The Missing 'World' In Warcraft
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- Have you ever felt like Modern WoW stories just feel kinda... off? Why was MoP's faction war well received while BfA was hated? While we're all farming bronze and collecting mounts, lets take a moment to figure out why that is.
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00:00 Intro
01:22 What's the issue?
02:25 What MoP Did Right
04:08 How BfA Compares
05:55 MoP Quests too!
08:21 And for BfA's quests?
09:29 On "Marvel-ifcation"
09:58 Why War Within is Different
11:50 Outro - เกม
I just got fatigued of the endless world ending calamities happening every patch. It never feels like the world matters when its constantly on the verge of ending, and gameplay wise is nothing but unchanging static layers that they dont want you in unless its the current ones.
But the world ending calamities were there since day 1 in WoW. Ragnaros is world ending. Nefarian was world ending if his schemes came to fruition. C'Thun was world ending. naxxramas and the scourge were world ending. You can't screech constantly that Vanilla was soooooo much better and then say this crap. There has always been world ending threats in this game and there will always be more.
@@blacksunshine9995 Indeed, there will always be conflict and of the highest possible kind if they escalate to such a level. I dare say for a good while, Dragonflight was in the beginning the closest thing to a world without conflict only for that conflict to rear its ugly head.
@BeyondDaX Dragonflight started off as Vanilla did. Just about exploring a new land and establishing research into areas of legend. Some conflicts here and there just like with any zone, but we came into that expansion as emissaries and adventurers just like the old days. No gearing up for war or amassing kill squads and hunting the enemy of the current patch. But conflict found us and it was actually barely continental on the scale of threats. The enemies we were facing weren't even much of a threat with their power, all things considered. Nobody was screaming that the primalists were going to take over zeroth. They had to figgt and scheme and plan every step they made and that isn't world ending in my opinion. That was a threat that we could have contained and beaten back if we were a united force but we still weren't. We didn't even have the dragons working together honestly. So this whole argument that people were sick of world ending threats should have been dropped after the Jailer was defeated. Dragonflight had no world ending threats, just threats in general that we fought as we adventured through the world.
@@blacksunshine9995 I never mentioned vanilla, I play retail not classic
@blacksunshine9995 also I started in pandaria and figured legion would be the ultimate final battle but was wrong, got fatigued of it and miss the game pre-level scaling. Really don't know where the vanilla accusations came from but if I made you angry I genuinely am really sorry
I really agree with the message of this video. I do miss when the leaders and NPCs were powerful leaders in the world, and not our buddies we hang with. Yeah, all the NPCs are still people and have feelings and day to day lives, but not everyone should just hang with the king. When you do it should feel special imo. Like it used to.
not sure how you got that out of this video...
I absolutely agree with this! I’ve been wanting more people to bring this point up
It started in Cataclysm but it really went downhill in Warlords of Draenor. It just felt patronizing how much the game is kissing the player's ass.
To be honest after all of our achievements.. Would that make sense? In fact kings should lick our boots.. For better or worse
@@alihorda no, especially since they stopped attributing our victories to other characters. But still don’t know how the op got to that point, as it was never mentioned in the video…
I am still sad that the fish and monkey didn't become playable races....
MoP is not universally beloved, some people hated the panda theme
It's the one weird expansion where at the time it wasn't beloved until after with Legion. With WoD a massive failure, and Legion a massive success, a lot of the streamers both big and small praised MoP to high heavens. Which then caused a "every 2nd expasnion was good after Wrath" mentality. So Cata - bad, MoP - good, WoD - bad, Legion - good. Also every streamer marked the Timeless Isles patch as the oatch where MoP becomes the greatest expansion.
It is proven untrue with BfA, SL being the two worst and Dflight being questionable at best.
Also note the reason most streamers probably cherished MoP is 9/10ths of the loudest streamers are Alliance. While not all Horde hated MoP, a lot didn't like to be villain batted so the Horde playerbase has a different tune when it comes to MoP, but are more silent on it since honestly if you say MoP was a bad expansion, you'll get stones thrown at you.
Doesn't stop be from saying MoP was unejoyable and a bad expansion.
@@BBTheSixth hmm I see, I appreciate your response and context. I never played MoP until remix recently however I still didn’t care for the theme/pandas. In my eyes it’s way too goofy even for WoW. I can’t speak too much on its game mechanics/end game and such but out of all the expansions it had the least visual appeal for me
I was one of them, but to be fair I left WoW in mid-late Cata because of how much that expansion changed the game. I came back in late Panda right when WoD was about to drop.
It's an appeal to the eastern market, nothing else.
Yeah, I was one of those who weren't a fan of MoP for several reasons - the new talent system being a big factor. However, it's definitely not one of the worst anymore!
I'm gonna be brutally honest here: the devs are not all to be blamed for the shift in WoW. Leveling used to be kind of a free-form, non-linear journey that was open to little adventures and exploring for adventuring's sake, but then many of us grew up and got busier lives, and many just wanted to get leveling moved the fuck away as soon as possible, so we could get shepherded to endgame and raiding as soon as possible. Install add-ons and use guides to not have to read or do "unnecessary" quests or areas, and just go for whatever makes the numbers the biggest. It's a long-term surefire way to kill joy, but it's hard to see in the moment when you're just chasing the next high.
"I don't think its a bad thing"
It absolutely is and I'll tell you why:
You don't matter. As in, your character. It is the personal stories of some other characters you get to experience. For a MMO, that's flat out bad storytelling.
You can go two routes with this:
- Old WoW
Politics and the world are the center stage. You can place your actions and characters in this context while experiencing a larger tale that happens to contain multiple characters in it.
- FF14
You are the main protagonist of the tale and every personal story beat you get to experience ties to your personal journey one way or another.
The modern WoW storytelling would have Emet-Selch's entire zone confrontation happen not to the player character, reflecting on every action that brought them there, but rather they would do to the scions, hell maybe just Thancred or something like that, and you get to watch and fight that character's memories - Not the ones from your character.
Don't beleive me? That's literally what just happened on the most recent Dragonflight MSQ with Alleria. Literally. Shadowy figure forces a deeply personal confrontation in attempt to control the protagonist to the conclusion they wish for them to take.
Same motivation, same character roles, different approach. One is shadowbringers, probably my favorite MMO story ever, the other was forgetable to me.
What you claim to be 'scars' from BfA and Shadowlands to me are still present. Dragonflight has the exact same problems. You get to experience the problems of other characters as a mute killing machine they activate to advance the plot sometimes.
I can appreciate those stories to a point but the utter disconnect I feel from it makes them worse.
Like, let's use the short stories they have been publishing for War Within. I like them just fine. I'm a passive reader of a story, I get to relate feelings and travel through the beats.
It works there. It does not work on a game like WoW. Flat out.
I happen to have the opposite opinion on the "you don't matter" bit.
The stories in an MMO were originally there only to put context on the large scale group content (hence that first M). Somewhere along the way we stumbled from "you're included" into a single player experience where you are THE main character, but there are literal millions of other people who would also then be the "main character" and that feels insincere to me.
I have no problem being a mute killing machine, but I wish we players weren't elevated with the title of "champion", implying a position of influence or even friendship with the people who call us that - I'd much rather be a forgettable hobo who needs 20 other hobos working together to even have a chance at punching these god-level enemies. Except, as things have shaped out, we end up doing that every Tuesday, and the way that we're inserted individualistically into the story doesn't leave room for the rest of the group so it can come across that those 20 other losers with you were just there to help YOU. If we, the player characters, were further removed from pivotal roles in the story I wouldn't even really mind the main characters in WoW taking all the glory, so long as it felt like they were actually there in the fight more than they do currently (or at all in many cases). Alternatively, there could just be NO glory because it's so deep underground and kept secret that the greater World didn't get a chance to learn the implications of the threat. However, with the way an entire city is going to be falling from the sky, I don't think it's going to be very secretive.
I understand the sentiment of "I was there for this and I was there for that and it's time I actually got some recognition around here" but when new players come in showered with unearned praise for deeds they didn't do, it only adds to the insincerity of the main characters acting like you're their ride-or-die only to send you on mail deliveries, and the insincerity of being implied to have the abilities to tackle dragons only to get sent to the spirit healer by some bugs right outside the city gates. An evergreen fix to this is to just let you be some idiot who's stumbled into some shit and now you live here, in the shit, until you help deal with the shit. I'll reiterate: you HELP deal with the shit.
If you're worried about that epic feeling you get when you kill a hard boss, I promise you it didn't feel good because the story implied all the terrible things that would happen if you hadn't. It felt good because you did it as a team. The story only gave you a reason to have been there in the first place. The acknowledgement of YOU doing it, Champion, was the slippery slope that got us to this point that I don't like much, but shifting the glory to the main characters, so long as it feels natural, could help me feel less weird about being so centric to the plot when all I really did was punch the stuff I was told to punch.
@@coraf9682 All that text you sent to me could've been avoided if you saw that I actually supported pretty much all you said by praising old WoW story much like the video said.
Except I must add, that you did matter in that world.
The stories you made where through your actions in a larger context as you describe it.
Modern WoW fails at both ends of the spectrum.
Also, your commentary seems completely ignorant of the praise I gave to that other game - FF14. Your character matter in that story, you are the protagonist of it, and with all the weight it entails. No one is showered praise on it without earning it - Heck I even praised Shadowbringers for bringing the hardships you experienced on said story. Somehow on your post, you twisted my denoncing Modern WoW narrative as a support to it, since that's something that happens there and I detest greatly.
@@AKImeru then thank me for extrapolating
Looks like you'd be better off playing a single player game or staying with FF14. As long as the story is as good as, for example, Legion, the majority of people will be happy with it.
The "world" of Warcraft was never about us, it always was bigger than the player character so I don't really understand why suddenly people are bitching about being "killing machines". But this is the essence of "old" WoW players, they're always angry about anything.
I really don't understand why you would assume that modern WoW (after WotLK) isn't about politics and the world at the center stage, it's been like that since forever.
I'm not saying the story is perfect but people have not been happy since WotLK for more often that not no good reasons. To me, the 2 biggest fuck ups were the ending cinematic of WoD and the whole Shadowland story and I think for a 20 years old MMO it's pretty damn good.
I want less world/universe ending threats and more down to earth/Azeroth faction conflicts, to be a soldier or citizen in my chosen faction as a small part of something larger and not some demigod and to be immersed in a fantastic world I and many players call "home" On another note unrelated with the technology they have been working on to develope the underground systems of war within how long will it be before we can fly to each continent without portals?...making portals and in turn makes more sought-after
Its missing the war too lmao. Its just Of Craft at this point.
Let's see we were at war with the illidan's forces, the lich king and the undead, the twilights hammer and Deathwing in Cata, the primalists in dragonflight, etc etc. What war have we NOT been in? I get you (and many others) mean faction war but that isn't the only type of war there is. Just my opinion.
@@Boxkar24 when people whine about the lack of war, they mean stupid hamfisted faction conflict that limp wristedly gets "resolved" with one side or the other making a weak sauce declaration of ending the other if they do it again... then the cycle continues. Kinda like a weak parent who threatens to spank a child but doesnt own a belt.
MoP is my favorite expansion, and I LOVE every single short story that expands every single faction of the continent
MoP was the last time I felt like a part of a faction rather than the "Champion" who does all the work while all the other memebers in the story cower and beg for my help. When Classic launched in 2019 it really gave me the contrast between Retail at the time and where the game started. They need to bring Factions back and step away from the whole "save us! We're useless!" storytelling.
So we're going to act like the ending of warcraft 3 wasn't exactly that? Or how about when the factions put their differences aside to kill C'thun or defeat Kelthuzard in classic? Or the myriad times we had to come together throughout the games entire history when there's a greater threat that will take us all out. We've been going around the same merry-go-round since this game launched.
the thing is, the whole 'save us, we're useless' has been baked into the core since 2004. its just these days people are more tuned into how the story goes and finally realizing, Blizzard has always been shit at storytelling but the writers just got worse over time.
This channel is such a breath of fresh air. Instead of crying about wows problems and saying that its dead and hasnt been good since wotlk you discuss the problems in a constructive way and show that theres still some sense to blizzards storytelling and actions overall.
Wow, I've only JUST discovered this channel and I already feel a more deep personal connection to their discussions about things relating to WoW.
This video more or less described my feelings about this game's story perfectly, even if I fully didn't know it myself. Thanks for showing up on my recommended dude. Here, have a like and sub. :)
Welcome to the channel!
It was all down hill after Elwynn forest / Westfall, with a brief reprive in Wrath.
“Hope is like the sun behind a stormy sky.
Ever in the heart, but veiled to the eye.” - Chi Ji
You're a great writer bro. I so often find myself watching your videos just to see the wording you use or the way you make your case. Very well written blizzard could learn a lot from you.
What I also like in this video is you being able to recognize that even if story in BfA didn't work as full expansion story or in wider scheme of things, it had brilliant moment, such as Kul'Tiras arc and Jaina's role in it.
Not all characrers got ruined or turned into bland villains, like they did to Sylvanas(which is sad, cause she used to be great character).
Thank you! This is a subject that has been on my mind for years! I’ve been hoping more people would talk about it. With that said, I love the way you wrapped this up. I am absolutely stoked for the world soul saga
Glad to see there's still some folks out the who understands the big impact worldbuilding has in the overall health of a game like WoW.
To be fair you're right but something you didn't address but also adds to the problem you mention is the heavy self insert of the devs' fanfics within the story. Dragonflight is plagued with this kind of stories, mostly with a very heavy ideological message born of the problems the US currently has and calls "cultural war", another very important point is how all this affects the relationship players not natives to the US have with the game.
Another great video, thank you Six and the other editors involved 🧡
Great video as usual! I see you must be enjoying the MoP Remix to get such a good retrospective!
its kinda hard to explain. i started getting back into wow like half an year ago with wotkl Classic (today is the end of June 2024). i then continued playing into Cata Classic and even tho it was still fun (not as much as wotkl, but still fun) i just wanted to give retail an try (Current expansion is Dragonflight, if anyone sees this in the future). and to my suprise i had an blast... for around 5 days. i´d say the positives are the transmogs and how transmogging works, you really can look like you wanna look. like playing an shirtless berserker without actually not wearing anything on your chest wich would obviously make you really weak from the missing statts, another huge improvement are all the newer animations, different attacks really look different and awsome instead of having the same 2 or 3 hitting animations and i love the way all the professions work. Also, even tho you get absolutely handheld while questing, the classes have a lot more buttons to press and mechanics to look for, so i wouldnt even say it got dumped down, quite the opposite, wich is a plus. But in some kind of way after like 5 days of playing i somehow felt some hard to explain emptiness... even tho i joined a guild and hang around with a few cool people on their discord. this game did not feel like world of warcraft. it was all there but it fellt like playing an singleplayer game with mmo quests and thats just simply not what i am looking for. i am now back into Cata Classic and even tho it looks and feels old. (cause it is lmao) i am having so much fun right now. this is the wow i wanna play, i wouldnt even mind if classic goes to pandaria, cause i am one of the few people that actually liked that addon when it released back in the day but i guess i am gonna stop if they decide to roll dreanor around. cause that is when it truly went downhill for me, even tho legion was really good, story wise.
tl;dr: I only bring up FFXIV in that last post because it's pretty clear what Dragonflight was inspired by and was trying to build off of as a direct competitor. Except it never really fostered the casuals that did stick around for more complex and nuanced stories. So what you get in the end is just Marvel movies but in MMO format.
the thing is, XIV never goes this hard into the cheeseball "power of friendship" trope nor does it rip off Avengers. only XIV haters claim otherwise, simply to absolve Blizzard of wrong doing in the story department. Even though people point at endwalker but that end boss moment was earned, through 10 years of cumulative storytelling to build up to it. They earned it while Blizzard just drops you into Endgame and expects a standing ovation as the credits roll.
Currently experiencing MoP in the Remix Event. Such a good story - it is heartwarming, the characters are fun and we see so many diverse communities of Pandaria. And what is the best, we hang a lot with ordinary folk of the realm, seeing how they live, but still the stories are really well crafted. And the entire realm of Pandaria is just stunning.
And when the stakes are higher, you feel it - it's not that bland, all the time world-ending sh1te. And the smaller quest chains are so narratively good too! Learning about Pandaria, seeing this cute little banter between characters we meet - it's so organic. I forget about the whole bronze thing and end-game mechanics, I just play it for the vibes and story. xd
Its great what a mighty Pirate like Guybrush speaks for World of Warcraft :3
Best WOW content creator
You really can feel presence in all the dialogue of MoP!! Looking at the SoO cinematic was really good as an example!
This is why I only play Era and HC.
Im really happy someone bigger is saying this. Im so tired of having whole world but still hanging out with the same cast and listen about their personal struggles. There is place for that too but im more interested experiencing Barrens for example rather than Thralls adventures in Barrens. I want to be an adventurer who is part of this world and not just dude watching main cast living in it
Thanks for shining that beacon of hope at the end of war within since I am really interested in anduin in particular and how his story will shape up and I do hope with midnight being all about uniting the elven tribes if they are going to make the elven leaders these larger than life figures again, it would be amazing to see that.
I miss the world feeling alive :( they should really make world a thing again feels like its just a lobby for your raid m+ or pvp instances
Bro.. it's not just the world thats missing in WoW, it's also the Warcraft. Its literaly just "of"
honestly this video was kind of refreshing because any time MoP gets brought up its mostly people shitting on it
Great vid as always Six! -Helbrook
*Boops the Heldork for being a good woofer and runs away*
SUCH A UNDERRATED CREATOR!
I always compared the Horde to the Klingons in Star Trek. Territorial race, brave but yet everything they do is with honor. Same with the Federation in Star Trek. It took a long time for them to be friends, But they eventually got there. I think the problem is now we need a new foe. Something new we can sink our teeth into. Lately it's been "Same shit, Different EXP." The Monk class looked to start that way as it could had been a new foe (PVP wise.) But it became just another race to play and it was up to you to decide if you was Horde or Alliance.
This is a great analysis. Nice work.
It comes down to scale and perspective. In MoP, the player character was just a soldier. An extraordinary soldier, sure, but still just part of the rank and file. So when they witnessed epic points in the story it felt like a once in a lifetime moment.
From BfA onward, the player character has been closer to a superhero. They talk to world leaders and do history altering stuff all the time so the moments that are supposed to be epic end up feeling pretty mundane.
Add to that all the navel gazing by characters who are supposed to feel larger than life (Jaina, Anduin, Thrall, etc.) and the sense of global scale just doesn't come through like it should.
I know I'm going to be Pumped for what's to come!!
I think you’re putting way more emphasis on the impact of cutscenes and things like that. So many players just don’t care about than stuff, but things like the Azerite grind in BfA affected everyone. I found so much of the story and aesthetics of BFA to be banger, but I can see why people hated it at the time. It was a major grind that didn’t feel rewarding.
idk that cinimatic is FN awesome though the shadow pan one is gasrosh being garrosh who at this time already had his whole team basicly hate him from day one.
I really want WoW to win me back over, DF felt like friendship bracelet expansion with soft threats
I'd take a Legion, MoP or even WoD style expansion again pls, ty haha xD
DF got a softball threat because people complained about true world ending threats being the norm, so they tossed you a couple saturday morning cartoon villains and people still complain.
Going to drop this I played wow from late Vanila to early Cata (where I quit).
and as RP player... let me put it like this my guild in Burning Crusade did the Ilidian raid and when it come to who defeated Ilidian and all that the agreement our server had was.
that there was no Player no Guild that defeted Ilidian... any guild that completed the Raid was part of the Final Push into the arena they got see see Ilidian but the one to defeat Ilidian was a NPC.
Our guild at that time had not completed the raid and the Lore for us was that to put it like this any guild that tried to do the Raid (was part of the Assult on the main gate/entrence).
if you failed you manage to get into the raid but then you would get slowed down maybe you found your party whit to many wounded/casulties to continue so you said we will hold This room or this location.
while the other continues forward.
thoes that manadge to get to the Ilidian Fight but not finnish it got halted outside the arena Holding the Reinforcement back and so on.
and that is something I think later wow expansion failed whit was the players are not important we are adventures and explorers we are freelancers we are not heroes we are not The Champions.
Nothing will ever be perfect though
This was such a good video! I am a bit wary of TWW, but I hope it kicks ass :)
We need an expansion that legitimately knocks the players down a peg. Something that takes us off that throne we're on. Considering what's been hinted at so far about the next three expansions, I'm hoping this is it.
In vanilla the major lore chars were practically cameos more than anything else. I always preferred that, though I did find the first several expansions that unreasonable.
Im not excited until there's something definitive to hold onto.
But lessons? Just well rounded considerations for their stories. Wow writing loves impact dialogue where characters spit the memorable line. Their flaws are in how much they bend or distort casts and factions to get there. They tend to avoid the legwork of setting up the cascade of events that can take them to an otherwise good moment.
Well made ❤
In my opinion, the choices and stakes mattered in Pandaria as well as Legion. We felt invested in pushing the story. In BfA we were just rehashing old grudges that seem kind of moot. There can only be so much hatred for the other t-shirt wearers.
It became old, really quickly. That being said, I enjoyed the story, but wasn't too hyped for future expansions.
As always, love your videos Six and hope you get bigger than Asmongold and Bellular.
One of the biggest complaints that we hear nowadays about the story in WoW is that players want to go back to simple down-to-earth conflicts and less world saving. The kind of storytelling that Blizzard started telling in recent expansions, that involves character building and personal stories, would ironically work better in the smaller plots of early expansions than in the recent ones.
To clarify, Blizzard went from telling a world-driven game plot with a character-driven player story, to a character- driven game plot with a world-driven player story. If that makes sense.
This is why I prefer Classic WoW. I don't *want* world events to revolve around my toon -- I don't want them to be buddy-buddy with the faction leaders, or to see into their personal lives. I don't mind hearing things here and there in quests and cutscenes, but ultimately, my toon is a grunt, off in the world on their *own* adventure, which *occasionally* crosses paths with the Big Events. I never wanted to be "Speaker of the Horde" like in BFA, because with that kind of storytelling, it's emersion-breaking in an MMO when you know that every other player character is also "the Hero". It cheapens the title, the interactions, and the story. Meanwhile, nobody else is the Orc Hunter with the backstory *I* came up with for her.
The way books are written is a completely different kind of storytelling than an interactive game, especially one with multiple, customizable player characters. I feel like Blizzard has lost that realization.
Very good analysis. I mostly agree. There’s a bit more to dig into, however.
From what I’ve seen of Beta, they’re close to hitting the nail in the head with the MSQ in TWW having both the Alliance and Horde land into Khaz Algar in the end. This factor is one present in BFA and it’s one of the main appealing features it has: it pushes the various races stories forward. That gives enough push to the worldbuilding so it’s enjoyable. This aspect wasn’t really brought up in your video, but I consider it very important and I think both MoP and BFA succeeded in this front (while SL and DF really dismissed the whole idea).
Alright already I subbed! Sheessshhh...
Welcome aboard :)
The missing "World" and "Warcraft"
How you describe BfA is how MoP felt at the time when MoP was alive. I think MoP only feels better in hindsight because mostly everything after was a trainwreck. MoP started to deteriorate the factions, particularly in that they had a solid moral gray to them prior to MoP. Garrosh going from a dopey, but well meaning warchief in Cata then flippping on his head in MoP felt so disjointed at the time. It also was paced very poorly, where MoP starts out along similar lines of both Horde and Alliance doing what they felt best for their faction, but if you were Horde every patch really escalated Garrosh into being a mustache twisting villain with little build up. I've heard you had to read books to see it better, but from a strictly gameplay experience it was jarring. Ironically while everything in BfA generally stunk, especially the main story quest for painfully similar reasons as MoP, I feel like BfA's individual zone questing doesn't get a lot of attention for being interesting; Zandalar, Nazmir, the Blood Trolls, Dying Loa, and anything with Bwomsamdi was very memorable and all served as a sort of escape from the awful MSQ. The Alliance zones had some neat ideas too with the Old God cults and Drust, but neither was capitalized on. Regardless, the leaders should feel like a representation of their faction/race, and that's not really a thing that happens anymore. Assuming that because there's a common enemy to fight is going to make these characters interesting is a stretch, and to think that will mirror upon our characters is a further stretch unless they plan on reviving some mild faction drama and utilizing some lesser known characters taking some attention away from big names and focusing it into smaller zone lore.
i want remix but burning crusade mop remix was just blizz trying to breath life into a shit xpack
Warcraft is not really a world, Due to Technical limitations at the time. Its separate instances linked together by portals & loading screens. The world you speak of is a few instances Currently called 'Cataclysm'. They make a new expansion, which is a set of new Instances (large and small) and link that to the old expansions using Cataclysm expansion as the HUB. In my opinion the Cataclysm Instances Like Kalindor and Eastern Kingdoms should be updated per expansion to Reflect passing time and new threats instead of Slapping on new ones
BFA had a few big fails, warfronts , Islands that could have been great but werent. The only fail they had though that made me think id never play again was Corrupted Mythic gear being mandatory for pvp. Shadowlands fixed this but came with its own problems (forced torghast pve content, gear levels ranked locked behind rating) Bfa gameplay and pvp was amazing until the corrupted gear. I play wow for pvp, I also enjoyed BFA's story greatly though unpopular opinion?
lovely!
I wonder when it happend to be belowed expansion. I remeber haldf of my friends leaving wow during Cataclysm, and then the ones who stayed all left in Pandaria, guilds were closing, or merging, cause lack of players. and whole year of Raiding SOO killed the rest. those who stayed keep complaining that Pandaria t doesnt fit WOW. But, well comparing to Dreanor, it was much better....
i loved this, glad youtube said to watch it =)
You get that grandiose feeling even with the characters you hang out with like young Anduin and Loremaster Cho. We need this writing back in WOW but the alpha doesn’t look very promising in that regard unfortunately. Tho ngl despite everything i enjoyed df and im still looking forward to the world soul saga.
I have been saying this to my grandma who has played with me since vanilla the only bit i disagree is that bfa does have that moment exactly like mop where you realise what your doing but its sadly only on the horde burning Teldrassil broke my trust with my the faction id called home for years as a Tauren druid main that shit was unacceptable and ive been saying for years we need a wrath of the wilds or some shit because the druids/world wouldnt take this shit this long also all the burning crusade content needs an update in general with the new sylvanus lore fucking let us fly at Silvermoon Blizzard
dude you are on point with your facs
I think another big thing is the characters themselves. When Varian spoke it carried weight and I listened and respected everything he said. I can’t stand Manduin and his sniveling uncertainty in everything he does. 0 respect so I could care less what happens to him. Man I miss Varian. Almost embarrassing to be an Alliance main.
Varian is the best Character in WoW next to Illidan and Arthas. And to this point he is LEGENDARY status. Died like a GIGA CHAD!!! I still remember the evening we landed on the Broken Shore. It was raining here that day, and I knew I would play for at least 3 hours. First hour, the incident happened and I was left speechless, full of emotions. Man….what a gaming session that was. Hail King Wrynn! (I still go to his tomb in SW and chill out)
@@roronoa92 I actually go to his tomb and pay my respects too. It’s literally the only RP I do or will ever do in the game.
I feel like a lot of these problems were already solved a long time ago in FFXIV, yet WoW never tried to learn from it until recently.
First is they need to stop with these world ending events happening one after another, they need their stories to take moments to breathe were conflict builds over time until it culminates in a big event like how WotLK and MoP did back in the day. FFXIV for example is never afraid of this, as the story just got out of a world ending event only to follow with an expansion about the main characters going on a "vacation" to a new continent and find the city of gold. WoW needs to go back to doing simpler adventures were the biggest concern might be something like a gang of pirates, and then over time that might get to be something bigger.
Second is the focus on character driven stories is not a bad approach, but they never exploit it the way it should. There is nothing wrong with following around these characters, but the problem lies in that they feel more like pawns in a chess board rather than companions or friends that you get to know more of. The contrast to FFXIV is the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and the Leaders of the Eorzean alliance, where even if they are all important you get to know them more and more as the story progresses, by fixing this problem you get to make people more interested in the politics of the game as well.
Third is the way the story gets presented, i'm not asking for cutscenes, but something needs to be made so the players know how to follow the story of the game in a more interesting way. How to see the key elements in the story the devs want to tell, without the need for youtube videos.
nar we only had mop coz hroll want to kill garage hell screen
It's hilarious when people complain about WoW being Marvel-like.
Yeah, Metzen and the others LOVED Marvel and stole entire meta plotlines from the comics they loved. Someone best described Warcraft as "The comics Gimli and Legolas would read".
You *want* Warcraft to be like Marvel!
Anyway, great video.
Political is such an important things to this world and also any other world .
Idk why it getting weaker and weaker .
u cant escape political , cause we all live with it .
In my PoV it feels like you as a player get more detached from the game and lore the more it goes on.
I have always loved the lore in wc3/wow but I have never read the books.
And up to bfa it have been somewhat solid, in shadowlands / dragonflight I have felt like wtf is even going on and why is the game "shit".
I'm not talking about game mechanics but just how it is.
In dragonflight you see all these massive dragons that do really cool stuff.
But they can't talk / befriend a couple of groups on their own.. Like wtf blizz, you need this random ass adventurer to do that for them?
Or just how you go from a nobody to "champion, hero, adventurer or whatever they call you", then all of a sudden you are called a student? Like what???
I had a friend make a character in dragonflight with no prior knowledge of the pasts expansions, he loved the game but he were so confused to all the amazing titles they were shouting at him.
Its one thing to have that for characters that have been thru it all since vanilla, but it can be npcs that you've never seen shouting champion towards you.
From a gamedevelopers perspective I understand that it is to make things easier to just give us a "insert whatever title here" and call it good. But it all gets so bland and pointless after a while.
I just want the upcomming expansions to "slow down", go back to its roots and make you the player more integrated again, or atleast dont make the main characters so lifeless.
nice transmog
I agree. BfA had some great story elements, but it felt like the build-up just wasn't as powerful. Not there as much as it should have been. Shadowlands, imo, was a complete travesty of an expansion that gave us a few tiny slivers of story building for TWW. Dragonflight has been really good at just being a palate cleanser, as someone else said in the comments. This expansion has given us major changes in, not just world story, but mechanics of the game. This has been Blizzard's HAVE ALL THE NEW THINGS expansion. Customization updates, new ways to get collectables, transmog revamps, a new way to fly, a shift in how we earn things, and even bringing back more fluid and dynamic talent trees. WoW is an ever-evolving game, with a constantly shifting player base. The children and even some grandchildren of the original players are playing now. WoW has grown up with them, and just like how a person changes as they grow, so does this game. Its what keeps it relevant and attractive to new players and old. I play ESO too, and it can't hold my attention like WoW has since I started playing 14 years ago. Six, this was a great video! You're on your way to being a big player in the WoW video world, and I can't wait to watch your meteoric rise! - Elianna
FFXIV sort of did this better where characters that monologued at you and were at your level had actual character arcs that spanned the entire expansion. With WoW it always felt like they were doing half-measures where characters like Thrall or Alexstrasza have to be dumbed down because the vast majority of WoW players don't care about the story. So you have this self-defeating cycle of slop that only gets worse the more you add onto it because there's only so many times the world can end and the power of friendship, unity, honor, or whatever must be used to stop it. Meanwhile, characters in FFXIV are constantly evolving, constantly growing with the player, and there's always a compelling tragic hero archetype to rally around on. It's because very early on FFXIV was remade for a community that expects good storytelling comparable to a mainline Final Fantasy game. For as many gripes as people have about the unskippable main story quest content, it does a far better job at grounding the player in the setting. You could argue that in-time every expansion after MoP worked to undermine the exact cutscenes you described because the Horde & Alliance go to war or maintain peace not because of in-game politics, but because the writers needed them to at that point to contextualize the next expansion. It's entirely meaningless in the grander scope of things by now.
Mop was not super loved by everyone. Allot of people quit and the forums were a mees...
the people who gave it a chance loved it, the people who quit and hated it couldnt see past "dur pandas". Though over the years some of them finally opened their eyes and enjoyed the experience, once they got past their hatred and prejudice.
@@Shiirow sure man, but that can be said about any expansion. The people that play an expansion are also the people that like or even love it.
Don't forget that the people that didn't like it will quit.And quit they did. In droves.
First comment
This is the first video I've seen from you, but I couldn't agree more with you! Good job of putting it to words!
I really dislike mop because it just doesn't feel like it belongs to Azeroth
I mean, you're missing the WAR part too, the faction war has been gone for too long, holding hands is why a lot of us quit to begin with.
faction conflict in a game where the playerbase is divided is the worst type of storytelling. its always weak and limpwristed with the ending always a stalemate because you cant have one faction triumph over the other in any meaningful way. its like a 20 year cold war, and they gets annoyingly boring very quickly. I wish people like you will finally wake up and smell the sour coffee that is faction war.
The reason it was so bad, was MoP was blizzards way of capitalizing on the Kung Fu Panda movie. It was strictly a cash grab to get the little kiddos to spend mommy's and daddy's $15/month so they can pretend to be Po. They didn't even remotely care about the story. Just the money. Thanks, Activision! 👍
This idiot . . .
I very much disagree with you on BFA point.
That whole cutscene was great.
There is time for political intrigued dialogue and there is time for personal story telling
BfA approached wasn't bad.
Take legion cinematic. The entire monologue was about culmination of Varian characters and how he grow as a person. There is no grander ideas or political messages but people loved it anyway.
Saurfang story is like that and honestly one of the few good thing about BFA.
Sylvanas is, like, the hottest.. like, zombie I've ever seen. Or undead. I think she's undead. Wtf is a banshee?
... anyway, she's pretty hot for an Irish, elven, like, ghost chick.
Gotta be the naysayer here, I'm afraid. I love me some MoP. But I _also_ loved BfA, and, just like MoP, the general consensus does seem to be coming around. If you weren't moved, motivated and gripped, by the burning of Teldrassil, Old Soldier, the choices between loyalist and turncoat on the Horde side, the coming together under one banner, the all new but compelling politics of Zandalar, by Saurfang's Mok Gorah, then I'm not sure you have a soul. (No hate, just sayin' I disagree.) The only things wrong with BfA were mechanics shenanigans, (can we please have an end to borrowed power, Blizz? Seriously,) and a bit of a disconnect between the 4th war stuff and the Void stuff. If you're a Sylvanas Stan, then you might also be salty as hell that her character was underserved, at best, and I won't argue the point. (I honestly think she was a far more compelling character in BfA than in Shadowlands, but that's a whole other kettle of stank.) If you want to see how to create a terrible expansion, look to Shadowlands. BfA arguably had a whole lot more going for it than that, or, looking back, than WoD. Imho, folks hate on BfA because they're salty about Sylvanas, or about mechanics, not because it was a bad expansion.
How many WoW tokens and store mounts have you bought in your time playing WoW?
I still hate it … did you ever grind rep just to grind some more rep .. and than go to an Island just to kill frogs … yeah no
a very simplistic and stupid way to describe the expansion, sounds like you never gave it a chance and are still riding "I hatez dur pandas" train. Need to get off before the train finally derails and your the last passenger.
I played WoW for YEARS, from 2004 to probably I dunno, 2012 and I can tell you exactly what happened... The great story that was Warcraft 3 ended with the fall of the Lich King. From this point on the "writers" stopped thinking up new villains and started thinking up reasons for existing characters to become villains... The story was progressing towards a Horde/Alliance reconciliation, peace... if not for its own sake than for the sake of battling a greater threat, and of course that threat was the Burning Legion. It was here that so many stories went off the rails.. WTF happened to Thrall, leaving the Horde, stepping down as Warchief, not ending up with Jaina... Turning Garrosh into a Villain, Killing Blaine Bloodhoof... My god so many FUCKING TERRIBLE decisions... The story of this game just went to shit, went completely to shit... Stuff that was clearly set up in the story was just thrown in trash and the story became trash... The original writers who penned the story that everyone was invested in stepped down and the kids who took over had no respect for any of it burned it all to the ground and wrote their own stuff... and surprise surprise the stuff they came up with was dogshit... THAT IS WHAT DOOMED WORLD OF WARCRAFT.
I truly liked your video but I disagree with the premise of MOP being better than BFA.
Taran Zhu didn't get stabbed. He caught the blunt end of Gorehowl to the gut.
There's plenty of world in Warcraft. You just have to look for it. MoP was great, BFA was kinda sold on a lie
Nobody tell him that you can open the world map, the world is there!
Now go out and send this to Blizzard HQ.
MoP's theme put me off, and it was the expansion in which I quit the game (until Classic's release, I love Era now!). The panda stuff and basically a romanticized miniature China felt like a parody of the game and world I loved. The pandaren started out as an April's fool joke, and it should have stayed that way.
It's weird hearing you conclude on an optmistic note citing BfA and Shadowlands as narrative-evolving scars leading into War Within, but COMPLETELY avoid mentioning Dragonflight 😆it's not a positive upwards trend on in-game storytelling if you don't omit the roll downhill that was the entirety of the last expansion, the one that's actually leading into War Within.
sidenote, still enjoyed the video 🙂
To be fair, Dragonflight is a palette cleanser of a story
@@jetillian it has all the structural problems as BfA and Shadowlands. Its just not complete shit writing atop of it as a bonus.
@@AKImeru I don't disagree with you, but it is a lighter story by comparison to everything else.
@@jetillian as I implied I thought it was a continuous downgrade over previous expansions, setting a pessimistic trend IMO
Garrosh was right.
Been playing since day one, not had this much fun since the Lich king xpac.
we need a Sixcamera cameo
Garrosh still's one of my favourite "villains" to this day
The fact you put that in quotes tells us the value of this
Yeah, you're wrong. Shadowlands had the best story.
Remember when WoW didn't have main characters?
No. They day you found a necklace for some old farmer, you were a main character of Elwynn. When you cleared out Stockades, you were a main character in SW. The day you killed Rag, you were a main character of Azeroth. Sorry, but WoW is still WoW, for better or worse.
@@keithb6344 people still cling to this fantasy of what they believe what vanilla wow was. thats why era servers still exist.
I thought the faction war was stupid then and now, so I am not with some of you on that point anyways. "Conflict ball" wars are always dumb. I thought BFA handles characters better.
I still don't consider MoP as "peak" just "sorta interesting" myself. Hard for me to like any war expansion when I find the premise silly since we will have a real issue to deal with soon again
Good video. Good content.
Also, Pandas are dumb.
👍
I liked BFA. I remember in Vanilla WoW felt more like a basic fantasy game and less like the space, astral, tech high fantasy that it is now. BFA felt like a great dose of that old basic fantasy. Ever notice the cinematics and cutscenes are less grandiose / flamboyant and more reasonably fantasy than gameplay is? Many of the armor models are "less shoulder" for example.