Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore
Wrath of the Lich King wasn"t just an expansion -- it was an experiment in progressive storytelling featuring story lines and lore that we haven"t seen since Warcraft III. While Burning Crusade tackled new issues and races, it did little to further any of the Azeroth stories we"d seen in the earlier Warcraft games; Wrath took a step backwards to move the prior stories forward. Along with this change in direction, we saw the introduction of a few things that hadn"t been seen in Warcraft before that made a large change to the way we view stories and quests in World of Warcraft, and a re-introduction of many of the heroes and prominent figures that we"d only caught glimpses of in vanilla. Today, we"re going to look at Wrath lore: what worked, what knocked it out of the park and what failed to impress.
Phasing
Quite possibly the biggest technical advancement in storytelling was the introduction of the phasing mechanic. This allowed players to play through quests, and as the stories progressed, so did the world around the players, giving a new and unique feel to story line progression. Suddenly, instead of playing through a zone with no indication that you"d made any changes to the status quo, the world changed around you -- the chain of events in Conquest Hold in Grizzly Hills and Frosthold in the Storm Peaks both actually ended with NPCs being replaced as a direct result of player interaction. In the quest chain of The Battle for the Undercity, both Alliance and Horde players are teleported into a phased version of Orgrimmar, designed as a vehicle to further the story line -- and as a way for Alliance players to interact with Thrall without being attacked.
Continue reading Wrath Retrospective: Lore and the art of storytelling
Wrath Retrospective: Lore and the art of storytelling originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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