I dont think the Jailer ever said an actual sentence. It was always delivered like a one liner quote to no one in particular. And I can't remember any of it.

Inserting a character into 20 years of lore in an attempt to claim they existed the entire time while only truly existing in person for 1.5 years is the easiest way to throw a Molotov Cocktail onto the fans enjoyment of the lore.

*Jailer:* "I will use the sepulchre of the first-ones to recreate reality where everyone is my mindless slave!" *Also Jailer:* "Noooo why are you defeating me?! how can you be so cruel you just don't understand how benevolent I was being I was just torturing everyone into oblivion and trying to turn everyone into my mindless slaves for your own gooood!"

Legion gave me hope that WoW was finally going in the right direction. They brought back class identity with class quests and npc dialogue specific to your class (rare but at least it existed). They had fun profession quests. We got to spend time with NPCs we actually care about. BFA was so disappointing and Shadowlands is so bad I've only had a sub for two months of the two years it's been out so far. I at least followed the story of BFA even when I wasn't subbed but I don't even know the story of Shadowlands.

It was market as the expansion that would give closure to Warcraft 3, instead it was the expansion that gave us nothing but took everything from us. - From Sylvannas being a secretive damaged character, to a bi-polar genocide who is allowed to get a redemption because the writers say so. - To Elune being portrait as an incompetent Goddess who purposely allowed her people to die and suffer because she couldn’t be bother to do follow up questions. - To Tyrannda and her Shadow-Warrior story that promised much and ended without accomplishing anything. - To the Jailer being the ultimate master mind, and yet we are being told he is the ultimate mastermind and when we see it for ourselves he is a bigger fool. Yet he is somehow a good guy. - To Arthas the one established and beloved character being said “Get the F*ck out of here” essentially by Sylvannas and never being given the send off that was appropriate. - To the entire shadowlands who’s lore doesn’t make sense and all their rulers are incompetent at their jobs. This indeed was the worst expansion both story and gameplay wise.

"I could have gotten a college degree by the point this plot point was revealed". BRO I DID I GOT A BACHELORS OF SCIENCE QUICKER THAN THAT FUCKING STORY POINT

Another issues with Shadowlands is that it basically didn't even take place in the WoW universe: basically none of the races or architecture or plotlines we see have anything to do with the world previously established. On Legion we fight an enemy we've been fighting since Warcraft 3, in a location we've knows since Warcraft 2, alongside races we've known since the start; and even the new races introduced have some relation to the existing world, whether it's Highmountain Tauren or former Night Elves in Suramar. In BFA, the whole thing is about conflict between two existing factions, based around politics and rivalries between existing characters; and the whole thing takes place in locations we've been hearing about since, again, pretty much Warcraft 2. And then you get Shadowlands, where we're taken to a realm we've literally never heard of before (seriously, how did we never know anything about the afterlife in a setting with necromancers and resurrection spells?!), met a bunch of races and factions that have absolutely no connection to the WoW universe, and then fought some villain who was supposedly the biggest bad guy yet with the biggest army, but again, literally the first time we're hearing anything about him. The whole expansion honestly feels like it's from a completely different game; every time I see Thrall in a custscene I have to do a double-take, because he just seems so very out of place...

-They somehow butchered the most promising expansion, probably by letting an AI write the story -They managed to make Elune look like an idiot -Give the finger to the fans by giving Arthas nothing but a monologue that tells him to fuck off -They made Sylvanas the most hated idiot -Made a side antagonist (Denathrius) that's somehow better than the main antagonist -They made (tried to anyway) the Jailer to look like the ultimate Big Bad that turned out to be a discount Sargeras in every way, and didn't even get close to finish his goal, let alone leave a mark on the world (Sargeras actually was very close to destroying Azeroth) All of this in one expansion, and i probably missed quite a few

"I prefer to remember the Temple as It used to be, not the abomination that it has become" (Akama ,2007, The Burning Crusade Patch 2.1: The Black Temple)........I feel you Akama

"I hope we get a grounded story" The expansion literally ended with dollar store Thanos hinting this wasn't even as 'epic' and 'cosmic' as it can get lmao.

On the note of a *world* filled with *interesting characters* , I should remind Blizzard that doesn't have to always mean falling back on familiar WC3 characters. One of my favorite moments from Legion was meeting Runas The Shamed and I was legitimately broken up losing him despite meeting him literally like 5 quests ago. His role in the story was short, powerful, and a genius segway into later feeling the urgency to save the nightborne from their troubles in Suramar, in part by- OOH, MANA CRYSTAL! * loots *

I still follow the lore despite not playing wow anymore, and this sums up the issues of the story in Shadowlands absolutely perfectly. Extremely well said my guy I think you hit the nail on the head with the "world" thing, and half the characters actively take away from the world. Hell, even the concept of the shadowlands existing makes a lot of the world existentially irrelevant. Plus, all the zones in shadowlands being separate made transitioning between them feel so artificial. There's just 5 different large instances. That's all without ruining characters beyond repair. I genuinely wonder how it got like this. I feel like theres so many people who could out-write the writing team on this one. It feels like the writing team is just the dev team. It feels like azshara and nzoth each could've been their own expansion. Its so unfortunate.

What frustrated me about Sylvanas is that we were lead to believe she had this grand revelation, that she knew something crazy that we didnt 4 years of slow, tedious build up with her committing genocide and other acts we get to see that ultimately she's just a willing slave to the jailer and all this big talk was just nonsense. Shadowlands went nowhere and all it did was further destroy Warcraft 3's legacy beyond what reforged did

Players: "Now that we have defeated you can you please tell us what you were trying to do?!" The Jailer: Spits right in the players face "A cosmos divided will not survive what is to come...." Players: "Oh my god.. I thought Blizzard said this was the final part of the chapter yet they set up more!? What gives blizzard!" Blizzard: Spits directly into the players face "Give us more money and we'll tell ya by telling you a half truth that itself is vague as all hell."

the problem with WoWs storytelling is when they stopped using established plots and created their own "non-metzen" stories it showed just how weak the writing staff is creatively. its not the method of how they tell a story, its the fact they have no fucking clue _how_ to write a story. Metzen may not have been an award winning author but his story direction was clear, concise and interesting.

What I miss in the game is a frame to grow a connection with your character. The characters seem to be mere vessels for the endcontent. Doesn‘t matter which race/class you choose - everyone gets the exact same experience. Ok they can’t give every class/race their own endcontent. But the way to max level could be much more divers. Legion was great in that aspect as they had the classorders. The last straw was when they axed the tiersets. Remember: as (for example) a shaman, there was once a time were you didn‘t just level up and could do everything, no, you had to actually earn your totems. Or as a druid earn your forms. Or as warlock you had to fight and enslave the demons before you could summon them (even the warlock mounts have an actual lore). And so on. At max level I had a connection to MY character. It was I who mastered the elements/magic/demons etc. MY character is not exchangeable. I don‘t get that feeling now; if my character would get switched halfway through I‘d barely notice it. The individual flavor is missing.

I just miss being regular and not a anime like OP protagonist. Being a regular soldier helping the war effort. I hope we can go back to that one day

A word that keeps coming up from the community is "grounded". I think this is the heart of the narrative's issue. It just keeps ballooning out of control and there is only so far it can go. I think it's time for smaller-scale stories back on Azeroth.

Something I will never forgive the writers at blizzard for is the "closure" they gave for Arthas. This is one of the most iconic characters in the entire lore and they basically just wrote him off, they couldn't even be assed to give him an in-game cinematic like they did with Garrosh in Sanctum of Domination. Its like in the next expansion the faction leaders receive a letter which says that Illidan is dead and everyone just accepts it and we are not shown any cinematic or conclusion of the character of any kind. Absolutely pathetic.

unless they get a new lead writter I dont think the narrative will improve

I really wish this expansion would be treated like an anime Ova and we forget all of this happened

Shadowlands feels like they wanted to tell a deeper story like a book, except it was like if a book released 1 chapter every 6 months, and was only 100 pages long total. So they couldn't possibly tell a good story in such a short amount of words, but they sure as hell took 2 years to tell it anyway. While setting it up for 4 years prior. Although based on leaks and hearsay, this is likely due to some development hell in the back-end, and the current writers did they best they could to salvage the story. So the next expansion should be them working with a clean slate, rather than trying to put out a constant fire of random stuff they were given and told to make sense of.

Way I see it, the Warcraft 3 story we knew and loved ended with Legion. We defeated the big baddy that existed as the catalyst of the entire series; Sargeras, and that was it.

This problem has roots in the earlier expansions. WOW had already a great story, and great characters which were left behind. Why not use the already existing plots/characters? Also Azshara was done dirty :(

And when WoW lore needed him most… He returned

Worst part of Shadowlands imo was losing many of the WoW youtubers.

Argus brought a tear to my eye. The quests where you go round up the fallen heroes of Argus. It reminded me of Broxxigar. Standing up to Sargeras is the simple story telling people enjoyed and I had wanted to see what Argus was like since WC3. BFA and Shadowlands are like pure circus clown music and instead of a tear brought to your eye, you're pied in the face.

World of Warcraft never really had good Story-telling but what it definitely had was very strong world building, little details and quest-lines everywhere, mysteries all over the place, conspiracy theories, a deep history that you can deep up as well and all this made it feel real. the current Writers don't seem to be able to write a story that has a connection to those roots, their story seems completely detached and in a vacuum and that's why it doesn't feel like World of Warcraft anymore.

Their first big mistake was in making the leveling experience a glorified tutorial for the expansion, rather than an integral part of the experience. The zones only exist as a place to stuff the handful of dailies to mindlessly grind while waiting for raid night. The way they've been going, expansions are just glorified reworks of the Darkmoon Fair. We get walked to each attraction and then given a handful of tickets each day to spend on a randomized selection of attractions to visit.

Wrath had better faction tension then bfa and we were working "together" instead of at war

Yes, I absolutely agree with everything you said. I started playing TBC classic because I really missed exploring and questing in Azeroth. They have created such a beautiful and interesting world and they’re fucking it up.

Yeah, that sums up what I've noticed about the game lately. Also, this comment is going to be a bit lengthy but I want this off my chest. For years I was curious about WoW. I only started playing it once my nephew and I wanted to play something fantasy related. WoW and a few others were our picks. We began right at the closing days of Legion so we never played the end game. We were still low level characters at the time. Now for obvious reasons, my nephew couldn't play as much because of school. Yet I continued to play WoW. What interested me the most was it's lore. No, I didn't learn it from the game itself, but by other KZfaqrs who knew about the lore. This channel, Madseasonshow, and Nobble87 included. I learned about WoW's history both lore wise and even history made by players in game. Though I wasn't part of that history, I can still pass by key locations and know that history was made in someway. I can even feel something when I pass by old raid and dungeon locations. And I'm sure many of you do too as well. Especially all you WoW vets out there. What do you think of when passing by Blackrock Mountain, or even Icecrown Citadel before that Shadowlands mess? Even when you hear the music ambience from within the raid itself. Going through BFA, you can tell there was some work put into the zones, music, but not the story sadly. Or at least the late game part of the story. Playing through both Kul Tiras and Zandalar, I could tell they had something. Just no real pay off. Now with Shadowlands... I can't even get myself to even play the basic zone quests. I feel nothing from the modern game at all anymore. Just when questing in older zones or playing through older campaigns that I missed out on. Now this comment may be overlooked but for anyone that sees this comment, thank you for taking the time. As for WoW, I cannot say much since everyone else has already said what they needed to say. All the heart and soul of the game is gone... And that's just sad. And I'm sure many of you can agree on that.

I simply cannot put into words… how shit the story has been for the last 2 years… it all feels so wrong I hate to use the word but they have cosmically raped the foundation of the warcraft story. They are trying to come up with something new just for the sake of something new, and didn't stop to think whether it's actually necessary or even a good change at all. In trying to create originality, they made the universe really unoriginal and actually detracted from the wonder that was there before. The Titans already fulfilled the cosmic order concept in wow, with Titans overseeing the universe, each having a connection to a force like life or time. The Titans also created Titan Keepers (like Freya, Thorim, Mimiron) who similarly fit into a pantheon of duties and existed to fulfil the Titans' grand design. Now apparently there is a TitanPlus 'First Ones' cosmic creator group that literally made everyhing including the Titans, and Pantheons and workshops for all the forces in the universe. It's really derivative and unoriginal, and only makes lore more boring "Get your Pantheon in 5 other flavours now!". When we fought the Legion, it felt natural and made sense to involve the Titans in some way as they represent Order and had a large role in the Legion's lore with Sargeras - but apparently there's also a Pantheon of Fel (that nobody ever knew anything before)? Lol does the force of Disorder sound like something that would organise into a Pantheon? The Old Gods (awesome villains conceptually) are servants of the mysterious Void Lords... who apparently are a Pantheon of Void created by the even more mysterious First Ones? And there is a Zereth workshop pumping out Void stuff somewhere? This "the First Ones made it, also Pantheons and Zereths for everything" angle goes against what those forces were meant to represent, what made those forces interesting and unique. Jesus what does this add to the lore other than cheapening everything by codifying even the most unique forces in the universe into a copy-pasted and cookie-cutter "Pantheon of 3Dprinted BS"? The afterlife, a mysterious concept of the great beyond was made into a color-coded 5-zone theme park. Sure they tell us that there are more Afterlifes... but the center of the Afterlife is opened by the sigils of only these 5 Eternal ones, and the Forge of Afterlives 3Dprints only these 5 zone leaders, so...yeah. 5-zone theme parks work when we're exploring an island or parts of the world like Pandaria, the Broken Isles, the Cataclysm elemental zones... but NOT when you're trying to depict something as vast and mysterious as the Afterlife. Which as it turns out is 3D printed into existence by a large glowing technoball - which is also possibly the furthest thing from Death and the afterlife you could think of. So honestly they keep ruining the most interesting things about this universe with their contrived shoehorning. Let the Titans have their Pantheon and Forge of Origination and Hearts of Azeroth, the universe is just worse off by forcing the same codified nonsense onto Death and Life and Void etc. In their amateurish drive to create originality, the writers created a world devoid of originality. Oh wow there are floating trees and water you can walk on (as if we didn't have that before) but now the Emerald dream which was such a beautiful and mysterious magical place is just 3Dprinted by a technoball of life, and Elune is just a servitor in the Pantheon of Life, on the same level as this random 3Dprinted blue broad that only exists for color-coded Covenant theme park purposes. So yeah - sure the Jailer and Sylvanas storylines were utter garbage, but even without those the story direction is full of bad ideas that is just a detriment to the wonderful universe we had before... The Jailer is the most boring uninteresting disgraceful attempt of a villain in the history of the Warcraft franchise. 20 years of lore ruined just because you needed to make this random guy seem important. I genuinely hate more than anything that Zovaal was actually the real big bad all along, ruining 20 years of lore because of what? Because you were so desperate for the story to be engaging so you made this bald fraud out of thin air and claim he’s behind everything ever so people would care?? You may aswell have written please give a shit about me on his character model!!!! I fucking hate it more than anything. Everything about the jailer gives me the vibe of a kid saying this character I made is so cool and so amazing and can shoot mega lasers from his eyes, he can beat superman in one punch and everyone thinks he's so strong and the biggest bad guy ever, but it's written by fucking adults. The worst part is they COULD flesh him out and make him even mildly interesting but they couldn't help themselves in writing a compelling character, or even a fucking stupid WWE saturday morning cartoon villain - but instead they stand on the shoulders of established characters and lore and take a big fat shit directly on their head and go "SEE IT WAS ME ALL ALONG" Warcraft, the story, ended with the end of Legion and everything else after is fanfiction by people who don't like Warcraft. I'd rather them full reset the game 30,000 years in the future so they can't touch current characters anymore. They turned a certain undead elven archer into like the second most powerful character in the story because they like her so much in the writing room. Seriously what would the reaction be if slowly Lorthermar or Baine slowly got more powerful to the point of they could just start to fucking fly and 1v1 the Lich king and break icebergs with regular arrows Does it not seem problematic to anyone in the writing team that they completely took the myth out of not only death but creation itself from the perspective of the player character? How does one respect death after saving the entire realm of death and all the clowns within it? They just made the player characters one of the most powerful beings in existence. How can you go back to treating them as regular mortals doing pick-up quests in 10.0? Imagine dying from the perspective of the player character, how could you even take any of the guys in the Shadowlands seriously? You literally saved it all.

When Blizzard said '' We are going to end the warcraft book'' (or something in those lines), i hoped for a revemp. New systems, tales and adventures. Each and every expansion since pandaria feelt a bit dislocated. New mechanics are added and removed all the time, and i feel a certain lack in consistent. For a moment, i hoped that Jailer actually would win and reset the world, giving some life to this fading world. I do love warcraft, and because of it, i hope for it to thrive. But it is not because i love it that i will overlook its failures. For one moment, they could do a full reset, just like FF XIV and start anew. I'm not saying to be like FF, i'm saying to be new, innovative and espetacular, just like it was some 16 years ago, when blizzard actually tried and take risks.

Platinum: "I cannot think of a media that has a slower moving narrative" Berserk: Would you like to talk about boats and boat accessories? RIP Miura.

The core problem is Danuser's philosophy of dropping hints around and letting the players try to figure stuff out. Fire him.

Not gonna lie I teared up at the end there. It's so incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking to see all the potential WoW has on a storytelling level get wasted again and again and again for a shallow spectacle...

Glad to know I'm not the only one with an odd appreciation for Mordretha, the Endless Empress. Also, I find funny to hear that you could get a college degree in the time we found out who manipulated Vol'Jin, because I DID GET my college degree during that exact period of time!

Shadowlands is the first time I've ever been completely burnt out on in WoW. Everything about it has put me off of the game I've loved for 14 years and it feels awful to have to say that.

I've been saying this for years now. The plot and lore of WoW has been ruined because of Steve Danuser. You can blame Alex Afrasabi for being a piece of fucking shit all you want, but the lore was still fuckin awesome up until BFA. And BFA is when Steve took over as the lead story director. Steve Danuser is a hack and has destroyed WoW's lore and history for his own ego. Steve Danuser has Last Jedi'd the game.

I love WoW lore because it manages to make magic, zombies, pirates, voodoo, rocket ships, ninjas, aliens, dragons, radiation, lovecraftian horror, and walrus people all fit into the world yet somehow still make complete sense.

honestly plat, you hit it out of the park with this one. even with all the ham-fisted writing and design decisions over the years, the world always kept me coming back. it was cool to be able to go around and adventure! it really felt like youre really an adventurer in this big open world, youre not alone and together with allies you can overcome any challenge. i think thats the essence of wow, which is something that both pcs and npcs are ultimately beholden to, and its when people forgot what that meant that the game really took a downturn.

I feel you nailed shadowland's description really well by using "artificial", for me from beginning to end it just felt off, like it wasn't even wow.

Never understood why they just didn't make the soul of Ner'zul and Arthas the Jailer, twisted into one. With time moving weird in the Shadowlands they could have easily made them the rulers of the Maw. Might even give Arthas a proper sent of once we break him from Ner'zul.

I fully agree with this video. I actually stopped playing Retail wow and started playing classic realms solely based on the fact that i stopped caring about Shadowlands narrative and decided to relive old and better narratives, and to rediscover zones with rich details that were lost with retail's new leveling system.

As a WoW lore geek, this expansion kinda hurt. I am left confused on the storyline of the expansion (if there is one), and am left confused about the "mysterious enemy" Zovaal mentioned. It may be the void lords but that was the main reason Sargeras went on his Burning Crusade. I still love WoW lore, just not the insane retcon that Shadowlands has made. I also hope that the Dreadlords and Denathrius come back in some way, too, as they were my favorite villains (mostly Denathrius). Maybe they'll be working for the void lords this time? IDK

Hit the nail on the head with this video - the slow drip of lore being dispersed once every 6 months has been incredibly painful. It feels like Blizz has been asking us to hold on just one more story beat for 4 years now because surely something poignant or exciting is coming. In the end, like you said, even mediocre story beats end up feeling horrible instead because it doesn't live up to fan theories and hopes. Also Blizz somehow managed character driven stories in Legion, I think because like you mentioned it was still a straightforward story. The Rejection of the Gift cinematic was my favorite moment in Legion for that reason.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Blizzard's greatest enemy is narrative scope-creep. They keep trying to write bigger and more complexly deep stories... and they just can't. They fail every step of the way. WoW's narrative was far better when it was focused on worldbuilding and small-scale problems. Like how the Defias Brotherhood was a bunch of smaller, interconnected stories that happened to coalesce around a single important figure pushing things into motion, or how a bunch of the problems in various zones (all four human ones particularly) were independent problems being caused by local politics (and also, the same damn dragon, funnily enough.) Blizzard can write a world. They can't tell a story, and they need to stop trying.

Every second Platinum was not talking about Shadowlands, I knew it was a second he was happy

They said the jailer wraps up the story. Yet Azshara, Xalatath, Yrel, void lords, elune to name a few are still out there

Main plot aside, There's a ton of side characters I'd love to keep seeing. I'm sorry but I love most of the venthyr side cast, and a few of the others too. Theotar, Tubbins n Gubbins, Lady Moonberry, Venari, The Accuser (with Kael!), And of course Daddy D. I think Blizzard knows Denathrius is an actually good character so they salvaged him early, but the unfortunate reality is if they're going to dumpster SL like WOD then these characters are gonna go the way of Yrel.

There is one way Shadowlands may redeem itself in my eyes. Have Ner'zul, now free of the Jailer, do a prison break on Tor'Ghast and free a bunch of dead characters so they can return to the Warcraft setting. Merge the two Gul'dans into one being and have him become the Warlock class-leader, while Ner'zul seizes Tor'Ghast to act as the new Necromancer Class Order Hall, with him as the Necromancer Leader.

Tyrande: takes the power so she can kill sylvanas Elune: *takes it back the moment she's about to kill her* Elune like 10 minutes later: tyrande has to choose between vengeance or forgiveness I still can't get over that hahahaha

you hit the nail on the head the thing that makes Shadowlands so boring is that it's really nothing like the regular World of Warcraft Storytelling(BFA wasn't really good neither) it feels like a whole different game and not in a good way neither

Legion's Suramar is the most WoW thing i've ever experienced and by far my favorite, I was fond of the ancient war and Warcraft 3 before this expansion so it hit right on the money for me. Also yeah the Tomb of Sargeras audio was absolutely amazing. I think you're right for the most part but I kinda like the Shadowland factions and their individual characters and their personalities it really feels like WoW when you're gathering a ton of followers with different styles and behaviours, I wish we'd see more of them instead of some content that isn't fun or useful. For example delete the Venthyr's Ember court and focus more on characters like Theotar or idk fucking Simone or Laurent or whoever. The idea to build up your own abomination was great even if I didn't really commit or tried much of it it looked like a mighty good idea and appropriate for this covenant. It would all contribute to fleshing out more these characters which are now a big part of the lore and "have always been there"

I think another major issue with the wow lore is that it's suffering from a major case of Slideshow syndrome. The writers have obviously written major plot points, but didn't map out the path between them. Leading to dramatic shifts in story moments. They wanted the Jailer to collect all five sigils on screen. However, The Primus is already in his custody and the arbiter should be out of his reach surrounded by all the other eternal ones. Well... I guess the Primus hid his sigil in a vault and then the player character brings the sigil into torghast and gives it back to the primus in the lair of Zovaal. And I guess the arbiter gets dragged into the maw and all the eternal ones are just missing at the time. We need to chase after the jailer into Zereth Mortis, but we need 5 sigils and Zovaal took them. Ehhh, just make new ones. Oh, and the caretakers can just sub in for the Arbiter because... Sylvanas needs to switch sides, but she has no reason to and especially wouldn't want to after committing MULTIPLE war crimes in order to serve him. Wellllll, Zovaal didn't tell her about Nathanos and she didn't want to mind control Anduin and the Jailer mask slips and says "serve" and now suddenly she really doesn't like the word Serve (for some reason). These aren't the only instances of this issue, I'm sure you can find many more. But they really need to flesh out their plots BEFORE making future major plot points so that they can avoid this issue.

This really reminds me of the last Jedi. When force awakened came out everyone was speculating who snoke was and what would happen in the next movie cause force awakened was essentially the same as some old Star Wars movies so they focused on the characters. Then they released last Jedi and straight up made snoke useless and replaced him with palpatine in the next movie after that

Warcraft is now Terminator: Dark Fate

I've always seen my character as just a travelling adventurer exploring Azeroth and beyond who happens to get wrapped up in world-ending events on an alarmingly regular basis. I've been given many titles; some know me as "Commander" or maybe "Champion of Azeroth". Some call me "High Priest", and lately it has been "Maw Walker" spoken in my general direction with equal parts awe and derision. But the title I wear with the most pride, the one that means the most to me, is simply "of Ironforge". Must say though, it's kind of awkward being in a state of knowing what happens when we die and still now knowing what will happen when I die.

The reasons you put here are exactly why Mists is still my favorite expansion to this day

Warcraft fell into the trappings of power creep hard. It is very difficult to keep a continuous story engaging for as long as the franchise has gone on for. There are many ways to address this, but blizzard took the easy route and resorted to introducing a new villain that's more powerful than anything else before and the heroes powering up alongside them. This can work for a little while, but there comes a shark jumping moment where the audience expects this power up and gets bored, defeating the purpose of the decision in the first place. WOW was hit particularly hard because the blew through what was considered the ultimate evil in the universe at the time in the second expansion and have been chasing that peak with increasingly ridiculous new threats ever since.

I still remember when Shadowlands first came out and introduced the covenants and zones and I was like "there's nothing here to be excited for". The overall aesthetics of each area and the stories behind them just felt uninspired... Like when you go from say, the fantasy imperial China of Pandaria or the fantasy Mesoamerican Zandalari in BFA to these sort of bland and uninspired cultures and realms in the cosmos, you just don't feel drawn in. The world, atmosphere, art direction, and music in Shadowlands just doesn't really have the same power to draw me into the game that much as the previous expansions did.

Man I miss Legion, it was good. Despite the AP grind & legendary item gets I found it really neat & I got to see my old friends that returned again.

I have legit searched for information for years about the audio dramas and WHEN there will be more of them. I absolutely love both the tomb of saergeras and a thousand years of war and still listens to them. Please blizz make more with the exact same narration

Ill tell you what: Competent writers that know and remember previously established stories and rules of the universe.

>what makes WoW lore good Not having Danuser or Christie Golden for once on the story department.

Nailed it. The storytelling has been so alienating in most regards lately, they could have been better off introducing a robot evasion trying to hi-jack the titan facilities.

Hey I'm a big fan of your channel and Warcraft lore. Great video, you provided a different way of looking at things. I would like to add that in my opinion, Warcraft excels at telling sub-plot or minor stories. Like the smaller stories of less important characters and stories told through quests (like Suramar in your example). However, for some time now, Warcraft have been unable (in my opinion) to give a strong and compelling main story, and that is most apparent in expansions such as Warlords of Draenor (where they used lazy time traveling), or Shadowlands (Retconlands). I could rant on for ages as to why that is, but I'm sure you've already heard every opinion out there :) Anyways keep up the great videos.

Yeah, i agree with this video. Especially considering the so called "looming threat" wow keeps teasing is THE DARKNESS, which is the most overdone threat in all of fiction. I think blizz overestimates how much players care about faction leaders. They take the focus away from the player, which is the opposite of smart.

God I remember at the start of shadowlands I thought they were making all the right decisions ... then they decided to totally fuck everything up right down to even the lore.

Thank you for this video. I think it's a really important perspective about character narrative. I personally have had issues with WoW's "single player" story telling since, WoD. It kind of started in WotLK, but the only real example of that was when the Alliance reach Borean Tundra and the first quest text we get is proclaiming us as an important hero of the Alliance. Now, while I do dislike the _"you_ are the general of Alliance forces on Draenor" and _"you_ are the new Ashbringer", I mostly hate those because I'm in a world filled with other player characters who are experiencing the exact same thing. It would be like taking Skyrim, making it an MMO. The special treatment of being _the_ Dovahkiin is diminished when everyone is shouting dragons out of the sky. It's ok for player characters to become _a_ general, it's another matter when players become _the_ general. The former means you are part of something, the latter means you *are* the something, and I wont lie, the playerbase complaining during WoD that they "don't feel important enough" is one of the (subjective) reasons for an ending like we received at the end of BfA. A group of people are working together to defeat an amazingly cool villain, but its only *you* that channels the power of Azeroth. One person. Not the group. Not the MMO. You. You were the only person carrying the Heart of Azeroth. You. All 500,000 - 4,000,000 of you(singular). That drives me crazy. Its not what I play an MMO for. However, I personally don't feel this complaint extends to non-player characters. NPCs are suppose to be the lens through which events of the world affect an individual. Blizzard have attempted this before, and they didn't quite get it right. Thrall in Cataclysm. But here's the thing (for me), the issue there isn't that Thrall had too much focus, it was that he was the _only_ NPC with focus. The Aspects were doing what they could to hoist him up. He ended up being the only NPC that the story's finality was told through. Player agency is already a difficult thing within an MMO if you want it done without diminishing all of the other player characters around you. When the story is then hyper focused on an individual character, that you never get to choose, the question of "why am I even here" becomes too frequent. While it would be easy to just keep using Thrall becoming Green Jesus as the main outlet for this complaint, I feel I need to spread some of the examples on to Magni. the 'Champions of Azeroth' was really just a Magni Bronzebeard rep bar. No one else was given any purpose within that faction, and that was the game's best opportunity to provide character development to so many faction neutral characters. Better still, by giving players a variety of NPCs within that faction to "mentor" them, you provide agency to the player because they got to choose whose perspective to experience that part of the story. When you approach it this way, you spread the weight of a story on to more shoulders than either a single NPC (which tends to ruin them, aka, Thrall) or from placing it all on to the player character at the expense of every other player character around you. There are degrees of good and bad to story telling. So, by taking what I've just described and apply it to a bad ending like BfA's. So, yes, cheesy homage to LotR aside, focus of the power of Azeroth being pumped through the player character. Flip it around. ALL of the player characters instead channel that power in Magni, his diamond body refracting the power until it is controlled with the aid of other neutral NPCs (like poor ol'd Hamuul) to eventually kill N'Zoth. But don't stop there. Because Magni is the conduit instead of the player, you have the options to maim, sacrifice or transcend him through this act. These options do no exist for the player beyond waking up in a bathtub in Dalaran, because game developers can't just perma death your character. It would still be a lame Return of the King rip, but there is more weight and consequence there than attempting to provide MMO players more agency only to reveal that our involvement carries no choice. Being front and centre is _not_ true player agency. Both players and developers make this mistake. Complaining about *you* not being the centre of attention is a small part of the problem.

I actually got a degree from Uni between the Vol'jin's death and the Mueh'zala reveal. August 2016-June 2019. It was still unknown when I finished it 💀

Dam bro. You can tell this is a huge amount of pent up anger getting unleashed. Good for you man, sorry they did this to you

You literally put all I've thought about BFA and Shadowlands into words thanks

The audio drama for Tyralion and his bae was soooo good. It got me into audiobooks in the first place, it was that good!

Shadowlands should've been a really world building focussed expansion along the lines of Pandaria. I mean we've been here for ages and we still don't know a bunch of fundamental aspects of this place. Like, why don't the other realms of the shadowlands have pantheon members? What happens when you die in the shadowlands? Why did they have to pump Argus full of death energy to get him there? Do entities like demons or Naaru go to the shadowlands when they die for real? Why can the titans just strut around in reality and why are they birthed through world souls when none of that applies to their death equivalent? What is domination magic? Is it death fueled? Is it outside the cosmology we know? How did the Jailor find out about this "bigger threat". What's up with Elune and the Winter Queen? And the list goes on. Back in Pandaria every villain and plot point that came up was clear, they had a couple of questions like this, but they felt purposeful, not just like stuff that got left out for no reason.

WoW, as a universe, has such great potential to be such a well of fantastic lore. Available if you wanna dig into it or talk about it, or you can accept the surface of it to go around the world day to day. Depending on how deep you want to dig into it or especially theorize about it, it can offer you everything you'd be interested in. And since it's a 'world', you can tell almost any and all stories within it that you'd ever want to tell. Happy, sad, emotionally mixed. The possibilities are so vast it is mindboggling, and even the most boring ones could be interesting. I understand the team has been under pressure, and not every decision was something they would have gone for. But after seeing BFA and Shadowlands....really?!??! Of all the vast possibilites THIS is what you go for? This is the best you can do? There's some little things they did right but long run have fully butchered. Taelia could have been an interesting character to see in the world, without being connected to any existing characters. Did she REALLY have to be the 'long lost daughter'? She's perfectly fine as just a fresh face, brand new character. And the Drust! They were so cool as just this threat that lurked in the background, angry at their ancestral home being taken from them. Why were they in Shadowlands? Literally zero reason to be there and since then have had almost no elaboration onto why. And why was Baine JUST SITTING THERE THE WHOLE TIME. I sympathize that there were behind the scenes issues but please blizzard, the only way this could have happened if someone very important (who is still at the company currently) forced very stupid decisions. Not even saying it was someone on the writing staff, but someone with push who thinks they know best has made terrible decisions.

Thank you very much for bluring out jailer's chest or as I like to call him: Nipples Magee! (Christ put a shirt on get some self respect) I personally say (story wise) WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN! Make the player not the chosen one but just another solider. That's what I want. Also I agree if ya got no passion why make a vid on it?! Plus I like looking back on good (and funny) lore.

I do agree that the games strength is when it focuses on the world and the smaller aspects rather than grandiose elements. Suramar at the start of Legion was also my favorite zone, and it was amazing to feel the progression over time since I was the one causing that progression. After progressing through the zone, and infiltrating the city piece by piece, it all led to to the tier raid, which had the antagonist(Gul'dan) which had set everything in motion for this expansion. Progression that was understandable, effected the world, and was directly created by you, fantastically built. However, I disagree where the faults are. The gaps in the narrative are not problematic, especially since they have always been there. While Suramar was more continuous, the rest of Legion did have those gaps as well. Each patch still had time in between them, progressing to the next chapter of the story still took time. But that time isn't an issue when the story itself is told well. The real issue with the story is not that there is too much time in between each chapter, or that its character focuses, or that its not zone focused...It's that is fucking sucks. The story these days is focused on the pay off without caring how it gets there. It's all about the spectacle, but there is no meaning behind it. Sylvanas was character assassinated. The Jailer is mustache twirling evil guy and nothing more. Remember the one cinematic where Tyrande beat the crap out of Sylvanas for her to randomly lose her power cause...reasons? They are just trying to fast track to the spectacle, but that spectacle doesn't mean anything if it hasnt been built up. Arthas was arguably Blizzards most iconic character. But why was he iconic? We saw him start as a proud and noble Prince, and saw him fall. We saw this man go from righteous and stalwart defender of his home, to be consumed by vengeance and accidently become the before thing he swore to destroy, and be consumed and forced against his will be then destroy his very home. When WOTLK starts, we know the kind of power we are up against, and as we battle through northrend his presence is literally everywhere. The scourge littered the continent and flying over Icecrown showed you his tremendous force. Then at the final climax we actually lose, and if not for Tirion breaking Frostmourne, the Lich King would have actually won. And that is why video games are such an amazing medium for story telling, because we didnt just see all of that, we PLAYED all of it. We played as Arthas picking up Frostmourne, we played as Arthas leading the Scourge, we played our characters invading Icecrown, we played the game we saw it happen, and it makes the end result statisfying and meaningful. All of that is absent in the modern day. They keep throwing cliffhangers at you in an attempt to keep you interested because the story is devoid of meaning. Cliffhangers only work if I cared about what was happening to begin with. Classic WoW shows that sometimes bigger isn't always better.

I will never look at wow lore the way I used to again. I absolutely hate how they ret-conned the Dreadlords. All of your videos about old lore and classic stories are pure gold. The effort put into thousands of years of history was incredible and now reduced to this garbage in less than 2 years

Cliffhangers just don't work in an MMO, but truth is it just shows they are making it up as the go if anything. A bit more planning and purpose to the direction of the story could go a long ways. Edit: A prime example is Damon Lindelof's work with Lost vs The Leftovers and Watchmen. Regardless of what you think of the shows The Leftovers and Watchmen had much more satisfying conclusions because the direction and journey was plotted out beforehand. Lindelof has even said he didn't want to make the mistakes made with Lost's conclusion again and the shows turned out better for it.

Wow 2.0 hahahah! That aged well 😎

Player: Argus was a cool idea but needed more set up Blizz: Hold my beer

The problem with modern storytelling, in my opinion, is that writers just don't give enemies/antagonists enough space, love, attention, and time. The big baddies often are almost an afterthought, have no depth, no real motivation, are not relatable. Their plans are obscure, their end goals destructive for no real reason besides "because they're evil", and often they don't really directly do anything that bad to the main character to be hated by the player. The heroes kill the big evil boss and you feel nothing, you barely knew him. When we were progressing on the Lich King fight we were looking forward to kill him, we wanted to see him dead more than getting an achievement or a piece of gear. When that finally happened my entire raid group was cheering, that joy lasted for days. Now, that feeling is completely gone from WoW.

The issues with WoW you mentioned remind me of Brandon's Sanderson lectures on book writing (available on youtube). In one speech Sanderson talks about a point of promise in plot and what happens if author does not write to fulfill it. In that context: - in Legion we were promised to defeat BL and we did - in BFA we were promised a war between Horde and Alliance and.. we fought N'zoth - in the Shadowlands we were not promised anything so no one is waiting for anything (we know there is the Guy, but we do not know anything about him or his goals, why do we even fight him? there is no reason to, he had not done anything evil tbh, but the plot makes us)

Even putting the mess of the story aside, another huge problem is complete lack of communication from their team to the fans. Steve Danuser's twitter is filled with talks about dogs and random TV shows, instead of being dedicated to conversing with the fans. He doesn't ever show up in public, doesn't give sincere interviews, is obviously afraid to talk to other people, and only shows up in that trademark Warcraft black shirt uniform that somehow shows that he is a part of the chosen few who get to to work on the story. Why he (and the other story devs) choses to be above us all for some reason is completely unknown to me and feels really humiliating. Not to mention the number of youtube WoW content creates who created videos just like this one that Platinum made, straight up showing dissatisfaction and asking for more communication, and still not a single word from them

Thank you Platinum for everything you do. Your passion for this universe is inspiring and makes me want to start playing WoW classic just so that I can experience that passion again for a game that I grew up with and loved.

I am so glad you brought up Suramar and it's story. I loved and adored it, it truly was captivating and honestly if they just did think like that I would love the game more. Everything in Shadowlands just makes me angry from basically my completion of the base story, but Legion and it's story of each of the zones I actually cared about and made me look forward to each of the raids

Platinum WORLD soon!? Platinum telling us about Historical stuff, with troll and gnome models!? Hell yeah!

An idea I've been gravitating more and more towards would be an expansion based primarily on rebuilding cities and communities broken by the events of the previous expansions, as well as fixing problems that have been around since the background for Vanilla. I'm thinking of faction-neutral questlines where the Horde and Alliance can work together through neutral intermediaries, like the Cenarion Circle, to fix local issues and heal corruption in nature, as well as gradually work towards peace. But of course not everybody would want peace between the factions, so there would also be political intrigue, and a joint Horde-Alliance conspiracy to sabotage things. Essentially the plot to Star Trek VI, but on Azeroth.

4:09 "that's like explaining the plot to a movie after the credits roll" good one

All good stories have not only enjoyable characters but also proper build up and progression. In legion I enjoyed the small arc of Velen going from a Prophet trusting blindly his faith in his visions to a leader taking charge and deciding his own fate (which was also helped by the contrast between him and Illidan) and the only thing that came remotely close to this in Shadowlands to my memory was the Kyrian and Forsworn arc, it had a set up with Uther's arrival disrupting the status quo by showing a clear flaw in The Path, It's theme was expanded upon and poised good arguments for both sides and it ended with a pay off that resolved the story's conflicts, having watched Nobbel's videos on all 4 covenants and chains of domination patch I feel confidant in saying that the story of the Kyrian is the best the Shadowlands has to offer (it's not perfect, them still delivering souls that will only get thrown in the maw was never touched upon). And I will say this, I'm worried about Dragonflight's story about the Incarnate, these proto-drakes that chose to infuse themselves with the elements rather then serve the titans and also the Dracthyr, both are things that I feel like may make the reader painfully aware that these are things that just didn't exist or have no tangible existence to anything prior and are only around to pad out a brands life span

I feel like they had the perfect opportunity to reboot WoW and start with fresh ideas, revamped classes, etc. and they messed it up

Feel like it can never be the same anymore. It just get more and more silly and the ladder of villain and who's the creator just goes up.

One thing I really like is being important or serving an important role along with the core characters rather than being some errand runner. I kinda get doing errands in early levels, but I hate it when you’re level 60 and they just send you to do their bidding for these unimportant tasks. I like my character to be important second to the main characters. When I started a Demon Hunter I felt important for completing Illidan’s cause. When I went to Bastion I hated it. Sure the zone is gorgeous but it made me feel so unimportant. Same with the other realms in Shadowlands. I was just some character running errands. Farming anima by doing mostly same things over and over again and it taking painfully slow to get anywhere is frustrating too. When I started WoW it was when Shadowlands was already released. So I didn’t get to experience the lore in the way long time players have. Sometimes it’s very frustrating trying to figure out where things go chronologically. And trying to follow the storyline without getting into the other expansions by accident is a huge problem for me. It could just be me being stupid though XD

One thing about the Jailer/Shadowlands that no one seems to really talk about is how it retconned not just part of WoW, but ALL of Warcraft's history. As we find out that the Jailer set in motion or is responsible for literally every major event in the entirety of Warcraft History. Everything from the Burning Legion (dreadlords), manipulation/actions of Sargeras, the creation of the Lich King, Orcs coming to Azeroth, and virtually every major event between and after all either directly or indirectly as a result of the Jailer's plan being set in motion.

EXACTLY. overarching stories should be simple, but fun and badass. where the complexity comes in should be in questing storylines and worldbuilding. i still know so little about the zones in the past few expansions, because they all just felt like unimportant vessels to house a "greater" narrative, rather than an actual writing focus.

You could do a series called “wait, what?” where you reveal to us the links between plot points that we’ve forgotten 🤣

They should've kept making RTS games, use those to make big character driven plots, have campaigns for the villain factions so you can learn what they think and why, give the actual characters a chance to do something other than hand out quests to the mobs of murder hobos that actually get things done. Then use the MMO to let players explore the world, hang out with side characters, fight bosses in interesting ways, effect the world through the actions of their guilds and find out which RTS campaign had the cannon ending.

Holy shit I actually just realised I actually DID get my university degree in the same time span as the Vol'jin Mue'zahla arc. Fuck....