One of the big things in my opinion. Is dropping the concept of lore being tied to books and comics and web novel crap.
I shouldn’t have to buy books and comics and additional junk to know the story of the game I’m playing.
I made the comparison to Kingdomhearts. Where the story is canonically tied to 4-5 different consoles from different makers and a Phone game. It’s the same stuff.
If you want to write book lore and stories, more power to you. But have them not connected to the main content. Tell the story of Gizzek and Saffy. Tell the story of the expansions struggles after we toss there sacred magical artifacts in the bin to equip a hat we pulled out of a pigs lower intestines.
Tell us whats happening in outland etc etc.
If you have to add stories that are vital to lore, make it an optional quest or something you can play through in game to.
I’d love to know what the hell thrall was doing in outlands, or how things are actuall linked together properly now.
At the moment, the world is a bloody mess, let the jailer rewrite reality and give us a cata 2.0 with a fresh world and leveling, so we don’t have to explain to new people the warchief shuffle. Slap all the old stuff into a caverns of time portal library.
Bonus points if you add a guy to fast travel you to points, like the raid finder guys.
They are writing what we see in advance of it being released but from what we are seeing that’s as much forethought as things get. I said earlier, they seriously need to get some outside editing and feedback on their plotting/writing. It’s really easy when you’ve created something to overlook its flaws, I believe there is a quote being bandied around about the writers room being a sacred space -no negativity and that says it all.
I’ve done a bit of beta reading for authors and can tell you how valuable it can be. A fresh pair of eyes saying ‘this character isn’t behaving as they should’ or ‘I don’t get what you’re trying to say here’ or ‘the pacing here is awful’ makes a massive difference to how the story is received. (I’m not talking about someone rewriting the story for the author -rather point out the flaws they haven’t seen themselves.)
Maybe a fresh perspective would do the story some good. Inspired creativity is a powerful tool. But maybe writers are forced to stay within certain boundaries and decisions made by others. I don’t know how that works at Blizz. But something like that can choke creativity for sure.
If you ask me, then yes, I think the game is being killed by always doing things the same way, ridiculous plot armor and content that serves no other purpose but to drag out a poor and maybe even boring tale at times. New writers could, with emphasis on could, make things interesting again. If they were allowed.
Link me one thing that makes sense and that was a planed out story in advance. You didn’t so far.
We already know for a fact that’s not what they are doing. All the changes during BfA and from BfA to SL alone are proof of that.
And no, characters returning in different expansions is not a sign of a long planned out story. Not at all. You did not even try.
Of course ignoring the retcons. I see.
Wow you did not make a single point. Impressive.
Your only idea of a replay was “muh character existed”. That’s weak.
Read up on Sylvannas Windrunner or Thrall or Illidan Stormrage. All perfect examples of strong characters and consistency throught out the lore. You could have figured out that from what I have said already but nope!
WarCraft lore is lengthy and a complex one. It did not start with Battle for Azeroth.
It’s not really a retcon when a character exists for many expansions and books.
It’s very wierd, because they kind of want to do a continuing story, where one part sets up the next, but they also want to keep the storylines separate and a lot of threads just kind of get dropped or get that kind of bad resolution to say that there is a resolution technically.
(Sylvanas got completely retconned twice within the span of like 2 major patches…)
No they aren’t. Especially Sylvanas character was destroyed in BfA. There is no consistency. Heck Sylvanas story wasn’t even fleged out for BfA and SL. Or go form the BfA cinematic to Bfa itself. The story is not consistent at all.
They don’t plan in advance like they say they do. At the very best a ruff outline of a expansion idea, nothing more. Even this seems to be made on the last minute. Going from the Mongrel Horde to WoD is one example.
No it’s really not.
Retcons are all over WoW and it has gotten only worse over the years. BfA was so terrible they even had to declare choronlicles as “point of view” lol.
I don’t think she was. Things she did in BFA, it’s not really surprising why she has done it. She did similar things before just on much lower scale. Problem is that people are trying to reason her motivation through prism of living and human and she is banshee and undead. She was evil once she was under Lich Kings will, after that, you cannot really say undead = evil, its oversimplification.
If I was Sylvannas and I was living in enternal pain and agony, I would also want to end that and not just for me but for everyone and even thou, I would be completely aware that no one is going to agree or ‘allow it’, I would do it anyways.
Well according to basic principles of storytelling when you show nothing and tell nothing then you have nothing. And the Retcons i speak of are
She was evil all along and worked for the Jailer since Wrath. (According to Afrasiabi Interview around time SL was anounced/War campaign ended. I hope this gets debunked, but yeah.)
Stories and Fairytales of azeroth saying that Jailer always had, at least some portion of her soul. (Confirmed by the ending of Sylvanas raid encounter) Which retroactively robs her of agency.
In BfA she was a narrative plot device and in SL so far she did very little of consequence outside her raid encounter. We still don’t even know what the heroes of Azeroth were trying to stop her from doing neither did anyone bother to find out. (Let alone motivations and personal stakes)
Sure you as an audience member can do your desired amount of mental gymnastics to fill in some of the blanks, but you shouldn’t have to do that, with the plot the expansion centers around. (Before you say we’re not privy to that information then that’s the writer’s fault for writing it that way.)
I can argue something very same. If I am doing mental gymnastics, you are then unable to interpret what story is telling and wait for developers confirm to understand what it means and then you blame them for well, as some of you put it, retcon.
But yeah, Sylvannas was able to see into The Maw and Shadowlands somewhere post Wrath events, when she attempted the suicide.
We are about to find that out??? Like what are you even saying? Story is not over.
Even Vol’jin telling us back in Cata Rastakhan wanted to unite the tribes and not Zul is another example of them not planing ahead.
They simply don’t do it.
I mean, you will be able to provide anything. Right? No. You wont. It^s not a thing in WoW’s simplistic story.
What i mean by mental gymnastics is going out of your way to make sense of things, which otherwise are jarring and out of left field. (Developers should not have to explain the story, if it is well written. Obviously.)
(The Afrasiabi interview is the only real source we have on the timeline, at the moment. So there is still hope they will change it to something more sensible than retconning everything since the Edge of Night)
Also retcon is not necessarily a bad thing, all it means is that it is a retroactive change to a continuity. The criticism levelled against the interview and Soulvanas is not that it is retroactive, but that it diminishes the character’s previous actions and therefore the impact of said actions, in kind.
Yes, we’re finding out after the fact, what should have been the opening statement. If you don’t know what the villain’s goal is then you’re not really opposing them, because you have no idea what you’re doing, there are no established consequences for their success or failiure, which means there are no stakes either and inherently without stakes in the story the audience loses interest, because you just have a disjointed mess of stuff happening.
You did not even try.