Do you think the writers are "incompetent"?

[Overlordd]

Or do you think that the writers are doing okay, but think that book writing just doesn't work for an MMO?

I have my opinions about the writers, but I honestly think that book writing has to go, and that Blizzard should hire world designers and quest designers again, that make up a story through the lense of world building.

Chris Metzen never wrote much books, but it was thanks to his vision and other developpers at that time that Azeroth was shaped.

I think Blizzard just needs to drop the whole novel thing. I don't think making Warcraft books that post set the game works at all.

Sure you could hire writers to write the Warcraft universe after the story is set ingame maybe? But I just don't think that books work for MMO's

[Tharendil]

What's your standard? They are no world class storytellers and much of what came after WC3 TFT ruined a lot of what came before.

They retcon without hesitance. Chronicle is the biggest insult to players. Paying for seeing them ruin previously established lore with their new nonsense that they think is creative.

And when they went "there is only one Legion across infinite timelines", they completely lost it.

What about Azeroth being a Titan? Why are we even fighting for the world soul? Best case is the thing awakens uncorrupted and shakes us all off like a bunch of fleas, worst case is it gets corrupted and turned into a dark titan. There is no hope for us. Unless we kill the world soul, like Sargeras wants to do.

The story at this point requires you to be a buffoon to like it and be invested in it.

Just look at how stupid the Horde members look, when they just accept Sylvanas as warchief and then are surprised at her betrayal.

[Fibh]

100% incompetent.

My 9y old nephew wrote a pokémon fanfic the other day. His characters were more consistent than wow's.

[Varodoc]

They are more competent and professional than the armchair writers on this forum, and the franchise is much better in their hands than in the hands of the people in here.

Plus 90% of the times if someone on MMO-Champion is complaining about the story, they were not paying attention or are just trolling to start some drama (like you dear OP have done in the past).

[DemonHunter18]

What's your standard? They are no world class storytellers and much of what came after WC3 TFT ruined a lot of what came before.

They retcon without hesitance. Chronicle is the biggest insult to players. Paying for seeing them ruin previously established lore with their new nonsense that they think is creative.

pretty much this.

they don't respect their own lore.

the lore is dead since TBC. this is just post apocalyptic world where carrion is feasting upon corpses.

- - - Updated - - -

100% incompetent.

My 9y old nephew wrote a pokémon fanfic the other day. His characters were more consistent than wow's.

LMAO this made my day

thanks xd

[Combatbutler]

Considering they hardly care for consistency, they will never be able to write a good overarching story, not to mention they write extremely shallow and have shoddy world building.

[Bigcountry11782]

oh 100% yes.The original lore was very well done.Over the years it has been turned to this hot garbage lore we know today.

[oblakoff]

All of writers for Blizzard books, some of which are now consultant or even senior writers, are pretty mediocre as ...well, writers. So the problem is not that they are book writers, but that they are BAD books writers, and mostly have no original content but mercenary writing for established universes. WoW don't have bright future with the likes of Christie Golden

[shoc]

I don't think they are incompetent rather it's a 25-year long case of 'too many cooks spoil the broth'. Over 25 years several hundred people have had their way with WoW lore, a dozen of them at the novel/novella level. Of course it's not going to be as great as something with a unified singular vision, as if it were a work by Tolkien or JRR Martin.

[Graeham]

I do, though it's a problem that plagues pretty much every MMO these days. Even the highly praised FFXIV falls into predictable tropes and outright neglects certain characters in favour of pushing fanservice at every possible turn.

I think a lot of it is simply down to age in WoW's case. Many of the original writers have since left the development team altogether and those that have come afterwards would prefer to do their own thing or just whatever is 'cool' at the time regardless of whether or not it makes sense with what came before it.

To their credit, there are some good gems to be found among the muck - though in no small part that is due to the art and music teams being consistently excellent.

[Thundering]

yes wotlk was the last hurra of wow lore.

[Aucald]

Incompetent? No, I don't think so. Flawed? Certainly. Much of the regular frequency of criticism I think stems from a variety of sources that don't really have much to do with the quality of the writing, though; which while a definite hostage to gameplay mechanics and "rule of cool" type storytelling has been pretty consistency from the get-go (all the way back to its roots in WC1's lore). I've identified what I think of the three central pillars of criticism when it comes to the Warcraft universe's writing and popular criticism from the playerbase.

1.) WoW is an ancient game that cleaves to older traditions of writing. By which I mean that people often forget that WoW is itself a product of the early aughts, a time when story in gaming was only starting to rise to the relative prominence it has now. Held to the standard of some modern games or indie darlings with cerebral plots and compelling storylines WoW does fall somewhat flat. It relies more on the age of its own IP than any kind of internal narrative richness, and the story is more akin to older games where the narrative is more sketched than belabored - until later expansions it more left the world-building aspect largely to the players' collective imagination. I think the newer writing team is trying to "update" WoW's story in a sense to the more modern conventions, but obviously they are somewhat hamstrung by the older lore as well as deep-set loyalties in the WoW fandom.

2.) The playerbase is highly resistant to change or progress in the story of beloved characters. You see this one over and over - there is a definite sense that players do not want their favorite characters to change or progress, regardless where that logical progression may lead. Sometimes I think this is down to just the nature of MMORPG's in general, where there is an expectation of a less dynamic world that is paradoxically juxtaposed with a desire for organic change. The expression of this basically comes down to the translated sentence: "Oh, I want new content, I just don't want anything to fundamentally change." This resistance to change takes many forms, but in the lore department it often takes the appearance of protectionism toward certain characters, or of the world itself. It is the primary reason why I think the Cata revamp was received so poorly, because it essentially ended a world the playerbase was enamored of and replaced it with something updated and new, but not the same as what was.

3.) Factionalism. Probably the most consistent source of player disharmony and anger - just the notion that the story, the writers, and/or the developers themselves have a pronounced favoritism toward one faction or the other. Accusations of bias from either side telescope out into players heaping scorn on the story itself for enabling said biases, electing totems who represent "all the problems with WoW's writing," etc. etc. This issue is exacerbated many times over by the fact that the factions are forced to exist in a relative state of balanced status quo by the game mechanics themselves, and so there can't be a way for either competitive faction to essentially "win" within the narrative. One faction loses a major city, the other faction must lose one, etc. etc. This of course also bleeds into the other two pillars accordingly, as victory or defeat must also spell change to those characters involved, and must also manifestly change the world or else feel meaningless in the long term. This is itself, in my eyes, the ultimate narrative failure of BfA itself - a convoluted story-arc of war and conflict spanning the world of Azeroth, which ultimately is forced to end in detente and resumption of the effective status quo.

Is the story of the Warcraft universe flawed? Certainly. But I also think it's more or less fine for what it is. It *could* be more than that, but I think it would take a writing team with, let's face it, a lot more mechanical and technical skill to "fix" the issues with the story than the game currently has. It would also involve some significant subtextual retcons to bring about, which if I were to guess is what is likely coming - but for good or bad I can't really say.

[LordVargK]

No. I think SOME writers are incompetent. The lead writers responsible for the overarching main story are.
The writers that write the stories for the zones, quest text, etc are often really able to write good stories. Drustvar was amazing for example. BfA could have skipped Dazar'alor and instead have a drust themed raid. Similar to this Uldir could have been replaced by a more Blood troll themed raid, since Uldir only served as a means to discover MOTHER. The lore of those zones really had much more potential.
And thats just one example. Suramar had amazing lore.
But then there are some Developers that say "Hey, lets give the Horde two races that were affiliated with both factions equally" and "Lul, voidelfs" and those somehow got their way...

[Venziir]

Or do you think that the writers are doing okay, but think that book writing just doesn't work for an MMO?

I have my opinions about the writers, but I honestly think that book writing has to go, and that Blizzard should hire world designers and quest designers again, that make up a story through the lense of world building.

Chris Metzen never wrote much books, but it was thanks to his vision and other developpers at that time that Azeroth was shaped.

I think Blizzard just needs to drop the whole novel thing. I don't think making Warcraft books that post set the game works at all.

Sure you could hire writers to write the Warcraft universe after the story is set ingame maybe? But I just don't think that books work for MMO's

When you yourself write "much books", I wouldn't exactly judge the writings of others. Also, yay, another Overlordd whine thread! You are really on a roll these days kiddo!

Infracted.

[Viikkis]

I never kept Warcraft lore in high value though it does feel like it has gone downhill these last expansions.

[Sorrowseer]

Too many writers spoil the script. End.

[darkdude103]

I think there is a clear disconnect between the story team and the rest of the devs.

The micro story in zones is usually consistent and pretty good. Spires of Arak, Drustvar and Jade Forest are usually well praised and anytime new lore is introduced it's generally well put such as the case of Pandaria. I dont think the lore team has any say on the theme of the expansion or the final boss and are just there to fill in the blanks.

We also have to consider how limiting gameplay is to the story the entire idea of factions as a gameplay mechanic pretty much hinders what they can do.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Too much retconning, the canon has been messed up for a long time. I don't know if the writers are incompetent, or if they have too many, or they change writers too frequently, but they definitely have problems when it comes to WoW. There is an enormous lack of consistency and I have no clue how much of that is the fault of the writers.

D3 had some pretty good story writing, as did Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm (I'm not including LotV cause it felt like it just went into a strange territory with the main purpose to be preventing SC3 from ever being a thing).

[McNeil]

The story is just at the very back of their list of priorities which for the games sake is probably for the better. They will always need to build the game around gameplay and the rule of cool, whatever fits their marketing the most (like frontloading Sylvanas a lot, and Illidan in Legion as examples). The writers we got are just some people they took from Fanfiction.net or at least it feels that way.

If you do want to get invested in the lore I'd either stick with the books or ignore the new lore and just appreciate at how good the lore used to be.

[Hellobolis]

writing for an environment like wow is difficult. honestly they would probably be better off hiring TV show writers who are used to the kind of production environment wow is instead of novel writers.