Hey Blizzard, I’m just writing to express my dissatisfaction with your current WoW story strategy. I’ve been playing since vanilla, and through that time, my main characters, though Alliance loyal, have grown to interact and appreciate the horde. My main has been three through the rise and fall of many of the greatest threats to Azeroth, and has made friends with the Horde and its allies through both personal experience and gameplay.
So I must express my resentment with BfA in almost its entirety, as it completely ignores the alliance who have sided with Vol’jin, or have witnessed Thrall’s wedding, or have fought alongside the horde to free their people from the tyranny of Garrosh. You have fried experienced players to kowtow to NPCs whose lives they have already saved to war with their friends and like innocent people as a result of empty obedience to leadership.
After all of her experiences, my character would never follow such direction, and until you provide a realistic opportunity for her to do so, I will not return to your game.
I hope you consider this in your future writing:
~Maddy
My characters would have never gone to Northrend to fight Arthas, or the elemental realms to fight Deathwing and Oldgods, or to the Broken Isles to fight the Legion.
Honestly, fighting a war against the enemy faction because those were the orders they were given (whether they agree personally or not) is about the only expansion conflict I can envision most of my characters realistically engaging in… were any of them soldiers.
At a certain point, there’s got to be separation between what our character avatars do as requirement of advancing in the game, what they do as part of their RP history, and what we as players feel is right/wrong.
Edit: And I’ve never really tied any of that to the quality (or lack therof) of Blizzard’s ability to write what I’d consider an engaging narrative.
My characters have no problem fighting the Horde after what they have done from Cata on up, they have done PLENTY of bad stuff before the tree. The problem I have is the story just feels like it does not make sense because its simply not going anywhere. We already had everything happening in BfA happen in almost every other expansion. I am for faction conflict but have it make sense and change it up a bit…
At this point the whole morally grey horde vs alliance thing feels pretty forced given how closely we worked together in the last expansion with the Order Hall. Coming from Warcraft 1 - 2 where i was morally opposed to the horde i haven’t really felt a ton of IC drive to kill horde unless its purely for PvP enjoyment. Especially the Tauren who are respectable af.
this is a family restaraunt
Cross-posting this from another thread tho.
The writers are just working with the big plot points they’re given. Granted that’s not a free, full ride out on excusebus to excusetown. But these big, bold directions are from the top down. Not the bottom up. They aren’t in the writer’s room going: “Next expansion should be this.”
(I think) It’s more of a: “How does B connect to C and tie in with A?”
Thanks for that insight into who is responsible for the nonsensical story!
I don’t think OP really specified which department of blizzard she was addressing though: it was more like a general “hey blizz, I used to like the game’s story and you’re letting me down now”.
Fact of the matter is that blizzard has been structured that way for previous expansions as well, with writers doing what suits the desires of the programmers, but the story has never had quite this many bafflind decisions before now. So whatever the cause, be it writers or programmers, something in blizzard is off.
WoW needs a major overhaul because Blizzard needs a major overhaul because the video game industry needs a major overhaul because American capitalism needs a major overhaul.
In short, everything is bad, so why not disappear into a virtual world to distract yourself from… Oh. Right.
Yeah my writing really could use some tightening up, come to think.
Wait what?
Hey guys how do you see thralls wedding cause I have cataclysm loremaster and literally have no memory of it at all
This still doesn’t excuse it; folks have been coming up with better ways to connect all the plot points without ruining the story every day, and even some of the worst ideas are way better than the garbage Blizzard is forcing out for BFA.
This. Isn’t. Working.
Blizzard just refuses to admit they really lowballed us on this.
wow it’s like i already said that
I know haha - but you did do the whole “this doesn’t excuse it, but [insert what sounds vaguely like an excuse]” hah.
No one has any grounds to fault you for saying -“There is no excuse for publishing crap tier writing, even if it’s just them embellishing on plot points from the top down.” Big bold period at the end of it.
I’m not even subscribed to the game. It’s a company and they follow the money.
For me the interesting point is how they admitted to having developers on fan sites and forums ‘looking’ into them for advice. And yet are uncompromising in their design philosophy. Too narcissistic to admit fault.
What purpose is this for? Damage control? Stealth posters dictating the tone of a thread and derailing valid complaints?
The game and company isn’t what it used to be. The only valid complaint they value is lost revenue and money whales.
While this is true, I haven’t played the game for the game in years… since Cata, actually. I’m only here for RP and friends, tbh. I enjoy the physical game world and character models, as assets to use for RP. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested or invested in the story, but I really just don’t have anything other than the story to complain about hah.
If they won’t listen to us and our complaints, then meh; their loss, but I still write my own stories anyway, and I can easily enough ignore theirs.
I play games to play games. Not a game convincing me it’s not a Skinner Box. If roleplay is accommodating than that’s a plus. I’f not: there are other mediums and games to use. I’m dissatisfied enough to not pay anything this expansion. The next one will need to pull a miracle to convince me otherwise.
I’m pretty damn dissatisfied, but I also know how to entertain myself with what’s in front of me; that said, I feel that - big mood. I’m close to wanting to just leave, but I think the draw of friends is just a bit too strong still.
That said, I won’t be pre-ordering the next one, nor getting Blizzcon tickets again (like I’ve done every year), or buying anything else; Blizzard definitely doesn’t need that sort of encouragement when they damn well don’t deserve it.
I guess I just don’t value or see any reason to pay a premium for an avatar in a game I dislike.
Huh?
complete sentence
I went on a tangent. Disregard.
It’s true though. In the same interview Ion said “we know you’re unhappy but you’re just internet nerd babies” he talked about how developers frequent fan sites and forums to see what we think.
He then made it very clear that while THEY may care and be bothered, he and others on his level of management do not, and disregard all of it.