Nah, that’s just Danuser.
1 Like
But Danuser IS Blizzard.
1 Like
Nah. He’d be fired in the blink of an eye if the board of directors could link a massive dip in revenue to player dissatisfaction with his narrative design.
1 Like
I disagree: The Lich King was done extremely well in Wotlk.
For an antagonist to have a sense of “weight” in the story it needs to have certain aspects to its presence:
-Danger
-Consequence
-Mystery
During Wotlk this was written extremely well. When we first arrive in Northrend, regardless of zone or faction, we’re under siege from the LK’s forces: we are being beaten and there is a sense of danger here. The enemy seems superior, and that makes it a real threat.
Then the first time we come face to face with the Lich King in the Howling Fjord is when we use shamanic magic to step into the shadowlands, where he finds us. He not only easily see’s through our magic, but also catches us when we are vulnerable, with no forces nearby to help us: we are helpless. Moreover, if we go to close to him, we are immediately struck by his aoe and die: thus he has a sense of consequence.
After that encounter we don’t know where he is, so we are never sure of his location and thus we’re always on high alert in case we come across him (since there is a real liklihood of us dying when we see him).
Back then world mobs and dungeons were more lethal, so whenever we came across him again: before he empowered a boss, our first experiences would often be a difficult fight or a death. Not the Lich King, but just his lieutenants were deadly, which made him seem even more so. Sure we would farm those bosses later on, but its the first impressions that set the tone of the story.
We’re in a land of the dead, in dungeons filled with the dead, and we are struggling to survive. The enemy is a real threat, and there are lethal repercussions for our failures.
No other major lore enemy has had this effect:
-Illidan we didnt see until the dungeon.
-Deathwing would meme fire over us once in awhile, but everything else in that expansion was too easily resolved (it was the start of the cartoony evolution of wow).
-WoD almost did it well, until we killed the first Warlord as an opening boss in the first raid, since one of the more lethal warlords was so easy, then the others weren’t to be taken seriously either.
-The Thunder King was just a “Hey, come kill this guy plz”, no threat at all.
-Legion opened well, but then became “we came we saw we looted”
-BFA, we killed an Old God in a patch…
-Shadowlands: the only thing that is even slightly scary now is the Tarragrue as it at least has some of the needed aspects to be a good antagonist.
1 Like
Like it happened with Afrasiabi, who was Danusers boss in BfA in the narrative department and has now been fired from Blizzard.
Best thing is that she completes forgot about Nathanos and seems to care far more for Anduin 
3 Likes
Funny that because of people like you Blizzard turned Garrosh and Sylvanas into the “enemy” character both Alliance and Horde hated. Horde had to killed their leaders, yet Alliance players continue to blame Horde because of the faults of those leaders.
And meanwhile Horde had to lose their beloved characters like Cairne, Nazgrim, Vol’jin, Saurfang, and I don’t want to even mention about Thrall.
Original gang of the Horde is totally gone, the Horde spirit is broken.
Yet you Alliance players still have your beloved Tyrande, Jaina, Malfurion, Velen, Genn, Alleria, Turalyon, Muradin, Falstad are still alive and kicking.
Blizzard turned Horde into Garrosh’s evil den, then killed Cairne, killed Nazgrim, killed Garrosh.
Blizzard turned Horde into Sylvanas’s evil den, then killed Vol’jin, killed Saurfang, and probably will redeem Sylvanas… because, reasons…
It is really painful to play a Horde character storywise.
And people like you believe they want the Horde downfall. Ah… the Horde is already broken. We are playing with the pieces right now.
1 Like
christie golden is what we call a hack writer
2 Likes
Christie Golden has gotten a lot of flack from everyone (myself included), but she is hardly the only one at fault here.
Her only “sin” is to have enough free reign to shamelessly thrust forward those characters she favours. With nobody apparently willing enough to halt her.
In small doses, even Anduin and Baine stories can be good. But we are way past the sating point.
Bear in mind we’ve had Jaina story-defining plots almost non-stop since Golden took hold of her character, and the position to promote it, back in mid-Cataclysm (eleven years ago).
1 Like
I´ve read your post and i completely disagree but i don´t want to start an argument here since its not on topic. I think the LK was done very poorly and felt more danger so to say from someone like Garrosh who actually did manage to push the factions and take things away from them. But again it´s ok to disagree on that point because i know that big parts of the community are also on the fence regarding Wotlk Story. Some loved it and celebrate it as the Best Expansion others not so much.
And in regards to the topic at hand and Arthas. I think it does not take away from my point bringing Arthas back into the game caters to both Group of people. People who think Wotlk was done great will probably be hyped to see the good Characters return and might hope for a return to what is considered WoWs peak. While the more critical people might be catched with the promise of doing it better now.
Hack writing is what makes sales in the Western markets.
WOTLK lich king was executed terribly for the following reason:
“you killed every single one of my generals and usefull minions, np I await you with my genius plan to res you all with a 2hour cast while the only person who could possibly be a treath to me in the whole world is behind me in an ice cube but I forgot about him” good stuff
4 Likes
Can we talk about how good your mog is? 
I’ve never found Anduin likeable to be honest, he is too “doe eyed” and into the whole “friendship is magic” deal and has been since I had to chase him around in MoP.
My guess is Christies biggest problem is she never learned that sometimes you gotta kill your darlings (sometimes story ideas and characters just either need to be outed with or never made a thing) and favoritism. Ironically this is a mistake most writers make when they are new but learn to fix early on if they really want to improve, especially with the help of the massive amounts of resources available online.
Christie don’t really need that though, she already got a pretty sweet gig. I would be in favor of her doing some workshops on the side or Blizz simply finding new writers.
Also she needs to look to characters who are not from YA fiction when writing stuff like BfA, it becomes contrived and cliche. Where to find it is really up to the writers themselves but FF14 is seemingly getting praise, despite it’s anime roots, so maybe that is what WoW need, looking at many different mediums, from anime to nature documentaries and try to stich whatever inspiration that comes from all that together.
1 Like
I think you’re very far off the mark on this. The story was Arthas was iconic, and set to rest in an almost perfect way. This was done, and people had closure on what was perhaps the best story Blizzard ever produced.
Now they’re opening a grave, retconning the lore, and its kicking dirt on what was an excellent story.
Arthas’ story was so great because it was so tragic: a prince so determined to save his people that he became the very thing he sought to destroy.
You see him slowly discard his morals and his humanity the deeper down this path he goes in search of power to protect his kingdom, until finally it ends with him faced with his end atop Icecrown Citadel.
But already, has and is continuing to be changed. Even in this most recent cinematic with Anduin: it suggests that Arthas wasn’t even responsible for his actions, which completely robs his story of what made it so tragically iconic.
He no longer became what he sought to destroy, he was just a puppet. It entirely changes the dynamics of it: it robs him of his original motivation, it removes any accountability, it also diverts away from the morality, and the consistency is removed. It’s no longer logically consistent with itself.
This means people that were invested in that story, and could enjoy it for the journey it took them on, have had those past experiences tarnished.
And with that last point people try to offer the counter-argument that they are “expanding” upon the story. But expanding on a story requires the “expansion” to be consistent with the story itself, which this is not. The concept of the Jailer behind behind all of Arthas’ wrongdoing was not planned out all the way back in 2002, so to be added to the story has to destroy elements of it. If you have to change the previous story to fit the expansion, then its not an expansion. To expand upon something suggests creation or articulation: not destruction.
7 Likes
It’s a good point, and it’s become part of a wider issue. With the original implementation of World of Warcraft, the lore was very diverse. Without the reliance on ingame cutscenes, most lore happened in game and was explained through quests. This meant that there could be lore evolutions on a wide variety of characters and factions.
However, these days they don’t do that. Instead, they focus on a small amount of key characters, and build the stories around them. With this smaller diversity of lore to work with, it funnels the writing into pre-established categories, and that’s why it becomes so cliche: “The power of friendship compels you!”.
This is also why entire factions have little to no development. If you were to ask: what was the last lore development the Tauren had, not Baine, but the Tauren from Mulgore, what would you say? When they built the huge door into Mulgore? The water drought before MoP?
How about the last lore development that happened to the Worgen? Not Greymane, but the Worgen and Gilneans themselves as a faction independent of the alliance? Being received by Darnassus in the Cataclysm?
Because the story is no longer focused on factions, but on the main characters of those factions. Sometimes this can be okay, as they can move their faction lore along such as the Blood in the Snow scenario where Moira proves the Dark Irons commitment to the Alliance. But most of the time it becomes a personal piece that plays out like poor fanfiction from a 12 year old (“And then when all seems lost, Jaina soars into sight on a magical floating ship and magics the plague away saving the day! Yay!”).
An MMORPG is an entire world (or in this case now, a universe), and to maintain its logical consistency, the world needs to move on at the same pace. By only zeroing in and focusing on a few specific characters, it means the rest of the world is stuck in time until suddenly a plot device for one of the characters is needed and they convenient fit the bill (such as the Draenei in Legion, to move on Velen and Illidans story).
While the occassional individual story can be compelling and enjoyable, in the long-term it is a poor way to move the story as a whole along and is bad for the overall health of the game.
6 Likes
Actually, a good analogy for this is like bread: hear me out on this…
If you have 3 slices of bread, then you can only choose a few toppings to put on each. So you’ll choose something safe, maybe jam, maybe peanut butter, and maybe nutella. You won’t be risky, and your choices will be pretty obvious and boring.
If you have 20 slices of bread, well you’ll have your jam and nutella, sure, but you might try something more adventurious too: maybe pate and gherkins, or sardines and tomato, maybe you’ll try garlic and goats cheese, perhaps cranberry and brie, or poached eggs and salami (try it).
The point is this: if you don’t focus in on just a select few, it leaves room for more variety of storytelling, and that is what makes a world feel alive and exciting.
3 Likes
This is slightly off topic, but this is why I think Cataclysm is one of the best expansions (and definitely in the top 2 when it comes to story), it did the most for worldbuilding, progressing the small stories, zones, factions, and having some genuinely good writing with the quests. Also, as it’s logical, not all zones became more corrupted and broken, we’ve seen quite some results of the healing we did easlier, which was nice to see. We need more of this. BFA was sort of on the right track with updating old zones with new stuff (even if it was mostly just war and N’zoth invasions), but Shadowlands is the complete opposite.
1 Like
Cataclysm did have its strengths, and the world of warcraft being relevant in World of Warcraft was certainly one of them. Desolace and the PlagueLands showing signs of healing was brilliant, as was the build up of a military presence and culture of the Argent Dawn.
One of the things I utterly dislike about the Shadowlands is that: what reason do I have to care? I’ve not heard of these places, or these races, and I have no emotional attachment to the story, or even reason to be. There is no investment to it.
And if I were to get invested in the lore: well they’ve proven they’re happy to retcon lore and destroy a story, so it’s a risk to enjoy anything they make going forward.
And by codifying the shadowlands, they’ve removed the mystery of it. And they did it in such a way that there is no difference between the Shadowlands or Outland or Kul’Tiras: it doesn’t feel like an afterlife, it just feels like another place, another island.
1 Like
Hey, Baine donates bits of his horns. What else could you possibly need?
Yeah. First time I stopped caring about the story when I learned about it back in Cata (TBC also had some… “interesting” things), and my reaction was “why invest any time into it if anything could be invalidated at any moment”.
Currently though I’m just a “mechanics first” player with a few drops of interest from before the disappointment times. Well, and collecting clues in a way is a “diet point and click” for me.
gl hf
1 Like