Very few people are trying to defend the story of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth at this point, with one of the more common accusations leveled at the story being that it is functionally identical in many parts to the path of Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief pasted onto Sylvanas Windrunner despite her having to act wildly out of character to hit plot points. According to a new interview with lead narrative designer Steve Danuser, however, this was all intentional. The idea was to start off with the two having a very similar arc, but then explore the nuance in the differences between them!
You can make your own evaluations about how well that works.
Danuser also discounts any talk about updating the stories for older zones at this point, claiming that the team is happier letting the stories exist as slivers of their time instead of trying to address timeline issues. He also explains that the goal for Shadowlands is to tell a single overarching story with stronger connective tissue than some of the individual moments in Battle for Azeroth. You can read through the full interview if you want a wider perspective on the plans and future developments for WoW in the narrative department, although if you are not on the “defend the story in this expansion” wagon it might leave you a touch enraged.
