Does WoW need to return to swords and sorcery?

[Thoughtcrime]

It's like power levels, once you start up that ladder it's very difficult to get back down it. Does anyone want to buy an expansion where the main villain is some powerful but otherwise ordinary wizard holed up in his castle

Because the opposite is true as well: Once we've commanded armies and faced down near gods why should we care much about some old bearded guy torturing the inhabitants of a small town off in the wilderness somewhere?

Tough problem which I'm glad I don't have to solve.

It's a problem that's solved with writing characters. I'm going to do what I always do and go back to the original Star Wars trilogy. The first movie ends with them destroying a literal world ending threat. From there they knew they couldn't just have a bigger threat for the sequel so they took a step back and made the focus of the story be about developing Vader as a character and firmly establishing him as Luke's antagonist. We got the best movie in the series and one of cinema's greatest villains.

Conversely, with The Matrix the first movie was great because it was reasonably grounded. We followed the protagonist from his office job as he discovered the nature of the world in which he lived and his power grew until he had the strength to upend the whole system, that should have been enough; story could have ended there and it would have been solid. Instead they made 2 awful sequels with Dragonball Z battles that went on forever and had no consequence.

Blizzard built a World, but to me it's never been much more than a fun - if derivative premise. What WoW is desperately crying out for and has been since day one is new strongly developed characters that we care about, whether they are heroes or villains. Not just more monsters to bash for loot.

If they wanted a game to be about hitting on loot pinatas they already had it, that's what Diablo caters to.

[cparle87]

I personally see WoW hitting an industrial age, where there is a whole lot of technology... but the level of skill with less technological weaponry, and the existence of magic, makes everyone on an even playing field, even with technology.

I will remind you that the deeprun tram, the horde zepplins, the dwarven tanks, guns, all of gnomeregan, the engineering profession, Goblins and Gnomes, and the thousand needles raceway, were all in Vanilla.
Over the years, we've added: magical crystal spaceships via the Draenei and Naaru, Paddleboats, airships flying like out of the avengers (BEFORE the Avengers), industrialized Orgrimmar, submarines, sentient giant robots and tanks built by the titans... all before Pandaria. What did WoD add? a steam train is actually a step down from the deeprun tram, a bomb on wheels (big deal, we got exploding robot sheep!), and an even bigger tank.
Legion borught us: Fel powered ships, larger fel robots, and a new draenei magic crystal ship.

I think the last time WoW was swords and sorcery was actually before Warcraft 3, 'cause even that had dwarven mortar teams.

Before that. WC2 introduced the gnomish flying machines and mechanized sea turtle.

[MoanaLisa]

It's a problem that's solved with writing characters.

That sounds simple enough but it runs into the practical problem of developing characters with a backstory and stuffing enough information about them, so that someone will actually care what happens to them, into a game so that only gets updated in a major way every 18-24 months. And yeah, that's a big problem specific to this game and their oft-stated dictum that play is more important than story.

Which I think is dead wrong at this point. The game plays fine (if they would stop fucking with it in major ways every expansion). The stories are unsubtle, unsurprising and so shallow there's nothing to really think about. That's also a structural problem with writing for an 18-24 month stretch when you only have so much text to work with and know that a substantial number of players don't want to read any of it.

The whole thing has been seriously exacerbated by their willingness to kill off major lore characters at an increasingly alarming rate, much faster than new ones can be created, all for the sake of effect (or being EPIC!! in Blizz terms).

But they aren't developing anyone really new that I can see in this expansion that will carry over and replace major lore NPC's in the next.

There's a lot of really dumb mindsets at Blizzard when they start having their story meetings and someone says "Wouldn't this be EPIC!!??!!" I'll list the two most obvious:

1) Bigger is more epic. Witness Deathwing and how dumb and counter-intuitive that all turned out. "But he's FUCKING GIGANTIC! THAT'S EPIC!!" I can hear it now.

2) "We'll kill people that players know". See above for the problems with that if they don't have a plan to replace them.

The problem with writing to be epic is that epic is something players decide, not the writers. Hype isn't epic. Killing off a bunch of people at the start of Legion isn't epic in and of itself unless that washes down future story lines. Has there been any consequences for the Alliance in killing Varian? Really? Nice memorial but the story since then hasn't really turned on what the Alliance misses without it's leader. So it's a wasted death.

Again it's a problem I'm glad I don't have to solve.

Postscript: Whoever wrote Mists deserves some sort of reward though. Nice story with some subtleties in the non-Garrosh parts of the plot and some new characters introduced in a way that made you at least care something about them. So they can do it.

[Thoughtcrime]

That sounds simple enough but it runs into the practical problem of developing characters with a backstory and stuffing enough information about them, so that someone will actually care what happens to them, into a game so that only gets updated in a major way every 18-24 months. And yeah, that's a big problem specific to this game.

At least for me, FFXIV and in particular Stormblood shows that it needn't be a problem. It's the same genre, and the same mix of high and low fantasy and yet it has characters that have been introduced and developed in game that I genuinely care about. I am really looking forward to where they take the likes of Lyse, Hien and Gosetsu and even though that game also has ever escalating threats it has characters I care about to guide me through the story and give me a reason to care.

I definitely agree that Blizzard have wasted a lot of potentially interesting characters over the years but I don't care that they're dead because none of them were satisfactorily developed in game and they've made a minimal effort to establish anyone new.

[Eurhetemec]

I started out delivering love letters, helping farmers and villagers. My adventures consisted of helping a beleaguered kingdom against bandits, outlaws, pirates attacking farms and renegade orcs invading lakeside towns. I joined the night watch in protecting their town from worgen and a necromancer that tricked me into helping him build an abomination. In fact almost all of the adventures up to level 60 were low key like that and it was wonderful. Nowadays we can't go a zone without bombastic world ending threats. Everything has to be epic, with space ships, and demon lords, and void gods, and it's boring. None of it can ever be as engaging as something as small and simple as a broken man trying to bring back his wife or people protecting their homes and families in a dangerous world.

Stories need humanity. Or they're not stories we care about.

You're talking about WoW, not Warcraft, though - and WoW was set in the aftermath of extreme High/Epic Fantasy.

I would also question how good it was at conveying the sense of "humanity", because a lot of the time, the humans just seemed to be parodies/jokes/references rather than people (not even comedy characters, just cheap cardboard stereotypes/archetypes). And it didn't help that every time someone was evil, magic seemed to be at fault, not a personal flaw or the like. There were a few places it did work very well - oddly enough everywhere kind of "gothic" in WoW seemed to work extremely well atmospherically and stylistically. However, even that broke down with the original Naxx and so on. WoW was always headed rapidly back to High/Epic Fantasy with the odd poop joke along the way.

[nyc81991]

Dance boy dance.

Can we get a mod to take care of this? It's derailing the post.

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You're talking about WoW, not Warcraft, though - and WoW was set in the aftermath of extreme High/Epic Fantasy.

I would also question how good it was at conveying the sense of "humanity", because a lot of the time, the humans just seemed to be parodies/jokes/references rather than people (not even comedy characters, just cheap cardboard stereotypes/archetypes). And it didn't help that every time someone was evil, magic seemed to be at fault, not a personal flaw or the like. There were a few places it did work very well - oddly enough everywhere kind of "gothic" in WoW seemed to work extremely well atmospherically and stylistically. However, even that broke down with the original Naxx and so on. WoW was always headed rapidly back to High/Epic Fantasy with the odd poop joke along the way.

I agree Warcraft has always been on the "high fantasy" side of things but there is definitely a big difference between back then and what we are seeing right now. I don't remember Demons flying Spaceships with warpdrives in Warcraft 1 - 3 and that's where most people have a problem.

[Eurhetemec]

I agree Warcraft has always been on the "high fantasy" side of things but there is definitely a big difference between back then and what we are seeing right now. But I don't remember Demons flying Spaceships with warpdrives in Warcraft 1 - 3 and that's where most people have a problem.

Sure but how do you step back from that without a "WoW 2", which isn't going to happen any time soon? I don't think you entirely can.

You can just have a period of calm before working up to another threat of similarly existential nature. I expect we'll see a similar pattern to Legion, as it seemed to work well, with a new area (probably navigated by ship) and a focus on more minor threats at first, gradually adding new areas with more and more monumental threats.

I doubt there will be any more spaceships for a while (of course I post this and no doubt we'll see "EXPANSION LEAKED AT BLIZZCON - WOW GOES TO SPACE!").

[sociald1077]

I find it funny that people think this started in WoW. All these elements were setup in the bastardization of the WoW lore in WC3.

WoW didnt start the downfall of Warcraft lore Warcraft 3 did. Going from WC2 to WC3 was such a huge tonal change for the series, its almost hard to look back at what Warcraft lore was setup as.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Can we get a mod to take care of this? It's derailing the post.

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I agree Warcraft has always been on the "high fantasy" side of things but there is definitely a big difference between back then and what we are seeing right now. I don't remember Demons flying Spaceships with warpdrives in Warcraft 1 - 3 and that's where most people have a problem.

Pussy. LAWL

[Deleted]

Always this terror when Fantasy seemingly turns into SciFi, even though both are more or less the same thing with minor variations. Particularly since the Legion explicitly employs a crap-ton of magitek powered by souls.

You want a group shoving it over into SciFi? Look at Gnomes and Goblins, not the Legion.

WarCraft has ridden the line between the two at the very least since they introduced flying machines in WC2. Complaning about it now makes me wonder what mountain you've spend the last 23 years or so under.


"True Fantasy" isn't actually a thing. Fantasy(and SciFi) are very loose clusters of genres that constantly shift borders and heavily depend on the viewer.

However, i disagree with your last point. Magical Crystal Spaceships propelled by glowing windchimes are far more at home in Fantasy than SciFi. It's not whether technology exists that defines what side of the Fantasy/SciFi scale something falls on, it's how that technologies existence is justified. And for all the Legion and Naaru stuff, that's pretty much "It's magic". Now, Gnome/Titan tech is a different topic.

You're right, my mistake, I use the term space opera and sci-fi interchangably because I always forget the two aren't the same.

OT: I think one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of the spacefaring direction WoW has gone in, is a lot of times it doesn't make any sense.

Why hasn't the Legion just used a portion of their armada to systematically blow up every capital city in the game crippling the Alliance and Horde? The cities have no anti air weaponry making them easy targets.

Why didn't they park their battleships in Azeroths atmosphere and blow the entire planet up while being out of our reach?

At least with previous iterations of the gane it has somewhat made sense.

[Wyrt]

I find it funny that people think this started in WoW. All these elements were setup in the bastardization of the WoW lore in WC3.

WoW didnt start the downfall of Warcraft lore Warcraft 3 did. Going from WC2 to WC3 was such a huge tonal change for the series, its almost hard to look back at what Warcraft lore was setup as.

Yeah, Warcraft 3 was when the Warcraft transition from incredibly generic and boring fantasy setting into its own thing with some incredibly generic and boring fantasy elements still in it.

[rda]

Does WoW need to return to a simpler time of swords and sorcery? We are increasingly rushing headlong in to greater threats and associating with beings of such great power such as the titans that I fear we are losing sight on the simplicity and enjoyment of the swords and sorcery aspect we were introduced to.

I understand the story needs to progress, but I am worried by the current expedited increase of the threats we face and our own grandeur and how we are becoming a galactic universal force of power.

Does anyone else feel we need to come back down to earth and confront threats out of our reach but feasibly able to defeat.

I would love that, but I think it's far too late. It would have been much cooler if we just stayed on Azeroth for all expansions and there was much less magic all around, but... the ship has already sailed, you can't calm down after BS fights vs dragons / demons / whatever that we had.

[Servasus]

This is the latest # trend, apparently. Keep seeing this on reddit, too. To hate on sci-fi genre and call wow a "medieval fantasy game," which it literally has never been in its entire existence. Warcraft has always had multiple genres mixed into one huge fantasy setting. That is why it works. You can have spaceships and teleportation AND sword-slinging and thieving all in the same game. Need I remind everyone the entirety of the first WoW expansion was, gasp, in space. lol.

[ComputerNerd]

Going back to something which wasn't there from the start.
Even the first dungeon is about tackling some bigger threat.

[Deleted]

When did we last not face World-ending threats?

Ragnaros and Neltharion weren't exactly jokes...

[slikvik]

This game is 10+ years old. You really think this game would have lasted this long had we not moved on from killing boars and shit. This is like watching the last season of GoT and complaining its too ridiculous.

[Benomatic]

I had mentioned in a previous thread I had started http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-reset-in-game That the current game progression and writing is causing bigger issues for the game. The ever increasing power of the threats we face and our rise in power level to face them is preventing new characters being introduced. We the player should be interacting with NPCs yet its the NPCs taking our role.

The bigger the threat, the more focus on us, the less development there is in the game world/ More and more characters are being killed off and not enough are being written or brought up to the forefront.

[Stallion]

I started out delivering love letters, helping farmers and villagers. My adventures consisted of helping a beleaguered kingdom against bandits, outlaws, pirates attacking farms and renegade orcs invading lakeside towns. I joined the night watch in protecting their town from worgen and a necromancer that tricked me into helping him build an abomination. In fact almost all of the adventures up to level 60 were low key like that and it was wonderful. Nowadays we can't go a zone without bombastic world ending threats. Everything has to be epic, with space ships, and demon lords, and void gods, and it's boring. None of it can ever be as engaging as something as small and simple as a broken man trying to bring back his wife or people protecting their homes and families in a dangerous world.

Stories need humanity. Or they're not stories we care about.

This so much! I cared so much more about the story when leveling in Classic than I do now. What makes the current apocalypse lore especially impossible to enjoy for me, is the fact how ridiculously half-assed and weak the invasion attempts are. Like someone said, why would they stop their attack with placing some of their ships in the sky above Broken Shore with several real life months passing where no attacks even happen?

Then we "take the fight to Argus", i.e. we place our ship in the sky above one square kilometer of rocks and boulders, enter rifts in which you form a party with everyone in there and run from spawn point to spawn point oneshotting mobs like they're level 100. The pinnacle of this lore comedy when you get to find Kil'Jaeden in LFR where he's basically a talking target dummy. Am I really supposed to take the Legion threat serious when I'm threeshotting any invading mobs as a tank? I could probably sustain myself against every minion on the Broken Shore / Argus attacking me at the same time without a healer. That's how dangerous the legion feels. In classic I had trouble pulling three Tyrs Hand elites at the same time even though they didn't threaten to nuke my whole world.

It just doesn't work to deliver a story with such a threat in an MMO without it feeling like a joke threat. Because every player including newcomers need to be able to defeat things and people progress through the "story" at varying pace, so you can't really have the invasion be a real invasion, all actions need to be started by the player when he has time to play. So the invasion seems to stand still.

[Ynna]

1. WoW can't return to Sword and Sorcery, because it never was just that. Many people have pointed out the more modern, futuristic or steampunk aspects that have been present since the beginning. Being able to mix "traditional fantasy" with sci-fi or steampunk aspects are what makes the World of Warcraft feel unique and varied.

2. I don't think the problem is that the setting has gone to much towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum, but that this is just a tangible detail people can latch on to. The Vindicaar and all the tech being used on Argus still feels very "magepunk" rather than science-fiction, for the most part, and Mac'Aree is solidly on the "fantasy" end of the spectrum.

3. I think the bigger problems are that (a) we've been getting the same enemy tech for three or four zones now, with a relatively boring color scheme and little variety, and (b) the focus on the spaceships and warframes makes it so that our own characters don't feel as impactful. Especially the latter point is important. Part of the fantasy of, well, fantasy and the "sword and sorcery" genre is that individuals or small groups can overcome insurmountable odds. Where sci-fi focuses more on humanity as a whole using its tenacity and intelligence to overcome huge challenges, fantasy focuses on a smaller group to represent that same humanity. Our current invasion of Argus shifts to focus to large armies using "cookie-cutter" technology, rather than a small band of heroes using their own skill. More so than the tone and appearance of WoW shifting towards sci-fi, the theme has been shifting away from fantasy.

The more I think about my last point, the more seems to fit. The Class Halls also shift away focus from our characters as skilled heroes and puts them in the role of, basically, administrators. Those characters exist in Sword and Sorcery, but they're rarely the protagonists.

[Spiral Mage]

It can't return to something it's still doing .. ? You have to leave something, to return to it.