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

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

How can you invest so much money into developing a product yet it still has absolutely horrible lore, i'm not asking for some out of the world, it doesn't have to win a pulitzer, it just has to be NOT atrocious.

[Surfd]

vAnd it's funny, because back in the day we didn't have people burn down the forums for every little death. When the Undead turned on the living at the Wrath gate and Varian was furious and attacked Undercity, we didn't have this massive outrage with people screaming murder. No, back then people were capable of understanding what a story is.

Umm, can I have some of whatever you are smoking, cause that must be some REALLY good shit.

Out of all the possible examples you had to pick, you chose the Wrathgate cinematic?!? And then have the balls to pretend that nobody was "outraged" over it? I still run into people, to this day, who haven't managed to grasp the fact that the events at the Wrathgate was basically a coup staged by a dreadlord controlled faction inside the forsaken and are convinced that it was a horde plot wipe out the alliance..... there was plenty of outrage from alliance fanboys everywhere screaming about horde favoritism for killing off their hero figure while the horde was equally pissed off at blizzard for throwing them under the gratuitous villiany bus YET AGAIN and giving the alliance a paper thin excuse for sacking Undercity.

Yes, some of us got the over-arching story point blizzard was driving at, but I guarantee you we were far and away outnumbered by the people who only saw a horde faction NPC carpet bomb the area with blight while cackling maniacally.

[ravenmoon]

Umm, can I have some of whatever you are smoking, cause that must be some REALLY good shit.

Out of all the possible examples you had to pick, you chose the Wrathgate cinematic?!? And then have the balls to pretend that nobody was "outraged" over it? I still run into people, to this day, who haven't managed to grasp the fact that the events at the Wrathgate was basically a coup staged by a dreadlord controlled faction inside the forsaken and are convinced that it was a horde plot wipe out the alliance..... there was plenty of outrage from alliance fanboys everywhere screaming about horde favoritism for killing off their hero figure while the horde was equally pissed off at blizzard for throwing them under the gratuitous villiany bus YET AGAIN and giving the alliance a paper thin excuse for sacking Undercity.

Yes, some of us got the over-arching story point blizzard was driving at, but I guarantee you we were far and away outnumbered by the people who only saw a horde faction NPC carpet bomb the area with blight while cackling maniacally.

Wiat, wasn't that the first instance of the villainous horde since WC2?

Secondly, I think it is important for a story to be ambiguous enough for people to believe things like "it was a horde plot"... even though we know that it was a coup, and blizzard toys with things. i've seen silly arugments in the forums ofver the years on things that should be quite clear to an outsider with a birdseye/god-like view of the situation, but rather instead fans take sideslike the in-game characters. I sometimes wonder if some blizzard employess do this intetnionally to stir up controversy that keeps people coming back or that some people actually believe it.

I became convinced that some people actually see it that way, the way they argued, even when I tried to shift my perspective to theirs, the other pieces of information from the otherside, dev interviews and presentations made it clear what the real story was, and yet even while pointing them out, they just didn't see. I later came to realise that most people only read the first few lines of what I write, and a few more skim, and miss all the information I provide, because tldr - treating a forum like a messenger or twitter platform, and have the nerve to tell me to reserve long posts for blogs when forums were the main platofrm for my posts long before blogs ever became a thing or coined term (yes, i'm old enough to remember the 90s.

But it's not like I'm not well versed with human eluusion and prevalent deception, I admit the only reason I am here is I am slo being a bit manipulated. and I erally shoudl just stay away forever.. it will do me al ot of tood.

[kansor]

I think the lore was in a fairly consistent place until BFA. Cheesy and imperfect as always, but pretty consistent in quality.

Illidan and kael were wasted in TBC, but at least kael got a meme line, and the Sunwell patch ultimately made a good conclusion to the xpac, tying together the stories of the draenei and blood elves.

Some people may have preferred the idea of "honorable" Garrosh, but his story ultimately worked out okay, taking the scope of the MOP plot beyond Pandaria and making for a reasonable conclusion to the faction war.

WOD/"draenor is free" was pretty crap, but it took place in an alternate pocket universe we could just forget about afterward. No real harm done.

Only in BFA did the core story get tainted. It was a blatant repeat plot, the MCs got character assassinated left and right, the two most anticipated villains in the series got rushed and wasted, and the lore just got really bad in a way that's harder to forget than something that took place in an alternate dimension. The scent of that will take a long time to wash off if ever.

[Aleksej89]

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.

[Redroniksre]

I think the biggest problem is that there are simply too many characters in WoW. Look back at the memed redshirt guy with Falstad, a lore character who hadn't been relevant in awhile still being looked at by the community. Now whenever Blizzard decides on an event, suddenly EVERY character has to have screen time to weigh in, according to the community. It would of been better for them to kill off all but a handful, and focus on them with only expansion wide stories for the rest.

[Leyre]

Yes this, the thing they had going back then was interesting. Bending the light to their will etc was cool.

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Its just that the space element just doesnt realy fit wow.
I never liked it either.

You do know Orcs came from another planet right? A planet that was, gasp! in space

[Feanoro]

You do know Orcs came from another planet right? A planet that was, gasp! in space

Via a portal, since they were ax waving barbaric monsters.


On topic:
With so many flat out fuckups, it's hard to pick, but one of the biggest was reducing it down to two factions. Night Elves had no reason whatsoever to join the Alliance (or Horde for that matter), and Thrall's good Horde went out the window the minute the NuScourge joined.

[liberaet]

For me, it began with Classic.

Putting undead humans into the Horde was a mistake, Putting Night Elves into the Alliance was a mistake.

Exactly this. This was a major blow to the lore which took some time for me to digest, but the heaviest blow was for me probably the arrival of draenei on a *spaceship*, which had no place in warcraft lore and style and was when I started to lose any respect for WoW storywriting.

The other idiotic things that came after - the WoD time-travelling as well as the more recent things like the Vulpine familiar appearing in Warcraft, Vulpera joining the Horde and the Horde losing all its identity from the RTS games made me completely give up on modern WoW.

There is just no coming back, so I could be the fan of WoW lore that I used to be after the RTS games and vanilla, when I spent days reading about it on wowwiki or whatever was the name of that website.

[Feanoro]

Exactly this. This was a major blow to the lore which took some time for me to digest, but the heaviest blow was for me probably the arrival of draenei on a *spaceship*, which had no place in warcraft lore and style and was when I started to lose any respect for WoW storywriting.

Don't forget that the Blood Elves had a spaceship too and shot them down. I really wonder what the hell Metzen was smoking then, since everything about the Draenei in BC was a major lorelol from him "kinda forgetting" everything he had written up to that point.

[Terongor]

Warcraft 3 definetly Warcraft 3..... it just ruined the overall lore we got in wc1-2.

[Grazrug]

Warcraft 3 definetly Warcraft 3..... it just ruined the overall lore we got in wc1-2.

Nope. Warcraft 1 and 2 were just your average tolkien tropes mixed with Warhammer. Nothing special. It was Vanilla WoW where it all went wrong. From Thrall turning stupid towards that 2 faction system that locks the plot in chains. The downfall started all the way back in 2004.

[TheFirstOnes]

It was when Warcraft decided to try something it was clearly not. (AKA Warcraft 3)

[Grazrug]

It was when Warcraft decided to try something it was clearly not. (AKA Warcraft 3)

Dude nothing went wrong here. Metzen always pleaded with his bosses ever since Warcraft 2 to get honorable Orc as their campaign and story. He just didn't succeed with it until Warcraft 3 which is why the whole Thrall story exists. Best evidence is the canceled Warcraft adventure game. The idea wasn't wrong, it just came too late and the unga bunga orcs blizzard bosses weren't forsighted enought to realize it.

[Terongor]

Nope. Warcraft 1 and 2 were just your average tolkien tropes mixed with Warhammer. Nothing special. It was Vanilla WoW where it all went wrong. From Thrall turning stupid towards that 2 faction system that locks the plot in chains. The downfall started all the way back in 2004.

Warcraft 3 made aspects actually "godly" in origin and before that alexstrasza was just the dragon queen and deathwing her son.

wc1 and wc2 was far more dark fantasy than happy bright wc3 which made warcraft universe more like tolkkien and average at that at best and yeah wc1 and wc2 were far more warhammer but less tolkkien as we can compare many demons to silmarillion balroggs and how they descriped sargeras in wc3 reminded alot like morgoth when before that he was more like chaos gods of warhammer and we could argue chaos gods are far more interesting idea.

also warcraft 3 added so much darth vader type characters like arthas or many other extremely dull and stereotypical characters and while wc1 and wc2 had one note character it didn't focus on them and the story was more about the world not the dull characters.

[Grazrug]

Warcraft 3 made aspects actually "godly" in origin and before that alexstrasza was just the dragon queen and deathwing her son.

wc1 and wc2 was far more dark fantasy than happy bright wc3 which made warcraft universe more like tolkkien and average at that at best and yeah wc1 and wc2 were far more warhammer but less tolkkien as we can compare many demons to silmarillion balroggs and how they descriped sargeras in wc3 reminded alot like morgoth when before that he was more like chaos gods of warhammer and we could argue chaos gods are far more interesting idea.

also warcraft 3 added so much darth vader type characters like arthas or many other extremely dull and stereotypical characters and while wc1 and wc2 had one note character it didn't focus on them and the story was more about the world not the dull characters.

average orcs vs humans stories are lame and outdated. Warcraft 3 added special flavor to the mix.

[TheFirstOnes]

average orcs vs humans stories are lame and outdated. Warcraft 3 added special flavor to the mix.

That wasn't the case in 1994...

[Terongor]

average orcs vs humans stories are lame and outdated. Warcraft 3 added special flavor to the mix.

Yeah adding demons which are satanic, typical undeads which were copypasted from.song of ice and fire (heck tft last missions name was symphony of frost and flamd...)and pratically wood elves with a hint dark elves expect taking away their magical sides and making them wood elves with dark elf skin..... so much special flavor.

Most of the time adding less than average stuff to an average story and them focusing on the part blizz has never being good character development makes the stuff overall worse.

[Alanar]

You do know Orcs came from another planet right? A planet that was, gasp! in space

Which doesnt matter in the story at all.. its not anywhere near the level of lightforged crap with ships and all.

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Warcraft 3 definetly Warcraft 3..... it just ruined the overall lore we got in wc1-2.

Dissagree warcraft 3 enhanced the shit to next level.. 1 and 2 was just a set up. I see where thos goes... 1 2 3... high..

[Terongor]

Which doesnt matter in the story at all.. its not anywhere near the level of lightforged crap with ships and all.

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Dissagree warcraft 3 enhanced the shit to next level.. 1 and 2 was just a set up. I see where thos goes... 1 2 3... high..

Adding pratically demons from christianity, undeads from song of ice and fire books and woold elves with dark elf skins and focusing on the part blizz has always being worse story from character PoV and char development all wc3 character are either bland, dull or cliche characters which are the worst like arthas.