The timeframe in which World of Warcraft unleashes their lore has been a hot topic for a while and I’m curious your guy’s thoughts. I finished the Sylvanas novel yesterday, wherein they provided some insight into the Legion cinematic wherein Sylvanas holds a latern to the Valkyr Eyir and tells her to submit. (World of Warcraft’s Youtube video reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ2m03Rgj5A). I was EXTREMELY invested in this storyline when it released. We saw Sylvanas confer with Helya, we saw this part with Eyir via a cinematic, and yet…we never got an answer as to what Sylvanas was trying to do… until Sylvanas released on March 29, 2022. The Legion Eyir cinematic was released March 02, 2017. Literally FIVE YEARS to obtain an answer. Truthfully, despite how invested I was in the Eyir/Helya Legion storyline, I actually FORGOT about it while getting to it in the book. It was so long that I literally forgot.
This brings to another point. Azmongold just finished an interview with World of Warcraft’s Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and ended the interview asking about the Sword [of Sargares stuck inside Azeroth]. Ion’s response was “Wait…wha…what sword?” In another interview, it was simply referred to as “a splinter” since it’s been drained of its power. This leads the viewer to believe that they are either not going to address it OR they are going to unveil some huge action with it to shock the playerbase. That sword was struck into Azeroth approximately November 28, 2017 and players are STILL asking about it without a clear answer.
Personally, I am extremely irked over the timeframe it takes for major World of Warcraft lore situations to unveil. I would prefer each expansion to be like a series of a saga, with beginning, middle, and end in the story writing. Of course some outliers and mysteries will remain to feed into other parts, but I believe each major storyline should be wrapped up within the story of the expansion. Even with Shadowland’s end cinematic, we are left with an open-ended plotline of “the cosmos divided will not survive what is to come.” Are we going to have to wait another FIVE YEARS to uncover “what is to come”??? As a player who enjoys the World of Warcraft storylines and lore, I find this rather ridiculous.
What are your thoughts? Are you satisfied with this timeframe of constantly having the lingering lore questions? Would you prefer that the World of Warcraft storywriters provide some conclusions when they make a point of showcasing major situations? I feel this is important enough to people to warrant a discussion for World of Warcraft writer’s review.
I think a big problem is I don’t think they know what they plan to do with things right away. This is common in TV shows, like most recently off the top of my head, the Charmed writers admitted they don’t know what they’re doing with one of the characters, they’re just writing him until it makes sense for them.
I don’t agree with it, as I don’t think you should add something to the plot of any story before you know where you plan to go with it, but I’m not the writer for the game. Even just having a vague idea is better than doing something for the shock factor now and deal with it later.
We’ve been told before that pretty much the entire storyline of WoD was changed. And honestly, I have no doubts this happened with Shadowlands as well. (Due to things like the Arbiter being very clearly alive in the loading screen, the Arbiter stirring when we first entered Oribos, etc.) and to be honest, that kinda feels bad for me. We’ll never get an explanation for why things like that happened, because they changed the story.
There’s also cases of the writers seemingly not knowing their own lore? Like, in 9.2.5 there’s a conversation between Jaina and Khadgar where Khadgar talks about how age is getting to him and he feels the end is near or something.
But… Khadgar is the same age as Jaina. He was cursed for his body to appear aged. That shouldn’t affect his lifespan though. He’s literally in his 40s.
In short: I do wish they’d be transparent on if they have a plan. Like, they were quoted a bit ago as saying the Sword in Silithus was part of a plan later on, but now Ion’s interview essentially says they forgot about it.
At least if we know you don’t have a plan yet, we won’t get our hopes up. But if you do have a plan and it takes years to come to fruition, that’s terrible storytelling.
I think a bit of the storytelling in WoW is set up to fail from the start, because it’s a very wide setting with a lot of dots that ought to be connected. Blizz knows this, and ever since they started to run out of WC1-3 material to draw on they have been adding tons and tons of more story threads to potentially pull on in the future. Which of course means that a lot of these story threads will just stick around for years and years before there’s any real payoff, and that doesn’t always feel great. The problem is, if you don’t set up all these story threads in good time for the future, it might feel like it comes out of the blue and isn’t all that rewarding. See Shadowlands to see how that pans out.
I agree. There can be mysteries lying around that we’ll have to unveil over longer periods of time (e.g. the Titan mystery, the Old Gods), but each expansion should function as a story in of its own.
I think this is true to an extent, they’ve stated in the past that they usually plan about two expansions ahead of the current one, so they do at least have some vague idea of where they’re going in the future.
I think the main issue people had was we didn’t have actual years, so we were just being given vague “few years” - having a set timeline is very helpful to see just how long things have gone. Knowing it’s been 3 years is incredibly helpful, and the fact Shadowlands took place over 2 years rather than the normal 1 is surprisingly helpful as well.
Honestly, the only issue I have now is Anduin - you guys added story of him leaving the Maw to return home at the end of Shadowlands.
But if Dragonflight is 3 years later, where is Anduin? He’s still MIA on the alpha according to the dialogue - is this going to be explained or is he just going to pop back up one day and act like he hasn’t literally been missing for 3 years? Or was that scene we saw actually at the start of Dragonflight but y’all released it early? Or are you recycling the Varian story of him being kidnapped. Etc.
(I’m not expecting an answer, just putting it out there that things like this going unexplained leaves much to be desired.)
Thank you for the elaboration. I won’t lie, as a player though, I feel a little dissatisfied with the response you have provided. I’ve been playing this game since the game was released in vanilla, and there have been a lot of events that have happened since then. This is the first time I’ve heard that blizzard has an internal timeline of years for the entire world. There have been so many intense and important events that have happened within that time that I feel, as a player and a character in the world, that I should be a part of. For example you mentioned that several years have passed between dragonflight and shadowlands, yet as a character who just came out of that realm, there is no indication that my character has had that time of calmness before dragonflight. I appreciate you mentioning that players will not have to read a novel in order to understand the time change, however, I believe that this will not be indicated in game as it has never been illustrated in game. I believe blizzard needs to do a better job at providing the players in game with the timeline at which events are occurring. It’s remiss that we have to conduct extensive research just to figure out where in the timeline we are. Please consider that moving forward and provide the player with context as to where we are in the World of Warcraft universe without having to review external databases. As a player we were extremely aware that time flows differently in the twisting nether and in shadowlands, so to return into the present world as a character and not know the timeline or just to be told via foreign post that it’s 5 years later is a bit odd.
I feel like this is the biggest problem for me. We have been absent for X amount of time but nothing has changed? World building waits for us to see it happen?
This would have also been a good opportunity to heal the world from things like cataclysm etc. It feels a bit like our adventures in the shadowlands didn’t had any impact on the real world.
Honestly it would be great if Blizzard added a “Timekeeper NPC” in the capitals who simply give you a dialog text as to what year it is. If they wanted to even add more flavor, they could have the Timekeeper give a small line about what the NPCs hear regarding the adventurers after each patch.
IE for Shadowlands:
Season 1:
Timekeeper NPC: It’s year 35. I hear the adventurers have discovered the Shadowlands!
Season 2:
Timekeeper NPC: It’s year 35. I hear the adventurers have discovered a new land called Korthia!
Season 3:
Timekeeper NPC: It’s year 36. I hear the adventurers have discovered a place of origination!
[Dragonflight Season 1 - Timekeeper NPC: It’s year 40. I’ve quite enjoyed the peace, but it seems the adventurers have discovered the Dragon Isles!"]
I think this would be a nice touch. They could also add it to the bulletins that has a simple “Year 35” or whatever on it lol. Hell, if they give me edit powers, I’ll go write it on the bulletin after each patch - they can call it “Mornnahing News” LOL