New story developments should not inspire dread

Lore Story Forum
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It is telling that when new cinematic and general story content directly related to the plot generates controversy, division, and even general feelings of dread that something has gone wrong with the creative process at Blizzard. Or at the very least, that players are expectant of the very worst outcomes in regards to story content.

That is clearly an unacceptable way to engage with story content for a massive multi-million dollar brand. This seems to occur because players have grown cynical and weary of Blizzard taking only the most trite and toxic paths with their story. The problems with the last expansion, BFA, are emblematic of this issue.

We expected an honest faction war both sides could get behind–what we received was Sylvanas abusing both factions for her nihilistic ends.

We hoped that Blizzard would not be foolish enough to displace and disgrace two of the game’s most iconic and oldest races, Forsaken and Night Elves–what we got was the opposite.

We expected content in relation to the Old Gods to get its fair due–what we got was a rushed and contrived for-closure of any further avenue for that content.

The only positives for BFA were the world building and quest content for Kul’Tiras and Zandalar, things Blizzard always excels at. But they were unfortunately marred with the taint of being associated with such a blatantly bad example of forced faction war content.

It is even more telling of how badly Blizzard botched Saurfang, turning him from beloved fan favorite into a depressed and self-loathing shamble, leaving his death having little impact.

So how can Blizzard recover after such a long series of debacles? By playing it safe. What does playing it safe look like? By having Sylvanas face realistic consequences for brutalizing the Alliance and betraying the Horde. Committing multiple crimes up to and including mass murder and damnation of innocent souls. Now is not the time to rock the boat with another asinine plot twist or eleventh hour turn-around. If Blizzard expects players to take their narratives in good faith then they need to deliver logical outcomes in good faith.

Please note this is not a Sylvanas hate thread. I too honestly wish her character development wasn’t so thoroughly botched, that her villainy wasn’t tied to the abuse of both factions leading to the absolute end of any sort of faction pride. But what I want to see from CDev going forward is more emphasis on the choices character’s making having consequences, and those consequences affecting future choices. That is a basic pillar of good, consistent storytelling. And it needs to be enforced in order to win back player’s trust in the narrative.

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This also should tell how much cynism is running at the community after a whole bait and trigger storyline was on display and developed. Literally Blizzard is almost antagonizing toward their own customer.

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Pretty sure that, in the lore, the only race newer than the Scourge Leftovers Forsaken are the Void Elves.

Nearly every other race has a much longer history.

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I meant in terms of being among the first playable races.

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Fair enough. I admit I’m still bitter about the Scourge being allowed into the Horde in the first place. Ungrateful and nothing but trouble.

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They have been having that attitude since WoD basically.

And I am talking about the developers of the game, not the story.

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As a Sylvanas fan I dreaded every new BfA cinematic because it was like “here we go, how are we going to villain-bat and mustache-twirl Sylvanas again today.” The cinematics were getting better on a technical level and more frequent, but I was instantly turned off by the tone…especially the Sadfang series and especially the Sad Jaina and Sad Thrall and Sad Baine cinematics which became unbearable toward the end

I’m quite enjoying the Shadowlands cinematics so far by comparison. If you feel turned off or feeling dread from the Sylvanas Choice cinematic well…welcome to BfA for players like me.

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The Saurfang arc was some of the best storytelling this game has ever had. If you can’t see that, I don’t even know how to have a conversation with you.

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sips paint thinner

Yep, that’s a good storytelling.

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There’s so much “we” in here but all I read was one person’s opinion. Weird.

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I’d go into this, again, but the last time I did people took offense to me pointing out that Blizzard glorified a depressed character’s suicide.

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I apologize for the contrivance, it is a pit fall of my paragraph construction.

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In a nexus, I will say looking Saurfang’s story wasn’t terrible. I got what they were going for with him. Especially with him feeling so lost at Lordaeron.

Within the context of the greater BfA though … it was miserable. Those cinematics clearly showed that Blizz knew what the Horde was supposed to represent, but Blizz did not care enough about any of those ideals for even a single one of them to become inconvenient for their Sylvanas-SLs plotline. At least not until those things were allowed to count … long after they would have been of value.

That being said, I’m coming from a weird spot. I was assuming Blizz put her into the drivers seat of the Horde to do something terrible with it since Stormheim in Legion. You just do not have her play an homage to Arthas’ “new world order” line, but only to the Alliance PC … if you plan for her to mean anything good for the Horde. Was waiting around for 4 years to see her finally betray us and bail. Got a bit of catharsis from it.

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I’ve seen a lot of really bad takes, but you take the cake with this one.

Calling his death a suicide is like spitting on every soldier everywhere who lost their life trying to save lives while facing an impossible situation.

Of course people were offended by a blatantly offensive statement.

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Without getting into some of the details that I know will be fought about in this post - yes, you’re absolutely right. New story developments should not inspire dread.

The story is not for the writers’ sake. It does not exist so that they can flex their creative muscles and create something that they think is going to be poignant, or meaningful. It’s not there to teach the audiences moral lessons, or to stand as one of the great works of the ages that got people to think about big philosophical questions.

Don’t get me wrong, it can do those things. Those are possible side-achievements, but that is not the story’s main goal. The Story’s main goal is to drive sales and retain customers in a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing game that has elements of PVE and raiding, combined with a competitive rivalry with roots going back to the 90s, that now is tied into PVP as an endgame option.

… and to make those sales and to retain those customers, the game has to be fun.

It can and should have challenge. That’s fun. It can and should have adversity that the player can overcome through their efforts. That’s fun. It can have a story that makes people think about things, see their characters in a given way, give context to their actions or progress through a turbulent narrative that ends in meaningful catharsis, that’s fun.

But what we have now is not fun. It’s not even trying to be fun. It’s miserable, and it almost seems intentionally so - and that makes it inappropriate.

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I disagree. It seems odd to hamstring a future narrative based on your personal wants and expectations.

All throughout Legion, Xera was really getting on my nerves. After spending so much time with that good egg Adal, and knowing about Muru’s sacrifice, Xera’s attitude made me concerned about where the story was going. Then - Illidan blew her up. I was pleasantly surprised.

I have my share of complaints. At the top of my list is changing past events to fit a desired future narrative. But I have less of an issue with new lore going forward, as long as previous lore isn’t contorted to make it work.

The complaint in the OP could be a result of so many different tastes. As an example:

Some people actually think this. Imo, it was the most trite and rote horsepucky that ever hijacked the narrative. Some sad old male warrior learns to hope again from a fancy boy , and dies - great. I didn’t enjoy it at all. I thought the Character of Saurfang was alright enough before BfA, but by the end, watching Sylvanas blow him up was almost as satisfying as watching Illidan blow up Xera.

Idk, it smacks of “the story isn’t good unless it goes the way I want.” Which is a fine opinion to have, but not a convincing argument.

Not every soldier quits and changes sides after being lectured by the leader of their people’s enemy. Not every soldier has been involved in multiple genocides. What ever one calls his death, it is about his death - not IRL soldiers.

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I think it’s a lack of trust - at least, from where I stand, I trust them to do the only things that won’t actively set fire to the product. They’d be immediately fired if it threatened to sink the franchise.

But a lot of my faith has been misplaced and it feels a lot as if I’m watching someone bulldoze a drive-in theatre that I liked as a kid, so I’m a lot more prickly when everything goes awry, because it means a lot more to me.

I don’t want to hate WoW, nobody pays $15 for the pleasure of being pissed, I can do that for free in the real world, any time, any place. I want to log in one day and see new developments in the game and say “oh, cool!” like I used to.

I just feel like they know what’s safe and know what’s risky, but there’s some sort of shake-up in the office where the new blood despises the old and wants to remake WoW as something it isn’t.

After they kill Sylvanas off and put Tyrande on the back burner as a character, I hope they play it really safe and generic. I need to build some trust first. I need to know that they’re not about to destroy the foundation of the house they’ve already burned down.

And, as a side note, please, if anyone’s reading this - don’t waste precious CGI time on bad stories! The Saurfang trilogy didn’t have to exist. They were pretty! But extremely expensive, were tied to an atrocious story and we normally don’t see them for anything other than expansion openers. It’s basically pissing money, time and talent away if the end result is garbage that nobody really enjoyed.

I’d sooner want to see that put towards the books like Exploring The Eastern Kingdoms and Exploring Kalimdor.

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What I find amusing to this day is that these wickedly expensive cinemas (€1.8 million per minute) were paid for a story that revolved around one of the villains, or revolved around a king who was only secondarily connected to the cause. How many minutes are there in these five cinemas? I think it’s about 15-20 minutes in total, right?

15-20 minutes at 1.8 million/minute is between $27 and $36 million.

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Someone in the office was huffing their own farts.

Nobody goes through that much time and effort and says to the board; “Guys, this story’ll be the tops, you need to trust me on this and make a cinematic follow-up to mark this story. Warcraft’s about to take off..”.

Only it turned out that not a lot of people liked it.

We’re not going to get an opportunity like that any time for Warcraft and it fills me with dread that it was a wasted opportunity.

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I mean, that’s a lot of money, $36 million at the most expensive, that actually flopped. I mean, the cinemas were great to look at, but they ended up being the opposite of popular.

oh, you edited your post, yeah, i want to say the same thing^^

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