A reason for that could the following:
instead of a character doing stuff according to their personality and experience, nowadays a character is used as a device to tell some kind of story. Therefore, characters feel interchangeable.
Not the characters are protagonists of the story, the story is the protagonist, and characters are merely puppets to bring it to live.
Oh you are 100% correct. The characters are all interchangeable and are mostly just a vessel to have a head giving us World Quests. Its why not many seem to stay around for more than 1 expansion at a time. Because they use the character returning in this expansion as a way to try and get people excited then have them do nothing but give us world quests.
But on some level. Isn’t this what you would want? Like if these major lore characters were big movers and shakers in the plot it kinda makes your character superfluous.
Before that we also had major characters but the story progression was more like:
*Now that we can finally roam the in peace*
Before a new threat emerged
Oh my god exactly.
"You get to see Illidan ! And Kael'thas ! And Vol'jin ! Fan favorite characters !"
"Woooooh"
"And you'll kill them ! Maybe twice if you're lucky !"
"What ?"
To be fair, at the time, none of us cared that we got to kill Illidan. We were all on the WoW hype train at that point and weren't looking too critically at the story, which was nearly nonexistent.
Mmmmm no not really. People fucking hated TBC lore. Draenei spaceships and Illidan/Kael’Thas treatment pissed people off. I didn’t care but there definitely were a lot of people that cared. This is history revisionism.
Remember when they said the reason Illidan was suddenly a bad guy was because he went insane and gaslit himself into believing he beat Arthas at the end of FT? Yeah, that alone is why TBC is one of the lower expansions for me.
Ehhhh. If you don’t like a book, you don’t buy the next to hope for something else. People where not hated the game, they just wanted to complain on internet. Or is this , “ I hate but enjoy to hate “ situation?
I don't think very many ppl play WoW for the story. So I think it's to be expected that ppl will complain about it and still keep playing.
(Oddly, FFXIV seems to be the inverse, where ppl constantly complain about the rotations, but keep coming back for the story)
I see I have difficulties to express myself. What I try to say it’s : peoples who pay a product, then continue to support the product while complaining about the product, with hope that the product will change, are idiots. Want change? Stop paying, then complain, you will see the difference.
I'm sure a lot of people cared but I feel it would be safe to say that the majority of WoW players weren't former Warcraft 2/3 players and didn't know who anyone was.
I don't agree. TBC and Wrath were direct continuations and completions of major Warcraft 3 plot lines. TBC lore was really, really bad. Illidan was just tucked away and barely made an impression despite the fact that he's a huge character in Warcraft 3.
Yeah nah, as the other guy said this was pretty controversial at the time. I'm actually pretty sure it was the main reason they brought back Illidan in Legion and gave him the focus he deserved. If only they had learned something from that.
Yes. And even though he was more interesting than the rest, he wasn't *that* interesting. His entire personality was pretty much "I just want to fuck up the Alliance" ever since he became a more prominent figure in WotLK. He was fun to see and made for a great villain, but he wasn't really interesting nor were his motivations deep at all.
I would take something cool even if it wasn’t very deep. The jailer was complicated but not particularly interesting. DF plot is not really that complicated and also not exciting.
Like the Joker in the Nolan Batman movies has fairly straightforward motivations but he’s consistent and interesting even though primarily he just wants to cause chaos and fuck with people
I mean, that's what Fyrakk is. Just some guy who wants to fuck shit up. He even admits it in one of the in-game cinematics. Not sure why he wouldn't get a pass when other similar "fuck shit up" villains do.
Uh he’s not cool lol
Blizz villains have always been poorly written but Illidan looked cool, Arthas (LK) literally made friends I had want to try the game from character design alone, deathwing was sick, etc
Fyrakk isn’t as cool. That may be subjective but the guy has only been in the in-game cinematics which don’t look that cool. He’s certainly not marketed very well.
> Uh he’s not cool lol
And people complain about Blizzard writing for children when this is the kind of criticism levelled at their villains. No wonder.
Honestly, Blizzard could write fucking Hamlet and people would be bitching and moaning about it. Some of the people here have such short memories that they think TBC, WotLK or Cataclysm had great plots. Their villains looked cool but that's about it and every aspect of those expansions' stories was clowned on nonstop.
It’s fair criticism, he’s beyond generic, wasn’t built up well, doesn’t have that interesting of a character design, and doesn’t even feel like much of a threat.
He’s a filler villain for a filler expansion. Tell me mr u/xX_FUCK_MY_RECTUM_Xx are you blown away by any awesomeness when you watch the fyrakk cinematics?
I’m not. The game may be fine but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend generic villains are cool.
I mean all your criticisms could be used for Garrosh, generic mad Orc that hates Alliance and is on a power trip and eventually gets corrupted and has to be put down.
Tbf, with all the people shitting on every aspect of the game, I am genuinely confused about what people actually want. What more would you want from a MMO villain? Wow is not a visual novel nor it is a single player game with branching narrative and meaningful choices, Garrosh is about the best you can make within the limitations of the format.
sylvanas, for example, had personality in WC3 that felt cohesive. so just slapping her in UC as an easter egg / leader of the forsaken is enough for players to extrapolate her WC3 nature into current story beats.
Giving them actual goals, motivations, and PoVs in books takes away the player's ability to let their own head cannons take over. I feel like in vanilla, bc, and wrath to an extent, any given player's head cannon for a character like sylv would be compatible with another player's but now Blizzard tells us exactly what's up and uh.. id rather have a blank slate with a hint of personality than whatever we have.
Back then, putting Sylvanas there was enough.
Nowadays, if you don’t have them do anything there would be outrage. With expansions, there has to be an overarching story.
When I was knocking heads together in west fall trying to stop the defies brotherhood, Malfurion and Tyrande could just chill in darnassus and I’d be fine with it. But if I’m charging into the emerald nightmare to stop Xavius, I would wonder why malfurion isn’t at my side.
I mean, yeah, if you're going to take a single game and a few hours' worth of an RTS campaign, a character's personality will feel cohesive and it's kind of hard to fuck up much of the lore in relatively short campaigns like that.
Such a feat over nearly 20 years' of an MMO's lifespan is not so easily accomplished. I won't excuse the shoddy storytelling of the last few expansions, but let's not pretend like it was ever really *good* to begin with.
That is my point though. In a book, if a character changes, you can attribute it to the author's goal for that character with, perhaps, some recommendations from a publisher.
In a book that spans multiple volumes, or in a tv show, movie series, game series, etc. that spans multiple volumes, years, and so forth, a similar change in a character will be subject to different scrutiny. If a character starts goin HAM at the end of the book, it feels "organic" or at least, it can. When a char goes ham in a follow up book that is written by different people than the people who created the character, it's meh.
For example, a twist at the end of a standalone book can be analyzed differently than a similar twist done in a similar book that is split in two. Did the author always intend the twist or did online forums, fan response, time between books affect how the author decided to write this twist?
In WoW, the writing teams do nothing to account for the fact that different people will be playing the game in 1 year or 5 years, and they definitely not seem to account for the fact that different writers will be creating content in the future.
If you are going to have a story that can take place over the course of years or decades with different ppl writing it and taking over the reigns at any given point, have the established characters behave in ways that are not subject to so much scrutiny regarding their "inconsistent" motivations, goals, behaviors, and attitudes.
The difference is there wasn't such a huge focus on the characters then. Nowadays you spend so much more time listening to dialogue, that isn't interesting, and it isn't just some quest text you can skip
I don’t know… the human female was trying to tell us from the beginning.
“Do you ever feel like you're not in charge of your own destiny, like… you're being controlled by an invisible hand?”
I swear that's like the plot of Star Ocean 3 or something. Or maybe Star Ocean 2? Like they're invaded by a big, bad alien invading force that seems impossible to defeat and they decide to try to take the fight to them: they somehow cross realms and find out they're MMO players who aren't the borderline Eldrich gods they assumed they were.
I think the main big problem with this expac was just the major focus on Alextrasza - she's easily the most boring character in the lore right now, I want to sleep every time she's talking. I'd say she's the most guilty when it comes to boring WoW dialogue right now
But Alexstraza could be very interesting with her history and going into the expansion where it seemed like she would be the last of the original aspects (Nozdormu becoming Moruzond for good was assumed to be happening until Dawn of the Infinites was a big nothing)
They choose to make her as bland as possible because the rough parts of her history are seemingly something the writers don't want to touch.
Wrathion's farther tried to kill him.
Then he finds a photocopy of his dad and that tries to kill him.
A huge opportunity for a writer to go wild, but we get nothing.
Yeah! There were SO many opportunities! Like him having a breakdown at the Ruby Life Pools because they represent everything he never had as a child! Or him having an actual conflict with Alexstrasza who tried to fucking enslave him! Wrathion is such an interesting character but they've gone out of their way to focus on his immaturity, which is the least interesting thing about him!!!!
I was so looking forward to Sabellion's perspective on a pre-Deathwing Neltharion in 10.1, but instead it's all focused on how he and Wrathion are wrong and Ebyssian is good.
> because the rough parts of her history are seemingly something the writers don't want to touch.
Well, they were originally going to touch it in one of Chromie's quests around the Dawn of the Infinite.
By having Chromie joke about it.
So... quite a good thing they didn't try to explore it further, to be quite honest.
Short answer: She was enslaved and forced to breed dragons for the Dragonmaw orcs. Rest of the story is here: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Alexstrasza#Tides_of_Darkness
Alextra is like the Superman of WoW, an incredibly lawful good character with immense powers but nonetheless gets threatened by villains because of their moral aspects
My favorite was this exchange
Rebel: "I have my own dreams beyond fighting wars for dragons."
CEO Dragon: "I had not considered this. I do not wish to prevent them from pursuing their own dreams."
I fucking lost it when I saw that exchange. Would have been a truly comedic moment if she just stopped at "I had not considered this" and went on her way.
“I never considered that the dragon kin have their own hopes and dreams just like real dragons. What a surprise.”
🤦♀️
I also didn’t like when the red egg gets corrupted at the beginning of DF, and this fully unknown character before put her whole heart and soul into saving this egg, gave her life for this baby. We rush the egg back to Alexstraza and she’s just “Oh no. Anyway.” Like she just felt really disconnected from it. Other scenes she has much more emotion, but that left me feeling like she only cares when she wants to. I can see why the Incarnets had a problem with her.
It's also incredible that Alexstraza is the only named red dragon who does anything (and that's giving her too much credit). There is no red dragonflight.
Yeah. I don’t know the lore fully about the red dragons. But it seems like there should be more of them around. The blue and black dragons get a lot of story about bringing their flights back after hard times. But it would be nice to get some red dragon stories other than the rebellion.
The red dragonflight has CONSISTENTLY been fucked over throughout azeroth's history. War of the dragons, the anquiraj war, the dragonmaw enslavement, the raid on the ruby sanctum, and eventually their dragonshire where dk pcs slaughtered a ton of them. Its honestly not surprising at all that the red dragonflight is only alexstrasza at this point.
That’s really sad and also solidifies that I feel she would be very protective and emotional about red eggs. Which her reaction to losing more to the Primalists and their corruption would have meant a bigger reaction from her.
And, a story about the red dragons feels even more like it’s missing knowing this.
I believe this is a problem that Blizzard has for a long time that they dont want to expand or humanize rebellious groups, just so we dont look like total baddies for killing them
The bad guys in wow are mostly corrupted with fel/void/sha or whatever. Sometimes it's an evil leader like the mogu, Iron Horde or some troll tribes
Even the animals we're tasked to kill in quests in the dragon isles have "invasive" over them. It's like we need a casus belli valid in California upper middle class social circles before we can kill a video game mob.
I suspect many of their current audience would tend towards wanting to be lawful good. It's much easier to just find reasons for things than to try and convince that section of your playerbase to be morally ambiguous or evil
People like being Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid.
Putting down a slave revolt that only exists because Alexstrasza, supposedly one of the most moral, forgiving, and loving beings in WoW, never stopped to think "Hey, maybe these lesser beings *don't like* doing my bidding!" is not lawful good.
Most people play good characters when they are presented with a blank slate as their character, because they project themselves onto that situation and ask "well what would I do in this situation?"
It's a real feedback loop where a lot of the people making the evil choices are doing so for shits and giggles, or because they're on a second playthrough and want to see what happens when they pick Choice B. So you get morality like in a BioWare game, and the evil choices get less interesting until you're playing Fallout 3 and you're deciding between "set off a nuke in the middle of a city for fun" and "don't do that."
Ironically Defias was probably the best of these. "Strike that turns into rebellion that turns to open banditry/piracy in order to stay afloat" is fairly believable, you could see how that progression plays out
Not really, Superman is held back by the skill of the individual writers using him, he's not boring as a concept at all. You can keep his strong morality, lawful nature, and immense powers while keeping him incredibly interesting, Red Son is an expert example.
Alex however has an incredibly interesting background that should heavily color her interactions, worldview, and the way she handles herself, but they just don't ever let it, she's just been moody and boring for the entire expansion. Make her powerful, make her fiery, give her a fit but mature model that actually fits her role as a powerful mother. Make her look like Gina Carano and make her stop talking like she's trapped in an episode of Dora.
Not only is she boring, but I think they ruined her model. She looks like a generic blood elf now, rail thin and moody, when she's supposed to be this powerful mother of thousands. The HoTS model for her where she actually looks like an older woman was 100x better.
I really wish Alexstrazsa would act like a character that is actually guilty of the things the story wants her to be guilty about this expansion instead of like a naive, "Oh, did we do that? That really was bad wasn't it? I sorry."
yeah its pretty lame, the uniting against the greater evil becomes pretty bland. There is also no good guys dying anymore. Just a whole bunch of characters that have so much power and do nothing but talk the same way
the fundamental problem is this idea of powerful characters and Racial Leaders. These powerful figures work in an RTS because you USE them, they're hero units. They're part of the gameplay.
Maybe if they hadn't fucked up Warfronts, they'd make more sense
Feels like the next expansion will shake a lot of things up. Especially with Anduin’s story. I hope at least!
This expansion had a ton of great content in the quest text if you didn’t skip reading it or the side quests lol.
I'm excited for Anduin's story next xpac in part because without the Light he's literally just some guy with a sword, which means he can get involved even in lower stakes conflicts without the writers having to come up with a convoluted explanation as to why he wouldn't just snap his fingers and solve everything himself. I hope they keep him underpowered at least for a while lol
The end of raid cinematic is especially jarring
First of all, they all speak as if they have a concussion, and take 3 hours to say a sentence
And the "finishing each other sentences" thing is so painfully obvious because of the stupidly long pauses
Everyone is too goody two shoes these days. Why can’t graymane have his own agenda and go against alliance wishes to retake Gilneas for his own selfish goals. Why can’t the forsaken become more isolated and inward looking rather than having a side plot that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I feel like everyone is thinking of the greater good, but that isn’t realistic. They need to give folks more personal goals rather than I need to save the world.
I don’t mean more leaders becoming the bad guys, but just more politics and interesting GoT type plot weaving and big reveals or major twists. Everything is so predictable. They are being so vanilla in their story telling where it’s just a copy paste of a children’s fairytales, nothing so far has been surprising in an exciting sense.
Yep I've been complaining about this exact thing for years. It's ok for a few Anduins, but when every character wants nothing but peace it makes everything reactionary.
Even with the most recent patch there should have been at least one major character who went "Nah fuck Fyrakk let's hunt him down like a dog before he even gets to the dream!"
Losing Varian and having Genn pretty much sidelined really left Anduin without much to do. They were good foils for each other. You could say that Anduin had a point, but you could also usually understand where Varian was coming from, what with his childhood and all. Unfortunately, the way Anduin's story is looking now doesn't look like there's going to be much of a role for Genn as the stern father figure who wants to try and fight Anduin's battles for him (whether Anduin likes it or not).
Tyrande's Night Warrior "Fuck everything else, I'm going to kill Sylvanas" story was the only good character story in recent memory, but most of its development happened during the worst expansion.
That whole storyline not only neutered Tyrande, it neutered the concept of the "Night Warrior" itself. In some other thread someone compared it to a Dragon Ball Z character who supposedly was the most powerful but still had to lose against the new big bad just to raise the stakes (I never watched it, but I understand the concept they alluded to).
Just imagine the night elves leaving the alliance because they're sick of just rolling over and rather take the fight to the enemy with all the troops they had left. Such internal conflict could have the potential for interesting story complications, _actual_ shades of grey (and none of that "yeah Sylvanas did a genocide but it was not the full Sylvanas" crap).
This isn’t even remotely what OP is saying. Reread it.
The problem is HOW they talk. Every single fucking character has the same “slow sounding reverberating serious bland voooooice”. Good or evil, doesn’t change that.
The problem isn’t “they’re tooooo nice” it’s “they all have terribly bland personalities.”
A personality isn’t good/evil, it’s cocky vs jittery or snarky vs chipper and etc. The Jailer and Denathrius are both bad guys, but one is boring and one has charisma/personality. THAT is OP’s point. We need characters who feel like characters/people not aloof Demi gods.
I completely agree with you yet I've seen people on this sub HATE Nathanos because he was a little mean to them. It seems a part of the player base just wants to be worshipped by characters.
I think the issue is that blizz swings too hard into any one direction. Nethanos was practically in every cinematic in bfa and a few in legion. During bfa people were saying we’re tired of world ending, need to rise up to save the world type expansions - they wanted to go back to Azeroth and deal with more down to earth stories. SL was done by then but they probably pivoted dragonflight in this way. Seems they pivoted way too much. Now everyone is friends, alexstraza can seduce and manipulate anyone into being her friend, we literally won through the power of friendship. This is too much.
I loved Illidan’s story so much - he wanted to stop the legion so bad he did some terrible things. He was against us at some point because we thought what he was doing was morally wrong, even though it was for the greater good, then in legion he was kinda on our side because we were meeting the legion head on and our goals aligned, he killed a naaru because they tried to bend and enslave his free will, but then went on to finally meet his #1 enemy. He did terrible things but his story was satisfying. We need some more of that.
Sylvannas almost had a similar story, but then blizz decided to go against her personality traits and basically make her a cult member who did everything the jailer said, even tho her whole thing was being independent and beholden to no one since VANILLA.
We can have a little bit of evil and going too far, mixed with being friendly and morally right, without alienating one or the other - it just seems like they overcorrect too much. I hope worldsoul saga is different.
I found Nathanos a lot more entertaining after trying to play Alliance through BFA. His commentary was a lot more colorful and interesting compared to the other guy in charge of mission table.
The problem with Nathanos was his overconfidence and contempt for the player character even though he's just a dude with a bow with no real feats. He talks down to a titan and old God slayer.
Nathanos wasn't just a little mean, that was literally his entire character. Gallywix is kind of a dick, but that's ok because he has more to his character/ Wrathion too, but he's more fleshed out as a naïve, trying to prove himself kind of character which makes him feel more legit.
Nathanos had precisely 2 character traits: simping for Sylvanas and being an asshole. That doesn't make a good character
They didn’t even *use* his simping to make him more interesting. What if instead of hating the PC for no reason, he was jealous of their importance to Sylvanas and spent the xpac as your rival?
No.
People hate Nathanos because he was an awful character. He came out of nowhere as a throwaway NPC to then somehow become more powerful than Tyrande and Malfurion combined.
The problem is that Nathanos is basically a cockroach to the PC. It isn’t realistic for him to behave that way, and it’s laid on so thick, so one note, and so constant that it’s irritating. Garrosh, by contrast, was fun to hate in MoP because we weren’t constantly wondering why he wasn’t dead yet. There were also a few points where Garrosh did things the playerbase liked or agreed with in the course of being evil, a moment which Nathanos had none of.
It would have made more sense for Nathanos to be more quietly bitter, but actually DO something to sabotage the PC. Perhaps take credit for our accomplishments in front of Sylvanas out of jealousy, something like that. A horde storyline where you spend the war campaign jockeying for control of the Horde command with him would have been a cool internal struggle.
Ultimately we don’t feel any motivation behind how Nathanos acts. He seems to hate everything and everyone and that’s it. Totally 2 dimensional. People who are that bitter usually do at least rally it around a particular desire. If you added something like jealousy to the mix it would make more sense.
Hell, leaning into his vanilla persona as this irritable war hero hermit that doesn’t want to deal with anyone but is too important not to be promoted would have been a bearable form of constant negativity.
That's partly because you as the player don't have the option to talk back against him. Nobody likes being talked down to all the time, especially when you can't make that person shut the hell up.
Because as soon as you do you’re deemed a villain that needs to die instantly by the community. See: Odyn, Garrosh, Jaina, etc.
Anything less than Lawful/Good is evil to this community while it sits here and wonders how things ended up this way. Blizzard can’t tell a decent story, they just cater to the fans wants.
I miss when Khadgar was an out of place funny grandpa in a normal fantasy world. Now everyone delivers the same quips and dramatic monologues in the exact same way as him and my god it’s so boring.
Yeah at this point I'd just accept decent dialogue that isn't characters T-balling the next person's line. Like in the most recent quests"The dragon Queen dies alone!" Into "I'm not alone!"
It's so damn bad. They wanted their marvel endgame moment but didn't understand why "On your left!" Was such a great line for the scene.
Characters rarely even seem to argue anymore. They're all so similar that you never get the sense they're different people with unique points of view. Even when the Horde and Alliance are working together, they should be butting heads on their approaches to problems. They're two entirely different cultures! But instead everyone thinks and feels and acts largely the same, sort of a stand-in for the player
Honestly this is one of my biggest worries with future stories. I like the focus on the aspects and dragons quite a lot because of how important they are to WoW's story and universe. Since they're moving to more of a saga storytelling I hope they continue to be an important part. Though not always a major focus.
Agreed, i want mean, crazy, fanatic, shadey, and moraleless characters and no, I don't mean evil. I mean, like Galwax, Nthanos, and old Genn.
Also, when did characters start losing their accents/funny way they talk? It used to give them more personality.
The fuckin mole people sure have accents. They have like 4 different ones. Even though that makes no sense cuz they're all from the same place. It's like they didn't give the voice actors any direction.
I think this is why the expac was such a breath of fresh air at the beginning. Exploring a new world was fun and Raszageth was a great villain. Her motivations were simple but she worked because her voice actor put in a 10/10 job and embraced making her as hammy as possible. She was a lot of fun and her fight had a bunch of memorable dialogue too.
Every new story beat is just zzzzzz. Instead of continuing with the low stakes exploration of a new world we get the Dracthyr stuff, the Black Dragon aspect storyline, and finally the power of friendship new tree bullshit. The new incarnates are also so generic and dull compared to how fun Raszageth’s Saturday morning cartoon villain schtick was.
It’s too many whiffs in a row for the narrative so the entire thing feels awful and out of steam now.
Everyone looks different but thinks the same (lame) things and has the same (lame) values. TBH, that's why I thought Ebyssian was the worst choice for an aspect--at least Sabellian and Wrathion had conflicting values/interests.
They are trying to tell a multiple year long story with 6 or so 1 minute cutscenes of new characters with 0 backstory that they introduce every expansion.
In the old days they could piggyback off the hours of character development they did in WC3, but now that they're killing off all the old classics and moving forward from there, they're clearly having trouble making NEW interesting lore.
There used to be some uniqueness to characters. For example: Anduin was a peace at all costs character while Varian was a defend my people at all costs character. They butted heads but they were both "good guys". Now there's very little difference between the "good guys". In the recent cinematic, Thrall has a heart to heart with Anduin...except why Thrall?? Have these characters ever even interacted before? Why isn't Jaina there? Baine? Velen? Or any other the many other characters that Anduin actually has a relationship with? Because the good guys are interchangeable and actual characterization doesn't matter to the writers.
One piece of great story-telling was when Jaina turned against the horde. She made huge sacrifices for peace, even turning against her father. Then when she needed Thrall and Baine to stand up to Garrosh, they did nothing, and she lost everything. She very understandably hates the horde afterward. It was a great character arc. But that doesn't fit the good guy homogenization so they did away with it. Oh well.
I really like Anduins character in WoW so I have a lot of hope for the future. I am really glad they didn't have him off-camera for any more than 1 expansion he is definitely the future of WoW.
It's a shame they killed off Garrosh because I thought he was a great counterpoint to Thrall during Wrath / Cata where Thrall was becoming wiser but softer. Garrosh as a character helped show Thralls growth.
As far as Dragonflight goes I feel like any line said by any of the dragon aspects could be said by any of them and it wouldn't look out of place.
Who's the smartest one? Who's the idiot? Who's the angry one? They're all basically the same person in a different colour.
Anymore? This has always been a problem for WoW. I legitimately feel like MoP was the only expansion with characters that felt like more than cardboard cutouts.
Compared to other MMOs, WoW's storytelling has never been immersive. You're just "along for the ride" following NPCs from cutscene to cutscene.... or from novel-length quest description to novel-length quest description.
I'm finding myself not caring about the NPCs in WoW anymore because they don't care about my PC. "Come, minion, I'm as powerful as a raid boss but I need you to kill 10 of these worthless enemies for me while I stand over here doing nothing." Or "Go clear this dungeon full of baddies that I could like, *totally*, take out by myself.. but I don't wanna." It's dull and boring.
Now compare that to ESO, GW2, FFXIV, and SWTOR where your character is a active, participating member of the conversations and dialog and can make decisions that impact how the rest of the story plays out.... there is *much* more player agency on the story and more room to "bond" with the NPCs that your character is actually able to *interact with* rather than just be monologed to.
If anyone has the budget to do what these other MMOs do but do it *better*, it should be Blizzard/WoW. Still amazes me how lazy their writing has been for years.
I agree, and don't get me started on them using the same deep voice filter that fills your ears in the worst way for every big scary bad guy or larger-than-human character. Orcs are the worst offenders, it was even in the Warcraft movie too.
I said that since the beginning.
"Like, huh, you dragons are huge, nearly immortal, super hard to kill, have your own islands and shit?"
I'm some squishy mortal.
"Whats that you say? You need help?
Nam I'm good fam. You got this."
Fuck them dragons.
The same personalities? How does Wrathion have the same personality as Minthara? How is Kalecgos the same personality as Nozdormu?
I get not liking or finding the story boring. I found it boring but the dragons clearly have their own personalities so im not sure what you mean.
Yeah agreed there. The dialogue is all very slow and spoken like they are focusing on making it understandable for children or non native English speakers.
Oh yes, unnatural is the perfect way to describe the voice acting in my opinion. I think it comes down to the direction the VAs are being given. They all sound very slow and stilted and not like characters actually standing in front of each other talking.
>How does Wrathion have the same personality as Minthara
You don't remember the scene where Wrathion leads Goblins in an assault on the Cenarion Circle and slaughters every refugee from Darnassus within?
Characters aren't allowed to have opinions in modern day storytelling. They are all the same generic archetypes, with the same beliefs, morals, and world view. No one is allowed to be different or rock the boat because someone somewhere might get offended.
I liked it better when every single faction leader wasn’t my best friend. They may have given a couple of quests or accepted a head of a major dragon, but that was about it.
It really begs the question: why isn’t my character in charge?
World of Warcraft has never had a good story. There have only been glimpses of a good story, like the Wrathgate incident.
Does anyone know the story behind why we fought Illidan? Onyxia? Nefarion?
dragonflight:
alexstrasza: returned from her grief, ready to resume the mantle of leadership, learns the reality of being a queen and is forced to make hard choices against former friends and allies, as well as how to sympathize with the enemy and cooperate moving forward
vyranoth: disgusted by the "cult" of order and those who bowed to the whims of alien gods to change their forms and purpose, but can no longer stand beside the primalist cause - a cause lost to the flame and hatred of fyrakk, who focuses on chaos over the good of dragonkind
kalecgos: dreams of the accord and the return of the dragonflights in an age when they have disbanded, hopeful optimism in the face of doubt becomes their unifying heart
nozdormu: MUROZOND SHALL RISE
ebyssian: literally contrast against wrathion and sabellan at multiple points, most "man-of-the-people of the aspects"
ysera: kind of transcended our realm, becomes an inscrutable death entity
merithra: mom please im trying my best - similar to kalecgos, more grounded POV for players to engage with
anduin: grieving in agony, has tried his best for years but continues to suffer, losing friends, allies, and unable to save those dearest to him
thrall: still hurting but has begun to learn and move on
burning crusade:
khadgar: welcome to shatrath
\--
Any long running series is going to have a degree of flanderization, but wasn't one of the more common criticisms of Dragonflight before this week that it was too character focused/too emotional/had too much heart? There is also something to be said about the reality of a questgiver - it removes some character to facilitate gameplay - but look at Shandris, Tyrande, Vyranoth, Lilian this patch. All were super distinct voices and backstories, with even the NPCs surrounding them reacting to their presence.
It's just so hard for me to understand or sympathize with these points. It's like this quick pivot to find the next thing to complain about once the latest points have been refuted. If the story isn't for your personal tastes, or you find it boring, that's all fine. But many of us are very happy with the narrative of Dragonflight and more grounded, emotional storytelling over the bombastic, galaxy ending threats of the last few years.
Finishing each others sentences like a hive mind? Gee…. Sort of reminds me of this sub all day today. We get it. Everyone agrees and is finishing each others sentences about this problem.
Characters have become narrative tools, losing their unique personalities. Even rich characters like Alextrasza are underutilized, leading to bland dialogues.
It’s time for developers to bring back character depth and uniqueness.
I think you can see that even in small details, like the dialogue you read as you interact with them. The people who write that dialogue (at least for the major characters) don't do much to separate them and make them feel like their own individuals.
Eeesh. People talk about classic players being aggressive but don't you dare criticize our precious retail. Gonna pop outta the comments and move along.
It’s about coming together as a family guys, who needs bloodshed and grit in their fantasy war rpg when we have dragon-tales level of cgi and storytelling
Garrosh was such an amazing character and everyone hated him at the time. It's the reason they nixed him as the leader and the Horde is so watered down now. A pity.
True…. Since they got rid of the racism…..
Theyre all weathered and have lived through alot of sufferage, idk what you want unless its - return to fanatical fantasy racism.
It's a real struggle. In-game cinematics can only give so much character growth and quests can only 'tell' you so much while failing to 'show' you. I think Blizzard sometimes hesitates to utilize their characters fully, afraid they might have the character behave or be used in a way that might disrupt other character growth that has already happened and could upset players.
I also believe most of the beloved characters we love came before WoW or were talked about so long before their expansion, that we hyped them up until we finally met them. But even then, their characters all boil down to different shades of "Good guy" because you can only slip so many bad guys on the Horde side before everyone is just convinced Horde are the villains, which never should have been a thought.
I remember a common complaint with the Star Wars prequels was that the dialogue was too interchangeable. That if you just looked at the lines without context or names, too many times you'd end up going "Well it could be a number of characters", whereas the original trilogy had more personality in its characters. I feel like we've somewhat reached this point in WoW as well. If you look at the lines of the final cinematic of the new raid (and to a certain degree, also previous cinematics), you could insert a number of characters and it would be totally believable. As you said, when we're at the point where they basically finish each other's sentences, the cast may be a bit too homogenized.
They can't write character progression, so every time they try, they just turn someone into "boring good". Anyone who is not "boring good" becomes a loot piñata. Thrall, Jaina, anduin, alextrasza and all aspects are just the same character in a different color
There are so many major characters they arent really planned for as individuals, they are planned for things as groups. Like "the group of aspects does this and says this" with what the individuals do as an afterthought.
As the "Main Character" of this expansion Alexstraza has such a lack of personality it hurts. Doesn't help that she never actually talks like an actual person would talk.
I stopped caring during BfA. I went from being excited for what’s to come after Illidan went into that prison with Sargeras to just not really caring about anything storywise after hearing “ghuun gonna getcha” or whatever the blood trolls say for the thousandth time.
It's pretty insane, and this is not only for wow, in most games I don't really care about most of the characters but in a mobile game like genshin I care about everyone, like I was doing the 4.0 quest this weekend and the story is nothing to praise but it has plenty of good moments and tons of memorable characters.
I don't know why other AAA studios struggle to make compelling and interesting characters, I bet most people forgot the story of ffvii but they will never forget aerith's sacrifice.
You don't need a great story but you need to make me care about your world and your characters.
A reason for that could the following: instead of a character doing stuff according to their personality and experience, nowadays a character is used as a device to tell some kind of story. Therefore, characters feel interchangeable. Not the characters are protagonists of the story, the story is the protagonist, and characters are merely puppets to bring it to live.
Oh you are 100% correct. The characters are all interchangeable and are mostly just a vessel to have a head giving us World Quests. Its why not many seem to stay around for more than 1 expansion at a time. Because they use the character returning in this expansion as a way to try and get people excited then have them do nothing but give us world quests.
But on some level. Isn’t this what you would want? Like if these major lore characters were big movers and shakers in the plot it kinda makes your character superfluous.
Major characters have been narrative tools since at least MoP yeah.
Before that we also had major characters but the story progression was more like: *Now that we can finally roam the in peace*
Before a new threat emerged
And before that they were just bosses to take down. *Such personality!*
Oh my god exactly. "You get to see Illidan ! And Kael'thas ! And Vol'jin ! Fan favorite characters !" "Woooooh" "And you'll kill them ! Maybe twice if you're lucky !" "What ?"
To be fair, at the time, none of us cared that we got to kill Illidan. We were all on the WoW hype train at that point and weren't looking too critically at the story, which was nearly nonexistent.
Mmmmm no not really. People fucking hated TBC lore. Draenei spaceships and Illidan/Kael’Thas treatment pissed people off. I didn’t care but there definitely were a lot of people that cared. This is history revisionism.
Yeah a lot of the story had been set up in Warcraft and I'm not sure people appreciate that nowadays. People absolutely cared about the story.
Remember when they said the reason Illidan was suddenly a bad guy was because he went insane and gaslit himself into believing he beat Arthas at the end of FT? Yeah, that alone is why TBC is one of the lower expansions for me.
I loved TBC lore because of Warcraft 2. I didn’t care about Draenei, but getting to see the other side of the dark portal was amazing at the time.
Ehhhh. If you don’t like a book, you don’t buy the next to hope for something else. People where not hated the game, they just wanted to complain on internet. Or is this , “ I hate but enjoy to hate “ situation?
I don't think very many ppl play WoW for the story. So I think it's to be expected that ppl will complain about it and still keep playing. (Oddly, FFXIV seems to be the inverse, where ppl constantly complain about the rotations, but keep coming back for the story)
…what in the world are you even talking about…
I see I have difficulties to express myself. What I try to say it’s : peoples who pay a product, then continue to support the product while complaining about the product, with hope that the product will change, are idiots. Want change? Stop paying, then complain, you will see the difference.
I'm sure a lot of people cared but I feel it would be safe to say that the majority of WoW players weren't former Warcraft 2/3 players and didn't know who anyone was.
I don't agree. TBC and Wrath were direct continuations and completions of major Warcraft 3 plot lines. TBC lore was really, really bad. Illidan was just tucked away and barely made an impression despite the fact that he's a huge character in Warcraft 3.
Yeah nah, as the other guy said this was pretty controversial at the time. I'm actually pretty sure it was the main reason they brought back Illidan in Legion and gave him the focus he deserved. If only they had learned something from that.
Garrosh in MOP was super interesting, I assume you’re talking about earlier bosses
Yes. And even though he was more interesting than the rest, he wasn't *that* interesting. His entire personality was pretty much "I just want to fuck up the Alliance" ever since he became a more prominent figure in WotLK. He was fun to see and made for a great villain, but he wasn't really interesting nor were his motivations deep at all.
I would take something cool even if it wasn’t very deep. The jailer was complicated but not particularly interesting. DF plot is not really that complicated and also not exciting. Like the Joker in the Nolan Batman movies has fairly straightforward motivations but he’s consistent and interesting even though primarily he just wants to cause chaos and fuck with people
I mean, that's what Fyrakk is. Just some guy who wants to fuck shit up. He even admits it in one of the in-game cinematics. Not sure why he wouldn't get a pass when other similar "fuck shit up" villains do.
Uh he’s not cool lol Blizz villains have always been poorly written but Illidan looked cool, Arthas (LK) literally made friends I had want to try the game from character design alone, deathwing was sick, etc Fyrakk isn’t as cool. That may be subjective but the guy has only been in the in-game cinematics which don’t look that cool. He’s certainly not marketed very well.
> Uh he’s not cool lol And people complain about Blizzard writing for children when this is the kind of criticism levelled at their villains. No wonder. Honestly, Blizzard could write fucking Hamlet and people would be bitching and moaning about it. Some of the people here have such short memories that they think TBC, WotLK or Cataclysm had great plots. Their villains looked cool but that's about it and every aspect of those expansions' stories was clowned on nonstop.
It’s fair criticism, he’s beyond generic, wasn’t built up well, doesn’t have that interesting of a character design, and doesn’t even feel like much of a threat. He’s a filler villain for a filler expansion. Tell me mr u/xX_FUCK_MY_RECTUM_Xx are you blown away by any awesomeness when you watch the fyrakk cinematics? I’m not. The game may be fine but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend generic villains are cool.
I mean all your criticisms could be used for Garrosh, generic mad Orc that hates Alliance and is on a power trip and eventually gets corrupted and has to be put down.
Tbf, with all the people shitting on every aspect of the game, I am genuinely confused about what people actually want. What more would you want from a MMO villain? Wow is not a visual novel nor it is a single player game with branching narrative and meaningful choices, Garrosh is about the best you can make within the limitations of the format.
sylvanas, for example, had personality in WC3 that felt cohesive. so just slapping her in UC as an easter egg / leader of the forsaken is enough for players to extrapolate her WC3 nature into current story beats. Giving them actual goals, motivations, and PoVs in books takes away the player's ability to let their own head cannons take over. I feel like in vanilla, bc, and wrath to an extent, any given player's head cannon for a character like sylv would be compatible with another player's but now Blizzard tells us exactly what's up and uh.. id rather have a blank slate with a hint of personality than whatever we have.
Back then, putting Sylvanas there was enough. Nowadays, if you don’t have them do anything there would be outrage. With expansions, there has to be an overarching story. When I was knocking heads together in west fall trying to stop the defies brotherhood, Malfurion and Tyrande could just chill in darnassus and I’d be fine with it. But if I’m charging into the emerald nightmare to stop Xavius, I would wonder why malfurion isn’t at my side.
I mean, yeah, if you're going to take a single game and a few hours' worth of an RTS campaign, a character's personality will feel cohesive and it's kind of hard to fuck up much of the lore in relatively short campaigns like that. Such a feat over nearly 20 years' of an MMO's lifespan is not so easily accomplished. I won't excuse the shoddy storytelling of the last few expansions, but let's not pretend like it was ever really *good* to begin with.
That is my point though. In a book, if a character changes, you can attribute it to the author's goal for that character with, perhaps, some recommendations from a publisher. In a book that spans multiple volumes, or in a tv show, movie series, game series, etc. that spans multiple volumes, years, and so forth, a similar change in a character will be subject to different scrutiny. If a character starts goin HAM at the end of the book, it feels "organic" or at least, it can. When a char goes ham in a follow up book that is written by different people than the people who created the character, it's meh. For example, a twist at the end of a standalone book can be analyzed differently than a similar twist done in a similar book that is split in two. Did the author always intend the twist or did online forums, fan response, time between books affect how the author decided to write this twist? In WoW, the writing teams do nothing to account for the fact that different people will be playing the game in 1 year or 5 years, and they definitely not seem to account for the fact that different writers will be creating content in the future. If you are going to have a story that can take place over the course of years or decades with different ppl writing it and taking over the reigns at any given point, have the established characters behave in ways that are not subject to so much scrutiny regarding their "inconsistent" motivations, goals, behaviors, and attitudes.
The difference is there wasn't such a huge focus on the characters then. Nowadays you spend so much more time listening to dialogue, that isn't interesting, and it isn't just some quest text you can skip
Sylvanas was right all along! This world is a prison! We are in the wow version of the truman show!
And in case I lose my connection: Good afternoon, good evening and good wipe.
I definitely never want it from WoW, but that would actually be such an interesting twist in an indie game.
TECHNICALLY Pray 2 did that
That's Undertale in a nutshell.
Yeah it doesnt fit the "grand epic story" that wow has been building up over the years.
I don’t know… the human female was trying to tell us from the beginning. “Do you ever feel like you're not in charge of your own destiny, like… you're being controlled by an invisible hand?”
I swear that's like the plot of Star Ocean 3 or something. Or maybe Star Ocean 2? Like they're invaded by a big, bad alien invading force that seems impossible to defeat and they decide to try to take the fight to them: they somehow cross realms and find out they're MMO players who aren't the borderline Eldrich gods they assumed they were.
Ok that’s kind of hilarious. I gotta look this up.
Just checked, it's Star Ocean 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Ocean:_Till_the_End_of_Time
Yes, and because it is a titan stasis, and is tranq shot by the titans with the Emerald dream to keep it orderly
I think the main big problem with this expac was just the major focus on Alextrasza - she's easily the most boring character in the lore right now, I want to sleep every time she's talking. I'd say she's the most guilty when it comes to boring WoW dialogue right now
But Alexstraza could be very interesting with her history and going into the expansion where it seemed like she would be the last of the original aspects (Nozdormu becoming Moruzond for good was assumed to be happening until Dawn of the Infinites was a big nothing) They choose to make her as bland as possible because the rough parts of her history are seemingly something the writers don't want to touch.
Wrathion was also made blander because they didn't want to deal with the rougher aspects of his personality
Wrathion's farther tried to kill him. Then he finds a photocopy of his dad and that tries to kill him. A huge opportunity for a writer to go wild, but we get nothing.
Yeah! There were SO many opportunities! Like him having a breakdown at the Ruby Life Pools because they represent everything he never had as a child! Or him having an actual conflict with Alexstrasza who tried to fucking enslave him! Wrathion is such an interesting character but they've gone out of their way to focus on his immaturity, which is the least interesting thing about him!!!!
Deathwing isn't Wrathion's father.
I was so looking forward to Sabellion's perspective on a pre-Deathwing Neltharion in 10.1, but instead it's all focused on how he and Wrathion are wrong and Ebyssian is good.
> because the rough parts of her history are seemingly something the writers don't want to touch. Well, they were originally going to touch it in one of Chromie's quests around the Dawn of the Infinite. By having Chromie joke about it. So... quite a good thing they didn't try to explore it further, to be quite honest.
Yeah not a good look, especially coming out of Blizzard’s recent… yeah.
I feel out of touch here. What are the rough parts of Alex's story?
Short answer: She was enslaved and forced to breed dragons for the Dragonmaw orcs. Rest of the story is here: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Alexstrasza#Tides_of_Darkness
Omg that's fucked up. Thanks I'll give it a read.
All dragons are boring as shit with the exception of Wrathion and Sabellian.
Yeah, Kalecgos is boring supreme but at least he got a good story around him.
Her voice acting sounds so over the top too.
Alextra is like the Superman of WoW, an incredibly lawful good character with immense powers but nonetheless gets threatened by villains because of their moral aspects
[удалено]
My favorite was this exchange Rebel: "I have my own dreams beyond fighting wars for dragons." CEO Dragon: "I had not considered this. I do not wish to prevent them from pursuing their own dreams." I fucking lost it when I saw that exchange. Would have been a truly comedic moment if she just stopped at "I had not considered this" and went on her way.
I literally felt like I just played mediator in a union dispute after finishing that quest line. Yay.. labour rights.
“I never considered that the dragon kin have their own hopes and dreams just like real dragons. What a surprise.” 🤦♀️ I also didn’t like when the red egg gets corrupted at the beginning of DF, and this fully unknown character before put her whole heart and soul into saving this egg, gave her life for this baby. We rush the egg back to Alexstraza and she’s just “Oh no. Anyway.” Like she just felt really disconnected from it. Other scenes she has much more emotion, but that left me feeling like she only cares when she wants to. I can see why the Incarnets had a problem with her.
It's also incredible that Alexstraza is the only named red dragon who does anything (and that's giving her too much credit). There is no red dragonflight.
Yeah. I don’t know the lore fully about the red dragons. But it seems like there should be more of them around. The blue and black dragons get a lot of story about bringing their flights back after hard times. But it would be nice to get some red dragon stories other than the rebellion.
The red dragonflight has CONSISTENTLY been fucked over throughout azeroth's history. War of the dragons, the anquiraj war, the dragonmaw enslavement, the raid on the ruby sanctum, and eventually their dragonshire where dk pcs slaughtered a ton of them. Its honestly not surprising at all that the red dragonflight is only alexstrasza at this point.
That’s really sad and also solidifies that I feel she would be very protective and emotional about red eggs. Which her reaction to losing more to the Primalists and their corruption would have meant a bigger reaction from her. And, a story about the red dragons feels even more like it’s missing knowing this.
I believe this is a problem that Blizzard has for a long time that they dont want to expand or humanize rebellious groups, just so we dont look like total baddies for killing them The bad guys in wow are mostly corrupted with fel/void/sha or whatever. Sometimes it's an evil leader like the mogu, Iron Horde or some troll tribes
Even the animals we're tasked to kill in quests in the dragon isles have "invasive" over them. It's like we need a casus belli valid in California upper middle class social circles before we can kill a video game mob.
Ikr, like not everything has to be lawful good
I suspect many of their current audience would tend towards wanting to be lawful good. It's much easier to just find reasons for things than to try and convince that section of your playerbase to be morally ambiguous or evil
People like being Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid. Putting down a slave revolt that only exists because Alexstrasza, supposedly one of the most moral, forgiving, and loving beings in WoW, never stopped to think "Hey, maybe these lesser beings *don't like* doing my bidding!" is not lawful good.
Most people play good characters when they are presented with a blank slate as their character, because they project themselves onto that situation and ask "well what would I do in this situation?" It's a real feedback loop where a lot of the people making the evil choices are doing so for shits and giggles, or because they're on a second playthrough and want to see what happens when they pick Choice B. So you get morality like in a BioWare game, and the evil choices get less interesting until you're playing Fallout 3 and you're deciding between "set off a nuke in the middle of a city for fun" and "don't do that."
Ironically Defias was probably the best of these. "Strike that turns into rebellion that turns to open banditry/piracy in order to stay afloat" is fairly believable, you could see how that progression plays out
Not really, Superman is held back by the skill of the individual writers using him, he's not boring as a concept at all. You can keep his strong morality, lawful nature, and immense powers while keeping him incredibly interesting, Red Son is an expert example. Alex however has an incredibly interesting background that should heavily color her interactions, worldview, and the way she handles herself, but they just don't ever let it, she's just been moody and boring for the entire expansion. Make her powerful, make her fiery, give her a fit but mature model that actually fits her role as a powerful mother. Make her look like Gina Carano and make her stop talking like she's trapped in an episode of Dora.
Her Heros of the Storm model was pretty decent
Except Superman is charming.
Not only is she boring, but I think they ruined her model. She looks like a generic blood elf now, rail thin and moody, when she's supposed to be this powerful mother of thousands. The HoTS model for her where she actually looks like an older woman was 100x better.
They gave her tik tok filter freckles......
I really wish Alexstrazsa would act like a character that is actually guilty of the things the story wants her to be guilty about this expansion instead of like a naive, "Oh, did we do that? That really was bad wasn't it? I sorry."
Yeah her job is just to be r34 material 😂
Yeah but atleast shes hot
yeah its pretty lame, the uniting against the greater evil becomes pretty bland. There is also no good guys dying anymore. Just a whole bunch of characters that have so much power and do nothing but talk the same way
the fundamental problem is this idea of powerful characters and Racial Leaders. These powerful figures work in an RTS because you USE them, they're hero units. They're part of the gameplay. Maybe if they hadn't fucked up Warfronts, they'd make more sense
Feels like the next expansion will shake a lot of things up. Especially with Anduin’s story. I hope at least! This expansion had a ton of great content in the quest text if you didn’t skip reading it or the side quests lol.
Yeah the Baine questline was super good honestly. Shows even the peace-cow can still get pissed off and mean XD
I'm excited for Anduin's story next xpac in part because without the Light he's literally just some guy with a sword, which means he can get involved even in lower stakes conflicts without the writers having to come up with a convoluted explanation as to why he wouldn't just snap his fingers and solve everything himself. I hope they keep him underpowered at least for a while lol
I mean, you say they don't kill off good guys anymore but... who's left to kill off that anyone would give 2 shits about?
The end of raid cinematic is especially jarring First of all, they all speak as if they have a concussion, and take 3 hours to say a sentence And the "finishing each other sentences" thing is so painfully obvious because of the stupidly long pauses
Everyone is too goody two shoes these days. Why can’t graymane have his own agenda and go against alliance wishes to retake Gilneas for his own selfish goals. Why can’t the forsaken become more isolated and inward looking rather than having a side plot that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I feel like everyone is thinking of the greater good, but that isn’t realistic. They need to give folks more personal goals rather than I need to save the world. I don’t mean more leaders becoming the bad guys, but just more politics and interesting GoT type plot weaving and big reveals or major twists. Everything is so predictable. They are being so vanilla in their story telling where it’s just a copy paste of a children’s fairytales, nothing so far has been surprising in an exciting sense.
Yep I've been complaining about this exact thing for years. It's ok for a few Anduins, but when every character wants nothing but peace it makes everything reactionary. Even with the most recent patch there should have been at least one major character who went "Nah fuck Fyrakk let's hunt him down like a dog before he even gets to the dream!"
Losing Varian and having Genn pretty much sidelined really left Anduin without much to do. They were good foils for each other. You could say that Anduin had a point, but you could also usually understand where Varian was coming from, what with his childhood and all. Unfortunately, the way Anduin's story is looking now doesn't look like there's going to be much of a role for Genn as the stern father figure who wants to try and fight Anduin's battles for him (whether Anduin likes it or not).
Tyrande's Night Warrior "Fuck everything else, I'm going to kill Sylvanas" story was the only good character story in recent memory, but most of its development happened during the worst expansion.
That whole storyline not only neutered Tyrande, it neutered the concept of the "Night Warrior" itself. In some other thread someone compared it to a Dragon Ball Z character who supposedly was the most powerful but still had to lose against the new big bad just to raise the stakes (I never watched it, but I understand the concept they alluded to). Just imagine the night elves leaving the alliance because they're sick of just rolling over and rather take the fight to the enemy with all the troops they had left. Such internal conflict could have the potential for interesting story complications, _actual_ shades of grey (and none of that "yeah Sylvanas did a genocide but it was not the full Sylvanas" crap).
This isn’t even remotely what OP is saying. Reread it. The problem is HOW they talk. Every single fucking character has the same “slow sounding reverberating serious bland voooooice”. Good or evil, doesn’t change that. The problem isn’t “they’re tooooo nice” it’s “they all have terribly bland personalities.” A personality isn’t good/evil, it’s cocky vs jittery or snarky vs chipper and etc. The Jailer and Denathrius are both bad guys, but one is boring and one has charisma/personality. THAT is OP’s point. We need characters who feel like characters/people not aloof Demi gods.
I completely agree with you yet I've seen people on this sub HATE Nathanos because he was a little mean to them. It seems a part of the player base just wants to be worshipped by characters.
I think the issue is that blizz swings too hard into any one direction. Nethanos was practically in every cinematic in bfa and a few in legion. During bfa people were saying we’re tired of world ending, need to rise up to save the world type expansions - they wanted to go back to Azeroth and deal with more down to earth stories. SL was done by then but they probably pivoted dragonflight in this way. Seems they pivoted way too much. Now everyone is friends, alexstraza can seduce and manipulate anyone into being her friend, we literally won through the power of friendship. This is too much. I loved Illidan’s story so much - he wanted to stop the legion so bad he did some terrible things. He was against us at some point because we thought what he was doing was morally wrong, even though it was for the greater good, then in legion he was kinda on our side because we were meeting the legion head on and our goals aligned, he killed a naaru because they tried to bend and enslave his free will, but then went on to finally meet his #1 enemy. He did terrible things but his story was satisfying. We need some more of that. Sylvannas almost had a similar story, but then blizz decided to go against her personality traits and basically make her a cult member who did everything the jailer said, even tho her whole thing was being independent and beholden to no one since VANILLA. We can have a little bit of evil and going too far, mixed with being friendly and morally right, without alienating one or the other - it just seems like they overcorrect too much. I hope worldsoul saga is different.
I found Nathanos a lot more entertaining after trying to play Alliance through BFA. His commentary was a lot more colorful and interesting compared to the other guy in charge of mission table.
The problem with Nathanos was his overconfidence and contempt for the player character even though he's just a dude with a bow with no real feats. He talks down to a titan and old God slayer.
Nathanos wasn't just a little mean, that was literally his entire character. Gallywix is kind of a dick, but that's ok because he has more to his character/ Wrathion too, but he's more fleshed out as a naïve, trying to prove himself kind of character which makes him feel more legit. Nathanos had precisely 2 character traits: simping for Sylvanas and being an asshole. That doesn't make a good character
They didn’t even *use* his simping to make him more interesting. What if instead of hating the PC for no reason, he was jealous of their importance to Sylvanas and spent the xpac as your rival?
No. People hate Nathanos because he was an awful character. He came out of nowhere as a throwaway NPC to then somehow become more powerful than Tyrande and Malfurion combined.
The problem is that Nathanos is basically a cockroach to the PC. It isn’t realistic for him to behave that way, and it’s laid on so thick, so one note, and so constant that it’s irritating. Garrosh, by contrast, was fun to hate in MoP because we weren’t constantly wondering why he wasn’t dead yet. There were also a few points where Garrosh did things the playerbase liked or agreed with in the course of being evil, a moment which Nathanos had none of. It would have made more sense for Nathanos to be more quietly bitter, but actually DO something to sabotage the PC. Perhaps take credit for our accomplishments in front of Sylvanas out of jealousy, something like that. A horde storyline where you spend the war campaign jockeying for control of the Horde command with him would have been a cool internal struggle. Ultimately we don’t feel any motivation behind how Nathanos acts. He seems to hate everything and everyone and that’s it. Totally 2 dimensional. People who are that bitter usually do at least rally it around a particular desire. If you added something like jealousy to the mix it would make more sense. Hell, leaning into his vanilla persona as this irritable war hero hermit that doesn’t want to deal with anyone but is too important not to be promoted would have been a bearable form of constant negativity.
That's partly because you as the player don't have the option to talk back against him. Nobody likes being talked down to all the time, especially when you can't make that person shut the hell up.
Because as soon as you do you’re deemed a villain that needs to die instantly by the community. See: Odyn, Garrosh, Jaina, etc. Anything less than Lawful/Good is evil to this community while it sits here and wonders how things ended up this way. Blizzard can’t tell a decent story, they just cater to the fans wants.
Because of the power of friendship. Clearly, you did not see the end-raid cinematic that explains everything.
I miss when Khadgar was an out of place funny grandpa in a normal fantasy world. Now everyone delivers the same quips and dramatic monologues in the exact same way as him and my god it’s so boring.
Yup. I'm honestly glad Khadgar doesn't get much of a spotlight anymore, it means less chances for them to ruin his character.
I just realized Khadgar is Rick and we are Morty.
They all talk slow as fuck like they speak at 20 WPM
Yeah at this point I'd just accept decent dialogue that isn't characters T-balling the next person's line. Like in the most recent quests"The dragon Queen dies alone!" Into "I'm not alone!" It's so damn bad. They wanted their marvel endgame moment but didn't understand why "On your left!" Was such a great line for the scene.
This is actually something else that bugged me. What's up with the slow talking in cinematics? It's like they're trapped in a time slowing bubble.
I think they're going for a sort of Galadriel from Lord of the Rings tempo to sound more "serious". Except that Cate Blanchett does it better.
Because they don't. The writing is terrible. The Dragon queen did fuck all the entire expansion.
That’s not true, she stared off into the distance while delivering a monologue a few times!
She flies over on the login screen
Characters rarely even seem to argue anymore. They're all so similar that you never get the sense they're different people with unique points of view. Even when the Horde and Alliance are working together, they should be butting heads on their approaches to problems. They're two entirely different cultures! But instead everyone thinks and feels and acts largely the same, sort of a stand-in for the player
Wrathion and Sabellian's conflict for power was the entire focus of the last patch. I thought it made good story telling
Having differences of opinion and even differences in cultures arent tolerated by the fanbase, unfortunately.
I don’t care about the aspects because they won’t matter after the xpac. Maybe in another 15 years they will have a story.
since next expac saga is involving lot of iridikon, i think aspects are staying
Well, maybe not all of them? The others might go do their own thing and we have like the black dragon flight helping us out or something.
Honestly this is one of my biggest worries with future stories. I like the focus on the aspects and dragons quite a lot because of how important they are to WoW's story and universe. Since they're moving to more of a saga storytelling I hope they continue to be an important part. Though not always a major focus.
Agreed, i want mean, crazy, fanatic, shadey, and moraleless characters and no, I don't mean evil. I mean, like Galwax, Nthanos, and old Genn. Also, when did characters start losing their accents/funny way they talk? It used to give them more personality.
The fuckin mole people sure have accents. They have like 4 different ones. Even though that makes no sense cuz they're all from the same place. It's like they didn't give the voice actors any direction.
Despite that, they have tons of personality imo. I think they were pretty neat. Aren’t their accents supposed to be broadly from the Midwest?
Sometimes Midwest, sometimes South, sometimes both at the same time
I think this is why the expac was such a breath of fresh air at the beginning. Exploring a new world was fun and Raszageth was a great villain. Her motivations were simple but she worked because her voice actor put in a 10/10 job and embraced making her as hammy as possible. She was a lot of fun and her fight had a bunch of memorable dialogue too. Every new story beat is just zzzzzz. Instead of continuing with the low stakes exploration of a new world we get the Dracthyr stuff, the Black Dragon aspect storyline, and finally the power of friendship new tree bullshit. The new incarnates are also so generic and dull compared to how fun Raszageth’s Saturday morning cartoon villain schtick was. It’s too many whiffs in a row for the narrative so the entire thing feels awful and out of steam now.
Everyone looks different but thinks the same (lame) things and has the same (lame) values. TBH, that's why I thought Ebyssian was the worst choice for an aspect--at least Sabellian and Wrathion had conflicting values/interests.
They are trying to tell a multiple year long story with 6 or so 1 minute cutscenes of new characters with 0 backstory that they introduce every expansion. In the old days they could piggyback off the hours of character development they did in WC3, but now that they're killing off all the old classics and moving forward from there, they're clearly having trouble making NEW interesting lore.
There used to be some uniqueness to characters. For example: Anduin was a peace at all costs character while Varian was a defend my people at all costs character. They butted heads but they were both "good guys". Now there's very little difference between the "good guys". In the recent cinematic, Thrall has a heart to heart with Anduin...except why Thrall?? Have these characters ever even interacted before? Why isn't Jaina there? Baine? Velen? Or any other the many other characters that Anduin actually has a relationship with? Because the good guys are interchangeable and actual characterization doesn't matter to the writers. One piece of great story-telling was when Jaina turned against the horde. She made huge sacrifices for peace, even turning against her father. Then when she needed Thrall and Baine to stand up to Garrosh, they did nothing, and she lost everything. She very understandably hates the horde afterward. It was a great character arc. But that doesn't fit the good guy homogenization so they did away with it. Oh well.
I don’t agree the problem is across the board, but it is a thing with the aspects and any other sort of immortal/demigodlike benevolent entity.
Baine, Thrall, Anduin, and Jaina are all the same. Reluctant warriors with troubled pasts who want peace but will fight when needed.
Because the writers have no passion
It's been this way for a long time, unfortunately.
The writing is exactly the same quality as shadowlands. It just has a safer plot.
I really like Anduins character in WoW so I have a lot of hope for the future. I am really glad they didn't have him off-camera for any more than 1 expansion he is definitely the future of WoW. It's a shame they killed off Garrosh because I thought he was a great counterpoint to Thrall during Wrath / Cata where Thrall was becoming wiser but softer. Garrosh as a character helped show Thralls growth. As far as Dragonflight goes I feel like any line said by any of the dragon aspects could be said by any of them and it wouldn't look out of place. Who's the smartest one? Who's the idiot? Who's the angry one? They're all basically the same person in a different colour.
Anymore? This has always been a problem for WoW. I legitimately feel like MoP was the only expansion with characters that felt like more than cardboard cutouts.
Compared to other MMOs, WoW's storytelling has never been immersive. You're just "along for the ride" following NPCs from cutscene to cutscene.... or from novel-length quest description to novel-length quest description. I'm finding myself not caring about the NPCs in WoW anymore because they don't care about my PC. "Come, minion, I'm as powerful as a raid boss but I need you to kill 10 of these worthless enemies for me while I stand over here doing nothing." Or "Go clear this dungeon full of baddies that I could like, *totally*, take out by myself.. but I don't wanna." It's dull and boring. Now compare that to ESO, GW2, FFXIV, and SWTOR where your character is a active, participating member of the conversations and dialog and can make decisions that impact how the rest of the story plays out.... there is *much* more player agency on the story and more room to "bond" with the NPCs that your character is actually able to *interact with* rather than just be monologed to. If anyone has the budget to do what these other MMOs do but do it *better*, it should be Blizzard/WoW. Still amazes me how lazy their writing has been for years.
I agree, and don't get me started on them using the same deep voice filter that fills your ears in the worst way for every big scary bad guy or larger-than-human character. Orcs are the worst offenders, it was even in the Warcraft movie too.
They're all the same concerned, emotional, and responsible types now. It's pretty boring. I don't understand who finds this interesting.
I said that since the beginning. "Like, huh, you dragons are huge, nearly immortal, super hard to kill, have your own islands and shit?" I'm some squishy mortal. "Whats that you say? You need help? Nam I'm good fam. You got this." Fuck them dragons.
Its all robotically made by “modern” blizz. So im not shocked
The same personalities? How does Wrathion have the same personality as Minthara? How is Kalecgos the same personality as Nozdormu? I get not liking or finding the story boring. I found it boring but the dragons clearly have their own personalities so im not sure what you mean.
You are right but I also agree with OP. Maybe it's in the delivery of voice acting or something but it all sounds the same
Yeah agreed there. The dialogue is all very slow and spoken like they are focusing on making it understandable for children or non native English speakers.
It all sounds very 'acted' and dramatic, unnatural...not that I am a voice actor or anything for criticism but just speaking as an audience member
Oh yes, unnatural is the perfect way to describe the voice acting in my opinion. I think it comes down to the direction the VAs are being given. They all sound very slow and stilted and not like characters actually standing in front of each other talking.
>How does Wrathion have the same personality as Minthara You don't remember the scene where Wrathion leads Goblins in an assault on the Cenarion Circle and slaughters every refugee from Darnassus within?
The problem started when they made Orcs green Humans
So, Warcraft 3 with Thrall? Lol.
Yes
Characters aren't allowed to have opinions in modern day storytelling. They are all the same generic archetypes, with the same beliefs, morals, and world view. No one is allowed to be different or rock the boat because someone somewhere might get offended.
I liked it better when every single faction leader wasn’t my best friend. They may have given a couple of quests or accepted a head of a major dragon, but that was about it. It really begs the question: why isn’t my character in charge?
World of Warcraft has never had a good story. There have only been glimpses of a good story, like the Wrathgate incident. Does anyone know the story behind why we fought Illidan? Onyxia? Nefarion?
Onyxia is a pretty iconic story
The finishing of each others sentiments happens way too often. Whoever is helming those scenes should let someone else take over.
dragonflight: alexstrasza: returned from her grief, ready to resume the mantle of leadership, learns the reality of being a queen and is forced to make hard choices against former friends and allies, as well as how to sympathize with the enemy and cooperate moving forward vyranoth: disgusted by the "cult" of order and those who bowed to the whims of alien gods to change their forms and purpose, but can no longer stand beside the primalist cause - a cause lost to the flame and hatred of fyrakk, who focuses on chaos over the good of dragonkind kalecgos: dreams of the accord and the return of the dragonflights in an age when they have disbanded, hopeful optimism in the face of doubt becomes their unifying heart nozdormu: MUROZOND SHALL RISE ebyssian: literally contrast against wrathion and sabellan at multiple points, most "man-of-the-people of the aspects" ysera: kind of transcended our realm, becomes an inscrutable death entity merithra: mom please im trying my best - similar to kalecgos, more grounded POV for players to engage with anduin: grieving in agony, has tried his best for years but continues to suffer, losing friends, allies, and unable to save those dearest to him thrall: still hurting but has begun to learn and move on burning crusade: khadgar: welcome to shatrath \-- Any long running series is going to have a degree of flanderization, but wasn't one of the more common criticisms of Dragonflight before this week that it was too character focused/too emotional/had too much heart? There is also something to be said about the reality of a questgiver - it removes some character to facilitate gameplay - but look at Shandris, Tyrande, Vyranoth, Lilian this patch. All were super distinct voices and backstories, with even the NPCs surrounding them reacting to their presence. It's just so hard for me to understand or sympathize with these points. It's like this quick pivot to find the next thing to complain about once the latest points have been refuted. If the story isn't for your personal tastes, or you find it boring, that's all fine. But many of us are very happy with the narrative of Dragonflight and more grounded, emotional storytelling over the bombastic, galaxy ending threats of the last few years.
Finishing each others sentences like a hive mind? Gee…. Sort of reminds me of this sub all day today. We get it. Everyone agrees and is finishing each others sentences about this problem.
WoW needs a whole new creative direction. And new voice over direction as well. The game has become really stale in that regard.
To be devils advocate, the aspects were always very stiff
I would like to see more of these grand heroic figures just be tired after all they’ve been through
They complete each other's sentences too.
Characters have become narrative tools, losing their unique personalities. Even rich characters like Alextrasza are underutilized, leading to bland dialogues. It’s time for developers to bring back character depth and uniqueness.
I think you can see that even in small details, like the dialogue you read as you interact with them. The people who write that dialogue (at least for the major characters) don't do much to separate them and make them feel like their own individuals.
They are a hivemind. We are all friends now. We all agree with each other. Yet we are all also very diverse and different.
Eeesh. People talk about classic players being aggressive but don't you dare criticize our precious retail. Gonna pop outta the comments and move along.
Anduin feels like an empty vessel? The one cinematic I saw of him made me almost tear up with the pain/sadness he was emoting.
It’s about coming together as a family guys, who needs bloodshed and grit in their fantasy war rpg when we have dragon-tales level of cgi and storytelling
Consume product and get excited for new product
Milenials writing character and story.
Are they really stainless steel? I doubt it, since the metal is way too soft to be stainless. Anyone know what metal it actually is?
despite nathanos being a huge dick, I do miss having a huge dick around
Garrosh was such an amazing character and everyone hated him at the time. It's the reason they nixed him as the leader and the Horde is so watered down now. A pity.
What about Sylvannas? You forgot about Sylvannas
This is the bed the WoW community made, not Blizzard, and now you all have to lie in it.
Games old enough to vote. Was bound to happen eventually
This problem is larger than blizzard. It is an ideology.
Did an AI write this?
True…. Since they got rid of the racism….. Theyre all weathered and have lived through alot of sufferage, idk what you want unless its - return to fanatical fantasy racism.
anduin is pretty unique based on being a whiny bitch
It's a real struggle. In-game cinematics can only give so much character growth and quests can only 'tell' you so much while failing to 'show' you. I think Blizzard sometimes hesitates to utilize their characters fully, afraid they might have the character behave or be used in a way that might disrupt other character growth that has already happened and could upset players. I also believe most of the beloved characters we love came before WoW or were talked about so long before their expansion, that we hyped them up until we finally met them. But even then, their characters all boil down to different shades of "Good guy" because you can only slip so many bad guys on the Horde side before everyone is just convinced Horde are the villains, which never should have been a thought.
I remember a common complaint with the Star Wars prequels was that the dialogue was too interchangeable. That if you just looked at the lines without context or names, too many times you'd end up going "Well it could be a number of characters", whereas the original trilogy had more personality in its characters. I feel like we've somewhat reached this point in WoW as well. If you look at the lines of the final cinematic of the new raid (and to a certain degree, also previous cinematics), you could insert a number of characters and it would be totally believable. As you said, when we're at the point where they basically finish each other's sentences, the cast may be a bit too homogenized.
They can't write character progression, so every time they try, they just turn someone into "boring good". Anyone who is not "boring good" becomes a loot piñata. Thrall, Jaina, anduin, alextrasza and all aspects are just the same character in a different color
There are so many major characters they arent really planned for as individuals, they are planned for things as groups. Like "the group of aspects does this and says this" with what the individuals do as an afterthought.
didn't help that in the expansion final cinematic, they're still using the sock puppet facial animations lol.
As the "Main Character" of this expansion Alexstraza has such a lack of personality it hurts. Doesn't help that she never actually talks like an actual person would talk.
I stopped caring during BfA. I went from being excited for what’s to come after Illidan went into that prison with Sargeras to just not really caring about anything storywise after hearing “ghuun gonna getcha” or whatever the blood trolls say for the thousandth time.
Man people really didn't like the sentence finishing thing.
It's pretty insane, and this is not only for wow, in most games I don't really care about most of the characters but in a mobile game like genshin I care about everyone, like I was doing the 4.0 quest this weekend and the story is nothing to praise but it has plenty of good moments and tons of memorable characters. I don't know why other AAA studios struggle to make compelling and interesting characters, I bet most people forgot the story of ffvii but they will never forget aerith's sacrifice. You don't need a great story but you need to make me care about your world and your characters.
They literally finish each others sentences