Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t.
Same goes for Golden and Metzen. They wrote plenty of turds as well.
Then why did WoW have plenty of crap before all of this?
I urge you to look at the bigger picture with more objectivity.
I’m not telling you, you can’t dislike what you dislike, but objectively speaking WoW’s had numerous examples of bad, shallow, cringeworthy writing over the 20 years of its existence.
It’s the themes that are different.
So you don’t like the themes.
Because bad writing with themes you liked, is apparently okay?
Well, there is no way to make something perfect, but it doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be good and have an overall atmosphere that aligns with a creative vision. Having too many cooks though is a very sure way to fail in my opinion. It’s the same by the way in technical industries, where you can’t just throw more engineers at a problem and expect a better or faster output. Usually the opposite is gonna happen. For example, if your manufacturing plant has a problem, you won’t get a faster or better solution if you hire 50 engineers instead of 3 good ones.
Leaving the ‘good’ aside for a moment: … What if this is THAT? What if this DOES align with their creative vision?
What if you just don’t like that creative vision?
That’s kind of my point.
You can have the best writer in the world, but if they’re making a story about something you just don’t care about, handling themes you find boring/offensive/insert-any-reason-here, you are not going to like the result.
I don’t think that analogy works in this case.
Writing for a video game is very different.
Just one example: What if the main writer has writer’s block. Just feels uninspired.
Then it would certainly help if there’s others to pitch ideas, themes etc to hopefully spark that creativity once again.
Then I’ll acknowledge that its good, but I don’t like it.
Just saying that everything is subjective does not invalidate quality complaints. And also, I think the story should appeal as well to wow’s core audience, that liked wrath of the lich king, Legion, etc. So there you can also add an objective element too. Right now, there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and I think the creative direction is too much impacted by Karen- and moral panic mentality. The designs are also not mystical enough.
No, but my issue with it is:
Why haven’t you been complaining for 20 years?
Because it’s literally been bad for 20 years.
And yes: Not always AS bad. Sometimes worse. Sometimes much better.
I just feel that for many, today’s complaints are not fueled by actual issues with the quality, but rather by agendas. By political views. By social issues.
That’s not me saying that’s the case for you by the way, perse.
But in general this happens quite a bit.
That’s too vague to say.
WoW’s core audience is vastly different than what it was when it first launched.
It’s also vastly more diverse than what it was when it first launched.
It would be insulting to say to a considerable part of the playerbase (probably the majority I think, but I have no data to back this up): You don’t matter. You are not the core audience.
And there’s exactly what I said: You don’t like things because of that.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s going to change.
Not with Metzen in charge, not with Golden in charge.
Unless Blizzard gets bought from Microsoft by some billionaire who then puts his own agenda into the game - because that’s the thing: ‘NOT having these themes’, is just as much an agenda as ‘having them’ in today’s world.
And like it or not: WoW is not a right wing or a conservative alligned product.
It’s just not.
For example compare Faerin Lothar’s design to Senna’s from League of Legends. You need to skip to timestamp 1:25 to see her, but lucian is also really cool and follows a similar conceptual idea:
https://youtu.be/ZjvDFvzfxsQ?si=m_Oxg_OZ6KfvLFpx
Both of them have a very similar theme, where they’re using the Light to fight an overwhelming darkness. Yet Senna is really cool and badass with a mystical, interesting, and likeable design, and then you have Faerin Lothar being very bland and boring. And same goes for a lot of characters right now in World of Warcraft, where Blizzard’s creative team does not meet the vibe check.
Because we’ve had Illidan, Sally, Gul’dan, Velen, Medivh, Hellscream, Sylvanas, Blackhand, Thrall, etc. who all follow the rule of cool. Why do you think so many people cosplay them? Because they’re epic. I think almost nobody is gonna cosplay Danath Trollbane for example or most of the other recently added or recycled characters, except maybe Xalatath, yet I already said she’s an exception to the rule. And Xalatath alone is absolutely gonna carry 11.2 based on what I’ve seen in the ptr, so I don’t just wanna doom.
Basically what you are saying is, even if things may not have been peak flawless perfection, they still were good because it followed the rule of cool, and generally were just mild blunders.
As in today the best you can get is an “It’s a’ight”, while the lowest you can get is “Who made this? Fire that whimwham”.
Did I get you right? I wanted to simplify your point for the benefit of some forumgoers.
I agree that especially DF and TWW have suffered from a lack of epic, badass events/moments/cinematics. They should definitely improve there.
But honestly: In terms of storytelling, story flow, quest flow, I genuinely think TWW’s launch content is one of the best examples of that throughout WoW’s history.
That’s completely ignoring any subjective themes or storylines. Just looking at how they told/presented the story, the pace of it, how it connected to the quests, etc.
I’m not suggesting that is true for this latest questline. To be clear.
But it is just a blemish after what I consider a wonderful leveling experience.
Should the Arathi storyline have been better: Yes.
Are the storylines in 11.2 better?
Hopefully. I’m trying to stay relatively spoiler free.
I think they were generally really good with few mild blunders sometimes. For example I still get goosebumps, when I watch some of the older wow cinematics from Legion, Wotlk, WoD, BFA, etc. The stories of the emperor in Mists of Pandaria were also amazing. There was a time, where Blizzard and Riot were competing with eachother for the coolest cinematics, and now Riot is completely outclassing Blizzard.
Why are the cutscenes trash ?
Same reason why in the 90s and 00’s we had movies like Fight Club , The Matrix , Lord of The Rings , and now we have Captain America x110 , Supper Woman and female Ghost busters .
Because the story writing is trash . And the story is trash because the whole culture in California is trash . And it is trash because they hire and write based on inclusiveness and propaganda .
Seriously watching a grandma with glasses and a sword , fight a crippled black woman that looks like a man with one eye . For real . In World of Warcraft . This is not even trolling anymore . It is pure disgrace . What’s next , teletubbies do a pillow fight ?
While I was leveling another character I decided to go through Warlords, the expansion largely considered “Bad”. Although I think it is fair to say it’s bad mostly due to how it fairly underdelivered and then got axed midway through.
I can tell you that the leveling process, going through the quests, reading the text and the cutscenes within were much more of a delight than it was in War Within. I actually kept the sound on playing there, while I have it muted in current content.
It is, dare I say… An objectively better experience than War Within.
Edit: I will say that the Goblins were for the most part good, and about the only thing that felt like Classic Warcraft, rather than New Age Warcraft. A shame it didn’t last long.
And I believe that your opinion isn’t objective.
Because objectively they weren’t good.
They were shallow, highly dependant on previously establish lore (that’s not good writing), often nonsensical or over the top, often it wasn’t clear at all what was going on and you had to resort to outside sources to ‘get it’ (or just ignore it for the most part and just go: 'Mhkay. Kewl.").
‘You just liked them’. That’s the only difference.
That’s the opposite of objective.
Please don’t confuse them.
You had a better experience: Totally fair and I can respect that.
But it’s not an objective opinion. It’s formed by your experience and that experience is based on your subjective interests and taste.
Did WoD have cool stuff? Yeah, I think so.
But to claim it’s objectively better storytelling requires an objective comparison between the two. Laying out all the pros and cons in an objective way.
See, that there proves my argument.
You consider ‘something feeling like Classic Warcraft’ to be good.
That’s not objective at all. That’s just you ‘liking a certain flavour’.
I neither said, nor implied that at all. Stop making things up about other people. I want neither left- nor rightwing or other types of Karens or Moral Panic people destroying my hobbies. That goes for any direction. I simply wanna enjoy genuine things. One of my favourite recent games is Metaphor Refantazio for example.
Do you realize that not long ago, moral panic people tried to censor violence in videogames for example? This type of mindset should not be given any attention. There are also prudes for example, who are trying to censor women, who wear sexy outfits by manufacturing artificial outrage. I don’t wanna see any inch of this mentality in videogames.
Of course you would crawl out to defend mediocrity like it is your life’s purpose. The only thing more pathetic than the cutscene is watching people like you scramble to shame others for having standards. You admit we have had tons of horrible ones, yet you foam at the mouth when people dare to demand better. You are not tired of the discussion, you are tired of being reminded that you accept garbage and call it content. Keep licking boots and parroting corporate lines, the rest of us will keep expecting actual quality.
