Today I’ve been reading the wowhead article of the upcoming gender change at the barber shop, which includes a statement from John Hight. It’s obviously just corporate speech, stating that they have only the player in mind. But there was 1 sentence in his statement, that really made me think:
I actually think this statement might have been true in the past, but it certainly isn’t now. We have characters being shipped left and right, while we are constantly being confronted with romantic hints between the now established main character cast.
I feel like this has all creeped into the game with the hiring of golden. Ever since she started that kalegos X Jaina thing, the story feels more and more like one of those cheap romance novels for middle aged women and now that she is actually working actively for Blizzard, I really think her influence radically changes the course of the franchise.
I’m not saying relationships are something new. They simply weren’t put in the focus of things and apart from Thrall (which is a whole other story…) were mostly already established relationships.
What do you think? Do you feel the same or is it just me? Do you guys think it’s a big deal?
I feel like the warcraft franchise slowly turns into a fanfiction of it’s original self, hence the title.
I get what you mean, though I doubt it’s all Golden’s doing.
And yes, it’s more blatant and in some cases totally cringey and unnecessary bloat.
And in some cases it adds so little, I find myself wondering why they even bothered, aside from some signalisation how this character is Obviously oriented this way, because he looks at and thinks of this person that way( Baine and Mayla, who are both bland and boring characters anyway).
I guess if you’d said you find WoW’s story turning more into some early night sitcom soapseries, I’d agree with that too.
A wise man once told me: “I think it’s funny how warcraft writing has switched hands from 40yo nerds to 40 yo catladies who write cringy love fanfiction”. And there is truth to that.
And I’m not totally sure how much the romance stuff annoys me. I mostly feel it’s a waste of time.
The best example for that would be Before the Storm, where they introduced a subplot about a gnome and a goblin rekindling their love, while playing with Azerite. It went absolutely nowhere. While we got BfA content with them, they didn’t serve any important purpose, and there were enough established characters to fill their role. And while I actually think Anduin should be pushed into a relationship (king is a heritable position, isn’t it? Get some heirs!), BtS felt a need to make it about romance without even introducing a love interest. I could accept Anduin finding love and marrying her (yes, her. You don’t get heirs with “him”), but just talking about how much he wants love instead of politics does seem to fall into exactly that fanfictiony category.
Then we had that short story about Lorte’s romance… and I was just bored by it. Which might be okay. If the short stories were thrown around with different genres to have something for everyone then of course the shipping fiction would have their place there. But considering how sparingly they actually use short stories, I can’t help but feel a bit cheated by the first story since the start of BfA being nothing more than that.
But looking back… how new is that really? Wasn’t the romance stuff always in the novels? Didn’t Knaak give us some of those Windrunner x Human pairings? Didn’t Golden already make much of the third war about Arthas x Jana and Kael’thas lusting for her? Wasn’t Thrall’s and Aggra’s “romance” just as unnecessarily highlighted, and even worse, didn’t they basically throw the character of Aggra away, after there was not much of a romance story to be had? Heck, even the Vol’jin novel which really had set up bigger problems to deal with, had a prominent romance story between Chen and that Sagewhisper girl.
So… It might not actually have gotten much more, I guess. But with Golden getting more prominent, it might just be that the more shallow ones were highlighted too much? I’m not sure, but I certainly feel it’s cringey more often than not, by now. Fairshaw was actually among the most well done WoW relationships of the last decade or so, that worked out without some interspecies stuff… And that’s not a good thing.
I don’t mind a romance story, regardless of its nature or form, for as long as it’s relevant to the overall plot.
Not to be confused with forcing it to be relevant.
In a setting that already lacks on so many fronts, putting so much effort in these sort of random pairings seldom ends up feeling as “world building” or character depth. It feels as a waste of space.
I say that you’re ignoring pretty much everything with Malfurion and Tyrande, Turalyon and Alleria, any female Windrunner and a Human male (with their “potential” rip Lorath. The Amani got at least one.) and more. There was always a lot of romance in WoW and it’s books.
Golden is horrible yes, but so was Knaack.
Blizzard in general wasn’t really good at this.
Shdows Rising however with Flyn and Shaw was something very different and really good. If it’s like that and not like this boring elven short story, I have no problems with it at all.
However, I am unsure how much of that is specifically tied with romance stories and or their subplots.
Or Christie Golden on her own.
If you take a good look at these, then at more recent releases, it will be undeniable that the original apperance, tone and feel, have been completely lost to the point these are, at least to me, unrecognisable settings.
I certainly would not be able to imagine many components of the current WoW in the same world as those two videos.
I cannot pinpoint exactly what, if there is even one glaring factor in particular, was the cause of this change, and I am unsure whether I could adequately explain exactly why the recent iterations of this franchise no longer cause that same impact and investment on me as those old versions still do.
All I know is that the excitement in experiencing this epic tale of heroes and tragedies, and magics and catastrophes is instead replaced by a sensation of ongoing frustration at worst, disinterest at best.
Somebody mentioned old trash happened way back before, like Knaak’s.
I’ll say Warcraft lore should just drop all ROMANCE and even comics Expanded Universe into the BIN.
I know this might be a radical and unpopular opinion.
But lore would truly be sanitized this way to begin with.
Then, WoW:ClassicPlus new rebooted franchise needed there also.
Fanfiction? Yes that’s the correct word.Christie Golden sure managed to damage this game’s lore with her personal political views and agenda, but the main story team and the one leads them are literally obsessed with Slyvanas, and he clearly self-insert as Nathanos at this point, so there is that too on top of Golden.It’s his fanfiction, and somehow blizzard is paying to someone for this lore mess no one is happy with.Their obsession with one character is so obvious, to the point we had to endure Slyvanas everywhere in story since couple last years.We just can’t get rid of her uninteresting neverending story.
We saw Slyvanas 3 times in a row in expensive CGI expansion trailers.Legion-BfA-Shadowlands, let that sink in.The current team and the self-insert that’s in charge of Story literally ruined the legacy of this game’s rather-serious and interesing lore from WCIII, to the mere fanfiction romance.
That’s because they have a CGI-model that’s ready to use which is cheaper for Blizzard. Which is why we have seen a lot of Thrall, Saurfang, Anduin and Zekhan recently in CGI cinematics.
I know I know Blizzard is just a small indie company still…I went hard on them unjustifiably.
On serious side, aren’t they are a multi-billionere company by now, seriously how expensive can it possibly be for a company that plays with billions and makes silly amount of money with micro-transactions on top of P2P model.I am not buying that ‘‘money reasons’’ excuse ever, they are just lazy in this case.Definitely not poor.
