The lore is actually fairly linear and logical. It’s just that you need to read a few books for it all to make sense. And they can’t get that into the game. So rather than put a books worth into the game - or cut it entirely - they just put in some. And that doesn’t really add up.
In fact, you don’t even need to read the books - any number of content creators cover the lore so you don’t have to. So I guess if you don’t have an irrational hatred of content creators you can essentially audio-book the lore.
Personally? I think the story is something they should cut. It makes the game worse having it partially in the game rather than making it an extra curricular.
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That doesn’t make it good and doesn’t excuse the retcons and changes and dumb crap they’ve written.
It’s an MMORPG. No.
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I guess that’d be one way to ensure I would never touch the game again, lol.
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I have a different perspective. The narrative that has been written over the last few years is bad on many levels. But it would still be “do-able” if the narrative wasn’t being pushed at such break-neck speed that players become lost as to what is actually happening.
The story-telling is what has fallen far short. There is simply too much narrative content being forced upon us while being tied to character progression. In BfA there was simply too much being told at once, too many story arcs, too many threads. It’s just too much information in too little time and too fast.
That there even needs to be books (expanding on lore as opposed to explaining what happened in game are two entirely different concepts for novels) and content creators (sic) to explain it outside of the normal in game story telling mechanism is evidence that the story telling vehicle broke down long ago.
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Writing stories for persistent world games always has a lot of issues. The first issue is that you can’t make changes that inconveniences the playerbase such as destroying cities or making areas inaccessible. The second issue is that players don’t like losing.
The way WoW presents its story is mainly through expensive CGIs cutscenes and voice acting through campaigns because the average player doesn’t read story text and just wants to get through quests asap.
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Simply put, when a player has to log out of the game, ask him/herself “wtf just happened?” and go search the internet for answers, then the story telling is broken. The game should make people want to read books to learn more about the world, not understand what they just played through in game.
Or even better, for their own metrics, they should go back to the original philosophy of adding more content in game not tied to character progression for players to run around in game learning more about the lore.
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People shouldn’t have to read books or listen to a youtubers summary of said book to understand a story for a video game.
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I swear i never heard about night warrior tyrande except from the forums and this latest cutscene where we had to fight her. Did i miss it in the story somewhere?
The setting is fine. The story sucks, partly because it revolves around a 5D villain whose entire plan seems to revolve around us making terrible decisions at literally every point we could.
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Did you play BfA? It started there. And it was part of the Night Fae campaign.
That’s an actual issue: splitting up the story into four parts that not everyone can access.
No, i skipped legion and BFA. Quite near the end of wod.
BfA set up SL (albeit poorly), so if you skipped it you missed a lot.
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Yeah, there’s a good chunk of storyline missing for you and some they even removed, because stupid reasons.
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/hugs Thundastahm
Why must you say such hurtful things? Especially as a fellow dwarf.
Off topic, just wanted to say I always enjoy seeing your posts because I get a kick out of saying your name in my head.
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No, it’s not.
Let’s take the burning of the tree as an example. The Horde marched on over there with the intent to occupy it. Then this elf lady triggers Sylvanas, so she randomly decides to burn the tree, surprising everyone, even Nathanos with this sudden change in plans. Then we’re expected to believe in SL that she actually planned to burn it the entire time for the Jailor.
Then there’s Tyrande and the power of the Night Warrior. Elune granted her the power to enact her vengeance, but then she revoked that power the moment the vengeance was about to be carried out. Then Elune forced Tyrande into choosing between vengeance and renewal despite having already made the choice and despite depriving her of the choice in the first place.
It reads like the writers never planned anything in advance and were making it all up as they went along.
You shouldn’t need external material to understand what is being presented in-game. That’s an even bigger example of bad writing. That’s Balan Wonderworld levels of bad writing where the story is so barebones that you need a novel to flesh out what little plot there is into a full story.
A recent example of this in-game is Calia. That lightforged undead lady was just plopped into the game with no context and made into the new leader of the undead despite nothing about her being explained in-game. You would need to buy the books to get her backstory, because she doesn’t have one in-game.
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Wow blizzard did tyrande and the night elves big dirty. I feel some kind of disappointment in Anduin. That owl though
Not only this, but Sylvanas’ plan would have failed at literally any step on the way from BFA onwards if we had have made the correct decision in half a dozen different points.
If Saurfang had have said “no, I won’t do a preemptive strike on Teldrassil because I think the Alliance will keep their word in regards to diplomacy”, Sylvanas’ plan failed.
If anyone at Teldrassil had have said "hey, there’s a troll camp we know about, we should probably keep an eye on them so we don’t get stabbed in the back (literally), then Sylvanas’ plan failed.
If Draka had have said “no, taking the Primus’ sigil that the Jailer is after TO THE DAMN HEART OF THE JAILERS POWER” was a bad idea, Sylvanas’ plan failed.
If literally anyone said “hey, Anduin just walking out of Torghast is kinda sus”, we should probably vet Anduin before we let him meet the Archon, then Sylvanas’ plan failed.
The amount of sheer luck and stupidity needed for Sylvanas’ plan to actually work should cement her as a terrible villain in regards to planning.
Not to mention the obvious cognitive dissonance she has when she looks at the guy whose magic manifests as chains, is called the Jailer, lives in the sanctum of DOMINATION, relies on Mind Control and/or torture for half his plans and still thinks “yeah, this is a guy who is big on free will”, and then is surprised pikachu when he doesn’t actually want to free everyone.
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I altered your statement to provide another insight.
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