I hope blizz realizes that 0 hype for midnight was mainly (un)generated by generic and boring cinematics/lore

Community General Discussion
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Don’t get me wrong, whole concept of midnight lore is good, it’s just implemented very tasteless. Attack on sunwell itself is huge event but cooked with 0 tension or big bang in it

Before I start I have really serious question- why whenever you got people hyped and mass population started playing at start - expansion turned out to be lacking in content and boring

Why when you promote expansions with boring cinematics, gameplay is usually much better and rich in content but there are no people to play

WOD- HUGE HYPE, content ? non existent as playerbase after

Legion- Overall good lore with strong cinematics. Rejection of gift cinematic was the last time I got so sucked in cinematic. Rich in content with questionable gameplay ( I mainly hated shallow rotations) but I still loved every second of it as it kept hype going on there, with cinematics, cliffhangers, huge patches, systems and all.

BFA- great starting cinematic -hype HUGE, content poor - it was rich in players at release but they gone fast

SL- similar scenario

DF- Do I have to tell? Whole expansion was portrayed as nothing happens - boring - sad cuz expansion was fine

War Within - same story as DF, lore overall was a bit better though

Midnight - Huge invasion happens, so much possibilities - intro cinematic looks like AI generated. Don’t get me wrong- expansion looks good overall, but It didn’t add anything new, only prunnings happened which punished players who play this game for longer than month or care enough to want to learn.

*no new abbilities

*huge prunnings

*poorly showcased content gameplay

*ideologies pushed again - all kind of fantaticism is just bad - but atp it’s getting ridiculous, I think everyone realized that females are powerful in wow sice you started replacing every strong male character with female leaders which started being weird in bfa already) At least try to not make it obvious.

You degraded all new male characters to being goofy and boring ( ask yourself why no one liked Dagran Thaurissan II or at least was interested in his story. Why was he even put in campaign story not in just some side quests ) and flooded the game with strong powerful females ( Which sometimes makes sense you have right to but not repeated 100% of time - what you do )

*the same kind of narration is pushed over and over again, I feel like I play the same expansion since DF

*Side quests seem to have more interesting stries than campaign itself

Can you bring back hype for expansions? Can you stop pushing ideologies in your game ? Can you aim more at centrism ? Or just remind yourself that it’s fantasy game and your imagination is unlimited instead of repeating the same old story over and over (and over, and over… AND OVER ) again

bring back more serious tone, wow is literally the latest game in your game store that kids can afford and it seems to be only game aimed at pegi 3+ somehow. I doubt game playerbase would change at all if u changed wow to pegi 18+ because at this age most of people start to being able to afford the game themselves, while kids pay for games like diablo or gta. You seem to do COMPLETELY OPPOSITE.

Bring back tension and hype, make players want to show this game or it’s cinematics to their friends again, not to be embarassed by it.

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In my opinion, what Blizzard needs to do to really bring World of Warcraft back to feeling like World of Warcraft is to reintroduce the actual war between Horde and Alliance. We haven’t had that since, what, Battle for Azeroth? Ever since then, it has just disappeared because everyone wants to be goody-goody two-shoes, holding hands and skipping through meadows as if we’re all singing the same song together.

When WoW first launched, it was very clear: you were either Horde or Alliance, and part of the fun was wanting to fight against the other faction. That sense of rivalry gave the game tension and excitement. Now, it feels like cooperation between the two factions has become the main focus. The story is all about “we’re working together to save the world,” and there is little recognition of players who still want to fight each other.

The only remnants of conflict are these generic threats like the Twilight people or other enemies that attack both factions. But that’s not the same as true Horde versus Alliance tension. Players want meaningful opposition between the factions, not just shared enemies. The feeling of “us versus them” is what made the game unique and kept people engaged.

If players wanted a game where everyone cooperates and goes on an adventure together, they could play those types of games. World of Warcraft should focus on what made it great: the tension, the rivalry, and the choice of faction really meaning something.

I also think Blizzard would see this if they actually asked the player base. If every player responded honestly to a survey, it would show that many people left because the game no longer feels like the one they originally played. The lack of faction conflict has diluted the game’s identity, and bringing that back could help restore the feeling that WoW is a game of Horde versus Alliance, not just a cooperative adventure.

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This stopped being a thing way before. For PvP most people were on the faction with the OP racials and the same goes for PvE (also who had the most players because of recruitment). This was one of the major reasons why people wanted it gone. You didnt choose where you wanted to go, you went where the massive blob of people were. The Alliance was pretty much extinct on the PvE front before the removal of faction seperation.

Reintroducing faction separation would flat out kill the game at this point unless everybody gets a free faction change for ALL their existing characters (which will never happen. And you would very fast reintroduce the problem of old with the blob and racials).

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I don’t think this is the actual solution to the problem. I mean sure it had its place in the past but the truce has been called so let sleeping dogs lie. Hugging it out does make for boring gameplay but we don’t need a Horde vs Alliance anymore especially when every time a “universal threat” appears they call a truce anyway and work together.

What would be interesting though to see some real politics take place and have a Horde Faction or even a Leader try to break it. (or Alliance if you prefer) It would add flair and drama and tension and make it interesting. Unfortunately Blizzard lacks the writers for it.

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People really care about that stuff?

Anything outside of M+ is just white noise for me.

Especially anything you do before max level, Like campaign or quests.

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I have so much wrong for WoW retail new approach in everything! They completely missunderstood what made WoW popular! It’s bland and ugly, no creativity at all! Shameful blizzard!

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yes? why wouldn’t they?

mythic wasn’t even added to the game until a fair few years into the game’s development

many players enjoy the journey as opposed to the destination, especially in rpg’s…

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So Much better games than WoW if that is what you want out of it.

Because WoW’s story is just extremly … and … written these days.

Sure if that’s what you enjoy but that’s like an abusive girlfriend saying she likes her boyfriend.

Probably just because they don’t know any better or think they can’t get any better

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yeah, i play a lot of different games

but as far as mmo’s go, the market isn’t in a great place right now and so it’s still arguably the best of the bunch, albeit with many issues

so i call it out

yeah, so i call that out as well…and it need not be terribly written, it’s a deliberate choice and one i criticise frequently

i don’t expect anything i write here to be read by anyone high up in the company, of course, but it’s nice to vent from time to time and a lot of good is accomplished simply by letting other people with similar complaints know they’re not alone in disliking certain trends

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just comparing from what I seen so far (level 82) before entering Zul’Aman. Other studios would never handle this as bad, even in mmorpgs, I mean we are talking mmorpgs ofc. How they developed Zul’Aman is pure nonsense, idk how anyone still cares about wow story anymore (unless u care about epic, big cutscenes that move story forward for many years to come). Idk if comparing blizzard vs arenanet (gw) is bannable, but I will mention it nontheless. Gw2 does story very good. Leaders act like wise people, mature and with rational compass. Story happens naturally as it’s expected, strong emphasis on geopolitics and enemies acting from the shadows. Gw2 will have u twist and turn, go here and there for 15 hours until you meet the enemy, enemies usually come off by being strategic and they counter you from shadows, it’s not expected as well (like void elf harbringer doing this to aleria in the end of omega raid - traitor), it was expected and is very foolish by writing team, no high strategy or rational compass like gw2 story. very childish and it is wonder how art writing team can do their job so bad. in such a big company as well.. its incredible. so yes, idk how ppl still care about this story unless its ‘‘big’’ thing how expansion ‘‘starts’’ and ‘‘ends’’ and who is major threat etc… small bits of story make no sense due to how bad it is and idk how someone can care about it, because its ugliness from within, which shoulda been art.

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Im pretty sure he meant that people overall care about lore in games, as whole, not in wow and he didn’t mean he likes the story. As everyone knows it’s hard to get sucked in the lore right now.

From perspective of returning/new players lore is KEY to get someone interested in game. Simple example - do you want to play games that just made it to the market- you check them and these have intro with same script as dora explorer?

I know many bad games that were saved only by lore.

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I don’t care about lore only, I don’t care about open world anymore, or should I say I started caring about lore and open world designs! They need to fix things. Make writing more creative and stop making funny games on us, it’s disgusting how embarrassing it is when you look at it from different perspective! Leave the people alone, stop messing around with games, it’s not how it is supposed to be! You are not going to do anything at all, like 10% will be hooked in, others will ignore it and won’t be impacted, so what’s the deal? Why is it really needed if it’s not doing anything, because those hooked in are fishes already, why make it through games like this, is there any sense in it?

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Sorry dude, but can you look at your post again, I do not really understand what you trying to tell us because of all the typos.

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WoW writing and story direction needs to be more in lines of ‘‘ordinary’’. It should not give us an expression of ‘‘epic’’ thing, that has vibe of ego-centric spoiled ‘‘kid’’. That’s the vibe I am getting from WoW since almost always. When you play proper RPG that has pro writers, you connect with all the ‘‘gray’’ areas of their story writing, it feels natural, ordinary. WoW feels way too ‘‘special’’ and that’s what I don’t like in WoW lore made within the game. Every time it’s same thing, over and over again, another spectacle to witness. For example my favorite side-stories are something like scarlet crusade or westfall stonemasons

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I also believe that WoW should be more brutal and geared towards an older audience, but I also believe that the hype, which seemed small for Midnight, was also caused by Blizzard investing more recently in presenting seasons than in the expansion itself.
For example, when Shadowlands was about to be released, despite its unpopularity, the hype was enormous compared to what we are seeing now. In my own social bubble, I did not notice as much hype as there was, for example, for the Undermine part of TWW.

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its cuz of corona, u changed

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I’m no Vanilla player. I was playing Civilization and Path of Exile and other games when wow launched.

I started in BFA and i got hooked. I loved the lore, the war between horde and alliance, and i joined when we had to level through all xpacs i believe? Well i got hooked and hyped. I found a guild, did mythic +, raided aotc, few mythic bosses. I loved it, did all the quests, loremaster, a real addict. Same for SL despite what most people think about it.

And DF happened. And i felt like i was playing carebears land, no clue about what was going on . And TWW happened and i felt even more carebears land.I am totally unable to even remotely tell a friend that wouldnt play the game what it is about now…

And Housing is a neat addition to the game, but thats all I see now in Midnight. I literally did all the quests and lores available and you want to know the memories i kept from the journey? “A decor for the house for every single quest”. That’s it.

Voidstorm saved a bit the adventure for me, I loved the ending, it got me hooked back a little and im eager to see more about Turalyon,Alleria and Arathor, but i cant remove from my mind “how many more decors are we gonna get before we reach the Last Titan?”

That’s sarcasm but that’s all i can associate WOW to now. Decors. House. I got so disgusted by the flow and the shop and the decors that i cant even go into my house do things, whereas i enjoyed doing it when it launched. Im having HOUSING OD. They’re everywhere. You complete delves, hop get yourself the 11th same shelf you already have but you need more decors, dont you? Lets see what kind of fun things those quartermasters have to offer… Oh more decors. Ok.

And that prepatch event was such a let down. You tell us the void is invading Azeroth ready to destroy it, and we have to defend it, ok fine. But we zerged mobs that were barely the size of battle pets. Make them impressive, threatening, something…

Granted those new squirrels mount in the shop added lately are scarying me more than the Twilight Cultists. Aside of those in voidstorm. Probs on people who designed that zone, i feel the desolation there. And those void storms in the sky are really adding to it. And thats a bit immersive. Plus that pvp/pve zone on decent pop server is really fun. So we’re heading to what Priest Alfonsus said i believe, that the Light becomes what the wielder of it does of it, or something like that. Its interesting but it got lost in the journey. So hopefully we will get to see more about this, Light being not so “good” and maybe Void is not so “bad”?

PS: i still dont know the purpose of Harandar aside of introducing a new race. I mean Zul’aman i got it, they were here before cataclysm and such in Ghostlands. But Harandar? I’m unable to say anything about that zone aside that its very dragonriding unfriendly and that the Potatoads are the most amazing mobs i’ve seen so far… Im sure theres more to it but yeah, it got lost in translation again, for me anyway.

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I haven’t paid much attention to story while dinging to lvl 90 on my main .just pressing escape button on cinematics as I know I will get a headache trying to make meaning of it .

There are other plus to the game and hopefully with mythic plus launch and higher raids launch I will have more stuff to do in game

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For me its the massive classes downgrade, every spec now plays the same and has 2-3 button rotations. It’s sad because i want to play but im giga bored

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…with a boring main feature (housing) of the expansion.

Be honest, how many of you have visited your Players’ House since the expansion went live?

Me?!, I did yesterday, all of my Heartstones were on cooldown, and I wondered if there were any portals there that I could use.

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