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

[Ivarr]

Cataclysm's main plot was rushed and unfinished. But where the expansion truly shines is in all the smaller stories it provided. We even got a dwarven wedding!

At this point i just feel like that the writers just wanted to remove any potential plotpoint that still exists on Azeroth so that even to option to focus on anything else but the cosmology chart is nonexistent.

Just like they're jettisoning any current gameplay content with every new patch.

I like Draenor, I like the Broken Isles, I like Zandalar and Kul'tiras. I want to revisit them. Nothing majorly important, but just for trivial stuff. Find some rare mob that drops something that's required for a recipe or a world quest that contributes to some reputation in the current expansion.

All this content that Blizzard made is still legit, it's good stuff. I don't understand what keeps them from recycling it by scattering bread crumbs all over these previous expansions for players to pursue.

[Kralljin]

I like Draenor, I like the Broken Isles, I like Zandalar and Kul'tiras. I want to revisit them. Nothing majorly important, but just for trivial stuff. Find some rare mob that drops something that's required for a recipe or a world quest that contributes to some reputation in the current expansion.

No, you "play the patch" and you're happy with it.

When it takes 7-8 months to develop that patch!

[Talrath]

Thought about the story and compared to other mmorpgs its terrible, compare Shadowlands with other expansions of WoW, you could say that its mediocre.

Vanilla was more about that you are a nameless adventurer, there were alot of problems, both small and big ones. There were many plans going on behind the scenes such as Fandral sending you to ungoro crater for the plants. You didnt know jackshit and just thought, well hes the arch druid he knows best, only to find out he actually was making sure that malfurion wouldnt wake up. There were many other plan set in motion during vanilla.

Burning Crusade had kinda the same vibe, a nameless adventurer but with no real plans behind the scenes. Nothing that would help the story in the future.

WoTLK you were a seasoned veteran but still a namesless adventurer. Still there were no real pland behind the scenes. Nothing that would help the story in the future.

Cataclysme + MoP same story as BC and WOTLK.

WoD is where you suddenly became a champion and the story still had nothing that would help the story in the future. (same with Legion and BFA)

You can clearly see what happend when the story kept getting worse and worse, essentially after Vanilla the story got real bad. How many videos of speculation were made because of Vanilla, just watch Pyromancer and Bellular + the community speculating cuz of the breadcrombs of Vanilla. They ditched the nameles adventurer for a champion, which is nice but the way they told the story was horrible. Think it would have been better for them to make it canon that after every expansion, at the end of the raid, the so called adventurers (us) died to protect the world and that the NPC, who went with you, is a legend cuz he/she survived the fight. Not only does it let the developers still force you kill boars, but also the NPC dont have to tell you everything what happend cuz you are just an adventurer and your character doesnt know what really happend (we do but not our character). NPC can make you do things which arent exactly a good thing but our character is a noob and doesnt know what we as players know, can even make it more subtle to even fool the players, basically a Fandral kind of a sceme.

Yes there is the Yoggie puzzle box, but they only did put it in just for the lolz. Many times moments popped where it was that it looked that the words of the puzzle box would come true but then blizzard did a quick u turn and because of this the story suffered alot.

In short:
They should stick with the nameless adventurer who dies at the end of the expansion.

[Ivarr]

Yes exactly. The bigger the player, the smaller the world. It's World of Warcraft. The world is supposed to be this tenacious, wicked beast that the player tries to tame, but never will. That's how you get players to keep chasing that purple dragon, and staying subscribed because they will never catch it.

[Super Dickmann]

To be fair, despite Shadowlands being a complete asspull, it also managed to tarnish very substantial elements of pre existing lore, it however wasn't material that could be used for future content.

I think one of the reasons I've been more charitable towards Shadowlands than a lot of people upon its release is that I think the premise and its consequences are by far the worst part of its effects on the story going forward. Demystifying death is a terrible thing and even if it ends with the Veil sealed you'd still have taken the genie out of the battle for a story that's disposable and has to spend much of its main story runtime resolving plot threads in different, but equally incompetent ways to BFA.

There are other very bad character choices. Kel'thuzad and Elune tower over all others in that regard. Kel'thuzad's entire character dynamic with Arthas and Ner'zhul and all his prior lore was gutted to the core for the sake of making an announcer for a shitty rare mob mechanic in the Maw. He was bland but harmless in 9.0, but 9.1 does nothing with any element of him and even destroys his backstory for the sake of shilling the Jailer while not in any way working with his current predicament. Him and Sylvanas are two rooms across yet despite history emphasized as late as last patch nothing comes of it. It really is the worst character writing short of Sylvanas herself, but while Sylvanas was fucked since BFA everything done with Kel'thuzad in 9.1 was unnecessary character assassination. Elune is another element of the demystification problem discussed where simply giving her a voice, face and familial relationships is a mistake no matter if you got Mark Twain to write it it's just counter to the purpose. Having her very first appearance be going 'lol I fucked up, sorry fam' is just salt in the wound.

Other characters though get better shakes than they do in their actual previous WoW appearances provided you can accept the premise they exist in, like Kael, Vashj and even Bluether.

Elements like the Dreadlords I admit more amount to personal preference - the retcon returns them the closest they've been to their WC3 version as a cabal that's a part of the Legion, but distinct within it and has a strong connection to undeath and have their own rules of conduct regarding each other and opens possibilities for further stories in a setting that badly needed to stop killing its old baddies. I can't pretend to give a shit about this somehow undermining Sargeras when this is the fifth permutation of that particular plot point of which most have put it down to dreadlords anyway. Starting with the eredar converting him in the WC3 manual, then the dreadlords being behind it in TBC, then it being his general ennui over the fruitlessness of his fight per some comic pages, then his reaction to the void (as practiced by dreadlords) being what did it in Chronicle and finally the former still being the case but a vampire in the afterlife having told them to do it. Likewise when it comes to the Lich Kings when the story falls over itself to emphasize that all of them had their volition as they did what they did and the Blue Man wasn't in charge.

But i agree that BfA's biggest sin was throwing so much pre established lore into a dumpster fire.
Between Kul Tiras, Zandalar, the faction war (and revisting Horde vs. Alliance Battlefields all over Azeroth), Nazjatar and the Black Empire, a more "conservative" could've turned that material into 2 (or even 3) expansions easily.
At this point i just feel like that the writers just wanted to remove any potential plotpoint that still exists on Azeroth so that even to option to focus on anything else but the cosmology chart is nonexistent.
The sad part is really, when you look at BfA and simply *remove* 8.3, nothing changes.
Literally nothing, the ending of fourth war in 8.2.5. had a bigger impact on the story than the defeat of N'zoth, because he did achieve nothing when he was freed and we had to expend nothing to defeat him.

BFA was a full throated massacre of all remaining plot threads on Azeroth inexorably moving towards destroying one of the pillars of the game in the factions, only to pussy out of it at the last moment. Thus rendering itself not only purely destructive in the story sense but pointless in achieving the gameplay benefit that would be the sole fruit of such a route. Even the Island Expedition blurbs and story build up story points and cultures that could've carried zones or questlines of their own, like surviving nerubians, secret forges of tol'vir, the Drakkari, etc. etc, simply to destroy them. It had a great premise and all the means to not just make a great expansion story, but also develop room for anything from two to three expansions further off, with both Azshara and the Black Empire able to carry such narratives, but instead systematically squandered it all. By comparison, there are few elements of Shadowlands that weren't already fucked, albeit in marginally different ways, by the time it got to them or aren't products of its fundamentally bricked premise.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The one thing I will give Shadowlands credit for is not regurgitating the same Horde vs Alliance storyline, and instead creating 4 new factions that are in a different conflict.

[Gaidax]

In short:
They should stick with the nameless adventurer who dies at the end of the expansion.

Ehhh... WoTLK "nameless adventurer" with Lich King, Alliance and Horde leaders and all the notables strolling around you? With Lich King declaring it was his plan all along to grab you as his champion.

WoTLK is where the whole "nameless adventurer" rolled over and died and IMO it's really not an issue, because let's be real - it's 17 years of WoW and my main over all these years is all but a "nameless adventurer" with all the lords, kings, gods and even bloody titans she participated in taking down.

If anything, it would be weird and cringe as hell for our character to be addressed anything less than a champion or glorious savior or whatever. Like hell, look at FF14 - you're practically a bloody "Warrior of Light" from like day 2 - you're barely spending first few hours hours as some "nameless adventurer" and are propelled to unique status from a get go and somehow story is fine.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

there's threads on the official forums saying how wonderful and great BFA was.

If true then I have now lost any respect I once had for the WoW forums.

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.

If you think WoW fans are vicious towards their own series, you haven't seen Fire Emblem fans, Trails fans, or Pokemon fans.

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.

I don't think most of the stuff in GoT S8 was conceptually bad, just poorly built up and executed. Whereas many, many storyline concepts after Mop are just conceptually bad. "Garrosh breaks out of jail and time travels back to Draenor, and we fight alternate timeline Iron Horde? Demons exist across all timelines and never die outside of the Twisting Nether, meaning that the Night Elves' and Grom's sacrifice in WC3 was meaningless? The Death Knights slaughter their Paladin comrades on a whim from Bolvar, and then they go back to being buddy buddy like it never happened? An entire expansion around sweeping Illidan's behavior under the rug and vindicating him? Sylvanas didn't send the Alliance a message explaining why she had to withdraw from the Broken Shore and continues to lead the Alliance on and make them think she turned on them? The Alliance just lets the Horde off the hook for committing genocide? Sylvanas inexplicably solos the Lich King, despite the fact that the Lich King fought a 25 man raid and WON and only lost due to divine intervention?" Etc.

[Gaidax]

If true then I have now lost any respect I once had for the WoW forums.

I mean... let's not be total edgelords there?

Quite a few BFA storylines were pretty damn good, Battle of Dazar'alor was good. Drustvar, Zandalar were good. Patch 8.2 was one of the best patches ever released for WoW with insane amount of good content - Mechagon was brilliant and fun and Nazjatar really propped group and group PvP content in the world.

There legit was quite a few great things about BFA.

The issues with BFA were mostly Sylvanas bullshit and N'zoth flash appearance and defeat.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

There legit was quite a few great things about BFA.

Oh don't mistake me; there are quite a few things I liked about BFA. The Darkshore pre-patch event was legit amazing. The Burning of Teldrassil is one of the most powerful video game memories I have. I also loved the early American Colonial setting of Kul'Tiras. Island expeditions were fun. Art was great as usual. I just don't think that is enough to offset the bad and make BFA and overall good product.

[Souflikar]

I'll state what I've basically said in other posts. Characters(in this case, Zovaal) are seldom interesting without a backstory. A story broken-up into so many convoluted pieces can be difficult and exhausting to follow. It's OK to have a mystery unfold over a 2 hour movie, but NOT a 2 year expansion. Meaning, I don't enjoy waiting until the end of an expansion to understand the prior 99.999% of the story. So much more but to wrap it up....one of the most silliest things so far for me personally is when Sylvanas tells Zovaal, I will never serve - after she's been serving for YEARS!!! It's just bad.

[Gaidax]

Oh don't mistake me; there are quite a few things I liked about BFA. The Darkshore pre-patch event was legit amazing. The Burning of Teldrassil is one of the most powerful video game memories I have. I also loved the early American Colonial setting of Kul'Tiras. Island expeditions were fun. Art was great as usual. I just don't think that is enough to offset the bad and make BFA and overall good product.

I just think people here are edging WAY too much either way. In my opinion BFA was far from "teh worst expansion ever total disaster" like many push here. I really genuinely think that BFA was pretty damn decent expansion, if they would have made a proper "good war" orchestrated by N'zoth instead of this orchestrated by Sylvanas bullshit and made Warfronts a bit more fleshed out it would probably be a great expansion overall. It would also actually tie well into 8.2/8.3, instead of sudden "wtf N'zoth" of 8.2/8.3.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Ok.

I couldn't care less, because I've seen far worse in this game and I don't form my opinions based on the rose-tinted glasses of people with selective memory-syndrome.

WoW writing was never amazing but when they literally turn characters they hyped into loot pinatas and skip an entire storyline (Grommash), they've sunk to a new low.

[Yarathir]

I will never post.

[Akibaboy]

WoW's story is comics books. It does not exist to go toe to toe with other beacons of the High Fantasy genre. It does not exist as a catharsis delivery apparatus. It does not exist to make you go UwU over you and your best NPC friends having cute and charming dialogue together. Like comic books, WoW's story exists to provide new reasons for cool looking action figure set A to be bashed against cool looking action figure set B. This was Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and WoW since its inception.

One of the main problems with WoW's cutscenes is that they're actually written so well that no one understands them. Writing guru Robert McKee advises when writing dialogue and screenplay to avoid several traps such as needless exposition, repetition, "as you know" dialogue, etc. and because WoW's scenes follow those rules, and the rules of cinematic pacing pretty effectively... everyone misinterprets them. For example, all of social media accused Elune of sending the Horde to burn Teldrassil, which was 100% wrong because they didn't know how to understand the simple, straight forward dialogue of "in the wake of tragedy". In another MMO game, those 5 words would be stretched out into 2 paragraphs of exposition with onlookers tilting their heads with hand firmly placed on chin. Even the PC Gamer article misunderstands what the Jailer did for Sylvanas and says he "randomly decides to be nice" - in the cutscene, the Jailer says that he is going to leave her to their mercy: by restoring her soul completely, he's effectively tormenting her with the ability to realize how terrible she's been, and also leaving her in the presence of people who will judge and remind her of that constantly. The Jailer and the Maw's whole thing has been torment. This is a spiritual and psychological torment he just gave her, not him being "nice".

And everything I just wrote isn't a defense of WoW's story. Again, WoW's story is a comic book. It exists for a very specific purpose and it's good that it doesn't spend hours at a time trying to make you feel catharsis over bashing a gnome's head in with a hammer. If I want to find our what a teenage boy with the pressures of royalty thrust upon him feels when his lifelong butler passes away, there's a book with that waiting for me and not another cutscene where my Champion of Light and Fate is awkwardly hovering in the corner.

[Rozz]

It would not feel nearly as bad if it didn't cost the team 2 legs to get content out bc of issues and covid. In a way, it's not much worse than Legion's story excluding Suramar. The overarching clunky shit with Xera, the Burning Legion, and Illidan was not any worse than BFA's Sadfang and SL's head in the sand for Sylvanas.

Actually, every expansion has had some really crap aspects of the overarching plot. I'm not even sure the writing got worse. It's probably always been really terrible with nuggets of good questlines/zones w/ fun characters making up for things.

[Atrea]

By WoW standards, I think Shadowlands is pretty good on the story side of things, probably second to Legion. By non-WoW standards, particularly compared to non-MMO single player story games, honestly WoW has always been pretty pathetic.

You and I don't agree often, but I agree with everything you just said.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

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.

They do represent the bullhorn of the community. There's plenty of people I would've added such as Nobbel and Tae but you all know they are bound to NDA's and contracts and which so they cannot fully express themselves. Heelz would've be another but that guy is nothing but negativity.

- - - Updated - - -

It's almost as if people have different tastes. Some people will find BFA amazing, others will find Shadowlands, or Wrath of the Lich King. Not sure why you are "cringing" or "disappointed" when people express different tastes of what they like. It's like reading a book, watching a tv show or a movie. Some people will find it amazing while others will find it not that great.

These same people saying BFA was good are the same people one year ago saying how bad it was. thank you next

[Bbebto]

This is nice story...

[Leodric]

it's a shit show, started with the lich king being such a pushover against all-mighty sylvanus