Has The Writing Improved In BFA?

[Verdugo]

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.

They are still someone you can root for, unlike the Alliance, which is ironicaly less relatable because of them being a paragon of goodness.

[ultima ratio]

Yeah I never understood how this is about female empowerment when the women in question are also examples of everything wrong attributed to the female gender role (emotionally unstable, manipulative, vain). If anything the political statement of BfA is how only the enlightened elites can help the uneducated masses overcome their preference for the authoritarian populist.

Jaina manipulative? emotionally unstable after her family reunion? Sylvanas? (both r the opposite of ur suspectively projective "claims")

and who represents this enlightened elite? those unstable femme fatales? the boy-king? Baine?
if anything the political statement of BFA is to save the world from dying, wich is uptodate contemporary. its gonna be the players, who will save Azeroth. so the enlighted elite is the player itself, saving the masses via saving Azeroth... thats quite pedagogical.

maybe there is more joy in the plot outside of (incel) echochamber? (some reduce females into such projections due to inferiority issues, its an absurd version of power-fantasy, and a very lonely i guess in reference to ur postcounter...)

[aceperson]

when star wars episode 5 came out, most people thought it ruined star wars. now it's considered one of the best star wars movies. tastes change over time and so do opinions. if you enjoy it, then keep enjoying it regardless of what other people say. it means you like different things compared to them.

[thesmall001]

The writing is great. The story is medium. The world building is poor.

Different things are worked on by different people and have different qualifiers of success.

When a character says something you think is "in character" for them, that's good writing, it's demonstrating an understand of the character and their style and tone.

That character might be in a situation you don't like. That's the story. It's designed from a higher level. A character can be well written in a story that is not. This is a nuance most gamers don't recognise or respect. They want a story that always goes how they want, delivered by characters that always act as they expect. This gets boring. Sometimes it's more fun to put a character in a situation they shouldn't be (so you sort of tank your story) to explore how they react. You may not like that combination but it does not make it inherently bad. It just isn't making you feel good and safe about it. So the story is subjective.

World building is something everybody feels but nobody notices. It's the little things where silence can be deafening. It's things like half the archaeology descriptions being left as placeholders. It's the absence of in-game story-telling widgets like the Pandaria scrolls or the Artifact Knowledge or the books that were found everywhere in Classic through to Cataclysm. It's definitely not the World Quests for an entire faction not being a copy and paste of 4 generic talking heads. It's definitely not delivering 2 zones stretched into 6 zones using almost none of the pre-existing knowledge about those places to shoe-horn the current story into them.

The only times that consistently delivered on all 3 of these things were Classic, Wrath and MoP. People didn't necessarily recognise it at the time but it has stood up to scrutiny and reflection. These are the things that stick with people years after they forget how classes felt or how exciting the raids and dungeons were.

[Onmius]

I would say no, since unless i'm missing something the story is currently implying we just LEFT the pillars of creation at the tomb of sargaras with like, no protection, and Azshara just waltzed up and yeeted the thing right into her palace.

[Kathranis]

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.

"Dragonmaw" is what they are called in the common tongue on Azeroth. It's like how we call Deutschland "Germany" in English.

In Orcish their clan name is Nelghor-shomash ("Cry of the Beast"). Nelghor ("loyal beast") is their name for the mounts they tame and ride, which on Draenor were the rylaks, and on Azeroth are dragons. Eventually nelghor became the orcish word for Azerothian "dragon."

Same for the Blackrock Clan. They are named after the blackrock ore found on Draenor, which is formed from the remains of the colossi, and is known by a different name in orcish. Blackrock isn't literally their name in orcish, it's just the common translation on Azeroth.

Likewise for Hellscream, Doomhammer, and the rest. In literal orcish they have orcish names, it's just how their names are presented and localized for players.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I would say no, since unless i'm missing something the story is currently implying we just LEFT the pillars of creation at the tomb of sargaras with like, no protection, and Azshara just waltzed up and yeeted the thing right into her palace.

I figured they were pretty much locked in to seal the place, I don't get why the fuck we left them there in the first place if they weren't needed to be there any longer, literally, they could have been used during the argus campaign or as fuel for our damn weapons. Writing them back into the story in that manner is just stupid.

[Cracked]

I just did the introduction quests to Nazjatar.

No, it hasn't.

[Blackmist]

Well yes, but actually no.

The voice acting and dialogue is noticeably better than it's been in the past. The overall story is hot garbage with plot holes you can drive a tank through.

[Felixon]

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?

- - - Updated - - -

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?

The story is the worst i've seen since I started playing. So many stupid decisions and directions they took,so much illogical bullshit,that contradicts the lore they have written before - a perfectly fine lore compared to what we have today. They started turning the lore into a pile of crap during the WoD,then they wasted a huge potential that a Burning Legion was,portraying them as a bunch of arrogant and incompetent fools,and now we have Azshara and N'zoth,but I sense,that they are also going to ruin these last remaining villains of old Warcraft. What will they do then? I have no idea.

I would compare the lore of Wacraft with a car. Up until the WOTLK,it was a car in a great condition,which was sold to Activision, who can be compared to somebody,who never actually knew how to drive and who turned a once great car into pile of junk,which is still going on,but has so many issues it's cheaper to buy a new one,than to repair it.

[Wangming]

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.

Dragonmaw not named Dragonmaw till Azeroth was a Chronicle explanation. Till that point the name made absolutely no sense for decades. Dunno if this was retconned but in the novelizations it was explicitly mentioned that the Blackrock Orcs took it as a good omen that a Blackrock Mountain exists on Azeroth.

They are still someone you can root for, unlike the Alliance, which is ironicaly less relatable because of them being a paragon of goodness.

A fair point. But they aren't unrelatable because they fit real world politics. They are unrelatable cause they are bland and uninteresting.

Same for the Blackrock Clan. They are named after the blackrock ore found on Draenor, which is formed from the remains of the colossi, and is known by a different name in orcish. Blackrock isn't literally their name in orcish, it's just the common translation on Azeroth.

Likewise for Hellscream, Doomhammer, and the rest. In literal orcish they have orcish names, it's just how their names are presented and localized for players.

You completely missed the point. I know they aren't speaking english.

But an alien race living in a place named after them by pure coincidence....that's silly

It's like grey aliens from the Cairo clan landing in Egypt.

Naming something Hellscream when there is no Hell...is dumb. Nothing prevented them from naming him Grom Netherscream. Or from making an actual Hell for us. Or even a Hell that doesn't exist, but the Orcs nevertheless believe in.

Just to give you an example from the opposition:

In Final Fantasy XIV A common exclamation is: Seven Hells! There is no Hell in FFXIV, but the belief in Seven Heavens and Seven Hells is a core part of Eorzean beliefs. It's reflected in Astrology for example. in Othard they use: By the Kami! cause they have an entirely different religion.

Meanwhile demons are called voidsent because they come from the Void. A very literal realm of darkness.


And Doomhammer....Well it doesn't matter if it is just a translation. It can be Vasdakncaskcasncska in Orcish as long as it roughly means Doomhammer. A peaceful shamanistic society does not name people, or weapons, Doomhammer. Or bully disabled people. Or let a time traveling Garrosh turn them into a bunch of genocidal monsters.

[MrCool]

Read a VN if you want good story.

[sam86]

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.

it is very early at start, and it was shown in the free sample at wowhead
just check first chapter that talks about orgrimmar, u can find it on wowhead, right after the line she is proud to be the first 'female warchief', strange how she noticed she has boobs after 17 years, 15 of them she was leader of her faction
I know her dream was to kill LK, we all know, but this book show that nope, her dream was first to wipe out humanity, like what happened to sylvanas we know for 18 years prior ?

[tromage2]

Story of BfA sucks.
Its MoP plot step by step very lazy to do another Horde cival war again.

[Izzyfurious]

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

Calls me out defending a game when i simply disagreed with someone else opinion. When i never stated in the first place my opinion equals i defend again. Also proceeds to use horrible insult about my characters avatar. So original You have no idea what the eff you are saying. Stop talking please.

Honestly, is this a 4 chan copy and paste user?

[Kathranis]

A peaceful shamanistic society does not name people, or weapons, Doomhammer.

I would hardly call the Blackrock clan a "peaceful shamanistic society." They're the ones who named the weapon, and it was named so because it brings doom to the wielder's enemies.

Not all orcish clans held the same values, nor did all the members of those clans.

The clans who initially joined the Horde (and Iron Horde in the AU) either did so because they were warlike or out of desperation.

I don't think anyone believes that the orcs had a "peaceful shamanistic society" on the whole. They lived brutal lives on a brutal world where peace was rarely an option, due to the constant clashes with ogres, arakkoa, botani, saberon, and other orcs, to say nothing of all manner of beasts.

I'm not going to say that Blizzard has ever been consistent with its writing, but you're really nitpicking on a lot of this stuff. Most of these issues stem from the transition from WC2 to WC3 when the setting was essentially rewritten from the ground up. Hell, angels, daemons, etc. were things in WC1 and WC2, when the series was in its infancy. It wasn't until WC3 that the unique lore of the Warcraft settings was established, and there are still some elements from the first two games that stick out.

You really can't compare FFXIV to WoW as if they exist in bubbles. FFXIV was built from the ground up by a large international team with the intention of being a wholly self-contained world, utilizing decades of experience building unique worlds for over a dozen other games in the series.

WoW, on the other hand, is the fourth game in a setting with an ongoing narrative that was created in the early 90s by what was at the time a small indie studio without much experience.

Pointing out these minor linguistic inconsistencies is tantamount to complaining that Square Enix didn't translate Midgardsormr as Midgar Zolom in Heavensward because that contradicts with the original localization of FFVII.

[digichi]

I'm only confused that in a whole expac about saving Azeroth, there is a distinct lack of characterizing or showcasing Azeroth/Magni and that storyline in the forefront (atleast in cinematics). The cinematic story is focused on political intrigue, which doesn't really help anyone emotionally invest in saving Azeroth or your Heart of Azeroth.