WOTLK 70 -75 Review: FUCK STORY!
So, this was part of my initial review of WOTLK:
From the title on WOTLK defines its theme: Wrath of the Lich King. This expansion is about the Lich King. The trailer, art, new hero class (Death Knight), continent, and quest stories are about the Lich King. The entire feel of the expansion is Lich King; playing the expansion feels like a build up to a final confrontation with the Lich King.
Initially my appreciation of WOTLK was focused upon its coherent presentation of story and its ability to define and stick to a theme. After today, though, that view was shot to hell. Here's what happened.
I logged in to do my daily quest for the walrus people. You see, if I become exalted with the walrus people then they will sell me an epic fishing pole and a penguin pet. The fishing pole will help me fish; the penguin pet will keep me warm at night. So I do their daily quest to gain reputation. What is the daily quest? Well, you see, the walrus people are at war with the badger people. So the walrus people want me to steal 12 baby badger people so that I don't know why because that information appears before the summary quest text, which is all I read. So I go steal the 12 baby badger people and give them to the walrus person. He gives me 20k experience and some amount of reputation. Huzzah, I'm that much closer to my fishing pole and penguin pet. Upon completing this quest I head off to do more quests.
That's where the trouble started.
So I'm going along doing quests as usual. Except after I turn in this certain quest the screen goes black and suddenly an FMV starts playing. In the FMV a bunch of alliance people I don't know are fighting a bunch of somethings. Then some orcs show up. After they say some words (apparently orcs can talk to humans now) the alliance human yells something at the castle (which is weird, because castles, as I understand it, lack ears). The gates open and the Lich King comes out. And I know it's the Lich King because it's the guy from the trailer and the box art.
Anyway.
So the lich king kills the orc guy (zomg noes!) and then the lich king is about to kill the alliance guy, except then some third guy shows up and sprays green shit all over everyone. Then the Lich King walks away, the human guy dies, and a bunch of dragons fly in and plant some flowers. Then the FMV ends, my screen goes back to the regular display, a bunch of NPCs are running around screeming, my framerate drops to 2, and after about 3 minutes my game crashes.
Confused? Well, you're not half as confused as I was.
WHO THE FUCK WERE ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE?! What the fuck is going on? I started out the day catching baby badger people for the walrus people and suddenly I'm involved in an epic struggle against the Lich King who is being fought by some alliance fuckhead and a horde guy i've never heard of who is now dead? And who the fuck is that third guy? And why the HELL do dragons come and plant flowers? Are these magical Horticulture dragons?!
Here's my point: FUCK STORY!
I could appreciate Blizzard's attempt to articulate a deep and rich story which draws from an wealth of source material if the game were structured to support such a story, if the gameplay experience were such that a player was compelled to continue playing as a result of an appreciation and yearning to discover what happens next. But WoW is not Parasite Eve. WoW is not Final Fantasy. WoW is a Massively-Fucking-Multiplayer-Fucking-RPG; WoW is a quest grinding, loot attaining, currency amassing time waster. This is what the game IS! WoW is not a vehicle for rich storytelling. WoW is not a tapestry upon which a compelling tale may be told.
WoW is doing daily quests for the walrus people to get the fishing pole and the penguin pet. WoW is running Hyjal 1,000 times to get a hat.
And when Blizzard attempts to enmesh walrus people rep grinds with FMVs starring fuck-all-if-i-know-who battling "that guy from the box art" I think we have a fundamental conflict of game design going on. Blizzard cannot reasonably expect to present a person with the prospect of grinding a quest 47 fucking times in order to amass the reputation required to be exalted with the Walrus people AND expect a player to delve into the "storyline" of the expansion. That is simply not reasonable; that is neither consistant nor coherent. I cannot be the savior of a people who brings about peace by destroying the Lich King once and for all if after I kill him he respawns and I kill him again the next week in the hope of him dropping something else.
Either WoW is a vehicle for telling a story (so remove the grindfest) or WoW is a grindfest focused upon increasing one's numbers (so remove the story); it cannot be both.
Because when it tries to be both? I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!
7 comments:
"WoW is not a tapestry upon which a compelling tale may be told"
yes it is. just because walrus people are in need of badger babies doesn't mean there aren't bigger things going on in the world. Things such as the main story line. The warcraft series is based on story. The novels aren't about killing X number of Y creature for Z NPC to get brutal gladiator set items.
And the warcraft series isn't based on novels!
Here's some more:
Here's the example I like to use: My favorite time to play WoW is after an expansion or a new content release. Why? Well, the entire server population is focused on a very specific component of the game. So players will be engaged in the same quest chains, having to kill the same mobs. This leads to awesome phenomena of waiting in line to kill a named quest mob.
We've all experienced this. One goes to the spawn point of the mob to find a line of other players or a group of other players already camping the location. So either a line forms and players take turns killing the mob or the zone becomes a gigantic AOE storm with multiple players attempting to tag the mob once it first spawns.
This is what makes the concept of WoW as a vehicle for storytelling a completely absurd and moronic notion. It does not make any sense to present an individualistic story within this context. It's completely nonsensical to talk about the death of a character who respawns. It's completely nonsensical to talk about finitude of events when events are endlessly repeated. It makes no sense to talk about aiding the walrus people by collecting 12 baby badger people when one recognizes that every day until now and exalted status one will go collect 12 baby badger people.
At which point people raise the objection of "suspension of disbelief". One ignores the limitations of the medium, the particular facticities of the situation, to "engage" in the presented story. We know that Illidan respawns after he is defeated week after week, but we sort of suspend that disbelief in order to engage with a story which presents Illidan as having an ultimate demise.
Except that in a context such as WoW it is not as simple as suspending disbelief by ignoring the facticity of the situation as one sitting in a chair playing a video game. It's not just that one must recognize that other people out there are playing the same game. It's not just that one must recognize that other Warcraft games have already addressed these characters. The problem is the in-game phenomena which fundamentally refutes the in-game story. At the end of a quest chain an NPC rewards you for saving some captured prisoner. And then, after turning in your quest, some jackass bloodelf walks up behind you and turns in the same god damned quest and so receives the same in-game text respawns. It's the phenomena of "I have to kill Shitcock the Wretched to save this village" and 35 other people are standing at the spawn point of Shitcock the Wretched waiting for him to respawn.
A healthy mind cannot suspend disbelief to the degree required to understand this situation as being unique, a component of an individualistic and personal narrative. This is simply not possible.
And that is the absurdity of the cutscene, the absurdity of this attempted individualistic story. Healthy human beings cannot delude themselves to the point required to accept this as anything but laughable. One cannot do a daily quest to increase one's rep with the walrus people and then become engaged in an epic battle against the Lich King, assisting Thrall and other named NPCs in their attempts to defeat whomever, and then go back to grinding rep with the walrus people. That is simply disharmonious to a degree which no amount of suspension of disbelief can counteract.
So I don't know what Blizzard is trying to do. It's laughable to attempt to present a single player story in an MMO. Why don't I read quest text? Because the quest text will say something asinine about how I am the savior of whomever and has to end the suffering of whomever, and must kill whatever to do who-the-fuck-cares-what-because-i-just-want-the-damn-gear-and-15-million-other-people-will-do-this-damn-quest.
I can understand that marketing requires Blizzard to put an aesthetic face on what is fundamentally a database with numbers. I understand that people would not play WoW if it were merely "Number Increasing MMO #4".
But come on. I have to go defeat some boss who overthrew Undercity? Really? I'm pretty fucking stupid. But i'm not that fucking stupid. I'll grind rep for walrus people to get my penguin pet. But don't try to shoehorn in some single player campaign to a fundamentally replicated and multiplayer experience. That's just idiotic.
"And the warcraft series isn't based on novels!"
agreed. The comment is a way to show that there is an interwoven story behind things and events in the world. The fact that novels can be written about the world and made canon, is a testament to the deepness of the environment in which we play.
The suspension of disbelief is nearly impossible for situations of mass cluster fuck such as Borean Tundra, or previously Hellfire, and Sunstrider Isle. The overarching issue is to whether or not WoW as a medium can be used to convey an engrossing story. The opening of Ahn'Qiraj I feel is a prime example of the ability to create a situation where people come together to participate in the advancement of a story with out stepping on each others toes. I wish there would be more one time content, but as my room mate has repeatedly tried tell me it creates an "unfair situation for non hardcore players". I think that is the cost of not being such.
The overall impact of having other people participate in a story line that does involve a strong sense of linearity is that it creates a very disjointed situation. How can your character do anything unless you were the first person to reach any of the various outposts in the game? When I whisper my friends and ask them about the quest I'm running that they did last week, I do not feel as though I have some how been tricked by the NPC's into doing something that's been done 1000 times before. Each character has their own story and meshes with the world story. That's where the RPG aspect comes in. I think at release times we all tend to get too focused on the draw backs of the MMO half of the title, myself included. I am running quests now on my 45 hunter since most of Kalimdor is empty. It gives the feeling the game was supposed to induce as best i can guess.
"A healthy mind cannot suspend disbelief to the degree required to understand this situation as being unique, a component of an individualistic and personal narrative. This is simply not possible"
I would never try to believe that I'm in a unique situation in the game. That would require that be playing Morrowind again. I would however propose that my reading of a story (which in reality is all that WoW is) is not lessened by knowing that others have read it before.
"The overarching issue is to whether or not WoW as a medium can be used to convey an engrossing story."
No, that actually is the overarching issue.
Our enterprise is not to attempt to construe WoW to be X or not to be X. Our enterprise is to discern what WoW fundamentally is.
WoW is fundamentally a computer program by which particular users can increase numbers linked to their account in a database somewhere. That's WoW. We do the daily quest for the Walrus People so that we can increase our reputation with the Walrus People so that we can get the epic fishing pole so that we can more successfully fish in the Dalaran fountain so that we can get fishing coins so that we can get the Fishing Coin achievement.
That's what the fucking thing is. Just like a painting is light-reflecting shit put on a canvas. Just like a monument is a chunk of whatever shaped in a certain way. This is what these things are.
If deluded human beings construe them to be something other than that...well, that's the sort of thing a deluded being does.
I'm not saying one cannot shoehorn a cutscene into WoW. I'm not saying that Blizzard cannot craft an instanced individual quest wherein one fights with Thrall and Sylvanas to overthrow whats-his-ass in the ruins of Undercity. They did that in WOTLK.
I'm simply saying that this does not indicate that WoW is a vehicle for telling an engaging single player story of self-fulfillment and personal accomplishment. It simply indicates that Blizzard can shoehorn anything into this damn program.
Like, for example, walrus people.
"WoW is fundamentally a computer program by which particular users can increase numbers linked to their account in a database somewhere."
With all due respect; that's like saying the Count of Monte Cristo is fundamentally a collection pressed wood pulp rectangles with symbols printed on them in ink.
Wow's narrative aspect is much like reading a novel in chunks, where in the interim between reads, you actually have to return to work, deal with things in real-life. However, when you pick the book back up; you can jump back in become re-immersed in the plot and atmosphere of the story.
You speak of "delusion" and of a "healthy mind," but in general you're the one choosing to play a game that's based on fantasy. If you want a rational numbers based strategy game stick to Othello.
Walrus people are ridiculous? Yet, large talking cows and magically animated undead - not even to touch the concept of magic - are fair game in your rational world?
I hated MMORPGs; I found them all to be tedious and repetative. I have tried and quit EQ, AO, and SwG ALL because they represent the "focus on the numbers and the gear" grind to infinity. WoW changed that by adding in a "reason" to do engage in the "kill X and bring me Y" activities.
The popularity that WoW has achieved is a testament to the ambiance and immersion represented by the incredibly rich storytelling presented.
But, to get that, you actually have to read the quests; pay attention to conversations that are happening around you; and in general focus on the journey instead of the destination.
And if you would have been reading the quest text; the cut-scene's existence makes perfect sense and has incredible dramatic value and progresses a story-line that has been in place before WoTLK launched.
nice post!
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