I keep watching WoW expansions pop up, and each and every one of them is completely disconnected from reality, from how real people actually talk and behave. This disconnect leads to zero immersion and all quests to never be read and just used as xp farm. I recently heard Asmongold say that in his opinion people don’t care for WoW story and aren’t interested in it. Yep, I agree.
I wish WoW’s story was as masterfully done as WoW’s environmental design, or as Blizzard cinematics in general. I think a step in the right direction would be to focus more on internal human and orc politics and stop making everything in the story so superficial and absurd. Focus on internal struggles and not on “saving the world” or other cosmic events. Stop adding new NPC races and focus on developing existing ones. Go deep, instead of going wide. Wouldn’t that be cool?
This snippet here exactly states what I feel is wrong with the lore of the game.
WoW’s lore has so many wonderful things but Blizzard expanding to new and higher concepts again and again has left so much with fantastic potential to be half-baked and gather dust. While players are curious to find new things, Blizzard must not forget they’re also curious about what already exists in the game. From awe-inspiring powerful figures like Azshara to much more down to earth subjects like the cultural differences between elves that are unrelated to the use of magic.
Dragonflight is a step in the right direction. While yes we have new big bads, it has given us a wealth of lore about the origins of the world we love; Azeroth. Many of the dragon npcs have a lot of personality that make them feel more like -people- and not just beings of immense power. More of this please.
I prefer a very fleshed out world that concentrates deeply on less subjects over a wide range of poorly explored concepts. Quality over quantity. Also having deep well established lore makes it more impactful when a new concept is introduced.
Btw, I watched the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series on Disney+ yesterday and it reminded me of WoW’s completely absurd and unrealistic stories. Hundreds of Stormtrooper get killed left and right, but the lightsaber-swinging Sith and Jedi never die. It reminded me of how in Warcraft we kill millions of trash mobs, but the big bad villains like Sylvanas or the Jailor are basically unkillable or they manage to escape by teleporting away or something ridiculous like that.
The only good Star Wars content since the original trilogy is the Andor series. It’s good because it’s realistic and because it goes into a lot of detail, e.g. how the Imperium operates and behaves, and how the Rebellion started getting formed.
Well, what would push the storyline to mature a little? I would enjoy that as much as the rest of you, but does the wider fanbase demand that? Is there a market for it?
We don’t watch Fantasy (and sc-fi, it is its name science-fiction, tho’ Star Wars is techically fantasy with the space wizards and an all) for realism you know
There’s something called suspension of disbelief. Any fantasy world needs to be based on rules, it’s own rules where there’s dragons and magic but there are still rules.
When the author breaks his own rules your suspension of disbelief staggers. Where the fk did a million star destroyers show up from in the last part of the SW trilogy? I’ll tell you, from impotent writing.
Same goes for WoW, nobody expects realism we just expect it to adhere to its own rules which it broke fantastically in SL.
I find the DF story to be a means to an end. We need dragons and dungeons and raids ergo here’s a wishwash of storytelling that can explain why dragons need humans and orcs to take care of their issues.
Take wotlk, the raiding was story driven, in DF (and other expansions) it’s the other way around. The game experience was molded into a story. But that happens, I don’t even blame blizzards writing team.
It’s incredibly hard to imagine and reimagine a world that has already given everything it could.
You want small scope stories? That died the day we shoved our swords through the Lich Kings heart
You mean, when we got one shoted, killed and only a literal Deus Ex Machina saved our souls and empowered Tirion Fordring like Rita Repulsa her current monster of the week?
Pinacle of writing, yeah
This is what happens when you kill off all characters that people care for and start creating new ones that none care for wich is why i havent bothered with story or reading quest since maybe after legion and the dracthyr are the worst they all look same and i dont care for some temporary dragon character
Creating new characters is better than bringing back deceased characters imo. Gul’dan has deceased years ago but they brought him back in Legion and we fought against him. It was around the Warcraft movie came out, so I guess they wanted to use that character in game too. But it’s not just about him, we fought against Ragnaros, Mannaroth, Kil’jaeden, Archimonde twice. And with the shadowlands lore, they made the death an unimportant part of the universe because apparently you can just reborn again, like Ysera did.
Most of the people didn’t like how they introduced Jailer but I think he was a decent villain and was a nice touch we never saw him before. So I guess introducing new villains and heroes better than using old ones again and again.
Thrall has been leading the Horde from the beginning and they portray him like the superhero. He comes and saves the entire world whenever needed. I think they made better decisions with Garrosh. He was the hero, turned into a villain and died on his own terms. They could do the same with Sylvanas but instead decided to turn her into a soft hearted person with regrets from the past.
For the dragonflight, I think it’s better if we fight against a new villain instead of Deathwing v2.0
They could create new characters from the ranks of existing factions as they distinguish themselves during new battles. This way people would feel some connection to them.
As for the general theme and villains, as people pointed out “destroying the world” is always a dumb threat in both movies and games. It doesn’t allow for plot twists or bittersweet endings because “gosh I wonder whether the hero will reach the big red cancel button or will the world be destroyed?”
They are making new characters from existing factions. Demons, dragons, undeads, elementals and even faction leaders turning into villains are the ones we keep fighting against since the beginning. It’s not like they surprisingly introduced artificial intelligence trying for world domination.
Nobody except for Deathwing tried to ‘destroy the world’ actually. They tried to control and rule the world, even the Jailer.
I like it just fine, though redoing old content I do appreciate the story a little more in that there are underlying themes throughout the levelling zones of “hurdur need food” x10 that lead you to the big bad. WotLK is the best of this, seeing the LK throughout and annoying him by foiling his plans. Yet, my favourite expansions are Legion and Cataclysm and the stories within because the levelling QoL was so much better.
100% agree. And getting chased around by him in halls of reflection felt quite epic. Especially since back in the day dungeons weren’t so watered down so he had a real chance of catching you.
