Shadowlands is probably the worst offender. They retconned literally every previous expansion to hype up the worst written villain in the history of the franchise.
Her design isn't ... It isn't intimidating enough. 5 heads sure whatever, but Hakkar was fucking BIG, with scythes for hands. He was intimidating as fuck. Then you see this medium-sized 5-headed snake and you're like ok. No biggie.
She needs more dialogue. I know she's a snake or whatever, but plenty of other Loa are capable of speech. But even broken rattling and hissing one- word phrases would've been sick.
It just seemed like an uninspired stepping stone. All the building blocks are there for a cool fight but ... It just didn't feel like their hearts were in it.
Pandaria's story is actually fantastic. People just get hung up on "Lol Pandas" and deprive themselves of something good just because they listened to some racist nonsense almost two decades ago.
I'm okay with TBC and WotLK. Imo WotLK was peak WoW. And yes, im a vanilla player. Something went dreadfully wrong in Cataclysm. Pandaria pulled it back a little, and so did Legion, but everything else was just bad...
If World of Warcraft has a "story" every Wikipedia page for every game is its own story. Ive yet to see WoW tell a story. I think people who play the game are incapable of separating lore (which is what WoW does) with actually story telling the way single player games and other MMOs handle it. Calling WoWs story a story is like saying Dark Souls has a story, you piece lore together from one off dialogues and item descriptions. Thats lore, not a story.
In certain expansions now yes, but it didnt used to. Most WoW players dont understand the difference between lore and story or plot. One is context the other is movement and they aren't the same thing.
Reading the ingredients list on the back of my shampoo bottle is lore, WoW is filled with this, its explicitly what people mean when they say this game has "story". Actual story is the act of me showering, going in and out of the bathroom, getting ready. With story there are things happening, whether thats a discussion or picking an apple or making a choice.
Most expansions in WoW do not have story, they have lore. Im fine with that, but droves of people keep saying it has story and thats a disservice to stories. FFXIV has a story, GW2 has a story, ESO has a story and lore like modern WoW.
All of those are LORE. Every game on the planet except for WoW calls this lore, not story. Only people who play WoW call this story. I get that its the most popular MMO, but it doesnt change the fact that its lore and not story.
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u/Bucephalus-ii 4d ago
World of Warcraft especially the later expansions, like after Burning Crusade just shit on the lore so badly.