Why WoW's Writing is So Bad

dvspress.com/why-world-of-war...
Join the list and get a free book! dvspress.com/list
www.bitchute.com/channel/R98D...
www.subscribestar.com/davidvs...
Read my books- dvspress.com
davidvstewart.com
zulonline.com
www.amazon.com/author/davidvandykestewart
teespring.com/stores/david-v-...

[@Sousabird]

"It's partly because I was forcing myself to pay attention to the quest text." I appreciate your dedication, but self harm isn't the answer.

[@whisped8145]

It is called Martyrdom.

[@zero_wing_]

inshallah

[@Mueslinator]

I remember what originally drew me to stay with WoW after the initial month, way back in early 2004: The devs had understood that the world was the main character, and I really wanted to see it all. The problems started (for me) as early as Burning Crusade when world building was sacrificed on the altar of drama. After that, it got progressively worse - and why care about anything in the story when you know it's not going to have consequences, or lead to something, or is left by the wayside anyway? At that point, the draw of the game then becomes player power - and that as well is idiotic to chase: Every major patch will level the field again, only to have you continue on the hamster wheel. The entire game is a ever-churning Sisyphean Task.

[@theoutlander1411]

I think a lot of people have nostalgia for Vanilla WOW because you can play the entire levelling experience 1-60 as a game unto itself and have a lot of fun mixing and matching the various weapons and armor you get along the way. Max level, or even the expansion max levels (like going from 60-70, 70-80) isn't that fun. Sure you can do things you couldn't do before (grind rep or gold for rewards, raiding, PVP Arena etc.) but it does feel more like a chore.

[@xelldincht4251]

Warhammer has the 4 Chaos gods who will always be around and will motivate characters to do their bidding. It seems like WoW on the other hand introduces constantly new, more dangerous super gods. I get the feeling you can't do that forever

[@crepooscul]

Yeah. And each is the puppet of the next one, somehow.

[@ExelArts]

They turned elunes into a goddess then turned her into a titan back to a goddess for now she's a titan again but on the Pantheon of life. The titans are all robots as all life is thanks (shadowlands) and the ones that created the titans are called "the first ones" this is all Steve denusers shit writing

[@lomborg4876]

The problem with Warcraft is that they killed off The Burning Legion. The Burning Legion is the core plot driver in Warcraft. When you look back in the lore, every issue could be traced back to them

[@mikfhan]

Pretty much - when Warcraft did not get the Warhammer fantasy license they made their own chaos demons with felreavers and succubi - now they are gone it's kinda like Game of Thrones when D&D stepped out of the GRRM writing laid out for them. Damned if you do & damned if you don't. Time to wipe the slate clean and start over once the next three expansions are done, they won't be enough to recover the world... of warcraft.

[@Chordus_Gaius]

WoW also cannibalized Warcraft RTS Series

[@DVSPress]

It's sad that we won't see another one!

[@Chordus_Gaius]

@@DVSPress yep. It is.😖

[@whisped8145]

@@DVSPress With how the writing went, I'd say that's for the better. SC2 proved that already. SC2 also proved that Blizzard had already forgotten what matters about visual design in RTS - I could not tell the terran humanoid units apart from the dark background, and much less the Zerg, especially on creep. The team-decals were too small and almost hidden. Yes, Zerg camouflaging against Creep makes sense, but... not when playing an RTS as the player playing them. WC3-Reforged that drove that lack of comprehension home. WC3 did everything right in that department, and Reforged did it so wrong it is unbelievable. Had Reforged come out originally, the game would have tanked. The first Golden Rule of RTS design is that every unit type must be instantly recognizable by it's mere shape. Then come details. Even Command & Conquer got this right with it's little 20-pixel infanty guys: The grenadier was immediately recognizable against the standard rifleman - in part due to his blue-grenade pixel standing out in stark contrast. So did the rocket launcher with his long grey pixeltube. With obnoxiously obvious team-colours Supreme Commander got this right too. But SC2 and Reforged? Pixel/texture/microdetail mush against the background. Blizzard is a dead Leviathan. It has died a long time ago, the legs, fins and bowels have simply not gotten the memo yet that the brain is dead and started decomposing years ago.

[@hachijospaniard5643]

@@whisped8145 No.

[@thehydra4007]

I didn't care for much of anything WoW after Wrath of The Lich King, until Legion ....and now I mostly haven't cared for anything WoW since

[@hotchowder]

Legion was dope, hardcore downhill since then.

[@Liam4Dead]

Honestly, the gap in quality between this and Pandaria is incredible. All the set up of brand new lore, races and characters has never been matched. Dragonflight falls in the same category as a new Island that we’re able to explore, with brand new lore, and while the gameplay is excellent, the story is flat. Nothing in Dragonflight compares the the plight of the Klaxi, the purge of Dalaran or the offensive or n the Thunder King. All of it integrated far better than the Dracythr or Primalists. It feels exceptionally flat.

[@NothingCoherent]

Dragonflight is the first version of WoW I didn't bother with. Dedicated player since vanilla release, way back when I was in high school. The gameplay is still enjoyable to me, but the hilariously bad writing and expansion themes have totally destroyed my interest in the franchise.

[@WarrenCBennett]

As a former wow player, this is sad to hear but unsurprising.

[@DVSPress]

Been this way for awhile, but now the cancer is definitely terminal.

[@pheonixshaman]

Blizzard itself truly died with the Lich King.

[@ayhamahmad2277]

​@@pheonixshamanit died with the legion the last great expansion

[@Merkdawgm16]

@@ayhamahmad2277true actually enjoyed legion. When guldan died wow died.

[@ayhamahmad2277]

@@Merkdawgm16 when sargaraes was defeated it was over with bobby gone know there and the new expansion blizzard may be back

[@TheCatWatches]

WoW peaked with Arthas’ story and Wrath of the Lich King. Runescape has better writing and aesthetic

[@hotchowder]

The depth of writing was turning Arthas into a fart. Shadowlands was a travesty. Dragonflight is great gameplay wise, the story is still uninspired and woke.

[@innocentsmith6091]

MMOs as a genre have basically committed suicide through refined, streamlined mechanics and gameplay loops. Quest markers are often blamed, but really they are just a small part of the problem. Even gear grinds are meaningless endeavors. Itemization has been refined down to a couple key stats for your class, and all of your loot is tailored toward you. And there's no point in optimizing beyond ilvl except in absolute endgame, because you're shoveling through so-called epic items too fast to even care. It's just one of many grinds to make numbers go up.

[@Cyberdemon1542]

I would argue that the decline started much much sooner, in Burning Crusade. That's when they started doing some very strange things to the lore and reducing important lore characters to raid bosses, even twice. As for NPCs being interchangable, a good example is Danath Trollbane, a very important lore character who has quest text that is interchangeable with any other NPC's. There is nothing unique about him in WoW. I think wow works best when it doesn't tamper with the narrative and just expands the lore. Vanilla had no story but it expanded the lore in very very interesting ways that make sense and don't feel forced. It is clear to me that they never had a clue how to marry the structure of the MMO with the narrative, especially when dealing with characters like Arthas, with whom they basically did nothing. The only time they did justice to a character was with Illidan in Legion. They fixed his portrayal in TBC wonderfully in legion. It really makes sense. Finally, the world itself is becoming too colorful for its own good. If you look at the graphics and how the world is built IN VANILLA, it felt strangely cartoony AND realistic at the same time. Look at places like Shadowfang for example. It perfectly captures the feel of the WC3 cinematics. If you look at that cinematic only, there is no way you could imagine a race like the Vulpera or Pandaren existing in WoW.

[@IndyDefense]

Gamon was the best, most unique NPC: He went from a weakling who was killed nonstop, then became a guy who just wanted to sit and drink his ale, but people still wouldn't live him alone, so he kicked everyone's ass that messed with him.

[@unruler]

Wc3 had pandaren and vanilla WoW had a reference to it in a form of quest "Chen's empty keg", so pandas were in lore even before WoW. No vulperas though.

[@imaran1303]

@@unruler The War of the Ancients books do mention a fox ancient that had been fighting there, honestly, Vulpera are fine with me, the REAL kick in the nards for me were Void Elves, here we have this corrupting and corrosive force that has brought low and made titans and dragons insane... but one pep-talk from a discount halloween decoration was enough to overcome the maddening whispers of the void, bringing us void elves? Fuck that. Heck, I don't even mind Dracthyr either. Because they at least have decent explanations for their existence. And with Vulpera, it makes sense why we never saw them before now, they live a secluded nomadic life in a desert, they aren't really creatures that tend to travel outside of their desert. I also liked the duality of them, they could be calm and opportunistic traders.... or absolutely vicious ankle-biters.

[@unruler]

@@imaran1303 I'm not really into the lore, so I judge from esthetics perspective. Like when they added blood elves to the horde, they have no place there, neither do undead, this dilutes the theme imo. Like when I go to Disney Land, I don't expect to find power rangers there. As to vulpera, they feel like cutie character from mobile game for children, or another association is furries. Warcraft universe derives from Warhammer: can you imagine cute characters there? It's much more brutal. Wow is pandering to casual and younger audience.

[@imaran1303]

@unruler For me, lore matters, as such, their appearance matters little to me, it is their story that matters and the Blood Elves fit perfectly into the Horde as another race that got fucked over by the Alliance, same with the Vulpera. Warcraft wasn't Warhammer, if it was, it would stop trying to paint the Horde as the villains and the Alliance as the good guys, we wouldn't be having this koombayah nonsense going on. There are some heavy fundamental problems in WoW, the Blood Elves and the Vulpera are not the problem here.

[@tamarans.ns.ii.4968]

Good points but another take on the subject might be that the writing is good enough for the majority of their player base so why bother and waste resources on anything better. Just like after screenwriters strike in Hollywood, the studios realized that most people will gobble up anything thrown at them so they just didn't care anymore about good writing. 😔 Lowest common denominator always gradually becomes standard. ☹️

[@DVSPress]

Yeah that's a good point. Replace to my point that fundamentally the players don't pay attention to the writing at all. It's a really doesn't matter does it?

[@j.r.mocksly5996]

That's a great point that I didn't even think about, that yeah you're right: we really saw a big departure in writing quality across the board in showbiz after that strike. It was almost like a test that was so successful that they pursued that angle of just making writing awful on screen, to where competently written scripts became exceptions rather than the norm. Reminds me of something I just learned today, the legal tender act of 1861 and the original "greenbacks." What happened was, these greenbacks were issued the first time to finance the civil war, but were garbage: unbacked paper, printed debt to scam people. But after the war was won the greenbacks stuck around and people got duped into viewing them as at-parity with gold, therefore it became our first and persistent paper money that stuck around until the federal reserve act of 1913 made out-of-control fiat money the new normal. And here we are: all through this one act to finance a war that had unintended (or perhaps intended) consequences.

[@whisped8145]

Well, they're now finally earning the rewards for that. Writing got so bad, and they ran out of asian-movies to badly copypaste and present as their own ideas, that people are tired and fed up. When writing went bad, that was one problem, but now that gap has been filled with the always same propaganda so much I'm calling it political fetishism. People don't like that. You look at the number of writers on a movie or TV-show now? You can just fire all those hacks and pay one competent guy instead for the same money, maybe even two. It's not a money-issue. No matter how good all the effects, all the props are, and there are some stunning works in that regard, there's real artists working in the background, the unsung heroes of movie-making, but when the writing is crap, all of that goes to waste.

[@DVSPress]

@@whisped8145 Writing is probably the cheapest part of any Hollywood production. I remember looking at writing room salaries when I was in LA and they were a pittance, and not just in terms of LA money.

[@hackintosh3899]

Have to go to the root of the problem. Blizzard's just another company run by Vanguard, Blackrock, Morgan Stanley (now being sued by the Virgin Islands for Epstein connections). As soon as the company goes public or it's sold to a public company, that company ceases to exist. CDPR, Bioware, Blizzard all had their CEO bail and that guy was replaced by a banker yes man. With Blizzard that new CEO became Bobby Kotick, who was a contact in Epstein's little black book. Not too long ago people were questioning bank bailouts, marching on the banks and calling out politicians from both the "left" and "right" and you had to break them apart. You do this by having a few companies control all media and pushing identity politics, which breaks up people into separate groups, funding anarchist groups and groups that separate and scapegoat people by race. The people who marched together, now argue with each other. In the 60's/70s when they straight up assassinated people who tried to unify others, they didn't have the control they do now. They used drugs like LSD to break up any counter culture. Now the drugs is entertainment and it's much more effective. With Blizzard you really only now have something that useful to it's real owners as propaganda and you really don't want to empower the playerbase to unite or even to get along well. The hijacked property willl obviously not be super popular as they begin indoctrination, so they have to recoup as much as the money as they can (the rest is offset through taxpayers and competition is limited through not loaning them money or doing so at much worse rates). At it's core WoW is really only about two demographics. The "hardcore" players who don't care about story, who live with a caregiver and who are essentially slave labor who sell token carries in "esports" raids and pvp and borderline dull, mobile gamers. Those players buy tokens, play the game as a singleplayer game (outside casual pvp) and sit there and get indoctrinated by the story. Everything about WoW has been done to target these two groups. Blizzard doesn't want social players (outside degenerate child predators and furries on the RP servers) or people who universally like story etc and who form a community. 40 on 40 BG's no longer function on servers that are purposely sabotaged. We KNOW they are sabotaged because private servers can have hundreds of players on screen, with CHEAP leased virtual servers and it even works on the modern "Classic" client with the hermes proxy. Lots of players on screen can also mean large events, community events. You can't even talk in WoW chat anymore without getting a report and temp bans. Even when you get those temp bans reversed, you still are TRAINED to not talk anymore in game and the people who reported you are not punished. A social game that is no longer social. A game that trains you to rat out and punish anyone who doesn't agree with you and that behavior is never punished. A game that trains you to be "toxic" with "fails" on content with timers, so that you give up playing with people and just pay a token carry to progress. WoW is just social engineering now. The writers suck, but that's because they are hired because they suck. They are either cheap or useful idiots. Just like the artists are "Disney adult" furries from Deviant Art who will work cheap and who push the other things that the real owners of Blizzard own. Crap like Disney. The guy in charge of WoW, Ion was hired because he's a useful idiot to. He's from "Elitist Jerks" and doesn't care about anything other than a hardcore raiding bubble. That's why everything else in the game now sucks. About the only project that has the possibility to be ok from Blizzard as far as story is Diablo 4 (ex CDPR story guy) and that's probably only due to monetization, to offset losses from games like WoW that no longer has a lot of players. Even then you have Washington Post hit pieces trying to sabotage that games story before release, due to not having enough politics in it. They can always bait and switch with Diablo 4 to. I expect the expansions to be woke AF.

[@NothingCoherent]

I think this comment, despite sounding conspiratorial, is exactly right about what happened at Blizzard. Intentionally catering to furry wierdos on RP realms? No way, right? Well, simply look up the current art staff on Google and you'll find all sorts of disturbing shit. The funniest one was discovering the story leads' social media, and his publicly posted cuckold fetish stuff. Cool, man. Maybe keep that separate from your professional work handle?

[@hackintosh3899]

@@NothingCoherent Yeah the furry angle is about 2 things. 1) Catering to insular social outcasts that will support/sub to a bad game as long as you give them an outlet for their "hobby and 2) because they work CHEAP. Hiring well adjusted, S tier artists in the industry ain't cheap. They have families, and know their worth. You can hire awkward, mentally ill people off Deviant Art for peanuts and Blizzard pays their artists jack sh@^. The same goes for writers who are now fan fiction slash tier that want to ship romances in everything. The entire industry is about to collapse and in their own words "that's a good thing". Unreal 5, indies and sane budgets is the way to go. An example of good design decisions would be KOTOR. There was nothing wrong with having the protagonist not voice all his/her lines. In fact I would argue it helped with the roleplaying. That's 2 expensive voice actors saved. Then they had lots of alien species where the language was just translated. TON of money saved there and REAL diversity for these sci-fi titles that let's you get creative with design. In a modern "Bioware" like game, romance is also an absurd amount of the budget due to having to cater to every gender/sexuality and kink under the sun and due to having to make laughable kissing and sex scenes with clipping textures that just makes the average person laugh. What if they made romances that actually matter again and that were main plot relevant and just have skins for that romance character? That would save an absurd amount of money. Bastila was an offscreen kiss andI would argue that romance was better than anything in Mass Effect cus it was main plot relevant. If people want to see sex, they can watch anything these days on the internet within seconds. Waste of money and time in games. I don't remember the sex scenes in Witcher, I remember Yen and Geralt sitting on that ship in the clouds. I remember giving Tali a homeworld. That's what mattered in a RPG. Current triple A video game development isn't even sustainable, which is why it has to be more predatory. It's bloated and broken. Great companies came out of that video game crash in the 80's and I'm excited to see what people do with Unreal Engine 5. Will they eventually be bought out and the cycle continue? Sure. If anything needs to be rebooted these days though it's Hollywood and video games. I'm glad they are failing.

[@andrewvincent7299]

They were being sued but the attorney general there got fired. Our government is so corrupt.

[@jacobsteele925]

This is such an underrated comment and 100% true.

[@whisped8145]

@@hackintosh3899 Wonderful analysis and summary 👍

[@javelinmaster2]

Not only this though. Imagine being a new player. the new player gets dragged into BFA WITHOUT any explanation. why are we at war? what led to this? none of that gets answered since the introduction quests got DELETED. mayor story bits are being puit into endgame just to get skipped over as soon as the expansion ends.

[@eyeopening618]

I've noticed, after coming back after quiting in 08 or so. I came back to find a game I no longer recognized. If it wasn't for classic being released, I wouldn't be here.

[@theoutlander1411]

Having played WOTLK for the first time in WOTLKC, I think it's a little more jumbled than people remember. It starts off amazing, and levelling from 70 (or 68) to 73-74 to the Wrathgate is 100% connected to the idea that your faction needs heroes to go up to Northrend and fight the Lich King. However, the middle, from 74-78 is completely absent narratively. Presumably you're supposed to be training and exploring, with no grand narrative, and only a side narrative to go see if the other factions need some help or to find out what Nesingwary is up to. You discover the Ulduar side story in Stormpeaks who can maybe be considered allied with the Lich King or doing their own thing. Then from 78-80 you're back to fighting the Scourge. Phase 1 has Naxx which is relevant, though the other two raids (dragons) are loosely connected to the main story (Malygos was a villain referenced earlier in quests in Borean Tundra, Sarth I have no clue about). Phase 2 though you're back to Ulduar helping a dwarf break into it. Other than the Argent Tournament (a Tournament designed to determine who will be worthy to challenge Arthas) Phase 2 seems to be a break from the main story, with the next two raids Trial of the Crusader and Ice Crown Citadel making it relevant again.

[@Ogamra]

I'm glad I haven't bought Dragonflight and never will. Blizzard's writing is so disgusting and pathetic.

[@radicalcentrist4990]

I actually prefer it when an MMO doesn't have a greater story. And old WoW used to be like that. In old WoW questlines were usually taking part just in a specific area. Each area had its own problems, not everyone was thinking about the big bad guy or the big great hero because it didn't matter to that specific part of the world you're questing in. That just made it feel like there's more to the game's world than just whatever the big guys are doing. I personally stopped playing after Pandaria. At that time I thought that kung fu pandas were too stupid and out of place for me to take it seriously anymore, but they kept going even dumber since. And yeah, I know that pandas were in Warcraft 3 too, but I didn't think they were supposed to be anything more than a joke.

[@bardofhighrenown]

When you were talking about original WoW it made me think about a discussion I had with someone about how different of game Dark Souls is when looked at next to Elden Ring and how it's indicative of a trend of game designers not really understanding how/why a game was great and what components made that game work. Instead it feels like they take a couple of very obvious mechanics, decide that's what made the game good and strip out everything else. Also whatever you did to your audio sounds great

[@kaoskittykat857]

finally someone who noticed

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

How does Elden Ring trend in that way? It seems great to me, so far. Haven't completed.

[@bardofhighrenown]

@@ForbiddenFollyFollower Elden ring isn't bad, but it is a fundamentally different game that bears only a surface level resemblance to Dark Souls and lacks almost everything that made it great.

[@ForbiddenFollyFollower]

@@bardofhighrenown The most significant difference I can think of is level design.

[@bardofhighrenown]

@@ForbiddenFollyFollower Elden Ring is what you would get if you looked at the success of Dark Souls and your conclusion was 'Dark Souls is good because the combat is challenging.' Then you made a game based on challenging combat. But it leaves behind or ignores the other design aspects of Dark Souls that all worked in unison. In my opinion, Dark Souls was an exploration game. It was focused on exploration of the world and to do that it give you limited resources to manage and then used challenging combat to drain those resources. Which lead to a great risk/reward system based around exploration. Elden Ring is a combat game, exploration is only a secondary mechanic to support the combat. If a fight is too difficult, you go explore, find new items and gain levels until you can beat the fight. It's an inverted version of dark souls. Exploration has no tension, that tension has been transferred to the combat. Checkpoints are frequent and often enough that death means little other than you failed the combat and need to try again. Elden Ring isn't bad, it's probably a lot of fun if you agree with the statement 'Dark Souls is good because the combat is challenging'. But that wasn't the main draw to me and it makes it extremely easy for me to notice how different they are.

[@xelldincht4251]

When it comes to story and characters in MMOs I think Star Wars Old Republic is one of the best. Not all the class campaigns have the same quality of writing but even the weaker ones (Sith Inquisitor for example) have some great highlights. All the characters (companions and other important NPCs) grew on me

[@crusherven]

swtor really does have a great story that feels very personal. It's one of the only MMOs I've thought about going back to, despite playing WoW for many more years.

[@javelinmaster2]

That's also mostly due to you being an actual character there. the game especially in the beginning is made to be YOUR story.

[@mlggames2384]

I actually think inquisitor is one of the better stories along with warrior

[@gamingnostalgia3716]

It always sucked, but it used to be in the background, with voice over used sparingly for big moments, since the game shipped on CDs. It's about the WORLD of Warcraft you explore with your friends, not the dumb story you sit back and watch as the sidekick of the huge cast of characters that you can't even keep track of.

[@Horos101]

I quite liked questing during MoP. I didn't raid during and wasn't in a guild anymore but stayed subbed to do the storylines. The Jade Forest questline where you and Lorewalker Cho rediscover the Sha, Valley of the Four Winds where the Stormstouts reconnect with their mainland cousin, the Dominance Offensive storyline where you pursued ancient superweapons and infiltrated Teldrassil and Dalaran, the legendary questline and the dialogue between Wrathion and Anduin was quite good IMO. Then WoD happened and not only was there a dearth of questing content, the stories weren't as enjoyable as MoP, and the game didn't have anything else going for it so I unsubbed. I came back during Legion and BFA and enjoyed the Death Knight class order hall storyline and the War of Thorns questline, but disliked everything else, and again didn't have a guild so I quit. Haven't resubbed since. FFXIV's story was pretty strong early on during ARR, but then slowly went downhill. People hail Shadowbringers, but to me that's where the story started getting pretty bad. The game went from being a grounded story about geopolitical conflict with stakes to this Kingdom Hearts story about feelings and light vs darkness, no consequences or tension, and long running plotlines were thrown out the window. I also came to gradually dislike the Scions. They're all scholars from the same country and got along with each other. Every scene you could predict what everyone was going to say. The new storyline is pretty mediocre. I hope 7.0 is a turn around but I'm not holding my breath. Might unsub.

[@hakimbenzaid7904]

"It's full of homosexual dragons couples and trans dragons ..." The reason i deleted a almost 15yo account and gave up on blizzard

[@Christmaslights175]

And the intro to the quests starting on the ship. And the character Levine on the horde side on the plaguelands border who wants to wipe out a group of people. I was done!

[@tenou213]

The Warcraft lore carried us for decades until WoW blew it up step by step - burning childhood memories for just one more subscription month. You compare WoW story to FFXIV and you'll be blown away by the latter. You compare WoW to the games that outright plan cohesive story arcs intertwined with trailer releases, character elements, map/level design and freakin ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCES and you'll feel like you stepped into a higher realm.

[@markbay9275]

Great analysis. I agree with all major points. The modern devs dont have the talent or know-how to design WoW as the original devs did. The OG devs were simply better at understanding MMO's and what makes an RPG world. They were EQ vets. They knew what drove players. The original art team was better too. The art nowadays, while technically superior, doesn't have the same charm. I think WoW is dead. Its a husk now. 😥😥

[@timidalchemist8475]

Pretty much everyone has agreed that WoW’s lore and overall writing quality peaked with WotLK. After that the writing has gotten worse especially with Steve Danuser not knowing what good storytelling is.

[@IVPixel]

The writing was always shit I don't know what you're smoking,

[@smokingowly3607]

very few ever read the quest text. Wow writing have always been bad. It was more consistent and simple in classic, burning crusade and wotlk but never really great. Now the lore is a huge mess and the writing reflects this.

[@turkeyman631]

Yup, love a lot of the gameplay of the new expansion and playing around with evoker, but damn, FF14 beats WoWs writing by a large margin. It's sad too because back in the day I was so enthralled by the WoW story line. Up until Wrath of the Lich King, then the decline was very obvious to see.

[@wbbartlett]

Watching that screen for more than 20 seconds gives me a migraine. Never played it, and based on how utterly awful it looks, I never will.

[@DVSPress]

You have to watch it in 4k 60fps :p

[@Omegaphoenix128]

So Chromie being trans is a retcon then? Cause I remember that there sex was very much female in earlier xpacs. That said, its no suprise that they would do this. The irony of blizzard is despite all the 'internal issues' that are running rampant, the people who subscribe hard to woke politics just see it as a vehicle to further their belief systems, not as a game that is meant to be fun. So as much as they decry all the sexism and bigotry, they still continue to work there. This is also why it focuses so hard on 'outing' every characters Gender ID or sexuality, rather than addressing fundamental issues in the lore, gameplay, and world building. Those things are not even secondary or tertiary, but rather things they tack on in the last week before release. The TLDR is WoW is dying, for reals this time. Unless there is a massive overhaul that brings it a lot closer to its roots while remaining fresh and interesting, its the Titanic. Its already hit the iceberg and is sinking. No matter what music they put in, or woke IDPOL they insert (which generally has never been a selling point for any IP), there is no saving the ship. It's only a matter of time before the thign slips beneath the waves. Not that that is a bad thing honestly. Sometimes IPs need to die. Theyve run their lifespan, told their stories, explored their worlds. Better to remember them for what they were than to drag them out infinitum. This might be why classic games tend to be more timeless - their stories were neatly written and wrapped up well. WoW just keeps trying to find some new big bad to fight, when there is literally nothing left.

[@Christmaslights175]

Trans represents baphomet. Look at the drawing of it.

[@JayceMinecraft]

I think you spent a lot of this video criticizing the game design of WoW, rather than the narrative. Personally, I think Dragonflight's story is mediocre at best, fine, even. The problem is that it's never really shown to the player, and there's so much fluff and random nonsense thrown in there that isn't even the story that the players never really experience it. The issue you have, is more with the designers of quests, and the way that the story is setup. Your video is really good and actually inspired me a lot.

[@DVSPress]

Thanks. My focus on design is really that the design of the game influences how the story is "told," and the truth is, most players simply don't care about quest text, which means you're just getting the occasional cut scene.

[@ulaznar]

And journos and normies complained that one needs to do physical notes to keep track of the NPCs in Elden Ring

[@innocentsmith6091]

Imagine if they played a dungeon crawler and had to bust out some graph paper.

[@crepooscul]

@@innocentsmith6091 Yeah, they'll just call it tedious or "archaic". They don't know what immersion, strategy are or how good delayed gratification is, they just instant dopamine hits.

[@thehydra4007]

The taint you speak of seasoning the most recent expansion, is the societal rot of modern trendy metropolitanism ideology. You'll find that all of the entertainment industries (comic books, WotC, video game development, Hollywood, etc) crawling with this pathogen exist in HEAVY metropolitan regions and are thus comprised of modern metropolitanites that now associate their insulated regional cultural views with moral rightness. John B. Calhoun referred to whats now presently occurring within the metropolitan west (HEAVILY so in American metropolitanism) as "Behavioral sink" . Anyone denying the parallel absurdity of what occurred within those insulated and pampered mouse populations, and whats occurring within metropolitan America carries _lackluster_ analyzation qualities.

[@whisped8145]

~7:00 The entire UI-handholding-overload has been a bane to gaming ever since. While the players created tons of interesting and useful UI-improvements, tools, some even necessary for fluent gameplay in raids, ultimately it destroyed a lot of the actual game experience and spilled into other games being developed. I remember when even in classic (or was it BC already?), questing through Ashenvale, I asked people in my guild to switch off the minimap for a day - at least try an hour. There were some protests and jokes first about not finding their way and quest goals, to which I said in short "Yes, that's the point". Most reactions were positive quite quickly. The others noticed how different they looked at the game, actually looked at the game and the world, instead of at the minimap. A standard way to play the game is to only look at the minimap and play it through that without noticing, and only see the gameworld itself peripherally. Removing those UI-elements (and forcing you to figure out how to get to where you're supposed to through reading and navigating the landscape) changes the entire experience so much it becomes another game entirely. Slower, sure, but immersive. MMORPGs have had a tendency to turn into flight-simulators. There may be moments for that, but outside the big raids with their army level bulletsponge-bosses it just destroys immersion. Perfection is not adding so much that nothing can be added anymore, but removing as much as possible without detriment to the thing. Hence I was happy that Nintendo went for a minimalist UI in Breath of the Wild, even though there was still a simple minimap, though at least that had a story-relevant explanation, running around with your ancient technology smartphone.

[@DVSPress]

One of the reasons Morrowind feels so.immersive.

[@Melchizadeckk]

Nicely said. I enjoy the artwork while I play. The writing is horrible. The Draktheir don't look badass. The voice over in so much of the characters is just bad. Once in a while you get a good one like Bwansomdi. Flynn was a fun character I thought. I think they need to find an entire new continent on the other side of Azeroth and start over. New graphics engine, new writers, entirely new story, and a brand new leveling experience that doesn't feel disjointed through the zones. So often the story and voice acting just comes across childish.

[@antiquecardboard]

Writing has definitely trended down in these modern times but has video game writing ever been "good"? I'm not talking writing that is adequate or sufficient for the world that it inhibits...but has there ever been true good video game writing in the artistic literately sense containing meaning, moral conflicts, themes, and clarity all coming together in a cohesive package from start to finish? I've played a lot of games in many genres but have not yet found a game where I put down the controller/keyboard in amazement at the writing and story. Only movies and books have been able to do that. Games like The Last of us--lauded as some of the best writing games have to offer--is really only B-grade TV script. It just stands out because of how bad game writing usually is. I am still waiting for a game to wow me with its writing (i.e. its ability to distill Truth in an impactful manner). P.S. I've played many games that have great "storytelling". But few/none with great writing. There is a difference between great storytelling and great writing (common example: Star Wars has great storytelling, Lord of the rings has great storytelling AND writing.)

[@tamarans.ns.ii.4968]

I was shocked for example how Malazan book series had great writing and terrible storytelling until I found out that they were actually world building books for the writers TT game system. Wasted my time on 3 books trying to care about anything in them 😅

[@everettzarnick2323]

I definitely disagree about TLOU having a B-grade script. In my opinion, TLOU, while not deeply philosophical in the way a movie like No Country for Old Men is, has brilliant writing both in its narrative and dialogue.

[@mateivacariu1171]

Bioshock

[@Sigxy]

Soul Reaver 2.

[@ElUltimoLeviathan7901]

@@mateivacariu1171 The story/lore of bioshock is absolute garbage, it is just a story of arrogant "philosophical" pretentious intellectuality. and Ayn Rand's was not a philosopher, which assumes that bioshock 1 and 2 are based on this writer and the same thing happens with bioshock infinite. Also like FPS they sucks Bioshock is the perfect overrated game that really sucks in both story/lore and gameplay

[@ponczos_2293]

Speaking of woke writing, I've seen Asmongold saying that woke stuff doesn't matter when the game plays good and is enjoyable, "who cares if there are quests about gay or trans characters" or something like that. It's kinda weird seeing this in wow at this point but then again when even the developers from Blizzards commission furry p*** anonymously, I'm not really surprised anymore tbh.

[@DVSPress]

Gameplay is still pretty bad though

[@ponczos_2293]

@@DVSPress I guess Asmon and the rest of wow players like him are still on hopium then

[@DVSPress]

Just an aside but I don't think Blizzard will ever change the design problems that are fundamentally at the core of why the game is not fun anymore.

[@ponczos_2293]

@@DVSPress Yeah pretty much. At this point I don't see WOW being alive after next expansion. Probably it's gonna get shelved. Unless they do a hard reboot, both gameplay-wise and lore-wise. But I don't think they are capable of doing it at this point especially given how AAA companies keep hiring people adjacent to Hollywood and similar industries where story is usually bad and usually doesn't matter to them.

[@theoutlander1411]

@@ponczos_2293 They're going to keep going in multiple directions with Classic (SOM, Classic Era, Wrath Era, Classic Cata etc.) and probably onward past Dragonflight. Most WOW players are addicts to the game (in some version or another) and many of the people I heard claiming WOTLK Classic will be their last coming in from TBC Classic, have said they plan on playing "One more expansion" now.

[@JohnDoe-sl6di]

Warcraft writing was at its peak with frozen throne

[@medicinally]

Thank you! Finally, someone pushes back against this pathetic excuse for a story. So many people I've encountered have been showering it with praise that I felt like I was going insane. As you noted, the "relationships" are beyond forced and serve only to further the "woke" ideology running rampant within major institutions. Anyways, great video essay.

[@DVSPress]

The gameplay is really not good either but I didn't want to make this video about that. Just a terrible story. I don't believe they'll ever fix the problems that make the game unfun. They've been present for far too long. The mechanics they've added into the expansion as always are bad.

[@jpwright87]

I'm finally getting around to playing Diablo 3 and I can't stand all of the "story". It's basically all lore dumps that have no bearing on what I'm doing as a player. It sucks.

[@AnotherCrazyClown]

I was thinking about the same keyword, Potential, there's few good things on secondary quests but on the superficial level it feels so bland and yes, i loved the characters that's why when i wanted to play WoW i expected to know more about their backstories and their future achievements but nope, all i got was quest givers and no interactions at all which still is one thing modders want from Warcraft, what if Arthas went to Kalimdor and met Thrall, what if Maiev and Ilidan started working together, what if.. and on and on. And i also don't expect them to be at the same highest peak on lore, maybe another few things here and there but never as a whole.

[@whisped8145]

8:40 WotLK had great flow and lots of nice ideas in various areas. However... it already made zero sense to me that Arthas had been in complete control of the Scourge in Northrend for 4 years and... achieved absolutely nothing. He still sat around in Icecrown with his infinite army stuck in a canyon? And then some minor skirmishes outside with at best a Troll-empire that still resisted? I liked Northrend as a place, but it... even lacked being the frozen North it was expected to be. That place was greener than Kalimdor. It just made no sense. Blizzard had already started wasting key characters as raid-bosses before, and here that just continued. Instead of building a rich subterranean storyline with Azjol-Nerub, it's just a small tunnel-dungeon or two and wasting Anubharak in an optional nonsensical and hamfisted side-raid. It hurt even more that I liked this character the most from WC3 on the bad guys' side. It was my final nail in the coffin and I did not even see the icecrown-raid because of it. And all the downfall that came after... though I was kept informed by my friends who stayed in the game about the clownshow that WoW was becoming, like... the legs of Ragnaros...

[@jellyfrosh9102]

I tried reading the quest text in DF and quit about halfway through the first zone because how many gay and trans quests there were. I also just turned my sound off after seeing the giant 12 foot tall dragon with the voice of a little girl. I still have no idea why we're even in the Dragon Isles or what we're supposed to be doing.

[@whisped8145]

I can assure you that all these people writing that stuff, and all these people openly claiming to be trans, are most certainly not. They fetishize, romanticize and fanfiction about a condition, because they want to be special, and because their deranged ideology thinks it key to its fantasy to reshape humanity into being compatible with its utopian ant-farm. When in reality, the condition behind of all that, that they lie about how it works, manifests, where it comes from, is biological in nature, and most of the extremely rare people who suffer it past puberty (for most lose it through natural unintervened puberty), have no intention to seek the spotlight, do not want others to know what they're dealing with, whether they try to transition and pass or not. All these obsessive sexually deranged hackwriters are doing is creating characters that blurt out into the world that something is weird and wrong with them and that is something to be proud of and a party to be like that, when reality is the opposite. I'm at the point that I believe that if these people could do the same with cancer, they would, insist that self-identification with cancer is enough and must not be questioned, that diagnostic processes are cancer-phobic and destroy cancer-identity, and they must get chemotherapy no matter what and cut in line of actual cancer patients. It's basically what these delusional attention-seekers are doing with the rare real condition of this trans-thing. Ask the real ones that do not have some sort of narcissistic personality disorder and they will tell you that they'd rather be normal - many either way. The joke is, with these obsessive fetishistic activists wanting to "represent trans", they're doing exactly what all horrid "how do you do fellow kids?"-parents do. They don't understand the issue, they don't want to understand the issue and they will tell the few people suffering the actual problem that they're "doing it wrong" - which is further irony as just 5-10 years ago the Left insisted that only trans-people should talk about trans-issues, for they know it best and would call anyone else "cis-splaining", but they realized that the actual transpeople are not on their side, the condition is not due to "social constructs" but biological f* ups in the brain, broken androgen receptors etc, and thus it became okay for the non-trans to explain the trans to the trans, because the real trans have the trans wrong and are just not accepting of the happy party proud histrionic fanfiction fetishistic self-ID-trans and their non-binary sidekicks. The real dysphorics don't want to stand out, they want to fit in, they want to not be noticed, not cause trouble, they want to pass if they transition, and grit their teeth about the mental exhaustion and don't talk about it if they don't transition. All in the pursuit of the ultimate goal: A normal life, preferably without pain. How do you portray that in a videogame, book, comic or movie? Especially as a side-character? You can't. Because the entire thing is hidden. It's supposed to be hidden. If your entire story is not exactly about this topic, then it simply cannot be tackled. You can have hidden hints at best, and even that is probably impossible to do well - at least by hacks. So what is left to the attention-seekers who always need to speak for everyone while holding everyone's mouths shut? They need to invent their own version of this specific issue. They need to glorify it, they need to twist it so that it is awesome to be like that, and invent nonsense solutions that do not alleviate the pain/mental stress at all. For example: Cross dressing does nothing to alleviate real gender dysphoria, and real dysphorics don't want to go out looking like wardrobe malfunctioning makeup-clowns. They tend to have a sense of aesthetics and dignity left. The real condition destroys your self-image. Thus you can conclude that every character depicted, and every one of these alleged trans-youtubers that is pushing this as something glorious and enviable, while posing half-naked before their "transitions" or "coming outs", never had the condition in the first place. It is all just to satisfy their egos. As an exmaple: A real dysphoric biological man can have above average looks, be well trained to the point of beginning to show a six-pack, but still be unable to acknowledge those good looks and even the six-pack will feel wrong to see. There is no hallucination going on. The issue with real gender dysphoria is that the subconscious expects to see, interact with, the opposite sex's body, and thus judges its looks by the standards of the opposite sex. The best looking man will thus always be an ugly woman. Problem is that while the dysphoria presents itself as some sort of full-body phantom limb (not singular body parts - when the individual is only obsessed with singular body parts it's a fetish - those types pretend to be trans and outnumber the real cases by far, and tend to be the attention-seeking activists too) but the judgment from the subconscious will not even tell you it's because of that, but just hand you a post-it with a low or negative score. Being cognitively aware of the objectively good looks does not change that. Both the Left and the Right are wrong in treating this as just a "social construct" or "decision", as in both cases you could just talk it away. The Right is correct however that psychotherapy is relevant, for those with low self-esteem and other issues are likely to fall prey to the activists brainwashing them into believing that trans is the issue and solution to their similar problem. Last bit because I mentioned that broken androgen-receptor: It's because of that that real dysphorics tend to have completely normal testosterone levels, but have androgynous looks about them. The low-T epidemic is something completely different and those types are not trans. Basically, when it just looks like a very angular-faced, even masculine dude in a dress, it's very likely not dysphoria, but anything else. Then take a look at how most of these activists look that write all this garbage... Now that was probably way too much of an autistic lecture.

[@g0gool_]

Jellyfrosh mad because his political opinion doesnt fit in a game. SO SO SAAAAAAAAAAAAD

[@duc_de_sel]

Gay and trans is a political issue, and lots of people disagree with it

[@gyderian9435]

​@@duc_de_sel gays and trans are people like you and me, not "political issues"

[@ZarisWhiteFoot]

Game is pretty gay

[@marektengler6033]

I thought that it's just me problem... but appearantly not. I've start playing wow classic (first time wow player) and had blast and choose to give retail a shot I was shocked how cringe dialog are. I mean... game itself look beutiful, have amazing gameplay options but damn... playing retail I had feeling that I play childish 8+ friendly game... and that is not nice feeling.

[@DVSPress]

Classic wow was such an awesome game. The leveling alone remains one of the best gaming experiences, still.

[@forestgaming3993]

Interesting video essay. For me the draw to World of Warcraft was actually Warcraft 3. I doubt I would have played World of Warcraft if Warcraft hadn't been one of the most memorable and impactful stories I have ever played through in a video game. Starcraft 1 had that same hook for me with the story as well. I have realized since that what I thought brought me to World of Warcraft and what actually brought me to it were different things. I got very caught up in the social environment surrounding Massively Multi-Player Role Playing Games of the time. Transitioning to World of Warcraft from Guild Wars 1 and Runescape (I think it's called 'Oldschool Runescape' now) was with an elitist mindset. "runescape vs wow" I think was the name of the video that got me so hooked on how amazing World of Warcraft looked in a cinematic and 'cool' mindset. It seems, looking back now, the elitist mindset is what carried World of Warcraft after it's initial release more and more. To the point where World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: Dragonflight seem more like two completely different games that are almost in different genres. Whereas, it seems more like what really pulled people into the game was the world and story techniques. As at that time, I think that was much more the emphasis and development style at Blizzard Entertainment established in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1. When World of Warcraft became such a monolithic succes it completely transformed the MMORPG genre and market to the extent that it became synonymous with the genre, essentially being defined as the MMORPG market. That pivot in Blizzard's development style began to start. It seems like it would be very hard to stay only marginally influenced by your own work. Being very easy to begin to get increasingly stuck within a self insulating feedback loop of your perceived success misdefining itself to you. I think Blizzard slowly began to be more and more stuck in that feedback loop. Ceasing to make games with the same perspective, intention and goal they had when originally designing World of Warcraft and the Warcraft setting. The surrounding perceived elitism that fueled a lot of people in those days got more and more associated with World of Warcraft's success until it became the game we know it as today. Likewise, Blizzard the company it is today. It really reminds me, in a sequantial sense, of some KZbin video essays exploring the change in cinema from the late 60s, 70s and into the 80s. One of the key questions explored was "Why are there so many classics created in the 70s by the Directors such as Spielberg, Copola, Lucas, (etc)?". If I remember correctly, the answer it explored to this question was based around how new directors were given a lot of directoral freedom and large production budgets because the medium was so new that it hadn't found an established template yet. Once that economic success template became more established the experimentation was stopped, an answer to reliable commercial viability had been found. Which in my mind, perfectly mirrors the video game industries changes from it's beginning to now. There is still a lot of experimentation in independent games. However, in the AAA space it is a lot less. Which is why I think that the video games industry design and common consumer mindset, is now firmly based in 'the meta'. What is the best way for us to make our earnings number forever go up? What is the most efficient way for me to play this game so I can get through it faster than everyone else or as fast as possible? Both to me are the same emphasized mindset, 'the destination is the journey'. Before World of Warcraft's expansions, I felt much more immersed in the mindset of 'the journey is the destination'. In general, that also feels more true as the emphasis I experienced in Warcraft 3's story, Starcraft 1's story and The Lord of the Rings story. I also wanted to touch on what you said about Dragonflights simplistic romantic writing and in all honesty, I see that reflected in most movies I have seen recently as well. The 'drama' feels more manufactured to fill a space. As opposed to: A logical culmination of the characters life in the story. It feels a lot of times like someone has an empty warehouse and so they decide to get a spaceship to fill it. Is the spaceship able to fly or safe? Who cares, it fills the warehouse. This kind of feeling to modern stories writing is so common for me now that I struggle to find movies that give me a sense of caring and warmth for their characters. I don't look in games anymore. It makes me very curious why that is in all honesty... What things changed in me and others to precipitate that kind of a change?

[@zero_wing_]

YOU KNOW A VIDEO IS GONNA SLAP WHEN IT STARTS WITH THE CLICK OF THE MOUSE.

[@prayforjonas]

It's pretty crazy how saturated the game is with politics in Dragonflight: from all the races on the Dragon Isles having nearly zero sexual dimorphism to practically all leadership roles being filled by women to the total over-abundance of gay relationships to brown dwarves/gnomes/elves everywhere to quests giving you rainbow trails you can't cancel to Chromie to "gender fluid" dragons to dragons with pronouns to the distinct lack of masculine characters. It's pretty fucking gross, honestly.

[@jamespadgett8660]

You're right. The wokeness is almost unbearable. We both know that they will continue to push the envelope in even more explicitly disturbing ways. While I've been playing this game for 16 years, I'm still having fun at present pushing Mythic plus keys. Thank you for the video.

[@HolyknightVader999]

Because it's made with perpetual continuity in mind, not having a conclusive, cathartic ending. The same problem bedevils the SWTOR expansions after Knights of the Eternal Throne. Everything just extends a story that was meant to have ended with a "happily ever after". Revan became one with the Light, Emperor Valkorion, the Emperor of the True Sith, is dead, and both the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic have a new sovereign (the player character) who is handling the rebuilding of the galaxy. That is where the story should have ended. Continuing the story past that just proves how worthless the ending of KOTET was and how they're obviously dragging out the story for more subscriptions. The story for Warcraft should have been all about the coming of the Burning Legion. They failed in the past, but they've proven to be tenacious and will try again. But the fact that the story became more about Alliance-vs-Horde baby-mama-drama just makes it boring as hell. Oh, they killed the Lich King Arthas and replaced him. Big whoop. The Undead army remains neutral and doesn't join either side, nor is it preparing for the inevitable war with the Legion. And yet they're still going about their lives as if a massive demon army wasn't headed their way. This makes no sense given the context of the past Warcraft games, almost as if those games and WoW exist in alternate dimensions......

[@Bingo2501]

I gave it a try some time ago, I found it super boring and very simple game play. :D

[@DVSPress]

The game has two difficulty areas: 99% of the game is mind numbingly easy. Then it's mythic raids. Then when you say it's too easy the response is that you didn't spend 100+ hours grinding the unbalanced current max difficulty raid.

[@nickjordan8996]

HORRIBLE quest writing.

[@manekinofficial]

thanks for not having music so we can hear you clearly

[@ImHere4Nothing]

everything after warcraft 3 has nothing to do with warcraft anyway. I always think about the current warcraft as a spin off.

[@DVSPress]

Any semblance of story went out the window after Pandaria. They went to an alternate universe and it feels like they've been LARPing a parallel fanfiction for years.

[@ayhamahmad2277]

​@@DVSPressi think that's the legion was the last great expansion there is hope that they well fix the story with bobby gone

[@ladypilliwick8179]

so glad I stopped playing this game 10 years ago. reson I quit was one could buy everything with real money. I loved the game the way it was and I miss it

[@gabbyk1391]

Larry Fink, Blackrock, ESG, ruining games by forcing their garbage politics and worldviews on everyone. It takes a lot of boredom and desperation from lack of good game releases for me to support an ESG company like Blizzard or Riot, and I won't spend a cent over the amount I absolutely have to in order to have an active subscription or whatever is required to play. With games from companies like this, I would be incredibly surprised to see a straight couple with fair complexion. Even though that's a huge percentage of the people playing these products and supporting these companies. Their representation has to be decimated for "fairness" and "equality" or whatever buzzword of the day they choose to use. I used to love and admire Blizzard, but these days I expect much less. When they were going through their sexual harassment issues I knew that ESG would be a parachute they would be influenced into leaning on for a smooth landing. If they had any integrity at all they lost it in that moment. How companies like Riot Games need to rely so heavily on ESG boggles my mind. I doubt they even need to. I think they've been convinced that it's the right thing to do. The politically correct and progressive thing to do. So they turned straight White males gay, and now you can expect future champions to be gay, lesbian, non-White, transgender or some other thing for the foreseeable future. They already sold their company to Tencent, and as if that wasn't bad enough they kneel to ESG like it's their master. Let's hope for a change. I'm tired of this garbage being pushed on me in all forms of entertainment, advertising, etc. They don't want equal representation, they want elimination of the norm. They want people to submit to their worldview with no regard for anything else.

[@kesor6]

Most of my gameplay was in WotLK ; But I did return to short plays from time to time. Again this time, for Dragonwhateveritsname. Had extremely low expectations, just wanted to chill and read the quests and treat it like a book or a bad movie. But boy, these woke quests, why are they even there? Shemale race that fights the dragons, gay love in every single relationship. This is just sick woke religion clawing their agendas into mainstream culture making everything that once was just "okay" to become horrible. The gay centaur quest, which I didn't accept did it for me. Quit the game, opened up support automated refund and got the war-within+dragonwhatever refund automatically. Thank god.

[@sethman75]

People read the quest text?

[@DVSPress]

They don't, but once, they did.

[@sethman75]

@@DVSPress I used to as well dave, stopped after the lich king when the story took a sharp nosedive

[@jacobscholtissek2410]

Great Video, thats one of the reasons i cant enjoy modern wow. The world feels Empty the dungeons are just a little bit of action for loot instead of an adeventure. I cant immerse into the Game, and even it is true wow begins at the endgame if i cant immerse than i dont have fun. And thats sad because retail is a far superior Game to classic when it comes to gameplay and visual appeal.

[@Seagaltalk]

Because it's a type of game (most games are like this) that is not conducive to writing a good story and even if you do you have to keep adding to it time and again to the detriment of the good story that started it. Like sequel after sequel in most franchises

[@clintcarpentier2424]

I tried online games a few times. I quit shortly after each attempt. People kept expecting me to talk to them.

[@DVSPress]

Oddly enough the wow forums are now full of people complaining that they had to do group content to get through the campaign. People say they have social anxiety about it (no doubt, shit is toxic). It's funny because the main draw of the original game was PEOPLE. But seriously, it's okay to just play single player games.

[@clintcarpentier2424]

@@DVSPress Sadly, a lot of reviews of single player games say that their saving grace... is their multi-player. My other issue is that single player games aren't games anymore. They are extended movies that let you play for a few hours.

[@whisped8145]

@@DVSPress Truly ironic. These kinds of games helped get over my social anxieties from being constantly bullied at school and not getting any help whatsoever. Online games fixed that. Autism is also not an excuse, because online games are the very place where one can safely learn to communicate. I dropped out though before voice-integration became a standard. I remember just turning the option off when first introduced in I believe late Burning Crusade? It was killing immersion having children's voices and male voices from female characters. Screw that, leave me in silent fantasy and learn to type. - Typing is better initially for us tisms anyway. In typing, your turn is always when you type, you can't feel unable to respond or be talked over or miss the cue or whatnot. I was a pretty messed up broken kid, with actual problems looking back at all of this from a safer and somewhat mended spot. But what in all of existence is wrong with these douchebags whining like that? It really seems to be a product of oedipal overbearing care. All those fancy quality-of-life-tools need to be taken away, stripped out of the game and whatnot, so that these kids HAVE to interact again. You can't tell me that us, the outcast introverted insecure nerds of the past, where complete powerchads when playing these games and the kids now can't even do that? The mean thing would be to say: They're not even gamers. And they're certainly playing the wrong game, the wrong genre. My tinfoil hat morse-codes me that we are at silly levels of divide and conquer.

[@itsababysworld]

I find myself wishing you could rewrite Dragonflight. *sigh*

[@GitGudFox]

Without good lore and conflicts, there's no point to playing WoW at all. There are games that are more fun than WoW. WoW's gameplay is supplemental. It's the combination of the "World" of Warcraft with the gameplay that makes WoW. There's nothing that can be done either except nuking the story and starting over, and even then, it'd be starting over with the same shit tier writers.

[@H_Grunt]

damn that woke stuff is why I ain't playing retail - should leave real world politics/events out of games

[@Grivehn]

I could say so much about the story... and I did, for years. Then gave up. The gameplay is best its been in years... for whatever thats worth. The story doesnt matter anymore, only as far as art and customization goes. They eliminated any and all reasons to care with their retcons, abandonment of plots and characters, and their wierd, evil agenda to make you like the evil forces like Fel, Void and Death over Light, Nature and Arcane (Titans and dragons).

[@lobstereleven4610]

Ty for the video!

[@Travybear1989]

WoW's writing sucks because WoW caters to the lowest common denominator and is the McDonald's of RPG's. WoW will scratch the MMO itch but it's extremely easy to play and not very difficult to master. You could literally have your grandma play it for 2 hours and she'd get the gist of it and by the end of the week she'd be able to run dungeons and pvp. Sure, some classes like Warlocks or Mages (aoe grinding), or even hybrid classes are more difficult to master but that isn't saying much. I remember back in 2005 when I started the game I was 18 years-old and was anything but a gamer (the newest console I owned was a Sega Dreamcast that I owned like 6 games for) and when I made a mage I was pulling groups of 3-4 by level 30 and could kite people to death in pvp with frost nova like it was a joke and then frostbolt most players to death before they even touched my character and that was within the first month of me installing the game. The writing is basically Stephanie Meyer/Stephen King level because most people don't want to bother with anything more complex. It's the same reason the Silmarillion is nowhere near as popular as The Lord of The Rings or The Hobbit. I've play WoW on a vanilla private server for over 4 years now and I mainly log on to destress after a long day and that's about it.

[@bahamutkaiser]

If you think this is bad, you should see what Dragon Prince tries to pass off on children...

[@adanos4]

This forced transgender BS is the main reason i cannot enjoy because i am one of the few people who actually read all the quest that i pick up.

[@ricardomolina905]

Danusser and shadowcrap were the "coup de grâce" for wow

[@witcherpie]

wrong, I couldn't give a damn fuck about the world or "my story in this world". All I want is to meet interesting characters that go through hell, go through intense character development, and get a good payoff. That's all that wow needs to do, make us feel and love the warcraft heroes, not because we played wc3 15 years ago, or because we've watched some stupid one off cinematics or read some novels about em. But because they went through hell in a story expansion focused on them, and they merged out victorious and stronger than ever. This is a classic good storytelling trope that you simply can never go wrong with. It doesn't have to be about world ending threats, it has to be PRECISELY about characters, emotions, immersion, dialogue, music. A little bit of grit or teeth is a + but is not needed to tell a decent story. In warcraft 3 we had to play through arthas's origins or pain/goals, focus on his traumas or love interest jaina, wotlk didn't make sense at all for any new player if they didn't play wc3. Wotlk had shit story telling. And that's okay, because it's an mmo, which means that gameplay comes always first, not lore. With the big exception of ff14, who does exactly what I've said, characters, immersion, music, emotions.

[@saturn580]

I haven't played WoW since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion back in 2008. In the hundreds of hours I clocked up, I can't remember a single quest or plot point that even mentioned the sexuality of the characters involved. It seems Blizzard have gone full Tumblr and let their flagship product become a playground for perverts and ideological zealots.

[@theoutlander1411]

There is that quest in Elwynn Forest where the girl is in love with the boy from the other farm and their families don't want them to be together.

[@i.j.dragonfly3123]

​@friedrichkingston9923What is the difference, in your opinion? If the characters in that quest were both women or both men, would it stop being "romance" and become "sexuality" instead?

[@Kezui]

wow really has so much potential through world building, astethics, artdirection to characters. They have all the tools to make a good story and interesting questlines. but the quests and world feels so empty, lifeless and boring.

[@DVSPress]

The real thing that gave the world life was the players, and now the game design encourages them to never interact. The world is empty because you feel very alone playing it now.

[@Kezui]

@@DVSPress i never had a player interaction in any multiplayer game that made the game/world feel more immersive or alive while questing. i mean sure people running around the world gives makes you feel less lonely and gives opportunties for Interactions but they dont make the world feel more immersive (not talking about PvP or Dungeons/Raids)

[@samflood5631]

World of Warcraft can have some good and bad writing from time to time. Here’s a list. Good writing Vanilla Burning Crusade Wrath of the Lich King Legion Ok writing Cataclysm Mists of Pandaria Dragonflight Bad writing Warlords of Draenor Battle for Azeroth Shadow Lands

[@IH8KWEERZ8070]

I miss the old wow characters. I miss varian,blackhand,Garrosh,old thrall,grommash and etc old warcraft used to be so testosterone boosting I think wotlk and wod were the most testosterone boosting expansions

[@whisped8145]

2:58 Here you have figured out the entire issue of the past decade, you have described how people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder see the world and relationships, as they are emotionally immature and have bonding issues for this very reason, mistake the same for "polyamoury/being able to love many" when in reality they love noone at all, only use people for personal gain (that includes social and emotional resources, not just monetary). Throw into that the magical and irrational thinking of borderline, the leaning towards revenge fantasies for personal slights (including imagined and dreamed ones), and get today's nonsense. That this hotbed is the perfect soil for sociopaths and psychopaths is self-explanatory. If you had the unfortunate experience to have walked around the rainbow movement, it is full of these people. There are grounded gays looking for monogamous relationships, but they are quite frustrated, as that is equal to a legendary drop in that demographic. Most people there are just indulgent selfish children unable to form emotional bonds. In the trans-area it is even worse, as that is filled to the brim with false positives. People with superficially similar issues that are completely different in roots and execution though: Crossdressers and other fetishists outnumber the rare real dysphorics (who tend to not seek the spotlight and like the monogamous gays just seek a normal as possible life where they bother as few people as possible, not stand out) by at least a factor of 100 to 1, if not more. When attention seekers take over the issue of a quiet people with little energy due to the mental stress of their condition, it is not just a walk in the park, it is detrimental to the issue itself. Similar to all the weirdos no claiming to be autistic and speak for autists and make it all about being special and playing victim, while misunderstanding the real issues, positive and negative, as well as the biological causes of this - as with the rare dysphorics, which has a biological cause, we have the brainscan-studies after all. But I digress. From these craptivists, as I've dubbed them, only harm comes. For the demographic they claim to speak for, as well as for those they negatively affect. The completely unethical sudden castration of healthy, not properly diagnosed children, on a whim, on a global scale, without any prior longterm studies, for the craptivists insisted on throwing that out the window as they themselves know they would never pass it and be unmasked as the fetishists and narcissists they are, might be one of the greatest crimes in human history. A lot can be boiled down to Münchhausen-Syndrome. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the other key to understanding this issue, understanding how the narcissistic mind, that immature, underdeveloped consciousness, works. Most modern writing reads like fanfiction, because it is on the level of fanfiction writers: Most of it is incompetent, indulgent, impatient mary sueish self-insert writing. Narcissists rank high on the Dunning-Kruger scale: So incompetent, due to a lack of self-reflection (reflection would break the narcissism, but require seeing and acknowleding one's flaws, which is utter hell for narcissists, so they avoid it like the plague), that they cannot see how incompetent they are, while thinking themselves competent and demanding everyone else acknowledge it - thus any critic must be wrong and thus must be bullied out or fired (or more). That also includes getting rid of those more competent than the narcissist, because someone else being better implies that the narcissist isn't perfect. Especially when that other person is in the way of the narcissist getting his or her inane ideas through. What happened in that game developer studio Naughty Dog between their Last of Us games was exactly that. The first game had decent writing and world-building, Druckmann didn't get his madness through. The competent woman responsible for that got fired, and at that point the rewriting, retconning by Druckmann started, to the point that now he is rewriting the story and characters of that first game, to fit in with all the changes he made in the second. It is now nothing but an insane, indulgent, world-broken and ideologically charged repulsive mess. The irony in that example-story is that a competent woman in the games industry had to be fired by a toxic (allow me to use that charged term here for the irony) in order for the ideology that claims to push for more women in the gaming industry forward. Druckmann is a preaching apostle of Sarkeesian after all, quite relevant context. In the end this example itself should already show that the ideology that is driving all of this does not care about the very people it claims to be about and for. It only serves to grow its own numbers and uses and fosters narcissists and worse and produces more of them through its bad ideas. The bad writing, the sullying and destruction of cultural treasures and artefacts, is as much a product as it is a goal of this ideology, because in the end it wishes there to be no other ideas but it itself. It's own intellectuals have written this out a long time ago - Antonio Gramsci being a more prominent voice of that. It is not about money, profit, for these people. Several of these companies taken over by this madness have even said so openly at this point. Profit is not even secondary, it is tertiary to these people. They do not care if their companies break down, not realizing that their own incomes then disappear as they cannot think ahead, only in the moment, as if not even their prefrontal cortices have been switched on or developed in the first place. Firstly it is about spreading their vision, their ideology, their propaganda. It is inserted into everything, and everything of the past must be rewritten and replaced with it. Hence Disney doubling down on tying in their failed trilogy instead of decanonizing it, and now even announcing a new Rey-movie - in which this character gets even more of what was Luke's in the expanded universe: Rebuilding the Jedi Order. It does also not matter to them that people will detest all of this and even begin to not want to watch the good original content anymore, because they will always be reminded of the future garbage. You can see Rings of Power attempting the same thing for Lord of the Rings. For secondly, even if the company itself breaks down, it is a win for the ideology, as it seeks total destruction of everything that isn't it. A hallmark of a nation/culture falls? Good! It was just a patriarchal captialist monster anyway or some such - even though only they controlled it on its ride into the abyss. Retroactively everything the ideology did was good, will be framed as good. They always know whom to blame, even if the who is fabricated, made up. I can go on for hours, but I think this is enough rambling at this gordian 10k-pieces-puzzle for now.

[@W0WNeW.]

ohh my are hurting of your video

[@IndyDefense]

True,, however the Tauren will always be the coolest concept in the history of video games.

[@LeBrow420]

They should have hired George RR Martin to do the writing

[@DVSPress]

Yeah but then the xpac wouldn't come out until 2030

[@IPlayVideoGamesAndNothingElse]

It’s because the writers and devs are the exact same as sweetbabyinc.

[@millerdiamond708]

helldivers 2 devs said no to wokeness devs said it would ruin the game

[@ExelArts]

FIRST I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO Over time there has been to many different writers as the original writers would leave and new ones take there place. Writers would often change there minds on many things which is fine as long as it didnt make it into the story/game, its when there in the game and they change there minds either because they regret it or decide a new path would be better and decide to retcon it, Then new writers either not liking the lore or story, jealous or for what ever reason decide to retcon things or add something dumb eventually making the lore/story so inconsistent that many players cant stand wow anymore. The current writing staff and other teams at blizzard are by far the worst they are more interested in forcing there activist views onto the player base but it wasn't just the current devs it's all of them that would retcon the story and lore. adding science fiction bullshit to a fantasy game, fat playable characters, brown skin to the blood elves, removing pictures of females with fruit, adding trans to a character that was once a normal female, Rmoance as a whole rather it be gay or straight dont do it its obvious that the current team arent equipped for it. The writing staff are really poor writers especially steve denuser the man that said video games are a bad media for story telling!!! why is he working in the game industry!!! and after looking him up hes really hated in the game sphere im not sure what but it had to do with something he did while working on everquest and if its anything like what hes doing with Warcraft i understand the hate IF THEY CARED SO MUCH ABOUT SOME OF THESE CAUSES THEY WOULDNT HAVE ADDED THEM TO THE GAME. ITS A FANTASY GAME AND THATS HOW IT SHOULD STAY, NOT A PLATFORM FOR THE DEVS CAUSES OR SICK FANTASYS As a big guy myself i don't need representation i didn't ask for it i don't need to see myself in a video game. Devs added them because they said "its so fat people could feel powerful and know they can be a hero too". No as a fat guy myself theres no way i could do the things a fit human could do! Adding brown skin tone to blood elves wasn't needed no one asked for it and the developers knew that. devs knew players wouldn't like it while some players would creating tension. Developers along with player activists would call anyone against adding the skin tone racists, since they didn't have an argument for adding the skin tone other then representation no one asked for. Devs would protect players that agreed with them on the forums while banning those that didnt. The most frustrating thing about his was 3 blizzard devs were caught on twitter making racist statements about the blood elves being only white skinned and they were disgusted by it. those comments were deleted almost instantly(i seen one of them i wish i had taken a picture if). nothing happened to these devs or the ones on the forums...hate this company Why was there a need to add any science fiction to a fantasy game evolution timetravel robots!!! The inconstant lore and story telling has been a thing since the beginning of World of Warcraft, its just that the current team at blizzard have done more harm to this game then any other in wows history. We don't need a wow2 it'll just solidify all that was bad with Wow1 as canon and all the same shit would just continue with wow2 because the same team would be making it. ID RATHER JUST SEE WARCRAFT DIE

[@i.j.dragonfly3123]

Why shouldn't elves have brown skin tones? The pale options are still there, nothing is lost. I've never heard a good argument against it.

[@ExelArts]

​@@i.j.dragonfly3123 I've never heard a good argument for adding them. There elves and no one asked for it. adding them started arguments on the forums players and devs attacking other players and the devs knew that it would happen. why should they have it when they where supposed to be the traditional elf's of warcraft fair skinned from mythology. this is a fantasy game no one played warcraft to see them selves in fantasy species. all its done has created fights in game and the forums. Now the woke devs can get there 15sec of acceptance from the mob and say look im an ally. NO ONE ASKED FOR IT! 1. Deviation From Lore: Warcraft lore, Blood Elves are a race of elves who were once High Elves but were driven to near extinction by the Undead Scourge. As a result, they became addicted to using magic to sate their hunger and changed their name to Blood Elves. Adding dark skin tones to Blood Elves is a significant deviation from their original lore as it change's how they are perceived as a race. 2. Racial Identity: By adding dark skin tones it negatively impact the racial identity of Blood Elves. This is because the addition of dark skin tones conflicts with the established identity and image of the Blood Elves. It also raise's concerns about cultural appropriation if the dark skin tones are inspired by real cultures without proper representation or acknowledgement. 3. Changing Established Characters: Blood Elves have appeared in various media within the Warcraft franchise, and fans have a strong attachment to their established appearances, this is not just within the warcraft universe. Changing the appearance of a beloved character lead's to disappointment or backlash from fans 4.. Escapism: video games provide an escape from real-world problems and adding real-world issues detract from the escapism that games provide. 5. Sensitivity: Real-world issues are complex and sensitive, and some argue that video games, as entertainment media, Don't have the nuance to portray them accurately or respectfully. Attempts to depict real-world issues in video games end up trivializing them or exacerbating existing stereotypes. 6. Target Market: Video games are marketed to a certain demographic, and not everyone may be interested in games featuring real-world issues. Adding such issues will alienate gamers and lead to lower sales figures

[@dominusdevacore517]

I hate the main storyline (some side quests were pretty funny) for ffxiv. Emotional driven storyline that makes very little sense. I felt like that creepy guy/girl that probably shouldn't be there as the real stars did their thing. How about another cut scene on how awesome new character y is? Personally, I liked swtor for the fact I could pick to what I wanted to do. I was actually surprise on how deep the choices would let you go (at times). Picking a good option to do something far far worst was thought of. (Saving so and so parents only to give them to the bad guy) The story was at least partly my own.

[@snakesolidhb]

it was today's years when i found chromie is a transgender dragon? Seriusly, im getting more and more disconnected with the lore of warcraft... its just political agenda instead an interesting and immersive story. I still remember playing MoP and going to those villages helping farmers and learning the story in each zone, i would get so connected for those looked like real villagens without that much "fantasy" to it, no magic just helping the families, and i would get involved in the connections those npc's made with each other, and then all of a sudden the storyline snaped and bam big demon or sha destrying everything, hust to remind me "This is warcraft boy! theres sht going on in the world". But that experiense made me connect much more to the world, and the charecters, and i would feel a lot more if a simple father of a simple family died after i've helped them. Now... theres this political correctness going on... i dont really care about a couple being gay, i dont care about trans ppl, i play wow to immerse in a fantasy world not to play a mirror of reality... Like the made Malfurian a cry baby that just says "Tiranda!" so they could show "Woman power"? i mean... isnt the dude infused with insanly ammounts of power from cenarius?

[@stanleykassim2839]

The storytelling became very westernised and started focussing more on the story and less on the characters. Every really good story focuses on the characters and their motivation - and not really on the story. The story is built by characters and motivation - not the other way around. Good stories have rich character lore and relatable motivation. As soon as characters become shallow and motivation becomes unrealistic, the story becomes irrelevant. With that said. We must keep in mind that the new market is a full of attention deficit Tik Tok zombies who are addicted to instant gratification and could not care less about a good story. All they want is good gear to beat other players with and to get to max level ASAP to start getting the best gear. Unfortunately for us pre-Tik Tok people, it means that Blizzard had to abandon the best part that made WOW the best MMORPG: character depth.

[@KeepitABuck50]

It's all about characters emotions now rather than warriors at odds with each other fighting to the death. It's just lame. We need knuckle dragging barbarians fighting knuckle dragging knights. The blue haired lesbians writing this trash are sooooo bad.....it's sad.

[@CreativeUsernameEh]

Yawn. Fighting for no reason other than inherent Right Wing Authoritarianism isn’t interesting. I like having different cultures clash like the xenophobic ultra-traditional (and this ultra outdated and ignorant) Night Elves instantly responding with violence to all strangers because they’re traumatized from the first Legion invasion. I like Orcs being honorable survivors fighting to protect themselves after they’re judged for their appearance instead of mindless genocidal monsters who genuinely are horrible monsters. I like Forsaken who are fueled by grief and vengeance for how badly their lives were ruined, not generic evil undead that are enemies of all living things. And I love having these larger group motives/identities consolidated into singular characters like Tyrande, Thrall, Sylvanas. Yes, that means “emotions” but you don’t need to be afraid of emotions. They’re necessary to tell worthwhile stories. This is a lot more than “knuckle dragging hulks”! Warcraft has been ruined since the start when it became all about rule of cool nonsense. Blame The Burning Crusade xpac. Wow was always horrible\doomed

[@KeepitABuck50]

@CreativeUsernameEh I actually agree with you, those character motivations are great. The problem is how those motivations are written.

[@i.j.dragonfly3123]

I promise you, there are very few, if any, "blue-haired lesbians" in WoW's writer's room. These are old straight guys who want to LOOK progressive without doing the work to write endearing, interesting characters (who also just so happen to be gay, trans, black, etc.). Tokenism annoys everybody.

[@michakoniecpolski5677]

@@CreativeUsernameEh RiGhT wiNg auThOriTariAnIsN Lmao, cry more soyboy

[@youngkingdom8131]

I see you're back on that WoW train. Same.

[@DVSPress]

I actually unsubbed well before releasing this video. Did all the content I care to, The rest is just grinding the same crap at different difficulty levels. Very little to do and none of it matters. And I can't ever even seem to be online with my friends either.

[@youngkingdom8131]

@@DVSPress Yeah, this is the first week I haven’t played since dragon flight. I’ve always been a pvper, and Blizz has not served that community in any meaningful way since MoP. Just the same old stuff. Lost interest, and playing the Warhammer private server with my friends. If you ever crave a classic mmo pvp experience, it’s a blast!

[@DVSPress]

@@youngkingdom8131 Sweet I really enjoyed WAR when it came out.

[@wallybiii]

Unfortunately most FFXIV quests are just as irrelevant...I guess at least they aren't shoving identity politics down our throats though. It's creeping in though.

[@zacharyarons6950]

In your opinion what is the proper way to write gay and trans characters?

[@lomborg4876]

The problem with Warcraft is that they killed off The Burning Legion. The Burning Legion is the core plot driver in Warcraft. When you look back in the lore, every issue could be traced back to them. Warcraft has also become too positive a world. There’s a night and day difference between Warcraft 3 dialogue and Dragonflight dialogue. And ofc. Warcraft is made by woke people now - Woke people have absolutely no talent for storytelling.

[@ayhamahmad2277]

That's why legion was the last great expansion let us hope with bobby gone they can fix the story

[@firepenguin38]

I unsubbed to wow. I know my un support doesnt change much, but this garvage is not what o signef up fir around 15 years ago. When the story wad good. Not gay dragons

[@DVSPress]

The main reason to stop giving money to people who hate you is for YOU, not because it sends a message to them.

[@merlinmage6012]

Without the story there aint no game really espefially rpgs i cant see how anybody would play a game only to see numbers at that point you are better off playing with a calculator or just play sports games for some reason mmorpgs have attracted dumbasses that dont like to read or explore or do anything even play the game from what ive seen alsways complaing of the game dungeons raids mobs which is weird that is the game and what makes it fun atleast it used to now its just simps and mount collectors and idiots tht probably dont know what world they live ingame or why they are doing it.

[@DeusExDraconian]

I've been playing through classic, hoping to finally finish what I had to quit due to schooling so many years ago, and I was joking about the poor state of Dragonflight, but mostly on deaf ears. To the average player, the state of the lore or the woke politics is irrelevant. I have not butt heads with anyone else I am playing with, but since several of them live in California, I bet they support the woke crap, or are at least numb to it and I'd probably be guild kicked if I laid out my true feelings and arguments against it. I hope to finish Wrath and then I can say I finally finished what I had started long ago and then let WoW die and leave it a memory and ignore anything I hear from it for the rest of my life. It's bad enough already I have to be giving money to this company, but I've had multiple private servers up and die on me, so I didn't have much choice if I wanted the 'real experience'.

[@user-xc9nd8kz9j]

because the writer have no life experience. but is not only wow. look at the loadingscreen only one weapon and this a staff. and no male? only women and transsomething. in comparison look at the screen when u going to stormwind thats is war

[@i.j.dragonfly3123]

Lots of good points. I don't think "woke politics" by itself is as much of a problem in WoW as people make it out to be. Like you said, Chromie being trans is harmless and cool, because it's integrated casually and she has a personality outside of it. (Also, even if you question the Warcraft universe having progressive politics, it makes sense that the bronze dragonflight would be... ahem... ahead of their time on certain issues. Haha. I'm sorry...) The problem is that the writers are overwhelmingly out-of-touch men who want to aggressively pat themselves on the back about "including" other groups of people without putting in the effort to make them feel like... you know, real people, with feelings and doubts and arcs and stuff. Hence why you get token gestures, like covering Sylvanas's midriff for being "objectifying," all while butchering the story of one of the most iconic female characters in gaming. She's no longer a ruthless antihero seeking revenge, or a bitter and terrified creature trying to avoid hell, or a shadowy figure suddenly thrust into the limelight and forced to fight for people she once saw as nothing but a shield. Instead, she's a girlboss in the most reductive and insulting sense. A tool to push us into more meaningless spectacle. The writers didn't understand why she was once so well-loved, so they twisted her into something that no one loves anymore. But what we call "woke" when it's a woman or a gay person or a black person being treated like a prop, would simply be "bad writing" if it were to happen to a character who isn't a minority. The solution is to write interesting, endearing, complex characters whose identities are just one facet of who they are. (And who don't have obnoxiously unnatural dialogue, but that should go without saying.) And I think that's how it all ties into your big point. Players don't feel invested in the story because the characters and the world aren't given time to develop naturally. We are told how important people and things are, but there is no room to breathe or to discover fascinating new things about the cultures, environment, and history around us. You can have all the fun mechanics you want, but you have to answer the big question: why should we care?

[@pheonixshaman]

I left at the end of Cata and came back for the first 2 weeks of Mists and have not been back since. The game has become a complete cluster in every way: gameplay, storytelling, worldbuilding............ Whenever I get the itch to go back to an mmorpg, it is always FF14 that I think about going back to, not WoW.

[@Aedrion-]

Undervalued video. A few points I wanna comment on: First, yes the world was the protagonist, it featured lands, nations, races, history, massive wars and in there were memorable people. Now it's the inverse, all of that is dead and the focus is on 'memorable' people who - without a world to drive them - are boring, empty shells. I want to add to this that a world must also challenge a player to be memorable. It must be deadly, demand intelligence, demand understanding and merit caution and curiosity. A world only receives as much respect as it demands. Why do people care about Dark Soul and Elden Ring so much? Because their worlds a brutal and unforgiving and therefore memorable. WoW's world is a vapid, safe, soulless and empty place where oceans of 'mobs' are mowed down in AoE, never threatening the player and thus... being swiftly forgotten. - Second. The core drive in my experience for a grander story are the motivations and opinions of its key actors. And their actions that derive from that are what creates a compelling, logical story. You touched on this and I feel like this is one of the greatest sins in WoW because the motivations and opinions of every NPC are bland, uninspired drivel. Where's the warchiefs that seek death or glory, the fanatics who seek purity in the light, the warlocks bargaining for forbidden power, the diplomats trying to reconcile two opposites, the vengeful and driven? Where's any of this that drives a plot and changes a world? Nowhere. It's nowhere. So the plot is like a zombie, it walks not because it's going anywhere, but because the body remembers what that looked like. - Third. The woke shit is obnoxious and awful but I wanna mention it *did* get noticed. To this day, threads on the forums pop up bemoaning the horrible California writing that destroys any semblance of realism and immersion. These threads are of course quickly shut down or spiral out of control with hundreds of replies within hours. The consensus I've reached is that the more mentally mature audience that loved old Warcraft, can't reconcile how awful the lore and stories are while people who seem woke, or just more... shallow, don't mind. And WoW is a game for simple and somewhat dumb people now, I'm just going to say it. I've played it long enough to have noticed that everybody I played with, had a very shallow interaction with the game. - Fourth, you're bang on with Wrath and Arthas causing a shift. They knew that when Warcraft's main flagship character was on stage, the story would inevitably be his and shift away from the world. It did, and while I wasn't a fan of how they handled it - with a bad ending - at least it gave him time to shine. But they never realised after that this only worked because it was Arthas fucking Menethil, the most popular character in Warcraft and a known name even to some people who don't know Warcraft very well. Deathwing who? The world needed to become the stage again after he was gone, but it never did. They stuck with this main campaign nonsense and it got increasingly worse because there wasn't anything compelling to drive it forward. - Finally, I wanna point out that I noticed it took an actual writer to be able to point out all this nonsense. And the people writing for Wow are not writers, are not qualified and should be fired. The world they envision is a woke nightmare, full of plot contrivances, fabricated drama, shallow, vapid characters, complete nonsense consistency, irrelevant world elements and some of the worst written dialogue I've ever had the displeasure of hearing or reading. There is, sadly, no way back. Warcraft is long dead and what shambles on is a corpse, propped up by a company that wants money and players whose standards are too low to notice. Thanks for being one of the few able to recognise how and why this happened. I think everybody underestimates how important the world and story were to the health of WoW and that by neglecting it, they've killed it.

[@auntieambmiracleb2]

I'm so tired of people weaponizing the word "woke". That word does not at all deal with sexual identity. My God . .

[@johnja9017]

It does though. You don't see non-woke people proclaiming their pronouns.

[@briansmith2160]

One word.....women. You have to hire them..... the evil Government makes you. And so, all hope is lost.😔

[@litebkt]

I’ve been frustrated by many quests lately that have no text to read. I read the quests. The “woke” stuff doesn’t bother me. That’s how the world is these days. Live and let live.

[@whisped8145]

Due to "live and let live" the woke got to where they are now, and they certainly never abide by "live and let live". They are absolute tyrants, narcissistic and sadistic quite often as well. They are the harbingers of the next soviet union/nazi-germany level tyranny and mass death. Always funny how everyone is so against the Nazis and yammers how we must do more, and just wonder "how could that have happened D:" but refuse to see it with the other insane Socialists and their dogmatic scam.

[@CreativeUsernameEh]

@@whisped8145 you know you’re totally ignorant of world history when you think trans people are like nazis. The Jews weren’t the only people Hitler put into concentration camps you know.

[@petrock2267]

oh hey this guy seems like he has a well thought out non reactionary opinion, how cool is that! :/ i simply do not think gay people being in games is obnoxious

[@Seagaltalk]

Hold on dragon flight has gay and trans characters?????? news to most i am sure Final fantasy hasn't had a good story in any game.