There’s backstory, such that it is, but not game plot. And that’s part of the issue- any movie of that franchise is basically going to have to make up a story out of whole cloth, and set it within that backstory, as well as include enough artwork and gameplay shout-outs to the fans. So I’d be willing to bet that something in the upcoming Warcraft movie will involve peasants chopping a shit-ton of wood for one reason or another.
That’s the difference- some games have backstory, but some have actual in-game plot/storyline, and the ones with only backstory tend to stink mightily.
Warcraft has enough plot for at least two dozen movies. Maybe not good movies, as Miller says, but there’s plenty there. They’ve been working on Warcraft for literally 20 years.
World of Warcraft’s plot is actually fairly deep, if rather convoluted. In fact, the game does a pretty good job of making you feel like you are a part of a very large-scale story, and a very important cog in that story. Many of the events are even Hollywood-quality movie moments! If it wasn’t for the fact that it becomes such a grind-fest in the end game, I would pay for my subscription for more than a month or two after each expansion- just long enough to be part of the story.
That doesn’t mean that the movie won’t be terrible- but if it is, it won’t be because there is a lack of story in the source material.
Everybody knew Oedipus was gonna poke his eyes out. Everybody knew Richard III was gonna die on Bosworth Field. They went to see the plays anyway. There is more to a story than its ending – what matters is how the story is told.
And Westerns were “Hollywood” long before the very start of filmmaking. The whole “Wild West” was a media (dime novels, melodramas & Wild West shows) creation beginning not long after the Civil War. In the real Old West there was little violence apart from the Indian Wars, and a cowboy was much likelier to die of illness, or of falling off his horse with his feet tangled in the stirrups and getting dragged to death, than in a gunfight.