The Problem With Shadowlands (What Makes Warcraft Lore Good?)



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46 thoughts on “The Problem With Shadowlands (What Makes Warcraft Lore Good?)”

  1. WoW's lore was cooler when it wasn't all about beings from another galaxies/dimentions. Azeroth itself is vast enough when it comes to story-telling (scarlet crusade, scholomance, stratholme, hyjal mount questline, Zul'Aman, etc). But the dependency of another realities, planets, timelines and others, has made WoW boring when it comes to keep up with lore-related things. Sure things as the legion, titans, old gods and such have been around for a while, but some of them had a very unique way of being conclued (Kil'jaeden Archimonde, Varimathras and so on), but since BFA some of these "conclutions" feel a bit forced and pointless. Not to mention the re-introduction of unnecesary characters (Wrathion, Queen Azshara again ffs). But what da heck do i know; i can't even afford this game in its retailed version.

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  2. I feel like the least they could do is retcon some of this garbage. It's very existence brings down the rest of Warcraft lore, and has done more damage to the story (in my opinion) than any other piece of lore, story, or media set in the Warcraft universe.

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  3. The reason for these vague, abrupt and unpolished cliffhangers that each patch ends with is that Blizzard needs to have a plot that can somewhat continue when the staff in charge changes and brings new/other ideas for the lore. We saw with movies like the Star Wars sequels that multple ideas for one story don't make for a cohesive storyline, especially not when it is this mess of horrbile writing already when contained to it's respective team. If the gameplay was well designed enough, they would get away with it, seeing how many people don't care much for the lore, but when you can't keep your game neat and clean in areas were it really, really matters, you will draw attention to other flaws as well.
    I was a huge fan of Warcrafts lore right to the end of Legion, and in parts some of the additions in bfa were alright as well (mainly Zandalar and Kul Tiras beeing revealed, but seeing Il'gynoth again was quite alright), but i care A LOT for the quality of the media i consume and am very critical of it. And everything past Legion and even some of the setups in Legion are just about as bad as video game lore can be. Video games have the highest advantage in storytelling you can have, as you can fill EVERY criteria for viewer engagement; text, picture, animation, sound/voice acting, gameplay, choices. There is so much you can do with just a single one of those. But the narritive of post-Legion Warcraft feels like a fan fiction written by an 11-year old. For shame. Best thing to do now is to take things back to simpler and more grounded story elements; essentially clean your plate and start building again, because you can't possibly make a satisfying payoff to Shadowlands events; and it is so bad that you can't retcon it back into mediocrity either. Ruins the continuity, but thats damage already done.

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  4. the jailer adds literally 0 to the story, they just shifted sargeras motivations to coming from the jailer
    the story told us that the general was actually just a seargent, the real general was someone else all along
    we already knew that "there is something worse to come" for a long time, thats the entire point of the burning legion destroying everything, stopping it from getting worse or happening at all

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  5. I miss the animosity between the horde and alliance. Those prideful cheers from the crowd at blizcon when there faction was presented made the game fun. You saw the enemy and needed to destroy them. You chose your faction that you felt close to. The classes helped you play out that roll. The world let you get lost in the environment around you. You felt as you are part of the lore. Bfa missed the mark. The zones just did not have the layout for it. There was no emotional connection to the area. Had they used the classic zones that may have worked. Maybe someday that will come back to the classic us vs them. Maybe.

    FOR THE HORDE!

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  6. I don't even think Mueh'zala / The Jailer forcing the Sylvanas pick was intended, I think it's just another retcon. You could easily take Vol'jin pick as a cut-and-dry choice.

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  7. The problem i have with shadowlands is, WHY THE FUCK IS SYLVANAS THE DRIVING FORCE! When Arthas soul was released she was the only one who spoke. Not his mentor or lover, but some banshee that got freed and became angry and bitter

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  8. So a soul split Sylvanas gets redemption, but Arthas, who was corrupted by a sword and helm infused with Zovaal’s domination magic doesn’t? Not only that, but his soul is utterly destroyed to nothingness? That is so unbelievably cruel to the character. Arthas made a mistake in chasing Mal’Ganis to Northrend, he should have stayed home and helped his people. He also shouldn’t have picked up Frostmourne. But you understood why he did it in his desperation and being caught up in his vengeance. But he shouldn’t be damned for eternity for those two mistakes. And for Sylvanas and the others to talk about him like he was a total monster is insane, especially with Anduin right there, seconds after being freed from the same power Arthas fell to. Uther should have said “I’m sorry.” For damning his pupil’s soul to annihilation, not even given a chance to atone for his sins in the afterlife. Sylvanas should have forgiven Arthas long ago since she was serving Zovaal, the guy who created the Lich King in the first place, for years.

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  9. Big agree that the world building played such a huge part in why I loved the game and the lore surrounding it. Shadowlands had a few gems, like the Kyrian questline where you get transported to Redridge and try to defend your family from the scourge invasion – that was fucking fantastic and probably my favorite quest they've made in shadowlands.. but I think that's just it, it was so grounded and connected to Azeroth, and Warcraft in general, that it really stood out to me. Most things in Shadowlands don't feel like Warcraft to me really at all.

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  10. Part of the problem was their use of characters. No one wanted a Sylvannas redemption arc. No one wanted Arthas' spirit to do nothing the whole expansion then just get eaten and disapear forever. Maybe some people wanted Anduin to be saved but it would of been ALOT more interesting if he died there. They honestly had the opportunity to do this expansion so well, they just screwed up in every conceivable way at every possible opportunity. I honestly have no idea what goes on at Blizzard anymore. Maybe the lore makes more sense if you read it in Chinese. Blizzard obviously doesnt care about their core playerbase anymore.

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  11. I just hate this "Mystery box" obsession that the wow team currently has. They don't let us know what the "villains" are working towards, they don't SHOW us actual in-game glimpses of what's to come. And I'm pretty sure they do that so that they can change things quickly "just in case".

    Edit: I'm also (personally) tired about having all of this story and lore scattered around in media outside of the game. Like, books are cool, but you shouldn't be REQUIRED to purchase a book, just to follow the story. Books should be a "complement", something you buy because you think that the lore and story (THAT SHOULD BE IN-GAME!!) are cool, and want to have a hard copy to showoff to your friends or other people.

    There are a TON more issues that I have with current wow; but that's the one that I hate most about the lore.

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  12. One point I heard in a Nobbel video that is worth mentioning, Shadowlands not only screwed up the 20 year existing lore, it may ruin future storylines as well. We are told that the first ones prophesized the mawalker, which means that the first ones purposefully built the universe this way, they knew that zovaal with betray the purpose and the mawalkers are the solution. Which means that they can keep pulling this shit in the future and saying it was all part of the plan and it was "Fate" and with Blizzard's caliber for story writing, it will not be good.

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  13. When we (the players) were just regular adventures, but also reliable and good at getting shit done. And not standing tor to tor with Titans and gods.

    I know the writing for WoW wasn’t always the best, but my god The cringe in the new writing. It’s atrocious and apparently no actions have consequences.

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  14. Even putting the mess of the story aside, another huge problem is complete lack of communication from their team to the fans. Steve Danuser's twitter is filled with talks about dogs and random TV shows, instead of being dedicated to conversing with the fans. He doesn't ever show up in public, doesn't give sincere interviews, is obviously afraid to talk to other people, and only shows up in that trademark Warcraft black shirt uniform that somehow shows that he is a part of the chosen few who get to to work on the story. Why he (and the other story devs) choses to be above us all for some reason is completely unknown to me and feels really humiliating.
    Not to mention the number of youtube WoW content creates who created videos just like this one that Platinum made, straight up showing dissatisfaction and asking for more communication, and still not a single word from them

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  15. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Blizzard's greatest enemy is narrative scope-creep. They keep trying to write bigger and more complexly deep stories… and they just can't. They fail every step of the way. WoW's narrative was far better when it was focused on worldbuilding and small-scale problems. Like how the Defias Brotherhood was a bunch of smaller, interconnected stories that happened to coalesce around a single important figure pushing things into motion, or how a bunch of the problems in various zones (all four human ones particularly) were independent problems being caused by local politics (and also, the same damn dragon, funnily enough.)

    Blizzard can write a world. They can't tell a story, and they need to stop trying.

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  16. It's now pretty much impossible for me to ever care about warcraft lore again. Too many retcons and bad moves have permanently stained it into a complete mess. Even if the next expansion had a great story, it doesn't change the fact they destroyed everything else permanently.

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  17. What I miss in the game is a frame to grow a connection with your character. The characters seem to be mere vessels for the endcontent. Doesn‘t matter which race/class you choose – everyone gets the exact same experience. Ok they can’t give every class/race their own endcontent. But the way to max level could be much more divers. Legion was great in that aspect as they had the classorders. The last straw was when they axed the tiersets.
    Remember: as (for example) a shaman, there was once a time were you didn‘t just level up and could do everything, no, you had to actually earn your totems. Or as a druid earn your forms. Or as warlock you had to fight and enslave the demons before you could summon them (even the warlock mounts have an actual lore). And so on. At max level I had a connection to MY character. It was I who mastered the elements/magic/demons etc. MY character is not exchangeable. I don‘t get that feeling now; if my character would get switched halfway through I‘d barely notice it. The individual flavor is missing.

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  18. I think character driven stories made sense in the early expansions because in Warcraft III you play as the characters from the lore, like Arthas, Uther, Jaina, Thrall, Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, etc. Lots of people were heavily invested in the stories of these characters because they were able to see how they were important in Warcraft III. But as more time goes on, the most important character for most people is the player character they play as in WoW, because that is the one they spend the most time with.

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  19. I think it’s a similar problem to WoD, we were out of the Azeroth we knew, so there was no chance for the world to change and evolve.

    I haven’t played SL, I heard they brought back more dead characters than just Arthas, from this video it sounds like they weren’t used well.

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