It Was All Just A Dream

Now I know what you’re going to say. This is the cheapest, most base form of retcons or explanations there is. But honestly, is there any other way to save this franchise at this point? In my opinion BfA severely damaged it. Shadowlands killed it. Nothing short of a retcon of titanic proportions will be able to fix this mess.

The only thing they can do is pretend that everything after Legion (Or maybe even after fighting Elisande) was a dream that was caused by either Elisande’s temporal magic or even the Pillars of Creation being corrupted by the old gods and warping our sense of reality.

What do you guys think? Is there another way to fix this (in my opinion) utterly destroyed story, or did it come to the point that this would be the only option left?

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For me it finally broke with Void Elves, but looking back it was already trash before. BfA and Legion aren’t really worse than WoD or even TBC’s story. They just have gotten better at telling us their story in flashy cinematics, making it harder to ignore.

It’s too late for a retcon to save anything. Much too late.

I am not kidding when I say that I would like WoW to give up on serious story-telling and go full tilt towards making it a self-aware parody of the genre instead. I will never again be able to take its story seriously, but it could still be fun. That would be my preferred option.

Failing that, I still think that giving up on linear story-telling and just doing independent little quest chains is still preferable to the dream-nonsense. Nothing will take the bad stories we experienced away. But there might be some nice short stories that don’t refer to them ahead.

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Perhaps you’re right. Yet I don’t see them ever improving the story, because they think their story is good and healthy for the franchise. They probably think they’re creating a masterpiece of storytelling, which is even more concerning.

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What about allied races ? If there is no post-Nightborne Palace, allied races just disappear because we don’t see any of them before 7.3.
And you post on a vulpera.

It’s a sacrifice I’d personally be willing to make for the sake of the game. Allied Races were a mistake anyway. Most of them should have been customization options for the existing races.

Alas, gameplay > story. It’s just wishful thinking on my part.

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You will never take my loved darkiron dwarves away from me :rage:

They could always just make them into customization options for the normal dwarves. Wildhammer dwarves are like that. Besides, the Dark Irons have been in the Alliance since at least MoP, so their intro never did make much sense anyway.

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All they really need to do is to expand beyond their characters and make their world matter again.

Saying: “THIS WORLD IS DOOMED WITHOUT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS!” is not worldbuilding.

Neither is hyping up only a few characters and making the rest look like idiots or statues in comparison as props to advance those same characters. To which, I mention on the side, that the Archon really needs to learn how to dodge, or parry, or counter attack. She got the standing still part quite perfectly already.

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As far as I’m concerned BfA lore >>> Legion lore. Legion really felt kind of like Shadowlands to me, but at least it was happening on Azeroth.

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Honestly, I’d just prefer they retcon everything that’s happened after MoP. We should’ve focused on rebuilding the world seared by the Cataclysm, dealing with smaller issues, focusing on the individual races again etc. Gilneas could’ve started seeing improvements regarding the plague, with Gilneans fighting against the Forsaken at the outskirts so that the battleground would remain relevant. We could’ve seen Varian and Vol’jin do more stuff as the leaders of their respective factions. So many things could’ve gone better…

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  • Step 1, makes this expansion the last one.
  • Step 2, turn all post Warcraft 3 releases in all mediums into “Legends”
  • Step 3, hire a new writing team that will be fully in charge of the story in all it’s aspects a bit like the MCU and the new “Favreauverse” that is starting with the Mandalorian. (Not saying the MCU is perfect or anything, but it’s defo tighter than wow.)
    (optional) Step 3b, create warcraft 4, continue building this fantastic universe and its story. Saying optional because I’m not sure how much love RTS will receive in this day and age.
  • Step 4, introduce World Of Warcraft 2 a brand new game picking up from W3 (or 4), fresh future proof engine, cohesive story that is genuinely planned years in advance and isn’t relying on completely ineffective plot twists (aka retcons).
  • Step 5, you now have now reasserted yourself as the king of mmorpgs, enjoy years of profits.
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How about a “Flashpoint paradox” sort of scenario? Where the protagonist acknowledges such a screwed up scenario, that he travels back in time to prevent it from ever happening.

Blizzard already did a soft version of this in the WotA.

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I honestly like this idea. We could return to the end of MoP and start anew from there.

I can’t see anything other than not giving money to the retail wow team, and then to maybe make a claim that ignoring the user feedback leads to BfA level financial performance.

Now, polishing the feedback into something usable is a tricky thing too. But for now, while Ion touts the whole “we’re listening”, story side seems not to be eager. So, IMO, sadly enough, best chance seems to be in convincing the financial crowd to force CDev side to do sensible thing.

Before I played through BfA content my thoughts were “I don’t think it is actually as bad as people say”. After looking closer at the thing, it’s even worse that people claim.

Afaia the Shadowlands, given that Ion became the game director after Legion release, is the 1st expansion fully made under his leadership. And it’s also the 1st expansion ever to have all the relevant story bits in the game, and not in other media.

So, while there are some worrying signs, like the Thrall panel during blizzcon, and some questionable decisions mentioned in interviews, I am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt for now. While there are some bad things seemingly ahead (Anduin not allowed to do something bad even under mind control), there are also some things that are good (telling story of the game in the game). Not sure if there will be more good or bad by the end of the expansion.

The way I see the problem of the story so far, is that the way the players see it, the narrative bit are, let’s say, build upon each other. Some events flow into others, things grow / evolve / etc. But the way the devs seemingly approach it is from another direction, “from the top / end”. They know where they want the story to arrive, and pick the characters and story threads that could push the story in the direction they desire.

So, the problem is that those 2 approaches are under no obligation to intersect. At all. From my PoV the devs leave many story threads unresolved, even those that would be critical to address, and make the story go in directions that I have no idea where it even comes from or how could it be derived from the currently existing story.

So, IMO unless there is some pressure from the poor financial performance or even outright replacement of some CDev people by those who instead of twisting the in-game universe to validate personal preferences would actually respect and expand what is there, I do not think much can be done.

The highest chance I could think of would be to point out to Ion the difference in the financial reports of BfA “wait and see” with the ones of “we’re listening to the feedback”. 2nd was able to get the “record sales on PC”, although as the devs started to backtrack from it into stubborn mode, things seems to go down for them once again.

/rambling off


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I think canonizing the ability to retcon in-world creates much more problems than it solves. I don’t really understand why people would want that. The idea is that we want the big retcon because we don’t like what the writers made happen, why would we need to make sure that everything is still canon?

Apart from that, the Flashpoint scenario would essentially have to keep the cosmic nonsense the same. The Shadowlands would still be the canon afterlife, the six powers fighting for dominance would still be there, N’zoth would still have less brains than the goldfish he impersonates, the “one Legion spanning all universes”-thing would still be canon, etc. etc.

If we get a retcon I want to retcon the bad world-building, not just switch timelines within that world.

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Hmm, that’s a very good point. Perhaps the absolute retcon would work better.

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Hasn’t it been already?

I mean, we have an entire narrative element dedicated to it.

We have been toying with it in almost every Bronze Dragonflight related story.

To name a less known example, that’s the reason why there is a Blue Dragonflight to begin with.
The only reason they didn’t go extinct, was because Krasus went back in time and gathered enough eggs to have it survive the WotA.

And as i said, the entirety of the WotA, Broxxigar, Rhonin, etc., has already been affected by said sort of take.

Yeah, but it could mend how we were to use it.

If the Shadowlands get screwed to a point where only travelling back in time, and preventing Sylvanas from making a deal with the Jailer, is the lone alternative left, the cosmic stuff may remain the same. But we may not have to deal with it.

Retcon is tearing a hole in the story. The timey whimey thing is bending it to the extreme.

Sort of, the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

Point taken. It might be stupid, but it is there.

I don’t care how we use the crap, it is still crap.

No, in this case it would be tearing off a chunk of the story that we don’t want. Not in the middle, but the end, so I really don’t see where that hole would be. “the addons A to N never happened” doesn’t leave us confused. It doesn’t create plot holes. It just resets the plot.

I’m glad there’s some positive nodding towards the idea of absolute retcon. So many cases of it in the last few years (think Terminator: Dark Fate, Crash Bandicoot 4, some TV series have done it too, hell even that atrocity Justice League film got it’s second chance). I feel it’s been done enough times that people wouldn’t be surprised, I’d imagine most would be relieved.

Precisely that.

They just got to choose a point from which the reset happens. I go by Warcraft 3 games as they have they provide the most fertile grounds in which we can explore the world and it’s cosmology from. They must reset the whole lot, Chronicles, cosmology and all that jazz.

And no more time travelling / multiverse stuff… It just always leaves a sour after taste. I don’t mind “what if” scenarios but keep them as separate bubbled things that don’t have any relation with the way the main story unfolds.

I did find this a bit odd and worrying as well. I mean he’s been pretty lame in this expansion, but he had that moment where the elements finally responded to his call in Torghast, but somehow wasn’t made a big deal about. I was wondering if they’re going to give him some super noble sacrifice in the end of this, but that would be the second major orc to do one in a very short period of time. Who knows.

As Ve’nari said (The Weak Link)

Before you do so, I offer a word of warning.
No creature imprisoned in that place [Torghast] should be trusted. Tread carefully, mortal.
After all, it would be a shame to lose so valuable a business partner.

Some conspiracy material:


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