WoW's story needs to go back to being more like Exile's Reach

[A Chozo]

You can't kill God then go back to being the farmer's son who searches treasures in the forest.

What should happen is less identification of the player as a Champion and more identification of the player as the member of a group of champions. Call us "veteran of countless battles", etc.

[kaminaris]

You can't kill God then go back to being the farmer's son who searches treasures in the forest.

Of course you can, plenty of stories like this. It's like saying once you raise to power you absolutely cannot enjoy things you did before that.

[A Chozo]

Of course you can, plenty of stories like this

Any citations? Because due to WoW's nature (you work for the Main Faction) your deeds can't be erased and are public knowledge.

[kaminaris]

Any citations? Because due to WoW's nature (you work for the Main Faction) your deeds can't be erased and are public knowledge.

Dragon ball for example, goku came back to being farmer, his sons went back to study after killing intergalactic villian
Superman, spiderman, flash, and thousand of other teenager like stories.

Look, you know how ridiculous it sounds right? Lets dabble into your example and dissect this.

You were farmers son -> you did farms work
You rose in power -> you still have family
You might have enjoyed doing farms work
Now you killed a god, who the fuck is going to forbid you to come back to family and do some farms work for them?

Its like saying once you grow up you absolutely cannot go back and enjoy some lego building.

[vizzle]

While I agree that WoW story is really dumb right now, i don't see how PoE is a good example. PoE story doesn't make any sense. You literally wake up on a beach, there's no intro or cutscene to explain to you why you're there, then you find an encampment and everyone starts talking about necromancers, Brutus, mermaids, whatnot, and your character acts like he/she knows what they're talking about; meanwhile you're there, clueless like "who the fuck are these guys and who the fuck are these people that they're talking about?"

It's called in medias res, Jesus. But I suppose concepts like that are too big for some people.

[Mysterymask]

Dragon ball for example, goku came back to being farmer, his sons went back to study after killing intergalactic villian
Superman, spiderman, flash, and thousand of other teenager like stories.

Look, you know how ridiculous it sounds right? Lets dabble into your example and dissect this.

You were farmers son -> you did farms work
You rose in power -> you still have family
You might have enjoyed doing farms work
Now you killed a god, who the fuck is going to forbid you to come back to family and do some farms work for them?

Its like saying once you grow up you absolutely cannot go back and enjoy some lego building.

....but then theres no story anymore i mean even classic stories did that its called "And They Lived Happily Ever After"

[blankfaced]

Isn't the whole point of Exiles Reach that it's the start of your adventure though? It's like life, if only we could all go back to not having to deal with the big stuff right?

It's called in medias res, Jesus. But I suppose concepts like that are too big for some people.

Fancy words for we don't know how to tell a story and just expect people to catch up to our way of thinking without ANY pretext. PoE is one of the most boring games i've ever tried to play. The story is just stale and generic. It does nothing aside from it's ability system to set itself apart from any other generic RPG with skeletons. If it's combat was spot on I could see peoples points, but it's not. PoE is the Rift of ARPG's. It's only good because it's free and everything else is even more of a generic dumpster fire.

[Powerogue]

Just because it's more supernatural I wouldn't say Shadowlands feels "less grounded." Their issues are fairly simple and involve zero alternate realities or time travel.

I like MOP as well, valley of the four winds is one of my favorite zones, but variety is the spice of life, and this is the death expansion. I don't feel like they overcomplicated it to the point where I felt lost in the story at any point, nor did I feel like I needed the side stories such as the motion comic covenant videos or the book to understand what I saw in-game.

[Klingers]

I found the Exile's Reach story intro to be more compelling than just about any Shadowlands stories outside of maybe Revendreth. Exile's Reach feels grounded and relatable. You're a soldier with a small makeshift camp, rallying some allies and scouting the zone. You then deal with an Ogre problem and uncover some use of necromancy that ends in a fight with a dragon. The whole time I got that old school DND adventure vibe and enjoyed it quite a bit.

When you do something like Shadowlands, the story deals with eternity, ghost people, civilizations that persist in the afterlife on these pocket dimension islands... hard to really give a shit tbh. I like vampire stuff so Revendreth was enjoyable, but everything else is so out there it feels like background noise.

We need to get back to MoP style storytelling imo.

The problem is that WoW's writers felt a need to throw Tolkien, Lovecraft, Norse and Egyptian Mythology, Ghostbusters, Dante's Inferno, Star Wars and Back to the Future into a giant blender, take a whole bunch of acid and shart out a cosmology. Now we're stuck with it.

[Palapop]

You realize the original story of warcraft is an interdimensional alien invasion right?

Having some fantasy-themed portals and rifts is NOT the same as killing Gods, Creators, Titans who can cut an planet in half... etc, etc, etc...

[vizzle]

Fancy words for we don't know how to tell a story and just expect people to catch up to our way of thinking without ANY pretext. PoE is one of the most boring games i've ever tried to play. The story is just stale and generic. It does nothing aside from it's ability system to set itself apart from any other generic RPG with skeletons. If it's combat was spot on I could see peoples points, but it's not. PoE is the Rift of ARPG's. It's only good because it's free and everything else is even more of a generic dumpster fire.

I'm not defending Exile's Reach here; I'm defending the concept of in medias res. God forbid you ever pick up a book that wasn't written for an 8 year old.

[kaminaris]

....but then theres no story anymore i mean even classic stories did that its called "And They Lived Happily Ever After"

What are you even on about? Making grand god-slayer "story" doesn't make it any more interesting. It does the opposite, makes you want to ridicule it. Especially when it repeats itself with the same pattern each expansion.

[AlaxJohns]

The same old world threats still exist in some capacity.

[ParanoiD84]

Writing have been complete shit for along time in wow now imo.

They have what 20 or so novels in 15-20 years and most are pretty bad minus a couple that's alright like legion but that was written by a black library author.

They have really backed themselves into a corner story wise and it gets boring really fast.

Some fresh authors and fresh ideas could do perhaps.

There have even been some amazing authors that wanted to write for wow atleast before like black library's ADB but never gets the chance so their loss.

They can continue with golden and crew lol.

Then again blizzard knows they don't need solid stories to make money they get that from subs.

Wow is also a mmo first so there is that.

Could also be that most of the old team with the passion and a idea what wow was supposed to be are gone but like I said perhaps they need fresh authors/writers and just fresh people with ideas all around..

[Mysterymask]

What are you even on about? Making grand god-slayer "story" doesn't make it any more interesting. It does the opposite, makes you want to ridicule it. Especially when it repeats itself with the same pattern each expansion.

well its not really ridicule..its the fact the story getting ridiculous and continually upping the ante forever is because the series has gone on for so long.
I mean think about it seasonal rot is a thing that happens to shows and long running game series normally. Now name a series that has literally had a continuing narrative for 27 years with more and more new shit added every couple of months that has to last for a couple of months. A story that is locked under the restraints of an MMO because large story changes could equal large gameplay changes and a story that maybe a good quarter of the player base may not even participate in at all but has to keep going.

Hell most of the game series that have gone on for 20+ years are either episodic and aren't a continuing narrative (Final Fantasy), has SEVERAL YEARS between entries (Kingdom Hearts), has a mostly inconsequential or non existent story (Megaman, Devil May Cry, Pokemon), subsequent entries take place decades or even centuries between each other (Fire Emblem, Zelda, Breath of Fire), had the good sense to just end the story by their own accord (Metal Gear Solid) Spin off the story with a different character and point of view (Resident Evil) or just get cancelled when shit actually got really fucking convoluted (Legacy of Kain)

Wow on the other hand is a story that has literally gone on since 1994 and since wow had to add new story beats every couple of months since Wrath when they decided this is how story beats are going to happen. Now personally I've long checked out on wow's story not really finding it good since...well the RTS games were tied up and see it as new rides in the theme park. I've resigned to the fact an MMO is a terrible way to write a story and story wise wow is going the way of the simpsons in that regard but as long as there are rides in said theme park that's worth going to I'm good.

[Aphrel]

It’s hard to see how to make it go back to something like that.

The same old world/universal threats still exist in some capacity.

One way I can see it happen is if the add a backside of Azeroth with undiscovered land filled with normal mortals and villains that are not cosmic power levels bad guys.

or just a time travel. Once we leave shadowlands in next exp. we find ourselves in a different time.

We hear about wars, distasters and invasions that has happend during our absence.
The world has been conquered a dozen times by a dozen diffrent factions, light, void, elemental, demons, hostile etheral..., even damn titanic factions of order.
We see leftovers of cataclysmic battles from long ago, with new vistas, new zones new conflicts new unregonizable factions, new... everything Nothing is recognizable and wer not even sure if we are on azeroth to begin with. Nothing remains of the old world to recognize us.

And thats how we start from scratch, nobodies in a new world. Time to carve a bloody path to fame and fortune my fellow mercenaries!

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

or just a time travel. Once we leave shadowlands in next exp. we find ourselves in a different time.

We hear about wars, distasters and invasions that has happend during our absence.
The world has been conquered a dozen times by a dozen diffrent factions, light, void, elemental, demons, hostile etheral..., even damn titanic factions of order.
We see leftovers of cataclysmic battles from long ago, with new vistas, new zones new conflicts new unregonizable factions, new... everything Nothing is recognizable and wer not even sure if we are on azeroth to begin with. Nothing remains of the old world to recognize us.

And thats how we start from scratch, nobodies in a new world. Time to carve a bloody path to fame and fortune my fellow mercenaries!

But that's not how time works in the Shadowlands.

[Zantera]

This is why I would enjoy an expansion set on another planet because everything would be new when arriving there and we wouldn't come with the reputations of being these great heroes from Azeroth. We'd be stranded on a new planet and establishing bases and trying to make sense of things.

[Orwell7]

Fully agree.

Similar with Star Wars: the writers were trying sooo hard to create epic, memorable, teaching moments that they completely forgot that this is just a fariy tale.
Then Mandalorian came, which is just a little side-story, not trying to be epic, not trying to be the ultimate answer to all... just a great story with great characters, but they are not really responsible for what's happening ultimately in SW.

We need that in WoW. Let the "main" driving factors be events outside our influence, let the big guys like Thrall, Arthas etc. fight their own games, and let us have our own fun adventures.

[Aphrel]

Only problem I see with this, is i'd rather play a wow2 if we had to start from scratch storywise

I admit that with all the transmog, accumulated gold, accessible old content, timewalking, any attempt at "resetting" the World and its stakes will feel hollow.

ah yeah, agree 100% with u there.

But wow2 doesnt seem likely to happen :S