The narrative delivery of 9.2 is terrible

Lore Story
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I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve watched cinematics ahead of time as they have been released, but haven’t played the PTR, so now that the patch is live this is my first time getting the actual in-game story delivery…and oh boy, it’s…it’s certainly something.

Week 1: Arriving in Zereth Mortis was…alright enough I guess, Firim is an interesting enough dude. But as soon as things actually got started it was all very underwhelming. The Jailer is sieging Haven, we show up and kill some mobs, Jailer just leaves. We run around and do a bunch of busywork, we fight Mal’ganis for like 10 seconds, Jaina and Baine show up and do nothing. We see Anduin for 2 seconds before he yeets off with the Jailer. Come back next week. Uhm…o-okay…

Week 2: Suddenly Uther is there, I talk to Uther and is shown the Sylvanas cinematic. No buildup, no context, just Uther showing up and going “So yeah, that happened”. Literally the next thing that happens: Bolvar saying that Sylvanas being back isn’t really a priority for him right now, and I am sent off to do more busywork with the Enlightened. I do a bunch of kill this and fetch that styled quests to activate a flightpath - then all of a sudden Sylvanas is just there, like, fully armored, armed, all blue and shiny, not in chains, not looking like she is under any kind of guard, I can’t even talk to her. A brief cutscene is triggered where Sylvanas goes “We gotta save Anduin to defeat the Jailer”, then Jaina goes “I don’t trust you” then Uther goes “Trust me”, then Jaina goes “Okay”…then the three of them together with Bolvar goes through the flightpath and yeets off. Come back next week.

What?..

We waited all this time, for this? Characters that are integral to the plot just suddenly appears without buildup with their entire frame of existence changed and turned on its head without it even being adressed or handled in any narrative-driven sort of way. This isn’t even a “Sylvanas is redeemed moment”, this is literally a “Sylvanas is just here now, shut up and go along with it” moment.

I hope week 3 is better but…Jesus Christ it’s not looking good. This is the kind of narrative delivery I would expect from a browser game 10 years ago.

10 Likes
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I completely agree. Updating on week 3, without major spoiler, the bad story telling method continues, the idea, that you base the outdoor story progression on raid progression is super bad, at least story wise. If you haven’t defeted all 7 bosses prior (and tried to avoid spoilers as possible) week 3 part hugely spoilers everything you would see in raid. The another issue is that it paired with gamplay progrssion, like 7th level legendary, and flying, so you either wait till your guild kills Anduin, or you try to build up the raid story from YouTube, to progress onward less spoilered.

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Well, Twitter aren’t happy with the story delivery either, so maybe things will actually change for the next expansion.

We know Danuser doesn’t go on the forums and only looks at those on Twitter, so maybe their will be a change.

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I just ressubed and after playing trough it came here to write pretty much the same thing as you did. Completely agree and thank you for saving me the trouble of writhing a post.

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Hey, Runescape 2 came out 16 years ago and has better narrative storytelling!

6

That’s basically how they treated Sylvanas since the start of BfA so it’s not exactly surprising outside of the “I expected nothing and I’m still disappointed” way.

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The only Sylvanas I remember

1 Like
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