Stop making off the cuff comments in lore interviews that have wide ranging implications like "There is one legion across all alternate universes" or "sylvanas actually did the wrathgate" 10 years after the fact.
Stop making off the cuff comments in lore interviews that have wide ranging implications like "There is one legion across all alternate universes" or "sylvanas actually did the wrathgate" 10 years after the fact.
The Rastakhan example is fairly simple. The Alliance side version is what actually happened, and things are twisted in the Horde retelling. Remember the framing device for that is you enter the Throne Room and a Zandalari Guard is recounting the story to you. Naturally they want to make their king look better.
It's still a pointless split in the narrative that isn't at all needed. And since there's already a problem with faction bias in storytelling... I mean various parties being showcased as 'good' or 'evil' in the overall story told not a sense of 'favoratism' here... We don't need some half assed unreliable narrator to mess up details like major speeches before fights (but still get the rest of the details accurate).
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
One of the core problems that fucks them over is the idea that consistency and thus coherence is a thing that ties their hands instead of a prerequisite for a story to be able to function at all. Everything else comes from this. There's no reason to be invested in a story when it doesn't follow its own rules and doesn't care with the things it wanted you to care about just five minutes ago. Examples are endless, but the war campaign's shift from gung-ho faction war to fighting a raid boss, to helping her out and then the most profound anticlimax and copout in what was already a rehashed story stands out in BFA in particular.
Dickmann's Law: As a discussion on the Lore forums becomes longer, the probability of the topic derailing to become about Sylvanas approaches 1.
Tinkers will be the next Class confirmed.
Not make her Warchief? Not have the the PCs be her loyal champions after Teldrasil? I mean there is so much they could have done that didn't throw Horde lore in the dumpster. Maybe she wants the current, "Not-SYVANAS" warchief to do something about Stormheim, gets rebuffed (maybe even with something like, "it doesn't matter, no living people were killed", and storms off to secret plots and manipulations?)
I mean, you had Wrathion plotting the one faction eliminating the other fact, regardless of the lives lost, and they had him do without even being a villian, let alone implicating the Alliance.
I'll gladly answer these...
- How do you want blizzard to tell lore in the future?- I don't mind it if they tell the story in the books, but for the love of god, but at least some of it in the game please. Thanks.
- Ingame only, from books, or both?- As stated, both.
- How deep do you want the lore be told?- Deep like MoP but not deep enough to the point where it's edgy asf (For example: Sylvanas and Illidan). Jaina's story is deep enough as it is, and it's great because of it. Why? Because it's also not EDGY!!!! It's actually dark.
- Are you satisfied with the current lore, or do
you want it to be darker? More fantasy?- Diablo in WoW is something I'm not fond with, but I'll accept it nonetheless. It's the Shadowlands, weird shit appears there, so whatever. Darker lore is fine so long as it's not cringe inducing levels of dark.
More realistic?- I mean, I want some of the main characters to actually fucking die, yeah...
- Do you want your character to be the great
or take the mantle of the common soldier
where you are representing a different
soldier all the time.-
It's too late to feel like a common "soldier" again to be honest. I mean, we literally just dismantled the Legion, Sargeras, Argus the Unmaker, N'zoth, Azshara, etc. So, I mean, why be a simple adventurer now, ya know?
"-etc etc"
I have many, don't do this to me...
1. Kil'jaeden was wasted.
2. Sargeras should've had more story shown to us during 7.3. While I don't think he was "wasted", I do think he was rushed...
3. Garrosh.
4. WoD after 6.0.
And 5. The Old Gods were wasted. F
- - - Updated - - -
My favorite BFA Zone will always have to be Drustvar. I love how grim it looks, Waycrest Manor is a pretty fun dungeon to run, there are a ton of Salem references (Such as the Witch Trials, Man-Pigs, etc), it just looked dark and impressive. Seemed like something you'd actually find in a Gothic esc Forest region. Not to mention the fact that the most powerful guy there was just some Vry'kul with neat little decay magics.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
I only disagree with point 3. Warcraft needs to get a bit darker. I mean, the villains need to be dangerous again. Scourge was cool because it destroyed Lordaeron. N'zoth, however, even free is too weak to do that and instead teleports to pocket dimension to send his minions just as if he was imprisoned.
Blizzard really needs to reuse old characters and locations more often. Sometimes it feels like there is corporate wide quota for reused locations, leading to quests taking place in confined locales instead of branching out more.
Now that being said, Blizzard is definitely getting slightly better at doing it correctly, but still not that great. Leading to moments like the 8.0 and 8.0 war campaign where we logically should be going around the world more, but instead just spend time in the current areas.
8.3 is a nice encouraging step forward though, in that Blizzard is finally realizing that they have massive amounts of barely used zones that just need a fresh coat of paint to make the world feel more alive. 8.3 could have taken place in Uldaz, patch island #2759, but instead we got some actual relevant story reusing old locations we could do with learning more about.
The world revamp dream will never die!
Cool, I love brainstorming!
- How do you want blizzard to tell lore in the future?
They need to get this idea out of their heads that gameplay comes before story. I mean, yeah, I know it's a video game first, and no one buys it for the lore, but they need to shit or get off the pot. If lore must always take a second seat, why are today's questing zones designed around NPC's having cut scenes every other quest? Classic worked perfectly where quests were generic adventures and the player could role-play his or her own adventure. Don't tell us story can't take precedent over gameplay and then have us follow Talanji around a whole zone hearing her whine, or Varok belly ache about his honor. Stop doing this soap opera shit and designate more generic Classic-like zones, and then lore heavy zones with racial leaders so players can choose whether to make their own adventure, or play through your soap opera.
- Ingame only, from books, or both?
In-game, I'll buy a book if it's interesting, but the book has to be worth existing. For example, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King is probably the most popular book they ever sold. It tells his origin in full and gives information we won't get in-game. A Sylvanas book? Not so much just due to how over-exposed the character is.
- How deep do you want the lore be told?
Not sure what you mean by this, but I just want coherent stories where characters don't became caricatures.
- Are you satisfied with the current lore, or do you want it to be darker? More fantasy? More realistic?
It's high fantasy, but I do expect it to first and foremost, make sense. Going to put my writer's hat on and say, most players, gamers, or people who don't understand how story craft works, often don't know why a story doesn't work. That comes from a writer not knowing how to make it logical and coherent. @Aucald for example, doesn't think Kargath Bladefist having two blades for hands matters much, but I find it stupid even for the Shattered Hand Clan, especially if he's the only one. If the reader depicts in the story and has to question the logistics of it, even within its own fantasy world, you just bring the whole narrative to a stop. "He has no hands... that sounds cool, but then it's kind of dumb too." Good writers cater to all readers, not just a niche trying to chew up popcorn lore. Even Tolkien was extremely detailed. Did we see Orcs go to the bathroom? No, but it goes without saying they could, none of them have blades for hands and they can eat, and we do see them eat. For these characters to be able to logistically do basic necessities the reader can, it humanizes them, and yes, you have to humanize every character that matters to an extent, otherwise you don't care whether they live or die, and that's the point.
The lore doesn't have to be darker, I just want it to be good. It's not rocket science. Sometimes they write very good stories, sometimes, they strike out for no good reason. (See Sylvanas, Varok and Baine's stories in BfA.)
- Do you want your character to be the great or take the mantle of the common soldier, where you are representing a different soldier all the time.
I want my character to be a nobody adventurer again. This whole player character becoming the focal point of the current story to me is part of the problem with lore. I didn't defeat Arthas, Tirion did, and I know that. If WoW dies one day but Blizzard creates new lore in any medium, it's not going to say "Tirion and Kyphael defeated Arthas." It'll say Tirion and adventurers did, so don't waste time trying to build the game around me. Classic still did this best. We're just the guys tagging along with the heroes for support, don't make the PC Overlord of Class Halls or General of whatever. Tell the best story you can, and make it make sene.
- You can be even be very aggressive and point the writers faults and say how you would have done it. Condition is that you start from WotlK and end with bfa. The burning of teldrassil happens, that is rock solid.
Deathwing should have never been portrayed as a mad dragon, but a cunning strategist. The role Wrathion played should have been Neltharion disguised as his own son to get close to the player character in order to politically manipulate the racial leaders from the inside by saying "I'm my mad father's son, and I want to help you take him down." It's the ultimate contingency plan, and it would have been a method to his madness. Ebonhorn still gets introduced later as an uncorrupted Black Dragon.
Mists of Pandaria went fine except Garrosh should have never eaten the heart of Y'shaarj. Lei Shen should have been the final enemy of Pandaria and Garrosh would have remained Warchief going into Warlords. They only kept him alive to be a catalyst.
Invent some evil Bronze Dragon to be the catalyst for WoD and it still works without having to kill off a major character you created people like (Garrosh.) Don't waste WoD making it a stepping stone to Legion, make full use of the Warlords; people care about Gul'dan, Ner'zhul, Blackhand and the others. Focus on them. Gul'dan can still flee at the end after his defeat to initiate Legion.
Don't waste Sargeras. If this is our final go around with The Legion, pull out all the stops. If we're too weak to scratch him, use your big guns; Medivh, remaining Aspects, the other Titans, etc. Make it a fun, final showdown. We don't have to kill him, just imprison him as it happened anyway, but making us fight a character we've never seen or heard before as a place holder is a slap in the face. It's like The Avengers never fighting Galactus because he's too strong, it's stupid.
If you want a faction war, stick to it and make it make sense. The Horde has been through this civil war, war for its soul shit too many times already for it to be compelling. You alienate Horde players by making them look stupid. Baine and Varok spent most of the expansion looking like spineless traitors. Either have them challenge Sylvanas at the beginning and kill them off, or have them follow her as Warchief until the end. None of this worked. None of it was coherent. No character came out on the other side looking good. It was a train wreck. Anduin was inept, Malfurion and Tyrande as usual, ineffective, and Genn did a whole lot of nothing. If you want war, have the Alliance and Horde go at it, no whining, no "muh honor" or Anduin scrunching his face like Kate Winslet. Give us blood, and show the consequences of war. Then Azshara crashes thee party, ascending from the sea to pick the bones, and the survivors band together to put her and her master down. It's clean, it's raw, and it makes sense. This Days of Our Lives crap just doesn't cut it.
I'd actually like them to stop focusing on "expanding" the lore and make use of the TOMES already available to them to generate the major story arcs.
I enjoyed how Legion utilized order halls campaigns and artifacts, specifically referring to those that hearkened back to previously established elements/weapons/characters in the lore, as catalysts and tools for new narratives. Or how Pandaria's "main story" was deeply intertwined in the political situation in Kalimdor.
Examples where this wasn't well executed include : Warlords of Draenor, the Alliance story of BfA, and from what I've seen thus far, potentially Shadowlands.
To me, it feels like most expansions are built on one or two recent dangling plot threads and then wholly new stories/lands/characters take the prime focus but are then left to rot after 1-2 patches.
TL;DR :
I'd prefer the story felt like the original talent trees - every point builds on the previous point and carries forward indefinitely.
Not like professions - spend a lot of time focusing on the newest thing only for it to be made nearly obsolete and irrelevant in 1-2 patches.
Last edited by Villager720; 2019-12-12 at 04:10 PM.
Make single player games like skyrim to expand the story and grown both enemies and heroes no more mustache twirling evil warchief.
-> Single players games; used to introduce new characters, grown up enemies, let the players experience more detailed stories
-> Support for the game lore, but no more raptor army or medan
-> the mmo a closure for the stories introduced in the single player with raids, dungeons or bg; character must stay consistent no bending for gameplay reason.
Really liked this part, let the Alliance go full hate mode after burning of teldrassil. Anduin would have to temper their hate but after treaty the Alliance members dont listen to Anduin. Ofcourse they wouldnt, the horde committed genocide and this is something you cant forgive. Finger crossed that this will happen in shadowlands.
Excuse me but what i want to know is how can we send these messages to blizzard how can we get them to understand that what we need is better lore progression?