Hello, I see you replied to the thread. That’s pretty standard for the OP, haha! If you say the writing from previous expansions is horrible, they won’t say anything but god forbid you try to claim this garbage expansion has terrible writing, haha!
Thanks for your post and have a great day!
I mean, that sounds like it’d be pretty deep into philosophy to answer
So, I’ve discussed this at length before, but as a writer, what bothers me most about his writing is that it’s very “Last Season of Game of Thrones” in that there seem to be specific cutscenes and setpieces that he wants to have, but he doesn’t put in the work to get there. As such, the turns in the plot seem to be somewhat random and arbitrary rather than developing as a result of the actions and points of view of specific characters, and any changes that happen to them as a result feel unearned.
“The work” in this context is doing the underlying character development where we actually see character thought processes, where what they are shown to want makes a difference to the story, and where the story seems to flow from realistic, grounded and relatable motivations.
Danauser writing was at peak levels of bad in Shadowlands, where The Jailer was tossed into the plot but was supposed to be behind all the bad things ever, which introduced inconsistencies to the story retroactively (why did he have his own minions fighting each other?) He never bothered to explain or lay out how and why Sylvanas - a character previously presented as not a naive idiot - came around to believe that the Jailer wasn’t out to enslave the world, including her. And in the end, when it came to be time to finally show and explain what the heck his deal was, something that was held back either because they wanted it to be a story “gotcha” or, all signs point to “they just didn’t know”, it was a cop-out of a Your Princess is In Another Castle ending, yet another “I did this because there’s a bigger threat coming that the universe can’t stand against unless it’s unified” and just kicked the can into a future expansion again.
There have been some improvements since then, but you can’t just have two characters talk about their feelings without making the characters and the scene something that people are interested in, and that’s really the tricky part. Alexstrasza and Nozdormu and Chromie and Vyranoth have been expositioning about their feelings in cutscenes, but it’s still a bit clunky and over-simplistic. I think that people calling it “Disney writing” are ridiculous in general, but also it’s clear that the storylines aren’t connecting for a lot of people.
At that point it gets a little more ineffable, and turns into an issue where it’s harder to do a paint-by-numbers story and have people call it high art. It turns into a situation where the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in and people who aren’t expertly skilled at something can’t tell that they’re not expertly skilled at it so they can’t really figure out why what they’re doing isn’t working. And heck, I (as a non-pro writer) couldn’t really say, specifically, “this is how you fix this” either. At that point I turn into more of the casual story spectator, you need like a Neil Gaiman-level write-ologist to step in and start offering advice and tweaks.
I suspect that the answers lie in making the answers less simple. “You were mean to me back in the day therefore I support ending the world” is a bad motivation for a villain, even if they eventually come around. Giving them a reason to come around is good, but neither Alexstrasza nor Vyranoth come across as particularly likeable or relatable. Fyrakk on the other hand takes such unrestrained glee in being the bad guy it’s hard to hate him. We know he’s just going to end up another dead raid boss, but like the Shadowlands stand-out Sire Denathrius it’s fun watching him mustache-twirl.
The Jailer wasn’t fun or relatable. You have to have characters that are some measure of both. Alexstrasza was relatable but not fun. Nozdormu’s brooding has been relatable but not fun. Sylvanas in her prime was fun and relatable (and had her characterization scuttled in favor of the plot). Anduin was relatable but not fun. Chromie is actually relatable and fun, but “relatable” is a very individual thing because of her overall characterization being more of a YMMV thing, it’s hard to take her seriously as a character.
Thrall’s hero’s journey was fun and relatable, until it got a little too far into its own head and bogged down in navel gazing. Baine, having finally been allowed to express some anger, is both fun and relatable, but that’s at the tail end of years of being the designated Debbie Downer of the Horde. And even if you got all the characters in the plot running on all four cylinders, you still need to have the plot around them develop in ways that come up from those characters and their actions and not have their actions dictated by the big swings you want the plot to take that don’t work unless those established characters are hurried or warped in a specific direction.
For example - Ysera. We’re never given a really compelling reason why Ysera needed to come back for a while, and why it was supposed to be so dramatic that Malfurion was basically taking an extended nap while she interfered with her daughter’s ability to lead the flight. Maybe that’s coming? But I sort of doubt it. There were no actual stakes so the turn in the plot rang hollow.
I don’t think that the overall plot of the Dragonflight expansion is bad, on the whole. The lower-level quest and NPC writers have been knocking it out of the park, consistently. But when it comes to the broad strokes of the overarching story, while it isn’t the disaster plot-and-character-wise that Shadowlands was, I still wouldn’t say that it’s a plot skillfully told. For that, they’d need to hire a writer-writer and not a “media synergy” specialist with a knack for fanfic.
Creativity as a philosophy? Do you even know where it comes from?
Do you know where the spirit of creation in the human mind comes from?
Sure,consciousness which is based on reality unless you wish to deep dive into the spirit world which i can do but it’ll take too long for this thread.
As for creativity it is a process of simulating surrounding to a function ,painting ,stories ,making food are all created . Stephen kings stories are all based on real true stories. Even you toon is based on a created notion of a bull-human.
Common Asmond Fan L
I mean, that’s what it is a part of, it’s not an explanation of why the mind does those things.
This comes off as an extremely limited understanding of a very broad thing.
Arthas saw that the scourge could not be stopped no matter what they did. The slaughter of a particular town showed that and he was the only one that was willing to try to buy some time, then after doing that seeing that not even killing off those that were infected so they could not spread if faster was going to work he JOINED them to try to do it. Its even right there in the story of WC3 that he says only if he becomes the Lich King can the scourge be told to stop…which is WHAT HE DID and even says when he does so that, he will buy humanity TIME to become strong enough to stop them.
Hell, he even ENDS the invasion of the Burning Crusade as he is doing this.
Arthas is THE ONE that stops the spread of the scourge and the invasion to destroy the world. This is said again in Wrath of the Lich King right before he dies…and what does the so called pure soul of the one he kills say? “There must ALWAYS be a Lich King”…and what does the person to take the place of Arthas say? The SAME THING Arthas says…I will hold the scourge in place.
A hero does what MUST be done no matter the morals and only a true hero is willing to lose his SOUL to do it.
That is why the writing of the early expansions are so far superior to all the weak im sorry nonsense the last 10 years. Hell even the Banshee Queen sacrificed herself to try to end the cycle. if it were not for her “atrocities”, the Jailor would not have been exposed and stopped and she did it all to do just that, show the world that it was a prison…all while the so called morally superior Alliance leaders were doing NOTHING to actually do GOOD by STOPPING EVIL.
Seriously…what great moral paladin in this story even tried to find the sources of evil behind those they were happy to kill? None. Those pulling the strings would still be doing so as paladins skipped around happily going back and forth killing the little people whose strings were being pulled.
In what way is it narrow when it is wide ,there is no limits to creativity if the mind is open to all possibilities. You take all into it and present from it to the world in a fashion that could be understood< could if opened ,if not it is closed for another day but never lost.
I see shape and think of x y z thing… least for art / drawing.
Writing? Idk
OK ,here O I created!
I see a tree stump.
That’s because your a vulpera I see a acme hole in the forum.
Players getting overly offended when their favorite race/faction did anything remotely evil, stagnated the story telling and shoe horned the creative process behind the factions.
The Wrathgate could have been an epic opportunity to break the Forsaken away from the Horde and have an actual baddie playable faction. But instead, they played Sylvanas out to be a fool and us just her witless pawns. Oh, then she turns out to be a genocidal maniac in the end anyway?
Garrosh, another prime opportunity for unique 3rd/4th factions.
I haven’t followed the story since. But both were let downs in the end.
I would say that Shadowlands writing was embarrassingly bad, but it is a bit of a grey area as to what was him and what was already in place from Afrasiabi.
I think DF has been pretty decent writing-wise minus Wrathion/Sabellian in 10.1 and I think Vyranoth switched sides way too quickly. Otherwise I think it is pretty solid
These narrative choices are mid , multiple new characters are mid and i just am so uninvested in the story since he’s taken charge.
No hate on the dude but this isn’t warcraft… why did they do this to Sylvanas
Danuser just did too many retcons and isn’t respecting characters. Add to that using boring characters like Anduin as main characters 
Just feels like the new star wars. The only character that felt like himself (in SL) was Garrosh cameo and they gave him a subpar cinematic. While Scalies have just not worked out in my opinion and that the Dragon isles is just a bit too bland. Add to that the writers seem to have no awareness and makes fun of feedback toward the story.
Well the major characters keep returning. Anduin, Jania, Tyrande, Malfurion, Kahdgar, Baine, Illidan, the list goes on. They are not all in every expansion but they keep returning from time to time.
Which ones did you have in mind that you never see any more?