Posted: February 21, 2012 6:09 pm
By: Mike Schaffnit - @MikeSchaffnit
In a recent tweet from Chris Metzen, we catch a scary glimpse of what might be in store for the lore of World of Warcraft. Metzen tweeted to his followers “If a Warcraft character could come back from death, which would y’all like to see (provided the story was good)?”
This has fans in an uproar over the idea of seeing characters like Illidan, Uther, or even Arthas coming back to life in additional content. Some followers have responded in pleas, saying don’t bring anymore back. Make new stories! This doesn’t seem like a very hard task when you could browse WoW‘s lore for days on WoWWiki.com, like I have.
That’s why it comes as a shock that Metzen followed up the question by stating that “It takes years to make fans care about the new ones!” Now, at face value, this statement is 100% true and part of the reason why people felt so apathetic towards Mists of Pandaria. Without any news on a new Warcraft RTS, the only means of creating lore over time is through books and novels or slowly being introduced through World of Warcraft itself. So it makes sense for the longevity of the game to craft new stories and villains now to keep the game populated. But the idea of bringing a character back from death — just for the “hype” of their return — seems like a potential cop-out or gimmick to simply keep players excited while new stories are being crafted.
There is plenty of unexplored lore we could have over multiple expansions. And while a expansion against Sargeras himself seems like it would be one of the last expansions for the game, it’s a battle players have wanted for a long time now. Blizzard is going to have to face these iconic leaders at some point. So why not use the struggle against them to build new lore for the players to be excited about instead of just casting Resurrection on the bosses we have already overcome?
