How come blizzard is so incompetent at bigger arching stories?

[Accendor]

They arent. Pretty much anyone reasonable agreed that the sylvannas arc ended well.

And boy howdy did the garosh arc end great. It was fine as is but seeing him turn to dust was cherry on top!

I know it's been 5 days, but holy moly, thats the weirdest statement I've read in a while.

[Aleksej89]

bad writers, they are unfit for the job.

no world building, no character building, clueless how to make characters interact properly and develop.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Blizzard shines with short stories.

Diablo 1 is still my favorite. Starcraft 1 to an extent is good, but even then, everyone starts trusting Kerrigan just to get the plot going, lol. Also individual WoW zones like Drustvar, Sholazar, Highmountain.

They fall flat when they try to write nuances. Blizzard's best villains are the single-minded one, such as Sargeras (get to Azeroth -> take/kill Azeroth), Gul'dan (kill everything), Arthas (make everyone a zombie).
Then you get into Jailer territory and it's... heh. Jailer has a plan -> we don't know the plan -> Jailer pulls Korthia in -> we don't know the plan -> Jailer behaves erratically with regards to his previous behavior and Sylvanas tries to get away from him -> we don't know the plan -> Jailer goes to Mortis -> we don't know the plan -> Jailer dies without telling the plan.
The bizarre thing is, there was no plan. Nothing at all there. Just vague mumbling. Because Blizzard cannot do big plans. If the Jailer would be yet another one-sided villain, the story would have been much better. Still bad, but better

[VladlTutushkin]

bad writers, they are unfit for the job.

no world building, no character building, clueless how to make characters interact properly and develop.

Also they are inconsistent with what they want to write and in what style or theme. So we get mad dashes from "war is heck nitty gritty" to fucken Marvel bullshit in the span of one expansion.

Basically they just cant write. The staff that writes secondary quests kinda knows their job but its also easier since they dont have to follow the larger narrative... I'd say its the writer issue in general.

[Al Gorefiend]

They arent. Pretty much anyone reasonable agreed that the sylvannas arc ended well.

And boy howdy did the garosh arc end great. It was fine as is but seeing him turn to dust was cherry on top!

I've come to appreciate Garrosh storyline. You think given his heritage and given Thrall's blessing he'd become this great Orc hero. Instead we watch him slowly unhinge. Wish he was killed in MoP though, the whole trial thing in a world where entire organizations get the death penalty for digging at a sacred tauren burial site seemed so forced.

[VladlTutushkin]

I've come to appreciate Garrosh storyline. You think given his heritage and given Thrall's blessing he'd become this great Orc hero. Instead we watch him slowly unhinge. Wish he was killed in MoP though, the whole trial thing in a world where entire organizations get the death penalty for digging at a sacred tauren burial site seemed so forced.

Btw that. In WoW we killed basically any “evil” character without trial, even if we COULD because either they refused to surrender and fought to the death or because we just… did so.

Letting Garrosh stand trial is shite. It also was used by Celestials to humiliate Tyrande, you know, because that character was not used as a plot’s punching bag before.

Again, anybody who says that Blizz dont have a weird obsession with tormenting night elves and night elf character should just look up which race gets to be the butt of every sad plot, “taking down a peg” scene and basically any story involving humiliation.

Its fucken bizarre.

[voidox]

well, in part it's cause quest zones are smaller in nature, so they are easier to write. Usually they can write a zone story that has a clear beginning, middle and end in that zone without worrying about much other stuff in the game.

also, it seems like the zone stories are written by writers who actually seem to care about the lore/zone they are working with
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the bigger stories require good writers (which Blizzard don't have) that can juggle plot lines spread across multiple zones/expansions/characters/so on as well as having to work through expansions. Furthermore, larger stories require continuity, consistency, respect of established lore, a narrative focus and so on.

They have failed at much of that with BFA/SL under Danuser.

then comes shit like the "rule of cool" and blizzard's obsession with "going bigger" with each new expansion. Those things lead to poor writing in themselves, especially when attempted by bad writers.

Also doesn't help when the writers keep retconning/changing things to introduce the non-wow fantasy fluff they have been doing in SL, instead of introducing new stuff that fits the established lore. Feels like they don't care about WoW, and just want to do generic fantasy/sci-fi stuff.. which they can't even do well cause they aren't good writers (as seen in BFA/SL with so many examples).

and finally, the long running issue of how major story/plot is done out of the game, it's a serious fault with the lore and plays into why the story turns out so disjointed, inconsistent and at times random for many players.

I could go on, but other people in this thread and talked about other points and I'm just summing up my thoughts here. But ya, tl;dr - blizzard's narrative team is a mess.
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They arent. Pretty much anyone reasonable agreed that the sylvannas arc ended well.

And boy howdy did the garosh arc end great. It was fine as is but seeing him turn to dust was cherry on top!

lol nice bait I guess, cause wow this is something.

[geco]

then comes shit like the "rule of cool" and blizzard's obsession with "going bigger" with each new expansion. Those things lead to poor writing in themselves, especially when attempted by bad writers.

Also doesn't help when the writers keep retconning/changing things to introduce the non-wow fantasy fluff they have been doing in SL, instead of introducing new stuff that fits the established lore. Feels like they don't care about WoW, and just want to do generic fantasy/sci-fi stuff.. which they can't even do well cause they aren't good writers (as seen in BFA/SL with so many examples).

The biggest problem is that he doesn't really understand the "Rool of Cool".
I mean, one thing is that they soften Maiev to have "Ship" dialogues between her and Illidian that much of the community loves.

Another thing is that they destroy the Honor of the Horde, the Kaldorei and Sylvanas. To have a video that in the end everyone hated and now they try to hide.

If they made changes in the lore to put cooler things. Or better would be fine. But they do it to make things worse.

[boots1991]

Simple, Wow is a story that has been going for over 20 years. With numerous writers and different company heads having input over that time.
The lore of WoW is a product of it's environment. The story team has set parameters that need to met each expansion that doesn't always contribute the best outcome in creating the perfect overall story.

At the same time, the Wow and overall MMORPG player base has shifted. Many of people are better educated by a lot of great story content in 2022 than they were back in Vanilla WoW times.

No intended offense to any one, but those individuals who immerse themselves in fantasy media and story focused RPG's will always find the WoW lore lacking. It hits home harder if WoW was the franchise that got someone into the whole fantasy/RPG scene, those people want to see more out of WoW because of that fact.
I am one of those people, it just took a long time to realize.

[angrywithmygod]

I think it was when Golden became the main writer of the books, Knaaks books while not always the best expanded the lore and characters and have been used as the staple for multiple expansions. Where as goldens books and writing have shrunk the world to a handful of characters and don't expand the world of villans.

Even now Dragon flight is building off of Knaaks last book dawn of the Aspects.

Where as shadowlands/BFA were all built off the writing of Golden and they simply didn't work as they were to focused on a hand ful of characters and didn't really do anything for the lore.