I should’ve expressed myself better there, Undermine and the whole isle of Kezan and any other surrounding stuff. Just one city is indeed too narrow, but perhaps the rest aswell could’ve worked!
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Almost everything they did with Bwonsamdi, Modern Troll depictions, Endless Troll as enemies stories and Thanos aka Zovaal
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I agree, the ethereals - bringing forth an entire world - kinda comes across as a bit random. I guess the rootland patch was deemed not worth it?
I agree with this so much - Even if K’aresh is but a single patch, I feel like it’s just too soon? Like make it either the start of Midnight or the first patch or the like.
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I wasn’t a huge fan of Dragonflight’s writing. At all. And I’m not so much of a fan of TWW from what I have experienced.
Dragonflight had way too many moments and story beats that were just the same storybeat done over. and over. and over. and over again.
In very broad strokes.
We have young, plucky questgiver that has a problem they need to tackle.
They fail initially.
An older, deep voiced mentor type gives them the “You just need to realize that you have the strength within you!” talk to the questgiver.
We solve the problem.
I wouldn’t complain about this particular style of writing. If it wasn’t every single major storyline in Dragonflight’s level up campaign. All of them did this to some degree. Kalcgos, Chromie, Ysera’s kid (whateverthefuq she’s named). And I think there’s a difference between doing say a “Theme” of the older generation passing the torch, which they also did… A LOT in the same way. Basically used the same script and just changed the names of the characters.
Greymane. The Night Elves. etc
I honestly think the worst thing that ever happened to WoW was that they discovered they could do really cool in game cutscenes. Because now it’s just so soapy all the time.
In WOD they were done to give each zones last questline an amazing and thrilling finale. Now they are just made to pontificate upon the emotional distress the principal characters are feeling.
And in an MMO about essentially fighting a War(craft) and adventuring through distant lands (And mercilessly slaughtering everything within sight) - it is less galvanizing to watch two lizards cry about their feelings than watch a ship blow tf up while an half metal Orc curses our names!
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I could go on about the Trolls and how the Trolls we keep meeting are nothing like the ones I personally fell for.
Always torn on that though because… yeah the Darkspear -should- have grown and changed. (though I’m not sure why their ‘old abandoned but now returned’ loa are so babyish, given the intro for the darkspear was ‘dark, savage and hateful jungle trolls’ but whatever).
However… what in the heck was Zuldazar? Pathetic.
Pinacle of Troll culture my blue butt.
But ultimately for me I’d say Legion was the bit where blizzard ‘most dropped the ball’ as the OP put it. Not because it was inherently bad. It wasn’t, legion is a decent expansion with a decent story as far as an MMO goes.
The trouble is, to me, they A) did some weird ‘we’ve been at war for 25000 years army of the light nonsese’ which just… I can’t with. I can’t rationalise that at all, it’s nonsense. I don’t subscribe to it, at all. Don’t tell me the legion has been conquering this long and still has pockets of resistance on Argus, it’s absurd. Or the paladins living thousands of years due to… time is wobbly? I dunno. I don’t care. It’s Nonsense.
But mostly it’s B) they had no follow up. They ended the ‘big bad’ of the setting in every functional sense but hadn’t really set up anything in its place. The void? Ok. If I say THE LEGION to a long term WoW player, they know what that means. it’s a terrifying concept. It’s the end of everything. Or was.
THE VOID? Ok a few whispers and a tentical fetish, cool. Moving on.
They tried to go with the ‘jailer’ but… again it all comes down to no set up, no plan and no… care I suppose?
SO yeah whilst legion is itself a good expansion, in ending that ‘chapter’ as they like to call things, it revealed a total lack of set on their part. They had nothing to the fill the void left by the legion. So now the story has nowhere to go that isn’t seemingly just random and “oh the titans did” which is… not enjoyable.
And I like tww. But I can’t tell anyone the plot. We landed, met dwarves, followed an angry elf and met more humans. That’s it. Oh and a goblin sideshow for some reason. It’s nonsensical.
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Everything with Nathanos. In the short story Dark Mirror, Nathanos shows a bit of personality by sassing Sylvanas ( imagine ) and then at the end his cousin is sacrificed to give him a newer, stronger body and the story ends with Nathanos feeling guilt/shame.
Then in the BFA cinematic in which SYlvanas burns the tree Nathanos looks at her in shock and Sylvanas has to order him AGAIN to burn it. I definitely looked too deep into it but I was hoping they were setting him up to go against her and choose the Horde/Forsaken over her. It would’ve been a really cool story about how just because someone you loved saved you from perdition doesn’t mean you owe them your soul.
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All of shadowlands. Aside from the other side basically.
Draenor is free is definitely one of the moments as well.
How king Rastakhan was handled. Hyped for years as this badass only to be turned into a clown that dies in 2 patches to prop up Talanji (who I rly like)… only for them to abandon her as a character immediately after BFA.
As others said earlier, legion and BFA killing off so many enemies in such a short time or neutralizing them.
All of DF’s main storyline.
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While SL is the obvious answer, I am also going to say BFA as well. Something about the setting really brought out some bad in people’s attitudes, which in turn, bled into the RP.
You had those who were religiously pro-peace where their actions just got weird and didn’t make any sense for the setting, trying to push peace where it just wasn’t possible.
And you had the religiously pro-war who seemingly made everything as brutal and sadist in their ‘war RP’ as they could.
And both sides really made drama that just brought out the worse of both for RP.
Plus, the Horde’s actions during the war were just reprehensible and really made it hard to go “Go team Red”, while the Alliance either got away with certain actions or portrayed as the ‘do no wrong’ crowd, effectively making them rather passive and dull, all the while Blizzard tried to push the ‘morally grey’ justification.
All the while, coming off Legion where both Alliance and Horde apparently suffered so heavily, they could only be on the defensive leaving all the class orders to take charge, only for the ability to wage a war on several continents, made it hard to sell the idea that war was a good idea at all.
Its thanks to BFA that I can’t really support any idea of a faction conflict any time soon. People think that bringing it back will bring ‘good’ story.
Mate, we are dealing with this dull slop right now. That writing will seep into your faction conflict too unless changes are made to the writing team.
*Edit
Bonus mention, Dragonflight’s ‘Avengers’ moment where everyone just appears out of portals and glares at the BBEG of the expansion was just cringy.
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Shadowlands 3D Printer. The First Ones, the Eternal Ones and all that jazz.
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While Shadowlands and Co are already a given.
I want to bring up not one instance of writing but all the little moments where they didn’t write something.
be it garroshs 180 heel turn to old god champion, AU Gul’dan learning who garrosh was or the many times the scarlet somehow returns.
In some instances you can make assumptions like, garrosh was probably influenced by the sha the moment he landed on the shores of pandaria, but it isn’t really explored or written about, so it becomes little more than a fan theory.
A lot of their bad writing can be contributed to cut-content and later arcs and beats not changed to reflect the changes or lack thereof.
Its how we got the infamous Draenor is free!" moment.
And while on the topic, whenever they hide actual character development in a book, sure it might not be badly written but its bad overall writing practice to obscure or neglect critical information from the main media like that.
TL:DR
Its not so much the bad writing its what they don’t write thats really bugging me.
With Algalon we got a cool Dr Manhattan archetype; of someone completely detached from the world that however could be made to see the value of life as we did. But his point of view crossed the eons, in many ways his concern - to prevent the rise of the Old Gods and the total corruption of the planet - made sense.
I think they will eventually go for a “titans are the bad guys” route, which I don’t know if I like, but I find their current take a bit hollow?
Right now looking at some materials, titans feel like geeky space fash. And like, duh, are we really in a time and age which turns gods into basically evil Sheldon Coopers?
“Life is chaos, order this, order that, take away free will because it’s not orderly, order order.”
“Also Azeroth needs to be violated and turned into a titan, likely against her will.”
Is this truly compelling writing for players? I feel like titans appear very human when written like this.
This reminded me of something altogether seperate.
I realise something modern WoW somewhat misses when it comes to tone and style.
One thing with early WoW, and/or Warcraft 3 is the world itself often feels like a character in that tells much of its story without any dialogue at all. People might remember: “This whole city must be purged.” or “I have freed myself”. But crucially, Warcraft 3 had very sparse dialogue. Characters showed who they were and how they felt through what they, and crucially the player, did. Its storytelling was largely visual and audio than text or deep background.
Less Lord of the Rings, more Spaghetti Western.
The tone is different. Look at how detailed the soundscapes are for these menu screens. The natural elements of the world are brought to the foreground. Crackling flame, distant thunder, the song of birds. The colours are dark and light, with redolent yet muddy colours and that convey a kind of if not sensual, then highly rugged physicality in the characters. It’s the wild landscape of the American southwest turned into a fantasy world. There’s an unspoken strain of Americana to its fantasy that’s absent even from other Tolkien-derived settings such as Forgotten Realms.
The buildings, when they appear, are as exagerrated and chunky in the style of an 80’s muscle car, partly as a way of getting around early 2000s polygon limitations, but also as a storytelling device. You infer almost everything from what you’re looking at because purpose always informs form.
The world it presented was a beautiful but dangerous one, red in tooth and claw, ravaged by harsh elements, where everyone, including the women, are big, muscular, swaggering and heavily armed. Notice the exagerration of a swordtip, the glow of a bowstring or prepared spell.
There’s purpose and intention to every shape. It’s an art-style derived from the Bronze Age of comic books. Vibrant colours, exagerration, it’s slightly grotesque because it wants to make any 10-year-old reading it make it feel like they’re reading something slightly provocative or dangerous.
There is also, dare I say, two other aesthetic currents that are purely speculatory and hypothetical on my part. The art style of Warhammer is obviously a huge influence, but there are others that inform the tone.
The first is the Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings, that both Samwise Didier and Chris Metzen doubtlessly saw as kids -
The second is Iron Maiden’s album covers. It’s dark, but in a slightly tongue in cheek way. I don’t think there’s a coincidence Evil Dead keeps being referenced in Warcraft 3’s NPC dialogue.
The fourth (and this is purely me) is Yoshinori Kitase’s art style for Final Fantasy 7, which released and was extremely popular around the time of Warcraft 3’s development. Note how form is always inspired by function.
What’s missing (though certainly I think, returning) from modern WoW’s storyline is that slight touch of- psychedelia, a harsh colourful, hardscrabble physical world where everything is exagerrated, where the sky threatens to swallow you. Combined with a natural world that feels like it’s alive and always trying to kill you. The animals and monsters are as sweat-laced and dangerous looking as the people. It should feel heavy metal. It should feel like something your 80’s Republican parent disapproves of you playing.
I think the problem is, both Blizzard itself and its player base have started looking for a style of story that they’ve never really been that good at as a studio.
The narrative in earlier Warcraft and WoW was all context for the gameplay, and while there was lore, it was mostly impressionistic brushstrokes that allowed the audience to project their own stories on to the visually (and crucially, audiably) conveyed world.
If you want proof of what they were going for, try this trailer narrated by Optimus Prime -
Warcraft, at its core, has always been a cheesy comic book that pretends to be a serious piece of fantasy. The emphasis is on pathos. It relies on conjuring emotions and ideals already present in the audience. The depth is implicit, rather than explicit.
Think of the music of The Barrens. Compared with the bombast of Cataclysm, the original was sparse, slightly melancholy.
It’s this subtlety, and somberness, I feel like WoW’s lost over time. It wears its emotions on the inside, never entirely sure of them. It’s expressed through weight, through action.
The central character isn’t Thrall, Arthas, or Anduin, it’s the world, and those struggling to live their lives within it.
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I could dedicate an entire book to some of the topics being discussed here.
I think a lot of people are 100% blinded by nostalgia goggles in many senses, however. I don’t like calling ALL of what Blizzard does these days outright bad but it’s definitely not to my tastes, and in many instances is just genuinely bad… but to be honest I don’t think the Warcraft writing has ever been that grand. I can think of dumb decisions going all the way back: why was the Blood Elf “story” arguably wrapped up so neatly in TBC and left to rot like a time capsule for so long?
A franchise going on for this long being told through an MMORPG primarily (which I will not be convinced despite FF14 fans: it is not a good medium for “proper” storytelling) is bound to change in story and aesthetic. You can argue that WoW’s graphics have gotten better over time and they have, but they’ve changed stylistically too. Some weirdos will blame that on certain things I’d rather not get into it, or call it “disneyfication” (whatever that means) but frankly it’s just incredibly different and that’s all that needs to be said.
I’m rambling…
If you want something short and simple: I think the Gilneas questline recently is an absolute travesty and has genuinely turned my already vague disinterest in Warcraft as a franchise these days into outright dislike.
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I don’t think anyone (or, at least, I kinda hope not) is saying that WC1-WC3/vanilla was ‘Perfect’ - I’d cite Lintian’s Warcraft breakdown thread for some very good picking-apart of the various narrative issues and holes.
It’s just even where the stuff was a bit threadbare, it was at least hung on a suitably solid framework that help up through Good and Bad.
Nowadays the framework is rickety, warps at the drop of a hat, and the main bulk of writing is very much less-good, with some good bits and gems scattered less often.
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I think what you’ve said applies to WoW as a whole tbh.
I mostly play Classic these days (though I hate Classic Andys who talk about retail nonstop, it really lives in their head rent free) and whilst I still love the gameplay of retail, it really does feel like it’s a comically tall tower of building blocks you’d make as a kid.
There’s so much stuff that feels like it only exists now to satisfy collectors who would scream FOMO if it was removed (even though we could just put it on vendors), systems that feel like they only exist still to confuse new players.
It’s hard to keep a universe coherent over so many years, especially when (tbh rightfully so) gameplay should always be concern number one.
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Aethas Sunreaver mopily looking for a gift to apologise to Jaina. Every time he walks around Orgrimmar with that remorseful sowwy dialogue at the trading post, I cringe. They massacred my boy.
Also the allude they wrote in his backstory about being SAed by a harpy and banshee but was saved by a random apprentice? Gross and unnecessary.
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Mentioning Jaina made me remember. I was trying to supress this memory…
Thalyssra saying “We cannot fight her. Run!” Is for me what “Draenor is free!” Is for most of you…
I get that they were in the middle of Stormwind and fending of Jaina along with thousands of guards and other magic users doesnt seem like a good idea. But Thalyssra running away from Jaina without putting up a fight? Not even a throwaway line about fight in the middle of enemy territory is too risky or something? We dont have to get into powerscaling, sure Jaina may have been able to defeat Thalyssra. And I would be mad if she did, dont get me wrong. Because my mage bias is trumped only by my nightborne mage bias. But this is wow, we should have got op mage showdown. It was time of teleporting magic ships. Why can only the alliance mage get unlimited power moment? And who else to at least try to stand up against “the human potential” than the first arcanist of Suramar?
I liked the rest of the questline and especially Zul setting the city on fire. But they should have given us an epic fight or at least frame it as smart move to retreat rather than being sent running like when you overpull defias pillagers in vanilla…
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Sorta thing where if they’d reworded it even just slightly to something like “We don’t have time to fight her now! Press on!” would’ve solved it without having to adjust anything else about the scenario.
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Taking one of the McGuffin plot devices [the Primus Sigil] straight into the Jailer’s own home. Sylvanas’s whole arc after becoming Warchief.
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