The Story: Then Vs. Now

Community General Discussion
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I quit retail because, despite the gameplay and art being great, the story was literally the worst I’ve ever played in a video game MMOs included (I also play FF and SWTOR semi-regularly). Decided not to purchase Midnight after seeing what they did to the Blood Elves and the Horde. Been hiding out in TBC classic where Blood Elves are still the race that was marketed to me when they were created.

People say Classic was just as bad but that’s just…completely unrelatable for me? Maybe I just prefered when the story was more about the world and your life as an adventurer/champion, instead of all this melodrama and YA slop. Playing Classic now, the story and world just seem so much more…real? Grounded yet fantastical? With dialogue that feels like it belongs in a fantasy world?

But going back to modern WoW, I literally had to turn off the voice acting eventually because the dialogue was so cringe-worthy. I’ve never done that before in any other game. I play games, especially RPGs for the STORY AND WORLD. WoW is the only game where I finally had to ignore the story if I wanted to have fun. So, I took forum-goers advice and quit.

As for WHY the story is this bad: for the last time, the story isn’t bad because of “wokeness”. Left-wingers can make incredible game stories. Just look at Kojima.

This is PR-driven corporate slop. The writers arent bad because they’re “woke californians”. They’re bad because they’re unskilled, refuse to improve, won’t challenge authority, are closed-minded, hate feedback, and seem to genuinely hate their own setting.

And for the people who still love modern WoW? I’m not trying to be mean to you. I like Dragonball. We all have bad taste sometimes. Taste is subjective, quality is only partially-subjective. But liking something personally is different from insisting its good and that everyone else is wrong or not paying attention. Please don’t be that guy.

Edit: Omg I’m so tired of you people complaining about women. The women aren’t the problem. It’s bad character writing and PR-pandering.

Amy Hennig is one of the greatest gaming writers of all time and made Legacy of Kaine. All of you need to shut up about women or maybe touch one consensually.

EDIT AGAIN: Because SOMEONE keeps claiming I won’t explain why the game’s story is bad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQfZZ2GzHls

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Being loud on the forums and band-wagoning that a certain thing or story is good or bad doesn’t actually make it so.

It just means that people are loud on the forums despite the many who are happily enjoying the game and also those who are too afraid to voice their opinions on the forums because of potential backlash.

The story isn’t good or bad. People liking the story doesn’t make it objectively good any more than people hating the story mean that it is objectively bad.

You don’t like the story? Good for you, but many people who are quietly enjoying the story are not necessarily on these forums.

Also, many of the people who enjoy the story, with some exceptions, are women… while many of the people who hate the story are men (who tend to hate women or anything remotely feminine and keep pretending they don’t).

They’re just loud… not necessarily right, and not necessarily a majority.

I’ve seen peope hating on every single female character, every single male character who is perceived as feminine, and crap on any parts of the story that are emotive and nuanced.

The people hating on the story don’t want story. They just want to crap on females or feminine characters, and smash and destroy everything so they can feel better about themselves as males because they fear that the story somehow invalidates their manhood or something if they let “ze feemales” have their way or have anything remotely good happen to them in the story.

I realize not many people might back me up here and I feel like I’m single-handedly holding the forte but this is the harsh truth of what all the story-hating crap really boils down to.

It’s just that a lot of the females (or even males) who enjoy the story either A) aren’t on these forums… or B) are too afraid to speak up lest they get harrassed and ganged up on or told that they’re just imagining things or that they’re somehow “wrong” or delusional.

Hate me all you want and hate the story all you want but this is what it really boils down to.

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In the same post:

Sure, Jan.

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In the second paragraph, I was talking about the people who hate the story. I wasn’t claiming the story is good or bad.

But “sure, jan” me all you want.

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No, you’re right, over half the “criticism” on these forums that is supposedly about the story, is just a thinly veiled excuse to make those sorts of rants… ironically accusing the game of being political because it doesn’t tightly reaffirm the posters’ own fringe political viewpoint (that they believe is “taking back the world” or some crap).

And with some overlap, another chunk of the “critcism” is posters salty and thinking that Blizz hates the faction or ‘race’ that each such poster has made part of their personal identity, and unfairly favors someone else, so that if a new ‘race’ goes to the “wrong” faction, that’s “bad writing”, no matter how much setup and reasoning Blizz baked into the game.

Would be GREAT if we could have a level-headed discussion about the actual shortcomings of the storycraft in WOW… but it’s drowned out by that junk.

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im gonna just copy what i wrote in other thread

even if the DF story was bad, it made sense, bad guy release the bad boss, bad boss do damage to the land, we gather forces and stop them. thats it, made sense had a beginning mid and end

now we are jumping from spiders, to goblins to other worlds to sunwell to trolls. wtf are we doing?

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I still think that the apparent flip of Harandar and K’aresh between TWW and Midnight did a lot to jumble the flow of the story.

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It also doesn’t mean that those opinions are completely useless or have no validity either. Do you think most people like the story? Or do they just tolerate it?

But at the end of the day these are forums. They exist for us to voice our opinions. Never understood people who dont get that. WHy be here otherwise?

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You can have a good story and girlboss characters too.

Old Sylvanas was that, just evil. I mean WoTLK Sylvanas and Jaina- people loved them.

But we don’t have any of that, right now.

Xal is a cardboard cut-out, and people are very tired of the Windrunners in general.

If you told me back in 2004 that Alliance and Horde would become elven family drama, I would not believe you.

People who dismiss the story being bad as just anti-women, that’s being disingenuous.

The story is bad.

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I’m literally as left wing as they come. I have no problem with diversity. I just hate bad writing and PR driven storytelling.

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Likewise, it’s such a cop-out response to legitimate complaints.

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This same problem is happening in film and TV.

Blizzard low pay and horrid work culture doesn’t help either here.

All the good games now are in the AA and Indie space.

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First of all, “Woke” means “Wake up”. It comes from an inner city dialect “You be woke up now” used in the context “Wake up to racial discrimination”. It has meant this for decades.

It came into the public dialogue during the George Floyd incident. So if you are anti “woke” it means you don’t want people to “wake up” and become aware of something.

As for how it has been changed, today it means; Equal justice under the law and equal opportunity with regard to jobs, housing, family, etc.

Of course there is one side of the great divide which is against both uses, the “Stay Asleep” and “Only certain people should have the rights” faction.

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(X) Doubt

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And I genuinely think corporations like Blizz prefer it this way. It’s the same thing with Disney. Make your story diverse (a good thing) but then this allows you to excuse any criticism as bigotry (a bad thing).

And morons on these forums play right into it, derailing every convo with complaints about woke californians. They’re literally doing Blizz’s work for them.

Why? Because I don’t like a video game story? Do you want me to actually go into my political beliefs on a forum? Or are you just trying to stir things up because you’re bored? I’m literally a black, gay Marxist you idiot.

Grow up.

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I really understand where you’re coming from. I gave up on the game because the story was so poorly written. Right now I’m playing ESO, but I really miss the days when WoW’s story was written by people who actually loved and understood the World of Warcraft universe… These days, we’re stuck with stories that are sloppily written.

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It helps alot when you actually partition WoW from the rest of your thoughts and belive systems.

There is literally no need to bring up woke anything. Just enjoy the damn story, or more likely, ignore it.

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Agreed.

And I just don’t like the story because I think it’s badly written. Love the gameplay and art design.

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They probably don’t have enough left handed creatives.

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I grew up playing WoW. I lost my father to a heart attack and my mother to cancer. WoW has always been a refuge where I could have fun, enjoy the story, and make friends. These days, WoW has become just a part of my past. I still have a deep affection for that universe, but the way the company treats it is pure neglect… In the end, all that matters is making a profit and writing half-baked stuff.

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