The scale of the story-telling has me...worried.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, the balance between the scale of the threats we face in WoW and the expansions/patches they come in. Nobody else has seemed to really address it, so here I go:

-The first three expansions were fine, this issue wasn't really there.

-MoP is where this first starts to be a problem in my opinion. We get an entire expansion of Pandaria and Pandarens. Such a tiny, tiny part of Warcraft as a whole gets dragged out for a whole 2-year expansion. Tiny threat, evil Garrosh powered by Sha.

-WoD, an entire expansion of going to an *alternate*, past version of *another planet* which we already explored in modern day. We don't go into our own past, we don't visit another interesting planet in the functionally infinite Warcraft universe, we go into Outland's past...for another 2 years.

-Legion went way, way, way too far in the other direction in my opinion. We get: The Third Invasion of the Legion, The Broken Isles, The Emerald Nightmare, Argus, The Return Of The Titans, and the defeat of the biggest bad in all of Warcraft (up until they retconned Void Lords into existence)...all in one expansion. Blizzard blew all their lore cooldowns here. And the result in my opinion was fun...but really rushed and forced.

-BFA kinda seemed alright to me so far. We get faction warfare, Kul'Tiras, Zandalar, and some light Naga and Old God stuff. Lots of good stuff, but not the frankly psychotic light-speed pace of Legion.

-Until now, where it is starting to seem like they are pulling a Legion again. 8.2 is going to Nazjatar and defeating the leader of the naga. It looks like 8.3 is gonna be us banding together to defeat N'Zoth, dropping the faction war entirely. If this is the case, 8.2 and 8.3 are going to have content more worthy of being full expansions than Draenor or Pandaria.

-Then what's left? A WotLk re-hash with Bolvar and/or Sylvanas? Going into the void and somehow fighting the Void Lords, leaving nothing left in the whole warcraft universe? I feel like there is a struggle within Blizzard between people wanting to do cool, big, cosmic threats and people wanting to scale it back to just being random nobodies killing boars all day.

[Zandalariprelate]

I agree with you in many points, Azshara and N'zoth diserve their own raid and expansion for themself but it's seem blizzard has gone back to his old habit of burning their cds very early

[Powerogue]

A fair point, but part of me does kind of want them to eventually make a grand finale expansion. Hell, as you put it, Legion practically could've been that.

[Directionalk9]

Post-Legion was a perfect time to scale down the Threat Level Midnights. We could’ve had a nice clean faction war, but nope interject the Naga and an Old God, Azeroth is dying.... blah blah blah. I seriously wouldn’t mind if raids were just the culmination of bad guys are being bad, but the world isn’t in danger. ‘There’s an evil king over there, bring me his head, and take 10 or more friends... and ahh, fight mythically!”

[EntertainmentNihilist]

Post-Legion was a perfect time to scale down the Threat Level Midnights. We could’ve had a nice clean faction war, but nope interject the Naga and an Old God, Azeroth is dying.... blah blah blah. I seriously wouldn’t mind if raids were just the culmination of bad guys are being bad, but the world isn’t in danger. ‘There’s an evil king over there, bring me his head, and take 10 or more friends... and ahh, fight mythically!”

I don't really disagree. Though I do think that if you scale it down too much it gets boring and generic. I like big cosmic threats, but they can't just throw them at us left and right and keep trying to one-up themselves. I definitely agree that post-Legion they should have kept it scaled back for a while, perhaps gradually building the threats back up until we got to the Old Gods.

[Directionalk9]

^^
8.0 - faction war
9.0 - Azshara and the Naga Empire, heavy tease of N’Zoth
10.0 - Scourge War 2: Into the Shadowlands
11.0 - Journey to the Center of the Ny’olatha, N’Zoth biggity ole bad

[therealstegblob]

Post-Legion was a perfect time to scale down the Threat Level Midnights. We could’ve had a nice clean faction war, but nope interject the Naga and an Old God, Azeroth is dying.... blah blah blah. I seriously wouldn’t mind if raids were just the culmination of bad guys are being bad, but the world isn’t in danger. ‘There’s an evil king over there, bring me his head, and take 10 or more friends... and ahh, fight mythically!”

The issue here is both versions have a shelf life. How long can we go on, fighting DA EVIL ANCIENT AWAKENZ.... ASHARA THE OLD GODZ POWER DARK MIGHT... LICH KING... in every single raid? Conversely, how long can we keep just killing rando badguys ala Molten Core? You can try weaving the two together and doing one and then the other to keep things "fresh", but that'll only work so long too.

The game is just old. The story is old, and bad writing has failed to keep it very fresh. If it were any one thing or the other or both or neither, it'd still end up feeling stale at this point.

[sillag]

idk man this is just how it is. blizz isnt going to make new expansions where the action is less exciting than what came before. the stakes have to keep getting raised and spectacle creep is real

we had a giant planet appear in the sky, a giant sword blow up a zone, 2 cities destroyed, wow's very own holocaust, a faction war that has been artificially pushed so hard the universe is breaking down around it, the planet is dying, the last old god is breaking free, i hope you realize we are never going back to collecting juicy bear flanks in hillsbrad

we are gonna get a war against the light where evil naaru come to trap everything in crystals, the void lords are going to come and eat half the world, probably another faction war where a continent gets nuked or something, the moon will explode one of these days because its a cool graphic for the skybox and ff14 did it

and dont even think it ends with the void lords they will pull some new stupid shit out of their ass thats even bigger and even more darkerer that we have to fight while repeating the same cyclical horde honor crisis story every 3 years like clockwork

bfa is the point where the story has fallen apart around the spectacle but dont think for a second that means blizzard will dial it back. they think that to sell new cool expansions and draw unsubbed players back in they have to keep upping the ante and so thats what they'll do

[Mayia]

I think you forget we had focus on one expansion back in tbc/wrath with the small trips to caverns of time, TBC had almost a laser focus on the one expansion we had the two dungeons one was based on the invasion of the orcs from the place we were, the other a pivotal event in time, and the raid was also.

Though i do think we need a whole black empire expansion the scale really requires it, Argus was really poor because we spent so little time there and it was such a small part of the planet, i think it should've been rolled out when broken shore was, with more work put into it.

I think the issue with BFA is they are going to over do the final chapters because of how shit much of the early systems were in bfa they'll go loopy with areas that should be leveling zones at least.
So i really hope we get naga at some point to revisit these areas.

[Eggroll]

The game is just old. The story is old, and bad writing has failed to keep it very fresh. If it were any one thing or the other or both or neither, it'd still end up feeling stale at this point.

Idk, this "old" excuse doesn't seem to be a good one. I'm looking at twitch and there's "old" games like Mortal Kombat and Dota at the top. "Old" doesn't really mean anything anymore imo.

[therealstegblob]

Idk, this "old" excuse doesn't seem to be a good one. I'm looking at twitch and there's "old" games like Mortal Kombat and Dota at the top. "Old" doesn't really mean anything anymore imo.

...What lol.

I mean, Eggroll post whatever but I'll entertain it anyways.

I'm not talking about the game mechanically, not at all. I'm talking about its storytelling, or more specifically, how it does storytelling in Raids. Besides, Mortal Kombat is not an "old game", it is quite fucking literally a brand new one (MK11, that is. Which is what everyone is streaming and watching right now). DotA 2 is a pure PvP game, it doesn't suffer from its storytelling growing repetitive.

[Eggroll]

...What lol.

I mean, Eggroll post whatever but I'll entertain it anyways.

I'm not talking about the game mechanically, not at all. I'm talking about its storytelling, or more specifically, how it does storytelling in Raids. Besides, Mortal Kombat is not an "old game", it is quite fucking literally a brand new one (MK11, that is. Which is what everyone is streaming and watching right now). DotA 2 is a pure PvP game, it doesn't suffer from its storytelling growing repetitive.

It's not the "old" storytelling. It's the BAD storytelling. Let's call it what it is. I agree with the OP, Blizz storytellers or whatever they are firing off too many of their story telling cd's too soon. It's just not well paced.

Same with systems. For Legion, it would've been enough to have the Artifact, but noooooo, they had to put Legendaries into the game, too, which completely fucked up balancing and was a constant point of contempt. What a fucking waste if you ask me. Also the overkill with profession quests, I mean, seriously.... these dudes have no sense for rhythm and pace of anything, it's either completely static or whiplash, there's nothing inbetween.

[zlygork]

I do feel like the difference in pacing across expansions may come as a bit Schizophrenic, particularly when we compare Vanilla to Cata to MoP to Legion, but it doesn't really bother me too much outside of the importance that our characters have earned, which while logical doesn't make sense within the settings of an MMO story.

On the concept of running out of villains, that's something that really doesn't bother me. Wc3, Vanilla, MoP and even Legion had no issues creating new plotlines for everyone but those screeching that only the RTS established lore is real, and new dangers will keep coming.

[Wewlad]

Honestly WoW should never have tackled the A Story, ie continue the plot of Warcraft III. It was never the right game for such in-depth storytelling, but Blizzard ended up using their established villains as crutches when they should have been saved for a proper RTS sequel.

As for the argument that our characters "deserve" to tackle the big stuff, no and no. Our characters by themselves are only part of the raid groups which took down all the threats and yet Blizzard tried pushing single-player RPG "Chosen One" bullshit on them. Even then, fighting huge dragons like Nefarion should have been enough, and it was until Blizzard allowed us to kill Kel'thuzad thus dooming themselves with the expectation that other noteworthy villains would be killed in raids.

I mean, I'll always wonder how a true WCIV story would go without all the retardation. Arthas would get a proper story rather than be a punch-clock, same with pretty much everyone else.

[DeicideUH]

I think Blizzard is cleaning the board to begin anew.

[Sharby]

I still feel like Legion shoulda been the last expansion.

[Tyrathius]

Blizzard very rarely outright kills something off for good, usually they either go for the non-lethal takedown or set up a replacement. This is very, very deliberate.

-Sargeras was sealed, so he could potentially be brought back for more Burning Legion. Blizz has also refused to clarify whether Archimonde died for good in WoD or not.

-Bolvar is the new Lich King, so he can do the Scourge again.

-Deathwing's uncorrupted but mysteriously still kind of evil for some reason and also one of the only dragons to not have been depowered son Wrathion.

-Murozond has died but still exists because timey wimey ball.

-Azshara doesn't seem to die in 8.2, so more naga later.

-Old Gods can't die for good and there's already signs C'thun and Yogg-Saron are reviving.

-Ragnaros and Al''akir are replaced in the Shaman class hall.

-Kel'thuzad's phylactery wasn't destroyed.

If we ever get to the point where there's nothing new to fight, Blizz can just pick any of the above and reuse them.

[Triceron]

We actually have staggered expansions.

Not every expansion has built up or tackled huge threats. Some build up to big threats, some only touch on the threats and leave them as 'beating back the the toe of an Old God' cliffhanger.

They can create enemies anywhere they see fit. We don't just have the Void Lords left, we have plenty of lesser threats (of significance) to deal with, as well as returning threats. Infinite Dragonflight is still around, the Nightmare seems ever-present no matter how much we win, the elementals are still fighting for a new Firelord position, the return of the Black Empire, and there's the Lightbound/Yrel's Army of Light, etc.

Also since we've opened up to space travel, there's places like the Nathrezim homeworld and Ethereal homeworlds to explore. Entirely new cultures and staging areas for a potential big Void Lord fight.

[therealstegblob]

It's not the "old" storytelling. It's the BAD storytelling. Let's call it what it is. I agree with the OP, Blizz storytellers or whatever they are firing off too many of their story telling cd's too soon. It's just not well paced.

Nah, it's the fact the storylines are growing old. As I explained before (and you somehow failed to understand), it's a problem of you can only do THE BIG EVIL ANCIENT AWAKENS so many times before it gets super repetitive and loses all weight, conversely you can only do a "lesser bad guy" before it, too, becomes a little monotonous. There's only so many enemies we can face before they start losing all of their meaning.

[cuafpr]

if i recall blizz themselves said this was an issue on balancing the big bad threat to the world for excitement vs story telling.