World of Warcraft: Current Year

Cybsled said:

WOTLK was a great xpac and had a good story.

WOTLK was also released 14 years ago and their xpacs and story have been ever uneven since then

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The last tier of Shadowlands in terms of story wasn't that bad (actually I've enjoyed this recent tier for the most part). Given I despised everything else of Shadowlands and maybe our guild break made this last tier much more tolerable but I just felt the Sylvannas arc was just drawn out way too long. I think we all kind of knew what kind of resolution her character story would receive but I felt like the story was completely held captive by her character for far too long. I feel like Dragonflight is going to be somewhat of a distraction or a story break before the next long term arc is introduced. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since WotLK and how far I felt the story has fallen and suffered. Really it felt like it just laid there every expansion was like blah blah blah Sylvannas blah blah Sylvannas. Which is a solid character but surely give their rich lore and number of notable characters something can happen. I'm not so familiar with their written works but I'm assuming they have a lot of places to go but regardless of how good the game is or not, I'm fairly disappointed in the lore over the last few years.

Muligan said:

It's hard to believe so much time has passed since WotLK and how far I felt the story has fallen and suffered. Really it felt like it just laid there every expansion was like blah blah blah Sylvannas blah blah Sylvannas.

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That's a really reductive summary of the last decade and a half.

It was blah blah blah Garrosh, _then_ blah blah blah Sylvanas.

MMOs are a terrible medium for storytelling and they need to stop.

They are a great medium for world building, but if the world is already built you just end up killing off most of the characters in your IP or making their wiki bio be nightmarishly convoluted so that newbies can't keep up.

WoW reached that point at the end of Battle for Azeroth. They should have had WoW 2 ready to go at that point with a timeskip and new characters and plotlines to explore.

I actually think that we shouldn't have killed any of the antagonists. Arthas should still be sitting on the throne with the raid just being us containing him. Have him be like the faction leader bosses, so he's killable but non canon. That way you can bring him back for Shadowlands but have it just be a Northrend revamp rather than derivative new stuff.

WoW should have been a RPG world you could live in, not a medium to drastically progress the IP.

Daidraco said:

I seriously hope you werent taking a review from Chris. FFXIV is the literal definition of stockholm syndrome. No shit the little parts are good when you just suffered through 40 hours of fucking running fetch quests back and forth.

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While Chris is the poster-child of over exaggeration, talking about stockholm syndrome about FFXIV in the WoW thread is quite the irony.

Malkav said:

While Chris is the poster-child of over exaggeration, talking about stockholm syndrome about FFXIV in the WoW thread is quite the irony.

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Lol. Yes. That was great.

FF14 added garrisons by the way, LMFAO.

It's just a basic version of animal crossing with no player power attached though.

Malkav said:

While Chris is the poster-child of over exaggeration, talking about stockholm syndrome about FFXIV in the WoW thread is quite the irony.

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Very true. I missed my own irony there (gets ready to log into WOTLK classic prepatch).

Chris said:

MMOs are a terrible medium for storytelling and they need to stop.

They are a great medium for world building, but if the world is already built you just end up killing off most of the characters in your IP or making their wiki bio be nightmarishly convoluted so that newbies can't keep up.

WoW reached that point at the end of Battle for Azeroth. They should have had WoW 2 ready to go at that point with a timeskip and new characters and plotlines to explore.

I actually think that we shouldn't have killed any of the antagonists. Arthas should still be sitting on the throne with the raid just being us containing him. Have him be like the faction leader bosses, so he's killable but non canon. That way you can bring him back for Shadowlands but have it just be a Northrend revamp rather than derivative new stuff.

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MMOs are fine for storytelling. The quality depends on the storyteller.

Wow's problem is it blew it's character and lore load early on due to it's NON story focus.

FFXIV had a fricking 10 year build up to the resolution of the main story arc. Characters came and went, some lingered for multiple expansions, some were there just a short time and made a MAJOR impact. But all of that was due to the world building and lore and what have you.

WoW tries to do the same thing, but because their initial focus wasn't on that story, they're forced to do a lot of clumsy retcon. Not to say FFXIV doesn't have to do some retcon as well, but usually it is focused on dialogue told to us vs. and using the "unreliable narrator" angle to explain things away. Like "Suchandsuch told you what? That's odd. It's not a lie, but it is an embellishment of the truth. They must have had their reasons..."

Cybsled said:

MMOs are fine for storytelling. The quality depends on the storyteller.

Wow's problem is it blew it's character and lore load early on due to it's NON story focus.

FFXIV had a fricking 10 year build up to the resolution of the main story arc. Characters came and went, some lingered for multiple expansions, some were there just a short time and made a MAJOR impact. But all of that was due to the world building and lore and what have you.

WoW tries to do the same thing, but because their initial focus wasn't on that story, they're forced to do a lot of clumsy retcon. Not to say FFXIV doesn't have to do some retcon as well, but usually it is focused on dialogue told to us vs. and using the "unreliable narrator" angle to explain things away. Like "Suchandsuch told you what? That's odd. It's not a lie, but it is an embellishment of the truth. They must have had their reasons..."

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As highly as I regard the story in the last two FF14 expansions, nothing about the MMO medium helped the story (other than "Champions from beyond the rift, heed my call!") and the story is a barrier to the MMO.

It would have worked as well as a regular RPG and they are even going back to make it so that you can play the whole thing single player if you choose to.

Yeah, that's one of the main reasons I never could get into WoW. They just trash old mechanics at every expansion / reset. Never played during the time garrisons were useful. When I did get around to playing again, I liked garrisons but by then they were almost useless and a waste of time. It was just another thing that pissed me off and added to my reasons to quit again.

I hate reset mechanics. Don't have a lot of time to play games, so having my time investment thrown into the dumpster by greedy, no skill devs will always keep me away from games like this.

Didn't end up subbing to check out the free SL/Boost after all. Got about half way through installing mods, and just couldn't be bothered. Looking at recent YT vids on the DF Beta, it all looks very much like more of the same.
A dozen hours to max level & another bunch of islands that I won't give a shit about in a couple of months...daily quests out the wazoo once again...new race looks completely retarded to me, so no interest in any of that. Even the changes to crafting seem typically Blizzard half-arsed and meh. M+ speed meta basically unchanged (I know many love it) etc.
Guess I'm still done with WoW after all.

Bondurant said:

Maximum Interview with Ion Hazzikostas - MMO-Champion

Maximum Interview with Ion Hazzikostas

www.mmo-champion.com

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I'm a simple man. Ion speaks, I don't listen.

I hope that's actually real and they did that. A company with no GMs to properly facilitate the playerbase in the actual game, but an army of twitter and reddit thought police.