Warcraft endings

[Beloren]

There are endings and many beginnings in a story. But if you were here from the start, are there any stories left that don't have endings?

If they are all concluded, are you still into this? If so why? Do the new stories and plots excite you or pique your curiosity? Or are you happy to say, you finished your Warcraft stories and nothing captivates you as much nowadays.

What are your thoughts?

[Soon-TM]

There are endings and many beginnings in a story. But if you were here from the start, are there any stories left that don't have endings?

If they are all concluded, are you still into this? If so why? Do the new stories and plots excite you or pique your curiosity? Or are you happy to say, you finished your Warcraft stories and nothing captivates you as much nowadays.

What are your thoughts?

I can safely say that all the stories I cared for in WoW are over, whether I like how they ended or not. Scourge? Done after WotLK, since the supposed massive Scourge invasion taking place atm will not be reflected in the slightest in the future - not in-game, anyway. Faction pride? Done after MoP and especially after BfA, with the Horde becoming a Red Alliance in the (futile) hope that it won't be villain-batted again in the future. The Old Gods? They have been retconned to literal space ticks status, and they are all dead anyway. Race-based stories? Who cares about those, writers are very busy fapping to Sylv and/or Anduin.

Even the Burning Legion is over after, well, Legion. Maybe they will bring Sargie back from retirement in 4-5 years from now, but they will just use him as box cover for whatever chapter of the current cosmic mumbo jumbo they have such a hardon for.

[Beloren]

I can safely say that all the stories I cared for in WoW are over, whether I like how they ended or not. Scourge? Done after WotLK, since the supposed massive Scourge invasion taking place atm will not be reflected in the slightest in the future - not in-game, anyway. Faction pride? Done after MoP and especially after BfA, with the Horde becoming a Red Alliance in the (futile) hope that it won't be villain-batted again in the future. The Old Gods? They have been retconned to literal space ticks status, and they are all dead anyway. Race-based stories? Who cares about those, writers are very busy fapping to Sylv and/or Anduin.

Even the Burning Legion is over after, well, Legion. Maybe they will bring Sargie back from retirement in 4-5 years from now, but they will just use him as box cover for whatever chapter of the current cosmic mumbo jumbo they have such a hardon for.

It’s very hard to argue against this.

But I had to rofl at the old gods reduced to space ticks. So true!

Even the Aspects mystery and story ended. Kinda feel that this sort of activity could have been spaced out over 5,000 years, even 10,000 but it all happened in 30 years

[Saltysquidoon]

Gifting the title of ultimate villain from the Legion we've essentially been fighting since WCI to some vague undefined as yet unseen extra universal void lords may well be good decision for brand longevity but it absolutely compromised the greater overall story.

[draugril]

I wouldn't mind if, suddenly, Sylvanas suddenly snapped back to reality... still gazing into space, at the vacant throne of the Warchief. The past three expansions were merely an intrusive thought.

[Orby]

I would rather they just end woW after Shadowlands and work on establishing some new lore for a few years before doing another MMO, but Blizzard gotta drag that dead horse another 15 more miles.

[Mamut]

I would rather they just end woW after Shadowlands and work on establishing some new lore for a few years before doing another MMO, but Blizzard gotta drag that dead horse another 15 more miles.

Oh cmon, according to forums WoW is dead since WotLK so its much more than 15 miles

And when WoW is done there wont be second MMO with so deep lore and established characters anymore. Not from Blizz and not from anyone else simply because it would cost too much money and time while you can earn much more from some online games with lootboxes (or similar mechanics) much faster and easier.

[Triceron]

Oh cmon, according to forums WoW is dead since WotLK so its much more than 15 miles

And when WoW is done there wont be second MMO with so deep lore and established characters anymore. Not from Blizz and not from anyone else simply because it would cost too much money and time while you can earn much more from some online games with lootboxes (or similar mechanics) much faster and easier.

To be honeset, does the depth even matter when the story is unable to pivot beyond the Horde and Alliance main characters?

That was the genius of the RTS games. Big time jumps and world-scale progression. It didn't bank on keeping main characters at the forefront of the story, rather the characters were a means to an end to unfold bigger world-shaking events. New heroes rise and fall with each conflict.

WoW holds on to nostalgia with no room to pivot. Character deaths are fairly insignificant when they're constantly being brought back in different ways. The story always revolves around the same people with no real character growth or progression. And the character growth we do get ends up being so archetypical that it's not all that interesting, for the most part.

To me, Warcraft ended with Warcraft 2. Everything after is a Alternate Universe that's been a good run with interesting stories, but definitely not what I'd consider what Warcraft should have stayed as.

Kinda like how Starcraft 2 is a very different flavour and feel from the original Starcraft. I do wonder what a true spiritual sequel to Starcraft 1's original story could have been.

[Soon-TM]

Kinda like how Starcraft 2 is a very different flavour and feel from the original Starcraft. I do wonder what a true spiritual sequel to Starcraft 1's original story could have been.

Somewhat off topic, but since Metzen was still active when SC2 was being made, I always wondered why he didn't just take a page or two from e.g. the Dune series, since he apparently wanted a space opera so badly. It could have been much better than what we ended up with...

[Triceron]

Somewhat off topic, but since Metzen was still active when SC2 was being made, I always wondered why he didn't just take a page or two from e.g. the Dune series, since he apparently wanted a space opera so badly. It could have been much better than what we ended up with...

I personally think he was part of the problem moving away from it being a space opera, and that he wanted to focus too much on the Raynor-Kerrigan romance which ended up taking her into a path of redemption instead of what should have been a darker, cataclysmic outcome.

That and the whole Amon thing was handled quite poorly overall. I don't think we really needed Hybrids thrown into the story as some super crazy galaxy-ending army like the Burning Legion in Space. Duran's hints in Starcraft 1 were enough to set a greater picture of a possible threat, but it could have been a much more complex threat than just space armies of tentacled freaks. We knew how much damage just one shapeshifter was able to cause, that's all we needed to set up the rest of the story and events.

[Stardrift]

After N'zoth, Azshara, and Sylvanas, I don't want to see how other things might conclude.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

None of the stuff from WC3 ended satisfyingly to me and the characters have been dragged on and ruined from their original incarnations. Even the stuff WoW itself setup, such as N'Zoth didn't end well either. It's really just a curiosity of what they're gonna retcon, over explain, or ruin next.

[Soon-TM]

None of the stuff from WC3 ended satisfyingly to me and the characters have been dragged on and ruined from their original incarnations. Even the stuff WoW itself setup, such as N'Zoth didn't end well either. It's really just a curiosity of what they're gonna retcon, over explain, or ruin next.

Elune is next in the chopping block. Folks like @ravenmoon or @VladlTutushkin are surely going to love it

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Sword in Silithus, that's of course captivating story without an ending! I wish to know more.

[dope_danny]

They really swept up the holdouts with Legion and Bfa. Hence the current Dragonball GT era of Omega Lich King and Baby Anduin with the whole new power tier of things that were more powerful than all the previous loot pinatas and the real threat all along. Which is really all we can expect from now on. The next tier above that was the "real threat". 37th times the charm.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Elune is next in the chopping block. Folks like @ravenmoon or @VladlTutushkin are surely going to love it

Who wants a sense of mysticism and wonder? Explain it all! (ಥ﹏ಥ)

[Mungho]

None of the stuff from WC3 ended satisfyingly to me and the characters have been dragged on and ruined from their original incarnations. Even the stuff WoW itself setup, such as N'Zoth didn't end well either. It's really just a curiosity of what they're gonna retcon, over explain, or ruin next.

That's literally the only reason I'm here. I stopped playing at the end of Legion. It's like watching a trainwreck and you want to see how it ends, but it's so long that you're getting tired of watching but you still wonder how it will end so you keep watching.

[Niter]

There are endings and many beginnings in a story. But if you were here from the start, are there any stories left that don't have endings?

If they are all concluded, are you still into this? If so why? Do the new stories and plots excite you or pique your curiosity? Or are you happy to say, you finished your Warcraft stories and nothing captivates you as much nowadays.

What are your thoughts?

These questions are very hard and bitter to answer. I am the kind of person who believes that whenever we know EVERYTHING, the mystery is lost. I feel like the Warcraft universe has been exploring the EVERYTHING-thing too often for its own good.

Another issue is the unbelievably liberal use of plot devices (that means something happens because it it needs to happen to drive the story in the direction of their choosing, regardless of logic or what was established before). A good example is the burning of Teldrassil (which is more like an island with a peak atop, it was a huge place, so big that there was land in its boughs and people lived all the way up, from the island portion to the canopies of the tree!)

Being too 'Hollywoodian' was also a big problem: always a beam in the sky, threatening to end all creation! Can't the races fight threats that are not world-threatening, but can be a huge problem for their races and factions? Something more localised, that developed the races more, that made the characters we play connect with the lands from where they come.

Scope and power level are also awful. This 'there's nothing you can't do when you believe it!' drivel is horrible, and it's been happening since our characters started being referred to as 'champions'. It felt more epic to be the adventurer making his/her own way to help in every possible way, eventually being one their race's best (like in the Argent Tournament). Now, it's all an Avengers movie and we're all Thor, Hulk, Scarlet Witch of Captain Marvel. We're unbeatable!

Many stories were rushed to be a feature in an expansion pack, so what could have been entire, fun, fulfilling storylines, became footnotes. Malygos shouldn't have been in a forgettable raid! If anything, he should be as hard to take on as Deathwing. Let's not even talk about having N'zoth and Azshara, both not living up to the hype and biography.

Finally, Blizzard can't get over reusing their own ideas. I mean, Void Lords? Just like in Starcraft 2, right? Or someone being 'the chosen one' and going from vile and mad to chosen by the 'light' in order to fight the darkness (Illidan's story in Legion, almost like Kerrigan's but with a slight twist!)

I guess I still love the lore from before all the retcons and the attempts at re-writing everything so that WoW's factions would be two sides of the same coin. Even the RPG books which are not canon, are better than what happened after WotLK. Pandaria was the only expansion in which I felt something original was added, and the way the story included a new big baddie still connected to the Titans and the Old Gods was excellent. Now there is no mystery, so they need to create stuff, a new pantheon, a new this or that, explore the 'multiverse' or whatever.

They make a lot of decisions based on 'what the devs think it's cool' and then try to tie everything up afterwards. It hasn't been working for a really long time now, and I don't trust Blizzard to tell good stories anymore. Even Diablo 3 had to pretty much change so much of the original story... It's ugly.

[Beloren]

These questions are very hard and bitter to answer. I am the kind of person who believes that whenever we know EVERYTHING, the mystery is lost. I feel like the Warcraft universe has been exploring the EVERYTHING-thing too often for its own good.

Another issue is the unbelievably liberal use of plot devices (that means something happens because it it needs to happen to drive the story in the direction of their choosing, regardless of logic or what was established before). A good example is the burning of Teldrassil (which is more like an island with a peak atop, it was a huge place, so big that there was land in its boughs and people lived all the way up, from the island portion to the canopies of the tree!)

Being too 'Hollywoodian' was also a big problem: always a beam in the sky, threatening to end all creation! Can't the races fight threats that are not world-threatening, but can be a huge problem for their races and factions? Something more localised, that developed the races more, that made the characters we play connect with the lands from where they come.

Scope and power level are also awful. This 'there's nothing you can't do when you believe it!' drivel is horrible, and it's been happening since our characters started being referred to as 'champions'. It felt more epic to be the adventurer making his/her own way to help in every possible way, eventually being one their race's best (like in the Argent Tournament). Now, it's all an Avengers movie and we're all Thor, Hulk, Scarlet Witch of Captain Marvel. We're unbeatable!

Many stories were rushed to be a feature in an expansion pack, so what could have been entire, fun, fulfilling storylines, became footnotes. Malygos shouldn't have been in a forgettable raid! If anything, he should be as hard to take on as Deathwing. Let's not even talk about having N'zoth and Azshara, both not living up to the hype and biography.

Finally, Blizzard can't get over reusing their own ideas. I mean, Void Lords? Just like in Starcraft 2, right? Or someone being 'the chosen one' and going from vile and mad to chosen by the 'light' in order to fight the darkness (Illidan's story in Legion, almost like Kerrigan's but with a slight twist!)

I guess I still love the lore from before all the retcons and the attempts at re-writing everything so that WoW's factions would be two sides of the same coin. Even the RPG books which are not canon, are better than what happened after WotLK. Pandaria was the only expansion in which I felt something original was added, and the way the story included a new big baddie still connected to the Titans and the Old Gods was excellent. Now there is no mystery, so they need to create stuff, a new pantheon, a new this or that, explore the 'multiverse' or whatever.

They make a lot of decisions based on 'what the devs think it's cool' and then try to tie everything up afterwards. It hasn't been working for a really long time now, and I don't trust Blizzard to tell good stories anymore. Even Diablo 3 had to pretty much change so much of the original story... It's ugly.

Good point this. But regarding paragraph 4, because it is a fantasy some or even many do want to be the Avengers, captain Marvel type character as well. Yet the we can’t be both the unknown adventurer overcoming reasonable odds and the super powered avenger ending cosmic threats.

This may be were blizzard erred. They built wow with the player being a no name who doesn’t even have a voice or lines to respond to Npcs. Unlike the characters you play in Wc1-3 or in an MMO like SWTOR where your character is actually a person in the story.

Without being a person in the story it makes no sense for you to be an Avenger type character, but rather to be the humble adventurer type making his way in a world that always seems bigger than he is.

As such they should have stuck with that. Notice they still haven’t changed the format. Still haven’t given our characters a voice and so we do all these things as a nameless group of heroes canonically in a story.

This is probably one of their biggest errors. They switched format from classics world adventure to a staged storyline in TBC but didn’t change our characters to now play an active role, so there is now a mismatch

- - - Updated - - -

That's literally the only reason I'm here. I stopped playing at the end of Legion. It's like watching a trainwreck and you want to see how it ends, but it's so long that you're getting tired of watching but you still wonder how it will end so you keep watching.

Like a bad novel you know you should toss, but don’t because you’ve already. Read most of it so now just have to see how it ends

[Razion]

As long as a single human and orc remain to fight, there's still Warcraft. You could delete the universe, you could delete the multiverses, you could delete all the desperate realms of creation, and you'd still have an Orc and a Human tussling in the Great Dark Beyond over scraps of meat on a rock somewhere just because they hated each other so much that they refused to die with the rest of creation. Well, I guess that's literally the story of Azeroth anyway. Oops.

WoW is a world. Every NPC, every zone, they all have stories that don't end. These people's lives didn't stop getting lived and the colossal problems that they deal with don't go away forever just because we packed up and left for somewhere else on the dirt rock. We deal with temporary problems, and this is a war fueled with conflict that NEVER ends. Everyone, struggling to survive. Everyone, biting at the throat to kill SOMEONE over SOMETHING stupid. Some people trying to earn honest living, surrounded by beasts. Adventurers, braving the world, fighting its wonders and treasures in the elements and dragons of the world.

Conflict erupts everywhere, all the time. Just as it did at the beginning of Classic, any random problem anyone can imagine for anyone in this world can crop up at any minute. From the problems of the common folk to the problems of the higher caste, to the problems of culture, and war, of resources, of huge threats that threaten us all -- everywhere there's a problem to squash. Every land mass, every island, every cave, every hole, every rock, tree, and person has a story. The world grows and grows and it doesn't STOP growing.

It's not like Orcs and Night Elves are holding hands in Ashenvale right now. Like, what the fuck do people think is happening at Blackrock right now, that elementals and dragons are suddenly getting along? Like, get real. The war never stops, anywhere, in any zone, ever. Did the Mantid just decide to chill forever in Pandaria? No. Is Outland still crumbling and losing its collective shit and trying to quell demons? Probably. Is Northrend still practically overrun with Undead all trying to make everything else dead? Freaking, probably. Literally every landmass, every zone, they all have stories like this that didn't just suddenly decide to pack up and walk off into the ocean the second we left. Like, dude, Azshara hasn't gone anywhere. The Emerald Dream is still there to defend. Freaking, the hell is happening in Undermine? Are the elemental planes all even safe -- are new Elemental Lords causing trouble? Have any of the Aspects gone mad again? Did the Old Gods really die? What about the ENTIRE rest of the Void? What about the ENTIRE rest of The Light? Are the Titans on the up and up and are there more out there somewhere? Tons of young NPCs have to have grown up, have to have fought in wars and raised families and had all their own shares of problems.

The franchise is nowhere ever close to ever running out of gas. It's not like the game can't use radical graphical and gameplay updates every now and then. Updates to things are natural in a cyclical game like this. If I were going to complain, it'd be that SL wasn't radical enough -- we got some light customization that fizzled out really quickly. No new class, no new races, no huge omega graphical update like WoD, no huge class revamps like Legion. The expansion feels empty without any of these huge graphical or gameplay overhauls. People I think were expecting two new races, or a new class. Neither were provided.