WoW Factor: The well intentioned errors of World of Warcraft’s Ula’tek storyline

I’m offering up my thoughts on World of Warcraft‘s latest major patch, 12.1: Curse of Ula’tek. In my previous piece, I covered the new content and updated game systems, but today we’ll be discussing my favourite topic: the story. It’s a bit of a similar situation to the patch’s systems in that it’s not a full-blown disaster, but it does leave something to be desired.

I’m going to try to avoid giving any big spoilers, but I will still be discussing the plot beats in broad terms, so if you haven’t played the patch yet and want to go in fully fresh, you might want to hold off on reading this piece until you’re caught up.

One of my big criticisms with Midnight’s story to date has been how it’s handled the story of the Amani Trolls. I was all for the idea of the Amani getting a redemption arc, but a redemption arc requires acknowledging that these people are historical villains, and instead Midnight has opted to mostly just sweep their dark history under the rug. 12.1 goes a bit further in exploring the darker side of the Amani, but not to the extent I’d hoped. I had expected a deep fracture within the Amani, with many violently opposed to peace with the Elves, but instead it’s just one person.

There’s sort of two sides to the story of this patch. There’s the ancient history, told through visions and historical clues, of what brought about the titular Curse of Ula’tek, and then there’s the current day internal conflict of the Amani. I really enjoyed the former, not so much the latter.

I’m always a fan of history and mythology, fictional or otherwise, and uncovering the dark origins of the Amani Empire was a great ride. I want to give special praise to the character of Nek’zali the Soulcoiler. Unfortunately she gets very little screen time, but she leaves an impression with the time she gets. She’s got just enough nuance to feel like a real person while still being clearly and irredeemably corrupt. Her voice performance is 10/10, too. I wish she’d played a bigger role in the story.

Unfortunately, the lion’s share of the patch’s story is spent not on that history but on the much less compelling melodrama of the Trolls in the present day. There are few things more frustrating than when a story keeps trying to make you feel sympathy for a character who absolutely does not deserve it, and that is exactly the treatment given to 12.1’s primary antagonist. Stop trying to make feel sorry for this extremely unsympathetic person, Blizzard.

While things feel a little less chummy this time around compared to the original Zul’Aman story, the long-running conflict between the Amani and the Blood Elves is still mostly ignored this time around, and that’s a shame because I think the history uncovered in 12.1 puts it in an interesting new light.

The core grievance of the Amani against the Elves has been the Elves’ colonialism. Quel’Thalas is built on stolen Amani land, and however awful the Amani may tend to be, their anger over that is entirely justified. This is what made them compelling villains in the past; they’re the bad guys, but they do have a point.

However, in Curse of Ula’tek, we learn that the Amani’s claim on what would become Zul’Aman and Quel’Thalas is itself built on some pretty terrible acts, all fueled by dreams of empire. Even those who opposed Ula’tek did some pretty dreadful things in their haste to contain her. Of course, you can’t really hold the Amani of today accountable for what their ancestors did… but nor can you really hold the Blood Elves of today accountable for the colonialism of their ancestors.

There was a great opportunity to sit everyone down and say, “Look, both our peoples did horrible things to claim this land. Everything we have done is built on the bones of the innocent. We have to accept that no one’s hands are clean, and the only way to move forward is to let the past be the past and work towards a future together.” But sadly that never happened. Maybe it might come in a future patch; one could hope, anyway.

I suspect the desire to downplay the long history of the Amani being the villains in this story is out of discomfort with the real world parallels of Troll culture. Trolls in Warcraft draw inspiration from a mishmash of African, Caribbean, and indigenous American cultures, all historically marginalized groups, and I understand the desire to make the point that they’re not all bloodthirsty savages.

But we already did that. Over twenty years ago. We’ve seen heroic portrayals of Trolls since Warcraft III. The idea that Trolls don’t have to be villains has been a part of the story longer than most of their indigenous flavouring has, and WoW has only strengthened that by further exploring the cultures of more noble Troll factions like the Darkspear and Zandalari.

It’s been clearly established for a long time now that Trolls aren’t inherently evil, but that they do have a very dark history — as one would expect from any people who once forged a globe-spanning empire — and that some factions of them venerate those bloody ancient days and want them back, with the Amani being a chief example. This is very realistic, and honestly it makes Trolls one of the most nuanced races in WoW.

Downplaying the Amani’s traditionally villainous ways doesn’t add to that nuance; it detracts from it. I’m sure it comes from a place of good intentions, but rather than humanizing the Trolls, it feels like it’s reduced them to more of a “noble savage” cliche.

This anti-nuance has been an issue through the expansion. A common defense I’ve seen of Midnight‘s story is that it’s adding more shades of grey, but things were already grey, and it’s now subverting the expectation so hard that we’re actually back to things being fully black and white. The Light being essentially good but some of its adherents being dangerous fanatics was an interesting story. The Light being a corrupting force that induces madness exactly the same way the Void does is not. The Titans being essentially benevolent but having such a grand perspective that the lives of individual people or even individual worlds mean nothing to them was an interesting story. The Titans being petty, cruel tyrants is not. According to current lore, every cosmic force is now essentially the exact same thing in different colours.

There are some silver linings to 12.1’s story. While it’s a mostly a side story within the greater Worldsoul Saga, there are some small tie-ins to Xal’atath’s arc, and those provide some interesting tidbits. We now have an explanation for why the Twilight’s Blade was attacking Zul’Aman at the start of the expansion. I’m glad to have that plothole closed, and it goes a small way towards restoring Xal’atath’s mystique as a manipulator.

We also get the requisite tease of where the story is going next, and it seemed interesting, but now that we’ve gotten a preview for patch 12.1.5, it’s been revealed as a single boss raid rather than the full tier I expected, which is a little disappointing. The way they’re talking about it, it sounds like it’s the end of the expansion’s story, but surely they would never conclude an expansion with a single boss raid in an X.1.5 patch. I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see where the story goes next. Perhaps BlizzCon will hold answers.

War never changes, but World of Warcraft does, with over two decades of history and a huge footprint in the MMORPG industry. Join MOP’s WoW fans for new installments of WoW Factor as they examine the enormous MMO, how it interacts with the larger world of online gaming, and what’s new in the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor.