Does WoW need to return to swords and sorcery?

[Valrysha]

Does it need to? No.
Would I prefer it that way? Hell yes. The joke has always been 'World of Starcraft' and that's true more than ever, I would love a return to the Sorcery and Swords type.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yes.. the space ship focus and the clear protos inspiration are a bit much for my taste and are really starting to straddle the line ..

[darkfire979]

I think they can exist side by side. And this expansion, we are dealing with 'Protos' of the Warcraft world, it make sense for Draenei to make full use of their technology as they reclaim their homeworld. I'm sure next expansion, we'll go back to swords and guns again.

Unless the gnomes and goblins have decided to work together to acquire Draenei tech. Imagine if that shoeless gnome mage at the Vindicaar basement is a sleeper agent and he waited for the crew of Vindicaar to go to sleep at night and switch the Dalaran portal to smuggle in gnome and goblin engineers.
Next expansion, we might see Vindicaar replicas flying above Ironforge and Orgrimmar.

[Soon-TM]

WoW could definitely use more S&S and less SC. Not that I have anything against the latter, but fantasy tends to not mix too well with sci-fi, unless you pull something like TK and the whole Netherstorm, which is one of the highest points in WoW imo.

[huth]

WoW could definitely use more S&S and less SC. Not that I have anything against the latter, but fantasy tends to not mix too well with sci-fi, unless you pull something like TK and the whole Netherstorm, which is one of the highest points in WoW imo.

Mixing SF and Fantasy hard? They are so close that sometimes you have trouble telling which one a story belongs to. If you're careless, you can end up mixing them by accident. It's common enough that Science Fantasy is a genre of it's own.

[Deleted]

They should highlight every spaceship/space/interplanetary-related object/quest/item/NPC in the game and press delete. Only then will we maybe be on the path to being a fantasy MMORPG again.

so warcraft: Humans. is what you want? no orcs?

[huth]

so warcraft: Humans. is what you want? no orcs?

No, since Humans are indirectly Titan created, it would be WarCraft: Trolls vs. Tauren.

For that matter, the Alliance would cease to exist since the only race left would be Pandaren.

[Nyel]

Yes. I hate the whole dimension / time travel and space ship stuff. In TBC it was cool and interesting but it's too much since WoD and Legion is just absolutely ridiculous when it comes to that.

[Deleted]

WoW is too heavy on pop culture references since the beginning. It's not like we did not have weird steampunky tech since Classic with gnomes and goblins and such. The SciFy-ness of WoW is less than in Star Wars, which already is a fairytale in space because some things seem like people only re-iterate technology given to them and don't push forward anymore (besides building planet-killer weapons which are even somehow able to destroy planets in other solar system faster than the speed of light). "Technology" in WoW is so often just magic put in a technological shape. Draenei starships work with magic, not like the pseudo-scientific Start Trek ships.

[LanToaster]

It's literally fanfiction at this point, it's what a 6 year old kid would make if you handed it the original warcraft lore.

"Original Warcraft Lore", so: "Hey Guys lets make a game where Humans and Orcs fight each other"
A bit later: "Hey lets make it so the Orcs came through a Portal from a Place called Dreanor" (If it actually had a name back then)

Just because you dont like the direction the Story goes, doesnt make it less canon. And the Original WarCraft story was not that deep. They Added whatever they thought "Cool" or "Neccessary".

Edit:
On Topic:
I for myself dont mind the "Sci-Fi" stuff. There are some things storywise that dont really add up, (For example why they dont just blow the Vindikaar out of the sky with their ships, or why they only have one "Anti Air Deamon Cannon Thingy", and so on) but if you dont "want" to bitch about stuff, I think one may look over these.

[Demithio]

WoW has gotten very far away from its roots, but then every aspect of the game has changed drastically since Vanilla. There was always a bit of 'tech' in WoW but it was kept under control. Now, its to the point of being ridiculous and silly, but again, not surprising considering what happened to the rest of the game.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. I hate the whole dimension / time travel and space ship stuff. In TBC it was cool and interesting but it's too much since WoD and Legion is just absolutely ridiculous when it comes to that.

Although TBC was 'tech driven', its overall feel was very different than what we have today. It did a very good job of connecting vanilla mindset with the new TBC content (one example Karazhan) to where there wasnt a vast separation between the two.

[huth]

"Original Warcraft Lore", so: "Hey Guys lets make a game where Humans and Orcs fight each other"
A bit later: "Hey lets make it so the Orcs came through a Portal from a Place called Dreanor" (If it actually had a name back then)

It had by the time of the WC2 expansion at least.

[Nyel]

Although TBC was 'tech driven', its overall feel was very different than what we have today. It did a very good job of connecting vanilla mindset with the new TBC content (one example Karazhan) to where there wasnt a vast separation between the two.

I agree! /10chars

Legion is just... too much of everything.

[Deleted]

"Original Warcraft Lore", so: "Hey Guys lets make a game where Humans and Orcs fight each other"
A bit later: "Hey lets make it so the Orcs came through a Portal from a Place called Dreanor" (If it actually had a name back then)

Just because you dont like the direction the Story goes, doesnt make it less canon. And the Original WarCraft story was not that deep. They Added whatever they thought "Cool" or "Neccessary".

First of all, I agree that warcraft never had the best storytelling or worldbuilding, being a mish-mash of various "influences". Of course the first game was as you said a game where they just had to make orcs fight humans. But there are some interesting things that they did like the orcs coming from another world through a portal with the help of a corrupted mage, and the tone of the setting was very consistent and engaging. Was it derivative? Sure, but it was still enjoyable and immersive.

As for whether or not is canon, do any of the same people develop the story still? I doubt it. Canon is a very technical term, and yes, technically it is canon, something i never disputed in the first place, all I said was that the writing was horrible (as it is often in fanfiction) and extremely inconsistent with the original themes and material (as it is also often in fanfiction)

[Tyris Flare]

I have a lot of trouble caring about transdimensional wind chimes and their protoss carriers.

I would love to get back to "orcs versus humans" or whatever style that is a little bit more grounded. WoW has basically turned into Planescape, just without all the interesting stuff

[Vargas]

I don't mind that there are societies in the WoW universe, like the Draenei, that are so technologically advanced that they make the natives of Azeroth look like cavemen. I actually think its cool to see how the Alliance and Horde's technology has evolved over time; there was a time where the Horde army was basically orcs on wolfback but now we have tanks, catapaults and lots of other stuff. Same with the Alliance.

[Deztru]

Well the first contents you ever played in Vanilla were to stop baddies from taking over the capitals.

[Demithio]

I don't understand why people think the whole sci-fi/Legion spaceship stuff is some new concept in WoW. It's always been a part Warcraft lore since at least the Warcraft 3 days. The spaceships themselves may not have been but space demons were always a thing in Warcraft lore. Where do you think the infernals came from when they crashed into Azeroth in that opening WC 3 cinematic? And since they came from a different planet how do you think the others got here? A logical explanation would be spaceships. Hell, the draenei came to Azeroth in a flying crystal spaceship that crash landed in Azuremyst Isle. Did people forget that? Right there pretty much established the fact that there are spaceships and space travel in the Warcraft universe. It's just that we're actually seeing them for the first time.

I don't know why people think Warcraft is just as simple as swords and magic because it's not. It's much more than that. It's not your typical fantasy game. This is coming from a guy who has a hard time keeping up with the stories and hardly read into any of the lore. If I am able to point these things out while others cannot then I have either just simply played longer or people have not been paying much attention to what is going on in WoW.

Theres a different between having it be a distant part of the lore, the "what if" factor that WoW used to have, and having it fully in your face. Its the same effect as the Pandaren, I read about them long ago during late vanilla / early TBC, and thought it was an interesting novelty, something to think about as some distant part of the lore. I never thought they would make an entire expansion out of it, which in actual practice turned out to be ridiculous and silly according to many opinions.

[Deleted]

I am in agreement with the OP. WoW became popular in the first place not because we toppled gods or travelled through space and time. It got popular because it was an amazing feeling to be able to run around in a massive, seamless fantasy world. You would feel so immersed by the forests, deserts, caves, lakes, mountains, etc., that it was a very captivating experience. The fact that the world had a thriving community also helped loads.

Right now, I feel WoW is sustained expansion-to-expansion by trying to woo us with shiny things.

Look, you're the COMMANDER! Look again, you're a CLASS LEADER! But wait, now you're the DEFENDER OF THE WORLD. WITH ILLIDAN. AND TURALYON. AND FUCKING POWERFUL WEAPONS PEOPLE IN VANILLA ONLY DREAMT ABOUT.

People are likely also sticking around because by now, a combination of time passing, friendships taking root, collections getting bigger, lore reaching its climax, and life outside of WoW getting more stressful to handle, all contribute to making it difficult for old players to let go.

So now, people are under the misconception that WoW remains healthy and popular as ever, growing even. But I think that's a mistaken belief. I think WoW would be a lot more popular if it had stuck to the wizards and dragons concept. Outland was about as far towards the outlandish as it should have gotten. It toyed around the idea back then. At this point, we're basically in StarCraft.

[Hyral]

I miss fighting the Venture Co.

They can retcon everything again next expansion to create the Light Lords that the Void Lords were afraid of and were secretly fighting against that we had no idea of like they ruined Sargeras and the Legion but eventually it will become repetitive. Right now the only things that pose a bigger threat to the world than actual gods are us mortals. Eventually we are going to need an expansion similar to MoP focused on faction war since gods are clearly not on our level anymore.