The "WORLD" of "WARCRAFT"

[Akibaboy]

I certainly share many of the OP's feelings especially the Avengers Team lmao. The Fab Four, i.e. Andy, Jaina, Thrall and Baine (five if we include Sylv) are an utter bore to watch and contribute nothing to make the World of Warcraft feel more like... a world, instead of a page from some lame comic.

Oh no! You have to watch a 2 minute cutscene or dialogue a handful of times and then another one again every like 6 months?! The horror!

Never mind that the vast majority of the time played in Shadowlands is spent with the entirely new cast of characters that look to you for aid and don't give a shit about the characters you mentioned. The raid and dungeons are all new locations with new threats that are contesting against you. I've spent max like 2 hours interacting with legacy characters. The efforts across the 4 characters I have doing each Covenant is almost exclusively focused around these new worlds and my place in them.

Why is everyone so butthurt about a *maybe* collective 20 minutes of base plot points delivered by series staples when the majority of the game revolves around what you're doing for your causes?

[Tyris Flare]

I genuinely don't understand how anyone has ever been immersed in this game in terms of the world/story compared to a single player RPG or at least something like swtor where your character has a voice and a role in many cutscenes. The same way I don't really get how people can get as immersed in ESO as Skyrim - how do the other people running around like jackasses not shatter the illusion for you?

The only thing this game has ever been good at is instanced group content. And it remains by far the best at delivering it (albeit too slowly)

[loras]

Just scrap both.

The World isn't interactive at all. Phasing, War mode, everything is scaled. There's just no sense of adventure and exploration. The zones have becoming smaller and smaller each expansion. Horrible to navigate on top. Mobs scattered everywhere.
There's no danger, the game feels like a downgraded Sandbox MMO.

There's no immersion either and the story of this expansion is downright horrible.

What made the story of World of Warcraft so good is told in its name.
A world of conflict between various races.
Quite simple really. I do not care about following the Avenger's team of Warcraft once more. I do not give a crap about Anduin, I do not care about Jaina, I do not care about Thrall, I certainly do not care about Baine.
I do not care about their dialogue, their voices. I just want to adventure, explore and interact with the world. Not these fantastic heroes, almos the Avenger team on Azeroth.

I think the writer's reflect that nature. All Blizzard could scrape together as a writing team were some self virtueing people on Twitter, and you know how obsessed those lunatics are with Marvel and other pop culture trash.

I'm saying that the writer's are incompetent and that they do not care about the Warcraft IP, they care more about their self virtueing morals on Twitter, gathering likes on Social Media. They go back and change lore that they did not create. They constantly retcon stuff. They bring in dead characters because the incompetency of them that they can't write new characters.

Also the copypasted systems and them not even trying anymore just really shows. You can really see them just making decisions like "let's artificially time-gate as much content so these suckers will continue playing and stay subbed"
"yeah we'll just throw in a few mounts and transmog pieces, no need to even implement a story or anything, just MOGS MOUNTS AND CHEEVOS"

Maybe that's the nature of the average MMO player aswell.
When I played the original AV, I Felt like a soldier on the battlefield. Gaining reputation with the Stormpike/Frostwolves. Getting rewarded for my feats on the battlefield. In the end, I was allowed to buy a really good weapon, and not only that, I was rewarded a Stormpike Ram/Frostwolf mount. Not only were mounts hard to get, I was allowed to buy them for a lesser fee because of the hard work I put in.

And now, "lol just get renown from everything bro, just get it so you can get this fucking bear and several recolours of it lmao, also here's some transmog I guess"

It's so blatant that the game is ran by corporations nowadays for maximum profit.
This game doesn't feel like a World.
There's no Warcraft either.

The lore is shit, the immersion is shit. There's only repetitive shit to do in this game.

I agree on the lore but disagree on the systems.

They tried to bring back world pvp with warmode
They tried to bring back exploration with islamd expeditions
They tried to recapture the rts roots with warfronts
They tried to allow us to build and modify the world with garrisons
They tried to givd us engaging repeatable content that could be solo'd if desired in Torghast and visions
They tried to give us more ways to modify and define our style of gameplay

They tried a lot, and it's always been a hit and a miss, but to say that they do not try is dishonest.

That is not to say that i do not also see your point regarding corporate influence, especially the exprbitant prices now asked for mounts that require a rep grind is like they're trying to draw blood from under my nails.

[username993720]

But they have no qualms throwing the word "genocide" every now and then, maybe because SJW's get their pants wet with it, and also because muh morally grey world

Yea...
Jesus christ, it's a game. Not real-world. Meaning, they can get away with things that would not be applicable in real-life because it's a fantasy game. That's the point of games. You can shoot people as much as you want in games, despite the high rate of school shootings right now in USA and the hatred towards it.

almost all his thread are closed because they are all troll or bait thread but he is still not permabanned, why ? https://www.mmo-champion.com/search....rchid=67391330

A person cannot complain about the game?

Anyway, for anyone else, I will say I recommend starting from scratch on a lot of this.
I might have agreed with the world not feeling engaging until I recently started doing Nomad Leveling challenges.
Basically, you agree to use only ground mounts, no flight paths, no portals, and no hearth stones.
Everywhere you go you go on the ground yourself.

It REALLY starts to make you notice the little things in the game and has given me an entirely fresh perspective.

It starts to really accentuate the lore too, which I previously did not care about at all and probably also would have agreed with being bad.

The game should be designed around it, if we think about it.

I genuinely don't understand how anyone has ever been immersed in this game in terms of the world/story compared to a single player RPG or at least something like swtor where your character has a voice and a role in many cutscenes. The same way I don't really get how people can get as immersed in ESO as Skyrim - how do the other people running around like jackasses not shatter the illusion for you?

The only thing this game has ever been good at is instanced group content. And it remains by far the best at delivering it (albeit too slowly)

RP realms?

[Bee76]

I do not care about following the Avenger's team of Warcraft once more. I do not give a crap about Anduin, I do not care about Jaina, I do not care about Thrall, I certainly do not care about Baine.
I do not care about their dialogue, their voices. I just want to adventure, explore and interact with the world. Not these fantastic heroes, almos the Avenger team on Azeroth.
.

Thx dude. I totally agree. I sont play wow only for the story, otherwise i would have left long time ago. But the story is really bad, and even worse for those that are proud hordemembers.

[TheFirstOnes]

You do realize "World of Warcraft" doesn't mean shit regarding the game, yeah? I mean, I agree with you OP, I do. The world is way too sharded and instanced rn (Even if it's still fun...kinda).

But, the WORLD of WARCRAFT means the world is at war. WC1, the first RTS and overall part of Warcraft, literally trademarks the term "World of Warcraft", as in the world of in itself is at war.

Even now, that still applies. Except, this time, instead of us battling against eachother, it's Cosmic Beings Vs the Forces of Azeroth. Since the forces of Azeroth are apparently the only mf's in all of existence that can do shit against these evil cunts.

[Dazmalak]

Oh no! You have to watch a 2 minute cutscene or dialogue a handful of times and then another one again every like 6 months?! The horror!

Never mind that the vast majority of the time played in Shadowlands is spent with the entirely new cast of characters that look to you for aid and don't give a shit about the characters you mentioned. The raid and dungeons are all new locations with new threats that are contesting against you. I've spent max like 2 hours interacting with legacy characters. The efforts across the 4 characters I have doing each Covenant is almost exclusively focused around these new worlds and my place in them.

Why is everyone so butthurt about a *maybe* collective 20 minutes of base plot points delivered by series staples when the majority of the game revolves around what you're doing for your causes?

Because of the disconnect between the two. 99% of our gameplay has no impact on the storyline. We can max out every covenant, farm all the anima, get all the things, beat all of the raids, dungeons, and PvP to hearts content, but only a handful of quests we complete for the covenants have any bearing on the pre-written story. When it's all said and done we do everything, then get a 2 minute cutscene of unrelated characters doing things to move the actual plot forward. The world and your place in it? The world doesn't evolve, change, or respond to anything you do with the exception of your shared Garrison; which doesn't appear to have any bearing on anything either outside of convenience.

Not only that, but these new characters are all throwaways. They will only exist and be acknowledged for this expansion. They live in a bubble and once we are out of this bubble, they will be nothing but memories. Though I'd hardly qualify any of them as memorable.

This all goes back to the original post: The "world" doesn't really feel like a "world", it feels like a small theme park with some okay rides that quickly lose their charm. Anima is the same as all the little tickets you can earn to buy a nice big prize from playing all the mini-games...an endless endeavor for irrelevant rewards. And the "Warcraft" has been replaced with modern political virtue-signaling and harmless Disney vibes.

[TheFirstOnes]

I genuinely don't understand how anyone has ever been immersed in this game in terms of the world/story compared to a single player RPG or at least something like swtor where your character has a voice and a role in many cutscenes. The same way I don't really get how people can get as immersed in ESO as Skyrim - how do the other people running around like jackasses not shatter the illusion for you?

The only thing this game has ever been good at is instanced group content. And it remains by far the best at delivering it (albeit too slowly)

The story is genuinely good imo, issues or otherwise. Not everything needs to be SWTOR, bud. Also, WoW's Art/Music slaps. The hell do you mean the only GOOD content's the instanced shit?

[Soon-TM]

They tried to bring back world pvp with warmode
They tried to bring back exploration with islamd expeditions
They tried to recapture the rts roots with warfronts
They tried to allow us to build and modify the world with garrisons
They tried to givd us engaging repeatable content that could be solo'd if desired in Torghast and visions
They tried to give us more ways to modify and define our style of gameplay

Except for the last item (which I'm not really sure what it's about) and maybe warmode, that's a quite impressive list of failures. I wonder what are the folks who design such systems, and especially those who greenlight them, thinking.

[Drusin]

Instances are a part of the world, it's not the "Outdoors of Warcraft"

[Soon-TM]

Instances are a part of the world, it's not the "Outdoors of Warcraft"

In theory yes, but in practice instances get A LOT more attention than the outdoors part. Furthermore, every time I think about a "world", the image of a claustrophobia-inducing maze that exists in its own little time capsule isn't the first thing that comes to my mind.

[username993720]

Even now, that still applies. Except, this time, instead of us battling against eachother, it's Cosmic Beings Vs the Forces of Azeroth. Since the forces of Azeroth are apparently the only mf's in all of existence that can do shit against these evil cunts.

Aren't you tired of it?
When you make a Forsaken, a Goblin, an Orc, a Worgen, A Dark Iron Dwarf or a Void elf, a Warlock, a Death Knight, a Shadow Priest or a Demon Hunter do you, really, wanna be a heroic good guy? or a badass villain?

Not only that, but these new characters are all throwaways. They will only exist and be acknowledged for this expansion. They live in a bubble and once we are out of this bubble, they will be nothing but memories. Though I'd hardly qualify any of them as memorable.

This all goes back to the original post: The "world" doesn't really feel like a "world", it feels like a small theme park with some okay rides that quickly lose their charm. Anima is the same as all the little tickets you can earn to buy a nice big prize from playing all the mini-games...an endless endeavor for irrelevant rewards. And the "Warcraft" has been replaced with modern political virtue-signaling and harmless Disney vibes.

Isn't that kind of annoying?
Back in the day, there was some mystery around the villains we faced, and some to the protagonist entities out there. Old Gods, Burning Legion, Titans were unreachable. Now, they are just another beatable mob.

[Akibaboy]

Because of the disconnect between the two. 99% of our gameplay has no impact on the storyline. We can max out every covenant, farm all the anima, get all the things, beat all of the raids, dungeons, and PvP to hearts content, but only a handful of quests we complete for the covenants have any bearing on the pre-written story. When it's all said and done we do everything, then get a 2 minute cutscene of unrelated characters doing things to move the actual plot forward. The world and your place in it? The world doesn't evolve, change, or respond to anything you do with the exception of your shared Garrison; which doesn't appear to have any bearing on anything either outside of convenience.

Not only that, but these new characters are all throwaways. They will only exist and be acknowledged for this expansion. They live in a bubble and once we are out of this bubble, they will be nothing but memories. Though I'd hardly qualify any of them as memorable.

This all goes back to the original post: The "world" doesn't really feel like a "world", it feels like a small theme park with some okay rides that quickly lose their charm. Anima is the same as all the little tickets you can earn to buy a nice big prize from playing all the mini-games...an endless endeavor for irrelevant rewards. And the "Warcraft" has been replaced with modern political virtue-signaling and harmless Disney vibes.

You just described pretty much all of WoW's history though.

Classic:
Overarching Narrative - dictated by a handful of legacy lore characters. Onyxia pulling the strings of pretty much *everything* behind the scenes. The very first quests for Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes all relate to a crisis with military resources being diverted to Battlegrounds and local threats subsequently left unchecked. The status of the entire world is dictated by a handful of characters from the lore that you'll interact with for a total of minutes in the game.

Your Gameplay - 99% has no impact on the storyline. You're helping locals not die to raids from criminals, monsters, Horde, etc. or helping them not starve. You'll leave them roughly in the same state of getting by as you found them. Only at the very end of all that is there and event where you can play some kind of role in something of consequence to the lore happening (and then they'll make a comic book saying you didn't).

The new characters in pretty much all of the expansions exist to service the expansion and didn't carry on except for a handful of exceptions. Are you expecting to have a fortress back on Azeroth where 28203 NPCs from different expansions gather to tend your garden? I've actually advocated for an evergreen follower system that we add to as the game goes on... like I miss hanging out with Vanessa Van Cleef. But at the same time I'm under no delusions that the denizens of the Shadowlands should somehow care about my problems of bandit raids when they've been charged with maintaining the engine of death for eternity.

That's been the entire history of World of Warcraft... except Legion which tried to make you one of those "Avengers" by giving you Mjolnir.

TLDR The game has always had big lore characters that drive the overall events, where your character is left doing the majority of the ground work until you and a buttload of other save the world at the end.

[Tyris Flare]

The story is genuinely good imo, issues or otherwise. Not everything needs to be SWTOR, bud. Also, WoW's Art/Music slaps. The hell do you mean the only GOOD content's the instanced shit?

It has good art and music, but that's no really content you consume in the same way as story or dungeons.

Non-instanced content is leveling, world events, world quests, pet battles, etc. Imo, all of that content is mediocre to bad and always has been. Not just in an absolute sense, I mean compared to other games in the genre. Even in 2005 I would argue that City of Heroes and other games had far better outdoor content (but worse gameplay). Other games now have housing, far more interesting and dynamic world content, and so on.

The only good, unique content wow has consistently been able to deliver for 17 years is competitive instanced content like raids and dungeons.

[Aucald]

"WoW is Dying/Dead" type threads don't tend to produce much in the way of constructive discussion or debate. Closing this.