Again, dev team changed between late MoP and early WoD, and it shows.
Legion was alright and had a lot of that old WoW feel to it, but it feels like it was a remnant of plans from years prior. BFA and SL just feel jank.
Because a bunch of stereotype races that are also classically high fantasy are so unique. Most you got is trolls.
Alliance is lacking because the current writers just aren’t abusing what they have, and after 10+ years of playing Horde, it’s freakin’ boring. (…outside trolls.) “Bad guys but jk trying to be good” isn’t always interesting.
Also, “traditional high fantasy” includes literal crusader goat aliens? HP. Lovecraft elves? Amazonian druid elves?
Dwaves and Humans/Worgen, I guess fit the bill, but even the take on gnomes and steampunk is different. Dark irons are a good twist.
Why are Horde players always going on about how much more interesting their faction is when you have Blood Elves? Literally the most boring fantasy race besides humans. They actually washed them back to being plain old Warhammer style elves after TBC.
Look at ANY intellectual property you like. It doesn’t stay in its lane does it? Buy a jar of The Walking Dead branded picante sauce if you need to TASTE this modern mercantile misery.
I think this is a case of viewing your past with rose tinted glasses. I played WC2, 3, TFT, vanilla and then quit until SL. The writing has never been great. Replay WC3 and tell me again how great it used to be.
Revendreth honestly feels like home. Multiple expansion made me felt like a fish out of water if not a complete Alien every single expansion. It’s quite amusing to see mere Mortals feeling like a complete fish out of Water in the current expansion.
In other words, I personally find this Expansion interesting to the Point of having no interest in purchasing any upcoming expansion; Especially after BFA.
Of all the people who left Blizzard, Metzen is the one whose departure affected the game the most. Not only could he craft a great narrative, but he had the stature within the organization to insist that the game be driven by the story, not have the story as window dressing for e-sports.
WoD definitely started a trend of people making decisions that don’t really know or care about the actual setting then the writing team needing to tape everything together. They needed a retro expansion because of the movie coming out, so ummm… time travel, but not really.
BfA followed this with Horde Vs Alliance marketing, with everyone finding out they’ve been tricked into fighting later.
One thing that I think Blizzard struggles with too is, and again I don’t have a source but I’ve heard this from time to time, is writers have the job of figuring out a story from what gameplay has already set up. It isn’t writers coming up with a story to the expansion, it’s the game designers making the world, models, raids, etc. and then the writers are told to make it work. I don’t know if that’s true, but the evidence of especially BfA and Shadowlands kind of supports that style of writing not being important at the start of the expansion’s planning. Story feels like it’s second to everything else in the game.
I honestly think the only way for them to really fix this cycle of word ending threats is to do a time skip. All of the big bads of our era have been dealt with; we need a chance of regrow and renewal. Maybe some form of set up for the future, but ultimately I’d personally love the chance to have the whole world revamped and remade and spend an expansion exploring new Azeroth again, with new stories, new threats, etc. It would also help to restart the story to something more coherent.
I sat out a lot of BfA, so no real opinion on that one. All the others I have typically enjoyed the story. When I do have a problem with an expansion, it usually comes down to class mechanics or gameplay systems.
Actually a major portion of BC was built when Vanilla was built. Not fully fleshed out, but if you watch some of the video with the original devs, they had planned to have things like Hellfire peninsula and Northern in Vanilla. They ended up holding those off to make expansions. See video below:
I think it’s also telling while everyone who left are trying their own video games, Metzen is going tabletop RPGs.
This tells me right there that he is probably what made this game a game I wanted to play. I play for an online, video game version of D&D, not just a Mario Bros with a LOTR skin
Funny you would compare those two as Maiden happens to appeal to the kind of people enjoy reading and are the traditional fantasy folks. I know I am.
Maiden = Song about books like “Out of the Silent Planet”, poems like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, or even “The Charge of the Light Brigade” or even historical figures like “Alexander the Great”.
Now if you want o compare them to someone singing:
Squeeze me, babe, 'till the juice runs down my leg
The 3 main story lines of the original Devs are kind of wrapped up: Scourge, Burning Legion and Old Gods. It’s possible the old Devs would have come up with a better sequel, but who knows?
