Personally I’d say that it went wrong mid-tier legion.
Sure Mists had the Pandas and the none-sense making rebellion arc (Hmm dejavuè) ?
WoD actually had great potential minus Ashran and the rushed story to just get to the next thing!
Then came Legion it was a pretty good starter expansion.
we had this feeling of defeat from the Broken Shore.
the world being on the brick of being lost, the Surramar conflict followed suit in 7.1 escalated and we defeated the ruler of the Nightborne obtained the last pillar of creation and were ready to seal the Legion Portal.
the came 7.2 with no thrilling story telling, no interesting mechanics the stupid limitless grind of ones artifact weapon, and weekly quests that just told you to do what you had been doing already for days!
the order hall quests weren’t interesting (Unless you were a dk damn! )
and the expansion just kind of fell flat on its rare there!
From then on we had the tomb of Sargeras that was pretty thrilling (like most raids) But the ending had us going to Argus!
which was really just 3 half baked parts of a zone, with nothing to do but WQs, some pretty lame quests over-all.
and then we had the raid itself, which kind of story based just fell flat on it self, but made a new opportunity for a new interesting expansion BFA.
Which then turned out to be a combo of all things wrong with -Mists, Wod and Legion combined.
so, where do you guys think the story went wrong and lead us to this low tier story telling we’ve now?
There are some individual parts I don’t like. Certain zones where I feel the storytelling has been lackluster, and there’s been some missed opportunities here and there, as well as some weird transitions from plot to plot, and story/gameplay conflicts…
But overall I quite like the story. I think it’s great.
It started with a demon invasion that was an absolute joke, we spent the addon waltzing through the zones of a world that was supposed to be super deadly, and we got aliens, space ships, bigger armies than we ever had before, I think, and a load of retcons concerning demons, draenei, Blood Elves, and Outland itself, with some very strange character changing stuff with some legacy characters like Kael, Illidan, Zul’jin, Khadgar, etc, with minimal explanation… Oh, and changing the Blood Elves very nature within one single addon.
I didn’t care back then, but with hindsight I think that the biggest flaws that plague the story to this day were already present back then. Inconsistent lore, inconsistent characters, style over substance, gameplay over lore. It just became more obnoxious over time.
Really now?
then as someone who seems to be enjoying this story perhaps you can answer I few things I just can’t make sense of it?
When, how and where did Sylvanas suddenly get the urge to feel the hungering darkness?
at one point did Sylvanas turn into a power house that can go toe to toe with Saurfang in his own field of expertise?
What was actually the whole point of Saurfangs arc?
How did Anduin transform the whole Alliance into the same page, even though each nation in the past clearly had different interests?
at what point in time were the Alliance shown harvesting Azerite like Khadgar and Magni told us they would? Well them and the Horde.
How come Genn and Rogers actions are acceptable to just broom under the rug, but the Horde Fighting their Mortal enemies for what now thirty years?
is the greatest acts of evil ever to be seen? (Yes the burning was bad)
But even the Horde attacking the Night elves their enemies is shown as some big world evil in the story.
I used to think it all started in Vanilla, when the Forsaken and Night Elves lost their faction status to be absorbed into the rigid two faction system.
But thinking back, it probably already started when some writer thought inserting things like Broxigar and Rhonin into the War of the Ancients instead of keeping it timetravel free was a good idea.
It needlessly throws up continuity questions for the sake of… I dunno. Self inserts?
Honestly I never really minded the story but in BfA it’s just so god damn awful that it leaves every other expansion in the shadows. Nothing makes sense at this point anymore.
They burned Teldrassil, making everyone expect that the alliance / night elves would strike back and we’d get a somewhat exciting faction war. Then they just went into the opposite direction and swept everything under the rug.
Now we’ll likely see a Sylvanas redemption in 9.0 and all of her crimes will be forgotten. It’s also funny because after Legion, there would’ve been time for peace but instead Blizz made the horde start an unforgivable faction war. Now that it’s time for war and for the alliance to strike back, there’s suddenly peace, everything’s forgotten and there are greater threats.
Vanilla is where it started the problems;
With night elves and forsaken being forced into the 2factions.
The factions in General really.
And so much just being why we do it/why we kill them,cause loot i guess. But no explination or anything given really.
Like the sandfury,Early wow was not at all good for its character treatment or explinations for anything we fight realy for most part.
But aslo we had tstuff like he comics with varian being split in 2 for example.
some threads found interesting from the lore subreddit,should be able to find enough about where went wrong aswell.
Comment i found that summons up some issues quite well about wow/blizards story telling.
Like never actully showing/telling us anything about how the clans/empirers/kingdoms etc actully work(basicly goverment of any group)
Or just what happens to people of the kingdoms/races. Know overall to kingdom but how people dealt or deal with it,or how theyre run we never get anything of that.
or reasons behind stuff. lIke we still dont know why talanji and zul were captured in SW or how.
Or basicly blizz can create good/amazing settings but never really epands on them and builds them up to extend they should.
Here is that cool and interesting place and race.
Players: Cool could you expand them.
Blizz: expand on what?
they basicly forgot theyre a thing (for any new) right after was introduced.
Whole Alliance is a bit of an overstatement. Whole BFA it was Humans pancing around and making decisions and Dwarves, gnomes and Draenei (with Lightforged) followed like the good sheep they are.
There has not been any opinion of what do other races do really think of it, except Night elves and Gilneans.
As for Story itself I think it was coming from get go since the 2 factions had locked their races. For me personally Warcraft 3 was beauty because of how quickly the alliances changed and yet the dynamic of the story telling was much quicker and unhindered.
Also - Horde been introduced as bunch of misfits who united to fight their enemies has a short life, as they became stronger, as strong as Alliance (or so Blizzard wanted us to believe) then their soul searching quest begun, which lead to … this.
Imo its just WoW itself that does allow to tell the story in very narrow way and focus at one thing at a time. I always thought that it was stupid, when rest of the world froze when expansion focused on one particular story.
Oh and the new “Continuity exists to enhance a story, not to tie the hands of creators.” Moto ofc.
Nah, they were also set during BC. with a Blood Elf as one of the main characters, and so on. They just retconned quite a few Classic events and their timing…
I think it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the story of Warcraft went wrong. I would say that there’s not a single expansion without a flaw or a problem in its writing. At the same time we have expansions which add great lore and details to the world. “Mists of Pandaria” for example. I like the pandaren. I like how they were added to the game, and I absolutely love the Shado-Pan.
I think one major problem of Warcraft (a problem Cyri already talked about) is that the universe and the world isn’t fully utilized. There are so many different nations, races and even sub-races in the Warcraft universe but only a selected few have a somewhat developed culture or identity for example again the pandaren or the Kul Tirans. Stormwind and Arathi on the other hand are as bland as they can get. The gnomes have barely any lore at all.
The world of Warcraft is fascinating but it is in dire need of world building.
Comment i found from us.
one of Best comments ive seen about where story went wrong.
whole thread there has many good answers realy. worth a Read.
Also:
Aslo i sometimes confuse/blend together Grandblade from Us forum and Araphant here,not 100% sure why. But i do have posts i renember being from 1 but actully from other.
