This whole "I just want to kill bandits. Screw Cosmic stuff" type comments suck.

[Hotmail]

I remember "Lapdogs, all of you!". I can't remember a single quote for all those dime a dozen space goat bosses

[Super Dickmann]

A cosmic threat has one huge advantage over the faction war, namely that there can actually be a winner.

Focus on the faction war led to the entire playerbase pissed off, with many quitting. That's not how you want your customers feeling about your game. The faction war should be kept as it was in vanilla, skirmishes and cold war, unless they're prepared to let one side win with actual consequences.

Emotion produces interest. Emotion in WoW comes foremost from the people we actually care about. No one today gives one iota of a fuck about Cho'gall, the drogbar, the Twilight's Hammer. Even genuinely solid villains like KJ can have their shit ruined by a disappointing death. No one will mention the Bald Man except as a punchline the nanosecond there's literally anything else to talk about. But you have people arguing to the death about minor faction minutiae, because the factions and races are those who's shoes we inhabit.

Shadowlands' most lasting negative consequence won't be whether some dickhead is tortured by vampires or not well after they exited stage left, it'll be the soft faction merge and the lawsuit consequences doubling down on every protagonist being a disposable bore who can't enter into any human conflict because it wouldn't reflect the values of Our Democracy (TM).

[Woggmer]

I hear a lot of people saying the same "The cosmic stuff is so boring. Wish we could run around killing a bunch of goons like in classic". I don't think it makes any sense for us just to fight dragons in a cave at this point in the story. A lot of people complain that the cosmic story is boring and wow doesn't feel like wow because of cosmic stuff which I think is silly because Warcraft has always been cosmic. The first expansion is us visiting the shattered world in space and interacting with Naaru or entities made by light. Heck Warcraft was cosmic even before World of Warcraft. We visited the outland in WC3. Orcs are an alien race that invaded Azeroth from a different planet. Warcraft has been cosmic from the very beginning so I don't get the people who say the cosmic stuff doesn't feel like Warcraft.

I get that shadowland is terrible but that's not because of the cosmic storyline, it's because the writers are incompetent.

I honestly don't get this whole "We just kill a bunch of bandits, trolls, dragons, etc, and cosmic forces should be in the background." thing. We are nearing the 10.0 and it's about time that a lot of cosmic legends should be explored. You can't just do the same "Oh look there is an unexplored island on the map of Azeroth with a new race. Let's explore it." forever. New threats need to be explored but I think they should be handled well.

Oh and don't get me with all this "I want to see faction wars." bullshit because lots of people complained that faction wars were boring and overdone when BFA was announced.

I think we're stuck in power creep and people think that by going to back to simpler stories and scenarios back on Azeroth = power creep reduction. That and the whole "We need the X power in order to defeat this big bad because he's so powerful on a cosmic level that we need an excuse for this borrowed power."

Think about it like this... We just stopped a bald man with a hole for a chest from destroying all of reality. We've officially reached Thanos levels of absurdity. Not to mention that the more we explore things on a cosmic level, the more they start to trivialize established "Gods" or Titans to make the player character even MORE powerful than them.

And to be blunt... WoW players will always find something to complain about in an expansion, they do it for EVERY expansion.

[Feanoro]

@Super Dickmann I didn't say people don't care, I said the faction war as Blizzard presents it is a failure because even the "winners" are disappointed every time we suffer through it. Everyone was pissed off after BfA, with people quitting in droves citing reasons that included the Night Elf genocide, how the Horde was villain batted again, how the Horde didn't go far enough/win, and more.

They rarely touch the faction war, and wisely so, since they don't have the balls to let either side truly win.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

They did present the cosmic story really nicely in Legion, but regarding Shadowlands they did it in an opposite way.

[Super Dickmann]

@Super Dickmann I didn't say people don't care, I said the faction war as Blizzard presents it is a failure because even the "winners" are disappointed every time we suffer through it. Everyone was pissed off after BfA, with people quitting in droves citing reasons that included the Night Elf genocide, how the Horde was villain batted again, how the Horde didn't go far enough/win, and more.

They rarely touch the faction war, and wisely so, since they don't have the balls to let either side truly win.

That's a problem of the way they wrote it in BFA and Mists, i.e not in acceptance of what the game is, namely an MMO that can continue indefinitely with the factions meant to clash accordingly. The stakes are too high. Individual zone storylines always have their faction bits remembered more and it's why the faction war, or really regional conflicts between playable races, must go hand in hand with fighting Big Bads. The future soft-faction merge will actually enable far more of, in case the planets align and the writing staff realizes that human conflict is key to the game.

There's a reason Camp Taurajo is a meme or Stormheim was debated for years, whereas even people telling you the Legion stories are the best thing since sliced bread would have to look up a glossary to tell you a singular character trait from anyone in the Highmountain storyline that isn't Ebonhorn.

[Rozz]

You are missing the forest for the trees... thats EXACTLY the point, there was PROGRESSION.

Yup. Exactly my point, thanks. I wasn't the one saying there wasn't

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They really just make anyone moderator huh.

Online communities always put the loud minority front and center.
Look at the top upvoted post on /r/wow: 62k upvotes. ~2000 comments.
Yet the sub has 2.2m users. And even then there's about 3k online most at any given moment.

The people actually talking are a small group.

???? Okay?

[Zoneseek]

I am not a fan of the cosmic stuff but others are so they can enjoy it, all good. I noped out of shadowlands in record time... its just not my thing, but instead of complain about it I just went and played something else.

[Rozz]

And even in those communities the people saying what @Rozz is claiming are yet only a fraction of r/wow, which is as you said in turn is a fraction of the player base.

A fraction of a fraction so yeah ..hyperbole heh

It's funny because it doesn't even matter. I just mentioned where I saw this type of commentary (with the posters being 100% serious about it) because some people think they don't exist.

Like, damn. It's not that serious <3

[Nerovar]

Shadowlands' most lasting negative consequence won't be whether some dickhead is tortured by vampires or not well after they exited stage left, it'll be the soft faction merge and the lawsuit consequences doubling down on every protagonist being a disposable bore who can't enter into any human conflict because it wouldn't reflect the values of Our Democracy (TM).

Another Garrosh-type character is the last thing we need right now. That would be terribly insensible considering recent events...


On topic: It surprises me that people are unwilling to see the difference between killing Orcs on another planet/timeline and having to watch cringeworthy monologues about free will in an expansion that focuses on a flawed, mechanical afterlife which ultimately gets "resolved" by killing a robot god guy who wants to "unmake reality" (whatever that means) and putting a new robot guy in charge.

[Super Dickmann]

Another Garrosh-type character is the last thing we need right now. That would be terribly insensible considering recent events...

Zidormi might consider some minor name alterations to make it through to the next expansion.

[Aydinx2]

It's funny because it doesn't even matter. I just mentioned where I saw this type of commentary (with the posters being 100% serious about it) because some people think they don't exist.

Like, damn. It's not that serious <3

We do not insult others here. Please stay on topic.

[Jastall]

That's a problem of the way they wrote it in BFA and Mists, i.e not in acceptance of what the game is, namely an MMO that can continue indefinitely with the factions meant to clash accordingly. The stakes are too high. Individual zone storylines always have their faction bits remembered more and it's why the faction war, or really regional conflicts between playable races, must go hand in hand with fighting Big Bads. The future soft-faction merge will actually enable far more of, in case the planets align and the writing staff realizes that human conflict is key to the game.

There's a reason Camp Taurajo is a meme or Stormheim was debated for years, whereas even people telling you the Legion stories are the best thing since sliced bread would have to look up a glossary to tell you a singular character trait from anyone in the Highmountain storyline that isn't Ebonhorn.

You're just describing different flavors of bad, not making a case as to why one is better than the other. A story making a dozen people throw shit at each other on forums ad nauseum isn't necessarily a better story than the one that makes everyone bored of the Jailer and sick/tired of Sylvanas.

The issue isn't cosmic vs local IMO, it's a compelling story with interesting characters vs boring characters doing nonsensical stuff to advance the harebrained plot. Citing Highmountain isn't a strong argument when people liked Val'sharah (sans the Malfurion illusion nonsense) and Suramar, who have nothing to do with the faction war. DK Order Hall, Velen's arc, nothing to do with the faction war, but also not necessarily large-scale ultra cosmic space rangers threat either. That's probably where WoW shines brightest, high fantasy without going overboard.

Hell the good stuff in BfA itself was... everything but the faction war and N'zoth. Zandalari were cool, Azshara was cool, Kul Tiras was pretty decent, Mechagon was the closest thing to a properly motivated villain we've had in ages even if underused. But they tried to tackle le morally grey faction war story while not having a tenth of the writing chops required to do so and then undercooked the cosmic threat so it seems a joke. Hell I'd say the same of Mists, the best stuff was the world building and side villains like the Thunder King. Whereas the road to fighting Nazi Orcs is a spectacular case of characters going off the rails for the sake of forcing the story.

[Gaidax]

I am playing the game all the way from the beginning and I started the whole franchise with Warcraft 2 back in the day.

So my take is that I want the game story to move forward and tackle the big threats and yes - move forward IS a cosmic direction. I certainly don't want the game to take another 20 years of filler before we get to deal with Void Lords, the way it happened with Sargeras.

And on that end, I most certainly don't want the game to devolve back to bandits and mundanes, because it will simply be another year burned doing some filler like first part of BFA was. Been there and done that plenty.

[uuuhname]

"collect these 5 bear asses"
vs.
"collect these 5 bear asses, these asses are the keys to saving the universe"

that's how I see this topic.

to the OP's point; this is what blizzard writing has reduced my interest in this story to.

[theostrichsays]

I don't dislike the cosmic stuff as a baseline, I'm just not invested in it. Killing bandits, and murderous animals for a village isn't going to push some overarching plot forward, but it pushes a smaller storyline entirely based in some random towns location forward, and I can relate to that. Bandits start poaching, kill a few do-gooder villagers, this leads ot a lack of food that drives a wolf or bear to kill some innocent folks. Now we got to kill both the bandits and the bear, then go elsewhere and acquire food to bring back to the villagers. Get stopped by bandit's leader, kill him in his revenge motive and feed the village. Maybe he has family/friends somewhere else that are now aiming to take revenge, maybe some corrupted politician in stormwind knew him.

I understand that even the small stories have been less then stellar in general but I can at least relate to it.

But I will say, if Blizz had better explained Zovaal and his motives, I probably would care more about it.

[FelPlague]

Could have easily just said, for gameplay reasons, old azeroth died but you can still travel to it. Our characters are canonically stuck in shadowlands right now.

what im saying is if the jailer resets reality and resets us to being random nobodies doing quests for random farmer who wants us to kill some coyotes, that does not work aswell while you look like...

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erase our memories, let us reborn. ANYTHING. It is a fantasy game.

Yes and again.

How do you feel like a random nobody again without removing our mounts, tmog, abilities.


cause just having us go back and fight random fucking gnolls does not work when you can launch massive nukes and ride on a literal god mount while wearing armor from the titans themselves while using the grim reapers gavel.

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Random fucking farmer: "Hello, are you that new adventurer i am hearing about? Wow I could sure use someone to deal with the boar that has been diging up my garden, could you maybe slay it for me? It might be a bit strong so maybe bring some friends."

Meanwhile you:


Again, unless they remove mounts/tmog/etc we cant really go back to feeling like "nobodies"

[Florena]

Jailer should have won, remake reality, crush everything, drains all power and let us start from zero. Best way

The jailor winning would not mean the new story would be any better even with a clean slate, nor do they need to do something that drastic to take a step back and start fresh.

[wushootaki]

I think Mists of Pandaria is the best example of the “bandits” you speak of. It isn’t world ending. They invented a history of a people and you had to help them with their problems. If they took MOP level of groundedness and put over it a scarlet crusade paint for example then I would think that would be a great expansion.

MoP is great because its world-building in a meaningful way. Shadowlands, while being world-building, took a giant crap on every race's religious beliefs of the afterlife while making death feel impermanent and meaningless because there is just another life after.

MoP also directly world-built Azeroth with things people already cared about (Pandaren).

MoP's villain was also one built up through the game over years, and directly impacted the factions in a meaninful way. SL Villain was created in Shadowlands and undermined previous stories by being implanted into SLs that were not originally written with him in mind, with an "Aha! But it was me all along!"

On top of the fact that "NO ONE ESCAPES THE MAW!" and yet it's the first thing we do in the expansion, which sets the overall tone for how unimportant and unimpactful the Jailer feels.

We still have a tone of places left on Azeroth to explore, all of which could be flavored with Cosmic lore while keeping things relevant:

Tel'Abim
Dragon Isles
Undermine
Ogrezonia

Things that were wasted by could have possibly fleshed out an entire expansion dedicated to Azeroth:

- Azshara and the Naga (literally a throwaway patch after years of hype)
- Magatha Grimtotem's control of powerful artifacts summoning otherworldly elementals (so much hype from Cata, then thrown as a Shaman follower)
- N'zoth (literally a throwaway patch after years of hype)
- Mechagon (could have built this up much bigger incorporating the bling-tron war, and things like Undermine, and a revamped Azjol-Nerub - make the quest for King Mechagon to turn everyone back to their pre-curse of flesh state a world level threat)

[exochaft]

The jailor winning would not mean the new story would be any better even with a clean slate, nor do they need to do something that drastic to take a step back and start fresh.

I think your general sentiment is correct, however resetting the story/players (no matter the method) would make Blizz's lives easier in crafting a narrative. Again, I say easier... doesn't mean it'd be better.

I imagine a lot of people have this feeling that they know something's wrong with the WoW story, but they can't quite put their finger on it or express it in words. That's fair, as there's a lot going on that's contributing to issues in the WoW narrative. However, if you view the direction of the WoW story and compare it to other stories, you start seeing some similarities.

As an example, a story jumping to time travel or the afterlife (especially if the original story doesn't even delve into that much or at all) is generally considered a risky move at best. There's two aspects to view this from, and it's why you go this direction and the execution. Concerning the 'why go with time travel or the afterlife?', it's usually because you're running out of ideas or trying to reset your narrative in some way (or you could just being going for sensationalizing your story). The common thread through all of these reasons is that your story is likely waning or hitting a dead end for various reasons. However, unless this is a very carefully crafted narrative, you run into the second aspect: executing a time travel or afterlife narrative can be extreeeeemely hard in terms of not screwing up your story and trivializing what came before it.

The unfortunate reality is that when most story makers turn to time travel or the afterlife in order to rescue their story, they will not give their story the attention to detail required to not mess it up in some way... and quite ironically if they had this attention to detail in the first place, they wouldn't need to resort to such methods to rescue their narrative. While these two are the biggest tropes to resort to, there's others that can be used. As an example, constantly one-upping your villain and power. Again, having this planned out well in advanced is one thing, but having a villain seemingly come out of nowhere threatening all of existence and/or being behind everything all along screams the writers grasping at straws. While some people will immediately think "He's just referencing the Shadowlands story"... well, I could, but I'm actually thinking of other works that do this exact thing; what Blizz did with the Jailer and Shadowlands isn't new in general, and I can't recall a case where it was executed well.

Now people wanting to return to more simplistic stories or stories of lesser scope is a suggestion to help the writers, as they can be executed more readily than a 5D chess narrative. I imagine players tend to recognize the tropes used above tend to end horribly in stories unless the writers execute extremely well, so they recognize the trend instead of the potential reasoning behind it. In all honesty, it boils down to Blizz demonstrating that it cannot handle making an elaborate narrative without screwing it up in various ways, and a more satisfying story would probably be one that is simplistic in nature to help them focus on making a great story that works in the game.

I'd like to add one more thing, as well: even if we keep our cosmic power (or at the very least we're still in high power territory), you can make a story that entertaining and smart where despite all the power the NPCs or players have, it cannot help them overcome a problem or will be extremely limited in capacity. Easiest method is to just remove the powers for reason X or Y, but skilled writers can craft a villain or a situation where even the most powerful people become powerless in their circumstances. Helps when you have well-defined powers and weaknesses to be sure, but recognizing that power can be more than just pewpew lazerbeamz is the first step. If you want a bare-bones concept, taking a hostage (whether it's a specific individual, a group of people, or even inanimate objects) can cripple a protagonist if they have any semblance of morality. You don't have to be on-the-nose about it, but you can make even the most OP character a hostage to their own circumstances so they are effectively depowered without literally taking their powers away.

Anyways, the WoW story could be brought down a ton in scope and withdrawn from cosmic-level stuff and still have stakes while being interesting. Little hard after the Shadowlands debacle, as they've hamstrung themselves when it comes to killing (or the threat of killing) people, but the avenue is there. However, that just shows that delving into time travel and afterlife narratives can have drastic negative consequences in your story if not done careful.