There was one upside to the current writing.
Nothing was funnier than the intern’s cutscene jank decimating the writing team’s AND the cinematic team’s magnum opus.
LMAO.
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No, I’ve also named other events and those were just a few examples because you asked. Those were the biggest offenders, but most of WoW’s modern storylines are not deep, well explained or developed properly. It feels rushed and brings up way more questions than it actually answers. Even the leveling experience in SL had some major flaws where the actual plot was sacrificed for some silly story-gimmicks and mini-games. I’m talking primarily about Ardenweald.
It was presented as the place that was affected the most by the anima drought. The ‘Afterlives’ cinematic tried to introduce this place as tragic, struggling and full of sacrifices. We’re reminded of that pretty often in the zone. This was a great concept. Yet … when we get into the zone, we’re greeted by a big silly theatre performance that was made out of anima and everybody there seem to be happy about that. While a few quests later the NPCs already voice their concern about the drought again. There’s no sense of continuity, consequences and it’s just all over the place.
I’m not saying that there aren’t small parts or quest lines that do make sense and are somewhat explained and explored. But it’s not consistent at all and generally quite shallow.
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Even when people are under stress they are not miserable all the time. It makes perfect sense that they would occasionally do things to release tension and a silly play would be just the thing to do that.
Look, you didn’t like the story and I understand that. It’s not your cup of tea. But compared to the rest of WoW I do not see a big drop off in story quality. For example, at one point in Panda land the quests had us rounding up a farmer’s animals. It was little more than a Viva La Dirt League parody.
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Because you keep destroying it as you kill them!
Be more careful next time!
I’m getting a bit annoyed because you completely misrepresent my points, put them out of context and ignore half of it. What you are saying is a pure strawman. I never said that the denizens of Ardenweald couldn’ feel some joy and do silly stuff to release tension. It must be very convenient to just leave the rest of my argument out. My main point is that they’re wasting tons of anima for this silly stuff while souls are damned to wither away and be sacrificed for that, which is not even brought up once in the theatre quests.
“My team believes that continuity exists to enhance a story, not to tie the hands of creators” - Sean Copeland, Historian Supervisor, WoW.
/rolls eyes and shakes head
Actually it exists so your story makes sense in the World you are telling it.
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The difference between your argument and the part to which I responded is very minor. In general you seem to be saying people should not have light moments when tragedy or stress is around. Ok so I mentioned the wrong silly moment, big deal. It’s still the same point.
If there is tragedy, stress, etc in a zone should we see light moments or not?
I feel like MoP was more of an exception to the rule rather than an example of how it used to be. MoP -always- had a far better story (at least ON Pandaria, you could argue about the SoO stuff) than the majority of WoW, and with stronger worldbuilding as well. There’s so many little tidbits of info you can find just on random scrolls and stuff in the world in MoP, and as silly as MoP can seem at a surface level, it’s really, really not. It’s my favorite by far in terms of whole expansions’ writing.
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No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, I even explained that to you. Two times. You deliberately choose to ignore the context and put words in my mouth so you don’t have to deal with the actual argument. You’ve done that several times now and at this point I’m done.
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MoP was the last good Alliance vs Horde expansion. BFA didn’t really have that much fighting actually in it.
I know Blizz can’t do anymore war expansion due to the population being mostly Horde. I am hoping they can do a new faction war with light vs void.
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MoP writing was great. Every zone had its own self contained story, sometimes contributing to the overall story, sometimes contributing to the world building, and sometimes just being charming on its own merits. There were plenty of good lighthearted fun moments, and plenty of darker scenes. Sometimes they were right after one another. One moment you’re watching the orc and undead girls prance off to go do girl stuff (Rikos words) the next minute you’re witnessing the orc soldier get turned into a jade statue.
It had great pacing, ensuring that levity was mixed in with action and drama at appropriate times. And not to mention, the voice acting was superb. These days everyone speaks… so slow… and methodically… every… word… is important… and must… be… overemphasised… no matter what the topic is, like who talks like that? It’s so unnatural and stilted… and I mean, I knkw it’s not the voice actors fault, even the worse ones are usually at least decent, but when even Laura Bailey is giving subpar performances…
But back in MoP time? Say whatever you will about Garrosh, but the man had presence. I’m hard pressed to name a single character that was poorly voiced in MoP, and lord knows Jim Cummings absolutely nailed it as Lorewalker Cho, as well as several other characters, long before he was ever Runas the Shamed…
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I’m trying to understand your context. It’s not clear from what you are saying.
Slight correction, those were mantid but not the Klaxxi. In fact the Klaxxi were against the swarm because of two reasons
- It was around 10 years too early.
- They were swarming out of fear.
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As much as we like to complain, outside of the horrid Sylvanas arc, WoW’s writing has for the most part been fine.
It was the Shyamalan twists and mystery boxes that ruined the BFA+SL arcs and just awful pacing that hurt DF.
All they really need to do is keep up what they are doing with the story content, but stop trying to simultaneously trying to speed run us through it and tell it as a glacial pace and TWW will be fine.
Dragon flight did this too… there was a quest afterwards where you ran around buffing your allied characters.
There was the similar “Avengers” scene. That might have been what proceeded it but I can’t remember.
The Worldsoul saga better have some epic action cgi cinematics
For me MoP was the last of the great expansions.
Good ol’ lore walker cho and the stories are pretty cool!
Mists?!
Don’t you mean WotLK?
Nothing tops Arthas’ storyline…
Dragonflight kinda feels like the writers only know how to write one or two characters. If they’re not a mustache twirling villain, underneath their shiny veneer, they all seem to be the same person. At least that’s how it’s been feeling lately to me.