They do not use these forums for feedback. These forums are specifically to give rage babies a place to vent that can be ignored, and allow players to communicate with each other/hang out/discuss.
I’ve heard rumors of this type before. I don’t agree with the conclusions reached, however.
Forums remain a valuable source of feedback even if there is a second tier forum filled only with their sycophants. Additionally, avenues of feedback such as this one are consumed by other members of the community, which in turn informs their impressions and commentary, impacting this and other forms of social media.
As for accusations that the story forum is being ignored, they are as old as the story forum itself, despite that SF feedback has wound its way into the story before. Do recall that the SF itself was the outgrowth of the old suggestions forum.
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Name 1 suggestion brought about by the Story Forums implemented in game post Throne of Thunder. I will wait. Provide the proof that it started here — since you seem to want to make grandiose claims without backing them up (unlike myself who has substantiated the claims with evidence).
You can’t.
I’ve been on the forums since the game first arose, and even I can maybe pinpoint two incidents: Boss Mida, and the dialogue text for Ji Firepaw on Wandering Isle starting zone. Both, which in the grand scheme of things happening in game, are entirely irrelevant and pre-secret forums.
15 Minutes of Fame: Player RP campaign inspires goblin NPC | Engadget
The Darkshore changes, as few and as paltry as they were, including:
Removal of the death camps
Revamping of the Tyrande/Nathanos fight
Introduction of wisps that would fight you back during the raising quest
Each of these were the apparent result of community feedback, received here and elsewhere.
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PTR forums are not the story forum.
Every day I thank the cosmos that Blizzard doesn’t draw ideas from the Story Forums anymore.
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Depends on who you ask. IMO, they do not listen either way, but it does not matter, because
https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraft3/comments/l31zw3/according_to_jason_schreier_classic_games_team/
followed by
https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-merges-blizzard-and-vicarious-visions
So, who knows how will the story unfold.
gl hf
Dealing with the feedback is as much of skill and art, and drawing or coding, I’d say. Tricky thing. Might help to salvage even miserable games (FF14, for example, or the feedback that led to the creation of FNAF). Not useful to replace one’s head though.
gl hf
The whole thing doesn’t fit for any one. The lore nerds hate it because it makes very little sense or craps all over a group. The pvp thing got a big uptick until they rolled out the OW pvp benefits. At which point people either dropped pvp like a hot potato or shopped around for the better servers for the xp/rep bonuses.
For the record the Alliance won literally every battleground. So the course of the faction war was entirely in the Alliances favour. That said it was still a stupid plot point. Were it I writing the cause it would have been a N’Zoth cult group that burned the tree while the Alliance and Horde were distracted at Darkshore. That way neither side would be quote “Guilty” of genocide or whatever. Some would still be miffed but you can’t win on that front. You’d be able to create a better story than Sylvanas and Nathanos being Mary Sues.
In order to maintain the faction war you would need something like Teldrassil to reignite the need for war. Making it a cultist plot would provide enough ambiguity in the fictional world for why tensions would remain hot. After all there is enough hate for any side to justify paranoia that the plot is a cover-up. The Horde had ample reason to believe it what with Genn making war during a truce. Sylvanas and the invasion of Gilneas being good enough reason…
In short stupid and lazy writing. It is why I am still baffled by why anyone takes WoW lore seriously. It died the day Metzen left.
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Metzen made plenty of regrettable writing decisions of his own.
100% true. He was no Shakespeare but he created enough good material for people to love Warcraft beyond it just being an RTS.
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I agree with you first off that the thing doesn’t fit for anyone. I’m certainly aware of, and I respect, that there are many valid complaints that come from many different corners, and I do try to hear them out as I see the reasonable ones.
This point I will disagree upon however - there were pre-existing tensions in BFA that could have turned into a more limited, Battleground-focused war. Vanilla did this quite effectively, and there’s no reason it can’t be or couldn’t be mimicked. Blizzard didn’t do this, I feel, to make a believable faction conflict - they did it to set up their next big bad, and while they did that, they left behind a metric ton of damage in a rivalry that I don’t think they really understand anymore - in part because they aren’t writing for it anymore, even if that’s what the marketing people keep telling them to do (and the marketing people aren’t entirely wrong on this - the problem is that they don’t connect it to the needs of PVP gameplay).
Perhaps I’m just jaded and bitter but I would argue that the current writers/devs never understood. From what I looked up some time ago nearly everyone who worked on Vanilla and most of the way to Wrath are gone. What they have left are super-fans who liked one particular group/aspect or people who have a social agenda. Neither are conducive for a quality product.
You can see that same sort of consequences for games like Planetside 2 where content was modified to fit the content that Wrel enjoys. At least that is if you buy what most of reddit is selling. All I know is that the quality and enjoyment of the content is through the floor. And it started after they hired the Super-fan. 
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I mean, I get being jaded and bitter - I’ve been there with this franchise. It’s just that at this point I don’t see where it gets me, if that helps.
But yes, the current devs never understood - likely because they are not the ones who took Warcraft from RTS to MMO. These are vastly different gamestyles with vastly different appeals, means of connecting to the player, abilities to attract player investment. An MMO notably cultivates a very personal investment to the character, the aspects of that character’s identity, and to beloved places that an RTS simply can’t. The Terran Campaign in Starcraft begins with the destruction of a planet called Mar Sara - a planet that you are the magistrate of. You spend around five missions there, and its destruction is meaningless because to the RTS player, it is little more than a field upon which you do battle.
It doesn’t have the trappings of a home, or something that you identify with. The emotions involved are entirely different.
The requirements of an MMO therefore reveal themselves as those that need to be careful with the player identities, which themselves are the most impactful and meaningful choices that individual players can make.
As for the rivalry, for me? It’s pretty simple. If Blizzard has carved in stone that no matter what I do, I cannot defend the places that I care about, that I identify with, that I was established as being there to defend because the outcome has already been dictated, I see no reason to play. If they have established, that on the basis of the identity that I picked, that I will be the perpetual loser and that every victory I have in game will be tainted by the reality of what they wrote - then I will not play.
Bitterness and jaded serves no purpose. Save to remind one to never get attached to any franchise. They inevitably disappoint.
As for the rivalry… you answered your own question. The Dev’s will never create a satisfactory story so long as certain individuals hold the positions they do. My suggestion is either head-canon things yourself and simply run the content for loot and trasmogs or move on. I would had I some place to go. I keep thinking about FF14 but not sure if the friends I followed will go back to it or come back to WoW. They stopped playing both.
I chose one of the two to just grind on. Don’t even read the quests unless I need further details. Gods this game has become so bad.
I mean, I can think of no greater indictment of how a franchise has been handled than to see someone talk like this.
Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Star Trek and Star Wars etc.
If an IP is for sale it will ultimately fall under the weight of time and expectations. This is the way of things. Enjoy a game, novel, movie for itself. Safest that way.
It helps to stop doomscrolling the story forums sometimes. Stop doomscrolling in general actually and actually play the game, you might find that you have fun even despite the things that bother you.
The problem is, that in order for the BfA story to “work” it requires to look at it in isolation. Once other plot elements appear, contradictions and oddities become more and more problematic.
When it comes to the motivation of Varok, there are 2 major problems:
- He already walked the path saying similar things as he did in BfA. He got these exact conclusions years before (so, the “best” plot of the BfA is a re-run of the WotLK one):
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Garrosh_Hellscream#Scourge_Invasion
- Before the Storm. Sylvanas shows an act of aggression right in front of Anduin, Turalyon and Genn. If the story about Anduin being unable to withhold them would’ve been true, those who wanted to fight would have all the justifications and then some as the Gathering events happened. But that was not the case, so the horde
ifshould’ve been fully aware that Genn going against peace even in the stress situation is a non-thing.
gl hf
Till this day I am not sure how much of it were his decisions being bad, and how much - execution. He was not only working on WoW story, so, when “titan” was in active development, how much really could he focus on the polish and details of the story?
(oh, and btw, there is the comment about it when it comes to Cata story: he only could spend 5% of the quest dev time on the story):
[edit: Metzen was not even in the quest design team, it seems]
gl hf