9.0 General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

Where we park out chars for expansion launch? I thought it's Icecrown, but yesterday I watched launch test for moment and saw people starting on Stormwind/Orgrimmar.

Could start from several places in theory. WoD allowed you to start by talking to Khadgar either in the Blasted Lands or in your capital city.

I would wait until next week at the end of that questline, usually it gives a good indication of where is the best spot to wait

[Raetary]

You start in SW/Org. @Dracullus


The starting quest is a pop up quest which sends you to your capital.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Aw man. If this happens, it seems potentially likely that we might have Nathanos rooting us on and/or working with us a la Azshara. I'd rather just kill him repeatedly and be done with him as opposed to having Nathanos helping us out.

He should just be given an 'infinite death' where he dies over and over, never feeling the release of 'actual' death.

Plus I'm sure anyone who worships Bwonsamdi would hate working with him lol


As for the permanent erasure like with Ursoc, watch them make it that if someone/thing is 'thought' off enough, it'll be reborn somehow

[Dracullus]

Could start from several places in theory. WoD allowed you to start by talking to Khadgar either in the Blasted Lands or in your capital city.

I would wait until next week at the end of that questline, usually it gives a good indication of where is the best spot to wait

Khadgar in capitals were "emergency Khadhars" added very quickly after launch ;D. Blasted Lands was place to start expac.

Yeah I think @Arafal is right. Watched some vods and looks like Icecrown part of questline is instanced and you get there through portal in Orgrimmar/Stormwind after launch quest pop up.

[huth]

He should just be given an 'infinite death' where he dies over and over, never feeling the release of 'actual' death.

Plus I'm sure anyone who worships Bwonsamdi would hate working with him lol

Put him in De other side. I'm sure Bwonsamdi will be happy to list his grievances.

[Sondrelk]

Khadgar in capitals were "emergency Khadhars" added very quickly after launch ;D. Blasted Lands was place to start expac.

Yeah I think @Arafal is right. Watched some vods and looks like Icecrown part of questline is instanced and you get there through portal in Orgrimmar/Stormwind after launch quest pop up.

I could have sworn he was added right before launch, I faintly remember everyone piling around him on launch night.

[Eurhetemec]

Not what I mean at all. Until we get the direct observation of his displeasure or discomfort, it's a pretty hollow "victory" to observe, and it's arguable it was what he wanted in the first place. I don't mean the physical act of violence.

It's not arguable that he wanted his throat slit half-way through one of his rants, no.

I get what you're saying here, but it's a matter of degree. You wanted Nathanos dragged through the mud, shamed, humiliated, or close to it, not merely to have something extremely painful, fatal (but that doesn't matter kinda), and more moderately humiliating happen to him.

However, I think that's probably to come. Like I said, his fate in SL is likely to either get straight-abandoned/ignored by Sylvanas, or manipulated into doing something dumb, and he may well realize what a chump he's been there. If he doesn't, then your case will be strengthened.

https://twitter.com/SteveDanuser/sta...42223050100736

I, too, look into mirrors and see completely different visuals other than myself. ...wait, who took my Clozapine?!

Someone jokingly replied on the presence of hair and he even acknowledged it, including the difference in eyes.

https://imgur.com/r/wow/FX4poT6 Hate to repost this, but Moorgard's twitter activity is gone, and hey look at that, comments about a desire for crimson eyes.

The visual similarities don't even need to imply it's a 100% self-insert, you can have credit on that, but it's intellectually dishonest to ignore that Nathanos is modeled heavily after Steve Danuser. The origin of his current character design was a short story he wrote himself alongside his romantic relationship with Sylvanas in the first place. Nathanos' origins and aesthetic unto itself ignoring Danuser is already a special snowflake. In a fantasy universe with golden spaceships, you can and need to suspend a lot of disbelief, but it's another thing to suspend the universe's own internal roles when it's an exception granted for one character that is designed to look like a lead writer.

I'm genuinely disappointed.

I though you'd have something really clear, but no, you've got a middle-aged man who thinks a character looks like him, maybe. The Dark Mirror crack may well relate more to the story than that too.

The ad hominem "intellectually dishonest" claim is just really sad. To claim that, you need actual evidence that Nathanos was designed to look like Danuser, and that he saw his personality in the character (or a "dark mirror" thereof, even lol) and you've provided nothing of the sort. This is classic internet bullshit, where a whole theory is woven out of a couple of out-of-context tweets (or outright fake tweets, but I assume that's not the case here) and a giant containership of paranoia and Pepe Silvia.

The only solid point you make is that Nathanos is an overplayed character, who was clearly a villain the writer enjoyed writing. I've run Dungeons and Dragons for 30 years. I've had a number of villains I really enjoyed playing, or putting in adventures. Maybe I even overused one or two. But did that make them self-inserts? I don't think so mate. Overexposed or overblown or whatever is not even remotely the same as "self-insert".

You're ignoring the context behind it. There's been plenty of characters who act shitty towards us in the past, but none have been so ubiquitous and omnipresent with no basis to do it. Nathanos was never this important until he was suddenly a tumor.

Rude. I'm not "ignoring" anything. I play WoW too mate. I agree he's overexposed, which all you're really saying here. Just at length.

When people mix it, though, with the perception of these kinds of character exceptions being made, and then ALSO see the similarities to a public figure with already well-known fandom and favoritism towards a certain polarizing character, it is increasingly conspicuous that they may have external, writer-driven influences rather than just "well, they kinda mishandled that one character" and move on.

I think when you're saying stuff "favouritism", you're pretty confused about how writers work lol. The issue with Nathanos is again a simple and common writing problem often referred to with the phrase "kill your darlings". Now, pretending Danuser is particularly bad for this silly. Metzen was fucking terrible for this, and indeed almost every WoW lead writer or the like has appeared to have "darlings". The point with the phrase "kill your darlings" is, if you enjoy a character too much, kill 'em off.

And should that have happened to Nathanos? Absolutely. I totally buy that this is bad writing, because Danuser is failing to kill his "darling". But you're getting into this Pepe Silvia realm where this is because Danuser thinks guy who constantly writes as dumb, smug, arrogant and all-round reprehensible piece of shit, is "like him". I really doubt that lol. Even as a "dark mirror".

What you're proving here is fairly typically low-grade plotting/meta-writing. Unfortunately all of WoW has that issue (as does WC1-3, soz).

It's more like if Alan Rickman and Jeb Stuart regarded Hans Gruber as a favorite character, Hans Gruber managed to personally fight John McClane to a stand-still in the second act, and he smirked slyly on his way down the Nakatomi Building after covertly wiring a bunch of the money to Simon before he existed.

I enjoyed this, so thank you, but it's not quite true. It's more like if Hans Gruber killed/fought off 30 cops, then McClaine comes out the smoke and rubble, and one-sidedly beats the shit of him (Gruber managing some parries but nothing else), and whilst Gruber is on his knees, he is smugly saying he's already wired the money to Simon, and ranting about how Simon will kill John and John's family, and killing Gruber will just make Simon angrier, McClaine just shoots him in the head in the middle of a well-crafted sentence.

And I agree with your point that whether it's my version or yours, both are less fun than the movie version. A lot less fun.

There's enough reasons to attack Steve Danuser without even factoring in Nathanos, the least of which is for him to call BfA a story "full of heart," to insist it wasn't a poor redragging of Mists, or just about every other poor narrative decision he has been the lead on. The awkward psychological implications are just gravy. But hey, what is context or nuance?

The problem is that context and nuance aren't Pepe Silvia crazy-wall shit. That's the enemy of context. Reading in masses of stuff from an off-handed twitter comment and Pepe Silvia-ing it to a peculiar "meta" interpretation of the title of a story is not real "context", it's internet nonsense. If there are "enough reasons" (and I agree that there are some, though I don't think he's actually any worse than any other lead writer WoW has had, but that's a LOW fucking bar!), why even bring in this "self-insert" stuff when it's such a stretch?

Hopefully the above well justifies it for you. Other than that, I can't really fix contrarianism. Or people who choose to act as PR teams for free.

You kind of shat on your own argument at the end there, with that defensiveness. The whole sad, petty bit with "contrarian" and "shill" (the latter even sadder because you try to work around actually saying "shill" because you know it'll make you look bad). Literally your whole argument would be more convincing without that petty ad-hominem bullshit line here (and it absolutely is ad hominem, you're attacking the person, not the argument).

You made a some interesting points, but none of them were around Nathanos being a "self-insert", which is what I'm arguing about. If anything you illustrated how weak the case is there, how much Pepe Silvia has to be involved. You also seem to conflating a bunch of stuff, and seem to think that if you think Danuser is a mediocre writer, he must also be a shit person which totally doesn't follow. If being a mediocre or even shit writer makes you a shit person, well, I guess WoW has always been written by monsters.

[Vakir]

However, I think that's probably to come. Like I said, his fate in SL is likely to either get straight-abandoned/ignored by Sylvanas, or manipulated into doing something dumb, and he may well realize what a chump he's been there. If he doesn't, then your case will be strengthened.

I'm in agreement that's the trajectory of it. Just been bored of this waaaay too many times to give them complete faith, I guess.

I'm genuinely disappointed.

I though you'd have something really clear, but no, you've got a middle-aged man who thinks a character looks like him, maybe. The Dark Mirror crack may well relate more to the story than that too.

It's definitely not a reference to the story if he directly acknowledges there's a deliberate resemblence modeled...?

The ad hominem "intellectually dishonest" claim is just really sad. To claim that, you need actual evidence that Nathanos was designed to look like Danuser, and that he saw his personality in the character (or a "dark mirror" thereof, even lol) and you've provided nothing of the sort. This is classic internet bullshit, where a whole theory is woven out of a couple of out-of-context tweets (or outright fake tweets, but I assume that's not the case here) and a giant containership of paranoia and Pepe Silvia.

The only solid point you make is that Nathanos is an overplayed character, who was clearly a villain the writer enjoyed writing. I've run Dungeons and Dragons for 30 years. I've had a number of villains I really enjoyed playing, or putting in adventures. Maybe I even overused one or two. But did that make them self-inserts? I don't think so mate. Overexposed or overblown or whatever is not even remotely the same as "self-insert".

Rude. I'm not "ignoring" anything. I play WoW too mate. I agree he's overexposed, which all you're really saying here. Just at length.

I think when you're saying stuff "favouritism", you're pretty confused about how writers work lol. The issue with Nathanos is again a simple and common writing problem often referred to with the phrase "kill your darlings". Now, pretending Danuser is particularly bad for this silly. Metzen was fucking terrible for this, and indeed almost every WoW lead writer or the like has appeared to have "darlings". The point with the phrase "kill your darlings" is, if you enjoy a character too much, kill 'em off.

You're kinda taking this and running with it. I think Danuser is a hack, not an actually bad human being to my knowledge, so there's no real paranoia here. You understand there's a spectrum, right? There is a sizeable gap between "this is a character I enjoy writing perhaps too much with no other influence" and "this is my character that I am personally writing every single moment of every single day, in a game made by hundreds."

You're correct that Chris Metzen did the same thing. Thrall, however, began as a popular character that didn't warp the setting he was placed in, beyond being the impetus for Warcraft having a new identity for orcs to separate it from the standard Tolkein or Warhammer Fantasy shit. He did overtake the significance he was written for by doubling down on the Messiah elements that weren't as extreme and putting in a romantic plot tumor that reflected Chris' entry into parenthood - which he did admit to. People hated it then, people chilled on it when they read the damn room and scaled it back.

I...don't really think direct quotes and evidence from one person who is not even a degree of separation from the person we're talking about counts as some Pepe Silvia conspiracy board shit, my dude. That's the flipside of the "internet bullshit" - where anyone who asserts anything that isn't a direct concrete statement from a company is clearly just blindly making shit up. Because since if people lie regularly on the internet, assuredly this means everyone is wildly speculating unless an authority confirms it rather than just thinking for one's self.

Your signature kind of says it all about the attitude you're entering with. It's unrelated to this topic, but it's endemic of the problem of being glib and dismissive of pretty much any kind of fandom critique or analysis under this self-aggrandizing nature of being an oldbie-guard among nerd culture. Yeah, god forbid people who play the game, have more experience than the developers, and people who have been consistently correct about problems with their systems over the last 5 years give opinions regularly. When Blizzard asks for their opinions first anyway. Congrats on your 30 years of D&D. I've been at many a table myself where the overexposure of a villain who stopped the campaign to monologue was a direct function of the DM wanting to play that character as an empowerment of themselves.

Putting aside mere overexposure, Nathanos as a character has a bizarrely special, universe-rules warping origin story and aesthetic literally the moment he becomes an actual character 13 years after his debut - penned by the guy who fully acknowledges the resemblance of the character whether you choose to ignore it or not. He immediately enters as already in a romantic relationship with Sylvanas, a character the same developer expresses his extreme fandom of routinely, in the same story. This same individual is the Lead Narrative guy just as both of these characters become overexposed and every single plot thread short of maybe Dazar'alor essentially lives and dies by their will, even the Old God stuff through their involvement with Xal'atath.

Thrall came out of nowhere via a canned adventure game, but he was mainly brought to life by Golden over Metzen in Lord of the Clans, and he didn't overstay his welcome in the games that introduced him. Ultimately the changes they decided to go with that made him an irritant to the story felt like a misstep in progression and in response to fandom popularity, not the means to the end of what the character was meant to be since their introduction. Thrall started to suck a good 8 years after he was already a main character.

If you wanna bring up Game of Thrones, it's not much different from show-Euron Greyjoy. It's not just that he's a irritatingly smug cunt that deviated from the source material, it's the fact that he feels like he wandered in off another god damn show and proceeds to warp most of the things around him in terms of overall importance. Part of this was the deviation in the show's adaptation, and it shows, but it's the sum total of all these elements. The difference here is you don't have anything meta that indicates the show runners had particular favoritism on an outside level. But if you did, wouldn't it explain a lot? Or would you need HBO to officially release information on that for it to not be an insane conspiracy rant?

And should that have happened to Nathanos? Absolutely. I totally buy that this is bad writing, because Danuser is failing to kill his "darling". But you're getting into this Pepe Silvia realm where this is because Danuser thinks guy who constantly writes as dumb, smug, arrogant and all-round reprehensible piece of shit, is "like him". I really doubt that lol. Even as a "dark mirror".

You're absolutely right. Self-inserts are never indulgent miserable fucks that are a reflection of the creator's enjoyment of playing evil characters. Reprehensible qualities absolutely never show up in characters that are designed to fill the fantasy of the person making them. There totally aren't rules because of this exact thing derailing the shit out of campaigns and character interactions because the average little Timmy has a tendency to make vile characters. Nope. Never. Doesn't happen. The presence of negative qualities in a character is evidence of there being no personal agenda of self-empowerment by story proxy.

...WHAT.

(Where do you get dumb from Nathanos? Serious question. Guy's never really come up short until now. Any setbacks are generally not the consequence of poor intel or planning. Hell, he's taking orders from Sylvanas, who routinely warps the intelligence of everyone around her to be the smartest person in the room even when she's fucking stupid. Which is often.)

I enjoyed this, so thank you, but it's not quite true. It's more like if Hans Gruber killed/fought off 30 cops, then McClaine comes out the smoke and rubble, and one-sidedly beats the shit of him (Gruber managing some parries but nothing else), and whilst Gruber is on his knees, he is smugly saying he's already wired the money to Simon, and ranting about how Simon will kill John and John's family, and killing Gruber will just make Simon angrier, McClaine just shoots him in the head in the middle of a well-crafted sentence.

Nah, I think I got it, so thank you. Nathanos even being alive until now is bullshit. He should be star dust after the encounter in 8.1. He fought John McClane to a standstill while John McClane was on Old God-killing fantasy steroids. ...because of two angels that are now confirmed by canon to be garden-variety humanoids. We ain't just talking about 9.0, other stuff happened that is hot garbage and has been since.

The problem is that context and nuance aren't Pepe Silvia crazy-wall shit. That's the enemy of context. Reading in masses of stuff from an off-handed twitter comment and Pepe Silvia-ing it to a peculiar "meta" interpretation of the title of a story is not real "context", it's internet nonsense. If there are "enough reasons" (and I agree that there are some, though I don't think he's actually any worse than any other lead writer WoW has had, but that's a LOW fucking bar!), why even bring in this "self-insert" stuff when it's such a stretch?

Again, where is this fucking crazy wall? Where is this "masses" of stuff? If like, 4 pieces of evidence is "masses," but is also somehow not enough, what qualifies as reasonable? This is the direct observation of one public figure. Are you seriously unwilling to even mildly entertain the possibility unless Steve Danuser submits an official press release stating "Hey guys by the way Nathanos Blightcaller is my fantasy character and also I have a Sylvanas body pillow?" Do you also think Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (parody or not) was just a goth girl with "interesting traits" that the writer just so happened to like? It's totally a coincidence that Gene Roddenberry's middle name was Wesley, you guys.

You kind of shat on your own argument at the end there, with that defensiveness. The whole sad, petty bit with "contrarian" and "shill" (the latter even sadder because you try to work around actually saying "shill" because you know it'll make you look bad). Literally your whole argument would be more convincing without that petty ad-hominem bullshit line here (and it absolutely is ad hominem, you're attacking the person, not the argument).

Don't talk to me about defensiveness when you're calling it creepy and "dude"-ing me from your first reply. You don't get to pull that glib horseshit and then take a moral high ground. Not to mention treating a basic observation as some kind of vast conspiracy theory with mastery of all of one overused reference. If you have this much of a vested interest to believe that merely poor writers couldn't possibly influence a story based on their preferences and personal fantasies beyond being just "darlings," I'm not sure how the fuck you've ever played at a table in D&D unless you've had the most lucky groups in the world over the past three decades or are totally blind to human behavior.

Jake Goldman and Jared Shapiro? Totally different people and in no way creepy! A spokesperson said it, so it's fine.

[razorpax]

War of Thorns. Was like a three or four week storyline. had some nice mog and mounts if I recall correctly.

Oh I thought that was part of the intro lol if you wait until the last week it’s about 2 hours of content for a mount

- - - Updated - - -

How about having an ACTUAL Scourge invasion, no? Floating necropoli attacking zones? Zombies rampaging in major cities? It was done 12 years ago. Do they no longer have the technical capabilities to do what they did more than a decade ago? Just reskin the Legion events and replace the baddies with the Scourge.

This "invasion" does not feel like an invasion at all.

They won’t do it because of how it worked last time

[Wilfire]

Oh I thought that was part of the intro lol if you wait until the last week it’s about 2 hours of content for a mount

- - - Updated - - -



They won’t do it because of how it worked last time

Someone complained about not being able to access the AH for 2% of an expansion's runtime so they went and destroyed the fun for everyone. Got it.

[Xilurm]

Someone complained about not being able to access the AH for 2% of an expansion's runtime so they went and destroyed the fun for everyone. Got it.

Ikr. Sad people who get angry at others having fun.

[enderzone]

Someone complained about not being able to access the AH for 2% of an expansion's runtime so they went and destroyed the fun for everyone. Got it.

I kind of felt war mode would fix that but to be honest being forced to purge yourself constantly or suffer durability damage and a ghost walk every time you had to do anything that wasn't in an instance did lose it charm fairly quickly.

[razorpax]

Someone complained about not being able to access the AH for 2% of an expansion's runtime so they went and destroyed the fun for everyone. Got it.

If you find fucking with someone else’s experience fun then I have no sympathy

[Sondrelk]

If you find fucking with someone else’s experience fun then I have no sympathy

The entire point of the event was to simulate the Corrupted Blood Plague from vanilla, and also make it seem like a real zombie invasion. The question is just whether it worked or not.

Guess we will see how it ends up working in the pre-patch though, I suspect it will not be terribly exciting given the severe restrictions, but it could be different.

[huth]

If you find fucking with someone else’s experience fun then I have no sympathy

Well, that's the problem here. Somebody is fucking with everybody else's experience over a minor grievance.

[Sondrelk]

Small niggle I have realized about the pre-patch. Does anyone else think Blizzard missed a real opportunity by giving DKs a separate intro to seeing the Faction Leader abduction cinematic? We already have the beginning with Bolvar being rescued, just have DKs instead get a missive to return to Acherus and be briefed in the kidnappings there before being sent back to SW/Org to continue the regualr questlines.

Small thing of course, but would have made the pre-pathc questline that tiny bit stronger.

[Eurhetemec]

The entire point of the event was to simulate the Corrupted Blood Plague from vanilla, and also make it seem like a real zombie invasion. The question is just whether it worked or not.

Guess we will see how it ends up working in the pre-patch though, I suspect it will not be terribly exciting given the severe restrictions, but it could be different.

The issue with the original implementation wasn't, as people like to pretend, stuff like "the AH NPCs got killed" (though that is a real problem given how much relies on them and that they're only in one place). The issue was that it made it very easy to grief people who were trying to level up by questing, as high-level people could become ghouls, and then just wipe out the quest givers (in the very first form they could also wipe out the flight masters pretty easily, but I believe that got dealt with in the second iteration), and generally NPCs like repairs and selling NPCs, and people were systematically keeping quest givers dead in places like Redridge, Westfall, Barrens and so on - all the lower-level zones. Back then, that basically stopped people from leveling up, because quests were essentially the only way to level up. It was large-scale continuous griefing. It didn't happen in the higher-level zones because there were high-level players around to fix it, and sometimes high-level players would come and fix it in low-level zones, but that didn't last, because they'd fix it, then leave, but the griefers would just hide out until they left. I personally had to keep logging over to a max-level character and swapping to them when the griefing started, then going on to the character I was trying to level for fifteen minutes until it started up again.

It's not true that it was to "simulate the corrupted blood plague" AFAIK. I've never heard that claim before it and seems like an asspull, but perhaps you can source it? Nor a "real" (?!?!!?) zombie invasion. The goal was to have a really cool event that made the game feel different and exciting for a while. If you were only playing at max level, that was maybe partly true, especially initially, but it rapidly devolved into just trying to grief people. At low levels, at least on both the servers I played on (higher pop ones), it was a literally 24/7 grief-fest, where people weren't really after your character all, just trying to keep the NPCs dead to prevent you do anything, which didn't feel at all like a "zombie invasion", but just like, organised griefing. Indeed, it was similar to when high-levels from the other side came in and did the same thing, except it worked way better, and it was usually your own side doing it, so much easier, because you couldn't corpse-camp them, as soon as they weren't zombies you could no longer attack them.

So I think all that is why they've toned it down so much.

On the other hand, the game is totally different now and that stuff is much less of a risk, and full scaling (rather than just the weird scaling the zombies had back then) and places in other timelines and stuff (where the zombies should be banned from going, because it's another timeline) mean it's way less of an issue, so I think they may have gone too far.

- - - Updated - - -

Your signature kind of says it all about the attitude you're entering with. It's unrelated to this topic, but it's endemic of the problem of being glib and dismissive of pretty much any kind of fandom critique or analysis under this self-aggrandizing nature of being an oldbie-guard among nerd culture. Yeah, god forbid people who play the game, have more experience than the developers, and people who have been consistently correct about problems with their systems over the last 5 years give opinions regularly.

You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

And your idea that you "know more than the devs", and deserve plaudits for being able to hindsight complain about stuff that's already in the game is pretty hilarious and demonstrative of the attitude you have. It's pretty funny stuff.

Congrats on your 30 years of D&D. I've been at many a table myself where the overexposure of a villain who stopped the campaign to monologue was a direct function of the DM wanting to play that character as an empowerment of themselves.

Thanks! I have zero time for that lol. Any villain monologue I have is intended to be interrupted (preferably soon because I probably haven't written the whole thing out!). I can't think of any times where I've had a DM "stop the campaign" for the sake of a badguy, it's always been GMPCs who are more Thrall than Nathanos. YMMV of course, but posting RPG.net and ENWorld and stuff for a long time (I guess for their entire existence), I would say GMPCs are self inserts commonly and villains very rarely.

If you wanna bring up Game of Thrones, it's not much different from show-Euron Greyjoy. It's not just that he's a irritatingly smug cunt that deviated from the source material, it's the fact that he feels like he wandered in off another god damn show and proceeds to warp most of the things around him in terms of overall importance. Part of this was the deviation in the show's adaptation, and it shows, but it's the sum total of all these elements. The difference here is you don't have anything meta that indicates the show runners had particular favoritism on an outside level. But if you did, wouldn't it explain a lot? Or would you need HBO to officially release information on that for it to not be an insane conspiracy rant?

I'd need the showrunners to say something directly indicating he was, yeah, for it to be more than a conspiracy theory.

He's a great illustration, too. There's basically zero chance he is a "self-insert", in either the book or the show, but you're right, he's EXACTLY the same kind of annoyance as Nathanos.

Like Nathanos, he's the product of bad writing, not a power trip. These sort of characters are routine. They're common. Acting like they're all self-inserts is absolutely paranoid and conspiracy nut stuff, and you evidence is not even flimsy, it's just reading between the lines, reading into the meaning of things, and so on.

I will say, it's not just you, and it's not like history hasn't given fans reason to be paranoid about this sort of thing, but when they aren't out to get you, and you think they are, that is paranoia.

You're absolutely right. Self-inserts are never indulgent miserable fucks that are a reflection of the creator's enjoyment of playing evil characters. Reprehensible qualities absolutely never show up in characters that are designed to fill the fantasy of the person making them. There totally aren't rules because of this exact thing derailing the shit out of campaigns and character interactions because the average little Timmy has a tendency to make vile characters. Nope. Never. Doesn't happen. The presence of negative qualities in a character is evidence of there being no personal agenda of self-empowerment by story proxy.

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but the trouble, it is extremely rare for them to have characteristics the person behind them both clearly thinks are negative, and takes time to make dramatically negative, and GMPCs or favoured villains absolutely never get into situations like Nathanos just did. Getting their throat cut on their knees? Come on. Come the fuck on. You sound like you're a TT RPG player, you know how these guys go out, if they ever go out. Even a "merely a setback", they're not going out like that, if they're really the product of self-insert-type stuff.

(Where do you get dumb from Nathanos? Serious question. Guy's never really come up short until now. Any setbacks are generally not the consequence of poor intel or planning. Hell, he's taking orders from Sylvanas, who routinely warps the intelligence of everyone around her to be the smartest person in the room even when she's fucking stupid. Which is often.)

Dude's a fucking failboat. He never does anything clever. He never originates clever plans. He just sort of hangs around like some kind of awful middle-management. He's like the David Brent of the Horde. We never seem him ranting about his masterplan, or whatever, he's just a lapdog for Sylvanas. He's a goon. He's always been a goon. He's just a goon with an inflated self-opinion.

Nah, I think I got it, so thank you. Nathanos even being alive until now is bullshit. He should be star dust after the encounter in 8.1. He fought John McClane to a standstill while John McClane was on Old God-killing fantasy steroids. ...because of two angels that are now confirmed by canon to be garden-variety humanoids. We ain't just talking about 9.0, other stuff happened that is hot garbage and has been since.

I agree that this darling should have been killed quite a while back. I would actually say sometime in late Legion would have been preferable. 8.1 would have been fine.

Again, where is this fucking crazy wall? Where is this "masses" of stuff? If like, 4 pieces of evidence is "masses," but is also somehow not enough, what qualifies as reasonable? This is the direct observation of one public figure. Are you seriously unwilling to even mildly entertain the possibility unless Steve Danuser submits an official press release stating "Hey guys by the way Nathanos Blightcaller is my fantasy character and also I have a Sylvanas body pillow?" Do you also think Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (parody or not) was just a goth girl with "interesting traits" that the writer just so happened to like? It's totally a coincidence that Gene Roddenberry's middle name was Wesley, you guys.

I dunno. I need something more direct that the innuendos you have there. Sorry. I don't think he's a self-insert. He doesn't act like one, and whilst it would have been nice to have Nathanos dragged through the mud more, what happened to him just now is shit that doesn't happen to self-inserts when the inserter is still in charge. I can tell you EXACTLY what would have happened if he was a self-insert - he'd have ranted that she was giving him what he wanted, and thrown himself on her blade (which is a total WoW kind of dramatic incident). Or if he got to the point of having the glaive at his throat, he'd have shoved himself on to it, not ranted and got cut off.

(4 pieces of evidence can be a crazy wall, just a really bad crazy wall.)

You talk correctly about how they "read the room" on Thrall. To me it looks like they just did that with Nathanos. The proof will be in SL one way or the other.

Don't talk to me about defensiveness when you're calling it creepy and "dude"-ing me from your first reply. You don't get to pull that glib horseshit and then take a moral high ground. Not to mention treating a basic observation as some kind of vast conspiracy theory with mastery of all of one overused reference. If you have this much of a vested interest to believe that merely poor writers couldn't possibly influence a story based on their preferences and personal fantasies beyond being just "darlings," I'm not sure how the fuck you've ever played at a table in D&D unless you've had the most lucky groups in the world over the past three decades or are totally blind to human behavior.

That seems really touchy dude, and again, it's a bit sad. You have all these fairly decent arguments, and then at the end, it's all defensiveness and anger instead of a reasonable conclusion. You know what you said last time was inappropriate and defensive, and what you're saying here is inappropriate and nasty, and just a cheap straw-man exaggeration of what I said. Not sure why you feel the need to end an otherwise-reasonable post that way two times in a row, but maybe don't? It really doesn't help.

I call everyone dude, it's because I'm old and talk like I'm from the 1990s, btw, not some special internet mockery thing. I sometimes edit it out if it looks too mock-y.

Jake Goldman and Jared Shapiro? Totally different people and in no way creepy! A spokesperson said it, so it's fine.

I had to look this one up.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-creepy-...god-1795730698

Sounds like a storm in a teacup. The person was apparently not in a position to self-insert themselves into the show (though people assumed he was), and multiple people openly explain where the character came from. I totally get the initial "Ewwwww" factor, and even with him not being a self-insert, the whole thing is pretty creepy, but anyway, if this is your supporting evidence, maybe not the greatest example to choose? Still, wow sounds like the 2016 Powerpuff Girls was a bit of shitshow. You don't need to add in claims of self-insertion to make it creepy.

[Vakir]

You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

And your idea that you "know more than the devs", and deserve plaudits for being able to hindsight complain about stuff that's already in the game is pretty hilarious and demonstrative of the attitude you have. It's pretty funny stuff.

Two separate examples of the same attitude, the main of which isn't hindsight. I don't think I explained it very well. For the sig, I'm referring to "a Youtuber said so" paired with sarcasm of "Wow experts" which implies dismissiveness in general. Typically the players are correct about, for example, very legitimate systems issues, like how Covenants are likely to be an absolute shitshow, but people just have a tendency to mock those with large audiences out of a combination of the perception that devs have exclusive authority and "new media bad." There is often dismissiveness of people attempting to aim for clickbaity negativity when often that's just not even the case. Maybe that signature isn't your intention and I'm reading it all wrong. If that's the case, legit my bad. My point is that if you're going to implicitly devalue critics, you're already implicitly entering a lot of these discussions not buying into anything that isn't driven by the creators, game systems-wise or lorewise, which I'd argue is as closed off as the the same overly-negative idiots vilifying those same devs/writers for every single thing.

Basically, nothing I'm talking about in that quote of knowing in advance is retroactive, it's all systems-oriented (not lore) based out of frustration of very real issues that have been called out ahead of time that go pretty much exactly as expected. But to bring it back around, while it wasn't the point of what I was getting at, I'm seriously not jerking myself off when I say Nate's end went exactly the way I thought it would in the most cynical way I could've predicted it. "He's gonna still look badass. He's gonna gloat. He'll die but get the emotional upper-hand. He for some reason won't get disenchanted Varian-style so he may still be a super strong final tier raid boss." That's why I don't have particularly great hopes. I'd love to be wrong.

Thanks! I have zero time for that lol. Any villain monologue I have is intended to be interrupted (preferably soon because I probably haven't written the whole thing out!). I can't think of any times where I've had a DM "stop the campaign" for the sake of a badguy, it's always been GMPCs who are more Thrall than Nathanos. YMMV of course, but posting RPG.net and ENWorld and stuff for a long time (I guess for their entire existence), I would say GMPCs are self inserts commonly and villains very rarely.

I believe you and I legit envy your tables. I've seen so, SO many bad examples of The Big Bad Show by way of some edgy twenty-something who derails the entire story to cackle and twirl their mustache and drive literally the entire force of the story in a bad way. Wondering if this is a generational thing, very possible.

I'd need the showrunners to say something directly indicating he was, yeah, for it to be more than a conspiracy theory.

He's a great illustration, too. There's basically zero chance he is a "self-insert", in either the book or the show, but you're right, he's EXACTLY the same kind of annoyance as Nathanos.

See, I don't disagree entirely that there's not enough here for Greyjoy (which was kinda the point), but I also hate calling these kinds of thing "conspiracy theories" or paranoia. Conspiracy theories are inherently harmful. They literally proliferate extreme truths that are juxtaposed to a base reality and encourages people to reject certain things that are just outright important to accept. Crisis actors, anti-vaxers, that kind of stuff.

The worst you can say about going "...huh. Nathanos sure seems to have some influences to look like Steve Danuser. It was acknowledged. He sure does seem to get preferential treatment at the same time. He sure did pop up in tandem with the same guy being a narrative lead" is that it encourages people to be more critical of Steve Danuser's future work than maybe is deserved - except I think the Nathrezim manipulation twist is kinda dope as fuck so I'd already be an exception to that. Ignoring that beyond those pieces of what you call coincidence, we have no way of knowing who writes what in-game without confirmation.

But I don't think any sensible person is going to harass the guy personally. His reception at BlizzCon remains great, the man's job isn't in danger, and generally the most vitriol you're going to see in fandom is leveled at Sylvanas in the first place more than anything else including Nathanos. (I wonder why...)

This isn't on the same level as like...incels threatening to murder Laura Bailey's family after TLOU2 or something. For people on board, it's equivalent to watching a derailing cringe train and sighing at it. At best, it's false and we still have a bad character that someone likes too much. At worst, someone who has been shown to be a kinda lousy story lead continues to be lousy more often than not and the world keeps turning. It's like why it doesn't really matter if Greyjoy is or isn't a plot vacuum because someone likes him too much: we already know Benioff and Weiss suck regardless.

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but the trouble, it is extremely rare for them to have characteristics the person behind them both clearly thinks are negative, and takes time to make dramatically negative, and GMPCs or favoured villains absolutely never get into situations like Nathanos just did. Getting their throat cut on their knees? Come on. Come the fuck on. You sound like you're a TT RPG player, you know how these guys go out, if they ever go out. Even a "merely a setback", they're not going out like that, if they're really the product of self-insert-type stuff.

I mean, he died, his throat was cut, but the tone of the whole thing was so bitter and deliberately non-triumphant. Part of that is the direction of Tyrande's slow devolution into "vengeance bad" story beats, I'll grant, but if your villain eventually does need to fall, you can do a lot worse if it's a GMPC with an agenda to have it be as unsatisfying as possible.

Dude's a fucking failboat. He never does anything clever. He never originates clever plans. He just sort of hangs around like some kind of awful middle-management. He's like the David Brent of the Horde. We never seem him ranting about his masterplan, or whatever, he's just a lapdog for Sylvanas. He's a goon. He's always been a goon. He's just a goon with an inflated self-opinion.

Which is fair - but I'd also argue that, if you're on board with this interpretation, he's one piece of the pie in this awkward love affair with a fictional character. He is middle-management, but it's in service to another character that, while not seemingly a self-insert, sure does look like perfect waifu bait. The only thing that supports this is how she totally dropped him in Shadows Rising but...well, again, the jury's out on how this is gonna go. Especially if we see a redemption arc like speculated. I think that would make the last 2 expansions (counting SL) pretty unforgivable in terms of how mean-spirited and hateful their actions have been framed narratively, beyond simply "oh, extremists." I will go to my grave yelling favoritism and self-insert if that happens, any arguments be damned.

I dunno. I need something more direct that the innuendos you have there. Sorry. I don't think he's a self-insert. He doesn't act like one, and whilst it would have been nice to have Nathanos dragged through the mud more, what happened to him just now is shit that doesn't happen to self-inserts when the inserter is still in charge. I can tell you EXACTLY what would have happened if he was a self-insert - he'd have ranted that she was giving him what he wanted, and thrown himself on her blade (which is a total WoW kind of dramatic incident). Or if he got to the point of having the glaive at his throat, he'd have shoved himself on to it, not ranted and got cut off.

Point, it could have been worse. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That seems really touchy dude, and again, it's a bit sad. You have all these fairly decent arguments, and then at the end, it's all defensiveness and anger instead of a reasonable conclusion. You know what you said last time was inappropriate and defensive, and what you're saying here is inappropriate and nasty, and just a cheap straw-man exaggeration of what I said. Not sure why you feel the need to end an otherwise-reasonable post that way two times in a row, but maybe don't? It really doesn't help.

I call everyone dude, it's because I'm old and talk like I'm from the 1990s, btw, not some special internet mockery thing. I sometimes edit it out if it looks too mock-y.

You know what? You're right. I apologize for my defensiveness. This is, ultimately, pretty fucking unimportant and not even worth the vitriol. As I said above - the worst possible thing this does is frame B-tier writing as B-tier with a lemon twist added. It's ultimately semantical anyway at this point if you acknowledge that it's a horribly written darling vs. "self-insert" because the end result is still an unpleasant character for either definition.

I had to look this one up.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-creepy-...god-1795730698

Sounds like a storm in a teacup. The person was apparently not in a position to self-insert themselves into the show (though people assumed he was), and multiple people openly explain where the character came from. I totally get the initial "Ewwwww" factor, and even with him not being a self-insert, the whole thing is pretty creepy, but anyway, if this is your supporting evidence, maybe not the greatest example to choose? Still, wow sounds like the 2016 Powerpuff Girls was a bit of shitshow. You don't need to add in claims of self-insertion to make it creepy.

Yeah, I've read this before, and I still don't entirely buy it. But perception of that seeming conspiratorial aside, the way I look at it is...well, if it isn't a self-insert, it just means 4 people look bad rather than 1. The writer and co-producer involved making the decision for the character's existence look bad, the principal artist looks bad by having it resemble an actual crew member anyway, and Goldman looks bad for not reading the situation even remotely.

Like what do you say to the debunking anyway? "This is really bad but I guess you get a gold star for not being a prospective pedophile...?"

[Dracullus]

Alright, secured my free day for 24th, now all I need to do is f*ck up my sleeping schedule during weekend and I'm ready for launch.

[Sondrelk]

The issue with the original implementation wasn't, as people like to pretend, stuff like "the AH NPCs got killed" (though that is a real problem given how much relies on them and that they're only in one place). The issue was that it made it very easy to grief people who were trying to level up by questing, as high-level people could become ghouls, and then just wipe out the quest givers (in the very first form they could also wipe out the flight masters pretty easily, but I believe that got dealt with in the second iteration), and generally NPCs like repairs and selling NPCs, and people were systematically keeping quest givers dead in places like Redridge, Westfall, Barrens and so on - all the lower-level zones. Back then, that basically stopped people from leveling up, because quests were essentially the only way to level up. It was large-scale continuous griefing. It didn't happen in the higher-level zones because there were high-level players around to fix it, and sometimes high-level players would come and fix it in low-level zones, but that didn't last, because they'd fix it, then leave, but the griefers would just hide out until they left. I personally had to keep logging over to a max-level character and swapping to them when the griefing started, then going on to the character I was trying to level for fifteen minutes until it started up again.

It's not true that it was to "simulate the corrupted blood plague" AFAIK. I've never heard that claim before it and seems like an asspull, but perhaps you can source it? Nor a "real" (?!?!!?) zombie invasion. The goal was to have a really cool event that made the game feel different and exciting for a while. If you were only playing at max level, that was maybe partly true, especially initially, but it rapidly devolved into just trying to grief people. At low levels, at least on both the servers I played on (higher pop ones), it was a literally 24/7 grief-fest, where people weren't really after your character all, just trying to keep the NPCs dead to prevent you do anything, which didn't feel at all like a "zombie invasion", but just like, organised griefing. Indeed, it was similar to when high-levels from the other side came in and did the same thing, except it worked way better, and it was usually your own side doing it, so much easier, because you couldn't corpse-camp them, as soon as they weren't zombies you could no longer attack them.

So I think all that is why they've toned it down so much.

On the other hand, the game is totally different now and that stuff is much less of a risk, and full scaling (rather than just the weird scaling the zombies had back then) and places in other timelines and stuff (where the zombies should be banned from going, because it's another timeline) mean it's way less of an issue, so I think they may have gone too far.

The corrupted blood incident was memorable for being a massive outbreak with dead bodies strewn across capital cities, the WotLK zombie event in a sense wanted to mimic that to give the impression of a real-life outbreak.
That being said I do not have any actual quotes on it right now, though I have heard it stated before that the Corrupted Blood incident was regarded as a memorable and therefore "fun" event, and when the WotLK zombies did somethign similar it was awful.

Griefing is of course a problem, though I feel this version is fairly foolproof. New players from Exile's reach are immune to Zombies, and you even need to opt into PvP to be attackable last I checked.
I also don't think AH NPCs are targetable, though I cannot say for sure. Regardless I feel a single week of somewhat intrusive gameplay is warranted if it is memorable and fun. 4 weeks would probably have been too much as players would grow tired of it quickly, but I think a single week is enough time for players to find it fun for the entire duration supposing they do not spend all their time in SW or Orgrimmar.