I’m not entirely sure Blizzard understands what morally gray means. They kept on using the term, but so far BFA is nothing but black and white.
As my interest in the game really came to an halt after the butchered writing, I gave other games a go. And I came across a game that most of you might have heard about or played it, its called Thronebreaker.
I’m not sure how far into the game I am right now, but every decision you take in the game is morally gray, there is no right or wrong, each decision has its consequences, and each decision has a good moral and bad aspect to it.
I know that Thronebreaker is not an MMO, it’s a single player game. But WoW has turned into a single player hack’n’slash for a few expansions now. Maybe Blizzard writers need to invest their time off their ‘quality’ writing and see what the real talent is doing, and get inspired.
TL:DR; if you like games for their story, and you want a morally gray game. Give Thronebreaker a go. You won’t be disappointed.
You have to understand how blizzard sees morally gray.
Lets say I go burn down a orphanage. You in your basic understanding of the world would see that as a simply evil act that fits into a black and white world.
The big brains of blizzard’s writing team though? They understand one of those orphans might of grown up to be the next hitler making what I did good.
I am not sure if it’s a writers telling them its “morally gray” or if its the development team dont have a clue what morally gray is and they think its a good talking point…
My guess its a little of both and they have no freaking clue what morally gray means…
I’m guessing that they simply don’t know what it means.
Just for the improbable off chance that someone from Blizzard might read this… let me give you an example of something that is actually morally grey.
It is brought to the attention of the ruler of a local country that is being ravaged by a plague that a doctor has taken to experimenting on urchins that have been forced into the streets by the deaths of their parents. Most of them are sick and would die anyway, but the doctor is subjecting them to painful experiments in his search for a cure.
He is believed to be close to uncovering the cure to this plague–which would save the kingdom. However, he has commited undeniably monstrous acts by vivisecting sick children and subjecting them to other cruel experiments–illegally so I might add.
So does the ruler let him continue in hopes that it’ll be for the greater good, does the ruler follow the letter of the law and have him imprisoned/executed, or do they search for some sort of middle ground?
Before anything, this is an extremely common misconception brought up with BfA, the only quote that had ‘grey’ in it is this one from Ion in a dev interview:
Throw in the word ‘morally’ and yeet it on Sylvanas, bam, you made a way to unfairly attack the story
There’s plenty of fair ways, like, “Why is Sylvanas cartoonishly evil for seemingly no reason” “Why are the Elves not raising more of a fuss for the lack of help in Darkshore” “Why does Anduin suck so bad when his father was extremely powerful and awesome”
Morally grey might just be hard to write when you have two factions that over the years you have pushed towards peace as a result of yearly big baddies to fight. The only way to really justify an act of war has to result from something big.
There might be a way around this problem but it would require some really nuanced writing and a lot of plot setting up that MMOs are not known for, especially WoW. I think the amount of plot detail you would need to lay the ground work for that would never fit into their designs.
Your name, OP … to me indicates you just might take this a litttttle too seriously. Could just be me though.
Regarding what you’re saying though … maybe, but maybe not. A lot of people on the Horde side are pretty torn about who to follow and therefore it indicates a gray area as both sides feel the other is wrong, when in the end … who is really to say?
When Blizz start talking about story twists and using buzz words like “morally gray,” I’m reminded of that scene in Anchorman where Brick just points at random office objects and says he loves them.
You guys don’t know what they mean. They said the Horde is morally grey. The horde is. Sylvanas is not. They never claimed sylvanas to be morally gray.
Modern Orcs, Tauren, Blood Elves, Highmoutain, etc are all leaning on the good or honorful side of the horde.
Forsaken, Goblins, etc are not. Therefore when you have evil and good on a faction it becomes grey. It’s not a hard concept.
Oh, trust me, Blizz know exactly what morally grey is, they just choose to play dumb.
BFA writing has nothing but shock value to keep itself going.
“Sylvie burned a tree and killed civillians? She ain’t evil guys, just wait and see how gray she is”
“She just started another war? Wait guys, she does all that for the Horde, you gonna see how gray she is.”
“She decided to raise Derek and turn him into the the thing she always said she hated the most? Guys, it was a gray action, you will see”
“Oh no, Sylvie betrayed the horde and proclamed to serve only death, a clearly evil thing? Wait guys she still has a gray plan somewhere”
“You guys killed her because she was a crazed evil villain and are now upset because she was never morally grey? Lolguys we lied and totally got you hooked on the story amirite? c:”
Blizzard writers are not really dumb, they are just bad writers.
But I take the point that Blizz never really said that it was going to be.
More importantly, IMO, Blizz focussed too much on the NPCs. As such, it was an okay story, though I never really understood Sylvanas’s motivations. But it was a story for a book or TV show or movie. It wasn’t a story that was well-suited for an MMORPG.
Going forward, the stories need to focus more on the players, with the NPCs giving us motivation and advice and lore (and quests), but not being the central characters of the xpac.
Well, pretty sure that the term “morally gray” never even existed in the first place, because there’s no quote for it and this is what was actually said in the interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUik9-2ygS8
At 59:40, Ian says, “Azeroth is a world of grey; it’s never been a world of black and white.”
sorry but burning down an orphanage is still black and white. Even if there was another Hitler in the mix.
1 you make the others suffer for the actions of one.
2 the targeted orphan has not done the actions yet.
3 by burning down the orphanage you are creating the very Hitler you are trying to stop.
Also, people just aren’t smart/wise enough to be able to see that such an outcome was likely. As my favourite wizard once said, “Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Each faction has many races, each race’s own interests and decisions should render them gray. But instead we get all the races to act like the same, everyone’s goals are so perfectly aligned which makes the entire gameplay/story bland.
Races in the game are just looks at this point. They talked about faction pride (which they failed miserably) while they can’t even make a race relevant. The only race that is relevant is the Human race, and Thrall, which they made him look as human as possible.
In a world where everyone’s goals is aligned so perfectly, you can’t have any gray. And thus, as you said the Plot detail shortage.
