Will WoW's story ever stop being disjointed?

[Soeroah]

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. Even back in vanilla, one of the things people wanting to get a pre-Cataclysm world back was that each zone had its own story that stood on its own, without being tied to a main expansion - vanilla WoW was very much a world of many stories, most of which weren't connected across zones let alone across continents. You had the exceptional cross-world quest chains, yes, but there were still plenty of plot threads going on at once - demons, scourge, faction squabbling, minor threats to outposts, titanic research, pirates...

[Saltysquidoon]

This. Even back in vanilla, one of the things people wanting to get a pre-Cataclysm world back was that each zone had its own story that stood on its own, without being tied to a main expansion - vanilla WoW was very much a world of many stories, most of which weren't connected across zones let alone across continents. You had the exceptional cross-world quest chains, yes, but there were still plenty of plot threads going on at once - demons, scourge, faction squabbling, minor threats to outposts, titanic research, pirates...

You know that like the primary complaint about vanilla wow's story during vanilla was that it had nothing to do with WCIII right? That's the reason TBC was a who's who of WCIII loot pinatas (to the ultimate loss of the story as a whole that blizzard would later admit in legion).

[Darknessvamp]

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.

From what I can tell it seems like the The Old Republic Novels are supplementary or side stories to the stories told or the progression that happens in the game, for example the Revan Novel provide the reader with a greater understanding of what happened to Revan prior whilst in game you learn about where he's been, what he had been doing all that time and why he had suddenly attacked again and his motivations. Sorta like how the War of the Ancients gave a greater understanding of events preceding WoW as supplementary material and gave insight into Malf, Tyrande and Illidan, until things in Cataclysm and Legion contradicted them. As for FF14 the only novel I can find is a collection of short stories that are separate from the game's story so I'm guessing they're meant to expand the world of FF14 sorta like the MoP lore videos. There doesn't seem to be any books or novels equivalent of War Crimes, Before the Storm or Elegy and A Good War for those games.

I don't follow, if anything storytelling in games is an evolution of the mediums of novelisation and film as it allows the player greater interaction and exploration of stories because it is a game. You can literally see, experience and understand it from the viewpoint the designer/creator desired whilst they still have as much freedom as they would allow themselves when writing a Novel or working in any other medium and the only possible limitation they have is how well they communicate the story which is no different from other mediums. I mean switching perspectives, greater context, information the character/s isn't supposed to know but we the reader/watcher do from Novels and film has already been done countless times in games and even some parts have been present in WoW albeit inconsistently. Not to mention it's worked perfectly for both linear stories as well as branching stories that cohesively end up returning back to the main story, which is what people desire WoW to do. I'd argue that WoW's story is a lot more stupidly convoluted than straight forward and I'd argue it was less because it was a game and more poor writing decisions and "wouldn't it be cool if" moments that haven't been fully thought through.

Like take the whole zone of Drustvar from BfA from example, thematically, design wise and atmospherically great for a zone that emulates Grim Tales, witches covens and witch hunters, absolutely abysmal story wise and sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of Kul'tiras as a continent and BfA's story as a whole.

It's progression from an area and noble house that has been quiet for a week, to it's been completely been dominated by an ancient cult of witches that no one remembers almost instantly, to the all the forests, ancients constructs and dead have just been awakened for evil, to the majority of the local populace has been ground up and turned into abominations or cursed, to the one person who has any idea about how any of this happened is just randomly getting hanged because now they believe in witches, to you save her and discover there's also an ancient alliance of Witch Hunters that everyone forgot about, to Oh let's just randomly reform that group out of five people and instantly repel the witches, to you know what actually the Ancient witch coven has roots in druids that we just remembered existed and actually predate us from when we colonised this area and slaughtered them all so why were there Witch Hunters in the first place... nevermind those Druids still exist just down the hill from us, to it's all the fault of an Ancient Dead King and my mother so let's clear our mansion and kill them and everything will go back to normal, to "okay all done. What's this about Boralus? Sorry we don't have enough people left alive to actually help and we need to stay here and deal with witches and we don't actually have much say in Boralus but whatever." before you finish the zone. The whole zone could be cut and the story of BfA wouldn't have been affected in the slightest.

Killing pig men as a construct was fun though.

[letssee]

no cuz every expansion they retcon shit

like can u believe that the chronicles that was supposed to set everything in stone, has now resorted to being "told in the titans vision" just so they can retcon more, fking LOL
i have no faith in blizzard, their stories used to be cool

[Sansnom]

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?

No. Because WoW was never written that way. That kind of long story requires the writer to have a clear vision in mind at the start. It has be done. Plenty of books are like. Even then, it has to end at some point.

The problem is that writing a book cost less that game development at the start.

You could potentially do it that each expansion ends in a manner that makes sense and can continue to the next expansion, if, and it is a big IF, there is sufficient success in the previous expansion to justify it.

Given WoW relative success. They could potentially make a multi-expansion story as a compromise.

[Zarc]

If they ever decide to do a World of Warcraft II, I hope they basically remove the whole storytelling component from the game entirely.

My impression is that in Vanilla and TBC there was no overarching story arc that propelled the game forward, instead the game was propelled by a sense of exploration and adventure. Through the world (of Warcraft) you were basically picking up the pieces of past stories, rather than being told new ones. You would learn the history of a zone that at some point had served as a theater of some Warcraft lore and battle remnants of the past as an anonymous hero-for-hire. To me that was always a much better experience than the story-driven game we have today, where you are supposedly the main character of a cross-factional industrial-scale war effort to defeat the latest existential threat.

They should return to WC3-style RTS' and let those serve as the main storytelling device of the franchise, complemented by books and other things. At some point they should conclude World of Warcraft with basically laying to rest this ever-grander story arc involving all the forces of the cosmos and beyond, have us mortals be victorious or whatever, and then bring everything back down. Let all the heroes retire or struggle to find a new purpose. Tear down the outside forces compelling the factions to keep the peace, outside and within (split the factions into 4 a la WC3?).

Beginning with Warcraft IV (where they retcon Battle for Azeroth to not be "the fourth war", of course) they should have the factions in all-out war in Kalimdor, for whatever reason cut off from Eastern Kingdoms and the rest of the world. In the end, 4 capitals would emerge for the 2 or 4 factions. Astranaar (Night Elves+), Orgrimmar (Orcs+) Theramore (Humans+) and Thunder Bluff (Undead+). Then they should drop us back into a World of Warcraft II that takes place 5-10 years after the events of this story where you start again as an anonymous adventurer picking up the pieces of past events.

Then they should continue telling the story of the past in Warcraft IV expansions, taking us to first Azeroth proper, then another expansion for Khaz Modan, another for Lordaeron, then Northrend, the Dragon Isles, the South Seas, through the Dark Portal, etc. etc. And then sync that with expansions of those regions taking place 5-10 years after whatever happened there concluded.

To play as the main characters and watch cool cinematics and cutscenes that tells the ever-evolving Warcraft story of twists and turns, you'd play the campaigns of Warcraft IV and its expansions, very much a single player experience.

Then, for an adventure in a massively multiplayer online experience, Enter the World of Warcraft.... II.

[MoanaLisa]

There's nothing wrong with having multiple story lines running in parallel.

I agree they don't do this very well and that the books play a more important role in understand what's going on than need be. Execution of story lines like this is always going to be a bit disjointed when you only add new chapters every six months or so with a break of nearly a year between expansions.

This, in my view, is one of the most important things they need to fix. Blizzard needs to drop the BS about gameplay being more important than story. That worked for a while. We're at a point now where people return to see new sights and see some of the story. Hardly anyone returns to see how the mechanics of their class changed. Quite the opposite.

[Soeroah]

You know that like the primary complaint about vanilla wow's story during vanilla was that it had nothing to do with WCIII right? That's the reason TBC was a who's who of WCIII loot pinatas (to the ultimate loss of the story as a whole that blizzard would later admit in legion).

Weird. Still, much more recently I've seen it framed as a positive thing about vanilla and why the post-Cataclysm world sucks comparatively.

[Wolfrick]

YES IT WILL!!!

In BFA... we as fans hit blizzard hard and they looked into it.

So many of the Lore team develpoers told in interview that they agree wit hteh fans... that the STory was kinda all over the place... and that in the future they will focus on Stories that tie together and not jump from "super villan to super villan"


So the future is bright and I think that the Lore of world of warcraft will be more bound togehter ^^

[Beefhammer]

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?

Never. 1, MMOs(videogames in general) are bad story devices. 2, the game is so huge it has to have more than one linear story. 3, I have never felt, outside of Garrosh's trial in the novel, that any outside source was needed to understand anything that has gone on in game. Most of the time, it enhances the story. There is more than enough information presented to the player, that most ignore, to know just about everything in the form of quest text, cut scenes, and dialogue after you turn in a quest that many just walk away from eager to get to the next objective.

[Nachtigal]

World of Warcraft. It’s a game, yes. But it’s more than a game. It’s a world. It’s the medium which connects all sources of lore. It’s the visualization of a DND DM’s game world.

[Beefhammer]

If they ever decide to do a World of Warcraft II, I hope they basically remove the whole storytelling component from the game entirely.

My impression is that in Vanilla and TBC there was no overarching story arc that propelled the game forward, instead the game was propelled by a sense of exploration and adventure. Through the world (of Warcraft) you were basically picking up the pieces of past stories, rather than being told new ones. You would learn the history of a zone that at some point had served as a theater of some Warcraft lore and battle remnants of the past as an anonymous hero-for-hire. To me that was always a much better experience than the story-driven game we have today, where you are supposedly the main character of a cross-factional industrial-scale war effort to defeat the latest existential threat.

They should return to WC3-style RTS' and let those serve as the main storytelling device of the franchise, complemented by books and other things. At some point they should conclude World of Warcraft with basically laying to rest this ever-grander story arc involving all the forces of the cosmos and beyond, have us mortals be victorious or whatever, and then bring everything back down. Let all the heroes retire or struggle to find a new purpose. Tear down the outside forces compelling the factions to keep the peace, outside and within (split the factions into 4 a la WC3?).

Beginning with Warcraft IV (where they retcon Battle for Azeroth to not be "the fourth war", of course) they should have the factions in all-out war in Kalimdor, for whatever reason cut off from Eastern Kingdoms and the rest of the world. In the end, 4 capitals would emerge for the 2 or 4 factions. Astranaar (Night Elves+), Orgrimmar (Orcs+) Theramore (Humans+) and Thunder Bluff (Undead+). Then they should drop us back into a World of Warcraft II that takes place 5-10 years after the events of this story where you start again as an anonymous adventurer picking up the pieces of past events.

Then they should continue telling the story of the past in Warcraft IV expansions, taking us to first Azeroth proper, then another expansion for Khaz Modan, another for Lordaeron, then Northrend, the Dragon Isles, the South Seas, through the Dark Portal, etc. etc. And then sync that with expansions of those regions taking place 5-10 years after whatever happened there concluded.

To play as the main characters and watch cool cinematics and cutscenes that tells the ever-evolving Warcraft story of twists and turns, you'd play the campaigns of Warcraft IV and its expansions, very much a single player experience.

Then, for an adventure in a massively multiplayer online experience, Enter the World of Warcraft.... II.

There was plenty of overarching story in both, it just wasn't a beaming focus like in Wrath forward. Because the world was relatively safe after the events of WC3, we were set off to adventure. We discovered bigger things as we got closer to level cap. Obviously the BL possible return and the fugitives KT, Lady Vasj, and Illidan were the bigger overarching story, but we got to find out what happened in OL after Draenors destruction too.

[devilzxlin]

WoW mmo has always been poor in story telling,i think swtor have more better story telling than world of warcraft.

[Rexosaurus]

There's nothing wrong with having multiple story lines running in parallel.

I agree they don't do this very well and that the books play a more important role in understand what's going on than need be. Execution of story lines like this is always going to be a bit disjointed when you only add new chapters every six months or so with a break of nearly a year between expansions.

This, in my view, is one of the most important things they need to fix. Blizzard needs to drop the BS about gameplay being more important than story. That worked for a while. We're at a point now where people return to see new sights and see some of the story. Hardly anyone returns to see how the mechanics of their class changed. Quite the opposite.

I think that's the single most important change that they'd have to make for the story to become decent.

Trying to cram a story that fits into the box that the dev team made is a terrible way to tell a cohesive story. They're basically inviting giant plot holes and unfulfilling conclusions to their story lines.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Snowball's chance in hell imho.
The hot parts of hell.

[Zremax]

I really does hope it will become a thing. We'll see though.

[MoanaLisa]

And there is a question of whether gameplay even is more important than story in an RPG, even if it is in MMO format. There are scores of beloved RPGs that have crappy gameplay and survive on good story. Tabletops have steadily shifted to narrativist approaches as time has gone by because story and agency end up being more important than gameplay. No this is not WoW's niche ofc but story has been lacking since forever. They have had numerous points in time when large parts of the gameplay were stellar. Fix the gameplay, stop screwing around with it, then stick with one vision and just built content and story around it while making small balance changes and lateral instead of vertical additions.

I think this is right. To my mind the problem is pretty simple: The people who are in charge of the game at the design level are engineers who are more comfortable with spreadsheets and theory crafting than telling a good story.

[Yooginava182]

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?

Hence why they are changing the way you level and choose which expansion. While newer players jump right into the most recent expansion so their not dealing with cata then bc/wrath then back to cata or mop but missing the entire plot as to why we got there. Once their max and want to go see the old stories / content they can. Giving newer players more content at end game. Im excited for this "pick any expansion to level through" especially with the new character customization. You can to an extent create your own story for how / when this character started out.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I don't think so at this point. I think Blizzard has settled into their "theme park" design where each continent, each zone, and each quest hub is its own self-contained self-themed little area.

I'd love to see a WoW with the kind of linear in-depth storytelling of say an FF14, but I don't think it's happening. This is the niche WoW made for itself.

[InDemand]

I would have to agree that the storyline in wow is very disjointed. Wasn't Sargeras meant to be the overall bad guy? Now that he is captured we won't see him again? How do the void lords fit in? I don't get it.