings.
Individual stories might, but the game never ends.
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Players who are pushing keys, progressing raids, collecting transmog, or decorating their new houses aren’t going to stop playing when a story arc ends.
Most of them don’t read the quest text anyway.
Im hoping the ending sort of ties everything we have seen together in a neat way to set us along on the next adventure with more answers than questions. Which imo has been an issue in wow in the past couple of expansions, characters stories not tied off well enough to feel satisfactory.
Except with How I Met Your Mother. Wonderful series, terrible ending.
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