WoW's lore has become too soft and weak

Lore Story
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I might get banned for sharing my unsalted opinion here but after playing through Shadowlands I miss the old days when Warcraft was about war. It was crude, harsh, serious and dark. And not some anime-funland nightmare full of mellow and overly emotional and dramatic… losers…sorry to say.

I think many people here know that Warcraft was inspired in large by the Warhammer universe. And some here might know that universe is basically grimdark and metal as all hell. Warcraft was similar, the world was the protagonist and it had no time for weaklings. The drums of war thundered over the sounds of bickering arguments.

Yes, Warcraft was a ‘manly’ game, I’m saying it. Written by dudes in the 90’s for dudes in the 90’s. It was about big green guys coming to make war upon the nations of the world. Demons, and magic, undeath and corruption. Each character had to have a strong spine or they wouldn’t make it. The setting had some jests and light-hearted moments - which set it apart from Warhammer which is only war - but it always stayed true to that hardcore theme. That’s why the Scourge was so popular, it embraced this.

Every character in old Warcraft had a strong resolve - not cringy like they are now, but firm. Their dialogue echoed this. No ‘Woe is me!’ and much more ‘Turn this town into a graveyard!’ Even the softest of characters, Jaina, was still firm and resolved to find out how to win the wars and think harder than a bonehead like Arthas. And she wasn’t going to ask questions when some guy with a giant club came to brain her. Nope, she was going to blast his head off, then ask questions later. No time for melodrama.

With the introduction of so many new characters and re-using of so many older ones, I can’t help but notice how many of them are unlike the kind of person they were or who’d have existed on Azeroth during the Warcraft games. They complain about emotions, make overly dramatic and empty speeches, moan and whinge like I’m doing right now, every step of the way or crank out jokes like it’s a Marvel movie. These cringelords have become the protagonists and not the world. And their stories are more akin to some sort of Pony Adventure Quest story than the gritty warcraft of old. They’re loathsome and weak and don’t deserve the spotlight.

Now all the ‘grim’ moments are a glamour, they get resolved fast and are afraid to delve deep into the dirt of things. Tormented souls wail ‘Doooooom’ and ‘Paaain’ as they die and that’s it. Oh no, how horrible… But we don’t get to see the memories being flayed from them one by one, the screams of agony as their identities are torn apart, no wailing and crying as they stop recognising a world they once knew. No madness and screaming as they descend into insanity, full of fear of everything and everyone, and devolve into just base spirits that lash out at everything. We don’t get that happening to a named character, who we end up killing in the end. No happy ending. This is Warcaft.

Nope, instead people keep coming back, like Ysera, who is sooooo tormented by things that happened millennia ago and that she’s had millennia to digest and cope with. Woman, you used to be The Dreamer, a badass. Not some tormented loser. Everything now gets a bowtie, a neat ending. And it’s lame. I want half the characters I quest with to die horribly under some massive demon’s axe. Because that’s what it used to be. “I’m so burdened by my past life’s misdeeds. I exploited the innocent. Oh no.” Nothing a giant hammer to the skull can’t fix, that’s how we did things in the olden days. Was it the right way? No. But war makes monsters of us all.

It’s been a steady decline from a grim, rough setting in which the world was the protagonist with many cool characters therein, to a stale, empty stage for weaklings and pathetic sods to whinge on. I know it won’t change. I know my own complaining here isn’t much better but I don’t care.

It’s not an attack on anyone. In another MMO or setting, whatever the story is now would be just fine. And if you enjoy it, good on you. I just want some real friggin’ war in my warcraft and less of a rubbish story that serves as discount therapy for people with self-esteem issues.

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pretty sure their manhood is part of the reason they got sued just saying they should have keeped it in their pants

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Having real life nonsense at the company dictate what the story of Warcraft is going forward is demented.

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Hard to separate real life from the story when the authors are human beings and the company is…well a company that wants to make money.

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There was certainly a shift in tone. And I would have preferred if there wasn’t.

It has been more than 20 years, so I’m not exactly surprised. Culture has shifted, and while I find many of those shifts regretful as well, they are still there. And the devs are trying to find something that works for most people today, not 20 years ago. That that would lead to a softer and more personally dramatic world than back then isn’t exactly surprising to me. And that they failed a lot at trying to set the tone doesn’t make changing the tone a bad idea by itself.

At this point I mostly want them to do what they are doing well for a change, instead of making a mess of it. I’ll prefer a good disney-esque adventure story, over another botched world war story. They are allowed to change their target audience over time, especially if young players aren’t coming in. And they are the ones that have to decide which kinds of players to ditch in the process. But that only works, if the product is actually any good.

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Idk if this is controversial or not but Imo we should get a more vanilla like expansion or two, where there is no overarching narrative. Something like a themepark of stories with each zone being it’s own thing. That way we Blizzard could potentially set up whole new cast of character, see which of them are popular and have the time to develop them for future use, because with the recent scraping of legacy characters, character assassinations and overall new characters being unpopular we sure need some fresh likable faces.

Now the rumor is that Blizzard are actually going in the different direction of focusing on an overarching story over multiple expansions (not to be confused with and an overarching character story like the one we had with Sylvanas). I am not saying that this is a bad move but personally I would prefer something low stakes and a breath of fresh air (also I still don’t trust Denuser with overarching stories). Sometimes people get tired of Game of Thrones and just want to watch Looney tunes.

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Well, not exactly what you said, and not exactly rumor, but this here seems to be what the Devs told Preach. Taken from WoWhead’s summary:

That they won’t try to force the storylines to start and end within one expansion is a good thing. That they aren’t just doing one at a time as well. This doesn’t talk about the stakes involved, and more about the pacing, though.

Apart from that, I really hate the “main story” as the story of the racial leader NPCS. They could cut that out entirely, and just have us do self-contained storylines with characters that aren’t important outside of it, and where we the player character are actually a protagonist, and not an awkward bystander with superpowers, and I’d be fine with it. Anduin, Baine and co should spend more time sitting on their cushy thrones and commanding us, and less time sobbing on the battlefield.

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I feel like they were already, sort of, doing that when I think of the N’Zoth arc at the end of BFA. They can very much put more than one main storyline in each expansion, but if they want to keep focusing on different NPCs in each of them… I don’t think it’s going to end well. They suck at being consistent with character development in general and concluding plot threads convincingly, not tryna be mean but I don’t think they have the talent necessary to make that idea work.

Basically FFXIV, but that’s what gives it a solo rpg feel and I don’t think that the WoW fanbase fancies that. I remember how many people disliked the whole ‘child of Azeroth’ finale against N’Zoth. I still like the storytelling of FFXIV better because it makes sense. In WoW, the player is what Newt Scamander is in the Fantastic Beasts 2 and 3: a bystander in a movie that’s supposed to be about them.

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I was thinking more of WoW before cata, where the main content was getting to know the world. FF is mostly about your relationships with your scion team, isn’t it?

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Yes WoW could definitely benefit from that and I am not arguing that. What I am trying to say is that imo they should try and do short form stories first and establish a new cast of characters seeing as there are very few left that people actually like.

And on a side note it could potentially be very detrimental if the story that they are planning for multiple expansions ends up a dud. Again take the Sylvanas Legion-SL arc, it caused divide in the Horde fandom right from the start by making her warchief and then it quickly degraded even more. Now imagine if we are stuck for 2-3 expansion with lets something like the Sl story, where pretty much all the magic gets explained and we find out that we are all robots and nothing matters. This is where my “low stakes” comment comes in, building up another Lich King or a Deathwing story where we find a new big bad that wants to end/take over the world and we attempt to foil their plans and deal with their henchmen over the course of several expansions is one thing and I can get behind that, but if it’s another reality hoping universe ending adventure that results in an existential crisis for all those involved, I’m out. And I don’t know how literal we should be taking this quote, but if they believe that the Jailor failed just because he didn’t have enough build then they don’t fully understand the issue. In order for the Jailor to work as a concept he should have been part of the story since the very start and even if that were the case I believe it would have resulted in poorer story than what we had prior Shadowlands.

I hope I’m wrong and Blizzard have already course corrected but even in DF (which story I liked for the most part so far) we have hints about Titan shenanigans and space 3D printers.

PS Sorry that this came out a bit self contradictory and rambly.

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You’re the protagonist from the beginning of the story. Your relationships with your team mates enhance your story, but these characters also have their own storylines that do not include you directly. They evolve through the expansions in a logical way, act according to their personalities but without being predictable at all times. They grow. You witness their evolution as much as you do the one of your character and that’s what makes the team believable. Sometimes I don’t even understand why I’m helping or working with the NPCs WoW forces us to work with

Getting to know the world is also a big part of FFXIV (understanding how it works is at the heart of the main storyline) and will still be post-Endwalker

Pack your bags

We’ve had hints of those since the release of Zereth Mortis. We also know that Firim is worried that the First Ones didn’t create the universe to make it last, and that’s potentially what the Jailer wanted to stand against by enslaving all creation. Just watch the movie “The Eternals” and you’ll get where the lore devs want to take this story. You don’t even need to read the comics.

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And BfA and SL were bad stories on their own, long before their ridiculous conclusions. I’ll agree that lower stakes would have helped a lot. What I’m not sure about is if it would have helped, if the stories would just have been kept in their seperate addons. Seems to me would have gotten crap either way. My biggest problem wasn’t just that the story was bad. It was that it was the only story that mattered, I couldn’t escape it AND it was bad. I can deal with one of a few stories being long and boring. And I would prefer a story to be long and good, if it needs the time to be good, rather than being rushed, because a new addon is coming out.

Don’t mistake that with me saying that I trust Blizzard to do it right. But I do feel that everything they are saying now, would be a step in the right direction. I mean, look at the context of the quote. It pretty much says, that it was a horrible idea to conjure the Jailer out of nothing, and that it would have made so much more sense, if they had allowed themselves to build him up in the background in the addons that came before, rather than restricting themselves to keep him as a Shadowlands character. Do you really disagree with that? Frankly, I believe they are bullshilling here, since I believe the Jailer we got wasn’t the Jailer they originally planned anyways, but they are saying the right bull poop.

And that’s the impression I got. It’s all about the scions. I don’t deny that you are the superchosen protagonist, but I am saying that FF seems to be about the relation of the MC to his support staff, while I am claiming that early WoW was about the relation of the character to the world. Or even just the world, really… as I say this, I’m not actually invested in being the protagonist. I just don’t care for NPC protagonists in an open world game. If the world is the only protagonist that matters, I’m fine with that.

Not in my experience, no. I only saw it till the end of Heavensward, but I really have no feeling for the world of Eorzea at all. It all seems extremely vague to me, and the moments I remember are the anime drama between characters.

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I don’t see how that can work for any RPG, but it could also be me not understanding what you mean. Would you like current WoW or FFXIV better if your character was the only one that mattered? How can you build a story around that for an MMO?

The whole ARR story is there to make you understand how the world works by making you encounter every civilization there. You get more and more details as the story progresses through the expansions, but judging by the end of Endwalker and the premise of the transition, spending more time exploring the world is definitely part of the plan.

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Like I said before, I meant how WoW’s story was before cata at least. Without much of a main plot at all, and quest chains that most often weren’t there to drive the plot, but to make the world that you are in more real.

Not in my experience, no. :wink:

Indeed, I felt actively discouraged from leaving the main quests, because all I would do would be outleveling the stuff I had to do anyways (while also getting shoddy XP value for my time in comparison). Even when catching up with secondary jobs side quests felt like a waste of time, compared to repeatable content and logs. I hate that game…

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Oh I know but I was hoping that they wouldn’t revisit that story and retcon it down the line.

I have watched it and I have red some of the comics long ago. I am not entirely convinced that one was directly inspired by the other because even though the similarities are jarring the timeline doesn’t add for when the two things released. Unless Denuser had a behind the scenes tour of Disney/Marvel studios or was a comic book reader (and then again the movie is vastly different than the comics and those comics are very obscure even among marvel fans) I can’t say that it was a copy/paste job.

I agree with you and that is my concern, while an overarching story could benefit WoW I do not think that the writers over at Blizzard can pull it off. That is why I want shorter stories with new characters, so they could, for lack of better phrase, throw $#17 at the wall and see what sticks, then whatever stuck they could continue. And a really good way to make people care about a story is when you put characters that people already care about in it. Baby steps as opposed to a leap of fate is the better course here imo.

As I mentioned before, yes I disagree. Would the Jailer have been a better character if he was build up from several expansions- probably yes. Would the overall story have benefited from the Jailor being included in it-absolutely not. The major problem with Zovaal is not that he was poorly developed, it was that his existence removed the agency of a lot of the legacy characters as he was “behind it all”. What we had before is ~20 years of characters taking advantage of status que changes to further their own plans and agendas, what we have now (and what we would have gotten even if the Jailor was mentioned in WC1) would have been some weirdo that has been manipulating everything from his jail cell since time began and somehow it all worked out the way he wanted up until the very end.

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They are talking about taking multiple addons when necessary as opposed to making the same story in one. I don’t think you have the time to do baby steps, when you’re supposed to get anywhere within those ~4 patches of content. So I do think this is actually allowing them smaller steps than they did before, and that’s why I see this as a move in the right direction. Lile I said to Nedra, I’d actually prefer no grand story at all. But if they do it, getting rid of confinements is never a bad idea, I think.

I guess we disagree there. The “behind it all” stuff is a tired trope, but we’ve taken that one often enough from Blizzard, I could have swallowed it and laughed about it, if it had been presented as well.

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I started playing during TBC and there was already an overarching story. It was less “in your face” than it is now since the game didn’t force you to take quests you didn’t want, but it was definitely what kept the expansion going.

We’re speaking two different languages here I guess, but it’s fine. Many side quests are there to make the world feel real, and if you want to put a halt to the MSQ you can.

Matter of taste. I like it better when a game that forces me to focus on its story has a well-written story. I wish WoW had that quality at least now that the game won’t even let me delete story quests I have zero intention to do and launches voiced over dialogs I don’t care about.

Of course they would and will. We know that each plan of the cosmology has its own Zereth and thanks to DF’s beta, we know that the one the Titans were forged in is called Zereth Ordus.

The overarching story clearly is, and despite the movie and comics having some differences, some of the key points are the same. Titans, Eternals and the other pantheons are just like the Eternals, and the First Ones are very likely going to be similar to the Celestials. I’m not saying that the game will be a straight copy of “The Eternals” movie, but the plot will be similar because the source material is the same even if the devs won’t admit to being more than just Marvel fans. Zovaal being a poor man’s Thanos was proof of that.

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That is pretty much what I’m saying, no overarching expansion story, just small semi-selfcontained zone stories.

Again I agree with the premise but given the writers they have atm the safer bet would be going smaller.

Not on this level, and that’s the problem. There is so much weight you can put on a single character before it or the story crumbles.

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Did it, though? I mean, Kael’thas or Illidan’s fall from grace, and Vashj’s journey might have been stories. But they weren’t. It was pretty much “the elves have been corrupted by demons, the Naga are draining the swamp (probably undermining the government that way), and I’d really like you kill anyone you can please”, wasn’t it? I guess the Sunwell had a story, but that was mostly in comics, or without setup.

So… even looking back, I don’t really see it. Almost everything you did in questing would be considered “side stories” today. And that’s pretty much what I want.

Still not my problem, though. If it felt real in the moment, I would still have complained about what it does to the legacy on the forums, sure, but it’d have felt fine enough, and I would have moved on. I find going to the Shadowlands at all much more objectionable and hurtful to my immersion than any puppeteering the Jailor did to characters I don’t really care about, no matter how many.

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There was a story to follow and finish. You couldn’t go to Outland without doing story quests and it was the main zone of the expansion

The examples you gave weren’t even proper side stories imo but to each their own. I don’t see myself paying a sub just to pick up poop and kill randos