What if becoming Principal Narrative Designer was like being appointed Dalai Lama and Ion and Metzen rolled up at your house one day and laid out 76 different Blizzard-related items and had you choose two of them, and the ones you chose had belonged to Steve Danuser, and so you were named the new Principal Narrative Designer and they flew you first class to Irvine, showed you to your office (the biggest one in the building) and then asked you, “So… what’s next for World of WarCraft?”
I would have to somehow destroy the shadowlands expansion and part of BfA from lore. I would have to explain it away somehow.
Only then could I move forward. And then I would do a very light hearted expansion that returns to its roots and sees how it’s holding up after all these years
Probably hide a small indefinite festival of moonkin dancing in some remote forested area, and then pass the job off to someone who is actually qualified to handle the story aspect of things.
He is the religious leader of the Cult of Blizzard. That is why he left, to be a more effective Shaman and to find the Chosen Principal Narrative Designer using the ancient method passed down to him by the Sky People.
I’d bring back the faction dichotomy. I’m not thrilled with their attempt to do 50 Shades of Gray: WoW Edition; doing it well would require writing and subtlety that Blizz just isn’t that good at. I think it’d work better if they just let the Alliance be the goody two shoes, the Horde be the bad ones, and sprinkle a little of the opposite in each for flavor.
As part of that, I’d excise the faction leaders that want to hold hands and sing songs with the other faction (eg. Baine, Calia) and replace them with leadership that’s more interested in their own faction.
First task… fix SL and BFA with good plot twists… second task… make an expansion around Life as a cosmic force, step 3… have the Life expansion segueway into the Light Vs Void expansion (likely something exciting but still mysterious involving Elune and her hand in creating Naaru).
I think I’d focus on some new evil that represents a larger threat to the citizens of Azeroth more so than Azeroth as if it’s a titan or whatever I just don’t care about it anymore.
I got it. The veil between life and death has closed but it being open has affected the mortals on Azeroth in a strange way. They can no longer become drunk. This in turn makes the dwarves go ape . They start to war upon themselves at first and Morias son is killed. She LOSES it and decide to destroy everybody. She comes up with a plan using a gigantic core hound to dig a huge hole and collapse giant areas of our zones, starting with Stormwind. Anduin passes away trying to protect lots of people, tragically.
This in turn makes Baine super mad. And he’s like OK it’s go time. Baine pulls together all the rest of the races to fight the sober dwarves. He plans for Goblins, Mechagnomes and lightforged come together to build a fighting robot so big it’s actually our new main hub too. So we stomp around in a huge robot to stay safe and have to keep making trips out for resources but it’s very unsafe since the ground can fall out right beneath you randomly. The final boss is Moria on a giant Core Hound vs the Robot once we make enough enhancements to it. It’s a good story.
Twenty dart boards with words instead of numbers and a twenty sided die to choose which boards I throw darts at. Once I make a complete sentence that the new narrative direction WoW takes.
Do they even get to make that call? I thought it was more along the lines of,
"We want to have all these iconic lore characters in the next expansion. The box art alone will sell a million copies. Only problem is that they are all dead. Figure something out. "
. They start to war upon themselves at first and Morias son is killed. She LOSES it and decide to destroy everybody. She comes up with a plan using a gigantic core hound to dig a huge hole and collapse giant areas of our zones, starting with Stormwind. Anduin passes away trying to protect lots of people, tragically.
