How would you improve WoW's Storytelling?

[MsSideEye]

This is the main point I disagree with you on... the storytelling and themes were very different in Warcraft 3.

Even Vanilla-TBC-WotLK-Cataclysm is probably also closer to WC3 storytelling.

Except where is the darker stuff you all are on about? Everything from WC3 that I saw was no different outside of the fact that you were allowed to kill everything that came your way... and the entire reason for that was because it was a single player game where you even got to play as the bad guys for a huge chunk of it. Any time you were with the heroes, they were almost always either defending themselves or just trying to do things that would allow them to live a bit easier. Hell, one of the major final story bits for Thrall and the orcs in WC3 were them fighting off against Jaina's dad because he had such a hate boner for them he wouldn't resolve things peacefully.

The vast majority of the cast in Warcraft has always wanted the fighting the stop or at least not be destructive. Only those who eventually became massive villains (Garrosh, Sylvannas) ever did anything that pushed that envelope.

And I want to clarify that when I say "western liberal" that this not done in the american context (of liberal vs conservative*), but pointing out that all the results are very much western-centric, with all the ideals of classical liberalism being promoted as the absolute virtues and goodie-two-shoes who can never lose or suffer setbacks. (*Although FFXIV also touched upon this subject and often had conservative values thematically winning over more naive pacifism and good intentions...)

It's just another facet of the Mary-Sue problem.

Where do you see Mary Sues that never lose in Warcraft? The Child King whose lost his father three times over and then got mind controlled by the aspect of Death? The woman who turned on her own culture/people to try and forge peace with the horde and got her city bombed for it's trouble? How about the Priestess that watched the very home of her people get burned to the ground and than gave herself over to the darkest aspects of her goddess to seek revenge? Even with me just going off what I know from the alliance, I see no mary sues here.

Also if you are having to clarify what you mean be western liberal, then it's not the correct term you're wanting to use for describing the issues you've got. What you have been describing thus far is the idea also isn't liberalism, it's the fact that the idea that WoW was founded upon (That is to say, Two major factions being at odds/war with each other) isn't the central focus. And I have gone and pointed out that it's NEVER been the central focus. It's always been something that was added into things for a little extra conflict while the heroes of the story (Thrall, Jaina, ect) were trying to put out as much fires as they could.

This is why using these terms, Western liberal, Woke, Mary Sue... they lose all meaning because you're using that to quickly explain what you mean but the actual terms in which you're using it is completely at odds with what they actually mean. It's just something you dislike and you're using a catch all term as the 'enemy idea' that you're trying to rally like minded people against.

[Rexosaurus]

TBH I think I've written off the notion that WoW's story will ever be good or even decent at this point.

Even if they suddenly became good at planning out a cohesive story and started actually showing us the story instead of over relying on floating text bubbles and outside books, they've already squandered almost all of the obvious stories, characters, and interesting background lore that'd been set up by previous Warcraft games. And in the process they've destroyed/neglected a lot of the attachments that players had to various characters and plotlines. They're also bad enough at creating new ones that the newer story stuff just doesn't feel like Warcaft anymore, imo.

MAYBE if they could pull their heads out of their asses and come up with a narrative story arc that they can stick to over the course of a few expansions, that also tells a complete story within each expansion as well, then there'd be enough continuity to get people invested in the story and characters again. But as of now, I don't think they're capable of that (and tbh the WoW team never has been).

[Floot]

The vast majority of the cast in Warcraft has always wanted the fighting the stop or at least not be destructive. Only those who eventually became massive villains (Garrosh, Sylvannas) ever did anything that pushed that envelope.

Ironically these two characters also were the more WC3-like characters with a grey morality. This made them also the more interesting characters in the lore...

Where do you see Mary Sues that never lose in Warcraft? The Child King whose lost his father three times over and then got mind controlled by the aspect of Death? The woman who turned on her own culture/people to try and forge peace with the horde and got her city bombed for it's trouble? How about the Priestess that watched the very home of her people get burned to the ground and than gave herself over to the darkest aspects of her goddess to seek revenge? Even with me just going off what I know from the alliance, I see no mary sues here.

The setbacks certainly became less or less impactful since BfA. And while it's not necessarily "Mary Sue" (because there are some setbacks before the inevitable victory), what bothers me most is that the most "modern human" ideals always seem to win out in the end. As I stated, I find the term "western liberal" a very good term to use, since at the end of every character or race's storyline they become a little bit more modern day western humans (and less interesting).

Other than that, if anything warfare and conflict between factions (not necessarily Horde vs Alliance) has always been a central theme of Warcraft too. So is steering away from that such a good idea, or is this also once again done to pander to western-centric ideals?

There really should be more attention to cultural diversity and the races should have their cultural differences not weakened or reduced because it doesn't fit our modern western ideals, but they should be emphasized. That is what makes them interesting. You pointed out exactly where the writing went wrong:

Only those who eventually became massive villains (Garrosh, Sylvannas) ever did anything that pushed that envelope.

Some of these more complex characters shouldn't be turned into massive brainless villains, they should sometimes be the heroes of the story, so we can respect diversity of thought and ideals.


I'm strongly of the opinion that if WoW maintains it's current direction of storytelling that by the end of it the world will be difficult to keep apart from say: The Sims 4.

[Shadowferal]

There's no "edge" to "Warcraft. There certainly isn't any sense of the "epic" in...whatever it is they seem to be half-heartedly attempting to show in...whatever story they're trying to tell.

[MsSideEye]

This is a discussion about how to improve WoW's storytelling; people seem to have the opinion that it could be better if it were darker. Whether that means full on Warhammer or some halfway between it and what we currently have is subjective to each individual. We know what WoW is; the problem is we feel it needs to change.

I don't think darker is the right option. Some stories do work best when they're dark. But if your problem is that WoW's been to silly/happy, then I hate to break it to you, but it's been that way since the start and the expansions that players consider the best (Wrath, Mop, Legion) had the most silliness about.

I agree that any step into a more mature story would be welcome. WoW's playerbase is not in elementary school. They are largely 30+ and don't need the sort of preachy finger wagging the game incidentally seems to do more of the past few expansions. If I have to hear another cutscene of throwaway lines stating the obvious thing we just witnessed followed by "We can do this. TOGETHER." or some variation thereof, I may go blind from my eyes rolling so far back into my head they detach themselves.

For that to happen, WoW would have to focus on more than just 'BIG EPIC MOMENTS', which has always been their strong suit. It's never been about the littler stories that could flesh out things, but these big grand standing moments. ICC is a perfect example of this, as is the 'I AM MY SCARS' moment in Legion.

Not to mention... how often have we gotten the 'We can do this together' bit in WoW? As far as I know, the only real big moment we've ever really seen even close to that was getting Aundin back to normal in Shadowlands, and that expansion is just horrible writing all around. Otherwise you act like this has been part of WoW's thing for years when it really hasn't.

Also, Mature doesn't not equal blood and guts, death and pain, sex and violence. Like... James Bond has all of that, but I wouldn't call any of the stories it tries to tell 'Mature', especially if we're talking about the original Sean Connery Bond stuff. Something that is Mature to me would be something that could make me feel for the characters, want to cheer for them when they're happy, cry when they're hurt, and satisfied when the story ends. And WoW can't do that because it doesn't allow us to spend time with the characters to form any meaningful bonds before it moves us off to the next event.

I'd say WoW's biggest failing is that it is afraid to talk about war in any meaningful way. As an example, BfA was a massive missed opportunity with how it was presented, and the whole Jailer motivation tacked on made it even dumber. It not only used the same tired formula of MoP, but it went a step further and made a fan favorite character (Sylvanas) into a complete idiot for the sake of the plot in an arc that was the exact opposite of her characterization up to that point by making her the Jailer's lackey. If BfA had focused on the war itself all the way through, the hardships it causes, the smoldering hate and mistrust that lingered between races for past transgressions both perceived and real, the casualties, the collateral, and how difficult it is to even achieve peace, it could have been a great story. Had the Alliance been the aggressors and attacked Undercity first due to Genn's warmongering, a fear of Sylvanas pulling a Theramore like Garrosh with a WMD, and even Anduin seeking revenge for his father (a perceived transgression from the Broken Shore debacle), then the burning of Teldrassil would have been even more poignant and tragic if it happened as a result of the Horde retaliating. Instead it was just senseless and meaningless. It had no purpose other than to villainize yet another Horde leader in the simplest of terms so players could feel good about stopping a faux "Hitler" yet again.

Which is one of the major reasons a Faction war is a stupid thing to do when you've got PLAYERS on both factions. It's impossible to have both shown as both good and bad in equal measures without it devolving into a 'who did it worse' context. Not only that, it doesn't serve the goal of having a big bad for the players to take down nor does it do anything to progress a story. It's just more senseless and pointless stirring up the lines that does nothing for anyone.

Considering what it built up to, BFA should have focused on people rebuilding and fixing things after the massive sword got stabbed in the planet, trying to figure out how to make sure things weren't going to go to pot. Said sword stab would also have caused things like less overall resources in the planet, thus the reason why the Horde and Allaince both are seeking out the allied races and the main draw to getting the Zandalari and the Kul Tirans to join up with us, because they've got more resources than we have, including increased naval travel to see if we can get more. That would lead up to Azshara waking up and causing trouble, thus leading into the whole old god stuff that happened.

Boom, you now have a story that doesn't involve the whole stupid faction war start and then takes a massive turn away from it. OH, and we actually try and do something about the damn sword.

Ironically these two characters also were the more WC3-like characters with a grey morality. This made them also the more interesting characters in the lore...

There's nothing 'Grey' about Garrosh. He's a simple racist through and through for the vast majority of the players time with him. There's a grand total of two points in the entire game where he isn't like that after Wrath and it's almost a certainty that's because it was a different writer heading the zone in general.

Sylvannas is probably the best Gray character, but she lost a lot of that after Wrath, and they were always playing around with the 'Is she evil or is it just members of her people who are like that'? There was always a level of distrust with her, clearly wanting to go full evil but never committing to it until BFA/Shadowlands. There's a clear disconnect between the Sylvannas before that and the Sylvannas after.

A 'Gray' character to me is a character who is clearly willing to do an evil thing for the greater good, or taking a choice that they KNOW is the wrong one, but it's the one that would be right for them personally. It's would be killing the love of your life and mother of your child to cast a spell that would wipe out a massive amount of evil from the world. Not just killing something because it's there.

The setbacks certainly became less or less impactful since BfA. And while it's not necessarily "Mary Sue" (because there are some setbacks before the inevitable victory), what bothers me most is that the most "modern human" ideals always seem to win out in the end. As I stated, I find the term "western liberal" a very good term to use, since at the end of every character or race's storyline they become a little bit more modern day western humans (and less interesting)

I mean, I could understand things a little better if they weren't portrayed mostly as modern humans? Especially with the constant examples in game of 'Oh, fighting each other to the death DOESN'T WORK', the idea of them actually trying to get along and operating like modern day humans isn't that far fetched. Not to say that we've really even seen that much of a focus on that at all, considering last i checked we're almost entirely on helping the Dragons and the amount of crossover between factions is fairly minimal.

Other than that, if anything warfare and conflict between factions (not necessarily Horde vs Alliance) has always been a central theme of Warcraft too. So is steering away from that such a good idea, or is this also once again done to pander to western-centric ideals?

It's been a central theme for the game for... let's check the clock... 20 YEARS. It's tired... it's over used, and it's never, EVER been the main focus of the game, just a stirring up of 'US VS THEM' mentality that we get enough of in modern day politics. With the characters, the writers, and players like myself? The idea of going 'Ew, hordies, let's kill them' was something we were bored, done with, and wanted to move on from back when Mists of Pandaria tried to end the faction war the FIRST time around.

It should have stayed dead then. We would have been better for it.

There really should be more attention to cultural diversity and the races should have their cultural differences not weakened or reduced because it doesn't fit our modern western ideals, but they should be emphasized. That is what makes them interesting.

You can do that without having people at each others throats and fighting each other. Hell, you know what I'd fine something that would give us a wonderful focus on that? A horde/alliance embassy in the other factions main city. Allowing there to be mingling between the factions and showing off the fact that every day people still remember and distrust the other. Like, you know those little kids running around stormwind with the toys? Have a Horde member of the embassy show up and have the kids freak the heck out because 'Oh, shit, big scary orc that Mommy said killed daddy!'. That alone would be more interesting than anything else involving more fighting that isn't going to go anywhere.

I'm strongly of the opinion that if WoW maintains it's current direction of storytelling that by the end of it the world will be difficult to keep apart from say: The Sims 4.

We've had a grand total of one expansion, Dragonflight, that isn't even a year old that is trying to establish a new direction of story telling. You can't hold anything from Shadowlands since the whole point of the Time skip was to forget that shit ever happened. Acting like WoW has been doing the 'Let's hold hands and be fweinds' thing for years kinda falls flat when this is the first real attempt at it.

There's no "edge" to "Warcraft. There certainly isn't any sense of the "epic" in...whatever it is they seem to be half-heartedly attempting to show in...whatever story they're trying to tell.

Why does it need 'edge'? What even is 'edge'? And nothing has changed to that point outside of the faction war being truly and hopefully permanently done and nothing about the faction war was evern needed to tell good stories. In fact, most of the bad stories you can point to (BFA being the one most people will likely call out) is a direct result of it being focused on the senseless faction stuff.

Also, Dragonflight hasn't been around for even a single year at this point... You can't call out any of it's stories for being bad because the main story it's wanting to tell, the Primal dragon stuff, isn't even half finished at this point. Until you can say more than sprout out buzzwords, sit down.

[Shadowferal]

The stakes were also a great deal lower which is more to my taste; I prefer the Scarlet Crusade, Defias Brotherhood, Syndicate, ogres, gnolls, pirates, dark iron dwarves, blackrock orcs, centaurs, and so on over a lot of the cosmic stuff we've had going on for a long time, that Dragonflight seems to also lead towards.
But that's a me thing, and you probably can't fight enemies of that power level forever, unless you're able to make them incredibly cunning but that is way more difficult.

The benefit of hindsight and seeing where Blizz went wrong.
I myself preferred a more grounded game. Faction leadership firmly in place, but other leaders as well among them for the inevitable time when they need to step up.
And yes, the added tension for opposing factions that enliven the game.
The cosmic stuff should've been pushed back for as long as it can with an overarching narrative ending in a cliffhanger to keep us entertained and interested in the ingame future.

[Alanar]

Erase all expansions until wotlk and start over new path. Im still disgusted how SL ended lich king story.

If you ignore the part of Uther grabbing Arthas body and ignore hes soul put into Anduin blade, which you easily can it basically doesnt really add or change much in Arthas hes story.

He died at the Frozen throne and hes blade broke, freed the souls and that was it. That was or will always be the end for me with Arthas, sl didnt do shit really and I will continue to ignore those parts. Sl will not be missed.

I had a harder time accepting the Janitor and how he suddenly was responssible for everthing related death. He was made up like a last year joke and there wasnt much backstory or hooks that would make me think; o wow so THATS how he did it. He was a one liner.

[czarek]

If you ignore the part of Uther grabbing Arthas body and ignore hes soul put into Anduin blade, which you easily can it basically doesnt really add or change much in Arthas hes story.

He died at the Frozen throne and hes blade broke, freed the souls and that was it. That was or will always be the end for me with Arthas, sl didnt do shit really and I will continue to ignore those parts. Sl will not be missed.

I had a harder time accepting the Janitor and how he suddenly was responssible for everthing related death. He was made up like a last year joke and there wasnt much backstory or hooks that would make me think; o wow so THATS how he did it. He was a one liner.

I cant ignore and accept that Janitor stand behind all of that. That is the saddest part.

[Powerogue]

One thing I really enjoyed about leveling through Vanilla is the faction leaders seemed like actual faction leaders; generally speaking it seemed as though they were cooped up in their respective capitals doing, presumably, leadership stuff.

In recent years it seems as though faction leaders have less ruled over their respective domains and more become WoW's version of the Avengers.

Definitely agree, but Dragonflight has been only positive in that direction. The only faction leader I recall meeting so far since we left our capitals was Baine, and that was because he and some other familiar tauren (one of which, a significant-to-Baine-but-not-racial-leader side character!) even dies. Seems like exactly what you're describing, and I liked that questline well enough.

Replacing the Forsaken leadership with a council also meant that same "rise of smaller characters" aspect to the resulting forsaken Heritage questline. Lots of smaller characters we hadn't interacted with in a while like Belmont and Faranell getting to interact with us and each other without feeling like "Avengers fighting cosmic threats" was fantastic. Just us Forsaken killing Scarlet Crusaders, like the good ol' days. :P

My favorite characters in the whole expansion have been Veritistrasz, Voraxian, and the members of the expedition that they befriend down in Zaralek Caverns. None of them are aspects or faction leaders. But I felt for their struggles and appreciated every moment with them. All brand new characters as of Dragonflight, but Runas The Shamed in Legion was too.

About the only thing I would have added to this thread was a feeling that, with us rushing over things at 900%+ mount speed, it feels like we lose out on the smaller details of the game and worldbuilding, but I found I resolved that pretty easily by just getting off the mount and walking around. All the details and little story beats that make an expansion feel lived in and rich are all there in Dragonflight as much, or more, than ever. I finished the Ancient Stones achievements among others under the "Exploration" tab and found tons of stuff I had missed. I talked to off-the-path npcs. I read flavor text. I looked at the world around me as more than just obstacles to swerve around on my drake. It was incredible.

The only thing I want improved right now is more of it. If 10.2 winds up being the last patch of this expansion, which would be a shame, I want them to keep up a strong release schedule of sub-patches like they have been so far to the best of their ability.

[Garymorilix]

People say they want 'darker' fantasy then lose their absolute shit when a random tree burns down.
This is why Blizz should never ever listen to the forums.

The biggest issue with the story is that for some dumb reason players forgot that Warcraft is not real life but a fantasy game with various races that act based on various stereotypes inspired by certain real-life cultures or habits.

People literally expect Azerothian races to react to things based on IRL moral values which hurts the story and the world every single time it happens.
The racial stereotypes in-game need to be the focus. That's how interesting interactions happen.
If everyone has basically the same moral code then what does it matter if one side is an undead and the other side is an elf?

People who think they are literally part of this world going around 'oh but muh horde / alliance' are the most cringeworthy.
What does it matter if this or that happens to either faction, Blizz will never just delete any of them.
Now they are afraid to even write stories about the factions and their races, fuck, they spent SL and DF actually making everyone get along buddy-buddy 'realizing how similar they are' and all the romantic comedy bs you can think of.

You know what was good storytelling? The revamped zones in Cata. They are full of flavor cuz they were made before all this moral nonsense.
'But muh teldrassil' who the fuck cares, it's a fictional tree and we spent the last 3 expansions crying for it. It's fucking boring already. Give us actual 'fantasy cool' not this sobby dogshit for the #nightelfmains.

[Zodiark]

The mostly childish voice acting, to the Dracthyr's fabulous visage forms, the lovey dovey dragons (who are actually more human than dragons) and the cartoonish villains.

Yeah totally! I always got Robbie Rotten vibes from the recent villains. Not to mention all the current day parallel human inserts with the dragons. Honestly this whole expansion seemed like a direct knee-jerk reaction to the legal battles and accusations Blizzard had against them. Like "look at us! We are totally nice and progressive!".
More virtue signaling garbage.

- - - Updated - - -

My biggest suggestion for WoW's lore and storytelling has always been to have a central narrative that ALL players can do. New players would automatically be funneled into it and older players/characters would have the option to start at any time. The storyline and quests would take you through an abbreviated version of all the expansions and zones to make them ALL somewhat relevant again. Do a few key quests in each area with the option to watch/read further about all the subtle nuances of each expansion. Otherwise you just get a brief summary of events. Meanwhile while going through this path you would get level appropriate rewards from quests wether you are forging your journey for the first time OR going through this storyline as a max level character. That way the storyline would be leveling content AND endgame content. Raids are the bonus rewards and testing grounds for your character and the gear you've accumulated. NOT the whole be-all-end-all content of the game.

Also going along with this line of thinking, don't make previous content obsolete! I can't stress this enough. Look at even current events in WoW today. When 10.2 comes out no one is even going to mess with the previous patch content which will become obsolete. Players are just rushed through expansions and if you take a break and come back for any length of time you are brushed along the storyline with no real cohesion or proper sense of lore progress and/or the comprehension of said lore.

This has been the case since forever. I remember RL caused me to take frequent breaks from WoW for years. Each time I would come back near the end of an Expansion and do the final raids and all the while wonder how did we even get here again?

I would go back and replay the expansion a bit here and there but it always seems a little dull with literally nobody else around. Kind of like the very first episode of the original Twilight Zone series called: Where Is Everybody?

[Sauredfangs]

Im not really sure if Im qualified to talk about this since I havent thought of it for a while, but to me sometimes they ignore what they did to certain character/plots in the past and just do something different with them. I think they need to build more on what they've done in the past so it feels like we're growing/progressing as readers.

[FAILoZOFF]

Just don't think too hard about it really, that's the only thing that comes to mind ;3

[Floot]

A random thought crossed my mind, I feel like at this point they should retcon the player experience.

Take for example: Shadowlands. Where you basically just had Bolvar standing around a bit, not doing much.
Canonically, it would be a lot more "epic" if it was actually him and his army of Death Knights fighting and defeating the Jailer. It just would make him a more inspiring character and it would just make the Knights of the Ebon Blade appear more relevant.

It just feels so weird to have all these big name "heroes" and all we see them do most of the time is just ... standing around. It makes the most recent artwork for 10.2 where all the aspects are posing just outright comical.

[Magistrate]

Existing races need regular in game lore developing them beyond one off heritage quests. Since the introduction of the new tutorial zone new players have never been more distanced from foundational race lore.

I would like a separate expansion long quest track (like the campaign but separate) tracked on the same way for each race. I would gladly sacrifice a bulk of filler quests every expansion for this, as it can largely fill the same niche but help contextualize each races current leadership, key figures, current standing, etc. Add to it in the launch patch and then in half patches.

For allied races that connected with main races (like maghar) consolidate them.