So now all of your narrative wishes are going to come true?
Good luck with that one
That’s what I’m missing. I need a narrative.
I mean there were a lot of people that felt the lore went to hell with TBC since it turned Illidan and Kael in to villains, the Draenei retcon, Horde BEs, and Outland in general. The meme back then was “lol lore”. Even those sorts though will usually admit a dip after Metzen left.
BFA lore felt like the new team wrapping up unfinished plot stuff (N’zoth, Azshara, etc. all shoved in to 1 expansion) to make way for their own stories, but Shadowlands was such a catastrophic failure, and DF has been “eh” that Blizzard hit the “Break glass in cases of emergency”.
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I can only agree with you on this point. There are more than enough people, who praise TBC in the highest terms, but when you take off the rose-colored glasses, TBC was pure trash when you look at the lore. So much was broken in the process… but somehow, a lot of people just seem to ignore that. Probably because of nostalgia. 
He’s back now! He begged for his job back and was so pathetic that Microsoft allowed him to return as a volunteer.
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WoW is a more difficult medium to continue Warcraft’s story with. Vanilla worked since most of the lore was world-building. Major lore characters were more cameos than anything, instead of following you around on quests or interacting all the time. The only major lore character that became a raid boss was Kel’Thuzad (and Sapph, but he wasn’t a major character in WC3) who was the boss of the game and didn’t even die, the rest, Rag, Nefarian, C’Thun, Onyxia, Hakkar, etc. were all WoW originals.
TBC is when they started trying to further the main plot when really the main plot should have continued in WC4 with TBC world-building Outland. Kael siding with the Legion and betraying Illidan could have been an interesting plot, but you just couldn’t tell it in WoW. Kael, Vashj, Illidan, and Zul’Jin were all just memorable loot piñatas. Magtheridon was sort of excusable since he was an evil demon. Gruul was the only original Outland (final) boss and he worked, even if his story was really simple.
Even Wrath, which had better lore than TBC, had stupid stuff. From Anub’arak being a throw away boss, to the DK lore retcons, to Arthas acting like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. The player character and player character factions in WoW just make it too hard to tell a story. In the RTS games, factions can lose, and villains can win, and individual characters can have their story told much better than hanging around for a quest or two.
They really should have had WC4/WC3 expansions between each WoW expansion, but that doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. Deathwing for example would have been a much more memorable villain if he actually had a campaign about him.
I liked Garrosh though, one of the few that was alright since he was built up over several expansions and, even though some people complain he turned evil, it was perfectly in-character considering he was his father’s son.
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Can I have his stuff?
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It may just be because I’m trying to search Twitter without an account, so I can’t find the threads, or they got deleted, but there was a solid era of people sending death threats to Golden.
To that end… it’s been 20 years now. Of mostly “just ok” narrative and a decently fun game. Expect it to be “just ok” and at worst you’re mildly disappointed, at best you’re pleasantly surprised. That’s how I see it.
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I mean, it is part of the community — but not trusting it is valid, I can respectfully understand that. 
That being said, as mentioned – Despite despising the lore, story & retcons of Shadowlands — There were certain short stories, excerpts and a handful of themes I did enjoy from the expansion. That, I can at least acknowledge. 
If they revealed more lore about Shadowlands to reflect it’s more than just the machine of the First Ones & the souls that perish there aren’t erased but reincarnated into new forms (Would give Monk Class spirituality some worth) – I’d actually love it a whole lot more.
- Personally I was hoping they’d reveal that the Brokers were the Ethereal race that used a machine of Death to escape the void lord & that their kind used all sorts of cosmic engines to escape – And that they’re not the last cosmically altered versions of their race who we’ll be likely to encounter either.
Upon the subject of positive attributes in Shadowlands, Blizzard have stated they’re aware players weren’t particularly fond of the systems in Shadowlands eiether, however did enjoy the renown (Thus why they reused it in Dragonflight) for progression.
Best wishes but he shouldn’t have burnt my treehouse down.
Anyway this XP is awesome.
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I agree, I’d like to see this more as well but I’m afraid that might not happen. Blizzard told us they were going to expand beyond the mortal world showing us the words of death (i.e. Shadowlands), Light, order, chaos, the void, etc.
However a loud minorithy of players constantly trash talked Shadowlands. This pulled in several large YouTube providers seeing the opportunity to farm clicks from this group that wanted to hear negative things said over and over and over again.
The result was massive negative advertising against expansions in these areas which makes it very unlikely that we will see a folow up story explaining who “The First Ones” really were.
Thanks Preach, Thanks Bueller, Thanks Asmongold.
You misspelled Afrasiabi.
Metzen was still at Blizzard, but had moved on from wow creative director well before WoD. That ‘wonderful’ mess of Orc destroying nonsense was all Alex.
Even in Cata, that was largely Alex. Why do you think Alex was on the Blizzcon stage during the Q&A for the famous “Red-Shirt guy’s” Falstad related Cata beta question, and Chris kept deferring to Alex throughout the panel?
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A lot of those concerns & detests I shared myself to be honest — However, if there’s an opportunity to mend the rifts & make something better for the future of the game, I definitely feel they should seize it.
I agree 100%. But making things LESS like Shadowlands would be, in my opinion, a major move in the wrong direction. I was really excited to hear their plan of going into the other realms like Death and I really liked their first outer realm expansion (Shadowlands).
But will there be more outer realm expansions or will they go in what I believe is the wrong direction because of all the negativity from the minority of people who make up the forum echo chamber and the YouTube guys who farmed them for clicks?
Eh ~ Depends what you mean by that. 
If they made things more:
- Ethereal
- Mystical
- Spiritual
- Eternal
- And infinite potential for souls
— I’d be all for it! 
However, if they return to:
- Making stuff all 3D printed & robots
- Entropic nihilism across all realms
- Along with their souls that are finite without anima that leads to their oblivion
- And continuing to push the narrative that every big bad in the WoW universe was the Jailor all along …
— Hmmm, probably not. 
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Chrono Trigger would disagree with you.
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To be fair, Steve did what everyone else thought was impossible. The fans said “Steve, there’s absolutely no way you could make a story about the old gods bad!” and Steve just looked at them and said “WATCH ME” and he actually did it! Nobody thought it could be done but through sheer talent and determination he defied all expectations people had for him to succeed. He actually did it. His ability to make people laugh will be sorely missed and the game just won’t feel the same without him. He will be missed
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They are literally making Chronicles 4 and suprise SL is as canon as any expansion.
I was talking about the cinematic itself.
Just leave your personal feelings about Metzen aside. His stories were so much better than what we have now. It’s his game. Yeah, he deserves praise.