I struggle with the story for 3 reasons, I think.
1. The presentation and characterization of themes and characters.
2. The quality relative to the quantity of stories told.
3. The narrative focus and pacing.
I’ll just go through them one by one, because why not?
1. The presentation and characterization of themes and characters.
I feel like Blizzard doesn’t really stay true to its own source material.
When Blizzard first introduces dragons in Warcraft they are typical fantasy dragons. It’s Richard A. Knaak who is tasked with fleshing out the dragon lore in his War of the Ancients book trilogy, and he basically writes them as these mythical beings with great powers that don’t really bother with mortal affairs, and who have a way of life that is both animalistic and God-like.
For a good while Blizzard sticks to this presentation. When Arthas comes upon Sapphiron in Warcraft III he’s a dragon through and through. He doesn’t consider Arthas to be more than a nuisance, because he’s the dragons.
In Vanilla WoW the dragons are a relatively rare occurrence, often found in caves and near mountains. There’s little interaction with them, they mostly remain mysterious and secretive. The ones that are more prominent in their appearance use disguises, like Onyxia and Nefarian.
In the Swamp of Sorrows there’s a little cave with some green whelpings and an NPC in some green clothes who offers a discreet quest. He doesn’t say he’s a dragon, but you suspect it.
So Blizzard really tries to maintain this presentation of dragons that’s true to the original lore. They are mysterious, powerful, wise, animals, secretive, and distanced from mortals. They lay eggs and live in caves and spew fire and fly around. And they’re old and magical and powerful and wise. All of that.
Fast-forward to Dragonflight and it’s completely different.
The player character is basically best-friends with all the Aspects!
The dragons have entire societies that replicate human societies. They have inns, daycares, banks, administrative buildings, roads, gardens, and so on.
They have jobs and tasks and behaviors that all appear very human. They look like humans most of the time as well.
They talk and interact with each other as humans.
They are plentiful, they share everything, they talk at an eye-level, and they convey emotion and humor that is human.
This is also true for the individual dragon and their characterization.
There’s a stark difference between the character of Deathwing & Korialstrasz and how they are presented as dragons, relative to Chromie and Kalecgos.
This shift – which is a massive shift in presentation and characterization – is difficult to adjust to, especially because it erases most of the old in favor of the new. And as an oldschool Warcraft nerd, it’s hard to see the case for why the new is better.
And even if one is to accept the new, it’s difficult considering how abrupt most of the changes appear. There’s no smooth transition that helps connect the old with the new.
War of the Ancients and Dragonflight may as well be two completely different stories, because they are so unlike each other in terms of presentation and characterization of dragons.
2. The quality relative to the quantity of stories told.
It feels like something Blizzard have strived toward for WoW recently, is to deliver more content to players more frequently. It’s a Live Service game, so volume of stuff matters.
That appears to have the consequence that Blizzard focuses more on having a lot of quests and a lot of stories, with less focus on the quality of the stories being told.
Some of the best story writing Blizzard have done is for Diablo II.
That game has a total of 18 quests and 4 cinematics and the game manages to tell just as epic and grand a story with just as much journey, exploration and adventure as any WoW expansion.
A typical WoW expansion has more than 1000 quests!
The Azure Span in Dragonflight has quests for the Tuskarr, the Gnolls, the Furlbogs, the Blue Dragons, The Kirin Tor, Nesingwary, the Archaeology expedition, and so on.
And it’s all a myriad of NPCs and text boxes and objectives and more NPCs and more text boxes and more objectives. And it just piles on and on and on.
Volume. It’s all about volume.
What’s Warcraft III? There’s 3 campaigns and they tell 1 story each. Thrall and the Orcs, Arthas and the Humans, and Tyrande and the Night Elves.
The game adheres to one of Blizzard’s core design philosophies, which is concentrated coolness. We don’t spend a lot of time dealing with the story of the people of Stratholme. Arthas just goes in and kills them. The story keeps a laser focus on Arthas and his personal journey. We don’t get an expansion-long story about Arthas’ invasion of Quel’thalas. No, he just plows through to The Sunwell and moves on, because it’s about Arthas.
In Diablo II there’s enough story to make the whole game about Khanduras (act I) alone, but that wouldn’t really get the plot moving forward. So instead the game focuses on the major story beats and covers all the ground it needs to in 6 quests.
By comparison, then Diablo IV has dozens of main story quests in each zone, as well as ~50 side quests, totaling 300-400 quests in total. But the story isn’t any better because of it.
It’s just volume.
But it’s more important that Blizzard delivers a good story than a lot of story.
They seem to have forgotten that.
WoW would be much better off, in my opinion, if it shaved off 50% of its quests and emphasized the premium main campaign more.
Like Warcraft III. Like Diablo II.
This quantity over quality approach perhaps works adequately for gameplay content, but it works terribly for story content.
3. The narrative focus and pacing.
WoW has 3 major story beats it needs to cover if Blizzard wants to get a final story resolution and land the universe somewhere equivalent to the StarCraft universe after the events of Legacy of the Void. And that’s surely where Blizzard wants WoW to land, because then you can start to talk about next-gen and WoW 2 and all that.
There’s Azeroth and The Titans. That’s coming. That’s probably ~5 years.
There’s Light versus Void. That will come (by Metzen’s admission). Let’s say that’s dealt with in 2 expansions, so ~3 years.
And then finally there has to be the conclusion, the big baddie The Jailer mentioned, The First Ones or whatever the grand reveal is, like the Xel’naga and Amon in StarCraft II. Let’s say Blizzard covers this in a standard expansion, so ~2 years.
That’s ~10 years!
That’s insane. That’s 10 years just to wrap the major story beats up that Blizzard have already spent 19 years on!
It does not respect the player’s time when Blizzard advances their own narrative at such a slow pace.
We’ll see if The World Soul Saga is any better, but so far Dragonflight spends way too much story time, on way too many stories, in way too many quests, without advancing the narrative very much.
It’s long-drawn, it’s convoluted, and it’s inconclusive. And as a player it’s very hard to maintain your interest when you spend so much time and get so little narrative satisfaction out of it.
Other games cover way more ground way faster and in a way more satisfying manner. It is disrespectful that Blizzard expects players to hang around for upwards of 30 years just to figure out the conclusion to that narrative they began in Uldaman or Un’goro or Silithus or where ever.
Yeah, that’s it. Felt like emptying my brain a bit on the matter. There’s plenty of story in WoW. I would summarize my criticism by saying that Blizzard were better storytellers in the past than they are today. They seem less focused on telling good stories and more obsessed with shoveling content down the throats of their paying customers, quality be damned.