What could be done to repair the narrative?

[Soon-TM]

So either the only options are to keep paying for a game we hate, which then people like yourself will just barf out, "GOD IF YOU HATE IT SO MUCH JUST QUIT ALREADY" or we actually DO quit and people like yourself then just go, "YOU AREN'T EVEN PLAYING IT HOW CAN YOU CRITICIZE SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT PLAYING?!"

You have just described the *censored* algorithm. It isn't particularly sophisticated, as anyone can see, but hey... what can you expect of certain people. It was also quite funny how the guy you quoted tried to imply that you need to be subbed in order to discuss the story KEKW

[Myradin]

1) Give more spotlight to the Ren'dorei, who represent the most unique and interesting Alliance race. Resourceful, conniving, devoted to the cause, but also ruthless and methodical in their approach.

2) Develop characters like Magister Umbric who have been introduced recently and are in desperate need of new lore and a new model.

3) Stop focusing only on the WC3 characters, stop focusing only on Tyrande, Sylvanas, Jaina, Thrall. These people already had 20 years of lore development, stop giving them the spotlight and dedicate time to newer characters already. I'm going to roll my eyes if Jaina will once again accompany the players in raids in the next expansion.

Void elf loving aside, point 3 is honestly a must.

The fact the majority of the cast from 20 years ago is still around and the focus is really sad, and shows how little the story has really progressed. These characters' arcs are done, and yet they keep bringing them back. Thrall even retired with a family TWICE and he's still back.

Characters also get ignored for years or just left out of events they should have been there for, leaving them weird shells. Tyrande and Malfurion being oddly absent from the naga storyline in BFA for example, or those two never talking to illidan in Legion.

WC3 being 20 years old also isn't helping its nastalgia bring people in anymore. Reforged certainly isn't going to attract more people to warcraft to see these characters.

Its really odd how characters introduced in wow tend to die off, but characters from WC3 are effectively immortal unless turned into a boss, and even then there's a good chance they survive.

[Varodoc]

Void elf loving aside, point 3 is honestly a must.

The fact the majority of the cast from 20 years ago is still around and the focus is really sad, and shows how little the story has really progressed. These characters' arcs are done, and yet they keep bringing them back. Thrall even retired with a family TWICE and he's still back.

Characters also get ignored for years or just left out of events they should have been there for, leaving them weird shells. Tyrande and Malfurion being oddly absent from the naga storyline in BFA for example, or those two never talking to illidan in Legion.

WC3 being 20 years old also isn't helping its nastalgia bring people in anymore. Reforged certainly isn't going to attract more people to warcraft to see these characters.

Its really odd how characters introduced in wow tend to die off, but characters from WC3 are effectively immortal unless turned into a boss, and even then there's a good chance they survive.

You agree with Point 3, so why do you put aside my points about the Ren'dorei?

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see a cinematic about Magister Umbric or Alleria instead of Anduin, Jaina, Tyrande? [talking exclusively about Alliance side]

It's always humans and night elves who get the spotlight in the Alliance, it's been like that since forever.

You say Tyrande was absent, and yet she appeared in several cutscenes and cinematics from this expansion, while Alleria, who could have appeared in a cinematic involving Sylvanas, was absent. This normally might not be a problem if Tyrande wasn't a main character since Vanilla, while Alleria was reintroduced only in Legion.

[Myradin]

You agree with Point 3, so why do you put aside my points about the Ren'dorei?

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see a cinematic about Magister Umbric or Alleria instead of Anduin, Jaina, Tyrande? [talking exclusively about Alliance side]

It's always humans and night elves who get the spotlight in the Alliance, it's been like that since forever.

You say Tyrande was absent, and yet she appeared in several cutscenes and cinematics from this expansion, while Alleria, who could have appeared in a cinematic involving Sylvanas, was absent. This normally might not be a problem if Tyrande wasn't a main character since Vanilla, while Alleria was reintroduced only in Legion.

Those points just felt biased towards a particular group is all. I only used Tyrande and the night elves as an example because it happens often to them. Though perhaps thats because the night elves got a rather substantial chunk of lore in WC3 whereas most other alliance races are undeveloped or one-note.

But yes, Void elves getting more development would be good. Everyone getting more development would be good. Races all boiling down to one character, who happens to be their leader, is really odd.

[CaptainV]

The covenants were already a testament to bad choice making in terms of story narrative, your basically lotted into groups of people that are ironically your not-so-recent enemies in the same "camp" but a different faction, instead of merging factions we had them stay seperate for *convinence* because the devs wont bring the factions together.

Heres what I think they need to do with the faction war story now:

We need a counter-faction war story, a story thats about the alliance/horde merging while the sepratists from both sides go to extremes to try to stop and sabotage this. The groups finally after a third attempt to do so understand the meaning of unity between each other being a complex system of truces/agreements/disagreements and tolerance between each others values while never really trying to uniform anyones goals.

This can lead to some good potential afterwards:

- We can get expansions and storylines specifically focused on specific races/characters from said races at a time, which means more lore/love and attention to the world building.

- The faction war being solved means theres no more logical reason for division between peoples save maybe some new 2 faction system driven by ideals rather than factions (I.e. light vs void).

- It also means new races dont have to be faction locked anymore, they can remove the exclusivity of factions entirely and just make it possible to enter anyones capital city at any time.

- PvP and Open World PvP could exist in some form as "Mercenaries" where basically you enter pvp areas and switch on mercenary mode, which enables you to pvp with anyone that isnt in your party/group at any time as long as they also have pvp enabled.

- BG's would be divided in a similar vein of "Mercenaries" where previous faction wars are used by chromie and the bronze dragonflight to simulate military training for mercs.

- Its evident from the many attempts to take wow away from Azeroth or Planets to explore, future expansions set in alternate realities/planes should be reduced to maybe a single zone in a single plane because people generally dont enjoy the planar stuff over the world exploration.

[Deneios]

You agree with Point 3, so why do you put aside my points about the Ren'dorei?

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see a cinematic about Magister Umbric or Alleria instead of Anduin, Jaina, Tyrande? [talking exclusively about Alliance side]

It's always humans and night elves who get the spotlight in the Alliance, it's been like that since forever.

You say Tyrande was absent, and yet she appeared in several cutscenes and cinematics from this expansion, while Alleria, who could have appeared in a cinematic involving Sylvanas, was absent. This normally might not be a problem if Tyrande wasn't a main character since Vanilla, while Alleria was reintroduced only in Legion.

Thats because Rendorei are in the same boat as Nightborne. A faction flip of a excisting race/skeleton for the elf fanatics and their money. There is no real story behind neither of the races. They are just there to fluff out windrunners and tyrande past legion.

[AngerFork]

The first thing we need to do to repair the narrative IMO is to close out the open gaps we have currently, particularly where it comes to the faction conflict. If we are going to have cross-faction play (as seems likely), then we need to give those races who still hate the other faction a way to come to peace. Perhaps Talan'ji gets guidance from Rastakhan via Bwonsamdi, stuff like that. A lot of what is hurting the current narrative is papering over previous stories & characters simply to draw out a new story. As for the lingering Shadowlands stuff, just ensure the story with the Jailer is done. Whatever you do with Sylvanas at this point is already a lost cause, simply pick a direction & lower her impact in the story for a while if she sticks around.

Beyond that, WoW sorely needs to develop some new characters for the player base to follow & love. Too often to this point has the Blizz team leaned on old WC heroes like Thrall, Jaina, & Sylvanas. WoW at this point should have an entirely new set of characters to build up...and those characters are there, we just haven't seen much from them lately. Moira, Umbric, Ji, Aysa, Zekhan, & Geyarah instantly come to mind as characters who could be built up & given much more story than we've seen to this point. We need new characters to really guide the story if for no other reason than to show the universe of WoW rather than recycling the old hits.

The other thing I would say is that each race needs it's own home, and we need to be making better uses of those homes once we have them. The story has gone way too far into the player character being as mighty as gods & titans while keeping us from even understanding character motivation for why we are there. Imagine BfA if we had more updates on what the Pandaren were thinking throughout the story. How is that situation with the Council of the Three Hammers going anyhow? Part of the reason the story feels so disconnected from Azeroth is that the story has seemingly gone out of it's way to sever our own connection with Azeroth as a planet. I no longer really feel like a resident of Azeroth as much as a being of infinite power. Perhaps if we were closer to Azeroth & had something always tying us to Azeroth, it might feel a bit more like Warcraft even when we do crazy stuff.

[voidox]

well, as others have said, fire Danuser and his writing team. Without that, nothing can be improved or repaired in any way

once the game gets writers who care and know the lore, then have the time dragons do some stuff that causes players to go back in time of us pushing back the legion invasion. First few things, the nightborne are now like the pandaren: choice of alliance and horde instead of the stupid "oh tyrande was mean to me, so let's join the horde tee hee"

also allow players to join their class order hall instead of alliance/horde, i.e. cross faction gameplay as well as opening up story of champions being outside the horde/alliance factions. This would allow more freedom if Blizzard wanted to do a faction war expansion, as having players not being part of the factions allows them to do more with each faction

then give us a proper expansion of Azeroth going on the offensive against the legion, invading legion worlds and wiping out legion bases. Have us rescuing survivors and rebuilding the army of the light. Expand on Xe'ra and her story, turalyon/alleria, do a lot more with the titans and their revival, have Eonar be more involved as we go to her realm and such, have sargeras be an actual visible threat to us instead of a cloud appearing at the end, do more with argus/draenei, do a lot more with argus and so on

then once we get a proper legion's end in that expansion, have us return to azeroth and do a full Azshara expansion where we properly and finally deal with her and the naga. Better involvement with Tyrande/Malf vs Azshara, expand on the naga armies and Nazjatar, expand on the way nzoth was using azshara behind the scenes, you could even have nzoth meddling with alliance vs horde stuff during all this... so much there

then that expansion ends with nzoth's revival, maybe azshara death or her getting away, and give us a full on proper old god expansion. Nzoth controlling zones and characters, make Ny'alotha an actual expansive zone and city, include other void stuff and so on

there was so much there for 3 great expansion settings, and it shows how we don't need any of this stupid SL stuff or cosmic power nonsense that Danuser is obsessed with... yet blizzard decided to rush all this in single patches -_-

[mickybrighteyes]

The narative needs to get back to a consistent lore that isn't drastically altered every other expansion and maybe stop with world ending super beings as the main thing in every zone. Best villains of the lore thus far might still be Arthas, Garrosh, and Sire Denathrius.... not because of their relative power scaling or armies they can unleash but just because of how their stories wound up involving them.

Stop using the same cast of characters for literally everything. I would say MoP was among the greatest xpacs for lore because it brought up a roster of folk we didn't already see and weren't all major faction leaders.

At this point.... faction split is beyond silly outside of token nations having issues with other specific nations so get rid of player faction restrictions. PvP can still happen in other means but at this point just open up the factions for pve activities. Maybe keep pvp relatively the same but it's largely 'merc' style which I think has been a thing to deal with lopsided queues?

[Steelangel]

At this point, a full reboot of WoW is the only thing left that could makes sense.

Then let the Jailer win? lol

[ro9ue]

Unfortunately it seems like they did irreparable damage to whatever was left of the lore. Not that Warcraft is known for great storytelling in the first place, IMO I always felt Warcraft was more of a make really cool iconic characters and people will be drawn to them type of IP. But even there they ruined a few iconic ones, particularly Sylvanas.

The best thing they can do right now for the game is just focus on improving the gameplay and updating professions and classes to make it more enjoyable. Then whatever madness is happening in the background story wise can just serve as a flavoring for the dungeons and collectibles.

[cparle87]

A note should be put in the writers' office reading "THIS IS A GAMEPLAY-FOCUSED TWO-FACTION MMO", with all priorities coming from there. Chief of them the main cast need to take a long vacation to Belize and the game needs to nix serial escalation, while ending the message mongering that the gameplay cannot sustain.

Not sure what you mean by message mongering but we did have a de-escalation, a big one, going from Legion to BFA. Going from duking it out with Titans and Legionlords with lore weapons of legend to Azerith gear, faction story, and a knockoff Old God is a pretty big de-escalation. I heard lots of complaints about it.

[Rhlor]

Time skip and world revamp

[VladlTutushkin]

The narative needs to get back to a consistent lore that isn't drastically altered every other expansion and maybe stop with world ending super beings as the main thing in every zone. Best villains of the lore thus far might still be Arthas, Garrosh, and Sire Denathrius.... not because of their relative power scaling or armies they can unleash but just because of how their stories wound up involving them.

Stop using the same cast of characters for literally everything. I would say MoP was among the greatest xpacs for lore because it brought up a roster of folk we didn't already see and weren't all major faction leaders.

At this point.... faction split is beyond silly outside of token nations having issues with other specific nations so get rid of player faction restrictions. PvP can still happen in other means but at this point just open up the factions for pve activities. Maybe keep pvp relatively the same but it's largely 'merc' style which I think has been a thing to deal with lopsided queues?

According to Exploring Kalimdor Alliance is not a faction anymore. At least since they signed a separate peace treaty while one of their members is still under active assault by the Horde.

They cant even say that “night elves are attacking” since Horde invades Ashenvale, so its a case of defence, to which Alliance must respond with aid, but they abandon one of their members.

[mickybrighteyes]

According to Exploring Kalimdor Alliance is not a faction anymore. At least since they signed a separate peace treaty while one of their members is still under active assault by the Horde.

They cant even say that “night elves are attacking” since Horde invades Ashenvale, so its a case of defence, to which Alliance must respond with aid, but they abandon one of their members.

at this point any over arching war story should just get canned cause the entire writing team seems to not understand how nations should interact in war =/

Sometimes it's full mobilization under a singular leader... other times it's like "That's rough buddy... ANYWAYS!" >.<

Some acts that should result in actual war escalation are scoffed off and old grudges are brought up or forgotten as the plot requires.


A time skip and removing literally every major character for a bit would do nothing but good.

[Gadzooks]

Hot take, but I think Warcraft should end.

It's clear that the writers had a vague idea for the story of WoW. They'd first tackle Illidan and Arthas, and then there'd be the final war with the Legion.

That story has played out. The story took a few detours with rawr dragon, a faction war, and time traveling orcs. Some stuff didn't pay off as it should have (the titans). Most of the original people who set up this story didn't stick around to see it to its end, but the arc of WoW was eventually finished.

Warcraft is a franchise zombie at this point. The artists are gone. The IP is only head up as a skinsuit by corporate suits trying to milk as much money as possible out of the brand's name recognition and the religious fans who still cling to the product. Spiderman too started out with a clear goal in mind. By issue 59, Spidey was no longer the boy he had started the story as. He was a respected man with a job and well on the way to marrying and starting a family. The story was almost over. But Spiderman had also become a successful IP for a corporation that was beginning to stagnate and needed to hang on to past glories to stay afloat, so they butchered Peter and kept his story going. And now nobody cares about Spiderman comics. Same with Batman: his destiny is to be punching a clown forever, not because that's a good story, but because it makes the suits money. Star Wars' story ended at episode 6 and anything after is superfluous. And so on.

I can go into detail about what I'd like new writers to do with Warcraft, but at the end of the day Warcraft has outstayed its welcome. Blizzard needs to move on to telling new stories. I was hoping Overwatch would have been a positive sign for Blizzard, but alas, by 2017 - a mere three years after it's announcement - it became clear that Blizzard had no idea what they were doing.

They do need to move on, but the irony is, they can't. WOW pays the bills. Even with the loss of players over the last year because of the scandals and such, it's still what keeps the lights on. They can't move on until they can ship a game - or games - that can generate the cash WOW does. So we'll see Danuser continue to burn down the lore going forward, as long as subs remain above a closely guarded secret level. And they'll go another year with no releases, because the cash shop exists. They can't even force a mobile game cash grab Diablo out the door in less than 4 years. That's ridiculous. (And I think it's gonna get pushed back again) A full fledged AAA title like WoW? Lol. Sure. I'll be flabbergasted if they ever ship a game as large as WoW ever again. Diablo 4 is the only title of note we know about, and that's years off at this point.

I just don't see Blizzard pulling a game out of their collective asses at this point that could even hope to replace the WOW money spigot. So they'll keep applying the electrodes to the almost dead golden goose and make it poop out yet another expansion, and load up the cash shop. Bad story? Who cares, fuck you, pay me, every month.

After all, that's what Bobby says to them every month. And if they still want to pay rent/mortages, they'll ship something eventually, regardless of how bad it is - and WoW is the only reliable money grab they have.

I think the reality is, none of the leadership of WoW or Blizzard give a flying rat's ass about the story, except for outliers like Metzen, and maybe Kosak, while being an awful writer, still seemed to be into it. Ion reads what someone else writes for him about lore, and then moves on to his beloved systems and spreadsheets. I think the mistake is thinking anyone else there at the higher levels care, at all. Like Lucasfilm - it's clear they don't respect the story or Lucas, and I just can't believe they people who run Blizzard now have any regard for the game, the story, or the people who made it originally.

[Orange in the Streets]

There is no way back for Warcraft.

For a long time, my enjoyment has been story/world over game play. But I just don't see how a time skip would solve anything. For me it is reboot or death.

We are no longer playing Orcs vs Humans, we are no longer playing Orcs, Humans and the other native races of the world, long forgotten, hidden away, like Elves and Pandas.

A time skip will not suddenly make world souls, shadow realms, first ones, armies of light, warping demon star destroyers, etc, suddenly no longer be a thing.

The power creep of our characters is one thing. Say a cataclysm happened, time skip to new evolved sub-races, discovering long forgotten magic arts and metallurgy bringing us back down to basics, cool... but what about everything else?

Remember when the dragons were cool and powerful or the titan keepers, both given power by the Titans, like god's to mortals? remember the threat of the burning legion? An army of demons, ranked from as low as us, all the way up to dragons, lead by a Titan. Or the Lich King's original lore, an ever growing threat placed on Azeroth, increasing in power to one day get his revenge on the Legion?

The champions of Azeroth, a bunch of misfits, powerful in their own right but they are not dragons juiced up on Titan energy or avatars of said Titans, defeated all of these crazy strong foes, to the point of taking down a half baked Titan, old gods (god I forgot the old gods) in varying states of strength, god like entities from the realm of death and big boy Zovaal, entering the realm of which everything was created by these First Ones.

Next step? Well looks like we have to take down a First One boys. A bunch of humans, little humans, orcs, trolls, sexy trolls, cows, goats, dogs and goblins to bring down an entity that has created reality itself.

Nah, it'll be OK, if we skip 10,000 years into the future, we can go back to Orcs and Humans. /sarcasm

Rebooting the story might work... is it an alternate reality? Meh, Warcraft has gone full Sci-Fi now anyway. We've already touched AU, all of the above crazy will still exist.

The only way a reboot will work, is if its the type of reboot that has nothing to do with the original other than recreating the same story, culling the bad bits, keeping the good bits and making something new, but at that point, make a new IP.

So it is death.

PS: Void lords.

[Iheartnathanos]

Hot take, but I think Warcraft should end.

It's clear that the writers had a vague idea for the story of WoW. They'd first tackle Illidan and Arthas, and then there'd be the final war with the Legion.

That story has played out. The story took a few detours with rawr dragon, a faction war, and time traveling orcs. Some stuff didn't pay off as it should have (the titans). Most of the original people who set up this story didn't stick around to see it to its end, but the arc of WoW was eventually finished.

Warcraft is a franchise zombie at this point. The artists are gone. The IP is only head up as a skinsuit by corporate suits trying to milk as much money as possible out of the brand's name recognition and the religious fans who still cling to the product. Spiderman too started out with a clear goal in mind. By issue 59, Spidey was no longer the boy he had started the story as. He was a respected man with a job and well on the way to marrying and starting a family. The story was almost over. But Spiderman had also become a successful IP for a corporation that was beginning to stagnate and needed to hang on to past glories to stay afloat, so they butchered Peter and kept his story going. And now nobody cares about Spiderman comics. Same with Batman: his destiny is to be punching a clown forever, not because that's a good story, but because it makes the suits money. Star Wars' story ended at episode 6 and anything after is superfluous. And so on.

I can go into detail about what I'd like new writers to do with Warcraft, but at the end of the day Warcraft has outstayed its welcome. Blizzard needs to move on to telling new stories. I was hoping Overwatch would have been a positive sign for Blizzard, but alas, by 2017 - a mere three years after it's announcement - it became clear that Blizzard had no idea what they were doing.

- - - Updated - - -



For a long time, the stance of Blizzard's developers (or the oldguard, at least) was that instead of making remakes of old games, they would rather use that time and resources to make a brand new game. That thought rings more true today than when it was made a decade ago.

Any reboot of WoW isn't going to be satisfying. It's not going to be made by the OG artists who created the thing that made people fall in love with Warcraft in the first place. It's going to be made by people who don't care about the source material who are servants of a corporate bureaucracy. It would be just as anti-Warcraft as modern Star Wars is anti-SW, or any other reboot.

- - - Updated - - -



I think the overabundance of character dialogue and cutscenes (both shoddy in engine cutscenes and tons of prerendered cutscenes) is a symptom of another problem that plagues modern WoW. It has turned into a soap opera. It used to be that you would only get CGI trailer and some ingame voice dialogue to contextualize why you were here in this war. The characters weren't really important. When we did get a prerendered cutscene, it was almost always to depict either 1. a monumental lore event (ie, Bolvar becoming the Lich King), or 2. an event that could not be depicted in the engine (ie, Deathwing smashing an airship). The game was about you going on adventures through high fantasy environments.

Now the game is about the writer's characters and their feelings. We get 5 minute long cutscenes dedicated to... characters standing around and talking, with closeups of their faces. As if we're watching some modern soap opera. I don't know who that appeal to. That's not what the Warcraft audience wants. JRPG fans might have their curiosity piqued but they're not going to last more than an hour in WoW.

Just chiming in to let you know that as a lifelong comic fan the best Batman comics I’ve ever read have on come out in the last ten or so years, with many more before that, well and truly after the golden age. It can be done.

[Super Dickmann]

Not sure what you mean by message mongering but we did have a de-escalation, a big one, going from Legion to BFA. Going from duking it out with Titans and Legionlords with lore weapons of legend to Azerith gear, faction story, and a knockoff Old God is a pretty big de-escalation. I heard lots of complaints about it.

I expand more in the quoted segment, but by message mongering I mean the game trying to sell moral suggestions that it can't possibly carry. BFA on stuff like necromancy or the MMO in general as regards war being most of these. In real life, war is very bad, if sometimes necessary, and someone who spends all their time trying to become better at killing is a psychopath. But in this game, the whole of the gameplay is focused on those very things. The game's attempts to lecture thus fall necessarily flat. Some of its worst bits, like the constant start-stop of the faction war and trying in vain to end it over and over come from this incompatibility between medium and message. The medium won't change as it is the product, so it's the message that has to go. That doesn't mean producing a morally vacuous narrative, but acknowledging that conflict is the baseline and working from there. Some of the most emotional storytelling has come from the depiction of the reality of a regional-scale war, finding the Taurajo fallen or the line in acceptability in Stonetalon.

As for people's complaints re: deescalation, many of the same people who went "Why are we fighting pirates and the other faction, there are Cosmic Threats (TM)" are now going "REE, Cosmic Threats are boring, I want to kill boars!". In the words of a wise man, they think they know, but they don't. Most everyone agrees, then as now, that the best parts of BFA were Kul Tiras and Zandalar. I think Jaina's BFA story is a circular piece of shit that reverts all the character's development and makes no sense in light of Kul Tiran society, but a lot of people like it and it has basically no worldwide stakes, it's entirely about her and her family in a singular kingdom with the biggest external threats being regional (pirates and Drust). Right now Jaina is fighting the Turbo Devil in Plato's World of Ideas and you won't find a single person who finds that a better story for her or one that even requires her presence. For another example, two of the least impressive big antagonists were a world-ending dragon and the fallen conductor of all of reality's souls. Two of the best are a pair of orcs motivated by power and issues with his father respectively. Scale doesn't produce weight but only in Mists have Blizzard actually managed to stuck with that throughout.

[cparle87]

I expand more in the quoted segment, but by message mongering I mean the game trying to sell moral suggestions that it can't possibly carry. BFA on stuff like necromancy or the MMO in general as regards war being most of these. In real life, war is very bad, if sometimes necessary, and someone who spends all their time trying to become better at killing is a psychopath. But in this game, the whole of the gameplay is focused on those very things. The game's attempts to lecture thus fall necessarily flat. Some of its worst bits, like the constant start-stop of the faction war and trying in vain to end it over and over come from this incompatibility between medium and message. The medium won't change as it is the product, so it's the message that has to go. That doesn't mean producing a morally vacuous narrative, but acknowledging that conflict is the baseline and working from there. Some of the most emotional storytelling has come from the depiction of the reality of a regional-scale war, finding the Taurajo fallen or the line in acceptability in Stonetalon.

As for people's compalints re: deescalation, many of the same people who went "Why are we fighting pirates and the other faction, there are Cosmic Threats (TM)" are now going "REE, Cosmic Threats are boring, I want to kill boars!". In the words of a wise man, they think they know, but they don't. Most everyone agrees, then as now, that the best parts of BFA were Kul Tiras and Zandalar. I think Jaina's BFA story is a circular piece of shit that reverts all the character's development and makes no sense in light of Kul Tiran society, but a lot of people like it and it has basically no worldwide stakes, it's entirely about her and her family in a singular kingdom with the biggest external threats being regional (pirates and Drust). Right now Jaina is fighting the Turbo Devil in Plato's World of Ideas and you won't find a single person who finds that a better story for her or one that even requires her presence. For another example, two of the least impressive big antagonists were a world-ending dragon and the fallen conductor of all of reality's souls. Two of the best are a pair of orcs motivated by power and issues with his father respectively. Scale doesn't produce weight but only in Mists have Blizzard actually managed to stuck with that throughout.

I think MoP hit on your first point pretty well with the whole "why do we fight" proverb. We have two sides who hate the other but who have things they want to protect. Because they don't trust the other to not be or become a threat to those things they keep starting conflicts. It's what Sylvanas used to hook Saurfang into the war: that the Horde he wanted to protect would be in danger in the future when he wasn't around to protect it if he didn't act now. Taran Zhu put it well, paraphrasing here, that each action is a provocation and each action an excuse for retaliation.

Confused by what you mean by calling Jaina's story circular and completely loss of the Turbo Devil etc etc bit.

Gotta disagree with you about Deathwing, though. Did you read the short story about him and what the chink in his armor was that let the Old Gods get to him?