Why do people say this story is any good? (Spoilers)

Community General Discussion
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Can we have an honest talk about TWW’s story and how its not any good? After seeing all these threads talk about how good the story is or how the story is bad because of Faerin, I feel like we need to discuss the actual parts where this story fails:

  • The Alleria and Xalatath rivalry is so forced and contrived, its really hard to care about it. It makes no sense why Alleria would be super mad that Dalaran, a city she has no personal connection with, got destroyed? It is understandable that Khadgar and her are friends from the Sons of Lothar time - but Alleria has been 1000 years removed from Khadgar that this level of hatred is questionable. Why wasnt Vereesa being used as the lynch pin for this? At least then, it would be somewhat more understandable than handwaving her out of Dalaran. She never gets used anyways outside of standing around in the background and has essentially been replaced by Alleria (Sorry high elf fans, but its true).

  • Why are Thrall and Jaina even here? They do essentially nothing other than call in their factions to come help and then do nothing. Cool. So you are telling me - that a city of mages with some of the STRONGEST MAGES and magic users couldnt be used instead. Why bother showing Meryl Felstorm, Aethas Sunreaver, or even Ritssyn if you are not going to do anything with them? Wheres the Council of Six?

  • Why put an emphasis on Ansurek’s reign if you arent going to show her or do anything with her at all? She has only shown up TWICE to do literally nothing and she is being built up to be the big bad of the patch as the raid final boss - Razsageth had better build-up than this and felt contrived. Denathrius was eons better than this. This feels like Blizzard had no idea what to do and painted themselves into a corner with this initial patch since they cant fight Xal just yet - and Iridikon hasnt shown up at all.

  • Speaking of which…who is even going to be the next fight after Ansurek? Blizzard has literally done away with every minion she had revealed in the patch. Eirich is defeated in Stonevault. Aelric is killed in the campaign and his Cult of Night are defeated twice over between Campaign and Dawnbreaker. Ansurek is killed in the Neru’bar Palace. Who is even left? It would be like Blizzard feeding us Denathrius, Sylvanas, Evil Anduin, and Kel’thuzad in the same patch for Shadowlands and leaving the Jailer with no one. Blizzard has already openly stated that Xalatath will be an overarching villain into next expac, so…its obviously not her.

  • SPEAKING OF ANDUIN. Hallowfall is garbage. I was expecting to learn more about the Arathi, as they are this long forgotten branch of the old Arathorian people who build this great Empire - but I instead get Anduin talking about how he cannot channel the Light because he feels unworthy…huh? Why are we doing this plot when the literal trailer had Thrall go “stop moping around, its not doing anything to help you”? An entire zone that doesnt EVEN resolve Anduin’s black hole plot that sacrificed any cool culture or storytelling about the Empire outside of their two points of Light empire and they like cat who have the “zoomies” and “Beans” - heckin’ epic Reddit humour bro. Thank god theres all those books about Arathi culture - what do you mean its only revolving around their time in Hallowfall and nothing else?

  • Staying with Hallowfall - Priory feels SO disconnected from the plot, I wonder if Blizzard changed this storyline prior to release. So we meet these two brothers where one dies…and somehow this turns into the Prioress being a light-dominance would-be conqueror with Light undead. No, there is no jump cut - that is EXACTLY how it is presented. And yes, these are the only times both the undead and the idea of world domination come up at all. Why?

It just all is so tiresome to see people defend sloppy writing that is being written on the fly.

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Reading some of this, it’s clear you barely understand what is going on or haven’t played for very long.

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“You dont understand whats going on - no I will not elaborate.”

Epic post.

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That is a wall of “I didnt pay attention” mixed with “I havent seen the ending of the raid story and I’m mad I dont already know the next story beat” while also not understanding someone saying “Hey you should feel better” doesnt magically make people feel better.

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I’m not elaborating because it applies to all of it.

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WoW is like a YA novel where you can enjoy it for what it is, and it can be ‘good’ in the sense of delivering entertainment, but if you dig deeper and connect plot points together and expect a proper world-structure, political intrigue, and consistent character motivations, then you’re going to be severely disappointed. I know for myself I already felt this way all the way back in Cata and already had 14 years to go through the stages of grief

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That is a reasonable point. I thought a change in the narrative department with Metzen would change things.

Having replies that go “erm…you just didnt understand it” only makes it sound like you yourselves have no actual defense.

Enjoy it though.

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You know how long it would take to go through op’s entire post and “elaborate “? There is so much wrong with it.

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Well, off the bat you’re not being honest so…

So the High Elf that absorbed a Void Naaru and can hear the whispers of the Void shouldn’t be up against a Void entity?

They both heard the Radiant Song and were at Dalaran when Xal’atath made her move. They are also leading their respective war efforts against Xal’atath and Queen Ansurek and her Nerubian army.

She’s literally the first raid tier.

Maybe we’ll see what’s going on with the Harronir, which we briefly met in Azj-Kahet. Maybe Xal’atath will set her next plan in motion. There’s many ways this can continue, and to act like this is new is just pure ignorance.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even incorrect ones like yours.

It just all is so tiresome to see people attack purely with their feelings without having a single moment of clarity.

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We think you don’t understand what’s happening. Full stop. That doesn’t that require dissecting your entire post.

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I agree with some of your issues, and disagree with others. Enjoyment of something is subjective.

Alleria and Xal’atath does feel like a weird rivalry built out of nowhere in-game. Xal’atath is an agent of the void, and Alleria is using the void to hunt the void. She’s basically Illidan 2.0 with no specific Sargeras, and Xal fills that void when Alleria is tasked with hunting her and continuously seems to be bested by her along the way.

It’s not a long-standing rivalry, we get to see the start of it, which is what this story is. It follows the flaws of Alleria Windrunner quite well, I think. What would Vareesa contribute to this? I’m sure she’ll come in later on when Arator steps into the story, but Vareesa has been the motherly Windrunner. I wish she got more respect for that and I hope she comes in later on with some development.

Why are Thrall and Jaina even here? Like Anduin and Khadgar, THEY are the heroes of the story. They’re part of the big “Justice League” group that takes every threat to task. We’ve just recently joined their group as more than a trustworthy adventurer. But I do kinda joke to my wife every time we see Thrall “oh great, we’re babysitting grandpa on this quest.”

He’s only ever here because Metzen. He’s the wise old guy in the kitchen who gives life advice nobody asked for. At least Jaina sometimes gives me portals.

Why put an emphasis on Ansurek’s reign if you arent going to show her or do anything with her at all?

She’s a queen. It’d be weird if we engaged with her more than we do. She’s royalty, man. Not a soldier. We’ve had enough build-up for her in-game to recognize why she needs to be dealt with, even if you only touch upon the main story.

Who is even going to be the next fight after Ansurek? IDK. Iridikron and Xal’atath are still out there. We freed a N’zoth fish into the waters of Hallowfall. Azshara isn’t dead either. Plenty of places for this to go.

Remember that Xal’atath is also called the Harbinger, which emphasizes that her role is to bring something more threatening our way, and we’ve been led to believe that she’ll be around for the majority of this trilogy saga.

Hallowfall… Okay, after reading that complaint I just… did you finish the zone? If so, you really should try it again. Obviously you weren’t paying attention there. I don’t understand this complaint, it’s not a valid one. Hallowfall is very fleshed out in every way you want it to be, it’s not just about Anduin’s journey.

Reading through your complaints, I can only assume you did the main story and didn’t bother reading the side quests or participate in the Stay Awhile and Listens. Go give those a shot if the story actually means something to you.

The MSQ is designed to give a brief understanding of why you’re in that raid or running a dungeon. It’s not designed to answer everything about the current lore we’re given, it’s a compromise for people who don’t care about the story or questing and for those that do.

The writing is campy, sure, but it isn’t sloppy this time around. Whether or not you enjoy high fantasy with a T rating is your personal decision, but it’s not sloppy or poorly written. I’ll defend that so far (for this expansion only).

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There’s 30 years of story building up to this. You choose to not learn any of it. Then you complain about the story. Your opinion is not really very worthy of discussion, because it won’t go anywhere, because you won’t learn anything.

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The only thing I will agree with OP about is that the Priory feels a little out-of-nowhere and disconnected. It would have been fine in any other expansion, but given how good the writing is in the expansion generally, the tone shift from the quests leading into the Priory and the Priory itself is a little jarring.

But even that’s a very limited agreement. It clearly fits into the larger theme here that while the people in Hallowfall themselves are pretty nice, a lot of that niceness was learned via desperation, and the core of the Arathi Empire is deeply unkind zeal.

I have been brutally hard on Blizzard’s writing in everything but Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 for 20 years. It has never impressed me consistently… before TWW. Having to eat a lot of words suddenly and I couldn’t be happier about it.

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But I thought, the original arc of WoW was ended with the Jailer. Thats what Blizzard told me

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Because she still values her friend. And the reason why Vereesa wasn’t used is because she has no connection to the Void. With Alleria, we helped her absorb a Void Naaru. Vereesa makes even less sense here, because she doesn’t really have any connection to Khadgar.

I’m reasonably sure that there is going to be some story content later today with the season drop. We will get a little bit more story in Azj’kahet with her in it to set up the raid, I’m sure. They made a story mode for raids specifically so you could kill her and complete the quest without having to queue for LFR.

We’ll probably find out later.

But we do learn a good amount about them. Do the sidequests.

As we all know, this fixes literally every problem associated with trauma.

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Why do people who either ignored all the story or haven’t even played the story feel the need to say how bad it is constantly?

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You begin with implying that anyone who likes the story is dishonest. I’ll just stop there.

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No we cant have a legit honest talk about the story. We all know why.

Because of that I just stopped caring about the story. I couldnt tell you one thing about it because I just ignored it as I leveled.

I do pvp and let the PVE story people deal with the story.
I was forced to do the campaign to get fun stuff unlocked but I coudlnt tell you what 1 quest was about. Its just not that important to me to care what WOW devs have done with the so called story.

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There are still years worth of character and worldbuilding elements inherent to the current story that answer the motivations, beats, and other things you are complaining about.
These intricacies did not spontaneously die with the Jailer.

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This.
Seems there are quite a few who just want to hate on the story and try very hard to make their end justify their means. (I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase that…)

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