I realize there’s plenty of people who play this game and never once cared about the story and the lore. Kudos to them, for them BFA probably is a slight bit better thanks to their ignorance about the story going on.
However I was never one of those people. I used to always ingratiate myself with the story so I knew why I’m doing these quests, what I’m doing in this zone, dungeon, raid, etc. It always felt more satisfying for me and beyond that I just straight up always thought the Warcraft lore/story was awesome.
But these days it’s just for lack of better words not awesome anymore. I realize that might just be my opinion but I feel the story/writing has become so bad and makes so little sense in the last several years that you basically are forced to ignore it and just play the game while skipping fast through all the quests and just not even really paying attention.
I just would like to see a return to those old storylines that made the game feel awesome. The kind that made people line up and camp out all night for wotlk for example not because they wanted to test the new gameplay features, but because they wanted to explore northrend and fight Arthas because of the story leading up to that encounter.
Yeah but we’re grown now, and besides with digital releases camping out for a game isn’t a thing anymore really. However I feel you can still understand what I mean, I just want the story to be a driving force of why I’m buying the expac again.
People used to joke since a long time ago how bad WoW Lore bad. They never imagined.
BFA is another level of rock bottom of how bad it is. Even WoD with a time travel/universe jumping combination was way better written. It is specially surprising since Legion, one of the best expansions writing-wise was right before this…whatever this garbage is.
I did just fly through the quests to try and progress faster so I was skiping lore and fun tid bits. But I really enjoyed the horde story about Rastakahn and His proud and powerfully daughter. I also played through the aliance story for bfa and was totally underwhelmed by it.
Mists was awesome to me. New Lore that didn’t rely on old Warcraft stories and actually flowed from Zone to Zone rather than the old way of “Start story, stop, start new story, stop, start new story, stop, resume the first story three zones later when you forgot about it, stop, start new story”.
The problem isnt bad writing. The problem is WoW has a built in Questhelper. Players no longer have to read the quest text to figure out what the heck they are doing.
Whether or not people are reading the text has absolutely no bearing on the reality that this expansion’s writing is the worst it has ever been for this game.
That isn’t a matter of bias either, based one faction or the other: it’s simply a straight up fact.
Stories were left incomplete, shoe-horned, and pulled entirely out of someone’s butt. Character motivations made absolutely no sense. Massive chunks of the story were hidden away from player characters, and then revealed at the end as if we were supposed to go “oh no way so cool”, when in fact there was little to no build up towards them to support such a conclusion.
BFA has been a one night stand where the guy blows it ten seconds into the fun, and then passes out -face down in their partner’s chest.
Wrath was one of the best expansions popularity wise. And we knew everything we needed to about the expansion before even setting foot on Northerend. We knew that we were there for Arthas, and Yogg’Saron was shoe-horned in. It is also the expansion that Gearscore was a huge factor which led to ilvl being big as well as community addons like Raider io, as well as the addition of LFG being a qued system rather than a post and apply system. Are you going to criticize one of the best expansions with the same effort?
Stories have been incomplete, shoe-horned, and pulled entirely out of someones butt since the very start of the game. Blizzard isnt known for having big reveals or deep story, they are known for doing big cheesy things.
Really, the whole thing started going downhill storywise once they decided to make NPCs revere the player characters. WoD took this part forwards by a huge step, and it continued from there to the point where its hard to look at the story without thinking that you are playing a single player game. Champion this, Hero that, Commander who. Legion was just as random as BfA and people loved it. And the storytelling in those zones were just horrendous for a MMO game. Val’Sharah and Stormheim, Im looking at you.
One thing is clear that’s a big factor at the center of BFA that has always been a problem in Warcraft writing. Sylvanas.
As others have said, she’s a lore wormhole , and in service of her plot, the writers are willing to sacrifice any faction, character, race and storyline. The way the writers talk about her as if they were in love certainly doesn’t help when you notice the creepy way she’s protected and made to always be “cool”. She’s less of a character and more of a collection of moments so people can awe at her.
“Oh she burned teldrassil!” “oh she defeated the lich king!” bla blah.
They continuously add a plethora of random new plots so it can serve her, and she doesn’t really “win” what she gets. The plague? developed by putress somehow an uber magical plague even stronger than the scourge’s , the val’kyr? somehow decide to serve her, suddenly random new villain giving her power, Helya, Azshara, the Jailer etc…
And this all translates into BFA and how it was written. Where there was truly no satisfactory resolution to anything because “Sylvanas has to look cool”
“Ohhh, Sylvanas said that N’zot will serve death hurr durr” soo the big villain of the expac is just her ploy?
“Ohh Sylvanas insulted the horde and went away unscathed” Soo nothing in the war really mattered, at all.
“Ohh Sylvanas actually doesn’t need the val’kyrs and she’s capable of destroying the entire scourge herself!” Soo the darkshore storyline, the new DK storyline etc… are worthless.
This led to the waste of many plot-lines that were built up since forever. N’zoth, Aszhara, the Fourth war etc… into limp , barebones stories in the service of Sylvanas.
WOTLK was miles better in writing than BFA. Yogg saron wasn’t really forced there, as the plot of old gods was tied to northrend since WC3. An yes, WoW always has lore conveniences for gameplay, but BFA is bad beyond that.
I’m not because you’re drawing comparisons where I wasn’t. I’m focusing exclusively on story, and not taking into account any of the mechanical gameplay elements.
This is true, but it’s only ever been elements here or there; the majority of BFA’s story was left incomplete, or was just flat out dead in the water right out of the gates.
This isn’t exactly true. One major criticism and failure, certainly, is elevating the player to a status that we can’t possibly be reduced from; that was indeed an error on Blizzard’s part.
However, I’d argue that the point at which things began going down hill was when they started limiting the scope of each expansion to a single, focused narrative. Wrath was the start of this, and notably one of the few that did it exceptionally well.
When you have such a massive universe such as Warcraft, you have tons of characters to draw from. Thrall had his own stories, Tyrande had hers, Jaina had her own, Sylvanas had hers, etc etc. These are all distinct, entertaining, and thoroughly fulfilling stories to journey through alongside those characters.
However, Blizzard began to reduce the number of characters that we focus on. Instead of having dozens of characters with smaller roles (such as in Vanilla and BC), we began focusing on only a half dozen characters or so, and they are the sole focus for the expansion. We get mini side stories with b-quality characters, sure, but most of the weight is thrown behind these six or so characters that comprise the “main cast”.
That’s a novel concept when you want to tell a single story; the issue is that not everyone wants to hear that story. This is okay though, because not everything is going to please everyone.
The other issue though, and the one which is the genuinely troubling part of it, is when Blizzard tries to tell a story, only has these six characters to tell it with, and starts messing with their development in order to roll out an expansion or patch.
In this type of circumstance we have characters that are shoehorned, or forced to do something that doesn’t make sense given their prior progression or development; it’s how we end up with characters like Jaina flip-flopping.
Why does Jaina do “X”? Because she is a character that the developers are hell bent on using, and they need someone to fill “X” role in the story. Jaina might not fit that role, but her development/personality will be tweaked to fit the needs.
Stormheim is a great example of what I had mentioned in my previous post: information is withheld intentionally and we’re supposed to just go along with it.
Val’sharah was full of redundant tropes that have been beaten into the ground by Blizzard; mary-sue characters being suddenly incapable of holding their own, bla bla bla. Some parts of Val’sharah were great (the Black Rook Hold stuff was pretty nice), but the major elements there were lacking.
This is also true, and they keep trying - bless their cold, dead, corporate shill hearts.
This entire expansion can be summed up with one word: Sylvanas. And you’re right, they’ve trashed her writing since Cata, and for me - it’s put the final nail in the WoW coffin for me with BFA.
And this, like I said - they will twist and warp any other character’s story in order to service their “want” to have a story built around Sylvanas. It’s a major problem with their development approach.
WoTLK was gold tier, IMO, because all the stories pointed in the same direction and didn’t break down any character’s original backstory - it only enhanced them.
While I can agree with a fair amount of what you said, I personally do not understand the whole “BfA story is incomplete” argument. Each zone has a clear problem and resolution. The War Campaign also has a clear agenda and execution. And the raids have had theirs as well. The only bits that havent been completely explained are bits that are being elaborated on in the future (and Sylvannas…), like with N’Zoth and Azshara, and Calia Menethil and her role as an undead.
As a person who likes to play for the story and lore, I am interested in how they will set it up in Shadowlands.
I know you will be able to choose from one of the 8 previous expansions to level up to 50 If you aren’t a new player. Wowhead currently shows:
New Players:
1-10: Exile’s Reach (new newbie zone for all players)
10-50: Battle for Azeroth
50-60: Shadowlands
Experienced Players:
10-50: Any choice of the 8 expansions
50-60: Shadowlands
I’m hoping that they make an easier “rollout” to give a story from one expansion to the next in the correct lore order.
Just to note, Allied races start at level 10 and can’t go to the new starting zone Exiles Reach. Demon Hunters and Death Knights start at level 1 and go to the new starting zone.
Soo let’s say you start at level 10 as an experienced player. With there being 8 expansions, you could start at classic and achieve 5 levels, then lock your XP gains after which puts you at level 15.
Finish the story and move on to the next xpac, unlock XP gains, snag level 20, move on to next xpac. Etc…
That leaves you with 6 expansions left in the story and if you follow the same pattern, you will end up at BFA at level 50. Then continue on to Shadowlands.
If you’re a true lore/story person, this is probably the way to go. I myself plan on doing it.
When going from Mists to Warlords of Draenor, did anyone who never played before Warlords get any sort of context as to what was going on beyond a small quest-text blurb? Did anyone who chose not to read the War Crimes novel know why we were suddenly going back into the Dark Portal to fight against an Orcish Horde of the past?
No. It was never explained, because that bit of story is not important for Blizzard to portray in the game for players to understand context.