Blizzard should kill more lore characters in the future

[Radaney]

Why do people keep saying Anduin is gay?

Dank meme between Anduin and Wrathion.

[Deleted]

how could his name be refference to teen titans... it dident come out till 2006... warcraft came out how many years ago?
if you mean his name go'el, it has ntohing to do with teen titans, its a reference to the word goel, a hebrew term, that means to redeem, or the redeemer, and he seems to be a redeemer for the orcs

Looks like someone's cynicism detector broke...

Ofcourse it's not a Teen Titans reference, but it very well could've been seeing the ironic similarities between the names Kal'El and Go'el, seeing as Superman is part of that same universe and the word 'go' is in it, as in Teen Titans Go. But you're obviously responding to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking.

As for Go'el being a reference to a Hebrew word which means 'to redeem/redeemer', makes the name all the more worthy of the Mary Sue/Jesus concept they were pushing back in Cata.

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Death doesn't need to be purposeful

In real life it doesn't.

When you're portraying events that are meaningful to a fictional story, it better be purposeful.

[Kokolums]

One of the best aspects of Legion storywise was the killing of three major heroic characters from the start. It set the tone and emphasized the threat we're dealing with (something I felt previous expansions lacked, especially WoD) so I really hope Blizzard won't shy away from killing off huge characters in the next expansions. What's your thoughts?

Blizzard isn't killing the heroes correctly.

A KEY aspect of telling good stories is to make sure the threat your heroes face is credible. There is no tension when heroes never lose. A good example is bad storytelling are the imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars. They never accomplish anything, and just exist to get mowed down. That's BORING.

An example of GOOD storytelling would be the Shawshank Redemption. Dufresne gets convicted of a murder he didn't commit. The prison guards are corrupt. They ruin his one chance for freedom and put him the hole. The antagonists score REAL and PERMANENT victories over the hero and destroy his life. But that makes the story compelling because it reveals Dufresne's character. He chose to rise above all that and keep pushing forward. That reveal is IMPOSSIBLE if the villains never win BIG.

Legion screws this up. Gul'dan does not score a clean kill of Varian. Varian just sacrificed himself to save others. Varian chose the manner of his death, which robs it of meaning. And it wasn't even 1v1 Gul'dan vs Varian. Gul'dan had serious numbers and Varian was half dead. That's AWFUL. They utterly WASTED Varian's death.

They did the exact same thing with Maraad in WoD. It was just self-sacrifice to save Yrel. That doesn't make the Iron Horde look stronger, or tell us anything important. It just sucks.

There is NO ONE that knows how to write good stories that will say they are doing this right. Its botched beyond belief.

[prwraith]

Lor'themar is the warchief we deserve. Kill everyone else until he gets the job.

[Kokolums]

You can sum up how to write GOOD stories in one sentence. "Create interesting characters and torture them for 300 pages." Maybe they rise up and meet the challenge. Maybe they fall and become evil themselves. Maybe somewhere in-between. But use the story to reveal who they are.

[Aeula]

Agreed. Start with Jaina.

[Anjerith]

Blizzard isn't killing the heroes correctly.

A KEY aspect of telling good stories is to make sure the threat your heroes face is credible. There is no tension when heroes never lose. A good example is bad storytelling are the imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars. They never accomplish anything, and just exist to get mowed down. That's BORING.

An example of GOOD storytelling would be the Shawshank Redemption. Dufresne gets convicted of a murder he didn't commit. The prison guards are corrupt. They ruin his one chance for freedom and put him the hole. The antagonists score REAL and PERMANENT victories over the hero and destroy his life. But that makes the story compelling because it reveals Dufresne's character. He chose to rise above all that and keep pushing forward. That reveal is IMPOSSIBLE if the villains never win BIG.

Legion screws this up. Gul'dan does not score a clean kill of Varian. Varian just sacrificed himself to save others. Varian chose the manner of his death, which robs it of meaning. And it wasn't even 1v1 Gul'dan vs Varian. Gul'dan had serious numbers and Varian was half dead. That's AWFUL. They utterly WASTED Varian's death.

They did the exact same thing with Maraad in WoD. It was just self-sacrifice to save Yrel. That doesn't make the Iron Horde look stronger, or tell us anything important. It just sucks.

There is NO ONE that knows how to write good stories that will say they are doing this right. Its botched beyond belief.

You started off on the right idea by drawing an example from an excellent novella (although I am pretty confident you only saw the movie, since anyone who has read it would have at least quoted the correct title of the story), but then you crashed and burned HARD on the analysis of the death of Varian. That was perfect, has been hinted at in many pre-expansion storylines and was a major payoff for the character. A meaningful death doesn't have to always be a Goku vs Frieza battle (which is what it seems you are sort of aiming for), it has to be a death with emotional resonance to the reader/viewer.

Varians death struck this cord *not only with Alliance Players* but with Horde as well.

Now, a better analysis for you would have been Voljin. So, 40 points for effort, Resubmit and you may manage a passing grade. I will even throw in a bonus and tell you the story is called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption".

[Mace]

One of the best aspects of Legion storywise was the killing of three major heroic characters from the start. It set the tone and emphasized the threat we're dealing with (something I felt previous expansions lacked, especially WoD) so I really hope Blizzard won't shy away from killing off huge characters in the next expansions. What's your thoughts?

that's a bit twisted, if you have to rely on killing characters to make your story interesting than you're not really a good writer. And if you feel that killing characters is what makes a story interesting, then I feel your moral compass got inverted somewhere along the way.

Ofc, it depends on how many you kill, but then if you start killing all your heros, then you're making this into a hope killer, who's purpose is to darken the hearts of its consumers, something it readily achieves anyway in its very dark themes, it doesn't eed more. And we saw what blizzard did when they started killing off all their main characters by making them raid bosses starting in TBC with Illidan, just an excuse for cheap notoriety and hashing out content rather than taking the time to develop properly new characters or smaller character and tell a story on how they grow into such darkness... and you always need the opposite far more than the former, because we are people who's souls thrive on hope, so you need to tell stories of great heroes arising. And that can't be just the player character as he doesn't really have presence in the lore, the role must fall to others.

Now they don't need to use the same old souls over and over again, like Thrall, Malfurion, Khadgar, Jaina, but they don't have to kill them either

People want hope, not despair, and killing off good people and characters just for dramatic effect often feels quite quite cheap when they do that. It only works when you do it once in a while. Varian and Vol'jin and Tirion feel impactful because this rarely happens, now if it happened all the time, it feels cheap. Take the world ending scenarios, they feel so cheap, because the world comes under a world ending threat every 2 years, you are not moved at all by it. More descturction, more carnage, you barely raise an eyebrow, let's not even go to the mass de-sensitization of extreme violence and destruction, a very valid concern but for another topic, the effect of such occurences seem almost tirivial far less than their desired impact.

And no it's not an excuse to actually destroy it to make an impact, you need to get more creative in the sotry telling, and show a bit more humanity and emotionally engage the players, like legion does a much better job of doing than previous xpacs, but still falls well short of what can be done. You also need to build up hope and the world.. we've seen a massive night elven empire in total ruins, what more is left to ruin of the night elves? I suppose Suramar, but the point is you also have to write the races healing too, so that next time great disaster comes it means something.... okay the orcs and humans have recovered a lot since the sacking of stormwind or the 3rd war or 2nd war ... but you don't really see them established properly.

therefore when new disaster comes it is cheapened, and weakened, and means little. Like the night elves, they just always suffer and get some ridiculous amount of sorrow and tragedy, it's not impactful when it happens, in fact the opposite would have much more of an effect if for a change you see them actually win or do something right that builds them up rather than takes more away.

Same with every race, same with destruction, disaster and ofc, killing main characters.

so no, I disagree with you there.

[McNeil]

I'm all in for killing off characters who have outlived their purpose for far to long, the worst offenders being Thrall and Sylvanas. They have been fleshed out quite a lot in WC3 and did their stuff in WoW (Sylvanas got her revenge on Arthas and Thrall stepped down as warchief). But yet they keep giving them screentime and in Thralls case make him look extremely powerful and kind of a dick. Sylvanas is just doing her own shit and IMO hasn't been that interesting, her new story in Stormheim didn't even continue beyond the questing, which leaves yet another open hole. It just feels like they keep this characters around for the sake of fanservice.

Then we have other characters who could use some more screentime badly, basically most other faction leaders. Lor'themar got his time to shine in MoP, which is something atleast. But then we have characters like Mekkatorgue and Gallywix which we've never really seen do anything after the starting experience. Even if they are more ''jokish'' characters, you can still make them more involved into the Alliance/Horde stories with all the technology they provide. Baine hasn't really been doing anything either, like any other tauren.

I think its good to have older characters die to make room for new ones, or to show more of other known characters. But instead....... they just brought back some old well loved characters for the sake of fanservice, looking at Gul'dan and Illidan. And then I ask myself what other new characters have been well written, I can't get further then Wrathion.

[Toppy]

Ever since GoT became popular everyone and their mother suddenly thinks the only way a story can be good is if its willing to kill off characters.

Stories dont need to kill off characters to be good. Killing a character isnt going to suddenly redeem bad writers.

[Orby]

One thing I have always liked about Warcraft (pre-WoW) was the fact Blizzard was never shy about killing of characters, Lothar and Uther were favorites of mine, seeing them die I was like "noooo", b ut it was cool because there was always new heroes to take their place.

Best thing about Legion was how ballsy they were with about kiling two big characters.... (Tiron and Varian).

[Deleted]

Ever since GoT became popular everyone and their mother suddenly thinks the only way a story can be good is if its willing to kill off characters.

Stories dont need to kill off characters to be good. Killing a character isnt going to suddenly redeem bad writers.

GoT didn't invent killing characters but if you're presenting an end of the world ultimate war scenario like Legion then it's rather unrealistic if front line heroes never dying.

[Deleted]

GoT didn't invent killing characters but if you're presenting an end of the world ultimate war scenario like Legion then it's rather unrealistic if front line heroes never dying.

Literally every expansion except BC and MoP started of and concluded with an end of the world ultimate war scenario:
- The Lich King turning all of the world's denizens into mindless undead is pretty much the zombie apocalypse.
- Deathwing wanting to literally break the world and wipe out all life.
- The Iron Horde wanting to take over the entire planet and commit genocide to its races.

1-3 people of significance died throughout their combined entirity.

With Legion, 4-5 major lore character met their end within the first 2-3 hours of linear gameplay.

How ru still complaining?

[Toppy]

GoT didn't invent killing characters but if you're presenting an end of the world ultimate war scenario like Legion then it's rather unrealistic if front line heroes never dying.

Did I ever say GoT invented killing character? No. They popularized it as a means to punctuate every single major occurrence to the point where its over used and expected.

The issue is more so that blizzard ramps up the threat level to hard and to fast. Cata, WoD, WotLK, Legion, all start with huge scenarios with the bad guys messing everything up, then we hit the actual bulk of the content and the threat levels plummets as we go from zone to zone with little threat. Eventually the last raid comes and we mop the floor with the bad guys.

Having someone die at the start like with Legion did not make the Legion seem like any more of a threat than the old gods in Cata or the Lich King in WotLK. We had our big moment of danger and then decended into the questing experience where we destroy everything.

Killing characters it not automatic good story telling. Killing characters does not automatically make a crappy story a good one. Other MMO have been able to pull off good story telling because they dont ramp up the hero to god levels, or if they do base storylines based on others reactions to the events and make it clear that you're ultimately in a fragile position (FFXIV). There are ups and downs that are spread out. Rather than WoW which is one down followed by a none-stop up until the next expansion.

Take the Imperial Agent storyline in SWTOR: you start from a lower station, work your way up, sometimes are betrayed, other times you're faced with morally grey issues. Ultimately by the end you're up there in your organization but you're not leading it. You're not a walking god. WoW has gone to far with making the characters feel special and in doing so made to many world ending events not seem threatening. The writers themselves seem incapable of doing any storyline past "Good guy has a minor setback at first, then rapidly starts winning everything". Going further, there's no characters they can really kill off to make a moment seem dangerous since in WoW, the writers have largely done very little to flesh out important characters or make players feel sympathetic to them. Why should anyone care that Vol'Jin died? He did pretty much nothing. Why should we care about Tirion? He committed treason in a book no one read, then pops up in WotLK and like the player, ends up hitting overpowered god of war status. What about Varian? We're mostly just told he's great and amazing, but very little had been done to show that point. Why would we care about any of the myriad characters whose entire personalities change to fit the moment (Garrosh was notorious for this, but Varian had it too)?

What would anyone care if Tyrande died? Tyrande who has been built up at this point to be a hot headed incompetent. Or Baine, who has literally done nothing. Killing characters only works if you feel investment and care for that character. The writers for WoW have done nothing to make players feel invested or caring about characters.

Also please dont speak realism in a magical high fantasy setting with canon resurrection.

[Healing Rain]

Warcraft has always been event driven. It's never been about killing characters.

[Deleted]

Spoiler.
Gul'dan dies at Nighthold

Now that's enough killing for a while, even though I wouldn't miss that fucking Tyrande.

[Sengel]

Blizzard isn't killing the heroes correctly.

A KEY aspect of telling good stories is to make sure the threat your heroes face is credible. There is no tension when heroes never lose. A good example is bad storytelling are the imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars. They never accomplish anything, and just exist to get mowed down. That's BORING.

An example of GOOD storytelling would be the Shawshank Redemption. Dufresne gets convicted of a murder he didn't commit. The prison guards are corrupt. They ruin his one chance for freedom and put him the hole. The antagonists score REAL and PERMANENT victories over the hero and destroy his life. But that makes the story compelling because it reveals Dufresne's character. He chose to rise above all that and keep pushing forward. That reveal is IMPOSSIBLE if the villains never win BIG.

Legion screws this up. Gul'dan does not score a clean kill of Varian. Varian just sacrificed himself to save others. Varian chose the manner of his death, which robs it of meaning. And it wasn't even 1v1 Gul'dan vs Varian. Gul'dan had serious numbers and Varian was half dead. That's AWFUL. They utterly WASTED Varian's death.

They did the exact same thing with Maraad in WoD. It was just self-sacrifice to save Yrel. That doesn't make the Iron Horde look stronger, or tell us anything important. It just sucks.

There is NO ONE that knows how to write good stories that will say they are doing this right. Its botched beyond belief.

I would agree with you on storm troopers except in episode 4. The first two times you see them they mercilessly exterminate their targets. (The blockade runner and on tattooine) so the first interaction with them in mos eisley had tension(it goes down in the death Star). It's empire and after that they become comical.

On topic though, I agree that we haven't seen a good villains win moment since, ironically, cataclysm when death wing destroyed the world (to bad his fight sucked).

[Toppy]

I would agree with you on storm troopers except in episode 4. The first two times you see them they mercilessly exterminate their targets. (The blockade runner and on tattooine) so the first interaction with them in mos eisley had tension(it goes down in the death Star). It's empire and after that they become comical.

On topic though, I agree that we haven't seen a good villains win moment since, ironically, cataclysm when death wing destroyed the world (to bad his fight sucked).

In Ep4 the heroes are also constantly avoiding them. They also wreck the Hoth base and help capture Han Solo. In episode 6 they are a very real threat.... until the teddy bears came into play.

They're just so integrated into modern culture as being bad shots and useless that no one remembers their threat moments.

[Rudkobing]

Let the bodies hit the floor.

[Deleted]

Literally every expansion except BC and MoP started of and concluded with an end of the world ultimate war scenario:
- The Lich King turning all of the world's denizens into mindless undead is pretty much the zombie apocalypse.
- Deathwing wanting to literally break the world and wipe out all life.
- The Iron Horde wanting to take over the entire planet and commit genocide to its races.

1-3 people of significance died throughout their combined entirity.

With Legion, 4-5 major lore character met their end within the first 2-3 hours of linear gameplay.

How ru still complaining?

I said Legion did it well...

WotLK zombie apocalypse felt like flu season
Deathwing destroying the world was cool to see but little else happened
Iron Horde was the worst, we stopped the invasion with ease then defeated each Warlord with ridiculous ease.