It is just as bad as Shadowlands, if not worse because of the character writing alone.
I saw some spoilers… we are getting more of the same quality…
2 Likes
MoP literally destroyed a character with insane potential to rival Varian while keeping “Warcraft” alive.
What they did to Garrosh was unforgiving.
The overall story was nice, the built up for Anduin, but for the Horde was the first big stick that would keep coming at us.
No, thanks.
2 Likes
I agree. Firstly, the Mogu, Mantid and Sha were more than enough to carry the story. Imagine a final raid that has Lei Shen empowered by the heart instead of Garrosh? Goosebumps right there.
Secondly, Garrosh was (re)introduced into the story in Wrath as an equal force to Varian. Their development should have remained mirrored.
Imagine a world where good king Varian, and an older wiser Garrosh die fighting back to back on the broken shore.
4 Likes
The story of Pandaria has 1 major problem: Garrosh was evil. All of the pandaren lecturing us about fighting and whatnot falls flat because Garrosh is evil. We HAD to fight Garrosh, we couldn’t just not fight him.
The whole story would have worked a lot better if it was the 2 factions just duking it out because of hatred and whatever, but then they went and made Garrosh stupid levels of evil.
Also MoP is where the High King garbage was implemented which was a horrible story direction to take the Alliance in and has been a constant plague. First with Varian having to show up the night elves and dwarves to justify his position and later with Anduin inheriting the position for no reason whatsoever.
3 Likes
This also wasn’t a popular story back in the day to. A lot of players disliked how quickly Garrosh went from a ruthless but honorable leader to the joker over night.
Imagine if they decided to work together and instead of Garrosh, a rogue section of forsaken, elves and orc warlocks, along with human warlocks and highborne night elves decided to rebel against the leaders and work together to sabotage horde and alliance.
Both Garrosh and Varian push to all out war until Anduin and Thrall come together to show that they were mislead and stop them. that serves as a development for both Varian and Garrosh.
Wow. Already better than trashing Garrosh out of the game.
They didn’t do anything new to Garrosh, he was the same loser that everyone hated that he was in Cataclysm, Wrath, and Burning Crusade.
2 Likes
I feel like Blizzard didn’t appreciate what they had in Mists. Both with potential for Garrosh to grow into his role, which would have been amazingly gratifying for the player, but also how amazing Lei Shen was as an antagonist.
The third act didn’t need to drag the horde through the gutter in a story where the overall message was supposed to be that both sides were wrong.
Had Lei Shen survived his initial raid and invaded the Vale to retake Pandaria that would have been a pretty worthy final act.
1 Like
Faction identity and conflict aren’t allowed anymore in 2024.
1 Like
Tell me you know nothing about world of warcraft lore without telling me you know nothing about world of warcraft lore.
Where does this fanciful notion come from?
Horde players hated Garrosh in Burning Crusade, he was written as a loser. Thrall had a soft spot for him because Garrosh’s dad killed Mannoroth, and Garrosh repaid Thrall by trying to murder him and take over the Horde.
Then in Wrath, as a Horde player, you get to Borean Tundra and your first thought is, “why is this loser in charge, here?” Then Garrosh tries to sabotage your efforts against the Scourge.
Then you get to Cataclysm, he’s INEXPLICABLY in charge, and all the racial leaders hate him and vice versa.
There was never going to be a “grow into his role”.
People look at Garrosh like he was a child.
Garrosh wasn’t a child, Garrosh WAS OLDER THAN THRALL for god’s sake.
He simply ACTED like a child. And so everyone treated him as such.
You obviously didn’t play Horde back in Burning Crusade or Wrath. The “i 
garrosh” newbies can be spotted a mile away.
5 Likes
MoP story telling is god tier compared to DF, are you kidding me right now lmao.
Shadowlands was people finger painting a story together. Yeah, you usually write words, you don’t paint them. GG.
I really liked the Klaxxi. The Paragons all had different personalities and it was neat to slowly assemble them as a team over time.
Too bad we had to kill them, in the end.
As for the rest, I didn’t find anything particularly noteworthy, although the Wranduin dialogue was good, sometimes.
2 Likes
I love Chen and Li Li Stormstout’s characters. The theme music, funny dialogue, and story, made quest chain in The Valley of the Four Winds very memorable.
I can’t wait to play MoP classic.
3 Likes
This is exactly how I feel about Jaina’s redemption arc and Kul’Tiras. Excluding the Sylvanas war stuff, the Kul’Tiran storyline was awesome.
3 Likes
MoP feels like Warcraft. DF feels like Hello Kitty. lol It is strange that pandas have more grit then dragons do in DF.
3 Likes
Completely agree. I forgot how much I loved these zones. For some reason the kazoo inn music has been everything during this stress week.
1 Like
Excuse me, we’re not in real life, we’re in a game that has a big writing and lore team.
When the story falls flat and isn’t explored properly, the whole storytelling starts to fall apart. Because when big events in the game get accompanied by four lines of informal dialogue, it’s not proper storytelling anymore - it’s just gameplay with a quick explanation what the next objective is.
What you’re basically saying is that it would’ve been completely fine if BfA went like this with dialogue and events:
Starts pre-patch quest “Let’s start a war with the Alliance. We must destroy them.” - “Yes, my queen.” - “Go to Darkshore and attack the civilians.” And off you go, do the thing and afterwards it’s not mentioned anymore wtf actually happened and why and all the other NPCs don’t care anyway. We’re just in war now and that’s how it is. That’s not storytelling, it’s just things happening without proper execution of storytelling.
If half the development of a story is missing, it is bad writing. When something like this happens in a story that is properly set up, the writers fill in the blanks with other elements like how the characters are feeling. Meta comments what the incomplete discussions will bring (in this particular scene in WoW there wasn’t even any discussion lmao). The description of confusion in the room and the unsettling feeling that it causes. But in some cases in WoW there was nothing to work with in this regard.
If writing like in Shadowlands patch content would happen in a movie or a book, it would probably be a flop. And so was SL, obviously most people thought it was a joke.
If it was good enough for you, that’s fine. But that doesn’t make it good, logical or engaging storytelling.
2 Likes
Your picking one event in Shadowlands and saying that one thing was not explained well. There was plenty of other stuff that was explained well. In fact the leveling story in Oribos, the Maw and the four covenants had plenty of story telling and each of the four covenant story lines after that had plenty of story telling.
Once that was done there was Korthia, Zereth Morthas and each covenant had a separate attack on the Maw, all with stories to tell.
2 Likes
Yet people at the time complained the writing sucked and wasn’t as good as LK and BC. People will always complain about the current then praise the past, not knowing they complained back then too.