The guy who created the World left, and the first thing the company did was take the book he made to be a lasting canon and chucked it out the window by saying it was just from the point of view of the Titans.
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Metzen retired.
It’s been happening for a while that resonant intellectual properties are given to people who don’t respect the setting. We see it in films and in television, we see it in games, and it’s happening now in Blizzard.
Because the “old guard” isn’t around in the same capacity as it used to be, the people who have been given the charge to craft the evolution of a world have a divergent vision of what that world should be that the original architects did not have.
Flat out, I lay this at the feet of Danuser and Golden. They’re motivated by more than telling a story. I don’t know exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, but I’m not seeing the same reverence toward the characters and what they were before they had a chance to take a spin with it.
Comic book characters have been around for decades. Even before their original creators died, they were being written by others at times. When Miller wrote Batman, he didn’t invalidate what was established by Kane and Finger. Bendis and Slott evolved Spider-Man, but didn’t make us feel like we never understood them. At the very least, they didn’t reach back into previous storylines that they did not write to try and change what we thought was happening.
Danuser is not doing that. Many of the character’s he’s currently driving were not created by him, had their stories and motivations details in ways that were understood and relateable. I go in detail about this in a post I wrote about the three “eras” of Sylvanas here: A Tale of Two Sylvies and why the Jailer Reveal was Bad
The story is bad because everything we thought we knew about the major characters is a lie, and we’re shown that we never really understood them. The Jailer revealed that Sylvanas has lied to us since after Wrath, and that’s something this current writing team decided when the previous team were writing her a completely different way.
This isn’t a simple redefinition of a character either. This is a lot closer to Bruce Wayne saying the death of his parents had nothing at all to do with his decision to be a crime fighter, despite decades of the character’s motivation being understood as inexorably connected to that event, all because the current writer has a vision different than the creator.
The writers are misleading the players. They’re doing that by reaching into parts of the story they were not involved in and changing what those events meant. It’s nothing short of narrative desecration and I don’t know how they can call themselves writers if they can’t tell a story without erasing the intent of those who not only came before them, but built the world that enables them to prance about in this way.
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This is about as succinct and accurate as it gets, especially for the Horde.
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Zovaal is a character with a death motif who believes there is a fundamental problem with the universe. His plan to solve this is gathering an army of followers from across the universe - including numerous lesser villains, and then acquiring five cosmic items to rewrite reality. Sounds like MCU Thanos to me (comic Thanos killed half the universe because he had a crush on the Grim Reaper, who’s a woman in Marvel comics).
(As a bonus, they’re both bald, buff guys with six-letter names and a death motif; the Marvel character Thanos was inspired by/named after Thanatos, the personification of death to the ancient Greeks)
Reading this, I just realized it is very similar to Sargeras as well as Thanos.
All sorts of recurring themes in the game unfortunately.
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You identified a big part of the problem. The only thing I have to add is these ideologues among the writers have also worked in some anti-religious sentiment - which is a feather in the social justice cap and goes hand-in-hand with their anti punishment sentiment (or maybe anti-punishment comes from their hatred of religion - it’s a “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” situation)
This started by using the naaru character Xe’ra to undermine the good reputation of the naaru (they even admitted this agenda in an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBzHRc4FZY&t=27m55s ). The writers and some of the fans project authority figures they don’t like onto Xe’ra. How do I know this? They kill Xe’ra off by having an edgy character kill her in a rejection of her attempt to forcibly purify him, then bring back an AU version of her as a villain (way to have your cake and eat it too, writers).
This is followed by villain-batting Yrel and the AU Draenei - sweeping the AU Draenei’s legitimate grievances under the rug - to tell the story “Light fanaticism bad 2, electric boogaloo”, which we’ve already done with the Scarlet Crusade, so why retread old ground unless you’re pushing a message on the audience. The only reason this clear agenda has survived so far is because it’s popular with parts of the fanbase.
And right here in the latest expansion, we find out the cosmic justice system is broken. In fact, I made a thread on this anti-punishment subject myself Is the World of Warcraft story anti-justice?
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I’m aware of your post it’s what actually made me draw some conclusions.
The thing is, is we really are in our real world hitting a new wave of anti-justice and anti-punishment and it’s really being taught in colleges across the U.S and many Western countries in general.
a lot of modern young adults have been told and really do believe that punishment any type is cruel. which is why we see a huge wave of bonds being waved, shoplifting made legal as false connection being made between shoplifting and being in need was made.
Huge increase of attacks by the homeless because you can no longer arrest and charge someone on mental health. ect, ect.
In other countries outside the US such as europe and Australia you saw people being forgiven for murders and attacking children and only getting 15 years in prison with parole after 5 years. We are living in an anti-justice world, and the writers who believe that is just are reflecting that in WoW.
Sylvanas can do tons of awful things but she can’t be punished for it as captial punishment is cruel and imprisonment is cruel and they teach that anyone and everyone can be redeemed and rehabilitated and go on to live an ideal life. Which is actually completely false btw.
Basically accountability for actions of any type is cruelty. but accountability for something someone said on twitter 11 years ago is normal.
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Part of my guess is they wanted to make Sylvanas(the literal final thread from Warcraft 3) have as “metal” an ending as possible and yet Blizzard probably never figure out a way to do. In a way, she is the Kerrigan of Warcraft and we know Kerrigan’s ending was controversial. Sylvanas, having existed longer means her ending would probably end up more controversial.
Don’t be daft, if anything we have seen the police and governments crack down too heavily on people. Literal kids being handcuffed or shot behind their backs. Honestly, if say the Purge of Dalaran was done now in WoW, it would have a very different tone from when it was done back in MoP(at that point the “war on terror” was still pretty big on people’s mind)
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While justice hasn’t gone completely from our world, you have a point.
In case you wonder why I focus on this new “Light bad” stuff getting shoehorned into the lore, the answer is in this question; do we see fanaticism from anyone else?
- Do we have any fanatical Titan-worshipping Dwarfs?
- Do we have any fanatical followers of the Wild Gods? Maybe D.H.E.T.A, but every villainous druid encountered so far either defected to Ragarnos, was corrupted by the Emerald Nightmare or it’s perspective due to the Alliance vs Horde conflict.
- Do we have fanatical loa worshippers?
- Do we have fanatical Old God worshippers?
I think it’s possible for the last two, but in their case, such as worshippers of Hakkar or the Void cultists, they’re acting in accordance with their masters - the Old Gods want to make a Void titan to destroy the universe, and Hakkar is a pretty vicious Loa.
Back on the subject of anti-punishment, I just remembered another character whose misdeeds go unaddressed - Odyn. The rise of Helya and her Val’kyr, and everything that they’ve done, is entirely his fault and we never get to call him out on it.
Dwarves used to be portrayed as rather fanatical in digging up titan relics, at least. It got pared back into being more neutral content with Brann Bronzebeard, but early horde questing showed them trying to push tauren off of their native lands and it resulted in the extinction of a tribe over it.
I’m pretty sure the night elves’ “shoot first, ask questions later” shtick over protecting nature wasn’t meant to be viewed as a positive thing since it resulted in needless death, but some people seem all over that for some reason so I dunno.
Hakkar is the biggest example of fanatic worship of a bad loa, but we’ve also seen multiple examples of hostile trolls cannibalizing their own gods. And it’s likely that Bwonsamdi just barely dodged being killed off due to his voice acting, just like Denathrius. That would have resulted in troll religion effectively being villain batted, and would have been the second time a horde race’s religion was warped in this manner (the first being the orcs’ shamanism).
All old god worshippers are fanatical. Them going insane is the point. Doomsday cults and the Tidepriest corruption are two examples of that.
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I love the story
Hey, it was his idea to take the Primus sigil to Torghast! For some reason!
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There is like 100 ways they could’ve let the Jailer get the sigil. Like, I don’t know. Maybe using that captured Fatescribe and have him infiltrate our ranks and reveal himself right as we leave Torghast with the Primus. But nope, just have the worst possible idea result in it’s respective outcome.
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Easy.
World of Warcraft is an MMO. So long as it’s making a profit, it will continue going forever.
This means that the story can never, ever, ever find a resolution. And a story without resolution is just a melodrama.
Characters will heel-face-turn, face-heel-turn, die, come back, die again, become undead, get resurrected, and so on. Writers will come and go changing all character personalities and backgrounds as they do. The story will constantly mutate as continuity edits are made and retcons are made to suit current needs, the end boss will always be serving 'a greater master," and nothing, nothing will EVER find a resolution.
Because when the story resolves is when the servers are put on maintenance mode.
There are many reasons why the story has failed, almost all more fo to the higher ups of the story department then the average quest writer/lore flesher-outer.
Let’s start with the most simple, there is a very very real case of “Running the Asylum” in WoW’s writing department. For those not in the know, running the Asylum is when the people put in charge of the product are former fans who want to enforce their vision on the propertly. It’s very common in comics, where writers begin overpromoting their favorite characters. Same things happened in WoW, Anduin, Jaina, Sylvanas, and Baine are overpromoted and overused to the point people are tired of them. This also leads to the game getting more black and white as time goes on, which causes numerous problems in that one of the core concepts of the game (alliance and horde).
Another issue is that WoW’s structure just isn’t good for an ubernarrative. In every single expansion the same song and dance has been done “The Zone stories and lore are far superior to the main story”. This is because theres more freedom for the rest of the team, and more importantly, fits the MMO Structure a lot better. Exploring the World is more engaging to the players then seeing Sylvanas and Jaina yell at each other nonstop. The best Villain we’ve had was Garrosh, largely because he was unintentional.
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While we can agree that this is the case, I am not quite sure the narrative team would agree.
I think Tyrande as evidenced by what she did in that particular scene that you referenced, she wants Garrosh dead and she has been charged with doing, just as Baine has been, doing the very best she can to make sure that this orc receives what she and many others perceive as the only … the ONLY real justice.
Ian Bates: This one is … I’m going to make it as spoiler-free as possible … The August Celestial’s verdict (without giving it away) is quite odd
Christie Golden We can’t really comprehend how they think, and I won’t go so far as to say they see the future; because I honestly don’t know one way or the other; but I do think that they are wiser than we are and they are unburdened by things that we are. So they are actually as impartial as impartial can be.
…
We are mortals, and most of us in Warcraft, most of the races are short-lived. They are not thousands of years old. Some of them are, but not all of them; and they are very immediate and these are infinite creatures; and I think they see all ends, and what may seem very frustrating may turn out to be: “Ooooh … got it!”
© https://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzplanet-interview-world-of-warcraft-war-crimes-by-christie-golden
Which makes me think that they have a very different idea about the topic of justice. Like, there might be “different kinds” of justice. Maybe “one justice to rule them all” or something. Or that a mere mortals can’t comprehend whatever the grand plan for the plot twists they have in store. Or that any “justice” system which is not how they want to treat the characters they like must be wrong.
(similar to “oh, burned the tree™ with civilians - stay fight for Sylvanas; touched a military person - omg! Free will! How dare she to touch Jaina’s brother?!” I mean, what could scream “nepotism” louder than such treatment?)
I mean, the whole premise falls apart just after a firm look at it, but I guess when people are busy praising each others’ ideas, it’s easy to be stuck in such odd thinking.
gl hf
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I guess that they would never have an chance to tell what they want to the audience this big with their own ideas / setting / games. So they use the brand name without the brand identity so to say.
I saw this approach metioned before in relation to TV shows. iirc it was described as “if a story is good, it does not matter if it does not fit the canon”.
Which might be a valid approach, however:
- what’s the target audience to define if the story ended up being “good”?
- what are the lessons learned from the customer reaction?
- is the existing audience even interested in this approach?
Regardless of how good a story might be, sometimes it might not be suitable for the audience.
Sometimes the story feels like the devs taking old ideas and going like “oh, but we can this thing better!”
And then we get what we get.
I think I saw a mention of something similar at one point:
But overall, the dev process seems to be “design by committee approach” according to their own admission.
I am not sure if it’s about the freedom. From what I can see, the devs can be good with the stories that rely on a single idea or emotion. Something short, like cinematic story, or a single quest line.
Simultaneously these stories, that usually end within a single patch, or even smaller in scope, or short character interactions, individual lines, those things actually are rather well received. But blizz for some reason does not capitalize on what they do well, and instead of episodic adventures with possibly common theme, they try to push epicness, long wannabe complex stories, etc.
gl hf
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That is true, and I have admitted in the past Golden can write some good short stories.
Why blizzard doesn’t do that might honestly be one of two things. Shareholders or Pride. They really seem to want to be the Game of Thrones of Video Games, and whether this is from Corporate Mandate or Stubborn belief thats how you make a good story i don’t know.
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I really loved Rise of the Horde. But feel like she’s not only grown complacent, but doesn’t have any sort of peer review anymore. She writes dialogue like, “I will never serve,” and people like Danuser think it’s golden. Ironic.
Remember when Sylvanas exclaimed the Horde was nothing?
Remember when Sylvanas was trying to convince the Jailer to spare her friends?
The writers don’t.
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Inasmuch writers write what they know, makes you wonder
The alleged “leak” from this past sunday (from 4chan, of all things) finally got on my youtube/twitter feed today
Don’t think it’s real tbh, but I think the story’s incoherence and inconsistency speaks for itself that the vision within the writer room is not stable.
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