Poll: Does Blizzard write good plots?

[MirenBainesUSMC]

Star Craft and Star Craft II was more or less game-world SF with a meager story line just to set the place up for the RTS game to have what it has in a space environment.

I don't think they'll be winning any Sci-Fi literary rewards anytime soon.

Having said that, there are pockets of good story line but nothing cohesive where you would be dying to get to the next portion of the game due to just the story portion. I think fan based fiction and some novels had a far better grasp at storytelling than the actual game but... do people really play RTS's for the story? I don't think they do. I think in an RTS aspect, people really focus on the units you can use and the game play/UI.

But... yeah... great basic foundation for some great storytelling but no dice on the side of the Blizzard team itself. I can def take what they had done and ran with it to make some awesome plots and sub plots.

I think Blizzard should make a FPS based off of the Star Craft space Marines but that is just me.

Finally. Blizzard takes too damn long to come out with their sequels. I find myself not caring about The Legacy of the Void.

 

[Eddie the head]

I prefer villains with little bit sympathy and they never really play up the tragic nature you're talking about of the orcs in the original lord of the rings, I understand the supposed to be corrupted elves but they never really played it up in the original movie and when a tolkien orc is used in most fiction they never really do anything with them except being extra experience. (once again only the movies)

Also the forsaken are not evil, they have free well although the faction have done some questionable things. I'm thinking you're talking about the scourge who the original forsaken who Escaped from thanks to Sylvanas WindRunner and the scourge do have a lot of similarities with tolkien orcs now that I think about it but only slightly and after the Lich King is dealt with I think most of the scourge regain their free will and join the forsaken.

I don't want to get into a debate about which series is better(lord of the rings would win and I know this) but I'm think calling wow a rip-off would be unfair. That's like calling Star Wars a Flash Gordon ripoff or most superhero fiction a rip off of Superman. The fantasies setting that Lord of the rings created has inspired countless fictions that have taken inspiration from it and played the tropes in a very unique way and I don't think lord of the rings ever had goat people from outer space running from demons because one of his friends betrayed him because he didn't side with him and his brother to make there people join space Satan. .......Wow is fucking weird.

also they were originally ripping off Warhammer get your facts straight.

Then read the books. The movies aren't Tolkien lore they're adaptations. Don't complain that something there isn't there because you're too lazy to look for it. You want to see them as more sympathetic so you're seeing them that way, when really they're about the same. They both drew water from the same well. In this case I believe Paradise lost. Melkor is analogous to lucifer and so is Sargeras, I think that's the Burring Legion dude? The bad guys are basically the same they just chose to make the orcs, not orcs. They share a name and nothing else the undead, and demons, take there roll. And again you're talking about D&D, orcs for Tolkien served a thematic purpose.


Quit projecting your insecurity onto me. I don't care that something shares similar plot elements. I've hardly called anything a rip off. There nothing new under the sun, I don't care. Tolkien took a lot form Norse mythology, and biblical myths as well. So if you want to argue against that someone who thinks that, look somewhere else. My beef is I don't think it's very good.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

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SNIP

Guys, you don't have to argue about this here. This is a thread about Blizzard, not about who lifted what from Tolkien or indeed what Tolkien lifted from fairy tails and myths.
If you want to continue your debate, can you please take it to messages? I don't want mods closing the thread down because of Lord of the Rings.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

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SNIP

Guys, you don't have to argue about this here. This is a thread about Blizzard, not about who lifted what from Tolkien or indeed what Tolkien lifted from fairy tails and myths.
If you want to continue your debate, can you please take it to messages? I don't want mods closing the thread down because of Lord of the Rings.

sorry i didn't know I was being an asshole I don't think this debate is really worth it as I think Eddie the head is right that lord of the rings is better I was just pointing out things I disagreed with him on

once again sorry for derailing this thread.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Warcraftverse had a good story behind it. Then their MMO hacked and retconned it in to a muddled mess. They have good ideas for stories, but they just write too many contradictions for it to be considered good.

 

[zumbledum]

no seriously, arthas the lich king is beat for beat note for note a direct rip of the witch king of Angmar. I always assumed the name was a nod of recognition to the source. ok they changed a ring to a sword and afaik the Witch king didnt kill his father (might of i just dont know) but other than that its direct copy/paste.

I'm going to list off some plot elements of Arthas's story, I'll also try to find ANY link to the Witch king of Angmar.

Arthas tries to save his kingdom (of humans) which he is a prince of.
Witch King of Angmar was a king of humans.

Arthas sacrifices the city of Stratholme trying to stop the spread of plague.
Witch King of Angmar has no relatable plot element.

Arthas succumbs to the temptation of Frostmourne and lets it devour his soul. (The first soul frostmourne took was arthas's)
Witch King of Angmar succumbs to the temptation of one of the nine rings given to men, and lets it control him.

Arthas obeys the Lich King in order to help him free of the demons control.
Witch King of Angmar has no relatable plot element.

Arthas defeats/kills Illidan (who is serving the demons in a way) on his ascent to the Lich King.
Witch King of Angmar is killed by a human while serving Sauron.

Arthas combines with Ner'zhul when freeing him, and forms the Lich King as we know him, controller of the scourge, forged by Demons.
Witch King of Angmar has no relatable plot element.

The Witch King of Angmar is a servant, a slave to his master that shows no sign of fighting his control.
While Arthas is a slow descent into that which he sought to destroy, a story of conviction so strong that it causes your enemy to overcome you.

I see no major connections at all.

i said they copied the witch kings story not that the other way around. ok its been over 30 years since i read the books but from what i recall of his story,

the witch king was originally a human king , his people faced a terrible threat of doom , he takes up a powerful object against council and warnings of the consequence to successfully defeat that threat, once the threat is passed he refuses to put down the power, is slowly consumed by it and becomes its servant.

We know the Nine were all good men , all good kings that served there people but were slowly corrupted by the power they refused to give up.

id say all of that is in Arthas's story. so its fair to say they copied it. sure they added extra bits and fleshed out details. but the witch kings story is a part of one appendices and Arthas had to fill two whole campaigns in wc3 and was the main villain for a wow expansion so sure theres a lot more stuff added. but do you really not think he was the core inspiration for the Arthas story?

 

[Valiance]

Define "Good"

I wouldn't say they're completely terrible, but let me just say that Starcraft I had irrevocably, unequivocally (and I can prove this with documented facts, not opinions) more sophisticated writing with more character development than Starcraft II.

I found Diablo II's writing to be fairly alright.

Warcraft III and its expansion is where things really slipped, and it just kept going downhill from there.

Again, it's not entirely awful, I just hoped for more. It's no Obsidian, but it's still better than plenty of other companies.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Like 99% of the industry, the stories aren't up to much. Good job i have books for stories and games for gameplay

 

[happyninja42]

I think they can write good plots for some of their content, though I think it depends on the writer. I'm pretty sure they've got a large writing staff, and the quality will vary from person to person.

I loved the story of Warcraft 3, and to this day, still think the Horde campaign was badass, especially the final cinematic. It was such a wonderful crowning jewel on the game's story, that I didn't even bother playing the Night Elf campaign, because fuck those treehugging hippies. Nothing can top the emotional impact I had from the Death of Hellscream cinematic.

There were specific quest stories in WoW that I thought were brilliantly written, primarily a quest in the...I think it was the Eastern Plaguelands, though it might have started in Western, where you go through this huge quest line to try and redeem the soul of one single man. He was the champion defender of a village during the initial Scourge invasion, and he successfully fought off and defeated a lieutenant of Arthas and his horde, with the help of the villagers. But he was wounded in the fight, and turned into an undead overnight, and then killed the village he saved. A dragon of the Bronze dragonflight, sends you on a long quest to try and gather items from the fight, that have "spectral/temporal resonance" so that she can use time magic to basically reinact the battle, but this time you help the fight, and try and change the outcome among the ghostly combatants. If you succeed, the spirit of the man is redeemed, and he's able to finally find rest. It was just fucking awesome. I don't know which writer came up with that one, but I love them to death.

I FULLY agree with your opinion of Heart of the Swarm however, and I was just bitching about this fact to a friend of mine last night. It totally negated all the effort you do in Wings of Liberty, and it REALLY pissed me off. "What? Kerrigan isn't the iconic and really popular Queen of Blades anymore?!? Fuck that!! Retcon that shit and get her back into her freaky/sexy look for the fans to drool over!" Bleh.

I think the story in HotS was...ok. I mean, it was decent enough to actually motivate me to play as the Zerg, which I don't really like to do. But it felt forced, and when it was all over, I just was like "Ok...so um...yeah...that was a thing...that happened....yay I guess?...we won?"

But, to be fair, I've never really been heavily invested into Starcraft as a player. I mean I played it, I liked it, but the story of it never really sucked me in like some people. I enjoyed it more for the gameplay, and was happy that the story was fairly decent.

I think they have their moments of quality writing, but when you are talking about a company that has been putting out content for what...20 years now? 30ish? You're not going to have A list quality writing all the time.


Though I do think they do dramatic cinematics like nobody's fucking business. They always suck me in with how epic they are, and the emotional impact of them. Top notch on that front.

 

[Rednog]

I want to say yes...but I honestly can't. As much as I love heroes from Warcraft 3, I don't know what happened to blizzard. Everything post WC3 has been utter shit. Once WoW pissed away that initial cast from 3, I honestly couldn't find anything as interesting in all of WoW. Every other new villain and threat was just bleh.

 

[Aetrion]

Blizzard's plots tend to be very predictable and pretty much always revolve around themes of corruption and redemption. It's always about something good that turned evil or something evil that turned good.

 

[wizzy555]

Starcraft 1, Brood war and WC3 were good. Starcraft 1 contrived reasons why races should fight within themselves in a decent and coherent manner relying on political relations instead of "and then they were corrupted".

Since then Metzen is recycling his "greatest hits" over and over. Watch the end of vanila WC3, then watch the ending of deathwing in cataclysm.


The three franchises are also starting to merge into one in terms of visual design and story themes which is a shame.