WoW's lore could REALLY benefit from more complicated/deeper themes

Why not, anyways? Correct me if I’m wrong but it’s got one of the oldest age averages out of most games, so why even bother with storylines so directed towards little kids? The world itself is very rich and diverse, but it’s also extremely dull, generic, repetitive and lacks EMOTIONAL realism- every character is so 1 dimensional (either big baddy or an embodiment of pure goodness), it’s pretty stupid…( with very few exceptions, I guess). Like, is there really anything WORSE then an antagonist that thrives for pure destruction, chaos and death for no real, logical reason? Damn, the more I think about it the worse it gets, the storytelling in this game really is extremely medicore.

4 Likes

Current writers do not know how to write them.

They are mediocre at best, and downright awful at worst. And they often rely on the art/design team to give them a push hard enough to keep the audience entertained with their superfluous, shallow, and often bad, stories.

That’s why we have top notch cinematics and visuals, but awful writing.

12 Likes

Did you see the last faction conflict? The expansion sold on a premise of “faction pride”, with warbringer Jaina. That scene with Thrall… totally a war bringer and exactly what one expects from such marketing.

The whole story was a mess where the events happen when it’s convenient and leave people asking “what is even going on?”

So, yeah… I am not sure they could do it. Maybe some nice side quests. But temper your expectations from the wow story.


gl hf

3 Likes

Welcome to the Story Forums. If you still call it mediocre, we call you an optimist. :wink:

On the topic… well, it would be nice if they stopped the world-ending threats and concentrated on more personal stories where we could actually see different aspects of heroes, villains, and normal people alike. But as long as their focus are great cosmic conspiracies between impersonal forces trying to dominate the universe, that’s just not happening. At most you might get some sympathetic side-characters, but as far as the big names are concerned… you are either for Azeroth or against it, and everything else is tertiary.

4 Likes

Well, there are some short side stories, like Uuna’s one, WoD arakkoa story line, and others here and there, that are good or almost good. Reminds me of The Elder Scrolls games, some interesting side quests / short stories, but not sure I can tell the same about the main story lines.

It’s not like there is completely nothing to like in the WoW back story. Sometimes it’s fun to look at whispers, or for some double meaning here and there. But when it comes to the main story that is right in front of everyone…
:rage:


gl hf

Oh, I totally agree. Indeed, I think more often than not, they do a relatively good job at normal questing zones. Whenever you’re not running around with the characters who actually matter to the main plot, and whenever you’re exploring things that are just new, and only very loosely connected to existing canon, you can find some nice stories. And while you can also get really bad ones there, you usually don’t care too much, because it doesn’t ruin anything else.

That’s why I keep saying they should just drop the main plot and go back to the Vanilla playstyle of exploring the world from the adventurer hero’s perspective. If you run out of world, just add new stuff. Exploring Pandaria and its peoples was great. watching Garrosh become a clownish bad guy to introduce some greater conflict wasn’t.

6 Likes

At worst, perhaps Blizzard is already trying to tackle deeper and more complicated themes. For like the last 3 expansions on a row, they tried to “redefine what it means to be horde” or something. And while it could certainly make for an interesting narrative to explore what it means being a conglomeration of vastly different cultures and people with different moral outlooks and difficult pasts, all it ultimately comes down to is "violent dictatorship bad, be nice, honor yeah! (whatever “honor” means…) family yay!"
Thats… not exacly a deep and thoughtfull conclusion, is it? Its the simple minded 12 year olds answer to complex world politics and the function of society, which he doesnt even understand.

Or take Jaina in BFA. For a moment, it seemed like there was the possibility for a deeper narrative. Was striving for peace wrong? Was her father, a man who was seen as a hateful warmonger stuck in the past, ultimately right? That would be quite the unique and morally ambiguous narrative, wouldn’t it? The hero facing the reality that no, there can be no forgiveness. That the people you tried to make peace with all life long, cant be convinced. Coexistence is a lie. Peace isnt the answer. The warmonger was right.

Yet what did we got? Jaina didnt even follow up on her “beware of me” in any way, shape or form. She just fought the horde the regular way, no dirty tactics and drastic measures involved. And then, without any real explanation, her “im listing now, father” was gone in an instant and she was buddy-buddy with thrall and worked alongside the Horde in Nazjatar.

And Sylvanas? The whole narrative of “are drastic measures of war justified if they can archieve the ultimate goal of peace?” didnt even take place. It was just one entire expansion long "wtf does she even want? What´s her plan? Whats her goal? " And even now, with BFA done, we still dont really know.

Concluding: The narrative staff at Blizzard isnt able to pull it off. The simpler the story, the less likely they screw it up. And gods have mercy with our souls if BFA was their honest try at these things. Because if it was, it failed at every step of the way.

6 Likes

Be careful what you wish for. BfA was supposed to be a down-to-earth story without cosmic forces. Sure, the world was ripping itself apart, but the REAL focus was on the war between the factions, right? Haha…

Even before N’zoth and even without the Old Gods at all, wanting stories that delve more into our favorite lore characters mostly just means they’re going to be either twisted around the faction some more (because devs have outright said they think deviating from faction lines was a mistake) or at best some of them will get good development, like Jaina, while the main story continues to be about more faction conflict, because that’s apparently the only way to show conflict at all without the literal threat of Armageddon getting up in everyone’s faces.

I wished for cutting away the main plot, and instead to focus on small, independent plots with the player as an adventurer-protagonist. You’re not really describing how that would go wrong.

For Blizzard it never was, no. It was just marketed that way.

1 Like

Whats so bad about :

Dragonsoul LASOR
Dreanei SPACESHIP LAXORS
NAARU LASOR
AZURHEIT LASORZ

WoW main story since 4-5 expansions is about friendship and unity not being worth s***t, you should shoot LASERS to solve your problems.

1 Like

I’m with Wimbert. I too would like to see the removal of the main plot in favour of more subplots scattered across an interesting environment. Everyone’s journey to max level in Vanilla, TBC and WLK was unique. Would you quest in Borean Tundra or the Howling Fjord? Within these zones, which quests would you do and which would you skip? Would you leave for Dragonblight or Grizzly Hills the moment you had the chance to or would you continue exploring your current zone? I miss making these decisions.

In Legion and BFA we could choose which order we wanted to do the zones in, but we had to do the main plot in all of them. If you have to do everything in the end then your choices doesn’t really matter all that much, and everyone’s experience becomes rather samey.

… but that’s the way WoW is these days. When logging in on the pre-patch you’re greeted with a message board hyping up the new features. Among the new features Blizzard brags about the new streamlined narrative experience.

I’m wondering what happenned to Warcraft 3 and MOP’s lore writers.
Are they all gone ?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: We don’t need a full-blown faction war. It’s stupid, because neither side will be allowed a truly meaningful victory, and we all know it.

Just have constant low-tier scrabbling over whatever resource is around. It worked in BC, it worked in WotLK, it worked in WoD (OK, it didn’t. Ashran was a mess. But it COULD have worked).

I don’t need a faction war to group up with a team and World PvP gank Horde for hours. I just need some guy to offer me a purple piece of gear and some conquest points.

2 Likes

Completely agree, although I think Blizzard of modern times think and operate far too 2 dimensionally to come up with anything you or I would have in mind.

Basic, straight, obvious is how they seem to work, without any compromise. Even when they think they’re throwing in big twist, everyone saw it coming months prior.

One problem with that is that we actually have months to work it out. Chapters of the story only happen with each patch, and every patch is supposed to set up the next. And different from some novel that we might put away and forget until the next one comes out, most uf us are conftonted with the game and its story on a daily basis. So by the time the next patch rolls around, those who care have already gone through the reasonable possibilities for the story, including twists. So most twists can’t really be surprises… and those that are have to come totally out of left field, which usually just leads to ridiculous stories.

That’s why they really shouldn’t make enjoyment of the story dependant on liking the twists.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.