WoW's story needs to go back to being more like Exile's Reach

[TerrisT]

It can't be done. We are already the "Hero" that have dealt with gods and infinite armies. You can't just not be that anymore.

But anyway, it has never been like that. Sure you started dealing with small tasks but WoW has always been a fight between interdimensional beings. Even in vanilla.

It can be done scenaristically, just need to put the "old world" and its expansion in a time pocket, and decide that the "new world" is the new construct for stories, with more grounded problematics like ogres, dragonkin, bad Orcs etc. Pretty much the vanilla world.

There would nee to be a new capital for each faction, where the "portal" room would lead you only to the "old world", and future expansions.

Now, it seems the wow team is running on a budget to keep players hooked, so such an endeavour is unlikely.

[kranur]

Can't really happen without a major revamp and world reset. I mean the random adventurer from a long time ago has defeated so many major characters that he's no longer just a random adventurer.

Exile's reached was pretty bad tho. But then WoW is no longer the game of exploration and discovery that it once was ... it's now just a streamlined story ... and for the most part quite bad too.

[Rasula Elfbiter]

To be fair, sans all the Azerite business, BfA was very down-to-earth, especially Kul Tiras. I mean, we defeated a demon god in Legion and now fight pirates, corrupt guards and village witches. It felt like Westfall and Duskwood again. Zandalar was a tad more exotic with its dinos and mesoamerican trolls but still had some very mundane plot lines. And Nazjatar was way too mundane, we invade the realm of the most powerful naga mage-queen and instead we jump in puddles and run errands for goblins and fish-men.
Legion was quite epic but even it had garden pest and bear asses quests in Highmountain.

Shadowlands isn't really that alien and epic too. Out of 4 zones, 3 have pretty standard problems - Ardenweald is yet another Ashenvale where we help dryad and druid types and fight nasty critters and forest despoilers, Maldraxxus is Durotar meeting Tirisfal (lots of martial prowess quests combined with undead themes), and Revendreth is your typical gothic vampire land. Maybe only Bastion with angels and fallen angels stands out, and ofc the Maw, but that's expected.

[Makabreska]

We did have stuff like this in BfA. After you defeated a goddamn World Soul in Legion you move to uncover a political plot involving pirates in Boralus, a witch coven in Drustvar, we attack/defend a Zandalari city in an old school battle etc. Even Nazjatar was pretty tame. The problem with this is, you can't really do it entire xpac. There needs to be an escalation.

[McNeil]

BFA zones had a much more grounded story than we used to have with expansions like SL, Legion and WoD. We explored continents on Azeroth that has been in lore for a long time, we got to meet the natives and were back to dealing with threats such as corrupt politicians, pirates, Alliance/Horde, local wildlife, some Old God and witchcraft influences. It felt like a fresh breath of air after dealing with intergalatic space battles on Argus and dealing with literal God's. BFA gets a lot of flack but this is the one thing they did right, the questing was actually solid (though no one liked getting weaker after each level which is why the leveling experience was brought down).

Exile's Reach story was very basic which is fine for newcomers who just started the game. The whole point of it was that a completely fresh character starts out on their adventure which won't be the case for those who have been playing for much longer.

[Gehco]

I found the Exile's Reach story intro to be more compelling than just about any Shadowlands stories outside of maybe Revendreth. Exile's Reach feels grounded and relatable. You're a soldier with a small makeshift camp, rallying some allies and scouting the zone. You then deal with an Ogre problem and uncover some use of necromancy that ends in a fight with a dragon. The whole time I got that old school DND adventure vibe and enjoyed it quite a bit.

When you do something like Shadowlands, the story deals with eternity, ghost people, civilizations that persist in the afterlife on these pocket dimension islands... hard to really give a shit tbh. I like vampire stuff so Revendreth was enjoyable, but everything else is so out there it feels like background noise.

We need to get back to MoP style storytelling imo.

Honestly, I agree with you.

Though, furthermore so, I believe the player needs to get knocked off the pedestal in expansions. We already have it sorta in Shadowlands, "Who?" moments. I believe the player should never reach above being the 'champion' or 'soldier'.

[justandulas]

Wow does a lot of things well, but story telling isn’t one of them. The writing is legit painfully bad, it’s impossible to give a crap about it

It’s way too disney story, safe and always good wins and we’re all good. We can’t play villains or morally grey characters, bad guys always lose, and it repeats ad nauseum. It legit makes the Disney channel look hardcore.

The writing staff should have been fired the day MoP was suggested. The original writing staff from vanilla-wotlk had a more grown up narrative

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Exile's Reach is more grounded because it's simple.


That's really there all is to it. You shipwreck --> rally friends --> explore, discover --> uncover bad guy's plot --> sabotage bad guys --> kill bad guy boss. Exile's Reach could have been an animated made-for-TV movie on the Disney channel.

[Teriz]

I do believe that the next expansion will be back on Azeroth. Blizzard doesn't tend to go off world for two expansions in a row, but we will be on Azeroth for multiple expansions.

I'm thinking Dragon Isles or Undermine/Catacombs next.

[Nerovar]

It’s hard to see how to make it go back to something like that.

The same old world/universal threats still exist in some capacity.

One way I can see it happen is if the add a backside of Azeroth with undiscovered land filled with normal mortals and villains that are not cosmic power levels bad guys.

The threats may still exist but that doesn't they need to bother Azeroth every 1-2 years.

[Daronokk]

You realize the original story of warcraft is an interdimensional alien invasion right?

Nope, that was added in Warcraft 2.

The backstory for Warcraft 1 is simply, "no one knew where these creatures came from".

[Nobleshield]

We need to get back to MoP style storytelling imo.

IMHO we need to go back to MOP style everything. Storytelling, gameplay, class/raid design. Everything since has been steadily downhill.

[Lasombria]

It might work to have a second "adventurer" track of questing. You might have some level capping at various points, and stories with more local focus. Maybe just an "adventurer" quest line each zone at its level bracket. Seems worth pondering.

[Kokolums]

they cant go back unless they do a fork off of wow classic before BC. the current storyline is littered with universe-sized threats its pointless.

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To be fair, sans all the Azerite business, BfA was very down-to-earth, especially Kul Tiras.

the writing in kul tiras was terrible. most of the characters were portrayed as stiff and constipated. even the pirates were written that way. not down-to-earth in any way whatsoever.

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It might work to have a second "adventurer" track of questing. You might have some level capping at various points, and stories with more local focus. Maybe just an "adventurer" quest line each zone at its level bracket. Seems worth pondering.

thats sounds like a typical blizzard solution that would be worst-of-both-worlds and solve nothing.

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bfa taught us that the writers dont know how to write a pirate to save their lives. its sad and hilarious.

[willtron]

I found the Exile's Reach story intro to be more compelling than just about any Shadowlands stories outside of maybe Revendreth. Exile's Reach feels grounded and relatable. You're a soldier with a small makeshift camp, rallying some allies and scouting the zone. You then deal with an Ogre problem and uncover some use of necromancy that ends in a fight with a dragon. The whole time I got that old school DND adventure vibe and enjoyed it quite a bit.

When you do something like Shadowlands, the story deals with eternity, ghost people, civilizations that persist in the afterlife on these pocket dimension islands... hard to really give a shit tbh. I like vampire stuff so Revendreth was enjoyable, but everything else is so out there it feels like background noise.

We need to get back to MoP style storytelling imo.

Entirely why I would like classic to turn into WoW 2/OSRS style, which it never will. But would be nice.

[Dhrizzle]

Wow does a lot of things well, but story telling isn’t one of them. The writing is legit painfully bad, it’s impossible to give a crap about it

It’s way too disney story, safe and always good wins and we’re all good. We can’t play villains or morally grey characters, bad guys always lose, and it repeats ad nauseum. It legit makes the Disney channel look hardcore.

The writing staff should have been fired the day MoP was suggested. The original writing staff from vanilla-wotlk had a more grown up narrative

You did play in the last expansion where Horde players took part in genociding the Night Elves, right?

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On top of that TBC and WotLK had way more of a straightforward good vs evil story ("Disney" as you'd call it,) MoP was where we started seeing more shades of grey in how the Alliance and Horde act.

[Lane]

Even if Blizzard just added roles where you could choose between hero or mercenary would help. I hate being "hero/champion" all the time. I would love it if the faction leaders would address me like we had to approach Arluin in Suramar. We hear you're awesome, we need your help, "pay my price". Also, more quests from people who don't know or care who we are and are just looking for day labor. We don't have to be notorious and everything we do doesn't have to have a cosmic impact.

I'm still team revamp though. I think at this point we've spent so much time elsewhere that we need to focus on EK & Kalimdor. Centaurs could have had an uprising. I still feel like we got ripped off in Cata with Uldum, I would love to have more Tol'vir and Qiraji interaction/lore. Even though I hated the execution of the Living Story in GW2, I liked the idea behind it. The devs could focus on a couple zones per patch to 'rebuild' instead of doing it all at once, ideally with a neutral storyline that won't lock us into a timeline. I haven't figured out what the raids would be in such a scenario, but there's plenty of fodder for dungeons, WQs, basically the rest of the end game we've been used to since Legion.

[Darkeon]

Pandora's Box.

It's out of the box, nothing we can do and definitely go back to that, in current WoW.

Only thing that can happen is to hope that they either hire new Storytellers or that the current ones magically get some sort of decent skills and enjoy the story-telling monorail with a side of loot-hamster wheels and overdosed systems that is retail.

[Kokolums]

Arguably the biggest problem with the Shadowlands lore is that it *feels* like they started out with ideas for systems and gameplay mechanics *first* and *then* cobbled together a mish-mash of new lore characters to fit those systems (Winter Queen, the Arbiter, the Primus). These are not characters that are loved by the writers at all but serve the systems in place and are to be totally discarded when the systems go away.

It even feels that way with existing lore characters. Rescued are Thrall and Baine and Jaina, what the hell do we do with them, oh let's dump them on Oribos in the meeting hall, they can sit on the floor or something.

[shise]

You realize the original story of warcraft is an interdimensional alien invasion right?

And yet, it is not.

It all happens in very down to Earth, normal lands and questing. The Burning Crusade came to Azeroth and we then went into the Outlands. The Outlands have the same spirit and essence as Azeroth.

Ever since WoD we started going into a completely different game.