Why Don't Blizz's Writers Respect Their Predecessors?

[dope_danny]

Its a job. These are hires to create the plot of a themepark skinner box to conjure up excuses to sell another box to keep consumers on the purple treadmill. This is not a labour of love, those people are all long gone, these are people either simply don't care about the past work or have a case of 'now its MY story' which in western studios has been a pretty common thing with sequels nowadays as they pull a The Last Jedi to subvert expectations.

As someone with years of time and money invested its understandable to get upset but at the same time WoWs story is already 'done' in terms of wrapping up the rts's story hooks. But its still profitable. As long as thats the case its always going to have another "N-no THIS is the real big bad that was behind everything and everything before was merely prelude, swer on me mum!" because they need to find a reason to fart out another expansion pack. Thats the state of a game when it outlives its writing. Alt-fic takes over and replaces it with OC's, self inserts and just generic filler because the writers are long gone, the story wrapped up its loose ends and now its just a struggle to find someway to keep you subscribed beyond the natural end to the story.

Its not just a WoW issue mind you but a problem with live service games and persistent worlds in general. Its already been said by the devs that FFXIVs main story has around 3 expansions before it wraps up and if its still making money it will keep getting updates after that but the whole story of a world split into a multiverse and the survivors of the original world trying to cause disasters to rejoin them so their shattered god is rejoined as well has and end and when its done the project will see its leads move on to new games and replacements will do the same Blizzard does now with WoW.

It sucks but no game can last forever before story is replaced by OC churn. There isn't a setting alive that can do it no matter the medium. Star Wars struggled in its novels, Stargate tried to invent a whole new power tier of villains after they wrapped up the story for two more mediocre series of tv and mmos have the same problem too. WoW has just gotten to that point where it feels more like randos being put on a established comic book and they want to make it 'theirs' in ways that dont follow the original creators vision simple because those creators aren't around at the company anymore.

But games are still relatively young enough that longrunning series haven't had to deal with this as much as things like comic books or television. If you have issue with it now but want to stick to a product in its "zombie phase" where its pulling a simpsons and just riding the wave till profitability tanks it aint gonna get better and you are better off finding something else to enjoy to replace it as its not going to return to what you loved. It can't.

[Rageadon]

It's hard to give a shit about the story if the writers themselves don't give a shit.

This and also activision, bet they have original ideas but thats not allowed cuz of risk losing money

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Guys, just take a deep breath.
You don't know a thing about these "writers," their interactions with their predecessor or even the process they use to write the story.

Realistically, I think a lot of what happens is the game gets pushed in a way that just doesn't work out.
There is story and then there is gameplay, and they aren't both always going to line up well at times.

I think that is a clear indication of what happened in MoP with Wrathion.

The entire time they were setting up the Legion, but then in 5.4 seemed to pivot quite hard and ended up with some iffy time travel case.

Its possible it was because of pressure from the film's release, some gameplay features that weren't quite ready, or of course because of poor writing.

But if you don't actually know which (and none of us do) then best to stop the needless circle jerk about how poor human beings the "writers" must be.

I mean, the strangest part of this all is I know just about every lead developer at Blizzard, but can't name a single person who is a "writer."

Can you?

[xdunpealx]

this thread has made me more angry to Star Wars now.

[Pakheth]

But that's something people do after the original work has already been finished. A story that's still being written should be different shouldn't it? Look at GOT, the show after the 4th season, coincidentally when the books ended, took a serious nose dive. If a story is not complete, you shouldn't break its cohesion.

The books didn't end, he wasn't finished writing them so they had to come up with stuff which is a huge problem in general when making media of in progress source material.
If you want a better example look at the anime Full Metal Alchemist. The artist wasn't finished with the manga when they made it and got their blessing to come up with something else so they did. They still redid the whole thing later with Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Personally I loathe the first version but there are others that love it.

A horrible example of this would be the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie which was made before the end of the 3rd season of the animated show. The director M. Night Shyamalan absolutely butchered it because he wanted to do his own thing.

Or look at the Kingdom Hearts series. First game has understandable plot and neat storytelling. The moment Sakaguchi got the boot from Square and Nomura was put in place as main story director the entire franchise went cuckoo. He wanted to do his own thing and made it into a terrible mess I honestly can't be arsed to play anymore. He ruined the story in Final Fantasy VII: Remake too goodamnit.

What I am saying is that isn't something new and it will continue for pretty much forever. What Blizzard is doing is pretty tame in comparison if you ask me.

[Akka]

What do you mean with "butchered the original class fantasy?" I am sorry, i just do not get it. Give me some examples please.

Well, a striking example would be rogue. Rogues in Vanilla were these wily guys hiding in corners and shadows, ready to jump on people and stab them in the back. Be it bullies or assassins, they were crafty people relying on surprise, guile and tricks to keep their opponent flat-footed while chaining underhanded attacks to kill them.

Comes Legion, and we've got a choice between a dagger-wielding warlock that teleport and cast shadow spells, or a pirate firing guns, summoning ghosts and throwing dices, or an alchemist showering acid and poisons over his foes.

We went from down-to-earth, wily guile fighters to some sort of one-trick pony battle-mage trio.

[Nero Duskwind]

You misunderstand, it's entirely possible for people to BUILD on what came before without REPEATING.

By not respecting the folks that came before, they ended up REPEATING and doing *what their predecessors did* with BFA

It's interesting you brought this up because the current arc is, by all appearances, shaping up to be a complete and farcical retread of the MoP\WoD\Legion arc. The arc in a nutshell:

1. Faction War ends with Alliance helping Horde rebels depose a dishonorable and out of control warchief
2. Deposed warchief makes escape to another world that has past legendary figures inhabiting it. Plot twist midway will reveal originally propped big bad is not the big bad, true big bad is emissary of the following expansion's big bad.
3.Repel invasion by messenger's big bad forces (the zealously militant Lightbound of Draenor) and launch counteroffensive.

Take it for what you will but, between X'era's encounter with Illidan towards the end of Legion and the current path that Yrel's fanaticism has taken her in Draenor, it is strongly suggested that Lightbound are rapidly shaping up to be the Light's equivalent of the Burning Legion.

[Oneirophobia]

What retcons have you liked since then?

Personally, Kul Tiras being its own super-island, Zandalar only being partially sunk and not completely gone, the Titans not being "permanently" eradicated as the chronicles have us believe.

Not really into all the Sylvanas flip-flopping though. The Sylvanas in BFA's book is a completely different character than the Sylvanas in BFA, to the point her own thoughts in the book no longer make any damn sense ESPECIALLY after Blizz said she's had a deal with the Jailer for ages.

[Nerovar]

What do you mean with "butchered the original class fantasy?" I am sorry, i just do not get it. Give me some examples please.

One example would be demonology completely losing the metamorphosis fantasy of becoming a demon (even though that wasn't a thing in classic it's been around for a long time) in favour of simply summoning more of them. Or combat rogues even getting a rename to suit their new class fantasy of being a pirate or something like that.

[ravenmoon]

I'm sure we've all heard the rumors by now, that a large part of WoW's devs hate Chronicle and see it as 'constraining' them, and prefer to make up new stuff on the fly.

We've also seen issues time and time again in the writing where characters will change dramatically, or repeat plot arcs over and over again...

There are palpable concerns that BFA was a repeat of the Alliance vs. Horde war arc we saw in Cata/MoP simply because new folks on the writing staff wanted to 'do it right'.


Does anyone else feel that instead of seeing their previous writers as building a framework and foundation for them to build on, and to be inspired by, that they're instead disrespecting the writers who came before them?

Is each generation of writers just treating their position like a chance to write in their own fanfic rather than building a cohesive narrative?

Cause that's what it sure feels like.

@Sagenod too. It's more like they don't have that much respect or love for the work any longer. It's about making money churning out new stuff faster and faster, - can't be bothered to understand teh old things properly and wevae new and better stories that give continuation. This is not necessarily a new writers fault, it's a directive from the top, if they required them to know the lore properly and get up to date, they would do it, but if management cases only about churning out content and can't be bothered to make sure it synergises and is correct, then that's management's fault and usually because no one in management cares about it or loves it that way anymore.

You've got to love a thing to care about making sure the old stuff isn't removed. When the artists design the world you can see the care and love put into it by the style the detail etc, for a story teller lore person it's easy to see, not only in the quality for the story but how it brings out the lore well and slides in effortlessly into the scheme of things even enhancing the past more.

For fans like me this = Goodbye warcraft, everything i loved can change at the fly, it means it's pointless liking anything now because tomrorow it's something else, something I don' tlike, all to push some fast shiny new thing

I appreciate detph, continuing story, deep roots , something susbtantial, building on things in the past, this is what makes it rich and worthwhile.

If you abndon it and keep re-writing , you simply lose me.

But they already have. this is an ech of o an echo that is fading, I will soon put this down and never pick it up again. The lore helped m e see what a waste of time loving this was.

[Tanaria]

@Sagenod
But they already have. this is an ech of o an echo taht is fading, I will soon put this down and never pick it up again.

You can still write your own fan fiction about night elves though.
I'm currently writing my own fan fiction regarding my Blood Elf Priestess and Female Night Elf Druid

[ravenmoon]

You can still write your own fan fiction about night elves though.
I'm currently writing my own fan fiction regarding my Blood Elf Priestess and Female Night Elf Druid

Meh, I won' be able to motivate myself, it only works when the fantasy is stimulated officilaly, at least for me.. I keep asking myself what's the point of wasting myself on this and eventually talk myself out of it.

[Tanaria]

Meh, I won' be able to motivate myself, it only works when the fantasy is stimulated officilaly, at least for me.. I keep asking myself what's the point of wasting myself on this and eventually talk myself out of it.

That's up to you.
I just think it's my way of keeping the world of Azeroth alive for me.

Specifically, keeping Eversong Woods (which is stuck in it's TBC period), Felwood (which is stuck in it's Cata period) and Crystalsong Forest (which is stuck in it's WotLK period) are key locations that I've expanded - granted it is my own headcanon, but such lore heavy zones should be kept alive, even if it's through none-canon writing.

[Trumpcat]

Judging by the inconsistency in writing, the writers should take the Chronicles vol 1-3 and learn them by heart. Then write stuff that is consistent and not contradicting them.

The old lore depicted in those chronicles is what captivated people.

[Rinaul]

You know the Star Wars trilogy with Rae? It be like that.

[Stormspellz]

I'm sure we've all heard the rumors by now, that a large part of WoW's devs hate Chronicle and see it as 'constraining' them, and prefer to make up new stuff on the fly.

We've also seen issues time and time again in the writing where characters will change dramatically, or repeat plot arcs over and over again...

There are palpable concerns that BFA was a repeat of the Alliance vs. Horde war arc we saw in Cata/MoP simply because new folks on the writing staff wanted to 'do it right'.


Does anyone else feel that instead of seeing their previous writers as building a framework and foundation for them to build on, and to be inspired by, that they're instead disrespecting the writers who came before them?

Is each generation of writers just treating their position like a chance to write in their own fanfic rather than building a cohesive narrative?

Cause that's what it sure feels like.

Thinks its less about "respect" and more about lacking a story arc road map beyond what ever expansion is being worked on, I wouldn't be surprised if the writers are just told to "make the story fit" into what ever the expansion hook/theme is.

[Saltysquidoon]

WoW's writers are hacks and WoW is an old large franchise. Thus WoW has the problem you invariably get when you combine hack writers with old large franchises, retcons and conflicting visions. Anyone who's ever read a superhero comic knows what I'm talking about.

You have a new writer come in who either doesn't care about the lore or has a vision that conflicts with the lore. Do you think they're going to let respect for the source material conflict with their word baby? Hell no. The result is invariably what you see in WoW, unnecessary retcons that could have been avoided with a ten-minute flick through chronicle and the wiki and character's strength, motivations, actions, statements and beliefs becoming hat the plot needs them to be (i.e the fanfiction seasons of GoT problem).

One example would be demonology completely losing the metamorphosis fantasy of becoming a demon (even though that wasn't a thing in classic it's been around for a long time) in favour of simply summoning more of them.

The irony there being the call to nuke demo in wod was almost 100% assuredly a business decision to make meta seem 'cooler' for DH's when it came out. Even though the implementation of meta on DH (and the class generally) is the most half-assed thing possible and not even half as in-depth as demo's was (I still believe demo did need to lose meta for them to add DH's but how they went about it was terrible).

[Jamie081]

It's probably that the writers want to make their own visible imprint on the game and concerns for consistency with older lore become less and less of a concern. I think this line of thinking has driven a lot of the degradation (not just in the lore department) we could see over the years.

Honestly I feel like it's this more than anything. It happened with game design in WoD when Alex Afrasiabi was one of the people pushing for no flying. Flying/no flying was not a debate whatsoever before WoD. Everyone working at Blizzard wants to push their own vision on what is good for the game. The writers have no care for anything because they want to push their own ideas in the name of them being original, when nothing about Shadowlands so far is original at all.

Pushing what is good for the game even shows with classes. Some people loved the Legion class redesigns and others loathed them. Everyone has their own idea of what a class should be and how it should play.

[Clone]

I'm sure we've all heard the rumors by now, that a large part of WoW's devs hate Chronicle and see it as 'constraining' them, and prefer to make up new stuff on the fly.

We've also seen issues time and time again in the writing where characters will change dramatically, or repeat plot arcs over and over again...

There are palpable concerns that BFA was a repeat of the Alliance vs. Horde war arc we saw in Cata/MoP simply because new folks on the writing staff wanted to 'do it right'.


Does anyone else feel that instead of seeing their previous writers as building a framework and foundation for them to build on, and to be inspired by, that they're instead disrespecting the writers who came before them?

Is each generation of writers just treating their position like a chance to write in their own fanfic rather than building a cohesive narrative?

Cause that's what it sure feels like.

Because the original writers didn't respect their work either.

[Orby]

I think anyone who says the writers 'don't care' or are 'putting in no effort' are hate baiting, as someone who follows a few of the writers they have plenty of passion and love for the game, I hate this concept of 'I didn't like the story there for is a sign it's the writers fault that they didn't cater to me' and thats fine, peoples taste in lore and supposed to be different. But these people in the positions they are in are living the dream they seem to love the job and love writing the characters and also love talking about them. They have a grasp of character concepts.

the thing about writers and when those writers change hands people have different visions. Its the same thing with comics, when you have something like WoW which has been going on for nearly 30 years you are bound to have a change in story structure and presentation. Stories evolve and change and even style of those stories can sometime be altered, even I do still think Warcraft still feels very Warcraft to me, so to me I don;t feel thematically the game has changed too much..

With that said... If there has to be any excuse issues it could be that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, as we know Blizzard have a large creative team in the writing department, in a situation like this there are a lot of ideas and a lot of narratives clashing creating a lot of problem in the narrative itself. Now I am not sure thats the problem I do not know how the writing team works. I do know there are people that have an idea for a story then they pass it on to the creative writers to then write the story which then get passed onto people to fill int he gaps. which will lead to any rewrites and redos if necessary.