WoW is the work of many storytellers, and that's what makes it great

By Matthew Rossi

Recently, I saw a person talking about World of Warcraft and Blizzard’s storytelling who was not particularly complimentary. And they had some merit to their position: Blizzard has not always told the most satisfying stories with its massive, decades old, sprawling game setting. But one of the mistakes I see when people discuss WoW as a story is acting like it’s the work of a singular entity, as though ‘Blizzard’ is a being that wrote all of WoW’s story, and all of Warcraft’s story before that.

Part of that might be due to the influence that Chris Metzen has had on the games. His presence meant that he effectively served as the face of Blizzard for many of us. We could let ourselves think that because there was a singular vision for the franchise, the entire game was created by that singular vision and one person was responsible for it.

I’m not at all trying to decry Chris or his role at Blizzard over the years — he was and continues to be inspirational in his passion and involvement — but he couldn’t make the game alone.

Out of many voices, one story

Chris has been gone for a while now and World of Warcraft is still going on. It’s time to admit what’s been true ever since the first game: no one person wrote this. It’s a collaboration on a scale that many of us would find terrifying to attempt. Over the years many people have contributed to the writing of these games, from the campaigns of the Warcraft RTS games to the various novels, short stories, comics, and manga that have told pieces of the setting’s story to us. Each step of the way World of Warcraft has always been the product of many hands. No one person can be said to have created it, and Blizzard isn’t a monolith dispensing the game to us like cavemen twirling bones in a Kubrick film. From every quest designer to the most senior staff on the game, the story of Warcraft is a mosaic of these many contributions.

As a result of this the game has changed. The game was change, from the moment it was created — World of Warcraft was a huge departure from the RTS games, exponentially expanding what was then known about the world of Azeroth and the people and places of that setting. World of Warcraft zones that are now 13 years old to us were at best barely known and often completely unknown to us in the RTS days. Dire Maul, Maraudon, Silithus, Un’Goro: these are just a few names that nobody who played Warcraft 3 would have recognized. And that game itself was the first mention of Kalimdor and Northrend. When the Tomb of Sargeras was first mentioned in WC2 nobody mentioned that it used to be the Temple of Elune, because the Night Elves and Kalimdor and Elune didn’t exist until after that game came and went.

Change is the only constant in Azeroth

If the last time you played World of Warcraft was in 2007, and you haven’t kept up with what’s come after, the narrative is full of things you’ve never heard of.

There’s Ulduar, the Firelands, the Mogu — and one could spend hours just discussing how Deathwing returned and was defeated and what that means for the Aspects, or how Malygos died and was replaced, or what the Old Gods are and how they’ve shaped the world since. Neither Yogg-Saron nor N’Zoth would be names you’d recognize. You wouldn’t know that Gilneas had fallen or that the Worgen were playable and you certainly wouldn’t know why Genn Greymane was a central figure in the Alliance or why he was a big wolfman now. This is the nature of a long-running collaborative storytelling medium, be it comic books, serialized movies, or a game franchise.

And beyond what you would have never heard of, there have been big changes to the story. In 2007, Garrosh Hellscream was (if you were Horde) just an annoying kid in Nagrand who whined at you until you got Thrall to be nice to him. The Lich King was still chilling up in Icecrown. Deathwing’s last appearance was in a novel. So much of what would be massively important to the game wasn’t even a thing yet.

The layers of story in Legion

Legion has been a very interesting expansion to watch from a storytelling perspective, with a great deal of the game’s story being told in smaller, semi-exclusive pieces that require you to play a certain class or faction to access it. The Artifacts did a lot of good in terms of broadening the storytelling and letting players experience it or not as they chose. It also locked some of that storytelling behind barriers, to an extent — if you don’t have a level 100 Paladin, you wouldn’t get to see their Class Order Hall or do their campaign or gather their Artifacts. There’s a lot going on with this kind of narrative delivery and it’s something unique to games. I have some difficulties with it but overall it’s worked very well in Legion, and it wouldn’t be possible if just one person writing the game.

While I believe it’s possible to argue that WoW has a singular vision guiding it, that vision guides numerous people and they’ll all put their particular spin on what they deliver. You can see this in the variety of stories you can access in Legion. The Rogue campaign is not the Warrior campaign and neither is the Paladin or Priest campaigns. The Death Knight campaign does not feel or play like the Mage one. The Hunter campaign isn’t the Monk campaign. In Legion, we got great stories because WoW’s story isn’t told by just one person.

WoW can tell stories for everyone

This narrative flexibility, which allows the game to provide a smorgasbord of story to appeal to players with wildly variant tastes, is the great strength of the many voices of the franchise’s narrative design. This is a setting with many authors. That might not work for something more intimate in its aims, but World of Warcraft is trying to tell massive, sweeping stories that have room for smaller, more intimate parts. In essence, this is a game where a dark god can come to your world to destroy or conquer it, but you still might end up picking beans out of a bucket in Northrend.

The cosmic and the mundane can both exist here, and everything in-between. Legion has shown us that even in the middle of a massive demon invasion you can still make wine. Sometimes over and over again while a weird Elf guy seems way too interested in watching you step barefoot on fruit. This flexibility is the true strength of WoW‘s narrative, and it’s entirely because it isn’t the product of one author.

WoW is many things to many people because it has been shaped and formed by many people.

And that diversity keeps the story interesting... and probably keeps us paying attention after more than 20 years of Warcraft.