I think the story needs a Red Wedding style surprise

[Eli85]

First, what should be the most obvious: the Red Wedding, whether through the books or the show, was the furthest thing from surprising. It is the end result of thousands of pages of foreshadowing, and every small step that was made towards it, especially in the third book, made it abundantly clear that something really bad was going to happen to a whole bunch of characters. If anyone was surprised when it happened, they either weren't paying enough attention to the story and the characters, or they did not care to.

All of that said, the WoW story does not need a good "shock." Shock writing is one of the worst things you can do. Good writing is layered with foreshadowing, convincing character motivations, and logical conclusions. Shock for the sake of shock is just high school creative writing or fan fiction.

What WoW's story needs is to actually be good again. In my opinion, that starts with a really good antagonist (villain), and he / she needs to be built up appropriately as a deadly threat. The last time I felt this was done well was the entire Garrosh arc. Gul'dan? Nope. The Legion? They sorta just show up and go BRING IT! N'zoth? For the corrupter of Neltharion and an Old God, not once did I feel like he had any chance of victory.

There is too much to say about what WoW needs to do to make a better story, because you could honestly write a book on it. But really, I think, the crux of the problem is this: too many unlikeable characters are pushed to prominence (*cough* Slyvanas), and you get so much disengagement because of it.

[meroko]

The WoW writers aren't anywhere near the level of those from GoT around the time the Red Wedding took place.

The season 8 writers though..... thats a different story

uh, it was the same writers though. They went off source material of course but the writers never changed lol

[Orby]

Thought WoW had its red wedding scene , wasnt that the Broken Shore scenario. Varian, Tirion, and Vol'Jin all died there :P

[Eazy]

People are still mentioning GoT? I thought that thing was dead for a few years.

[Shadowspire]

First, what should be the most obvious: the Red Wedding, whether through the books or the show, was the furthest thing from surprising. It is the end result of thousands of pages of foreshadowing, and every small step that was made towards it, especially in the third book, made it abundantly clear that something really bad was going to happen to a whole bunch of characters. If anyone was surprised when it happened, they either weren't paying enough attention to the story and the characters, or they did not care to.

All of that said, the WoW story does not need a good "shock." Shock writing is one of the worst things you can do. Good writing is layered with foreshadowing, convincing character motivations, and logical conclusions. Shock for the sake of shock is just high school creative writing or fan fiction.

What WoW's story needs is to actually be good again. In my opinion, that starts with a really good antagonist (villain), and he / she needs to be built up appropriately as a deadly threat. The last time I felt this was done well was the entire Garrosh arc. Gul'dan? Nope. The Legion? They sorta just show up and go BRING IT! N'zoth? For the corrupter of Neltharion and an Old God, not once did I feel like he had any chance of victory.

There is too much to say about what WoW needs to do to make a better story, because you could honestly write a book on it. But really, I think, the crux of the problem is this: too many unlikeable characters are pushed to prominence (*cough* Slyvanas), and you get so much disengagement because of it.

this pretty much.
blizzard storytelling is for one faaaaaaaar to kill happy to the point it irritatingly numbs you. and also blizzard did have a red wedding, 2 actually.
theramore bombing and the legion opening quest.
story burout doesn't mean kill a bunch of people to shock fan interest back ,it means find a new storytelling way.

[Eli85]

this pretty much.
blizzard storytelling is for one faaaaaaaar to kill happy to the point it irritatingly numbs you. and also blizzard did have a red wedding, 2 actually.
theramore bombing and the legion opening quest.
story burout doesn't mean kill a bunch of people to shock fan interest back ,it means find a new storytelling way.

For their villains, absolutely; but they also aren't willing to kill characters that actually matter. There is far, far too much plot armour around Sylvanas, Anduin, Thrall, Jaina etc. It's to an extent that the fear of death is just not there, which is very antithetical to good story telling. To reference back to the Red Wedding, the characters that did die, you had a palpable sense long before the Red Wedding itself that something really bad was going to happen to them. If that fear isn't there, the shock isn't very impactful.

And yes, technically there has been shocks. The Legion opening quest, for me, it never resonated with me. Largely because both Varian and and Vol'jin were ... fairly unrelatable characters to me. I felt nothing at all. As an Alliance player, I have far greater attachment to Anduin, and I still do. If it was Anduin that died and not Varian, it would have been much different.

Also, yes, you're right: the current story burnout means they need to find a new story telling way. I think the writer's room needs to go back to the WarCraft stories (not just World of WarCraft stories) and really have a soul searching experience for what worked and why, and then think about if that same structure could work again. Personally, I would put aside these introduce or re-introduce a villain in one expansion and kill the villain in that expansion. I think they'd be better served if we went two or three expansions with the same villain, give the villain some real victories, build him or her up to be a credible threat, and really give the writer's room to really develop them. I mean, I think the reason why WoW's best villains had their origins in the RTS games is because they went through a much more thorough development.

[Soon-TM]

...and then ppl on this very forum will scream that it is cheap and they saw it a mile coming and how shite the writing is. Need proof? here comes:

Well, since you are quoting @Asrialol, I assume that you have read the actual book, so you know what he/she is talking about, right?

Thought WoW had its red wedding scene , wasnt that the Broken Shore scenario. Varian, Tirion, and Vol'Jin all died there :P

I couldn't give a single !@#$ for any of them (except maybe poor Vol'jin), so for me it was pretty much /shrug. The one thing Broken Shore did right was to depict the Legion as an actual threat, something that sadly was all but abandoned right afterwards.

[Orby]

Well, since you are quoting @Asrialol, I assume that you have read the actual book, so you know what he/she is talking about, right?



I couldn't give a single !@#$ for any of them (except maybe poor Vol'jin), so for me it was pretty much /shrug. The one thing Broken Shore did right was to depict the Legion as an actual threat, something that sadly was all but abandoned right afterwards.

*gasp* the way Tirion went out I know I was pretty pissed :P

[Soon-TM]

*gasp* the way Tirion went out I know I was pretty pissed :P

I never liked Tirion tbh. He was just another Uther, and not a particularly interesting one. Besides, having him KS the LK from Sylvanas (you know, the character whose sole purpose since its introduction was to take revenge on the LK) did certainly rub me the wrong way.

[KainneAbsolute]

It needs a Warcraft 4 to introduce us and let us play with new characters.

[oplawlz]

The writers in this game have consistently proven that they are not willing to take any sort of risk with the story, I'm not sure why you think that would change. Add to that the horrendous job they've done in the few lore character deaths we've had and you're just better off without trying.

[Th3Scourge]

No, it really doesn't need a Red Wedding style surprise.

The absolutely last thing you possible want from Steve 'Simp4Sylvanas' Danuser is his attempt at some 4D-chess level Red Wedding-style surprise

[Asrialol]

Well, since you are quoting @Asrialol, I assume that you have read the actual book, so you know what he/she is talking about, right?



I couldn't give a single !@#$ for any of them (except maybe poor Vol'jin), so for me it was pretty much /shrug. The one thing Broken Shore did right was to depict the Legion as an actual threat, something that sadly was all but abandoned right afterwards.

Hey, don't @ me like that!

I didn't read the books, mind you. But I could smell that something bad was about to happen.

My miss being pregnant at the time made the whole pregant baby stabbing feel extra.

[Echeyakee]

I agree, in a way. Wow needs a real threat, a proper "darkest hour" moment. I don't think it needs to be a mass killing, because it never feels impactful. In a world with healing, resurrections, and now a confirmed life after death, you can never really be sure someone is dead for good, so you don't get that genuine "oh shit" moment.

It has to be something else, and something we as players value. Otherwise there is too much of a disconnect between storytelling and gameplay. SL is a perfect example. We've breached the veil between life and death, braved the literal hell, and faced off someone who is pretty much a god there. Rather epic tale, but in gameplay terms, it's no different to finding some new islands in the sea and going there for a quick sunbathing sesh.

Wow could never really do low points well, or the inciting incident. I don't think it's even possible to do it that well, not an mmo, but that's just something writers have to work around. Change their approach. For example we've rolled over any threat that appeared before us so far, be it a strong beasty or unimaginable cosmic forces. So it's pointless to try and gurren lagann a bigger threat for us, not unless writers are willing to accept the ludicrousness and go full ham, which they are obviously not willing to do.

So instead we need crafty villains. Ones that mislead us, and/or openly try and delay us, while working towards their goal. But it has to be done right, not another "merely a setback" moment. We need proper foreshadowing and an early "midpoint" (yeah, I know how that sounds). Say we have the initial setup for whatever bad thing is happening next, and we do the usual thing with helping locals and rallying allies, just to storm the first raid. And as we're happily looting the final boss, we get backstabbed by the very locals we "rallied". Maybe we even loose access the what looked like the new capital, just for it to be a raid later on.

That, or just go full power trip, and stop trying to surprise us with the story. Power fantasy is also super enjoyable, if it's not trying too much.

[Soon-TM]

But I could smell that something bad was about to happen.

Well, that is precisely the writer's merit. It isn't just that several major characters were killed off, it's that when you read the book you knew there was something amiss , and that someone would end up biting the dust - it's that you couldn't tell exactly who. It isn't "predictable" by any means, at least not in the sense that @det tries to put it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I lost 50% of my interest in the show with the Red Wedding, and the remaining 50% when they blew up a certain building using green fire. It was shocking, heartbreaking, but it also made my time spent getting into the characters feel wasted.

So no, we don't need that sort of crap. As if the writers aren't prone to tropes already, now we'll start requesting they adhere to that lazy method within the confines of a PG13 title?

They can't even do War correctly, building up to a WoW "Red Wedding" would likely consist of "Lol, everything's fine?" and "Oh no! X did a thing and now Y and Z and the rest are DEAD!!"...

[Stardrift]

Baine really, really should have died there. Seriously, what a useless character. Dude needs to die or take action towards making the Tauren useful. Enough sitting around acting like maidens in distress. Done enough of that since Vanilla.

[Wheeler]

I'd be ok with Jaina or Anduin dying at this point honestly

I wouldn't be. I don't think his story's complete. I want to see him grow into a legit king, better than Varian. I still feels like he's in his dad's shadow.

Jaina's story is honestly done to me. She can go.

Then again - I guess that would mean Anduin is probably the more "surprising" one to kill off.

[Stardrift]

People are still mentioning GoT? I thought that thing was dead for a few years.

Because people died in GoT, people mistook "unexpected character death" for good writing and want it applied to everything, everywhere.

People are forgetting what purposes those deaths served in GoT. All these wannabe writers from Twitter who get all their inspirations from pop culture can't stop referring to "killing everyone off like in GoT".

[Soon-TM]

I lost 50% of my interest in the show with the Red Wedding, and the remaining 50% when they blew up a certain building using green fire. It was shocking, heartbreaking, but it also made my time spent getting into the characters feel wasted.

So no, we don't need that sort of crap. As if the writers aren't prone to tropes already, now we'll start requesting they adhere to that lazy method within the confines of a PG13 title?

They can't even do War correctly, building up to a WoW "Red Wedding" would likely consist of "Lol, everything's fine?" and "Oh no! X did a thing and now Y and Z and the rest are DEAD!!"...

Imo the problem isn't so much that they are prone to tropes (even if they seem to be very fond of Mary Sues as of late, both male and female), but rather that they are TERRIBLE when it comes to building up the required background.

Baine really, really should have died there. Seriously, what a useless character. Dude needs to die or take action towards making the Tauren useful. Enough sitting around acting like maidens in distress. Done enough of that since Vanilla.

Even in WC3 you had to rescue his useless ass from a bunch of quilboars.