This pins it down for me. I never played WoW myself, as I find it to be way too much actual work, but the storylines were interesting nonetheless.
They pretty much lost me though when they killed off Arthas.
Blizzard still has much left to play with, but I am sure they will manage to get the worst out of it, unfortunately.
The show (flow of money) must go on, no matter the price, eh?
Chris Metzen itself said that he is amazed just how much story they managed to sell in Wc3.
In TBC they managed to end many story threads, with the death of Illidan, Vashj, Kael, Magtheridon. Currently they also found closure for Maiev it seems, as she never appeared. Than came WotLK, where they killed Anub'Arak and Arthas/The Lich King. And that right there, is 75% of Wc3 story characters.
Who's left? Thrall? Furion? Tyrande? They didn't use Tyrande at all. And all these are do-gooders, they exist only as an answer, a reaction to a threat. They themselves do not lead anything. They themselves do not start anything, they are just reactions to threats. Threat arises, better call Thrall, Furion and Tyrande.
Sure Sylvannas is left, she had some part to play in Cataclysm (Worgen starting area), but that's about it.
I would so much love to see these characters be the actual main characters of the world. See cut-scenes on how these characters change the story. To see their ideals. There is some of this but mostly amongst the characters from outside the Warcraft 3, like Garrosh, Varyan and Rhonin in WotLK. And than the 5 Dragon Aspects in Cataclysm.
I don't think that Deathwing itself was the issue with Cataclysm, but Metzen... no offense... but he is so old in terms of age, he should be so experienced in this...and he is... but when you look at the direction of the Warcraft story, you clearly see anime/manga and soap opera elements. No characters to back up the decisions.
Blizz order of thought about the storyline is "1 + 1 needs to equal to 2, so who do we have? we have thrall + garrosh needs to equal to garrosh warchief... okay... let's change/make both thrall, garrosh and circumstancs in order to make garrosh leader", and this isn't good.
What I would have loved to see is this "1+1 = 2, we have thrall, we have garrosh, we dont change anything about them... they represent certain character types, are they a match in order to make garrosh the warchief? Yes or No?" simple as that.
Two TV shows do this perfectly or almost perfectly in my opinion, and those are 'The Simpsons' and 'Grey's Anatomy'.
And this is what I would have loved from WoW storyline, a clash of characters, of personalities, which produce realistic character goals, ambitions and results. They did that a little with Varimathras, he 'killed' his own brothers, why wouldn't he betray the woman who forced him into it.
But characters just seem a means to an end. And for me characters are the end, and the action, the interaction are means to strengthen the characters themselves, and mature them.