Features of the good written story

[Deleted]

Hi,
for the beginning, sorry for my poor english. I will try to make my post as understandable, as I can. Please also remember, than I'm not a "loremaster" - I don't know many things and can be mistaken. Another important thing is, that I don't want to force anyone to my point of view - I just want to know what do you think about the case and share my view. With no fights. That should be rather just a fun thread.

I was mostly inspired by various threads, where people was talking about problems with current WoW storytelling caused by gameplay prioritaire. For example some people proposed WoW 2 which would be more RPG-alike game, some proposed even not MMO, but just WoW RPG game, some was blaming Dave Kosak, and some - fact, that WoW has only two faction and they need to be balanced.
There was also proposition for Warcraft 4 RTS game.

So, going to the core, I'm just wondering - when story is considered as good? What are the features of interesting fable?

My views are:

1. Consequence. I mean, if they started some concrete story plot, it should been expanted later and resolved in some way. For example whole this "what is under Tirisfal Glades" thing, or stories of some important characters, like Kel'thuzad, Maiev, or even Calia Menethil (we don't know anything about her - is she alive, dead, undead? Even if she is absolutely dead, why we don't know what happened to her? She was a princess of Lordaeron, what makes her rather important person). And Med'an, too - if they created him, they should do something with him. No matter what - for example killing him could be one of the best ways to resolve problems with him - but if he was raised to exist in the lore, leaving him without any continuation is rather bad.
Different example lack of consequence is whole Old Gods thing. Titans imprisoned them, because Old God's were bound to Azeroth as a planet, and wiping them off would break Azeroth, too, am I right? I'm not 100% sure, but as I remember - that was an explanation why Old Gods can't be absolutely killed. Second thing was probably, that they were just gods, what was making them immortal, even if their material body would be killed, they would be back. But now - C'thun is dead, Yoggy is dead, Y'sharj is dead... are they, or they not? If yes, why there was whole this "Old Gods cannot be killed forever" thing? Why Titans didn't kill them many thousands years ago instead of leaving them alive only imprisoned and waiting as players ("champions") will killt them? Shouldn't it result just destroying Azeroth and turning it into another Outland?

2. Personal dramats and hard choices. Someone would of course say - there's Sylvanas, who was killed and turned into banshee by Arthas. There's Jaina - man that she loved turned into Lich King and then died, and land of refugeers she managed, was bombarded by Garrosh. And of course, those are dramats - but I mean something different - a character's dilemma. For example whole Garona/Maraad/Varian thing. Just look: Maarad was her uncle - a brother of her mother, what makes him her closest living relative. Maraad was also in WoD a close advisor of Varian Wrynn, what was visible on all those WoD short cinematics about warlords. Garona killed Varian's dad - Llane. So just look - Maraad could be torn apart between loyalty to his ally, king Varian, and love/will of protection for his niece. Of course both, Varian and Garona would not trust him so Maraad would have really big personal problem, for me it could be really interesting story and resolve of this could be some nice surprise. But this story was just not expanded, I think that probably of none of Blizz storymakers even thought about that.

3. Rational reasons and themes of character's dids. I mean - mostly the villain ones. Just look, how oftenly they like to expand really shallow themes "we need to kill some character? let's just make him/her mad!". Most of villains are now evil because: they are controlled by something, usually an Old God or demons/they always were evil "just because" and they want to destroy world (why? "destroy world and then rule it?" the ruined world? it has no sense). I just don't see in WoW enough villains in style of Garrosh or even Sylvanas (I don't like her too much, I admit, she's too much "crying emo teen" for me now, but I like that she is not controlledbygreaterevil and all her decisions seem to be thought before, not just "raaawrr kill kill kill") - not mad, just with different priorities than most of "good heroes" have, ambitious, power-willing. And they could make many villains like that, for example Fandral Staghelm could be like that and he could be political alternative for Night Elves - but no, they turned him mad. Just because. The same with Godfrey - morally "grey" character, with interesting personality, he also could be the darker side of the Alliance and some political concurence for Varian supporters - but what they did with him? He jumped out of cliff. Almost with no reason - just because his king turned into a worgen. Then he appeared as an undead, but still this is completely wasted character IMO. His suicide was the biggest WTF I have ever seen in WoW.

4. I'm not sure how to write this point in english - lack of constant excess of emotions. I'm explaining what I mean - you know, when something is constantly in danger and we must still save it with no rest, it would finally be not emotional anymore. You know, the syndrome "well, another monday, another world-saving day... my job is so boring". Something like action movies are very oftenly just boring, because of constant quick action and any rest of this, any calm moments.
Generally in WoW Pandaria was this calm moment, when we didn't must save the world from 5 different powers wanting to "destroy Azeroth to rule it after". And that's good. I'm not sure how WoD will end, so I won't judge it now. I think that we need to take a rest from saving world and even turn whole Azeroth next 10-20 years into the future. It would be also a nice occasion to bring to the lore many new characters. You know, some children would grow up, some would be born. Like in life.

5. Characters and their personalities. Many people would probably hate me for what I say, but you know why I don't like Geroge R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" too much (I'm not saying it's bad, I appreciate whole idea, but I just don't feel attached to this story)? Mostly because of characters. I can't find any single character in whole this saga, that could be believable for me. Well, maybe except Catelyn Stark and Tywin Lannister, they are quire realistic. But rest - they seem to be just copy'n'paste characters "programmed" to think and work in some way and to make them lovable or hateable - we have "the good guys programmed to be loved", "the sarcastic good guys programmed to be loved even more", "the sarcastic bad/grey guys", "very evil psychoguys programmed to be hated", "superbeautiful and superpowerful women programmed to be fapable", "overpowered kids that everyone love" etc. I cannot identify with any of them, those characters are just fake for me. Like a bots. And very similar thing is in WoW. I know that our characters are more important than NPC ones, but still this is not a reason to make badly written major NPC characters.

6. Power of characters. If you was playing Warcraft, you surely remember Thrall. A nice guy, very fine, strong-willed character. Shaman and warrior in one, and, what was interesting - I think he was still better warrior than shaman. Rather a kind who would enchant his hammer with power of earth and lightning, to smash enemies heads even better. Not a guy who could command elementals to dance to the melody he plays. And that was nice, his powers was quite strong, but his biggest power was charisma and strategical mind.
"And then Cataclysm came..." and ruined all. Our Thrall, a Warchief, suddenly became as powerful to hold powers of Dragon Aspect. Plus he resigned being a Warchief and so he failed his own people, because he worked to restore power of the Horde and then he just left them "because world need to be saved" That was also just a WTF for me.
And while power of mortals is oftenly too big in WoW, power of immortals is too weak for me. Remember Archimonde? Noone of mortals was even thinking about fighting him - only spirits of elders could do this (what as also awesome theme - the weakest playable units ingame - wisps - killed the most powerful being in Warcraft 3 because they detonated all magic he gathered). But in WoW there's enough to send some anonymous "champions" and then they are able to kill beings almost as powerful as Archimonde (and some of them even more). I know that this is gameplay reasoned, but well... from lore perspective it seem to be not right, remembering how hard was to make a trap for Archimonde.

7. Conspiracy. This is the most subjective of all, but while whole thread is subjective - why not add also this point?
So, good heroes in WoW are good in everything, but they fall with some conspiracy. They almost don't manipulate, don't cheat, don't play political games. Well, maybe Vol'jin was planning to kick Garrosh out, or something, but... there's not enough. Plus he failed, too.
By the first, now whole race is a one block and think exactly like racial leader. In the case of Alliance, even whole faction works that way - king Varian's word is sacred even for Night Elves living 10,000 years longer than him. But why don't change it? Why there are no people who want to kick Varian out of the throne, or just reduce his power, or manipulate him? From the other side, why Varian don't manipulate anyone? He could do many things. He could for example marry fake princess Calia to get rights for Lordaeron's throne, or make similar many of similar political cheats to became an "Emperor of Mankind" or even someone more. Humans of course could be splited to many factions, and many of them could be supporters of Varian's politic, while many could be his opponents wanted to kick him out. The same with other races of course.
Or back to Vol'jin - making him a Warchief could also be some political game - he could be only a pawn, who now sits the throne because someone wants to rule from his back as a grey eminence. Or something. There could be many of conspiracies like this and it's too bad that there isn't - that is making whole this fable very simple and completely unbelievable. Because I think that even in fantasy world with dragons, demons, alternative timelines, spacegoats et cetera should be kept some realism, something that would make whole story more, hmm... serious.

Generally those was my major points of views. Of course I won't fight for that, this all is only what I feel about Warcraft lore and how for me it should look to make the story good for me. You of course can have different thoughts and I'm curious what do you guys think about this case.
Ach, and if I mistaken some lore things that for example was already explained - please, write this, too. As I said, I am no loremaster.
So - discussion is welcome here.

[clevin]

Good points - Some of this is dictated by the needs of playing a game but much is not.

[Arrashi]

You missed one important point - lulz. Every story needs a little bit of them, even if they are handled like in berserk, where funny part comes from innocent people getting hilariously murdered by overwhelming force that wasn't even aimed at them.

[Wildberry]

A cast of protagonists that don't all have Captain America's moral compass and a Lawful stupid alignment.

[Aquamonkey]

A cast of protagonists that don't all have Captain America's moral compass and a Lawful stupid alignment.

There's nothing wrong with Captain America if you know what you're doing.

[Wildberry]

There's nothing wrong with Captain America if you know what you're doing.

I wouldn't necessarily say there's something wrong with Captain America. However, there's two problems.

-They don't know what they're doing.
-There are multiple Captain Americas, which gets... dull.

[Kokolums]

The essence of good storytelling can be distilled to one sentence: Create interesting characters and torture them for 300 pages.

To elaborate:

Characters can be interesting regardless of alignment. lawful good, chaotic neutral. It doesn't matter. To be blunt, you need to torture them. Write them into situations where they suffer. Where they feel a sense of loss. Where they make impossible choices. Create antagonists that are worthy of your heroes quest. Maybe they rise and overcome. Maybe they fall. But the point is, by torturing them, you show the audience what your heroes are made of, their character.

Prince Arthas is a good example of a hero's story. He faced a huge threat to Lordaeron. He made hard choices, and those choices revealed his inner character. He was tortured by events out of his control. Friends died. Ultimately, he FELL and became the Lich King.

Warlords of Draenor is terribly written. The heroes aren't getting tortured. The story of WoD is our heroes are ROUTING the Iron Horde with impunity. The Iron Horde cannot score a single victory. Khadgar runs around and mocks the Iron Horde while he smashes their infrastructure. Garrosh got killed like a punk. Kargath was a loot pinata first boss of a raid. Grommash got overthrown. Bleh.

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Captain America: the Winter Soldier works as a story so well because they focus on torturing Captain America. He sees SHIELD turn against him and it turns out HYDRA has taken over. Nick Fury gets killed (for a little while at least so we can see Cap deal with that). Cap gets framed. Cap sees his childhood friend Bucky come back from the dead, only he finds out he is totally evil now. You walk away from the film feeling you really understand what makes Cap tick.

[Splub]

I think that Blizzard is a company that has transitioned to a more "superhero/action" esque blockbuster movie feel where the heroes are big, the action is big, the drama can unfortunately be low sometimes but the sets are amazing. This is mostly evident in all of their series today, and even more so in their newer games which lack stories altogether.

You don't need to kill characters to get good drama but you do need more time with the characters, more moments. Unfortunately due to the medium its a lot harder to get these moments because it is an action MMO game and your character only gets to spend time with the other characters when there is action going on. You don't get to see Thrall or reflect on his decisions or those moments that really individualize the characters from one another. Your basically just getting scraps due to the format.

Most everything that happens in their games and Blizzard themselves has said this is done because it is cool or it would be fun in their eyes. As a result things are not as consistent, they can be simplified to get to the point they want to get to. In Starcraft and Warcraft, at the peak of their powers Kerrigan and The Lich King both for whatever reason went into hibernation, when you would think the story would progress in the direction of them continuing their paths of conquest immediately. Why? Most likely because at some point they wanted to tell a different story, whether it be allowing the Dominion to rise to power or being able to do a straight MMORPG adventure and not a war themed game.

Now Blizzard does still do great, epic stories I think, I love the WoD story so far and I've enjoyed their other games and their stories.

[Mormolyce]

6. Power of characters. If you was playing Warcraft, you surely remember Thrall. A nice guy, very fine, strong-willed character. Shaman and warrior in one, and, what was interesting - I think he was still better warrior than shaman. Rather a kind who would enchant his hammer with power of earth and lightning, to smash enemies heads even better. Not a guy who could command elementals to dance to the melody he plays. And that was nice, his powers was quite strong, but his biggest power was charisma and strategical mind.
"And then Cataclysm came..." and ruined all. Our Thrall, a Warchief, suddenly became as powerful to hold powers of Dragon Aspect. Plus he resigned being a Warchief and so he failed his own people, because he worked to restore power of the Horde and then he just left them "because world need to be saved" That was also just a WTF for me.

Just going to address this point, because I hear it a lot and it never ceases to annoy me. Anyone could've wielded the Dragon Soul. That's how it works. Nekros Skullcrusher, a random Orc, used it in the Second War to subjugate Alexstrasza. The Aspects basically overloaded it with all their power (it already contained a fragment of their essence, that's why they couldn't use it themselves) so it could destroy Deathwing.

Thrall stood in for the Earth Warden simply because he was the Elder Shaman of the Earthen Ring. Considering he's the person who brought Orcish shamanism back from extinction and is the first of Azeroth's new Shaman (and a powerful Far Seer in his own right), it is no stretch of the imagination at all that he's Azeroth's most powerful Shaman.

Again, literally anyone could've wielded it - EXCEPT the Dragon Aspects. Thrall wielded it specifically BECAUSE he was mortal.

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A cast of protagonists that don't all have Captain America's moral compass and a Lawful stupid alignment.

There's nothing wrong with the moral compass of Warcraft characters, you just want everyone to be DARK N' EDGY to satisfy your teen angst.

If they listened to people like you Warcraft would read like some Liefeld comic from the Dork Age.

[Wildberry]

There's nothing wrong with the moral compass of Warcraft characters, you just want everyone to be DARK N' EDGY to satisfy your teen angst.

If they listened to people like you Warcraft would read like some Liefeld comic from the Dork Age.

Golly gee, you sure did knock this guy down.

Wanting a universe where heads of state don't act like members of an extended, modern family, where war isn't treated like it is in the 21st century, where at least a few prominent characters actually have a moral compass reflective of reality, rather than all or most having childlike idealism, where story-moving characters have more human motivations...

Really I could go on for a while; however, I think it's plenty clear that nothing I'm asking for is "DARK N' EDGY."

Sorry, but that argument hasn't held any weight the last few times you've tried it.

[Deleted]

Again, literally anyone could've wielded it - EXCEPT the Dragon Aspects. Thrall wielded it specifically BECAUSE he was mortal.

Hmm... yes, you are right here. I didn't thought about that, thanks for drawing attention to this. Being temporally empowered by some powerful artifact is indeed justified, just like I can justify Jaina's tsunami - because she was wiellding Focusing Iris, artifact of Blue Dragons. About Gul'dan, his power seem to be a resulf of pact with demon, even various demons - that situation is justified, too. But in general Thrall was only example, another example could be power of Varian, choosen one of Goldrinn (it could be ok if he would be a worshipper of Goldrinn, or, the best situation - his priest, but he wasn't - I doubt that he even heard about him something more than his name, this is just like in our world european kings like Charlemagne or Richard Lionheart would be empowered by Quetzalcoatl). And many similar situations. Also Malfurion's power seem to be too big, he's considered as the most powerful mortal in Azeroth, thankfully he's doing nothing very "heroic" with this power. And there's of course still Med'an, too.

Unfortunately due to the medium its a lot harder to get these moments because it is an action MMO game and your character only gets to spend time with the other characters when there is action going on. You don't get to see Thrall or reflect on his decisions or those moments that really individualize the characters from one another. Your basically just getting scraps due to the format.

Good point. And this is one of the biggest problems of storyline in MMO. In Warcraft 3, it was easier to feel character's dilemmas and choices, because player was Thrall, Arthas, Tyrande. Not one of their units, but the hero himself.

Now story is told rather from perspective of anonymous military unit, but I think it could be better still (there are a lot of good stories told from perspective of simple soldier, or even civilian). For examply I lack gameplay resolves like more interactions between NPCs and player. City guards and major lore characters should rather distrust and disregard player character (he could be a spy for example). In my perfect WoW, player should no simply get to the Stormwind Keep and see the king. Of course to not complicate gameplay, there should be maybe 1-3 really simple quests in the same city (go to some X guy in Stormwind's Old Town, talk to him, pay him few coins - even fake ones, get the papers, bring the papers back) enough to unlock entering to the Keep (and any other racial leaders and major characters) permanently. It should be generally something simple and quick, to not annoy people enjoying gameplay more than lore, but for RPers it would be a nice fable relish, something showing that player, even if he was a champion, is nothing but a pawn, a military unit like one of many in War3.

The essence of good storytelling can be distilled to one sentence: Create interesting characters and torture them for 300 pages.

There's something in this. Nice point, very interesting.

Of course I'm not telling that WoW story is bad. I really enjoy this. Maybe much less after Cataclysm, but still I try following the lore. So, story generally has really big potential and I like it, but I think that is still could be much better and deeper.

[Arrashi]

There's nothing wrong with the moral compass of Warcraft characters, you just want everyone to be DARK N' EDGY to satisfy your teen angst.

If they listened to people like you Warcraft would read like some Liefeld comic from the Dork Age.

Aside from them being boring, one-dimensional morons with no sing of personality, yes there is *NOTHING* wrong with they moral compass. Aside from trial in pandaria, because that was so dumb it cannot be skipped.

Also using

DARK N' EDGY

as insult is simply cute.

Perhaps those comics were bad because they were (like many other comics) written by a talentless git with no skill or imagination and 8 year old kids view on morality ?

[Melusine]

Something that makes for bad story writing:

Thrall. Yep, Green Jesus himself. In WoW, he was the warchief. In BC, he went to Outland to discover himself. In Wrath of the Lich King, he played a role in the assault on Undercity, which was good, but then, resigns from Warchief to go save the world, to which we follow him again, In Cataclysm, he takes on the role of the Earth Guardian, and is the bearer of the Dragon Soul, and thus, ultimately is pivotal to defeating Deathwing. In MoP, he leads a coup d'état to unseat Garrosh Hellscream, and in Draenor, he finally takes down Garrosh after leading Horde forces all the way into Nagrand. Not a single character in WoW has had near the story to date as Thrall has. And the fact is, Thrall is Horde. If he was neutral, maybe there would be a lot less of a polarizing figure, but no, that is not the case. He shows up in Escape from Durnholde, The Battle for Mount Hyjal, and the Hour of Twilight CoT instances, and a lot of this game has been, for lack of a better term, the story of Thrall, more than any other person in the game.

Maybe rename the game "World of Thrall" and just be done with it. I can't wait until he finally dies.

[Mormolyce]

Perhaps those comics were bad because they were (like many other comics) written by a talentless git with no skill or imagination and 8 year old kids view on morality ?

Not to mention an inability to draw feet, or a face that doesn't look like it's chronically constipated.

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In Cataclysm, he takes on the role of the Earth Guardian, and is the bearer of the Dragon Soul, and thus, ultimately is pivotal to defeating Deathwing.

He held the title "Earth Warder" temporarily. It's literally just a title. He bore the Dragon Soul the same way absolutely anyone apart from the Dragon Aspects could. Was Nekros Skullcrusher amazingly powerful too?

In MoP, he leads a coup d'état to unseat Garrosh Hellscream

False. Vol'jin began and led the Darkspear Rebellion.

Not a single character in WoW has had near the story to date as Thrall has. And the fact is, Thrall is Horde. If he was neutral, maybe there would be a lot less of a polarizing figure

He's been neutral since Cata. He was actually pretty neutral as far back as War III.

I think Thrall haters are just basically bitches. Or ridiculously faction-obsessed.

[Mehrunes]

Just going to address this point, because I hear it a lot and it never ceases to annoy me. Anyone could've wielded the Dragon Soul. That's how it works. Nekros Skullcrusher, a random Orc, used it in the Second War to subjugate Alexstrasza. The Aspects basically overloaded it with all their power (it already contained a fragment of their essence, that's why they couldn't use it themselves) so it could destroy Deathwing.

Thrall stood in for the Earth Warden simply because he was the Elder Shaman of the Earthen Ring. Considering he's the person who brought Orcish shamanism back from extinction and is the first of Azeroth's new Shaman (and a powerful Far Seer in his own right), it is no stretch of the imagination at all that he's Azeroth's most powerful Shaman.

Again, literally anyone could've wielded it - EXCEPT the Dragon Aspects. Thrall wielded it specifically BECAUSE he was mortal.

Yeah, no, you've got only part of that right and then ignored the rest (I mean, you did mention it, but it magically went over your head because you tried to make a point). While yes, any mortal could have wielded it, there was still this small issue that Demon Soul couldn't work on Deathwing. At all. Because it didn't contain his essence. That's why Thrall is also charging in and not just the Aspects. That's literally the reason why Deathwing was the only dragon who could wield it. That was his whole plan when he tricked the others into making the Demon Soul.

So they needed a substitute Earth Warder to power up the Demon Soul, not just someone to wield it. And this person, for some mysterious reason (read: Metzen's obsession with his self-insert character) had to be Thrall. Because Earth Warder's powers originating from the Titans are totes legit the exact same thing as Shamanism fueled by one's connection with the elements. And it was Thrall who was the World Shaman, because self insert (prior to Twilight of the Aspects Thrall wasn't that overpowered compared to the other Shamans yet). Without this illogical deus ex machina, created only to highlight how awesome Thrall is, Deathwing would have won. But with this deus ex machina in place, he would have won only if the Demon Soul was wielded by anyone that wasn't Thrall.

So to reiterate your point, literally any mortal could have wielded it. Thrall was the only one who could have wielded it and successfully used it agaisnt Deathwing BECAUSE he is Thrall.

He held the title "Earth Warder" temporarily. It's literally just a title. He bore the Dragon Soul the same way absolutely anyone apart from the Dragon Aspects could. Was Nekros Skullcrusher amazingly powerful too?

Weird, because when Deathwing attacked the Dragonmaw caravan that was leaving Grim Batol, Nekros tried to use the Demon Soul against him. And it had absolutely no effect whatsoever. But sure, just a title

False. Vol'jin began and led the Darkspear Rebellion.

He declared the rebellion after capturing Razor Hill, sure. But the rebellion de facto started when Thrall liberated Echo Isles from the Kor'kron (being a monumental hypocrite playing favorites with Trolls and overall traitorous douchebag while at it). There's a reason why the Horde 5.3 questline started with the Kor'kron trying to retake Sen'jinn village. Trying to contain the spark of the rebellion and whatnot.

He's been neutral since Cata. He was actually pretty neutral as far back as War III.

Incredibly neutral post Siege.

[Kokolums]

Sylvanas also has a very good story. She starts out a a fierce defender of Quel-Thalas. She taunts Arthas but eventually he kills her. Then he resurrects her as a banshee. Eventually she got a physical form again. Later she got her mind back but now she became twisted by the horror of what had happened to her. She gets some measure of revenge and founds her own kingdom on top of the remains of Lordaeron. But internally I imagine she is at war with herself. She still has memories and feelings of being alive, but the cold darkness of undeath tries to empty her out and leave her a vengeful husk.

The torture she went through revealed that she is a character on the edge, maybe chaotic. She was never quite redeemed, but never really turned evil.

You don't usually see a story end with a damaged, tormented soul in a leadership position like that. Its so interesting when you think about it. There's a lot of things you can do with her character. I wish they focused more on her internal struggles in-game. I'm hoping they don't just decide to make her a villain and an end boss to an expansion. That would really cheapen, perhaps ruin, what they accomplished with her character.

To me she's actually the most interesting character in the entire Warcraft world.

[Lynneiah]

Not to mention an inability to draw feet, or a face that doesn't look like it's chronically constipated.

Or women...

[Kokolums]

Something that makes for bad story writing:

Thrall. Yep, Green Jesus himself. In WoW, he was the warchief. In BC, he went to Outland to discover himself. In Wrath of the Lich King, he played a role in the assault on Undercity, which was good, but then, resigns from Warchief to go save the world, to which we follow him again, In Cataclysm, he takes on the role of the Earth Guardian, and is the bearer of the Dragon Soul, and thus, ultimately is pivotal to defeating Deathwing. In MoP, he leads a coup d'état to unseat Garrosh Hellscream, and in Draenor, he finally takes down Garrosh after leading Horde forces all the way into Nagrand. Not a single character in WoW has had near the story to date as Thrall has. And the fact is, Thrall is Horde. If he was neutral, maybe there would be a lot less of a polarizing figure, but no, that is not the case. He shows up in Escape from Durnholde, The Battle for Mount Hyjal, and the Hour of Twilight CoT instances, and a lot of this game has been, for lack of a better term, the story of Thrall, more than any other person in the game.

Maybe rename the game "World of Thrall" and just be done with it. I can't wait until he finally dies.

Thrall is a problem.

He had a good origin story. The whole deal with Taretha and how she was such a helpful figure in his life, only for her to be sexually assaulted by Blackmoore and later beheaded by Blackmoore. Blackmoore threw her severed head at Thrall! Carving out a new kingdom in Kalimdor.

But Thrall's story is done. There's nothing more to tell really.

What you can do however is have Thrall invest himself in a new enterprise (in order to use it to torture him). And the writers did that through his interactions with Garrosh. Garrosh was basically Thrall's new project. It was Thrall that backed Garrosh. It was Thrall that chose him to be the new Warchief. Those decisions, as it turns out, were horribly, horribly wrong.

The fallout from Garrosh's crazed leadership SHOULD be smacking Thrall in the face. The way to write the story going forward would be for other major lore characters to question Thrall's judgement, or even blame Thrall for everything because he picked Garrosh to lead. You could make Thrall a bit of an outcast. You can explore how he handles all of the sudden criticism from people who he thought had his back.

But the writing team aren't doing any of that. They just keep trucking along with the idea that he is "Green Jesus" as you say.

[Ogren]

A cast of protagonists that don't all have Captain America's moral compass and a Lawful stupid alignment.

I wouldn't necessarily say there's something wrong with Captain America. However, there's two problems.

-They don't know what they're doing.
-There are multiple Captain Americas, which gets... dull.

Agreed with this pretty much, I think the idea of a 'superhero fantasy' world *can* be good if it's suitably well written and maintains some sense of consistency. It feels more wasted to just write the factions as a single superhero, rather than write them as superhero teams with a cast of characters that have diverse personalities and beliefs brought about due to their history.