WoW's game director says he's keen on organising its scattered story for new players: 'that is a weakness ... Chris Metzen and I chatted [about it] a bunch'
In a recent interview with WoW's community council (thanks, WoWhead), the game's current director Ion Hazzikostas was asked about the current state of the story, and how dang hard it is to introduce new players to its extensive lore.
For context, World of Warcraft's had a long-standing issue: a ton of lore can only be found in secondary media—novels and the like. In chatting with our resident WoW-liker and guides writer Sarah James, she mentioned that she had to pour through massive google documents assembled by players just to get a birds-eye view on the whole thing.
One is over 30 pages and she can't remember where she found it, «I'm sure those links are from like, 2014». As I look at this thing—with the only comment on it being a skeletal thumbs-up from 2017—I'm rapidly feeling like this whole exercise is an object lesson in just how scattered the story's become. She also points out that «a lot of the story happens in the Warcraft games too, so that obviously predates the MMO.»
Hazzikostas seems open to the idea that WoW can change how it tells its stories in the years to come: «I can completely acknowledge that is a weakness … Chris Metzen and I chatted [about it] a bunch recently.»
Metzen was the former senior vice president of story and franchise development at Blizzard, retiring in 2016. He's back on board for the upcoming Worldsoul Saga in the role of executive creative director after an advisory stint last year. He's known as the guiding hand for a lot of WoW's earliest stories—including those original Warcraft games.
«I don't know that gameplay is always the best vehicle for that in particular,» Hazzikostas says, mentioning how (for a new player) churning through several expansions worth of backstory could get
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