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

[Evaddon]

at the same time, this guy has a point

in the end i would just like to go back to being a normal adventurer, not Captain Azeroth, but i get why we can't

Yeah we can't not in this version of WoW atleast, it just wouldn't make sense and feel ultimately even less impactful for our characters just to become adventures again...we are Superman now, we can't go back to being just Clark Kent.

Its a double edge sword where both kinda fucking suck.

To me I think they need to focus on making a really good badass threat to us and what we have fought for (...Azeroth) and not just toss the threat to the wayside after one expansion, the real problem is our enemies. The big bads or the lack their of its not about us being or not being an adventure its about what we go up against not stacking up to expectations its comes to a point where its just like "oh another one...o another..and another" and not even the biggest spectacle can save these threats that don't feel like a threat. I think its time for our PC to lose. To come close and fail..that can set us back, that can change the perspective.

[SynDethroc]

I have loved all of the story so far in Shadowlands, from the zones to the Covenants; that not to say it's without issue (there certainly are problems), but I simply cannot comprehend how you prefer the story of a 10-level beginner island when it's written like a kid's cartoon. I mean, some of the dialogue and voices are utterly laughable, and not in a good way.

[kaminaris]

Except SL is actual amazingly deep stories dealing with far more than this guy wants to steal that guy's land. Ardenweald rebirth, the horror the is Bastion, the insanity of Maldraxus... and then there's Revenderth. Yes the jaoler is the big bad but it's nice to see some textured problems that are not hey the horde are being genocidal again.

And that is a problem. Pseudo deep stories that in the end are just boring. Any once you go down the alternative timeline road you can never recover.

[Mysterymask]

You asked for it and now you have it WORLD OF WARCRAFT ADVENTURES IN AZEROTH

After defeating dragons, elderich abominations, demons, and the legions of Death itself come to this new expansion to solve your most difficult challenge yet

Farmer Bob's potato farm is being ransacked by Gnolls go kill like...maybe 15 of them and ill give you like some pants or something I dont know

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

I think its time for our PC to lose.

i've thought of that before and i agree. hell, maybe we already have...

*laughs in Nzoth*

[Venziir]

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.

It's not that I completely disagree, but there should be a difference to the adventures of a level 1 character and a level 50 character.

[Vrinara]

I'm still waiting for Vanilla/cata zones to be updated to current events.

[Venziir]

I have loved all of the story so far in Shadowlands, from the zones to the Covenants; that not to say it's without issue (there certainly are problems), but I simply cannot comprehend how you prefer the story of a 10-level beginner island when it's written like a kid's cartoon. I mean, some of the dialogue and voices are utterly laughable, and not in a good way.

So's the covenant stories, and the rest of WoW so.... Shrug.

[crusadernero]

It would be nice if we actually lost or something at the end of an xpac. I feel the story in wow each xpac is "HURR DURR EVIL VILLAIN" *we kill everything including hurr durr evil villain*. *late in xpac reveals who next hurr durr evil villain is*

then next xpac: "HURR DURR EVIL VILLAIN" *we kill everything including hurr durr evil villain*. *late in xpac reveals who next hurr durr evil villain is*

Well all know we are going to kill everything coming our way in each xpac. What makes it even more predictable is that we can never control the outcome of it either, we are just players in Blizzards story.

We also know that yeah we killed the most dangerous villain this xpac, but theres a new one in next. We also know that we will kill him/her/that too and be victorious.

its getting very easy to see how it all plays out. The big issue with storytelling in a game like wow is that theres months if not years for storylines to completly unfold.

Often times I enjoy reading or listening to the lorenerds who are predicting on whats going to happen, than actually seeing what Blizzard has done. Many of the theories are awesome and then we get something bland.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm still waiting for Vanilla/cata zones to be updated to current events.

Why would they? Dont get me wrong, I would love that too. A total revamp of EK/K would be awesome.

I really doubt it will happen for a couple of reasons.

1. They did it for cata. They said it wasnt really worth it at the time. To much work for to little. People want to get the leveling over with, not savor it.
2. We have classic servers now. People can experience the old vanilla zones if they choose to.
3. With Chromie time, you can now choose whatever xpac you want to level in. Meaning, you can pick the newest leveling zone and experience questing in modern times, making also the storytelling somewhat cohesive to the new xpac. Theres a difference between EK/K leveling and BfA.
4. Current events doesnt really affect EK/K alot it seems. Except from the sword in Silithus, thers nothing that suggest we have had WoD, legion or Bfa xpacs. All those xpacs also happend in other places than these zones.

Look at how leveling is treated in wow anyway - people want to reach max lvl quickly and Blizzard aknowledges that by making it rather quickly to do so.

It would be an impossible task to recreate EK/K for a leveling experience to say 60-70(if thats the new max level in next xpac). Its enough work just creating 4-5 zones for it.

[Dhrizzle]

The current situation is ridiculous and jarring. The writers clearly want to just throw all current lore characters into the trash and create a new set of lore characters every xpac. However, their hands are tied because Thrall, Jaina, Baine etc. are required which obviously frustrates them to no end because they want to tell tales now about reality-threatening monsters but racial lore heroes have no place in that. So they literally make them sit down in Oribos on their butts and twiddle their thumbs. Its hilarious and sad. Blizzard writers are at war with their own lore.

That makes zero sense. If the lore writers wanted to make throw out all the old characters they would. Instead we have lots of them including Bolvar being a throwback to Vanilla/WotLK and Anduin+Sylvanas being at the centre of the main plot. Even the Covenants are full of old lore characters like Vashj, Kael'thas, Thrall's-mum, Ysera, Tyrande etc.

[Dwimmerlaik]

Boring, no thanks.

[Vrinara]

It would be nice if we actually lost or something at the end of an xpac. I feel the story in wow each xpac is "HURR DURR EVIL VILLAIN" *we kill everything including hurr durr evil villain*. *late in xpac reveals who next hurr durr evil villain is*

then next xpac: "HURR DURR EVIL VILLAIN" *we kill everything including hurr durr evil villain*. *late in xpac reveals who next hurr durr evil villain is*

Well all know we are going to kill everything coming our way in each xpac. What makes it even more predictable is that we can never control the outcome of it either, we are just players in Blizzards story.

We also know that yeah we killed the most dangerous villain this xpac, but theres a new one in next. We also know that we will kill him/her/that too and be victorious.

its getting very easy to see how it all plays out. The big issue with storytelling in a game like wow is that theres months if not years for storylines to completly unfold.

Often times I enjoy reading or listening to the lorenerds who are predicting on whats going to happen, than actually seeing what Blizzard has done. Many of the theories are awesome and then we get something bland.

- - - Updated - - -



Why would they? Dont get me wrong, I would love that too. A total revamp of EK/K would be awesome.

I really doubt it will happen for a couple of reasons.

1. They did it for cata. They said it wasnt really worth it at the time. To much work for to little. People want to get the leveling over with, not savor it.
2. We have classic servers now. People can experience the old vanilla zones if they choose to.
3. With Chromie time, you can now choose whatever xpac you want to level in. Meaning, you can pick the newest leveling zone and experience questing in modern times, making also the storytelling somewhat cohesive to the new xpac. Theres a difference between EK/K leveling and BfA.
4. Current events doesnt really affect EK/K alot it seems. Except from the sword in Silithus, thers nothing that suggest we have had WoD, legion or Bfa xpacs. All those xpacs also happend in other places than these zones.

Look at how leveling is treated in wow anyway - people want to reach max lvl quickly and Blizzard aknowledges that by making it rather quickly to do so.

It would be an impossible task to recreate EK/K for a leveling experience to say 60-70(if thats the new max level in next xpac). Its enough work just creating 4-5 zones for it.

The reason I do want a EK and Kalimidor revamp is because a lot of people have leveled through many of the zones, and most are still stuck in cata. And idk, I am someone who loves new stories for the zones and seeing things after everything has happened. But yeah It probably wont happen since now we can level in every xpac now. I think I am just tired of Cata EK and Kalimidor zones. But yeah it wont happen. Would just love to see the older zones get a current day revamp.

[Evaddon]

i've thought of that before and i agree. hell, maybe we already have...

*laughs in Nzoth*

I WANT to believe that , but I'm not sure and that would've been a indirect loss where he tricked us into believing he was dead and we had won I want a more direct loss where you know you done fucked up kinda thing! I think that's going to happen with the Jailer or maybe...just maybe..Elune might not be as good and wholesome as everyone wants to believe, but that's another theory I have lol

[Mysterymask]

I think its time for our PC to lose. To come close and fail..that can set us back, that can change the perspective.

Probably the only way we could FEASIBLY go back to the whole "Not Superman" thing but...that would mean we as a collective playerbase would of had to do something SO Heinous that the faction leaders would basically want to abandon us..but not heinous enough for them to execute us...allowing us to kind of restart stripped of our prestige the factions want nothing to do with us and we are basically alone...
But then where would we go? Would this be the redemption arc or something? Realistically the threats we are all already aware of aren't going to stop because "Oh gee That guy" so we would have to go back to the way we are eventually or when its too late.

[Littleraven]

The genie is out of the bottle. The moment we got to Legion it was never going to be small like that again. Unless they do a complete reboot there is no way to make it feel right that we go from killing literal gods to fighting normal ass foot soldiers again. And sure you could make an argument that every expansion this happens where we are killing rabbits and boars but I chalk that more up to just a gameplay need rather than a story one.

Personally I don't have an issue with where the story is going. I just don't think they are going to be able to pull it off in a meaningful way. It just seems like they have these huge "reveals" that anyone with a brain could see coming from a mile away.

[Omedon]

Just count me as a respectful nope. I'm ecstatic that WoW has gone "epic D&D campaign" with opening the "Planescape" Pandora's box, and with the potential for BFA to get squished into chromie time with the rest of the faction war where it belongs, and Shadowlands being the default new player 10-50 leveling expansion as of 10.0 prepatch, I'm all about new players being raised on a diet of "the war in warcraft is the cosmic chart of primal powers" from then on!

[Jastall]

Completely irrelevant and forgettable? I can't catch what's so special about it. The dialog is just as cliché as anywhere else in the game, there are no characters even worth remembering their names, nothing cool happens, we just stumble upon bad ogres and kill them then kill a bad dragon.

We stopped being muh simple adventurers the moment we hit 60 in Classic and started killing elemental lords, old gods and massive dragons for loot. That ship sailed before TBC even released.

[Yarathir]

There is something amusing about people talking about how there's no immersion.
Only to move on to imply that things are that way because your character somewhat consistently and sensibly gets acknowledged for their achievement.

[Shedaar]

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.

Yes and:
1) we never met them
2) they didn't react in any way to us fighting deathwing, burning legion, demons, old gods, no naaru ever mentioned them and they didn't even flinch when sargeras thrust big sword into the planet.

Yup, makes perfect sense.

[shoc]

I think it needs to be more like Dragon Ball Z and less like Lo-Fi Lord of the Rings.

I want us to get into a multiversal tournament against the top heroes of other universes. Losing universes get annihilated.

I want my character to power up to level Supercharged Titanforged Kaiōken Blue Special Rank SSS+++ Elite.

I want to wear shoulderpads that each contains the captured essence of a Void Lord miniaturized into a fist-sized black hole.

I want psychic power so intense that I can atomize people just by thinking of them.