Blizzard writing

[Swalload]

Hey everyone, first of all this is not a whining topic. :P


I am just curious what do you think has changed? I mean back then in RTS days specially WC3 and Frozen Throne the writing were not the best of the best sure, but hell it was waaaaaaay better than nowadays.


I know part of the reason is because of the genre of the game. It's tougher to have a good storytelling in an MMORPG where it was easier to tell a story in a RTS or classical RPG but was that the only reason? or simply the writers these days are not the same ones who did WC3 ?

Discuss please and thanks for reading.

Stories have an end. Look at any stories that last too long, it almost always end up like shit. Closure is very important in story telling and it's something totally missing in Warcraft, which is very bad because there's quite a lot of content. Which means everything feels like it's getting dragged in the mud and milked like there's no tomorrow. The story should have straight up ended after we killed Arthas in WoW, and then move on to something COMPLETELY different. But no, they just dragged the same shit again and again, inventing random continent that never needed to exist, bringing back villains but making them friends, traveling through time and space and shit. Nah, everything after Arthas is the point of "it's too long now it should have ended".

[Azelas]

Part of the issue is that an MMO is just not a good way to tell a story, RTS or RPG are way way better.

Aside from that, the majority of the fault lies in Blizzard, they are unable to make anything that's not extreme. Characters go from peace loving heroes to genocidal maniacs from one day to the other. And they use shitty tropes to justify most of them. Yrel goes from literally god to literally hitler, and their excuse is "well a lot of time went by". An excuse that is NOT acceptable if we're not gonna see what the fuck happened in the middle, it's just an easy copout to make a character do a 180 turn and become a genocidal fanatic. Aside from that, they lack any sense of tact, as I said characters go from god to hitler, but the most problematic part is that there is NO INBETWEEN.

They keep selling that characters are grey but they not. One day they're white, the next they're black. That's not being a grey character, that's shitty writing and turning a character into someone they are not.

[Queen of Hamsters]

But you're no food or movie critic and not able to judge the validity of their opinions.

Opinions being just that, is a fact though.

Even if many want to believe that theirs is somehow superior.
Just look at all those nutjobs pretending that Arthas was somehow the pinnacle of writing, as if nothing on par has been made since. Why? Because they feel that way.

- - - Updated - - -

Nah, everything after Arthas is the point of "it's too long now it should have ended".

I don't know, seems as though there's been stories told since then that deserved to be.

Not to mention that you don't go full retard and end a franchise just because X people feel as though it's peaked.
Especially when said X people, stick around all the same.

[George Lucas]

Opinions being just that, is a fact though.

Even if many want to believe that theirs is somehow superior.

I don't think so.

[Kyphael]

Movie critics and food critics are too the type of people whom are convinced that their subjective tastes translates into objective fact.
So yes, I'd say that's a good comparison, actually.

So by that logic, only masters of their craft should be taken seriously when critiquing. Which unless you're a game designer, published author, or chef yourself, it would disqualify your critique of any merit on those aforementioned. lol

[Deleted]

WarCraft 3 had good storytelling because the whole point of that game was to tell a story about the world as seen through the eyes of characters with clear motivations, with clear actions that had clear consequences.

WoW storytelling is a bunch of crap because it's just about selling a power fantasy, with the world and its character being little more than the incidental backdrop of the day. WoW storytelling is great when it deviates from this and time and resources are spent to actually give characters personalities, but it doesn't happen often enough and it never matters because it ultimately has no effect on the direction Blizzard decides to go with in the next expansion or even the next patch, and so personalities and characterisations in WoW are inconsistent because they represent little more than the devs telling you where to go next for your power fix.

[Swalload]

Opinions being just that, is a fact though.

Even if many want to believe that theirs is somehow superior.
Just look at all those nutjobs pretending that Arthas was somehow the pinnacle of writing, as if nothing on par has been made since. Why? Because they feel that way.

- - - Updated - - -



I don't know, seems as though there's been stories told since then that deserved to be.

Not to mention that you don't go full retard and end a franchise just because X people feel as though it's peaked.

I don't think the franchise needs to end. Just this plot of the story and then build up something new from the ground up instead of plugging in random crap that only last 1 xpack and have very little links to previous and following stories.

[Queen of Hamsters]

So by that logic, only masters of their craft should be taken seriously when critiquing. Which unless you're a game designer, published author, or chef yourself, it would disqualify your critique of any merit on those aforementioned. lol

Whether they're taken seriously or not, depends on what they're critiquing and what the reader feels on the same subject.
It doesn't disqualify anyone from giving critique. Their opinions are still just that though, unless they're critiquing something factual from a factual standpoint, such as "This restaurant has terrible hygiene".

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think the franchise needs to end. Just this plot of the story and then build up something new from the ground up instead of plugging in random crap that only last 1 xpack and have very little links to previous and following stories.

Building new stuff came with MoP and is moving forward as we speak, so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that "stories only last 1 xpack".
That was BEFORE MoP.
MoP fed into WoD which fed into Legion which feeds into BfA. Whether one likes the story is one thing, but the storytelling has gotten a hell of a lot more cohesive and is told through in-game means moreso than ever before.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think so.

You don't think so, what?

You don't believe facts? Well, can't help you with that.

[George Lucas]

You don't think so, what?

You don't believe facts? Well, can't help you with that.

I'm sorry. I have seen the light now. BELIEVE IN THE FACTS AS PROMULGATED BY THIS GUY WITH THE BANANA AVATAR!

[Deleted]

Whether one likes the story is one thing, but the storytelling has gotten a hell of a lot more cohesive and is told through in-game means moreso than ever before.

"Hey you thanks for saving my city and my people!"
"lel I hate you now horde 4 da win!"

"We need to find new ways to protect Silvermoon!"
"lel burn down Silvermoon 4 da Alliance!"

"We will work together to build a better world!"
"lel convert or die heretic"

Cohesive. Right.

[Nefarious Tea]

Hey, at least it can't get worse than WoD.

Don't say that. Blizzard will take it as a challenge.

[Kul Tiras]

pandering to SJWs

pandering to minority groups (homos, feminists, lesbians etc)

pandering to memes and way more pop culture references than Warcraft usually did, also, shitty ones

pandering to political corectness

pandering to children of parents who play WoW (most of pandaria)

lack of hiring of intelligent writers, focusing instead on having "diversity" (because that worked GREAT for Mass Effect: Andromeda, didn't it?)

focusing on the bottom line of the company instead of innovation and taking risks (pandaria wasn't a risk, it was a bad attempt at boosting subs through China)

....all this shit leads to things like "the sha" and the extremely shallow and boring Yrel and NO WAIT ILLIDIAN AND SARGERAS ARE JUST MISUNDERSTOOD MARTYRS and Arthas being killed by some magical wind chime sword all this other garbage that has permeated through WoW ever since WOTLK, though burning Croos-aid showed a lot of early signs of it.

Infracted.

[Queen of Hamsters]

"Hey you thanks for saving my city and my people!"
"lel I hate you now horde 4 da win!"

"We need to find new ways to protect Silvermoon!"
"lel burn down Silvermoon 4 da Alliance!"

"We will work together to build a better world!"
"lel convert or die heretic"

Cohesive. Right.

Yes, cohesive.

Dumbing it down in the way you've done, doesn't erase the lore in place.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm sorry. I have seen the light now. BELIEVE IN THE FACTS AS PROMULGATED BY THIS GUY WITH THE BANANA AVATAR!

It's not a fact because I say so though. Same as how it doesn't cease being a fact because you or others of your capacity, say so.

But it's cute how you can't form an argument fit for adults no matter how hard you try.

[Lac]

ENOUGH! despite you clearly being powerful enough to kill me, I am going to conveniently stun you and run away.

[Rendark]

The story went to shit with WoD. Just like in Witcher 3 and Bioshock Infinite the story goes down hill when they added alternate universes.

[Ærion]

Today's writing is more like you are reading a fan fiction written by some random person who has no clue what is going on.

That's because, for all intents and purposes, it is.

My main take on the matter is this: (...)Warcraft is not any one person's (or team's) IP. It belongs to a company, which needs to continue the game even after the people that originally made the lore are gone.

Warcraft was, if I remember correctly, supposed to be a Warhammer game that got rejected and they re-purposed elements. It had a specific feeling to it. Now that the original writers are long gone, and new writers are constantly doing new stuff for it, that feeling you got from the RTS' story is impossible to be recreated.

Right now all story and lore is fanfiction in the same universe, and it's considered canon because it's in the game. Think about it for a moment, the writers are fans of Warcraft, hired by Blizzard to write stories.

If you think about TV shows for a moment, those have a bunch of writers as well, that swap out all the time. But for some reason it works there a bit better than for an MMO (you still can tell when an episode is shit, and you probably know who wrote it because the style doesn't sit well with you).

I honestly don't know how or IF they can make an MMO feel fine with a bunch of different writers and their styles all coming together. I don't know if it's changed since before the Nighthold was opened, but, I think I remember them doing a weekly quest thing where you had maybe 30-60 minutes of new quest/lore content each week before it opened. That kinda reminds me of the way shows are released, and while I'm somewhat OK with shows being like that, I hated it in an MMO setting; it just felt like annoying-as-hell staggered content WAY out of place in a game.

[seleri]

The most cringe worthy moments in Blizzard writing comes from having to play around the faction barrier. If they got rid of it, or just stopped caring about appeasing both sides all the time, I think things would improve. Even though we all know N'zoth is going to come along eventually, BfA is marketed/hyped as the faction war expansion, so if they don't do something major with the faction war this time around, I'd say it's finally time to ditch Horde vs Alliance for good and focus on more nuanced conflics.

[Swalload]

Whether they're taken seriously or not, depends on what they're critiquing and what the reader feels on the same subject.
It doesn't disqualify anyone from giving critique. Their opinions are still just that though, unless they're critiquing something factual from a factual standpoint, such as "This restaurant has terrible hygiene".

- - - Updated - - -



Building new stuff came with MoP and is moving forward as we speak, so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that "stories only last 1 xpack".
That was BEFORE MoP.
MoP fed into WoD which fed into Legion which feeds into BfA. Whether one likes the story is one thing, but the storytelling has gotten a hell of a lot more cohesive and is told through in-game means moreso than ever before.

The "feeding into each other" thing is what I meant by small links from one xpack to the next. All of those should follow one main plot and not change it with every xpack. WoW went from a real solid drama series to become an episodic shit show. If they really had built from Pandaria, there would be more important panda NPCs playing much better roles, we would still be dealing with Shas and yes it would be fucking terrible. The Garrosh going all Hitler and shit was a better plot but it's pretty limited and based on almost nothing. The only link between WoD and Legion is Guldan who was insanely overshadowed by Illidan which made Guldan's end very lackluster.

A lot of things could have been much better with absolutely no extra effort, just better talents.

[Talsar]

The RTS days writing was basically a conglomeration of bland cliches and fantasy tropes.
Writing now is much more interesting IMO.

[McNeil]

I'd say there are several things that come to mind with Blizzard dip in writing. I think the main issue is different writers, they are a huge part of what makes a story great. They are the ones with a vision and how they see it being executed (basically Metzen before the George Lucas syndrome) and wrote a solid cohesive story for Warcraft 3. Notice how WC3 characters have been carrying WoW lore since the beginning, they even centered a whole expansion just to bring back Illidan and put him in the spotlight. Now people won't shut up about Sylvanas who was created and at her best in WC3.

Another thing is the different game genre, though I don't think this plays as much of a role as the former. WoW as a MMORPG is not build to be singleplayer, it needs to completely focus on the players interests where they often have to sacrifice story for the sake of gameplay elements. WC3 has singleplayer and multiplayer seperated so this wasn't much of an issue for the writing staff. The WC3 writers had all the story planned out long before WC3 released and they had ideas on how to expand it in an expansion and possibly early WoW, while WoW writers are often in a rush to keep up with the never ending flow of new expansions and often have to retcon or contradict some lore points in-game.

Thats not to say that WoW can't have a good story despite being a MMORPG. They simply need to have a proper story going, rather than going from ''here's this big evil, oke you just roflstomped him here's another, okay now here's yet another'' or having pointless faction conflicts that just make no sense at this stage of the game. But Blizzard is intentionally sacrificing lore for the sake of gameplay while it doesn't even have to be this way, but for some reason they are incapable of doing both. There are still some good bits of lore to be found, but I've found the main stories like dealing with the Burning Legion in the past 2 expansions to be rather lackluster. The Legion was described much better in WC3 where they actually inflicted major damage to the world, and came over a lot more threatening. The Legion in WoW only got as far as the Broken Shore and we ended up kicking their ass way back in Argus and sucking Sargeras back to where he belongs. They need to write better villains thats for sure...