Playing through MoP Remix made me realise how much better the writing used to be

Community General Discussion
21

Yeah, the writing was much better in MoP. Not just the plot points or the pacing, but the characters having motives realistic to their needs and mindsets, and taking actions which are realistic to their circumstances or obligations.

I think it says something that I used to look at MoP as a joke expansion, but now it’s like a beacon of what better WoW looks like.

Not to go on a rant, but It’s kind of sad how characters are utilized now a days. Take Lor’themar for example, in Mists he’s a total badass and easily a contender for Warchief. His actions, mindset and motives all befit a leader of his experience, age and position. Now, compare that to modern WoW where he’s basically a bland NPC who’s there for window dressing.

7 Likes
22

The whole 9.1 arc was a complete mess and this was also the point when a lot of people couldn’t take the story serious anymore and a flood of memes came in over the weeks.
A huge example, that was mocked by most people, was the moment in Korthia when Bolvar decided that we should bring the Sigil right to the Jailer. Even the other NPC guy mentions if this is some kind of weird joke, but nope. And as expected, the Sigil gets yoinked. This plot point was incredibly silly. It could’ve been saved a bit if there was much more resistance and discussion about this plan and an even more serious discussion afterwards. But it didn’t make much sense and was a rushed scenario that just reeked of “The sigil theft needs to happen… quickly. Just make it happen somehow”.
Characters make mistakes, but it needs happen in a somehow logical way.

Same with the assault on Ardenweald to get the other sigil. It was mentioned that the enemy would clearly try to search for the Sigil in the centre of the great tree and that it needed to be hidden and protected. But somehow the Winter Queen just shrugged it off and left the sigil open to see for everyone, right there. It’s a bid sad storywise, when old, wise and god-like beings look like they couldn’t tie their own shoes and there’s no effort being put into the writing of such a conflict.

Not to mention the famous “I will never serve” moment, after serving blindly before, where the more deeper explanations were written down in a book instead of the game.

Edit: Almost forgot “There must always be a Lich King” and then the writers kinda forgot about the Scourge.

12 Likes
23

MoP was an amazing expansion as far as the story went.

One more notable thing about it is that for the most part, it’s all story and a setting original to WoW. No pulling from the previous RTS games like the majority of other expansions have done and they did an amazing job at it.

5 Likes
24

Sl and DF are some of the most poorly written expansions in WoW’s history. This is what happens when you hand your IP over to people with no talent. Steve Danuser sucked. A lot of the current quest writers for SL and DF suck too.

Blizzard chased away so much of their talent trying to chase profits as well as letting that horrible work culture fester for years.

What we have seen the last 2-3 expansions is the end product of just massive neglect.

I think the stuff hit the fan this last past year, because DF did not sell well. SL did some permanent damage to the IP.

4 Likes
25

I mean… they fired Danuser for a reason, I guess. But he’s just a scapegoat considering the overall work ethics in the lore department. There was an interesting interview that came out a few months ago (?) where a lady that’s somehow in charge of this stuff basically stated that they don’t really care that much about continuity, logic and the integrity of the world building. If someone in the team offers a piece of story that sounds fun and interesting they shove it in without regards how it fits into the lore, they just try to make it fit somehow.
There are lore curators who try to help the writers by pointing out flaws, but the writing team isn’t obligated to follow these advices. Besides… Microsoft also fired half of the curator team, lmao.

3 Likes
26

This is how the entire game feels designed these days. The game has so many systems, mini-games, and pet projects just littered throughout. WoW feels like an amalgamation of an MMO now, both in story and in design.

This is why I love Lord of the Rings Online, for all that games jank, the writing is probably the best in any MMO. The studio that makes Lotro has consistently pumped out a lot of great content over the years, basically sticking to the same formula. They have had a few duds with added systems and stories, but not on the scale that WoW has.

2 Likes
27

Turns out this is not the first story where leaders made huge mistakes. There was a novel written called “World War II” which was even worse. At one point the fictional country of France, fearing invasion from their neighbor called Germany, built a huge fortification called the Maginot Line. Now get this, they were sure Germany wouldn’t attack through Belgium even though that’s exactly what they did in the prequel to WW II, a book called WW I.

Meanwhile in the Pacific Ocean one of the leading characters, an Admiral called Kimmel, ignored the fact that intelligence had lost track of the navy from the island nation of the Risingsun. He didn’t even send out any patrol craft to search for them and to make things worse he kept his fleet bottled up in the magic island of Perl Harbor. Sure enough the Risingsun appeared out of nowhere and devastated Admiral Kimmel’s fleet.

Back in the France area, Germany, having failed to crush the Island nation of Middle Earth to their north in the Battle of Britain made the foolish decision to fight a war on two fronts by attacking a much more massive country called Tsar land.

Having good luck at first they foolishly decided against pulling back to wait out the winter even though the Warlock Napoleon had made the same mistake in an earlier novel. Then they failed to use their air force to detect a massive Tsarland army Bearing down on them from the North.

Back in the vast Pacific what was touted as the best Admiral in the Navy, Admiral Halsey, sailed his fleet through a Typhoon then left his invasion force undefended while the biggest battleship in the world was near by ready to attack his forces. Now who would write such a thing?

Clearly this book was the most ridiculous thing ever written. How could anyone believe it? How could the leaders of major armies, navies and countries make such tremendous blunders, never mind mistakes? Because of this “World War Two” was a failure as a novel. No one bothered buying it much less reading it.

2 Likes
28

Reading this I get the feeling that you didn’t read my whole post and immediately started writing after the lines you quoted. Bummer.

Anyway, I repeat.

It could’ve been saved a bit if there was much more resistance and discussion about this plan and an even more serious discussion afterwards. But it didn’t make much sense and was a rushed scenario that just reeked of “The sigil theft needs to happen… quickly. Just make it happen somehow”.
Characters make mistakes, but it needs happen in a somehow logical way.

It’s not about characters making mistakes or misjudging situations completely. On paper such flaws are great setup for conflict, drama and character development. It’s been pulled off countless times in all forms of media how shortsighted and often even ‘dumb’ decisions led to difficult conflicts or even catastrophes.

The only problem lies in the execution.
No proper dialogue. No discussion. No deliberating of other options. And in the end no consequences or reflection. It’s absolutely rushed and something that happens out of nowhere.
The dialogue went like this:
“Ah, the sigil. Nice. You know what? Let’s bring it to the Jailer’s domain.” - “What? No.” - “Yes. Now go. Good luck.”. And off we went. It was literally just four lines of quick dialogue. Like Bolvar had asked if we could run to the grocery store to get some milk and the other NPCs just shrug it off and follow.

Afterwards (despite the possibility that the world could be undone) the Primus was just like “Well. That happened. Anyway, it’ll be fine.”. And I’m not even exaggerating. And that’s it. There’s no further talk about what happened, no comments, conflict or regrets. It’s just forgotten and not talked about it anymore in any way.

It’s clumsy, shallow and dumbed down storytelling where things just happen and nobody actually cares. And this seems to be the main theme of storytelling in modern WoW. Things just kinda happen without proper build-up or depth.

8 Likes
29

MoP was one of the best expansions Blizz has ever done. Though given the option I would have loved to change a few things.

1 Like
30

I wasn’t really paying attention to half the dialogue or lore in MOp but the writing feels so much better, character’s go out of their way to banter or show affection.

2 Likes
31

The best writing from MoP was the fan-made stuff happening off-camera, though.

:crown: :dragon_face:

32

This was the point of what I wrote. You are assuming that in any conflict the perfect right things will be said that would happen just the way a movie script would have written it. In real life that doesn’t happen.

So if any fiction shows confusion, the fog of war, the miscalculation, the incomplete discussion, that is not bad writing. It is writing what could really happen.

33

Hmm… seems I’m a bit late to answering this one, but may as well weigh in.

The writing in MoP isn’t that great, but it’s probably the best that WoW ever had… so it’s half-decent, with some parts being clearly better than others.

Looking at the overall structure, I can see the issues with how many parts were handled; a notable one is that there’s some “silo’ing” going on with the main story arcs and they don’t tie together very well.

  • The first big one is the Alliance versus Horde conflict, which is given some prominence in the Jade Forest… then all but forgotten about outside of a brief mention in the Karasang Wilds and the whole of the Landfall Campaign. I suppose it should be mentioned that there was an “old world” component that they can’t include in MoP Remix, such as Orgrimmar coming under martial law (Patch 5.3 was focused around the Barrens, if I recall correctly). The problem is that the Alliance vs. Horde conflict feels tacked on to the rest of Pandaria rather than properly integrated, especially since the storyline just disappears from the story for the majority of the leveling experience.

  • The Sha are kind of suggested to be a byproduct of the Alliance vs Horde conflict coming to Pandaria… but yeah, aside from the big one appearing briefly at the culmination of the Jade Forest, the outside conflict functionally disappears. The Sha become a sort of rogue element, affecting several zones and especially the Mantid. I actually don’t know if we get any sort of indication if the Sha corruption occurred before or after the players arrive on Pandaria, as it all happens off-screen.

  • The Zandalari and Mogu, culminating in the resurrection of Lei Shen? That’s actually a really good storyline, and the biggest problem is that it’s over far too quickly. Lei Shen wasn’t exactly a complex villain, but he would have been a GREAT bogeyman if he was allowed to survive. Hell, given his objective was the “Complete the work of the gods” (referring to the Titans), he could come back for the next expansions; it wouldn’t be the first time he was brought back from the dead. But besides that issue… zero connection to to the Sha nor the Alliance vs. Horde conflict, aside from certain parties looking to take advantage of his creations.

But the main issue is the overarching structure being a bit messy, the connective tissue between the story beats simply isn’t well thought-out… but the individual components and smaller sections are actually fairly decent. The only time I can think of stuff “coming together” is the finale for Valley of the Four Winds.

And no matter how you slice it, MoP is still FAR better than BfA and especially SL.
No comment on DF as I haven’t played it.

As I came back to the game only a few weeks ago (nostalgia and curiosity mostly, MoP Remix actually wasn’t a factor but I decided to indulge in it a bit), I may as well summarize my thoughts on the writing in SL.

ATROCIOUS & FORCED

Aside from every single zone being some variety of unpleasant and/or annoying, the nonsensical approach to the lore, and an obviously shoehorned villain that seemed tailored to invalidate what little good came from WoW’s existing lore?

The characters within the story had no agency, as they’re all seemingly fixated on some kind of “prophecy” that foretold that someone would come in and fix everything. It was getting rather obnoxious, to say the least.

Player, thy name is Mary Sue.

SL was bad fanfic levels of writing.
And not the “So bad, it’s good” kind.

MoP’s writing is at least competent, but I think the higher-ups were steering the story in a certain direction that led to many of the best parts being forced into the background for the sake of maintaining the overarching Alliance vs. Horde conflict.

2 Likes
34

One of the Pandaren characters was voice acted by Azula!

1 Like
35

I can’t put my finger on it but I think after shadowlands people stopped paying attention to the story as much

1 Like
36

Hard to pay attention when it is so unengaging.

1 Like
37

I’d say it was WoD.

When “the next expansion is where we travel back in time to an alternate universe” was leaked a couple days before the announcement, on reddit, everybody thought it was a joke.

3 Likes
38

Was it Taoshi? Or however you spell the rogue’s name? Taran Zuh’s number one agent.

She was great in Townlong Steppe and Isle of Thunder

2 Likes
39

Yep, that’s the one! Where you stealth and knock out trolls on the boat.

1 Like
40

Overall, MoP story wins out for me over any other. It felt like we actually got thrown into the middle of a very complex war centered ecosystem, and like we belonged in it. We felt like the catalyst and solution it needed.

The quests are heavy because the environment itself isn’t about death, it’s a celebration of life. It’s easier for me to put myself in a farmer or family’s shoes than it is for me to relate wotlk or SL, it’s grounded.

Xpacs like wotlk and SL are so hit you over the gead from the get go with the setting that it ends up all feeling unimportant or disconnected from us. Like yeah, dead junk, I got it.

2 Likes