WoW is a world without suspense or meaning

Good stories are driven by logic interacting with character choices.

A bad choice has a negative consequence, a good choice or clever move, results in something good. Powerful people are a threat to weaker people. In each setting, some universal rules exist that determine the limits of what people in a story can and can’t do.

Warcraft has thrown all that out the window. Characters will make choices dependant on what the plot demands of them and the consequences of those choices are equally based on what the plot requires.

Why didn’t Genn attack Sylvanas in the Undercity when he could? She murdered his son, destroyed his homeland, killed his people and then came after the place his people found refuge and burned that down. Yet when Anduin - who is his ally, NOT his king - says ‘Enough’, he stops? No. That’s immensely inconsistent with his character’s logical actions.

Why doesn’t Mechatorque or Jaina die after fighting the mighty champions of Azeroth? They have slain demigods and titans. Logic demands that she is drained of power and consequently slain, captured or wounded.

Why can’t Tyrande fight a random undead guy, even when she is personally empowered by Elune? Logic demands she one-shots him. He has no magic, yet she was shown able to slay dozens of warriors in an instant.

When logic and character consistency are no factors in storytelling, anything can and will happen. It’s impossible to plan, predict or work toward anything because whatever the plot demands will happen, even if everything else says it shouldn’t.

This robs a story of urgency, meaning and depth. WoW is a hollow game now. Your actions don’t matter, your choices and the choices of others don’t matter. When you meet somebody, their personality doesn’t matter. Everything is either retconned, glossed over or ignored to serve the plot instead.

When you stand before a mighty character, it has no meaning because the plot has already ordained that you will be fine and they will be defeated. ‘Nobody escapes from the Maw. Nobody.’ But the player character has ties to Azeroth so this somehow permits them bending the rules of the universe…because the plot demands they leave.

This is the perfect example of a setting where the plot dictates the character’s actions and choices as well as the rules of the world. Whereas it should be the other way around. This constrains the story to whatever the ‘writer’ cooks up, instead of having a satisfying flow of events that people can relate to and reflect on.

Enjoy it if you want, but acknowledge at least that you drudge in a world robbed of meaning and complexity. Whoever is jotting all this nonsense down is objectively unqualified for their job and ought be sacked.

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Worst part is that they are moving on from the BfA Story now and not going to address any of the stories they left open in BfA.

They just want us to forget about it.

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It seems Tyrande’s revenge (against Sylvanas rather than the Horde) is postponed in the expansion after Shadowlands…but technically it’s possible it won’t happen at all because Blizzard declared 8.1 was her revenge with the Darkshore warfront.

They also said they were going to give a more articulated story about Tyrande’s revenge in 8.3 but Night Elves players moaned a lot about it and wanted revenge immediately, so they had to cancel Tyrande in 8.3 and anticipate it in 8.1

Which is a shame in my opinion…if Night Elves players had just a little patience to wait for a bit more, it’s possible they would have got a better story about revenge for Teldrassil in 8.3…

Probably nothing to be honest. They said she got our revenge even though she achieved absolutely nothing.

Hmm never heard of that before, the revenge patch was a complete joke though.

Do you have any source for this? Because I’ve never heard of that and I doubt the night elves would’ve gotten anything.

WRONG! Good stories are driven by SYLVONUS interacting with SYLVANOS choices … SYLVUNAS!!

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Actually ion mentioned the genocide and that the alliance vs. horde story will continue. See:

There was also a mention that the night elves that died are now in the maw, a new zone in the shadowlands. But most night elf whiners won’t care because they are too comfortable being victims.

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Leave this place … LEEEAAAAAAVEE THIS PLAAAAAACEE

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That’s pleasantly surprising, still actions speak louder than words.

Demigods are overrated, and the only titan we killed was a fetus, and we only defeated him with the aid of the Pantheon.

I mean, following your logic do you know what’s even less believable than Jaina being ready to fight again after Dazar’alor? We being able to constantly fight every big enemy of Azeroth.

That’s also illogical but if we’re going to keep lists of everything illogical that’s happened, we’ll be here forever.

That is exactly the point of my post. Those are only examples of nonsense that happens. It’s everywhere.

Oh god will they never let this bovine excrement end?..

Well, going away from them would have taken balls, I guess…

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World of WarCraft is anything but a hollow game. I don’t get it, really, characters always made choices dependent on what the plot demands of them and consequences are what plot demands. There is nothing new in this, this was already set even in WarCraft 3 or any other WarCraft game for that matter.

Sylvanas did kill Genns son but his son ran in front of the “bullet”. So, you cannot blame her for trying to kill Genn and his stupid son got in the way.

I’m sorry but do you re-read what you’re writing and check if it makes sense? You say it’s not a hollow game, then say that the writing was always bad as if that’s some sort of argument to support it.

It wasn’t always like this by the way. True, it was never high level writing but it was consistent enough and grounded enough to feel realistic. The world was rich with crazy things but none so extreme that it felt outlandish, even for its own setting.

But since WoW launched, expansion by expansion since WotLK, things have become more extreme, disjointed from the reality that we knew prior. And by this point, devolved into a narratively bankrupt mess.

And I’m sorry but this, “Sylvanas did kill Genns son but his son ran in front of the “bullet”. So, you cannot blame her for trying to kill Genn and his stupid son got in the way.” is a logical fallacy devoid of reason so big I can’t even begin to explain why it makes no sense. I’ll try though.

It’s as if you had a beloved son and and I tried to murder you out of sheer spite. Your son saved you and so I killed him instead. If anything, for a father, that’s worse, losing your child! You should absolutely want to rip me a new one for that. It wasn’t an accident.

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I am sorry but did you read what I say? I am saying that is how it works and there is nothing BAD at it.

You think that the plot and writers desires for cool moment should overrule what characters would do and what the rules of the world dictate?

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I think that it is far from realistic or even cool that characters do not change or evolve as the story goes. That is what would be beyond stupid.

Good heavens… You must have never had the pleasure of experiencing a truly amazing story if you think this is what round characters and an evolving plot looks like.

You’re right, you know. Flat characters and a forever static world are not storytelling either but this is like pointing at a gruesome tower of rotten meat, sizzling in putrid gore and calling it a gourmet.

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Well, tastes my friend. They should not be discussed because some people have it bad and some don’t.

LoL … who wants to be in the fricking Maw mate? What comfort would that be for anyone’s race?

Some pppl like janko don’t mind plotholes, they just fill em up with anything they interpreted for themselves along the way