What killed the warcraft story for me

Community General Discussion
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I played up to cata. I didn’t like the direction of the game, disliked the changes, and quit but i still loved the story and would always keep up to date with cinematics, books, ect ect. I thought mop was dumb, the whole panda thing was lame. But I really admired how they tied in the ‘old gods’.

For me… what killed the lore was Garrosh. They completely did a 180 on his character and completely ruined him. Even worse was the whole ‘back in time crap’. I understand the bronze dragonflight but basing an entire expansion on time travel seems like a cash grab at nostalgia dollars. It was as if blizzard ran out of a decent story and wanted to bring characters back.

Even worse is Gul’dan and Illidan. The game continues to be effected and the story is just warped for characters that died a long time ago. Sylvanas isn’t much better. Its just a complete rehash of Garrosh.

The reason why I cant support retail is because I need for the game to die. The MMORPG elements are ruining and making a great story stale. Imagine if warcraft wasn’t limited to WoW. We’re never going to get a warcraft 4 until retail stops. Every change and every story decision is made for the sake of an mmo structure.

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Time Travel in WoD kinda diverted it greatly

I guess they wanted to bring the feel of TBC back in WoD but failed utterly.

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I agree on the story, I have followed the Lore since WC3’s instruction manual. Cata definitely made some bizarre lore decisions that still reverberate to today, but in my opinion the story has only really truly jumped-the-shark with BfA. The storytelling has been all over the map, they’re introducing new characters and side-plots in 8.2.5 and they haven’t even begun to address the 15 other loose-ends they started in BfA.

I think Reforged could be the prelude to a WC4, depending on how well it does. WC4 would work in the scenario where they either do a world revamp in WoW with a time skip using the story of a WC4 to tell that story, or if they plan on something as outrageous as a WoW 2 a WC4 could tell the story of that.

The more realistic reason why we won’t see a WC4 is RTSs aren’t a proven genre anymore, hopefully Reforged will rekindle interest.

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honestly, BFA is the first expansion where I have very little idea of whats going on. And I have little desire to know. From what I gather… Sylvanas is basically the villain and garrosh 2.0. That plus old gods & Azshara. My initial thought was they were going to put a twist on Sylvanas and say that N’zoth made her go mad or something.

At this point the whole ‘Thrall not wanting to lead’ and just wanting to retire is basically just a big Chris Metzen reference. The guy we need but cant have. Right?

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The story of WoW’s Universe is so big and has so many subplots that it’s simply sad when it’s forced to fit the Game.

Then again, without the Game we probably wouldn’t even have so much story to begin with…so conessions must be made.

Sometimes I just wish it could take some more realistic turns I know it wont because that’d break the game.

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TBC is what killed WoW’s story for me. Once TBC hit I knew not to take its story serious going forward.

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Metzen even wrote a blog apologizing for the numerous retcons in TBC. Good times.

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Cata was the beginning of the retconning.
Deathwing had already been long dead by Alleria, Kurdran and Khadgar.

This is what made WOTLK so badass, we’ve been waiting to see what Arthas has been up to in Northrend for years.

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TBC wasn’t bad. Lore wise it was kinda confusing and dull… But with the novel I thought they did a pretty good job of explaining his motives and what really was going on.

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I haven’t given a rip about the story in 15 years. It’s never mattered to me once.

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I love this comment in conjunction with your guild name :). Just seems poetic, no offense intended at all!

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Woltk was a disappointment. The ‘there must always be a lichking crap’. We’re literally in northrend to wipe out the scourge. The idea that it cant be done and that Arthas is a ‘good guy’ keeping the undead in check is just stupid. The simple fact that they changed his voice from the 40man naxx to the deep heavy ominous lich king of WOTLK ruined it for me. I don’t care about Bolvar. Let us kill Arthas. The real Arthas.

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5.3 and 5.4 where things have fallen apart, the lore have being crap since this, to much rule of cool, edgy moments and few consistence

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Pandas were absolutely lame at a surface level.

But tbh that expansion had some of the best world building the game has ever seen and if you actually played it and paid attention to quests, the only part that stood out as overly cartoonish and silly as it appeared on the surface was the first half of Valley of the Four winds (the 2nd half was better, and the entire zone was optional as you could do Krasarang instead if you wanted to).

The happy go lucky panda thing was a relevant part of their story, not just a marketing ploy for kids. Their whole society was basically a facade to keep the Sha dormant, until we showed up and immediately ruined everything.

Yep. As an Alliance player I never cared about Garrosh to begin with, always seems like he floated between major and minor in terms of importance, but I can acknowledge that they flipped his character way too fast for it to feel good for anyone. I don’t have an issue with where he ended up, I have an issue with the process of him getting there.

WoD was 100% a nostalgia cashgrab. Even the way the introduced the Warlords pointed to that. It’s no surprise that expansion lost half of its subs within a few months. Nostalgia brings people back, but for MOST people, does not have staying power. Even if the expansion wasn’t so lacking in content, it would have happened.

Also, yeah, time travel plots are bad. Some side stuff? Sure. Main story of a 2 year expansion? No. Bad. Especially if you aren’t willing to deal with the potential ramifications of time travel. Blizzard’s explanation and methods for avoiding that were lazy.

Mhm. Gui’dan was bland and could have been literally anyone, but they used him because people know the name and they had an excuse because WoD timey wimey crap.

Illidan… I think for the sake of not looking like they’re grasping at straws, he should have stayed dead, but I’ll give them credit and say that they portrayed him much better in Legion than they did in BC. BC clearly just wanted to show off neat looking stuff and didn’t think that much into it. Legion had a proper story attached to it. That said, Blizzard STILL follows the “rule of cool”, even if they do it better now, but especially with Illidan, the style of “cool” is like… 13 year old boy from the mid 2000s. So it just comes across as the cringe kind of edgy.

No. I acknowledge that MMORPGs come with certain restraints to storytelling, but WoW’s story has gone to hell not because of those restraints, but because of good old fashioned terrible writing. That’s it.

But I’d also argue that WoW has never had good storytelling, it’s just that it’s worse than it used to be.

Even Warfcraft wasn’t much good outside of 1 or 2 specific plotlines.

I honestly think Starcraft 1 is just about the only time I’ve thought a Blizzard story was good. They make solid universes to play in, but fill them with poor foreground stories.

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No they didn’t.

Garrosh was a jerk in BC and he was a jerk in Wrath. That’s why so many Horde players were disgusted when Blizzard made him ‘warchief’.

Then he was a jerk in Cata, too. So no wonder he was still a jerk in Mists.

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What really killed the story for me is that it’s a continuous repeat of itself with no new ideas. Horde does something bad, Alliance reacts, bad guy shows up, Alliance and Horde works together, bad guy is beaten, Horde does something bad, repeat.

Battle for Azeroth is basically MoP without Garrosh and pandaren.

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This is such a dumb reason to dislike an xpac.

I thought MoP was one of the most enjoyable xpacs out there, storywise. It’s got a lot of zen philosophical elements in it. It’s based on the premise of how emotion, positive or negative, can shape your reality. In MoP’s case, most of it was exaggerated to magnify the theme.

For instance, the denizens of Pandaria lived in harmony between negative and positive emotions. Negative emotions were repressed and packaged away aka sealed within the land.

When the Horde and Alliance arrived in Pandaria, their negativity toward one another shifted the balanced which culminated into sha pervading their lands. Garrosh thought it advantageous to use this negative energy until it consumed him.

I agree it was a waste of an iconic figure but I understood the principles behind it.

I preferred MoP to WotLK or any legion based expansion with their dull, dark, and ugly blue and green hues.

I think their goal was to allow players to see and interact with storied figures. Gul’dan, Grom, Durotan, etc were dead in Vanilla’s epoch. This gave players a chance to see said icons in action.

Cool or lame, that’s dependent on player preference.

Thus far, it appears to be heading in that direction but my biggest problem with BfA lore is the timegating.

They caused this giant uproar with the whole Sylvanas debacle but only release like 15mn of story on that front at a time. You do the war campaign and then it’s like “don’t worry about it until next patch, go fight G’huun”

Then we get some focus on it with BoD but none of it, even on horde side, focuses in on what Sylvanas is doing.

Now, we still don’t have much resolution. Sylvanas sends Nathanos on a ship with the dagger and then the focus is shifted on Azshara. Honestly, I can care less about Azshara at this point because I want to see to see the whole Sylvanas thing unravel so I know whether I should be disappointed or not.

Now, we get to wait another 3-4 months before another 15mn of story is released regarding Sylvanas. They may throw in another distraction as well, I don’t know but it seems like they’re trying to run too many stories all at once.

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This! He was turned into Keal’thas 2.0 it was stupid. Now if only I could make people realize Sylvanas isn’t Garrosh 2.0 because she was never good in undeath

Its not shes more or less living out her fantasy of destroying the alliance

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That is one aspect that has always really bugged me. That so many major aspects of the story are in books and not reflected in game.

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The only credit I will give them about Illidan coming back is saying that ‘well hes a demon now’ So his soul could be anchored in a way like the burning legion is. We’ve seen the dreadlords come back many times.

That being said you’ve now opened up a bunch of new questions like… “well how come Gul’dan never came back?” If anyone was so involved to the point of madness couldn’t he be labeled a demon now? Even hearthstone labels Illidan as a demon.