WoW's Darkest Secret.

[Rendark]

LOL. Imagine if 'The Usual Suspects' started with Spacey saying "I am Keyser Soze, and this is my story"

The video is based on the viewer believing it was real or at least not being sure what to believe.

So then its clickbait.

[loras]

The most amazing video anyone has ever made about wow. The lesson is at the end.

If you won't commit it to writing, why would i assume you would commit it to a video?

[exsanguinate]

The video was good until the end were he said it was all fake. He should have put that at the start.

???????? You even breath the same air??

[ek0zu]

I had the creeps up until the end! gr8 video D

[Izual45]

Amazing haha. He made a believer out of me.

Blizzard hire this guy!

[RobertMugabe]

The most amazing video anyone has ever made about wow. The lesson is at the end.

Don't really wanna be THAT guy, but this is already quite old and so many people have seen it already (through streams, reddit etc.)

[StillMcfuu]

If it was fanfiction he should've said so at the beginning. People watched this thinking this was canon lore they'd never heard of before, only for the author to rickroll them at the end.

Yeah that's the point, the rug pull at the end is to hammer home the point that stories can be made anywhere, they can be compelling and draw you in, and they don't have to be overly grand. It's a criticism on current wow and it's lazy devs.

[cparle87]

Yeah that's the point, the rug pull at the end is to hammer home the point that stories can be made anywhere, they can be compelling and draw you in, and they don't have to be overly grand. It's a criticism on current wow and it's lazy devs.

That's not the point. I don't care about the quality of the video. The video was deliberately misleading in deceiving the viewers that it was actual canon lore. We waste 20 minutes of our lives watching this only for him to go "lol this is just fanfiction, gotcha." Fanfiction should declare itself such. It would be like if you put a stand outside on the sidewalk that says you're selling lemonade. You go wait in line for 20 minutes, get to the front, only to get told. Nah, we don't see lemonade, we sell <insert whatever thing>. You'd feel cheated and lied to.

Pretty sure that's false advertising and illegal in some places.

[FelPlague]

Damn you are seriously buthurt over how great he is at storytelling are you? His point was to make an interesting story about the most boring place in WoW and he made it more interesting than all of Shadowlands. Just to prove how lazy Blizzard are, and he did it.

I thought i was fun and even if it wasn't real it was a treat. It's time to not be so offended about being entertained.

hes not great at storytelling though...
literally anyone could do this, it relies solely on fabricating lies about reality and misleading the reader, that is not storytelling that is lie fabrication, because people don't even know they are listening to a story.

i write and review scripts for a living, i make top 10's and history ofs, i would not call anything i do "story telling" even though it keeps people hooked on a narrative the entire time.


like have you ever heard the "it was a dream all along" literacy tale? its one commonly hated cause it means everything you just listened to didnt even happen and was a waste of fucking time cause it didnt even happen in the universe of the story being written, telling a story of a real thing happening then to reveal it was all just made up a lie doesent even really make it a story in the true sense and more a fabrication of fiction.

so yes i guess in the pure aspect of it, it is storytelling, but telling an interesting "story" that is literally nothing but lies is easy, and if as he says they shoiuld do, blizzard tried something liek this, the fucking communtiy would HATE it.

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But... It's not fan fiction? Like, what is your problem dude. It's legit and valid criticism towards Blizzard, while being very entertaining. Not his fault you're stuck up dude :P

it is fan fiction, he literally made it all up, none of it is real, it is just that fiction, or did you pause the video before he revealed it was all a lie?

[StillMcfuu]

That's not the point. I don't care about the quality of the video. The video was deliberately misleading in deceiving the viewers that it was actual canon lore. We waste 20 minutes of our lives watching this only for him to go "lol this is just fanfiction, gotcha." Fanfiction should declare itself such. It would be like if you put a stand outside on the sidewalk that says you're selling lemonade. You go wait in line for 20 minutes, get to the front, only to get told. Nah, we don't see lemonade, we sell <insert whatever thing>. You'd feel cheated and lied to.

Pretty sure that's false advertising and illegal in some places.

Bro what?

Even as told in the video, it doesn't even fashion itself as a lore video. It's a story about look at the potential bug I found, ohh wait it's an out of game conspiracy, ohh just kidding, but look at how invested I made you in the game, why can't the devs who are supposedly professional story tellers do this?

[FelPlague]

I'm annoyed, but it's a point well made. I was invested throughout the whole video. This is exactly the type of MMO shenanigans that MMO's used to be all about. Weird stuff that players had to figure out. Obviously not as deranged as this example, but certainly problems that the player has to dig for.

I suppose one of the problems is what these days any such mysteries would be immediately be spoiled by Wowhead and are therefore not worth the effort.

you mean what they are right now? idk if youve been playing wow but they have had insanely complicated and intricate secrets spanning years, jennifer, b'aal, unuu, the spirit darter, the waist of time, nightmare, etc, all of these super detailed secrets.

but you cant tell stories like this anymore because they get instantly spoiled, if they told a secret like this in wow now people would know about it in PTR months befoe it even goes live, cause they do do this, all the time, and yet people find it out through the PTR and datamining.

nevermind the fact "it was a dream all along" is one of if not the most hated trope in storytelling ever, and is the game equivalent of a "documentary" style story saying "oh yeah i made all that the fuck up"

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Amazing haha. He made a believer out of me.

Blizzard hire this guy!

hire him to write what exactly? its easy to do this kinda stuff, like do people not know of the existance of the onion for example?

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Yeah that's the point, the rug pull at the end is to hammer home the point that stories can be made anywhere, they can be compelling and draw you in, and they don't have to be overly grand. It's a criticism on current wow and it's lazy devs.

so you are saying blizzard should write a story where they mislead players for long periods of time, only to pull the rug out from under them and say "Oh yeah none of that was real, lol get fucked"



Well here we go, at the end of dragonflight suddenly we are going to wake up back in the shadowlands with the jailer standing above us saying "yeah that was all a dream, yall fell asleep while i was monologuing, time to fight!!!"

aww man best storytelling ever.



look there is stories that work in specific styles of genre, and there is specific stories that can only work in specific mediums. for example, an action scene, far better done and visualized in a visual medium like animation or even comics, meanwhile if you try to visualize that scene with text alone it is MUCH harder.
same is said for differing medias, a monologue is much more interesting on radio then it is in a silent movie, but an action scene is much more interesting in a silent movie then in radio.
in a game universe you cant really tell a story of "this is all real, oh wait its not" and do a rugpull, instead we have the "it was all a dream" or "Time is reverted" these are how it is portrayed in fantasy, and really the only good ways to do so, and even then the simple line.
"And they woke up, it was all a dream" is a meme for a reason, cause holy shit it is the most unsatisfying and annoying thing ever.

this story is decent, but only because the medium of a murder mystery is easy, and the ending is actually just... awful, but people love it because "fuck blizzard"

The ending would have hit much harder if he let it sit for longer, and revealed it in such a way that even after revealing it was all a lie... maybe.. just maybe it might be real?



if you want to give it a shot, dont even need to write a styory, just explain to me how you would write a murder mystery that takes place in a fantasy world, and then have it turn out to all be a lie and nothing happens no one dies no one is effected it was all just a waste of time. and not have it be extremely annoying to players?

when you are playing a video game, when you are doing anything you want payoff.
a story can be fun, but if the ending is dogshit it ruins the whole thing.
what do you give as payoff to make it all worth the time and effort? nothing.
his payoff was "lol fuck blizzard" which everyone agrees with so thats enough, but how do you tell a story to only pull the rug and say "none of it is real none of it mattered, goodbye" and have the player feel like their time was respected and they were rewarded for going through that.

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Bro what?

Even as told in the video, it doesn't even fashion itself as a lore video. It's a story about look at the potential bug I found, ohh wait it's an out of game conspiracy, ohh just kidding, but look at how invested I made you in the game, why can't the devs who are supposedly professional story tellers do this?

"look at how invested i made you in the game" except he didnt, he made you invested in the story, which turns out to be entirely made up, a pointless lie. nothing he says makes you invested in the GAME he makes you invested in the lie he has fabricated.

something conmen are VERY good at doing, they dont sell you the product, they sell you THE LIE.

[StillMcfuu]

you mean what they are right now? idk if youve been playing wow but they have had insanely complicated and intricate secrets spanning years, jennifer, b'aal, unuu, the spirit darter, the waist of time, nightmare, etc, all of these super detailed secrets.

but you cant tell stories like this anymore because they get instantly spoiled, if they told a secret like this in wow now people would know about it in PTR months befoe it even goes live, cause they do do this, all the time, and yet people find it out through the PTR and datamining.

nevermind the fact "it was a dream all along" is one of if not the most hated trope in storytelling ever, and is the game equivalent of a "documentary" style story saying "oh yeah i made all that the fuck up"

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hire him to write what exactly? its easy to do this kinda stuff, like do people not know of the existance of the onion for example?

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so you are saying blizzard should write a story where they mislead players for long periods of time, only to pull the rug out from under them and say "Oh yeah none of that was real, lol get fucked"



Well here we go, at the end of dragonflight suddenly we are going to wake up back in the shadowlands with the jailer standing above us saying "yeah that was all a dream, yall fell asleep while i was monologuing, time to fight!!!"

aww man best storytelling ever.



look there is stories that work in specific styles of genre, and there is specific stories that can only work in specific mediums. for example, an action scene, far better done and visualized in a visual medium like animation or even comics, meanwhile if you try to visualize that scene with text alone it is MUCH harder.
same is said for differing medias, a monologue is much more interesting on radio then it is in a silent movie, but an action scene is much more interesting in a silent movie then in radio.
in a game universe you cant really tell a story of "this is all real, oh wait its not" and do a rugpull, instead we have the "it was all a dream" or "Time is reverted" these are how it is portrayed in fantasy, and really the only good ways to do so, and even then the simple line.
"And they woke up, it was all a dream" is a meme for a reason, cause holy shit it is the most unsatisfying and annoying thing ever.

this story is decent, but only because the medium of a murder mystery is easy, and the ending is actually just... awful, but people love it because "fuck blizzard"

The ending would have hit much harder if he let it sit for longer, and revealed it in such a way that even after revealing it was all a lie... maybe.. just maybe it might be real?



if you want to give it a shot, dont even need to write a styory, just explain to me how you would write a murder mystery that takes place in a fantasy world, and then have it turn out to all be a lie and nothing happens no one dies no one is effected it was all just a waste of time. and not have it be extremely annoying to players?

when you are playing a video game, when you are doing anything you want payoff.
a story can be fun, but if the ending is dogshit it ruins the whole thing.
what do you give as payoff to make it all worth the time and effort? nothing.
his payoff was "lol fuck blizzard" which everyone agrees with so thats enough, but how do you tell a story to only pull the rug and say "none of it is real none of it mattered, goodbye" and have the player feel like their time was respected and they were rewarded for going through that.

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"look at how invested i made you in the game" except he didnt, he made you invested in the story, which turns out to be entirely made up, a pointless lie. nothing he says makes you invested in the GAME he makes you invested in the lie he has fabricated.

something conmen are VERY good at doing, they dont sell you the product, they sell you THE LIE.

No one is this dense...

[FelPlague]

No one is this dense...

did you really need to qoute my entire fucking post to type 5 words my dude?
and no i am this dense, i am a professional writer, whos job is literally to keep people engaged and entertained, i know how easy this kinda stuff is, when you are not telling a fantasy story that needs to last multiple months if not years, it is so easy, writing a short story is obscenely easy, especially if you use misdirection and fabrication.
i mean there is literally like 5 word short stories that are EXTREMLY compelling, FIVE WORDS

It enjoys watching you sleep.
just saw my reflection blink.
that door was just closed.
Alone in bed, blanket shifts.
Wife screams, at her funeral.
living alone; toilet seat warm.


super simple, literally 5 words, but these alone leave the mind wandering and tell terrifying stories and with just 5 simple words give you an entire story that could take hours to explain in full detail

simple stories are easy, because the human mind can fill in the details, extremly so.

telling a barebones story is the safest way to get people to like a story, because it lets people fill in the gaps. the issue with that is you cant tell barebones over long periods, because people fill in those gaps to the point they make up their own ideas and then hate the story from these ideas, example people hating the current story for things that arnt even cannon, but the community made up in absent of information, blizz leaves holes to be filled later, to be left a mystery for now, and people freak out over these holes not being filled right away, or even their own headcannon of what blizz did/is going to do with these.

for example everyone freaking out we arnt taking care of the sword... meanwhile we are going to obviously but not right now.

[The Stormbringer]

So then its clickbait.

Not even remotely. It's valid and constructive criticism framed through telling a story and making a point at the end.

[Rendark]

Not even remotely. It's valid and constructive criticism framed through telling a story and making a point at the end.

And the point at the end makes it not as good. Put that at the start and I'm down.

[FelPlague]

Not even remotely. It's valid and constructive criticism framed through telling a story and making a point at the end.

"constructive criticism" you dont know what that means do you "story writers are shit, i just spent 20 minutes lying to you all and they cant do that" is not constructive criticism.

[kranur]

That's not the point. I don't care about the quality of the video. The video was deliberately misleading in deceiving the viewers that it was actual canon lore. We waste 20 minutes of our lives watching this only for him to go "lol this is just fanfiction, gotcha." Fanfiction should declare itself such. It would be like if you put a stand outside on the sidewalk that says you're selling lemonade. You go wait in line for 20 minutes, get to the front, only to get told. Nah, we don't see lemonade, we sell <insert whatever thing>. You'd feel cheated and lied to.

Pretty sure that's false advertising and illegal in some places.

Do you get mad when you watch a movie and realize that it didn't actually happened in real life and it wasn't mentioned at the start of it?

[The Stormbringer]

And the point at the end makes it not as good. Put that at the start and I'm down.

Why? Part of the reason why you get so invested into the story is because you think it's real. That believability helps make his point more powerful, it showcases how a good story can captivate audiences.

"constructive criticism" you dont know what that means do you "story writers are shit, i just spent 20 minutes lying to you all and they cant do that" is not constructive criticism.

If you think his message was "story writers are shit, I just kicked their asses lol" then you're taking a far harsher take from this than I did. To me it was more like, "If the writers took the time to sit down and come up with interesting little stories rather than the big picture stuff like they're doing now, they would grab a lot more interest and attention from the players."

[kranur]

hes not great at storytelling though...
literally anyone could do this, it relies solely on fabricating lies about reality and misleading the reader, that is not storytelling that is lie fabrication, because people don't even know they are listening to a story.

i write and review scripts for a living, i make top 10's and history ofs, i would not call anything i do "story telling" even though it keeps people hooked on a narrative the entire time.


like have you ever heard the "it was a dream all along" literacy tale? its one commonly hated cause it means everything you just listened to didnt even happen and was a waste of fucking time cause it didnt even happen in the universe of the story being written, telling a story of a real thing happening then to reveal it was all just made up a lie doesent even really make it a story in the true sense and more a fabrication of fiction.

so yes i guess in the pure aspect of it, it is storytelling, but telling an interesting "story" that is literally nothing but lies is easy, and if as he says they shoiuld do, blizzard tried something liek this, the fucking communtiy would HATE it.

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it is fan fiction, he literally made it all up, none of it is real, it is just that fiction, or did you pause the video before he revealed it was all a lie?

So all stories that are not real life happenings are just fabricated lies and should not be considered as stories?
Wtf ... I must have missed the disclaimers on books "THESE EVENTS ARE NOT REAL, NOTHING HAPPENED, YOU WASTE YOUR TIME READING THIS!!!!!!!"

[FelPlague]

The ending was literally BIS. The only way it could have ended better than being true was the way it ended.

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It kind of is though. A point demonstrated through, well demonstration.

well idk if you know, but world of warcraft is fantasy, its not real, so how do you tell a story that plays on the mindset and strings and story scheme that what is being spoken about is real life.

you may not know it but your brain does TONS of stuff subconciously.
for example, if you see a dead body in a video game, no matter how realistic, it wont be as terrifying as if you saw an actual dead body in real life. because your brain sees it and knows it is not real, therefore it does not let it effect you in the same way. why also the brain will commonly trick you into thinking real things are not real if it means saving you from the trauma, something many people who suffer trauma do without their knowledge, their brain takes these events and makes them into memeories that feel fake, that they are not real.

if he told this story EXACTLY the same way, but let us know ahead of time it was not real, or if you got this story and put it ingame, no one would care.

i dont think i need to spell it out but the fact a real life person murdered 3 people and then got away with it for decades is far more compelling then a video game charecter murdered 3 video game charecters and we didnt find out till decades later.



i mean come on, charecters in fantasy murder millions with no problem, you will see tons of people all over the world who say they love garrosh.

but i fucking dare you to go and say you love hitler, even though they did the EXACT same things. because garrosh is a video game charecter, there is a level of disconnect, it does not include ANY real people, so you can disconnect yourself from that, but hitler was a real person, so were his victims.

Hitler and literally everything connected to him is a travesty, anyone who would appretiate him would be called rightfully so countless things. yet garrosh is commonly praised among the community for doing the exact same things. this is because you cant compare fiction to non-fiction, because in non-fiction actual people are effected, actual people died in ww2 and all its surroundings, but no one died in the siege of orgrimmar, so people are fine with it. its an example of why you cant just get things from one genre and move them to another, because they dont translate. because in fantasy real people are not effected, which drastically changes the context and emotional connections of the story.

yeah, his story was compelling, but ONLY because it was based in reality, if you told that exact same story ingame, no one would care. it relies on us as humans seeing REAL people and feeling that connection that this is reality, not fantasy

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If you think his message was "story writers are shit, I just kicked their asses lol" then you're taking a far harsher take from this than I did. To me it was more like, "If the writers took the time to sit down and come up with interesting little stories rather than the big picture stuff like they're doing now, they would grab a lot more interest and attention from the players."

read above, blizzard write interesting little stories all the fucking time, but because they are fantasy and not real they get NOTHING close to the attention or love. there is TONS of these in shadowlands, the story of kaelthas for example, the story of pelagos, the story of kleia, uther, kelthuzad, plague doctor marileth, like seriously the story of plague doctor marileth is insane, its so good, but who cares its a video game charecter, their trauma their pain their loss is not real, so who the fuck cares?