it is a result of Blizard’s rule #1
The story has been treated as the skin that covers the gameplay, rather than the skeleton upon which to build.
15 Likes
“Gameplay First!” LOL
2 Likes
Time changed…
Because something was accurate 17 years ago means not we are in the same time now, now the people have much higher standart and if blizzard continue to deny this, they will lost more and more people, otherwise, they can´t be trusted anymore to write a good story…or even a reason one…
Most people don’t leave because of the story. It’s content drought that causes people to leave and come back every content patch/new expansion
8 Likes
Blizzard is almost comically old school in basically every way. This makes them very slow to react to changes in the landscape, and the landscape has been radically shifting the past decade or so. A lot of things which people were willing to awkwardly side eye are not being tolerated anymore. On top of that Blizzard has viable competition now in FFXIV and have to actually innovate to keep pace. That has never happened before, to the point “WoW Killer” became a meme.
1 Like
I think a great idea for something on Netflix would be a “series” like Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch. Have it be about the bronze dragonflight trying to fix a problem in the timeways, with the viewer picking options that give different outcomes, that way it doesn’t have to be canon.
Again, I don’t mind a bit of “gameplay first.” All I ask is for the story to be consistent with itself, to reinforce the fantasies we all bought into, and not to actively make us feel bad for things our characters do or don’t do. Or for things the leaders of our characters’ factions do or don’t do. It seems like that should be a low bar to clear. If they could just get those things right, you’d see a lot fewer serious complaints in this forum, I believe.
6 Likes
I also feel using the books to tell important expansion linking stories is the wrong approach. The novels are secondary media for a reason. The game is where most of the story should be. Leaving important events that set up the next expansion in a piece of secondary media will always put me off. And it really started with the Shattering in Cata. Like the only thing from there that was in the game was Thrall naming Garrosh the new Warchief. Moira and the Dark Irons taking over Ironforge by force? Novel only. Cairne dying to Magetha via Garrosh’s ignorance? Novel only.
I miss when the novels told side stories. Like you didn’t need to read Night of the Dragon to understand the Twilight Dragonflight’s appearances in Wrath and later Cata. But you do kinda need to read the Shattering or summaries of it to understand important changes that came with Cata. The Traveler series is a step in the right direction. Telling side stories that make the world feel big and lived in. Using original characters as the main cast, leaving existing characters as either cameos or simple name drops. I also don’t like how certain authors think the in game scale of Azeroth is the actual scale. Like it took Arthas a month to go from Lordaeron to Northrend in WC3: RoC but it takes a few days to go from Darkshore to silithus and back?
You can write a somewhat engaging and true to character story even if it comes second to the gameplay. Sonic Heroes is an example of that. There isn’t much to the story as the gameplay came first. Unlike the Adventure games that preceded it. But the story is still somewhat engaging. Particularly the way Metal Sonic is written. As he turns against Eggman since he believes the Doctor was always holding him back. Which is why I hope they adapt sonic heroes if the movie series succeeds. Movie Sonic 2 looks like it is adapting Sonic 3 & Knuckles so there is hope. Simply because of a line Eggman says in the first movie about how he prefers machines because they “do as they are told” and “follow their programming”. What happens when one of your machines feels that YOU are holding them back from completing the task they were programmed to do?
Back to the matter at hand. It honestly feels like Blizzard is using that as an excuse to wave away any criticism they get when it comes to the story. It also doesn’t help that the gameplay has been medicore at best in recent years. The player base keeps saying no more borrowed power systems… only to get more complex and boring borrowed power systems.
7 Likes
Someone on the Community Council apparently thinks there are too many Black humans in Stormwind. They posted that on the unofficial discord someone made, and the comment got 4 upvotes. It’s on Twitter, and I could link it, but that might get me a ban. This program is a failure.
10 Likes
If Blizzard expects us to take the council seriously, then they better take concerns over council members seriously. If they ban me over it, so be it.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGq5YjBXsAo2UsP?format=png&name=900x900
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGvkOtiWYAwseMm?format=jpg&name=small
22 Likes
Thanks for that. I think my concern about getting banned were irrational, now that I gave it some thought. I may be brave enough to make a thread about this.
2 Likes
The program is an absolute joke in the first place.
They had so SO SO much feedback about literally EVERYTHING, and now they pretend that they don’t have enough feedback so they reduced the number of total people that are eligible to give feedback to 100 (?) and don’t even allow people outside of the council to dislike their posts/comments.
100 people that are cherry picked by Blizzard are allowed to give feedback and others only have the chance to 1) ignore it or to 2) like it.
15 Likes
Someone said the dungeon journal of the last few bosses should be locked to make the World First Race more exciting. I think that could be bad for the casual player who likes story. They don’t represent most us, I think.
2 Likes
At this point nothing should be “exciting” anymore, because the less player input, the worse Blizzard makes their game.
We’ve seen this perfectly in the last 2 expansions where they just decided to ignore all feedback.
3 Likes
Okay, so there’s other vile things in that Twitter thread that I can’t say here. There’s a General Discussion thread about this issue now.
5 Likes
does he suck because he disagrees with you? isnt that the definition of diversity?
If they want to do something with the journal I suggest fixing it first and completing the missing raid entries from Wrath to Vanilla.
2 Likes
Correction, it seems the dude wasn’t on the Council, but the real issue was the moderator, who is on it, excusing the comment by implying he might have had a valid point about worldviews being pushed in the game.
Also, that discord is apparently shut down now.
1 Like
You would think Blizzard would have given whoever they picked as part of this council some sort of code of conduct guide or something.
4 Likes
this entire thing don´t happened inside the wow forum, so the code of conduct didn´t work there.