Has The Writing Improved In BFA?

[owbu]

Well the new story doesn't have to set up a storyline that comes out of nowhere, so the writers are doing an okay job instead of failing at an impossible job.



You could call that improving I guess.

[Izzyfurious]

He really isn't. The quality of writing on the micro scale definitely has improved. The small stories told within the expansion are, for the most part, pretty good. But the overall storytelling, the overall plot, that's what's weak. Abusing the OP because you want to mindlessly lump that all together is it's own kind of denial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

[Alopex Major]

I think the character development is the best Blizzard have ever done, Jaina and Sylvanas have been great as well as Saurfang. There is a strong sense of real development in their character building.
.

Respectfully I have to disagree here; unless you mean that completely going against their past beliefs and actions and being inconsistent is "character growth" which I mean, I guess is technically true. It doesn't help that I personally am sick of Jaina and Sylvanas and would be happy never seeing them ever again, so no matter which faction I pick I'm stuck with a story I have no investment in.

As a roleplayer since 2006, the story and lore are fairly important to me as a player both to follow, and to provide context for what my characters are doing. I've weathered bad lore before (time traveling orcs say hi), but Legion and BFA's stories have been too much for me to stomach. I just can't enjoy the game when both the gameplay AND the story are atrocious.

[mario710]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

In my opinion, your opinion is also terrible.

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Hope I don't get banned for that.

[shadowmatrix]

Despite my distaste for the direction of the story, I find myself deeply invested in it.

If the writing is so awful then why can't I walk away?

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Saying all this to pose the question:

Perhaps the writing isn't "awful" and the writing department merely succeeded in evoking an emotional response from people like me?

Because the writing isn't awful, it is average at worst. Awful is the Fifty Shades of Black movies or the My Immortal fanfic.

[sam86]

I’d say the writing has gotten better but the story kinda sucks.

this
and story is getting worse because how chained it is, they can't make real changes in wow , alliance will be here, horde will always be, u would never one day log and find ur undead priest doesn't exist anymore
also they can do that and give u free race change, but i think Bobby Kodick would get heart attack from just hearing the letter "F", he can't be the greediest human on earth with most overpaid salary and fire 15% of staff only to give something for free, ever

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I think the character development is the best Blizzard have ever done, Jaina and Sylvanas have been great as well as Saurfang. There is a strong sense of real development in their character building

what character development ? Sylvanas in Before the storm talks about how her longtime dream is to conquer Stormwind
wtf ?
we talk about character that predate wow itself, that exists since 2001, from 2001 to 2018, she never, literally never, even mentioned anywhere at all her 'long life dream' of destroy stormwind, u can't do that to a character that predate wow itself, create a new character and make him rise to power, heck make it Nathanos dream and she will do it for him (it is already obvious how they love each others even if they are in denial-anime style state), but to make someone who is 18 years old, suddenly have a dream of wiping out stormwind
they could even just say it was new dream, yeah it will still be sh8t but it will be far less sh8t than to claim it was her 'life' dream that surprisingly she never said, and we saw her and how she talks hundreds of time over those 18 years
i can detail many more but that what piss me the most

[Cosmic Janitor]

Just looking at the nazjatar intro is an example how the writing really hasn't improved or the efforts of the writing team are trampled on by lazy quest designers. 8.2 the old pandaria-landing issue again, you arrive at a place in a dangerous situation, you are cut off from your supply lines and the first thing you do is set up a portal to your major outpost and go off and do something entirely unrelated.

Seriously, why do that? You could put the HoA quest before the other one and it would work perfectly fine as well, why ruin the pacing and the little bit of immersion your world designers have build by shoving Magi's diamond ass into it not 10 minutes in.

Also making the heart chamber shared is just narrative lunacy. I know they are desperate for postitive attention and the retards that constantly complain about sharding sure have soiled their pants in excitement, but seeing how the people here are form random servers, it's a rather transparent attempt to make the game look populated. Not to mention it also once again ruins any kind of immersion when all you see is a bunch of randos standing on the heartforge.

[Mayia]

Despite my distaste for the direction of the story, I find myself deeply invested in it.

If the writing is so awful then why can't I walk away?

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Saying all this to pose the question:

Perhaps the writing isn't "awful" and the writing department merely succeeded in evoking an emotional response from people like me?

Short answer ; Yes.
Long answer ; Yes.. but most of the good information is left for the books, while they still haven't gotten good at making more characters at once have roles they tend to cycle characters unnaturally, like how the night elves don't join us for Azshara.. is fucking retarded because last patch "we had too much of her" like that matters, they try to rotate the main leaders around rather than telling a natural story which will focus on one or more character for an extended time, but they are writing decent stories in the books.

But as for putting it ingame they suck.. warfronts failed at being a plot delivering devise what happened on darkshore makes less sense because of the warfront, and basically you have to watch wow youtubers to pickup what they meant to do.

[Thenatural]

It's not bad. Not great, but better.

[Orby]

what character development ? Sylvanas in Before the storm talks about how her longtime dream is to conquer Stormwind
wtf ?
we talk about character that predate wow itself, that exists since 2001, from 2001 to 2018, she never, literally never, even mentioned anywhere at all her 'long life dream' of destroy stormwind, u can't do that to a character that predate wow itself, create a new character and make him rise to power, heck make it Nathanos dream and she will do it for him (it is already obvious how they love each others even if they are in denial-anime style state), but to make someone who is 18 years old, suddenly have a dream of wiping out stormwind
they could even just say it was new dream, yeah it will still be sh8t but it will be far less sh8t than to claim it was her 'life' dream that surprisingly she never said, and we saw her and how she talks hundreds of time over those 18 years
i can detail many more but that what piss me the most

I have read Before the Storm, I am not sure I remember her goal being to conquer Stormwind (provide chapter and page). Her goal is immortality, to see herself and her people live forever and not die out. And she will obviously go though any means to get it.

Let's not forget her original goal was to see the Lich King defeated by her hands, and she missed that opportunity, she failed her goal, and then proceed to kill herself off of Icecrown, in death she found new meaning and a new goal, which ultimately led to this point.

This is character development, she has changed coarse, now you can be unhappy that this turn of events happened at all, but you cannot say that this isn't development. I personally think it's great that more dimension has been added. Now I am not a fan of Sylvanas as a character personally, I cannot wait until I kill her, but I respect the way she is written, she is the type of character who I really love to hate, like a Cersi from Game of Thrones (minus the incest) or Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye or even Iago from Othello.. Or at least thats how I see her. But each to their own.

[Verdugo]

I understand everyone has an opinion. But yours OP is simply awful. If you think the writing is getting better you are living in denial imo.

Someone with a Night Elf avatar defending BfA story...

[HitRefresh]

One of their most famous members is Grom "concept of afterlife that doesn't exist for the orcs or any known race in Waracraft lore"scream.

That's a result of retcons though. There was a hell in the lore until WC3. There's a reason people hated WC3's story when it was new.

[Inci]

I feel like I'll be getting a few hate comments about this, but this is how I see BFA so far.

I really dislike it when they bring real-life politics in games. I can't unsee how they are trying so hard to make it all about "powerful female characters" butchering Jaina and Sylvanas just to force a story on them. trying so hard to appeal to the outside world is disgusting.

Many tv series are following the same trend.

[Verdugo]

I feel like I'll be getting a few hate comments about this, but this is how I see BFA so far.

I really dislike it when they bring real-life politics in games. I can't unsee how they are trying so hard to make it all about "powerful female characters" butchering Jaina and Sylvanas just to force a story on them. trying so hard to appeal to the outside world is disgusting.

Many tv series are following the same trend.

In that case they are fucking up pretty badly. Women are shown as unstable cunts while a young white blue-eyed blonde boy is the future of the universe.

Maybe we can convince Blizzard that Anduin is considered a fictional hero of the alt right so they can make him disappear.

[Wangming]

That's a result of retcons though. There was a hell in the lore until WC3. There's a reason people hated WC3's story when it was new.

Blizzard loves retcons. And they tend to make things worse.

I feel like I'll be getting a few hate comments about this, but this is how I see BFA so far.

I really dislike it when they bring real-life politics in games. I can't unsee how they are trying so hard to make it all about "powerful female characters" butchering Jaina and Sylvanas just to force a story on them. trying so hard to appeal to the outside world is disgusting.

Many tv series are following the same trend.

The outside world is paying the subscription. So what's your point? You want an alien totally unrelatable story? Genuinely curious.

[Verdugo]

The outside world is paying the subscription. So what's your point? You want an alien totally unrelatable story? Genuinely curious.

Warhammer 40k, Imperium of man is a fascist theocracy, they are still considered protagonists.

[Wangming]

Warhammer 40k, Imperium of man is a fascist theocracy, they are still considered protagonists.

Well isn't the whole point of the setting is that everyone is an irredeemable trash of a person. It's still based on real life morals. They just all go against it. And the political systems are based on real life.

[Dastreus]

Nah. It certainly didn't. Warcraft writing was always bad. Like the Orcs from their home planet of 'Notorcishword' who were a totally peaceful people and definitely not savages who abused Gul'dan for being a criple and carry names like Doomhammer. They had several clans with their distinctive traditions. Such as the "Flying creature absolutely not seen on Draenor"maw Clan and the "Pure coincidence that a mountain with this name exists on another planet" Clan. One of their most famous members is Grom "concept of afterlife that doesn't exist for the orcs or any known race in Waracraft lore"scream.

We also had noble prince Arthas who was totally pure of heart before Frostmourne cursed him and he totally didn't massacre his own countrymen and soldiers because...reasons.


And this was before the lore turned into a huge clusterfuck. So yeah. It was always bad.

It has its moments, like in Gilneas, but even the backstory for the Worgen has its hiccups.

As for the BfA story....this war campaing is super bad. Granted the bad part isn't the writing of the story. It is the writing of the characters. But in the end it doesn't matter much as the result is me not caring what happens to these people. All of them are dumb, boring or both. The only one with a consistent character who doesn't fuck up all the time is Genn. He has been: "Fuck Sylvanas and anything related to him" ever since Liam died. He managed to ruin her plans in Legion and in BfA he is basically the one fighting the war. He worked with us to secure Kul Tiras' help when Jaina put herself in prison, he sent help to Tyrande when Anduin was busy with being Anduin and he is with us in Nazjatar as well.

The problem is, he isn't all that interesting of a character despite being a werewolf king. There aren't many places the story can go with him. He is an old king who lost his home twice and has a hot daughter he needs to find a husband for. He will not change jobs, he will not switch classes, he willnot hook up with anyone he will not turn undead. There is nothing to be done with him.

I thought the Dragonmaw Clan was formed on Azeroth from remnants of the old horde, aaaand the Blackrock Clan was named the Blackrock Clan on Draenor, and the mountain of Blackrock wasn't named Blackrock Mountain until the orcish clan took it over.

[Cosmic Janitor]

What exactly is "writing" in a gaming context? If we go by classical literature, writing would be the execution of the story in the medium - literally everything written, how it is worded, how it is structured, if the word choices are engaging, etc.. But since we don't have writing here (with maybe the exception of dialogue) we would need to transpose it onto the gaming equivalent. That is probably why most people here seem to talk about different things.

So again, what are we talking about? I think we can divide it into the 3-4 major parts.

Worldbuilding? - Setting the scene, the atmosphere. In a book this is written, here it is a visual representation, there are probably some concept stages you could label as writing, but we aren't shown to us usually, so we can only go by what we see as the final product. I think here the game has actually improved with a few nice touches here and there.

Plot/Story? - What actually happens in our story. The rough outline of the story before it is filled out with dialogue by NPCs. This category can probably divided up further by looking at the overarching story and smaller contained story elements within the overarching story. As someone already said, the overarching plot is awful and many smaller plots are used to facilitate the larger plot in unnatural ways. Characters doing stupid things also falls under this imho. But there are still some decent smaller plots, even if they are cliche, like the Story of the character Zelling or Zandalari/Kul Tiran faction plots excluding the warcampaign, The stories of House Proudmore and the betrayal of Rastakahn were certainly good ones overall.

Dialogue? - The way the story is actually delivered to us minus the visual component. Here we still have some really cringy lines, especially if we were to include some of the terrible ingame cinematic syncing. I still have outer body experiences whenever I hear "I am the Night Warrior" /shudder. I don't think the dialogues have improved at all over time, let alone the execution, it's often bare minimum and we still lack major voice acting for most quests, let alone quest texts of NPCs.

(Contextual narrative of the gameplay?) - The way quests and other mechanics are used to make us part of the story. Literature usually doesn't have this, but this is a game and player interaction is part of that and the way you interact with the story is part of how you experience it. If someone drums up a storm about how awsome the next enemy is and you one shot it (intentionally) then there is something wrong with the way this gameplay interaction was incorporated into the story. Or my above example where obviously they need to provide a check-point to players with a portal, but doing it in such a clunky way that it undermines the story. I think here the game still fails massively in this regard.


Overall I think the "writing" in wow has only improved in the way the settings are presented and in self-contained stories, but even then it's still often hit and miss or at least filled with filler-side stories. Stormsong valley is a prime example of this. The main story there is on paar with the other zones, but the rubbish quillboar and turtle shit to the west or the silly bee stuff to the east are uneccesary and don't add to the overall zone, where in Drustvar even the silly sidestories add to the overall story of the zone.

[Kathranis]

I’d say the writing has gotten better but the story kinda sucks.

I'd say this about sums it up. The overarching "war campaign" story for this expansion is really inconsistent and contrived, but when you get down to the stories for individual characters and zones, they're handled very well.