Blizzard writing

[Aucald]

Overdosing on drugs is enjoyable, does it mean its also good (for your soul ?).

Good or bad, is something you can determine but comparing something to other media from same genre. And depending on how it fares, its either good or bad. And no, 1 person out of milion unironically enjoying it, doesn't make it good depending on point of view.

Overdosing on drugs might be enjoyable in the short term, but it is bad in the long term - context is important.

Determining whether or not something is "good" or "bad" is often a matter of consensus, but even that isn't an ironclad and objective statement of reality, as it were. History of full of examples where the consensus for the longest time was bent in one direction and then, with new knowledge or simply a change in perspective, went in another entirely. Take your example of "Citizen Kane" from before - in its own time it was the subject of lukewarm reviews and largely languished in obscurity until it was reevaluated more than a decade later and slowly went on to become a film classic in our time. History is replete with modern classics that were largely hated in their own times, mutually disliked by the consensus of their day. Times change, and so do opinions (for better and for worse).

[Arrashi]

Overdosing on drugs might be enjoyable in the short term, but it is bad in the long term - context is important.

Determining whether or not something is "good" or "bad" is often a matter of consensus, but even that isn't an ironclad and objective statement of reality, as it were. History of full of examples where the consensus for the longest time was bent in one direction and then, with new knowledge or simply a change in perspective, went in another entirely. Take your example of "Citizen Kane" from before - in its own time it was the subject of lukewarm reviews and largely languished in obscurity until it was reevaluated more than a decade later and slowly went on to become a film classic in our time. History is replete with modern classics that were largely hated in their own times, mutually disliked by the consensus of their day. Times change, and so do opinions (for better and for worse).

Yeah, i don't think even nuclear apocalypse and loss of all other media would be big enough change for room to be unironically recognised as good.

Tho i must say, the idea of someone in 2150 unironically placing "the room" as pinnacle of art, is both hilarious and dread vision of future.

[Aucald]

Yeah, i don't think even nuclear apocalypse and loss of all other media would be big enough change for room to be unironically recognised as good.

Tho i must say, the idea of someone in 2150 unironically placing "the room" as pinnacle of art, is both hilarious and dread vision of future.

You never know - perhaps when we're all dust in the wind our ancestors will look back, see that we talked about "The Room" constantly, and think it was what we considered great cinema and hold it in high esteem because of it. Aristophanes would probably be laughing himself into a hernia in Elysium if he was able to look in on today and see what we think and say about his time.

[Arrashi]

You never know - perhaps when we're all dust in the wind our ancestors will look back, see that we talked about "The Room" constantly, and think it was what we considered great cinema and hold it in high esteem because of it. Aristophanes would probably be laughing himself into a hernia in Elysium if he was able to look in on today and see what we think and say about his time.

Yeeeaah...i don't buy it. There is a reason why some things become classics and are recognised - thats because they are good. Others are mocked and forgotten - thats because they are bad. The entire "Nothing in art is good or bad" argument is really nothing short of excuses, people on deviantART are making.

[Nerovar]

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.

Yeah, pretty much this. It's just disappointing. Back in the days I really liked the Warcraft lore.

[Skeletov]

Is this just satire or are people really this du easily pleased?

How anyone can defend Warcraft's writing at this point is beyond me. The plots are ridiculous, moral ambiguity has become overused, zones are disjointed, most characters are flat, etc.

Through a misguided sense of loyalty to a multi-million dollar corporation. I know because I've been there before. It took WoD to finally get me to outgrow that. Some people seem to have a much higher tolerance towards bullshit unfortunately. :/

[Aucald]

Yeeeaah...i don't buy it. There is a reason why some things become classics and are recognised - thats because they are good. Others are mocked and forgotten - thats because they are bad. The entire "Nothing in art is good or bad" argument is really nothing short of excuses, people on deviantART are making.

I wouldn't know, I don't really frequent deviantART - but I'm sure it's home to some certified travesties. I think it is more that "good" and "bad" are largely subjective labels, with meaning that is constrained to a given context, time period, and point of view. We often make the mistake of thinking our opinions or prejudices inform reality when they don't - and even 100% consensus doesn't ram a given judgment into objective or axiomatic existence. At the end of the day you have only your opinions, your justifications (or excuses) for those opinions, and the masses who give the thumbs up or thumbs down upon hearing them.

To return the topic to the subject of the Warcraft universe's writing, I would say it's a mixed bag. I try not to dwell on or accentuate the negative if I can help it, and so I take enjoyment from the story-arcs I like, and knuckle through the ones that I don't - I still enjoy the game, however; imperfections or disagreements aside.

[Qualia]

Is this just satire or are people really this du easily pleased?

How anyone can defend Warcraft's writing at this point is beyond me. The plots are ridiculous, moral ambiguity has become overused, zones are disjointed, most characters are flat, etc.

Sure some of this can be chalked up to the MMO format, I get that. But even acknowledging those constraints, the plots they've chosen to pursue and the way the story has developed is just bad.

Hardly. There is a difference between something getting better, and it being great. Just because WoW's writing has been getting better compared to how it was in the past, doesn't mean it's anywhere near being a classic (or something similar). I don't think he (or she) was saying that WoW's story is great - it's not, but that doesn't mean it isn't passable for the genre it's in. You can't just apply normal standards for fiction to a MMORPG - well, you can, but you'll more often than not be disappointed. Imagine this: if someone tell you "Hey, McDonald food is getting better", would that mean they are easily pleased? Or would you just automatically realize that they aren't trying to compare it with any sort of gourmet food, but to itself and other fastfood chains instead?

Anyway, I do agree with that poster that WoW's writing has been getting better compared to its early days. The lore in Vanilla was virtually non-existent. There was bits and pieces of plots here and then, but nothing complex, just simple & straight (or predictable if we want to look at it negatively) fantasy plotlines. None of the characters introduced was particularly interesting or intriguing, and until AQ, the heroes' motivations to face off against threats were only "for the looottts" or simply just because. It's only from AQ onwards that Blizzard tried to implement some sort of story arcs into the game. Yet, comes TBC, even they had to admit that Illidan - one of the two antagonists - was only being an antagonist because players wanted a familiar figure as the final boss, and they couldn't even figured out how to turn him into an enemy other than using the insane card. Compared to those early days, current writing in the last 2-3 expansions (yes, including WoD) is a big step-up. At least we have a story now. The plot is more complex than just "enemy arrived, we fight against them, no special event or minor plot in between" (which instantly makes it better than Vanilla's writing). There are retcons here and there, but most things can be explained reasonably with the lore - and for that matter, I prefer retcons over an inconsistent story, it's not like WoW-verse is the only one with retcons, anyway. That's an improvement. (Feel free to point it out if I was wrong, and if anything in Vanilla's story was better than current WoW's)

In the end, whether something is good or bad depends on what you are compared them to, and what sort of standards you are applied to them. I think people who are thinking Blizzard's writing has been getting worse are just expecting too much from a MMO. Personally, I judge WoW's writing based on other MMORPGs' writings (which I don't really have any sort of high expectation to begin with), and I believe it's doing pretty well for the what the devs wanted to.

[Captain Kennedy]

The writing is better overall, but the problems are also more striking than ever. This boils down to two reasons:

1. The characters, races and factions are locked in place because of gameplay reasons. Whilst I understand why Blizzard won't change this, I would applaud them if they ever decided to take such a risk. Blood Elves join the Alliance or Worgen join the Horde, I'd be totally down for that as long as there is a solid story to back it up. If only one race joins the opposing faction, have the two new xpac races join the other faction instead. However I don't see the WoW team ever taking such a big risk. This also isn't difficult to work around. Every toon on the race switching gets a free race change if they prefer to remain with their faction, or your toon can choose to change factions or elect to not follow the rest of their race and it becomes this cool exclusivity thing where for example "if you were playing a Blood Elf before X expansion they can be on the Horde but from this expansion onwards you can only create new Blood Elf toons on the Alliance". This also has some cool story possibilities with some NPCs choosing to stay with the current faction instead. This option would be pretty dope.

2. The other problem is the world, characters and lore is astronomically bigger than it ever was in WC3. And due to the enormity of it, the current team simply can't manage and juggle everything they've established and have going on at once. Now they've certainly improved over the years, but we can still see it's lagging behind in Legion.
- Despite defeating them twice already, Malfurion and Tyrande never participate in the battles against The Legion directly. And never have a reunion with Illidan despite the fact they aren't geographically far from each other.
- Jaina, despite knowing the threat of The Legion and leading armies against them before, doesn't do anything to help.
- Similar to Jaina, Malfurion and Tyrande, Thrall isn't involved in any of the major conflicts. Albeit is more helpful than Jaina.
- Wrathion, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks here.

I'm really hoping the team improves this over the years. I don't expect them to give everyone attention at once. But their current scope just isn't big enough to allow the appropriate characters to shine.

I'm also more than happy for them to retcon certain events to include characters and plotlines that weren't seen or dropped in the game.

[Deleted]

Is that a good thing?

It is if you think fanfic writers should be paid to write canon.

[Jervaise]

I do read it thank you.


Yes the questline and the way they narrates and quests dramatically improved compare to vanilla and TBC expansions but I do still it's still inferior to WC3 in term of telling story this is just my personal opinion.

They have more tools now and indeed better than it used to be but still a mess in term of storytelling look at WoD Iron Horde plot....Grom Hellscream AU the main antagnist and our enemy then one patch later he is buddy with us and with the Draenei... the only transition we got is one single raid patch trailer cinematic....now compare that to something like Arthas slowly descending to a dark path of vengeance slowly until he finally became the Lich king (Yes the story is not original it is very similar to Anakin Skywalker becoming the Darth Vader but still waay better than the garbage we got in WoD expansion).


I am not saying all of WoW storylines are bad I am just saying WC3 was superior in term of storyline and storytelling.

I wasn't clear enough about my opinion I guess

Blizzard's writing is better than ever, however it doesn't translate well into the game and the game's storytelling.

A person can get the best out of it when he or she reads about the lore - or reads the books. If not, the story telling in game is below average unfortunately.

I didn't mean you in person when I said "you" But I guess we are exactly on the same page anyway.

[Velshin]

I understood the transition well enough, although I don't think I would say that AU Grom ever became our "ally" in any real sense - he was present to revenge himself on Gul'dan and Archimonde, and in that sense it was more that his goals temporarily aligned with ours. WoD's story was hamfistedly done, and many of its narrative arcs suffered for that, but the story is at least coherent enough to follow if you care enough to piece its disparate parts together.

I understand his reasons trust me I really do. I still do think it's bad transition and not fleshed out well enough compare to for example Arthas slowly taking the dark side of vengeance. This is of course just one example.

[Deleted]

Was writing really that good / that much better in Warcraft 3? Or are we just feeling a bit nostalgic.

Imo, it was always decent at best. Good enough as a base story for a RPG.

[Verdugo]

Was writing really that good / that much better in Warcraft 3? Or are we just feeling a bit nostalgic.

Imo, it was always decent at best. Good enough as a base story for a RPG.

Decent is still better than horseshit.

[Mehrunes]

Retcons happen all the time, and can actually improve a given story if leveraged correctly - the fact that retcons simply occur is neither good nor bad, each has to be judged on its own merits.

Retcons happening all the time isn't a justification for retcons. People catch flu all the time too, does that make flu good? Retcons are sloppy writing caused by the writer either not giving a fuck about the established lore and paving a way for the new kewl thing at all costs, or them not remembering their own lore. Neither is a positive thing. The outcome doesn't change that. If you catch a flu and that leads you to meeting a nice girl in the waiting line for your doctor's appointment that still doesn't magically make the flu itself good. It's an accidental positive outcome of something that sucks.

Whether or not the Void Elves are an "asspull" race is an argument you would have to make and support with evidence. If you interpret "new" as "asspull" then I would agree, otherwise not so much - if we're talking about the lore of the Void Elves I would probably underscore that the separation of game systems or gameplay and story/narrative elements should be observed because if you're talking gameplay then *every* race or class is effectively an "asspull" to some degree. Blizzard whips up history wholecloth wherever it needs to, just as all fantasy writers can and do - the judgment comes in as to whether or not what is created fits into the scope of the greater narrative or not.

While I don't feel as strongly about Void Elves as others, they are still discredited by their own premise. Because there being Void Elves rests on Alleria's re-introduction into the story acting as their foreshadowing. Except the thing with Alleria was that she studied for centuries and was the ultra unique super duper special person who was the first mortal that Locus Walker found in an eternity to master the Void without succumbing to it. And now all of a sudden there's a bunch of random nobodies achieving that after playing with the Void without really understanding it. Sure, they were ultimately bailed out by the super-duper Alleria, yet Locus Walker was unable to do so for other Ethereals or other Void-corrupted individuals he met over the ages.

[Aucald]

Retcons happening all the time isn't a justification for retcons. People catch flu all the time too, does that make flu good? Retcons are sloppy writing caused by the writer either not giving a fuck about the established lore and paving a way for the new kewl thing at all costs, or them not remembering their own lore. Neither is a positive thing. The outcome doesn't change that. If you catch a flu and that leads you to meeting a nice girl in the waiting line for your doctor's appointment that still doesn't magically make the flu itself good. It's an accidental positive outcome of something that sucks.

I disagree. A retcon can also happen because an author felt that their original story was sub-par compared to what came after, and was required so that the story could continue to be of a higher caliber and not hamstrung by previous bad decisions or more juvenile writing. If the end-result is you get a better story, a better game, or a better what-have-you then I would say the retcon is justified enough - allowing a story to be crippled by a previous decision out of some sense of misguided purity or integrity would be somewhat silly, I think. I do agree that retcons can be born from mistakes, or forgetting details of what came before, and I would agree that those retcons are bad. Like I said above, you have to judge each on its own merits.

While I don't feel as strongly about Void Elves as others, they are still discredited by their own premise. Because there being Void Elves rests on Alleria's re-introduction into the story acting as their foreshadowing. Except the thing with Alleria was that she studied for centuries and was the ultra unique super duper special person who was the first mortal that Locus Walker found in an eternity to master the Void without succumbing to it. And now all of a sudden there's a bunch of random nobodies achieving that after playing with the Void without really understanding it. Sure, they were ultimately bailed out by the super-duper Alleria, yet Locus Walker was unable to do so for other Ethereals or other Void-corrupted individuals he met over the ages.

I would say we don't know enough about Locus-Walker's past, or his temperament, to judge that - he himself purposely shrouds his own past, and how he came to possess the powers and free will he has, in his conversation with Alleria. Personally, I'm of a mind that Locus-Walker was previously like his Shadowguard peers and somehow "rescued" by a third party himself (explaining his drive to find others who can be "rescued" or taught to wield the Void without succumbing to it), though that remains to be seen. Alleria and the Void Elves' respective transformations are also quite different and add to that the the ultimate fate of the Void Elves might also be Alleria's fault, given that Nether-Prince Durzaan appears to have been tracking her since the Sunwell incident through the Void, and was also responsible for the partial transformation of the Void Elves.

From an external, narrative standpoint I would agree that the Void Elves are born of a series of pretty large coincidences, but I still disagree that this makes them an "asspull."

[Mehrunes]

I disagree. A retcon can also happen because an author felt that their original story was sub-par compared to what came after, and was required so that the story could continue to be of a higher caliber and not hamstrung by previous bad decisions or more juvenile writing. If the end-result is you get a better story, a better game, or a better what-have-you then I would say the retcon is justified enough - allowing a story to be crippled by a previous decision out of some sense of misguided purity or integrity would be somewhat silly, I think. I do agree that retcons can be born from mistakes, or forgetting details of what came before, and I would agree that those retcons are bad. Like I said above, you have to judge each on its own merits.

But you just repeated the option A of what I talked about. Established lore is established lore regardless of how the author feels about it in hindsight. Them wanting to change it to a more kewl thing is them not giving a fuck about established lore, i.e. continuity, and forcing the kewl thing at the cost of the story's integrity. Once again, the end result is a separate thing from the act of retconning itself. Not that I'm sure how the integrity of the continuity without which the story wouldn't even exist as a coherent entity is "misguided", but replacing a "crippling" bit of story through sloppy writing tools only replaces it with another debilitation. Especially since more often than not (like, reaching 100% occurrence rate) Blizzard does not address all events relating to the retconned story other than the main point for the retcon, which creates a clusterfuck of plotholes.

[Jamie081]

So what exactly is your point ?

That this shit about the writing is a bandwagon (which is what I already said) and that y'all are so fucking fake for complaining about it now when it's been shit for a long time. That's my point, sweetie

[Aucald]

But you just repeated the option A of what I talked about. Established lore is established lore regardless of how the author feels about it in hindsight. Them wanting to change it to a more kewl thing is them not giving a fuck about established lore, i.e. continuity, and forcing the kewl thing at the cost of the story's integrity. Once again, the end result is a separate thing from the act of retconning itself. Not that I'm sure how the integrity of the continuity without which the story wouldn't even exist as a coherent entity is "misguided", but replacing a "crippling" bit of story through sloppy writing tools only replaces it with another debilitation. Especially since more often than not (like, reaching 100% occurrence rate) Blizzard does not address all events relating to the retconned story other than the main point for the retcon, which creates a clusterfuck of plotholes.

I don't agree that established lore is an axiomatic truth that cannot be deviated from - especially in the context of a fantastical story in a video game world. You tell the story that will give the most enjoyment, or grant the most fun, or attract the largest crowd of listeners or readers, and if needs require that you have to bend narrative causality to do that then treating your previous story as some kind of straitjacket is somewhat self-defeating. Hidebound and unthinking adherence to old motifs that limit narrative freedom or stifle fun aren't in the long-term good for any story - sure, you can claim you've maintained integrity, but if the cost is that no one is around to listen to the story or play the game then you've still ultimately lost.

Creating retcons and not explaining them, or attempting to somehow fit them into the existing framework, is bad though - and I'll agree Blizzard's track-record in that department has been somewhat less than exemplary. I think Blizzard has a lot of "Rule of Cool" ideas that they think will be fun in terms of gameplay, and story integrity definitely plays second fiddle to game mechanics in their minds, so if the story has to suffer so that they can implement something "cool" in the game world then so be it. I do think they're improving on that score, though; especially as the story slowly begins to become more central to the presentation - but there's still room for improvement.

[Arrashi]

That this shit about the writing is a bandwagon (which is what I already said) and that y'all are so fucking fake for complaining about it now when it's been shit for a long time. That's my point, sweetie

And people been complaining for a long time ? So whats exactly fake about them ?