Recent writing has been dubbed "the worst ever" by the community & mainstream media

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Just take a look at this little "gem":



Yes, nuance indeed LMFAO. One of the main characters is a comically evil Mary Sue, the other one is a goody goody two shoes, can-do-no-wrong (none that matters, anyway) Gary Stu. So much for a morally grey world and characters @Hitei

There isn't much room for morally grey when one faction is clearly far more evil and did far worse things than the other, under the leadership of a blablantly malevolent character who did a completely monstruous atrocity to start a war, with the willing complicity or too weak relucdance of characters that are supposed to be good or at least honorable.

The fact that Saurfang and others didn't realize that Sylvanas was a monstruous bitch and just as bad news as Gul'dan, Blackhand or Garrosh until Teldrassil or the ridiculous Mak'gora scene, and agreed with her plan in the first place was very forced and very stupid writing.

[Raizz]

I actually legit think that story as a whole is not horrible, but the storytelling is most certainly bad.

They so much overuse this withholding of basic information crutch, that it simply became a meme. Like take 9.1, after all this time AND after we captured Sylvanas, we still don't and won't know what was her plan and "why" was her plan for another 6 months if not more.

It's even more hilarious with the final in-game cinematic where she starts explaining it and Anduin does "hush Sylvanas" right as we should have at least got some answers. I mean, come on Blizz? What, universe would explode if you'd extend the cinematic by 1 minute to let her gush a bit over her grand master plan to fix everything?

We should have known these details months ago, way before we're even in 9.1, so we even have some insight into what we're actually trying to fight instead of just "Thanos bad " and Sylvanas mean popped our ozone layer wtf.

[Hitei]

Yes, nuance indeed LMFAO. One of the main characters is a comically evil Mary Sue, the other one is a goody goody two shoes, can-do-no-wrong (none that matters, anyway) Gary Stu. So much for a morally grey world and characters @Hitei

"But if I completely ignore the actual story and all the characters involved and just focus on the two characters that line up with my retarded narrative, the narrative makes sense!!!"
No shit, sherlock. And if you wear a blindfold 24/7 the entire world is always dark. But then you actually bother to read what is happening in quests and pay attention to the things happening in BfA instead of parroting some stupid meme you heard someone else parrot before you, and wow, look at that: There are people on the comically evil character's side who don't agree with her choices and are fighting her, or who do agree with her choices and methods for valid, respectable reasons, or who don't agree with her ideology or methods but are doing the best they can within her version of the Horde. And there are people on the goody-goody-two-shoes side who don't agree with his leniency and are out for blood, or agree with his ideology but think its naïve, or who are willing to unilaterally attack other people, or take hostages and prisoners, or assassinate civilians under the justification of that goodness.

Almost like there's, I don't know, a world of moral grays, but again: I'm not surprised it flew over your head that "Azeroth is a world of greys" meant that war is full of questionable ethics and a lack of clean hands, not that Anduin is secretly a bad guy totally in the wrong and Sylvanas is secretly not an asshole and was justified. Reading quests is apparently hard for people like you, and I understand it's a lot easier to keep vomiting out buzz phrases like "mary sue" than it is to actually pay attention to what is happening and form some sort of actually informed opinion about the matter.

[Hitei]

Except when you hide this in the background, focus the entire story on those two characters and not the whole of the world, and the story ends EXACTLY as everyone predicted: Bad guy we all knew, bad. Good guy we all knew, right all along and always good. And even WITHOUT all the details, not a single surprise was managed to be thrown anyones way, because the "big reveals" amounted to Sylvanas shouting "FUCK THE HORDE" as if she hadn't basically been doing so the entire expansion long, and Anduin, unsurprisingly, doing the right thing as he always did.

Almost like despite ALL that "morally grey" shit happening in the background (which will never be brought up again mind you, and mostly amounted to "payback for other atrocious shit that was already done, and thus could have been avoided if we, y'know, hadn't burnt the tree") and the lack of actual reason for war brought up by ANY side of the argument, everyone just chugged along without a thought in their heads because the plot required them to.

That's a lack of consideration for the story, and thus, bad writing.

Reading quests isn't going to fix that. The IDEA was good - But the execution was so beyond bad that there is simply no coming back from it.

Reading quests WILL fix that, because if you had been reading them you'd know none of it was "in the background". It was the large bulk of the war campaign the entire expansion. The entire story wasn't focused on those two charcters, in fact the two of them only really show up in the expansion at very specific points. But again, because you people literally do not pay attention to what is happening and only look at what supports your dumb narrative you miss that the entire default questing experience, and the entire patch questing experience, and the 99% of the entire war campaign for both sides was not about Anduin or Sylvanas and instead go "hurr durr, but Sylvanas was mean in the last Saurfang cinematic just like I thought she would be so the expansion was just about a comically evil person being evil". Except it wasn't. At all.

The fact that you think there were no actual reasons for the war brought up only cements that you have no idea what was happening. That you even think the thing to """predict""" here, was if the person willing to murder thousands of innocents to reach her goals was a good person or not is a huge red flag for the entire narrative going over your head. To use Godwin's Law to provide a clear example: A nuanced documentary about World War II and the moral greyness of war isn't going to be about there being some "ePiC tWisT" that needs to be predicted, where actually Hitler and the upper command structure of the Nazis had a good reason for murdering civilians and attacking a bunch of countries and the Allies were the evil ones. It's going to be about how the Allied forces also did some extremely terrible things in retaliation and the name of "justice" and the average german soldiers were just regular people with their own motivations for fighting and grievances against their enemies, or personal disagreements with what their commanders were doing but an obligation to keep fighting to protect their brothers in arms.

It was never about some dumb "gotcha!" moment like people were bizarrely expecting because they have the intellect of a five year old and think good writing is about someone popping out and yelling "surprise!". It was about telling the story of a war through many different perspectives and characters, all but two of whom weren't really good or evil, just people in a war. Pretending it wasn't a significantly more nuanced war story with a much better examination of moral ambiguity than MoP's war narrative is honestly just incorrect. Like as close to objectively wrong as you can get in a subjective comparison. It's just stupid.

[Ivarr]

Actually amused that people are -now- surprised that WoW's story has always been cheesy, absurd and constantly contradicting itself?

Don't take it too seriously. You'll feel better about it.

At least we're amusing someone.

- - - Updated - - -

yeah Jainas arc was amazing, especialy from point of view of Kultiran commoners
"hey remember daugher of our leader, who pretty much wasnt in our country many years, who we see responsible for his death, and death of many other of our people, and we pretty much made folk song about how she betrayed them? well, she is sad about it, so lets forgive her and make her our new leader"

They arrested her on sight. Whether or not she's forgiven isn't up to the common folk but to the Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras, her mother. Katherine has been given ample reason to forgive her daughter for what she did.

[THEORACLE64]

We’ll see how it ends. I’m pretty impartial on judging it right now, typically because I prefer to judge things as a whole. Some things can have a bumpy start and end really well, but I’m interested in where the story is going though.

[CaptainV]

Shadowlands had several problems going into it.

Frankly after BFA we needed a break from a world ending conflict, and an expansion veering away from that and giving us time to relax before the next shitshow would have been an infintately better option.

Something like the Dragon Isles where we explore the lost remenants of their civilisation we get HINTS about the existance of the First Ones, the Shadowlands/Titans/Greater Powers and THEN, *THEN* you can make Shadowlands.

Frankly it would have been a better setup to have a filler expansion purely relaxed and laid back like MoP was, something more "Take your time, explore" rather than "MOAR CONFLICTS, THE REALM OF DEATH, COVENANTS HURR DURR"

It honestly hit every fail in my book even before the concept was done.

Then Sylvanas, ahhh Sylvanas, a char I loved dearly in WC3, Tolerated in WOTLK, and despised ever since MoP.

A char thats lore went from amazing, to aweful in several plotlines and plotholes.

A character, that ultimatley has been given so much plot armor its unreal. She got literally turned into an unkillable demi-god after being slain by Arthas and I swear its rediculas how many times shes been let off the hook.

And we know, the worst part is, she'll be let off it again.

I can already predict exactly how 9.2 is going to set up the finale.

Nathanos is going to return as the "Lord of ravens will turn the key" and its more than likley Nathanos is that Lord, since his emblem is hers, the emblem of a raven.

He will almost ABSOLEUTLEY sacrifice himself to give Sylvanas her Arbiter powers and after that? Sylvanas will get her stupidly arbitrary and absoleutley unrealistic redemption plot that makes even the Kerrigan Supergod story look tame.

And at least that one had a DECENT BUILDUP.

But this? Nah, I think the real issue here is its unorigional now, media in the west is SO AFRAID of hurting female chars or killing them off that anyone that speaks about it gets called a "Malding insecure incel" which is absoleute nonsense.

What makes a good story is being willing to develop, progress, and sometimes especially in Sylvanas case, end a journey.

Sylvanas needs to die, that is not a hypothetical statement it is a statement of fact, Sylvanas surviving Shadowlands wouldnt just be a bad twist it would be proof Blizzard is too weak to committing to making their writing actually mean something.

Of course with the controversy they have atm naturally harming female chars would only further iterate how terrible they were in the eyes of very, very narrow minded twitter warriors but ive already made my point before that the companies practices towards women in the REAL WORLD is abysmal and utterly undefendable.

But the VIRTUAL female characters are NOT real women and thus are not beholden to the same rules.

And the FACT Sylvanas has managed to commit genocide not once but TWICE, both against the Worgen and the Night Elves and Not ONCE faced consequences for her actions is not just bad writing, its stupidly poor writing.

Its fanfic levels I could CONFIDENTLY write better endings for, and even better ways to build this entire plot up.

Here, let me give you an example of one small change that would have made a MOUNTAIN of difference in Sylvanas story.

The burning of Teldrassil.

We all knew Sylvanas was gonna be the one to do it, but alot of us hoped blizz morally grey preaching really was going to be something special, imagine, just imagine for a second Sylvanas speaks about her plans to Delaryn and implies that the Night Elves will be treated fairly, as long as they play their part.

But then, Delaryn and some extremists within the Kal'dorei all commit to saying they will never again be slaves under the auspice of the Horde, perhaps she in her previous time was one of the victims of Garrosh invasions into Ashenvale.

Having tasted defeat, humilation, horror, she decides she will never endure it again, she orders her comrades to do what must be done, they set fire to the tree.

Even Sylvanas doesnt see this comming, but she is while not horrified, disgusted at how cowardly Delaryn is, choosing to abbandon her people to die instead of fighting till the last breath as she herself had.

The whole cinematic with living Sylvanas plays again, only this time, she vows not to give Delaryn a peaceful end, she raises her as a dark ranger and forces her to live with what shes done.

SUDDENLY, you have a LEGITIMATE morally grey storyline and EVERYTHING wrong with BFA's intro was now annexed because for once, the plot actually IS morally grey.

That, is the problem.

Blizzard is terrified, of doing anything that requires commitment to risk.

Tyrande should have killed Sylvanas, perhaps as a plot twist her doing so would cause a disaster because the Jailor wins as a result of Sylvanas not being there to stop him.

That alone would have set a perfect "Oh crap" moment.

But no, they are afraid of hurting the female chars while having no qualms at all killing or torturing the males, gender is a problem here, because the writers are ironically terrified of writing anything that puts women in danger.

[mickybrighteyes]

Do you also think Elune "allowed" all the other shit that happened, dating back from the War of the Ancients and the Sundering right up to the contents of the WC RTS games and all of WoW?

Not sure why it matters. The game lore explicitly has her saying she sent the cascade of souls into the maw from the tragedy of the great tree.

Now I can speculate on past content... but it's likely all retconned anyways now

[Forgottenone]

The story should have been more thought out and executed in a superior way to what we have been given. If the goal was for Sylvanas to eventually be redeemed then we should of gotten more hints of it earlier on, that a soul could be splintered/split in half in the main story line. As for Zovaal, I'd have preferred that he was equally as strong as his brothers/sisters but fighting them together he stood no chance. Having been stripped of his power and cast into the Maw he slowly began to wield it's power for his own and grow his own strength, so that by the time he finally obtains his stolen power back along with what he gained from the Maw then he could be stronger than the rest.

However this just feels like the the undeath version of the Titans but larger. Brother goes to do evil things for twisted reasons, family has to work together to take him down with the adventurers.

At this point I'm hoping that by defeating Zovaal it simply opens up the void with no more super siblings. I'd even prefer if the void wasn't necessarily "evil", just all and forever consuming. No specific goal besides to escape and consume our reality.

[Combatbutler]

WoW lore has never been good, nor was it much better.

[Dhrizzle]

Not sure why it matters. The game lore explicitly has her saying she sent the cascade of souls into the maw from the tragedy of the great tree.

Now I can speculate on past content... but it's likely all retconned anyways now

It just seems odd that we've witnessed several genocidal attacks on the elves at various times but this is the one that has people crying over the lack of direct intervention.

[Soon-TM]

It just seems odd that we've witnessed several genocidal attacks on the elves at various times but this is the one that has people crying over the lack of direct intervention.

Maybe because there are a few, but VERY vocal nelf fans who are convinced for some reason that their beloved race are some kind of X-Men, despite all the contrary evidence.

[Shadowferal]

What makes a good story is being willing to develop, progress, and sometimes especially in Sylvanas case, end a journey. Sylvanas needs to die, that is not a hypothetical statement it is a statement of fact, Sylvanas surviving Shadowlands wouldnt just be a bad twist it would be proof Blizzard is too weak to committing to making their writing actually mean something.

Ever read "Dragonlance?"
The character "Raistlin" (wizard) goes from the red robes of neutrality to the black robes of evil....err...rational egoism.
Anyway, the writing had you, the reader, see through his eyes and tortured soul. The writers were surprised at the character's popularity. But how could he not be...the writing had many feeling enormous sympathy. He wasn't evil for evil's sake. And that's the quality of writing that was needed for Sylvanus. (Although I refuse to see any writer trying to justify burning Teldrassil)

[Soon-TM]

Implying that the common people have any say in who the leader is?

They've always had, even back in the time of absolute monarchies. When/if a ruler does something that pisses off enough people, he/she might soon find him/herself in deep trouble, no matter what the written law says.

[Iheartnathanos]

They've always had, even back in the time of absolute monarchies. When/if a ruler does something that pisses off enough people, he/she might soon find him/herself in deep trouble, no matter what the written law says.

Er, no. That is nonsense. Occasional violent rebellion does not mean people have a ‘say’ in government.