Originally Posted by
Aucald
I think the Arthas story in WotLK generally worked, and the writers foreshadowed it aptly enough in the various quests and encounters with the Arthas Lich King during the experience. He ultimately wants the PC's to emulate his journey - growing in power, being forced to make critical decisions, all so that they can ascend to his throne room full of power and self-importance, then turned into mighty generals of the Scourge when they fall to his power. The story works, and Arthas *almost* wins in the end, he just doesn't factor the Light into his plans (another interesting little narrative irony) and Tirion manages to shatter Frostmourne, allowing us to go free once more when the shade of Terenas Menethil brings us back to life. The only real issue with Arthas is that he showed up a few too many times, giving the players the impression that he was a bit of a hammy villain. This, I think, was an overreaction to the issues with TBC where Illidan had the opposite problem, and suffered by being too out of focus. Wasn't a major problem, though YMMV.
Deathwing's characterization was way off for me - I was used to the scheming and intelligent Deathwing from Day of the Dragon, Beyond the Dark Portal, and other stories. Deathwing in Cata came off more as a mindless destructive force, and the only example where he deviated from that was the Thrall short story Charge of the Aspects, where he gives Thrall a justification (from his own perspective) for his fall from grace. Unfortunately this isn't shown in-game at all, and Deathwing even had a unique humanoid model he never actually uses, one that could've been used to make him more relatable. I also felt the de-powering of the Aspects was pretty unnecessary, but that was more a personal opinion than an issue with the narrative, per se. The "Age of Mortals" thing felt like an unnecessary addendum, and the explanation of the Aspects' stewardship of Azeroth came across as shoehorned into the plot, also rather unnecessarily. Some personal interaction with Deathwing would've been nice, even if it was showcased with the other NPC's. A showdown with his bothers and sisters would've been awesome, perhaps a sort of recreation of their showdown with him in Day of the Dragon, but with the opposite result of Deathwing being the victor, which would go far towards explaining the need for the PC's to be part of the fight (more than the existing narrative does).
Garrosh's arc was okay in my view, I didn't really have an issue with his fall from grace as I sort of expected it to go that way. I felt it was pretty strongly foreshadowed in The Shattering and again in Wolfheart, the problem there is that both those examples are external to the game and it becomes a case of "show, don't tell" which if we're to be honest is a problem with WoW's storytelling in a more general sense. We needed to see more of Garrosh's (bad) decision-making processes, how he refused the wisdom of advisers and peers, instead opting to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who failed to challenge his ideas or offer up alternatives. This lack of character exploration was also made more a problem by the writers', uh, confusion as to how his character was to develop (e.g. the Stonetalon issue). What you ended up with was a charismatic Warchief who seemed to come across as no-nonsense and honorable, who then underwent a mostly off-screen devolution into the slavering tyrant we see in MoP. Like Deathwing above, the issue here would be resolved by more essential storytelling, organically showing in-game what happened to Garrosh and why he chose the path he did.
Ditto for Azshara, who probably suffers the worst from this "show, don't tell" issue. I think much of BfA's 8.2 story-arc could've been fixed by just letting us in on the "mystery" of Azshara and Sylvanas' connection and their plan to lure the bearer of the Heart of Azeroth to N'Zoth's prison to release him. This is why she opens Nazjatar to us, and why she goads us to blaze our way to her palace - using the sacrifice of her lieutenants to mask the fact that it was all intentional and put us off-guard for swerve to come. This would solve some of Sylvanas' characterization issues as well, in addition to the writers trying to play both ends against the middle, so to speak, trying to drum up some form of player choice where ultimately there could be none (and shouldn't have been any). I'm all for player choice and being able to make decisions that the plot reflects to a degree - but this was the wrong context in which to make that addition.
As for N'Zoth, well, I think his story was completely botched in 8.3 - all the way from his ultimate goals, his characterization, the Ny'alotha reveal, and everything else. I agree with most people who felt N'Zoth deserved an expansion of his own, and that his inclusion as the final boss of BfA was both shoehorned in and ultimately an anticlimax. In a way, one of the main issues with BfA from a narrative perspective is that it was just trying to do too much in a single expansion - it had way too many B-plots trying in vain to be A-plots and eating the scenery away from what was supposed to be the actual A-plot (the faction war). You had Sylvanas and her involvement with the Shadowlands plot to come, Xal'atath and her as-yet unknown plot(s), Azshara and her plotting, N'Zoth striving to free himself, the factions at complete war with one another - all competing for the same finite narrative space, and in some instances being mutually exclusive with one another. N'Zoth's resolution ultimately suffers the worst from this, in my view, as he essentially came out of left field to take over as the expansion's main antagonist only to be put to bed unrealistically quickly - ending the faction war far too abruptly and then seguing into the entirely unrelated Shadowlands story-arc without so much as a by your leave. N'Zoth was essentially used as a (mostly failed) stumble, and as both a character and a plot-point he deserved better than that (especially with his long and rather epic build-up since Cata). Even worse than "show, don't tell," BfA managed to fail to show multiple stories and then put them to bed unrealistically and abruptly. Would've been far better to just pick a particular narrative thread and focus on that, and choose perhaps one B-plot and let it happen in the background as per usual. Trying to do too much, too quickly, basically dragged all the BfA arcs down into the muck.