This thread is prompted by the interview that Katherine Bankson , Deputy Lead Quest Designer, and Anne Stickney , Lead Narrative Designer of WoW did with the French gaming website Millenium.
Now this interview has a lot of questionable answers, but there is one in particularly that annoyed me.
The question was:
If you discovered what turned out to be a narrative error after the fact, how would you go about fixing it?
The answer:
Katherine Bankson: " When we see this type of inconsistent element, we always wonder if it’s a narrative error or an unreliable narrator. Many stories in WoW were written by the Titans or from the perspective of the Titans or those who have only heard one sound of the bell. Recently and as we evolve the world of Warcraft we discover different points of view which contrast with what we’ve always been told. Is this an opportunity to show the world from a different perspective, or is it a pure contradiction preventing us from doing anything with it altogether? So we evaluate based on of this and seek the most suitable solution. These different perspectives sometimes allow us to create a more vibrant, more interesting world.
WoW is a living world, it is not static. Therefore, certain elements may sometimes have been perceived as errors and we try to transform them into opportunities in order to create something coherent. "
Anne Stickney: " As a Narrative Designer, I’m regularly in touch with my colleagues in quest design who pitch me their ideas. Sometimes they pitch me great things but there’s an element of the game’s story that contradicts what they are proposing. So I explain to them that we will have to get around this problem which often turns out not even to be that huge… How? Already, I don’t see the “narrative errors” like real mistakes. Like Kathy said when talking about the different perspectives, who was the narrator for example? Where did that piece of the story come from that you think is a mistake? Is that something we can work around or incorporate into the story, or is it really weird? And if it’s so weird, do we really want to highlight that weirdness?
There are lots of ways to look at what you consider to be “mistakes” without necessarily seeing them as such. It’s often more about opportunities to be seized than mistakes !”
And this the problem right here, if you don’t own up to your mistakes, and just say “Ah, but the NPC who told you this, was wrong!” It means your player base is not going to take your story serious anymore.
Imagine if a Lord of the Rings movie came out and the writers basically said “Ah wait no, see… Galandriel, who told you all of this, actually had it wrong, so this is how it happens”. It will make the majority of people who follow the story literally nope out.
How can we speculate, discuss and get involved on stories, based on what we’ve read, seen and heard if there is this possibility it was the wrong information?
Instead you could just say “We’re sorry, the story of Warcraft is x years old, we forgot about some parts, and we’ll fix it” would go along way to earn back the respect for Warcrafts story.
Please, keep consistancies in your story, don’t over use the “rule of cool” and keep true to the awesome story of Warcraft that we know and love. No more Bollywood plottwists.
Also, WoW is the most static unliving world I have ever been in, many zones are left to rot and be untouched. The world does not reflect change. Sentinel Hill in Westfall, is under contruction since the start of Cataclysm, for example 