New interview with Steve Danuser about BfA

[DemonHunter18]

1. It was lazy and pure wtf-fuel, having such a lackluster "cinematic" for what was ultimately the big bad. Sure they had the showing of our character defeating N'Zoth but they could at least have put SOME effort into the end cinematic...

2. I'd call that pandering. If they went down that route, I'd like to see an arrow in Nathanos' face as well. Or an Elysium-style facial explosion, even though PG13.

I was being sarcastic fam. If their future cinematics will be N'zoth level of bad then even their story telling mechanics won't be good.

Sure, kill him as well.

[Hyeonh]

Preferred when they still had Metzen around for stories, not the best writer at times but hes more consistent than what they have going right now. I especially hated how they handled N'zoth's conclusion, you have a character they built up for almost an entire decade go out unceremoniously like another blip on the radar as a loot pinata, he's the kind of character that should last longer than one expansion like Sargeras where we either contain him but not outright kill him or only destroyed a part of him and discover that he has an even greater foothold in the Shadowlands that we must permanently sever the connection there and the living world to prevent him from coming back.

[Varodoc]

I wouldn't call Nazi Orcs "fine". Garrosh was better than Sylvanas insofar as 1) his core motivations were relatively consistent (his character sure as fuck wasn't), 2) he was fun to hate due to how boisterous, unapologetic and in-your-face he was, 3) at some point Blizzard dropped any pretense and just said 'yeah, he's the villain" instead of dancing around the issue and 4) he was carried by a great voice actor. It still wasn't a good story that made much sense, and Garrosh still wasn't a good villain.

Nazi orcs is an interesting concept, because in WoW we never saw orcs go back to their roots as evil warmongers. Garrosh added an interesting twist to it, because he wasn't waging war for destruction's sake but to create a utopia for his people. His motivations made sense, that's all you need to have a somewhat logical villain.

Sylvanas' motivations on the other hand are borrowed from the Lich King's, minus his desire to unite the world so that it would stand a better chance against the Legion and Old Gods. And they contradict previous novels.

[Pendragon]

These old white men

White man bad eh? What a weird time to bring up race. I can already guess your political stances.

[Verdugo]

The rest of your post is pretty spot on but here you stumbled. Yes, Sylvanas is obviously this self aware. She has already broken the fifth wall and is in the process of breaking the sixth one. She can not only deliberately lie to the consumer but her thoughts can now travel through time and alter reality Steins;Gate style. That's why she has 20 different goals that all conflict one another yet she's meticulously executing them all at once and everything her enemies do is according to keikaku.

Oh god she is transforming into Tzeentch.

[Nyel]

3. Danuser is proud of Blizzard's storytelling in BfA.

Danuser, quit your job because you seem awful at it.

[derpkitteh]

Danuser, quit your job because you seem awful at it.

this just shows how badly he needs to go.

everyone went around blaming golden, when she was just some lonely old woman making some dumb teenage surrogate son she could also fap to. danuser has been the single source of the misery we have endured this entire time, and it's time that he goes.

[Varodoc]

Why? He finally realized that Sylvanas is a psycho who should die. I'm of the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. Let Danuser redeem himself in Shadowlands.

[Verdugo]

Why? He finally realized that Sylvanas is a psycho who should die. I'm of the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. Let Danuser redeem himself in Shadowlands.

We know the reason you like him and its another lore rape so you dont have much ground to stand on.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

The story wasn't that bad.

[Verdugo]

The story wasn't that bad.

Maybe if you are Anduin fan, otherwise you got shafted.

[TickTickTick]

She's not speaking to Bolvar in the Shadowlands cinematic but to the audience, that's why she turns her head towards the camera. When she says she'll set everyone free she means that she'll release them from the writing staff by crashing this storyline with no survivors.

Sylvanas caused Coronavirus outbreak omg

[Mehrunes]

it isn't opinion WoD is bad, it is fact
U can argue that many of wow stories are bad, not well written, but WoD is the only exp that just flat out nonsense
The idea that Legion is 'one and same' across all universe, while Sargeras their own leader is different in each universe is start of crazy sh8t, now add to it that WoD is 35 years younger than our world, but it has living still normal ppl before they became demons, so we already killed Soreccar, how is he alive? What about KJ? Why he didn't warn his past self that Velen will betray him? Does that mean that every single Velen in every universe will betray KJ - who is one single entity of course, but then explain to me how exactly there is a time where a demon archimonde and a non-demon archimonde exist, then the non demon decide to be demon, what happened to the already existing demon ?
just don't try to think, u'll get a headache and brain damage

TLDR: WoD is only exp that doesn't have total crap bad story, and not just plot holes, but it is flat out doesn't make sense and can't work!

I'm sorry, did I say WoD wasn't bad? Besides, despite its many flaws your arguments against it are weak. AU Socrethar became a demon only after we got there so why wouldn't he be alive before our arrival? And why would MU KJ warn other KJs? There's no guarantee that other Kil'Jaedens would accept Sargeras' gift, meaning he'd be warning potential enemies. And once they'd take the gift it'd be too late for the warning. On top of that he has a personal grudge against the MU Velen in particular. That doesn't translate to him having a grudge against all Velens everywhere. Meanwhile BfA is filled to the brim with plot armor thicker than the Great Wall of China for multiple parties involved, there are multiple deus ex machinas throughout the expansion and the ultimate threat of N'Zoth was solved because the master planner of the Old Gods forgot to take Xal'atath from his prisoner that wanted to kill him with it. But do go on on how WoD is the only expansion that's nonsensical.

I have to concede your point here, she is able to lie to the readers in her own thoughts after all. Hmm... I wonder if she's able to lie to Danuser too. Maybe her actual master plan is to get him fired from Blizzard for being such a creepy stalker. That's why she's been rattling so many chains and acting so inconsistent!

No, her master plan revolves around breaking the sixth wall, at which point she becomes real. So she can finally prove the certain aspect of the playerbase that has been incessantly whining about her for over a decade right and personally kick their dogs.

Faction war isn't inherently a bad story. MoP did it fine. Garrosh was a better villain than Sylvanas, and the Alliance also had their own "unsavory" elements with Jaina and Vereesa.

The problem with BfA is that Sylvanas is a bad villain. If the villain is bad, the story sucks. That's why the villain is even more important than the protagonist. Had they written Sylvanas as a more coherent villain, the story would've been better.

N'Zoth isn't much better. Dumb octopus with generic evil motivations gets boring after a while.

Yeah, no. Just because BfA is a disaster that made MoP look almost not shit by comparison doesn't change that the faction war was the weakest part of MoP. First of all, most of the faction war staff happened in Cataclysm. The MoP part of the "faction war" story revolved around an idiotic and hamfisted Horde rebellion. That, again, doesn't magically become good because BfA rebellion was even worse than it.

Other than the rebellion the "faction war" was full of lol wisdom of the Pandaren about war, conflict and the like. Or things like Horde players randomly doing a 180 about capturing Anduin. Where in Jade Forest you were ordered to capture him by the commander of the official pre-5.1 expedition to Pandaria and merrily went with it and then in Krasarang you just let him go because some dipshit Tauren who came to Pandaria on his own (i.e. left his post in the middle of a war) because vague visions had a fetish for little human boys and told you to leave Anduin alone. And you could even question him about that. But despite the ability to do so nothing came out of it and you were forced to agree with him and not capture Anduin again despite the fact that as a heir to Stormwind's throne he was an extremely valuable war asset. But nah, singing kumbaya with your enemies is the message we were supposed to get from MoP.

Speaking of how most of the war happened in Cata, the Alliance was losing left, right and center throughout of it. And even the few victories they managed to get amounted to nothing. Like how they "won" in Swamp of Sorrows yet the Horde still controlled Stonard after the fight. Alliance was already sending peasant conscripts as early as 4.0 (which was somehow a big deal when they did that in Dazar'alor raid patch, not that anything came out of that either) and they still continued to wage the war just fine. By sheer power of will, apparently. Either that or Stormwind has clone vats.

Alliance, despite being led by an abject moron who was fighting his first war in his life and despite all of those losses supposedly still continued to be a threat to the Horde even in MoP. Even though MoP opened with Nazgrim telling Garrosh that the Horde just scored two naval victories against the Alliance. And that was after Tides of War in which the Alliance lost most of its fleet to Garrosh's lol-krakens. Which means those two additional victories should have been the final nail in the coffin for Alliance's naval adventures. Yet comes 5.1 they managed to send (by sea) a Pandaria expedition as strong as the Horde's.

But, like I said, when it comes to MoP itself most of the faction conflict bullshit was the rebellion. And that rebellion was a fucking joke. The Trolls rebelled because Garrosh rightfully marginalized their leader because Vol'jin committed treason so severe even Baine argued that it warranted the death penalty and Baine is an Alliance pawn. The Tauren rebelled because Baine deluded himself into thinking that Garrosh "betrayed his father" even though Cairne was the one to challenge Garrosh and even though he was aware that Magatha was working on her own as early as The Shattering itself.

Goblins rebelled because the Gob Squad wasn't paid in full. The Orcs rebelled because Thrall talked with them or whatever (and yet despite the majority of the Orcs siding with the rebellion and even though most Orcs live in Orgrimmar, Garrosh still somehow controlled the city even though Orcs are a martial society and even their civilians are potential fighters). And, best of all, Blood Elves rebelled because Aethas and Rommath did not die in a Sha experiment they knew upfront was going to be dangerous.

And then the Forsaken (and the Pandaren but it's not like Blizzard cared about them in the very expansion they were introduced in) joined the rebellion only after Garrosh kicked out all nonbelievers out of his Old Horde redux tree house, even though Sylvanas should have been the one to act against Garrosh way sooner than the likes of Lor'themar.

I wouldn't call Nazi Orcs "fine". Garrosh was better than Sylvanas insofar as 1) his core motivations were relatively consistent (his character sure as fuck wasn't), 2) he was fun to hate due to how boisterous, unapologetic and in-your-face he was, 3) at some point Blizzard dropped any pretense and just said 'yeah, he's the villain" instead of dancing around the issue and 4) he was carried by a great voice actor. It still wasn't a good story that made much sense, and Garrosh still wasn't a good villain.

His motivations changed from "I will conquer the world and subjugate everyone else for the glory of the Horde" to "I will kill everyone who doesn't think like me" just because the other leaders of the Horde weren't in awe of him bombing Theramore like he expected, which shattered his self-esteem. Meanwhile his character has been extremely consistent, with the only exception being his portrayal being Stonetalon. Which was a mistake. A mistake so bad it's a rare case of Blizzard actually admitting that instead of deluding themselves into thinking they wrote a masterpiece like they are doing right now.

[The Butt Witch]

What did you guys expect? Did you expect him to criticize the company's product? To admit mistakes in the design? You think Activision is a Japanese company?

[Redroniksre]

The problem with WoWs story is always that it takes too long for relevant things to play out. They started going the long con route when it comes to the story, but the problem with that is that the "result" of the choices made will never manifest for 2+ years later, by then people either forget, get bored, or are already pissed off about the choices themselves being ass. Hell this Sylvanas arc could end up being the best arc ever, but it has been going for what, almost 4 years now?

[Cherry123]

"Anduin was so focused on living up to his father's legacy that it blinded him to certain truths. Those blind spots proved costly and will be something he has to come to terms with going forward."

wut ? he played in another version bfa?

[Niwes]

https://www.windowscentral.com/world...ry-shadowlands
The highlights:

1. N'Zoth is defeated... or not?


2. Sylvanas was supposed to be a repeat of Garrosh... with certain nuances.


3. Danuser is proud of Blizzard's storytelling in BfA.

why i do not hear anything longer of „morally grey“ ?

simple answer: its a cheap shit story they pull out of ass and change directions accordingly in a flat lame manner, because they develop story further between lunch and toilet.

fire that ppl and hire ppl that like their job and be enthusiastic with it and wanna do it professional instead old fucked up ppl that are since years in maintenance mode and just act accordingly to serve a giant company and their greed to save em selfes a good position.

[Reinhart11]

The major themes that come to my mind when i think about this expansions story wise are whining, endless whining and even more whining. On top of that feeling sorry for someone or something and making others feel sorry as well. And right behind comes a massive amount of incompetence. But in that regard, at least the characters fit the writing team. This interview only shows how inept and unfit Danuser is in regards to his current position.

A part from the interview that catched my eye as well:

Question: The Alliance seems overly accepting and forgiving of the fact the Horde burned down Teldrassil and genocided the Elves, in my view. I feel a bit like that is glossed over, perhaps?

D. Answer: In the epilogue scenes in Visions of N'Zoth, we wanted to show that Tyrande clearly has not forgotten what happened and will not accept any treaty that doesn't see Sylvanas—and the Horde—answer for the crimes of burning the World Tree and the murder of innocents.

Wars have a way of changing the world and those who inhabit it, in ways both broad and subtle. These changes do not resolve cleanly in a short span of time; that wouldn't feel genuine or true to the deep wounds inflicted by the Fourth War. So, while many fans are eager to see the resolution of what happened at Teldrassil, there is a lot more story that needs to unfold before it can be fully addressed. These characters have a long way to go, and many more lessons to learn.

More moral lessons to learn. Oh the joy...

[Kyphael]

Danuser!? I've been spelling it Dausner this whole time!!

[Foolicious]

this just shows how badly he needs to go.

everyone went around blaming golden, when she was just some lonely old woman making some dumb teenage surrogate son she could also fap to. danuser has been the single source of the misery we have endured this entire time, and it's time that he goes.

Blaming golden alone isnt fair and people should have realized by now. She may be involved more now that shes an official employee, but there are other people to blame. Her name is on the cover of books, so shes the scapegoat, but she didn't develop the stories for wow, asassins creed, star wars, d&d or star trek. She wrote them down. Thats a big difference.
It's danuser and his team that actually tell her what she has to write. They deserve to be blamed.