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

[mickybrighteyes]

This really sounds like Blizz idea of a healthy relationship...

This... really puts a spin on things... the quest is called "Rebuilding Faith"

[Torvald]

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"

I'd love to have been in the writers room when they planned out their arc for WotLK.

"Then the players, after beating down the Scourge everywhere, winning non-stop, holding a renaissance fair in Icecrown, and actually fighting more Horde / Alliance faction war in airships AS they ascend the citadel (because the Lich King has been that little of a threat) finally reach Arthas."

"You mean the Lich King that's a merging of Arthas and Ner'zhul, right? Cause we made a big deal at the end of the RTS where he and Ner'zhul say they are one."

"No, we'll be killing off the Ner'zhul half off-screen, but won't explain it in-game, because explanations are boring. We might devote one page of an out-of-game book to it. Anyway, after all that, the players get to Arthas, and then he reveals he was letting them win the whole time and he one-shots the raid dead. Then the Light performs a Deus Ex Machina, freeing Tirion, who was frozen, shattering Frostmourne, releasing Terenas, who resurrects the players while Arthas is helpless, thereby making the players win. But someone needs to be a new Lich King, so we make Bolvar into that, and it's a big secret to the world that "THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A LICH KING." Only the players and Tirion are supposed to know, as no one else was up there. Muradin almost will have made it up, and will have talked a bunch about confronting Arthas in the airship fight, but he'll get tired and take a nap with the vendors halfway up."

- - - Updated - - -

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.

This is definitely the strongest ground on which to attack SL as worse than prior expansions. With character plotting, I feel like it's par for the course (but at least we get more fun delivery today, with more cinematics and more voice acting, where sometimes the voice actors do such a good job, that they make bad dialogue sound okay.) But minimizing death, and WoD implicating parallel versions of everyone, definitely vie with each other as the biggest mistake in handling the world-setting they've made.

Still, I'm enjoying it. I just tailor my expectations around, "treat this with the seriousness of a comic book movie."

[hulkgor]

Actually amused that people are -now- surprised that WoW's story has always been cheesy, absurd and constantly contradicting itself?

Don't take it too seriously. You'll feel better about it.

[SolasSlyM3]

The writing is objectively terrible for these major developments. The lead ins are great, but the resolutions are so wtf.

Sylvanas commits mass genocide, but it's going to be ok now because we forgive little oopsies like that? It's in the past, what's a few hundred thousand nelves between enemies and plot advancement? Even Elune forgave her after sitting back and watching and allowing her "favored children" to be butchered because she was attempting to serve the greater good while oh, plot twist, NOPE. And now there are sads. Not anger, only sads.

Oh, and Anduin is now Lich King 2.0 because MIND CONTROL. ISN'T IT GREAT EVERYONE, THE LICH KING IS BACK! ...except not at all because Anduin's agency was taken from him as he was imprisoned and tortured until he broke so there really aren't any parallels at all except that they both have stupid skull covered armor and badass rune swords.

...I'd love to know how anyone thought the above two plot points were good to follow.

[Aliven]

The writing is objectively terrible for these major developments. The lead ins are great, but the resolutions are so wtf.

Sylvanas commits mass genocide, but it's going to be ok now because we forgive little oopsies like that? It's in the past, what's a few hundred thousand nelves between enemies and plot advancement? Even Elune forgave her after sitting back and watching and allowing her "favored children" to be butchered because she was attempting to serve the greater good while oh, plot twist, NOPE. And now there are sads. Not anger, only sads.

Oh, and Anduin is now Lich King 2.0 because MIND CONTROL. ISN'T IT GREAT EVERYONE, THE LICH KING IS BACK! ...except not at all because Anduin's agency was taken from him as he was imprisoned and tortured until he broke so there really aren't any parallels at all except that they both have stupid skull covered armor and badass rune swords.

...I'd love to know how anyone thought the above two plot points were good to follow.

You know, blizz really want for victims to feel sorry for the abusers. Clearly Sylvanas is traumatized, cant you see?

[exochaft]

I think the massive overarching story is fine and potentially interesting, but how it's implemented on a lower level in terms of execution and expressed to the players is really bad. The in-game execution is at best rushed and incomplete, requiring the use of external media (like the novels) to even get a decent understanding of what's going on. Furthermore, the game's narrative has turned into network TV drama as being the main focus... which isn't a high bar to begin with, but the story suffers for it. It comes off as a bad fanfic with self-insertions by a narcissistic author at the expense of all logic and comprehension.

While a lot of the issues are the fault of the writers, there is still fault with the game design and how the story is told. The reason many people seem to feel the story feels better if its in the background and not a major part of the experience is because the players themselves are basically squires to the major NPCs that aren't actually involved in many of the major plot events in a significant way. This disconnection just compounds the issues where the story is written disconnected from the world the game shows us and how we as players experience the world. In the earlier days of WoW and in some of the better story experiences overall, the player is directly involved in the story (even to where the in-game cutscenes revolve around the player in a few cases). The unfortunate reality is that WoW's storytelling in-game suffers from being told in an after-the-fact manner. This means that our comprehension of the story and what's going on isn't because we were there, it's based upon what others tell us about events that other people took part in. It works in small doses and when executed well, but that's basically all we get now.

I'd love to say a lot more about this, but the short version is that the writers and game development have a symbiotic relationship that will continue to ruin any chance of a cohesive story and player investment unless changes are made.

You know, blizz really want for victims to feel sorry for the abusers. Clearly Sylvanas is traumatized, cant you see?

While that's tongue-in-cheek, what actually happens at the office probably has a massive effect on the story that gets told. Not going to say the current lawsuit and the issues surrounding it are a main driver (it likely was a driver to some degree), but social/political narratives embraced by the company and individuals within said company are extremely present in the current WoW story. Leaving aside the argument of the story/game needing to be an escape from reality, such narratives generally do terribly in terms of making a compelling story... or at least they tend to be executed that way. It's likely because it suffers from the same issue you get with fanfics: self-insertion of oneself into the story, completely ignoring any reason or logic in the process. A lot of the social/political narratives of the day make little sense in reality, but more importantly they make even less sense in the fantasy world of WoW. But when the the message (or straight up pandering) is your most important goal, the story is likely to suffer.

Again, this is just one aspect of what's causing the WoW story and lore to become a completely mess, but it's certainly a non-negligible effect as seen by the current writing. To be fair to the writers, some of these insertions and adjustments may come from higher in the development food chain, forcing them to change the story into something it was not intended to be. This is where the game development side of things can interfere with and ruin the story.

[Jastall]

I don't expect many to agree with me on this but I think what really carried even Argus and why Broken Shore was comparatively naff was Velen. He was low-key one of their best protagonists, completely atypical from someone like Thrall, Khadgar, Wrathion or god-forbid anyone in the BFA/SL axis. The game wrung every bit of pathos it could in pretty much every scene he was in and he was more personally connected to the goings on than anyone else. It's some of their best characterization.

I actually think that 7.2 was the nadir of the expansion. While Argus could've easily been an expansion, it was innovative for what it was and it had god-tier presentation plus the aforementioned Velen fare. 7.2 consisted mostly of reused assets, had one of the worst patch non-stories out there and wasted Kil'jaeden.

Velen is Anduin done right- his convictions get challenged, he learns from said challenges in a fairly organic way, and he grows as a character without doing a complete 180 and/or having his arc take up most of the plot like a tumor (take notes, Saurfang and Sylvanas). I'm pretty sure he had the best arc of any WoW character, at least I can think of none that surpass his. It's a far cut above the usual "good guy becomes buy guy until we beat the bad out of them" WoW fare.

As for 7.2 having too little story, that's definitely true. Blizzard spread themselves thin continuing the class stories up to and including unique quests for mounts and the Mage Tower challenges, which likely took up the vast majority of the budget they had on the matter. IMO they should have cut a couple quests per class and given KJ a couple appearances to at least move the plot along beyond landing on the Broken Shore - doing class things and errands for Dadgar - booping KJ on the snout.

[Verdugo]

This... really puts a spin on things... the quest is called "Rebuilding Faith"

Just add some enhanced interogation to the mix for a healthy, working compa- sorry, covenant.

[Dhrizzle]

I'd love to have been in the writers room when they planned out their arc for WotLK.

"Then the players, after beating down the Scourge everywhere, winning non-stop, holding a renaissance fair in Icecrown, and actually fighting more Horde / Alliance faction war in airships AS they ascend the citadel (because the Lich King has been that little of a threat) finally reach Arthas."

"You mean the Lich King that's a merging of Arthas and Ner'zhul, right? Cause we made a big deal at the end of the RTS where he and Ner'zhul say they are one."

"No, we'll be killing off the Ner'zhul half off-screen, but won't explain it in-game, because explanations are boring. We might devote one page of an out-of-game book to it. Anyway, after all that, the players get to Arthas, and then he reveals he was letting them win the whole time and he one-shots the raid dead. Then the Light performs a Deus Ex Machina, freeing Tirion, who was frozen, shattering Frostmourne, releasing Terenas, who resurrects the players while Arthas is helpless, thereby making the players win. But someone needs to be a new Lich King, so we make Bolvar into that, and it's a big secret to the world that "THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A LICH KING." Only the players and Tirion are supposed to know, as no one else was up there. Muradin almost will have made it up, and will have talked a bunch about confronting Arthas in the airship fight, but he'll get tired and take a nap with the vendors halfway up."

"Still I think we need more."
"Okay then, dragons."
"What about them?"
"Everything. I've got this great idea for where they live, a tower in the middle of frozen nowhere."
"A really big tower?"
"No quite small, not even big enough for one of the Aspects to fit. But we're going to have the blue one go nuts and want to kill all the wizards. And some of the wizards will help him so he doesn't kill them."
"Okay that should be enough."
"Titans. All of it. We're going to find out that the dwarves used to be made of stone and metal, and humans used to be giants made of stone and metal and gnomes were robots. Made of metal. Some of the giants will be vikings."
"Sounds like quite a lot to put i..."
"There'll be an Old God who's going to kill everyone, and then a big man made of stars who's going to kill everyone."
"Okay so before fighting the Lich King we're going to kill a Dragon Aspect who wants to kill everyone, an Old God who wants to kill everyone and a man made of stars who wants to kill everyone. Then a friendly jousting tournament. Well we're defini..."
"Trolls."
"What about them."
"They'll just sort of be there. Oh, and you know all those quests that elves do where corruption has made the furbolgs go mad? We'll do that for a whole zone. Gonna have another corrupted world tree and everything."
"I'm pretty su..."
"What if Tauren were walruses?"

- - - Updated - - -

Just add some enhanced interogation to the mix for a healthy, working compa- sorry, covenant.

WotLK Lore Guy: "Got you covered. Gonna have the player torture a wizard gone bad. If they don't want to do it they don't get to see what the big blue dragon is up to. Speaking of which the encounter designer says he has a fight that takes way longer than any other but won't give any more loot. The last stage is a clusterfuck and barely playable, certainly not fun."

[deviantcultist]

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.

This is a very solid criticism and I agree.

- - - Updated - - -

You know, blizz really want for victims to feel sorry for the abusers. Clearly Sylvanas is traumatized, cant you see?

Not only that. Many major plots in SL try to shoehorn that seeking justice (aka vengeance in those cases) is bad. Elune reveal, Sylvanas "redemption" and even Uther being made to repent for literally being the only person to speak against the overrated princess snowflake called Arthas.

It's been said before, that term where the abuser becomes the crying victim is a form of gaslighting.

If Blizz wants to paint vengeance as an evil thing, then they should allow us to be the "bad guys" of their horrible storytelling and get it over with.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

That said I'm expecting more revelations on how these cosmic entities are going to manage lesser beings.

I hope you don’t think like most of people that Elune let the tree burn, because that’s absurd. I believe there is way bigger shit going on in the universe that we don’t see just yet.

[Super Dickmann]

As for 7.2 having too little story, that's definitely true. Blizzard spread themselves thin continuing the class stories up to and including unique quests for mounts and the Mage Tower challenges, which likely took up the vast majority of the budget they had on the matter. IMO they should have cut a couple quests per class and given KJ a couple appearances to at least move the plot along beyond landing on the Broken Shore - doing class things and errands for Dadgar - booping KJ on the snout.

The class mount quests were pretty decent but while the order halls made up for the non-Suramar story being fifty shades of pointless in 7.0 and were away for Suramar and 7.1 because of the strong focus on the Nightborne, 7.2 badly needed to have an actual story given how KJ's one of the biggest bads of the entire game. Instead, even Velen only gets to have one moment with him as he dies and it's probably the poorest part of his story, especially compared to how good the equivalence scene is on Argus - when Talgath even mentions his wife and child Velen smites his sorry ass and interrupts him mid-way through pulling the 'boss stuns you and runs away at 1%" skit. Meanwhile with KJ, the dude who not only engineered pretty much everything bad that happened to him but also recently spent thousands of years corrupting his son just so he could get a petty kick out of Velen finding out after he'd killed him, they have this pseudo-emotional moment of reconciliation. The handling of KJ is one of the bits of Legion that I've got a hard time getting over in general.

KJ destroying Dalaran in a reprise of Archimonde wouldn't have really done much for him as a character, but it would have upped his and the Legion's threat level as well as would have had no impact on 7.3 content and actually explained why Khadgar and the city vanish in BFA, but I can see why they didn't do it given the budget.

Not only that. Many major plots in SL try to shoehorn that seeking justice (aka vengeance in those cases) is bad. Elune reveal, Sylvanas "redemption" and even Uther being made to repent for literally being the only person to speak against the overrated princess snowflake called Arthas.

Yes, I can't even imagine the wordsmiths that used to work at Blizzard making a narrative where a guy destroys several kingdoms and fucks over the lives of most of the cast, only for when the moment of justice comes, the two victimized races to have zero role in his defeat, nor did the woman he had a relationship with. Instead, the final confrontation would center on some tertiary dickhead who'd never had any role in his story to begin with who defeats him by way of divine intervention. Could you imagine if his mentor ended up remembering him by what a good guy he used to be and the woman he tortured ends up killing herself after failing to achieve any catharsis?

[javierdsv]

I mean, as a writer you only write as good as your pay check.

[Super Dickmann]

I mean, as a writer you only write as good as your pay check.

I don't think any amount of money would turn Steve Danuser into Mark Twain. Being a hack is an incurable condition.

[Orwell7]

The problem is that in Legion, BfA and SL, they wanted to IMPROVE storytelling, we get much more cinematics, unskippable dialogs and so on so we are -again- FORCED to smell their shit 0-24.

Old Blizzard let players just play and don't give a shit about the story.
Cinematics were JUST cheesy, classic fantasy things with dragons undead big baddies.

Now they decide EXACTLY what the player experience will be, and they just cannot let us deviate from their "vision" - just see the TW xp nerf while not giving a shit about more important things.

Blizz is like a grumpy old woman who were a great cook "back in the day", but lost her senses a long time ago and puts 3 times as much salt in every meal, so it doesn't matter what she cooks, everything tastes the same: salt salt salt...

[Paetolus]

I feel like Legion was a great spot to begin really improving the story overall, but they dropped the ball quickly with BFA.

First, they need to ditch the format of major story being told through books and short stories. If it's major, put it in the game. Books should be side stories with small implications in the overall world, nothing more.

Secondly, more tension, and higher stakes. Kill off major characters, make it clear what happens if we lose against the baddie, have us lose sometimes in a significant way.

Thirdly, give the main antagonist more personality. This has been an issue forever in Warcraft. Give the villains in-depth backstory that is properly conveyed in the actual game itself. Make them sympathetic sometimes, and if they're pure evil, make them do evil shit that makes the players look forward to killing them.

There's a lot more they need to do, but this would be a long post if everything was covered. One more thing is that the dialogue needs to be made more natural sounding and there needs to be more of it between characters.

[Every Pwny]

I mean, as a writer you only write as good as your pay check.

That's not really true at all, a lot of great writers throughout history weren't paid well. If you are a bad writer you are going to write poorly regardless of the amount you are paid.

[deviantcultist]

I feel like Legion was a great spot to begin really improving the story overall, but they dropped the ball quickly with BFA.

Fully agree with that. As someone who had moved to FFXIV 2.0 launch back in the day when WoW was in late MoP phase, Legion was the only period when I considered coming back for a couple of months to catch up with WoW stuff. The only reason for bringing that up is to establish my perspective and also demonstrate the perspective that many will follow nowadays where WoW refugees in FF are more of a thing than ever before (3.0 had a big wave and 5.0 had the biggest till now).

Given that I'm following lore developments regardless, it was pretty evident that they couldn't sustain the caliber of Legion and SL now brings things back to WoD levels if not worse.

When I saw Blizz going south with SL, I argued that another Legion tier expansion would turn this around, but the chain of misgivings that is Blizz right now makes me wonder if they will even aim that big anymore.

[thottstation]

Sylvanas dies sacrificing herself to kill T̶h̶a̶n̶o̶s̶ Zovaal.

Saves literally ALL of existence, everywhere, ever.

Achievement unlocked: [Redemption]


Arbiter: "But... there must always be a Jailer."

Uther: "But who would sacrifice so much to be Jailer of the Damned for all eternity?"

(Music starts playing)

(Arthas, My Son.mp3)

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

im sure sylvanas will become the arbiter