Yes. I’m sure there are some people out there who don’t like the writing in general, but I feel for most it’s just the inconsistency that brings out these feelings.
The writers aren’t bad, it’s just hard to care about their story when characters and the world are so inconsistent.
Yeah cause chronicle feels like fan fiction now. I bought the books because I wanted books on the actual lore & now I feel like I wasted money. You can easily add to a story without retconning previous information.
I agree that this is their goal, but it’s funny how they’ve turned the faction war into a good-vs-evil struggle while “greying up” the cosmic forces.
Aren’t they doing the same with the Diablo series? Where Diablo isn’t the actual “evil” one.
I don’t think so?
If you’re talking about Liliths inclusion, she’s just this games main villain, since Diablo appears to be “dead dead” now.
Though we’ll see how long that last.
Consistency.
Believability.
If you tell me that the Horde is not strong enough to fight the Night Elf Army on its own. And that they then have to use subterfuge to remove that Army from their objective. Attack, and are halted in place long enough for that Army to come back, and yet the inferior army wins after all? Despite the Night Elf Army also having weeks to reinforce that position from other Armies and sources while the Horde were halted and delayed?
An Army that is now a full continent’s width away from their nearest major supply base which is a City that can barely feed itself. Their supply lines have to go through the home territory of the enemy they are invading, an enemy who knows this ground and thus would be able to ambush and raid with devastating effect any supply convoy you have.
A human soldier in combat conditions requires 3,000 calories of food a day to maintain performance at a minimum. The average Orc Warrior easily out-masses a human soldier and would need significantly more calories of food per day. Not to mention Tauren. You save a bit on the Forsaken soldiers, but you still have to feed your soldiers, and you have to feed your soldiers more food on average than your enemy does.
How do the Horde have the numbers to win against the Army that they say they cannot defeat?
How do the Horde have the supplies to maintain their forces to do it?
How do the Horde have the ships to move enough forces to Teldrassil to threaten the tree?
Where is the Night Elf Fleet that just brought their Army back?
To put that in perspective for you. William the Conqueror required over 700 Ships to move ~ 10,000 men from Normandy across the English Channel to England.
Where are those ships?
Where is the Alliance Fleet during all of this? If the Horde fleet can sail from Orgrimmar to Teldrassil in 2 weeks, why can’t the Alliance fleet sail from Stormwind to Kalimdor? The Horde fleet has to go all the way around the Northern Coast of Kalimdor. The Alliance Fleet would simply have to take the channel between the Northern and Southern Continents of the Eastern Kingdoms that is spanned by the Thandol Span, then sail East directly to Kalimdor.
Where is the Army of Stormwind? We know that Stormwind has their own Mages who are not affiliated with the Kirin Tor, where are they? Why are there no portals pouring in the 7th Legion and other standing units of Stormwind’s Army?
Where is the Army of Ironforge?
Where is the Vindicaar, controlled by the Army of the Light who are lead by Turalyon a stalwart Alliance General?
The failure of the writers to account for even these basic questions illustrates a lack of care to provide proper storytelling. Thus the story is nothing more than a child’s fantasy of “Because I said so.”
I do not mind suspending disbelief to be entertained, but I agree to suspend my disbelief, not hang it by the neck until dead.
this is another problem, this book was marketed as a bible from wow but it was retconned for it to be from the titan’s point of view, this is called false advertising, just like this expansion.
i want to talk a bit more about this expansion
the story of the expansion isnt that BAD per se :
for the horde: head of goverment goes mad with power, does genocide, runs when the rebellion comes knocking
for the alliance: 18 year old is crowned and is facing a genocide, its torn between his desire of peace and his commitment to his people, resolves to bring to justice the perpetrator.
then we go to the execution of it:
They go from the burning of teldrassil to how sad saurfang is, mind you this entire expansion was marketed on faction pride for both factions, you mean to put the focus on the one guy that begun this war and how sad he feels? then you go around and have to use dirty tactics just to even the field, you blight your own soldiers on lordaeron, you blight entire forests through your warpath to darkshore, you res against its will a poor guy that had nothing to do with the war, baine rebels, he is chained for his trouble, your allies city gets raided and their entire fleet decimated, you lose the rest of your navy and lots of troops because your warchief sees this as an opportunity to further her agenda, then your warchief yeets saying the horde is nothing.
oh yea can you feel that faction pride?
On the alliance side we dont get even that cinematic then we go ahead from the burning to invade lordaeron but wait sylvanas blighted it killing lots of alliance, whoops, you lost again, you go to kul tiras and see jaina flip flop from her warbringer persona to her usual peacemongering weaksauce jaina, anduin releases saurfang and its too busy pushing for peace instead of keeping his father’s word to the horde, tyrande does a forbidden ritual just to spank nathanos and kill a replaceable valkyr, the attack on dazar alor pushed the zandalari into the horde, we lose a sizeble chunck of the kul tiran fleet and the advantage that we gained on the war, then finally we see our leaders singing kumbaya with the new horde and pushing for forgiveness, making them look like weak, undecisive traitors of their own faction.
lose, lose, lose, lose, oh yea btw we will put on twitter that you did win both warfronts because we actually dont really care about you guys?, really proud of being part of this faction.
i repeat THIS.WAS.NOT.WHAT.WAS.PROMISED. on the marketing campaign of this expansion, the factions dont matter we both got served a dung sandwich, its almost like shifting genres midstory, if you are reading a fantasy book then it turns sci fy all of the sudden of course it will be jarring and weird.
Constantly jumping the shark with player deeds ruins the legitimacy of the story.
Ragtag band of nobodies defeating gods and world souls? Thats really dumb
Making the player character so incredibly overpowered like that really destroys the believability. It quickly leaves the realm of fantasy story into the realm of ridiculous story.
Good storytelling is about conflict, and promise, and stakes. A lot of people say that you shouldn’t be able to predict what’s going to happen next in a good story, but that isn’t always the case. Surprise for the sake of surprise gets old fast. Stories can be predictable to a certain point, not necessarily all the details, but you should feel like you know what’s going to happen.
BFA is a bad story because it had to many different things going on and there wasn’t a coherent narrative. One moment we were told the most important thing in the world was the sword sticking out of the planet, and then we’re told to go recruit allies to fight a faction war, and then we’re suddenly dropped into Nazjatar and end up releasing an old god. None of these things are connected properly to each other or explained properly.
8.2 and 8.3 in particular feel like a half baked attempt to wrap up loose threads so the story team can go tell whatever it is they’re excited about now, that being the Shadowlands and Sylvanas. Azshara and N’zoth have been around for years. We’ve been told over and over again that N’zoth is a major threat. Azshara has almost killed us multiple times over. And now, all of a sudden, when it comes to it, we’re able to defeat them in a single patch with a shiny laser beam. What happened to healing the planet? BFA would’ve had a much better story arc if it had managed to remain consistent and focused on a single threat, instead of trying to tell 3 different stories.
Look at what people say is the one of the best stories of Warcraft, Arthas. He got an entire expansion dedicated to taking him down. We were focused on a single threat. As someone said in another thread I was reading recently, we leveled in the shadow of Icecrown and battled our way to its gates to face its master. Arthas was this looming presence over us from the day we stepped foot in Northrend until the day we cleared Icecrown. It made sense, and it felt epic to finally defeat him.
Compare this to Nyalotha, where we were told right before 8.3 “yeah, this raid’s gonna be in Nyalotha, I know you’ve only heard of the place once, but it’s cool, it’s N’zoths super secret treehouse.” It didn’t feel epic, it felt like we were told to go there just cause they wanted us to. Nzoth never felt like a tangible threat. We didn’t feel dread or horror at the idea of facing him. The lore characters said their lines and we fought some tentacles.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But it’s just a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.” -The Two Towers
I know we all have great ideas how things should work out. Some times life (in this case story) just doesn’t go the way we thought it might.
So a great story to me is an interesting one that keeps me entertained. The emotion either good or bad means you’re actually into the story. When you no longer care, the story just got bad.
BfA’s story is awful because it revolves around the faction conflict which can never end in a satisfying manner because neither side can actually win. it doesn’t help that every character has to be incredibly stupid for sylvanas plan to even work.
blizzard’s writing is never what i would call good. it is cheesy and cliche but it is usually the fun kind of cheesy but BfA couldn’t even do that right and the story just makes you miserable and not want to participate. especially if you are playing a horde character
Establish the type of world you want. Pick one genre.
Orcs vs. Humans fantasy and monster slaying. Not crystal spaceships, time travel and robots.
Tell a clear story.
Adhere to the Law of Conservation of Detail. Maintain only a small set of important characters. Portray one clear end goal with few supporting, intermediate objectives.
Keep the world and characters internally believable and consistent.
Make sure their personalities, motivations and goals stay consistent over time. Character development does not equal completely changing behaviors between content phases.
Pace your story.
This is not a race. It is OK to explore characters and lore, especially in interactive media. This is not a serialized show. You do not need a twist on every story beat. Slow and steady goes a long way.
Oh hey, The Lord of the Rings does all that! So does the Dark Tower! Or Dune! Or Star Wars!
I think BFA was largely a mess due to their inability to stick to any focal point. Starts with a faction war, they made a mess of Azshara, and then we end it with killing our first, fully-released old god in one patch. N’Zoth’s puppets got more story and attention than the big boss himself.
I think Blizzard does much better when there’s a clear bad guy at the end of the road. How many times did we bump into the Lich King during our questing experience? During dungeons and other raids. It connected us to him. Everything led to him, and once we finally reached the Frozen Throne, it felt fulfilling to get rid of him.
I hope that’s the type of role their making the jailer out to be. I don’t want us to do all of this stuff in SL, see him once or twice, and then boom. 9.3 is here, and we kill him. Give him some depth.
Yep, for story telling Wrath and Cata were probably Blizzard’s best work. Arthas and Deathwing were front and center at the end of the road throughout the entire Xpac, with Tyrion and Thrall as compeling anchors on the protagonist side. They also allowed breathing space for refreshing variations in style in the middle through Ulduar and Firelands, which is OK to do.
Special mentions to MoP and WoD, for the impressive Pandaria world building from scratch and the coherent story following Yrel and against the Iron Horde and then Legion, which all flowed really well. Legion wasn’t bad either.
Thinking back on it, it’s really just BC (for lack of effort on story presentation) and BfA (for being all over the place) that really stand out as bad.
Good writing has lots of components but a basic thing is sewing a question and paying off with an answer, or showing an action that leads to impactful consequences. Right now there’s not answers for the constant sewing of questions, and there’s a lot of causes that lead to consequences that are difficult to believe or do not allign with established character motives.
Something at evokes feeling is generally good story telling to me (besides frustration hopefully). Internal consistency is another must. Within the rules of the world things have to seem at least plausible to me. Lastly, rather than a battle between good and evil I prefer a more nuanced view of morality. I would say something like morally grey… but I generally would not consider genocide and morally grey to go together.
Edit: Also, I am not a fan of the magically corrupted route. If a character is going to fall they should have some buildup rather than oops I got hit by X artifact/old god/ect. and was corrupted. I did not hate Ra-den’s route though I did not care much either way. Yserah was one that bothered me as she simply got zapped by an evil beam and became evil (though at least she was quickly dealt with).
Edit Two: I do think that they could do a better job if they focused upon specific arc of a smaller number of characters told over several patches with an intended direction. Right now it seems to be a lot of ok, this is X person’s screen time for the expansion watch as they solve all the problems and then go away for a while.
They could try
Legion did this and was fantastic. BFA meanwhile broke all the rules above and was laughably bad.
You should add “not removing or creating limited time questlines that are important to the story.” It’s a shame that you can’t play the War of the Thorns event anymore.