I feel very disconnected from WoW this expansion. It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean by “disconnect”, but the simplest way to put it is that WoW does not feel like WoW right now. This is mostly down to the setting and narrative, and how it’s being handled by the writers.
The Shadowlands have long been established to exist in Warcraft, but we never actually knew much about it. It was where dead people went and where Death Knights got their power. That’s all. The Maw, Bastion, Maldraxxus, Revendreth and Blue Emerald Dream Aardenweald were completely made up and we saw none of their influence before this expansion. As a result I feel like I’m not even playing WoW when I’m in these zones, because they are completely alien to me. To boot, the Winter Queen (literally who lol) being Elune’s sister is just beyond stupid. Things like this destroy the mysticism still left in the lore. It’s like we’re being force-fed information with little foreshadowing or build-up. The story itself is stuck on a hamster wheel.
The only thing that connects the shadowlands to WoW is the handful of dead characters that make an appearance throughout the story, and the living ones that we’re dragging along on a leash. The thing is, whoever writes the dialogue right now must be 13 years old, because the things these characters say is always childish and completely uncharacteristic. They all just spout the same nonsense and one-liners while the player is infinitely stunned or helpless and forced to watch. After the monologues are over, you’re back in godmode and slaughtering everything in your path. Am I even a part of this story? Because it feels more like bad theatre than a video game.
I also cannot name a single character that I care about. Any of the main NPCs could die right now and I wouldn’t care, because the writers have completely discarded character development for story. Sylvanas is annoying and the Jailer is a walking villain trope with an entire vocabulary of adjectives to put before the word “mortal”. I seriously wrote better villains than this in school.
If it were up to me, we’d be in a N’zoth expansion right now because that’s what a character of his magnitude deserves. They did an amazing job building him up, and killed him in the most pathetic way possible.
I shouldn’t care this much about some stupid story but I do. I took it for granted in past expansions because it was one of the few things that carried the game. Now we can’t even rely on that. Scrap the writers and hire competent people, because it feels like you aren’t even trying anymore.
Anyway; I totally agree with you on the setting part.
The Shadowlands as a setting we go to, was a mistake.
The way they implemented it, was a mistake.
None of it feels much like WoW.
I don’t mind the story and such though. I don’t love it either, but I don’t mind it.
That’s nonsense. The people devising the narrative are writers by definition. If people who aren’t “writers” (in terms of job title) are influencing the story, they should stop and let dedicated writers take the reigns.
My issue isn’t just with the overarching plot (which might be a collaborative effort outside of the writing team), but with how it’s presented (which is always down to writers). Anyone who writes dialogue or story is a writer in my book.
Don’t pretend you know the workflow of the WoW team or who writes what. The writing is bad. Anyone who is contributing to it needs to stop or be replaced
Not really. If you read the post you would understand my argument and not make that dumb point about “writers being told what to write”. It’s not that I don’t like the answer, it’s just completely nonsensical
If we are ranting about lore lets talk about the stupid retcons.
So I recently did the part of the campaign that you help Uther deal with his memories, the part that frustrated me was that now Uther is writhen as this uncaring guy who only wanted to kill Arthas when in the book (Rise of The Lich King) the reason Uther lost is because he faltered as he saw Arthas and thought for a second he can be redeemed, this is something Cristie Golden wrote, did she forget her own work ? I mean cmon.
The other thing that pisses me off is how SL is just retconed in and is the progenitor of almost everything we have seen before, Elune- she is the sister of the Winter Queen, Dreadlords- well Sire Daddynatrius created them, The Lich King- the Primus made him , and lets not forget everything is the plan of the Jailer. For me this just devalues everything that came before, instead of expanding the lore it just shrunk it.
Yeah exactly. I really hate how all of the shadowlands lore is just inserted and vaguely explained away. It makes all of the storytelling that came before seem pointless
