Do you think the writers are "incompetent"?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Anime Fairy Kerrigan seems in tune with SC to you ? Same thing with Sheablo.

I explicitly said "excluding anything from LotV" and you literally cite something from LotV. This is now the third time I've explicitly and specifically excluded the events from Legacy of the Void because I think the writing did take a nosedive there for reasons that were unrelated to the story itself.

I don't see anything strange from a narrative perspective with Diablo taking on a more slender and feminine form for the Prime Evil Diablo. Baal and Mephisto were both much more slender than Diablo, and Leah (the vessel) is female.

Your first point isn't something I ever argued against, and your second point has no apparent relevance to the writing.

[Overlordd]

I thank goodness for the novels because frankly that's 98% of the lore now. Tides of War for example, the novel explained in great depth the reasoning behind Garrosh destroying Theramore and all the twists and turns that happened leading up to it and the event. In-game, the events in the novel were simply a quick scenario with a 3 second cutscene of Theramore blowing up. WoD barely even touched on Garrosh's trial in-game which was a huge event in the novels. Without the books there virtually is no lore, the quest text and cutscenes just don't come close to covering it. In fact I don't know how anyone can claim to understand wow lore if they haven't read the books. The in-game text and cutscenes are just a very (very) high level overview of the storyline, just enough to barely explain why certain things in-game are happening.

Ed: Also just a suggestion. Even if you aren't typically a book reader, if you love wow you will gain a far greater appreciation for the game by reading the novels. At a minimum try to read the pre-expansion novels, which are amazing and will get you pumped for Shadowlands. They are great, especially the Christie Golden novels, and most of them also are available as audiobooks on Audible.

What was Garrosh his reason in War Crimes? Was Theramore really neutral?

[Raisei]

Or maybe, just maybe, some of us think:
- the writing has gone down in quality

You may believe that, but I think it is wrong. Story as a part of the game has only improved since WoD, with more clearly defined narratives that stretch over an entire expansion instead of short snipets that you sometimes find. Try playing the game as a new player and go do Wrath. You will have no clue what is happening, because the story does not explain a thing, hell there were not even clearly defined quest chains until Legion.

- the writing is not considered a corporate priority based on key employee statements

As I pointed out in an earlier post. This is obvious. This game is about gameplay, it is not a BW game that focusses on story. If story is more important to you then getting a steady influx of playable content then you are definately in the wrong game. SWTOR does story better, but sacrifices playable content instead.
When I moved here from SWTOR I was fully aware that I would not have a voiced PC with different dialogue options and branching story paths and was nicely surprised by how deep the story is despite that.
How is it that people that play WoW much longer then me are surprised by this fact?

- the writers have more than demonstrated poor ability and choices

I do disagree with some choices they made (mostly in regard to how Sylvanas suddenly became so powerful that she can beat the Lich King without a scratch and how the Horde is getting out of their newest genocide again), but that is the thing here: Just because I dislike the direction the writing team chose does NOT mean they are incompetent.
Their job is not to fulfill my personal wishes but to tell a compelling narrative, which they are doing adequately for the level this game needs. Hell, I would even say they are doing a bang-up job, since their narrative made me really hate Sylvanas and actually WANT revenge on a personal level.

Nah, we're just haters, that's it. Only positivity allowed here in the echo chamber!

If you cannot seperate your emotional dislike of the story direction to judge the quality of the story fairly then yes, that is exactly what you are.

Ah yes, the current state is just dandy after all:
- Factions have effectively swapped governing models

I must have missed the new governing style of the Alliance. Was there an 8.3.5. with a revolution? The Horde has changed, instead of completely disregarding the lessons that they should have learned in MoP already and did not, this time they actually implement change. A logical step, based on a logical path of the narrative. How is this bad story telling?

- The Horde keeps going through idiotic civil wars, losing characters without meaningful replacement, and is routinely tarred as the villains

Which is what the Horde fans want. Well, not exactly. The fans want the Horde to go to war and destroy the Alliance for good and they disregard the impossibility of that scenario in a 2-faction game. It is not the writers fault that the fans do not understand the futility of the faction war and fight tooth and nail to keep it.

- The Alliance is reduced to the non-human races either ignored or appearing only to make the humans look good, a Blue Warchief who's a sockpuppet for one writer's political ideas, and is completely bland, never allowed to be proactive or even strike back effectively

1) How is the friggin High King now a Blue Warchief? There was no change in the Alliance goverment style, except that there is a new king.
2) Your hatred for Anduin does not count as qualified critique as I said above. He did not suddenly become a peace-loving person in the new expansion, he has been a proponent of peace since he could talk, how is this still so surprising?
3) I have no idea which BFA you played but I saw many non-humans in important positions. Tyrande, Malfy, Mechatorque, Alleria. The expansion however was specifically about Anduin's ideals vs. Sylvanas (the loading screen kinda gave that away), so how is it a surprise that he is a central figure of the plot?
And it is a fact that many of the Alliance's big lore characters are human, would you like to have Jaina become a gnome just to change things up a bit?

- Both sides are lectured about morality lessons that are absurd in Warcraft's context, when you quite literally commit slaughters for cash and prizes

Exterminating barely self-aware creatures (like kobolds and gnolls) that attack you and everyone in their vicinity or raid settlements is quite different from commiting genocide on civilians and since you apparently cannot see the difference I'd say the lesson was needed.

- Lore that preexisted the current writing team is openly/publicly referred to as constraining, rather than a guideline for going forward. Bonus points for effectively rendering the marketing of Chronicles as fraudulent.

This whining about Chronicle is getting soooooo old. Get. Over. It.

- The Alliance playerbase is effectively ignored (the state of gameplay further argues this), and the Horde is divided between Thrall and Evil Horde factions. It's impossible to please even the majority in such a setup, as BfA just demonstrated.

I don't feel ignored, but I agree on the split of the Horde. Yet again I say it is the fanbase that caused this. Many vocal Hordes want to be evil so now and then they have to be indulged or they will leave. Their mistake is to believe it will stay that way and then complain when it is taken away.
I did argue in another thread that the writers have to make up their mind about the Horde, decide if it is an evil faction or a good one, so the playerbase and the characters can decide if they want to stick around for it or leave.

[Xilurm]

Or maybe, just maybe, some of us think:

- the writing has gone down in quality
- the writing is not considered a corporate priority based on key employee statements
- the writers have more than demonstrated poor ability and choices

I really don't think the writing was ever that good to begin with. It helps a lot that there's really awesome lore behind everything and that the quests put all over the world are not bad but the writing for the grand story of all the expansions isn't really that good, and imo it never has been.

What happens in Classic? You are just put into the world and you go around dealing with problems, everything happens in quests you get from random npc's and there isn't any "cinematic experience" so to say. Same thing in TBC, except you deal with WC3 characters in the raids but still, nothing grand.

Wrath changes that but slightly, you see Arthas a couple of times and there's also the Wrathgate cinematic, the Culling of Stratholme and a couple of quests in Icecrown.

Cataclysm was disjointed to hell and back, Deathwing is mostly in the background until the final zone where he only comes to deal with Alexstrasza.

MoP was the one time where it felt like you were following a story, because you just follow Anduin around for half the levelling experience but I think the lack of a final villain type of character didn't help with that.

So yeah, it wasn't that great even before WoD imo.

[Reinhart11]

The evidence for the incompetence of the lead writers is overwhelming. The only thing at this point that ensures players are still engaged in the Lore of the franchise is the fact, that years of playing the game and following the lore means these kind of players are very invested already in this fantasy universe.

And also expectations of course. In our mind the stuff that can happen in the future could be awesome. But the past showed in my opinion that the Blizzard authors don't really deliver at all, even if you have low expectations. I was pretty thrilled in the times of Classic, even in BC and WotlK still (although they kicked characters like Illidan, Kael, Vashj, Anubarak and of course Arthas into the retarded loot pinata grinder), for the events that could happen in Warcrafts future. The important characters who could show up, their plans, their interactions with eachother and the player characters. But Blizzards writers managed to waste most, if not all the potential there was.

Since MoP up to Legion it became more and more awful than the earlier expansions from my point of view, but since BfA in my eyes its downright a pile of garbage and more or less unbearable. BfA definitely has removed all the investment i once had in this fantasy world. And i would say i was very invested in it. Until they hire proper writers i won't bother anymore. Of course i will check on the story on Youtube, but Shadowlands already shows me that it is more of the same crap that happened in BfA. I'll pass.

[ClassicPeon]

That's actually kind of interesting, because I'm not really a fan of GRRM's writing. I read A Game of Thrones back in 2002 when praise for the series was really ramping up in literary circles, and I found it rather dry and less than compelling - it was a plodding affair, and while I enjoyed the realistic violent and historical grittiness, it also felt vaguely nihilistic in a way that wasn't compelling for me. That wouldn't compel me to call GRRM a "hack fraud" or heap scorn on him, though; because that was just my personal takeaway and obviously I'm in the minority in terms of my opinion - not that that would matter, either. GRRM has pretty obvious objective talent when it comes to writing, it's just that what he writes is likely never going to be my cup o' tea, and that's okay. I'm a big fan of Frank Herbert's Dune series and I hear a lot of people the say same things about Herbert that I say about GRRM: that Dune is dry (no pun intended) and overblown with academic pretension, that it is both plodding and formulaic at its core. That's a fine criticism, too; and while I don't agree I think it's someone's right to feel that way, just like I do about GRRM's ASOIF series.

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This is kind of funny, because I wasn't actually referring to you specifically with that post - although I'm sure you won't actually believe that claim. But the fact that you would take mild criticism of your argument as a "smear" is somewhat telling, and I think it goes toward demonstrating that my sketch of your motives is closer to correct than anything else. I've never really been accused of being "Mary Sunshine" either, so that's kind of a first for me; I'm actually kind of a down to Earth type of fellow when you get to know me. But yeah, I do think your hyperbolic criticism is more borne out of emotionalism than it is measured or quasi-objective analysis of the subject matter.

I also don't want to get the ball rolling on another multi-page exegesis of one another's critical motives, but I felt your charge above sort of required a response. So back to non-engagement for me.

I'm in much the same boat when it comes to GRRM. I actually love reading - something that not many of my friends do(as in fiction). I read the first two books and midway through the third it just died for me. I had trouble following characters because i genuinely didnt really care for them.

I wasnt speaking about his talent though but more the relation he has with a portion of his followers that obviously loves his work but are really angry at his "lazy" approach to finnishing his books. Normally i would say fuck them - but i genuinely do think he is a lazy person who fell into a gold mine that he cant be bothered to finnish mining.

[Ronald The Mcdonald]

I don't think they are all incompetent, that being said however, if Sylvanas gets a redemption arc this expansion then i will say that without a doubt they are all incompetent.

[Wyattbw09]

I think Blizzard just needs to drop the whole novel thing.

I hope not, I doubt I would ever sit down and read a Warcraft novel, however, as a audible or streaming book, they are entertaining for a few hours and help fill in some of the lore of this game I enjoy playing.

[Varodoc]

Anime Fairy Kerrigan seems in tune with SC to you ? Same thing with Sheablo.

I had no problem with Diablo III or Starcraft II. I liked Female Diablo and it made sense, because he used Leah as host body to return and also absorbed Andariel within himself. I had no problem with Kerrigan either, and besides the Xel'naga plotline was already set up back in the secret mission of Starcraft.

[Bigcountry11782]

"The original lore" Oh, you mean Warcraft 1? Yeah man, I also loved how regular and medieval Stormwind and the armies of Azeroth looked. Much better than this Death Knight, God filled, alternative timeline, outerversal power crap we have now.

You just assumed so much in your quote i don't even know where to start lol

[TheFirstOnes]

You just assumed so much in your quote i don't even know where to start lol

(For in-case you didn't know, the eye-roll was supposed to represent Sarcasm)

[Magnagarde]

Most of the regular posters of this section of the forum would do a thousand times better. Much of their work is on parr with poorly conceptualized fan fiction that's all over the internet, lately also sprinkled with some virtue signalling on top.

[Ezyah]

They just went off the rails at some point (around Wod i'd say) and since then they're just making uncontrollable drifts.

[Feanoro]

stuff

It's fascinating that the defense of the writers in this thread is not bringing up good points for them, but attacking the people who bring up their bad points.

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I really don't think the writing was ever that good to begin with. It helps a lot that there's really awesome lore behind everything and that the quests put all over the world are not bad but the writing for the grand story of all the expansions isn't really that good, and imo it never has been.

What happens in Classic? You are just put into the world and you go around dealing with problems, everything happens in quests you get from random npc's and there isn't any "cinematic experience" so to say. Same thing in TBC, except you deal with WC3 characters in the raids but still, nothing grand.

Wrath changes that but slightly, you see Arthas a couple of times and there's also the Wrathgate cinematic, the Culling of Stratholme and a couple of quests in Icecrown.

Cataclysm was disjointed to hell and back, Deathwing is mostly in the background until the final zone where he only comes to deal with Alexstrasza.

MoP was the one time where it felt like you were following a story, because you just follow Anduin around for half the levelling experience but I think the lack of a final villain type of character didn't help with that.

So yeah, it wasn't that great even before WoD imo.

I never said it was great, even at his height, Metzen wrote average but enjoyable fare. I just maintain that the quality has gone down, noticeably in the last few expansions.

I'm reliably informed by some posters though that negative opinions aren't possible unless I'm being emotional and subjective.

[ClassicPeon]

It's fascinating that the defense of the writers in this thread is not bringing up good points for them, but attacking the people who bring up their bad points.

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I never said it was great, even at his height, Metzen wrote average but enjoyable fare. I just maintain that the quality has gone down, noticeably in the last few expansions.

I'm reliably informed by some posters though that negative opinions aren't possible unless I'm being emotional and subjective.

I find that it goes both ways. In fact i find that most of the anti-crowd refer to anyone who isnt directly talking down about the writers as shills and brainwashed.

The reality is that the writers work with the material they have, and have been tasked with gracefully changing a lot of the pre existing lore.

Thats not an easy task and many people confuse this with bad writing, because the characters dont do exactly what they want them to.

There are people who see plotholes in every stone in azeroth. If you want to see something desperately enough, you are going to see it.

[Raisei]

It's fascinating that the defense of the writers in this thread is not bringing up good points for them, but attacking the people who bring up their bad points.

It's fascinating that that is your take-away from my post. Well, nevermind. You are obviously just seeing what you want to see.

[nonameelf]

They are extremely bad at writing factions. Which is really just sad because they try to make so much of the game and story focus on factions. Like if you're going to have a faction based game the one part of the story you'd want to do well is factions.

The writers also are very bad at writing war. Which when that's something in the name of the game you probably want to know how to write it.

So, yeah, I'm going to go with extremely incompetent. They can't do the 2 main jobs that are required of them in the story. Neither of these are about overarching story lines or things that you can't do in an MMO. They're just basic core features of Warcraft's story and Blizzard can't handle them.

[Toho]

Wow becomes incredibly unsatisfying if you start seeing the game as this overarching narrative which every piece matters.

As an MMO game that take months to deliver that next piece of content (story) more often than not it fails to deliver that next piece of content even when it does come.
For example.

Teldrassil burns and Horde commits yet another massacre.
Alliance unhappy. Horde unhappy.

Blizzard's solution? Old Soldier and Terror of Darkshore to rally the fanbase that something is happening to rectify these.
Somehow a moppy Orc with many... many mass slaughters in his portfolio fails to resonate with people.
And traitor undead Night Elves, the innefectual NiGhT WaRrIoR that did nothing and achieved nothing failed to resonate.

Shadowlands leaks still fail to show how any of BFA was worth sitting through and poor forsaken players have been completely ignored with their racial leaders becoming the next loot pinata and no one in lore cares about their destroyed city.

As for the biggest culprit of all... retcons. It seems every expansion slices off major plot points of previous games to create whatever they are pushing next.
Now we learn the Legion didn't make the scourge, they just stole stuff from shadowlands.
Wildgods dont go to emerald dream but in shadowlands! jesus christ.

[tommyhil622]

It's fascinating that the defense of the writers in this thread is not bringing up good points for them, but attacking the people who bring up their bad points.

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I never said it was great, even at his height, Metzen wrote average but enjoyable fare. I just maintain that the quality has gone down, noticeably in the last few expansions.

I'm reliably informed by some posters though that negative opinions aren't possible unless I'm being emotional and subjective.

What would you regard as good writing? Least amount of mistakes? or make mistakes but fix them and/or admit to them?

What's harder? a single person to write a book or hundreds of people working together writing a continuous story with no end in sight?

And finally.

Depending on your answers above, how can you really know if a writer or set of writers are incompetent based on their work?

[Popokolara]

What would you regard as good writing? Least amount of mistakes? or make mistakes but fix them and/or admit to them?

What's harder? a single person to write a book or hundreds of people working together writing a continuous story with no end in sight?

And finally.

Depending on your answers above, how can you really know if a writer or set of writers are incompetent based on their work?

If there are many mistakes and you end up retconing a lot, simply because you are forced to then i think bad is accurate. Then again wow expac storylines have had a degree of.independence and its a choice to transmute, putting it kindly, older stories to make the fit.

A single person is definately easier to maintain consistency but then again there is inconsistency and there is mutilation. Bfa did feel like anime trope cinematics with some poor idiots trying to make them fit together.

You can never know how bad a writter is because you do not know with detail the restrictions they have.

I fully believe things like calia being shoved.down our faces.and voss sucking up to her and patronising the players might be a corporate marketing virtue signaling decision rather than a writter one.


However keep one thing in mind.
If someone is good at what he does usually you can see it. If wow had a really awesome writter he would slip in moments of brightness over the course of all these storylines.