Warcraft story has always been silly and based on parody.

[Toppy]

Look back to old Warcraft games and honestly, the series has always been a retcon city with bare bones story and built on top of parody. Every sequal was loaded with retcons to the prior game. The stories themselves were often if not always parodies of existing fantasy stories and tropes. It was always silly and campy with the artwork being made by heavy metal band cover artists. Even the most celebrated story: Arthas, is just a fairly bog standard fallen prince trope that you can find in dozens of campy fantasy novels. Their most original idea was likely the noble savage Orc but even that was just taking the existing noble savage trope and slapping it on a none-human. The original Warcraft team were all fantasy nerds and its what they did. Warcraft is essentially the "Police Squad" of video games.

And it was great.

Things didn't start falling apart till the devs started taking things too serious. I'm not saying they shouldn't try for consistency, but the heaviest retcons always come from them trying to undue their over the top roots in some way. I'm not saying they can't be serious, but they've been leaning into it far to much and ignoring that you cant keep doing that with an setting with such an exaggerated, everything (art style especcially). They often seem to be embarresed about how corny the lore is and wanting to make it "super srs" which just, doesnt work. Its why the Zovaal thing just ended with everyone pointing and laughing.

[Iain]

Not just silly but utterly mundane. In Vanilla, players were predominantly preoccupied with doing chores for NPC's that occasionally would escalate into something epic and the player would never know where these frivolous quests would get them.


In current expansions the player is immediately thrown in a high stakes situation having to immediately save legendary characters that they've known for decades, then after the intro scenario the player is pushed to a council of all the leaders of their faction deciding on where to go next and in their plight to restore justice to the universe occasionally they get distracted by a silly side-quest.

Blizzard has it all backwards. I'll be completely fine shoveling dragon turds in the Azure dragon stables and picking gnoll-berries to build my reputation with that savage camp of gnolls.

[Varodoc]

The fact that Arthas is based on a generic trope doesn't change the fact that the execution was original, because Darth Vader-esque characters always get redeemed in the end, but Arthas never got his redemption. He just had a moment of lucidity where he was glad that he was freed from the artefact of K̶i̶l̶'̶j̶a̶e̶d̶e̶n̶ The Janitor.

If anything Sylvanas is even more generic than Arthas, since she did get a redemption, like all the other countless Darth Vader clones you see in fiction. Danuser even wrote in her dungeon journal that she "dropped her mask" or something cringe like that, and right after the fight, she is redeemed. It doesn't get more generic Darth Vader than that. Meanwhile Arthas, while also a Darth Vader rip-off in his backstory, is more original because he doesn't get redeemed.

People here also complain about Alleria and Turalyon being your generic Aragorn-Arwen couple that you find in every fantasy work, but even if conceptually they are not original, the execution is still very unique, because Alleria embraced the powers of a Dark God, while Turalyon was granted immortality by the powers of a Light God. I have never seen another fantasy couple that embodies the primal powers of the Universe so clearly and distinctly.

You also didn't mention villains like Lei-Shen and Malygos who are genuinely original, even conceptually. I have never seen another villain with a motivation like Malygos. Depriving mortals of their magic because they are foolish with it is an original motivation, and if anything the crime is that Malygos died so quickly. Lei-Shen is also original because, while based on the trope of eastern warlord, his motivation was to complete the work of the Titans.

[Atrea]

Blizzard has it all backwards. I'll be completely fine shoveling dragon turds in the Azure dragon stables and picking gnoll-berries to build my reputation with that savage camp of gnolls.

Unfortunately, it has escalated past the point where we can go back to just being regular people out in the world.

You don't defeat the Lich King, Deathwing, a slew of Old Gods and their minions, the entirety of the Burning Legion, and even robo-Satan himself, just to do an about-face and make your way shoveling shit in a stable. Story-wise, it doesn't make sense.

[LordVargK]

At least it was somewhat consistent in the past.
A silly story can be quite enjoyable. But an incoherent story where shit just happens without explanation is bad imo. And if past events lose their meaning, then current events can't have any meaning either. A good story doesn't have to belittle past events through changing their meaning and downplaying their impact.

[Iain]

Unfortunately, it has escalated past the point where we can go back to just being regular people out in the world.

You don't defeat the Lich King, Deathwing, a slew of Old Gods and their minions, the entirety of the Burning Legion, and even robo-Satan himself, just to do an about-face and make your way shoveling shit in a stable. Story-wise, it doesn't make sense.

Then to hell with 'the' story. Make it a trope where npcs are so self-obsessed that they constantly forget that it was you who did all the hard work.

[Mic_128]

You don't defeat the Lich King, Deathwing, a slew of Old Gods and their minions, the entirety of the Burning Legion, and even robo-Satan himself, just to do an about-face and make your way shoveling shit in a stable. Story-wise, it doesn't make sense.

And yet, despite being a renown hero, and a successful military commander, we're still going to go and pick X berries or get Y spleens ourselves.

[Toppy]

The fact that Arthas is based on a generic trope doesn't change the fact that the execution was original, because Darth Vader-esque characters always get redeemed in the end, but Arthas never got his redemption. He just had a moment of lucidity where he was glad that he was freed from the artefact of K̶i̶l̶'̶j̶a̶e̶d̶e̶n̶ The Janitor.

If anything Sylvanas is even more generic than Arthas, since she did get a redemption, like all the other countless Darth Vader clones you see in fiction. Danuser even wrote in her dungeon journal that she "dropped her mask" or something cringe like that, and right after the fight, she is redeemed. It doesn't get more generic Darth Vader than that. Meanwhile Arthas, while also a Darth Vader rip-off in his backstory, is more original because he doesn't get redeemed.

People here also complain about Alleria and Turalyon being your generic Aragorn-Arwen couple that you find in every fantasy work, but even if conceptually they are not original, the execution is still very unique, because Alleria embraced the powers of a Dark God, while Turalyon was granted immortality by the powers of a Light God. I have never seen another fantasy couple that embodies the primal powers of the Universe so clearly and distinctly.

You also didn't mention villains like Lei-Shen and Malygos who are genuinely original, even conceptually. I have never seen another villain with a motivation like Malygos. Depriving mortals of their magic because they are foolish with it is an original motivation, and if anything the crime is that Malygos died so quickly. Lei-Shen is also original because, while based on the trope of eastern warlord, his motivation was to complete the work of the Titans.

Fallen Princes as villains that dont get redeemed are... very common in fantasy, older fantasy especcially (which the Warcraft team would have been pulling from).

I love Arthas, but, original he is not. Not being aware of fantasy tropes doesnt make parodies of them unique. Lei Shen is a generic power hungry magic emperor. And power hungry emperors being revived is again, a rather common trope. The wizard going mad and declaring war, is also rather common.

At least it was somewhat consistent in the past.
A silly story can be quite enjoyable. But an incoherent story where shit just happens without explanation is bad imo. And if past events lose their meaning, then current events can't have any meaning either. A good story doesn't have to belittle past events through changing their meaning and downplaying their impact.

Eh. Was it? Even in the past Warcraft CONSTANTLY retconned. WC1-2 retconned. Wc2-3 retconned etc... Just the retcons werent as shitty since there was no ongoing narrative to fall apart due to said retcons. When you retcon a piece thats connected to almost nothing its like "Whoopty do" when you retcon something linked with 5 other things, then its a problem.

Unfortunately, it has escalated past the point where we can go back to just being regular people out in the world.

You don't defeat the Lich King, Deathwing, a slew of Old Gods and their minions, the entirety of the Burning Legion, and even robo-Satan himself, just to do an about-face and make your way shoveling shit in a stable. Story-wise, it doesn't make sense.

Bullshit. Other franchises do that kinda thing all the time.

In Everquests third expansion we were litterally invading and killing gods.

Expansion after that? Adventures in frog people swamp.

After that?

Lets invade a vampire castle.

The whole "We're to powerful now we cant go back!" is and always has been the most bullshit reasoning imaginable.

We went from fighting lord of all fire in vanilla, to fighting especcially buff Troll in the same.

Fucks sake, we went from fighting hyper satan in Legion, to fighting wizard lass and significantly weaker than other "old gods" we've fought a decade ago worm god in BfA. Warcraft itself goes against what you're saying.

[Varodoc]

Fallen Princes as villains that dont get redeemed are... very common in fantasy, older fantasy especcially (which the Warcraft team would have been pulling from).

I love Arthas, but, original he is not. Not being aware of fantasy tropes doesnt make parodies of them unique. Lei Shen is a generic power hungry magic emperor. And power hungry emperors being revived is again, a rather common trope. The wizard going mad and declaring war, is also rather common.



Eh. Was it? Even in the past Warcraft CONSTANTLY retconned. WC1-2 retconned. Wc2-3 retconned etc... Just the retcons werent as shitty since there was no ongoing narrative to fall apart due to said retcons. When you retcon a piece thats connected to almost nothing its like "Whoopty do" when you retcon something linked with 5 other things, then its a problem.



Bullshit. Other franchises do that kinda thing all the time.

In Everquests third expansion we were litterally invading and killing gods.

Expansion after that? Adventures in frog people swamp.

After that?

Lets invade a vampire castle.

The whole "We're to powerful now we cant go back!" is and always has been the most bullshit reasoning imaginable.

We went from fighting lord of all fire in vanilla, to fighting especcially buff Troll in the same.

Fucks sake, we went from fighting hyper satan in Legion, to fighting wizard lass and significantly weaker than other "old gods" we've fought a decade ago worm god in BfA. Warcraft itself goes against what you're saying.

You keep saying they are not original but then you don't give examples of other villains from fiction who are like that.

Give me an example of a Darth Vader clone (young hero who was manipulated and became masked villain) who didn't get redeemed.

Give me an example of a dragon who wanted to deprive mortals of magic because he thought they misused it.

Give me an example of an eastern warlord who wanted to complete the work of his creator Gods.

I also forgot Nozdormu/Murozond btw, give me an example of another villain who is a dragon who saw himself die and tried to shatter the timelines so that he doesn't die.

And in the end, they would still be more original than the Janitor. In the past, we objectively had more complex and compelling villains. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Iain]

The whole "We're to powerful now we cant go back!" is and always has been the most bullshit reasoning imaginable.

Sadly this is what Blizzard themselves have been buying into. It really flew off the handle in Warlords of Draenor where the game took every opportunity to validate the player and reaffirm how important they are. I liked the expansion but only in spite of all the ass-kissing. And since WoD things have only escalated further. I briefly got excited when arriving in Boralus immediately got the player arrested. But that didn't last long and before you know it you were back being the pivotal character again.

It feels dirty, creepy even. The constant patronizing in the literal sense, it's Blizzard prostituting themselves for your subscription fee.

There's got to be some cynical executive behind this who sees their audience as a bunch of neckbeard losers who play purely to be praised by NPC's.

Yes, players like to flex, but they like to flex on other players. They like to get on their hard-fought mount in a town square and get people checking them out. That's not the same as a cut-scene telling them they are the champion of the universe.

And, indeed, it especially is uncalled for once it starts being an excuse to write more intimate, smaller stories.

[cparle87]

At least it was somewhat consistent in the past.
A silly story can be quite enjoyable. But an incoherent story where shit just happens without explanation is bad imo. And if past events lose their meaning, then current events can't have any meaning either. A good story doesn't have to belittle past events through changing their meaning and downplaying their impact.

They've been retconning things from the beginning. WC1 had mentions of God, Heaven, demons were literally from Hell. Kil'jaeden was nothing more than Gul'dan's tutor and was scared away when the latter contacted Medivh. Bog standard fantasy. By WC2 they'd removed all the real world religious connotations, inventing the Twisting Nether as the home for demons.

[Iain]

And yet, despite being a renown hero, and a successful military commander, we're still going to go and pick X berries or get Y spleens ourselves.

That's what I want to be doing after a long day at work. Just soaking in the setting doing mundane shit.

[Mic_128]

That's what I want to be doing after a long day at work. Just soaking in the setting doing mundane shit.

It was honestly one of the things I loved most about MoP, starting from the 'bottom' again. Going around, helping people out and gradually showing we were competent.

[Toppy]

You keep saying they are not original but then you don't give examples of other villains from fiction who are like that.

Give me an example of a Darth Vader clone (young hero who was manipulated and became masked villain) who didn't get redeemed.

Give me an example of a dragon who wanted to deprive mortals of magic because he thought they misused it.

Give me an example of an eastern warlord who wanted to complete the work of his creator Gods.

I also forgot Nozdormu/Murozond btw, give me an example of another villain who is a dragon who saw himself die and tried to shatter the timelines so that he doesn't die.

And in the end, they would still be more original than the Janitor. In the past, we objectively had more complex and compelling villains. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.../TheEvilPrince

Its one of the bigger literature tropes.

Lei-shen wasnt trying to complete the works of the creator gods. Nothing in his actions show this, rather he was disgusted with what his god had become and usurped his power for the sake of dominance: which wasnt the creator gods goal.

You seem to be of the mind that since there arent carbon copies, then its original. Which is silly. My point from the start is that they are parodies and mashes together, common, tropes. Which they are. Blizzard used to admit to this themselves.

Hell both your Maly and Noz bit rely on "Find me a dragon that does this thing". Being a dragon that does thing doesnt make the thing unique or the character unique. If I made a wandering barbarian who uses common sense in his trials, but made the Barbarian an Elf, I havent made anything all that original, I just made Elven Conan the Barbarian. Heck, "Time traveler going evil to prevent own death" is the most overused time travel concept in fantasy.

[Khaza-R]

Rather silly thread IMO.

Its definitely not a parody but yes, its always heavily borrowed from pop culture and other IPs such as Warhammer (before it turned to trash). Then again, everyone borrows from something so not sure this is ever really a point. As the old proverb goes, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.".

There's a lot of humor in the games but I wouldn't call the overall tone silly. No more than MCU films are silly because they interject jokes throughout the plot sequence.

[Varodoc]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.../TheEvilPrince

Its one of the bigger literature tropes.

It's genuinely tragic how some people like you judge a character based on what the almighty trope website says. I guess no villain is ever original since they all belong to at least one of the tropes in the almighty trope website.

You don't even see these people as characters, do you? You just see them as a bunch of tropes that are listed in a website. It's frankly such a tragic way to read a story.

I honestly don't care what the website says. Arthas is still original because, unlike the other Darth Vader clones, he never gets redemption. This fact subverts the story and trope.

Lei-shen wasnt trying to complete the works of the creator gods

Literally his dying quote "I sought only to finish... the work of the Gods..."

You saying that he was just lying to himself and being hypocritical/copium would just be an additional layer to his character and wouldn't change the fact that it was his motivation.

ou seem to be of the mind that since there arent carbon copies, then its original. Which is silly

And you're of the mind that just because they follow a certain trope, they are not original, which is even sillier. Following this logic, no villain can ever be original since they all follow the general villain trope of opposing the protagonist lol.

If I made a wandering barbarian who uses common sense in his trials, but made the Barbarian an Elf, I havent made anything all that original, I just made Elven Conan the Barbarian.

If the fantasy world this takes place in is a world like Dragon Age where the elves are oppressed and suffer racism? Then it's not hard to make said character more creative than what it's based on.

Hell both your Maly and Noz bit rely on "Find me a dragon that does this thing".

You said these villains are overused, prove it. Give me a list of multiple villains who are very similar to Malygos or Lei-Shen or Nozdormu/Murozond. Since it's such an overused trope, you won't have a shortage of example to bring up.

And Yes, it kind of is relevant that Malygos and Murozond as dragons. Because a lot of dragons in fiction are either mostly beasts (like in Game of Thrones) or generic evil (like in LOTR). Meanwhile in Warcraft we have at least two dragons, Malygos and Nozdormu, who were incredibly intelligent and well-intentioned; Malygos thought humans were misusing magic, and Nozdormu tried to avert his own death by shattering the timeline. So Yes, the fact that they are dragons is very relevant.

I also love how you didn't address the fact that the Janitor is way more uninspired and unoriginal than anything that came before.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Ah yes, the thread topic that keeps on giving: Warcraft's story/lore elements being taken from other fictional story/lore elements.

[loras]

Look back to old Warcraft games and honestly, the series has always been a retcon city with bare bones story and built on top of parody. Every sequal was loaded with retcons to the prior game. The stories themselves were often if not always parodies of existing fantasy stories and tropes. It was always silly and campy with the artwork being made by heavy metal band cover artists. Even the most celebrated story: Arthas, is just a fairly bog standard fallen prince trope that you can find in dozens of campy fantasy novels. Their most original idea was likely the noble savage Orc but even that was just taking the existing noble savage trope and slapping it on a none-human. The original Warcraft team were all fantasy nerds and its what they did. Warcraft is essentially the "Police Squad" of video games.

And it was great.

Things didn't start falling apart till the devs started taking things too serious. I'm not saying they shouldn't try for consistency, but the heaviest retcons always come from them trying to undue their over the top roots in some way. I'm not saying they can't be serious, but they've been leaning into it far to much and ignoring that you cant keep doing that with an setting with such an exaggerated, everything (art style especcially). They often seem to be embarresed about how corny the lore is and wanting to make it "super srs" which just, doesnt work. Its why the Zovaal thing just ended with everyone pointing and laughing.

While i do agree with the assessment that going for overly complex super srs definitely backfires, both consistency and a world-driven narrative are necessary, especially in an mmo.

Characters will always get stale and/or be repetitive, they're characters. That is what characters do. Especially in a static world.

[mickybrighteyes]

People here also complain about Alleria and Turalyon being your generic Aragorn-Arwen couple that you find in every fantasy work,

or everyone else in Alleria's family tree... literally all her sisters went off to hook up with a human of note in the story

[Varodoc]

or everyone else in Alleria's family tree... literally all her sisters went off to hook up with a human of note in the story

The community loves Sylvanas and Vereesa and hardly ever complain about them. Alleria is literally the only one who gets so much hate from the community (for some reason), which is why I mentioned only her.

I mean, whenever Sylvanas and Vereesa commit mass murder, the community cheers for them (let's not pretend every Horde player wasn't making jokes about Teldrassil). But the community gets mad about Alleria just coming close to a fount of Light.