Read more about Shadowlands ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.tv
This goes out to anyone and everyone who feels a bit dissatisfied with the lore of Warcraft, whether you think it’s bad writing, a disjointed story or anything else, we take a close look at one of the obvious quirks about WoW’s storytelling that threatens its long term survival.
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Blizz needs to fix a lot of things. I just canceled my renewal to the game. I have other things that are a higher priority to focus on (Work, Grad school, and a new baby in May that will need heart surgery right after birth) instead of playing a game I no longer enjoy. I did move my Twitch Prime Sub to your channel though as I will keep up with WoW news here and there.
I would not mind maybe a mini expansion, no system changes, but an expansion that has a story from beginning to end in 1 year self contained. An adventure, mini lore chunks, some new zones and a few new dungeons and 1 raid. But all tied together to fit into 1 year, knowing that after that another large or mini expansion to start again.
THANKS SOGREASY! THAT WAS EXTRA GREASY!
Random person passing through. Thanks for the ideas you share. It's an interesting take. And seemingly more common that it might seem on the surface.
I am not going to claim that I understand or know in details what the players largely want, but my experience from the last half a year or so, chatting here and there about the game, makes me think that there are some areas where surprisingly a lot of players seem to intersect in how they see the story of WoW. Each of those point could have a dozen or more examples and be a wall of text on their own, but it'll be a big comment even without extra details.
1. "World" vs. "heroes". As C. Kaleiki said in his "Why I Left Blizzard After 13 Years" video, the original vision of the game (the one that arguably made WoW capable to become what it is) was "the world is the main character; players are the story; community is the content". The preferred method of the dev team is seemingly centered around the selected few characters taking to them all or most of the attention. Races / factions do not progress, only those "heroes", with the rest being a background to highlight those "heroes". What I see as a common hope of the players is to have more details about the world and how the events affect its inhabitants. How places change (not necessary a full-world change like Cata. Chromie time / Eonian Archives and phasing tech offer many opportunities for such things IMO).The world to be more alive and evolving. Personal dramas are fine, but not when they take away from the world itself. IMO it seems that for the devs the world is the stage for the characters, but a lot of players seeming want the opposite – characters are just "tools" to explore the world.
2. Scope. Frequently people discuss what are the story moments they like, what was interesting, what fell flat. And strangely enough, it is another area where there are a lot of similar views. Players seemingly praise and enjoy smaller, self-contained stories with a clear narrative structure, set up, and closure. I see praise of individual quest chains, stories told in cinematics like Afterlives: Bastion, or Warbringers: Azshara), specific interactions between characters. But the further away from the short format blizz go, and the more things they touch, the faster opinions about such story arcs goes to "well… that just happened". Zone-long quest chains already not as frequently praised. Expansion-wide story lines, especially post-WotLK, are barely ever mentioned as something worth of remembering, only selected few bits from them. Yet in the story we have perpetual cliffhangers, and attempts to tell "larger than life" stories. Game tech itself struggle even with the world-boss scope of events, so going further in that direction with big changes and huge events might not even be feasible for the game engine (whichever part of it is the bottleneck).
3. Depth vs. breadth. What I see frequently mentioned is the opinion that the game tries to move faster than it can handle the events. As if the devs just try to put in a little bit of everything, chapters from many stories, and hope that something will click with the playerbase. They seemingly continue or stop following the events at arbitrary moments, which are hard to attribute to something other than the convenience for the narrators. Yet the players seemingly want to see the aftermath of the events. How it changes things, what are the perspectives of different races (or different parts of races, since they're not necessary 1 race = 1 opinion) about the things that happen. Players, or so it seems to me, want expansions to focus on fewer, if not just 1 topic, and explore it in-depth. Sometimes people just quit the game before there is any continuation or some (at least intermediate) resolution of stories, however important (or hyped up by the devs) those plot lines seemed to be.
4. Continuity vs. hype. I do not know the official position of the devs on the "how to" topic when it comes to the storytelling after BfA, but their position up until Shadowlands was somewhat infamous. As Ion Hazzikostas said during the Legion time frame, if a part of a story that the devs want to add does not quite fit the canon, "things are flexible". Main consideration per Afrasiabi was "what's cool". The overall approach seems to be: if the story is good (who decides that it's good is not clarified), it's not relevant that it's not entirely canonical. One of things that I saw many times in my life poisoning projects I had to deal with, could be described as "if I have an amazing answer, then I am definitely answering the correct question". And this is where the difference between the devs and the players probably is the biggest. "Make scenes for the story" vs. "make story for the scenes". I do not know how the devs imagine their stories, but a common description of it I encounter from the players is "a collection of wannabe-hype moments, that are loosely connected, conveniently use only selected few elements of the story, and end whenever the devs want to claim that it did, regadless of common sense". I wish I could call such opinion not fair, but after looking at the story of BfA (which I originally skipped), I actually can't. The devs seemingly want to show "hype moments", tying them together as an afterthought, and the players want continuity and more "natural" flow of the story.
Sorry for the wall of text. Perhaps one day I'll find a way to express it with fewer words.
gl hf
gosh i hope someone from blizzard sees this…so true and much needed
Except at the moment, Blizzard's model is minimizing the crew to as small as possible while ensuring the big boss gets his bonus. If you expect the quality you'll have to wait till lighthouse and former employees with hearts invested in the game release whatever they are making.
I am really enjoying playing SL so far, however the lore is really getting far-fetched and unbelievable at this point. I miss when things like the old gods, the Pantheon, Shadowlands, etc. used to just feel more like myths to explain why the world was the way it was. Sort of like real mythology and beliefs that people have in real life. Now that we are actually going to these places and meeting these beings, it makes it feel less mystical.
Murder hobo's!
They need to delete bfa and shadowlands from the story canon. Reset the story back to the end of legion and give us the bfa that was advertised in that wonderful expansion cinematic. No big world ending threats. No fighting against death itself (lol). No horde civil war. Bfa was supposed to be vanilla 2.0 from a narrativer point of view. The 2 factions having a new reason to fight against each other for resources while allied races re-bolstered the factions armies after defeating the burning legion. Each faction had a new figurehead who were supposed to embrace their new roles as faction leaders. It was supposed to be centerd in eastern kingdoms and kalimdor. It was supposed to prelude the new black empire era. It was supposed to be the faction pride expansion.
Instead we get this nonsense where nzoth is defeated in one patch, horde is forced to betray our own factoin for a second time, and were stuck on small islands instead of the old world people love so much. Meanwhile, forsaken and nightelf identity get completly obliterated which is unacceptable from an rpg perspective. My forsaken characters should never be forced to betray Sylvanas after 15 years. Its a complete rewrite to player-character identity. There is no reconciling the consequences that bfa had on the narrative. It needs to be deleted and redone right.
Both Legion and BFA could easily be 2 expansions lore-wise. Just think about it.
7.X – Legion, ends on Tomb of Sargeras – now we have both BL head-honchos dead and Big Portal to Argus opened
8.X – Shadows of Argus, as the expansion – having more available zones on "biggest planet of the WoW universe" would be nice. we even could have Argus the Unmaker be the "middle" boss, while Sargeras would be the "big bad one"
9.X – Battle for Azeroth – but it ends on Eternal Palace – it's more fitting for Azshara to be the main villain of the story (as she was in the Warbringers cinematic), we get 2 possible storylines for next expansions – releasing of N'zoth / Sylvanas dumping the Horde
10.X / 11.X – those two stories, in any order – either Shadowlands as continuation of Sylvanas story, or Visions of N'zoth as a full expansion with Nyalotha being a full fledged "continent" to explore.
12.X – "Light is Bad Expansion™" – since we purged Azeroth from Old Gods, like we purged alt-Draenor from Legion, Light comes to do it's "hardcore preaching" sessions – we return from Shadowlands / Nyalotha and begin to fight the Light Crusade.
Sylvanas is forsaken identity. There is no acceptable scenario where they can kill her off or remove her from the story. She must be returned as the forsaken racial leader.
I would like it if more zones scaled to something like Expansion – 1. And I would like old bosses to still be relevant. We are mortals, Twilight's Hammer could still be a thing. If we had a Defenders of Azeroth Weekly old world content quests, we could travel to old zones and fight threats that aren't totally dead. We could also have infinite side quests for content and story.
dude, blizz should employ you.
Good video and intuition. BUT BUT BUT. I will not subscribe until Blizzard fixes the problem. I think they need to start watching your videos for the idea to fix thier mess. Blizzard has lost its integrity.
I doubt Blizzard will do this But if they do, they could take this opportunity to show us Azeroth recovering from the war. I'd like to see the night elves building their new capital on Mount Hyjal.
Lol at all those “subtle” burns towards blizzard
I will admit, even though I am all for the cosmology of warcraft getting expanded as much as it is, I do feel like it is expanding at too fast and brisk a pace. The game can't feasibly keep this up where they set up "the even greater evil behind it all" without it becoming repetitive and the stories losing their wow factor. I'll be excited for however Shadowlands story comes to a close, but the world of Azeroth is desperately going to need a time skip because coming back home to face, oh idk, a multiversal threat or the return of the voidlords/conquest of the army of the light would flat out be too much to handle and overwhelming coming right off the heels of Shadowlands, and anything less then will inevitably disappoint others because it won't have as large of a scope.
Sorry, love your videos but don't agree. The moment we are asked to do more worldly things (like farming, fighting an invasion, fishing to feed the village), the word 'boring' pops up, especially if it is repetitive and" the game is turning into a mobile game": plant turnips, bake bread, build your house. The lore has online videos and gaming catch up: level through those expansions if lore matters instead of buying a boost.The game follows the Hero's Journey and immersion comes from being in the thick of it. In the midst of a pandemic and so many other IRL collapses, I can understand that "boring life" has some attraction to the psychologically weary. Feeling the weight of mankind's future on our shoulders is frightening and tiring. Returning to it online can be 'too much'. However there is value in reflecting about choices, leadership, principles, ethics and morals, as well as covert reasons. The Lord of the Ring wouldn't have been the same if it was "a month amongst hobbits" and Superman's story isn't about him learning to pay his bills. The Hero's Journey has mythic and psychological value, especially at a time when many feel disenfranchised, powerless or that society is changing too fast for them to catch up. just my opinion. There is Classic now for those who enjoy a different pace of life, where you are just a pawn and need to fight murlocs to get to fish for your hunter's pet.
I play Lotro on the side and a thing they do with their content stream release several small updates (patchs) that lead up and set up next expac or large content drop and this really works out nicely as its not always the "world is going to end" content drops every time like we get
I feel you and Bellular could near enough fix any and all issues outside of the big 3 in an afternoon. Loving this series.
I totally agree. The story moves way too fast and often skims over things that are/were very important and could be an entire expansion to themselves. As a huge old god fan, I'm a little heartbroken over the shabby treatment of the naga and N'zoth in BFA. We NEED these "breather/recovery" xpacs to really let stuff sink in and create a proper arcing story that goes up and down rather than trying to constantly outdo the last. I really like your idea about the Mark of Sargeras one. That could have been the "South Seas" xpac we've always wanted where we explore and to try rebuild! I'm totally fine with cosmic stuff and I happen to really enjoy it, but we're moving too fast for it to feel like it matters.
I love the lore deeply and it's the main reason I love WoW to begin with, so it feels a bit heartbreaking when things aren't given their dues.
I genuinely think the Blizzard team would rather be creating new games than expansions. They've basically stopped expanding the main game, and now we get 2 years of a "new" game that's just tied tangentially to WoW because, well, that's where the players are.
The story isn't moving any faster today than it did when BC came out. Every expac is a fresh story, as they have always been, and they are fairly evenly spaced out. So basically you have a problem with something about the game that has been the exact same as since day 1 of the first official expac? I'm sorry, but isn't it too late to cry about this now?
Really what you’re saying is we need MORE content/story not less. I think the problem is real world time vs game time. It’s been 10 or so years since Cataclysm. That’s a long time. The story has to be progressed at a steady pace in the real world to stay relevant. The problem is the amount of time it takes Blizzard to release the content. If there was a steady flow of story content I think we could have these “down time” expansions.
I honestly miss the sense of adventure MMOs used to give and WoW should soft reset and focus on the fun of exploring and experiencing another world. In my opinion more story content would do this.
The systems need to stop 🛑 ✋🏻 in so tired that it’s exhausting even thinking of attempting to login because of the insane amount of systems.
Why doesn't blizzard just send out a Q&A about lore and how we feel about certain aspects and build on the player base feelings rather than just "end of the world" type of deal. The reason Classic is doing so well, well at least a part of it is WE aren't the hero, we aren't the champion, we and a band of misfits apply ourselves into the story. I'm tired of being the GUY.
What you described seams boring as hell to me. Making an entire expansion basically doing "clean up work" it's not something I want to do.
WOW does indeed suffer from terrible pacing but all you described could be added as patches of content not an entire expansion which would make it even longer to further progress on the current plots that are going on. There are many story points I want to see develped/concluded (like what will the role of Vol'jin be) and I am not willing to wait for a "slow down" expansion to come before all those stories can be continued.
haha forreals just give us a shity final boss and end this game already
It feels a little disingenuous to be called the "Champion of Azeroth" when Nathanos was the "Champion of Sylvanas" and somehow required a literal raid team of said champions to handle. I prefer the quality of life changes that are currently available, however I'd like to go back to just being one of the army, 'cause it feels…pointless now.
I've never nitpicked your titles Soul, but saying 'Must be done' comes off a bit…. arrogant. I know it's not how it's intended, but I see those click baity know-it-all titles enough, please don't join them.
Main takeaway from this…STILL no player housing! Lol. Jp. Thanks for the quick timeline of events within Warcraft!
All of those hypothetical story beats were fantastic by the way. In particular harnessing dormant power from Sargeras’s blade.
One thing that always bugged me, is that there is only a year in between each expansion (2 for cata iiirc). Imagine having a almost world ending event every year for the past years. Civilization would've super collapsed in the time since the WotLK
Can we reset history as well and have Blizz vomit on Activision instead of merging?
I do not agree at all
They already did this. It was called Cataclysm.
Personally, I don’t wanna stay at Orc vs Humans stage… I actually really like the way the story goes right now, that’s not the problem, the problem are the systems of the game and the long time between patches!!! Just don’t kill Sylvanas, PLS!!!!!!!!!
"Open up instead of escalate" such an important point!
Blizzard is trying to make every expansion into a self-sufficient story with it's own systems and powers and cosmos-shattering climax. As a consequence WoW does not feel like one game anymore. Furthermore, they are trying to enforce concepts that work on single player RPGs, like being "The Commander", to an MMO. They expect people to somehow pretend that millions of other "Commanders" do not exist in this world and feel special. All they have really achieved with this is player disassociation with their characters and loss of immersion to the in-game world.
Everything is relative. Opening Karazhan felt orders of magnitude more epic than killing N'zoth ,a literal god of the Void. And don't get me started on how little I care for the jailer. Such a dry, uninspiring, "generic baddie" would not be suitable for a dungeon boss in earlier expansions..
I'm worried for this game.