Not really.
If they had just said “cliche” I could buy it to a certain extent (but even in that regard, it really isn’t). But adding normative stuff such as “awful, ‘over-used storytelling devices’, and ‘clumsy’” without any specification…?
Nah’, the dude is just another person going “me want to whine, what troll topic popular, me pretend to be author-critical, dumb story, but me no dumb.”
All one has to do is point towards Faerin and one can safely say that a categorical dismissal of the writing is plain ol’ dumb. It doesn’t mean it is amazing across the board but the idea of categorically dismissing the story and writing when they absolutely nailed Faerin (and a WHOLE HEAP of other characters in TWW and DF) …
I think it’s mostly improved from Vanilla, but I don’t think it’s been by that much. Faerin is fine, but I don’t think it’s as impactful as you make it out to be. It’s still a contrivance that Faerin exists and was put through the decently written hardships she was.
Faerin has some promise, but this drive to lavish praise on blizzard for having the foundation for a good character is silly. She doesn’t have an arc in the base game. She has a character introduction. That’s it.
And what heap of characters from TWW and DF exactly?
I liked the Black Dragonflight story in Dragonflight. The rest? Innoffensive at best, but nothing to write home about.
TWW? Magni’s story feels like an epilogue to plotlines from Cataclysm and BFA. He showed up, turned human, reconciled with his daughter, and is now leaving the expansion as of the newest patch. Ok? Innoffensive, but not amazing. Dagran? Alright so far but no serious arc. Anduin? Actually alright, but he’s like the only one.
Xalatath? Mystery box writing with an unearned early victory and nothing to go off of after that.
Alleria? The impression of a character arc without enough actual connective substance to develop her internal struggles and make her revelation at the end of the campaign feel earned.
Thrall? Lol. Lmao.
The two best characters in TWW are ironically Brinthe and Merrix. They’ve managed to do alot with how little these two have gotten.
So, overall… yeah I’m not really seeing why the character work is supposed to be significantly better than Shadowlands. DF and TWW just aren’t accompanied by destructive retconning to WoW’s lore. The character writing is pretty much the same. People just don’t remember Shadowland’s covenant storylines because the Jailer retcons overshadow everything else.
You’re arguing in circles without addressing my actual points. To think you accused me of trolling. Laughable now.
Vanilla’s strengths aren’t its character writing. It’s the tone and world building. Which is what quests as a gameplay medium are actually suited to conveying.
Trying to convey character development through questlines will never really work. When WoW does pull it off its because it takes the time to have quest npcs monologue while you’re doing stuff or it has a cinematic. Really though, traditionally, WoW’s character development mostly came from novels and comics.
I’m really not interested in your “dark and gritty” argument. I’m barely interested in what we were discussing to begin with.
World building’s always been fine in WoW, and that hasn’t changed. It’s also handled by different people than the ones that develop quests. By proxy it isn’t beholden to the same rule I applied to the writing, which we can refer to as the plot if it makes it easier for you; that will still require escalation.
More like, coherent and at least somewhat thought out. Cataclysm marked a turn from Vanilla through wrath. Back then, quest designers checked with the lore people(mostly chris metzen) on if they were breaking lore or not. After wrath, it became a free for all. It’s somewhat improved now, in terms of world building.
Tone, however, yes. WoW was better when it was grittier. Cope about it, its the truth. Everyone’s favorite storylines come from the early days of WoW. Nobody is going to bring up “Pixar animation’s Kalecgos visits the Walrus people” a decade from now when they talk about their favorite WoW storylines.
They’ll bring up Warcraft 3, or Vanilla through Wrath. Maybe a few MoP or Legion enjoyers. But that’s it.
I will just point out that a lot of people liked the early stories in WoW because they already had lore and connections to the Warcraft games that people really liked.
That had nothing to do with WoW itself, it was nostalgia coming from a different game, so I wouldn’t really count that as “WoW being better”. Some people just had connections to characters that were featured in another game.
It isn’t a baseless claim. We have developers on twitter who talked about how before Dragonflight, it was a free for all. It’s improving now but unless the people on twitter discussing how the lore team had no say over quests was just lying, it’s how things were.
Want a glaring example? How about the Stonetalon quest chain where Garrosh acts completely out of character to the rest of Cataclysm and MoP?
The explanation given was that the quest designer who did them, Afrasiabi, literally didn’t consult with the rest of the lore team and just put it in. Come on now.
I don’t really think that’s entirely truetrue. While there was that section of people who loved Arthas, Illidan, Thrall, Sylvanas, or Tyrande going into WoW. Millions of people played WoW vanilla without knowing Warcraft 3. They were hooked onto WoW as a universe because of the tone presented through the zone designs and questing. Warcraft 3 storylines weren’t even that relevant throughout vanilla other than as background for the races and zones, and even then, not all of them.
The only raid that even tied into Warcraft 3 directly was Naxxramas.
TBC and Wrath of course had more connection, but even those two had multitudes of people who had to listen to lore heads tell them who these bosses were.
Yeah, a retcon Chris Metzen came onto the forums and not only explained, but outright apologized for. That’s how big of a deal blatant retcons were back then.
After Cata, such major retcons not only became regular, Blizzard’s attitude towards them was just to shrug and keep moving.
Its better because it was a rarity. The garrosh example I posted was just one of a multitude from that era of WoW. Cata retconned the world building and destroyed the aesthetic of many of the zones. It made the tone of quests goofier and filled the game with silly meme references. The only reason we have some discipline among the writers now is because BFA writing every single character as OOC as possible along with Shadowlands crow barring the jailer into the lore in the worst way possible lead to such a backlash that now Blizzard has to at least try to stay consistent.
So, at least now they pay attention to canon. But the issues with tone are still there, and need to be fixed.
Not to my recollection. The story’s been rife with retcons, contrivances, and outright dogwater since Warcraft 2.
Thank the powers I don’t play these for the story, or I’d have to be a masochist.
It’s still jarring (but understandable) that holy folks in Warcraft don’t worship any sort of god anymore, but channel a cosmic force. What’s the driving force behind their shared morality, now, anyway?
I remember a thread a couple of weeks ago (maybe a bit more?) asking why we couldn’t have more iconic characters like Arthas and Illidan instead of Blizzard having to create new characters. Obviously they can only milk those old characters and storylines for so long. I personally disliked Illidan, Sylvanas, and some others, but a fair amount of people did like them.
But I feel that even if WoW hadn’t happened and was just now releasing in 2024, those storylines wouldn’t be viewed the same way. Back then, MMOs were new and people were discovering things together as a community. I feel like it was similar to the early days of the internet when people were trying to figure things out.
These days, even if a completely new MMO is released with new lore and everything, it wouldn’t feel the same as MMOs back in 2004 did. MMOs have been broken down to a science and have had 20+ years to mature as a genre. Even if there is a new one, it still will share a lot in common with its predecessors.
I think it was more about the time and the era than the content. Not that the content was bad, but if those stories were released today, I don’t feel like they would get the same reactions.
I feel like it’s the first impressions that were left on us in vanilla that made the game so special and we’ll never get that second chance to have a good first impression again. I think for me the last expansion I’m really going to remember everything from was wrath.
I think you’re missing the fact that WoW didn’t release with brand new lore. What made people latch onto those characters is that there was a solid single player game that focused on them.
The truth is, MMOs can’t do story well unless they take the FFXIV approach where the campaign is twenty hours long and includes a multitude of cutscenese. They just can’t. WoW’s quest structure is incapable of making characters like Illidan or Arthas.
Characters that have worked from WoW alone take years and years to engender themselves. Garrosh? His story began in TBC, had multiple novels feature him as a character to help round him out, and finally ended in WoD. That’s eight years.
Meanwhile, they did Arthas in one game.
Do you know what WoW really needs to have iconic characters again? It needs Warcraft 4.
I’m going to be real, Xal’atath is good in concept, but so far her portrayal in TWW kind of sucks. They’ve been setting her up since Legion, I hope they don’t mess her up, but the wins she’s been getting in TWW all feel cheap. A good villain doesn’t get cheap wins. It outsmarts the heroes. And no, I don’t count Dalaran as outsmarting anyone.
No, you’d just be like every drone who have brainwashed themselves into defending every single thing Blizzard does as the best choice. Truly a fate worse than death.
They don’t have won and removed all objectively ‘good’ forces. Which means nothing matters, Sylvanas was now right to burn the tree in a tantrum because nothing matters and Cryduin is forever a loser and wrong because he’s fighting for ultimately nothing.