That’s kind of what I meant when I said this:
But I don’t necessarily believe that any of this is what people actually visualize when they think of ‘old lore’ vs ‘new lore’, and I don’t think Chris Metzen’s involvement had anything to do with this happening over time. It has more to do with story bloat which has accumulated over time via the different central story elements we’ve seen throughout WoW’s lifetime rather than something which has a specific ‘start’ or ‘end’ to it.
I think when people try to visualize ‘old lore’ all it actively does it venerate some nonexistent standard which they once believed Warcraft’s setting to have, which it never really did to begin with.
If what people crave for is ‘consistency’ and ‘simplicity’, I don’t think placing these labels on the vague idea of ‘old lore’ is meaningful in any way when there wasn’t much consistency back then either and the simplicity of the ‘old lore’ came about through the writers not caring to explain anything (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
What attaching these labels to ‘old lore’ does do is fuel a fire of ‘old good vs. new bad’ mentality which isn’t productive in any conversation about WoW at all.
However, I don’t disagree that the relative ‘simplicity’ of the setting was attractive and what made Warcraft’s universe appealing as a setting to RP in. I think the overall vagueness to how everything works along with the assortment of different aesthetic and thematic pieces within Warcraft’s setting allowed for narrative flexibility that you don’t see in other settings… Something which has lessened post-Chronicles.