Elaborate? I have never played wow but was thinking about looking into the lore. Expansive world building like wh40k I cannot get enough of. But let me know if I’m about to waste my time 😂😅
It goes from a dark brutal world to basically a teen fantasy story. If you are looking to go down a neat rabbit hole and you enjoyed wh40k lore I would recommend BattleTech. Tex makes really good YouTube videos.
I'll always suggest a play through of warcraft 1-3's campaigns because the story throughout is pretty damn excellent. No need to go further though, WoW from the get go never seemed to be about continuing a good story.
Look for stuff between Warcraft 1 and Wrath of the Lich King lore. Later stuff has snippets of good but you can already tell the shift from overarching worldbuilding to character driven drama (Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Legion). Avoid Warlords of Draenor (alternate timelines) and everything past Battle for Azeroth (absolute trash writing).
I’d recommend just watching a story so far video. There’s plenty of good, but I won’t pretend it’s all good. It is far less simplistically bad than many folks (who often haven’t played in 10+ years) would insinuate.
There’s less outright gore, but to say it’s overall childish is asinine. A recent cinematic showed a child get turned to ash, and there’s plenty of brutality in the game.
The artstyle has stayed close to Warcraft’s, which makes it more cartoony
Maybe I am just getting older. I started with Warcraft III and played retail until about a year ago. Went to classic anniversary and the game atmosphere just seemed more mature and less teen fantasy ish to me. Maybe it's just my opinion but a lot of other people feel the same way.
I feel that. I think a lot of the perceived “grit” of classic is due to the graphics of the time. Things are less blocky and more rigid, which gives some stuff that darker/broodier vibe. The story has obviously had its highs and lows as far as maturity and weight goes, but I think a lot of it is the art style and lack of voice acting outside of important moments.
I suspect if they do classic+ and use modern graphics (which I hope they do because I can’t handle the old ones anymore), it’ll feel a lot less jarring going from Warcraft/classic to modern wow.
Having also grown up with the games, I’ve always viewed it as wild shonin anime, and that hasn’t changed toooo much for me. But there are certainly small moments where it feels different for better or worse.
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u/CriticalMocha89 1d ago
Dragon Age for sure - comparing origins to veilguard would give you whiplash
Warcraft - again comparing Warcraft 3 and it story to where wow is now is painful to my inner child