This will take a long while to type down…
Just TL:DR - Old Blizzard is better than Today’s Blizzard and its about how the storytelling and the worldbuilding suffered under making player character able to amass more and more power. That while shifting the focus of the experience away from an optional story about local threats to a more restrictive experience where you have to play the story and global threats to match the PC’s powerlevel. And certain mistakes Blizzard has made over the last years that ruins their worldbuilding.
The vibe was best during Vanilla. There wasnt ‘a’ story but there were zone-wide stories that sometimes encompassed more than one zone. Like the Defias which you had to deal with in Elwynn, Westfall and Redridge. Or the Centaurs which you had as a threat in the Barrens and Thousand Needles. Or the storyline around Teldrassils corruption which, if I remember correctly, also brought you across Teldrassil and Darkshore to solve. The dwarves also had their attacks from the Dark Irons.
Of course these were only the “starting experiences” and larger spanning storylines didnt really happen anymore once you reached the mid-game.
In scope the stories told were relatively small and less about “Big bad evil will kill everyone if we dont stop them”. Not that there werent big bad evil guys, but these arrived late to the party and didnt really influence the entirety of the game experience. You worked yourself up from local threats to bigger ones, and the progression to that was slow and tied to your powerlevel.
The Worldbuilding was also relatively clear. Of course there were some weird spots here and there, but generally it was solid because it booted most of its lore from the Warcraft 3-Era and expanded upon it. You had a clear distinction between good and evil, good magic vs. evil magic. With both receiving a very different treatment. As seen with the distinction between human priests and warlocks: While priests could operate in the open and have their cathedral, warlocks were hidden in their small coven which they could only operate because they bribed local investigators. Their teachings after all were still forbidden, at least within human territories.
The overall focus was on the player characters. You was the protagonist in that game, everyone lives around you, doing their things. But you were the one taking up a bounty for Hogger with your friends because he was a major threat and the alliance needed cannonfodder to deal with it. You were the main part on why the Defias fell apart and your influence brought you some recognition from the higher-ups.
I played vanilla as a kid and played all classic versions so far. While the gameplay going upwards in expansions became objectively better, the setting suffered from the expansions and how Blizz handled them, and especially, the player character.
So no, I dont think my own life circumstances influenced my opinion on the matter.
As for the vanilla-way: They had pretty much free reign to do things. WoW started as experiment and was developed alongside Warcraft 3, so teams working on both projects could communicate with one another about the worldbuilding and setting.
Though I think the biggest thing speaking for Blizzard back in the day was that they werent driven by the greed they began developing during TBC and that they cared for their world alot more than they do now.
As for the last 15 years of WoW, maybe even more:
I think Blizzard have written themselves into a trap which they cant really get out of.
By allowing the player characters to take down big bad evil guys like Arthas, Kel’Thuzad, Illidan, Kael’thas etc. they became trapped in that kind of power fantasy and they couldnt just take a step back. It would have been a total tonal shift between “Hey, you were part of the team killing THE LICH KING, now go back to some barn in the middle of nowhere, kill 5 boars”.
They tried to make these bridges between expansions, but it never really worked well.
That forced Blizzards hands to ramp up the power and importance of the player character that somehow has to be matched with the world and the story.
I see a clear line between killing characters like Illidan and us going against Xallytoes in everso expanding levels of threats. While the storytelling and worldbuilding went from a living, breathing world you were just a part of towards “This is your playground to save from the bullies”.
Worldbuilding and Storytelling.
The story is nowadays forced down everyones throat, and its not a really good story.
Warcrafts Storytelling feels like the MCU: It started kinda good, but with each movie coming out the story became more and more slop to sell to the kids who dont know any better.
That together with big tropes like “This is just someone’s PoV” ruined the entire worldbuilding because there is absolutely no certainty in anything anymore.
Where back in the day Void and Fel was inherently corruptive and that you will eventually succumb to its madness, now Blizz could now make a statement of “Uhm, you didnt have the full picture and there is just one part of the void and fel being evil, there is actually also good void and fel” and it wouldnt break lore because fel/void being evil is just someones PoV and it didnt picture the entirety.
As I mentioned it in another thread: With that kind of worldbuilding you can basically write everything, doesnt matter how nonsensical it is. And that inherently makes for bad worldbuilding.
Worldbuilding needs rules under which the universe works. Blizzard effectively removed all rules from their world by making that choice.
Same goes with the story as well. Back in vanilla you didnt have to learn about the story, it wasnt pushed down your throat. You could just play and enjoy your time and you werent constrained to play through a story to experience the game. It was alot more free-form. Right now I play retail and stick to cata because I do loremaster. And the shift in how you play, how the stories are being told and how your character fits into all of this is a gigantic difference compared to everything that came with and after WoD.
Dare I say it: Cataclysm storywriting is better than anything that we have right now, even with the sometimes really annoying pop culture references.
However, ever since WoD and maybe even before, you have to play the story and you have to be the most important part of it because without you as the mary sue of the setting nobody would get stuff done. While your character also doesnt have anything to say but also is the guy every important lore character relies upon.
And from that Blizzard never truly moved on from, which is a shame.
One thing I would absolutely suggest:
Make the player characters retire after an expansion. And update the old zones with each new expansion. Doesnt have to be much, can be as little as changing some questlines to reflect the recent changes.
Like they slowly rebuild Stormwind over the course of two expansions, beginning with cata and ending with WoD.
And retiring in form like that: You have played Legion, you have that powerful arsenal of weapons. And you defeated the Legion.
Now, in the wake of the fourth war, new champions have to rise to fight against the other faction.
That way you can keep the powerlevels consistent, maybe even adding some fun stuff into it like “Hey, that paladin who gave me a quest is my paladin I played in Legion!”.
Of course without deleting that “retired” character, just restrict them from accessing the new content until that new content isnt current expansion anymore.
Its not opimal, sure. And it would be absolutely unpopular. But I think that, if Blizz wants to write a story that everyone has to experience, they need to fix their approach with powerlevels and the tonal shift that always occurs. It has been consistently failing with the borrowed power-systems, it has been failing in all the other ways before and after. Or does it make sense that your character who killed Fyrakk, a juiced-up roidraging ancient protodragon, sudddenly struggles taking down that young spiderqueen and her consorts? Or does it make sense that your character who took down the burning legion and their masters now has to deal with petty crimes in Kul Tiras?
However what I would prefer much more is that they return back to the vanilla fomula. Back to the roots of smaller threats, the world ending ones in the end of the expansion and not as center-piece, alot less focus on a story and retconning certain mistakes they have done, like the aforementioned “Its just someone’s PoV”-trope.
Just to pull more examples on how I would have done things if it were up to me:
Instead of going to Northrend to fight against the Scourge the alliance and horde sends out expeditions. And on Northrend they notice a scourge presence after having wrongfully assumed these undead have been contained. By the end of Warcraft 3 we knew that Arthas wasnt dead, but the rest of the world aside Illidan and his forces didnt know anything about it.
With that premise also retconning the Death Knight-intro, making them playable at some point within the expansion in a patch that revealed the Scourges continued existence.
Or with WoD:
Instead of having the Iron Horde invade through the dark portal and everything being about fighting the Iron Horde and their leaders, maybe have your characters be part of an accident that brought them to the Draenor of old but in a changed state due to time-shenanigans? And that you discover on Draenor that the timeline has changed due to that accident which resulted into the formation of the Iron Horde, with you being the one experiencing its beginning, not when they were at full force. And that at best after you made some levels in the old world.
Things like that I think would have made for a better experience overall.
At first retiring old powerful characters instead of stripping the power from them. And shifting the story towards a more progression-based experience where everything starts small and eventually becomes big, alongside the player characters who grow in power.
… and damn, that took a while.
I hope I could get my points across. While I heavily dislike Today’s Blizzard, I’m passionate about that world and it pains my authors heart to see what they do with it.
