[Lore]Blizzards big mistakes - When did it all start going wrong? And what caused it?

[Nynthalas]

Wod and everything after, even Wod being a good exp on some lore aspects (recognizing our toons as ranked soldiers from factions), as previously mentioned, the score was negative.

[Beefhammer]

To me, it seems dissatisfaction with the lore has been steadily growing a direct reversal from the incremental increases it got with the RTS series.

Question is, can anyone pinpoint when the downtown actually started and what was the cause?

Personally I feel the popularity of Warcraft has continued because of it's game playability, not because of its story, where the story was an asset and major attraction that spiced up the earlier series, it's often been a source of disappointment and let down - as to why? I'm not sure, but it has to be developments failure to take it as seriously as they do art, music and gameplay - which I feel was a major blunder.


As for when it went downhill, i'm not so sure, I think the decision to make world of Warcraft continue the story of the franchise in TBC was the major turning point as the way they presented the game (i.e. it's format) was not the best to telling a good story, and they certainly didn't make the changes they needed to pull that part of the game off.

Classic wow wasn't a story driven game, it was more sandbox, stories were local to zones and peoples for the most part as you were exploring the world of the RTS series that major events had happened. Departing from this is in TBC is where the error was made or refusing to seriously put effort into the main storyline - wow in TBC continued the zone stories, but the main storylines could never be brought out properly with the power they needed. The raids which were turned into the major focus points of the story themselves told no story where I feel if they had made raids into massive story telling events that pulled together the clues contained in the levelling zone quests, it could have worked as an alternative to an SWToR full on approach. But they never did, showing their dis-regard, and I feel it was the main thing.

I think other key things that hurt the story happened when they made wow a 2 faction game instead of the 4 or 5 factions WC3 had (Alliance, Horde, Night elves, Undead and Illidari by the end of TFT), in wow they also eroded a lot of unique touches, like alliance warlocks, tauren druids (incl female druids and male NE priests), and also by making every thing in the game canon, things became ridiculous (hearthstones for example actually being a thing, and dying more or less becoming meaningless) - however these are smaller issues that better story development could have utilised to much greater effect or gotten around.

Eager to hear what you think was the cause, and when you reckon it happened. I know some thing WotLK was the height of wow story telling, but it wasn't, it had many lame things about it, and the rot had already long started in my opnion. Legion imo had the best story telling for an expansion followed by MoP - in the way they told it in the game (not necessarily the quality of the story and it's plot although I also feel Legion wins that too). Still they are all patch jobs for a bad direction that started in TBC.

If I were to do it again, I would have developed an actual RTS or single player game to tell TBC/WotLK and it would have been very different then introduced the expanded realms to World of Warcraft where you could explore the zones in the aftermath of the events yo had experienced. I would tie hand in hand, new single player or RTS game with an expansion.

Story and it's consistency has never been a strong suit for Blizzard ever in any of its franchises. I think people have an unfair negativity towards Christie Golden and the direction of trying to tell a more nuanced story with actual mature themes, not the angsty I'm a teenager trying to be an adult mature themes.

[Hellobolis]

Question is, can anyone pinpoint when the downtown actually started and what was the cause? .

When they decided to make a mmo.

mmos by design require regular new content. this new content requires lore. it's just a matter of time until you write yourself into a corner, run out of lore, have to rush or retcon certain lore, etc.

and that's before you consider things like mmo's not exactly being the best types of games to do storytelling with.

[Verdugo]

Story and it's consistency has never been a strong suit for Blizzard ever in any of its franchises. I think people have an unfair negativity towards Christie Golden and the direction of trying to tell a more nuanced story with actual mature themes, not the angsty I'm a teenager trying to be an adult mature themes.

Because nothing is more mature than a young arian black hole sue and a self insert overpowered mage.

[Shakana]

Unpopular opinion but: MoP.

Yes, i do love MoP but for me it started a "no war" kind of lore and stopped some brutal elements present on wow from previous expansions, and WoD kind of failed giving it back.

TBC was overall a good expansion, nothing special besides Illidan stuff, but had major presence and space sci fi elements and all that came together in Legion better than it came in TBC.

Now, for me the total disgrace: my vote goes for BfA. So many themes misplaced and not that well represented on the game, the war was a joke, the titans are being kind of useless, and the old gods used to have a much more powerful presence, 8.3 will be how i expected BfA since the start but it isn't enough i guess for me to love this expansion when it comes to the lore.

[Niwes]

the day recycling lore as cheap shit and just using cool names/chars and cool pseudo stories for the quick dollar was when lore was thrown overboard.

or in short: when greed came lore has gone.

[Deferionus]

To me, it seems dissatisfaction with the lore has been steadily growing a direct reversal from the incremental increases it got with the RTS series.

Question is, can anyone pinpoint when the downtown actually started and what was the cause?

Personally I feel the popularity of Warcraft has continued because of it's game playability, not because of its story, where the story was an asset and major attraction that spiced up the earlier series, it's often been a source of disappointment and let down - as to why? I'm not sure, but it has to be developments failure to take it as seriously as they do art, music and gameplay - which I feel was a major blunder.


As for when it went downhill, i'm not so sure, I think the decision to make world of Warcraft continue the story of the franchise in TBC was the major turning point as the way they presented the game (i.e. it's format) was not the best to telling a good story, and they certainly didn't make the changes they needed to pull that part of the game off.

Classic wow wasn't a story driven game, it was more sandbox, stories were local to zones and peoples for the most part as you were exploring the world of the RTS series that major events had happened. Departing from this is in TBC is where the error was made or refusing to seriously put effort into the main storyline - wow in TBC continued the zone stories, but the main storylines could never be brought out properly with the power they needed. The raids which were turned into the major focus points of the story themselves told no story where I feel if they had made raids into massive story telling events that pulled together the clues contained in the levelling zone quests, it could have worked as an alternative to an SWToR full on approach. But they never did, showing their dis-regard, and I feel it was the main thing.

I think other key things that hurt the story happened when they made wow a 2 faction game instead of the 4 or 5 factions WC3 had (Alliance, Horde, Night elves, Undead and Illidari by the end of TFT), in wow they also eroded a lot of unique touches, like alliance warlocks, tauren druids (incl female druids and male NE priests), and also by making every thing in the game canon, things became ridiculous (hearthstones for example actually being a thing, and dying more or less becoming meaningless) - however these are smaller issues that better story development could have utilised to much greater effect or gotten around.

Eager to hear what you think was the cause, and when you reckon it happened. I know some thing WotLK was the height of wow story telling, but it wasn't, it had many lame things about it, and the rot had already long started in my opnion. Legion imo had the best story telling for an expansion followed by MoP - in the way they told it in the game (not necessarily the quality of the story and it's plot although I also feel Legion wins that too). Still they are all patch jobs for a bad direction that started in TBC.

If I were to do it again, I would have developed an actual RTS or single player game to tell TBC/WotLK and it would have been very different then introduced the expanded realms to World of Warcraft where you could explore the zones in the aftermath of the events yo had experienced. I would tie hand in hand, new single player or RTS game with an expansion.

I don't hate much as most people, but these are the bad spots in my opinion, for the lore. Burning Crusade was not thought out 'long term' in the big picture. They seemed to be focused primarily on game play at the time and lore was a secondary, if that, consideration. BC to this day feels disjointed from the story and big picture, though very few people disliked it as an expac.

Wrath had an amazing single expansion story and really was the epic conclusion of the WC3 RTS. Their failure was not setting up bread crumbs to lead well into future stories. Then you had Death Wing seemingly come out of nowhere. At least at this point they had MoP which did well to set up its successor, and every expansion since has had in game story to lead into the following expansion.

WoD's alternate realty having such an impact on the main storyline felt bad for me. I would be cool with AU stories being their own thing. I would love an AU Lordaeron expansion, for example. But an AU Lordaeron where it has a profound impact on the main story in the shape that WoD did would feel bad.

Legion's only blimp lore wise is that the ships felt out of place. Space travel feels weird in WoW to me. I mean, why have ships when you can just open portals and gateways? Illidan's retcon kinda sucked too now that I think about it.

BFA has ironically been fine lorewise to me. The subject matter has been beat to death and sucks an an expansion theme, but nothing feels out of place far as a Warcraft game is concerned. So far Shadowlands looks okay, though people disagree with the Bolvar thing, I can see it being somewhat plausible. I also think the Sylvannas fatigue is real at this point.

[Tronski]

To me, it seems dissatisfaction with the lore has been steadily growing a direct reversal from the incremental increases it got with the RTS series.

Question is, can anyone pinpoint when the downtown actually started and what was the cause?

Personally I feel the popularity of Warcraft has continued because of it's game playability, not because of its story, where the story was an asset and major attraction that spiced up the earlier series, it's often been a source of disappointment and let down - as to why? I'm not sure, but it has to be developments failure to take it as seriously as they do art, music and gameplay - which I feel was a major blunder.


As for when it went downhill, i'm not so sure, I think the decision to make world of Warcraft continue the story of the franchise in TBC was the major turning point as the way they presented the game (i.e. it's format) was not the best to telling a good story, and they certainly didn't make the changes they needed to pull that part of the game off.

Classic wow wasn't a story driven game, it was more sandbox, stories were local to zones and peoples for the most part as you were exploring the world of the RTS series that major events had happened. Departing from this is in TBC is where the error was made or refusing to seriously put effort into the main storyline - wow in TBC continued the zone stories, but the main storylines could never be brought out properly with the power they needed. The raids which were turned into the major focus points of the story themselves told no story where I feel if they had made raids into massive story telling events that pulled together the clues contained in the levelling zone quests, it could have worked as an alternative to an SWToR full on approach. But they never did, showing their dis-regard, and I feel it was the main thing.

I think other key things that hurt the story happened when they made wow a 2 faction game instead of the 4 or 5 factions WC3 had (Alliance, Horde, Night elves, Undead and Illidari by the end of TFT), in wow they also eroded a lot of unique touches, like alliance warlocks, tauren druids (incl female druids and male NE priests), and also by making every thing in the game canon, things became ridiculous (hearthstones for example actually being a thing, and dying more or less becoming meaningless) - however these are smaller issues that better story development could have utilised to much greater effect or gotten around.

Eager to hear what you think was the cause, and when you reckon it happened. I know some thing WotLK was the height of wow story telling, but it wasn't, it had many lame things about it, and the rot had already long started in my opnion. Legion imo had the best story telling for an expansion followed by MoP - in the way they told it in the game (not necessarily the quality of the story and it's plot although I also feel Legion wins that too). Still they are all patch jobs for a bad direction that started in TBC.

If I were to do it again, I would have developed an actual RTS or single player game to tell TBC/WotLK and it would have been very different then introduced the expanded realms to World of Warcraft where you could explore the zones in the aftermath of the events yo had experienced. I would tie hand in hand, new single player or RTS game with an expansion.

My honest opinion is that the lore and stories always were bad, but the games were fun to play. Which to me is more important. I want to play FFXIV because it's supposed to be such a good story, and I generally tend to like FF game stories, but the gameplay is so offputtingly awful.

[Nerovar]

To me it definitely went wrong in TBC, which is weird because it's so early and there has been good lore since in Wrath and MoP for instance.

But TBC was definitely where WoW lost it's pseudo medieval fantasy label, and I get that it had to differentiate itself from Warhammer somehow, but I'm not a fan of the sci fi elements.

You pretty much nailed it. TBC retcons in regards to Draenei and all of the Sci-Fi elements really destroyed the medieval feel and the sense of scale of the Warcraft universe. It also made Demons way less threatening to me.

From thereon, every expansion with a big "narrative" also had huge lore fuck-ups and retcons.

Playing classic again made me realize how immersive the Warcraft world used to be. All the little details and the subtle world building hidden in quest texts and in game documents are really precious.

[Steelangel]

Legion had a shit storyline.

We lost ONCE on the broken shore then won every single battle, major and minor up until the very end. Destroying WoW's biggest villain since Warcraft 3 with minimal losses or effort. It turned bigbads into an even bigger joke than they already were.

As for Nightsnore they just had a copy/paste of the Blood Elf story with worse writing and little in the way of emotional impact, partially due to how it was gated.

Storywise it was one of the worst expansions we've had.

It’s almost like you didn’t play Wrath, where we roflstomped through Northrend, setting back a bunch of elf vampires and thwarting everything Arthas threw at us easily.

Runas had more emotional impact than the entirety of Warcraft 3, but you’re entitled to your opinion.

[Athredas]

Personally I've always felt that all of this cosmic stuff they are focusing on now feels like it would fit straight into a crappy old Star Wars expanded universe novel

[Beefhammer]

Because nothing is more mature than a young arian black hole sue and a self insert overpowered mage.

Sure if you want to narrow your focus to pin point lore subjects only you can make ever story ever written look bad. 1/10 for the energy spent typing.

[Verdugo]

Sure if you want to narrow your focus to pin point lore subjects only you can make ever story ever written look bad. 1/10 for the energy spent typing.

When those two subjects are a major issue, I am going to pinpoint them if you like it or not. Golden is responsible for both.

[KYZ123]

It started going wrong when WoW as an MMO lived to what was probably far longer than the designers ever expected. At the start of WoW, there were countless threats to Azeroth - the Black Dragonflight, the Scourge, the Burning Legion, the Old Gods, the list goes on - but these have gradually been eliminated.

At this point, there are pretty much no villains from the original lore that we have yet to defeat, bar Sylvanas who is likely to be defeated in Shadowlands. To give WoW new villains, they have to either reuse old ones (e.g. Sargeras breaks free, or alternate timelines like with Gul'dan), or they have to retcon in new ones, such as the Jailer in Shadowlands, or G'huun in Battle for Azeroth.

[Caerule]

Storytelling of Warcraft only has 2 main flaws.

1. The audience can't handle a story that moves forwards. We're used to the stories of games and movies being solid and unchanging. There may be expansion packs, but they tell an additional story.

Wow gives us a world that lives. Things continue on. This means change occurs, in the characters, places and knowledge we have. That's how the real world works, and no one likes it. We would prefer to be able to head into the old neighbourhood of our childhood, and find everything the same as it was before. Every time a character evolves or grows, or changes or picks a bad path, people freak our about how the character isn't the same anymore. Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, will always remain the same when we watch that movie. Jaina in WoW won't be the same. Human brains are neither wired nor trained to like that too much, normally.


2. Blizzard is telling the story like a book. They know the conclusions, and are feeding it to us chapter by chapter. The problem is, a lot of chapters in adventure books suck or at least do not appeal to us, to be in for long. You watch a movie and the dwarves hunting a dragon are stuck in an enchanted forest. Maybe you hate that part of the movie. It's not the part you came for, and it takes frikking 30 minutes. In WoW though, that chapter you do not like, takes 8 months or more.

Blizzard needs to cool it on chapters that have no pay-off to their plotlines for 2 years. Each major patch should be satisfying stand-alone. They may have a satisfying conclusion in mind. But if the story isn't satisfying without that conclusion, don't keep us in that unsatisfied state for a year or more. That's not satisfying storytelling.

[matrix123mko]

Personally I've always felt that all of this cosmic stuff they are focusing on now feels like it would fit straight into a crappy old Star Wars expanded universe novel

I like cosmic system. My only issue is that Light and Darkness are give more order vs chaos vibes than Arcane and Fel.

[sam86]

yes it was Cata easily
While in TBC they made us with spaceships and completely retcon Draenei lore, back then at least they apologized for that
In cata we got holy cows, no amount of puns is enough for that, also they insisted that 'lore-wise' they are just druid of sun, yet we see them with paladins everywhere, and even playing some minor roles in both priest and paladin campaign

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It's all the Draenei's fault, if they made High Elves the race for Alliance in TBC everything would be fine.

u do know that alliance tried to kill every single living high elf in wc3 tft right? that doesn't make sense
in fact there shouldn't been any high elf with alliance in wow in first place, or they have the worst (fictional) stockholm syndrome i ever saw

[ZenmasterStar]

Well, most of you guys have some pretty good points. Some of which i do really agree with. I'll go over some of my main arguments with why the story went down in quality.

Warcraft 3 felt very much like a novel. The story followed a predetermined storyline that was character driven. Three entire campaigns were based on Arthas's character, and it is one of the main reasons why that particular story is remembered so fondly. And when considering all the other campaigns, each was focused around particular leaders of their respective factions, which grew with the story being told. They followed Thrall, Grom, Jaina, Medivh, Malfurion, Tyrande, Maiev, Kael'thas, Illidan. They were what drove the story forward. The world was only a medium through which that could be done. You can clearly see that through how simple and undetailed the loading screen maps were.

World of Warcraft took the different approach of making the world the main focus. While that brought one of the greatest games that has ever been made, in the form of World of Warcraft Classic, it did also represent a completely different format for storytelling, completely incompatible with the way it was done in the RTS games. By the time Classic was done, the team was entirely void of any creativity in my opinion. Which is why they were forced to go with an entire 180 in TBC, and go from the antiheroes the Illidari were in the Curse of the Blood Elves, to completely turning them into villains, with no respect given to their previous interpretations. That started the focus on gameplay over story, which meant that the only way to have sufficient enemies for our heroes to be excited to defeat was to turn former lore characters into villains. And they did that all the way until Mists of Pandaria, when they were completely out of material and started with something fresh, but completely opposite to what Warcraft stood there until then.

The MMO is a medium through which the work is put on one character, gameplay and storywise. Your character. And because the player was given complete freedom, it was impossible to tell a linear story. There could be millions of potential stories, each unique and different. Classic went in this direction all the way. The previous story could also be retconned for the sake of a more beautiful and interesting world. The clearest example of that is the fact that during the alpha development, there were actual considerations of moving the Dark Portal underwater to Azshara, if that could be considered better, completely changing nearly everything that was set up in the RTS games.

And this gets into another issue. Chris Metzen. While i believe he did some very good work by putting the foundation of all Blizzard franchises in terms of lore, i think the man had a huge shift in the way he wrote anything. The golden age was when it came to Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 1 and 2 and Starcraft. But after World of Warcraft Classic, he took a huge dive into an endless push of the rule of cool over everything, including the integrity of the world he built. That is made the best clear around the 2010, where World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, were nearly identical in their plethora of flaws. Villains that had no intrinsic motivations, and could only be killed in their original dimension. Characters completely forgot who they were in the past, and turned from vulnerable people with tragedy into their past to unmovable superheroes that always were right and always had their plots win. Just look at how many crazy things happened in Cataclysm that completely broke the suspension of disbelief, like the entire Indiana Jones thing in Uldum.

For the last 6 months or so, me and one of my friends have been working to rework the entirety of the Warcraft storyline starting with that huge change in direction that was World of Warcraft. We mainly wished to conserve the factions and characters while changing the story sufficiently enough for it to be of great quality. However our continous efforts have changed the story so much, because of the butterfly effect, that it is more of an completely alternate story from WoW. And we also intend to work this into a long series of RPG/RTS hybrid campaigns, sort of a perfected form of the Founding of Durotar. The main change we have is separating the peoples of Azeroth into 4 factions instead of 2, with the kaldorei and the forsaken remaining on their own. Each faction would receive new allies with the progress of the campaigns, with the illidari becoming allied with the forsaken. Each faction has its own identity and motives.

We are openly looking for other people that would like to learn about our work, and who would like to provide feedback and help us build up a good lore for Warcraft, that was not affected by the many flaws brought by its MMO adaptation. If you are interested, or just want to ask me further questions, please PM or contact me on Discord, where i can also invite you to our Discord server. My username is Zenmaster#0068.

[Belloc]

I'm sure people will disagree vehemently, but the lore situation now is unchanged from when WoW launched... or from when TBC launched, at the very latest. People have been hating on the lore ever since Blizzard started turning Warcraft 3 characters into raid bosses.

Every major story involves ret-cons. Every major story has story beats that some people just aren't ever going to like. WoW is no different. WoW's story is fine.

[sam86]

TBC. So pretty much right off the bat.
Started with forced villains just because they were cool, and they were, no doubt. But it made little sense. And the continued with bringing them back, and then got worse with rehashing and retconning.

Today the story just moves too slow and feels like you don't get much of a closure.

in classic everyone complained (me included) that we are slaying some random npcs we don't give a f8ck about, we don't care if Baron win in Strat or not, that was his first time ever showing up
we have zero connection to almost every dungeon/raid boss in classic
that's why blizz went 180 as usual in TBC, but honestly it was way worse
Karagath who is considered a horde hero is turned to loot piniata
Kael is evil for the lols
Illidan is evil for the lols (well he got insane but still)
Even that minor orc who hides in Auch in Rise of the Horde became a boss just for the sake of it
It was forced AND made no sense, why would Illidan enslave the broken, when they already swore to serve him? as everyone saw in wc3 they came out to help him and swore to obey him willingly, no one forced them
Why did Naga suck the water? that one actually 'made' sense when we thought he is trying to recreate a new Well, only to discover they were just doing it, no reason, they made sure that we know they are just doing it and they have no plan to make a well, what? why?
Kael became evil... Kael who we play in wc3 and his entire story trying to do the best for his ppl, join the faction that f8cked his ppl the most, Kael - and everyone, it isn't a secret info - know that BL created the scourge, why would he join BL?
The worst part imo was: we already went to Draenor in both wc2 and 3, and in both cases it was red waste of desert, it had no other zone type beside Hellfire Pensuala, a zone like Zangermarsh specially would been a must visit in wc2 and 3 since it actually has water, why we never saw Zangermarsh? I can understand why we don't see any other zone but Zangermarsh (who is the only route in first place after Hellfire) would changed a lot of story since lot of water means life would be far easier in Draenor than they always described

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I'm sure people will disagree vehemently, but the lore situation now is unchanged from when WoW launched... or from when TBC launched, at the very latest. People have been hating on the lore ever since Blizzard started turning Warcraft 3 characters into raid bosses.

Every major story involves ret-cons. Every major story has story beats that some people just aren't ever going to like. WoW is no different. WoW's story is fine.

no one has a problem with Archimonde or KJ be a raid boss
We had a problem with Kael the most, even Illidan u can swallow the idea he became crazy (because to be fair they did hint about it pre-TBC, also back then info was very slow to spread so i personally didn't know about Malfurion talking about Illidan in classic)

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The fantasy-tech-scifi vibe is my least fav aspect of WoW. It takes me right out of the story and I start wondering, "Why are we sitting here on a boat when we have space ships and mass teleports?"

in Cycle of Hatred, they went out of their way to show how exhausting and mana consuming and very risky move to teleport as a mage, i really loved that because it show that gameplay != lore, in a world where u can open portal anywhere why even domesticate a horse? because teleportation is very dangerous and should never be used unless most extreme cases
then blizz sh8t on their own lore (as usual) and made everyone teleport for breakfast