Story and Lore Developer Live Stream

[hupy90]

Riveting stuff, can't wait to see how "deep and meaningful" the conclusion to the G̶a̶r̶r̶o̶s̶h̶ Sylvanas story will be.

I know right! When Garrosh tried to conquer death itself and establish total control over all life, flooding Azeroth with the undead I knew he had to be taken down! And when Sylvanus found that old god artifact in a ruin and became corrupt from its immense power, needing to be killed to get a better suited warchief! Oh wait, those aren't the same in any way. Why, because all you see is "Warchief of Horde, Evil (From outside perspectives), Killed. Therefore, all who fit that are the same! ". That is like claiming all dictators were the same because they ruled their country, were mostly terrible, and died in the end. Sylvanus' story is MUCH more complex than Garrosh's. Garrosh was a minor character that suddenly became warchief and wanted to show off his axe size to everyone, quickly being cut down. Sylvanus has been preparing for YEARS, has been corrupt ever since her death, and is only NOW taking a move. Simply because the generalized version of their stories (That we know of atm) follows a similar path, does NOT make their stories identical. You don't assume every great engineer that has born and died all had the same life story. Sorry for the long reply.

[Minikin]

I didn't think these things could get any worse than Ion's, but at least Ion made a very poor attempt at answering questions.

This is just an hour of these two about one step away from sucking each another off live.

>DUDE OUR STORY IS GREAT
>WOAH WE HAVE SO MANY GREAT WRITERS
>DUDE [Character] IS SO COOL
>AH YES I LOVE [CHARACTER] TOO
>AND [Character] IS EPIC TOO
>YESSS I LOVE [Character]
>WE'VE GOT SO MANY COOL THINGS COMING FOR [Character]
>AND DON'T FORGET HOW AWESOME [Character] IS
>YES, VOICED BY [Voice Actor]
>NOT FORGETTING THE EPIC EVENTS OF TIDES OF VENGEANCE
>HAHA NO SPOILERS THOUGH
>ESPECIALLY THE STUFF WITH [Character]

Lol +1000 internet to you sir

[Sigxy]

"The team hopes that when Battle for Azeroth's story concludes and the "last funeral pyre is lit" players will have seen it as a great story that changed the world of Azeroth."

I don't recall an expansion getting THIS much dislike before regarding the story. Even during the early stages before the expansion was released, we saw issues. How do you expect that at the end of the expansion, people will forget all that? I'm honestly starting to think that Blizzard should stick to tell simple stories. Look at WC3, people love the story and yet it's really simple stuff - and there is NOTHING wrong with that.

This whole thing talks about how great the story is - yet people have complained. Is it really that bad to admit you did a few "hiccups" and say you will learn from those mistakes? No...? Guess not, otherwise they might've actually had a Q&A before this. Then they might've had to put in some EFFORT into looking for the positive questions...

[Hylndur101]

people complain about circle jerks at blizzard... but when i look at mmo-champ forums, all i see is a circle jerk of negativity.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Feels like a lot of PR speak here.

[Nathasil]

"The team hopes that when Battle for Azeroth's story concludes and the "last funeral pyre is lit" players will have seen it as a great story that changed the world of Azeroth."

I don't recall an expansion getting THIS much dislike before regarding the story. Even during the early stages before the expansion was released, we saw issues. How do you expect that at the end of the expansion, people will forget all that? I'm honestly starting to think that Blizzard should stick to tell simple stories. Look at WC3, people love the story and yet it's really simple stuff - and there is NOTHING wrong with that.

This whole thing talks about how great the story is - yet people have complained. Is it really that bad to admit you did a few "hiccups" and say you will learn from those mistakes? No...? Guess not, otherwise they might've actually had a Q&A before this. Then they might've had to put in some EFFORT into looking for the positive questions...

I think WC3 is a bad example, because the Horde story right now basically IS WC3's Arthas-Story. If you had to pick a faction in WC3 and not play all of them linearily to see the story, the reactions would have been exactly as bad as they are now in BFA. They just chose the wrong kind of story for a faction-based MMO.

Just imagine you were forced to play only Horde in WC3. What would be your story for the entire major storyline of Arthas following the Scourge and falling to it? Right, you would sit on a boat doing nothing. Which is EXACTLY what the Alliance story feels like this expansion, as Sylvanas is Arthas.

It just does not work. In an MMORPG you do not just play everything and when the story of one faction is non-existant for a while (=10 years) you just say "Well, i would really like to play Alliance, but since the story is on the Horde side right now, no biggy! I'm sure 10 years from now they will eventually get around to telling more Alliance stories and until then i will just play that Horde character i don#t really give a fuck about!"

[tratra]

I didn't think these things could get any worse than Ion's, but at least Ion made a very poor attempt at answering questions.

This is just an hour of these two about one step away from sucking each another off live.

>DUDE OUR STORY IS GREAT
>WOAH WE HAVE SO MANY GREAT WRITERS
>DUDE [Character] IS SO COOL
>AH YES I LOVE [CHARACTER] TOO
>AND [Character] IS EPIC TOO
>YESSS I LOVE [Character]
>WE'VE GOT SO MANY COOL THINGS COMING FOR [Character]
>AND DON'T FORGET HOW AWESOME [Character] IS
>YES, VOICED BY [Voice Actor]
>NOT FORGETTING THE EPIC EVENTS OF TIDES OF VENGEANCE
>HAHA NO SPOILERS THOUGH
>ESPECIALLY THE STUFF WITH [Character]

Thanks for the laughs. That should be rated as top comment of the year or something!

[etheldald]

Bahahahahahaha

"you guys know, jaina?, she is a wc3 character!, and she is back! and she exist! and that's cool because she is cool and we are cool, also, laura bailey can sing!"
"Woah old soldier was great, Zappyboi11! yehh!"
"night elves are cool like in wc3, not in wow where we treated them like thrash!"
"cool characters are cool!"
"we design the story around cool moments!" (rule of cool, yeahh!)
"we love all characters because they are great, we are great, everything is fine"
"no spoilerino, WaIT AnD See!"
"1 hour of literally nothing because we are repeating the same things that we said at blizzcon!"

"thank you for your questions, next time we will awnser more!" (who asked those? no idea)

[Gadzooks]

The only meaning the Saurfang choice has is a toy, if I recall the discussion and posts about it. And, the whole thing came about last minute, because of their piss poor writing that put a character players are invested in, into a bad place in the story. The whole "meaningful choices" is nonsense. It can't work in a game like WOW. Every player gets the same ride, no matter what. This isn't Fallout 1, this is WoW: The Dark Ride.

Besides, they're not writing a novel, it's fan service most of the time - and that's fine for a video game, but they're patting themselves on the back a little to hard here. But that's typical for the WOW team, these days. They're always making statements like "You'll find out what it means to be...." - and then never actually DO that. The whole story is unfocused and scattered because they're tunnel visioning on smaller aspects and stories, and letting the big picture fall apart. If you can't sell the faction war - and they haven't - then all of this is diluted as a result.

And, they really need to not call these Q&A's. It wasn't. Players have specific expectations of what a Q&A is from Blizzcon, and this isn't even in the same category as the Lore Q&As at Blizzcon - which is where a lot of the disappointment is coming from. This is a "where are we now in the story?" presentation - which is fine, but it should have been labeled as such.

But, you know, these Indy companies, they learn as they go.

[Life-Binder]

The war between the Horde and Alliance will culminate in something deep and meaningful.

b-but muh SoO 2.0

Kappa

[lfcifer]

I'm getting really tired of this wait and see approach to story telling. "The team hopes that when Battle for Azeroth's story concludes and the "last funeral pyre is lit" players will have seen it as a great story that changed the world of Azeroth" I don't want to wait till the END of the expansion to feel this way!!! You make the Horde feel nothing but uncertainty for the whole expac, then think you'll deliver one patch to fix it all? Do you really think we'll remember your ending conclusion more than the several months of frustration?

[McNeil]

This live stream felt as empty as BFA, lots of talk but nothing has really been said.

[Regalbeast]

Literally dozens of people care about the lore in BfA right now....DOZENS!

[Claymore]

Well... individuality have been painted as something of the Horde (look at the Nightborne joining the Horde, that's one of their main premises), the Alliance is more about unity (under the King, that's why the Alliance look like"Humans & friends" most of the time)

That's exactly what I mean, though; that is a BRAND-NEW development. In WC3, it's true that Dwarves and High Elves fell under the banner of "the Alliance", but in Vanilla WoW, it was established pretty early on that each Race was governing itself. Hell, Ironforge was the only capital with an Auction House for how many years?

You first saw the seeds being planted at the start of Wrath, but Cataclysm is when you saw the proliferation of the "Alliance military" being a copy-paste of the US military structure, completely regardless of race.

Conversely, the Horde has always been "under the thumb" of the current Warchief. On a PERSONAL level, Thrall was pretty relaxed, but make no mistake; Garrosh was acting completely within his right as Warchief throughout everything. And true to form, he was overthrown by who would become the next Warchief. But the Horde is not about "maintaining our differences", and PARTICULARLY isn't true under Sylvanas.

[Re4leader1]

Christie golding was a huge win for the story. No.... no she was not and non of her "strong female leads" are interesting or entertaining...

[Army Dreamer]

Bwonsamdi was influenced a lot by how his voice actor embodied him.

Epic character and epic voice acting.

Christie Golden wrote the dialogue for the Bwonsamdi and Rastakhan cinematic.

Kudos Christie. Really great writing.

[Hugnomo]

I love you Terran Gregory. I don't know much about Danuser to have an opinion, but I enjoy this game, and by proxy, his work. This, however, really sucked. Self-aggrandizing and empty; superficial commentary on everything we already know. I'm disappointed.
And I know not to be disappointed by these streams, but I still am. Wasn't this supposed to be a Q&A? where were the questions? Even trivial questions would have at least lead somewhere.

[SNES-1990]

Bahahahahahaha

"you guys know, jaina?, she is a wc3 character!, and she is back! and she exist! and that's cool because she is cool and we are cool, also, laura bailey can sing!"
"Woah old soldier was great, Zappyboi11! yehh!"
"night elves are cool like in wc3, not in wow where we treated them like thrash!"
"cool characters are cool!"
"we design the story around cool moments!" (rule of cool, yeahh!)
"we love all characters because they are great, we are great, everything is fine"
"no spoilerino, WaIT AnD See!"
"1 hour of literally nothing because we are repeating the same things that we said at blizzcon!"

"thank you for your questions, next time we will awnser more!" (who asked those? no idea)

Thanks for saving me an hour of wasted time.

[Pheraz]

That last sentence is interesting. When the last pyre is lit... Hmmm

[Deventh]

This has to be the worst 1 hour wasted in anyone's life. I feel sorry for people who were present during this. Holy shit, Blizzard... get your goddamn shit together. This is a disaster.