I still haven’t done them yet.
I do not feel I am missing much…
3 Likes
The second cherry is they used to and presumably still do have a lore department. People who do know or all. They brought one out in stage… ignored him the whole time (this was during metzen first run when he just screamed ‘rule of cool’ whilst the poor lore guy looked incredibly dejected).
So it really is wilful ignorance on their part.
4 Likes
There’s that time that a supposed lore historian ran an AMA on Reddit, though you should take it with a grain of salt, as with anything from Reddit.
What it boils down to is that the lore historians gave writers a nudge whenever they created a conflict with existing lore, but they had no greater power than that. If a quest writer wanted to power ahead and ignore their feedback, they could.
I think there were only two of them left, last time anyone was informed.
Whatever I think of WoW, its stories, its developers or whatever else.
The sheer freaking disrespect the Historians get from Blizzard and their direct colleagues should be punisble with jail time.
Like God what is even the point of creating this position to then 
on the people who try to nudge the story in the right direction, because its their job and they probably have a passion for the world of Warcraft
1 Like
It is what it is
You’ve begun running out of those
Do you wish to proceed?
Oh gosh, this explains so much.
1 Like
If you’re interested, here’s the thread.
Basically boils down to me asking if they have internal processes to make sure the quests they design are consistent with current lore.
https://x.com/Boogily_Woogily/status/1984333974697886013
4 Likes
Do they know they can just @Telaryn?
Cheekiness aside, it’s always a little demoralising whenever Blizzard’s management/development of the story comes up. It’s all an after thought, really.
4 Likes
I’m less concerned with the writers not knowing everything about the lore since they’ve had slip-ups since pretty much forever.
I’m more concerned with the writers frequently showing that they’re either embarassed of or simply do not like the setting that they write for and wish to change it into something that they’ll like more. That just doubles or triples up amount of the slip ups since why care about the lore of something that you dislike so much.
It also doesn’t inspire confidence that this council of writers Metzen talked about has a free pass to do whatever the fudge they feel like at the moment; no wonder the story has been feeling like a complete mess with plot threads being dropped before they have time to grow into anything. Yeah it’s bad that they don’t have a lore guy who can factcheck the stupid Arcantina quests but it’s way more tragic that they seem to not have a commanding voice who can stop the monkeys in the writing room from dropping whatever story they get suddenly bored of and jumping to the next one.
Doing “whatever feels good at the moment” sure has worked wonders for the Star Wars sequel trilogy and I’m sure it’s going to make the Worldsoul Saga come out splendid! Do not be alarmed, people, I am sure you will be thrilled to experience your expectations being subverted by Midnight focusing all on “Light bad” storytelling and sidelining the Void threat because Xal’atath will be killed off randomly only for us to face the actual true mastermind of the Saga’s events, because somehow the Jailer has returned.
2 Likes
the Light-Jailer this time, electric boogaloo 
1 Like
[I look meaningfully at Dimensius’ corpse ]
I’m going to go play Morrowind now to cleanse myself in good writing
2 Likes
https://tenor.com/p9AdKoUCD0n.gif
3 Likes
You can be mean about it, they get paid for it and they serve subpar world building and writing!
I mean if they atleast tried I would be more inclined to forgive them. They don’t try, they just write whatever they want and ignore any history or precedents.
1 Like
Yeah the thirty years of lore is pretty pathetic as an excuse, like they’re trying make it sound like they’ve got the Great Library of Alexandria at Blizz HQ and people get lost for all eternity in between the stacks of endless tomes.
Elder Scrolls Arena released the same year as Warcraft 1. I think that comparison alone says a lot of things as a contrast, both in volume of lore produced for either and what’s being done with it in ESO vs WoW.
LOTR is a literal lifetime of lore, I can still read the damn book in about 3 days.
It just speaks of a complete laziness, especially when there is comprehensive and easily searched wiki.
9 Likes
Bending existing lore or changing it to fit their newest story idea is typical Blizzard writing at this point. That’s why it just feels better not to get attached or too excited.
3 whole days? It took me two years back in highschool.
3 Likes
Ultimately every setting needs some kind of obsessive lorebeard on it or it always falls off. Elder Scrolls has / had some impressive loreheads, same with Warhammer Fantasy etc. I suppose Blizzard’s problem is it too fluid and changes on the whims of gaming and cultural trends.
2 Likes
They also don’t have the excuse of things being hard to look up when even without their in-company tools they still have stuff like the fanmade wiki, wowhead and mmo-champion. It’s pretty damn easy to look up the broad strokes for the lore online. The odd detail falls through the gaps but I don’t think people would be as frustrated with this if all the contradictions were statements made in side quests.
7 Likes
Their crutch usually is ‘unreliable narrator’ which just tells me that they are too scared to commit to anything unless they want to do ‘something cool’.
Imagine having to stick to a coherent narrative instead of being able to throw darts at the wall and going ‘good enough’.
2 Likes
Given the documentation and legislation dependent stuff I had/have at work, and the Britannica-thick e-docs we have, I feel I am pretty well placed to say, heartfelt and with my whole chest, Skill Issue.
2 Likes