Yay for self quotes:
The point, without being exhaustive of all the times it was done, was to set off emotion buttons; in other words, to “otherize” the opposing faction as monsters.
That was done some in the RTS’s, but they were not 2 years of developing story, offensively trying to “put the war in Warcraft”. Nor was it to the extremes done in BFA. (Darnassus/Undercity come to mind.)
While BFA was pushing those emotional buttons, creating Player conflict, it also was constantly pushing the Old Gods as “the real culprit”. Even if someone was getting into the Faction War, that was stolen from them by the story saying, functionally: “sucker!”
Both sides’ leadership, since the Events were all that seemed to matter, were subverted into plot devices that made constantly stupid mistakes. And were often devoid of their own Character history.
To quote myself:Really that was a let down from Legion: We won! The Burning Legion was defeated.
And then: LOL No! Old God make you fight!
And now, yet again: LOL No! Eternal One make you fight!
From: Did WoW botch their usual story formula in BFA? - #13 by Chaeor-azjolnerub
I complained back in Cata about their not telling the game story… in the game. It felt bad then, and I wasn’t even giving the story real focus because I was about raiding then.
Wrathgate just makes me mad though. It was NOT formed as Sylvanas doing it AT ALL. I’m saying that as someone who played it first-hand in the first patch of WotLK (and repeatedly on alts, on both sides, while Wrath was the current Xpac).
A.A. remade its meaning after the fact.
The timeline of the Wrathgate attack makes absolutely no sense with later claims, like A.A.'s.
I really wish they would just cop to “bad story data”, and say they’re sorry, and will try to do better. I know mistakes happen, but trying to pretend everything was actually-really-truly about the latest iteration is gross.
It comes across as a feeble, and bad, attempt at an entirely different genre of story.
Considering that they’re not keeping their own Lore clean right now, I don’t think adding even more people telling Lore is a good idea.