Anyone else bugged on how the entire lore of WoW is messed up nowdays? We start in “Vanilla”, but that’s not really vanilla, because it’s actually an after-cataclysm reworked world. This brings quests being very confusing, especially for new players that approach the game for the first time.
Few examples:
As a horde, when you start you are introduced to Sylvanas as the current warchief, but countless quests refers as Garrosh being the warchief
As an alliance, when you start you are introduced to Anduin as the King, with countless quests referring to Varian as the king
Theldrassil is not burnt, even if Sylvanas recently set it on fire
Pre-expansions questlines complitely removed, making even more difficult to understand what’s going on
Key expansion items (and questlines) removed (i.e. Black Prince rep and ring from MOP)
These are just few examples on where the current situation stands. What I’d like to see it’s a little consistency and having blizzard decide if the zones should be phased according to character level/completed quests or if everything should reflect current events.
I know I’m not the only one bugged by this, as I’ve seen other people complaining about it, but I also know that the the majority of players doesn’t care enough as they are more focused on end content… However I wish Blizz could give us some answers and hopefully a fix.
To be completely honest, who cares? Yes, the old world is kind of a mess. But the current expansion has issues I’d rather Blizz focus on fixing. Old content is, well, old content.
When the plan is to remove portals and send players out into the world more, it behooves them to make the old content have some relevance to those not simply leveling in the zones.
I have no way of knowing what the “real” reason is. I just think people would be more fine with the decision if they were being sent through areas where there is interesting things to explore and find.
We explored and found that world content when it was current content for us - over the last 14 years. The old content is for new people to level through and for us to go back to do this and that. Blizz doesn’t have to make brand new content for the old areas besides doing things like class mount quests and hunting Saurfang and such. That was “new stuff” in old content for us.
I’d rather they focus on current and future content.
Then we shall disagree. I think making more sandbox type content available in more areas will keep the whole world feeling alive, and not just wherever the current expansion is focused.
Also, if we’re in the middle of a faction war, it makes sense for more areas of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms to have things going on.
The timeline stuff is the biggest issue. Leveling flows like this:
Cata -> BC -> WotLK -> Cata Round 2 -> MoP -> WoD -> Legion -> BfA.
It’s -almost- fine, but BC and WotLK get in the way and throw everything backwards. I think they need to throw both of those in the caverns of time (hey, an excuse to bring back the portal, too!) with a short quest to preface going back in time to “learn from our past” or some nonsense. Typically I also suggest making those 2 pieces of content optional and squishing down everything else in the leveling process, but that’s not the topic of the thread I suppose.
The stuff with faction leaders is a separate issue that stems from the fact that Stormwind and Orgrimmar are basically constantly present day, while the leveling content around them is stuck in the appropriate time bubble.
I do not want Blizzard to start phasing lower levels out of the city, especially not on RP realms, so there really is no solution there as long as they want the capitals to remain relevant to the current expansions.
You just have to acknowledge that the capitals are outside the timeline of the questing. Thankfully, basically 0 important quests actually send you back to the capital, and it’s mostly just something you -see-, rather than disruptions in questlines.
It is kind of ridiculous the way it currently is. Anduin is King one moment, then he’s an emo teen lost in Pandaland. then Varian gets his face disenchanted by Gul’dan, the Brad Pitt…sorry, YA Anduin…is King.
Maybe it could be fixed up a bit by simple re-framing, i.e. rather than hopping on the boat and literally sailing to Northrend when you wanna do a transmog run, there’s something new that indicates you’re viewing past events.
Kinda like some of the quest-lines in Highmountain, where you control Hulm Highmountain during the War of the Ancients. Involve the Bronze dragonflight in some manner.
To be honest, the whole thing seems spaghettified beyond control. Map behaves differently in different content, combat stats that aren’t used still on old armor, and inconsistent on use quest items that are either used from you’re bags, quest tracker, or a special purpose pop up button.
They’re perfectly willing to make sweeping changes to systems but never willing to bring previous content in line with it.
The old world dungeons are also a problem. Some bosses just bug out, preventing the group from progressing. The third boss in Occulus and the 2nd boss in gun’drak, to be specific.
The issue here is that literally everything that isn’t the BfA Zones + Orgrimmar + Stormwind qualifies as “past events”.
The expansion questing content goes in order with the exception of BC/WotLK (which like I said should go to caverns of time, so I do agree with you, just with a slightly different method)
If BC and WotLK are “fixed” in some way, then it’s really a nonissue, as questing doesn’t typically send you to the capital cities where time will be screwy. It basically doesn’t happen at all in the 1-60 stuff, then starts happening like once at the beginning of expansions (starting with… MoP? I can’t recall before that, but maybe).
Maybe the framing of events in the past you mentioned could be used when you go to grab the expansion starter quests. Make it an auto-pop quest at the entrance to the keep/warchief hut thing.
How on earth did you compose this reply based on the OP? What in the actual hell is going on here? The post is about how story doesn’t flow well from expansion to expansion, which I agree.
Worth noting that even if the timeline inconsistencies are fixed, including issues with capital cities / faction leaders, this will still be the case. Expansion stories tend to finish in later patches and raids, while someone just leveling will just repeatedly jump away from the story before any patch content to move on to the next expansion.
Because if they’re going to rework old zones based on weird continuity issues, they might as well give some compelling content to players of all levels at the same time?
I also want to say to everyone who doesn’t care, to please see this matter from a new player perspective. Of course, if you have been playing for the past 14 years, you’ve got all you need and you lived through those changes, that of course felt more natural. But new players don’t get to experience that.
I remember when I first started, questing was so confusing, and I couldn’t follow the story lines because NPCs would mention events and characters that I didn’t encounter yet.
Also focusing on fixing the old content doesn’t have to mean to take away resources from current content, that’s not how companies usually works. We know we have a problem and it needs to be fixed.
I think having a specific “main story” quest line would be a great addition to the game, especially for new players. Also going with some sort of short cut scenes or instanced scenarios to give these players the story beats that are covered in old raids that they wouldn’t be able to see until they vastly outlevel them would be neat too.
I’m not sure though that they’ll allocate development resources to do this, unfortunately.