I disagree with that part. WoW feels like it is in decline due to gameplay being subpar. If gameplay is good or at least enjoyable, people won’t really care about the story. Case in point, TBC and Legion. The first has, in retrospective, terrible story, while the latter’s completely falls apart in how nonsensical and downright stupid it is if you think about it for more than a minute. Yet, both are regarded as some of the best, due to their gameplay alone. Point in case, the vast majority of players don’t give a hoot about the story if they are enjoying the gameplay. They will certainly not start nit-picking stuff the way we do here on the story forums.
I have said it numerous times, but WoW lost the plot when it started explaining stuff that had absolutely no reason explaining. Nonsense like the cosmological forces map started this trend and explaining Death and the Afterlife coup-de-graced it. I am not opposed to interacting with cosmic forces and their representatives, provided you treat it with the gravitas it commands. It should be a big deal, it should be a special occasion and by the gods it should create more questions than it answers. Middle Earth, the more consistent and well built fantasy world out there has “explained” the Valar, their god representative equivalents, and they have entire books devoted to them. Did that detract from their mystery? No, because they are set as entities in such a way that they are distant, mysterious and unapproachable and they aren’t even written as characters but vague concepts to an extend. Thus, when I reread the Trilogy after having read the Silmarillion, I didn’t think of the world less because I knew stuff like Gandalf’s true name and origins, and I actually enjoyed the fact that I caught details and references I missed before.
Not sure I can agree with it. It was definitely flawed and had “meh” parts, but the impression I got as “explorer” when played draenei, and how different they were at the time, how the game sprinkled new quest givers, alongside new flight points and graveyards, from the new races - it added quite a bit of extra flavour and interesting world building elements. People are harsh with TBC, but story wise it had some unappreciated gems IMO.
I remember well during WotLK how many people just skipped the quest texts because a lot of important stories are placed in the side media. The usual answer I got at the time was something like “why would I spend time reading when I won’t know the story anyway?”
The funny thing is ESO does the same but better.
you face dragons daedric lords in a lot of the exp of the game and yet they do it in a way that makes the small scare stories of bandits and kidnappings work and feel just a big a problem as those same super powerful lords.
Tbh, a big way that it is done in ESO - and how it could be done in WoW as well - is by simply upping the small scale stories into making them feel necessary. Not important, but necessary.
You could piece this together in WoW’s current narrative. They just need to go beyond: “Azeroth needs you, Champion!” x20391873-th time and actually make it feel like such. One among many rich examples could be what the heck a giant hole in the sky directly leading to the afterlife has done or is doing to the populace or civility that do not know better than simply living their lives.
Right now, they may as well just look at that sky over Icecrown and consider it a normal Bad Day Monday event.
Except, we even see the direct consequences of the scourge running wild on Azeroth in our absence with the attack on Lakeshire.
And I mean, the portals back are right there. I wish we could at least return to help the people at home once in a while instead of performing endless menial tasks for the Shadowlands residents whose only comment on all this is “ah yes, so very tragic that everyone goes to the Maw now, but we must trust in the purpose!”
Or they could send Baine and Thrall. It’s not like they have anything important to do in Oribos anyway.
The probably nowadays is that the writers come up with some big plot idea, then they are in a rush to tidy it up, so we end up with a story that is rushed, half finished, many plotholes and just really bad story telling.
Not to mention they seem to love to toss good bits of the story in their books, which this content should be in the game and not in 3rd party books.
That’s the thing. Lakeshire was pretty great for what it intended to serve. But where was the rest of the worldbuilding? the exposition, the side-stories, the meat that goes together with your main story meal that makes it taste even better.
It was a great direction, and going back to help people on the one place that really matters to us as characters (Azeroth) would be a great way of doing it.
We don’t even really know when those events supposedly took place. Is the Scourge still roaming after we went to the Shadowlands, and we picked up that soul directly after it happened, or were we picking up a soul that died during the prepatch events? Are we, the great champions of Azeroth, really letting our homes be pillaged by marauding zombies, because we felt it necessary to save some leaders? Or are they supposed not to be a big deal? Is Lakeshire in ruins now, or was it saved after our point-of-view soul died?
This quest did what it wanted to do and did it well, I agree. But considering the world-building it gave us all the questions and none of the answers. I frickin’ hate that. So I personally don’t even think that was a step in the right direction. Just another character-story, when I wanted to know the world.
huh that’s true, I guess. I had assumed the general consensus was that Lakeshire was a current event ( and that there would likely be similar happenings all over Azeroth while we’re away. )
Could be that the remaining leaders cleaned house by now, though. We left the more competent ones behind after all But we just don’t know and I hate that too.
This is my current biggest issue with Shadowlands. That we don’t really know what is going on at home. Which, for me, is a lot more emotionally important than anything Zovaal is up to.
But we just don’t know and I hate that too.