WoW Storytelling's Fatal Flaw — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:03] actually think something is deeply wrong with how WoW is telling its stories, at least some of its stories, anyway. And I think you know the ones. It's the ones part of the story really quick. Let's speedrun this thing." That's the kind of

[00:18] thing that leaves a bad taste in people's mouths. It happened during happened a lot during Battle for Azeroth. itself here. The majority of people talking about Midnight end-game

[00:31] campaign, and especially some of the latter chapters, seem to hate it. And I do see people who do like it, but all too often uh, it feels like it's turned into some tribalism style people running defense for it, people attacking it. So,

[00:45] today, I'm going to deconstruct it, and I'm going to fix it. And not just that one scene, but Blizzard's whole recent approach. Now, the first thing I would do is get everyone in their writing team to watch The Matrix. And not because

[00:59] it's a movie full of high-key aura farming. So, that is actually another problem for WoW, too, but not one we'll tackle today. The real reason why is actually because of a book. It's a book called Simulacra and Simulation. It was

[01:12] such an inspiration for The Matrix that they actually made it required reading for all of the cast. And if the author were still alive today, he'd understand exactly what WoW's problem is. I mean, I can't speak for the dead. He probably

[01:24] wouldn't end up as a WoW player. But the point is that for WoW, it's a bit more complicated than saying, "Lmao, skill issue. Just write better." We're all living in a form of The Matrix right now, and I obviously don't mean

[01:38] that in the very cringe Andrew Tate sense. No, today we're talking about Jean Baudrillard, and what he called a hyperreality. And what the Wachowskis did with The Matrix is make that hyperreality look

[01:50] really goddamn cool, and give us a lot of Keanu. But the idea, right, is that the WoW experience is not just the game itself. It's also everything else as well. It's the Reddit posts, it's what content creators post about data mining,

[02:05] and even what Blizzard promises us beforehand. And that last part is extremely important because this is the world soul saga. Blizzard promised us a world soul saga. Blizzard promised us a hell of a lot. So, wow here, the actual

[02:17] game that you buy and play, that is the reality, right? But it's not the only thing we engage with. What we engage with is the hyperreality of World of Warcraft. That means the version with all of the extra baggage that I talked

[02:30] all of the extra baggage that I talked about. Content creators, data mining, comments, all of those things. And Blizzard needs to think about that the one that ends up mattering the most here. And that means they need to

[02:44] data mining. It means they need to be to happen. And it even means understanding what we expect. Because understanding what we expect. Because that does matter. And to fix that, well,

[02:58] Baudrillard was a pretty smart fella, and he had another idea. And it's an idea that really explains how wow feels. And it's called the non-event. I mean, does that just not kind of click

[03:14] with how some of wow has felt to experience? Basically, the non-event is when things happen so fast, and there's so much noise around all of it that we don't actually get to sit and absorb the actual thing that happens. We don't get

[03:29] to engage with just the reality itself. No, what we're engaging with is the constant hyperreality. Have you ever wondered why old movies, TV shows, and games seem to be remembered better? Well, it's often because new things fall

[03:42] under what we would here call non-events. Where the world we live in is so fast, and we chew them up, and we spit them out pretty much in a week at most. And it's all very, very fast-paced. I mean, in many cases, we're

[03:55] almost finished with the story before it even happens, and then we're immediately moving on to whatever is next. Nothing has time to settle. Now, we've been years. We've been talking about what elven unification would mean since,

[04:09] We've been talking about the Don well since it was data mined months ago and the connections that it would all have to the world soul, you know? Light versus void and everything that that entails. All of this wider context is

[04:23] absorbed insanely fast well before the game even comes out. Blizzard might not literally understand this, but they can definitely feel it. And I think that is a big part of the problem. With that said, it is now time for the

[04:38] prescriptions. Stop speed-running your story. Every patch ends with an obvious lead-in to the next patch. And while that is in many ways a good thing, you do want some continuity and some foreshadowing,

[04:52] but it often means the main story gets no time to breathe before it's all resolved and we're pushed over to the next thing. The Sunwell is attacked, it goes dark, and it's fixed within just a few quests. We're reminded of Aethas and

[05:05] Vereesa's hatred for each other before the raid, and next week they're signing a compact. Well, compact really might be the perfect term for this whole thing, honestly. It just feels so compressed. Then, we've got the night elves taking

[05:20] no convincing to show up. I mean, just think about the Council of what do we do with the one ring of power? They devolve into arguments and a whole big thing before they work out what to do with the fellowship. Oh, no. It is lightning fast

[05:35] whenever we go to visit the night elves. And when you actually look at Shandris's dialogue, honestly, it's like a summarized wiki page for new players instead of her as an actual character, one who has lived through a life of

[05:48] experience talking to you in her unique voice. Rommath and Umbric, I will say, feel like a decent part of the story. And that's because they at least got to be around in the leveling campaign. But

[06:00] still, Umbric, major member of the Alliance, gets a new Void Elf embassy in the middle of Silvermoon. And no one bats an eye. There's not much talk about it even though it's a major geopolitical event in the world. In the quest text,

[06:14] we do actually see that everyone is still on edge, and the elves very much think of it as if they are in a temporary truce. There's actually lots of future setup in those lines of dialogue, some of them the spoken ones

[06:27] and others just when you right click at an NPC. But the thing is, that setup is an NPC. But the thing is, that setup is just that. It's setup. It doesn't feel like much is actually happening now. We all feel, from Blizzard's usual pacing,

[06:40] that this is just done, dusted, and well, it's time to move on to the next Blizzard are basically caught up in the blistering pace of the non-event. Just like how the Marvel movies ended up doing that with their endless

[06:55] post-credit scenes, and how it got to the stage where even though all the other, there was a lot of audience fatigue and people just stopped giving a Now, we can all see the utility of those post-credit scenes way back when

[07:09] they were a new fresh thing, but now, well, the credits aren't even over and your attention is already on whatever the next thing is. And it's similar announcement to announcement, from patch to patch, and nothing gets to stay

[07:23] around long enough to feel like it matters. Now, let's compare that to Mists of Pandaria, where we had the faction conflict rage fresh in every patch right up until the end. It was actually focused. It was one main idea

[07:38] lasting through a whole expansion. But nowadays, and I'd say especially ever since Battle for Azeroth, it feels like we just take off a handful of plot points in every single patch and then move on to the next. So, to help fix

[07:51] wow's issues, I would get Blizzard to slow down. That's how they escape the Matrix. Commit to an arc, commit to a big story, and nail it. The latter part is the important one because it could even have been like that in Midnight. We

[08:05] could have had the elves at each other's throats for a while, maybe even through another major patch. They could have disagreed with each other about how to heal the Dark Well. All expansion, this stuff could have been the focus. It

[08:18] could have been mined for all of its delicious ore. But it feels like we've rushed through. And as much as the Dawnwell cinematic hasn't really rang true to people, maybe it would have if it was at the end

[08:33] of this expansion, where it would have felt earned. But also, let's be real. That cutscene is itself something that needs fixing because it's indicative of a far larger problem.

[08:47] Blizz, you need to cut out the sugar. This saccharine power of friendship stuff seriously needs to end. It already felt forced at the Dragonflights, and the big Dragonflight cast members were literally all close family. But with

[09:00] these elves, it's just obviously fake feeling. The night elves barely have any ties to the story whatsoever. They're there begrudgingly to stop the Dark Well from threatening the world. Yet, Liadrin gives this pithy line about the moon

[09:16] meeting the sun. We see the five elves framed in this triumphant shot, where only Liadrin and Umbric have had any major involvement in this story. It's this weird, sugary sweet ending that cynically is supposed to make you have

[09:32] happy good feels. It's supposed to end with an orchestral swell that tells you the viewer, "Ooh, look at that. It's great." It's a situation where the music and the language of cinema often feels closer to being a laugh track, just

[09:46] telling the audience kind of what to do rather than something that's really reinforcing the themes as they have been experienced by players as we go through the story. That's why that hero shot of the five of them just doesn't feel

[10:00] right. But, I'd still say even if it was earned and even if it did land it, I would still want a different tone to this. And that's because the Dark Well fixes the blood elves, and I think that's a huge mistake. And not just for

[10:13] the role players, but for everyone. So, let's go back a little. What made you pick a race when you started World of Warcraft? For some, it was purely utility like going troll because of their berserking ability. But, for a

[10:25] whole lot of us, it was because that race and their story, their theme was compelling. The blood elves were certainly more, her quotes, normal than most horde races, but they were still brutal and tragic outsiders.

[10:40] Now, we just don't have those stories to connect to. They've brushed off their past and they have became generic elves. There's still obviously an underbelly to their society. We see a little bit of that, yes. But, now that they've

[10:54] accepted the void elves, who's to say that the fell smugglers of Murder Row are next? Here's how I would fix it. It's fairly simple. It's learning to write people integrating their shadows.

[11:08] have done, and when I say shadow, I mean that in the Youngian sense. So, instead themselves, they should accept what they are instead

[11:20] of healing the Dark Well to the friendship powered Dawn Well that seems to give them all of the benefits, but none of the downsides. Maybe Maybe could have nuked it. In midnight. They never mentioned that when

[11:34] Arthas corrupted the Sunwell, Kael'thas fixed it by literally destroying it. Then in the Burning Crusade, it was fixed by M'uru's sacrifice. Now that it's been corrupted again, well, blowing up the Darkwell would have been a real

[11:48] Blood Elf thing to do. They go hard. Now the modern Blood Elves hate Kael'thas, but they would have to accept that he was part of their history. He's even the guy that named them Blood Elves in the first place.

[12:02] Following in his footsteps in this one way would honor their legacy as a way would honor their legacy as a radical people, one consistently backed up against the brink in a hard situation. It would still have them

[12:15] controversial, but this time they wouldn't be sacrificing it. They wouldn't be blowing it up just to save themselves. They would be doing it to save Azeroth. That would preserve who Blood Elves

[12:27] Now the Night Elves would massively respect the seriousness of it, right? suspicious of the wells. They've seen all the bad that's came with them. So if

[12:40] radical of a solution, you could them even if it is through the most gritted of teeth. And if that happened, it would open up space for Astalor, a real edgy Blood

[12:54] Elf, in the future. Remember, he's a Blood Elf who is searching for sources of power. That would even tie the major gameplay of a big new feature into the

[13:06] gameplay of a big new feature into the narrative. Whereas of course thus far Prey is there, completely disconnected from the launch day experience, and that is a problem. Even if Blizzard was to fold Astalor back into the plot in two

[13:20] patches time, it would still be a problem now because of the story as we've actually experienced it and the game they've actually shipped. And had the Blood Elves gone with a radical, maybe controversial solution, it would

[13:33] maybe controversial solution, it would leave a scar, a scar to really remember the Sunwell by. We would finally have some stakes. And on the topic, we need to talk about stakes.

[13:47] This part's simple. Blizzard needs stakes, stakes that are actually taken seriously and dwelled on. Because right now, it seems Blizzard uses big stakes now, it seems Blizzard uses big stakes as a rally cry, as a point of marketing.

[14:01] But they don't actually dwell on those stakes inside the actual game. As an example, the Darkwell obliterated the Lights' Vangaurd, and they're instantly forgotten. It's insane. The power of friendship and

[14:16] forgiveness didn't even wait until the bodies were cold. No, the survivors, cursed by the darkness, were totally healed after we beat up Lura. Silvermoon was, in game and in any story that we've seen, completely unaffected by any of

[14:31] this stuff going on. And then there's our main villain. It's hard to take Xal'atath's threats seriously when she won't reveal her actual goal. Now, we've got a motive, but we have no idea how she plans to accomplish it. I mean, we

[14:46] theories, loads of theories, and ones that I think are basically bang on true. But the thing is, that to most players, who just take the game as they see it when they play it, well, their experience is that she vague

[15:00] posts and then exit scene. And what makes that worse is the actual fight Number one, it is a god damn awesome fight. Their

[15:12] encounter designers are cooking, and we've all been loving it. Now, that being said, Lura's dialogue is all about some sort of nondescript end happening. And the dungeon journal for Lura's final phase says, "Time is up.

[15:28] Can you end the ending itself?" Now, I don't even know if whoever wrote that actually knew what it means or how it actually related to the story that we got. Because without any context, it is a totally empty threat. Now, I'm not

[15:43] saying we need to blow up more cities or start killing main characters on screen. But Blizzard needs to give us time to sit with threats and consequences. Whenever Lura says something like that about the end, we need to truly believe

[15:59] Now, do you know where they did that and they pulled it off credibly? they pulled it off credibly? The Argus fight. It truly did feel like, think that's one of the reasons why it landed so hard both from a gameplay

[16:15] perspective and a narrative perspective. Whereas unfortunately, Lura lands experientially and in terms of gameplay, but not really narratively. And here's the upshot. Blizzard, it is not about the size of the threat canonically.

[16:32] It is about how real that threat feels whenever we actually play the game. And you know what would help? Characters who actually cared about these obvious threats in a way that felt credible.

[16:46] Characters need to have their brains. Here's one. Where are Alleria and Uh who knows? I certainly have theories, but do you know who should really be at least a little concerned? Their son, Arator. Especially since we

[17:01] just dumped a pile of magic stuff into the giant void well that his parents went for a swim in. Maybe he should have asked someone about it or at least expressed the slightest bit of worry about the status of his

[17:15] People who yes, he does have a complicated relationship with, but who to connect with. Literally, he does not mention this.

[17:28] And it's his goddamn parents. Now, in the Stay Awhile and Listen scene with Rommath and Umbric, they seem a little bit clueless. They know that Xal'atath went into the well with all of her host, and they suggest that the world soul is

[17:42] something to do with it. But, it's not real dialogue. It's a little bit of a condescending hint to the player, a bit of a wink wink nudge nudge. It's using those characters as, I guess, a bit of a meat puppet to wink at the player.

[17:56] But, it doesn't really serve those particular characters, two very intelligent and driven magisters. Now, I would love to sit and call characters stupid, but there is a real issue here, and that is managing player knowledge

[18:11] and character knowledge. This is actually really hard to do in especially a big one like WoW. What I mean by that is that loads of us know about ley lines and the world soul. Most of us know that Xal'atath is heading for

[18:24] the world core to do something to or with Azeroth. And we know there's a titan manifold across the planet and all of that stuff. We also know Algalon the Observer is waiting in the wings for the titans' return. So, even just using

[18:37] what's happened in game, it is actually clear that everything is converging, right? It is clear that what they're trying to do with world soul saga is moving forward and happening. But, that's just us.

[18:50] The people in the actual World of Warcraft, the characters, well, they don't have all the pieces. Let me spell that out. So, the blood elves know the Sunwell is connected to the ley lines. Dagran is the one who knows about the

[19:03] manifold, and most of our main characters know something about the radiant song and about Azeroth. But, if Rommath thinks the world soul is possibly under attack by Xal'atath, it would make a lot of sense if he did

[19:17] more, just a little bit more, than whisper that to Umbreck. I mean, at least tell Arator, cuz it's probably where his parents ended up. Things like this. Maybe, you know, we could take the threat a little bit more

[19:31] seriously if the characters in the world seemed to care. Not just emotes saying, "Oh, this is very important. We care." but no, actually go through the actions of caring, which would involve

[19:44] acting on the knowledge they have and doing so in the context of the relationships that they have and the characters that are here. It's just that characters that are here. It's just that that one with Arator seemingly not even

[19:57] mentioning his parents, even though they've just fallen into a big spooky not even seeming to care, that just makes the whole thing feel like artifice. But sadly, we don't have time for that. We need to go on to the

[20:13] next patch, the next patch after that, and then probably go to the troll island for our next big patch. And I think that's just why the world ends up feeling hollow. I'm Blizzard have got themselves in this rough

[20:25] situation. You know, I mentioned uh how the game is saccharine and uh you know, feels a bit too sugary earlier on. It's almost a little bit like Blizzard's got hooked on sugar. And by sugar, I just mean lots of content very, very

[20:39] just mean lots of content very, very fast. Um and you know, to keep their to keep their addiction fed, they just need to eat more and more and more and more almost what it can feel like with World of Warcraft's content cadence these

[20:52] days. It is amazing how we're getting so much, but when it ends up just turning much, but when it ends up just turning into what we mentioned earlier, um the non-event, well, it's no wonder that even though

[21:06] something is canonically huge for the Warcraft universe, that people don't give a about it. And with that reinforcing the non-event, I mean, it's no surprise that whenever a big thing happens in wow, people just don't care

[21:20] me, they used to. I was there for it. They did. It does not hit like it did back then. And while there's always been a lot of nitpicking going on with wow's lore,

[21:35] covered in this video that does actually hit different these days. And in a way that is I don't want to say unique, but is certainly

[21:48] to say unique, but is certainly to do with how modern wow is made. So, there's been an explosive reaction to all this stuff, naturally. I mean, this is a familiar page in the wow playbook. The oathstones left in

[22:01] Dragonflight, then Bel'adar and the black blood from the war within. Old stories that Blizzard ended in a big rush and moved on from. Which doesn't exactly tell players that their investment in giving a about

[22:14] any of those things will be paid off. But Midnight's different in a bunch of ways. We know that as an example, void assaults are starting in the point five patch and that they'll escalate with new quests in the point seven patch. We know

[22:27] the Twilight's Blade feel betrayed by Xal'atath. Maybe we'll have some defectors helping us out. And maybe the elves' tenuous agreements will be shattered by whatever happens on Atal'ai Tech. But even if that's all somewhat

[22:41] true, there's still a lot of people dissatisfied with the tone and the direction of the game right now. And right now is important because right now is the thing people have invested their time and money into.

[22:55] It being weak justified by something in is quite simply not good enough anymore. Our dissatisfaction with the tone and direction is totally valid. And so much of this is not on the actual lore. I

[23:10] the lore itself. It's on the execution of the story in the game. The story and the lore, those are two different things. Now, it's not the end of the world considering how almost everything else in this game is a

[23:25] pretty damn stark improvement. I seriously do mean that. I've been seriously do mean that. I've been enjoying Midnight a hell of a lot. But, if I were Blizzard's narrative team, I'd go watch The Matrix and I'd think

[23:37] about what their own red pill looks like. Buy Simulacra and Simulations. Really good book. Have a think about it in relation to the work that you're doing. And if the blistering production

[23:50] schedule of this game means that there's just certain types of stories you can't pull off well, like what's happened with the end game 12.0 stuff, then maybe we need to dial back our ambition so that even if we get less,

[24:04] even if we get less, we get it executed to the level I know Blizzard are capable of because they've done it before. This video is about wishing they'd be able to do it again. And a big part of

[24:16] it's the story. I think a lot of the lore is actually pretty neat. Not all of it though. But, if you want to hear about the recent lore, what's actually means for the future, simply watch this video next. It will fill you right in.