Is there a story or point to WoW?

[Patmian212]

Hey all,
I have been a warcraft fanboy ever since warcraft II. I loved the epic story line and the drama of good VS. evil. When WoW came out I was like oh my god I can save azeroth with better graphics and in a 3rd person view! Then I got WoW and it was nothing like that. It is a good MMO but I dont think it gives justice to the warcraft saga. Is there a storyline in WoW? I dig the quests but is there a point? Cuz now WoW is looking to me like a fancy diablo II(which is a good game) more then a warcraft game. There are no player built cities, there is very little rivalry between alliance and horde and there is no cool warcraft story. It just looks like a hack and slash RPG with a warcraft skin on it. Do you think the expansion will fix this? I remeber this great PC MMO star wars based which was awesome, jedi against the empire with player built cities and the works! WoW would rock so much harder if it was a bit more like that!

[HiRez]

It is a good MMO but I dont think it gives justice to the warcraft saga. Is there a storyline in WoW?WoW has quite an extensive and rich story (all tied in with the previous Warcraft histories), it's just that most people don't bother to look for it. For example, there are tomes spread all throughout the lands that you can sit down and read which give a huge amount of information, but you have to actually want to read them and then you need to try to keep all these various bits of information together and connect them together in your head, which is far from easy. And there's a lot of information in the quests as well, but most people don't even bother reading the quest text, they just look for the objectives and skip the rest. As far as rivalry, I guess you would want a PvP server and you would want to spend a lot of time in Battlegrounds.

[Patmian212]

WoW has quite an extensive and rich story (all tied in with the previous Warcraft histories), it's just that most people don't bother to look for it. For example, there are tomes spread all throughout the lands that you can sit down and read which give a huge amount of information, but you have to actually want to read them and then you need to try to keep all these various bits of information together and connect them together in your head, which is far from easy. And there's a lot of information in the quests as well, but most people don't even bother reading the quest text, they just look for the objectives and skip the rest. As far as rivalry, I guess you would want a PvP server and you would want to spend a lot of time in Battlegrounds.

Can you give me an example of one of these tomes. I never went passed level 20 so im not very experienced. Yeah true there is a PVP server but even if you loose its no big deal, I think if the horde or alliance raid a town there should be consequences.

[OutThere]

The expansion will add access to the Blasted Lands, which, since you know the Warcraft story line, has some significance. I think that the story line will be somewhat more important when the expansion comes out, and then, further down the line, when Northrend opens up.

It's hard to include a story line in the typical sense in a MMO, because there is no "campaign" mode, since everyone is doing it. For the moment there are a couple of side stories that are kind of cool if you follow the story line and read all of the quests:

-Black Dragonflight, see UBRS, LBRS, BWL, Onyxia, Nefarian.
-ZG Trolls, pretty cool story if you check out the quests off the coast of STV.
-Ahn'Qiraj...really, really cool stuff if you were involved at all in opening it.

Hopefully we'll see some more storyline type stuff in the future.

As you get to higher levels it's cool to check out some places that you played in in earlier WC's and what has happened to them:
-Darrowshire
-Andorhal
-Stratholme

etc

[bluemouse]

I remeber this great PC MMO star wars based which was awesome, jedi against the empire with player built cities and the works! WoW would rock so much harder if it was a bit more like that!

Did you actually play Galaxies? I did. It was mostly horrible. The Jedi were terrible, the Galactic Civil war was pathetic. And player cities... Well, they were added well after release, half-implemented, often buggy, and managed to kill the game, in my opinion. It spread out the player base from the main cities and Balkanized everybody into PA-aligned player cities. It became so that if you weren't in a PA, you had no place to socialize. The main cities became used for the spaceports, and that was about it. WoW would do well to avoid emulating Galaxies.

[HiRez]

Can you give me an example of one of these tomes. I never went passed level 20 so im not very experienced.Sure, just for one example, there's a book upstairs in the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire which briefly explains the return to the world of Ner'Zhul, the creation of the Frozen Throne, and how he enslaved the minds of the residents of Northrend as the Lich King. As you get deeper into the game, the books get more detailed. Some are written as non-fictional histories, and some are letters and journals from participants. There are at least dozens and probably hundreds of these scattered throughout the lands. They are often found in libraries and in stacks of other books, but they can be found lying around just about anywhere, so you have to be on the lookout for them (your mouse will turn into a magnifying glass when you mouse over them). Also, many of the quests, in addition to exposing story in the quest text, will give you an item to deliver, or have you go find an item. Many of these items can be read while they are in your inventory (gotta do it before you forget and turn in the quest). Many of the tomes can be read directly here (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/chapter1.html).

Yeah true there is a PVP server but even if you loose its no big deal, I think if the horde or alliance raid a town there should be consequences.The lack of consequences in WoW is a bit of a bummer. No matter what you do in the world, it will all be reset a few minutes later, so you have very little chance of effecting any lasting impression on the world. I don't like it either, but that's just the way it is.

[Kingsly]

Yes, there is a point to WoW. Its one of those that is so obvious that everyone overlooks it. Ready? The point of WoW of to get the entire population of the world to pay monthly for the privilege to sit in front of their computers all day live a fantasy life inside their computers and kill stuff. </sarcasm>