Taken from a youtube comment, just thought this resonates really well with the current story so far:
"T̶h̶a̶n̶o̶s̶ The Jailer (Who we don’t really know anything about, but don’t worry) got all the Sigils (What we don’t really know nothing about, but don’t worry) to open (We don’t really understand how, but don’t worry) the way to the Sepulcher of the First Ones (Which we don’t really know anything about, but don’t worry) to utilize some First Ones technology (Who we don’t know anything about, but don’t worry) to unmake reality (Which doesn’t really mean anything, but don’t worry). "
Then you have Sylvanas who “doES nOt serVE” uWu queen <3, but she served this guy for 2 expansions already, same guy that presumably created the lich king which was the arch enemy of sylvanas, the one that she hated with all passion for killing her and making her undead. Then she hears LK’s/Arthas’ voice saying “Serve”, and she snaps off (peak writing skills right here). Remember, LK was made by the Jailer.
Then you have Tyrande that literally says “my life for hers (sylvannas)” to Elune, but 5 mintues later Elune says “TyRanDE muST cHOose, veNgeancE oR renEwal”.
Just fire this Danuser guy already. Billion dollar company please hire a decent writer.
I generally think players look at the story the wrong way, believing it’s about predicting what’s going to happen rather than reflecting on the meaning of what has happened. I blame content creators for creating a bad precedent.
I’d summarize the story as this:
We venture to an unknown place to try and save our world, and along our journey we learn some things about life, compassion, forgiveness, and what it means to hope for a better future.
Nah bro, it’s just awful writing. Don’t turn the content creators into the scapegoat because the story doesn’t make any sense, is inconsistent, and the writers are incompetent.
See both sides. It’s good leaving thing to the imagination, and having unknowns. But too many makes for a bad story in this case. It really feels like we’re chasing the carrot on the end of the stick for knowledge. Come back next patch to learn what really happened last patch kinda. Which is basically we want more subs.
Depends on how you look at it.
Is Blizzard expected to write storylines for the lowest common denominator?
Not everything is meant for everyone and the world is filled with dumb people.
So… It’s okay that not everyone gets it. It’s fine that not everyone likes it.
WoW’s stories have never been great literature. They can’t be. But they’re at least trying different things and I’m fine with that. Do I like everything they do? Hell no. But I still like it that they’re trying because honestly I’m quite done with ‘Horde vs Alliance hur-durrrrr’ type stuff.
There are some annoying tendencies in the community.
Like I remarked earlier, then it’s unfortunate that players have so much focus on what’s going to happen.
What’s The Jailer going to do? What’s his plan? What does it lead to? What’s the next expansion? Is Sylvanas getting a redemption arc? And so on.
A lot of it is perpetuated by content creators who basically create YouTube fan fiction through unhinged speculation, which everyone then buys into and suddenly the community focus is on guessing what’s going to happen by presenting the most elaborate theories. And then we all QQ when it turns out that Blizzard didn’t do what our theory said they should!
Players also have a bad tendency to ruin the storytelling by jumping straight to spoilers and perceiving the events in an unordered manner. If you watch any of the cinematics as soon as they’re data mined, then you’re missing some context and you’re not so much going through the story itself as you are just jumping from one spoiler to another.
I won’t say it’s anyone’s fault, but there are certainly steps people can take if they want to enrich their story experience. In my opinion.
Also a lot of the individual races had some description of what the afterlife was like, they were all unique to eachother.
Shadowlands removed all of those by designating the shadowlands as the cosmic afterlife
it feels like shadowlands removed more lore then it added back in.
The first ones just feel like someone on the story team inherited the cosmic story and wanted to, mostly out of self importance, create something on top of that yet bigger.
From that came the first ones, who really aren’t titans guys.
But they are actually attributed to order, so actually they are, but they were first guys!
Also the jailor has an army much more bigger then the burning legion, did you know he was stronger then Sargeras?!
What? evidence? don’t be silly, that’d take up too much resources for development.
Instead we’ll have him show up at random points at the story like we did with the lich king in Wrath, except unlike the lich king the jailor doesn’t span multiple games and expansions of character building so where with the lich king you thought ‘oh shi-’ with the jailor it’s just ‘oh there he is again’
I liked the majority of the lore but Shadowlands really put a dent in that.
I’ll give you an quick example. Whitewalkers in GOT. Since season 1 ep 1, they showed up in the first 10 minutes of the show. Everyone was immediately captivated by them. They were a mystery, no one knew anything about them, but over the course of the show (at least the good seasons), they were built up slowly, tension was added up more and more, context was given, and so on.
The Jailer though? He popped out of nowhere with no context whatsoever, we know nothing of him, his motivations besides “unMaKinG reALitY” WOWOW so kewl, he took sigils from the other sl leaders (the f are those), to use them on something (wow big brain storytelling) to unmake reality (top tier writing right here). Then you have Sylvanas who “doES nOt serVE” uWu queen <3, but she served this guy for 2 expansions already, same guy that presumably created the lich king which was the arch enemy of sylvanas. Peak writing wow.
Then you have Tyrande that literally says “my life for hers” to Elune, but 5 mintues later Elune says “TyRanDE muST cHOose, veNgeancE oR renEwal”.
Swear to God I can pay the local drunken looser from my small town and he can make better story than this travesty.
can be (and usually is) part of any epic fantasy journey.
For example:
Frodo and Sam venture to an unknown place and save their world, and along the the journey they learn some things about life, compassion, forgiveness, and what it means to hope for a better future.
Luke venture to an unknown place and save the galaxy, and along the journey…
(this also applies to more recent works) Invincible (the half-Viltrumite) venture to an unknown place (the world of super-heroes) and…
Dovahkiin venture to an unknown place (he travels the border) and finally wakes up, blah blah…
Seriously, I think I can go on forever with that thing.
So, the problem is not really the “little side things that every adventurer learn along the way”. The problem is that we, the players (or spectators/readers if that was a movie or a book), get thrown into a place disconnected from everything we’ve been taught so far, to fight completely made up enemies with no connection to whatever plot remained before using plot devices that haven’t been foreshadowed at all, but we are told we should care about this new mystery that is coming out of nowhere: the first ones.
All of that while accepting that real mysteries, like Elune, get an unsatisfying resolution that doesn’t make sense (how could she not know about night elf souls goingto the maw when she bestowed her powers to Tyrande for this very reason ? and why is she suddenly a malevolent goddess who sees her “favored children” as fuel for the afterlife ?).
Now I’d like to add something extremely important for anyone who write stories.
You cannot expect your players/spectators/readers to be involved in a plot if the plot doesn’t make sense at all until you read the last page.
How far into the movie do you learn what Dr. No is trying to do?
Does it ruin the movie that most of the time you’re just following James Bond as he looks around and deals with local threats that he doesn’t really understand, until he eventually decides to go to a nearby island because it appears suspect and only then is everything revealed?
