Dave Kosak: "We always favor interesting mechanics over lore in-game."

[derpkitteh]

this kind of mindset really needs to get dialed back, because it's this kind of stuff that ruins the game.

[Destinas]

I didn't read Dave's quote as "we don't care about lore and the races that use technology in lore" - I read it more as "Mechanics in-game don't represent lore as accurately as they should be, and we bend that a little in-game for gameplay purposes".

Basically, it wouldn't be fun to fire a gun, clean out the barrel, put in more gunpowder, cock the hammer, and repeat step 1 again. The gunship fight in ICC wouldn't nearly be as fun waiting for someone to come over to load the cannons, light the fuse, wait for the boom, and start over. It's so much more fun to shoot a ton of bullets, and repeatedly blast cannon balls in rapid succession.

Any tech the Gnomes, Goblins, and Draenei (among other races) have is canon, but probably a bit slower or different in lore. In-game, it's sped up and slightly altered for speed and fun.

[Toppy]

Blizz has always put gameplay before lore. This is good in some cases, but often they go a bit to far with it. They've always been of the opinion that players do not care about the lore, despite being proven wrong time and time again.

Like that "It'll cost you a raid tier" quote came from players wanting a scenario based in the Arathi Highlands dealing with the humans there. Oddly enough, the general consensus in that argument was that people would have preferred storyline progression over another raid boss or two.

[Aucald]

I think Kosak is just saying that both the story and the lore surrounding it must bow to game mechanics in the name of both convenience and fun - e.g. if we actually tried to be realistic within the framework of a fantastical setting then with the current tech battles would be over in seconds (one sword thrust to the chest followed by death) or take hours (for regiments to load blackpowder weapons, prime them, and then fire, followed by reloading) depending on the scale of the battle. In order to have interesting things in a video game that are also fun, fantastic "realism" has to be bent in the name of purely mechanical constraints. Warcraft's lore, in places, reflects those places where story bends to gameplay mechanics - explained away by magic, by differences in the world, etc. etc.

It all boils down to the fact of this: WoW is a video game, not a novel. The overriding goal here is to ensure the game is fun and people play it and have fun, not that it has a purely cohesive storyline that meets all the criteria of a bestselling novel. It can't accomplish both in the same context because the two ends are completely different in nature, but they do try gamely to accommodate both wherever possible. But if story must be sacrificed to the maw of gameplay and mechanics? So be it.

[Toppy]

I think Kosak is just saying that both the story and the lore surrounding it must bow to game mechanics in the name of both convenience and fun - e.g. if we actually tried to be realistic within the framework of a fantastical setting then with the current tech battles would be over in seconds (one sword thrust to the chest followed by death) or take hours (for regiments to load blackpowder weapons, prime them, and then fire, followed by reloading) depending on the scale of the battle. In order to have interesting things in a video game that are also fun, fantastic "realism" has to be bent in the name of purely mechanical constraints. Warcraft's lore, in places, reflects those places where story bends to gameplay mechanics - explained away by magic, by differences in the world, etc. etc.

It all boils down to the fact of this: WoW is a video game, not a novel. The overriding goal here is to ensure the game is fun and people play it and have fun, not that it has a purely cohesive storyline that meets all the criteria of a bestselling novel. It can't accomplish both in the same context because the two ends are completely different in nature, but they do try gamely to accommodate both wherever possible. But if story must be sacrificed to the maw of gameplay and mechanics? So be it.

If things really bowed to realism, then the armies would only employ mages and other magic folk.

[Aucald]

If things really bowed to realism, then the armies would only employ mages and other magic folk.

Or it would be all laser guns and magi-tech, but you're pretty much correct, yes. Either way it would be kind of boring.