Another problem deriving from this strange arrangement is that major lore points have no metric of feedback other than, in recent times, social media backlash. These books honestly shouldn’t even exist at all and it says a lot that the creative team (or more likely, whoever is supervising them) isn’t confident enough in their ability to tell a story ingame to want to put the meat of narrative work actually in the game world it ties into.
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Can’t charge $13.95 for a quest chain the way you can for a novel.
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Where did things go wrong? It was making the Forsaken a part of the Horde. The New Horde started out as orcs, people with a dark past trying to find some way to live down what they had done, teaming up with the Tauren, a gentle and wise older brother to the orcs, and the trolls, a feisty and head strong younger brother, who have a dark edge that they aren’t altogether sheepish about.
It was perfect, and it was balanced. You had the makings of a true hero faction there. But then Blizz gave them an extra dose of “edge” that they didn’t need which threw everything out of balance. The story has “wobbled” as you might put it, ever since. It might have started small, but it became more pronounced as time went on.
Honestly, the Forsaken should have been an Alliance faction. The Alliance represents the “civilized races” and history shows the dark measures “civilized people” will go to in order to maintain their power. The Forsaken could have filled in the role of the Alliance’s dark shadow, their ugly hypocrisy given a physical form, perfectly. The Night Elves would have made a better fit with the Horde, and their savage nature wouldn’t have had to have been downplayed in order to fit in with their faction, the way it was with the Alliance.
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^ YES!!! I mean if I wanted to play ‘The Age of Mortals’ (Alexstrazsa: “…for the dawning of the age of mortals has begun.”) I’d play Sims, or something.
I and many others it appears, feel they keep shoving ‘Human Potential’ down our throats …
I RP’d my character initially going throughout the war - then once the fire was lit, porting into the tree to save civilians against the flames, then tiding up loose ends with those within the Horde that were going to oust me.
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Extremely. For several classes and races the only reinforcement for said players is a out of character “but thou must.”
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I think the story went wrong when WoW became a thing. Back in the RTS games, you could have a good plot because the player was always in the same shoes. You jumped around a bit and got a fun experience leading different peoples into battle, and at the end of the day there were winners and losers and memorable characters that engaged and interested you. Sure, it wasn’t as clean cut as a story like Star Wars, everyone kind of had their moment in the sun because you were going to play with every faction, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now.
Then, instead of WC4, we got WoW, and this changed the dynamic entirely: Now everybody has to be a winner in game during the same storylines, featuring all the same characters, but from different points of view.
To be fair, this kind of works with certain expansions, namely Wrath I think (although we all have to admit that one was built almost entirely on WC3’s back) but in general you HAVE to kill some of the story to service the playerbase. We can’t have the Alliance totally crush the Horde, even if the story has to bend itself into a pretzel to explain why not. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing one faction totally wipe out the other for a little while, but the fear of a playerbase riot keeps the devs from doing it.
Not that there aren’t good questlines and side stories in WoW, and some expansions had mostly good story telling, but I think we’ll never reach the level of greatness that used to be unless we ditch the MMO aspect (which we most certainly aren’t going to any time soon).
I guess to sum up: In order to customize and service every player’s experience and personal story in an MMORPG, they had to mangle the over-arching story they crafted in the RTS games. It can be good, but it will never be as great as it used to be.
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Yeah it is an issue, especially when they don’t have a in-game equivalent to an event from the novel. For example when Garrosh was made Warchief of the Horde there was an in-game with Thrall, Garrosh, and Vol’jin showing the transition of power. The novel was a bit more fleshed out since we got to see Thrall’s thought process on why he chose Garrosh.
Contrast that with a bunch of people asking where Cairne was and why Baine was in his place when Cataclysm launched. It would have neat to see the duel between the Cairne and Garrosh and actually take part in taking Thunder Bluff from Magatha. Missed opportunity for sure.
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It could have worked if they’d made more of the races aggressive, or at least given more plausible reasons for conflict. Also, maybe either give the races some subgroups or something to populate the areas a bit more. Instead, we started with a situation where only two races (Orcs and Forsaken) really make any sort of bid to expand their own territory. Everyone else is largely content to chill in their own area, and two races (gnomes and trolls) have no problem essentially sharing their lands with other races (dwarves and orcs).
Kinda hard to call something a World of Warcraft when only 2 of the 8 factions really have any innate drive to go to war.
(And even the Orc and Forsaken being aggressive is a bit contrived. The Orcs could very easily have just migrated south to Feralas for their lumber and resource needs, and the Forsaken really started out as aggressively defensive against the humans more than anything. Taking this a step further, if WoW had used the “natural” pairing - Horde Nelfs and Alliance Forsaken - there wouldn’t be any sort of conflict at all since now everyone has their own continent.)
Taking this a step further, the game’s done nothing to fix this. Of all the factions added to the game over the years, only the worgen are actively aggressive, and that’s still mostly defensive aggression. Everyone else is painfully neutral / passive. We even have the Zandalari aggression revealed to have been mostly Zul and not the empire’s official stance.
It’s just weird that there aren’t more factions that just want to conquer more lands simply for wealth and power. Might not be moral or pretty, but that’s pretty much the most basic reason to go to war.
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I’m pretty sure I’m developing an allergic reaction to human potential. My symptoms include fits of rage and minor depression.
Not everyone has to be the winner every time. But the wins and losses need to be balanced out. Having the Orcs defeat an attempted siege from the Night Elves on a settlement in the Barrens or Azshara. But have the Night Elves shove the Orcs out of Ashenvale. Have the Dwarves in the Wetlands beat a group of Goblins and Undead that tried to encroach. But then have the Goblins and Undead get their own victories somewhere else.
The problem is that one race’s losses on one side are used to facilitate another race’s victory on that same side and it leaves the losing race feeling like crap. Or worse like they’re just a wheel house for the race on their faction the Devs actually care about.
I don’t think WoW story will every be what the majority of people will ever want. At its core it is an game first, story second. Having said that I generally like WoW, at least to the point I still want to see what happens to the Alliance after all is said and done. Oh sure I have plenty of my own beef(robot kitty) but for the most I got what I wanted from it.
Namely, going to Argus, seeing the draenei homeworld and even its peak in AU Draenor, seeing the Arthas finally get killed, and with any luck see Sylvanas face her just dessert. Oh, I’m sure there is still a chance she will escape any punishment but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
“Suffering is the gasoline that drives our story engine.” So I expect will see more losses and victory in the future.
The Alliance are old and establish kingdom, they actually dont want new land and are quite content with the lands they own.
The dragons and night elves lost their immortality precisely because it is a story hook. These ancient civilization now to have to live their live knowing life is fleeting and precious. It the same as that old futurama episode where Bender learns he will actually die someday. It made him appreciate what he had.
Natural pathing for the Forskaen wasn’t joining the Alliance or a two faction system, it was joining the Illidari where Draeni, Blood Elves, and Forsaken form a third faction dedicated to stopping Arthas and the Legion at nearly any cost, while Velen is the counterbalance to try and stop the faction from becoming as bad as the monsters they fight.
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When they made the story of Cataclsym a mishmash of a all out world war between the Horde and Alliance alongside a world war between world end dragon.
Once they did that the somewhat tight narrative was shot in the gut and has been since.
To give an example of the gut shot, take a look at Legion. Legion began with both the factions losing their leaders and new ones stepping in. You would think, the main storyline of the expansion would be about said two leaders as they lead their factions to thwarting the Legion invasion.
Instead, Anduin did eff all the entire expansion, Sylvanas showed up briefly but her contribution did nothing for the overall narrative except reiterate that she really wants to not die, and the main characters of the expansion was Khadgar hot off his butt from Warlords and Illidan who they had to bring back because they killed just about everyone else.
Because of that, while the narrative was okay for Legion we’re dealing with the very obvious fallout of not thinking their plans through with BfA where now just like with Cataclysm we have an all out faction war which is a backdrop to an even bigger Void War brewing.
It’s all a mess.
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That actually would have been pretty cool.
I never really played any expansion but I finally took the dive and bought WoW: Legion. Now to be clear I never played but I knew people who did play and saw what Vanilla was like. Boy was I shocked when I jumped into an RPG that had no RPG elements left in it.
Weapon and Armour training? What’s that? A Hunters relationship with their pet? Whaaa? Warlocks not empowering themselves with the essence they literally rip from their dying victims? Crazy.
Now I know that that is… window dressing on the problem but that all kind of blends together. From what quest lines I have completed from the older expansions I would say the story started going down hill around Cata to MoP.
Never liked the Pandaren. They were funny as an oddity in WC3:FT. But as a serious topic… yeah. No. The whole “Kung-fu Panda” vibe killed it for me.
WoD and BfA are dumpster fires. BfA especially so seeing as… this is a war that shouldn’t have happened. The moment Sylvanas started seeming to be Garrosh 2.0; one or more of the Order Halls should have stepped in. At the very least the Silver Hand would have.
I don’t know about the warlock thing, but these things were in vanilla WoW. You might find Classic interesting if you’ve never tried it.
I always thought that Cataclysm always got more hate than it deserved. It definitely wasn’t perfect from a story angle, but its flaws were nothing that couldn’t be undone.
I would argue that MoP was where the story REALLY took a turn for the worse. For one, all the potential story threads in Cataclysm were dropped in favor of pandas, while Garrosh went from being a grey character to being a tyrannical genocidal maniac kind of out of nowhere.
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I agree with MoP is where it all started going down the rabbit Hole.
It was there where a credible conflict about land dominion with two ships gone missing one with an important subject and animosity credible. But then Horde started spiraling down to the irrational evil and Alliance the Cptn America of the story.
BfA was just the cherry on the pie by further cementing that image.
I hope this is about lack of time/talent in creating a credible BIG misunderstanding that would lead both factions into attacking cities… We had a whispering OG, a manipulative Queen and yet it all started because of a sudden Warchief tantrum. 
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middle mop, definitely there, the beginning was great, but then Hitler Hellscream, warchief Varian and everything bad today was leaded by those mistakes
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Totally biased answer: when they killed Kael’thas. That was the first instance I reacted with “What? Why?” to the story. There could have been so much potential with interactions he could’ve had with Sylvanas, Jaina, Arthas, Azshara, etc. and unlike Illidan, I don’t think there’s really any more ludicrous story twisting they can do to bring him back.
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Cata is the point where you can see the Sub-numbers took the first major hit and never recovered. The wounds from that expansion still fester to this day.
But my personal opinion on where things started going bad was when they decided on a policy of taking Alliance things/characters and making them neutral so the Horde could have them.
This had two bad effects on the story. First it weakened and watered down the Alliance and second it prevented any kind of build up of stuff for the Horde.
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