What is in your opinion more worse ? WoD story or SL story ?

[druchii5]

WoD, while overall bad in general lore premise, at least had interesting self-contained stories and worldbuilding pertaining to individual zones and the cultural aspects of both Draenei and Orcs. Shadowlands to me was just bad from the get-go and didn't even have any interesting "minor" storylines. Everything just felt unfitting, awkward, and out of place.

[Doffen]

I feel like I fell asleep somewhere around pre-legion and just woke up and I'm like "Sorry, who dis?" "What does s/he want?" "Ok, but why?" "Huh, this doesn't make any sense."

At least with WoD I had an anchor to somekind of lore ground. Yeah "Draenor is free!" was a cringy meme, but like "I will not serve!"... ???

Just as cringy I guess.

But the way Grom was so big about it made it hella more fun.

[aceperson]

wod's story was bad because it ruined the legion for me. the warlords were overall wasted and the legion became a literal cartoon army with infinite soldiers.

the shadowlands is inconsistent within it's own lore and ruins MUCH more lore than anything wod ever did. my vote is shadowlands lore is worse by a mile.

[Powerogue]

Still objectively WOD. Both do suffer the difficulty of being relatively divorced from the "main WoW story" taking place in very different dimensions (let's time travel, but change almost everything about what actually happened and what the characters looked/acted like! o_O), but I feel like SL has still got in some good moments with Thrall and his mom, Anduin and Sylvanas.

I was not interested in how WOD ended, I can at least say I'm interested in how this ends. Even if a lot of that is carryover from plot threads kicked off in BFA.

WOD was only somewhat salvaged by the epilogue, which doesn't count as WOD lore, it was BFA lore.

[TheRevenantHero]

Shadowlands is far worse. If you told me to tell you the story of SL I couldn't even begin. I don't know where we are, I don't know what anyone's motivations are, I don't know anything. Except that the Jailer is a bad guy and so is Sylvanus, except no she's not because he said "serve" in a cutscene (if he would have said "obey" instead she probably wouldn't have even blinked), and Elune let a bunch of night elves die and get sent to the Maw because she loves her people so much that...

I've seen better plotting on the back of microwave food. At least the plot is clear and follows to a logical conclusion - I open the box, I cook the food, I eat the food.

This is the best thing I've ever seen someone say about Shadowlands story. Hats off to you.

[MrMatticus]

SL. At least WoD wasn't directly plagiarized from Marvel. The Jailer is literally Thanos collecting sigils(infinity stones) for his gauntlet.

[Moozart]

Hey,

inspired by another SL story thread, i asked myself what MMOC ppls say:

Which one had/has the more worse story? WoD or SL ?

This thread should not feel like its purely targeted to ppl that do not like the SL story. Or to disgrace SL (or WoD). But i also do not want to add some „i liked both, but WoD more“ and „i liked both, but SL more“ options, since when you like SL factor 100 more than WoD, it still answers the question. In short: I purely wanna find out what ppl vote solely between the 2, even when that poll feels a bit negatively associated (what is not my intention per se).

So, without any real rating HOW good or bad you find the story of the 2 xpacs: Which one had/has, in your opinion, the more worse story ?

WoD or SL ?

Happy voting



Edit:

REMINDER: Dont forget we talk solely about the story/writing/lore here, NOT about the xpac itself (xpac as a whole)!

I actually liked the story of WOD tbo.

[Biomega]

We don't really know how SL ends, so for now WoD is worse - because fuck stupid time travel bullshit.

But it's not worse than SL by much, and if things keep going like this by the end of SL it might well be the worst story we ever had...

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Wods story was and but it could mostly be ignored in the wider scope of the lore but shadowlands has tainted pretty much every aspect of the lore in ways that can’t be ignored unless it’s all made non canon.

[Baroclinic]

WoD story should have ended after Garrosh bit it. Not our timeline, not our problem anymore.
Also nearly all time travel is done like crap.

Shadowlands isn't finished yet, but it has a ways to go to ever becoming as bad.

[Darkeon]

I'd say Shadowlands.

Warlords of Draenor had some potential, mostly fueled by nostalgia - Turned out bad and rushed.

Shadowlands just left me completely disincentivized towards Story by Blizzard.

[Syegfryed]

wod was hundred of miles better, it had a dumb and simple plot but it was better than this gigantic mess.

Even "draenor is free" is far ahead better than "i will never serve", bullshit, no contest.

[Steelangel]

Warlords' story was hot garbage that threw away so many good storylines and killed off good characters as dungeon bosses.

Shadowlands is slow, but I'm actually invested in the story; unlike a lot of people here who don't seem to understand it, it does make sense and doesn't really retcon much---as long as you assume the non-omniscient narrator.

[Athorha]

I think Blizzard needs to boost this ingame, not by much, but by a decent measure. One of the issues of current WoW story is that there is insane over reliance on mysteries, secrets and so on and so forth.

Like for the life of me, I don't understand why covenant leaders don't come clean on how exactly the whole Zovaal thing happened. Same goes for the first ones or Elune - like she's a bloody Winter Queen's sister - so why can't we get some explanations literally from the horse's mouth there - we deserve at least that for saving her and her furries' ass 500 times. And so on and so forth.

Instead Blizz keeps doing these Ilgynoth-like half sentences or shit we overhear or some 2 min cinematics with few lines missing the context like Elune one. Like until now, I have no fucking clue what Zovaal even tried to do to even be cast down to the Maw and what Arbiter actually is/was and how it got clearly Zovaal's bauble. And this shit - it really should have been revealed 9.0, so players would have actual information to work with instead of being with this feeling "this shit makes no sense".

I really hope that going forward Blizzard will adjust storytelling to be richer on detail ingame, the obvious questions that every sane person would ask right away should have an answer. Now 100% there should be mystery, but not bloody everything should be fogged up, because it's just turns everything into nonsense.

Even having books scattered throughout the shadowlands that players have to piece together and translate to find Easter eggs in the story would be a nice change of pace with the secret discoveries they like adding.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Both are atrocious, but I think WoD would catually edge out the win (as in being better), solely because the characters we met along the way were more interesting. Recently me and my buddies realized that we find barely any of the SL characters memorable or interesting. Same for their stories. The actions of the covenants are just baffling and moronic. Also fucking up your afterlife mythos is probably even worse than time-travel-multiverse shenanigans.

- - - Updated - - -

WoDs u-turn will forever be worst.

WE WILL BE CONQ.... Eh, I mean, DRAENOR IS F(REEEEEEEE)

Once Sylvans has been fully redeemed and is now absolved of all her crimes and shouts "the shadowlands are freeee", this will dethrone WoD once and for all.

In no way did they choose to make Sylvanas Warchief with the intention of "This'll lead into the Shadowlands expansion where she serves the Jailer in two expansions time." They decided she'd make the most sense as the character that could motivate the Horde and Alliance into fighting with each other in an expansion where we were meant to be joined against a world ending threat and then dropped that plot point almost immediately after the Stormheim questing ended. The same questing experience which completely contradicts the Shadowlands story two expansions later where she was trying to make more Valkyr and more undead as result and how Helya didn't have (and still doesn't despite just turning up in the Maw randomly) a connection to a figure called the Jailer. The same plot thread that gets referenced in Sylvanas' own thoughts in the lead up book to Battle for Azeroth and didn't get contradicted until 8.2.5 where she was suddenly working for a greater power and using new magic.

You'll have to point out how Ilgynoth teased the Dreadlords being a creation of Denathrius and please don't tell me you're using the random whispers which people retroactively make fit. Chronicles wasn't released with the intent of it's contents being explored in game, it was meant to be a series of books giving things already seen in game a definitive explanation which the cosmic chart did by laying out the powers exactly as they are in the universe, till it was retconned to just be an in-universe titan fan book.

There was no way Shadowlands had any conclusive concept or storyline planned prior to Nazjatar with the amount of "um... this is what actually happened" retcons that occurred to justify it happening e.g. Shadowlands: "Oh yeah Mueh'zala was totally involved in ensuring Sylvanas became Warchief by getting Vol'jin to die and making him choose her as planned, the fact that completely contradicts the event where this happened and then stringing along the player base with an inconclusive side quest in BfA which in no way hints at this was us just hiding the fact.".

Couldn't agree more. It's baffling how people keep claiming to see this obvious grand plan of Blizzard, when the pieces just don't fit at all. This naive believe and utter disconnect from reality is just painful. The way the novels are written alone is already enough proof that no one involved knew at the time of BfA's creation what Sylvana's true motive was.

[beanman12345]

I mean wow story has always been shit. And yes I mean exactly that, all the way to vanilla, compared to any other medium, or even other's in the genre, the story in WoW has just always been terrible. Is this shit worse than that shit? idk it's shit.

[schwarzkopf]

This is where we apply the standard rule for all things WoW.

<insert current thing> is always the worst example of <thing> ever.

The story is fine, problem is people just can't be bothered acutally following it - they just want the action and explosions.

Same thing happened with GoT, story was fine all the way to the end - but people ignored all the plot development, then whinged when they didn't understand the story.

[MoanaLisa]

I sort of liked the story in Warlords, especially the zone story in Shadowmoon Valley. I think maybe leveling through there might have been the best part of the expansion for me. Of course SL isn't finished yet but it's not looking especially good.

[Mightytasty]

This is where we apply the standard rule for all things WoW.

<insert current thing> is always the worst example of <thing> ever.

The story is fine, problem is people just can't be bothered acutally following it - they just want the action and explosions.

Same thing happened with GoT, story was fine all the way to the end - but people ignored all the plot development, then whinged when they didn't understand the story.

Did... did you just compare WoW's story to game of thrones, in a positive way? Yeah, the plot development in GoT was ignored all right... by the WRITERS.

This is such a bad take, holy shit.

[Sluvs]

While its the beggining of the expansion, therefore kinda hard to say of the story is truly that bad, I can definitely tell that it is not good.

The biggest reason that SL story bothers me is that it feels like a betrayal to what the warcraft really is. Warcraft is about, IMHO, about grounded conflict. Its themes are usually medieval with a little sci-fi thrown into it. It's about Silithus and the shifting sands war. It's about fighting a legion of demons. It's about defending the world from zombies in a massive war. Im not sure if I explained it properly, but I believe that SL expanded the universe so much that it does not even feel like warcraft. I mean, how do you go from slaying quilboars to fighting the God of death? Is not that the setting is bad, it's just that it does not feel like WoW. it also feels disrespectful to the core material when you demote Arthas to just a grunt in The jailer's plan, it feels like a betrayal to have the old gods be simply small parts of the void lords. The current threats are so far removed from azeroth, from reality itself, from us, that they barely feel real.

The reason why garrosh is such a compelling villain is because we could see his rise too power, we knew him and, to a certain extent, even understood and agreed with him.

The jailer, the void lords, the war between the void and the light are so alien to us that it feels like they are from another game altogether. The cosmic theme, while interesting, falls flat in comparison to the rebellion in suramar or to beating ogres in some far off land.

WoD on the other hand, was messy, the time travel saw to that, but once we were there facing our foes, beating out ogres and orcs, facing off against demons it unmistakebly felt like WoW. Yes, it was a bit over the top, but WoD's story felt very much like a warcraft story.

So if you ask me which one I enjoyed more, WoD is definitely my answer. Sure, it was cut short. Sure it was messy. But it felt like Warcraft.