I’m writing my Masters Dissertation about huge IP’s and the way they try to manage storytelling across multiple mediums (gameplay, cinematics, novelisations.) I’m particularly looking for examples of times the playerbase felt betrayed (or seen?) by story decisions in one of those mediums that contradicted another. I’ve got some core examples:
Varian Vs The Player on Who Killed Onyxia, via the Comics/Raid/Quests
Sylvannas’ motivations around Teldrassil, via novelisations/Warbringers cinematic/game quest
Medan’s turn as Guardian
Rhonin sort of entirely, I guess?
Lothar’s death in ambush/honorable duel with Doomhammer
I’d really appreciate if anyone has further suggestions on the topic. It’s gonna be a fun challenge.
That said, there are some personal arguments further in the thread, but the original topic delves into several story elements related to your dissertation idea (and the “anti-justice” part sadly aged way too well given the lawsuit).
For an example of what I see as a positive case, there’s Vanilla vs. the Ashbringer comic in regards to all the conflicts there. I personally consider the canon established in the comic, with Darion taking the place of the player in several events, to make a far superior story than some unrelated random adventure taking up the Corrupted Ashbringer.
I had forgotten this argument on the Story Forum. It really boils down to being a Han shot first moment in the lore if you get the reference. Personally, I prefer the honorable duel as it gives a better send off for Lothar and it makes Doomhammer less of villain.
Here are some examples I can think of—though I don’t speak for “the playerbase” at large. Mine are mostly Horde-focused.
Christie Golden’s book Before the Storm completely rewrote Forsaken society, psychology, and physiology from the ground up. This caused a huge backlash among Forsaken fans.
The BfA cinematic versus the story we actually got. Although the cinematic was vague about how the conflict started, the fact that it showed the Alliance attacking Lordaeron raised hopes that the next war would start with Alliance aggression. It also looked like Anduin would be struggling with the question of whether to be a warrior or a healer, and like Sylvanas would be learning to be a leader for the entire Horde. None of that happened in the BfA expansion story. Some people still say they’d like to see the expansion that the cinematic promised.
Various “canon clears” given to one faction or the other in Chronicles. The one that seems to sting the most is Sunwell Plateau being given to the Alliance. IIRC, the game implies that battle was carried out by the Shattered Sun Offensive, a neutral group that includes members of both factions.
Similarly, the Chronicles version of the Purge of Dalaran versus the two in-game versions versus the way it’s described when Hathorel confronts Jaina in BfA. Plus the missing scene with Aethas discovering the portal, which I don’t believe was confirmed in Chronicles, leaving its canonicity debatable.
Sylvanas’ death in WC3 versus the “Warbringers: Sylvanas” short. The “power slide” became a meme.
The novel The Shattering introduced the idea that Thrall chose Orgrimmar as the new home for the orcs as a “penance” for them. The original reason given in the RTS games was because Durotar reminded them of their old home. Later, that was changed to the idea that Thrall wanted them to work hard to build a new life, but without the idea of penance/punishment.
The portrayal of Night Elves in the RTS games versus WoW is also a sore spot with many, but I’ll let someone who’s more focused on them go into detail about that.
ETA: The introduction of the cosmic chart (in Chronicles) and subsequent reclassifying of magic is also a massive change. For example, arcane magic used to be portrayed as chaotic, and it is now classified as order. Playerbase reaction to that change has been mixed.
Hey, thanks for these new replies and suggestions. They’re all really helpful. As a lore nerd since launch, I remember all these controversies and have my own opinions but I’m going to try real hard to bolt my biases to the floor long enough to be neutral and measured for 10000 words, haha.
Really appreciate all the suggestions, and I’ll continue to appreciate new ones!
An interesting point for the OP to dig into is that this was a result of the lead time of making these cinematics and story changes during development. There’s an interview with Metzin out there where he talks about how the cinematic was the last thing he worked on before he retired BUT the whole war of thorns and burning the tree was something he knew nothing about. This implies that there is a massive gap between the initial pitch for BFA and what we got.
tbh, I think Arthas’ as an Anti-King Arthur is pretty masterful writing. World of Warcraft since then has been pretty mediocre, rule of cool style writing that is simply riding off the coattail of the RTS games that came before it. Which actually cared so much about it’s story that it included a deconstructionist retelling of ancient folklore.
Not an interview but a tweet, which is probably now deleted, saying how Teldrassil was a complete surprise to him
At the same time, the cinematics take a very long time to make
And the cinematics show us
Sylvanas breaking the Helm
Jaina entering the throne room and Talanji voice lines say she killed Rastakhan, when it was not her in-game
there’s a now deleted Nobbel / Roux interview where she stated that Blizzard asked her in the spring of 2019 to rewrite Traveler, that originally Muehzala was going to die in that book December 2019
Combine that information with:
Voice Actor Panel during 2021 saying explicitly that Bwonsamdi was originally going to be villain batted were it not for the community and the devs loving the voice actor
BoD was launched December 2018
afrasiabi was fired June 2020
metzen left september 2016
BFA launched April 2018
the leaked art in 2019 for the Jailer that is the in-game appearance of the Primus
interview where it was revealed originally Ardenweald and Bastion were one zone when the expansion was proposed
We can conclude two things
there was a massive BFA narrative pivot in 2017 after Meten regarding Sylvanas and BFA, likely resulting in the brutal villain bat of Sylvanas and the de-villain bat of Jaina
there was a massive shadowlands narrative pivot likely in 2019 once it was clear there was writing on the wall for Afrasiabi where the character of Zovaal and the Primus were separated (explaining why the Primus and the Winter Queen lack a name, explaining why Bastion’s symbol is a tear of elune)
Ion in 2018 said that Sylvanas burning the tree isn’t what we think, which also speaks to a rewrite assuming at one point Sylvanas didn’t burn the tree as part as a villain bat
Either that or Ion lied, as we discuss in the linked thread on Blizzard lies
Christie Golden said the “Warbringers” shorts were already in production when she joined Blizzard staff in May 2017. She specifically denied working on the Sylvanas one and did not say anything about the other two, suggesting that she wasn’t involved with any of them.
Alex Afrasiabi was apparently moved off the WoW story team sometime before his departure from Blizzard as a whole. So he is unlikely to have worked on Shadowlands and possibly not the later patches of Battle for Azeroth. See this post with quote and link to the source:
I think Taliesin is lying to run defense for Blizzard (after all, he receives money from them) because during the lawsuit period, Devs specifically said that Afrasiabi strong-armed the team into going along with the Sylvanas villain bat
Taliesin’s quote is in support of that idea, not contradicting it. They were saying he (Afrasiabi) rammed through the plot point of the burning, but then was transferred off the team without leaving detailed instructions for where he envisioned the story going next—if he had even worked that out at the time. Sounds like he was just focused on making Sylvanas as evil as possible in the short term and didn’t really have plans for any long-term payoff.
It contradicts it because of “before it was properly worked out”
Metzen left in Summer 2016, and there was no Sylvanas villain bat at that time
BFA launched in Spring 2018, with a Sylvanas villain bat, with the Teldrassil burning images since early 2018.
Afrasiabi was fired June 2020, and we all know how much he hated Sylvanas as a character for now evident meta-reasons and intra-Blizzard pettiness reasons (re: Garrosh).
Shadowlands launched Fall 2020.
Given that timeline, i.e. a 4 year gap between Metzen leaving and Afrasiabi being fired, and a two year gap between BFA launching and Afrasiabi being fired, and a 3 month gap between Afrasiabi being fired and Shadowlands launching, I do not believe he was so quickly stripped of power all the way back in 2017.
edit: It simply does not track that Shadowlands devs would simply go along with Afrasiabi’s vision when starting to develop SL in 2018 if he had been stripped of power in 2017.
edit 2: It makes more sense if he was stripped of power concurrent to the Shadowlands narrative pivot in Spring 2019. Too late to change Shadowlands as a whole because it was already a good way into development, enough time to try the reckless pivots at the end of the expansion.
From context, I assumed that phrase meant “before they established the long-term story consequences,” not “before they decided exactly how the villain bat would happen.”
IIRC, the first time we saw that image was at the previous Blizzcon, which would have been November 2017.