New players need to understand the story to get invested

Community General Discussion
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I wanted to share some thoughts with the community here.

TLDR: Story is not maintained for past expansions. New players (Who are interested) have no clue how to get invested into your current stories and expansions.

I am not a poster (unless a random question here and there recently), more of a lurker…I know that is not really respected here but I genuinely hope I do not come off like a troll of any kind. I’m just expressing an opinion and I think it could really help Warcraft in general.

I’m really concerned about a certain aspect of World of Warcraft.

The Story. The history. The Characters. The Quests. The World.

We have what over 30 years of Warcraft history and lore?

Why is this not being maintained in an understandable narrative in this game? Every single person I have attempted to get into this MMORPG (who do not just want to do some BGs and Arena) has left because Blizzard fails to lay out a understandable story for Warcraft. Unless you are a a long-time fan playing since firends and family alpha (lol sorry) you have absolutely NO idea what is going on story wise.

This is killing the game, and it’s turning new blood off. I’ve seen it.

How can Blizzard fix this?

There has been discussions constantly on the forums of massive campaign overhauls to explain the story, new quests, new scenerios, etc… I could go on. I’ve seen it brought up time and time again here and even privately in guild discords with new friends trying it out, or a random family member. It’s important to your RPG franchise blizzard and longevity in this game. People want to get invested. Or maybe not? (Wanna rush to end game? Let them be with their friends. Not a problem.)

Some of the ideas expressed here are fantastic why isn’t Blizzard doing something about it? Are they so far gone into the e-sports (I’m trying not to be negative towards other players and interests… Sorry) Mythic + grind fest etc to realize they made a online massively multiplayer role playing game? (the most succesful in the world, at that)

Not only that. But I see the way they treat past expansions as so disrespectful to the artists, the composers, the storytellers, the developers, the testers…everything. They just throw it all away, every expansion. Never to really get an update again…outside of a half-baked chromie time pos system that was generally misunderstood. ( story for a different day :roll_eyes:)

No story updates on old raids or quest lines at all. Just forgotten.

Is it too late to fix this? Can Blizzard find a way to fix this?

I genuinely want to hear peoples thought’s on this. I want to know what you have told friends you’ve recruited coming into (I have to do that embarrassing go to this Nobel youtube channel to understand I love him btw no hate. I listen every update myself) but c’mon.

Blizzard, please lay out a massive story overhaul for every expansion to explain “the story so far” make it worthy to the Warcraft name, the game us as loyal players for years has loved, you have loved. because we need new players. I LOVE new players, I love answeing easy questions in guide chat… making people genuinely happy to understand your game. This is becoming less and less. Your story makes no sense, Your past expansions in retail are left for dust and ruin.

Why are you doing this to the people that work for you and develop your World…let alone your fans.

Lets pick of the pieces for the future.

Thank you for reading, if you did. I would love this to be a respectful open discussion between everyone.

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It definitely needs addressing in some way. I’m hoping MoP Remix can be something of a model for how to do timewalking going forward. A speedrun through an entire expansion’s story, raids and all. They need something like that for every expansion, and they should be accessible for every character at any time.

Any new player to WoW knows that there is a lot of story to catch up on. That’s a given for anyone coming into it this late. And while they shouldn’t need to do it all in order, it should all still be available to them in a coherent way for whenever they feel like tackling it.

It would also just be super neat for any veterans wanting to replay an old chapter of the story and have it still feel like a proper game.

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This upset me a lot when Cataclysm replaced all the old story content. I expected them to modernize the structure and flesh out the lore, but instead it all got ripped out and replaced with filler. Always bugged me. It’s easy to think that as you are leveling up through zones you’re also progressing through time.

Huge missed opportunity back in the day.

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The big thing about this tho, it’s almost never new people complaining about it. I know a tonnnn that joined purely for m+ and progressive content, that don’t care about the story. There’s also a lot that joined for the rp aspect, and they mostly get a quick overview and then adapt their characters from other games. I genuinely believe the overall story isn’t maintained from the past because the masses just don’t care.

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I’m not entirely sure.

It wouldn’t be easy. WoW has always been and more then likely always will be a combat first game, Blizzard could never mimic the long segments of cutscenes between gameplay like other MMOs can. For example being FFXIV.

And due to WoW’s age, the more time passes that a good system isn’t figured out the bigger the burden becomes. We’re talking 2 decades worth of story telling that any new player is gonna look at and be completely overwhelmed.

No matter what the system is, it also can’t be mandatory. Cause if a new player is pushing to give WoW a try and learns that they need to go through 9+ other expansions before even scratching the surface of what’s current. I’d say that’s even worse then the Level cap being 100+ (Which also doesn’t help matters, but that’s a different topic)

Finding a streamline for new players to follow, that isn’t overwhelming yet also gives a taste of what has happened for the past 9 expansions. Not the easiest thing to achieve.

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already failed as they are keeping important lore removed for the sake of exclusivity of content that u could finish by doing lfr when it was current :rofl:

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While I don’t think this lessens the need to improve how old expansions are presented and played, I have noticed this as well. And it is kind of funny. Like we’re all proud of this thing we love and eager to show it to our friends, but we get real hung up on these flaws because we think they’ll judge us for it. It’s like frantically deep cleaning your house before guests come around, when really your place was probably fine anyway and they wouldn’t have cared.

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Wow is definitely missing something and it’s the social interaction. I have been playing cataclysm and I have been having a blast, I enjoy my friend and I arguing about a quest location or just meeting random people and questing alongside them.

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I have to say… This is probably one of the better posts on the forums. Very concerning, very true. Thank you for the thread.

so true.

I had this same thought. Unfortunately they ain’t even bringing back old quests or anything this will be like retail stuck in MoP areas. I hope this changes.

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What are your thoughts so far? I am having a blast despite some bugs. I was let down we still cannot experience removed content through this new gameplay mode :frowning:

I hope one day it gets added back into retail and something we can choose via chromie time.

That’s great all for it. But there are also a lot of people that join the game for the story and lore, to experience the Warcraft universe. I think this needs to be made easier for those people. Yes, videos online exist but it would be healthier to have it in the game.

Agreed 100%

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last time i was even remotely engaged with the story was MoP and Wrath

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The writers are offended by this game’s lore and history. There is no more WoW story, no more engaging characters, no more personality, no range whatsoever.

Just generic fantasy themed npc’s, all written the same, sharing feelings and gender identity, that’s all you get. Enjoy!

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Pretty much this. They would have to fire everyone at this point. And people still wont come back. Its no longer fixable.

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This will happen again if they try to make the story understandable. They will redo the entire world to adhere to the current story, deleting much content and characters. Then leave it for a decade until it is clearly outdated.

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So every expansion it takes longer and longer for a new player to hit max level.

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Old players, too. I’ve been around for a while and I’ve done a lot of questing but there’s still a lot of holes in the story that I don’t understand because quests and cutscenes have been removed.

I really wish they would make the story easier to follow, especially for the older expansions.

Someone mentioned adding a “theater” in game where we can watch all the old cutscenes and stuff and I think that’s pretty neat.

One of the main reasons I play is because I like the story of WoW, but there’s just so much missing. It’s very disappointing.

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Sure they can, whether they will is a different question.

I’ve asserted for a long time that the single best way to deliver Lore story was done in WC3 and WC3:FT. Here you had, what, 30? 60? scenarios played through with the WC3 engine, with interstitial in game cinematics advancing the story line. The battles, were, mostly, just battles, but there were some scenarios were you fought through from point A to point B, and got some more RP dialog to advance the story.

The key aspect of this was that the presentation was linear, and you were railroaded through the scenarios.

But I learned a lot more running WC3 than I did in WoW.

Thats not to say there haven’t been some very good WoW in game cinematics, there are. They can, and do, do this. Many people hate it. But it’s a good way to communicate the lore.

The problem today is that they’re too long.

Having to run through the entirety of SL, all four zones, the maw, fight the raids, etc. to get “the story” is too much today. Its fine “in the moment”, but now? Asking someone to do that is a big ask.

So, the plan would be for them to do a lore based quest series, for each expansion, that touches on the salient points of the lore. And, yes, each is a railroad. 50+ quests, with some cinematics, and RP scripts, that takes you through the expansion zones.

If you had those, you’d have, what, 500-600 quests, to go through to “catch up”.

They already do this, to a point, with the Heritage Armor quest lines. Consider those writ large.

The original quests and such would remain, but having these lore quest lines, would give folks a Cliff Notes run through the many story arcs, characters, and personalities. They wouldn’t touch on everyone, for example, they may not even get near the Timbermaw or other minor races and groups in the land. They would likely skip entire zones, notably in my EK and Kalimdor. But for the exapansions, yea, they should hit all 5 or 6 zones.

But they could skip things like Timeless Isle, Tanaan Jungle, other end game zones that are more gear farms than lore hotspots.

They could knock these out an expansion every quarter, and have it all done in about 2 years.

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I strongly believe an old world revamp is needed to bring cohesion back to leveling, especially for new players. Azeroth sorely needs an update. The biggest flaw of the Cata revamp was that is was made solely for Cata and it’s story.

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:point_down:

Agreed same here, been doing loremaster recently and it’s crazy how much I have forgotten or didn’t even know.

Yep, this can be something they do over time. Whatever that may be. Is it possible remix the start of some sort of revamp to past expansions?

Yep never to really be updated again besides a few things here and there. Zones have been on fire and underwater (with people still struggling to live there) for what 14 years now?

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Only children complain because there’s too much to read when you enter a story world that has been ongoing for decades. I’m sorry your friends have social media brain rot and need everything now.