I doubt that having any kind of formal education on the subject matters at all. If it does than I think that the council idea already has problems because that in itself is going to narrow the kind of feedback that can be acquired from it.
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You need both though.
Average Joes express discontent with the story in their terms.
Academic interpret and tease out consistent themes of critique from various players in why theyâre unhappy.
e.g.
- The guy who is unhappy with humans because it feels too âdisneyâ
- The girl who is mad about sylvanas being villain batted and because Calia doesnât âfitâ
- The guy who feels trolls were underutilized in SL and Bwonsamdi being disrespected by the Winter Queen âfeelsâ bad
Theyâre all actually criticizing the same thing:
- Many contemporary racial developments are relying on forcing the Races/Leaders to fit into the narrative rather than respecting their original core fantasy which is why a given player cares about those races.
- The original core fantasy within WoW of each race has been severely under-utilized within the narrative construction, both in allegorical senses (e.g. the lack of Arthurian themes for Humans) and in material NPC senses (during the BOL, why were Void Elves so prominent in the Alliance military rather than Night Elf Highborne and Dalaran High Elf Mages? why were no Blood Elf Magisters to be seen? Why were the Forsaken refugees taken to Orgrimmar rather than Ghostlands?)
- There is a lack of narrative equity at the intersection of the plurality of races vs faction depictions.
You canât do ethnographic analysis without a base population to analyze lol
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Itâs like when the âClass Representativesâ were added in Orgrimmar/Stormwind in that little house/base
Originally, the Horde Paladins were Silver Hand themed and the Horde Priest was a random Light-worshipping Undead.
The players (rightly) came forward and said âthis is bad, it sucks, why are you doing thisâ. Hundreds and hundreds of posts expressing that base sentiment without explaining why on GD and the PTR.
Very few posts (including my own) typed out long, elaborate posts explaining why it feels bad.
But you need the En Masse Average Joe Outcry and the Fancy Academic Analysis Sociology Ipsum Lorem Essays TOGETHER to push an argument.
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There are races with core fantasies that contradict each other. âDrill Baby Drillâ Goblin core fantasies are always going to contradict âNature protecting Amazonianâ Night Elf core fantasies. âChivalric Romanceâ Human fantasies are always going to contradict âMetalhead Edgelordâ Undead fantasies.
Because of these contradictions, appealing to one fantasy is always going to be seen as being at the expense of another.
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Thatâs only true if you force them to interact instead of telling self contained stories and having the juxtaposition in the world simply serve as flavor and diversity.
I donât care about how the Night Elves feel about the Goblins.
I want to know how the Night Elves are dealing with Highborne reintegration.
I want to know what the current Cartel Mafia chain of command and succession drama looks like among the Trade Coalition.
I want to know how Talanji is planning on unifying the Trolls once more under her leadership and support.
I want to know how Dwarves are planning on confronting the looming succession problems once Moiraâs son is of age and the older generation dies.
Christ.
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I hate this idea. Racial segregation sucks and everyone is at their most interesting when theyâre interacting with one another.
A world in which every group exists inside their own plastic bubble sounds not just insanely boring but also incredibly unrealistic. Especially when you consider the fact that most races have some kind of shared history with one another.
This reeks of implicit âracial purityâ rhetoric where everyone needs to be âprotectedâ from the corrupting influence of other cultures, which I doubt was your intent.
Even the best reading of it makes the world sound like a theme park. Look, thereâs Elf Land! Thereâs Dwarf Land! Do we have time to go to Wacky Goblin Land? Will Zombie Land be too intense for me?
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The Original Medieval Land was refurbished into Zombie Land. They moved Medieval Land behind the parking lot and it consists entirely of a half-inflated bouncy castle and pictures of how awesome the original Medieval Land was
Weâve literally done Night Elf vs Goblin melodrama for ten years.
What new plot could they possibly add they havenât already done?
It is time to develop inward, develop each race internally beyond the rotting and eroded foundation they havenât touched in centuries.
Thrallâs kids should actually be almost adults by in-game Orc aging standards for the love of God lol
Moiraâs son should be in Dwarf Royal Academy or whatever.
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I actually agree, Iâd like to see racial stories developed more, but it needs to be done in the context of a world in which there are lots of races, because thatâs the reality of the world in question. Night Elf calculus is always going to be influenced by the presence of the Orcs and Humans. Human and Undead developments are always going to be influenced by each others presence. Troll development is always going to be influenced by their relationship with the younger races.
Isolating each racial narrative is not only incredibly boring but itâs not even plausible because no race is actually isolated.
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No it doesnât.
Orcs donât go past Southfury River. Night Elves donât move into Tauren lands.
Night Elves should just interact with Worgen more, build on that relationship, and deal with the internal Highborne stuff.
At most the newly reintegrated Highborne should be âreconnectingâ with Dalaranâs Kirin Tor and the High Elves therein.
It doesnât have to in a fixed borders situation, but even then, this is what I came up with (I did all the Human Kingdoms first in my AU rewrite retcon stuff)
It literally doesnât. The only races proximal to Troll territory in a reunification scenario are Goblins (Booty Bay re Gurubashi, Gadetzan re Farraki) and Blood Elves (re Amani).
Troll reunification project would just be the Zandalari NonTrolls (Vulpera, Sethrak, Tortollans), Goblins, and Blood Elves.
Isolating the factions from each other is absolutely necessary because the narrative has been stretched thin as is.
Thereâs nothing to build on. Itâs sand. Dust.
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I agree with you on this one.
I think a council would benefit from all different kinds of opinions. Even though I disagree with the story you want portrayed, you are as valid here as anyone else.
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I personally love when people like Baal are around, because even when Iâm upset/angry over a particular storyline/plot/or theme at least people like him are smart enough to know what Iâm getting at, even if I donât always know how to properly explain it.
Having people like him on a story council is only going to help in the long run. Long with the other way smarter people than me who post here 
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Spoken like a true councilmen 
Iâve been posting since wrath. Just because Iâm not obsessively posting every couple hours about a dead human kingdom does not invalidate my opinion lmao. It means I care about my sanity. Get off your high horse and touch grass
Good point. I think writing actual stories portrayed writing skills better than being a critic of one, but I suppose the possibility is still there. Although, if those people are in charge now⌠then maybe itâs not a good idea to hire from that pool again?
Discussing story flaws â writing a good story
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I donât consider myself a Good Writer.
Iâve been told otherwise. Had a professor in undergrad who was a small time author, biographer, and journalist who insisted I was a good writer, and I admit Iâve never pushed my short stories in a visible platform, but dunno donât think Iâm a good writer.
But I never criticize without analyzing what possible solutions there are and the meta effects of those solutions (aka theorizing on both popular effects of the story paths or their narrative consequence down the road).
I also do the same with praise. I explain why I personally liked Rouxâs characterization of the Horde over Goldenâs, and theorize which parts of my preference can be extrapolated more generally (eg probably the way Roux allows the Trolls to be a profound and complex culture, or the political melodrama inherent to the Hordeâs infrastructure, similar to why the Voljin novel by Stackpole is so well loved by Horde mains).
But ultimately this Council Forum is prolly NOT going to ask for short story submissions like they did ten years ago.
Which sucks kinda. Maybe.
So all we can do is provide feedback and explain why and try to interpret the Popular Sentiment like an unpaid oracle.
But as far as Class Fantasy goes, thatâs easier. All you need is creativity and familiarity with the in-game lore of each class and their IRL basis for possible additional inspiration.
Eg my âwarlock stablesâ thread on GD
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I submitted. Hopefully Blizzard sees the problem alliance bias brings and ruins the story with.
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It doesnât invalidate your opinion, it just makes you look bad when you Kramer into the forum to complain about the idea of Blizzard listening to people you disagree with when you yourself contribute less than the people youâre attacking.
Erevien has contributed more and heâs a forum cryptid from Germany who keeps getting banned.
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Even then that is subject to change. I mean look at TBC. All the marketing etc was around Illidan but it ended up being Kilâjaeden who was the final boss and the main overall villain. It also made more sense for the Legion to be the villains of an expansion called, âThe Burning Crusadeâ then Illidan. Blizzard would later repeat this for WoD, Legion and maybe even BFA. Due to their whole â1 year expansionâ experiment failing on the first try.
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I think that what would be most useful to Blizzard from this is less the community pitching specific story ideas and more that itâs an opportunity for Blizzard to better gauge the emotional reaction of their audience to various plot events.
I think that one problem with the writing is that the writers donât have a way to properly track the sentiment of their audience in ways that arenât obsessive weirdoes like us yelling at them on the forums and on twitter. As such it can be easy for them to simply miss or be unaware of where their audiences mood is at any given moment, which is critical because being an effective writer is ultimately about manipulating, or at the very least emotionally influencing, the audience.
I also think that it might be a good opportunity to make the gameplay devs and the bean-counters at Blizzard aware of the fact that a good story can be just as effective for the game as strong gameplay systems. If the story is good, people will pay attention and want to play your game.
I think that the current pipeline where the gameplay devs say âwe want 3 raid tiers and 5 new zones, write a story around thatâ is too one sided. The pipeline should work both ways, and writers should have the opportunities to say to the rest of the devs âthereâs a story weâd really like to tell, can you design some raids and systems around it?â
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You came in here with your first post accusing a poster of being as bad as another, then you try to invalidate his opinions while telling him to stop invalidating yours. Throwing these kinds of accusations at people is not conductive to what the thread is about. Stop being toxic.
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Who judges how much people contribute to the forums? You? Lmao
Again, get off your high horse.
Iâm not trying to be a councilmen, he is. He disagrees with the fundamental idea of being a councilmen⌠then applied to be a councilmen. Thatâs like hating the law then becoming a cop. Do you expect anything good to come of that? And iâm the toxic one for taking issue with that?
This is a man that hates human characters becoming forsaken, but wants to bring a dead human kingdom back to life. Yea, heâs just like Erevien and iâd be scared if he even partially influenced where the story went.
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