World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[J1M]

There is a rumor that the Dragonflight writing lead(s) (team?!) are gone. I'm hoping this means Christie Golden too, not just Steve Danuser.

Whaat? Christie Golden is part of the official Blizzard lore team?!

Senior Writer?! Are you kidding me.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Fired back in January.

Val the Moofia Boss
Frank Capicoli
Late Bloomer

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Saw the news earlier today on the MMO Champion forums.

I enjoyed reading her Warcraft novels. She and Knaak did most of the good ones. Even in later years, Warcraft novels all became expansion bridge stuff where the writer comissioned by Blizzard was forced to bend over backwards to try to connect the dots from A to B as Blizzard's devs made up the story as they went along ("Garrosh breaks out of jail and goes 30 years back in time and rallies the old Horde to invade present day Azeroth!"), with Golden doing the best she can with what she was saddled with. The microlevel writing was short and to the point with likeable characters and was able to maintain tension, keeping me turning the page in spite of the absurdity.

I remember in 2018 when it was announced that she was no longer just a contractor but was instead being hired by Blizzard and joining the writing team proper. Lots of people were excited and were hoping that the storytelling would improve, but we already knew from under Metzen's tenure that the writers - the people who care most about the lore - do not have full creative control over WoW's storytelling. Metzen didn't want Blood Elves in the Horde. It made no sense for Quel'thelas to abandon the Alliance they were apart of and join the Horde that had savaged their kingdom years before. But the Blizzard devs wanted to 1. raise the Horde player population by adding a conventional race to it, and 2. wanted to cater to the Asian market by adding a pretty race. Metzen did not want Death Knights to be playable, but was overulled because the devs thought that DKs were cool. After MoP, the devs brainstormed what they wanted the next expansion to be, and the ideas were predicated based off of how cool they thought it would be rather than any sensible story progression. The initial pitch for expansion #5 was that it would have been about Garrosh breaking out of jail and rallying fodder races like Troggs, Gnolls, Quillboar, etc into a Mongrel Horde and then waging war against the Horde and the Alliance, but then they were persuaded to do the time travelling old Horde invasion plot since that was cooler. If Metzen couldn't keep the franchise's storytelling on track, there is no hope anyone else could. He's not going to do it now either. Blizzard is always working two expansions ahead. The War Within would have entered production during Shadowlands, long before Metzen rejoined Blizzard. He might be able to improve the dialogue of individual scenes but the broad strokes of the story are probably already set in stone.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

There is a rumor that the Dragonflight writing lead(s) (team?!) are gone. I'm hoping this means Christie Golden too, not just Steve Danuser.

Whaat? Christie Golden is part of the official Blizzard lore team?!

Senior Writer?! Are you kidding me.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Fired back in January.

Val the Moofia Boss
Frank Capicoli
Late Bloomer

Who cares?

 

[Reever]

I enjoyed reading her Warcraft novels. She and Knaak did most of the good ones. Even in later years, Warcraft novels all became expansion bridge stuff where the writer comissioned by Blizzard was forced to bend over backwards to try to connect the dots from A to B as Blizzard's devs made up the story as they went along ("Garrosh breaks out of jail and goes 30 years back in time and rallies the old Horde to invade present day Azeroth!"), with Golden doing the best she can with what she was saddled with. The microlevel writing was short and to the point with likeable characters and was able to maintain tension, keeping me turning the page in spite of the absurdity.

Not sure if I agree with you. Especially not with Knaak who's famous for his horrible books and self-inserts (Rhonin). Christie's books are fine for what they are (average fantasy shlock carried by the franchise) but nothing more. I never felt like her writing was above that like I would her on the internet. She also has her own fascination with Jaina, Arthas which is shown in both BfA and Shadowlands

I don't know if Metzen is going to be the saviour of wow's lore (probably not) but it would be hard for him to top the levels of retardation found in BfA and SL. He seems to have a lot more respect for older cannon as opposed to the recent hires.

 

[J1M]

There is a rumor that the Dragonflight writing lead(s) (team?!) are gone. I'm hoping this means Christie Golden too, not just Steve Danuser.

Whaat? Christie Golden is part of the official Blizzard lore team?!

Senior Writer?! Are you kidding me.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Fired back in January.

Val the Moofia Boss
Frank Capicoli
Late Bloomer

Who cares?

You. Enough to react to my post about it in January. Which is why I tagged you as a courtesy now.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

There is a rumor that the Dragonflight writing lead(s) (team?!) are gone. I'm hoping this means Christie Golden too, not just Steve Danuser.

Whaat? Christie Golden is part of the official Blizzard lore team?!

Senior Writer?! Are you kidding me.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Fired back in January.

Val the Moofia Boss
Frank Capicoli
Late Bloomer

Who cares?

You. Enough to react to my post about it in January. Which is why I tagged you as a courtesy now.

Imagine thinking that was about some random bint being employed or not and not a reaction to somebody caring about the writing team of World of Warcraft in 2024.

 

[Late Bloomer]

There is a rumor that the Dragonflight writing lead(s) (team?!) are gone. I'm hoping this means Christie Golden too, not just Steve Danuser.

Whaat? Christie Golden is part of the official Blizzard lore team?!

Senior Writer?! Are you kidding me.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Fired back in January.

Thanks for the tag. I feel the damage her and Steve Danuser did to not only WoW storytelling, but the setting as a whole, is almost irreparable. That is not to say that the storytelling in WoW has ever been amazing, but I always appreciated the writing for quests as a sort of bro sitting at a table, thinking of fun, sometimes funny, things for the player to be doing. The building of the setting, the overarching theme to an expansion or large patch, was always intriguing to me and my friends and family who played. WoW is one of the few games I gave a shit about in regards to the lore.

For many years I played WoW on and off. The game went through a lot of changes, on all levels. One of the main reasons, on a laundry list of reasons, but one of the reasons high on the list of why I stopped having fun, can be attributed to those two freaks and their god awful storytelling. Dragging what was once an easy going, light hearted, sometimes serious, story and world, through the mud of their own sick, perverted, degenerate, feminist, self serving, and worst of all, boring storytelling. Azeroth might not recover, but it will be a better place without their stories.

 

[Minecrawler]

Even attempting to fix or recover anything isn't on the table. It would require someone with an active strong desire to revert and retcon a huge steaming pile of what they have produced over the years.
That someone certainly isn't Metzen. Nor his daughter.

This thread desperately needs "Faerin Lothar" from the War Within.

 

[Elttharion]

Even attempting to fix or recover anything isn't on the table. It would require someone with an active strong desire to revert and retcon a huge steaming pile of what they have produced over the years.
That someone certainly isn't Metzen. Nor his daughter.

This thread desperately needs "Faerin Lothar" from the War Within.

Female, black, disabled, half-elf (?). Let me guess: we will discover its actually a troon?

 

[Skinwalker]

I'm still waiting for an actual sequel to Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. Last time we saw this world, Arthas had merged with Nerzul to become the Lich King, Illidan was left mortally wounded after corrupting the Blood Elves into becoming servants of a demon lord, and the Orcs built a new civilization in the steppes of Kalimdor and had a spat or two with the human refugees of Lorderon. Oh, and the Night Elves had done their part in battling the Naga and went back home in peace.

Would be interesting to see how they continue this story in Warcraft IV.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Would be interesting to see how they continue this story in Warcraft IV.

Given the image posted above, it really wouldn't.

 

[Vyvian]

Even attempting to fix or recover anything isn't on the table. It would require someone with an active strong desire to revert and retcon a huge steaming pile of what they have produced over the years.
That someone certainly isn't Metzen. Nor his daughter.

This thread desperately needs "Faerin Lothar" from the War Within.

Well that image just shows me the rot is too deep at this point. She hits almost every check mark on their diversity chart.

 

[J1M]

Even attempting to fix or recover anything isn't on the table. It would require someone with an active strong desire to revert and retcon a huge steaming pile of what they have produced over the years.
That someone certainly isn't Metzen. Nor his daughter.

This thread desperately needs "Faerin Lothar" from the War Within.

Female, black, disabled, half-elf (?). Let me guess: we will discover its actually a troon?

They already did that in Shadowlands.

 

[Caim]

I'm still waiting for an actual sequel to Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. Last time we saw this world, Arthas had merged with Nerzul to become the Lich King, Illidan was left mortally wounded after corrupting the Blood Elves into becoming servants of a demon lord, and the Orcs built a new civilization in the steppes of Kalimdor and had a spat or two with the human refugees of Lorderon. Oh, and the Night Elves had done their part in battling the Naga and went back home in peace.

Would be interesting to see how they continue this story in Warcraft IV.

Warcraft IV would have four options for a story, each with its own problems:

- Retread the WoW story, which is just the same thing again, the good and loads of the bad
- Become its own thing but be decried as being a non-canon waste of time that tries to pull multiverse bullshit
- Be the timeskip between the current and the next expansion, which the WoW fans will hate because it's not in WoW and does things to characters they'd rather see in their own game
- Go back in time and tell the story of the e-girl who thotted so hard it nearly destroyed the world, which will end up inventing a whole lotta bullshit that damages future events

 

[Skinwalker]

- Ignore the entirety of WoW as worthless fan-fiction, start where W3 had left off, do a reasonable time skip in the intro that sets up a new status quo, then kickstart the main story with the return of Sargeras that throws all the factions into panic.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

To me, the core essence of Warcraft is 1. fantasy setting with 80s powermetal album cover aesthetic where 2. distinctive factions fight each other. That need not be about the Horde and the Alliance. WC3 ended the Horde vs Alliance conflict, and TFT was about the new factions of Night Elves vs Scourge vs Burning Legion. (Theramore was a bonus campaign). I think Warcraft as a franchise could move away from the Horde vs Alliance story and explore new factions fighting each other. I had hoped that the Shadowlands expansion would do this, with players being able to leave the Horde and Alliance behind and join four new factions, but the Covenants weren't at war with each other, and the Covenants were then forgotten two years later as the game went back to Horde and Alliance stuff. If a Warcraft 4 ever happens, I would like to see it go the TFT or Shadowlands route of being about new factions, rather than yet another continuation of the Horde and Alliance story. It could be set on Azeroth, or could go the Final Fantasy route of being set in a completely different universe but retaining the same two identifiable tents of the franchise.

 

[Minecrawler]

Female, black, disabled, half-elf (?). Let me guess: we will discover its actually a troon?

Who knows? But Anduin Lothar remained one of those still unmarred relics of old lore, so of course they had to go after him.
And his father by extension, because this will be "long lost sister" or something.

They will also dig up a lot of old dwarven lore for this one (Modgud and Black Iron stuff), so I guess not only humies should prepare to suffer.

 

[Abesolus]

What bothers me on top of all this pile of garbage. are the expansion cinematics and tone. really from TBC to Cata all the expac cinematics were about a villain we had to defeat. not we have fucking therapy and facing "muh past" not that the subject shouldnt be touched. but it should be in a subtle way. really, even tho i have -50 hope for this game. blizzard still manages to baffle me with their incompetence and pandering. the day this fucking company goes bankrupt im throwing a BBQ for every here.

 

[Vyvian]

What bothers me on top of all this pile of garbage. are the expansion cinematics and tone. really from TBC to Cata all the expac cinematics were about a villain we had to defeat. not we have fucking therapy and facing "muh past" not that the subject shouldnt be touched. but it should be in a subtle way. really, even tho i have -50 hope for this game. blizzard still manages to baffle me with their incompetence and pandering. the day this fucking company goes bankrupt im throwing a BBQ for every here.

They are trying to get the FFXIV story fan audience without having the chops to pull it off so it comes across as amateurish and cringe.
They should just focus on WoW's strengths which lie in gameplay. They aren't going to draw FFXIV fans to their game by focusing on some grand narrative above all else.

Edit: My big issue with Blizzard cinematics and storytelling is that they want all these big emotional moments but do absolutely nothing to make them feel earned. Like they saw a cool scene in another game or a movie and just copied it without understanding why it resonated with people in the first place.

 

[frajaq]

I've decided to actually play this MoP Remix, tossed my plan to play Wuthering Waves since I'm not interested in gacha games right now

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've decided to actually play this MoP Remix

What class/race?

 

[Late Bloomer]

What class/race?

1 more post to 1k

 

[frajaq]

I've decided to actually play this MoP Remix

What class/race?

DH nelf or Dark Iron Warrior, still deciding. I want to be able to at least tank if I'm unlucky getting DPS spots

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A little bit of artstyle clash in the new questline, going between a closeup shot of Khadgar's more realistic face to Alleria's cartoony face.

Also a little annoyed my Tauren got shrunk down in the cutscene.

 

[Talby]

The plot of WarCraft never really should have progressed past the MMO. Vanilla WoW itself was the "epilogue" to the previous games. All the big plots had largely been resolved and the important heroes had retired or settled into governance roles, their stories complete. There was the lingering threat of the Lich King and the Burning Legion, sure, but they were faraway trials for the heroes of tomorrow to deal with. The player characters themselves were just nobodies fighting over scraps, while the world settled into a dull state of decline. That tone is much better than the lolepic crap from the later expansions.

Since it did continue, though, there were two jumping off points for the expansions where it made sense to end it. The defeat of Arthas and the defeat of the Burning Legion. There was just nowhere to go after those, and anything that came afterwards would just be underwhelming - and it was.