Shocking… My Thoughts On WoW's Plot



Something Final Fantasy XIV excels in… so what’s the problem with WoW’s storytelling direction?

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43 thoughts on “Shocking… My Thoughts On WoW's Plot”

  1. I read a comment on Reddit the other day and this conversation just reminded me of it. In the post this person said that Blizzard should have done wc3 to wotlk like normal then made wc4 and then gone in with other wow expansions or even wow 2. Like you guys mentioned I think this would have possibly fixed the macro storytelling issues blizzard currently has. Honestly, who knows though. It’s seriously disappointing to see the state of the lore now, especially after going through classic again.

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  2. If they are giving you "homework" (Understand books) and you have to read them all in order to understand the MAIN STORY of their game, not just some side character stuff, then there is something wrong with their storytelling. Why not put the story IN THE DAMN GAME where everyone can experiece it and instead write books about some side character that people liked or whatever.

    On a side note: At this point why should anyone care about the next big bad trying to kill this guy or that guy when we have access to the forge of creation that is 1 portal away from our capital cities. We can just create stuff i guess so why bother at all.

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  3. It's like worst of both worlds. Not only are we "champion" but we aren't even a champion that has a connection with the characters. Which is why being a random adventurer has worked more than being the central protagonist

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  4. I never played warcraft 3 and I never read any of the stupid books. Thus the "story" wow is trying to tell means nothing to me. I've played wow for 17 years and literally have zero investment as a character in this game. I just show up, talk to people who have no clue who I am from moment to moment do their go kill 5 of these quests, burn through it without really giving a damn so that I can get the grind as much out of the way as possible so I can go raid. Since Legion, there has literally been zero story. Lets see big sword in the world, cutscene … OH HEY we got your pirates and witches lets go do that.. huh? Then we all suddenly die? and go to some place with some baddie that UNLESS you read their stupid poorly written books or played an early stand alone game, you got no clue.

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  5. great writing can be summed up in one sentence. create interesting characters and torture them for 300 pages. SL suffers because the characters are boring. Zovaal is boring. The Eternal Ones are boring. Most of the side characters we meet are boring. The old faction leaders are boring. Bolvar is boring. They have no personality. They have stilted dialogue and sound constipated. Even Elune suffers from this. That's why the lore doesn't work. Even Sylvanas became a boring moustache-twirling villain. Its like the difference between classic Star Wars and a prequels as described by Red Letter Media. Han Solo is a daring smuggler with a secret heart of gold. Threepio is a neurotic but intelligent fussy droid. R2 is a sneaky, intelligent droid that gets things done. Leia is a hothead, combative leader trying to do the right thing.

    The prequels are SL. Qui-Gon is stoic and constipated. Padme is stoic and constipated. The council is stoic and constipated. Anakin is supposed to be a hothead but really is mostly stoic and constipated, Nothing in the prequels works because the characters are not interesting.

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  6. Honestly I preferred the WoW storyline when my character was just some random dude helping out. I don't think Blizzard is good at making my character 'the hero' of the story. I've always felt that Blizzard's strength in storytelling was the big over the top stupid things. Much in the same vein as professional wrestling 'story lines'. 😆

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  7. Vanilla and to a lesser extent later expansions felt like a world we were visiting or participating in. Now it feels like we're watching a movie that we get parts of every so often.

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  8. Epilogues… Shadowbringers had an entire patch where you were going around and saying goodbye. BFA ended with Magni handing you some gold and a 'good job, laddie'. And that was it. 🤦‍♂️

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  9. The feeling that the major lore-characters don't care anything at all about the player character is really annoying.
    I mean .. I get that they won't address me by name. But why the fuck do Jaina, Thrall etc suddenly call me "Mawwalker"?
    I get why all the Shadowland Citizens do that, because thats what makes me special in their eyes. But what connection to Jaina, Thrall, Bolvar (or even Ysera) have to the Shadowlands and the Maw that they think it is more important to now call me Mawwalker instead of the established "champion".

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  10. I am actually a little surprised that people liked the Thrall and Drakka dialog.
    Though the dialog between these two characters is something people were looking forwards to, what Drakka tells Thrall made people really upset.

    One of the biggest things about Thrall that people disliked and made him a contentious character was that up until the very end where he killed Garrosh he never excepted any of the guilt for the consequences of his actions regarding what happend with Garrosh after he made him Warchief despite everyones (including Garrosh himself) advice against it.

    One of the few good things that came out of BFA was that Thrall finally seemed somewhat remorseful and he would take responsibility for his past mistakes. He almost even apologized directly to Jaina for what happened with Theramore. They were laying the foundation for some really great character development.

    But Drakka just tells Thrall that nothing Garrosh did was Thrall's fault and Thrall is completely guiltless.
    It really does feel like they tried to tell people that "Thrall did nothing wrong" and our "good" characters can do no wrong.

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  11. That Theramore bit where they tried to remember who died and their relationship with Jaina almost gave me an aneurism with how much they messed that up xD
    Cherry on top was when Mat finally remembered that Rhonin was married to a one of the Windrunner sisters and then he names the wrong sister.

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  12. When I played LOTRO there were moments where your character wasn’t just treated like a third wheel, but part of the group. I was especially pleased with the storyline through Dunland while aiding the Dunedain on their quest to assist Aragorn. I never felt outside the story arc. I was a part of it and not just an observer. Rarely in WOW have I felt my character was a part of something. We ARE strangers to the main figures in the story. Even after all this time.

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  13. I've always thought that the greatest strength of WoW's "story" (that they seem to have forgotten lately) is that this is the WORLD of Warcraft. It shouldn't be about a typical character narrative like FF does.
    Why did we all start playing WoW originally? To explore the WORLD that Warcraft 3 took place in. To immerse ourselves in the Horde and the Alliance, to walk through the ruins of Lordaeron and the forests of Ashenvale. Here, we found the ruins of Uldaman and fought against the Qiraji in Silithus.
    Rather than tell a "small" character-focused story, I think WoW is best served telling a macro-level story about regions and factions. About wars and their repurcussions, about exploration and economies. Focus on the bigger picture and let us find our way through it. That was the appeal of vanilla WoW, that's what a lot of us rediscovered in Classic. And that, IMO, is WoW's greatest strength. Their 'home field advantage', in a way. And I hope they go back to that.
    I don't want to be a character in WoW. That restricts who I am and can be. Let me be a nameless adventurer amongst the multitudes. That's fine. And show me the World that I want to explore.

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  14. one of the reason I stop playing WoW, other than the grind for flying, is just no emotional attachment from the NPC's. When I left and went to ESO, and in that game, my character is constantly recognize by NPCs I have met through out the game, and some as a close friend. That emotional attachment makes the story so much better. Same with GW2. I want a good story but also that feeling of being part of the story, and not just a tag along

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  15. The one thing I take from this is, they're running an archaic storytelling schematic that they have been doing for the past 15 years. We're always regarded as an outer entity in the overall storyline.

    We're always this weird silent onlooker who never speaks and just stands there with no emotion in each story telling moment. I think it would be great if the characters actually acknowledged that we're integral to the entire games story to date, even if its just to say "Hey remember when we did this, you were important then and you are now".

    Look at the massive amount of history we've had with Thrall? The world basically wouldn't have existed if we didn't help him become the Black Dragonflight Warden in Cataclysm. Now up to date we're just a non-entity to him. I feel like they're the cool bunch of characters and we're the sad loosers on the table across a classroom looking at them all having their own cool story, while we do all the hard work and assignments getting the grades while they get all the credit.

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  16. After almost completing ew i realized why does ff14 story move so well. Sure, some parts are cheesy, but in general, ff14 uses fictional setting to present relatable, human emotions, doubts, problems; relevant issues, like racism (a REAL, believeable one founded on bias, not twitterborn strawman), corruption and authority, faith and its role in culture OR detrimental effect zealotism has, decadence and despair, lack of connection.
    Not to mention how well sewn and fleshed out world is, with multitude of cultures, hell, whole civilizations – and believeable way they interact across history, events of which ripple for centuries.
    The story is like a fairytale, but far from being severed from reality.
    It comes to player and it says: i know you are carrying burden. I hope i can lift it.

    Meanwhile wow story feels like something we are far grown out of. Like cheap fantasy movie that only maintains its worth until your popcorn box runs empty, long forgotten before credits roll to the end.

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  17. That segment when the two of you talk about Jaina and her relationships… started to drift in korean drama realm for me. I thought Starcraft 2 was supposed to be Blizzard's k-drama.

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  18. In Tabletop RPG terms (which is where WoW has is roots), Blizzard is currently a Game Master rollplaying with themselves. They've forgotten the most important rule: your story exists only to provide a framework of cool shit for the characters own stories to take place in.

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  19. I find myself disagreeing with this one. I feel the issue with WoW is that our characters are TOO involved in being the hero, that it doesn't feel like we have any narrative choice. Sometimes we don't care for our characters to be "Commander" or "Maw Walker" or "CHAMPIYOON O' AZEROTH", because not only do those roles come with unfulfilling sideline activity in the plot, but they fix us into a weird Schrodinger's Cat-like scenario with the plot, where we are neither important nor are we average.

    I feel having the choice to narratively 'lay low' in the game and having quest dialogue and such change depending on how we approach it would have been a step that would have made the progression to level cap and story content end more unique than FF14, but honestly speaking, it's too late to save anything. For many people, the narrative is such a tangled mess that it leaves a stain on our impressions of the lore, namely recent years.

    I'd take time traveling death metal orcs x100 more to what we have now.

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  20. Early years of WoW made you feel like a bit player in a world way bigger than you. Later years of WoW feel like a big dumb Hollywood movie where your character is basically an inconsequential ghost in the background until it's time to kill something.

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  21. In legion we fight not one but two titans and imprison a third. Badass. Legendary level of feats right there. Then comes bfa and your role is literally literally that of a peon, collecting wood and ore in battlefronts. Not to mention that you get nathanos talking to you like you are worth less than the dog shit he stepped on that morning. You killed TITANS. Each strong enough to eradicate life on your world.
    Nah, blizz… No thank you. Keeping their story and their game off my PC.

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  22. You hit the nail on the head with Voljin and Varian dying. I dont need to love them or feel sad for them, but i will be interested in consequences for the world and factions. I dont need or want for Jaina to acknowledge me and be like her best buddy. I want to be a nameless faceless adventurer in the crowd. I am a roleplayer, i build my reputation with actual player characters. There is nothing more obnoxious and annoying in rp than attention seekers who claim to be a supreme commader of alliance forces or blood elf who has papers from Anduin himself to allow them stay in stormwind etc.

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  23. We're seeing a lot of FFXIV comparisons here, but even as an FFXIV player myself I kinda wanna step back from FFXIV to hit the nail from another angle to hammer down the point that it's not just FFXIV that's doing good MMO storytelling, so let's talk about PSO2 (classic, not NGS)

    Pso2 has a main story in the way FFXIV does, however due to being a lobby-based MMO it's far more limited questing wise. However one thing that is insanely interesting about it is that you can just do raids dungeons whatever without doing the story and in that case you'll be treated as a regular ARKS (some sort of intergalactic fleet armed forces) member. But if you DO play the story, you do build up reputation as an insanely strong ARKS member, which at some point in the story you're not just promoted to a high rank, but rather promoted to a rank that is SPECIFICALLY MADE for you and one other major character. And that's just the story side of things, some raid encounters CHANGE if you're past a certain point in the story, which is something I rarely, if ever, heard of in MMOs

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  24. I wish they'd go back to more impersonal storytelling, honestly. They go on about "this champion" and then forget about them, but I wouldn't really want them to acknowledge that the player character is a very special indiviual. It's an MMO – take into account that there are lots of players in the world, don't make it a single player game where you happen to see lots of other players play the same single player experience as you do.

    FF14 nearly does something like this with their "warriors of light", but without having seen most of the story (just started playing it, gotten so far that I've joined the Twin Serpents), the story they tell is still about a specific character. Instead, make a space in the game world for a group of heroes, maybe 25 of them, maybe 40, maybe a couple of hundred. As a player character you start out at level 1 as a nobody with potential, and you become one of these elite few. The story recognizes that this group fought in all the raids we've been through we're we've saved the world, but you the player is just one of them – you're a member of an elite group, but you're not The One.

    I think The Secret World got some of this right, your character is one of several "bees" that are recruited by the secret societies. Your relationship with your superiors (Sonnac, Kirsten Geary) is just that, they're your boss, not your personal friend. You're always recognized as one of the gifted individuals, but not THE specific individuals, which is fine – this is, after all, a multiplayer game.

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  25. the old WOW story was good with building up the first 3 expansions eventually climaxing in the fight against The Lich King to tie up the Warcraft III story arc, then Danhauser and Golden took over the writing and its become one utter shart that decided to piggyback on Warcraft III's storyline in a feeble attempt for clout because they lack any originality to create their own story. Then they Shoehorned in Dollar Store Thanos er i mean "The Jailer" for good measure. The Jailer: "Be afraid of me im the big bad now" Players: "I don't even know who you are !"

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  26. I'm not sure if I fully agree with the sentiment that WoW's story needs to start centering around the Player Character(s). I've always felt that WoW was strongest in its storytelling with its own characters than us. We've never really been in the forefront and I've never had an issue with that because I was there not for my PC but for other characters.

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  27. I actually feel like they did some FF14 like storytelling back in Legion with the Suramar questline, which is to this day my favourite point of WoW's storytelling. Up until the end, the main cast were completely absent and it was just you and the small group of Nightfallen that slowly expanded over the course of the storyline.

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  28. You know what would have me coming back and interest me? A faction self-discovery expansion.

    When BFA was being advertised Zappy Boi and my hopes to see more of them was a big thing in what got me subscribed. Unfortunately it didn't really go anywhere but like…

    How about we play on that? We return to Azeroth, we find a bunch of new Horde soldiers, brand new characters, disillusioned by all of the cosmic events and the watchief shakeup, all of the recent events. We tag along with them while they rediscover what made their faction a faction. An Orc grunt struggling with the conceptual pride of the Horde, a Darkspear Troll who idolized Zol'jin, a Forsaken scorned by Sylvanas abandoning them.

    A story across Azeroth, getting to see from the ground level how the world has changed, getting to rediscover what made the Horde the Horde, the Alliance the Alliance, maybe redefining and rediscovering it some. Take some of those lessons from FF14's storytelling, and let us see what we care about working naturally on their level.

    The Alliance and the Horde.

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  29. STOP trying to do Final Fantasy bullshit in warcraft, it doesn't work, you don't have what it takes.
    Focus on the god damn world and all the lose ends you are shitting left and right.
    Make me wat to fucking walk around and explore the fucking world, STOP PUSHING ME THIS MARVEL COMIC BULLSHIT.

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  30. At some point mmo writers forgot that the player character isn't just a camera. They treat the existence of the player as just a moving viewpoint and that's it. The invisible view point entity in a 3rd person novel that is narrating the set actions. That's why the player character has no motivation or morals, because they're just there to be a reason why the player can see the set moving. Even when the player is the one causing a major change, the focus on the scene is more on the aftereffects as if the moment was just a rube goldberg machine waiting for a push. It's not a problem specific to mmo's either, it's just a general bad writing problem.

    Creating a sense of identity for where the player belongs in a video game is super important to immersion. A simple thing like the units talking to you as warchief in WC3 or establishing the existance of the overmind in starcraft added a small but important element of enjoyablity.

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