Will WoW's story ever stop being disjointed?

[Ashleyxoxo]

The story is not a linear plot progressing over time. The story has 20 different lines of plot, stopping and starting whenever. Also, you need to buy things outside of the game (books) to understand what is happening, now and during the gap between expansions. In short, most people playing the game have no idea what is going on. Will this ever change? Will WoW ever tell a main story and stick to it, instead of telling 20 different stories, stopping and starting at random points each?

[rhorle]

It never will be. Because gaming is a poor medium to tell or provide certain stuff. Books and outside material will always be superior to convey certain parts of the lore because of the nature of things.

[Cathfaern]

The story is not a linear plot progressing over time. The story has 20 different lines of plot, stopping and starting whenever. Also, you need to buy things outside of the game (books) to understand what is happening, now and during the gap between expansions. In short, most people playing the game have no idea what is going on. Will this ever change? Will WoW ever tell a main story and stick to it, instead of telling 20 different stories, stopping and starting at random points each?

I hope it will never. It's WORLD of Warcraft, not "Main Storyline of Warcraft". I think there should be even more story lines and more world building than the current way since Cataclysm.

[Darknessvamp]

Unlikely, the Writers for the game and stories all seem to have their own take on things and there doesn't seem to anyone or something that keeps track of the overarching story in such a manner that enables them to remain consistent. Not to mention their whole "rule of cool" and the fact they deliberately leave stuff out of the games for supporting material to be sold, until they throw it in a random book somewhere in the game world three years on, means we likely won't ever see the whole story in WoW. Especially when they remove stuff like the whole Burning of Teldrassil event rather than just the rewards associated with it.

It never will be. Because gaming is a poor medium to tell or provide certain stuff. Books and outside material will always be superior to convey certain parts of the lore because of the nature of things.

Huh? What are you going on about? There have been plenty games that have successfully delivered cohesive stories with some providing even less than WoW yet still being able to inform the player about everything important in their narratives. However if you meant it was due to WoW's format as a mmo then it can be argued that that could cause some limitations sure but The Old Republic and FF14 do show that mmos can have cohesive stories with fewer issues than WoW's story does.

[Powerogue]

Probably not. They like having a mix of mediums so that they don't have to have excessively long cutscenes in-game that take away from the action. They've said as much. We've also seen no sign of a "wow 2" to eliminate the many, many wibbly wobbly timey wimey nonsense elements of having all expansions coexist in the same game world.

We'll see if the Chromie stuff helps, and it might a bit (doing one expansion and seeing one warchief alone will be a hell of a lot less confusing) but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

[Hellobolis]

it could change. they just had their chance with 8.3 culminating 2 expansions worth of story, but blew it.

so yeah next opportunity is 4 years from now i guess.

[OpieOP]

The Old Republic and FF14 do show that mmos can have cohesive stories with fewer issues than WoW's story does.

And FF14 itself iirc has even interwoven their previous iteration of the game which is quite interesting, to not praise them too much.

But yeah its pretty unlikely that a cohesive story will ever come from Blizzard, I mean their games never were about a cohesive story tbh. And aside from that... I guess theres always bucks to be made so why not double tap lore nerds and bookworms

Also insert Chris Metzen is gone meme.

[BeepBoo]

At title: No. They license out their IP to too many people, and they refuse to ignore all the garbage those people put into their work and treat it as secondary sources or fanfic. Ergo, as long as they have to keep trying to account for all that garbage... and as long as they keep trying to find ways to hamfist things just to "keep things interesting", the story will suck from a traditional story telling sense. It will be disjointed. It will have contradictions. It will be ultimately meaningless.

[Kathranis]

The changes in Shadowlands attempt to solidify the timeline for the leveling experience, at least. The story progression will become Exile's Reach (1-10), Battle for Azeroth (10-50), Shadowlands (50-60), with the other expansion continents accessible explicitly via time travel.

In terms of other story content, probably not. Warcraft is a multimedia franchise. They could certainly do a better job of telegraphing important information from novels to players in the game, but the series will always span multiple mediums.

That being said, the Chronicle series does an adequate job of summarizing everything from the dawn of time up to Cataclysm. A fourth volume covering Mists through Shadowlands, ideally with some sort of addenda and errata for previous volumes, and some new historical material to reflect recent additions to the Warcraft cosmology, would go along way towards giving players a single, concise source o catch up on the story, especially if Shadowlands is going to culminate in a time skip.

And at least most of the tie-in media is made available for free. It might not be accessible in-game, but you can watch the animated shorts on the official YT channel and read all the short stories and comics on the official site. For the novels, if you're not willing to buy and read them yourself, summaries are widely available.

[Hitei]

I hope it will never. It's WORLD of Warcraft, not "Main Storyline of Warcraft". I think there should be even more story lines and more world building than the current way since Cataclysm.

This. Why would you expect everything happening in the world to be the result of a single plot?

Also, you need to buy things outside of the game (books) to understand what is happening, now and during the gap between expansions. In short, most people playing the game have no idea what is going on. Will this ever change?

No, you don't. Just because you refuse to read quest text or pay attention doesn't mean the books are required or no one knows what is going on.

[ThiagoTorres]

The big problem about wow lore is because blizzard change it every fucking time.

What in a book now is canon, next year the release another one invalidating every shit the book before sad. Look about old gods, now they really are killed, before even titans ouldnt killed then because the titans could destroy azeroth in the process, now lore changed and old gods are really dead by players

[Kathranis]

But yeah its pretty unlikely that a cohesive story will ever come from Blizzard, I mean their games never were about a cohesive story tbh. And aside from that... I guess theres always bucks to be made so why not double tap lore nerds and bookworms

Well I'd never say never, storytelling certainly isn't Blizzard's strong suit. Their real talent has always been creating iconic settings, characters, and moments, but weaving those elements together into concise and compelling narratives has for the most part eluded them.

The simple truth is that Blizzard's stories are, at best, pulp fiction. They're Dragon Lance and Thor and Conan the Barbarian, not Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire. That's fine, they just need to embrace it. Maybe try and take a page from the MCU.

[Saltysquidoon]

I mean I used to put it down to "MMOs gonna MMO"... Then I played FFXIV. FFXIV has many faults but a bad story is not one of them.

That showed me WoWs flaming slow-motion train wreck of a story has nothing (or close to nothing) to do with the genre and everything to do with blizzard having no idea whats going on.

[Erous]

I think it's over, personally. The original creators and think-tankers, visionaries and storytellers are all long gone. Those that dreamt of and built the foundational lore and its characters are long gone from the gameworlds Blizz created and it's evident primarily in WoW, which is where a story is meant to unfold.

I think without a new lore focus/story, it'll be disjointed from here on out.

[Theangryone]

No. As long as they insist on having to read information in various forms of media to understand what's going on it will never improve. All major story beats should be in game. It's one of the reasons why WoW barely feels like an RPG anymore

[rhorle]

Huh? What are you going on about? There have been plenty games that have successfully delivered cohesive stories with some providing even less than WoW yet still being able to inform the player about everything important in their narratives. However if you meant it was due to WoW's format as a mmo then it can be argued that that could cause some limitations sure but The Old Republic and FF14 do show that mmos can have cohesive stories with fewer issues than WoW's story does.

The Old Republic has a few novels telling "lore". I have no idea if they are referenced at all in the game as all I played was beta and didn't like it enough to justify the cost at the time. FF14 has some novels as well.

Gaming is still a poor medium to tell certain things because they are primarily a game. A novel allows so much more freedom because it isn't a game. That doesn't mean that games can not tell stories are how linear story telling. It just means some formats are better at telling stories. The story of WoW is pretty straight forward. They may not be all connected at least up until Cataclysm. But they are all pretty straight forward. Vanilla had no real over all story. TBC was Illidian/Legion. WotLK was Arthas/Undead. Cata through BfA all tied into each other by the events of one enabling the following story to be possible.

[Ringthane]

The story is not a linear plot progressing over time. The story has 20 different lines of plot, stopping and starting whenever. Also, you need to buy things outside of the game (books) to understand what is happening, now and during the gap between expansions. In short, most people playing the game have no idea what is going on. Will this ever change? Will WoW ever tell a main story and stick to it, instead of telling 20 different stories, stopping and starting at random points each?

Yes. They already have it in development. It's a four page comic book, and the last page is basically just Scratch-n-Sniff of different fruits and one of toast.

Seriously, though. You already know the answer to this.

[Raggun]

This. Why would you expect everything happening in the world to be the result of a single plot?


No, you don't. Just because you refuse to read quest text or pay attention doesn't mean the books are required or no one knows what is going on.

You do. They didn't even explain one of the main reason why the war escalated before BFA. It's covered in the books. Long story short: They attempted to reunite forsaken with their still living relatives, forsaken tried to defect and Sylvannas murdered the forsaken trying to flee. Arathi Highlands being the first major warzone released in BFA reinforces that it was a significant moment.

[rhorle]

You do. They didn't even explain one of the main reason why the war escalated before BFA. It's covered in the books. Long story short: They attempted to reunite forsaken with their still living relatives, forsaken tried to defect and Sylvannas murdered the forsaken trying to flee. Arathi Highlands being the first major warzone released in BFA reinforces that it was a significant moment.

The war escalated because of Azerite. The rest were all secondary reasons for the war beyond Azerite. Should it have been referenced in the game? Sure. But telling the same info in the game wouldn't work very well because of the nature of quests and the like. Blizzard also stated it was one of their more popular novels so the opinion that they have no place seems to be the minority.

[lolcats121]

It never will be. Because MMOs are a poor medium to tell or provide certain stuff.

Fixed that for you.