[Lore]Blizzards big mistakes - When did it all start going wrong? And what caused it?

[ravenmoon]

Well it might be counted as my oppinion but what caused ALL the current problems originates from wc3 like how characters are written for example jainas Mop-warcrimes-wod attitude was same kind of writting(meaning at the end of warcrimes she forgives the horde but at wod still hates the horde) which originated from wc3

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Well blizzard original notes on night elves was said wc3 ce dvd that they wanted to make wood elves with dark elf twist as dark elves are extremely magical usually and wood elves live inside and count on many basic night elves sides like their reverance for nature though they aren't as carpon copied as undeads or demons in wc3 but they still pratically only two D6D races combined into one which really isn't that original.

Wood elves with a dark elf twist?

That's not what the original developers said. They were fully intended to be the best of dark elves and wood elves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010205...667651,00.html

We could never get a majority of the team to [agree] to do elves as a race per se. But then somebody suggested the idea of doing dark elves. We all thought that would be kind of cool, but none of us wanted to do traditional "drow." So we took the best of wood elves and the best of dark elves and made them into one race.

And indeed this is what happens, night elves became a full race at a time when high elves were part of the alliance units. The backstory of the night elves and the novel war of the ancients, then the progression in cataclysm and legion show you that night elves aren't just wood elves, and never were from the very beginning. The only players that think that are those that aren't keen on them and just go based on what they see in-game without paying attention to what the story is.

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You cling to something the night elves willingly abandoned and scorned for well over ten thousand years, they do not look fondly back on the time of their empire, they look back on it, with disgust. The night elves are very much like wood elves, a defanged version from the warhammer asrai to be precise.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010205...667651,00.html

http://classic.battle.net/war3/nightelf/

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/ne...erview-suramar

We could never get a majority of the team to [agree] to do elves as a race per se. But then somebody suggested the idea of doing dark elves. We all thought that would be kind of cool, but none of us wanted to do traditional "drow." So we took the best of wood elves and the best of dark elves and made them into one race.

All these say otherwise. You may appear correct but if you only go superficially on what you see and skim the lore. If you look closer, what you say is further away from what it is, but you have to use all the lore you are given.

[Combatbutler]

All these say otherwise. You may appear correct but if you only go superficially on what you see and skim the lore. If you look closer, what you say is further away from what it is, but you have to use all the lore you are given.
[/FONT]

Yeah nice from blizz to say that, next they say starcraft is an original concept and wasn't meant to be a warhammer 40k title, which is precisely why I said Asrai, the night elves are very similar to those, extremely isolationist, once part of a vast arcane empire, ruled by a lovers pair one transformed by the magic of the forest, the other the avatar of their goddess, helped by demigods of the forests and spirits and always protecting their precious oak of ages.

[ravenmoon]

Yeah nice from blizz to say that, next they say starcraft is an original concept and wasn't meant to be a warhammer 40k title, which is precisely why I said Asrai, the night elves are very similar to those, extremely isolationist, once part of a vast arcane empire, ruled by a lovers pair one transformed by the magic of the forest, the other the avatar of their goddess, helped by demigods of the forests and spirits and always protecting their precious oak of ages.

That sounds like more than similar, it sounds like an almost identical copy paste

[Combatbutler]

That sounds like more than similar, it sounds like an almost identical copy paste

You don't say, blizz has a habit of taking a great deal from the warhammer universe, twisting it a bit.

[Magicon]

It went wrong when Blizzard decided to try to force 2 factions into a franchise that had 6 different factions at the end of the previous game.

Trying to shoehorn everything in under the Horde/Alliance banner not only ruined a bunch of things, but it made the world feel small and empty because everything focused around those 2 groups.

IMO WoW has been at it's best when factions were more or less ignored and at it's worse when the factions are at the forefront. Seeing different cultures and races is way more interesting than watching everything get swallowed up by a blue blob or red blob.

+1 /10char

[Evangeliste]

The actual big problem for Warcraft is...

Being 20+ years in the making and all the people in power, being changed consistently. Each having their own vision, their own agenda and their own understanding of the audience however informed or misinformed it is.

Its never been able to pause and regroup, constantly reinventing and tuning everything because they have to do it on the run.

It's super evident that they run into problems and don't have the time to properly address the issue. Literally WoD is a hallmark of meeting the inevitable a wall of issues, whether technical, narrative, etc and navigating around it by simply cutting out content because there's no time to recover from it.

I do not envy the people that work in that place.





Also... People like to blame Christie Golden for the state of written lore, here's one of the actual people who ordains what the lore and story actually unfolds into. This person seems to have taken on Metzen's job.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Lydia_Bottegoni

Her previous job really speaks volumes as to why the 'rule of cool' has been drummed into Warcraft something fucking rotten and how story seems nonsensical at times.

I miss Metzen because although you had Green Jesus, you could mock the credibility of the characters themselves... Not the entire damn story because it literally is so poorly portrayed and ignorant of game structure.

[mickybrighteyes]

Mists of Pandaria, when they ruined Garrosh and diffused the faction war rather than intensify it.

I thought it was a nice transition going from Wrath, through Cata, and into MoP overall. Garrosh's path was more or less set by Cataclsym and seemed to have more of the faults with his story progression than when we got to MoP (different zones with vastly different theme or feel for Garrosh...). MoP's only real issue with the story development was probably how fast we flip from general land grab expansion to Garrosh pushing his TRUE HORDE bullshit.

But arguably during The Burning Crusade when they made Shattrath a thing. Whenever you design a game to have PVP and then remove the animosity between factions in the story, you ruin the story. Blizzard have been morons since TBC's conception.

I don't really see how shattrath is an example showing removing animosity between the factions. It only served as a singular hub in the outland regions. As for wow being designed for pvp? PVP was a side game at best untill TBC pushed hard on arenas. Hell the game itself was running for a year post launch before it even got anything close to a system for pvp we'd recognize as anything more than pointless killing of one another (a year for honor system and then another month on that for the first pvp instance?).

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You don't say, blizz has a habit of taking a great deal from the warhammer universe, twisting it a bit.

I'm still waiting for a vermintide knock off...

wait... do mantid count? the MANTIDTIDE!

[Terongor]

Wood elves with a dark elf twist?

That's not what the original developers said. They were fully intended to be the best of dark elves and wood elves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010205...667651,00.html



And indeed this is what happens, night elves became a full race at a time when high elves were part of the alliance units. The backstory of the night elves and the novel war of the ancients, then the progression in cataclysm and legion show you that night elves aren't just wood elves, and never were from the very beginning. The only players that think that are those that aren't keen on them and just go based on what they see in-game without paying attention to what the story is.

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https://web.archive.org/web/20010205...667651,00.html

http://classic.battle.net/war3/nightelf/

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/ne...erview-suramar





All these say otherwise. You may appear correct but if you only go superficially on what you see and skim the lore. If you look closer, what you say is further away from what it is, but you have to use all the lore you are given.

Warcraft 3 CE behind scenes dvd they descriped it like that but still its combination of those two elves and we are here only talking about the lore from wc3 period tft came in 2003 while war of ancients first novel came in 2004.

And in wc3 they weren't really yet their own race just big dark/wood elves with female warrior Culture which kinda ended in wow.

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Have you heard about punctuation?

Infracted.

Have you heard about dyslexia?

[Thaag]

Well, one point was when they thought they could just reuse the plot for an old expansion (MoP) in a new expansion.

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Another point they went wrong was to keep hitting the same faction with villian bat while hitting the other faction with the hero bat.

THIS.

So much of this.

But I suppose it's easier to imagine "monsters" as villains instead. Kinda racist.

[Graeham]

The Burning Crusade.

Kael'thas, Lady Vashj and Illidan were iconic characters and protagonists in Warcraft 3. They deserved better treatment than they received and only Illidan has been 'fixed' since.

[Nero Duskwind]

It started with the Draenei/Eredar retcon in TBC which, while rather innocuous on its own, set the stage for the growing amount of retcons and shoehorns meant to reconcile conflicting canon. The most egregious early example is the comic book Harry Stu creation of Med'an, whose story was unfolding during Cataclysm and, given the official canonicity of the previous WOW comics, was expected by many to make an eventual in-game debut. Instead, due to overwhelmingly poor fan reception and the headaches his very existence presented to future storyboards, he was conveniently tucked away into obscurity by apparently having him wander off to adventure the universe.

[cparle87]

Honestly it started from TBC and continued in every expansion, more or less.

Blizzard neglected many faction leaders, warped existing characters into illogical and unbelievable ways, made some characters become too flawless...
They have this really dumb concept where at start of expo its Horde vs Alliance but by the end they unite - only to again wage war at start of next Expo...

Player characters (adventurers) were turned into borderline demigods instead of being on the level of footman/grunt.
Having a flawless 9999 wins - 0 loss score versus every villain in the Warcraft universe is extremely immersion breaking and kills all believability.
Every expansion had to be some world ending apocalyptic bullsh*t instead of just making a good story that had quality instead of buzzword fluff.

And being footmen/grunts after fighting in wars on a dozen continents and slaying demigods would be even more immersion breaking. Also did you forget all the times the villains tricked us into helping their plans, we killed the wrong person, or literally got our asses kicked like by Arthas or on the Broken Shore? We're far from flawless.

[Kelathos]

Warcraft never really had the best story ever told but it was good. Being made into a mmo hurt it a lot but i think the lore really started to die with WoD.

Warlords had some huge sins.

• Convoluted setting.
• Heralding of the Warlords, only to waste almost all of them.
• Grom getting a pass.
• Yrel being AMAZING. Then cast aside like trash.

It was pretty sad how badly that all turned out - when it held so much promise despite its origin.

[Saltysquidoon]

A huge issue with blizzards world is they create important powerful earth-changing characters and just forget them next time something important that's relevant to them comes up (and they should be there). This would be a problem in travel took more time in-universe so conflicts were more contained and it's realistic a character couldn't arrive/didn't know about the event until after the fact. But in-universe practically unlimited magical teleportation exists.

Keepers/watchers.
These guys are huge offenders, why is it even when an old god or the legion shows up these guys are just constantly afk? Also, did no one tell the other keepers Odyn and Ra-den are alive? Like the keepers just left Ra-den to sulk in pandaria for 3 expansions? The rediscovery of uldir?

The Dragonflights
Ok, they lost their aspect powers in Cata fine but I find it difficult to believe the dragons would have nothing to say about the legion invasion or N'zoth pissing about everywhere.

A'dal
He's been waiting for the army of light to show up since TBC and when they finally do in legion he just sits in shatt? Not even a quest or a hand wave or anything.

The Wild Gods
For some reason every time Cenarius takes a dirt nap they all just evaporate from azeroth.

[Shadowferal]

When did it first begin?
Hard pressed to see anything obvious. (the tehno-magic in TBC...too subtle for me to latch on)
Cata? Yeah...the environmental redesign pretty much took a shit on a lot of zones. There should have been "phasing" quests to repair them. Still..not too bad.
Whatever flaws Cata had, I easily forgave with MoP. So MUCH to do! And it was all so damn interesting to quest and explore!

No...WoD, that's when it became obvious that things just went all bugfuck to hell.

[Amarys]

Casual use of time travel for sure. It's created so many problems with the lore that even if you're not trying to find plot holes, so of them are just there. Like why can't we simply warn the NEs at Teldrassil, or go back and prevent any misfortunes and bad stuff that ever happens. Hell, why does Anduin just accept hes fathers death? Why not send the "champion" on a quest to travel back in time and save him?

Another thing thats wrong is over the top sci-fi stuff that everyone just conveniently forgets about when they could solve a problem easily. Like where is the Vindicaar? Why are soldiers using bows when they have access to guns, bombs, flying machines and tanks. No one used bows and swords even in WW2 and for a good reason.

I mean sure, the Draenei were introduced in TBC already but lorewise you could argue that most of their stuff got smashed during the crash and was based on Naaru tech, so couldn't be replicated. Even the gnome and goblin stuff were somewhat fine as they weren't exactly reliable or needed a rare power source or something to work. Now on the other hand we literally have mechs with lasers and rockets running around, giant titan high tech facilities, computers, miniguns, tanks, choppers.. why are there still warriors running around with swords and night elves in skimpy armor shooting bows?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It all began with WoD

• The entire WoD expansion was a filler expansion. Mists of Pandaria ended with an obvious lead in to Legion (which Blizzard admitted was supposed to be the next expansion)... and then we deteour to another planet in an alternate timeline that never comes back up again in the story. Felt like it only existed to cash in on the Warcraft movie that was releasing that year and featured the same characters.

• Hiding crucial plot twists and character development in ancilliary novels. At the end of Mists of Pandaria, Garrosh is taken prisoner and to be put in trial in Pandaria. The very next thing that happens in the game is that Azeroth is being suddenly invaded by a brand new faction called "The Iron Horde", from an alternate Draenor in the past, and that is was created by Garrosh. Wait, what? For some inexplicable reason, Wrathion, who was the arguably the main character of MoP, is now suddenly the villain. Wait, what? What is going on? Well, you will only find out if you had read a novel called War Crimes, in which Wrathion decides he needs to prepare the Horde and the Alliance to work together against the impending Legion threat, and decides to break Garrosh out of jail and have him create an enemy that will force the Horde and the Alliance to coordinate a joint campaign. None of this is explained ingame.

• In Shadowmoon Valley, we are introduced to a new faction called "The Void Lords", who turn out to be the bosses of the old gods and the faction Sargeras was so terrified of, he started the Burning Legion to preemptively kill unhatched titans so that they couldn't be corrupted by the Void Lords. Trivializes the threat of the old gods and the Burning Legion when they are no longer the end goal of the story, but just another lackey on the way to the true big bads.

• The final boss of WoD is Archimonde. No, not alternate timeline Archimonde. Blizzard decided that there is "one Legion that pervades across all timelines". Oh, and demons can only die if killed in the Twisting Nether, and Archimonde (who is an Eredar, not a demon) has now been retconned into being a demon. WTH? This completely negates the weight of Warcraft 3's ending, where the Night Elves sacrificed their immortality to defeat Archimonde and save the world. A complete spit on the face of Warcraft 3 players and Night Elf fans.

• AU Grommash Hellscream was an unrepetent mass murderer, and committed one of the most despiscable atrocities in the Warcraft setting: the Path of Glory (aka, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Draenei and using their dead bodies as pavement to the Dark Portal). At the end of the expansion, the protagonists just let him go like he didn't commit mass genocide against them.

• More hiding crucial plot twists and character development in ancilliary novels. Illidan Stormrage was salty that his brother, Malfurion, was so chad, that Illidan's crush Tyrande picked his Malfurion of him. He then run away to Outland to become a dictator, taking over the world, sacrificing innocents to empower himself, etc. He was an evil villain the player overthrew and killed in Burning Crusade. Then, in Legion, Illidan is now all of the sudden the great savior who will save our world from the Burning Legion. Wait, what? What is going on? Well, you will only find out if you had read a novel called Illidan, which retcons Illidan's backstory and explains that ACKSHUALLY he was working to fight against the Legion all along! (And for some inexplicable reason, didn't stop to tell us he was doing so, instead going "muwhahaha I'm so evil" the entire time...). None of this is explained ingame.

• The Argent Crusade - the fan favorite hero faction of WotLK - is brought back and unceremoniously killed offscreen in the first five minutes of the expansion, and Tirion too. A complete spit on the face on WotLK players.

• Vol'jin, the Warchief of the Horde after MoP, is unceremoniously killed off having never had the chance to do anything in the story. I think the only thing he did was show up in your garrison to give you a promotion. A complete spit on the face of Horde players who were looking forward to seeing one of the OG Horde leaders preside over the old school, honorable Horde we fought for in MoP. Worse, a diabolos ex machina has him appoint Sylvanas Windrunner as Warchief, because Blizzard wanted to pander to her fan following.

• After having resolved the faction war storyline to everyone's satisfaction in MoP, Blizzard goes back to the well of Warcraft nostalgia and revives the faction war through utterly contrived reasons (the Horde and Alliance had JUST WORKED TOGETHER FOR AN ENTIRE EXPANSION TO SAVE THE WORLD; no one bothers communicating with each other anymore; Sylvanas, Genn, and Rogers act stupid, etc).

• In Legion, Illidan is brought back and treated as the hero of the story who everyone worships... despite the fact that he is a backstabbing traitor and a brutal dictator who took over Outland and began using people's souls as fuel. Yet, the narrative and the characters of Legion treat him as this paragon who will lead everybody.

• In the Death Knight campaign, the Knights of the Ebon Blade invade the Paladin Order Hall underneath Light's Hope Chapel, slaughtering paladins left and right (Yup! The very same paladins the Ebon Blade had fought along with side by side against the Lich King, who they should be fighting with side by side against the Legion!) to steal the body of Tirion Fordring and raise him as an undead. This is stupid! The Ebon Blade wants people who can "do what we needs to be done", but Tirion was a stalwart paladin. He had qualms sacrificing his own troops. He isn't anti-hero material. Worse, it's revealed that the massacre wasn't, actually, to raise Tirion as a Death Knight, but a "test of loyalty", to see whether or not the Ebon Blade could "do what what needed to be done". EXCUSE ME? As a Death Knight player, I feel insulted. We have proved hundreds of times over that we are capable, and you sent us out to murder our allies over something this stupid? The Ebon Blade is needs all the allies it can get, and they straight up demolished their relationship with their closest ally, not to mention no one will ever want to associate with them again. What a farce.

• The "Light" is retconned as not being a truly holy, righteous anchor in this chaotic world, but just "another side of the same coin" in a poor attempt at being "morally grey". Completely undermines why the Light was so special in the first place, and a spit upon paladin and priest players.

• At Blizzcon 2017, BFA was announced, and it was revealed that the start of the new faction war was that Teldrassil burned down. Blizzard asked the question: "who burned the tree?", and insisted for months that it wasn't Sylvanas, and that the perpetrator was unknown. Blizzard continually hyped up the reveal. Come the prepatch event, and lo and behold Sylvanas invades Night Elf territory and begin slaughtering elves left and right, and the Horde actually goes along with this. Slaughtering... you know, THE PEOPLE YOU HAD JUST WORKED TOGETHER WITH FOR TWO ENTIRE EXPANSIONS TO SAVE THE WORLD! For some inexplicable reason, Horde druids - who are apart of the Cenarion Circle - are also slaughtering their fellow Cenarion Circle Druids - because they're Alliance. Sylvanas throws a tantrum because a dying elf didn't buy her moustache twirling villain facade, and burns down Teldrassil, massacring the majority of the Night Elf population. The Horde actually goes along with this, even though the Horde should be protesting this because they had spent most of their recent history being genocided and they know more than anyone else what it's like. Completely undermines the sacrifices made in MoP to fight for the old, honorable Horde. A complete spit in the face of Horde and Night Elf players.

• Even MORE hiding crucial plot twists and character development in ancilliary novels! At the end of Legion, the Horde and the Alliance had united together to defeat the Burining Legion once and for all, saving Azeroth from the greatest threat it had ever faced. The very next thing that happens in the game is that Sylvanas massacres tens of thousands of Night Elves and instigates a war with the Alliance. Wait, what? What is going on? Well, you will only find out if you had read novel called "Before the Storm", in which we get insight into Sylvanas' mind and the Horde's strategic situation. None of this is explained ingame.

• In 2016, the first Warcraft Chronicle book was released, advertised by Blizzard as the official, word of god chronology of the setting's history. Nice! Then, at Blizzcon 2019, the Chronicles books were declared to be "written from the point of view of the Titans", retconning them as no longer being the official record. Why did they even go through all of the effort of tidying up their lore and advertising the books as the official, word of god history of the setting if it was just going to be retconned a couple years later anyway?

• Oh, and BTW, Sylvanas' motivations in "Before the Storm" were retconned, so why did you buy that book anyway?

• The Emerald Nightmare storyline being hyped up for years, being an expansion's worth of material with several subplots and dozens of involved characters. Is dealt with in a single raid.

• Azshara and the Naga storyline being hyped up for years, being an expansion's worth of material with several subplots and dozens of involved characters. Is dealt with in a single raid. Worse, despite Azshara having comitted mass genocide and being one of the most evil characters in the setting, the protagonists just let her go so she can come back as a quest NPC in another expansion.

• The N'zoth storyline being hyped up for years, being an expansion's worth of material with several subplots and dozens of involved characters. Is dealt with in a single raid. Worse, Blizzard kept insisting that N'zoth had a master plan... only for him to turn out to be a nothing throw away baddie who is killed in a forty second long cutscene.

• There were no consequences in BFA. A godzilla monster shoots a laser beam at Daz'Alor, and yet when you walk around the city, all is fine. Daz'Alor is raided by the Alliance, and yet when you walk around the city, all is fine. N'zoth is released... and then he doesn't do anything. He is killed, and all is fine.

• Suevanas strolling into Icecrown Citadel and soloing the Lich King and his army with her resting bitch face.

• The premise of the eigth expansion, Shadowlands, revolves around traveling to the death realm. It is revealed that when people die, their souls are sent to the Shadowlands and used as a fuel for the people who inhabit the Shadowlands, powering their machines. This just seals the deal on modern WoW's nihilism, where nothing means anything at all, and a spit in the face of characters like Crusader Bridenbrad, who had an entire storyline revolving around his impending death and the comfort that he would go to the Light (way back when the Light was actually good and holy, and not just some "another side of the same coin").

• Please be sure to buy the next anciliary novel, "Shadows Rising", in which how Sylvanas was retconned from being a genocidial bitch to the glorious saviour who was save us all from the Jailor, who the Jailor is, how the Lich King was retconned into being the gatekeeper of the Shadowlands, and how the Horde and the Alliance invade the Shadowlands!

[Th3Scourge]

• Hiding crucial plot twists and character development in ancilliary novels. At the end of Mists of Pandaria, Garrosh is taken prisoner and to be put in trial in Pandaria. The very next thing that happens in the game is that Azeroth is being suddenly invaded by a brand new faction called "The Iron Horde", from an alternate Draenor in the past, and that is was created by Garrosh. Wait, what? For some inexplicable reason, Wrathion, who was the arguably the main character of MoP, is now suddenly the villain. Wait, what? What is going on? Well, you will only find out if you had read a novel called War Crimes, in which Wrathion decides he needs to prepare the Horde and the Alliance to work together against the impending Legion threat, and decides to break Garrosh out of jail and have him create an enemy that will force the Horde and the Alliance to coordinate a joint campaign. None of this is explained ingame.

As a player who did not play between end of WotLK and end of WoD, the most frustrating part was trying to figure out:

1. Why Garrosh was no longer warchief?
2. Where did Garrosh go?
3. Why am I in an alternate universe Draenor?
4. Why is some of this not explained in the game?

The fact that Garrosh absconding to an alternate reality is very poorly explained in game is really poor storytelling. The trial of Garrosh is one of the most pivotal moments in warcraft but is barely explained in the actual game

[Paperfox]

There are some really good posts in this thread - good job folks.

I think another factor is that it seems to me that there wasn't an overall vision of the story from day one. So the team for each expansion told their own story/stories and had to do so in a vacuum as they didn't know what another team was cooking up.

And if there was such a vision, then they started cutting/adding stuff for gameplay reasons, or perhaps because they or the community wanted it.

[Mehrunes]

• AU Grommash Hellscream was an unrepetent mass murderer, and committed one of the most despiscable atrocities in the Warcraft setting: the Path of Glory (aka, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Draenei and using their dead bodies as pavement to the Dark Portal). At the end of the expansion, the protagonists just let him go like he didn't commit mass genocide against them.

AU Path of Glory wasn't actually paved with dead Draenei. It's paved with iron plates.

• The Argent Crusade - the fan favorite hero faction of WotLK - is brought back and unceremoniously killed offscreen in the first five minutes of the expansion, and Tirion too. A complete spit on the face on WotLK players.

Argent Crusade wasn't wiped out, they just renamed themselves (though that was still stupid as hell).

• After having resolved the faction war storyline to everyone's satisfaction in MoP, Blizzard goes back to the well of Warcraft nostalgia and revives the faction war through utterly contrived reasons (the Horde and Alliance had JUST WORKED TOGETHER FOR AN ENTIRE EXPANSION TO SAVE THE WORLD; no one bothers communicating with each other anymore; Sylvanas, Genn, and Rogers act stupid, etc).

Which expansion was that? Because it was explicitly not Legion. The whole point of Class Orders having to lead the charge against the Legion was that the Horde and Alliance couldn't fulfill that role as they would usually do because they were in open conflict with each other because of Genn.