World of Warcraft in terms of story

[La vie sexuelle]

For years I ignored the existence of a game like "World of Warcraft". However, from time to time it reminds me of its existence. Sometimes it's a forty-year-old virgin who failed the class several times, and sometimes it's a new promotional campaign. Surprised by how realistic the latest cinematic is (i.e. I know it's about touching the hearts of "adult" fans, because for some reason corporations consider the mixture of sentimentalism and realistic graphics as something adults like). I asked myself - what is the plot in WoW? I'm not asking about the lore here, I saw a video like this on YouTube once and I lost interest after a minute.

Does WoW even have something like a story that you can progress from level 1 to level 80? Or did they go the way of Destiny 2, where old threads are simply thrown into the trash. If the second variant is true, how can WoW's story be enjoyed by someone who started the game last month?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

There is a story and I was quite invested in it. However, it comes with caveats. It is difficult to experience the entire Warcraft storyline in a timely manner.

First, the story doesn't begin in WoW, but in Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 introduces the factions, characters, and subplots that WoW revolves around. It introduces Thrall, Grom, the founding of Thrall's Horde and Orgrimmar, introduces the Night Elf empire and Arthas and the Scourge and Illidan and the Burning Legion and so on. The WoW game doesn't really do a good job introducing you to those characters. It does an excellent job introducing you to the world, but when you finally start doing expansion storylines that revolve around Arthas, Illidan, Jaina, Thrall, etc, WoW presumes that you already know who those people are and what happened in WC3, so it can be confusing.

The other issue is that a lot of WoW's story doesn't happen in the actual game. A lot of big, major events happen in books, many of which are out of print, or short stories that are hard to find on the official website since it's been revamped so many times. For example, Thrall becoming unpopular with the Orc populace and being pressured into appointing the young, popular Garrosh Hellscream as the next leader happens in a short story and a book. Cairne challenging Garrosh to a duel over the leadership of the Horde and then dying happened in a book. Garrosh nuking Theramore and causing Jaina to nearly wipe out Orgrimmar with a tidal wave happens in a book. Garrosh being put on trial happens in a book. Illidan being retconned from an evil tyrant into a good guy all along happened in a book. Sylvanas' motivations for starting a war happens in a short story and in a book. And so on. Right now, in the current Dragonflight storyline, the motivations of the main antagonists, the Primalists, are not well conveyed ingame, and you really need to read the new book to understand why they have such a seething hatred of the Dragon Aspects and the Titans.

I enjoyed a lot of the early Warcraft novels. The War of the Ancients trilogy, Lord of the Clans, the Beyond the Dark Portal novelization, etc. The authors back then had a lot of passion for Warcraft and were given a lot of leeway to make the most enjoyable book possible. The books really helped humanize certain characters too. But later novels are hamstrung by corporate mandated requirements. Christie Golden keeps trying to give Anduin a wife and Jaina a husband in the novels, but these aren't reflected ingame. By the time of War Crimes and Traveller, I wasn't really enjoying the new books anymore. A few years ago I decided to clear out my bookshelf of books that I wouldn't reread, and threw out all of my Warcraft novels. I kept only Tolkien, Narnia, and a few others.

Also, a lot of important storylines have actually been removed from the game over the years. The Battle for the Undercity which galvanizes King Varian's hatred for the Forsaken and the Horde was removed. The MoP and WoD legendary questlines which told the second half of those expansion's storylines have been removed. The Golden Lotus questline was removed when they were wiped out by Garrosh' nuke in 5.4. The BFA prepatch War of Thorns questline in which the Horde invades Ashenvale and Darkshore and then burns down Teldrassil has been removed. And so on. It's a shame because these were among the best questlines in the game, but they are no longer accessible. Reading about them on Warcraft wiki or watching a summary by Nobbel or the Lorerunner on Youtube isn't the same enjoyable experience as those storylines were.

Another issue is that a lot of important later storylines are locked behind lenghty reputation grinds. For example, seeing Malfurion and Tyrande being separated requires you to grind rep with the Maruuk Centaur, which can take a few days or weeks of doing dailies.

Lastly, you will need multiple characters to experience the story. You need at least one character on Horde and on Alliance. For example, in order to see the invasion of Gilneas storyline, you first create a Worgen character and see the fall of Gilneas from their perspective. Then, you need a Horde character and do the Silverpine forest questline, and see the invasion of Gilneas from their perspective. In Legion, each class has its own questline and some of them are pretty important like the Priest's questline, in which they acquire a sentient dagger that is going to be the big bad of the next expansion. Lastly, there are some race exclusive heritage quests, but only the Orc one is kinda important.

I think you kinda had to "be there" for Warcraft's story. Maybe you can get into it this late, but the story is now very, very long, and that would be a humongous time requirement, I think. I think if you want a good story experience in a video game, you would be better off playing shorter JRPGs like Final Fantasy or visual novels like Muv-Luv or Aselia. But WoW also has or had a lot of other nice things going for it in addition to the story, such as its aesthetics, character customization, the music, etc.

Another thing to watch out for is that until very recently, most of WoW's ingame storytelling was presented in paragraphs of unvoiced quest text, which most people didn't read. Recently they've been having more ingame cutscenes, which does help make the story more digestible.

If you want a list of the best storylines they are:

• Death Knight starting questline in Eastern Plaguelands
• Crusader Bridenbrad questline in Icecrown, a popular fan favorite.
• The invasion of Gilneas/Worgen starting zone (followed up by Horde Silverpine Forest questline)
• Stonetalon Mountains questline as Horde. You enlist in an army and rapidly rise through it's ranks as you fight Elves in the name of the Horde.
• The Wandering Isle/Pandaren starting zone
• The MoP levelling questline was overall enjoyable, particularly the Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, and Townlong Steppes.
• The 5.1 Dominance Offensive/Operation Shieldwall questline was great, but it is timegated by a rep grind.
• The Isle of Thunder questline
• The Warlords of Draenor questline was great. Likeable characters, threatening villains, lots of action, visually fantastic environments and the best OST the game ever had. Definitely the best expansion questline IMO.
• The Legion class order hall questlines really varied in quality. The Death Knight one had some exciting moments but also really mindboggling writing.
• If the War of Thorns BFA prepatch questline ever comes back, absolutely do that on both sides. The final quest on Alliance was one of the most memorable experiences I ever had in a video game.

There might be some others I'm missing. There were other questlines that I found enjoyable enough, like Azshara or Highmountains, but I wouldn't put them up there in the must-play stuff.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

The greatest story in WoW revolves around the shoulder pauldrons and how they came to be so... gigantic.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

There is a story and I was quite invested in it. However, it comes with caveats. It is difficult to experience the entire Warcraft storyline in a timely manner.

First, the story doesn't begin in WoW, but in Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 introduces the factions, characters, and subplots that WoW revolves around. It introduces Thrall, Grom, the founding of Thrall's Horde and Orgrimmar, introduces the Night Elf empire and Arthas and the Scourge and Illidan and the Burning Legion and so on. The WoW game doesn't really do a good job introducing you to those characters. It does an excellent job introducing you to the world, but when you finally start doing expansion storylines that revolve around Arthas, Illidan, Jaina, Thrall, etc, WoW presumes that you already know who those people are and what happened in WC3, so it can be confusing.

The other issue is that a lot of WoW's story doesn't happen in the actual game. A lot of big, major events happen in books, many of which are out of print, or short stories that are hard to find on the official website since it's been revamped so many times. For example, Thrall becoming unpopular with the Orc populace and being pressured into appointing the young, popular Garrosh Hellscream as the next leader happens in a short story and a book. Cairne challenging Garrosh to a duel over the leadership of the Horde and then dying happened in a book. Garrosh nuking Theramore and causing Jaina to nearly wipe out Orgrimmar with a tidal wave happens in a book. Garrosh being put on trial happens in a book. Illidan being retconned from an evil tyrant into a good guy all along happened in a book. Sylvanas' motivations for starting a war happens in a short story and in a book. And so on. Right now, in the current Dragonflight storyline, the motivations of the main antagonists, the Primalists, are not well conveyed ingame, and you really need to read the new book to understand why they have such a seething hatred of the Dragon Aspects and the Titans.

I enjoyed a lot of the early Warcraft novels. The War of the Ancients trilogy, Lord of the Clans, the Beyond the Dark Portal novelization, etc. The authors back then had a lot of passion for Warcraft and were given a lot of leeway to make the most enjoyable book possible. The books really helped humanize certain characters too. But later novels are hamstrung by corporate mandated requirements. Christie Golden keeps trying to give Anduin a wife and Jaina a husband in the novels, but these aren't reflected ingame. By the time of War Crimes and Traveller, I wasn't really enjoying the new books anymore. A few years ago I decided to clear out my bookshelf of books that I wouldn't reread, and threw out all of my Warcraft novels. I kept only Tolkien, Narnia, and a few others.

Also, a lot of important storylines have actually been removed from the game over the years. The Battle for the Undercity which galvanizes King Varian's hatred for the Forsaken and the Horde was removed. The MoP and WoD legendary questlines which told the second half of those expansion's storylines have been removed. The Golden Lotus questline was removed when they were wiped out by Garrosh' nuke in 5.4. The BFA prepatch War of Thorns questline in which the Horde invades Ashenvale and Darkshore and then burns down Teldrassil has been removed. And so on. It's a shame because these were among the best questlines in the game, but they are no longer accessible. Reading about them on Warcraft wiki or watching a summary by Nobbel or the Lorerunner on Youtube isn't the same enjoyable experience as those storylines were.

Another issue is that a lot of important later storylines are locked behind lenghty reputation grinds. For example, seeing Malfurion and Tyrande being separated requires you to grind rep with the Maruuk Centaur, which can take a few days or weeks of doing dailies.

Lastly, you will need multiple characters to experience the story. You need at least one character on Horde and on Alliance. For example, in order to see the invasion of Gilneas storyline, you first create a Worgen character and see the fall of Gilneas from their perspective. Then, you need a Horde character and do the Silverpine forest questline, and see the invasion of Gilneas from their perspective. In Legion, each class has its own questline and some of them are pretty important like the Priest's questline, in which they acquire a sentient dagger that is going to be the big bad of the next expansion. Lastly, there are some race exclusive heritage quests, but only the Orc one is kinda important.

I think you kinda had to "be there" for Warcraft's story. Maybe you can get into it this late, but the story is now very, very long, and that would be a humongous time requirement, I think. I think if you want a good story experience in a video game, you would be better off playing shorter JRPGs like Final Fantasy or visual novels like Muv-Luv or Aselia. But WoW also has or had a lot of other nice things going for it in addition to the story, such as its aesthetics, character customization, the music, etc.

Another thing to watch out for is that until very recently, most of WoW's ingame storytelling was presented in paragraphs of unvoiced quest text, which most people didn't read. Recently they've been having more ingame cutscenes, which does help make the story more digestible.

If you want a list of the best storylines they are:

• Death Knight starting questline in Eastern Plaguelands
• Crusader Bridenbrad questline in Icecrown, a popular fan favorite.
• The invasion of Gilneas/Worgen starting zone (followed up by Horde Silverpine Forest questline)
• Stonetalon Mountains questline as Horde. You enlist in an army and rapidly rise through it's ranks as you fight Elves in the name of the Horde.
• The Wandering Isle/Pandaren starting zone
• The MoP levelling questline was overall enjoyable, particularly the Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, and Townlong Steppes.
• The 5.1 Dominance Offensive/Operation Shieldwall questline was great, but it is timegated by a rep grind.
• The Isle of Thunder questline
• The Warlords of Draenor questline was great. Likeable characters, threatening villains, lots of action, visually fantastic environments and the best OST the game ever had. Definitely the best expansion questline IMO.
• The Legion class order hall questlines really varied in quality. The Death Knight one had some exciting moments but also really mindboggling writing.
• If the War of Thorns BFA prepatch questline ever comes back, absolutely do that on both sides. The final quest on Alliance was one of the most memorable experiences I ever had in a video game.

There might be some others I'm missing. There were other questlines that I found enjoyable enough, like Azshara or Highmountains, but I wouldn't put them up there in the must-play stuff.

Thank you for your comprehensive answer. Until now I thought that all classes were heading towards one plot, but now I see how fragmented it all was.

Perhaps I would even be tempted, but the fact that the threads were cut out discourages me. Do you even know why Blizzard mutilated its own story?

 

[MerchantKing]

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Warcraft III was great in matter of story.

janior: It was.

 

[Myobi]

Okay, it's sort of like... red and blue hate each other, but then every couple of years a very big bad guy shows up, so red and blue shakes hands and beat him up good, once that's done they go back to "GRRRR I HATE YOU CUZ U BAD!" each other till the next big bad guy shows up.

 

[Gandalf]

First, the story doesn't begin in WoW, but in Warcraft 3.

I don't want to be a dick, but the story started in Warcraft 1.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

the fact that the threads were cut out discourages me. Do you even know why Blizzard mutilated its own story?

The WotLK Battle for the Undercity event was cut because it took place in the vanilla Eastern Kingdoms, which was made unavailable when Blizzard revamped Kalimdor and the EK in Cataclysm. I'm guessing Blizzard were too lazy to port over the event from the old EK to the new EK map.

View from across the bridge. The cloaks had cool visual effects that sadly do not appear when transmogged on current gear. You have to be wearing the actual cloak item (this is the Xuen one).

Ordos, the world boss in the Ordon Sanctuary.

The MoP and WoD legendary questlines rewarded players with legendary items, and titles. The MoP legendary cloak had a unique visual effect on the back and gave exclusive access to the Ordon Sanctuary. You can't use a flying mount on Timeless Isle, and the only way to cross the bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary was to have the cloak and then leap over the bridge, being blown by a gust of wind. If you didn't have the cloak and tried to cheat your way into the Ordon Sanctuary, you would get teleported out. Access to the Ordon Sanctuary was the only way to fight the Ordos world boss, and the most effective way of farming 100,000 Timeless Coins for the Heavenly Golden Cloud Serpent mount which was a huge grind. Blizzard said that they wanted the legendary questline rewards to be "prestigious" by preventing players from getting them after the content was trivialized by powercreep, but the questline wasn't hard to complete. You could get the required raid items from doing the raids on LFR or normal difficulty. During the last few weeks of MoP, Blizzard even doubled or tripled the quest item droprate from the raids, and advertised that (as well as the questline going away), so they were trying to harness people's fear of missing out.

I have no idea why they removed the War of Thorns questline, since it didn't give any notable rewards, and the zones weren't removed like with the vanilla Eastern Kingdoms. You can still phase into the old zones by talking to a NPC. It was just good story they removed for no reason.

 

[MerchantKing]

Warcraft III was great in matter of story.

janior: It was.

I too though Wc3's was great in matter of "story"

 

[Axel_am]

... how can WoW's story be enjoyed by someone who started the game last month?

It can't. At least not organically through playing. It's just a massive amount of information at this point. If I was just starting out and I haven't played War3 before what I would do is probably look for a character I like - Ilidan, Arthas, Uther, etc - and start checking out on his story. From there things would slowly start falling into place. Arthas and Ilidan are pretty essential tho.

 

[Akratus II]

 

[La vie sexuelle]

the fact that the threads were cut out discourages me. Do you even know why Blizzard mutilated its own story?

The WotLK Battle for the Undercity event was cut because it took place in the vanilla Eastern Kingdoms, which was made unavailable when Blizzard revamped Kalimdor and the EK in Cataclysm. I'm guessing Blizzard were too lazy to port over the event from the old EK to the new EK map.

View from across the bridge. The cloaks had cool visual effects that sadly do not appear when transmogged on current gear. You have to be wearing the actual cloak item (this is the Xuen one).

Ordos, the world boss in the Ordon Sanctuary.

The MoP and WoD legendary questlines rewarded players with legendary items, and titles. The MoP legendary cloak had a unique visual effect on the back and gave exclusive access to the Ordon Sanctuary. You can't use a flying mount on Timeless Isle, and the only way to cross the bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary was to have the cloak and then leap over the bridge, being blown by a gust of wind. If you didn't have the cloak and tried to cheat your way into the Ordon Sanctuary, you would get teleported out. Access to the Ordon Sanctuary was the only way to fight the Ordos world boss, and the most effective way of farming 100,000 Timeless Coins for the Heavenly Golden Cloud Serpent mount which was a huge grind. Blizzard said that they wanted the legendary questline rewards to be "prestigious" by preventing players from getting them after the content was trivialized by powercreep, but the questline wasn't hard to complete. You could get the required raid items from doing the raids on LFR or normal difficulty. During the last few weeks of MoP, Blizzard even doubled or tripled the quest item droprate from the raids, and advertised that (as well as the questline going away), so they were trying to harness people's fear of missing out.

I have no idea why they removed the War of Thorns questline, since it didn't give any notable rewards, and the zones weren't removed like with the vanilla Eastern Kingdoms. You can still phase into the old zones by talking to a NPC. It was just good story they removed for no reason.

Today I played this game for a moment and I had doubts whether I really wanted to get into it. The reason was, surprisingly, the plot, not other players or queues for quests.

I made an undead warrior. The game starts on some ship headed by an femeale orc, then we crash, the orc goes to look for her daughter, and this daughter is caught by ogres who want to sacrifice her, so the goblin tells me to shoot zombies from the air... It's a lot of deisign work and an attempt to diversify the formula, but... I don't know, maybe the atmosphere of this game was different back then, but now it all looks and sounds very infantile. Worse yet, the dialogue sounds more like something out of a Starbucks in San Francisco than a fantasy setting.

But thanks for the help Maybe I'll come back to WoW.

Warcraft III was great in matter of story.

janior: It was.

I too though Wc3's was great in matter of "story"

By the way - I expected this "theme" to be toned down, but some of the models I encountered (harpies, resurrection angel) looked quite defiant, and these are new models.

It's as if at some point they turned the switch to "woke" and then turned it back a little. This is also visible in the development of Diablo 4.

... how can WoW's story be enjoyed by someone who started the game last month?

It can't. At least not organically through playing. It's just a massive amount of information at this point. If I was just starting out and I haven't played War3 before what I would do is probably look for a character I like - Ilidan, Arthas, Uther, etc - and start checking out on his story. From there things would slowly start falling into place. Arthas and Ilidan are pretty essential tho.

I played Warcraft 3 some time ago, but it seems to me that the game is easy to get in today (I'm talking about the original version).

Really, Warcraft started getting goofy with Warcraft 3, but then they kind of balanced it out. And now...

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I made an undead warrior. The game starts on some ship headed by an femeale orc, then we crash, the orc goes to look for her daughter, and this daughter is caught by ogres who want to sacrifice her, so the goblin tells me to shoot zombies from the air... It's a lot of deisign work and an attempt to diversify the formula, but... I don't know, maybe the atmosphere of this game was different back then, but now it all looks and sounds very infantile. Worse yet, the dialogue sounds more like something out of a Starbucks in San Francisco than a fantasy setting.

But thanks for the help Maybe I'll come back to WoW.

Yeah, with Shadowlands they changed it so that all new players now start at Exile's Reach, which is a shitty new starting player experience. It doesn't showcase what is unique about Warcraft or get people invested in their faction like the old racial starting zones. You have to first beat Exile's Reach before you unlock the option to start at the old racial starting zones. Fortunately Exile's Reach only takes an hour but still it's bad first impressions.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

I made an undead warrior. The game starts on some ship headed by an femeale orc, then we crash, the orc goes to look for her daughter, and this daughter is caught by ogres who want to sacrifice her, so the goblin tells me to shoot zombies from the air... It's a lot of deisign work and an attempt to diversify the formula, but... I don't know, maybe the atmosphere of this game was different back then, but now it all looks and sounds very infantile. Worse yet, the dialogue sounds more like something out of a Starbucks in San Francisco than a fantasy setting.

But thanks for the help Maybe I'll come back to WoW.

Yeah, with Shadowlands they changed it so that all new players now start at Exile's Reach, which is a shitty new starting player experience. It doesn't showcase what is unique about Warcraft or get people invested in their faction like the old racial starting zones. You have to first beat Exile's Reach before you unlock the option to start at the old racial starting zones. Fortunately Exile's Reach only takes an hour but still it's bad first impressions.

Ok, I gave this game another chance. I'm very edgy man, and I'm intrested in this Death Knight schtick.

 

[Reever]

It's a complete mess and for how much time and "effort" they put into the story it's crazy how hard it is to get into the story nowadays. The thousand of retcons don't help either. The game's story, characters and their motivations got rewritten a thousand times, sometimes in a random quest you found in a zone that's no longer accessible, sometimes in a novel that has a 50% chance to be good , sometimes because they needed a loot piñata for their new expansion. Not to mention the amount of time you have to invest to even find these stories or their conclusions.
The Chronicle series was supposed to help with that but it's full of inconsistencies, straight up contradictions and it's out of date by now.
You have writers like Golden, Danuser, Metzen or Knaak which have questionable writing skills (ESPECIALLY Knaak) but also prefer certain characters to the point of completely rewriting (or killing) existing developed characters to shine a better light on their favorites. Med'an and Rhonin come to mind and recent ones like Danuser's waifu Sylvanas.
As much as I despise the very thought of it, one of my friends got into warcraft's lore by watching youtube videos and honestly that might be the way to do it. In my opinion however, at this point I wouldn't even bother. The story was never some finely woven, grandiose piece of art. It was acceptable, especially for video game standards, and had some really memorable characters but I think the magic of it was lost with the zeitgeist. Which would've been perfectly fine had the story ended 10 years ago. But they keep releasing new expansions, resurrecting old characters and the quality of the writing keeps going lower to the point where you end up with zones like Exile's Reach.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

I played a bit like Death Knight. A completely different design than on Exile Reach. Everything is very cartoonish, but with an understanding of its conventions. No one makes it any dumber than it already is.

I'm starting to understand why people liked this game. It's a truly diverse MMO. Personally, however, I don't find the motivation to go further. Maybe if I were younger, but I think the amount of time you have to devote to Warcraft is disproportionate to the joy it gives.

It's a complete mess and for how much time and "effort" they put into the story it's crazy how hard it is to get into the story nowadays. The thousand of retcons don't help either. The game's story, characters and their motivations got rewritten a thousand times, sometimes in a random quest you found in a zone that's no longer accessible, sometimes in a novel that has a 50% chance to be good , sometimes because they needed a loot piñata for their new expansion. Not to mention the amount of time you have to invest to even find these stories or their conclusions.
The Chronicle series was supposed to help with that but it's full of inconsistencies, straight up contradictions and it's out of date by now.
You have writers like Golden, Danuser, Metzen or Knaak which have questionable writing skills (ESPECIALLY Knaak) but also prefer certain characters to the point of completely rewriting (or killing) existing developed characters to shine a better light on their favorites. Med'an and Rhonin come to mind and recent ones like Danuser's waifu Sylvanas.
As much as I despise the very thought of it, one of my friends got into warcraft's lore by watching youtube videos and honestly that might be the way to do it. In my opinion however, at this point I wouldn't even bother. The story was never some finely woven, grandiose piece of art. It was acceptable, especially for video game standards, and had some really memorable characters but I think the magic of it was lost with the zeitgeist. Which would've been perfectly fine had the story ended 10 years ago. But they keep releasing new expansions, resurrecting old characters and the quality of the writing keeps going lower to the point where you end up with zones like Exile's Reach.

For you, where is the point when they jumped the shark?

 

[MerchantKing]

Some more wc3 story

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Some more wc3 story

It was great!

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It was about a decade ago when the main storyline started becoming really wonky for a lot of people.

Storytelling is someone trying to convince another person of a sequence of events. The last decade of WoW lore shows a long string of failures on the part of the storytellers to convince the audience that something happened.

• "Despite the heroes having killed every bad guy before, for some reason they spared Garrosh and decided to put him on trial. Garrosh broke out of jail and time travelled to an alternate universe Draenor in the past and told them to invade our world in the present".
• "There is one Burning Legion for all timelines; the Archimonde you are fighting in Hellfire Citadel is the same guy who Malfurion blew up in WC3."
• "Everyone forgave AU Grom, who is a mass murderer and showed no signs of repentance."
• "The Horde did not send a note to the Alliance explaining why they retreated at the Broken Shore, leading to the Alliance presuming Horde hostility (which is then effectively confirmed by Sylvanas butchering her way through Stormheim trying to enslave Valkyr)."
• "A Naaru (an angel) tried to enslave Illidan."
• "Your righteous Draenei friends on AU Draenor went crazy."
• "Sylvanas destroyed a civilization on a whim and no one mutinied."
• "Every faction in the setting did not immediately turn against the Horde that just wiped out an entire civilization without provocation and is a threat to everyone."
• "The Alliance sent purge squads to Vol'dun to kill fox people for no reason."
• "The Alliance let the Horde off the hook after promising to end them if they went on a mass murder spree again."
• "The humongous sword that was gouged into the planet and caused it to bleed everywhere is not a problem. Until Blizzard suddenly remembered it 6 years later."
• "Everyone's religious beliefs - the Tauren spirits, the Orcish spirits, souls going to become one with the Light, etc - is all wrong. The afterlife is this weird second life where people lose their identities or become gladiators or fairies."
• "The dreadlords were actually working for this bald guy, who was behind literally everything that ever happened."
• "We shouldn't hold Sylvanas accountable for her actions because she had no agency over the evils she committed; her soul was chopped in half and we only saw her evil half!"
• "The dragons actually come from this secret homeland outfitted with advanced facilities and staffed by generations of loyal supporters and never talked about it until now, nor did they try to go back there rather than chilling in their relatively less advanced homes in Dragonblight. Except Deathwing apparently did manage to go back to the Dragon Isles deposit treasure there, but then decided not to make his fortress of Abberus his base of operations and activate his secret army of supersoldiers and was instead chilling out in some cave in Highmountain."
• "There was a massive dragon civil war that was never mentioned over the past 20 years of Warcraft games, novels, and short stories."
• "Tyr, the inspiration behind the founding of the Silver Hand order of paladins, was actually evil."
• Etc.

Shadowlands as a whole is so utterly incongruent with the the prior sequence of events and with how characters had acted previously that a large swathe of the fandom was not convinced it happened. Hence why the RP community chooses to ignore Shadowlands.

 

[Reever]

For you, where is the point when they jumped the shark?

Probably late Mists of Pandaria to Warlords of Draenor. Mostly for reasons mentioned by Val the Moofia Boss

Shadowlands as a whole is so utterly incongruent with the the prior sequence of events and with how characters had acted previously that a large swathe of the fandom was not convinced it happened. Hence why the RP community chooses to ignore Shadowlands.

Maybe I missed something but I'm surprised how little backlash there was to Shadowlands considering how much it fucks with basically everything in terms of lore.

 

[Axel_am]

Maybe I missed something but I'm surprised how little backlash there was to Shadowlands considering how much it fucks with basically everything in terms of lore.

I remember BFA being a poorly received expansion. Shadowlands was huge in terms of content improvement compared to it.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

It was about a decade ago when the main storyline started becoming really wonky for a lot of people.

Storytelling is someone trying to convince another person of a sequence of events. The last decade of WoW lore shows a long string of failures on the part of the storytellers to convince the audience that something happened.

• "Despite the heroes having killed every bad guy before, for some reason they spared Garrosh and decided to put him on trial. Garrosh broke out of jail and time travelled to an alternate universe Draenor in the past and told them to invade our world in the present".
• "There is one Burning Legion for all timelines; the Archimonde you are fighting in Hellfire Citadel is the same guy who Malfurion blew up in WC3."
• "Everyone forgave AU Grom, who is a mass murderer and showed no signs of repentance."
• "The Horde did not send a note to the Alliance explaining why they retreated at the Broken Shore, leading to the Alliance presuming Horde hostility (which is then effectively confirmed by Sylvanas butchering her way through Stormheim trying to enslave Valkyr)."
• "A Naaru (an angel) tried to enslave Illidan."
• "Your righteous Draenei friends on AU Draenor went crazy."
• "Sylvanas destroyed a civilization on a whim and no one mutinied."
• "Every faction in the setting did not immediately turn against the Horde that just wiped out an entire civilization without provocation and is a threat to everyone."
• "The Alliance sent purge squads to Vol'dun to kill fox people for no reason."
• "The Alliance let the Horde off the hook after promising to end them if they went on a mass murder spree again."
• "The humongous sword that was gouged into the planet and caused it to bleed everywhere is not a problem. Until Blizzard suddenly remembered it 6 years later."
• "Everyone's religious beliefs - the Tauren spirits, the Orcish spirits, souls going to become one with the Light, etc - is all wrong. The afterlife is this weird second life where people lose their identities or become gladiators or fairies."
• "The dreadlords were actually working for this bald guy, who was behind literally everything that ever happened."
• "We shouldn't hold Sylvanas accountable for her actions because she had no agency over the evils she committed; her soul was chopped in half and we only saw her evil half!"
• "The dragons actually come from this secret homeland outfitted with advanced facilities and staffed by generations of loyal supporters and never talked about it until now, nor did they try to go back there rather than chilling in their relatively less advanced homes in Dragonblight. Except Deathwing apparently did manage to go back to the Dragon Isles deposit treasure there, but then decided not to make his fortress of Abberus his base of operations and activate his secret army of supersoldiers and was instead chilling out in some cave in Highmountain."
• "There was a massive dragon civil war that was never mentioned over the past 20 years of Warcraft games, novels, and short stories."
• "Tyr, the inspiration behind the founding of the Silver Hand order of paladins, was actually evil."
• Etc.

Shadowlands as a whole is so utterly incongruent with the the prior sequence of events and with how characters had acted previously that a large swathe of the fandom was not convinced it happened. Hence why the RP community chooses to ignore Shadowlands.

Most of this sounds very...marvel-like. All these dimensions and doubling everything to increase the stakes may sound invigorating, but only at the beginning, then watering everything down more and more. In the end, even introducing new characters won't help.

Marvel is not the House of Ideas. Marvel is the Graveyard of Ideas.

 

[Grauken]

And I thought manga elf ears were ridiculous, but this is

 

[La vie sexuelle]

And I thought manga elf ears were ridiculous, but this is

Warcraft IS a manga.