Did MoP-Haters ruin WoW Storytelling?

[Techno-Druid]

Honestly it just seems to me that people continued complaining on the Far Eastern themes and pandaren race rather than the storyline. Pandaria had an extremely dark expansion covered up with excellent subtly and that's one of the things Blizzard has always been good at, portraying a rather dark or traditionally epic-style storyline through sometimes very stylized characters. MoP probably had the deepest message of any expansion and actually did help portray the players as a lawful neutral force. At the end of the day, Horde and Alliance might only do what helps them and not necessarily what if lawful good. It also dealt with some darker themes recurring within the WC Universe (slavery, genocide, two peoples meeting).

Now things me to my point, with all the hate Mist got, do you maybe think it might've pressured Blizzard to go more "savage" more "awesome" which created out "beloved" expansion WoD. Not saying Blizz hasn't handled these themes well before, but did they bite off more than they could chew? Maybe they second guessed themselves with the storyline and rushed through it and especially underestimated themselves and raised their expectations.

[eschatological]

I thought the MoP storytelling was fantastic. The sha seemed a bit of a pretentious/heavyhanded manifestation of it, at times, but good themes. For all the hate Valley of the Four Winds got, I loved this idea of this peaceful farming community trying to hold off chaos on all sides. The Klaxxi were interesting, the Celestials were pretty cool, Wrathion was a pimp, even Anduin wasn't bad even if I was a Horde player.

Whether the complaints "ruined" WoD storytelling, idk. I'll give Blizz the benefit of the doubt that they could see through the "LOL KIDDIE KUNG FU PANDAS F U," bullshit. I just don't think they had any good ideas on where to go next without tipping their long term hand (the legion, Sargeras, etc). I was having a conversation earlier where someone mentioned how they remembered Metzen at Blizzcon talking about how all their ideas were failing, and then someone said, "What if we went back to Draenor?" and the idea formulated from that. And rather haphazardly, at best.

[Crawclaw]

I will always defend MoP as my favorite expansion (Unless the next expansion ends up amazing AND ACTUALLY DELIVERS). The leveling was really great in terms of character and story and it continued that in the endgame. Complain about dailies all you want, but they let stories continue at endgame. 5.1 and 5.2 took this endgame storytelling and improved it even more. Now our endgame story is boringly easy content once a week for a few weeks. And it isn't even that good. WoD's leveling story was actually great though, it's just that the criticism of MoP probably led them to not continue it in the endgame.

[L e g i o n]

I didn't think it was childish. I just didn't like all the Asian themed stuff. It felt out of place and didn't really fit in my opinion. Also kind of reminded me of Anime.. and i strongly dislike anime.

[XorMalice]

Not killing the badguy who goes to the alternate past to change the alternate past future so that we need to invade the alternate future past because the alternate future past found a way, via a dragon, to timeshift while also spaceshifting to come and bring alternate future past orcs to the present so we need to go from the present to the alternate future past to save the alternate future past's alternate Azeroth while also saving our present from the


That ruined WoW's story telling.



Here's WoD resolved in a day:

Step 1: You land on WoDland.
Step 2: Mage portal to Stormwind.
Step 3: Tell the king what's going on. That's the warcraft I king, presiding over a massively powerful group of humans. Now you have huge well trained forces.
Step 4: Depowered current Alexstraza talks to alternate past Alexstraza. Alternate past Alexstraza is at full power- still an aspect, right?
Step 5: This conversation involves the tale of being chained and forced to give birth to a medium tier air unit for like, twenty years.
Step 6: Full powered alternate Alexstraza arrives on WoDland
Step 7: gg iron horeddd

[Techno-Druid]

I didn't think it was childish. I just didn't like all the Asian themed stuff. It felt out of place and didn't really fit in my opinion. Also kind of reminded me of Anime.. and i strongly dislike anime.

To be honest, pandaren aren't the only race based off East Asian Cultures. Night Elves are largely a mix of Japanese and or Korean, Norse and Celtic themes and orc blademasters are heavily based off samurai.

[Nathreim]

MoP was a great expansion the complainers, mindless haters, and those who didn't try it at all complained about everything and unfortunately Blizz listened.

But that was only part of the problem the other part is Blizz changed dev teams and half-assed this expansion.

[Wrathonia]

I gave MoP a fair shot. Pandaria really started to grate on my nerves as the months went by. The music grew to be an irritation. The pandaren quotes annoyed me more and more. But the story was never one I could get interested in. I don't give a shit about pandaren or their stupid farms. I hated questing there and I would be happy if the island just sank into the ocean. To be honest, the lore has been handled terribly since Cata. Sure, it wasn't perfect in BC and WotLK, but it was a hell of a lot better and more consistent on average with the previous lore. I was completely uninvested in the lives and fate of pandaria and their stupid sha emotion demons and I hated everything with Garrosh.

That said, the lore and story for WoD is the worst yet. So complaining about something bad and substandard gets us something worse? I don't see how that's fair.

[Techno-Druid]

MoP was a great expansion the complainers, mindless haters, and those who didn't try it at all complained about everything and unfortunately Blizz listened.

But that was only part of the problem the other part is Blizz changed dev teams and half-assed this expansion.

Yeah, like didn't something happen to Chris Metzen? I mean he is pretty much the soul of Warcraft .

[Moggie]

MoPs story telling, I thought was easier and less convoluted to follow than WoD.

[Shizari]

Not killing the badguy who goes to the alternate past to change the alternate past future so that we need to invade the alternate future past because the alternate future past found a way, via a dragon, to timeshift while also spaceshifting to come and bring alternate future past orcs to the present so we need to go from the present to the alternate future past to save the alternate future past's alternate Azeroth while also saving our present from the


That ruined WoW's story telling.



Here's WoD resolved in a day:

Step 1: You land on WoDland.
Step 2: Mage portal to Stormwind.
Step 3: Tell the king what's going on. That's the warcraft I king, presiding over a massively powerful group of humans. Now you have huge well trained forces.
Step 4: Depowered current Alexstraza talks to alternate past Alexstraza. Alternate past Alexstraza is at full power- still an aspect, right?
Step 5: This conversation involves the tale of being chained and forced to give birth to a medium tier air unit for like, twenty years.
Step 6: Full powered alternate Alexstraza arrives on WoDland
Step 7: gg iron horeddd

Alternatively:

The alternate Bronze could have seen shit get fucked up, arrive on Draenor, Nozdormu yells

And bitch-kick everyone from the MU back through or something.

[Techno-Druid]

Alternatively:

The alternate Bronze could have seen shit get fucked up, arrive on Draenor, Nozdormu yells

And bitch-kick everyone from the MU back through or something.

Yeah for something that would cover Nozdormu's job, he sure didn't do shit with Draenor.

[pondering]

Mop was terrible, WoD is also terrible.

[A Chozo]

One would expect Blizzard to be wise and filter the feedback they received about lore.
Pandaria was full of lore, lots of possibilities (an Old God in new form? Celestials <-> Ancients? Heroes and Villains who began their lives as common folk? COOL!). The storytelling could've been a little better, but it was 8/10 imo.

Draenor's storytelling in the leveling proccess was 8.5/10, but the story itself... Lorelols of Draenor.

[foxHeart]

Anything Blizzard does is because of players so we're responsible for everything, really, because they make the game to suit our needs. If we complain and the game sucks, it's on us. If we praise them and it gets better it's on us. It has nothing to do with what they try to choose to do.

Aaaaaaaaand sarcasm. *jazz hands*

[Marakesh]

The commercial with the orc and human fighting had a really sharp, gritty, more realistic look to those characters at the same time it still had Blizzard's art style. I was impressed. Then this cartoon panda jumps out and starts fighting. It was like whiplash from the more gritty style to absurdity. That summed up the problem for me. I don't care for eastern themes mixed in too heavily with western fantasy but this had a whole another element to it.

Gnomes and goblins have had their place, but they were always comic in nature. Even they guy at the end of Arcatrez. Panderan weren't just lifted from a april fools joke, they were made into fortune cookie spouting serious business characters. It wasn't like I just rejected the expansion outright, I went questing through that, and the more I saw of it, the more annoyed I got. Maybe someone can make a dark story work with muppets, but it sure wasn't working for me.

Plus, the gameplay for casual pve was bad. LFR is linear and boring grind, as are dailies. Garrisons look worse on that front. I get raiders and pvpers are happy, but I doubt thats the majority of the playerbase or they wouldn't be hemorrhaging subs like they are.

[turboether]

The wholesale murder of daily hubs was entirely unjust.

[lizon]

MoP was the best expansion to date when it came to progressive storytelling at max level. The progressive dailies as your rep went up, patch 5.1 Landfall, Isle of Thunder, and patch 5.3 Escalation were all great examples of max level storytelling. This is something that was sorely missed in WoD. The garrison campaign just doesn't do the trick.

There are so many story hooks and unresolved lore in WoD that they could have used to bridge the raid tiers and expand on the game story that simply were abandoned. It is sad.

[Echo419]

The message of the entire expansion was so fucking shallow even an ant couldn't drown in it. We've had the same message in Warcraft 3, except it wasn't delivered to us by a bunch of condescending, useless, stereotypical MORONS.

We had MEDIVH, a cornerstone Warcraft lore figure attempt to give his message of unison to multiple races and leaders, failing on deaf ears on some, while working on others.

We had meaingful dialogue.

We had original races and characters.

We had real villains.

We did NOT have stupid fucking Disney cartoon bullshit storylines about some goddamn emperor and his mushroom emo trip.

We did NOT have an entire continent copy pasted from Chinese history and having every word of "Chinese" replaced with "Pandaren" and every word of "slave masters" replaced with "Mogu".

Pandaria was such a force fed piece of shit I an amazed to this day how I allowed myself to drudge through it.

Cataclysm had great storytelling except for the Deathwing/Thrall jesus component.

WOTLK had the greatest storytelling of any expansion which is why it continues to rank highest of any expansion in WoW on any poll on any website.

So NO, crapdaria is not the reason why WoD's story was a clusterfuck.

Aside from the Wandering Isle pandaren, which actually had some intelligence and personality, the mainland pandaren split into two camps:

-> The utterly worthless, drunk social aid hobos

-> The hypocrites who gives us lessons while failing at everything else and depending on us to save their asses.

I am fucking SICK TO DEATH to hear people talk about pandaren and their meaningful (read: non-existent) contribution to Warcraft lore even though pandaren and monks are the least played class and race according to any census you can find on any major WoW site. That's how beloved they are. Remember the "EVERYONE WANTS PANDAREN ONLY THE VOCAL MINORITY DON'T WANT THEM". Pandaren and monks are less played than Gnomes and any other race in the game, even though that race apparently is hated by everyone.

I even tried to like the fucking pandaria story but when Loremaster Dipshit started talking in that 8 year old child's cartoon voice and when Taran'Fail started to give me lessons right after he utterly failed at something or failed immediately right after, I was so fucking temped to just write a letter by hand to Blizzard filled with vitriol for this fucking atrocity of an expansion they called a work of love.

Good lore will always be appreciated by players, bullshit lore will always be hated and defended by a faithful few who can never shut the fuck up about it, even when numbers show that they are in the minority.

[Fenixdown]

No, I'm pretty sure a bad story ruined WoW storytelling. MoP was not a bad story. This current story? Yeah, it's like worse than a bad anime series.