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

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Time traveling expansion aka WoD. Cataclysm and MoP were both very good lore wise.

[ravenmoon]

Which doesnt matter in the story at all.. its not anywhere near the level of lightforged crap with ships and all.

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Dissagree warcraft 3 enhanced the shit to next level.. 1 and 2 was just a set up. I see where thos goes... 1 2 3... high..

Yeah, WC3 took warcraft to the next level, it was really cool

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Adding pratically demons from christianity, undeads from song of ice and fire books and woold elves with dark elf skins and focusing on the part blizz has always being worse story from character PoV and char development all wc3 character are either bland, dull or cliche characters which are the worst like arthas.

I thought it was much better than wc3 and really progressed the story in a way that justified the I improvement, the wc3 world and politics is what wow should have maintained and improved rather than squash dow to 2 factions

[Newname1234567890]

For me always WOD multi-verse and the contouring of the Legion. Now we have multi-verse threats and single universe threat. Demons are multi-versal but titans arent, unless they're demonic titans etc etc

[Terongor]

Yeah, WC3 took warcraft to the next level, it was really cool

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I thought it was much better than wc3 and really progressed the story in a way that justified the I improvement, the wc3 world and politics is what wow should have maintained and improved rather than squash dow to 2 factions

So tell how it involved any actual politics? While wc2 on many ways had a focus between clan to clan relations like uniting them or one leaving the horde or how wc2 manual spoke alot about kingdom to kingdom politics their power squables and for example alterac defecting to the horde or KT leaving alliance before the events of beyond the darkness compining.

[ravenmoon]

So tell how it involved any actual politics? While wc2 on many ways had a focus between clan to clan relations like uniting them or one leaving the horde or how wc2 manual spoke alot about kingdom to kingdom politics their power squables and for example alterac defecting to the horde or KT leaving alliance before the events of beyond the darkness compining.

I misued the word politics naughtily, I was more referring to the various interactions between the different races and the fact you have 4 major players now and a new evil force, rather than just the human alliance and the horde with their new friends.

You had big new player night elves, and the big new ancient bad, their arch nemesis the Burning legion, you also had the Scourge undead with tis powerful new leader and the twists and turns of a story that at first is a mystery turned zombie movie turned fantasy turned supernatural as one thing excitingly leads to the other and you meet so many cool things, night elves were quite cool with their magical and immortal background (I read the manual first, and allowed the manual to frame my definition of the race which sometimes causes me to be at odds with other posters on night elves who tend to ignore written content on only base their assessment on in game visuals), then the creepy undead scourge, and while undead or zombies aren't new, he fit them into his universe in very good way, especially with a magical Undead king, the Lich King.. then the new evil, the demons, not being single agents but part of an invading force, with cool new models that were horribly terrifying, they felt evil and you had this night elf race who had fought em off once before facing a dire threat that had marked their lives for the last 10k years in a state they couldn't move on from because of this enemy their last 10k years existence was designed to prevent ever returning -- it was exciting and touching - how anyone expected the night elves to remain in wood elf mode after the Legion returns knowing the backstory is incredibly beyond me, I can only assume those people didn't know the backstory or never bothered to factor the race beyond - but as you can see from my posts - I am the sort of player that doesn't wait till blizzard expands the lore, I start imagining and planning the what next, what might it look like - it is exactly this that gives me passion to keep playing - it is looking ahead - for any who wonder why I seem a bit obsessed with it - this is the aspect of the franchise I am drawn too.)


So yeah, it doesn't have the political play of WC2 in that sense, I was being a bit..."creative" with the word (yes I outright misused it in my haste to be brief, relying on context to give me a feel.)

[Grimbold21]

Whenever they started to excessively on the two faction concept, and make largely about two primary races attempting to govern a myriad of others.

If I were really into Lore and how that is reflected in the game, I wanted know about dwarves and be identified according to what they'd represent.

[RangerDaz]

For me the big lore mistakes started on the Burning Crusade:

- For marketing purposes,to lure players to play the expansion they decided to make Kaelthas, Vashj and Illidan the bad guys, which is bad, as they prioritized boss baits over lore continuity,

- They made the Legion very Sci Fi oriented, less fantasy,

- The first retcons started: the anti-heroes of warcraft 3 became 1 dimensional villains, draenei became something else, etc

- the leveling experience was boring as hell. I still prefered vanilla wow quests and story.

[Alanar]

Adding pratically demons from christianity, undeads from song of ice and fire books and woold elves with dark elf skins and focusing on the part blizz has always being worse story from character PoV and char development all wc3 character are either bland, dull or cliche characters which are the worst like arthas.

Not realy.. almost all characters were all pretty fleshed out and had cool stories. This is just hating on nothing.
Or a salty warcraft 2 high elf fan.

[Terongor]

Not realy.. almost all characters were all pretty fleshed out and had cool stories. This is just hating on nothing.
Or a salty warcraft 2 high elf fan.

Arthas pratically Anakin story with dull dialogue, illidan power hungry dick, Maiev warden oppsessed with his prisoner, Malfurion ancient wise druid who battled demons long ago, Uther righteos warrior/paladin who serves as protagonist teacher and another father figure, Kael prince who tries his all to save his people, KT powerful sorcerer who falls to dark magic, Jaina dull idealist, Cairne old wise warrior and thrall member of race who though were bad but is actually good.

Nearly all of those have being out of date cliches in books since 80's and in Warcraft 3 their personality is descriped as whole by few words.
Arthas storu was fleshes out in rise of the lk book, Illidan has always being a mess, Maiev story was actually fleshed out again in few books which came alot later, malfurions was fleshed out in wota novels, same with uther as arthas, kaels story is just overall a mess and a cliche mess, Jaina... well she was dull cliche idealist till cata in every novel and until that only fleshing out she got was rise of the lk novel and thrall....... well lord of clans was already out by then by in wc3 thrall personality was extremely dull and lame when you compare it to lord of the clans and I have nothing to add for cairne.

also I really don't like the high elves they are pointless and dull since belf came out and best part of wc2 imo was beyond the dark portal.

[Niwes]

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 assume most ppl say after WotlK, because „all story told bla bla“.
as many said, lore/universe of wow was never that over the top, but it was good.
imo they started to suck, when their $$$ greed started growing, and everything was rehashed, recycled, and lore just used as a cheap transport medium for cost effective ingame content. i would say, definitely the latest point where lore really was completely pissed on, was with the release of WoD.

maybe this thread better should have a poll.

[Terongor]

I misued the word politics naughtily, I was more referring to the various interactions between the different races and the fact you have 4 major players now and a new evil force, rather than just the human alliance and the horde with their new friends.

You had big new player night elves, and the big new ancient bad, their arch nemesis the Burning legion, you also had the Scourge undead with tis powerful new leader and the twists and turns of a story that at first is a mystery turned zombie movie turned fantasy turned supernatural as one thing excitingly leads to the other and you meet so many cool things, night elves were quite cool with their magical and immortal background (I read the manual first, and allowed the manual to frame my definition of the race which sometimes causes me to be at odds with other posters on night elves who tend to ignore written content on only base their assessment on in game visuals), then the creepy undead scourge, and while undead or zombies aren't new, he fit them into his universe in very good way, especially with a magical Undead king, the Lich King.. then the new evil, the demons, not being single agents but part of an invading force, with cool new models that were horribly terrifying, they felt evil and you had this night elf race who had fought em off once before facing a dire threat that had marked their lives for the last 10k years in a state they couldn't move on from because of this enemy their last 10k years existence was designed to prevent ever returning -- it was exciting and touching - how anyone expected the night elves to remain in wood elf mode after the Legion returns knowing the backstory is incredibly beyond me, I can only assume those people didn't know the backstory or never bothered to factor the race beyond - but as you can see from my posts - I am the sort of player that doesn't wait till blizzard expands the lore, I start imagining and planning the what next, what might it look like - it is exactly this that gives me passion to keep playing - it is looking ahead - for any who wonder why I seem a bit obsessed with it - this is the aspect of the franchise I am drawn too.)


So yeah, it doesn't have the political play of WC2 in that sense, I was being a bit..."creative" with the word (yes I outright misused it in my haste to be brief, relying on context to give me a feel.)

Well burning legion was mentioned in wc2 manuals and they were as fleshed out then as they were in wc3 and even wc2 there was demons and wc1 and they were always extremely mental and hard and felt imo far more evil and far less saturday morning cartoon villains, Night elves are big new player yeah but they are pratically wood elves from D&D added stuff from ES with the night twist as in ES lore wood elves have eat everything they kill making them extremely brutal, wc3 manual descriped that ner'zhul was turn into the lich king and the wc3 CE dvd and undead scourge was pratically white walkers from Song of ice and fire so nothing new and bit cliche so there really wasn't any mystery on the scourge as most people who played in 90's actually always read the manual and many of those did it on wc3 aswell.

I can see that you are passionate and I raise my hat to you for that.

[Hyral]

When they tried to make it more than humans and greenskins trying to kill each other while having a few fantastic adventures on the side.

[ravenmoon]

i assume most ppl say after WotlK, because „all story told bla bla“.
as many said, lore/universe of wow was never that over the top, but it was good.
imo they started to suck, when their $$$ greed started growing, and everything was rehashed, recycled, and lore just used as a cheap transport medium for cost effective ingame content. i would say, definitely the latest point where lore really was completely pissed on, was with the release of WoD.

maybe this thread better should have a poll.

Actually, that would have been a good idea to make it a poll... there seems to be a consistent number of set responses as to why. I wish I could add one.

Greed is a good point. People often talk about profit and making money as the only logical choice and logical option. and it makes sense to do it this way to make it more cost effective.



But imo, there comes a point where you are priortisng maximising profit over making a better more enjoyable creative product. I still think they do a lot of things motivated by concept , but lore is one of the thing they sacrifice to cut costs and it is the BIGGEST mistake they made. Lore was the key to making this franchise a global one and the first video game universe to successfully transition to the big and small screeen into multii-media platforms.

They probably thought focusing on it as being too greedy, but rather tooo ambitious, and yet cut it for faster production or saving costs - hiring world class artists, game designers, music score writers, even voice actros, but not story writers. Notice how it took 5 expansions for the quest box format to upgrade.

But such si the way of greed, it directly and ironically forfeits the bigger prize for the smaller one. Greed I reckon caused them to sacrifice lore, yet lore would have catapulted them far beyond a game market.

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Well burning legion was mentioned in wc2 manuals and they were as fleshed out then as they were in wc3 and even wc2 there was demons and wc1 and they were always extremely mental and hard and felt imo far more evil and far less saturday morning cartoon villains, Night elves are big new player yeah but they are pratically wood elves from D&D added stuff from ES with the night twist as in ES lore wood elves have eat everything they kill making them extremely brutal, wc3 manual descriped that ner'zhul was turn into the lich king and the wc3 CE dvd and undead scourge was pratically white walkers from Song of ice and fire so nothing new and bit cliche so there really wasn't any mystery on the scourge as most people who played in 90's actually always read the manual and many of those did it on wc3 aswell.

I can see that you are passionate and I raise my hat to you for that.

I agree except for the nighte lves being practically wood elves, I never thought so because I read their lore, I looked beyond what WC3 presented, and new there was much more to them that wasn't shown yet. I was prooven right in time, even though it would take till legion and teh broken isles to see the pre-sundering arcane side in -game. But they were always clear about what they were from teh start.. I just feel it took that long to show because night elf development stopped after classic in favour of focusing on horde races to make them popular. when they evenntually got round to them, we saw the other aspects of the night elves coming though, the highborne, the wardens, the illidari, etc.. it took till 8.1 to see the WC3 style units, till 4.0 or to see night elf arcane users in the factions lore.. and yes DHs were a thing in classic, but it woudln'tb e till 7.0 before we saw them and wardens.

in wc3, NElves felt more like a female warrior amazonian group, the story made it clear why a magcially talented race was living in forests and the conclusion of wc3 made it clear it was the end of that era and things would change. Blizzard introduced them stating their great arcane history and their long nature vigil were both eras of the past, the new wera would be where they would bring about the heart of the night elves as the best of classical dark elves and forest elves. Slow development however has made a lot of people think tey're just forest elves, yet if you summarise them over 9 expansions - you'd have to exclude a lot to make that true. However the forest elf is the strongest visible identity of the night elves because it has been the left in that state for the longest period of time without updates and progressing.

Now with allied races, we have nightborne to show the arcane side, despite many people not thinking they're connnected to night elves.

[Combatbutler]

Now with allied races, we have nightborne to show the arcane side, despite many people not thinking they're connnected to night elves.

You cling to something the night elves willingly abandoned and scorned for well over ten thousand years, they do not look fondly back on the time of their empire, they look back on it, with disgust. The night elves are very much like wood elves, a defanged version from the warhammer asrai to be precise.

[Alanar]

Arthas pratically Anakin story with dull dialogue, illidan power hungry dick, Maiev warden oppsessed with his prisoner, Malfurion ancient wise druid who battled demons long ago, Uther righteos warrior/paladin who serves as protagonist teacher and another father figure, Kael prince who tries his all to save his people, KT powerful sorcerer who falls to dark magic, Jaina dull idealist, Cairne old wise warrior and thrall member of race who though were bad but is actually good.

Nearly all of those have being out of date cliches in books since 80's and in Warcraft 3 their personality is descriped as whole by few words.
Arthas storu was fleshes out in rise of the lk book, Illidan has always being a mess, Maiev story was actually fleshed out again in few books which came alot later, malfurions was fleshed out in wota novels, same with uther as arthas, kaels story is just overall a mess and a cliche mess, Jaina... well she was dull cliche idealist till cata in every novel and until that only fleshing out she got was rise of the lk novel and thrall....... well lord of clans was already out by then by in wc3 thrall personality was extremely dull and lame when you compare it to lord of the clans and I have nothing to add for cairne.

also I really don't like the high elves they are pointless and dull since belf came out and best part of wc2 imo was beyond the dark portal.

That the story is dull, is your own opinion and view on it.. thats possible. Doesnt mean its some form.of a fact for everybody else.

Moving on.

[Terongor]

That the story is dull, is your own opinion and view on it.. thats possible. Doesnt mean its some form.of a fact for everybody else.

Moving on.

Well it might be counted as my oppinion but what caused ALL the current problems originates from wc3 like how characters are written for example jainas Mop-warcrimes-wod attitude was same kind of writting(meaning at the end of warcrimes she forgives the horde but at wod still hates the horde) which originated from wc3

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Actually, that would have been a good idea to make it a poll... there seems to be a consistent number of set responses as to why. I wish I could add one.

Greed is a good point. People often talk about profit and making money as the only logical choice and logical option. and it makes sense to do it this way to make it more cost effective.



But imo, there comes a point where you are priortisng maximising profit over making a better more enjoyable creative product. I still think they do a lot of things motivated by concept , but lore is one of the thing they sacrifice to cut costs and it is the BIGGEST mistake they made. Lore was the key to making this franchise a global one and the first video game universe to successfully transition to the big and small screeen into multii-media platforms.

They probably thought focusing on it as being too greedy, but rather tooo ambitious, and yet cut it for faster production or saving costs - hiring world class artists, game designers, music score writers, even voice actros, but not story writers. Notice how it took 5 expansions for the quest box format to upgrade.

But such si the way of greed, it directly and ironically forfeits the bigger prize for the smaller one. Greed I reckon caused them to sacrifice lore, yet lore would have catapulted them far beyond a game market.

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I agree except for the nighte lves being practically wood elves, I never thought so because I read their lore, I looked beyond what WC3 presented, and new there was much more to them that wasn't shown yet. I was prooven right in time, even though it would take till legion and teh broken isles to see the pre-sundering arcane side in -game. But they were always clear about what they were from teh start.. I just feel it took that long to show because night elf development stopped after classic in favour of focusing on horde races to make them popular. when they evenntually got round to them, we saw the other aspects of the night elves coming though, the highborne, the wardens, the illidari, etc.. it took till 8.1 to see the WC3 style units, till 4.0 or to see night elf arcane users in the factions lore.. and yes DHs were a thing in classic, but it woudln'tb e till 7.0 before we saw them and wardens.

in wc3, NElves felt more like a female warrior amazonian group, the story made it clear why a magcially talented race was living in forests and the conclusion of wc3 made it clear it was the end of that era and things would change. Blizzard introduced them stating their great arcane history and their long nature vigil were both eras of the past, the new wera would be where they would bring about the heart of the night elves as the best of classical dark elves and forest elves. Slow development however has made a lot of people think tey're just forest elves, yet if you summarise them over 9 expansions - you'd have to exclude a lot to make that true. However the forest elf is the strongest visible identity of the night elves because it has been the left in that state for the longest period of time without updates and progressing.

Now with allied races, we have nightborne to show the arcane side, despite many people not thinking they're connnected to night elves.

Well blizzard original notes on night elves was said wc3 ce dvd that they wanted to make wood elves with dark elf twist as dark elves are extremely magical usually and wood elves live inside and count on many basic night elves sides like their reverance for nature though they aren't as carpon copied as undeads or demons in wc3 but they still pratically only two D6D races combined into one which really isn't that original.

[Rafoel]

Well blizzard original notes on night elves was said wc3 ce dvd that they wanted to make wood elves with dark elf twist as dark elves are extremely magical usually and wood elves live inside and count on many basic night elves sides like their reverance for nature though they aren't as carpon copied as undeads or demons in wc3 but they still pratically only two D6D races combined into one which really isn't that original.

Have you heard about punctuation?

Infracted.

[JacobusRex]

Mists of Pandaria, when they ruined Garrosh and diffused the faction war rather than intensify it. But arguably during The Burning Crusade when they made Shattrath a thing. Whenever you design a game to have PVP and then remove the animosity between factions in the story, you ruin the story. Blizzard have been morons since TBC's conception.

[Specialka]

Mists of Pandaria, when they ruined Garrosh and diffused the faction war rather than intensify it. But arguably during The Burning Crusade when they made Shattrath a thing. Whenever you design a game to have PVP and then remove the animosity between factions in the story, you ruin the story. Blizzard have been morons since TBC's conception.

Wow has never been designed around pvp or even to have pvp in the first place. They just added it because the community asked for it. Just so you know. Pvp does not mean open war at all. They could have stay in that sort of cold war that was Vanilla. Or they could have let the Alliance and the Horde have some sort of truce or peace while some minor parts of them was still duking it out in some place (like alterac valley).

[Soon-TM]

Whenever you design a game to have PVP.

The game was never designed around PvP, period. They added it as a sideshow due to community request, but the fact is that WoW launched without any form of organised PvP at all. BGs came 4 or 5 patches after launch, and arenas had to wait until BC. Even then, devs came on record saying how they regretted introducing them in the first place.