Zul’jan finds himself caught between his people’s fading legacy and the dangerous temptation of ancient power. As memories of his childhood clash with the harsh realities of the present, Zul’jan is guided down this new path by a mysterious mentor.
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Put the story in the game, maybe?
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Why? Why do you keep tossing relevant lore into outside sources?
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I’m assuming, like all things Blizzard does, there are metrics that gauge how receptive the player base would be to increased story content, which is why they opt to add so much of it outside of the actual game.
The players that have the attention span to read WoW short stories and novels will seek them out, and the players that are inconvenienced by story quests will have their journey to endgame expedited - everyone wins in their view.
Added to this, the older marketing approach was also to saturate as many channels as possible.
This comic could potentially pull in a new player. At least that was the way of thinking pre-AI. With how much folks are drowning in content, I’m not sure it works now.
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I mean, it’s not really that relevant.
It’s just more of Zul’jan talking himself up to releasing Ula’tek.
It reveals nothing new, it conveys no new message. It’s simply more of Janboi being an idiot.
Could have been a cutscene they did between chapters 1 and 2 of the 12.1 campaign, but I don’t really see it as necessary since it’s not providing any new information.
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Its a free comic, that happens to be voiced on youtube.
Having other medium to tell WoW story is a GOOD thing. Especially ones that are FREE.
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Zul’jan forgot about Uncle Kinduru so fast. 
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What does AI have to do with anything?
Should this not have been in the game, so we know, see and can hear what Zul’jan’s real mental state is?
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bilzz you have lost your touch…
I got more entertainment watching paint dry than this cartoon 
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Terrible retcon tbh. Zul’jin was wanting to get land back from elven colonizers, he wasn’t trying to summon Ula’tek. This is stupid
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How is this a retcon? He wanted to summon Ulatek to help him conquer the elven lands!
But he wasnt stupid enough to try without getting help from the other loas(and they were not willing to help so he took their powers)
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Did you just wake up from a coma? It’s 2026 and retcon = thing someone doesn’t like. Duh!
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From a marketing standpoint, 2010s-2020ish the plan was create an onslaught of content to attract consumers. Early augmentation tools limited scale, so consumers were more trusting of the message.
From a general marketing standpoint, GenAI makes it absurdly easy to create content. Whether it’s a supervised approach (helping in ideation, creation of snippets, etc) to larger spam approaches, the consumer is a lot more wary of content (and in some cases overwhelmed).
Marketing in the AI era is transformed and no one knows what it’s going to form only next. So sociological effects of AI is my comment.
But again, what does that have to do with this? Novels, short stories and comics have been a staple of WoW storytelling since nearly day one of this game.
I think I’m missing something here in what you’re trying to say. You gave a good explanation. I just don’t understand it from the viewpoint of this media.
Really puzzled by the reaction to this thread.
Are people here just tourists or…? Warcraft has been putting heavy lore information in novels and comics since… forever? I was a toddler at the time, but I remember the entire lore about the War of the Ancients came from a trilogy of books by Mr. Knaak in 2004/2005.
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Nah, I’m good. I’m so tired of having to access external sources for things that should be in the game. Shame on you.
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This media, while being entertaining and lore building, is still marketing. Its effort gets tracked under the marketing budget - time to create, reception (clicks, reads, access to supplemental mediums like YouTube).
Historically, all of this has been completely hand done. Automation loops included the push (socials scheduled and pushed automatically).
Some entities are pushing for this this type of content to be AI augmented (human doing 60% of the work and piece and parts are AI) while others are doing mostly AI gen with some tweaks.
This one was probably mostly human done. But generally consumers are getting wary of free marketing content due to oversaturation.
TLDR; yes, this content has been a staple. With AI, reception from audiences changes (loss of trust) and many companies are cost cutting. So not sure how long this will continue in current forms.
I think the issue is more that important lore for characters is being put into these outside sources.
For instance, Turalyon. If people only played Legion and didn’t read the novel, all they see is him being a bat crazy zealot who made excuses for the Naaru locking up his wife, as if it was okay.
But the book gives a lot more information on that and actually shows how that wasn’t the case.
That type of stuff being in outside sources is not helpful to the main story/character development. Side stories? Go for it.
No one sits in their office and does this by hand. No one has done that in probably three decades.
… are you trying to claim people think this is AI and that’s why they don’t like it?
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