Of the list of things that annoyed the OP, only #1 happened under Metzen’s watch.
And I don’t know if I’d call him a “lore messiah,” but I do think he was good at balancing the world such that we had two morally grey but basically good factions that disagreed with each other, which was what drew me to the story in the first place.
I’m perfectly fine with He-Man and basic drama, as long as it’s consistent and delivers on what it promises. Most of the problems with WoW’s storytelling, IMVHO, come from inconsistency.
The factions weren’t morally grey back then either.
It was clear that in almost all cases the Alliance acted in a more positive manner than the Horde, particularly during MoP and Cata.
The lore has always been inconsistent.
How characters act has also been entirely inconsistent.
Just look at Garrosh between Cata and MoP.
Look at how any of the pre-established characters from TBC were portrayed.
Look at how different many of the Orc chieftains are between WoD and previous lore installations.
Look at the drastic lore changes that would happen between every expansion and between every Warcraft RTS game.
The consistency under Metzen wasn’t any better than it is now, honestly.
Not to say that you shouldn’t expect consistency, just pointing out that inconsistency wasn’t any better under Metzen.
Also want to point out that the reason there wasn’t this feeling of inconsistency was because there was no real defined ruleset for what was/wasn’t consistent for Warcraft’s universe under the bulk of the story under Metzen. There was no cosmology chart, or real defined rules for how things worked lorewise so there was no real feeling of something being ‘off’ if it was introduced randomly then. If Domination Magic or some other forms of magic came out then, it wouldn’t have been an issue due to there being no real ‘cosmology chart’ that people believe Blizz should adhere to.
I was also speaking in general with this comment, not directly towards you tbh.
You just happened to be the first one I saw who mentioned Metzen.
They were, though. The Alliance put on a nice, shiny facade, but it had problems, injustices, and bad people in it. The Horde had a dark past but many good characters and others who had learned from their mistakes. It wasn’t “good guys versus bad guys” in any sense except the aesthetic.
This also wasn’t really true up until Cata when the faction conflict became the forefront, and became less true over the course of MoP.
And that’s still true.
I think you misunderstood what I meant to say.
I wasn’t saying that it was as simple as Good vs. Bad.
What I was saying was that even back then, beyond the aesthetics, the Alliance acted far more favorably than the Horde did in most instances.
Largely from MoP and Cata.
Prior to that the overarching ‘faction’ idea wasn’t as concrete, and the conflict between the Alliance and Horde was so minor you could completely ignore it in most cases.
Before then, the factions largely stuck to themselves and the focus was mostly placed on the inner-workings of the people within those factions rather than the conflict between the two.
The Horde can’t function without strong central leadership. Diversity is the Horde’s major advantage over the Alliance but that diversity comes with a ton of competing interests and requires a central decision-maker to decide who gets what out of all this.
The fact that the Horde council hasn’t torn itself apart already is pure deus ex machina.
No one knows who you are or even cares. Don’t like the game? Don’t play. It’s that simple. Making up “servers are dead” stuff won’t help you convince others. It comes off pathetic.
Making up “servers are dead” stuff won’t help you convince others. It comes off pathetic
What comes off as pathetic is your ostrich act pretending Retail isn’t in an abysmal failing state. Classic literally exists because Blizzard essentially lost faith in Retail’s ability to attract and keep players. SoD/Classic+ is a further admittance by Blizzard that Retail has failed keep players interested and ultimately only devolved the game as a whole. Classic would never exist and did not exist until Blizzard was forced to admit its expacs were failing around BFA.
Shadowlands even had its released timed at the end of WoW Classic phases in an attempt to draw those players back to Retail and it failed miserably. Classic era has only continuously grown its % share of players to the point the population is matching or in some categories exceeding retail players numbers. (By parses Classic has double the raiding population for example)
And its only getting worse as all the Hype this year was around Classic Hardcore and now it’s about SoD and Classic+ while every and their dog makes fun of the pussified and AWFUL lore of dragonflight. Seriously, Bellular, Nixiom, Asmongold, EVERY major WoW youtuber does nothing but crap on Dragonflight because its story and characters and become so freaking fruity and lame. Social Justice Warriors of Azeroth or Mighty Morphin Power Dragons are the retail vibes now.
How is that even possible when WoW retail gets like 100x the resources that Classic has had put into it? There is only one answer even Blizzard can’t deny as much as they want to; Retail is a burning failing sack of garbage that has been ruined beyond repair from what made the game a world phenomenon in the first place. SoD is the beginning for shifting the resources away from dying failing retail toward growing and thriving Classic.
It’s kind of even gone to the point Retail Wow now encapsulates every lame terrible stereotype about WoW and WoW players that has ever existed while Classic is essentially where anyone with any taste or class plays the game. All the cool streamers are playing WoW Classic or WoW hardcore, big streamers likw XqC who NEVER player wow are now playing it for the first time on their streams and what are they playing? Classic hardcore. I meet so many players who have never played any form of WoW on both Classic Eras and Hardcore.
Who streamers WoW retail? Mostly only people with no personality who embody the worst stereotypes about WoW players.
First. Who the crap cares about what streamers say? Most are over entitled crap. Second, I thought you were trolling, but dear lord. You are that delusional. Have fun drinkin the kool-aid. Ima go do literally anything else.
First. Who the crap cares about what streamers say?
That is a sad strawman you got there rofl.
Either the streamers are following the crowd or the crowd follow the streamers; it doesn’t really matter. The point is WoW Classic is in vogue and popular; retail is not.
You don’t have to care about the streamers but they are merely the most visible indication of a trend toward classic away from retail. You’re failing to argue that retail isn’t dying and failing relative to Classic and just attacking the superficial example of streamers because you got nothing else.
With retail having way more filled servers, The race for world first getting wow in the top streaming charts, I’m not sure you can say in good faith Classic wow is what brings the hype to the series.
Like, It is verifiable data, there are more people playing retail.
Well, you made it seem like you were talking about the ‘Metzen era’ of writing, and in that case he undoubtably had a hand in the writing of Cata and MoP.
Don’t know why you drew the arbitrary lines between Wotlk and Cata, when the writing for these expansions before and after are of the same quality.
Feel like there’s this misunderstanding within the community where, when looking back, people have this idea that the lore used to be ‘better’. When, no, it really wasn’t.
It’s all been fairly consistent in quality, always has been.
If anything, people identify more with that ‘old lore’ more because there was barely any info on it. Pre-Wotlk we barely knew anything about the origins of pretty much every race, had barely any background information, and to this day we have barely any information on Azeroth’s cultures beyond base aesthetic appearances.
Feel like people could fill in the gaps a lot more then than they can now, and people inherently liked doing that because Warcraft’s setting allowed you to make up whatever you wanted then. And the RPG, which was the main source of all this background and was canon back then, could’ve been entirely ignored.
Metzen started getting less involved with the writing around the time of MoP. And yeah, he got kind of weird in Cata, but as I said, he now has the benefit of hindsight about how that turned out.
Not saying his return is a guarantee of quality writing, but it makes me cautiously optimistic. You, however, don’t have to share that opinion if you don’t see it that way.
That’s a matter of subjective opinion. I’ve basically checked out of current lore because it doesn’t deliver the things that drew me to WoW’s story back in the day. For me, the lore absolutely was better back then. For you, maybe not.
WoD has the biggest assortment of Metzenisms out of any expansion they’ve ever released…
There’s also nothing saying that he got less involved in the story post-Cata, rather the opposite.
I don’t, that’s why I responded.
The actual quality of the writing isn’t any more in-depth or narratively complex than it was at the start (arguably it has gotten slightly more complex as time has gone on, but not in any meaningful way).
Nothing, writing-quality wise has actually improved or gotten worse.
What you subjectively determine is ‘bad writing’ isn’t necessarily worse than it was before, but rather your personal interest in the writing is subjectively ‘bad’ or ‘worse’ than it was before (something determined by you).
The way you were speaking earlier, it was if you were trying to portray this as a fact of Warcraft’s writing than your subjective opinion on it.
My meaning by saying what I stated before was a reason as to why I feel people think the actual quality of the writing was better before, which isn’t subjective.
Exactly, subjective.
I used that as a jumping-off point for which I stated how Metzen’s involvement in the story doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all.
I’m not arguing that I ‘dislike’ or ‘like’ old lore.
I was stating that there isn’t much difference in actual writing quality between the two.
If you want my personal opinion on it, I don’t believe in there being an ‘old lore’ which ended in Wotlk with the ‘new’ lore beginning in Cata.
I think people draw these arbitrary lines based on nostalgic reverence of their memories towards these expansions rather than the actual content of the writing.
What sources are you thinking of particularly that say he was more involved? Because I remember hearing that he was going through some “life stuff” in the Cata-MoP era that led to him stepping back a bit.
“Depth” and narrative complexity are not the only measures of good writing, especially not for a video game. When it comes to video game writing, the role of the PC and the level of satisfaction the player gets from participating in the story are the best measures in my opinion. A simpler story that actively involves the PC is, IMHO, better writing for a video game than one that involves the player just sitting through long cutscenes watching exquisitely deep NPCs carry out their own complex narratives. The latter would be better as a book or movie.
You’re the one who keeps trying to turn this into a discussion about objective good and bad writing. I’ll quote what I actually said:
You’ll notice that I didn’t use any language about the writing being better. What I said was that Metzen did a good job with a specific thing that I appreciated and that has, again IMHO, been lost from the game in the time since he stepped away. I stand by that statement.
I think it is objectively true that the focus and many of the underlying assumptions about the writing have changed since the early days of WoW. For an easy example, the Cosmic Chart has been introduced and much of the earlier lore has been bent, retconned, or recontextualized to make it fit into that framework; see, for example, the origin of Dreadlords. Some people like these changes and others don’t.
Once again, I have not used the phrase “bad writing.” You are bringing that part to the discussion yourself.
First, please note that I said “I don’t disagree that those things were bad lore decisions.” In other words, I gave my opinion on the statement. Not sure why you translate “I agree” as “My agreement is objective truth,” but whatever the reason, it’s on you.
Second, yes, I do have some (cautious) hopes that Metzen’s renewed involvement may mean the return of some of the things I liked about the writing during his initial tenure. Only time will tell whether I get what I’m hoping for, though.
And I am stating that there are tonal and thematic differences between old and new lore, which have nothing to do with so-called “writing quality.” I didn’t think was a controversial statement, but here we are. This sort of change is basically inevitable, between staff turnover and pressure to keep innovating (sometimes driven by gameplay considerations). People are free to prefer either one.
They’re important pieces to good writing, a well-thought out narrative and so on.
Alright, not arguing that.
I don’t disagree.
But it also depends on the game.
For Warcraft however, I agree.
Again, not really arguing that.
But that’s also subjective opinion on what makes a good story, not something I was actively arguing.
Well, that’s why I initially said:
And also why I picked your initial point about Metzen to continuously engage with, because I vehemently disagree with that idea.
I agree with this, it isn’t what I was actually arguing.
This was also something that I had edited out of the post I was responding to you with, because I realized that I was assuming that this was a different argument lol.
I don’t agree with what I actually said there, hence why I edited it out after looking back through the posts.
And that’s something I don’t agree with.
The thematics between ‘old’ lore and ‘new’ lore is pretty consistent, which is something I was saying before.
I don’t see much difference between the two.
That’s really the only major thing I care to argue about at this point, putting the ideas of ‘bad’ or ‘good’ aside.
It isn’t, but it’s not one I agree with.
That’s actually the only reason I cared to type out the argument that I did tbh.
I hate the popular mentality that there was somehow some difference between older lore and newer lore…
That there was at one point in the history of Warcraft the lore was somehow better than it is now.
When really, the way I see it all newer lore has done is flesh out concepts from that older lore… For better or for worse per the opinions of the people who care.
And also, as I said, I hate the idea that this period of time is somehow arbitrarily drawn as being between Wotlk and Cata.
Yes, there have been retcons, but as you said they were mostly to recontextualize the older pieces of story into fitting the newer pieces.
Again, I only ever really responded to your comment to make a general statement about what I have seen about people talking about Metzen’s return, it wasn’t necessarily me responding to you specifically. You were just the one who happened to bring it up, so I wanted to pick that idea that Metzen’s involvement would change anything.
Sure they are, the only thing I took issue with was the idea that there is a thematic difference between the two.
The themes of Warcraft have largely been fairly consistent since the beginning of Warcraft’s story the way I see it. I don’t agree that there was some kind of massive change that the thematics undertook at any point, and I definitely don’t agree with the idea that Metzen leaving had anything to do with that.
As someone who has been saying “actually this story kinda sucks” since I ever heard of Arthas back in 2003¹, quantity has a quality all on its own, and that’s not necessarily a good quality
if your continuity has a lot of stuff in it and that stuff is mostly beyond a certain threshold of good, it tends to magnify itself. if it fails to meet that threshold however, it becomes a lot of cognitive demand and obstacles in the way of enjoying the few good things, amplifying mediocre writing into bad writing
I think that is sufficient to be a meaningful distinction between old lore and new lore even if nothing else is.
¹ I had a player who had a copy of the WC3 D&D splatbook and they REALLY wanted to convince me to bring in some things from this book and started talking up the RTS and I remember thinking, “wow, Arthas sounds like the Darth Vader story but even worse than Attack of the Clones”
