Watch the cinematics.
You’ll notice a kind of… Vibe shift as the game progresses. The very first cinematic? You see it focus on YOU the players in the world EXCLUSIVELY. What are you doing? You’re fighting OTHER players. Notice, it has a very horde vs alliance feel to it. It is PVP centric.
The true WoW is horde vs alliance centric with the PLAYERS taking the centre stage. It is dark and gritty with dark comedic elements in a very bright stylized cartoonish artstyle.
It is setting the stage for YOU the players to fight. Your true enemy is the opposing faction. They’re not just your rival, they are your nemesis.
Your interactions with the enemy faction WERE the main story, basically. The PVE backdrop merely being the work you do to get to finally fight your true nemesis.
This cutscene is VERY reminiscent of the Warcraft 3 cinematics; which is pretty much the basis for the world we play in.
Then, as you progress through the cinematics, onto burning crusade, you see a focus on the players again, and the new races. Then it moves onto the new PVE baddie for the expansion. So here we’re seeing a kind of movement into a more balanced cinematic. It has a mix of PVP and PVE.
Wrath of Lich King… There is no focus on the players anymore, it is entirely dedicated to Arthas. This is a fully PVE centric cutscene. Given that Arthas is arguably the most iconic character of Warcraft, we can see why they’d want to dedicate it entirely to him, and honestly, probably the best cinematic of the bunch in terms of sheer spectacle. It maintains that gritty warcraft vibe but we’re seeing a focus shift from the players starting here.
Same again with Cataclysm. You have a touch of horde vs alliance in Pandaria, but you also have them cooperating in some jokey way. This is the first huge vibe shift. This cutscene is basically a cartoon. It softening. is Kung Fu Panda.
From here, were go full PVE pretty much. We’re just getting cinematics to do with pretty much just NPC story exclusively. It is not about your story anymore, you’re just a witness along for the ride. There are still HINTS of the players in some of the cutscenes, but it is mostly NPC story focused.
Legion as an expansion touches on making your character semi-central. By that i mean, the world reacts to WHO your character is outside of generic protagonist of main story. But again, it moves away from the Horde versus alliance player interaction, and is instead more on being unified against a bigger threat.
Battle for Azeroth’s cutscene is probably the most deceptive of the bunch, as it appears like they’re trying to get back in touch with the horde versus alliance focus, but then you play it and find that isn’t really the case. No, we’re just slowly leading into more friendly hand-holding.
Next expansions, we’re all friends now basically. There is no real grit anymore, it has become wholesome as opposed to dark. There are a lot of cartoon animals talking in cartoon voices. Villains talk more like cartoon villains and lack real intimidation.
Basically… What has happened is this : WoW used to be gritty and dark as a central vibe, with a kind of dark comedic element on the side. It was packaged in this cartoonish aesthetic which acted as a kind of contrast to the dark narratives being explored in the game. This contract, when combined, can lead to dark comedy at times.
People think WoW is some lighthearted cartoon game on the surface, because graphically, that is what it looks like, but really? It is dark, with dark comedy on the side as a garnish.
This is where the confusion is i feel with the direction of the game.
It seems to me like the people working on WoW don’t understand that WoW is meant to be a dark game, it has confused the contrast of it’s dark vibe and light artstyle, and instead taken the light artstyle AS the vibe of the game.
So now we have generic cartoon villain versus generic wholesome light-hearted good guys, winning through the power of friendship. This is almost… Juvenile in design. Like it is made for children. “War is bad guys! See! The power of love always wins!”.
WoW is not meant for children. There are genocides and all kinds happening in WoW… Torture, horror… It is just packaged in a cartoonish skin, which in turn makes it comedic in a dark fashion SOME of the time. Sometimes, when it wants to be just dark, it is dark.
Go back and watch those first cinematics, and you’ll see where the game has gotten lost. Go back and watch the Warcraft 3 cinematics.
It is a dark world DELIVERED in a light artstyle. That is where the comedy comes from.
The narrative focus is also completely misplaced in WoW. It should be stories forged via player interactions; that should be how WoW developed. Instead, it developed in some NPC PVE centric way, which is pretty antithetical to what an MMO should be, if we’re being honest. The world is now taking centre stage, and we’re just witnesses along for the ride. WE should be the focus. Nothing we do actually impacts the world outside of pure scripting; you end up feeling like a passenger to your own character.
WoW should really be leaning into Horde versus Alliance, not in a scripted narrative sense, but in a player interactive narrative sense… What do i mean there? I mean our choices in regards to the other players should be our story. The NPC storylines should merely be the backdrop; the setting for us to conflict with our nemesis.
Again, if we look back to vanilla… The PVE wasn’t what we feared. We just went there to get our gear, and we gain a sense of comradery getting our gear, sure… But the true fear in the open world was always running into an enemy player and suffering a humiliating defeat at their hands.
“Oh no! Not humiliation! Not negative emotion!!”
Some of this vibe loss can be attributed to the current political climate i feel. We live in this scared to offend world, which essentially amounts to an anti-conflict world. But see, this naive view of the world fails to see all the benefits that come from being willing to conflict and the importance of negative emotion in the complete picture.
It allows true expression. It allows people to compete. It allows there to be winners and losers.
Some people, i’d say, are AFRAID of PVP. They are afraid of competing against others directly because they fear what it means about them if they fail. Yes, it means you suck at the game, and yes, maybe that hurts, but you can improve if you stop being cowardly.
You can see how that has leaked into the narrative of the game.
It is all “let’s be friends and work together against the big baddie!”. No. Let us hate one another. Hatred is IMPORTANT. It is a human emotion; but in terms of the game? It is a motivator and counter balances the amount of joy we feel in our successes.
We are given a REASON to gear up and go after the horde/alliance… When we win, we feel GOOD emotion, good emotion to the degree at which we would otherwise feel negative had we failed.
The amount of suffering you allow the players to feel when faced with a challenge directly parallels the joy they can have when overcoming it. Popular games like Elden Ring understand this. As long as it is POSSIBLE for it to be overcome to a reasonable degree.
The more you let players torment one another? The more joy they’ll feel when overcoming their opponent. Suffering is IMPORTANT to feeling good. Instead, you have this mundane experience you walk through whilst watching youtube on your other monitor.
The whole vibe of the game feels like it is walking on eggshells, like they’re scared someone’s feelings will be hurt. It has infected the game’s narrative, and the game’s design; hell, it has even infected the moderation of the game.
People complaining about “toxicity” or something, because someone got mad at a videogame.
Yes, a byproduct of wanting something means we feel bad when we don’t get what we want… This can result in anger or sadness. It can lead to fear before we conclude whether we will get what we want. These are byproducts of a player wanting something. This is NORMAL behavior. HUMAN behavior.
Why are we pretending that hatred and anger are some reprehensible thing when they are literally hard-coded into our being? Why are we criticizing people for expressing their anger?
We’re adults, and this is a game that should be for adults. We should be able to express anger, we should be able to insult one another. Obviously if it becomes malicious to the point of impacting real life, then it is too far, but that is what laws are for. That would be criminal behavior, and we have stuff in place for that.
Just insulting someone is not a crime. We’re supposed to insult eachother, we’re supposed to conflict with eachother, and yes, we’re even supposed to hate one another. It is called being human. You need to embrace what you are and stop with this baby stuff… Seriously. It has all but ruined this game; like a parasite has corrupted the game from within.
It can still be put right, but you need to stop with the baby stuff.
the cinematics are bland emotional and trying to have a connection to the player base NWO stuff