Blizzard storytelling in-game

[Deleted]

It's not great, the stories they do is only because they think its cool instead of making the world feel like something alive. Npc's never acknowledge any events to eachother or even try to give insight in what they are thinking. Main characters only say things cause it sounds badass (and sometimes even goes against their character) or it's a pun.

The story is also presented very black and white mostly because Npc's don't ask questions or talks about the morality of things like the legion or even Illidan enslaving outland.

The way the legion is portrayed is like a bad caricature. how many times did a dreadlord say something in the vein of "foolish mortal, you will bow before my might however now I think about you aren't worth my time after you punched my kneecaps." and dissapears....

They never build up anyone. ex: Kil'jaeden has so much more potential to be a great character (and he really was). in 7.2 we learn he has some resentment for Sargeras, 7.2.5 he's dead...
They haven't even build up any other demonlords (There would be at least some demons who's goals are alligned with Sargeras for after he's gone.).

Many people say the story is better delivered, but that is mostly only because of suramar and the voice acting we got. If you exclude those (and voice acting is only an illusion of "more" story). But the quest text and chat bubbles npc's used to have to give more story are more abscent than in the past.

Then there is all the retcons just to bring Illidan back which were just appalling, in WotA Illidan betrayed the night elves. It wasn't a ploy since we read his toughts (and this would be something Blizzard told knaak to write.) and that is not even to mention working for Kil'Jaeden, again not a ploy. Haven't read the Illidan book to see if they retconed any of these.

Under retcons we also have Jaina that accepted theramore to be an act done by Garrosh and not the horde in War Crimes, yet in legion it's completely forgotten.


Tldr: Blizzard doesn't take their lore serious, doesn't even read their own material and giving the bare minimum of world building.

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.

I really don't understand their gameplay > Story mentality to not pay attention to story. I'm pretty sure the philosophy doesn't mean what they think it means, and should only mean that things like raid bosses respawning is not canon and only gameplay.
They need to get their head out of their asses about this issue.

[MoanaLisa]

I really don't understand their gameplay > Story mentality to not pay attention to story. I'm pretty sure the philosophy doesn't mean what they think it means, and should only mean that things like raid bosses respawning is not canon and only gameplay.
They need to get their head out of their asses about this issue.

Either the story exists to serve the game or the game exists to serve the story.

They seem to be firmly in the first camp which almost immediately leads to problems with a coherent (and more immersive) world. I think it hurts the game more than they are willing to admit.

It has to be said though that developers are frequently more engineers than artists which explains the obsession with class mechanics and having story less of a priority.

[Deleted]

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).

The storytelling devices was the point of the thread but people seem to be discussing if they like the current story or not.

[Deleted]

Either the story exists to serve the game or the game exists to serve the story.

They seem to be firmly in the first camp which almost immediately leads to problems with a coherent (and more immersive) world. I think it hurts the game more than they are willing to admit.

It has to be said though that developers are frequently more engineers than artists which explains the obsession with class mechanics and having story less of a priority.

They have lore writers though. And Surely adding a few chat boxes between 2 npc's doesn't take more than 10 mins time. In 7.3 they even cut out the whole windrunner sister conversation about sylvanas and what happened to Azeroth (unless we see it somewhere else still... but does anyone believe that?). It doesn't even need to be voice acted, as if an intern can't write a few paragraphs of story there?

They have some really weird mentality about how they handle their lore and don't seem to know what is actually interesting to read about. The neglect for their lore is really sad.

[TheFirstOnes]

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.

The story didn't end with Wrath.

You never played WC3, it seems.

[zlygork]

It has to be said though that developers are frequently more engineers than artists which explains the obsession with class mechanics and having story less of a priority.

This is a fair point. I feel like RPGs, be they online or single player should have a balance between "engineer" and "artist" developpers, neither of them should have veto over the other. What we see is stories constantly being limited because the engineers tell the artists that it would be a pain from a developping perspective, yet an artist cannot keep game mechanics in check. How about we got one less leveling area per expansion, and a bit of the world evolved with a total of one questing area worth of quests and art assets, for example?

[Blackmist]

Blizzard's in-game story telling is perfectly cromulent.

[Icecat]

MoP is really the only time that neo-World of Warcraft at least attempted to take on some deeper themes and explore interesting concepts about the nature of war and conflict. People say that Wotlk had good storytelling but I mean... Warcraft 3 has good writing. Wotlk only brought about the conclusion to a storyline in Warcraft 3, and its quality was questionable. People have been pulling apart that "There must always be a Lich King" asspull for years.

My impression of Blizzard storytelling is that it can actually be surprisingly good when it is a small, contained story. A great example of this is the Suramar questline which many people agree is well put together. I would cite MoP as another example; a relatively contained story that eventually tied back into the greater lore of the series. These contained zones also introduce us to lots of side characters that are able to have real character arcs that can be surprisingly evocative and even suffer tragic deaths (that are actually permanent) because they aren't hugely important characters that aren't hanging from banners at Blizzcon. The more important the character, the shittier the writing, for obvious reasons.

I can't believe there are posts in this thread saying that there is anything about WoD that was good, storyline was. Garrosh, Wrathion, and a confusing side character work together in an incredibly convoluted plot to go back in time, spend thirty years creating the Iron Horde, and then attacking the PRESENT timeline of Azeroth. There is also the enormous retcon that "orcs were always meant to be raiders, rapists, and murderers, even without the fel blood, which is INSANE considering the story initially was meant for us to empathize with them somewhat. We trounce the shit out of the Iron Horde throughout the leveling experience and almost all of them are dead by the time the first content patch was released. Every single villain was some dipshit orc shouting cartoon villain dialogue. 7.2 comes out and Grom turns into our ally for no fucking reason and we don't even get a dialogue prompt or cutscene over it. The whole expansion was riddled with plot holes. It might be the single most worst written game I've ever seen from a triple A developer.

Compared to WoD, Legion is fucking Hemingway.

EDIT: In my salt, I forgot to come to a real thesis here. The point is that if you want to enjoy storytelling in WoW, you have to look in the little places where stakes are allowed and they are allowed to take risks. The big overarching "story" is designed by committee and storytelling just plain and simple is not a priority for Blizzard. I mean they even said for years and years "gameplay before story" and it really shows. If you want a good story, there are many other games that will do you proper.

[DeicideUH]

I can't believe there are posts in this thread saying that there is anything about WoD that was good, storyline was.

The story was total crap, with a horrible premise and terrible ending. That said, I thought the leveling experience, given the constraints given by the premise, was quite good. The zones (with Gorgrond as the big horrible exception) were pretty immersive, there were interesting events and twists, and the Spires of Arak storyline was a true jewel that was unfortunately immersed into the crap that was WoD.