So true, both Nazjatar and Nyalotha could be a whole continent for an expansion, now i don’t get what direction Devs will follow, Old Gods were my favorite kind of villain, because are so chaotic, just a copy paste from Lovecraft but with that Warcraft touch and they just finish that plotline 
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Oh yeah, I’m mostly talking about it from the perspective of what you can experience in-game, and you’re totally right about this! Important lore events we need to know about should not just take place in books. I’m fine with there being books, but they can focus on more personal stories instead - things that don’t work so well in-game :>
Also adding an edit to my original post so others can find this thread :>
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Before the storm has a goblin x gnome love plotline that i don’t care too much and it’s perfect for a book but that meeting at Arathi, Calia’s death…etc, those major character developments that could change the playerbase vision around a character should be in game.
Thanks Halite for doing a thread around storytelling, however i don’t know if Blizzard will responde to this even when it’s consider a major failure for a big portion of players.
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I don’t think they even know what confusion they’re actually causing with these books.
A short while ago Ion said in an interview that they haven’t put major plotlines in books anymore and that they would do a pretty bad job if it was like that.
But then we have something like “Before the Storm” that you mentioned, in which the whole prelude to BfA and its character arcs are explained.
Something similar happened with “Shadows Rising” again. There is pretty important information in this book that just doesn’t belong there. The romance between Flynn and Shaw is fine, the book is the perfect place to explore a relationship like this. But the political situation with the council in Orgrimmar? The questionable hunt for Sylvanas that involves some serious torture by the hands of major NPCs? The rebellion in Zuldazar? The policital situation between Alliance and Horde? The knowledge that the nightelves are living in Hyjal right now? The capture of Sira? These are things we all need to see ingame! This book could’ve filled another mini-patch as story content that we need so desperately!
I’m just getting mad everytime people are speculating in the forums when we’ll get a new warchief, just because they didn’t buy this damn book.
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I would really like to hear Cdev give their thoughts on the state of storytelling in the game—what went wrong (if they even acknowledge as much), how to avoid the problem going forward, etc. It is difficult to know with the PR Wall that this company puts up, but looking in from the outside right now I’m given the impression they feel like the story is incredible and they can’t wait to continue these arcs that players are increasingly checking out of. That is worrying.
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I’ve got the impression that they don’t even feel like something went wrong. Mr. Danuser is straight up ignoring every negative criticism on twitter and scrolling by, while giving hearts out to positive comments in between. From other dev departments we’ve got some communication about things that didn’t really work out, but from Cdev… just pure excitement about how great the story is and will be.
Plus there was an interview with one of the creative devolopers a few years ago where he stated that they won’t let negative comments influence their stories and they don’t want any negativity in their “dojo”. Allegedly they’re listening, but they have a plan and don’t want to get distracted from their goals.
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I think this is one of the big reasons they never really address criticisms of the story. Admitting fault is often wrongfully considered to be a bad marketing strategy. I’d also love to hear from cdev and pick their brain a bit about this, how they handle criticism and how/why they interact with the public about it.
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Something apart from radio silence would be nice. Story is crucial to this game and genre, so it is not reassuring to see no communication about ongoing problems there. I’m glad to see the rest of the dev team opening up, but if they sleep on the story it won’t matter much.
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Blizzard is so unwilling to actually develop a fun, solid story that instead they produce a so-called “narrative” so bad that it has literally driven the single most bought WoW expansion to date to the lowest subscription numbers ever!
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and @Halite
I think all the criticisms of the story are spot on. I’ve been frustrated by how much great story content is put into each xpac’s launch, only to be followed up with almost nothing relevant outside of the cinematics in the patches. I’ve felt this way about every xpac since I came back at the end of Warlords.
That being said, I think that the Teldrassil-burning-background-gossip discussed on twitter and YouTube by Belular and Taliesin MUST be considered when we talk about story content from now on: huge parts of WOW’s story since BfA came from marketing and hype-building decisions by Afrasiabi (and likely Activision marketing). I imagine the sky above Ice Crown exploding was likely a similar "Building Peaks" moment. The story team working for Afrasiabi (then Senior Creative Director, which I think is the highest position on the WOW team for story direction), was then tasked with trying to stitch together these major “exciting” plot points into something resembling a story arc.
I’m not saying that the WOW story team hasn’t failed to plan for the inevitable patch delays and Wowhead data mining that have happened in the last 5 years when they craft these story arcs. Nor should the annoying amount of fan service and over-reliance on nostalgia by the story team go without criticism. But we can’t lay the blame for all of the issues on the working level folks trying to make something from an Acti-Blizz-King leadership that seems more interested in generating revenue from selling boosts, loot boxes, and WOW tokens than delivering quality, fun WOW expansions that sell subscriptions.
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I am very glad I asked halite about this. Glad to see they did it
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I’m in the “the story should be told in the game camp”.
You list 2 books I never intend to read.
And SL feels like it needs 5 books just to fill in all the plot holes.
I read - a lot. But if your telling a story in game, it needs to be complete in game. Not additional work.
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This for sure. “Hey, renew your subscription to play a patch that we admit was rushed” is not a good marketing strategy.
I leave it to the marketing experts, but I do wonder if something in the 10.0 announcement that admits that the World of Warcraft team has not produced the quality games that its fans expect, and that they’re taking their time to bring a new expansion worthy of the Blizzard name to us would be an appropriate hat-in-hand moment that could possibly generate hype within the jaded fan base.
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Honestly if they flat out admitted shadowlands was a mess I be open to dragon isles i know it’s not confirmed and that’s a rumor or theory but I’m hoping it is.
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The sad part is that it seems like only Halite want to talk about lore and story telling, nobody else on the Community council reply to her post yet. I’d love to see more players talking about their issues or ideas for this part of the game that’s being killed between transmedia and the gameplay development / story progression because if the game requires more time with systems and other issues, that compromise the amount of story that can be provided via new mini raids, dungeons, questlines, scenarios…etc
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Yes, this is true, and I originally mentioned it in one of my early drafts, but I decided to drop it both to make the post shorter and also because I wasn’t confident enough to discuss it properly with (potential) devs in the room. It’s really hard to continue to write a story written by someone else in the first place, and to have spanners in the works makes it even harder.
I think it’s important to give everyone on the CC some time to have their own thoughts and opinions form, I can at least tell from personal experience that I put waaay too much effort into everything I write on the CC because it’s such a public platform, so I’m not worried if the others want to do the same :>
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Agreed. I read at least 50 books a year, every year. I have not and never will read a WoW book. There’s too much other superior reading material out there.
WoW needs its story told in game, all of it, and no place else.
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Quoted for truth.
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I agree is important, however the ratio between members/replies just creates an image that some threads are dead, i think nobody at this moment reply to worldpvp post on professions, I think about this like a missing on player focus on professions, there’s a lot of topics dead and as a forum, only few threads have a good conversation between members, and the lack of Devs replies for weeks just show that they’re busy or don’t care about this feedback tool, some issues were cause by adding waves instead of the 100 member at once and Devs trying to reach deadlines with 9.2 and 10.0 announcement. IMO
However, I still feel grateful for the few feedbacks provided by CC that Devs replied and some topics 
thanks Halite
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Another Book
The game will keep suffering with transmedia if important and relevant lore moments are excluded from the game like the last 2 expansions, it’s different when books told stories before WC3 or WoW Vanilla but last books are relevant for events in game and character development.
At least Blizzard is listening with some gameplay changes but there’s not any mention about story telling improvements from my point of view.
I really hope Blizzard listen to the CC members talking about storytelling, they could do the book and questlines with the main events at the same time.
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