The story is putting off people wanting to try WoW

[Deleted]

And honestly I can understand why! Let's look at this from a complete point of view from somebody starting now! First you have the 1-60 experience that doesn't make much sense unless you played Vanilla, TBC and Wrath. 60-70 you're thrust back in time with no indication that the events from here on are set before 1-60 experience (same with 70-80) then your back to the timeline in 1-60 (again not mentioned)

I understand it is kinda inevitable that Cataclysm fucked up the chronological order of the levelling story experience but I have had a few people just quit because the story made no sense without background checking everything

[FAILoZOFF]

I am personally against story elements in MMORPG games, It never ends well.

[Lochton]

Uhm, is this just an opinion or fact?

I've been a tour guide 400 times since Legion started, for brand new players. As well as paid their first stage of flight.. Doesn't seem to put people off that much..

[Deleted]

And honestly I can understand why!

Ok? I assuming you're going update us with some numbers and facts about these "people" you're talking about? What sort of numbers are we talking about here? And where do they come from? Did Blizzard release some stats I missed?

[Venziir]

I am personally against story elements in MMORPG games, It never ends well.

You simply cannot have an RPG without story. That's like having a pool without water; stupid, empty and dangerous.

[Raetary]

I am personally against story elements in MMORPG games, It never ends well.

you want an RPG to have no story elements?
what?

[Polarthief]

you want an RPG to have no story elements?
what?

MMORPG. Most people tend to not give a fuck.

FFXIV is the only one to my knowledge that's done it 'right', and even then half of us don't care, like I didn't. WAY too many fucking cutscenes for me. If it was a single player game, maybe, sure, but not an online MMO.

[Toppy]

you want an RPG to have no story elements?
what?

Thats what blizzard seems to want. They have it engraved on a giant statue.

[McNeil]

I don't think the story plays that much of a role, I doubt that most of the players in WoW even has an idea what the story of Legion is about. If there's anything that puts new players off from trying WoW its the graphics. while they have its own cartoony charm, it still looks outdated compared to new games. The gameplay could also play a role which, while fluid, also feels dated. Compared to games like Dark Souls at least.

I do think that the old zones need to be updated again to have a proper coherent timeline going, while keeping all the previous zones in its own phasing timeline (even the classic zones) which you can toggle on/off by choice. But at this point I very much doubt that Blizzard is going to do something drastic with the old zones, apparently it didn't do well in Cata as it lacked end game in return.But the team is supposedly bigger these days so who knows.

[clevin]

It would be interesting to do a survey of random people who level up from 1 with no prior WoW experience nor a guide. The story is definitely disjointed and confusing. Whether that puts people off... who knows? It's just as likely that the climb from 1 to 110 just feels like too much (and before you talk heirlooms etc... we're talking NEW people.)

[MoanaLisa]

A good story is a reason to stick around in an MMORPG if only to see what happens next. Blizzard's insistence at prioritizing gameplay over story is one reason why the game doesn't make much sense and lacks an internal coherency.

It's more important than Blizzard thinks and their casual treatment of the lore has hurt the game over the very long run.

They could do much to fix the leveling story without trashing whole zones and continents.

As an aside: Blizzard has put their favorite novelist, Christie Golden, on staff. That may simply be book related but if they put her in charge of cleaning up the game story a bit they could do a lot worse.

Whether it has anything to do with new players being attracted to the game: No, I don't think it's a factor at all. I don't think the game is too big either. It just needs to be organized a little better and thought to future expansions needs to take into account what has come before. Using the entire world in a better way to tell those stories wouldn't hurt the game either.

[Erolian]

I've never been able to really make myself care about the story in WoW. Its pretty much just trash when you have an entire fantasy genre that does basically everything better and RPGs hanging around like the Witcher series. The biggest problem imo is that they always force the horde/alliance conflict when in reality factions always just seem like a great way of making sure you can't always play with all of your friends and it doesn't really make any sense in context for the horde/alliance to continue hating each other until they hamfist some kind of reason in at the last second. Then once you're in game the horde/alliance conflict doesn't actually matter. They're just those guys over there that you can't interact with. You might die if you afk fly into their camp or w/e and that's about it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

You being put off by it =/= new players unrelated to you being put off for a fact.

Most new players won't know about how disjointed the story is, they'll be busy discovering.

[aviger]

Ive been playing wow since beta, ive never care one iota for the story.
Half the time i dont even know why were are killing boss mob X i just like the shiny weapons/armor and having fun with my friends.
The story in WoW is completely irrelevant to enjoying the game for me and lots of my friends

[Faldric]

Can we still call this a story? I mean with all the retcons, revivals, multi dimension and time travel shit you are better off to just ignore it anyway. So I don't think its putting people off. If people cared for it, WOW would have closed down a long time ago. I just hope that if they ever do a WC4 they do one final retcon and declare everything that happened in WoW invalid.

[Nethlord]

New players...perhaps. Older players, Legion's "story" started to get all MGS levels of convoluted before I quit. Either story threads went nowhere or the resolution was laughably bad.

No what killed any interest in this game for me was endless, gated, boring grinding in dungeons/world missions/raids. Before legion (and WoD to an extent) you did content to your benefit, when you wanted to. Now? You miss a few days and that's the end of progression. I took off in November. There is zero catch-up, an ungodly amount of gated quests and content to do and frankly I don't want to play games that EXPECT me to clock in, everyday and do daily chores just so I can stay afloat.

That kind of gaming is garbage, whether it's wow or not.

[Deleted]

As much as I dislike Activision Blizzard, WoW is not a bad game. Even though it's not what I want it to be, it has still provided me with hours of entertainment and for free(who buys those tokens for real money anyway?)!

PS. the price of their services is still absurd and I refuse to pay it even though its "free"

[Deshi]

Most of my friends that tried wow for the first time after cata was turned off becuase of the leveling. Dungeons barley needs tank nor healer, two shoting everything and rares are completly solo able. No need to learn what the new abilitys do since one just get by so easy. Seem to be big turn of cuz they think this is how the end game gonna be. I do understand there is like no challenge. No one have complained on the story though!

[Khaza-R]

Cata was a mistake. They should have only streamlined the quests, added more flight paths, and prepped the old zones for flying.

Revamping fucked up the timeline, removed 90% of the content that Cataclysm references and make some zones ugly af

[Sky High]

only a few zones I can think of make reference to the past expansions in the new old world zones. and it's not like TBC and Wrath zones really connect to the Cata area's beyond maybe seeing a character in them you've seen elsewhere. not going to deny from a veteran point of view it's weird looking back but for a new player I would think they are just absorbing any info/lore as they go along without much thought of trying to put it together yet. until they get back to Cata and wonder WTF is going on.