Problem with WoW writing has long been (ever since Danuser took the lead) that the story doesn’t seem to understand its own strengths at all. It doesn’t understand what made Warcraft so appealing to young people, young adults and adults in the first place.
Story and characters lack any interesting qualities that made original ones so epic, cool and EDGY. Yes, edgy. I was 14y old when i started playing vanilla and i loved how dark, metal and edgy in good way it was. Young people don’t want disney villains, disney kumbaya talking about feelings stuff we have now. It’s not even insultingly awful anymore as it was in Shadowlands, its even worse because it’s so, godamn, boring.
I’m sure Metzen will work on the foundation of world lore and stuff like that, but the writers we have and have had have shown multiple times they are incapable of creating the stuff we as fans want. Again, i have no ill will against them as persons, but isn’t this enough already? I don’t feel they understand warcraft or even try to understand it, but try to make it about them and how they feel and think and represent. I feel like they don’t write this stuff for us and they even don’t want to.
Warcraft never was complicated, deep or intelligent story, but it was darker, grittier and so epic it didn’t need to. We want sweaty muscular men beating each other to the death, blood and boobs. It’s not that hard seriously.
Thanks for reading if you made it to the end. Love to the systems team and other deparments in the development! You guys have really improved a lot and everything except the story feels really good now.
The credits for Warcraft III The Frozen Throne was a metal concert with Arthas:
The game reflected the people who worked on it.
Warcraft today feels like it’s shifting toward a vibe that’s a bit…different.
Whether that will be for the better or the worse will likely be easier to judge in years from now, but if you’re an oldschool player you’re definitely feeling the shift.
Yeah this is exactly what i meant with good edgy stuff. It doesn’t have to be heavy metal anymore, but i mean dragons used to be somewhat scary and beastlike creatures. Now they are all like… just humans who need theraphy. It’s so… boring. Even the old models i think looked more cool even if they are basicly 3 pixels by todays standard. I cannot remember any npc’s name but i can remember so many from older expansions dating back 10 years. It’s not just… interesting. Make it more epic, give us more sex, more blood and fantasy. Not real life bs we want to escape from. Entertain, don’t educate.
I never understand why Blizzard don’t tell the story in WoW like they told it in the RTS games and like they tell it in their novels – with a laser focus on the individual character.
Warcraft III is about Arthas. Thrall. Illidan. It’s their story. There aren’t a million random NPCs with small side-stories to explore. The Human campaign is just Arthas from start to finish, and anything you learn about Jaina or Uther is something you learn through Arthas.
And it works. It elevates these characters to mythical status. They are legends.
In World of Warcraft each zone has 200 quests involving 100 different NPCs that tell 50 different side-stories that are completely superfluous in the grand scheme of things.
It would be so much better if the story was focused around a small set of characters who you experienced the story through, and who really got the kind of deep character arcs that Warcraft used to be known for.
Diablo is the same. In Diablo II there’s hardly any quests – 6 per act. The whole story is about Marius and The Wanderer. There’s very little story but it’s so good because it’s laser focused on the main cast of characters.
In Diablo IV there’s like 40 side-quests in every zone. Are any of them memorable? Not really. Do they add anything of value to the main storyline? Not really.
Blizzard does a lot of mediocre storytelling these days, because they just add a ton of quests for seemingly no reason other than to have a lot. I would so wish that they would go back to their old approach of having a more narrow story that’s laser focused on the main set of characters.
But rather than just having a concise story experience, the name of the Live Service game seems to be to have a lot. It’s just about volume. Have 20 quest designers write 200 quests rather than one guy pouring his brain out on a single masterpiece.
I just hit escape on the cutscenes. I cant bring myself to care.
I dont care about the characters. They are bland, one dimensional. Dull.
Make me love them or hate them, it doesnt matter too much but to be engaged you need to feel something. (Something other than irritation that they are all shallow caricatures).
I learned something throughout my marriage which I found interesting. Good communication is important. But there is something like ‘too much talking’. Sometimes you just need to shut up and do stuff. Act. Speak through your actions.
Unfortunatley Blizz/Microsoft continue the stupid ideea of Alliance and Horde kissing each other in order to save the Galaxy and because this is the trend now. Probably they have to recruit new writers who understand what this game is all about and how it all started years and years ago ( it will be no surprise if in the next expansion we will have to save the Galaxy fighting against Darth Vader ).
It’s funny isn’t it? Back then you had some guys who had an idea and they presented that idea as well as they could have. That’s it. Then the nonsense started, representation, diversity and all that crap where they have to please everybody but end up pleasing nobody.
