War Within story pacing is not good

Community General Discussion
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The big crystal in Hollowfall was supposed to be something shocking and special, but it’s probably just a spaceship.

The Earthens are already irrelevant before the expansion’s halfway point.

The Nerubian War was supposed to be special but ended up being less relevant than any filler conflict in the other expansions. The conflict had potential but ended up being less relevant than the Ardenweald skirmishes that everyone will forget about in the next patch.

Undermine is the best part of War Within, for reasons that are not about War Within.

My question is, is this slow narrative intentional?
Even if I’m positive and consider the ending of War Within to be a 10, in this scenario 80% of the expansion was still slow and not very engaging.

Will Midnight be similar to War Within narrative-wise?

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It’s basically super azerite.

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There’s always something new in the game with every patch—new stories, quests, and more. Many secrets still remain unrevealed, yes. But Patch 11.1.7 is introducing Lorewalking , which could expand the narrative and allow us to explore even more stories.

I’ve played Warlords of Draenor. So I am definitely happy with the War Within.

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I think you missed some questline. Because we were already told what the crystal is. And I don’t remember anyone claiming it was something shocking or special.

How?

Eh? I don’t remember anyone saying it was “special,” but we’re somehow still dealing with the Sureki in current content. So…?

Interesting. I find the reason it’s part of War Within to be interesting. But I dislike Undermine.

There are things you dislike, I get that. But how does that make it slow?

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This saga was originally gunna be 1 xpac

So enjoy the filler content

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So if you are telling me the huge crystal is not suposed to be special and nerubian war is not suposed to be special, then theres nothing left in War Within…

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They’re parts of the storyline, but I think you need to define what you mean by “special.” And it sounds as if you haven’t finished all of the storyline if you don’t know what the crystal is and that the Sureki are back. Could be some hidden gems there that you like!

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We already know what happens with the crystal…

Jen inserts the crystal shard into the Dark Crystal and restores its power, healing the world.

The Skeksis lose.

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I’m not sure it’s pacing so much as just the inherent story is bad. Agreed that that’s also the reason Undermine’s the best part of TWW, because like you said, it’s almost completely separate from the main plot. (Though the manner in which it intersects, with Xal’atath leaving her super-weapon unsupervised with Gallywix manages to make the main plot feel even more stupid, if it was possible).

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Theres a concrete definition of what the crystal is with no margin for interpretation?

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If you are looking for a well paced story you may not want to look at a MMO.

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Xala’nath is still out there somewhere, Iridikron is still out there somewhere, the Etherials are still out there somewhere, and Season 3 is coming.

Season 2 and the goblins seem more of a pause in the story than a change or premature end.

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I have no issues about legion and wod, all content were good most of the time

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Uh… yeah? They literally told us what it was. lol

What are you trying to read into here? Game says “here’s what it is.”

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Hard to say, but for the most part it seems that Blizz simply has no idea how to construct a proper narrative, let alone how properly pace it.

The habit of discarding entire plotlines the moment the next patch comes out really isn’t helping things either; it already happened with large chunks of the leveling content and the nerubians in TWW, and the goblins will be shuffled aside whenever 11.2 comes out.

Being frank, Undermine feels pretty “disconnected” from the whole TWW narrative. The only links we have on Gallywix exploiting the Black Blood as just a special sauce to make weapons stronger (seriously, it does nothing else in the storyline) and Floatyfeet stupidly giving the MacGuffin-Battery to him for repairs - only for the shadow-mummies to randomly steal it because Floatyfeet and the Greedyjowls have no concept of an IFF protocol.

The Undermine storyline could, and largely does, exist entirely separate from those obvious tie-ins to TWW’s overarching plot. It was obviously built separately then shoe-horned in.

Supposedly, the mention was that Metzen was brought in too late to “fix up” TWW’s narrative (but not too late to do the overall announcement). So there’s a chance things will be different for the next expansion.

… but given the history of Blizz’ storytelling as a whole, it’s FAR behind the curve, and TWW isn’t doing them any favours. They ran out of goodwill two whole expansions ago, they can’t really say “it’ll be better with the next expansion” anymore - they need results.

NOW.

And FFXIV will be the perennial counterpoint to that.

Aside from the delay between patches and expansions, the pacing there is great. And what is included within a single patch (as well as the expansion launches themselves) is at least a satisfying experience.

No weekly time-gating, ever. The closest thing to that is the optional reputation grinds for the tribal/society quests, which is a set number of daily quests between each milestone quest. Just about everything else is released on patch day, maybe a week or two delay for the harder difficulty version of content… and the in-universe explanation for those are they’re usually “embellished retellings” of the canonical baseline difficulty.

There’s definitely some challenges to storytelling in MMOs, but Blizz is definitely making it worse with their handling of it.

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You keep saying that but don’t say what it is? What it is?

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It really is awful storytelling.

Dalaran blew up at the start. That is a world-altering event, far bigger than Theramore, Undercity, or the tree. Immediate aftermath? Let’s go meet new cultures on Khaz Algar.

There’s no proper follow-up to the destruction of Dalaran until the final zone when you rescue some residents. And realistically, no conclusion either. That world-altering event is just brushed aside.

Now we’re fighting goblins. While I wouldn’t have minded Undermine if it was a Mechagon level patch, it simply isn’t. It’s a full raid tier shoved in randomly.

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Because I’m not one for spoiling it for others and I don’t know how to do spoiler tags here. I fail. lol

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Theres no concrete definition of what Beledar is, thats why

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Indeed there is. Like I said, I just don’t do spoilers. And I don’t know how to spoiler tag.