In his latest interview with GamesBeat, Ion Hazzikostas said this :
GamesBeat: We’ve seen the story and setting for Warcraft get bigger and more cosmic. Some people like that and some people don’t. But I guess I wonder, is it possible to go back? Or is the genie out of the bottle as far as the size and scope of what we’re fighting? Hazzikostas: I don’t think it is, no. That’s definitely feedback we hear as well. There are some who like that escalation. We’ve faced the Titans. What comes next? Let’s go through the whole cosmology. There are others who miss just being in an inn in Elwynn Forest, being an adventurer on a more humble scale. At this point the WoW protagonists are heroes. You’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest. But Azeroth is the heart of the WoW franchise, and it started with orcs and humans and dwarves and night elves and the rest. We want to get back to that too. There’s room to tell a big cosmic-scale story, and there’s also room for more traditional core fantasy. That’s not something we want to lose sight of. Even going all the way back, this isn’t necessarily something new. The first expansion for WoW was going to Outland. We had the draenei coming in effectively spaceships and landing on Azeroth. There was a lot of cosmic stuff there. But we want to cover the whole gamut. It’s something we think about when we’re planning expansions as well. We maybe alternate between something that’s more traditional and terrestrial, and then something that’s higher concept.
So we’re in for some sort of… alternation between an expansion that explores cosmic stuff and one that sets the focus back on life on Azeroth. In other words, if they hold on to that structure, next one should see us going back to Azeroth.
What do you guys think Azeroth will look like after Shadowlands ? Will there be a timeskip ? What changes will we see and what could be the main plots ?
My guesses would be :
The consequences of the 4th War, obviously, with stories about reconstructing towns and regaining territorial influences
When we recruited Mag’har Orcs from AU Draenor, we brought along a considerable number of alien races. With the Breakers (Gronn, Gronnling, Ogron, Ogres, Goren) the issue is settled as they’re in the Horde now, but Saberon and Botani, especially Botani, may become a serious problem
The status of Kal’dorei. Will they establish a new permanent home in Nordrassil ? What will be their status within the Alliance, considering what happened during BfA ? Will Darkshore get fully reclaimed ?
Maybe we’ll go back to Northrend ? Both because of the Scourge-related unstability that might follow the destruction of the Helm of Damnation, and because Danuser, when addressing the similarities between Maldraxi architecture and Nerubian architecture, hinted that we would soon learn more about the Nerubians’ origins
Unlikely in Nordrassil since it’s a neutral zone after all, also there aren’t many left of them to be needing a new city.
Darkshore could be fully reconquered, but the question is how long that will last with the Horde having full control of Ashenvale right at their doorstep.
Their status in the Alliance is pretty much that there are only a few refugees left of the race and they have to live on the streets of stormwind.
Really, what I’m reading is just “we’ll continue doing whatever we are doing, we aren’t commiting to anything else, be it the cosmic stuff we started, or the adventuring others wanted”. This was just typical Ion-speech.
I mean, I can speculate on a world remake, but I’m not buing this interview as a helpful source to fuel that speculation. So… ok, let’s try that:
I think a world remake is coming. I think it will be stupid. I don’t think they’ll do a time skip, because they’ll see no reason to have one, just like Cata came without one before. I think they will care as little about consequences of their plots as they did before, and will just have fun with their new questlines around a new topic. I think they’ll be much more focused on scaling and event tech that brings together max lvl players and leveling ones than they will be about world building. They’ll have some fan service, like a nelf capitol, sure, but the aftermath of their extinction event will have been Tyrande’s storyline, not anything happening after. I think they’ll continue focusing on their cast of annoying characters I just want to strangle, with an internal conflict within the Alliance around Turalyon still seeming like one of the more likely topics. And I think that I actually have about nothing to go on for speculation, except a bad opinion of the writers. Really, anything could happen… like in any grandiose story where continuity doesn’t matter much.
Why not but as I hardly imagine a Cataclysm-like expansion. Maybe new dungeons or even raids would suit the purpose of displaying this new plot.
Interesting points yes. The miror of my Quel’Thalas-oriented revamp could imply Azuremyst Isles, why not as a new settlement for the Kaldorei - after all it’s ancient kaldorei land, quite near from Teldrassil, and Draeneï would have fixed their issues.
I do buy the Nerubian hint, as such a would-be Azeroth raid.
Well, at least he acknowledges that Azeroth is still the heart of the game and that there are ( many! ) players who prefer smaller scale stories on Azeroth to the whole cosmology stuff and ever new, ever bigger threats, and that there has to be some kind of balance between the two. That, if nothing else, makes me a little hopeful for the future.
I too think a world revamp is long overdue. Will it be good? Hard to say with the current team, but better than being stuck in Cataclysm era forever.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that tbh. We know the worth of a WoW “genocide” in terms of demographics and influence… Look at the Sin’dorei, they’re doing pretty good now. Damn even the Quel’dorei, who are but a small minority within an already small minority, somehow managed to remain a relevant force that still partakes in important events. Kal’dorei will be just fine I believe
Love ur ideas. The Azuremyst Isles thing sounds pretty good. Isn’t there already an Alliance-aligned Furbolg tribe living there though ? The place would be kind of overcrowded
That’s one of the worst aspects of recent writing imo… They seem to believe that developing a champion equals developing the race it belongs to. That goes for Tyrande/Malfurion, for Baine too. They cling to their heavyweights and them suck dry. That is where SL loses me the most - I’m sick of characters, no matter how stupid that sounds LMAO
I get what you mean, but tbh Baine is in that wierd spot, where they for some reason undid Cairne’s paradime shift in Tauren society toward more proactive problemsolving and he has closer to the Aliance cast than he has to the Horde one, which is just bizzare.
I’d personally hope for organic developments, which stem from previous events and established motives. A line of logic we can follow from point a to point b, without excessive mental gymnastics. Characters should be consistent witht heir previous characterisation and should require character arcs to explain how their outlook/MO changed. You know fundamental principles of basic storytelling.
I suspect that a focus would be around Turalyon acting up, in foreshadowing of the grander Army of the Light’s arrival. So grounding this to Azeroth issues and actually making the goals something the players can get behind or at the very least have a basic understanding from the get go of the why, how, what.
They might do a time-skip and remake few zones/add some new ones. Maybe void vs light expansion, Nzoth somehow survived and reshaped one continent on azeroth.
I just want to comment on this prevailing perspective of MMO-storytelling from your quote:
You’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest.
I disagree with it. Canonically, it was Varian with the help of the Alliance that bested Onyxia – even though in game it was something that was done by the players. I can understand why some players felt “robbed” by Blizzard retroactively inserting their own hero into a story that the players had already experienced, but really what other choice is there?
Either the story has a canonical conclusion where Blizzard decides who the hero is, or;
Everyone who has killed Onyxia has canonically killed Onyxia.
The first option allows Blizzard more control over the story but may infringe on the player’s experience. A compromise here could be what they did in Icecrown Citadel where the players accompanied Tirion, and Tirion was kind of in the spotlight as “the” hero. The other option, however, is not feasible at all in my view. No, you can’t be the godlike überhero that unseated Illidan, Arthas, Deathwing etc. It makes no sense whatsoever for the story to have over a million überheroes. Is everyone’s individual experience canon? Does that make Azeroth some kind of multiverse where everyone is the überhero of their individual warcraft universe?
We already have to rely on suspension of disbelief anyways, unless killing Arthas hundreds, thousands of times in order to hijack his horse is also deemed canon. Azeroth is a world plagued with supernatural conflicts and we, all the players along with the named and nameless NPCs, take up arms against it.
They never figured out how to tell a story in their MMO, and I think the game would be better off if it did treat the player as some kind of nameless adventurer rather than the überhero. Perhaps a compromise between these two extremes would have yielded a more satisfying experience?
/rant … I have no idea what Azeroth will look like after SL, but the graphics team is pretty talented so I’m sure it will be pretty.
That boundary has been kind of demolished from WoD onward. Up to then you were a mercenary/decorated champion, however i don’t believe you can go back after naming the player the Commander of Dreanor expedition, Foremost member of their class, Bearer of Azeroth’s Heart, the Maw Walker, etc. Even in Wrath the story kind of revolved around Arthas getting the 25 strongest living had to offer, whom he would use, as the generals of his armies. Generally speaking to it was described as “Famous present character + assistance”.
You can’t really go from just short of faction leaders all the way to random nobody, at this point. That said with Blizz breaking down faction boundaries, presumably it’s possible the NPC boundaries could be redefined as well to break them up on a more ideological basis.
I agree over all, though I feel compelled to add a third option to this discussion, a “middle of the road” solution that I think will satisfy both camps to a certain extent.
I don’t think that many did or do object to the idea that both Akama (that canonnically and in-game lore wise plays a crucial role in enabling Illidan’s defeat) and that Maiev is there to capture Illidan Stormrage in the final encounter inside The Black Temple.
Perhaps the cannon could be adjusted slightly to include that a band of nameless and faceless “soldies” or “heroes” were there to bring down the big bad, similar to how all the soldiers in wars remain nameless and faceless while the king, commander or some other key person is the one being named in historical accounts of the events that took place.
In my opinion, and I’m sure in yours as well, the sole hero (or turning everyone’s player character into a superhero) narrative is in direct conflict with the game mechanics of a raid and leaves a sour taste in my mouth as the superhero player character cannot be described in cannon in a way in which it can encompass all player characters.
Being a soldier in a band of heroes (or something of similar character or function) not mentioned by name, is to me, a much, much, much more palpable solution not only for its congruency with game mechanics, but also because it’s reminiscent of how we tend to describe historical events or battles IRL already. I think it would fit hand-in-glove with our perception of how the narration of large scale events are constructed and conveyed (both in fiction and in reality).
You are correct in this, which is unfortunate. I don’t think the MMO industry ever really figured out how to do storytelling in a setting where many people share a world. Earlier MMORPGs seemed to be “RPGs within simulations” where there was more focus on creating systems for the players to use, rather than creating a “story” for them. A story in the sense that there has to be drama with rise and fall and conclusions to narrative arcs etc. It got worse with Star Wars: The Old Republic – I think they were the ones to pioneer the single player storytelling in an MMORPG (at least in the west, but I could be wrong in this) and this manner of storytelling was seemingly copied by every WoW-clone after (including WoW itself). SWTOR had some great stories but they chose a terrible genre.
But yeah, it’s too late for them to go back now. Perhaps we can see a “classic remastered” someday – where they bring the graphics and game mechanics up to a more modern standard but keep the narrative themes and sense of world building of the original product. Because the promise of vanilla WoW is probably the most appealing promise out of any iteration WoW has gone through.
Exactly this! I also feel that it infringes on the player’s own agency to have their destiny in the game be predetermined. In the original version of the game we were sold a different fantasy. The journey you embark on is yours. And everyone had their own journey.
I’m certain it is delicate to determine what the right place is for the protagonist in an MMORPG narrative. A first solution for example would be to propose tailored dialogues depending on the race and stuff (obviously a Vulpera or a Dark Iron Dwarf shouldn’t be treated as faction veterans or given credit for defeating Arthas…). At least for dialogues of the main storyline/campaign, ofc that couldn’t apply to every NPC in the game, but I understand that even that would imply a huge additional workload for devs and writers. Plus when we see what they did with the Sylvanas loyalist choice… Nathanos going all “Just do what they say so you don’t trigger suspicion” until the very absolute end of the plot… Let’s not ask too much of them
Something we can definitely blame them for though is that they ARE pushing for that “superhero” thing. Stuff such as “Oh somehow this 20k years old artifact solely reacts to our champion’s aura”. Ebyssian in BfA said something like “This war will be won by champions, not by armies” and I remember thinking that this was a telling example of their writing philosophy. To each their own I guess, I just don’t like that, at all
SWTOR i would say is the mest singleplayer mmo on the market, which makes no sense and that’s kind of the reason it wasn’t as big as it could have been lol. That said i think there are good lessons to learn from it, because it was pretty much the best out of the lot, at selling you the unique identity of your character and class. Obviously and Imperial Spy, Sith Lord and Jedi would face wildly different problems, which they would choose to solve, in very different manner. Bioware used to excell at giving players the illusion of choice, even if it may not have been as broadly impactful.
At this point i think it would be kind of futile to deny that the PCs are effectively, in that sort of small circle of elite operatives, who could effectively turn any war around singlehandedly and having them back you up would undeniably be a huge benefit to anyone with any end. They could present it, in a way where the players can choose the side they would wish to back. For the highest bidder or what have you.
You mean how the Loyalists were told to keep pretending and nothing of consequence happened despite the fact that on Blizzcon the leads said that there would be major ramifications, for making that choice?
If they really wanted to, I actually don’t think it would be too late. Communicate that you aren’t doing the “grand plot” thing anymore from now on, and just do classic-style quest content in the future. I have no idea if that would please more players than it would annoy, but I don’t think that the percentage of players that would be happy with it would be that small. In the last years the story has not just become irrelevant, but it actively detracts from the experience of the players that never cared for the story in the first place.
But even if the numers actually played out… I guess the idea would die in the marketing department at the latest. Grandiose drama looks just so nice in ads…
I recently got into GW2 a bit, and I have to say, I do really enjoy how they actually made my character a character, with traits that I had some agency in choosing… and spoken dialogue, even…