In my freshman year of college I took a philosophy course, and the first reading in it was JL Mackie’s Evil and Omnipotence, which discusses what is, in Mackie’s view, a contradiction between the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god and the existence of evil. I am not here to discuss the meat of that essay, but one of the things that I remember the most about it is that Mackie organizes counterarguments into “Adequate Solutions” and “Fallacious Solutions” in a way that is at the same time presumptuous in my view, and useful to the reader in that they explain why popular answers to this question rest on logical errors.
Consider this my “Fallacious Solutions” section - because in my experience in discussing matters on the story forum, I have run into an increasing number of bad answers to story issues that I think would be useful to keep in one place. So here we go.
Is/Ought Fallacies
When discussing dissatisfaction with story developments, or suggestions for new developments, we are frequently adopting a “normative” frame. That is, we are discussing how things should have been or how we think they should be in the future. Such an argument is distinct, and unconnected to an argument about how things are, unless accompanied by an explanation for why the status quo is desirable.
Appeal to consistency with lore
Consistency itself is a quality of a good story, but it is not itself the end of the argument. A story development can be set up, consistent, or foreshadowed while still being unsatisfying. Replying therefore to a criticism of the story merely by stating that it has been properly set up, unless the criticism itself is that it hasn’t been, is not appropriate.
Appeal to consistency with future events
An event being critiqued may be something that a defender views as something that needed to happen in order to set up a future development, or to achieve a certain result. This presumes firstly that the result is itself desirable, and if this is the intent, such an explanation is required (and may not simply be assumed). Secondly, it presumes that the route chosen to get to this result was the correct one without explaining why this is the case.
Word of God
Similar to the consistency arguments, the Word of God appeal attempts to address a criticism by referencing a developer statement or by calling to something that the developer is prioritizing. (example: Blizzard wants to say that pacifism is evil, therefore they are pursuing this story arc) Such a statement doesn’t address why the developer’s statement or intention makes for a satisfying story. (Appeals to themes also fall into this category)
“Why would the writers do that?”
Again, similar to the previous error - this argument defends a critique of a story element by asking the critic to explain why, if the development was so bad, that the writer would let it go through if they were indeed trying to write a good story, trying to make a successful game, or trying to make money, etc., with the unstated argument that the development is good because of these objectives. It does not consider the possibility that the writer is simply bad at achieving said objectives.
Whataboutism
A common retort to bringing up problems in one arena is a retort that the same problem is happening in another. Unless accompanied by an explanation that the problem is not a problem because it was narratively satisfying in that arena, this is merely a statement that the problem is more pervasive than previously stated, not that the problem isn’t a problem.
Appeal to writer autonomy.
For example: “It’s not your story, it’s the writers”. This first of all is wrong. The story belongs to the shareholders, who hire management, who in turn hire the writers. The writers themselves do not own what they write. Second, even if it were correct, it would not turn a bad story into a good story. Third, even if it were correct, it inappropriately assumes that consumers are not themselves stakeholders in the product being discussed. Fourth, it presumes that writer independence is itself a virtue, and that audience feedback should not be listened to - which does not engage with the criticism itself, and is not itself a provable axiom.
Statute of Loremitations
This reply holds that because a given element has been in the game for a long period of time, criticism may no longer be received about it, even if that element is still causing problems in the present day with more recent lore. This rebuttal often surfaces in reply to venerated issues that still attract discussion years after their introduction precisely because they are continuing to cause damage.
Often, this argument is actually the evolved form of the “Wait and See” rebuttal, as described previously, reaching this point in its evolution after the arguer has determined that the postponement of the criticism can no longer be seen as reasonable.
Headcanon and Speculation
Speculation is fun, but it doesn’t make the story better or worse - whether that is about what the story was, what the story is, or what the story might be in the future. Normally, answers of this sort try to improve the work by connecting dots that the writers didn’t connect themselves, or writing entirely new stories that are substituted for the one that exists.
“It’s in their nature”
When an event isn’t explained (that is: not stated to have happened), or is left ambiguous (known to have happened, but not known to have happened in a particular way) - the person advancing this argument will attempt to correct the gap by appealing to the motivations and expected actions of a given character or characters rather than by making reference to more concrete evidence of their acts.
Appeal to Literary Tropes
This is when someone attempts to either correct a gap in storytelling or fix a bad story development with the assertions that the fulfillment of sound literary tropes dictates that a given outcome must have occurred, either with no evidence to state such, or, as a statement that something will happen in the future. Chekov’s gun, for instance, is a well-known literary trope that holds that if you place a loaded gun on stage, eventually, a character must fire it. Writers however may choose not to fire the gun, even if they have explicitly stated that they would.
Texas Foreshadowing
Like the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, this method of addressing a criticism about a story beat is to claim that it was foreshadowed by a dozen or so “blink-and-you-miss it” moments and factoids strewn about the franchise, cobbled together into a narrative that this event or that was well telegraphed, often in ignorance of contradicting information. In addition to the tenuous nature of these connections, this reply often uses obscure information that most of the audience isn’t aware of, including invented or extrapolated information - which general audiences cannot be expected to know, which in turn impacts the underlying storytelling. The other matter it shares is related to appeals to consistency - that consistent lore is not always satisfying lore.
NPC Prophecy
This error presupposes that NPC statements, thoughts, internal monologues, and forward-looking statements are completely accurate, and ignores the fallibility of these characters, especially where they are making broad, sweeping statements about the world that require them to have information that they may not have. This error either is used as supporting documentation for a fact whose existence might defend a particular story beat, or as an indication that a certain event will happen in the future which will make the criticized story less-bad.
“Wait and See”
Because this is an MMO, the story is never “over”. New developments might repair or contextualize the damage from old ones. The “Wait and See” argument hence seeks to deflect criticism on what exists or what is being advertised on the basis that the story isn’t “done” yet. If this criticism is constrained to a timeframe and that timeframe passes, it may then shift to a statement that some, typically undefined element of its kind may still take place weeks, months, or years after the event being criticized is being discussed. This approach allows for the critique to be indefinitely postponed, despite that the storytelling is happening in the moment, and audiences are forming impressions based on what exists now, not what may exist in the distant future.
“Wait and See” can also evolve into a successor form, the “Statute of Loremitations”, as described previously.
Appeal to Themes
This is something of a departure from the previous “bridging errors” discussed in this section, but this is here because of a presupposition that the writers are going for a certain theme, and the desire to justify story events on this basis. That the story may have a theme, a message, or an idea does not mean that the narrative choices or storytelling devices that are being addressed were the appropriate ones to deliver that theme, message, or idea - and stories should be judged ultimately on how well they convey the ideas and emotions that they wanted to the audience, and from there, whether the audience was satisfied with what was conveyed.
Not Understanding the Medium
WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, which means that there are certain ways in which it can and can’t tell stories and expect them to effective. Just as there are storytelling devices that work in books but don’t work in movies, there are storytelling devices that work in movies but don’t work in video games, or devices that work in the real-time-strategy genre, but don’t work in the MMORPG genre. Errors of this kind either ignore those distinctions, or, going the other way, use game elements to dismiss criticism.
Playerbase Compartmentalization
Also may be identified with “no one cares about lore” - this approach explicitly or implicitly puts players into boxes where they are said to primarily care about one aspect of the game or another, with lore and storytelling being separate elements, rather than a more sticky factor that impacts players generally in one way or another. The criticism presupposes that because most players do not heavily invest into knowing the precise details of the lore that they don’t care at all. In reality, most players are between these two extremes, and tend to like (and form impressions on) more than one aspect of a given video game.
Text Supremacy
On the other side of the coin from the previous error is the presupposition that general audiences are aware of arcane lore details to the extent that the knowledge of such should override the impressions left in more accessible ways of accessing the franchise, especially with respect to visual or interactive information delivered in an overwhelmingly visual and interactive medium. A statement that a fact is stated is not the same as a statement that the fact has been satisfactorily conveyed in the storytelling itself - and story critique does not end with an analysis of the text.
Gameplay is from Mars, Story is from Venus
This error presents Gameplay and Story as mutually opposing competing elements that must struggle against each other for relevance, resources, and developer attention. “The story isn’t good because gameplay is the priority”. However, gameplay alone is oftentimes not enough to carry a modern AAA title, and requires story to make that gameplay memorable, to support the marketing, and to act as a “sticky” factor that may keep players playing despite flaws in the game systems. At the same time, the game systems themselves are vehicles for telling the story, and both elements are at their best when they are working with each other. These elements are mutually supporting, not mutually exclusive.
Undefined resource constraints
I’m not listing this to say that games don’t need to worry about budgets, they do - but this argument is here because resource arguments are often tossed out - without evidence - to cover for bad storytelling. A resource argument requires certain information to land, such as an analysis of alternatives, and an argument that the path selected presents the best return on investment for the resources either used in the critiqued story element, or, in alternative story elements that would have to be given up to make a proposed fix take place. Arguments where attempts at such analyses are not present are not sufficient answers to story concerns.
Inflated resource requirements
Alternatives often surface when discussing critiques, and an insufficient reply to said alternatives is to construct from them (so that the argument can then be knocked down) a utopian solution that may involve an entire expansion’s worth of content when in reality, something so small as a questline could satisfy the elements of what is being singled out as a fix. This may also be applied to calls to write off entire classes of proposed fixes and alternatives on the basis that nothing will be good enough.
Gameplay Mechanic
This argument dismisses criticism around the story on the basis that the criticized element is a game mechanic and “isn’t real”. For this argument not to be an error, the arguer must establish how the item in question a) directly contradicts with established lore AND b) is something that absolutely had to be there in order to make the game work (that is - it’s not simply a case of a new writer overwriting the work of an old one - it was demonstrably unavoidable). The character’s UI is an example of a valid Gameplay Mechanic argument. A quest that retcons previous lore that exists to promote pet battles is not.
Misplaced Focus
In an MMORPG, regardless of the writer’s intent, the protagonist is the player character, who, due to the nature of that genre is given choices that define their character and set the tone for their individual story. This is a setup that favors emergent storytelling and ultimately requires that developments be meaningful and satisfying for the player character - a concept that varies in its definition. Defending a story on the basis that this aspect of MMORPG lore does not need to be respected, in favor of narrative structures that are more suited for other media - such as a movie or a single player game - is hence itself an error.
Isolating Tactics
“Ad Hominem” is itself a broad concept, and a well-known dirty debate tactic designed to distract from an argument by shifting the argument to being about the speaker themselves. While tactics (typically not errors) described here certainly fall under the Ad Hominem fallacy, I wanted to be more specific with respect to story criticism.
Failure to apply sampling - the “Vocal Minority”
An introductory marketing class can tell you that most people do not respond to customer surveys. Most people don’t leave feedback. Most people don’t say anything at all before they choose to not come back to a store, and that those that do should be listened to because they present a sample of sentiments that may be present throughout the consumer base (within reason). This argument ignores this in favor of holding out that whatever community they are engaging with is the only group of people in the world who hold the opinions that they do - an assertion that often ignores parallel communities on other social media platforms and forums, as well as the proportion of the silent majority whose concerns the critic is raising.
“You’re taking things too seriously.”
The manifest purpose of fiction is to make the audience develop investment and to feel emotions about things and people that they know aren’t real. How a story does or doesn’t do that effectively is the basis upon which such a thing may be criticized. Nevertheless, a kind of last-resort argument to a criticism is to attack that manifest purpose, and question why a person should feel anything at all about “what a collection of pixels do on a screen”. This claim itself ignores the criticism entirely in favor of isolating and ostracizing the person making the criticism.
Are there valid forms to this? Yes, but probably not when they’re coming from an internet forum and motivated by a desire to win an argument. Friends, family, and actual professionals are in a position to make this determination - not opponents in an online forum debate.
Loyalty Tests and Gatekeeping
WoW is made up of multiple, overlapping stakeholder groups - most often represented on the Story Forums as racial or factional groups, that carry all of the characteristics of factions and frequently advocate for their side. From that springs a tendency to dismiss ideas if they do not come from one’s “tribe”. This does not encompass instances of a person explaining, through their experience as a member of a group, why a suggestion doesn’t work for actual fans of the concept. But it does encompass flat dismissals of points on the mere basis of one’s investment primarily being in another area.
False claims to investment
Related to the above, claims of this sort are more subtle, but involve a person holding themselves out as a fan of a particular concept when their investment is tenuous at best, specifically in order to undermine a criticism about the handling of that concept coming from fans of it with a much stronger investment. While stakeholder groups are not perfectly divisible, and while stakeholders of other groups may still advance valid suggestions for other groups - when there are two or more opposing stakeholder groups on opposing sides of an issue, this tactic can emerge as a form of concern trolling.