Cortyn from MeinMMO has identified the most annoying aspect of World of Warcraft: former players. They often only half-follow things, yet want to judge everything.
The story of World of Warcraft is always a heated topic of debate. Whether hardcore lore enthusiasts or casual players, discussions about the story, its meaning, and significance frequently arise. These debates can get quite passionate, and all sides have valid arguments. However, in many cases, this is overshadowed by people who are neither playing the current content nor really seeing the connections.
And as for the Nether: It gets on my nerves.
There is a rather large group of former players who only experience the story of World of Warcraft “from cinematic to cinematic”. They follow news sites like MeinMMO, wowhead, or similar sites, even though they no longer play WoW, but still have some interest in the story.
This leads to the various cinematics being experienced almost “all at once”. The cinematic surrounding Sylvanas’ awakening in Oribos is closely followed by the video that takes place after the fight against Anduin. The video of “Tyrande as Avatar of Elune” follows directly after the fight “Tyrande vs. Sylvanas” – even though many quests in World of Warcraft are between them.
And of course, the cinematics are always the polished finale of a quest line or a battle. However, the story in World of Warcraft consists of much more. There are usually long quest lines with several character dialogues, or even a final boss fight has some small dialogue passages that contribute to the atmosphere, mood, and story.
From my own experience, I can say that the Anduin cinematic has a totally different effect when you simply watch it as a standalone YouTube video versus as a conclusion to a (rather long and tough) boss fight. The criticism that Arthas was simply “burned up” and only appears as a blue glowing cloud falls apart when you’ve spent hours struggling with that very Arthas, who in the Anduin fight has several pretty cool appearances as exactly the Lich King he was known as – with a runeblade in hand and a massive army of undead.
I want to emphasize that I also do not agree with all of Blizzard’s decisions. I also dislike that some characters – like Ve’nari – were a bit underdeveloped in Shadowlands. I believe that the build-up of the Jailer as a major villain didn’t work well because there was too little interaction with him in Patch 9.0 and 9.1. As a player, one simply learned too little about the Jailer, making it difficult to find him interesting. I believe he could have functioned much better as an independent villain without having to reshape the story of the last 20 years around him.
And yes, I am also bothered by the implied: “The Jailer knows of an even greater and more terrible evil that we are all unprepared for.” Yes, of course, he does. Because all villains in WoW somehow always know that, and it has been the narrative since Warcraft II. However, this does not necessarily spoil everything for me or “ruin the game”. Too often, I feel that the story standards of Warcraft are compared to those of a grand literary epic – while at its core, it is a PC game whose story is primarily supposed to support the gameplay, not the other way around.
“Gameplay first” has always been the standard at Blizzard – and the story is subordinate to that.
Still, I am tired. Valid criticism is certainly warranted, especially on a subject with such passionate fans as Warcraft. But whenever the “usual suspects” crawl out of their holes to immediately find fault with a new cinematic or cutscene, without considering the context, it bothers me. It always feels like trying to talk to people about a book, yet they think they are fully competent to judge the book just because they read 3 pages in the middle that made little sense to them and they don’t know the rest at all.
I have thus decided to discuss such matters less when I get the impression that someone is only watching “from cinematic to cinematic”. It saves a lot of nerves and most importantly: It preserves my enjoyment of such cinematics and the associated quests.
Or what do you think?
