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This video discusses the narrative and tone of World of Warcraft and briefly Warcraft III, as well as the MMO’s evolution. From storytelling techniques to the factions. Class fantasy to talent changes. Qualms with Dragonflight, and Warcraft’s potential ‘identity crisis’ in recent years. Asking the questions: ‘When did World of Warcraft get ‘too soft’ for some people? And just who is Blizzard’s target audience today?
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If you are interested in learning more about Arthas/The Lich King, I recommend these videos :-
Athelarius
World of Warcraft: Lich King Arthas Complete Story (2022): All Cinematics in ORDER [Full Movie] –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXpwPZoo09o
Nobbel87
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpbWpPrTnk – The Story of The Lich King – Full Version [Lore]
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Let's be real, WoW does not have and never had has a good storytelling. Vanilla and TBC were plot-agnostic for the most part, Cata, WoD, BfA, and SL were if not bad, at least very polarizing (SL and WoD were objectively terrible). Wrath, MoP and Legion were the exceptions, not the rule.
Many people say "it's world of WARcraft" but, for me at least, is WORLD of warcraft. The game is not a metrics competition, is not a story, is not the even the factions. It's a world. A Fantasy world like no other were everything can happen, incredibly immersive, deep, and wonderous. I think the reason SoD is so beloved is because it uses the main asset of the game, the world, to a huge success, despite having almost no plot whatsoever. I really do hope something like can be incorporated to the main game, so everyone can remember how marvellous the entire world is. That's why people liked the Secrets of Azeroth event so much, I think.
and btw, when people complaing about WoW going soft in Dragonflight, I remember those were the same players that abandoned the game when it was as its most insufferable grimdark mode (BfA and SL) to play FF14 of all things.
Great video! you always have excellent takes!
Too little too late is still a major theme, I stopped after DFs first season not just because I don't recognize it but they keep on making similar mistakes of making a system and then forgetting about it.
It's supposed to be a world…not this contained amalgamation…
Another great video man. They definitely need to return to the style of the old warcraft games. But i am fine with a bit of the emotional stuff if they handle it like they did with Arthas in WOTLK
This is a solid video, but dont get tricked into what weirdos are saying in Twitter. many of the points you bring up cam EASILY be explained or reasoned through, but its not popular to do so. Keep up the great work!
It's not that bad to have emotional moments in a story. I mean, you see these kinds of things even in Warhammer 40K. Yes, there are some genuinely wholesome moments in Warhammer; a universe for violence and oceanic quantities of blood.
But in my opinion I will say, without a sliver of doubt, that Warcraft has slowly changed for the worse.
I blame Blizzard for the most of it since they HAD to cater to that crying side of the fanbase that really didn't like to shut up unless their needs were met and the game slowly got stripped of what made it, in my opinion, special. It used to mean something when you picked a faction, it used to mean something when you considered what race you were choosing and the class you were going to play. But thanks to some "well thought out lore plans", we will slowly enter the age of classes for every race soon enough where nothing matters anymore.
I don't mind the muzzle on PvP. I remember I had to stay on high allert everywhere I went, weary of some steroid injected PvP junkie that might shred me to bits at any given moment. Even fun moments like the Fishing event in Stranglethorn turned into a bloodbath because… why the heck not.
Quality vid dude its a sub from me.
We need to remove every copy of every Avengers movie from every WoW writer. They've proven untrustworthy to own them!
What I hate about the replacement writers in BFA/SL/DF is that they violate all of the previous lore….. but they do it with the method of unreliable narrator so that the entire playerbase is splintered into thinking different things happened than what other players who did the same exact content think happened.
For example, very few people seem to realize that literally "ALL THREE" of the major raids for Dragonflight were lies…..inside the narrative.
Vault of the Incarnates: There was no prison cell for Raszageth anywhere in that entire raid….nor was there any prison cell in the forbidden reach where we found her, she didn't get defeated or imprisoned by the Titans, she got defeated by Neltharion serving N'Zoth. She never cared about Azeroth, she never cared about other dragons, she never cared about mortals….not even the slaves in her primalist cults. She lied to her cultists over and over and over again, exploiting and betraying and deleting them; while exploiting and betraying and mutating dragon eggs as well. There were no primal dragons with sentience "ANYWHERE" on the dragon isles or anywhere else on the planet besides those 4 named villains. Literally, all the primal dragons were dumb as a box of rocks, with less intelligence than a cow or duck or crocolisk….. so they could not possibly have been part of any army that ever fought against the dragon aspects way back before the sundering. There was never any explanation, then, of how those 4 villains were given intelligence let alone magic visage forms, nor any acknowledgement of the evil they did against mortals.
Aberrus: It was a total lie, the ghost image of Neltharion that follows you around in the raid is not actually Neltharion and never was, it was a faceless one telling you lies. Therefore, it is yet another unreliable narrator….. so everything you see in the lab, and everything any characters inside that lab say….. can just be a lie. The faceless one could have done it all, including all the experiments, and all the hiding artifacts or secrets, all the enslaving of djaradin, all the creation of the dracthyr as a species……. every last single shred of it could have been done by the faceless one ghost and "NOT" Neltharion at all. When Nozdormu tries to retrieve a memory of the past from Emberthal in the animated cinematic which we saw just before the launch of Dragonflight, where she saw an image of Neltharion leading them and then using void powers….. literally we have no way of knowing if that wasn't also the faceless one in disguise using void powers to capture Raszageth and then putting all the dracthyr into stasis.
Amirdrassil: Also a total lie. Freya never showed up anywhere in the dream. Elune never showed up anywhere in the dream. Eonar never showed up anywhere in the dream. All the fake magical characters in that dream (not just the ones turned to fire, but the non-fire ones also) did not give one shred of care for us, or mortals, or the world soul inside Azeroth, or the planet Azeroth itself. They tried to murder us, and they exploited and lied to the many thousands of dead night elf souls which they were using as fuel. There is "ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE" that azeroth gave any powers to any dragons in that raid. We have yet another unreliable narrator spoken claim about it, and no lore showing any such thing. Considering that power was given to an evil ice dragon mass genocidal ecosystem destroyer like vyranoth…..then it makes no sense that the world soul inside azeroth would ever participate in such a way. And considering that the replacement writing in that raid totally disregarded and violated and contradicted the entire purpose of those aspects….. Earth/Time/Magic/Life/Dream …….. where we "NEVER" learned anything about Earth/Time/Magic/Life/Dream and did not use any of those to help the world soul nor the planet………. Then we are left thinking that some kind of evil cosmic Life villains hiding in the emerald dream somewhere just created a borg collective hivemind from the dragon aspects where they are finishing each others' sentences and repeating a mantra of together, family, together, family, together, family, together, family that totally excludes and victimizes every mortal other than dragons on the planet. They stopped being protectors of Earth/Magic/Time/Life/Dream and turned into a xenophobic group of greedy predators that only focus on themselves and their own genetic relatives.
Yet all 3 of these major raids was presented as if they meant something else….. and you'll have some players that didn't pay attention to any of the quests, or fans that didn't actually play but just watched some cinematics online…. all assuming that these 3 raids mean something different from what the actual bad writing showed. Some of them still think that Vault had any evidence for Titans doing anything wrong, and Aberrus being some objective account of what Neltharion did, and Amirdrassil being some kind of empowerment by Azeroth in dimensions where she does not exist……… all of which is wrong; and not presented in the writing that way at all.
I would have loved if karabor instead of being twisted into the black temple we knew in BC, but if it was twisted with void energy instead of fel in WoD and made a raid for a second time. They had the opportunity to do that with the shadow moon clan dabbling with void magic.
Congrats the algorithm is algorithming
Wow, this was really good!
Okay so about Wrathion in the Zaralek caverns:
I agree that he was acting in a weird way, I would actually argue that the place brought out the worst in both him and Sebellian. I think that’s intentional though because they are grapping with coming face to face with their father’s legacy, as well as being subtly manipulated by the void presence in Aberrus. They even say to the players that they can feel something prodding their minds and of course as we know there was literally a faceless void creature impersonating Neltharion in the raid.
From my understanding, Danuser and crew hated the conflict/violence aspect of the game and wanted to go more co-operation 'to show there's another way'. While it does make sense that at some point the main faction conflicts will die off as time goes on, it's something you can't really push in an expansion or two. To start, Alliance and Horde have different values and cultures. While it does fit that for all the times the factions had to come together to fight serious big bads that class restrictions would start to open up, with how much gametime's passed with the lore it's simply not workable for Alliance and Horde to be all hugs so fast. Toss in how grudge holding the longer lived races are (looking at you Kaldorei) and it's not only not workable, but face palming level of ridiculous. For them to pull it off with any plausibility, it'd take gradual work through multiple expansions and killing off main characters until the earlier wars are out of living memory. Pretty much it'd take the time for our grandkids or later to be playing on our accounts. Another option would be WoW 2 with a huge time skip, but I'm not seeing that as a successful option. While there might not be much cause for a full on major faction fight like in the past at this time, there's still plenty of smaller factions to stir up trouble or escalate into a bigger than local problem.
shed tears for ff msq 😂😂😂
Having races in a fantasy needs to serve a storytelling purpose – they're supposed to be artistic highlights of cultural aspects. Goblins and their BFA lore are a great example of how to make a race more complex without compromising the thing they are highlighting. We then got two different kinds of goblins, the OG greedy crooks and Gazlowe's fair trade union. Goblins were always capitalists essentially and that, to me at least, made it fun to create goblin characters of different classes which would present uniquely through that capitalist lens from an RP perspective (goblin priests using the light primarily to make money for instance). Its sadly rare for Blizzard to make quests that focus on the core theme of the various races and their modern direction is eroding those identities. I feel with all the character growth dragging entire racial communities and the factions themselves for the ride, the Last Titan is looking like WoW's finale.
WoW could easily solve the faction rivalry while keeping our current progress of cross-faction lifestyle by…..
simply introducing faction pvp under the in-lore guise of tournaments and “games”. turn it into a sport that the factions LOVE. something that gives the people organic entertainment they’ve needed. healthy rivalry. etc. then you still have a reason to do questing and dungeons with your cross faction friends, but if you’re serious about pvp you are separated by faction as that’s how the sport is played.
but i dream.
(also i can’t believe there’s people triggered by chromie hugging someone lmao or elves kissing)
WPvP doesn't sell as well as it did in WoW's hayday. FFXIV is notorious for how shitty it's pvp system is. But due to not having to squander time on developing zones to cater to WPvP or 2-faction competition, they were able to curate the community in such a way that certain cultural norms (such as helping new players or being generally nice) flourished. It's impact on the overall health and longevity of FFXIV cannot be understated. I think the current "meta" for most gamers is "why would I want to invalidate most of my hard work getting camped outside an instance like in Classic WoW when I could play a survival sandbox or live-service game for my pvp fix?" Newer MMOs don't necessarily curate the same WPvP aspect as Classic did. At best they'll relegate it to some form of battleground or timed event, especially if they have p2w elements. Not to mention the fact that people would just min/max and play the best faction, leaving the other faction without enough players to form raid or dungeon groups. Remember when Alliance was unplayable because everyone kept faction changing to Horde? We see a similar instance of this in WoW Classic where megaservers were dominated by 1 faction such as Benediction (Alliance) or Skeram (Horde). The only 2-3 people who remained on those servers in the minority faction were either getting camped to oblivion or were alts to fulfill the ahn'qiraj war effort turn-ins so the actual AQ raid could open faster.
I'd argue faction conflict is NOT marketable for newer MMOs and people naturally orientate towards the path of least resistance. You can talk about story all you want, but at the end of the day people who play WoW just skip quests and only concern themselves with mechanics and gear acquisition. WoW devs cater to their demographic compared to FFXIV's community that actually does care for story more often than not. I'd argue that from Blizzard's perspective Classic WoW's current attempts at Classic+ with SoD already fills the itch for faction v faction gameplay. Why risk Dragonflight falling down the same rabbit hole? Notice how they took queues from Classic's PvE components and storytelling when making Dragonflight instead of its PvP components.
A note on WoD hype you mentioned: We were going from muh pandas back to the roots of warcraft with the 'Big hairy men and metal music' vibes again. There was a world of potential with WoD and Blizz dropped the ball. (which thank god tbh because the resources went towards the best xpac in modern times Legion)
I think one of BFA's greatest crimes was making the Horde the inarguable bad guy of the two factions through Sylvanas' warcrimes, and then almost immediately moved on to ye olde 'big bad' threat with Azsharah and N'zoth. It felt like the only faction conflict that was had was [Horde commits cataclysmic war crime] and then straight into [Factions work together to save the world again].
It was worse than Garrosh, and the poor writing and story of the rest of the expac only made that damage cement into the lore instead of righting wrongs while the iron was still hot.
I have nothing against x-faction stuff and Horde/Alliance cooperation, but coming straight out after BFA's unresolved issues, conflict and in-lore trauma, and in such an incredibly unearned and forced manner just makes BOTH faction's place in the current setting really awkward and incoherent.
PS: I also think a lot of the issue of modern WoW story is its tone, pace and feel. I'd argue that vastly similar plot-beats told in the old style, tone and using the World Building properly would work a LOT better. By World Building, I mean that SL, DF (and BFA to an extent) failed to use the World of Warcraft while telling their story within it.
– You're telling me the Bad Guy of DF's first half is a rogue faction of anti-Titan Shamans, the second half is full blown FIRELANDS 2.0 and there isn't a single Earthen Ring representation in the entire expac?
– You're telling me we get an entire Druid and Emerald Dream patch but THE DRUID of the setting (Malfurion) is just completely missing from it, and only [Night Elf Druids-TM] are represented? Not Thornspeakers, not Loa-Druids from Zandalar? Or event the Pandaren-style Monks (who worship Celestials — aka Pandaria's WILD GODS/LOAS)?
– You're telling me we get the Primalists, an entire cult/faction of anti-Titan Azerothian races big enough to trigger a world-wide invasion in pre-patch and threaten the whole of the Dragon Isles, but we're never told or shown where they come from or how they formed? They just… happen to be there now? And once the writing team is done with them, we're just vaguely told in a pre-10.2 interview that their numbers are diminished and we're done dealing with them? WHAT? When? How? Who? Where?
– Imagine how LEGION would've felt if it was delivered the same. Only Demon Hunters show up to fight the Legion, the rest of Azeroth is briefly represented in a 30s cutscene of the faction leaders showing up to a little battle pre-Raid. We don't see the classes, organisations and orders of Azeroth come together at every turn to fight the fight. Just a bunch of main characters from the Broken Isles fighting the Legion with the help of a couple of DH characters and the PlayerTM. I bet you that even WOTLK would've felt shit and underwhelming if it were told the way Danuser and Co. delivered Dragonflight.
It’s world of elfcraft now. We got blood elves, night elves, high elves, void elves, highborne, nightborne, felborne. All the dragon aspects that blizzard likes turns into elves, we got dragon a race but they also get an elf form because they need to be cuter we got spiders that are almost certainly going to have elf forms. They’re like the crabs of World of Warcraft
i admit some of the flirts were rapey, but they removed the fisting one from highmountain making them no longer canonically bisexual
Great video, immediate sub, good retrospective aswell, your analysis was spot on, looking forward to more 😊
another relatable banger!!! im so happy to see another video from you, you definitely pay attention to detail and do your research. happy to see you getting the views you deserve as well, thanks a ton for the great content!! 🙂
WoD had great potential indeed. Legion made me quit WoW for the first time actually. The systems ripped my brain apart tho. Besides that it was quite good but jesus christ the AP grind killed me. I was actually a huge lore guy for warcraft but all that interest slowly died off sadly. Anyways, great vid.
World of Warcraft used to be aimed at people who grew up playing Warcraft 1-3, now it's aimed at people who grew up playing World of Warcraft.
And that's probably fine, even if you prefer the old direction you can't argue with the fact that the people the game used to cater to, have all grown up and now have steady jobs and families to dedicate their time to instead. Continuing to base itself on the black and white, pencil drawn, heavy metal album cover esque art of the RTS games just isn't sustainable because the people who enjoy that kind of thing don't have time to dedicate to playing the game anymore.
Blizzard could make War Within the greatest story ever told in a video game with the best gameplay in a video game ever and people would still find some BS to complain about.
Hate to say it but, Horde vs Alliance in the face of cosmic gods its actually dumb. They need to end it. Coming from a classic player
Really looking forward to see this channel blow up in the near future.
That being said, I personally quit world of Warcraft last year after being continually subbed for over 15 years.
Warcraft has always had these very explicit tones of old enemies setting aside their differences to face a greater threat. Even in the context of Warcraft 2, we have kingdoms that haven't seen eye to eye, and clans that have been actively at war with each other, banding together with their rivals to face each race's existential threat (The belief of their Planet becoming inhospitable for the orcs, and the orcish horde for the humans)
This theme was carried into Warcraft 3 with the Battle for Mount Hyjal, and anyone actively opposing the idea of allying against the greater threat (Othmar Garithos, Daelin Proudmoore) were painted as villains to hammer home that theme.
It's been in WoW's blood too, since Ahn'Qiraj, which carried into the Sunwell Raid, Icecrown Citadel, Dragon Soul, Throne of Thunder, Siege of Orgrimmar, the entire story of WoD (bar Ashran), 8.2 and 8.2.5
The reason the Horde and Alliance banding together felt narratively impactful and thematically congruent with Warcraft's Storytelling is not because we like holding hands with the Night Elves; It works explicitly because we don't.
When we work together only because that cooperation is the lesser of two evils, that's warcraft.
I have been advocating for Cross-Faction PvE content and Arenas since MoP at least, because it fits the theme of Warcraft's core identity for a Heroic Orc Shaman to ally with an equally Heroic Draenei Paladin to take down something much worse, and our characters have done that narratively with NPCs as far back as the aforementioned Ahn'Qiraj, and it is cool exactly because orcs and draenei do not get along. Where Blizzard failed with this conversion was having the Conflict melt away, to have Talanji have a conversation with Turalyon over wedding cake, instead of only tolerating his presence when it's necessary for the survival of her Kingdom.
Topper McNabb doesn't need to tolerate Forsaken for heroic characters to work together across the faction divide.
Instead, we got the opposite.
In Legion, Warcraft died to me. There was no longer any narrative reason for the Cross-Faction limitations to exist. We left behind the Horde and Alliance almost entirely to join new factions that were all explicitly working together. In 7.2, they even became a single faction, yet a Tauren Sunwalker and a Dwarf Paladin, both in the Silver Hand, couldn't party up to defeat Elisande.
There was no narrative logic to it, the gameplay being limited in active opposition to the story being told.
And then Shadowlands did the exact same thing again.
Quite literally all the limitations and negatives of playing warcraft, without the narrative and thematic benefits that made Warcraft cool to begin with.
Now, I held on and kept playing through both of those expansions, because I in both cases assumed it was temporary, and that Warcraft woud be about two non-evil factions with lots of animosity between them, forced to work together. In Legion's case, I was almost right.
I finally got the cross-faction play I wanted, to have player characters actually live out the best part of Warcraft's themes… except now the Grand Commander of the Alliance was invited to the wedding of the First Arcanist of Suramar, and had a nice chat with the Queen of all trolls in a Horde Capital city.
The narrative framing that made Faction Crossplay interesting is entirely gone.
The Waking Shore intro was a nasty wake-up call for me.
As for cinematics, I prefer big sweaty men fighting demons to heartfelt conversations, but I do genuinely feel they both have a place in Warcraft. The best cinematics have a bit of both (Like the Battle for Thunder Pass), but I honestly have no issue with cinematics that are entirely Genn and Tess hugging in front of Liam's grave, as long as they both hate the orc they had to work with to get there.
It's not that the storytelling is inferior that made me quit, or that heartfelt cinematics are worse than action-packed ones. It's the simple fact that Warcraft lost its biggest core theme. There is no greater evil, if you're not seeing a lesser evil. The story is now a bland "one side is good, one side is bad" and Warcraft's storytelling has never been good enough to make that interesting on its own.
I will always say it, ever since people started to compare WoW to FF14 their stories changed being more soft and family friendly.
Keep them coming Edd! Can clearly see your passion in these videos! -Nightmyst
I would have honestly preferred if the game remained loyal to the base concept of the different races, and then focused on their own story.
The tauren, orcs and trolls were a part of the Horde, but that shouldn't mean they suddenly don't have their own societies and conflicts. Same on the Alliance side, they just threw in night elves and then let the conflict unfold between the two sides. This is so much simpler than actually going and writing a different story for each race, but I think that should have been the best option.
The Horde having to deal with their own problems, and the Alliance with theirs. Give something to the undead and night elves too, there is plenty of potential in Azeroth, lots of outside dangers that could have been used as antagonistic forces for these storylines. Conflicts between playable races wasn't a necessity, especially with how unbalanced world PvP and factions ended up being.
To me, Warcraft was more of the world and those who inhabited it, instead of the red vs. blue that gained a lot of focus. But even then, the faction conflict was more of a gameplay thing, as the two often allied even in the first 2 expansions, much more than not.
Even in TBC, why make Illidan the evil faction? Why couldn't have players chose to play on their side, instead of limiting every race to just two factions? This couldn't have been applied to everything, like Arthas and the Scourge for example, but I definetly think its an interesting idea worth thinking about.
It's like a TV show. If you're successful then suddenly you'll have to make 12 seasons instead of the originally planned 2. The writing will fall off and it'll be hard to keep the story going on in the same way without repeating itself forever.
I think the game is in a tough spot lore wise.
Blizzard has learned nothing from Star Wars
Lukewarm take: Aspects were always vague, boring concept
The problem with sanitization is just that.
Sanitization is boring. People dont play games to be bored.
If you don't like the direction of the game you play anymore then stop playing and stop trying to ruin it for everyone else that still loves it and doesn't take it as seriously as you and doesn't make it their entire life … ffs, I cannot get my head around people choosing to whinge and complain about a GAME !! get over it and find something else to do PLEASE.
I roll my eyes every time some knuckle draggers talks about there not being "war" in Warcraft. Yea, we didn't "war" with the Lich King. We didn't "war" with the Twilight Hammer and Dragonflight. We definitely didn't "war" with Garrosh and his True Horde. Most certainly not the Iron Horde or the Legion. The Fourth "War" never happened, of course. So forth and so on ad nauseum. Just admit you want Orcs vs Humans and nothing else, then move on with your dull little lives. 😂