Lore Build Up

Just an idea but introduce new characters. And villains to the lore and build them up through dragonflight makes us want to go and kill a boss in a raid perfect example of this gul dan in legion. Arthas menethil it took 3 expansions one of the most popular villains in the game and the name still gives me chills to this day.

Both Gul’dan and Arthas have been prominent RTS and/or novel characters long before becoming bosses. Big villains original to WoW have been few and far between and actually good ones pretty much amount to Lei Shen, Elisande and Denathrius. Where Denathrius was hard carried by the VA, in the instant pot noodle of storytelling that was levelling in Revendreth.

What they need to focus on is organic world building, where characters don’t get along, because of believable reasons, don’t have relationships from before the conception of their species, don’t spawn in massive armies and secret organisations out of thin air and don’t canibalise legacy characters for clout.

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As logical as all that is, I fear that it might be too much to ask of the writing team. I hope I’m wrong.

Well, if they want people to care about their characters and stories that is the way to do it. Their bigger problem behind the scenes is that they are not an attractive place to work for the kind of people they need, especially when it comes to the editors and the QA.

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Eh with Garrosh, Varok and Nazgrim they kind of have shown that they would be capable of. Problem is since then they kind of stopped giving us replacement for the old guard and only recently starting remember that there are still characters out there.
I mean Nazgrel whas forgotten for over a decade on the Hellfire Peninsula.
Samuro who whas added for HotS is still not in WoW and until a few weeks ago people thought Tagar actually died in the war against Proudmoure.

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I also get the feeling its easier to create great characters in an RTS game than it is in an MMORPG. 90% of the great characters in wow are from wcIII and its expansion.

If blizz had launched wcIV or some sort of new campaign in the old game the story would probably have more appealing characters (but will never happen)

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Good observation, but why is that the case? What’s the reason?

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Doesn’t have to be harder in general, it might just be harder for the team working on it. Other MMOs have less of a problem creating memorable characters.

Firstly, many of those MMOs essentially have a single-player-RPG-like story. You might group up here or there, but in games like GW2, SWTOR or FF14 your character actually is the great world-saving hero that saves the world, while all other players are pretty much non-canon in your world. WoW doesn’t really give you that. You might be a maw-walking champion of the azerothian hordish alliance, but that’s just a blank page, and the story treats the champions as placeholders, not as characters.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly… all of the MMOs I mentioned here at least actually give the player hero their own team to work with, and those are the characters that are the ones that are developed most. Other characters often become important, because they are important to the team, that you already care about. WoW on the other hand focusses most character-work on the leaders of nations. Our bosses. We are not working with Anduin, Thrall, Jaina and Sylvanas, we are working for them. They might remember our services, but we’re not friends, nor are we collegues. They aren’t important to us through our characters, they are important to us through our care for the game world in abstraction. That’s just not a very personal connection, and it makes us care more about what they do than who they are and what they care about.
The closest they came to giving us that was actually Legion, where we got our own story and our own class-specific team… Only to learn that that was actually an “expansion feature” that they never meant to outlast the expansion. :disappointed:

The RTS-games never had those problems. While they focussed on the leaders of nations, commanders of armies and chosen champions, all of those were played by us. We weren’t standing around, while Arthas told us about his experience in Strathoilm, we were the ones who clicked on frightened citizens for Arthas to slaughter. We were Arthas. We were Thrall. We were Tyrande. We were what made the story happen.
And Blizzard just didn’t understand that - or at least didn’t solve the problem behind that - when they transisitoned from RTS to MMO.

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We dont want to save the world anymore we want good story and events that happen in azeroth lets have a king be assasinated or something we want drama

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Basically what was already said but in an RTS you play from the point of view of the different leaders of various nations which allows you to see things from different points of view and also develop these characters while in an MMO you are basically a nameless adventurer that is a spectator to these characters and their actions.

And yeah I’m tired of the world-ending threat trope. You can only use it so many times before it becomes boring

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I’m quoting these to clips of your post for a reason…I think we can put those two ideas together. What’s a realistic solution here? Is there a way to let players be the nameless adventurer and also avoid the “end of the world” tropes?

Only real place to go from world on fire stakes and maintain investment is to go personal. The problem is that Blizzard wants to have it’s cake and eat it too, with the whole nameless nobody, but actually so important you rub shoulders with the leaders, but still a nameless nobody thing.

The problem is that they should have done that in BfA by paying off long standing grievances and feuds to drive the conflicts. Problem is they discarded literally all of it, in favor of the unholy mess we actually got.

The reason people largely don’t give a toss about Dragonflight stems from that lack of personal stakes and Blizzard’s chronic inability to maintain urgency. Like the time Alexstraza sends you to pick flowers and pet animals, after you delivered a plea for help from Wrathion… like if the characters don’t give a :poop: why should you?

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