Is it just me or is the story telling in WoW not that great?
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I mean, I think attempting to make the player character relevant to the story is what hurts it. It has a LOT of potential, but I think this “Champion, you are the most important person in the world, just ignore the other thousands of players that play the same role as you”
I think we should just be like a lieutenant at best, not the champion of our factions, like the old days.
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WoW’s storytelling while in general is really awesome, the details about specific things has always been terrible.
If you’ve ever read ANY of the books you’d know that, aside from a few which even then aren’t amazing, just not as terrible as the rest.
BFA’s story has been terrible.
They stopped doing this after Legion because so many people complained about it, now people are complaining that the PC doesn’t feel relevant or important enough.
This is not the reason WoW has bad writing. Stop acting like this or the inverse of this is why WoW is a bad story. This is your personal preference, and other people prefer it other ways.
I’m so sick of people pretending like this is why WoW is an absolutely awful story, as if catering this one aspect to this particular subset of the player base will suddenly fix the entire story and suddenly this expansion won’t be MoP 2.0.
This is just what you want. You’re not thinking big picture about the many, many terrible writing blunders the lore writers have made over the course of this expansion especially. You’re just upset about this one issue and want to find a way to shoehorn your personal preference into a conversation about lore.
Just…this ain’t it, chief. This is not the reason WoW has bad writing. This is just something you want.
BfA is possibly one of the worst stories for a major video game, period. It is literally the exact same thing we’ve been through before. The characters even acknowledge that this is the same story that’s been told before.
There were so many opportunities to do unique and interesting thing with this expansion and they just…didn’t. What made them think this was a good idea? What made them think we needed to tell this story again?
It wouldn’t even be as bad if it was for the Alliance side this time. But it’s the Horde again. I just want to sit down with the writers and ask them what the hell they were thinking. Why? I just want to know why. Surely there must be a good reason in their minds.
I am not saying that completely destroys it, I am saying it hurts it, which it does, it’s hard to create an interesting storytelling when you have to make thousands of player feel special, it’s way easier to create a story when the important characters are the established lore ones.
I agree with you, this isn’t what makes it uninteresting but I also think it’s damaging to it.
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Blizzard has always been good at telling what we like to call “Big Dumb Stories”.
This isn’t a negative trait mind you. It means they’re good at big, crazy, high concept stuff.
Their story telling is at its best when Space Satan is stabbing a planet, or a dragon made of metal and angst wants to blow up the world.
They’re not so good at making deep, complex characters and narratives.
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I for one was really interested in what unfolded in the legion expansion, sadly things don’t always go the way you’d like with BfA
I don’t think that hurts the story, objectively, at all. I don’t think it’s hard to create a story in which the PC is an important character, in fact most stories (not just in video games, books and movies will often have a main character that is used as a reader/watcher insert) do this and have great success.
There’s still plenty of important interaction between established lore characters. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s easier to show us these important moments because our character is always written in to them. Otherwise, what would a rando soldier be doing at a big, important summit between world leaders? Why would they stand around a lore table with famed generals?
Making the PC a more important character gives the writers lots of opportunity to have them interact with these lore giants we all love. Otherwise it would feel extremely awkward to have Human Paladin Lieutenant #83 interacting with someone like High King Anduin or Lord Admiral Jaina. You would be seeing much less of these guys if you were just another soldier.
Yeah, I was hoping that Christie Golden joining Blizzard, the writing would improve. But after her last book and with how this expansion is turning out, really is making me lose faith in her writing.
It was never amazing, but unarguably the best author they had for their books.
I used to live 45 mins from Blizzard’s HQ. If I still lived there I’d definitely make the drive to see it / hopefully talk to someone as to what the hell is going on with the terrible writing, haha.
I honestly hope someone stands up at the Blizzcon Q&A and puts the screws to them and demands an answer for this. It just drives me nuts. I’d be okay if they just gave a reason, because from the outside it looks so illogical and insane.
How many ideas did they have to nix before landing on “lets do MoP again”? Why were those ideas so bad that this looked like the good option? Why couldn’t the conflict be within the Alliance this time? BLIZZARD PLEASE.
If no one said anything to Ion when he said that utterly ludicrous nonsense about PVP vendors being too complicated for our tiny little minds I highly doubt anyone will pin them on the story.
That being said, once we start moving into the crazy cosmic stuff, I believe it will improve. Like I said, Blizz is good at the big, dumb, high fantasy narratives. Keep them focused on the macro, and we’ll be fine.
Stay calm no need to get hot headed and start throwing out the punches in thin air
I doubt they’d let it happen. I mean remember the guy asking if Diablo immortal was a joke? I think they ended up kicking him out.
Yeah, it really would be nice if they worked better with the community to explain stuff vs. making things like short stories which crop up even more questions.
Right? And people were calling it as soon as it started and they even said “It won’t be another MOP” and It’s literally turning into that.
Warchief doing something everyone’s disagreeing with even though It’s literally just war against the people the horde hates the most…in a game called world of WARcraft…based on horde vs alliance in an expansion with the focal point of being horde vs alliance…
They are trying to tell a “serious” story in BfA which is not working.
They are also struggling in a post-Metzen world. I think there are people newly in charge of the story now that really just don’t “get it”, they don’t get the Horde or the Alliance or the characters, and this was always masked by Metzen being there.
I just want Anduin to win in this expansion, he can do it, I know he can. …
The fact that we went from leading expeditions to being champions of our factions is why we have so many interactions with them, I mean, in TBC and Vanilla they were very few in between.
And I do not disagree that stories are really interesting with the reader/watcher/player in the protagonist role, because, hell, I roleplay as myself in the world of Azeroth and I love games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age or even Mount & Blade, but, like I said, I feel like in the MMO space it hurts it because our characters are not meant to have choices(Or in horde’s case, lasting choices), if anything, just shows that our characters really like killing people, animals and other sentient beings for gold.
I think being downgraded from “champion” but still remaining relevant would be a nice compromise.
Being a general, or commander puts the player high enough up the food-chain to hobnob with the big wigs, but not so high that we become the “chosen warriors of the cosmos”.
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Yeah, that’s cool actually, I just don’t think our characters should be in such a position of power that every leader depends on us for… Anything, really.
I feel lately they’re trying to hard to have overly intricate plots and everything is over dramatic. Like anything happens is attempted to be some unexpected twist. I feel if they let things happen more naturally and kepts things simpler overall it would be better.