I really, really don’t appreciate how over the course of BFA, almost every single major female character who had been previously established has been portrayed as a Villain, especially with characters who it doesn’t at all fit with their backstory. Sylvanas is the prime example that everyone talks about, but the main point where she’s acting out of character is the fact that she’s acting like she doesn’t value the Forsaken at all. Literally every action she had taken in WoW over the previous expansions had been done to protect and ensure the survival of the Forsaken, so her suddenly flipping 180 degrees and not valuing their lives is super out of character.
However, Sylvanas is by far not the worst example of this growing trend in the Blizzard writing staff. Worse than Sylvanas by far is Y’rel in the Mag’har Allied race unlock. Taking Y’rel, who had previously been the key champion of hope for alternate Draenor, and had worked hand in hand with Durotan to help end the threats of the Iron Horde and subsequently Gul’dan’s Fel Horde and turning her into a villain is disgusting. And that’s before we even get into the fact that the Draenei have always been a Jewish parallel with their people being genocided without reason. So you take a strong female character who represented hope and is highly Jewish coded… and turned her into what’s essentially an anti-semitic character… that’s incredibly disgusting.
Now it seems Tyrande is going to be getting the same treatment at this rate, and frankly if it happens, I’m done with this game for good. It really boggles my mind how Blizzard’s current writing staff can go, ‘Oh hey, this female character who’s suffered massively, seeing almost her entire people get wiped out? Yeah, she’s evil now and you should hate her and want to kill her.’ It speaks to a level of ineptitude and a lack of understanding for good writing that is incredibly dangerous.
The most unfortunate thing is the irreparable damage that’s been done to a lot of theses characters that can’t possibly be fixed with a future expansion. It’s tragic really, as not all of BFA is bad… the small scale writing of Zandalar and Kul Tiras are actually pretty good, and the zones are fairly interesting with compelling conflicts between the local peoples. But the overarching War Campaign story, as well as what’s been written for a lot of the Allied Races is just bad.
I really wish Blizzard would hire a new head writer who understands the previously established lore and characters like Chris Metzen did. It’s unfortunate that Metzen caught so much flak back in the day when he was realistically the one making sure that all of WoW’s writing stayed consistent and was well constructed. I don’t want him to come back because I understand that the job was incredibly stressful for him, and it’s better for Metzen’s health if he stays retired as the head writer. But they really, really need to find someone who understands the universe on the same level as him and respects his established characters.
Ultimately, the only way that the damage Battle for Azeroth has done to the established lore and characters of the universe is if the entire War Campaign, and most of the Allied Race stories get flat out decanonized and excised from the game’s code. The expansion should realistically have had nothing to do with a faction conflict and should have instead focused on the South Seas. A lot of the patch content with Azshara and what I presume will be a Nyalotha follow up patch are fine and totally fit in, so those easily could have been kept.
The resources that were devoted to the War Campaign could have instead been focused on fixing the Heart of Azeroth system and making it a more compelling system. Instead of having the writers focus on destroying characters who were previously established, they could have worked to expand on the Heart of Azeroth story, having major events where you actually use it to help FIX stuff like it’s supposed to do. Say, have a huge wound in Azeroth that’s actually physically modelled into the world that you use the Heart of Azeroth to mend after empowering it, and it ACTUALLY fixes the ground instead of just being a sparkly effect on the ground that disappears.
Anyway, that’s my rant done with and out of the way. I have a lot of ideas on what Blizzard should do with future expansions moving forward, but unfortunately I don’t trust the current writing to manage anything resembling a compelling expansion story.
