Helm of Domination turned into a Burger King crown
Frostmourne still desecrated into disgusting pieces
Arthas, easily the most famous WARCRAFT character ruined and tossed away
Bolvar, who was HYPED UP SO MUCH in Legion, teasing a return to the Lich King, cast aside for no reason, and will probably never get his place back.
If I unironically put 1 billion dollars in front of these people. Told them they would have generational wealth for centuries. They, their kids, their kids kids would never lift a finger ever again, they could have anything on this Earth that they wanted at a moments notice, but all they had to do, was write a story that was even 50% of Warcraft 3.
No but it was always competent for a fantasy mmo video game. WoD was a bit of a low spot but after Legion is when it really went off the f’in rails. BFA had some good zone stories when it didn’t tie in to the larger story, but the main story of BFA was
SL’s I’ve only experienced after the fact, since BFA was so bad I didn’t even return till TWW. What I have seen on the forums and the bits of it I have gone back and played, doesn’t look like I missed anything good as far as the story goes.
DF looked fun. The zones are beautiful there but the only story I’ve done from it is the Amirdrassil stuff. They tried to roll back a lot of BFA/SL into something good, but you can only polish a so much.
I’d have to know what you find competent to say if I agree or not.
I have a relatively low bar for competence, it just has to be technically fine - and even Shadowlands ticks that box, despite me also hating the story in that expansion.
You forgot to mention Sylvannas the smartest lider in the Horde deciding to follow the “Jailer” in order to free people, Undercity our beloved city removed the forsaken with no lidership and the pretension of giving us a light undead as lider, disgusting.
Well, pretty much everything from Wrath up through Legion. I don’t expect Tolkien, and Metzen at least respected the lore and the players. Yeah he had his self insert and the story had its ups and downs throughout but it was good enough to support the biggest thing that had ever hit video games at that time. Not bad overall.
The hack that came after Metzen? Nah, that guy should never be allowed to write anything other diner lunch menus ever again.
I feel this way about GRRM, but people love the guy. And he is competent, at least.
Shadowlands definitely doesn’t match up to Wrath - Legion for me, either, though. I’m just not wholly convinced the margins are as wide for me as they are for a lot of other people, the writing was not bad enough to ruin my experience. Just give me a lot of eye rolling.
That’s an important point that people forget. The seasonal, perpetual nature of a continuing story in an MMO is going to affect the story. It’s going to be in chunks, spaced out over months and years, with no true end in sight. It’s impossible to get story pacing and characterization done right in those conditions.
That would have been categorically awful. Arthas didn’t need a redemption, or any story arc. His story was done, and the brief acknowledgement they gave him in SL was fine.
I mean, your second point is neither here nor there because I assume the theme was decided long ago. And if we’re going to the Shadowlands, there was no way they couldn’t acknowledge Arthas in some way.
Yet the same people dumping on WoW writers constantly are somehow also mad that they didn’t dig Arthas up to parade him around some more? There’s a disconnect of logic there.
