World of Warcraft's big story saga makes the game's weakest part worse

World of Warcraft is in the middle of a grand narrative experiment called the World Soul Saga, which launched with The War Within and continues into the current expansion, Midnight. At the upcoming BlizzCon, we’re going to learn more about the culmination of this three-act story in the upcoming The Last Titan. The Saga was sold as a way to improve on some of World of Warcraft’s narrative weaknesses, a way to plan out a more sophisticated story across a longer timeframe. Now that we’re in the middle of this campaign, we can get an idea of how it’s working so far, and my answer is that things feel a little... uneven.

It would be simple to say World of Warcraft has bad writing, and I don’t think that’s fair, because World of Warcraft has some good writing! The problem is the main quest has become a black hole. Every time a character or storyline gets pulled into the story’s focus, things immediately get silly. The player character in WoW has been relegated to the role of hired muscle. We kill mobs for loot, but you’re second fiddle to one Windrunner or another.

Which is a problem, because as soon as a character makes Azeroth’s A-list, they become less interesting. On one end of the spectrum, previously principled characters are flattened down into generally agreeable so they’re a better vehicle for quest distribution. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a Sylvanas situation, where a character suddenly swivels into making big, out-of-character choices to drive the story further.