What could be done to repair the narrative?

[Super Dickmann]

Agreed with you about the entire first paragraph. Really the only moral compass you saw across the characters was WHEN Sylvanas crossed their personal "I can't support this anymore" line. Saurfang hit it first. Later Baine crossed it with the thing with Jaina's brother. If you remember the tauren actually worked closely with the Forsaken in vanilla, seeing the latter as trying to overcome their unfortunate circumstances. Sylvanas spitting on pretty much the only taboo the Forsaken had (don't mind control free willed undead), was his line. Then summary execution of the tidesage and the arrest of Baine was the line for a lot of folks.

I've expanded on why I find these stories poor at great length in BFA, with you actually so I won't repeat myself too much, but where it concerns the topic's grounds, there's two main faults with this approach. The first is the storytelling one. You can pull all sorts of gymnastics to explain away why Baine's reaction is centered around what happens to Jaina's brother rather than everything from Teldrassil to necromancy applied to his own race to the Mag'har eating souls literally within eyeshot of the meeting he opposes Jaina on. But at no point in this would you be left with an admirable character or even one who's values can be parsed, let alone praised. And because we never see another tauren, we're left with Baine as the voice for all of his people. Except of course the tauren who arrest him or the one still mad about Taurajo, etc. This is the issue of tying all interaction to leaders and homogenizing races. Because besides Cairne who wanted to 'heal' the Forsaken, their main relationship with the tauren was actually with the Grimtotem, with Magatha working closely with the undead in Vanilla only for this plot beat to drop off the face of the earth because societal dynamics aren't interesting to this narrative. This lack of individuality robs you of making more interesting stories the way Mists handled this plot route a bit better by giving every race its own stance on it, even to the extent of something so basic as having Gallywix work with Garrosh until it was inefficient and then cutting his losses.

I typically saw Jaina's personality as kind of a DEFCON system going from MoP to now. DEFCON1 was right after Theramore, which amounted to "if you're a Horde race I'm going to drown you, even civilians." Thrall couldn't get through to her in this mindset, exacerbated by her blaming him in part. DEFCON2 is where she was at the end of MoP, trying to get the Horde as a polity dismantled. She spends most of WoD in DEFCON3 which is summed up as "I'm going to pretend you don't exist, and forbid anyone I work with from working with you." When she can no longer enforce this at the beginning of Legion, being outvoted by her own people, she ragequits the Kirin Tor and returns home.

I'll admit I didn't play Alliance in BFA so I only know the broad strokes of her mother turning on her, ending up in evil Drust dimension, and getting saved. Then her part in Dazar'alor. She seems to be between 2 and 3 for the rest of BFA, being an active attacker against Horde forces, this showing her first raising up the level as she's been slowly chilling out over several expansions. After Sylvanas flees she finally seems to deal with her personal issues with Thrall, showing that at least on a person by person, case by case basis she's willing to cooperate again. Which I'd say is DEFCON4, but still nowhere near as chill and "give peace a chance" as she was before, which was most like DEFCON7.

The core reasons I don't agree with the majority opinion regarding Jaina's story is that I can't be convinced that she came to the conclusions she did based on the information around her at the time and even less so that her mother and kingdom came to that conclusion. This is coupled with the effect this turn has on the Horde story as she goes. I'm also far more a Horde player than anything else.

Jaina reaches the conclusion that her father is wrong on the basis of all evidence to the contrary. She softens up without having seen that Baine (lol) opposes Sylvanas' efforts and having seen the Horde attacking her homeland on Sylvanas' order to much less opposition than Garrosh got before. BFA happening at all in the fashion it did puts to rest Varian overruling her and making the armistice he did with Vol'jin. The start of BFA follows this paradigm, with Jaina regretting she turned on her dad in light of what happened and convinced the Horde can't be fixed. Early drafts of the story heavily imply the same, even the remnants of the story like how Rexxar brings up how 'what Jaina did can't be ignored' in the Horde story which has no relevance in the live game. Yet the actual released product has her change her mind and learn her dad is wrong and immediately soften heavily on the Horde without any stimulus to reach this conclusion. Once we've seen that Jaina is backing off winning the war by all means already at 8.0, it robs all tension from everything that follows and her route is set. From "Beware of me" to sensually rubbing Thrall's arm, all while throughout this entire term Sylvanas has maintained majority Horde support.

But everything regarding the illogic of Jaina's conclusion pales before her mother and her kingdom. Those people have even less reason to change their stance on the Horde, shit like Brennadam validates everything Daelin said in their eyes. And yet instead of acting on Horde hostility her mother decides that her husband was wrong and disavows him for no adequate reason. The kingdom, who doesn't even have a mother's love for her child, does the same, going from hating Jaina for throwing Daelin under the bus and adopting moderate positions to suddenly lionizing her on this, again for no well established reason, down to accepting her as their supreme leader all the while they've seen absolutely nothing good from the Horde. Beyond the Horde waging a total war on them whenever they reach its shores they also raised Derek from the dead and the only opposition to it came from a dude who was imprisoned later.

They're plot beats that only work with the meta knowledge that we're supposed to accept that everything is Sylvanas's fault and that the Horde will revert to some parody of WC3 factory settings by the end of it. No person actually in the setting who's experienced what they did could ever reach these conclusions on their own and beyond being a form of character regression, it also fucks over the Horde story. If you play Horde the story preassumes you care about Jaina and also know she's had this highly unconvincing change of heart, hence why you're supposed to care enough about her family to slaughter Forsaken crewmen and then the Underhold guards including people she's fucked over previously in the Sunreavers on her behalf.

As for the Deathwing story, it was Charge of the Aspects. It's after the Ragnaros thing. Druids and Shaman meet at Nordrassil to try to heal it. The Shaman method is a literal out of body experience where they dive down into the earth to try to repair it. Shaman are always careful not to go too far down, in this case deeper than Hyjal's roots. But Thrall does so following a voice and Deathwing captures him and decides to torture him to death. His method of doing this was rather interesting. Deathwing reveals that as the Aspect in charge of the earth he literally feels the world's pain. Earthquakes and other disasters cause him physical suffering, which made it easier for the Old Gods to get to him, as he saw his charge from the Keepers as a curse from early on. Remember in the End Time dungeon Deathwing's endgame ends with him dead as well. When Thrall lambastes Deathwing for betraying Azeroth, the Aspect decides to give him some of his own medicine, a kind of "see how you like it." And Azeroth's pain nearly shatters Thrall's soul. Eventually the other shaman and druids are able to save him, and Thrall keeps the tiny bit of Deathwing's power. Which is what enables him to stand in for the Earth Aspect at the Hour of Twilight.

I'll freely admit I entirely forgot this story exists. It's helped remind me of how I both elementally disliked the hamhanded Deathwing/Thrall Aspect story at the time and also how entirely forgettable it is later. It speaks a lot that it hasn't hit the echelons of the worst Warcraft stories the way WoD and SL are treated. I get where it's going, but it hits that dual beat where it has to justify a painful plot beat, that is the Thrall as Earthwarder bit while tying him to characters who are both far out of his paygrade and also not very interesting protagonist-wise. It's preemptive surgery for the Dragon Soul ending, but its biggest problems are incurable, hinging on why Deathwing hasn't already done what he set out to do from Day 1 instead of waiting for ages, failing to explain or even handwave the temporal consequences of breaking the space time continuum to extract the Demon Soul despite the contrivances it engages in to allow Thrall to use it and the elephant in the room that is the whole "The Aspects were empowered to stop the Hour of Twilight, caused by an Aspect" bit from the ending. My issue with Deathwing doesn't hinge on his mental state or his motive, the latter of which was already in that form in the War of the Ancients trilogy and the former of which is a mess if you look back to the game, it's his actions in the plot and the waste that was made of his own original characterization.

It's actually the same problem the Jailer has, namely that there's no consensus in the plotting as regards what kind of villain he is. Deathwing is Godzilla, a tortured soul wishing to escape his predicament and a master schemer all at the same time and ergo is none of them and none of his actions in any way bring him measurably closer to his goal. The Jailer has a similar issue, with the added benefit that his actions do measurably bring him closer to his identifiable goal and with the downside that he has no background in the franchise the way Deathwing did and so there's no buy-in to get people to make excuses for the state of his story or to reference better characterized versions of the villain.

[Amnaught]

Tyrande decapitating Sylvanas.

[Sharby]

I think a start would be to remove Factions, because either balancing a two faction game story-wise isn't possible or the current team is incapable of making it work.

With that, they should also limit factional leaders' influence to their racial spheres and that's it. The problem currently (at least in my eyes) is that one or two characters become figureheads for certain sentiments i.e Good > Anduin || Bad > Sylvanas. And with that, everyone else in the story just gets their personality and memories forcibly molded to follow said figureheads, which causes everyone's personality to become diluted and lesser, which then requires the writers to intentionally exaggerate certain characters' personalities to the extreme to make up for everyone else being a boring yes-man.

The result is the complete ruination of all characters involved in the story and unsatisfying dementia-ridden conclusions where at that point, the current story was better off not happening at all and fans are grateful when their favorites are spared this treatment by way of being neglected screentime-wise.

I think that if they abandon the idea that one person would be able to bridge the gap of all the races and make them all unite and follow their orders, and instead make the races band together due to having a common desire running through all of them (example: Survival.) It would allow characters and races to preserve their identities and still allow for an overarching story that involves everyone.

The only remaining piece I think they should let go of as well is that any of the playable races are evil. This will never work, because the player character will always need to do things that save the world and others, you cannot have races being defined as morally grey because the PC will always be lawful good. It just creates and awkward disconnect that makes the PC feel like they aren't even apart of their own race. I think specific characters having a morally grey moment here and there can be fine, but the race definitely shouldn't be defined as such.



Just my 2c at least.

[cparle87]

Just gonna snip this here

The big thing to keep in mind is the Watsonian vs Doylian perspective. WE as outside observers have information the inlore characters don't. Characters making a decision or forming an opinion based on information we have but they don't is part of the story.

[Super Dickmann]

The big thing to keep in mind is the Watsonian vs Doylian perspective. WE as outside observers have information the inlore characters don't. Characters making a decision or forming an opinion based on information we have but they don't is part of the story.

Precisely and that's my issue with the story. The Jaina BFA story, among others, only works if we assume she and her kingdom have access to the BFA script. Their conclusions don't stem from any information they'd be privy to but does collate if one has a player's information as well as foresight of future plot points.

[Verdugo]

The big thing to keep in mind is the Watsonian vs Doylian perspective. WE as outside observers have information the inlore characters don't. Characters making a decision or forming an opinion based on information we have but they don't is part of the story.

Are you kidding? Thats exactly what he said. That characters are making decisions based on information that they dont have.

[Vonazak]

-Abandon the faction system
-Fire everyone in the lore department that were born in the US. Replace them with people born in Eastern Europe.Hopefully from Russia, have you watched any Russian series? Well, i want these guys in charge
-Let them write the most sad and deppresing story arc. Everyone important dies. Some deaths will be so pointless and realistic that the playerbase will be angrier than usual, i.e. Thrall dying from a stray arrow.
- Abandon all hope as the Russian guys will reject the idea of the Players being important super-heros, instead we will be random nobodies working alongside other random heroes that will surely die in our arms.
-Then we will focus on our world, 3 expansion focused on Azeroth and the many unresolved conflicts of our world.

The game will be so awesome that everyone will forget about the fantastic absurdity of the past 10+ years of WOW.

-

[cparle87]

Are you kidding? Thats exactly what he said. That characters are making decisions based on information that they dont have.

That's the exact opposite of what's going on, though. WE, the audience, are complaining that the characters are making choices we see as incorrect because WE have information the characters don't. It's like watching a horror movie, knowing the monster is in the woods, and screaming that the writing is bad because the character goes into the woods.

[Verdugo]

That's the exact opposite of what's going on, though. WE, the audience, are complaining that the characters are making choices we see as incorrect because WE have information the characters don't. It's like watching a horror movie, knowing the monster is in the woods, and screaming that the writing is bad because the character goes into the woods.

Thats one way to say that you completely and utterly ignored his post. Tell me, why should anyone take you seriously from now on.

[geco]

That's the exact opposite of what's going on, though. WE, the audience, are complaining that the characters are making choices we see as incorrect because WE have information the characters don't. It's like watching a horror movie, knowing the monster is in the woods, and screaming that the writing is bad because the character goes into the woods.

Hmm I really didn't see any complaints about this style.
There are complaints like "Elune because you send thousands of souls without noticing where they go" or rather the complaint is "Elune has been giving power to Tyrande for an entire expansion and you don't know what is happening?

[Aeula]

Oh that's easy.

1 (And most efficiently). A hard reset of the setting with different writers.

2. A soft reset back to the end of Legion. Cut out Sargeras stabbing the world and continue from there, maybe retcon Stormheim's faction conflict too. As much as I hated Legion the lore wasn't -quite- as fundamentally broken as it would become later down the line. Also with different writers going forward.

Like honestly it's kinda impossible to save the narrative while the current writers are working on it.

[Nerovar]

Here's the solution, are you ready?

Do what Bethesda did when they made Morrowind.

Hire Michael Kirkbride, have him read up on the lore of WoW and feed him copious amounts of drugs and allow him to make sense of it all.

Go balls to the wall with the lore, existential as all hell, make the First Ones the developers themselves at Blizzard, and have the story take a far more existential turn as their creations realize they don't exist and rage against their makers as a. result.

With all due respect to Kirkbride... This sounds even more horrendous than the game's current trajectory.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Just to stop putting in-game these weird little details that don’t mean anything or maybe they do. It keeps giving me headaches. Today I saw Khadgar in the raven form in Oribos. Just show things straight instead of wasting my energy digging in that stuff like I had nothing else to do that scopping out the damn wowhead and comparing Medivh’s raven form to Khadgar’s.

[Nerovar]

Eh you're probably right.

I do think its a case of doubling down or changing course entirely though, either could work if done well.

I think Blizzard needs to rethink what the roots of the Warcraft setting are and where they want it to go. Is it a story about cosmic struggle between forces that stand for abstract concepts like "control", "power" etc. and we just happen to play in a part in it or is it about the struggles of the races living on Azeroth with some more or less clever spins on established fantasy tropes thrown into the mix?

As long as they can't answer this question the narrative will be pretty much dogshit by default - though even if they manage to somehow nail it down it's still probably going to be shit unless they put in a whole lot of retcon work.

[geco]

I think Blizzard needs to rethink what the roots of the Warcraft setting are and what they want it to go. Is it a story about cosmic struggle between forces that stand for abstract concepts like "control", "power" etc. and we just happen to play in a part in it or is it about the struggles of the races living on Azeroth with some more or less clever spins on established fantasy tropes thrown into the mix?

As long as they can't answer this question the narrative will be pretty much dogshit by default - though even if they manage to somehow nail it down it's still probably going to be shit unless they put in a whole lot of retcon work.

After that, he has to inform the players about what his idea of the future is.
So those who are not looking for that idea can go.

[ResentfulUK]

They need to get back to having a thread, one that is clearly seen and understood with subtlety where needed.

Many people may not have loved the expansions, but the whole Garrosh thread was pretty good, spanned several expansions and had character development. Let's get back to that, move away from the idea that each expansion is an open and shut case on both stories and systems and remind the player base that Azeroth exists with its own smaller-scale issues.

The reason that some of the earlier expansions were so loved is because you were dealing with large, but understandable entities. Dragons, Fire Lords, etc... but now every expansion is some monumental fight to save the entire universe against universally superior, ultra-powerful beings.

Why can't we just fight against some tricksters or someone a bit more cunning than just; "Huh duh I'm a cosmic being get fucked!"

[Mehrunes]

With all due respect to Kirkbride... This sounds even more horrendous than the game's current trajectory.

With all due respect to Kirkbride, his writing is just annoying as all hell. There's nothing particularly deep about "hurr durr, this setting is actually a game" fourth wall break, even if you dress it up in random tidbits of philosophy. The only good bit out of that was Lorkhan seeing it for the BS it was and deciding to nope out of CHIM (a state of existence that serves as the in-story reward for a character realizing that their world is made up).

On top of that, Kirkbride's writing goes against Bethesda's writing principles (those they already had at the time of making Morrowind, because it's from an interview around the time of its release, just with other writers) about how lore should have ambiguity. Things like conflicting takes on historical events or different cultures worshiping the same god under different names.

Meanwhile Kirkride's insightful take on things like "Which description of the Battle of the Red Mountain is correct?" is "All of them at once!". "Who's actually the Underking? All characters suspected of being the Underking at once!", "Talos? Also multiple people at once! And because of convoluted nonsense Talos is actually the same as Lorkhan (and so are multiple other people before Talos)!", "Different cultures worship the same god under different names? They actually are separate gods! But wait, they also form some kind of meta-god together!". So on and so forth.

Also, most of Kirkbride's stuff isn't canon anyway. Most of that didn't make it into the game and he left the company before Oblivion was even released. And I'd say it's quite telling that most of the few references to his work that made it into the game since then are spoken by characters that are rambling lunatics that are also objectively wrong about various things (even with Kirkbride's fanfiction taken into consideration), like Mankar Camoran rambling about Lorkhan being a Daedric Prince and Tamriel being his plane of Oblivion.

I'd have thought that Kirbride's hype would have died down by now given how his latest work, C0DA, wasn't particularly well received even among his followers, but I guess there are still stragglers out there.

[cparle87]

Thats one way to say that you completely and utterly ignored his post. Tell me, why should anyone take you seriously from now on.

Because you clearly have no argument to make so all you resort to is ad hominem? Tell me, why should anyone take you serious from now on when you can't even discuss in good faith?

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm I really didn't see any complaints about this style.
There are complaints like "Elune because you send thousands of souls without noticing where they go" or rather the complaint is "Elune has been giving power to Tyrande for an entire expansion and you don't know what is happening?

Because WE know the machine of death is broken but Elune as a character doesn't. We spent the early part of Shadowlands wondering WHY Elune didn't help the elves because we had information she didn't. It changed how we viewed the situation because we were looking at it from our eyes, not hers.

[mickybrighteyes]

That is... exactly how nations interact in war. It's weird how often people complain that characters should be purely logical beings that don't ever do anything stupid.

I know it doesn't matter given the repeated State this poster finds themselves in...

But the point is...

we watched BFA blow up because of an "unprovoked" war that took place after a nation committed an attempted assassination, an attempted coup, and multiple degrees of sanctions on the SAME National Leader that declared war "unprovoked"...


the target of this "unprovoked" war is a nation that somehow captured a foreign dignitary, attempted to kill said dignitary (unless firing on a vessel is something else when engaging to capture and kill OTHER people aboard), invaded nation and then did everything but declare war on this nation while they fuck around and push them into their enemies alliance because they wanted to prevent that from happening in the first place.

I understand that some of the story elements are how some real world politics and war scenarios go but there is some serious mental gymnastics going on to really state the war of thorns is "unprovoked"

[Mehrunes]

Because you clearly have no argument to make so all you resort to is ad hominem? Tell me, why should anyone take you serious from now on when you can't even discuss in good faith?

I'm pretty sure @Verdugo made a clear-cut argument that you've missed what @Super Dickmann was saying and that as a consequence of the above you're (repeatedly) misrepresenting it. Which, you know, was confirmed by Super Dickmann directly. Speaking of which, I'm not sure how (repeatedly and, by now, insistently) misrepresenting Super Dickmann's post (and now also Verdugo's) classifies as good faith argumentation.