World of Warcraft: Shadowlands mimics the worst parts of the Marvel movies

I’ve been a fan of Blizzard games since I was a kid. I love the pulp and drama of their sets, the neat cutscenes and the daring characters. But over the past few years I have become frustrated. Part of that is almost certainly that I’m getting older and less patient, but a lot of it comes from the games themselves.

World of warcraft: Shadowlands is a narrative mess that recently culminated in a big reveal centering on Divided Souls, Reality Rewrite, and Villains Monologue. Monitoring, on the other hand, is stuck in the past – we won’t see the actual Overwatch organization in action until Monitoring 2, which currently has no release date.

Both settings have a comic book vibe, larger-than-life characters, and action-packed cutscenes. But not in a good way. It’s like Blizzard is learning all the wrong lessons from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

The “wow” moments

Playing World of Warcraft right now can be a bit tricky. There are some fantastic stories in the game, like the Zandalar Quests, or the Revendreth Zone. But the main narrative makes it feel like it hangs around a few big moments that can be easily cut into gifs. Sure, it’s super cool when the little group of heroes fight the bad guys and fire both rockets and one-liners, but it’s also a “sometimes food.”

At present, World of Warcraft we have the impression that everything is set up around these great moments in the form of cutscenes and cutscenes. The main story is there to set up a series of really cool story beats, regardless of whether they make a lot of sense. And when the story doesn’t make sense, Blizzard will just patch up those parts with… a binding book.

Sylvanas has essentially been the main character in Warcraft for three years now. I’m still not sure what her exact plan is, or why she thought siding with the jailer was a good way to go about it. The last time I glanced at his inner thoughts was in the Battle for Azeroth delivered Before the storm, and it was later … reconnected. The jailer is apparently a master manipulator, but all I hear him say is stuff like “Death is coming for the soul of your world!” or “I will crush you with my endless armies!” Thanos’ plan might not have made much sense either, but at least he took a few minutes to explain and think about his goals.

Blizzard even indulges in things like post-credit darts. Take the Monitoring cutscene at the end of the Storm Rising Archives event. Mercy asks if she can get an audience with someone, and we see the leader of Talon Doomfist meet a new ally. The ally takes off his hood and it’s… a guy?

If this was a Marvel movie, either I’d know who that guy was or my mate would say, “Oh! It’s so-and-so, comics! But in Monitoring, I threw my hands up. I don’t know who this guy is! This whole scene doesn’t mean anything without this context! Sure, we can speculate, but when we go years without answers it’s very easy to stop caring altogether.

it keeps getting bigger

You know how the Marvel movies start with Iron Man being just a dude in a mecha costume, and then the world around him slowly develops, culminating in a massive, sprawling cosmic threat? It was pretty cool! World of warcraft attempts a similar cosmic threat, with the jailer claiming the Seals of Shadowlands. It’s a very Infinity Stones plot… and I’m so tired.

In the early days of World of warcraft, we fought factions like the Defias Brotherhood and the Scarlet Crusade. These organizations naturally arose in the aftermath of the war against the Burning Legion in Burning Crusade, and soon we fought the Legion and the Scourge in Northrend in the beloved Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

After killing a variety of Big Cosmic People in armor, the fight against Gods and Guardians has lost its luster, especially as the stakes need to be increased for each guy. Sargeras was a massive threat that ended up stabbing the planet before we could wipe him out. The Jailer, the sequel to the Big Bad game, apparently manipulated all for decades behind the scenes. The complete culmination of 2003 Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne is the Lich King (created by the jailer) fighting against the Burning Legion (created and led by the jailer’s secret agents).

The jailer says he’s going to rewrite reality, and I think we should let him. There’s a lot to love about Blizzard’s games and cutscenes, but the overall narrative that holds them together slips under the weight. Monitoring 2 might be a great solution for the Overwatch franchise, but there is no silver bullet for World of warcraft. I hope once we’re done Shadowlands, we can reset the scale and go back to stories with clear beginnings, finished endings, and a lot of information in the middle.