The story is putting off people wanting to try WoW

[Silver Forte]

If a person playing the game doesn't care for the story, that's on them. It just means it isn't for them. They can skip all of the quest dialogue and cutscenes. They're not forced to choke it down. My wife on the other hand hates video games and tried WoW. She liked to know what was going on and why we were doing what we were doing all the way up til Zangarmarsh when we had to quit.

[Deleted]

Are you suggesting nobody plays games for the story?

These days? no
back in the days - veterans like me now - yes

[Logwyn]

You misunderstand my point. I saw start at 80 because when youre doing Lvl 1 stuff after the Cataclysm a lot doesnt make much sense. At least starting at 80 you start after/during the Cata.

I was extending your point. You start at 110. They change the "story" of everything to up till legion ends? Then just level up from there. Goldshire is now a leveling zone for 110. So is the Barrens. Everything scales now with you level. So you high max level of say 200. Westfall is now a lvl 200 zone.

[Toppy]

You compare some lame ass female undead caster where half the armor doesn't exist with a dark knight, a full plate tank with 2h weapon. At least pull up a DK in T19, but that would probably not make your point as well..

I used promotional screenshots from both games.

Here, a caster for FFXIV


and a death knight from wow


Once more, I am using recent material from each company themselves. This is how they present things, and what new players are most likely to see.

[Deleted]

They have nicer hats in FFXIV. But the large global cooldown never really was appealing.

Oh, and about the story: For me the story is one of the main attractions in a MMORPG.

[davidbane123]

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

WARNING: MMO MAY CONTAIN DANGEROUS NON-STORY ELEMENTS

Oh just like that? Thanks for the warning, I'll waste my pathetic life elsewhere!

[Deleted]

If they ever do a WC4 they need to just skip forward hundreds of years and hopefully start fresh with new characters and settings. There's no way to salvage the damage that's been done since TFT

Would prefer if they pretended WoW's story never happened actually, just carried on from WC3.

[Toppy]

Would prefer if they pretended WoW's story never happened actually, just carried on from WC3.

To be fair, modern blizzard has shown themselves time and time again to be god awful story tellers. Even if they did WC4 taking place right after WC3 it doubt it'll be anywhere near what WC3 was.

[Alexeht]

Only problem with lore is whole WoD. They changed so much, while making some great characters weak ... rip[*] Orgrim Doomhammer. IMO Cataclysm have better lore than WoD which was total disaster.

[Toppy]

Only problem with lore is whole WoD. They changed so much, while making some great characters weak ... rip[*] Orgrim Doomhammer. IMO Cataclysm have better lore than WoD which was total disaster.

Eh, Legion hasnt been that great either. Highmountain is based on the idea that the Tauren all got amnesia (they all saw what the hammer can do and who has it, but somehow forgot). Same with Val'shara (Cenarius and Malfurion not knowing what the nightmare is). Suramar starts off with "Elisande did this to protect her people" though she then turns around and begins the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children. Illidan came back and so did all the demons because apparently they dont really die? (I know thats WoD lore, but it was clearly made for Legion). Stormheim hinges on us blindly trusting the Vrykul despite having 0 reason to do so and ample reason not to. I guess Maiev is also a good guy now despite trying to murder Malfurion. Velen has a son, though we never knew, nor is it important. At all. Turalyon is alive, and somehow has been for hundreds if not thousands of years? Sylvaanas is going to take the warchiefs mantle, oh wait this changes nothing about her and she's trying to make a deal with the literal devil.

Its such an idiotic clusterfuck of none-sense that gives zero respect to established lore.

[Alexeht]

Eh, Legion hasnt been that great either. Its such an idiotic clusterfuck of none-sense that gives zero respect to established lore.

Agree. But WoD is just bad. I really had hope that they will show us orcs during their golden years, but instead we get orange weak slaves ;( And the amount of cool stuff they cut out from beta ...

[Deleted]

These days? no
back in the days - veterans like me now - yes

Then how are Telltale and Bioware games making millions and how there's an entire genre of interactive story games going strong?

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WARNING: MMO MAY CONTAIN DANGEROUS NON-STORY ELEMENTS

Oh just like that? Thanks for the warning, I'll waste my pathetic life elsewhere!

Were not talking about MMO's were talking about MMORPGs - big difference

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Eh, Legion hasnt been that great either. Highmountain is based on the idea that the Tauren all got amnesia (they all saw what the hammer can do and who has it, but somehow forgot). Same with Val'shara (Cenarius and Malfurion not knowing what the nightmare is). Suramar starts off with "Elisande did this to protect her people" though she then turns around and begins the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children. Illidan came back and so did all the demons because apparently they dont really die? (I know thats WoD lore, but it was clearly made for Legion). Stormheim hinges on us blindly trusting the Vrykul despite having 0 reason to do so and ample reason not to. I guess Maiev is also a good guy now despite trying to murder Malfurion. Velen has a son, though we never knew, nor is it important. At all. Turalyon is alive, and somehow has been for hundreds if not thousands of years? Sylvaanas is going to take the warchiefs mantle, oh wait this changes nothing about her and she's trying to make a deal with the literal devil.

Its such an idiotic clusterfuck of none-sense that gives zero respect to established lore.

Legion story is good on face value but upon delving deeper you realise how shallow it all is

[Protean]

Dark souls would like a word with you.

Dark Souls is absolutely saturated in story, only truly stupid people wouldn't see the story.

[OverFanNisseFrasse]

.. speaking about it, since Cata I have never levled an alt since then O :

But what they need to do is actully to remake Azeroth again, to make it more neutral and not as Catalysm have just recently hit us. Pretty sure that Garrosh ain't our Warchief any longer, nor are Twiligt Hammer around at all. The are probably alot more quests out there that are outdated compared to the the expansion we got.

It will be a major effort to remake so much, but to make the world more neutral would be a good idea. Also there are way to much phasing in Azeroth as for now as I could recall.

[Al Gorefiend]

It's never going to be updated because Blizzard has a one-track mindset. They fire and forget, only speeding forward never turning around. They introduce a concept, fly with it for a year, abandon it and make a new concept. They have little interest in backward integration of current systems and design.

Take gear for example. They change their gear philosophy every expansion, yet burning crusade gear still has attack power, leather with strength and 2-handed agility maces.

[plaits]

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

shrug, been playing since Vanilla and still can't tell you any more than the bare basics of wow lore. It exists only to give a basis to the gameplay, it doesn't really matter. They could retcon it all entirely and most people probably wouldn't even notice other than a dedicated few (but noisy) lore nerds.

Most people don't read a word of quest text anyway, and new players get a boosted toon, they aren't doing loremaster their first play through.

[Deleted]

I liked Cata's revamp a lot and I enjoyed returning to Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms after a while, but it inevitably screwed the story timelines.

What they should do imo is revamp the world again, either affect the entire Azeroth with the new bad thing (be it Old Gods or whatever they want to do next) OR simply apply the level scale tech to every continent, and organize the areas like this:

• Max level is reduced to 70.
• The "Vanilla" content takes you up to level 60. (probably with some adjustments, starting zones are still 1-10, the rest are 10-60.)
• The Adventure Guide points you towards the various storylines and suggests you your next zone based on your story progress and not on level.
• EVERY expansion's areas are now 50-60. When you reach level 50, the Adventure Guide will prompt you to also play through an expansion's storyline and offer you a quest for each expansion. The quest would be similar to Timewalking's "running through time" concept, clearly stating that it's an old tale, and it would simply start the chosen expansion's quests. At level 50 you have a huge amount of stories to pick from.
• Areas scale with your level, you can continue a zone's story without outleveling it and you can drop an expansion's quests any time and immediately choose another storyline.
• When an expansion ends, it joins the old expansions and all expansions are now 50-70. You aren't forced to play 60-70 in the same zones all the time. Since the 50+ zones are so many (including the Vanilla zones that still scale only up to 60), it would take some time until the system needs to be readdressed.
• New expansion would be 70+ and so on, until they need to reset it again.
• Soloing old raids would work exactly the same way it works now, the most recent old expansion's raids are hard and everything else is the same trivial difficulty.
• The dungeons you can queue up for are separated in level brackets, not in zones. Queueing for a random dungeon while 15-50 would take you to a Vanilla dungeon, queueing as a 50-60 will take you to a random expansion's or Vanilla dungeon. If you want a specific dungeon, you can simply queue for that; basically how LFD works right now but taking zone scaling into consideration.

Leveling right now isn't tedious because we are playing old stories, but because we are forced to play all of them and in a particular order. You quickly outlevel a storyline you have started and are then forced to pick another you may not like, and this is worse when you have to play through each and every expansion.

This way you can simply pick a questline you enjoy and continue with it. Creating a new char and don't want to play the humans again? Pick another story. Bored of Northrend? Just skip it. The Vanilla zones are also a good way to introduce a new player to Warcraft's story and their race's background, expansions should definetely be played after Vanilla.
Unifying all the leveling players into level brackets would also dramatically reduce the queue times for dungeons. I think Wrath's and TBC's queues are especially long if you are not a healer; if we were able to queue with any 60+ level player right now, regardless of expansion, the queues would be a lot smoother.

[Deleted]

shrug, been playing since Vanilla and still can't tell you any more than the bare basics of wow lore. It exists only to give a basis to the gameplay, it doesn't really matter. They could retcon it all entirely and most people probably wouldn't even notice other than a dedicated few (but noisy) lore nerds.

Most people don't read a word of quest text anyway, and new players get a boosted toon, they aren't doing loremaster their first play through.

But I argue you still know who most characters are... I am not talking about details in quest but more basic plot... Garrosh is a prime example, he was introduced in TBC, expanded upon in WotLK then become important! If you're new you will meet him as Warchief then suddenly see he isn't Warchief with no explanation then he's Warchief again! The 100 boost doesn't help either because a lot of Legion story requires prior knowledge such as who is Gul'dan, why is Khadgar important, who is Cordana, who is Illidan, why are people sad about Ysera, why does Greymane hate Sylvanas, etc etc

[Joeydivision82]

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

Legion is set in the current time line, not before 1-60. Do you even lore?

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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.

Dark Souls game mechanics aren't dated as fuck, that's a really terrible comparison.

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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.

Dark Souls game mechanics are dated as fuck, that's a really terrible comparison.

[AzazeltheRuthless]

shrug, been playing since Vanilla and still can't tell you any more than the bare basics of wow lore. It exists only to give a basis to the gameplay, it doesn't really matter. They could retcon it all entirely and most people probably wouldn't even notice other than a dedicated few (but noisy) lore nerds.

Most people don't read a word of quest text anyway, and new players get a boosted toon, they aren't doing loremaster their first play through.

I would love to see your statistic of that opinion. How do you know most people don't care about the lore? Some of the most populated servers in the entire game are RP servers and I can tell you that the people there definitely care about the lore. You may be surprised to know that most people enjoy the story, they might not be super hardcore about it like some others, but a lot do read the quest text the initial time through and have ideas of what's going on the expansion. it's MMORPG, a lot of people care about the RPG elements of the game. Usually one of the top ones is always the story.

Unless ya have numbers and statistics to back up that viewpoint, I think it leans more towards people do enjoy it. Hence why there was so much flack on WoD, one of the biggest complaints was the story was stupid.