Does anyone have any faith the story can even be saved at this point?
The writing is so terrible. Its terrible to the point where even the next patch has me cringing in my chair. I am so tired of all the fan-fiction OCs who happened to be related to or directly responsible for far cooler characters/races/items in the lore. This expansion has just inserted itself in the worst possible ways and completely destroyed the feel of WoW for me. It’s gone from metal with occasional comedy to a non-stop cringe fest of cat-lady fan fiction. And I keep thinking “Oh god, its only going to get worse isn’t it? It isn’t like the current team will just wake up one day and be better writers.”
The damage isn’t even just the current expansion, with all the re-contextualizations and retcons it is flat-out retroactive damage that essentially destroys the whole franchise.
I realize we will see still good loot and good gameplay (or is even that optimistic?), but good holy moly is this a bumpy ride.
With the way most movies and media has gone in writing levels as a whole id say thr days of creative writing and compelling and deep characters with rich stories and backgrounds is a lost art that most no longer have the capabilities to create. But who knows…they may suprise us with a twist the old gods are alive and the gift got nzoth into the seplecur and Azeroth is corrupt beyond saving and we are all doomed to void.
I feel the exact same way, but it feels especially bad in WoW over these last couple of expansions. This expansion especially, though.
I don’t care about happy endings, easy answers, or a black and white story. In fact, these are the very things this expansion tried to give us and its terrible.
There are still some gems to find out there. The problem is there is so much saturation in the storytelling market. Everyone and their hamster try to be a writer now-a-days. Most aren’t very good.
It can be done with a new writing team, and by pulling a cheese-tastic bs move. Something along the lines of, “iT wAs AlL a DrEaM.”
They need to be begging, pleading and sending offers of contrition, to get Metzen to deign to come back. He can irl rp Mary-Stu Thrall all the live long day, imho, if that’s what it takes.
well, there’s an easy solution on how to save the story, by thend of bfa, n’zorth has put us in a magical slumber, so we dreamed of the events in shadowlands
During our sleep, N’zorth starts to establish the black empire, in order to fight againts the empire, Turalyion needs allies, find Yrel from a.u Draenor, let the zealots get in azeroth, all out war between 3 factions, black empire vs zealots vs azeroth forces, and we wake up in the middle of the conflict
I’m actually looking forward to it because the outcome is going to be good no matter what happens.
By the time 10.0 drops the M$ Acquisition will either be wrapping up or would have just wrapped up, so it’s a make it or break it release for the decision makers on the WoW development team. If it’s good, that means we can say that most of the issues were then probably the result of people like Kotick and Afrasiabi like they’ve conveniently said and then we can be more forgiving. If it’s terrible, then that gives M$ the necessary excuse to clean house and hire proven industry veterans to take over the franchise and pull it up from the muck it is currently mired in.
So win or lose, it’s a spectacular outcome for we the players.
I think 10.0 can be a clean slate for the new leadership and team. It appears that the entire current Sylvanas arc was the product of one individual I won’t name and with him gone the rush job of the Shadowlands story makes more sense. The team is trying to wrap things up and move on.
IMO, they should have used WoD as originally intended and gone the time traveling route instead of alternate universe but we’re beyond that now. If indeed the next expansion is Dragon themed maybe they could still do this to some extent with the Bronze Dragonflight.
They also have a really good opportunity, story wise, by finally opening up the factions to cross faction play. If I were the development team I would lean into this more, not less, and incorporate it directly into the story because having cross faction interaction on this scale could lead to incredible inter-faction story beats and conflict. Conflict that will be small scale and personal in nature while in the background something large scale could be building that we’re mostly blind too. The large scale conflict should take place over multiple expansions though, big picture.
Finally, I really want them to return to class oriented stories and stop referring to me as “Champion” or “Arch Druid” etc. I just want to be a cog in the wheel making a difference as small as it may be. I also want a story that we actually lose. Give us real tangible stakes, something that rocks the game in a major way.
Nah, I have no good outlook for 10.0.
Lore is wrecked and game play… eh maybe but with how much uninspired crap grinding we’ve been given I’m not expecting much.
