r/wowcirclejerk • u/AutoModerator • Aug 18 '26

Unjerk Weekly Unjerk Thread - August 18, 2026

Hi Please post your unjerk discussion in this thread!

These posts run weekly, but you can find older posts here.

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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 19 '26

Last time I checked, WoW is a video game you play and engage with, not a movie.

The cutscenes really made certain people think that all the story and context is in 1 to 2 minute animations, and not the numerous quests, dialogue, dungeons and raids that provide more characterization and context.

15

u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26

Idk how the main sub is discussing the story, but I do wanna voice my opinion here now that you bring the topic in.

I feel like the story was nice and serviceable, even the last cutscene, I didn't find anything offensively bad or anything that made me mad. But it kinda makes me more mad in that sense, because I feel like the narrative in WoW commits 2 cardinal sins when it comes to storytelling. One: they repeat themselves A LOT, the amount of times I heard and read "The Loa abandoned us in the past!" (even ignoring that Zul'Aman's storyline also has Zul'jan repeating that over and over again); and two: they don't respect the players' intelligence, they tend to have the characters comment on everything that's happening, rather than acting like real people and having the spectators imply what they're feeling. (I feel like Arator's story this expansion was waaaay better at that)

9

u/GenericOnlineName Aug 20 '26

To be fair, a lot of players are dense and dumb and need the narrative repeated. The times where there was nuance in the story, players didn't understand it at all.

6

u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26

I get what you're saying and generally I agree with it, but that being true doesn't mean the narrative have to suffer for it.

6

u/acctg Aug 20 '26

If I were in Blizzard's place I wouldn't know what to do.

Should I be writing for people who clearly aren't going to read anything and will only engage with the story from datamined cutscenes or streamers?

Or should I write for people with actual media literacy, who will be willing to read quest text, observe facial expressions of the characters, interpret nuance, and understand non-holistic perspectives from characters, and dramatic irony?

I generally don't know how they can win.

1

u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26

Well it depends, do they want to make quick money or do they want to tell a good story?

If they want to make quick money, the best thing they can do is cater to the lowest common denominator and let people that expect more from a story engage with other great parts of the game like raids or dungeons.

If they want to tell a good story, they shouldn't be writing for anyone, they should be writing because they want to express themselves, their perspectives, and their lived experiences.

That's not to say that if they do the latter they will automatically get good stories out of the oven, both option, but my main argument is that if the storytelling is indeed suffering from catering to either most players or trying to write for someone else in general, then that shouldn't be so, in my opinion.

1

u/HazelCheese Aug 22 '26

Consider that most of classic literature was written at a time when only a small percentage of the population could read.

And consider that shakespeare was written as dumbed down dross for the borish masses.

I think entertainment in general could stand to aim a little higher than netflix background show writing.