The deep unseen flaws in WoW's development cycle

Lore Story
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I’m either very lucky or very special. Blizzard has actually implemented a lot of the suggestions I’ve made over the years. But there are dark patterns that have emerged inside Blizzard, which often undermine their best work. Good intentions corrupted by short-sighted design.

Trying so very hard to impress
In an attempt to make things feel EPIC Blizzard has forgotten what makes the World of Warcraft breathe. Both the game and the story are rushing you from one rollercoaster to another without really building up any anticipation. The Burning of Teldrassil cannot really mean anything because we never really spent time getting to the place. We just got served a reason for some outrage.

Our leveling zones have become pretty art galleries with a string of quests. We don’t really explore the zones anymore. Because it’s all too well planned out systematical.

Important characters are always much bigger than you, making you feel small in big moments. It’s not immersive. It’s a carousel ride.

Vertical progression is slowly poisoning WoW
Each patch and expansion introduces new systems into the game which renders the old ones absolite. The Garrison system was flawed, but instead of learning and improving on it, Blizzard decided to abandon it and pretends it never happened. We have so many legacy progression systems in the game that the new ones feel pointless. We know they will be abandoned soon enough, so why bother? Yet new systems are still added each patch.

There is only one form of progression that keeps getting better… transmogrification. And it’s the only form of horizontal progression that we really have.

Where do we start?
Expansions need to sell. So make that your opportunity to break new ground. But use patches to iterate and improve existing content not replace the old content.

Slowly update existing zones over multiple patches and BUILD THEM TO LAST. Think both leveling and endgame content. This is an opportunity to further develop existing race/culture/lore. It provides a sense of real progression in the world. This way each expansion actually improves the total game doesn’t replace it.

Enough surface level crap, take me deep!
Leveling should open up new customization options via talents. Not just give you more buttons. Think horizontal talent trees and not vertical ones. Not all talents have to be combat related. Travel talents? Exploration talents? Flavour talents? Lore talents? Visual talents? Things that would always be there for you, but would not subtract from the game later on. Some talents could even remove bottons from your action bar?

Better story tools
There should be voice acted cutscenes for the main story line (no quest reading text). Reading missions can be found in books, letters, bounties, messages, puzzles, sidequests, mission tables etc.

It’s fine if we get less main quests because of this. Most people will actually end up soaking way more story this way. Combined with zone activated quests and exploration items (chests, books, puzzles and such), this would make for a world that you feel rewarded for exploring.

Don’t show zone activated quests on map (unless they become dailies later on). Let me explore my options at my own pace. This gives back some of wonder of exploration like we had in Classic Wow.

Closing words
I do feel the game has improved massively since the vanilla days. But we have come to a point where we need to take the next step further if we want the game to (not just survive), but thrive for the next 10 years.

Do you agree with me? Did I miss anything vital? Please share your thoughts. I will monitor the comments for at least a week and do my best to respond to every person here.

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And it’s severely one sided.

While I mostly agree, also remember nostalgia is a big thing. Some places are better left the way they are. We all like to return to certain places sometimes and relive the old memories. It’s part of what keeps us connected to the game. It’s the little bits that we love to death and we don’t wanna lose. See Teldrassil and the outrage that it caused in the community.

That doesn’t mean the story shouldn’t evolve and progress. I’m always up for a zone revamp, for adding new quests that are up to date with the story.

I guess it depends on how well it’s made and if it’s worth the trade.

That’s interesting and I’d love to see some of these in game.

When these dailies become a chore (see world quests that are a rep requirement) you want to do them asap and you want to access them easily. An option to toggle it off would be better suited imo.

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The way I see blizzard storytelling could be described as… let’s say “top to bottom” when they know where the story should go, and then they place the events to move the story line in that direction. At the same time, the way it looks for the players is “bottom up”, where the story supposed to unfold accordingly to a pre-established knowledge from the game, maybe interviews, and way less so - from the books and other media.

However, these 2 “paths” have no obligation to intersect. So the story that is going where the devs want it to go is nice and all but can feel disjointed with what was presented to the playerbase. Besides, knowing where the story should go does not make it automatically good. And it seems that sometimes the devs forget that when they give an answer in an interview, that should be not as much of an answer in the style of “we know where we’re going and will share an extra bit of knowledge”, but more of “could the possibility of this come be derived from what is commonly known by the players”.

Why wouldn’t we have both? Have the “main story” and some extra quests to do. Maybe some quests that are available in a location because a player’s profession might be something that some NPCs in the area needs. Or even have a few class specific quests, because actions that a rogue can offer are not the same and as what shaman can do.

I do not see that as a problem. Player character is not a key lore figure, so it’s ok to be represented as “one of many”. But some influence over where things could go might be welcome. Once upon a time in another game, Guild Wars 2, there was an election event, where the players could vote for the next leader of one of key cities and that would also alter some elements, like what would be available in the city or what would be the next dungeon. Maybe something like that would be fine in wow, maybe something on a smaller scope, like who to support more in a specific zone, and so on.

Yeah, I remember how the devs tried to change the talents in Cataclysm, but instead of evolving this part accordily to the stated goals, simply threw the entire thing away after next to no iterations of the thing.

Is seems that the main concern for the dev team so far is “how can we add new things” regardless of whether or not currently existing things that the players need to interact with are up to date. On another note, maybe Chromie will be the answer to “how to preserve the old zones” and make it not feel out of place. That does not affect the question about how to make old zones not feel out of place in the current moment, but that would be a first step I suppose.

Seems like that could be an evolution of those activities that we should get from the covenants. Maybe you’re on to something.

Well, it looks like blizz approach to story is that it can’t be interesting without unexpected plot twists, and that if the story goes in a way that is reasonable and not contradicting anything that would be boring. And if people do not like it “it’s their story to tell”. At least that’s some of bits I got from M. Roux interview with Pyromancer (unless I misunderstood something which is possible considering that English is not my native language).

Not sure where they got those ideas from and why they think that something that works for one-time purchase game or a book with finite amount of text would also work equally well in a subscribtion based game, but so far they maybe did not get enough of backlash to stop for a moment and ask if the tools they chose to use might not always be the best option and if the feedback could be valuable. Or maybe they just did not show a new approach yet.

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I actually mean that they are literally bigger then you. Bolvar the human is twice the size of a Tauren. We are not even talking about a raid environment where it’s necessary to have an accurate read on creature models. The inconsistent unit scaling is a breaks the fantasy quite a bit.

People are afraid of change mostly because they fear the new is worse then the old. However if they show that the new is actually an improvement then we’ll see people begging for their favorite zones to be updated. For Nostalgia we can always use Chromie or even Vanilla WoW to scratch that itch.

I agree, but there are often moments where Blizzards story department is so hellbent on giving us the unexpected that the plotlines seem to be coming completely out of the left field. Loosing a proper narrative cohesion in the process.

I agree, but when you first arrive in the zone, you don’t expect to start unlocking dailies right away. The dailies can start appearing on your map when you complete your story quests. However I find it a little odd that we are discussing the best way to avoid some content in the game. Instead of making that part of the game enjoyable.

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Ah, yeah, that’s true. Sometimes the devs take a bit too much liberty in the details. Like Lor’themar being taller than Thalyssra. BElf being taller than (almost) NElf? LIke… how? Why?

I mean, I do not fully agree with the ideas I mentioned. Plot twists and strange actions, as well as “we’ll explain later” are fine sometimes, but not always an optimal choice. I am not sure that the stance “it’s out story to tell” aka how about we ignore the way community sees the things, is always a good thing. Sometimes yeah, by looking for compromises the key plot line might not be possible to execute. However, I’d argue that the story by itself is not quite enough. IMO it is the interaction with the players / readers / viewers what makes the game (or not a game) “a masterpiece”.

What good in a theoretically amazing gameplay system if people are not going to accept it? What’s good in being stubborn and ignoring the players if the goal of the project after all is to be commercially successful? (not that they always ignore the feedback, but I encounter plenty of “I told you so” comments)

Same goes for the story IMO. A good story can give players motivation to stay and support the game. (edit: the idea is that in a situation when the gameplay part does not work out well, the story can “buy” some time for the dev team) That could give time for other devs to fix the gameplay. But if story also makes people ask “what is even going on here” and gameplay elements fail to work well, what would be the reason for people to support the project?

I think it is quite telling how much more positive the reception of Shadowlands is in comparison with older expansions. And a sizeable portion of this reception is the communication. Maybe story department will take a look at the comparison of the reception of BfA “lets ignore feedback for as long as possible” approach and the current “it’s as much our game as yours”. Maybe “it’s our story to tell” is just a tool that sometimes works, but sometimes isn’t the most suitable one?

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Well a husband should always been taller than his wife to make a good impression on her I guess :stuck_out_tongue:

but, that was it since Vanilla I think…racial leaders and important NPCs have always been taller than players because Blizzard wanted players to notice them immediately and understand they were powerful/important.

Also it’s one of the reasons Ogres are not playable, actually. In lore they would be far taller than Tauren or Zandalari Trolls so realistically they wouldn’t be able to go into a normal size door of any building.

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Do you mean, that he’s using magic™ to pretend to be bigger (for an arbitrary definition of “bigger”)? Oh my, she might encounter some disappointments down the line :broken_heart:

Perhaps there are other things to highlight the relevance of someone. It’s not a big deal, but also could be a food for thought.

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That sentence should be cast in gold and framed on the Blizzard campus. Wow story is mostly written text and cinematics. With grinding quests in between big moments. Less and less is left for the imagination or for the player to discover on their own.

It’s no secret that women prefer a taller mate. In this case it would maybe make sense to make Lor’themar slightly taller then the average Belf and Thalyssra slightly shorter then the average Nighborne.

There are more ways to show that a character is important then just making them taller. Such as positioning, model size, story and plot, animations, armor, voice over, special effects and how other NPCs interact or are positioned around them. As humans we pick up these social signals extremely well, there is no reason it would not work the same in the game.

Building mystery and gray areas in your story is amazing, but it seems that BFA was so set on subverting all expectations that it lost track of the overall narrative.

If ALL the breadcrumbs in the story are false flags, then the story doesn’t feel rewarding. Instead it feels like we are being manipulated with and lied to. It doesn’t make sense to pay attention to the plot anymore because you know that you’re being set up for failiure.

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one huge problem we need to rember is that when Blizzard started to make wow, they made the story sort of from where Wc3 ended to some extent atleast, but in classic you realy se that they realy had no red line in the stories at all, we pretty much go from one boss to an other, whit no end goal at all.

this continued in TBC, to the extent the lore there many times didnt make any sence at all, you only knew illidan was evil, what again made no sence at all.

in wrath they started whit the the main villain part better, whit Arthas/lichking, and it worked realy well, most of the lore made sence, even the argent tournament did make sence, there and it continued ever since, story telling became their main thing in wow, even though offcourse not would aggree that the story is perfect at all, at times, what it most likely aint eighter, but at same time, you know what you are aiming for, eighter from start or you start to realice it when you quest.
lore side is probably the only thing that do make someone sence now, mechanic wise there is room for improvments that is for sure.

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They definitely have done a better job with structuring the story and even creating variety in quests. They do tend to go a little overboard with the goals sometimes when it comes to story.

I personally found the best zone in all BfA to be Drustvar. It had a mysterious and fantastical plotline while remaining grounded the entire time. We got to experience the everyday lives of it’s inhabitants while ending up in a pretty remarkable place in the story. A chain of simple stories that lead to something greater.

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Maybe. It’s been a while since then. But I remember having plenty of story-related conversations back in the day. Be it about what Grim Batol will end up looking like, or Qiraji war and it’s origins, role of the titans, swap from “Sargeras was corrupted by eredars” to “eredars were changed by Sargeras”. and so on. While it was not an in-depth fully polished story, it was not a barren field at all.

I see the story in wow like a one in manga / tv shows. There could be a planned ending in case it would be necessary to finish the story quickly, but otherwise it can go on and on. The end goal is, I would say, to make a commercially viable product. And a story, while could be good, is a tool to achieve that. So, I do not think it is a good idea to compare the story in wow to stories told in finite art forms like a single movie or a book. It would be better to compare it with those art forms that could, if proven successful, continue for unspecified amount of time.

Illidan never was evil in a “I want to burn the world” way. He was aiming to achieve his goal with little concern about common sense from the beginning. And we knew after the Frozen Throne, that his choice to achieve whatever he thought was necessary, was to become a pawn of the burning legion after a failed attempt to hide from them. We knew that the burning legion had no concern for the living on Azeroth, to achieve whatever it needed, thus, dealing with an agent of the burning legion made sense.

I can’t say anything about that. I was so fed up with their “you do not see the bigger picture approach”, that I dropped the game mid MoP. Would not come back if not for their change to pay more attention to feedback lately.

People have plenty of questions about the presentation. Sure, chatting about the lore with people during, say, Accolonn’s streams is fun, but when it comes to the story presentation in the game there are still a lot of questions. Finally we’re moving past the point when the games made by blizzard looked like an advert of expanded universe (I’m looking at you, Reaper of Souls and MoP with a bunch of changes out of nowhere for those who want to play games first of all).

As times go on, new tech and ideas appear, so the gameplay is likely to be changing for as long as the game is going to continue.

Now, I would add that I hope that the difference in perception between BfA style of “trust us” and Shadowlands with “we’re listening to feedback” will also affect the story team, so they would pay more attention to how the story perceived by the players more than to whoever could be their test groups in the past [edit: maybe even burrow some interesting ideas who the community]. And that while we could see some “we’ll explain later” things here and there, it is necessary to tell a story where character motivations and appearance of some new elements could be understood and not seem contradicting to someone who have no insider knowledge about where the story intended to go.

edit: spelling

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