Small, local quests without major cosmic threats. This is likely to become the norm again in World of Warcraft.
When a new expansion is upcoming in World of Warcraft, it almost always means: Now we, as Horde and Alliance, come together again, pull in the same direction, and fight against the new, oversized power. After the Burning Legion was defeated, even death itself followed, and now the Void is on the agenda.
But the “always bigger” and “always more powerful” eventually has an end. Even though the Titans are still on the list, with the conclusion of the world soul saga, Blizzard is likely to shift focus again. We are already seeing the first effects in Midnight, as the developers revealed in an interview with PCGamer.
What was said? In the interview, they not only talked about Midnight but also about plans for how World of Warcraft should proceed after the world soul saga. Ely Cannon, Art Director at Blizzard, said:
I hope that we return to telling the stories of the people of Azeroth and step back from the cosmic, grand, world-threatening things and that we talk again about local stories. I believe that with [Player Housing], that is a good place where we can start and really open up to “What is the story of the people, what is the story of the players.”
This is also important so that new players can find access to the world. Because even though cosmic threats are obviously part of WoW, they do not provide a good entry point.
For us humans, it is easier to enter a world with stories that take place on a level that we instinctively understand. We all have experiences from real life that we bring into the game world, and the more credible stories, the more personal they are … the more there are, the more one can say: “I believe this place, I can live here.”
Especially newcomers find it difficult to dive into the world of World of Warcraft. There is much to grasp – cosmic forces, great wars, thousands of years of history of the individual races. Those who do not know all this can hardly understand why a cinematic is particularly dramatic, why the death of a certain character is heartbreaking. Therefore, they want to have more quests in the future that take place at a grounded level:
This is particularly true for new players. The more stories we have told over the years, the larger the narrative has become, the more heroes and villains and overarching threats there are that people first have to understand. [After The Last Titan] this offers us many entry points into the world for people who are new and want to experience it for the first time, and that in a very understandable way.
This does not mean that Blizzard is not making improvements until the end of the world soul saga. Already, they have announced that with “Midnight,” more storylines for “Lore Walking” will come to summarize important story events. Also, the entire story of The War Within will be experienced and caught up in a condensed, shorter campaign to be up to date.
Already Midnight has more local stories – and conflicts on the ground
That World of Warcraft is gradually shifting this focus has already been evident in Dragonflight and The War Within. Even though the overarching storyline is the conflict against Xal’atath and the Void, both expansions have been filled with numerous quests that took place on a personal and local level. Especially the “Dementia” quest on the island of Thorn is likely to have lingered in many memories, but also the more romantically inclined quests that one could experience in the realms of Ohn’ara.
That Blizzard wants to bring these types of storytelling back into focus could also lead to tensions between Horde and Alliance gradually increasing again. Because when the great cosmic threats recede into the background, conflicts between the factions become more likely. We are already experiencing the first excesses of this in Midnight, as some Alliance paladins in Silvermoon act “as if this place belongs to them,” which, according to Maria Hamilton, will lead to animosities during the course of the expansion, possibly only the seed for something we will only experience much later.
Are you looking forward to more “classic” stories in World of Warcraft with smaller, local problems? Or do you prefer the grand, world-destroying events and enemies, like the Void, the Burning Legion, or the Titans? More about the latest WoW expansion can be found in our big overview of WoW Midnight.
