I liked talking to those nameless dreanei that lived in hovels out in the middle of the deserts of hellfire. I liked talking to orcs in ashenvale, and elves in darkshore, and undead in silver pine or the tauren in the plaguedlands. The dwarf in the swamps.
That’s interesting subject matter and makes a world feel lived in.
Idc about undead elf womans plan to free everyone by killing them or whatever is going on.
Blizzard’s writing style is better suited to a decentralized narrative, it’s true.
Their recent efforts to move the story in a more character-driven direction (and not player characters, either) have not been met with widespread success.
At the risk of sounding like a cliche, it really was the WORLD of Warcraft that got me hooked on this game. The races of the Alliance and Horde, the lands they lived in, the local problems that afflicted them all, etc. That’s what I really liked about the game when I started back in TBC. I struggle to even describe how little I care about Sylvanas and WoW-Satan’s plans on conquering other planes of reality.
I’m just…not interested in any of the lore this expansion. At all. And that’s never happened before. Not even during WoD. WoD was a burning trashcan, but at least it gave insight into orc and draenei culture on Draenor. Shadowlands doesn’t even do that much.
I couldn’t even tell you most of what happened during the Shadowlands quests. About halfway through Bastion, I just sort of checked out, threw on some podcasts, and powered through the quests and cutscenes as quickly as I could. Once I hit 60, I just started doing RBGs and I haven’t really looked back.
There hasn’t been any buildup for us to care about the Shadowlands or what happens to it. When we went to Argus, there was a genuine sense of suspense because they’d been building up the Legion and the main characters for quite some time. I honestly still get goosebumps, looking at Azeroth through the viewport of the Vindicar, listening to the music swell, and knowing that all our previous adventures have led to this campaign, this fight.
Cut to Shadowlands and…I care about the blue people now? I guess? Or I’m supposed to be upset when Margrave What’s-His-Jerk up and dies? I’m with you: I cannot be bothered to give a single damn about any of it.
I feel like the difference is simply that Argus did not take itself too serious. I mean sure the story tried to be serious, but the entire scenario was so over-the-top that you didn’t have to bother with coming up with logical explanations and you could just enjoy the wild ride of us flying with a spaceship, using rocket-launchers to shoot down Legion-fighter-jets, while invading other planets across the galaxy through portals. Oh, and we also have energy-barriers and holographic interfaces for good measure. “We’re a space-opera now boys!”
Like…give me a battle over a black hole inside a Lightforged-research-station, before said station crashes into the black hole and we have to fight inside a tesseract-like-structure to stop a void-creature from messing with some timelines. I would be down for such a scenario.
Shadowlands simply doesn’t have the fun-factor of Legion. Everything feels so generic, so flat and boring. It’s not over the top enough to become “so bad it’s good”…it’s just…bad.
Not to mention if you actually like any of the characters being used this xpac, then it’s suffering all around! Everyone is miserable. We’re literally in hell. Why did they think this would be fun? In ANY way?
Hurts?
Its barely existent.
The main plot is pretty much a parody at this point. Teenage melodrama with Anduin and Sylvanas aside, the big evil guy you never heard of before is trying to collect the special seals you never knew existed until that moment, so he can unlock the place you weren’t unaware of do something that isn’t at all defined. And they want us to care.
Character driven I don’t mind. I like many WoW stories that have more focus on a character’s personal goals more on interpersonal relationships.
It’s conflating the personal with world ending threats: When the world is at stake, yet the focus remains on a handful of characters as the only ones whose stories really matter.
The constant global scale, cosmic states and world ending threats also make it hard to take the personal seriously. When the universe is portrayed as being on the brink of ending, character traits that would usually make for good character driven conflict- miscommunication, excessive emotions, naivety, mistakes, ideological clashes, etc- seem petty and frustrating.
The more personal stories also help do a lot more world building, since they explore how larger systems actually manifest in day to day life. There’s a difference between simply telling us that “X people have a tendency towards pride and religion,” and actually showing us a bunch of characters displaying pride and religious devotion.
That’s why I think BfA’s Zandalari, Kul Tiras and Mechagon campaigns worked better than the war campaign. And why in Shadowlands, the more personal stories with characters like Uther, Kel’thas, Draka, Tyrande, Ve’nari, etc generally work better than whatever overarching save-the-world plot is going on.
But I do agree that if they’re going to keep focusing on these big giant threats and clashes of armies on a cosmic scale, they should switch the focus in those situations to armies and cosmic forces and not have them all hinge on a handful of people.
Just to be clear, I don’t have an issue with character-driven stories. Some of my favourite novels are more focused on characters rather than big, sweeping doomsday scenarios. The issue is that I don’t think that the writers exhibit enough nuance to make these characters worthy of being at the center of the story. And you’re right: I think the bigger stakes they keep trying to introduce with the plot makes it harder to feel the punch of the interpersonal stuff.
Which takes me back to Keydia’s point: I agree with the idea that WoW works better kind of like a big, dumb action movie. Legion was fun, probably my favourite expansion. There was enough melodrama with characters like Illidan to keep me somewhat invested in the main story, and we got those over-the-top moments with mech suits and everything else to just have fun.
But now the narrative focuses so much on how awful everything is, how sad and miserable everyone is, and how much everything sucks. Just give me a big lightforged mecha with azerite rockets that I can shoot into the Jailer’s stupid chest-hole already.
A large part of this IMHO is that every single zone uses only “Traditional Western High Fantasy”. It’s all just European folklore when it’s supposed to be the cosmic underworld government.
And in order to try to force us to care they are retcon’ing old characters, and unceremoniously and incoherently killing characters that were introduced with the trailer cinematics that sparked a degree of interest in the player base.
Devos didn’t have to die, Aralon didn’t have to die, etc
What I find is the most fascinating about all this is that Legion and BFA were the concluding arcs of the narrative we have been building up for the past 15 years.
Nzoth and Azshara were really the only villains left and the current writing team seemed intent on finally wrapping these two up so they can move on to their cosmic storyline the new team has cooked up.
I think Battle for Azeroth was also their attempt to put the Alliance vs Horde story to rest too. If anyone recalls the initial interviews thats what the devs were saying. This is the conclusion.
For years Alliance had their books of grudges and the Horde had Taurajo (lol) and the purge festering and they wanted to give the fans a definitive conclusion to all the rivalry and bad blood while trying to set up their new project. The new story arc with the new team.
Well did these people fail on epic levels on every level.
But this is it.
Shadowlands is everything they sacrificed everything for and nobody cares. it shows that nobody cares. First ones? Eternal ones? Everything is just so generic and plagiarized with the most generic villain dialogues and names.
I think what is honestly the saddest part in all this is that these hacks are somehow squeezing their new pet project into old beloved lore characters to somehow make the Jailer and his story more relevant.
While also dishonestly drawing on WotLK nostalgia in the advertising
… this expansion is so disconnected from the lore of wrath, its hilarious.
I don’t think that it helps that not everyone is a fan of the characters they want us to latch on and care about.
It reeks of a lack of professional feedback. Like when George Lucas wrote the prequels and no one had the spine to push back on his bad ideas. I highly doubt they have any editors.
Or there is professional feedback, but it’s all people who like the current story direction and the host of characters we are being forced fed (e.g. Taliesin)
And then after that they’re just going to keep villain-batting groups to keep the game and story going. After we defeat AU Yrel and the fanatical parts of the naaru, who’s next? Will Elune get the villain bat? Will WoW go all “last season of Supernatural” or “His Dark Materials” on us?
Sometimes WoW suffers from nerd culture toxicity like the prequels did.
The prequels are pretty beloved now though. I dont think very many of George’s ideas were bad, and the ones that were (midiclorians) did get sidelined.
I think that’s only due to how bad the new trilogy was. If anything its a coping mechanism by younger fans. The prequels were largely despised and mocked on release.
Watching the reaction to the latest Star Wars films and then comparing it to how it gets remembered decades later is fascinating.
Because back during the OT, the films weren’t looking at universal critical acclaim. Sure, they made lots of money- ALL Star Wars films have made lots of money.
And as much as the Empire Strikes Back is often lauded as the best film in the OT, at the time of it’s release, reactions were a lot more mixed and it was commonly said that it wasn’t nearly as good as the first. More dour. No real progress in the plot. Vader being Luke’s father and completely contradicting everything we were told in the original was also not met with the universal acclaim people often remember it for.
And Return of the Jedi didn’t fare much better. So many more sight gags, introduction of the marketable Ewoks (who got several spin off films and a cartoon), Leia suddenly being Luke’s sister, and Vader’s suddenly being unable to watch Luke die, when Vader’s the kind of guy who will torture his own daughter, watch her planet get blown up to prove a point, and kills underlings for delivering bad news. Just handful of things people slammed it for. 
You see something similar with WoW expansions. The amount of vitriol I saw over MoP at the time is bewildering compared to how fondly it’s often remembered now. Same with the TBC when it came to adding Blood Elves to the Horde (and not the Alliance), and pretty much everything having to do with the Draenei/Naaru.
Although honestly, I think what determines how an expansion is best remembered by the general public has less to do with how much they enjoyed the story/lore vs how much they enjoyed the gameplay.
I don’t know. Going off a good part of the gameplay commentary you doubt said commentators even played the game when said expansion was live. Its like said Prequel fans raving about said lightsaber fights when said movie was current everyone called it weeb garbage.