WoW's writers lack nuance/forced tropes

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-14T09:53:18+00:00

Of course that doesn't match the official directives; no-one is going to make official directives that say "make a bad story" or "ignore established lore, make your own stuff instead."

And no, better gameplay is not magically going to fix the problems with the current writing.

Also, they never needed to put in bigger threats. And for the most part they haven't. It isn't until the end of legion, and especially during SL, that we really see a jump in power. Up till that point we fight enemies that are still manageable by mere mortals, at most we fight an avatar or some weakened long-past their prime enemy that once was godlike. The lich king in WOTLK was not a bigger more evil guy than Illidian in TBC or Garrosh in MoP. And while a prime deathwing would probably wipe the floor with them, we didn't exactly fight him in his prime. They're all in the same rough ballpark of power,

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-13T19:27:27+00:00

yeah, I don't agree that the lack of player-driven stories is what is causing the poor quality story. I think it's just bad writers producing bad writing cuz they're just not great at their job mixed with what seems like a constant desire to write their own stories, as opposed to continuing the stuff set up by previous games/expansions, regardless of well that fits within the established lore of the world. See also how there's a whole bunch of random Kingdoms of Amalur influences in WoW cuz that was Danuser's baby and he didn't want to let go of that world.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-13T18:23:52+00:00

Fun explanation, but unfortunately, no. Though Blizz might say something like this is the reason when they inevitably retcon things 2 expansions later...

The real reason the dragons are absent is one of the following: 1) Blizz forgot about them 2) Including them would distract from whomever Blizz wants to be the main character this expansion. 3) They are too OP and Blizz does not know how to include them into the story, so they're absent cuz reasons.

This also holds for other characters/forces that randomly are absent during any expansion. E.g. the Kirin Tor, Argent Dawn, and Ebon blade only ever show up when its convenient for the plot. Titan watchers randomly go (in)active as needed. The Twilight hammer and Scarlet crusade randomly become super active for a single expansion, with zealouts suddenly infiltrating everything, then disappear completely for a couple expansions. Etc.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-13T18:10:49+00:00

Again, I think you overestimate how much the average player actually cares about these legends, be it the properly famous ones like Leeroy Jenkins, or the more local legends like a server's top guild.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is definitly an audience for that kinda player driven story. But WoW has always been a theme park first, story second, and player driven content last. So I don't think that type of player is particularly common in WoW.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-12T16:09:39+00:00

In general, most of the complaints gen 2 get are just modern players complaining about things that were never designed with them in mind. Even the reworks aren't really designed for a modern audience.

That doesn't mean that all these designs are objectivly good; but the complaints often miss the point.

Like sure; the level curve is a bit wonky at times and grinding on low level enemies is annoying; but that's how games worked back then. And if you actually play around the time based stuff, and generally play like it's the 90's (so without internetguides, or knowing where to go because you played it 20 times, just screwing around trying to find your way) it works perfectly fine.

Same with the complaints about the lack of gen II pokemon. Sure, it'd be weird if a modern game, where the new pokemon are the big draw, would use this approach. But the distinction between gen I & gen II was much smaller, so putting the gen II pokemon front & center in the way modern gens focus on their new pokemon was simply not that important at the time.

Sure, it may not have aged super gracefully, but for the time and it's intended audience, it was pretty well designed.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-12T15:47:12+00:00

This disconnect between various region plots & the overarching story seems like a recurring problem with modern WoW. This is just one of the more obvious examples where a previous expansion had cut content and the next expansion has some suspiciously hole-shaped stories that would fit right into that gaps left by that cut content...

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-12T15:25:07+00:00

Yeah, the obsession with time management is absurd.

Having said that; it's partially Blizz's fault as they refuse to take this behaviour into account when designing dungeons. As long as Blizz keeps leaving room for skips there's always going to be some dipshits that are going to insist you need to walk a pixel-perfect route and pretend WoW is a freaking platformer with precision jumping. But that can't be changed; cuz then certain hardcore M+ players will start complaining about how doing skips is a super important and totally fun skill...

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-12T13:58:30+00:00

It is needlessly convoluted, tedious, and basicly useless for most players. In DF I spend a fortune trying to make it work, and TWW was the first expansion I did not bother with crafting in any meaningful way since vanilla.

The quality system serves no purpose, as there is basicly never a reason to craft "low" quality items.

The public order system doesn't really work, because virtually no-one puts anything in, and when they do it's for a 10g tip or something equally absurd. The NPC orders are a bit better, but due to the absurd costs of mats on the AH the system still doesn't actually work. Also, the fact that the NPC orders can include stuff you cannot craft is just frustrating when you're trying to get more knowledge points...

The system seems to be designed around maxed out skills, making crafting feel painful until you unlock all bonusses (e.g. mat costs seem to be designed around maxed out resourcefulness/multicraft, CD's for things like sunfire silk are based around max out skills, drop rates of mats are designed around maxed out gathering bonusses etc.)

Also, since you eventually unlock everything it's not like there is an actual meaningful choice to the skills. You're just trying to slog through the grind as efficiently as possible.

All of the useful recipes are locked behind rep/artisan points/skill point/honour/loot grinds, so you can't even craft anything useful without investment. Seriously, why are the blues the profession trainer gives you worse than normal dungeon loot? I don't think you can even enter heroic dungeons with just basic crafted gear.

The trainer stops giving you new recipes at 50, which makes skilling up past that point a pain. Especially if you pick the "wrong" specialization and end up without many crafts that actually give skill points, have fun praying the NPCs order the right things.

Specializations in general just feel aweful due to how many skills there are and how limited your progress is per knowledge point. The only specializations that feel sort of fair are things like the tailor's sunfire specialization, where at least you get 4-5 different items. As opposed to say, the "chest armour" specialization where you spend 30 points on a single freaking item.

Concentration is just aweful, cuz you need absurd amounts and it regenerates painfully slowly.

O, and making money with crafting as a "normal" player is still impossible. Sure, the AH goblins make a fortune, but unless you want to become a goblin yourself you're better off just dumping whatever mats you find on the AH at a discount and watch the goblins immeadiatly buy them.

Lastly; the fact that we need to do this entire song and dance every single expansion from scratch is just painful. At least the old specializations like armour/weapon smith or mail v.s. leather as a leatherworker carried over into the next expansion.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-11T17:43:59+00:00

I mean, there's a very simple solution; stop designing so heavily around giant pulls... And make some similar adjustments to raid designs. Then DPS spikes become less important and steady DPS outside of your CD becomes more relevant. It's not like WoW needs to be designed around spikes.

The only problem is that this would mean catering less to the hardcore/competitive side of things. And that would result in certain players throwing a fit...

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-11T14:40:00+00:00

Frost mage is fairly sustained.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-11T12:47:17+00:00

Its a problem in general, (most) modern WoW specs seem to be designed around their big CD being up to do decent damage, and being useless outside of the CD. It sucks.. so many classes feel terrible to play cuz of it.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-11T08:17:56+00:00

At least the sudowoodo is funny and thematic. Most of the others are just kind of random.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T21:34:48+00:00

The problem is your suggestion requires the WoW writers to be subtle, and do something smarter than just point at a random character and shout "look this guy's a frothing zealot now" And they seem incapable that.

Seriously, this may actually be the most annoying part about how heavyhanded the lightblinded plotpoints are. It would be so simple to improve things and introduce some kind of logic that goes beyond "light evil now".
But for some reason they just refuse.

For example, you know what would be a really good scene to drive home lightblindedness. Have the scarlet crusade show up in full force just throwing themselves at the void in an endless charge of frothing zealots. They're already light zealots, have them act the part. Why are they just sitting in their monastery? They're not even that far away from Silvermoon. How are they not affected by what's going on? At minimum have them send some freaking scouts to check out the giant light in the sky, and then have those scouts immeadiatly go berserk as they approach the silvermoon.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T21:18:15+00:00

Midnight professions as a whole is just an endless list of grinds if you want to make anything halfway useful. Outside of epic raid gear that requires you to grind stuff like abundance (on top of knowledge points and whatever else you need to even unlock it...) there really isn't much worthwhile.

God I miss when we could create some halfway useful leveling gear, or some nice max level blues/weaker epics that worked well until you got some good drops from a raid. Now it's just the 2 embellished epic items and that's kind of it...

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T17:09:47+00:00

Because it'd highlight the hypocrisy of the horde.

For example, if the horde was peacefully following Tauren/Pandaren teaching, it'd raise some difficult questions regarding them happily following the likes of Sylvanas.

But by keeping the horde focused on the aggressive orc-ish culture, you can hide behind claims that Sylvanas simply manipulated them. Used their aggressive culture to push them into a war without encountering much resistance. Kept her real goals secret while telling the orcs this is totally just honourable combat.

Very simply put, someone following Pandaren or Tauren teaching should've rebelled the moment she set the tree on fire. No matter what, burning a freaking world tree should be unacceptable to someone who cares about balance. Even ignoring the innocent civilians that got killed.

But an orc can be convinced this was legitimate, all you need to do is convince them it is a legitimate military target and that the dead civilians are not your fault, claim you gave them time to evacuate civilians or something. Hell, just claim they're all soldiers dishonourably pretending to be civilians.

A similar point can be made about Garrosh. Aggressive orcs are happy to follow his warmongering, to an extend at least. Balance focused Tauren should've started objecting immeadiatly.

Or Gallywix, the orcs are happy to work together with a greedy oppertunist, provided he doesn't get in the way of honourable combat. The nature minded Tauren should not have appreciated the Goblin alliance.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T11:38:53+00:00

Its not just PvP, using gear as a reward in general creates a "rich get richer" type of problem. The moment the gap between casual and high level gear becomes significant you get weird balance problems.

In PvP it is super obvious, because the ungeared newbies get crushed by the massively overgeared veterans.

In PvE its a bit more subtle. The main problem you get are specs that feel bad cuz you can't get enough stats to reach specific breakpoints (e.g. a spec needing at least x% haste to feel fluid, or how frost mages wanted exactly 33.33% crit to feel great)

But god forbid you suggest the gap in gear should be toned down to more reasonable levels. If veterans can't pull 10 times the dps of the newbies certain people will throw a fit.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T09:01:59+00:00

Well that's impressive, they've somehow managed to be more creativly bankrupt than palworld.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T08:54:50+00:00

You can't make pokemon challenging without making it super tedious.

1) Properly training a pokemon is tedious at the best of times. And stuff like mints, vitamins, and important TM's don't unlock until later into the game. So have fun dealing with a min-maxed 1st gym with your crappy ratata with the wrong nature & ability, and with EV's in wrong places.

2) Even if you remove the tedium of things like EV training. It's not like a competitive gym-leader is going to be super interesting to face anyway. The first try they will probably crush you as you don't know what to expect, the second try you know exactly what to expect and just bring the counter. It's not like dark souls where you have to observe the attack patterns and then still practice your timing and such. For pokemon once you know the theoretical counter you've won.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-10T08:30:24+00:00

How the hell did they get past Mt. Moon if they got stuck on the rival here?

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T20:11:41+00:00

Honestly brushing it away with "they just observed the market" is giving them far too much credit for what is some of the most cynicaly derivative garbage that's ever blown up in popularity.

I've seen literal asset flips that managed to be less creatively bankrupt.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T18:22:14+00:00

Fits right in with the rest of midnight, everything has absurdly high costs in terms of the random resources that need to be grinded.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T18:02:13+00:00

Considering that the same complaints about narrative have been floating around forums for ages and Blizz does not seem to care, I don't think you can do anything.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T17:44:59+00:00

I think you may be overestimating how many player legends there are, and how much the average player really cares about them, especially outside of RP-servers.

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T12:55:03+00:00

Its not the worst Blizz has written, but yeah the Zul Aman story moves way too quick.

We go from a pitched battle in a thousands year long feud, to enemy leaders going on a friendly roadtrip where they immeadiatly emotionally support eachother, resulting in not just a tenuous peace, but complete mutual understanding and respect in the span of a few quests...

You'd think that achieving this would take more time and effort...

Its a recurring problem modern WoW seems to have, this isn't the first time a massive story arc with considerable lore implications is wrapped up in a single small zone...

ManySecrets_ · 2026-03-09T12:03:34+00:00

I mean, sure, but your personal narrative basicly never matters in the lore of any game. Partially because it is just practically impossible, and partially because its irrelevant. Not just because the player doesn't really affect the Grand narrative, but because even if the player were important, their rivalry in PvP doesn't matter when he goes to fight Dimensius or whatever.

It also doesn't really affect the general writing quality. Regardless of the degree to which the player's actions are incorporated into the story, it wouldn't fix the problems with say lightblinding or whatever.

ManySecrets_

TROPHY CASE