It seems like most people consider BfA to be a low point in the game’s writing, but what are some examples of times in the past when you think the writing was good? If we ignore the generally good plotlines of WC3 which lingered on in the early days, what stories were particularly well executed? Or is BfA just a new low in a game which has always had bad writing?
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It was never good, but prior to Cata (for me, at least), it was -enjoyable- in a cheesy fantasy way. I also find Godzilla movies highly enjoyable even though (with the exception of the original 1954 Gojira and arguably the 2016 Shin Godzilla) none are very -good- movies (just as an example of things that are “bad” but are still a hell of a fun story–you CAN have both).
The writing for BFA not only isn’t “good”; it’s not even enjoyable 
I think that’s the real difference between current WoW and WoW of a decade ago.
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The first half of Wrath was pretty solid. The whole “let’s host a to-the-death tournament in the backyard of the world’s most powerful necromancer, then also let the Alliance and Horde kill each other and lecture them immediately afterward” made my eyes roll, but I felt that the story sort of recovered during ICC.
I’ll forever be grateful that we had MoP, though. MoP is the only expansion we’ve had where the narrative was actually trying to say something, and actually focusing on positivity and humanity instead, well, the stuff they normally focus on, was something the game desperately needed. I unironically think that we need a MoP 2.
The first half of Legion - the Suramar storyline in particular - is probably the best writing the game has ever had, taken in a vacuum and divorced from what came afterward. Everything up through the end of Nighthold was great.
And while I criticize a lot about BC’s story, particularly how it treats women in certain parts, it did sort of have this undercurrent of good people trying to do good things that they do their best writing in.
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I think there are a couple of different things that can be meant by “bad writing.”
1) Writing lacks depth, drops plot threads regularly, runs on contrivance, and contradicts itself.
This has always been there to one degree or another. Some zones and plotlines suffer from it, others don’t, but I think the overall level of it has been fairly consistent.
2) Writing directly bungles its own themes in the same breath as trying to portray them, violently contradicts the main selling points of at least one player faction, and abandons even basic levels of character cohesion
This has happened before, but BfA is a particularly special time for it.
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Pretty much what Vorenth said. We have always had cheesy over the top villains that want to wipe out all life on the planet. It was fun being the noble heroes fighting demons and undead to protect what we love.
In my opinion, it was when they started focusing on characters GoT style that it took a major dunk. It lost a lot of the immersion there for me. It was in the transition to that since Legion and has peaked in BfA where it’s just constantly me following Jaina and Nathanos around while they throw poorly thought out one liners at each other.
Blizzard needs to go back to doing villains as the big character focus of an expansion so we have something to look to as a climax, and THEN have smaller individual stories in zones that build up the world.
And for the love of all that is holy they need to STOP DOING “SURPRISES” AND TWISTS.
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TBH I thought WoW’s story started to spoil in Wrath.
gets pelted with tomatoes
It wasn’t the worse by any means but it seemed like the start of WoW’s focus shifting to be more on major lore characters vs the player character. The game has had some ups and downs since then but despite the ups it’s always been on the decline.
I don’t expect tip top writing out of this game but it also seems to suffer from becoming a zombie IP. There’s a lot of lack of consistency or depth or interest exploring actual interesting plots. You have a pool of writers and writer leads getting shuffled in and out and are beholden to keeping this corporate owned IP to a specific branding even if it makes no sense at this point which causes people to see the inconsistencies and other problems bubble up. It’s the same reason I can’t read Marvel or DC comics.
WoW’s strength has always been creating very cool expansive worlds for us to explore and dive into and they’re still doing a great job at it. Zandalar is definitely one of my favourite new areas in the game now and I really did enjoy questing threw it all.
Kul’Tiras on the other hand, was fine until Stormsong and then we start to see the problem with the inconsistencies in the writing that makes the larger story difficult to enjoy.
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A lot of what have people said could be mirrored by myself.
Personally I found that the best of World of Warcraft’s writing isn’t in it’s overarching theme but instead found within it’s simplicity of quest lines. Duskwood was phenomenal in vanilla for getting ghosted by ‘The Embalmer’. Same with running around and doing Mankrik too.
World of Warcraft’s writing falls flat whenever it’s scope goes beyond simple quest lines because of a multitude of problems. World of Warcraft has been increasing in scope and size and it’s going to continue to do so unless direct action is taken. More characters are going to get introduced before being tossed around and eventually forgotten. Same with items.
But the biggest problem for myself is how Blizzard intends to write by the ear and the mantra ‘The Rule of Cool supercedes all’. It’s far surpassed the point and has been really troublesome in specific moments where Blizzard has thought about doing a cool scene, corollary throwing out character’s logic and how the world works.
The most poignant of these are the ending Warlords of Draenor and the Burning of Teldrassil.
They’re both impactful moments, but Grommosh Hellscream should’ve been hamstrung almost immediately after by the majority of those who’ve he harmed.
The Burning of Teldrassil pissed off the majority of the Nelven fanbase who hoped for a win and then even more of WoW’s fanbase when they realized that Sylvanas committed an act of genocide so horrifically bad that Nelves by any mention should be considered the equivalent if not worse than the Quel’dorei (A very rare race.)
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For me, the biggest strength of WoW is its setting. There’s a ton of lore and generally I love the cultures and world(s) in Warcraft.
But yeah… the characters which populate that world? They tend to be pretty one-dimensional and, most importantly, inconsistently written. I can’t even say for sure if I like some characters because I don’t know if next week their personality will take a u-turn and they’ll do something ridiculous. And moreover, this is an MMO… no matter how many times they call me “Champion”, I don’t really believe my character hangs out with Jaina on the weekends. Unlike characters in single player games I can’t ever get too invested in them since they mostly just act like WWE superstars yelling out lines to hype up a crowd rather than someone you could have a real conversation with.
So for me, WoW’s writing is good when it doesn’t focus on huge overarching storylines or big-name characters, and instead relies on their well-crafted settings and small-time characters within those settings. Suramar, like Ursuola mentioned, was a prime example, albeit one with a soiled legacy since the surviving characters from Suramar are now thrown into BfA’s world war plot under dubious pretexts.
Frankly, I don’t think the big stories have ever been all that good. I absolutely love outland as a setting, but it is hard to even understand what is going on with Illidan and Kael’thas because the writing is so spotty. Even with the Illidan novel retconning everything so that Illidan was just playing 4D Chess I don’t think we ever get a good reason for why Kael went Legion and became a minor setback meme. Wrath had its moments, but the Lich King stripped most of the stuff which made Arthas interesting and made him into Darth Vader (though Wrathgate remains a sorta cool plot beat). Deathwing, the Garrosh Arc, and WoD were all bad. But amidst all these bad headliners there were great supporting acts, and WoW would probably be better off if it had just remained a vanilla-like experience with zone-specific plotlines but no big bad.
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For some reason, this is just reminding me that Blizzard randomly obliterated Darkshire out of the blue in Legion, and it wasn’t even something that most classes get to see.
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Wait, they what?
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don’t have a rogue alt eh
They were all secret death cultists, actually
Won’t let me link it, but you can just search for it as “Veiled Hand” on WoWpedia.
Exactly. My favorite parts of the WoW stories are the small ones that flesh out the world and the culture the our characters live in.
Like, just look at the quest in Eversong Woods where you punish some apprentice mages who dropped their spellbook in a river. It showed us how magically minded blood elves are, and how they don’t take crap from people. Also made me chuckle.
In the rogue class hall campaign the entire town is taken over by a Legion cult. And I mean all of it.
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Apparently on Azeroth, any world ending threat gains massive cultist followers just by being… threatening.
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So I guess Darkshire is kind of an ideal example. You can have really cool short stories about the zone’s theme (in Darkshire’s case, gothic horror) like Stalvan Mistmantle or Mor’ladim… or everything can tie in to the dumb big bad of the expansion with no subtlety or reason.
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Don’t forget completely throwing away characters on a whim to cash them in for cheap gravitas.
See also: Amber Kearnen getting murdered in a sewer as part of the dumbest Legion plotline, or Admiral Taylor’s garrison in Draenor.
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The part where nobody but rogues even sees it happen is about 50% of what makes it dumb for me.
The entire town turning out to be cultists that you have to obliterate is dumb, but … WoW-like, I guess.
The fact that you will never know it happened unless you play a specific class at a specific level, is ridiculous.
It would be different if it were a random new town that was invented specifically for the rogue class hall campaign, but it super is not.
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At least Amber got to rest in peace, Admiral Taylor still haunts my garrison
Plus Darkshire was one of my favorite Stormwind towns. You know, out of Moonbrook, Goldshire and Lakeshire.