Good expansion story ruined by systems/gameplay?

Community General Discussion
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Are there any expansions you feel like, looking back on them now, had a good story/premise, but were ultimately ruined by the systems or gameplay for the expansion?

I feel like first and foremost Legion had a great story that was ruined by the artifact weapon grind. The class hall stories are still to this day 10/10 beloved story and characters, love em.

And this is a really unpopular hot take: but I actually enjoyed the story of Shadowlands that revolved around the lore of the Shadowlands itself, the First Ones, etc. I actually thought the whole premise was really neat and I really enjoyed the story of the different afterlife zones for the most part and Zereth Mortis. Basically everything that had nothing to do with Anduin/Sylvanas/etc. But of course, it was also ruined for me by the systems of the Maw, Torghast, etc.

What about you?

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Warlords of Draenor.

Had so much potential. But crap writing, no flying, selfie cams, a twitter link, and Garrisonville made it feal less like an expansion, and more like Wish dot com sent us the wrong stuff.

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BFA suffers from a lot of time gates and forced grinds because of systems on top of systems.

Azerite Power grind, and things like grinding this one thing (black empire invasions in uldum/vale) for one currency so you can do this other grind (Horrific visions) for a different currency/levels of cape upgrades.

Because of how the development cycle of expansions went back then teething problems with grind systems from Legion weren’t iterated, changed or expanded on fully enough before launch of BFA, grinds did get fixed after things went live, mostly, corruption vendor helped but in typical blizz fashion is was implemented in a weird way, the vendor rotated every couple of weeks for example.

People who hated BFAs story (and there are a lot) hated it even more when forced to do that content because of azerite or some other currency (titan residuum, coalesced visions, corrupted mementos, echoes of ny’alotha) you had to farm to progress your character in any meaningful way.

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WoD and Legion are the two biggest offenders.

WoD garrisons were such a massive parasite on the rest of the game that to this day it’s the only expansion Blizzard have ever cut short, which is a shame because the gameplay was good and the actual content was good. The first tier of WoD was an absolute banger, especially BRF and Hellfire Citadel would have been a beloved raid if the tier was like 5-6 months shorter.

Legion did great on nailing the class fantasy, especially for classes which often don’t get the spotlight lore-wise. But it was weighed down heavily by systems like artifact power and legiondaries which continued to plague the game in one form or another up until Dragonflight when they largely nixed the system/borrowed power grind.

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This.

The leveling experience and zone questing were all phenomenal.

And then when you were done with that it just kinda… stopped.

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Legendaries and covenants soured my feel about classes in SL. I couldn’t play the way I wanted to.

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Same here, but I leveled an alt through it and didn’t have to worry about that and realized the story is actually pretty decent. Sad that the bad systems in that expansion ruined it.

Revendreth/Denathrius are so cool!

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I don’t think WoW has ever told a good expansion story, tbh. WoW is a fun setting to play in, but the front-and-center storytelling they use it for is just not good writing 99% of the time.

They sneak in some solid side quests sometimes, but the plot-moving stuff? Nah.

MoP was the closest thing to being good IMO, but even then it was less the actual plot and more the general worldbuilding they did to make Pandaren and Pandaria feel like a real place. The Sha were solid as a concept though.

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TWW really has nothing to do outside the story.

M+? PvP? Raiding? Same as they ever were. (New BG is fun, but doesn’t address core problems with PvP like balance. Raid and M+ has problems of their own.)

Delves? Okay, but single-player dungeons in an MMO? Not exactly why people play WoW to begin with.

Also, Delves are redundant because they help you get M+/Raid quality gear, but are useless anyway because people want achievements/IO score/AoTC and delves won’t help with that.

Hero Talents are a nothing-burger. There, I’ve said it.

It’s just DF but feels worse in almost every aspect.

Delves didn’t even exist and yet DF was better in regards to all those other content pillars.

It just felt better to play.

If it doesn’t feel good, nothing else inherently matters.

Your character is the vehicle in which you experience everything.

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Wrath of the Lich King…

We only know that the Lich King has awoken on his Frozen Throne, raised Sindragosa who had been mortally wounded and hurled across Northrend into an icy tomb after Neltharion used the might of the Dragon Soul in an attempt to fully decimate the Blue dragonflight. He then started the Second Scourge invasion which spread a Zombie plague (LK pre-patch event) and alarmed both the Alliance and the Horde to head into Northrend to stop him.

During the adventure, we get glimpses of the Lich King throughout each zone, and in Dungeons, and work side by side with Arthas’ very own soldiers who were killed and raised to do his bidding. Darion Mograine, son of Alexandros and former member of the Argent Dawn, along with Thassarian, eventually broken their bonds with Arthas and giving us the Ebon Blade Death Knights who now inhabit the Alliance and Horde.

A crucial turning point in this war was the Angrathar the Wrathgate:

Bolvar Fordragon, the father to Taelia Fordragon, who we did not meet til BfA who was already in the custody of Cyrus Crestfall, a Kul Tiran harbormaster, took up the mantle after the dragon’s fire reversed the effects of the Forsaken’s fel blight courtesy of Alexstraza. This was one of the more emotional moments in Wrath. The next moment was more Horde focused as during the raid on Ice Crown, as High Overlord Varok Saurfang came face to face with the risen, undead version of his son Dranosh Saurfang who fell at the Wrathgate. In the Horde version, it is simply a touching moment as he recovers the body after we defeat him. In the Alliance Version, Varian puts himself in a grieving father’s shoes.

The Horde version:

The Alliance version:

But the most intense moment is after defeating the Lich King, Arthas finally comes out of his darkness just in time to see his father, Terenas Menethil II, who comforts his son as he is dying, and gently closes his eyes so he can finally be at peace:

Meanwhile, Tirion contemplates putting on the Helm of Damnation, but is stopped by a burnt, and tortured Bolvar Fordragon who takes up the mantle so Tirion can continue his fight in leading the Argent Crusade. He even says, “Tell them only that the Lich King is dead, and that Bolvar Fordragon died with him.” making Tirion the only person to know Bolvar was still alive.

Varian died in Legion not even knowing his commander and paladin supreme of the Northrend Alliance forces was even still alive. Terenas said, there must always be a Lich King, and Bolvar knew he no longer had a place among the living. He would not reunite with Talia for almost 11 years in gameplay time.

So, when you say something like “I don’t think WoW has ever told a good expansion story”, this would be one of the few times I vehemently disagree with someone and have to assume you did not play it when it was current. This was one of the most intense, and cinematically breath-taking moments in WoW’s 20 year history, and anyone who disagrees should probably just add me to their ignore list, because they obviously have NO love for the lore.

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It’s funny how much cutscene tech has improved, yet the new writers can’t write a compelling story if it was to save their own lives.

Wrath is still considered the peak of WoW writing, largely because it was built off the RTS games.

Nothing in WoW has any sort of depth, it’s just shallow. And has been running on nostagia fumes for a while.

Legion was the last time any of it was decent, imo.

Folks think the story will be “deep” again- spoilers, it won’t lmao.

SL and DF were awful, and BfA before that.

TWW cutscene where Alleria shoots Xal’s trinket and says “I wasn’t aiming at you!” is the most cringe cutscene I’ve ever seen.

I cringe for the folks that thought that belonged in WoW.

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WoD when they initially thought “hey let’s do 1 expansion per year” obviously that idea fell through, but I think it cut development time from WoD and left so many areas unfinished like Shattrath City.

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You have to remember, the writing today is being done by the short hand, emoji only, TikTok scrolling group of youngsters. During Wrath, we had adults like Metzen and Street helping control how the story was told. Now, they are trying to manufacture Lore from thin air… and it’s easy to see cause none of us can breathe.

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The age demographic of the people you are talking about are not old enough to work at Blizzard lol. Maybe if you said like Gen Z, but are you talking about the actual teenagers on TikTok? TikTok is popular with the generation younger than Gen Z, who are now in like their late 20s to early 30s.

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At 50… millennials, Gen Y, Gen Z and “alpha” (A name that makes me laugh since I am an Alpha) are all youngsters. Greg Street and Chris Metzen are both Gen X like myself, and we know what it is to pour heart and soul into something. Not saying these kids “can’t” do it, but I am expressing how they are “not” doing it. Important distinction.

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I dunno I really don’t think your age or what year you were born has anything to do with being able to write a good story :dracthyr_shrug:

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Think of any Great movie in the past 50 years. Something that had meaning, that moved you, that told a story that had you glued to your seat. Now name ONE from the last 10 years.

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BfA.

I know, BfA is hated, and for very good reason… but BfA has some of the best pacing any self-contained expansion has ever had, in my honest opinion. It’s just that the pacing isn’t going to save a contrived, annoying-at-best plot.

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I wouldnt say story…but bfa was 100% ruined by its systems. The content itself was pretty great but it was strangled by its systems

SL to a lesser extent… sl had some good content but it still has the most broken ( in terms if the fights just not being complete or not working properly) raids of any expansion.

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Saltburn written and directed by Emerald Fennell who is also a millennial

That’s probably the most recent movie I’ve seen that I was thinking about for days and days after seeing it

I love old movies, but the people who wrote and directed those movies were young once, and the year they were born didn’t magically make them write and direct good movies.

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