Blizzard use to write lore everybody liked...what happened?

[mcastillo88]

People tend to talk more about what they dislike than what they like, and the internet gives everyone a platform. It's not that everyone hates the story, it's that the people who hate it yell the loudest. Also, previous warcraft games had a controlled pre-determined story and controlled your character choice. When you can create your own character, you have a vested interested in what happens to them/their race/their faction.

[Uko]

The story is usualy better when they aren't focusing on edgelord "moraly gray" characters in a faction war. People liked it more when the focus was on the big bad we were fighting like the focus on the Arthas or Illidan.

[Rexosaurus]

Eh, I used to want to like the story but I've really turned on it over the last couple of years. The story in WoW has always bordered on awful. Part of it is the story itself, but it's mostly the way that they tell it that makes it fall flat on its face. The characters/events jump all over the damn place, and when we do get character development it's usually relegated to a few sentences of voice-lines and maybe a paragraph of quest text.

They need to stop trying to please everyone all the time and just focus on one or two characters per side for an expansion. Also, if you're going to do something like burn down a capital city/commit genocide on a race then you should probably have that play a much larger role in the story rather than ignoring it and then trying to wrap it up with a single scenario in patch one of that expansion.

[ravenmoon]

People tend to talk more about what they dislike than what they like, and the internet gives everyone a platform. It's not that everyone hates the story, it's that the people who hate it yell the loudest. Also, previous warcraft games had a controlled pre-determined story and controlled your character choice. When you can create your own character, you have a vested interested in what happens to them/their race/their faction.

Hate doesn't exist without love.. so if someone hates something, they must have loved and that loved has been twisted, whether by betrayal (your fave character twisted in a way you don't like or your race in way that you felt far more disappointing than what you were initially sold ) or disappointment (like your fave race not coming together or living up to how they were portrayed or the expectations you had), or neglect (which is basically the mass ignoring of the thigns you loved the most) the worse is when you have all 3 (like I have perceived for night elves)

As a developer you have to note that this passion (even when hate filled) wouldn't exist without love... if you understand what your fanbase really hates, ignoring the insulting words but picking up on the points they make, then you have whaty ou need to fix it - assure them, address them etc

[Aucald]

Not all the stories have been incredible, some were amazing, others far from it - but the world was amazing, the complex peoples and rich race lore - my disappointment with the lore started when they started dumbing down races and homogenizing them, ditching their unique lore in favour of one size fits all, blue all, and red all. For example, I use to admire the complexity of the night elves as this vast race that actually felt like it was more than a one thing race like most elven portrayals in fantasy realms - it had the forest, the great civilizaiton, nature magic, arcane magic, a goddess, the whole night thing, and this high moon and stars calling. Children of the stars they called them, immortal - with a wide net and range of things. when you look at how the priestesses, highborne, druids, illidari, moonguard, sentinels, nightborne, wardens, worgen, naga, satyr - this is rich stuff - immortals that had an air of perfection and flawlessness tot hem, yet capable of fallibility but also able to heal/find redemption, come back, they are not the only individuals to make a mistake, nor should they be denied redemption either (in case they want to redeem a race of naga and satyr).

then the story map .. did you know the night elves' story in a sense starts with WoW? The long vigil and the pre-sundering civilziaiton are both prequels - of an elaborate tale and a journey of race that has gone through arcane mastery and nature mastry, and have to find themselves anew after coming ut of isolation - the chance to build them into something both better and more powerful than they ever were in their lore (not necessarily restoring an empire) but it could be exciting, and they had the level of tragedy in their story that would justify great glory too.

I don't disagree. But I think one thing people tend to discount was the patchwork nature of the lore, allowing them to insert much of what seems like "unique lore" that was otherwise missing. Before being fully codified, or homogenized as your put it, it was fully possible to imagine the Night Elves as equally savage and somehow primordial as well as being stately and detached from everyday concerns. Those mutually exclusive senses of the Night Elven race could exist side by side until they were finally hammered out in canon, which made one idea *the* idea while consigning the other to the proverbial dustbin of history.

However one of warcrafts biggest cricitsm, is not developing races, and tying up stories.. As a world that continues to evolve and change - that is usually a huge asset because you can see more of your fave race, and when they get knocked down (like the night elves) you know you can expect hat's not the end, and hope for some sort of come pack - and the greatest stories are the ones that give you something even more amazing than you thought would happen, just as they gave you tragedy more terrible than you thought would happen.

However they don't, when they visit new things and finish off old story, they do annoying things like forget important characters, important conclusions that involve already established characters. Sure new ones should come in, but you also have some great stuff to conclude and round up. The annoying of the writers is hwen they don't.. and perfect opportunities come to explore and expand lore for osme groups and it is overlooked always in favour of one group or one set of characters.

Maybe the problem is that they don't have time to do everything, but something they just shouldn't miss. The Order of Elune and Tyrande playing a role in Suramar as priests( not alliance lackeys) returning to their original capital, the broken shore and their most holy temple being reclaimed, the encounter with their predecessors - even if it was necessary to have a stronger legion role and class orders in volved, a way should have been found to tie those ones in.

now i'm just focusing on the night elf ones as it is night elf lore that Legion and 8.2 Azshara deal with, but fans of orcs, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, humans etc will all point out similar thigns.

On one hand, I can readily see this - but on the other, I think it's an unavoidable problem. People have their favorites, and when a situation presents itself for said favorite to have a role and they don't there's a sense of disenfranchisement. But for someone who doesn't share that opinion it's not that big a deal, or even better if the character who actually does show up tends to be one of their favorites instead. Like Tyrande's conspicuous absence in Nazjatar, this is a bad thing if you're a big fan of Tyrande. But if you like Shandris, or Thalyssra, then you're all set. You can never please everyone.

i'm aghast at the night elves instead of coming together and recovering are takent hrough a second genocide, no story written to get a home , the nightborne given tot he horde (instead of shared) their lore against azshara not brought up in the patch that deals with her at all, and glaringly missing from finishing off the legion or interacting with Illidan when he came back and it was finally understood he was right about everything..

These are things we don't need to fill in the blnaks, these are the sort of things the critically acclaimed dramas are made over, or the cheesy knock offs that we enjoy anyway because they are in our favourite world. THe world is what we love.. writing the characters in properly and doing races justice stamps the whole creative work in a very special part. Failure to do so , or handling it badly greatly disappoints.

Without consistency and continuity, then no one is inclined to believe anything they write or introduced because it would be changed or ignored when it makes no sense for it to be.

I find myself doubtful that the Night Elven story-arc descending from Darkshore and the burning of Teldrassil is over - it more or less changes everything about the state of the Night Elven people, upending their old status quo and changing everything about how they connect with both the Alliance and the Horde. BfA seems like it's going to deal with the immediate fallout of Sylvanas' war, pushing the Horde out of Darkshore and re-establishing their own sovereign territory. They need a new capitol city, and of course it seems like that Tyrande's Army of the Black Moon is going to be bent on vengeance for the Kaldorei dead of Teldrassil, meaning that the Night Elves will be newly hostile to the Horde regardless of whether or not Sylvanas retains her seat as Warchief. If this thread doesn't continue and strongly inform 9.0 I would be sincerely surprised (and more than a little disappointed). It's a story that remains to be concluded.

[Zyky]

snip

Long story short, they ran out of Warcraft Lore and Characters from the glory days when it was a tiny small company and had to write new stories with a large team being hounded to make money.

[seleri]

People got older and more cynical/nitpicky. Blizzard's writing hasn't changed since the original RTS and if anything they've gotten better at presenting story in WoW with every passing year.

[The Stormbringer]

They turned warcraft into an MMO, that's what happened.

When you have an rts, or books or whatever being the main format of your lore, you can make it really interesting and good. You can have kingdoms rise and fall and you can have the point-of-view change often and even have them die.

But with the MMO, you are the POV for everything. You also can't lose and will always win(unless there's 2 factions, then you have a stalemate). Then out of nowhere, enemies who probably hate each other and care nothing for you... will now focus you and you will kill them for their loot. Their character development no longer matters, besides them meeting their end. You'll never see Illidan get his revenge on Arthas, or major wars between factions that don't involve the playable faction.

You also have to suspend your disbelief like crazy. For instance, Arthas and the Scourge swept through the most powerful kingdoms and only grew mower powerful. Deathwing fought in the War of the Ancients and annihilated thousands of mortals and demons alike and has grown more powerful. Old Gods were said to have fought the Titans and even killed one and even imprisoned are more powerful than mortal imagination. Yet you will kill them all, you who has a mortal body and will be reminded over and over that you're not as powerful as Thrall, Jaina or even a crippled Garrosh... killed literal god-tier beings... over and over again.

The lore became shit the moment that there were millions of POV's and they're all technically canon and can never really die for as long as the game goes on(that's some real bad plot armor) and the bad guys could never win.

This, I think, is the heart of things. Yes, they can tell cool stories, but when they're so restricted by the player characters, their hands become tied. In a way, it was better when we were nobodies, because then we could lose. We were able to fail back then, even if we still got loot and moved on to other places. I understand why so many people wish Warcraft 4 would happen, not simply because they miss the RTS genre, but because it could create serious differences in the world.

[Magnagarde]

Because the story used to be written with the story in mind, with no player versus player involvement through their factions and their gameplay/forum posting. The player becomes an agent in the story through their character and subsequently the faction they represent. The MMO setting of a game in which all players are automatically herded into two distinct groups that are almost always pitted against oneanother doesn't allow for storywriting that is believable.

Having too many plots that are being criticized and rated differently by millions of people, who have their individual takes and opinions on pretty much anything and who love to chime in, leads to this. In Warcraft III you were presented with a plot that was straightfoward, with ability for a player to exclusively represent one playable faction with their character and with pretty much all factions winning in the end. You don't like Arthas going to Northrend and turning into an undead-loving metal band lead guitarist? Well, too bad, but that's how the plot goes dude and in the end he's accomplished his goals. Our agency boiled down to playing the story of a character named Arthas and coming to the end of his journey, not being those who decide how that journey ends.

Fast-forward to WoW and you get "She wouldn't burn the tREE!" and "Why my night elf isn't still saving the world and being cool?". Everyone gets to chime in and feels entitled to being a lore critic. Now, it is true that many plots and quests could've and must've been handled a lot better.

[Super Dickmann]

Having too many plots that are being criticized and rated differently by millions of people, who have their individual takes and opinions on pretty much anything and who love to chime in, leads to this. In Warcraft III you were presented with a plot that was straightfoward, with ability for a player to exclusively represent one playable faction with their character and with pretty much all factions winning in the end. You don't like Arthas going to Northrend and turning into an undead-loving metal band lead guitarist? Well, too bad, but that's how the plot goes dude and in the end he's accomplished his goals. Our agency boiled down to playing the story of a character named Arthas and coming to the end of his journey, not being those who decide how that journey ends.

You're hitting on an important point, but inverting the actual problem. The thing with WC3 or Starcraft wasn't that we were passive observers, but that we were placed into the roles of the characters on their journey. We got to play with each of these sides and whether good or bad, they had their own conclusions and remained the protagonists of their own tales. Player investment exists foremost for these characters and stories relative to others because we got to crew them. We got Arthas to the Frozen Throne to become Lich King, we got Thrall set up in Durotar and Sylvanas in the Undercity. At all times the player is, if by a degree of separation, the one affecting events through the protagonist and he's invested in these groups because he's the one playing them.

By contrast in WoW, the PC is a character incapable of affecting the plot because he's an empty vessel and the two faction set up means that factions that were previously playable and thus the objects of player investment - like the Scourge or Illidari, couldn't have their stories continued well because we never operate from their viewpoint or help them achieve, dooming them to an unsatisfying conclusion. The factions themselves are unwieldily large tents wherein player investment is more with a brand or a set of races and themes than it is with the whole entity. Hence how a night elf player running an exclusively human story where the night elves are demonstrably a prop to advance the stories of others is rightly shafted. He is not the protagonist of his own story, nor is his race. When you played the night elf campaign, you were certain you were following the protagonist, good or bad, successful or doomed to fail. This is another reason why most post-Arthas villains have fallen flat - they dont' have that player investment that he did, even if they might be more sympathetic, better motivated or what have you. People care about the Scourge because we saw the Scourge as a threat in one of the campaigns and then drove them to victory. People don't care about the Twilight's Hammer because they have no connection to any of the characters in it.

[Magnagarde]

You're hitting on an important point, but inverting the actual problem. The thing with WC3 or Starcraft wasn't that we were passive observers, but that we were placed into the roles of the characters on their journey. We got to play with each of these sides and whether good or bad, they had their own conclusions and remained the protagonists of their own tales. Player investment exists foremost for these characters and stories relative to others because we got to crew them. We got Arthas to the Frozen Throne to become Lich King, we got Thrall set up in Durotar and Sylvanas in the Undercity. At all times the player is, if by a degree of separation, the one affecting events through the protagonist and he's invested in these groups because he's the one playing them.

By contrast in WoW, the PC is a character incapable of affecting the plot because he's an empty vessel and the two faction set up means that factions that were previously playable and thus the objects of player investment - like the Scourge or Illidari, couldn't have their stories continued well because we never operate from their viewpoint or help them achieve, dooming them to an unsatisfying conclusion. The factions themselves are unwieldily large tents wherein player investment is more with a brand or a set of races and themes than it is with the whole entity. Hence how a night elf player running an exclusively human story where the night elves are demonstrably a prop to advance the stories of others is rightly shafted. He is not the protagonist of his own story, nor is his race. When you played the night elf campaign, you were certain you were following the protagonist, good or bad, successful or doomed to fail. This is another reason why most post-Arthas villains have fallen flat - they dont' have that player investment that he did, even if they might be more sympathetic, better motivated or what have you. People care about the Scourge because we saw the Scourge as a threat in one of the campaigns and then drove them to victory. People don't care about the Twilight's Hammer because they have no connection to any of the characters in it.

I meant the same thing as you did in your entire first paragraph. Should have worded my post better, but yeah, that's spot on. There was a level of personal attachment with every story and its respective character that drove it.

[Adunai]

That and people just weren't invested. Ask anybody in most prior expansions and they might have a vague idea what's going on in the story as they skip all the cutscenes and the quest text.

Now Blizzard has their attention, and they meticulously pick apart every single cinematic and line of throw-away dialogue for the sake of arguing.

It's a very bizarre accomplishment. It both worked exactly as intended and tremendously backfired.

I think it's a matter of exposure and accessibility. Also, simplification.

In the early years of WoW, lore was a niche thing for hardcore nerds, now we have multiple youtubers like Nobbel and such, who are explaining and discussing the lore to tens of thousands of viewers.

And while flashy cinematics every other month are somehow great, it takes takes away the subtleness, the wonder from the story. It's all too much in yo face.

I don't get this argument at all. Is this an Iron Curtain thing? Because in Russia there are still kids running with nicknames such as "Artes123". Warcraft lore was the main selling point for early WoW - at least, in some geographic regions. Maybe just not in NA lul.

Also, it might be something as banal as your bias - you (and your circle (and Blizzard)) did not care for the lore, therefore nobody did.

Also, "now" is a very loose word. IMHO, Blizzard started to take lore seriously precisely in Cata. They made wonderful worldbuilding in that expansion, with Garrosh growing as a character, with the Worgen plague explained and expanded to Gilneas, with the Forsaken going full Putress, with Theramore militarizing (inb4 surprised pikachu face when Garrosh bombs them to shit). Honestly, I have not seen a good anti-Cata lore argument... aside from neckbeard raiders whining about Thrall kill-stealing their kill lmao.

Of course, villains are a joke. Factions and races are a joke. But that's the nature of the MMO. Still better lore than in vanilla, TBC, WotLK, WoD or Legion.

BfA lore isn't as bad either. At least, it doesn't have WC3 lore to mutilate anymore. Whereas look at WotLK - the rebuilding of Dalaran was a far bigger spit in the face for the WC3 lore than the entire WoD reveal about demons dying solely in the Nether yet... WotLK lore is considered the pinnacle of storytelling? I can't even.

[Frontenac]

Personaly, I blame the young generation. No seriously, nothing positive has been said about anything since they were able to hit on a keyboard. Star Trek is shit, Star Wars is shit, Warcraft is shit, Game of Thrones is shit, everything is shit. And everyone seems convinced that because they like something that they have a right to have what they want. If a story does not go the way they want, if their favorite character is shown in a different light, if their favorite race receives the hard end of the stick, the story is shit. Maybe they should remember to simply be fans and stop being idolaters and cultists.

[In Ogres We Trust]

The OP had his answer by the second post, i.e. "The Rule of Cool." On top of that, in an effort to make money, Blizzard fleshed out too much, e.g. the Titans, the Old Gods, etc., and they added in retarded stories, e.g. Kael'thas betraying his people for the Burning Legion (which, given his family and background, makes no sense), the Light versus the Void conflict, Calia Menethil returning to only be killed and raised as a zombie of the Light, etc. In essence, the story has gone to shit!

[ravenmoon]

This, I think, is the heart of things. Yes, they can tell cool stories, but when they're so restricted by the player characters, their hands become tied. In a way, it was better when we were nobodies, because then we could lose. We were able to fail back then, even if we still got loot and moved on to other places. I understand why so many people wish Warcraft 4 would happen, not simply because they miss the RTS genre, but because it could create serious differences in the world.

What is so frustrating is when you see that and you can think of several approaches they can take to remedy that

- - - Updated - - -

Personaly, I blame the young generation. No seriously, nothing positive has been said about anything since they were able to hit on a keyboard. Star Trek is shit, Star Wars is shit, Warcraft is shit, Game of Thrones is shit, everything is shit. And everyone seems convinced that because they like something that they have a right to have what they want. If a story does not go the way they want, if their favorite character is shown in a different light, if their favorite race receives the hard end of the stick, the story is shit. Maybe they should remember to simply be fans and stop being idolaters and cultists.

That's harsh, I do say positive things, and unlike my peers I say alot.

I did like the earlier story, and I admit there have been good things, but I expect more of a world class company, so I am always surprised when I notice errors or inconsistencies...baring those I am wrong about.

Then there is treatment... I just dont get why the nelves keep getting the hard end of the stick? Their initial lore, pre sundering stuff, even the drama and magic of the long vigil, the demon hunters in addition to the arcane legends and priests, that was incredible stuff to me, purple immortals at the centre of a great magical well, and a tree... called children of the stars, calling down star and moon arcane magic, nature magic and fel wielding demon hunters.. it was rare and lovely to see and captured my imagination. They seemed remarkable in their descriptions and I read all the books on them to kap out more.

So yeah I am going to be disappointed to see them constantly low and always kicked iin the teeth, even when Legion showed us their pre sundering civilization in Suramar, and a very noble faction of highborne in the cursed Farondis, progressed demon hunter lore to where the novels and past quests had always been hinting (this was actually very good, and the first really good portrayal and presentation of them since classic launch, much better than what the cata expansion portrayed both of highborne, female warrior nelves and of druids - it was much better across the board, but it didnt last.), Legion further patches instead deteriorated night elf involvement, lore progression and rather than build them up for the first time in wow after bringing in cool new groups and legendary ones like Val'sharah, Moonguard and Suramar, we saw more destroyed - (shaladrassil, nightwell, etc) nothing gained for the kaldorei factions. No coming together of the night elves or bringing them back to that original high calibre rsce the lore had portrayed them as, as many players had hoped to see them one day reclaim.

Instead worse happened, they take the nightborne horde, then do nothing with the Farondis or Moonguard, then brun their capital and lands after giving the other side their races last remaining city, their forests in a broken state, and minimal lore from them and about them, in their own temple (ToS). Then to crown it all, they are the least represented in dealing with Azshara, it's like having one human npc against Arthas, youd be like wtf... I expected and hoped for more, but every time I do, I get beyond the worse possible RESPONSE.

I cant help but conclude its rubbish, because it sold me an image and presentation of the night elves, andwarcraft, that got me to love it, then co completely changed it, went back on it, removed all the cool things (immortality, well, etc), then left them showing up as victims, always been beaten and frankly not shown to represent any of the the things in the way they were described.


Ofc I'm gonna be angry

[Grazrug]

Wait what? Lore that EVERYBODY LIKED?! Sorry but this is an purley subjective point of view. Warcraft story has always been cheesy with lack of worldbuilding. Except for the old RPG books maybe. It only became more obvious since the MMO restrictions limited creative identity. But make no mistake. Warcraft story was never high quality tier. For that you need to take a look at anything from Bioware or the Witcher series.

[Lochton]

It is the same as always, just lower quality. Blizzard has never written lore that 'everybody' liked.

[Skytotem]

The problem is really not quality, it's the lack of consistency destroying people's investment, because why care about a story now if it can just get retconned or changed dramatically next patch? Or if there's no resolution for 5 years to a plot and when it happens it's bad and underwhelming? (Ex: Tyrande and Azshara, Maiev's return to the nelfs, almost no fallout among Forsaken from Arthas defeat, Garrosh ruining the WC3 Horde arc, etc)

And the lack of good build up for the future. (Blizzard boiled down everything to Titans and Old Gods and wrapped up the Burning Legion very abruptly, Void Lords are underwhelming to hear about cause we already have mobs ingame called void lords and they're just a silly concept, Blizz should've diversified the types of threats we face, making it less an issue of power level and more an issue of different TYPES of threats)

[Soeroah]

Blizzard's insistence that the faction war is at the heart of Warcraft's story is a big issue. It worked great for single player RTS games, but in an MMO where players can play either faction it becomes a liability. Every time they push a faction war story it winds up with more people dissatisfied than satisfied. You can't have a faction war story in an MMO where both sides win, and so both sides of the playerbase feel like they are losing, since they aren't winning. It promotes argument and criticism among players and just leads to an overall worse time for everyone.

And BfA is particularly egregious because it pushes the faction war at the same time as ruining favourite characters by having them act out of character or exaggerating their worst traits to push a story, and because large swathes of it are functionally identical to a previous expansion that had the same "no one really won" result. It's a mix of repetition, rule of cool over substance, ignoring character threads and pitting an already divided playerbase against each other.

A lot of people liked Legion's lore because it was big and dramatic, but more because it had a lot of varied lore than set up future plot threads, and almost none of it was Horde vs Alliance. It was about banding together to save the planet. To go from THAT directly into a story that flew polar opposite to Legion's core theme of working together against bigger bads, an expansion where our characters explicitly became leaders of our classes because the factions themselves wouldn't behave long enough to save Azeroth, is such a 180 degree turn that it can't help but feel out of place and forced.

And the last point is, there are only a few ways the expansion can reasonably end, and they're all predictable. Either the Horde loses but the Alliance doesn't get a satisfying victory, or the Horde and Alliance team up to beat a Big Bad and form a truce. The best outcome would be the permanent end of the faction war, but that seems highly unlikely.

[chronoblip]

Personaly, I blame the young generation. No seriously, nothing positive has been said about anything since they were able to hit on a keyboard. Star Trek is shit, Star Wars is shit, Warcraft is shit, Game of Thrones is shit, everything is shit. And everyone seems convinced that because they like something that they have a right to have what they want. If a story does not go the way they want, if their favorite character is shown in a different light, if their favorite race receives the hard end of the stick, the story is shit. Maybe they should remember to simply be fans and stop being idolaters and cultists.

Who was responsible for teaching younger generations things like contentment? The generations before them who were handed everything but arrogantly pursued social, economic, and spiritual revolutions anyway? This doesn't mean the younger generation doesn't have serious issues, but that they did not get that way by random chance, and blaming them for all the woes they face will only foster a deep animosity.

Now, Blizz's lore is always just a few choices away from being "not that bad". For example, there are 6 cosmic forces set up in 3 opposing pairs, and no supreme deity over all of that in the Warcraft universe. This means that the fundamental framework for Warcraft's morality is not about inherent or objective "good" or "evil", but in how actions balance or unbalance the various opposing powers. Most of the "problems" we've had to address are when one tries to overthrow their opposite, and we mortal races simply get caught up in the collateral damage.

Sylvanas, having figured this out, is trying to place herself as the primary balance to "life", by becoming a focus for the power of death. She gets her "Kerrigan" ascension, she's no longer warchief, but she's also no longer a raid boss either because to overthrow her would create imbalance of "life", like the Overgrowth in Southern Barrens. Sylvanas is forcing the hand of the mortal races to grow in their power to no longer just be pawns of the various cosmic forces, but to rival or control them directly, because it's clear the cosmic powers simply don't really care about the fate of mortals.

She's doing "evil" things, but that's because the powers of "life" are trying to get her to stop to restore balance through mutual weakness, instead of matching her power and restoring balance through mutual strength. Her "evil" actions then take on a begrudging necessity, because her actions force power to be concentrated instead of ignored, and one way or another, the mortal races will take one more step towards freedom through mutual strength, because weakness has already been tried and the cosmic forces didn't even notice.

I don't have hopes in something like this really happening, but similar to the negative shift in narrative style in the last season of GoT, WoW could shift from the psychological storytelling that currently drags the whole thing down, to sociological storytelling, where the atomized individual is no longer the focus or "point" of the story. Similar to how the EU of Star Wars could tell interesting stories that had nothing to do with the main plot lines, sociological storytelling is how the 1st season of GoT could kill Ned Stark and not just for "shock value". Paradoxically, by relegating the big names we know to more passive roles like "maintaining cosmic balance", it would give room for the smaller stories in a bigger world that feels more "alive" because the whole universe is not sitting there waiting for players to press "Continue".

At the minimum, we'd no longer be constrained to Azeroth, quibbling over scraps of land and a sip of water, because we'd have harnessed the powers to create whole new worlds where the different races could exist as they desire without constantly conflicting with the other races who don't want to live in the same manner.

Blizz could do it, and just like Anduin, a lot of people would miss the bigger picture and fight against it, fixating on what is in front of them and what they think it's supposed to be about, lacking the appropriate perspective and understanding to do anything more than react.