Time for a Reboot? Return to the Past?

Lore Story Forum
22

If Blizzard doesn’t want to be tied down to what happened in BfA they should just stop mentioning it.

Nobody talks about Theramore anymore and that was supposed to be the big Oppenheimer “everything is different now with these Mana bombs” moment in WoW…

But it was relevant for a while and now people only ever mention it in passing.

BfA was fine. The narrative sucked, but its easy to brush past.

What needs to be fixed is the core issues with the story that can easily be remedied with change and continuing the story in a proper direction. Rebooting the story and simply going through the motions again is just going to be repeating the same symptoms that lead to the supposed disease to begin with.

Oh god, that would be the last thing that I want I’ll be honest lol.

And what’s the point?

Who really cares.

What? TBC never happens? Plenty of cool stuff was introduced in TBC like the Blood Elves… Why is it that being eternally stuck in the year of Classic timeloop is somehow a remedy for anything?

News flash, if they were to do Classic+ it’s going to be within the same lore and meta narrative that Retail is in, just like they did with SoD.

What do you mean?

We had a fully fleshed out backstory to the Orcs, their magic, and their origins in both War1 and War2 and War2:BtDP that War3 retconned and War2 retconned from War1.

It’s not like there wasn’t lore in these games, there was a lot of lore, it was just changed and isn’t relevant so nobody bothers to even mention it.

War3 was a massive departure and restructure from what came before. Enough to constitute a ‘trample’ by any definition.

War3 quite literally killed off a War2 legend (Ogrim) to force in Thrall to be the anti-bad Horde leader so they could force the Horde down a ‘peaceful’ path.

This is nothing new.

23

Yes x100%

I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about TurtleWoW (which will be taken down by a lawsuit any day now, hopefully!) but one thing they get right is they develop what people actually cared for: Azeroth. Mysteries of Azeroth.

WoW tried to go too big straight out of the gate with TBC and it backfired and never recovered. The butchered (literally) their best characters and each expansion, despite the world expanding in terms of size, it actually diminished.

It was kind of cool when a giant landmass (Pandaria) appeared out of the mist. But when they kept doing that same trick each time… boooooring! That’s why I’m happy with expansion returns to Quel’thalas. Something we actually care about.

Going forward, WoW needs to tell grounded stories. Stories about conflict, diplomacy (especially failed diplomacy) in a world of WARcraft. No Alliance/Horde nonsense, just warring factions. Night Elves guarding their trees, Forsaken in a world that reviles them… Maybe you can have Orcs/Tauren/Trolls and Humans/Gnomes/Dwarves cooperating, but in general I think races should be their own thing.

1 Like
24

I’m convinced that this is what everyone wants and is the path that Blizzard should go down.

I think that it’s perfectly possible to do this within the current timeline and iteration of the franchise.

Remember when everyone was talking about that ‘Southseas Pirate Expansion’ after SL and pre-DF? That would be the route to go imo. Something like that.

2 Likes
25

Agreed. Like, mechanically, you dont need to be fighting Super God X to have challenging and fun play. You just need to be creative, and let the content have some teeth. But, yeah, absolutely. Start revamping old zones as new expac stories. Let us “get back to basics and reconnect with our roots” for a while. Constantly creating new islands has absolutely hit its limit a while ago. At least Zandalar and Kul Tiras kinda had some prep before hand.

3 Likes
26

I remember back during Legion when people started making fun of how many landmasses Blizzard was putting all over the map… Yet they just kept on doing it LOL.

In my opinion I would like to see them revamp subcontinent by subcontinent…

So like, there would be a ‘Khaz Modan’ patch and then an ‘Azeroth’ (Stormwind/Stranglethorn) patch and so on. Something like that.

Though I would like them to start with Kalimdor first and foremost, that’s the continent that really needs an update. If anything they need a major fleshing out for the lore of Kalimdor as well, new races, new zones, etc. It’s kind of baffling how little there really is on Kalimdor compared to these relatively tiny islands that are packed with races, cultures, etc.

‘Return to Kalimdor’ Expansion where we go from Central, Southern, Northern Kalimdors to get a good fleshing out of each of the old zones and maybe some newly crafted zones with new races. Some further exploration into the Tauren where we see them have a major diversity in their culture depending on the environments they live in that are based off different amerindian tribes IRL.

Just a thought. I’ve always yearned for a better Kalimdor.

4 Likes
27

And i’ve come to learn that the argument of “wow has always being bad” is a rly bad argument to defend recent crap that is categorically worse by a huge mile.

Same way people defend the sequels “star wars was always being bad!1!”

28

I’m not saying ‘WoW has always been bad’ I’m just saying that going back to the old lore isn’t going to fix all of the problems that people have with the franchise because a lot of them are way more deep-seeded than people think they are.

I also think people often use the old vague lore as a means of creating their own quasi-headcanons and get so invested into those headcanons that they start thinking it’s genuine ‘word of the author’ lore… When it really isn’t at all.

1 Like
29

Absolutely. I want a chance to reconnect to this world, and the people of this world, flaws in writing and setting and all. There are so many little racial and personal storylines left over after all this time we could play-with and explore.

As for old lore. Like, small example. I am pretty irritated that Blizz did not have Rokhan serve as an intermediary between the BEs and Amani in Midnight. The guy is a WC3 Legacy, he has the foundation to build upon; but they’ve done nothing with him since they quietly made him the Darkspear leader. Placing him into that political position would not only expand on what characterization he was allowed in BfA, but also allow a chance to directly contrast him to how Jin handled “the Amani problem” back in Cata. Sure, you could say that Rokhan is WC3 lore “that trampled on WC1-WC2 lore” … but WC3 lore is what the WoW Horde was based upon. As its the only version of the Horde that on paper works for a long term player faction. So, I would have loved to see an expansion of that one small part of that “lore”.

5 Likes
30

It’s insane how little we actually know about the lives, cultures, and personalities of the literal races we play as.

It’s part of why I think so many people think there’s a ‘humanification’ or ‘bland’ problem with most of the races… Because we literally know nothing about them.

We can talk about bits and pieces of vague lore we have collected in the 20 years of questlines that Blizzard has made and their military history but we know absolutely nothing beyond that.

Do Blood Elves have holidays? What is Blood Elf religion like? What does a Thalassian accent sound like? What Orc holidays are there? Do Orcs have particular fashion trends? What is the Dwarves’ religion? Did Dwarves and humans always get along? Do Dwarves have different clans within their respective major clans? How do the Orcs organize themselves?

After all this time we have never seen a legitimate Orc village on Azeroth. Not one.
All of them have been strongholds, outposts, military forts and so on…

What little we do get on the respective race’s folklore and culture is beloved by the people that play these races, and people often make a point of memorizing and eating this stuff up, particularly roleplayers.

It would be nice to get more stuff like that, for sure. It’s why a lot of people were steadfast in holding on to the RPG even after it was decanonized simply because it had so much information like that.

4 Likes
31

I think people need to stop deluding themselves with this “Classic+” nonsense.

Season of Discovery was a playground. Blizzard does playgrounds sometimes - Lemix is one, Plunderstorm is another. They mess around a little bit. Try things out. It’s all good fun.

The idea that this will - or was every going to - lead into a diverging timeline with its own expansions and and substantial amounts of wholly original content is absolutely psychotic and people need to stop pretending otherwise.

2 Likes
32

It would be brand suicide to do a complete reboot, cause most of what has kept wow alive in the MMO market has been investment debt, people are less likely to move on when they have hours upon hours of time invested. A reboot would throw all that out and a timeskip removing the things people like about the setting would be equally suicidal for the brand.

5 Likes
33

The ‘diverging timelines’ thing is absolute cope. Not even SoD was a ‘diverging timeline’ it was simply the current lore with more details thrown in.

Part of why I think Classic+ hasn’t just outright been done by Blizzard yet is because nobody who says they want Classic+ can even decide on what Classic+ is. You ask someone who wants Classic+ what they want from it and they’ll all give you conflicting and entirely different answers.

It’s why there’s like 30 different “Classic+” pservers anyway, nobody can come to a consensus because different people want different things from it.

200%

Making an MMO is risky as it is, but trying to redo it from scratch? Blizzard walks a tightrope all the time trying to keep the plates balanced to keep this cash cow producing. No way are they going to start that from scratch within a game genre that has been incredibly niche since the early 2000s.

Hell, they hold on to the few legacy characters they still have with a deathgrip. They’re deathly afraid of losing any more marketability and brand recognition.

1 Like
34

Classic+ is coming. I don’t expect it to be some parallel “doing WoW right!” aimed at proving how bad Retail is. It would be a diverging timeline by necessity though. They’re not going to launch “Classic+” and just release the exact same content again. I would expect it to be more of a higher resolution expanding upon of Vanilla. Like the Scarlet raid they added to SoD, but on a much grander scale.

Ion responded to an email that basically confirmed they’re trying to find a classic model that will receive regular updates instead of being a seasonal model or museum piece. Will have to wait and see what form it ends up taking, but I would not bet against it happening.

35

My ideal reboot would be to roll things back to the end of WC3 and retroactively add and modify the setting to accommodate many of the additions made to the game such as races and some zones, and ideally new expansions would instead be updates to various parts of the world and creating new stories in existing settings as opposed to inventing new continents out of thin air every 2 or so years with new landmasses being more sporadic. The concept of sagas wouldn’t be pulled out of thin air at the final hour and would actually be planned out well in advance.

Examples of what I mean involve something like a character like Talanji existing much earlier in the story or newer races being modified to suit the old world lore with Vulpera being nomads who travel the world and Dracthyr being retconned into just being a powerful variation of Drakonid. Stories like the Legion or Old Gods would unfold differently and/or could even occur in different order chronologically.

I’d imagine this would take a considerable period of time to cook, but I understand implications of altering the setting to such a degree, but I believe it’s completely doable with competent writers and a clear vision behind it.

36

They are going to advertise and sell both games, which is in fact a genius move to win money.

they can prob price two different expansions each time, one for retail and one for classic+ and people would buy it

season of discovery was the testing grounds, and with wow turtle drama, they doing their own wow timeline, is a matter of time and resources

37

That’s the problem I have with people and their obession with Classic+. Because Retail WoW isn’t as bad as people want it to be. It’s in a healthy state population wise since DF, and people generally enjoy the content being produced

This forum has a really horrible habit of forgetting that we’re the extreme minority and our opinions DO NOT represent the majority of people playing WoW

3 Likes
38

Depends on what metric you are talking about

the gameplay is good

the lore is absolutely awful. so it is as bad as people “want it to be”, in fact, sometimes is worse.

1 Like
39

No it’s not. That’s my point. And besides, this forum can’t even agree on what’s worse

It’s selective outrage and nothing more. It’s the same people complaining about everything but won’t stop paying and playing

3 Likes
40

Everyone has their own metric for why ‘the story is bad’ and some people don’t even think that the story is bad or just don’t care.

My biggest thing is that I don’t believe Blizzard is going to ‘reboot’ the story because the vast majority of the audience doesn’t care and it just muddies the lore into forcing people to follow two different timelines with the same characters.

1 Like
41

I have things I dislike about WoWs lore. And I said this numerous times before, it’s not enough to make me quit. I can just ignore it and write my own stories. Which I often do

Blizz isn’t going to reboot WoW because people are accustomed to not only their favored races, but all the great quality of life improvements they made over the years

2 Likes