And forgot to check that the homework they copied are from the wrong subject.
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I would say Cataclysm. That’s where they started their current theme of writing one big meta story overall, the current themes of orcs, undead, the Horde in general, all the losses of the night elves, and so on. This was right around when Game of Thrones came out, and the concept of subverting expectations and hardcore gritty grey fantasy became much more mainstream.
It was also when they stopped following along WC3 stories, really. Arthas was dead, the remaining ones really didn’t have the same pathos, though some of the villains did pretty well, like the Thunder King. They managed to pull off something decent with MoP, but even then you had some serious hiccups.
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WoD because any sense of coherency in the story disappeared with WoD. There never should have been a WoD. It should’ve went to Legion after MoP.
Also what Spuddyc said.
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I get what you are saying, and I agree that it is silly to have every character in an MMO simultaneously being their factions general, or their class commander, or whatever.
When I say that player characters should be more central to the story, I don’t mean that we should be more important in the setting in the sense of all being faction leaders or whatever. Quite the opposite. I mean that the story should be focused around our adventures, not the doings of the high muckety mucks.
A tabletop RPG is focused around the stories of the players. They may be more or less insignificant when it comes to the vast affairs of their world, but they are the centre of their narrative. That’s what I am talking about. Restoring player agency, or at least the illusion of it.
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It hasnt been great for a bit, but it really became terrible when they plagiarized MoP
they took away your artifact.
Thats what allowed you to fight Legion.
Without it you are just a regular joe shmoe
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Oh by all means it makes sense, just still a downgrade feeling to fight the Legion to the Naga in that order.
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In a word, nostalgia. Instead of trying new things and telling new stories, they just keep doing what worked before, and the overall story’s integrity decays with each retelling.
I mean, I get it to a point. WoW owes its success in no small part to the strong roots it had in the RTS games and the love and affection fans had for them. But when it’s seventeen years later and “the Horde does evil stuff before destroying itself and finding redemption” is still the only storyline the writers have to tell with this institution, I think something went wrong.
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In Cataclysm, after WOTLK. Arthas was truly the last interesting villain. It’s then that Blizzard started digging up minor villains and making them “big bads”, while also digging up side characters (MOP). They even brought Gul’Dan back because they were running out of ideas, except AU Gul’Dan is worse than MU Gul’Dan. We had a whole expansion based around the Legion, but Sargeras barely played a role until the end. From what I remember he doesn’t even have any speaking lines. That was very underwhelming, though Antorus is my favorite post-Cata raid (then again I quit in Cata and came back in Legion).
And now we are in BFA, which is just recycling plots again. I’d rather they just make WoW2, where they cut away all the bad mobile game tactics of time gating and also handing out rares and epics. Have things actually be accomplishments again. Guess that’s why I’m gonna be om Classic instead of Retail.
I still don’t know why I let Gul’dan go instead of blowing his head off. The whole idea of freeing AU Gul’dan so he could bite us later was ridiculous.
We are the dumbest murder hobos ever. 
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Yeah, the player character might the hero of the universe or something like that, but they are still pretty much brainless constructs that do whatever NPCs want them to.
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I’m glad we got Warlords of Draenor because it brought back Gul’dan (my favorite Warcraft villain alongside Arthas/Garrosh) and allowed us to explore an an unbroken version of Outland. The story, at least during the leveling, was incredible - though Doomhammer’s cut storyline is a glaring flaw.
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I don’t think the story went “wrong” at any given point nor do I feel the writing is any worse than any other Blizzard games. This is a company that puts gameplay first and it shows, if you a want top tier story experience you play Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2. Warcraft has always been, at best, an homage to all the fantasy cliches with a comic-book flare.
I would also argue that BfA has had some of the best storylines to date. Jaina’s return home, contacting Vol’jin, the trials of the Zandalari, and the Saurfang subplot are all examples. The writing of Sylvanas and the faction war has been a roller coaster of consistency, make no mistake. But let’s not overlook the gems this expansion has given us either.
As to our character just being a bystander to view events… I’ve never felt more involved than with the war campaign, where your character is even included in the cutscenes. Just because our name isn’t voice-acted and we’re referred to as “champion” doesn’t mean we aren’t playing a crucial role in the story. Rather than being “soldier 003” as we were in classic, BC, etc. I think our characters are now on par with the major leaders as far as our role in the story, and I quite enjoy that.
Just because you don’t agree with the direction of the story doesn’t mean you’re just a camera to view it through. If your character wouldn’t agree with the decisions the story calls for, play it with another. My Tauren Druid has not and will not participate in the Darkshore campaign, yet my Forsaken priest’s motivations aligned perfectly.
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You mean…where did the CURRENT story go wrong?
Probably when they made Teldrassil the cause of Undercity, instead of a response to it.
The Alliance already had enough reason to attack Undercity, so having Teldrassil be revenge for the loss of Lordaeron would have made the entire conflict justified for both sides.
Having her burn Teldrassil for no real reason because “**** it, I’m just in a mood today”, makes the entire thing stupid and one-sided.
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For me its when they kept hitting the horde with villian bat. Faction has gotton minimal development and when it does get development it is used for raid fodder. It is no fun in RP to keep playing villians when blizzard keeps telling you something else.
not even the standing horde but most old horde content been dungons or raids like WOD
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How are you even RPing a ‘good’ Orc at this point?
Are you like Mr. Magoo -ing yourself through this war?
Azshara: invites enemies into her palace to steal the heart energy and plans on just escaping the room at the last second
Jaina and Thalyssra block her escape route
Azshara: 
!!!
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I don’t think Blizzard understands certain things.
Different styles of game require different styles of storytelling. You cannot write “A Story” in a purely abstract sense and then impose it upon a game without respect for that game’s structure and mechanics.
World of Warcraft is a game the presents a player with a set of identities: there’s the Horde and Alliance identities, the Racial identities, and the Class identities. The nature of the game strongly encourages people to develop loyalty towards these identities.
Storytelling for WoW should therefore incorporate and support that loyalty. Blizzard has become almost unbelievably bad at doing this.
The idea of The Forsaken, a dangerous and unreliable ally to the Horde, assuming control over it and driving it in a terribly destructive direction isn’t a bad idea for a novel! But for a game that has encouraged players to develop loyalty towards that race, it is an unforgivably bad story to tell.
This is, in my view, the largest fundamental, directional problem.
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That is the issue, guess I try to forget about the burning. When they mentioned faction war i told my self i would quite if horde went down the same path again. But they added straight orcs, something i wanted since Vanilla. Then Makghar armor ugh and here i am lol
On that note WOD was really bad too, I even quite back then.
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I’d actually go with improper world building in Vanilla. Also, telling too much stuff in books, when things should really be done in-game.
The biggest failing in Vanilla’s story, as much as it has one, is that it didn’t really set the factions up solidly enough for future factions and events. I know this sounds a bit odd, but a lot of factions and groups left Vanilla with no clear path forward. What were the Nelfs trying to do? The gnomes? Their story basically begins and ends with Gnomeregan. The Horde as a whole also had no real story other than just go around establishing outposts in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Finally, the Forsaken lost a big chunk of their story to the Argent Dawn. Always felt a bit off that the zone right next to a starting zone (WPL) was basically a neutral zone and not ground zero for the Forsaken fighting off the scourge. Really, the only faction to come out strong in Vanilla and have a complete story was the humans. Dwarves got BRD, which I guess is lore rich so they get second place. (Blackrock Spire as Horde always felt a bit odd - it just never really tied into what the Kalimdor Horde was trying to do, what with it being on the other side of the planet and all).
Ultimately, too many groups were set up as being mostly self-contained kingdoms. If not for orcs (and humans to a lesser degree), no one would mess with anyone else.
Basically, the problem all this presents is that the story is fine when we move to an entirely new land with new factions (MoP, Wrath, TBC to an extent). Things fall apart though when we revisit the old world and suddenly have to have things start happening, because nothing was developed or set up prior to this. Baine in BfA is a prime example of this. He’s been around since WC3 TFT and yet has no quest lines or important events outside of Mulgore until BfA (well, and recruiting HM Tauren). So, now we’re supposed to be sold on him being super honorable and stuff, but there’s nothing backing this up. Nelfs in general are in a similar position. They never had any real plot outside of “protect the forest”, so the only way to drag them into the story is to assault the forest in some way or another.
Books and outside media are another problem. Too many things happen in them that affect the story, but aren’t present in games. I could understand backing up minor things, but major events should receive some in-game representation. Baine, again, comes up since all of his actions are in books. I don’t read the books; therefore, I don’t care about Baine. Calia is another example of this - maybe don’t try and write a new character for a major role in a book and just shove her into the game and expect everyone to be impressed with her?
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