I repeatedly hear that no one knows what the Jailer wants and that this is part of a larger problem where in the wow team can’t write, they don’t know where they’re going, and the lore means nothing because it gets changed too much.
Some of that I agree with. But as I was going through some of my favorite moments in WoW storytelling:
Illidan killing Gul’dan
The Safe Haven cinematic
The WoD trailer with the Hellscream kill shot
Even the Harbingers/Warbringers/Afterlives were really good - Uther mic dropping Arthas was a great video
So why the disconnect? It seems to be the team can write well. And if the game story is being sacced due to time, can’t we just do less?
whoa whoa whoa, didn’t you hear that 9.2 is the culmination of many storylines going back several expansions? The 5D chess, big brain, writing required to pull that off is too staggering to say they aren’t good writers!
That or its just retconned nonsense to fit whatever narrative they want…
They absolutely can have great narratives and stories, lately though…
They are playing off nostalgia. Mostly and tacking their new stuff onto old for relevance than actually flushing things out as its own thing. Not everything has to connect
Sometimes it works and other times not so much because you cant just snap your fingers and say things fit when they clearly dont.
Jailer wasnt a behind the scenes force in any prior narrative idc what anyone says
I’m confused. Blizzard can create good cinematics so the narrative team can write well? Maybe I’m just posting too soon after waking up from a nap but I’m really not understanding what you’re saying.
WoW has never had a cohesive narrative outside of Warcraft 3 RTS. As a result, any plot-lines created post wotlk has had no consistency or over arching author to tell a story. It’s all just individual design by committee whatever fits the expac systems and budget at the time. It doesn’t help that they literally outright delete entire chunks of the story thus making even less sense.
There are entire core plot narratives completely removed from every expac from cata onwards. Let that sink in.
The Jailer created the Scourge.
The Jailer also created the Burning Legion by having the Dreadlords convince Sargeras to do so.
As a result, WC3 was the Jailer’s forces fighting the Jailer’s forces.
Let’s us also never forget such gems as Vashj showing up in Maldraxxus and having met the Primus, even though he should have already disappeared. You see, the Primus, captured by the Jailer and turned into the Runecarver, was the one whom had created Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination. The Scourge existed long before Vashj died, and yet, she met the Primus, meaning it would’ve had to of been BEFORE he’d disappeared/been captured, except that CAN’T be because the Scourge already existed…
Did you not read the news?
Once the Jailer makes the universe as he wants, all of our toons will be magically put back in Boring Tundra or the Grimy Hills and we start over from there!. As since WoTLK it truly has been a snore-fest in comparison. if that happened i may - just may- resub.
24 days Blizzard, make 10.0 happen that way and i’m back baby!
If you look at Shadowlands in isolation without thinking about how it ties to what has come before, it functions pretty much more or less coherently as a story which is not yet completed. Even with the removal of certain campaign/story quests recently, it doesn’t mess up the overall story flow too much.
But when you try to tie it in with the rest of the Warcraft franchise as a whole… yikers.
I think of it as sort of like Star Trek - Trek is a franchise that has been around for decades and thousands of individuals have made contributions to Trek’s “lore” over the years. Some of those contributions have been really great, others have been pretty good, some mediocre and some… well, let’s just not talk about those. So after 50+ years you have a universe that is sort of consistent but the details are all over the place.
It’s an inexact analogy to be sure but I think it sort of fits. Of course, WoW is not nearly as old as Trek.
That’s what I don’t agree with, I’m ok if the history is not really cohesive and has small compartments of lore in each individual xpack, but retconning past elements of the story ALL THE time just so things fit for the current writer’s narrative feels horrible, specially for the people that are really invested in the lore and keep up with the books.
I disagree. Even in a vacuum, we still don’t know who Zovaal is as a person, why he wants what he wants, or what he actually wants. Our understanding so far seems to be that he wants to remake the universe so that he can spend eternity being fanned by adoring followers. That’s… Boring.
I will concede that the story is at least slightly more coherent than a story that my six year old would tell me, though the characters are so random and arbitrary that it’s a very narrow gap.
It’s possible, though I feel I’m doing most of the work here, that Shadowlands is intentionally a bit of a dream-like story. You can make inferences about who people are and what people want, but there’s no formal introduction or clear start.
Its due to leadership. If the lead is fixated on one thing, it does not matter what the rest of the team thinks/writes.
Danuser wants to write stuff and that stuff has nothing to do with the original WOW lore which in turn leaves us with current story that is disconnected from the original lore, and is filled with retcons.
if that happened i may - just may- resub.