Blizzard storytelling in-game

[Deleted]

Greetings,

I'm wondering how you guys find Blizzards story telling in-game and if you feel it's sufficient in keeping you up to date with WoW's lore. I ask because sometimes the story will progress and I find myself asking, 'Wait, how did he get here again?'

Now I don't follow the lore intensely but I do keep an eye on it and often will try to find out more about the lore I'm interested in on sites like wowpedia or through videos. The biggest example I could give is the reason I felt like I should make this thread. I couldn't explain how Illidan is currently back in the present day alive and doing things.

I did take a break before the release of patch 7.1 but I did as much of the Illidan/X'era quest line as I could, eager to find out about what the situation is with such an important character. I fully expect and in a some ways can agree with responses I might get saying I shouldn't complain if I haven't played in such a long time. In ways though, I do feel like Blizzard might not do an amazing job at bringing players up to date with what's going on in the lore.

All I have managed to figure out from playing the Demon Hunter starter zone, seeing players fight Illidan in Nighthold, some ToS dialogue and all the in-game cinematics featuring him is that Gul'dan maybe got to him (I'm guess. He was in that teaser cinematic) and that somehow he was revived and now did something to allow Argus to be in 7.3

Perhaps I'll encounter a quest line soon that was introduced in a later patch that explains everything. I did have a skim through Illidan's wowpedia page reference links and the information about what happens to Illidan (especially things to do with Gul'dan) were tucked away in smaller quest lines. Am I expected to play and level a Demon Hunter to know why Illidan is up and about?

I know my summary of the events of Illidan in Legion might sound ignorant but I just wonder because I'm someone that atleast has an interest in the lore. (Read 2 volumes of Chronicles, etc) What about the average player? Do they know what's going on?

Thanks.

Edit: Feel free to discuss things other than Illidan, of course. Other times you've been confused about why things are happening, for example.

[MechaCThun]

As of late the in-game storytelling has been lackluster.

BUT it surely is not as terrible as most people make it out to be. I think people have a tendency to crap on HOW the story is being told/portrayed in-game due to them just not liking the story (or where the story is going) overall.

Unfortunately in-game, most story telling is regulated to questing, quest text, in-game cinematics & cutscenes, and even item descriptions. Being that the game is a MMO and not a game with a linear level system, it is of course harder to implement storytelling elements.

Blizzard has done an excellent job with other mediums to establish lore. Through novels, comics, online short stories, and everything of the like, they are able to maintain this universe and everything that is going on in it.

If they can fine tune how they convey the story in-game, the game itself will be in a marginally better place than current.

[MoanaLisa]

Let's be practical for a moment:

Story telling is hard when you can only reveal new parts of the story every 3 months or so. I'd love to see them have a separate patch cycle for story-telling elements that is much, much shorter but they've never done that. The best they can do now is the releasing quest lines every week which people get frustrated with as gating. Note that a story-telling patch every couple of weeks would amount to much the same thing but I tend to believe that if they constructed their stories that way they could make things smoother than quest-quest-quest-quest for four weeks and then nothing until next patch.

But let's not forget it's really damn hard to tell a coherent story when you're only revealing new elements three or four times a year.

[Dundebuns]

Lore is getting pretty rubbish. Everything is 'corruption' that and 'Stupid mortals' this.

[clevin]

Let's be practical for a moment:

Story telling is hard when you can only reveal new parts of the story every 3 months or so. I'd love to see them have a separate patch cycle for story-telling elements that is much, much shorter but they've never done that. The best they can do now is the releasing quest lines every week which people get frustrated with as gating. Note that a story-telling patch every couple of weeks would amount to much the same thing but I tend to believe that if they constructed their stories that way they could make things smoother than quest-quest-quest-quest for four weeks and then nothing until next patch.

But let's not forget it's really damn hard to tell a coherent story when you're only revealing new elements three or four times a year.

But they don't have to reveal it all at once. For an example - 5.1 and the LIon's Landing rep dailies which also had intermittent story quests as you hit various points. Now, yes, they have to create it and release it with the patch (unless the do a .01 thing) but that does not mean they can't reveal it over the life of the patch.

[Feali]

MoP was amazing. WoD even with its flaws had pretty good storytelling. Legion lacks a bit of consistency but it'll get better

[MoanaLisa]

But they don't have to reveal it all at once. For an example - 5.1 and the LIon's Landing rep dailies which also had intermittent story quests as you hit various points. Now, yes, they have to create it and release it with the patch (unless the do a .01 thing) but that does not mean they can't reveal it over the life of the patch.

I really wish they would. I think there's a mindset at Blizzard HQ that no one likes to read anything in game which I would think really limits how they approach this. I've complained about the font they use a few times in the past but I guess it's just too hard a problem to present text in game in anything other than that window frame they use for questing. It's annoying. They could do stuff like publish 500 words a week in a faction-specific newspaper that you could pick up from a vendor for a few silver that would foreshadow stuff, move stories along and even tell small stories that otherwise aren't in the game at all.

I once got a chance to bend Metzen's ear about this at a con (not Blizzcon) and he was like "Yeah, that would be great" while at the same time indicating that story stuff like this was difficult to get through the developers.

I think it hurts the game more than they believe but they've firmly come down on gameplay versus story a bunch of times in the past so it's not a priority. Just another RPG element that gets lost in the thicket of theory-crafting, class changes and everything else.

[Aoyi]

The story telling ingame is really hit or miss. Sometimes, they do a fantastic job like Suramar. Other times, you're going to be completely lost if you didn't read a book or online short story. I do think they need to do a better job in general of explaining all lore in game. Sure, they can make novels that have great stories, but its important that anything that appears in those needs to also be in game if its relevant to the story.

[Onikaroshi]

Let's be practical for a moment:

Story telling is hard when you can only reveal new parts of the story every 3 months or so. I'd love to see them have a separate patch cycle for story-telling elements that is much, much shorter but they've never done that. The best they can do now is the releasing quest lines every week which people get frustrated with as gating. Note that a story-telling patch every couple of weeks would amount to much the same thing but I tend to believe that if they constructed their stories that way they could make things smoother than quest-quest-quest-quest for four weeks and then nothing until next patch.

But let's not forget it's really damn hard to tell a coherent story when you're only revealing new elements three or four times a year.

FFXIV does pretty well about releasing a coherent story with Expansions and then patches every 3 months or so, so that's not really an excuse. A lot of people find the story of XIV to be one of the best parts of it, there's definitely better ways blizzard could go about it.

[A Chozo]

Blizzard? Storytelling? Lol.

This sums up my opinion about the subject as well. It stopped feeling like an RPG. Warcraft is turning into a worse Warhammer fanfic with each retcon.

[Evaddon]

Blizzards story telling has gotten a lot better in the current years that being MoP/WoD/Legion though all three had problems,
for example Legion...:
Each zone is set to any level, telling almost completely separate stories because of this. You can't expand and further develop one story because each story is for anyone of any level so that majorly hurt the story developing because it didn't really develop outside of small little things here and there that connected to over all story of the Expansion, this also left zones just ending...with kind of no real end, that being the example Azsuna,Highmountain, leaving Characters half way developed, or hell even ignored completely afterwards Stormheim, with Nathanos Blightcaller starting to become an actual character and The Forsaken actually doing things under the command of Sylvanas which was just dropped after Stormheim and not really finished within the zone or even close to being finished.

BUT...that doesn't mean what stories they told weren't good, half finished...yeah.They had a good reasoning to be happening, a direction to go and end (not all of them making it of course) but they were interesting, and felt..more..well, they felt "bigger" then other quest have in the past and had a lot more likable characters introduced, I liked atleast one character in every zone.

So they're getting better, look at Suramar great end game questing was important,had effects in The World, things changed as you progressed, it was leading up to something big, introduced a lot of cool characters, "new" concepts, a great cast of Characters that were probably the best voiced we've had in awhile, talking about the many different voices used...we've just never had that many before! So its getting better, but of course, this time gating of story telling hurts it at the end of the day. If we had Chapter 1 with like 3-4 quest chains, each week I'd be happy. But this one quest a week, we got with the Legionfall Campaign was weak

- - - Updated - - -

Lore is getting pretty rubbish. Everything is 'corruption' that and 'Stupid mortals' this.

So every fantasy fiction ever?
Oh you forgot something about Elves btw

[Svisalith]

All I have managed to figure out from playing the Demon Hunter starter zone, seeing players fight Illidan in Nighthold, some ToS dialogue and all the in-game cinematics featuring him is that Gul'dan maybe got to him (I'm guess. He was in that teaser cinematic) and that somehow he was revived and now did something to allow Argus to be in 7.3

The DH starting experience covers a lot of that stuff, rewatch some of the cinematics and quest text at the start/end

rest of it was in a questline that everybody got involving Xera and Illidan

[clevin]

I really wish they would. I think there's a mindset at Blizzard HQ that no one likes to read anything in game which I would think really limits how they approach this. I've complained about the font they use a few times in the past but I guess it's just too hard a problem to present text in game in anything other than that window frame they use for questing. It's annoying. They could do stuff like publish 500 words a week in a faction-specific newspaper that you could pick up from a vendor for a few silver that would foreshadow stuff, move stories along and even tell small stories that otherwise aren't in the game at all.

I once got a chance to bend Metzen's ear about this at a con (not Blizzcon) and he was like "Yeah, that would be great" while at the same time indicating that story stuff like this was difficult to get through the developers.

I think it hurts the game more than they believe but they've firmly come down on gameplay versus story a bunch of times in the past so it's not a priority. Just another RPG element that gets lost in the thicket of theory-crafting, class changes and everything else.

That would be a cool idea. And what I liked about the 5.1 quests was that you saw and participated in the story elements. Your idea is even easier as it doesn't require much development now at least - they could reuse the tech that they used to show us AK pages.

[Deleted]

In a way I miss MoP's scenarios. I felt like they were a good way of telling specific stories in a quick and engaging way.

[Lochton]

In a way I miss MoP's scenarios. I felt like they were a good way of telling specific stories in a quick and engaging way.

I do, and I don't. People whined too much about it, it was a good method of telling small stories etc. Just got shit when people bitched and moaned, and expected everything to be a rush job.

[Dundebuns]

So every fantasy fiction ever?
Oh you forgot something about Elves btw

I've read some superb fantasy without the need for every bad thing to be a corruption of some sort. Ian Irvine's Three World Cycle series of books throws a lot of tropes out of the window.

But yes. Elves...

[primalmatter]

I find it much better then before but it still needs a bit of work.

[DeicideUH]

Blizzard has improved its in-game storytelling a lot. The story does feel way more alive and evolving than it did in the past. That said, it can always get better.

(Notice that I'm judging the storytelling devices, not the story itself. How good or bad is the story is another thing).

[Evaddon]

I've read some superb fantasy without the need for every bad thing to be a corruption of some sort. Ian Irvine's Three World Cycle series of books throws a lot of tropes out of the window.

But yes. Elves...

Very seldom their are books without some type of corruption out there, its a huge thing for Fantasy. They never really go on the full evilness of what living things are capable of, and if they do they're aren't really fantasy just books about Man V Man in a realistic world and that isn't Fantasy really, just fiction

[Pony Soldier]

WoW's story ended in WotLK.

Cata felt lackluster and rushed. A dragon comes back to life and wants to destroy the world, not that amazing. Although I did like the occasional Deathwing sighting. Kinda brought some terror into the world. The Firelands stuff was cool though.

I loved MoP it was fun, it had a lot of fun mechanics in it, I loved the Chinese theme but I have to admit the story was a little lame. Not the whole story though, up until the defeat of the Thunder King I thought was pretty cool but when it turned to Garrosh being the final boss things just got stupid and ruined it all. Blizzard turned a once honorable Garrosh into a power hungry douchebag who made for a cliche villain. One of my favorite characters too and my all time favorite Warchief before he turned douchebag.

WoD was just a flat out mess of an expansion. It felt like there was no direction like it was just some story that was made up as you go. Like the whole going back in time but in a different dimension/timeline or whatever was just a confusing mess. Before it came out Blizzard said themselves that it had nothing to do with time traveling and there we were traveling back in time. So you didn't know what to think of it. The whole story felt like it could've been summed up in a Caverns of Time dungeon. Then it turned into a Legion prequel when all the fel stuff started happening with Gul'dan. Grommash who wanted to kill everyone did a total 180 and is now a good guy fighting alongside you and everyone seems to forget what he has done and forgave him for everything.

Legion is a much better expansion compared to WoD. However it turned the game into a grindy RNG fest and I just can't have fun with it anymore so I stopped playing. So I can't really say much about the story other than from what I played which I thought was pretty cool. Fighting the Legion again I thought was fun. Although I didn't like how the game was treating you like you were "The One". A special one of a kind snowflake with a one of kind weapon and the leader of your class yet you'll see dozens of other players running around getting told the same thing with the same class title and the same exact weapon. It's like they were trying to mix oil and vinegar together. Trying to make an immersive single player experience in an MMO where hundreds of people will be doing he same exact thing. Really bothered me.

They're either running out of ideas or they stopped trying. With Chris Metzen gone I'm sure their writing team is in shambles just scraping the bottom of the barrel of story ideas and clinging on to old villains as long as possible.