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

[Sondrelk]

i baffles me that people see this sylvanas fanfic redemption arc as "decent" or even "good", with the "i will never serve" after 2 expansions "serving"

It's mostly just Sylvanas who suffers from this plotline though, since it makes her come across like the most bafflingly incompetent and moronic broad this side of WotLK Arthas.

The rest of the characters do reasonably well. Anduin being corrupted like Arthas, though against his will, is a wonderful plotline whose only weakness is being linked to Sylvanas.
Bolvar is given the most lore since at least WotLK, and it is solid enough.

The base concept of SL is not that great, which might be what constitutes a greater problem in SL that it is likely impossible to untangle from. But compared to the absolute travesty that was the plot pileup in BfA I am willing to give SL the benefit of the doubt and say that SL cannot possibly be as awful.


BfA will always hold the crown for me on absolute worst plot, simply because it had my ideal setup yet managed to squander it so bad. A faction war with a naval focus and possible intrigue on why the war was even started is a wonderful and seemingly simple way to describe BfA,and yet it squandered it at every turn, peaking with the ending that simultaneously didn't actually give us a conclusion to the initial plothook, and also ruined a long anticipated villain by rushing into it.

SL still only really suffers from the Jailer being boring and Sylvanas being stupid. The Elune thing was explained perfectly well, just not really exciting enough to warrant the mystery. And SL as a whole is slightly creaking under the weight of a concept it cannot really support, but other than that most of the plot is perfectly serviceable, certainly not significantly worse than any other plot.


In summary BfA will always be worse, barring a similar plot suicide from SL.

[Biomega]

The style of the game is amazing. The artists drawing those worlds and characters and animations are really really good.

No question. Both the quality and the aesthetics are absolutely top-tier.

The writing, though, is middle-school tier. It reads like a tropey fanfic that steps into EVERY writing pitfall there is. It really is DCEU levels of cringe at times, "I will destrooooy yoouuuu!" and all that.

It bothers me that the writers seem to think we're stupid as an audience and couldn't handle more sophisticated writing.

[sam86]

People generally loved the soul split/personality change from Uther.

no we don't, in fact that is considered bullshit
what lot of ppl did like is part that Uther proves that Kyrian are blind fanatics who are wrong and he is right, not the part that his soul is 1502 parts some in azeroth some in frostmourne some in shadowlands, we literally visit his grave to honor or disgrace it in quest, he should have rested there, not half rest half grinding kyrians
not to mention Uther himself is considered icon of blind devotion in first place, that's literally his description in one of RPG books (I think Land of Conflict or Mystery)

And i doubt that leaving her to lesser creatures (jailer sees us as cockroaches or lower) to be punished is worse punish than anything he can do, if anything it shows he doesn't give a f8ck about her anymore

- - - Updated - - -

Writing is bad and all your "waifu" nonsense

what part is nonsense? the waifu part is sadly true, internet doesn't forget even if he deleted them

[Super Dickmann]

In summary BfA will always be worse, barring a similar plot suicide from SL.

SL doesn't have the rope necessary to kill itself. The only thing it really needs to conclude on its initial premise is have us beat down the Janitor next patch, seal the afterlives and leave how they work post-Arbiter vague and leave the dreadlords and Denathrius as their own conspiracy overarching villains going forward. If they want to be really daring they can have the Blue Man partially succeed to justify a world revamp but even that isn't necessary. They simply don't have enough pieces left on the board and anything that can be meaningfully fucked up either already was in BFA (everything about the factions, Anduin, Teldrassil, night elves, Sylvanas etc.) or already fucked up by 9.1 (Sylvanas redemption, lol Elune).

I don't know what even could be a worst case scenario and also be unexpected. They could redeem Sylvanas into the Arbiter role, redeem Arthas, kill both the Janitor and the Dreadlords and have Anduin return trauma-free, but that still leaves us at the exact same spot we were at the end of BFA regarding the playable factions so nothing of value is lost provided the Shadowlands are sealed.

It's rare, but kind of impressive, that you end up in a situation where the plot fails so often that it is simply unable to fail any further.

[Nutri]

Sometimes I wish we could just go back to the 'one storyline per expansion' type of writing.
No arc spread over 3 xpacs, just give me a big bad dude on the boxcover art and work the entire xpac towards killing that big baddy.

WotlK did that. Just have the LK show up here and there to remember who you're hunting and have him taunt you a bit to validate killing him even more. Have a 'a few years of peace went by but now a new threat rises' moment and let the next xpac start.

[Smallfruitbat]

The Warcraft story is becoming unrecognisable, in part because they have fallen into the trap that there always has to be something bigger and badder just out of sight that is controlling/causing all the ills of Azeroth.

At this stage, I'm not sure it's fixable. Going back 5 years, I wouldn't have killed off KJ and defeated Sargeras for a start. There were better ways of starting a faction conflict for BFA -which would have felt less contrived than a big sword sticking out of the planet. In fact, the Horde and Alliance blaming one another for the failure to take them out would have made more sense.

I also find the execution poor. If Sylvanas and the Jailer are supposedly the big bads of this expansion, why don't we interact with them? Chasing Sylvanas across Azeroth in BFA would have added some interest, especially if we got to see a trail of destruction left by the Night Warrior who was hunting her. We could have had hints that Sylvanas was working with someone and the who and why. That would have made the raid more satisfying. There should have been direct interaction with the Jailer, I was flinging the Ashbringer around not too long ago, I'm a pretty powerful foe. Why wasn't he interested in recruiting me. If you check my CV, I'm up there in terms of influence. Instead, we get snippets and then a big reveal cinematic and they wonder why players aren't interested. Give me a villain that I understand and I will love plotting against them and chasing them down. Show me a cinematic with a grumbling giant who says he's going to fix the world and I'm out.

[Tarba]

It's not the worst ever. It has always been incredibly bad.
It's just more important now while in TBC you would not even see the story.

[Divada]

As long as those in charge of the writing team remain nothing will change. There needs to be complete change in the team, starting at the top. Finish off the current storyline, replace the leadership and tell a new, contained story for the next expansion. WoW needs a fresh outlook and this isn't just limited to writers -- game design needs improved across the board.

[Tamurello]

its prety bad, the elune/tyrande thing was 1005 ringe

havig said that the whole sylvanas battle for azeroth stuff was terrible

[Nyel]

Where is the I absolutely hate it option?

I do not like it doesn't reflect my opinion on the garbage story and writing in Shadowlands at all.

[Nerovar]

Considering how fundamentally SL fucked the concept of death / Afterlive, i strongly disagree with it being worse than TBC.

TBC biggest crime was throwing some WC2 / WC3 characters under the bus, that pales in what SL has done.
Nevermind that SL storytelling is a failure with a millions of dollar budget.

Agreed. Ruining a few cool characters is one thing. Ruining the context in which cool characters can exist to begin with is a lot worse.

[AeneasBK]

Everyone will have a point at which they feel the story has gone too far into stupidland and therefore doesn't matter anymore. For some people that was Cataclysm, for a lot of people that was Mists of Pandaria, and for most everyone else it was Warlords of Draenor.

How, 3 expansions later, anyone is expecting the story not to be saturated in dumb, is beyond me.

[Ivarr]

Warhammer 40k's origin story, The Horus Heresy is the only example of galaxy-multi-dimensional-bargain-with-gods stakes are handled well. This is because the setting, despite its absurd scale is grounded in all the best that fiction has to offer.

The amount of characters, mainly the primarchs, are vast, but they're also highly distinct, extreme personalities, larger than life. They all have a completely unique, well argued, perspective and they're willing to sacrifice everything in order to assert this perspective. Even though the entire galaxy-spanning conflict is split along two factions, just like in WoW, the various philosophies within each faction are often at odds with each other to the point where the characters have as much to fear from their friends as they do from their enemies.

This is something WoW lacks. Sylvanas is merely an antagonist for the sake of being an antagonist. The lore constantly has to bend around her to accommodate her highly whimsical motivations.

The protagonist don't have an actual personality. Thrall is Jaina, Jaina is Anduin, Anduin is Baine, Baine is Bolvar. They are never disagreeing on anything, their wants and desires are identical. They look different but they're the same entity.

Ultimately, The Horus Heresy got away with these giant celestial odds because it was written as a tragedy. The Horus Heresy explained why the 40k universe is such a miserable place in constant strive. It desolved the universe order and everything is conflict.

WoW on the other hand, constantly has to let he player know they've won. They saved the universe time and time again. Every bad guy ends up dead with loot to be distributed. Order and peace restored to the land, the peasants can sleep sound knowing the dragon is dead.

By constantly putting the universe at stake, while at the same time being obviously unable to change it in a major fashion, the game has limited its story potential to repeating the same stale story over and over again.

[Khann]

I really like lore through out the expansions. World of WarCraft did not die with Wrath of the Lich King and Shadowlands are just great. I liked all the lore so far, including Legion, Warlords of Draenor, Mists of Pandaria, Cataclysm. I am sorry if you cannot enjoy it as I do but saying it that is "WORSE" is really a subjective opinion and you let streamers, like Asmongold to influence your own opinion as the only opinion there is.

I am not a streamer but I do have an opinion and my opinion is that Asmongold is the worse that can happen to this community and just the fact that he has such popularity, clearly says about what kind of players you get in the game and again - those are not the only players.

[mysticx]

It's mostly just Sylvanas who suffers from this plotline though, since it makes her come across like the most bafflingly incompetent and moronic broad this side of WotLK Arthas.

The worst part of it is that even when Sylvanas was indeed that mind-bendingly moronic, she *still* ran rings around the rest of the characters.

The Alliance still stepped into her plague-traps at Undercity (The place where green plague-goo is the #1 export) *twice*, only saved by Jaina-ex-machina, why are Alliance characters so powerful? To surmount the handicap of being as dense as a crate of anvils!

The supposed masterminds-by-retcon (Hardly any build-up at all, so "It was dreadlords all along" certainly feels like a retcon.) suddenly appearing everywhere, oh so smart! Then Thanos... oops, the jailer, doing his infinity gauntlet thing with those covenant McGuffins (One of which we delivered to him personally, did anybody not see that coming?), and giving Sylvanas half of her soul back so she can be washed clean of any responsibility, it all feels so cobbled together, like they watched "Infinity war" and "Endgame" at movie night one time and thought "We gotta do something like that!"

So here we are, putting together another set of covenant McGuffins over the new campaign chapters, let's wait for the "I. am. Sylvanas."-scene, shall we?

[Sondrelk]

SL doesn't have the rope necessary to kill itself. The only thing it really needs to conclude on its initial premise is have us beat down the Janitor next patch, seal the afterlives and leave how they work post-Arbiter vague and leave the dreadlords and Denathrius as their own conspiracy overarching villains going forward. If they want to be really daring they can have the Blue Man partially succeed to justify a world revamp but even that isn't necessary. They simply don't have enough pieces left on the board and anything that can be meaningfully fucked up either already was in BFA (everything about the factions, Anduin, Teldrassil, night elves, Sylvanas etc.) or already fucked up by 9.1 (Sylvanas redemption, lol Elune).

I don't know what even could be a worst case scenario and also be unexpected. They could redeem Sylvanas into the Arbiter role, redeem Arthas, kill both the Janitor and the Dreadlords and have Anduin return trauma-free, but that still leaves us at the exact same spot we were at the end of BFA regarding the playable factions so nothing of value is lost provided the Shadowlands are sealed.

It's rare, but kind of impressive, that you end up in a situation where the plot fails so often that it is simply unable to fail any further.

The very concept if going to the Shadowlands is enough rope for the story to hang itself I would argue. It's unlikely it will even manage, but the story has taken a significant blow just from actually getting cold hard proof of how the afterlife works.
As I have said before, we now know enough about the Shadowlands for each ghost we encounter to be a plothole without further explanation.

Generally though I agree. The material presented in BfA was far more volatile when it crashed and burned. Nazjatar was highly anticipated ever since the Naga was first presented, and while it looked about what it should (barring the stupid decision to not make it actually underwater) it's inclusion in BfA meant it got tainted by the same problems that plagued the expansion as a whole when it decided to cram too much into the expansion.

[Life-Binder]

TBC, WoD, BFA were all equal/worse

[loras]

With the recent allegations involving Activison-Blizzard aside, since BFA majority of the community have expressed their opinions in a negative manner towards Blizzard regarding the story.
"Sylvanas, Saurfang, and many other characters have took a 180 degree or more turn for the worse. They are unrecognizable now.", says one.
"Sylvanas is getting redeemed. The Jailer is basically f**king Thanos."
"I will never serve. Except you have been serving for the past 2 expansions."

While I like the current Shadowlands story, you cannot argue that it can't be better. Many holes are in the plot. Things don't make sense at all like Elune dealing with the Night Elves in BFA. BFA from a story view is the absolute worst garbage writing I have ever seen from this game. Nothing about it did anything good or progressively for the story.

"It feels weird leading your class hall as a Tauren Druid in Legion and protecting nature and becoming it's guardian only for the pre-patch to go and set a world tree on fire and destroy nature.", says a player.

Honestly? I think they should abandon the SL story entirely. They should end it with 9.1 and continue it at another point like they seem to be with WoD although Yrel getting villain batted randomly is quite odd. We should get a SL pt 2 in the future where they have the resources, time, and inside-stability to make a good story and a good game.

My questions for you?
How would you or could the devs make the story better and do you like the current story or not?


PC Gamer on Sylvanas, Shadowlands, and more:







The recent cinematics from Blizzard have been so negatively perceived that they have been flooded with negative comments, jokes and dislikes and thus unlisted out of embarrassment.

Sadly i find myself agreeing almost entirely with the PC gamer article.
For some reason they decided to go off the deep end around halfway through Legion. :/

At least we got a nice cinematic of Sylvie's BF getting decapitated by Tyrande.

The worst part of it though is that the smaller storylines really aren't bad most of the time (though understandably some people get embittered over them by association).

[Unholyvamp]

That is how i feel when i see a thread that has X,Y,Z influencer's opinion video about how things should or should not be.



Tell you what we can do next.
Let's all grab hands and jump of the ledge like lemmings.


The amount of influence these people have on the community is just scary.

[Super Dickmann]

The very concept if going to the Shadowlands is enough rope for the story to hang itself I would argue. It's unlikely it will even manage, but the story has taken a significant blow just from actually getting cold hard proof of how the afterlife works.
As I have said before, we now know enough about the Shadowlands for each ghost we encounter to be a plothole without further explanation.

I agree entirely that the worst thing about Shadowlands is the premise. The moment it became canon it already did the worst of the damage it was going to do by fucking over death. It is fundamentally, conceptually bad irrespective of any execution purely by removing death as the capstone of any character and instead adding an addendum to it.

BFA on the other hand as you say had among the best premises they've ever done only to completely ruin not just the premise but every single other aspect it touched, torching all remaining plot threads and turning the factions into indistinguishable grey goo. BFA did its damage in escalating order from its pre-release book BTS onwards, becoming worse and worse with every predictable, inevitable turn of the plot.

Shadowlands on the other hand did almost all of its damage upon being announced because of its singularly poor concept and all of its absolutely worst aspects as regards execution pertain to elements from BFA from Sylvanas to the night elves. Otherwise in terms of characterization and individual storyline I can more distinctly summarize the personalities of the Venthyr Court than I can the entire Horde council short of Thrall and the Zandalari. The plot's worst sin is that it's derivative, boring and obtuse rather than it being a coke-addled trainwreck that jumps from plot point to plot point wasting away everything in touches in service of destroying one of the main pillars of the setting.

Should Shadowlands end with the Veil being sealed then a character being killed will be just as final as it would be otherwise where any number of retarded contrivances could return them. On the other hand, the after-effects of neutering every playable race and turning every recurring character into an Anduin pastiche as well as wasting away the Old Gods and Nazjatar within two patches will continue to taint any further narrative.

P.S and slightly off-topic while Azshara herself was great, Nazjatar itself was abysmal and dealt the deathblow to the naga as a threat when what should've been a gigantic underwater metropolis consisted 60% of overground ruins, inexplicably revealed as a surface area so that the naga are more vulnerable to attack. This with not one but two irritating support races, with those gilblins going on about friendship being a walking argument for Azshara being right.