After nine expansions, World of Warcraft has seen a lot of death and destruction. Azeroth has been constantly invaded, entire worlds have been destroyed, dragons have rampaged across the land, and civilizations have fallen into disarray. It is an endless cycle of despair, danger, and conflict, with each expansion introducing even more struggles to overcome. This constant cycle has kept players on their toes, but it has barely changed World of Warcraft when looking from a bird's-eye view.
MMOs like World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 constantly get new content, and the studios always seem to want to one-up their previous expansions with an even larger conflict. This gives players a lot of interesting stories to experience, but the worlds that these stories take place in are barely affected. Once a next expansion rolls around, it seems like the world forgets about the latest conflict in favor of a new one. This lets the story keep moving, but it also prevents these worlds from feeling as real as they could.
Azeroth Quickly Forgets World of Warcraft's Major Events
World of Warcraft and Azeroth have been forged by the events of the Warcraft RTS trilogy. Those three games form the backbone of the world and its people, and many of the MMO's expansions have dealt with the fallout of those titles. The orc and human conflict has persisted for decades, the Burning Legion has constantly reared its ugly head, the Lich King has appeared multiple times, and many of the iconic lore characters are still major parts of World of Warcraft's story. This connectivity has helped build Azeroth, but the world has not really changed since its inception.
Every World of Warcraft expansion introduces a new conflict that is supposed to further shape the trajectory of Azeroth, but these events are quickly forgotten about once the next expansion rolls around. While the characters and people go through some major changes, the world itself largely stays the same. No matter how many invasions Azeroth sees, the landscape looks exactly like it did when Deathwing rampaged across Azeroth in 2010.
Deathwing's rampage during World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was the biggest shake-up that Azeroth has seen since the Warcraft RTS trilogy, and those scars are still visible today. However, those scars should have long since vanished and been replaced by new scars. It has been over a decade since those events occurred, and even longer for the in-universe residents of Azeroth. It is time for Azeroth to get a facelift, and that facelift should have happened with every expansion since.
Mists of Pandaria saw Garrosh Hellscream declare war on the world before helping the Iron Horde invade in Warlords of Draenor, but neither event had any lasting impact on Azeroth. Legion involved Azeroth's biggest fight against the Burning Legion, but outside a few character deaths this war had barely any effect on the landscape. There has also been a giant sword sticking out of the planet for three expansions now, but no one has talked about it since Battle for Azeroth. Even Battle for Azeroth's massive faction war seems to be getting cleaned up with no major ramifications, and no one could even tell that the heroes of Azeroth spent the last couple of years in an entirely different realm.
These climatic events play a major role in World of Warcraft, but Azeroth barely sees the effects of them. Besides a few leadership changes, Azeroth mostly remains unaffected. This makes these events feel like they do not matter within the grand scheme of things, and that narrative model needs to change. If Blizzard wants players to care about these giant battles, then it needs to make Azeroth suffer from them.
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