Recent writing has been dubbed "the worst ever" by the community & mainstream media

[Super Dickmann]

It always puzzles me why people who (presumably) play video games are so eager to slag off games journalists for not being "proper" journalists, like they don't consider gaming to be a "proper" hobby and instead of quitting decide to attack people who might take it a bit more seriously than they do.

You know the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Game journalism has the most acute case of it of any field because due to the field having no prestige it attracts mostly entry level employees who want to get their foot in the door for other forms of journalism, not any interest in gaming in particular. They might get scoops from publishers to work with and which may be interesting, but that's about it. When it comes to actual analysis, your average player of the game de jour will simply know more by virtue of actually playing it for a much longer time frame than the journo. In this case, the journalist likely has some knowledge of other stories, so he can confidently say that the story sucks dick in comparison to others and he'd be right. However, because he lacks the necessary background in playing this crap for as long as most people on this forum, he can't adequately compare it or bring up where it fails relative to the rest of the franchise's story.

[Relapses]

This community's perception of something is perhaps the most meaningless thing that's ever existed. This is the only video game I know of where people actively play it yet do nothing but complain about how much they dislike every aspect of it. Few people who identify as part of this community want to discuss ways to make the game better (outside of claiming Blizzard should design the game specifically around their preferences, nothing else), they simply want validation from other people that their opinion that the expansion does, indeed, suck is still relevant.

[Mendzia]

Story is total horseshit.

[Kehego]

lmfao you had arthas like fucking team rocket from pokemon throughout northrend and THIS is the worst it has been?

"Me failing to destroy you was part of my master plan all along! ahahaha"

[Aucald]

PC Gamer's take on the post-SoD cinematic is probably one of the more unfocused criticisms I've actually seen from the outfit. It's a cinematic and greater story-arc with lots of issues, there's no doubt about that, but "The Jailer randomly decides to be nice to Slyvanas and restores her soul—effectively turning her back into a living creature?" It's pretty obvious from context that the Jailer is punishing Sylvanas for her insubordination, so the idea that she's being "rewarded" and that it's "for no reason" is demonstrably false. We have no clue if she's been restored to full life, either; so that's just speculation without any real basis. Ditto for the assumed redemption arc, which while possible is by no means assured or guaranteed. A better criticism would've been to ask about Sylvanas' rationale for joining the Jailer in the first place, especially given the obvious thematic echo of the Lich King (especially with the Jailer's direct involvement in creating the Lich King in the first place) which Sylvanas would have to pick up on unless she was blindfolded and wearing noise-canceling headphones since BfA. Hell, criticizing BfA would've been a better bet from the get-go, whose issues in both the narrative and characterization departments dwarf Shadowlands in my opinion. A lot of what's wrong with Shadowlands really stems from trying "fix" or at least rationalize the absurdity of what BfA did to both the factions and the individual characters involved, and that's when it not trying to pointedly ignore it or patch over it with varying degrees of success.

[Kehego]

People have been complaining about stupid stories, retcons and poor character development at least since TBC. The only difference nowadays is there is a couple of e-celebs to provide opinions for people to rally around.

This is unironcally it.

Pyromancer is a top tier pleb that thinks his interpretation is the written lore. Kid will argue about whats in the chronicle

[Darknessvamp]

I mean if I was writing from the point where 9.1 is just the cut off point then...
First I'd write from the view point the First Ones are and were not a group of real beings, as in they were essentially the Shadowlands version of RL God made up by the Covenant figure heads as they believed 'something' must have come before and they justified it by pointing at architecture and things they had randomly just pulled into the ether with the Arbiter (however that started) but couldn't understand themselves and they just 'gifted' themselves their 'storied' sigils which formed when they first took anima from the souls that eventually entered their realm and the reason why we never heard about or learnt much about them is that they just were a taboo subject to explore (outside the Brokers who exist to just go insane in trying to justify them). Secondly, the Jailer literally just walked himself and Anduin into a literal primal energy grinder caused by trying to channel the sigils into 'something' and we likely will never see either of them again after having been atomised by stupidly (completely in character for him) walking into it before our eyes (though we don't realise that is what happened as it looks like they just passed into a portal).

From the conclusion of the Sanctum of Domination Raid, the few racial and group leaders we have in the Shadowlands are trying to appeal to the Covenant leaders to use their new sigils to let our combined forces somehow attempt to follow on after the Jailer where ever he has gone on his lonesome (he ded though) and the new triumvirate make the final decision that it would be heretical to do so because stuff about the first ones is Taboo in their eyes and since they don't actually know where or what the Jailer has really done, they don't want any other random mortals repeating what he has done or doing something sacrilegious at that destination. So they rebuke the mortal leaders while realising that all their problems seem to have cleared up, they no longer have a Jailer to deal with, Denathrius has fk'd off from the Shadowlands and they can bring everything back to normal once they get a new Arbiter somehow and so they make the declaration that all living Mortals have to return to the living World now or they will be forced to become a Denizen of the Shadowlands (they'll execute them and throw them into the system).

The Racial leaders try to bargain by pointing out the Mawsworn, Dreadlords and the Jailer being threats but they declare they're all problems for the Shadowlands to solve on their own. Some citizens who have come randomly through the portals throughout the expansion decide to stay to be with their loved ones (not realising that that won't be happening) and some of our 'friends' among the denizens of the realm try to champion keeping some form of connection with the living world before they get talked down by the Covenant leaders. As the Racial Leaders and other Mortals go to leave with Sylvanas in shackles (for her own good and despite the fact she keeps whining about how the Jailer must be dealt with) and the Shadowlands portals and tears to be sealed behind them, they're stopped by the Archon who demands both abhorrent undead are left behind. Of course everyone looks at Sylvanas having been the criminal behind everything but who's the second? Everyone looks towards Bolv- "The spawn of Light and Death is a slight against the purpose and clear transgressions against our people!" claims the Archon, it's clearly Calia Menethil she means. Calia 'benevolently' acquiesces to stay behind and come to terms with the Archon if it allows people to leave, with the added caveat that she wants to try and see the fate of Arthas while Bolver argues that Slyvanas has as many crimes to answer on Azeroth as she does in the Shadowlands. The Archon eventually gets angry at being denied and calls those loyal to her to take Sylvanas by force, the Primus who foresaw a conflict arising alerts the Winter Queen they work together to bar the Kyrian forces and ordering the rest to leave. Renathal and the fellow members of the Court of Harvesters hurry the mortals through to Icecrown but unbeknownst to them detained both Calia and Sylvanas while everyone escaped and they quickly sealed the portal after the last person (Bolvar) passed through, we don't see the conclusion of the conflict that started in Oribos (at least in this or the following expansion).

From this point we discover there is a lower population of undead on Northrend's landmass than there should be if they were held back and we learn that they've literally gone underground, Expansion: WoW: Dark Descent. We also learn that in the time we spent in the Shadowlands:
- Alliance relations had become strained as Turalyon proved an unpopular temporary leader among races other than his Lightforged supporters and certain nobles.
- Alleria has gone off to do void stuff with her secret cabal of void stalkers separate from the Void Elf refugees much to their chagrin
- Velen is having some dilemma over the future of the Draenei
- Genn has suffered some kind of deterioration as a long term effect of the Worgen Curse that also threatens the rest of his race.
- Night Elves are angry about a lot and want some actual change.
- Magni is causing trouble for the Dwarves by acting stranger than usual.
- Gnomes are finally taking back Gnomeregan .
- Trolls are having a hard time finding a place in the Horde, Zandalari are regretting joining.
- Orcs are no longer that sure there should be a Horde.
- Undead are in conflict over who should represent them.
- Blood Elves don't know what is going on anymore, Nightborne are trying to grow the number of elves visiting their city as a hub of 'neutrality' among their kind.
- Goblins are not 100% on their new leader
- Pandas are just being pandas as usual
Aside from faction conflict:
- Some form of theological/spiritual revolt is occuring among many who have heard the stories of those returning from the Shadowlands and it's negatively affecting every group on Azeroth
- As a result of the Battle of Azeroth followed up by the subsequent defence/barricading of Northrend against the undead significantly reducing the strength of the factions and the armies, other third parties have stared to arise in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms to pose a threat to the exhausted returning adventurers and allied forces: Quillboar Warlords, Nerubian Supremacists Bands, Lingering Corruption of Old Ones/Gods forces, The 100 ship Vrykul raiding fleet, rogue wizard thieves, the establishment of Gadgetzan City and it's Jade funding and so many more not to mention the growing threat from forces below involving the buried dead, Ancient Troggs and the truth behind Kobold's fears of the Dark.
- Also the Murkwald, a group of very clever Murlocs who are one step ahead of everyone.
-All the above is a distraction though from the fact the Great sword in Silithus has shifted slightly due to seismic activity and Azeroth is dangerously close to dying much to the ignorance of M.O.T.H.E.R

-Also later in the expansion the amount of activity that Azeroth has exhibited over the years has drawn the attention of a newly achieved space exploratory force with the defeat of Legion and the stranded nature of the Eredar and they've landed on the Elusive Dragon Isles and bearing Dark omens for the future.

Something like that I guess.

[Skirdus]

Stop making characters do stupid, illogical things and preach stupid, illogical life lessons

[ro9ue]

In terms of lore/story SL may be worse than WoD. Hard to really decipher what does more damage to the authenticity of characters and the setting: minimizing the concept of death, or implicating endless duplications.

[McNeil]

I miss when WoW's story was more centered around world building rather than focussing on a group of characters that basically form the Avengers and take on the bad guy. I also find that all this extensive use of cutscenes unnecesary and all it does is how badly WoW's graphics age. They often can't even get the lip sync right and the mouth flapping looks straight up awful.

While I prefer the older expansions for storytelling they had a lot of their own flaws aswell. Blizzard didn't expect the game to last as long as it did at the time so they just used up known WC3 characters as villains while their motivations were never really shown (something modern WoW also suffers from as they just keep it a secret until the very end). I could buy that Kael'thas gets mad with his hunger for magic and succumbing to fel energy, I can even buy Illidan going insane and wanting to conquer all of Outland just to protect himself from Kil'jaeden, but the game should have had us interact with these characters way more often and get behind their motivations. Don't just keep it all for the books.

Shadowlands lore also suffers because it always feels like the actual story is not going anywhere. The fight between Sylvanas and Tyrande for example had no real consequence other than ending the whole night warrior plot which now feels completely pointless. We still don't know the Jailer's motivations, Sylvanas acts all over the place due to her stupidity (I wIlL NeVeR sErVe), our cast of Avengers is not doing anything other than escorting the players and for some reason the Jailer just lets them go after the raid. All they do is ask more questions than answer them and then end with a huge cliffhanger that will take another 6 months to be revealed. At this point I'm sure that I and many others will have lost all interest by now.

[Niwes]

hmm, my opinion can definitely not follow most statements here. story of TBC (even when throwing a few chars under the bus) made me read all wow lore books. story of SL makes me quit the game. in NO way i would ever compare SL story to anything before WoD. its like compare eating of an old chewing gum with eating a fresh pooped turd.

SL story to me (as a player that plays wow without sub interruption since may 2005 and read all books till illidan) is the worst pile of shit any company did in ages. it starts in BfA with that nonsense sulvunas shit story and peaks the top in SL. i liked all the other side stories in BfA like daughter of the sea, Troll King and Talajni story and others. In SL i factually think storywise is everything the maximum overpower bullshit writing. its like Danuser found some drugs, to made him even more brain fucked (never thought thats possible).

but ofc its all taste.

imo SL is the most horrible garbage writing possible and 100 miles far away from even being comparable to every story before WoD, including TBC. i am rather curious if they REALLY can top this with even more garbage story telling in next xpac. i cant imagine, but the idiot power is strong in these ones.

but its all taste. and for my taste, its even more worse than the worst Jean Claude Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren movie plot.

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In terms of lore/story SL may be worse than WoD. Hard to really decipher what does more damage to the authenticity of characters and the setting: minimizing the concept of death, or implicating endless duplications.

when you do not take the characters and characters development into account but just compare

- sulvunas / jaylorz / afterlife story
- time twist / parallel universe / iron horde story

then, well, its REALLY hard to find the most bottom one. yes.

and to be honest, WHEN taking characters into account, its same difficult to tell.

[Nnyco]

I guess rose tinted glasses work well for tbc since thats clearly the worst writing.

[Gaidax]

I think the reality is that WoW as means to tell a story can't really handle anything more than a self-contained expansion with a more basic character development.

I ​don't think that Legion to Shadowlands story is that horrible, it's not bad actually, if it all would have been told in a span of 1 or 1 and a half expansion max it would have been better received. But they smeared this whole Sylvanas plots within plots for whole 3 expansions to the point people simply lose sight of it mid-way and there was a long going feeling "just what the fuck are you doing" without any real answer to it for years - too long imo for MMO.

I also, do not really dig this split soul bad Sylvanas - good Sylvanas thing either. IMO, they should have have chosen a path of simply having the smartass and calculating Sylvanas falling into a trap of her own making, but without the get out of jail free card "my soul was not whole, I'm fluffy blue eyed Sylv now, let's hug".

They should have made her goal more noble and made her attempt to explain and sell it to everyone before going rogue, then there would be much less "why the f are you doing, what is this shit" moments all these years - you'd know the motive. Then they could go with 9.1 as is, minus soul cleaving BS with her realizing she fucked up on her own without the soul shit. Then they could have made her try to unfuck it and people would be less cringe about it.

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I guess rose tinted glasses work well for tbc since thats clearly the worst writing.

IMO TBC was by far the most fucked up writing any WoW expansion had ever. Notables killed off for hell knows what right and left, merely a setback and the whole cringe with Illidan. It had great moments too, but overall it was a bloody mess.

[Grimbold21]

Is it worse than GoT S8 though?

[noctim2]

what actually is this thread? before TBC classic, TBC was the holy grail of wow expansions. funny how people realize, that basically every expansion had a lot of cheeeese in it.

shadowlands is technically more clunky than bfa, which was quite nice from a flow standpoint and feels a lot smaller. it‘s closer to WoD in terms of playability.

[Hellspawn]

Is it worse than GoT S8 though?

It is... not franchise killing bad but it gets closer to that. I think BfA story was a bigger franchise killer.

what actually is this thread? before TBC classic, TBC was the holy grail of wow expansions. funny how people realize, that basically every expansion had a lot of cheeeese in it.

shadowlands is technically more clunky than bfa, which was quite nice from a flow standpoint and feels a lot smaller. it‘s closer to WoD in terms of playability.

I think if we would have TBC now as a new expansion, people would hate the story. In TBC story still felt more like a backdrop and a lot of people were not invested yet (Keep in mind that they had a massive influx of new players, while current retails is mostly old players)

[Varodoc]

Is it worse than GoT S8 though?

Night King getting oneshot by a small little punk wielding a knife.

VS.

N'Zoth getting pulverized in a crappy In-game cutscene.

I do not know, which is worse?

This isn't sarcasm by the way, I genuinely do not know the answer.

[anon5123]

Surprise surprise, when you start hiring people based on diversity quotas instead of hiring based on qualifications, the quality of your product decreases.

[Dellis0991]

Warcraft lore/writing never been A1 but in the pass it was tolerable enough to keep people hooked enough but now all I see is


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This community's perception of something is perhaps the most meaningless thing that's ever existed. This is the only video game I know of where people actively play it yet do nothing but complain about how much they dislike every aspect of it. Few people who identify as part of this community want to discuss ways to make the game better (outside of claiming Blizzard should design the game specifically around their preferences, nothing else), they simply want validation from other people that their opinion that the expansion does, indeed, suck is still relevant.

I agree with you somewhat, the problem is blizz stop caring about it fan community a long time ago, they don't look at us for anything, if anything they just know that we will spend money on shiny shit....quantity won out over quality a long time ago. Now we just left with faith and hope that they will tell a good story or add a long wanted feature to the game.

[Gaidax]

I agree with you somewhat, the problem is blizz stop caring about it fan community a long time ago, they don't look at us for anything, if anything they just know that we will spend money on shiny shit....quantity won out over quality a long time ago. Now we just left with faith and hope that they will tell a good story or add a long wanted feature to the game.

It's really not that, they just got caught up in their own bullshit. They set up some giga multi-expansion mystery plan thing, but they made it all so obscure and for such a long time that it stopped making sense to most people mid-way.

They really should have revealed Sylvanas' plan and motive much sooner in BFA. Instead they dragged it out for years until now and hell EVEN now we have no bloody clue what Sylvanas actually wanted to do and why she, despite all the red flags, that she being such a shrewed tactician undoubtedly realized, partnered with Jailer for that.

I think their biggest mistake was dragging it out for 5 years and fogging it up under 500 layers of bullshit. The whole Sylvanas arc should have been 3 years max and we should have had 90% of all necessary information year 2 already, including what the fuck she actually wants to do and why.