What do you think of Steve Danuser's lore work as Lead Narrative Designer?

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

You know, this poll has never slipped under 89% as far as disliking the writing. That should tell you something. I feel like even if I shared this thread to a few reddit channels the poll numbers wouldn't even slip under 90%

[Syegfryed]

It is safe to say that Danuser's expectations will be subverted, should he ever open this thread and see the poll results.

He would probably see that he is in the right direction, for some reason

You know, this poll has never slipped under 89% as far as disliking the writing. That should tell you something. I feel like even if I shared this thread to a few reddit channels the poll numbers wouldn't even slip under 90%

And this is taking account how people are voting that they like just for memes

[Zers Editor]

Expectation: the Jailer gets a full-fledged, proper death cinematic, with him getting his actions mostly excused (like, Pelagos comes in before he dies and says "you simply did what you were destined to do" and "you did improve the system"). The seeds are somewhat planted for this with Primus starting to regret creating "domination", and all the other covenants changing their paths, and with the Jailer's dialogue in 9.2 suddenly getting more focused on "fixing the flawed system". You'd think he would get more unhinged being as close as he is to his "goal", no?

I'd love to see a reaction to that, especially when N'Zoth, of all people, got pretty much nothing in that regard.

[Gaidax]

Retreating when you're faltering is rational. The people who legit complain about that call basically wanted the Horde to sacrifice themselves to save one human guy. That happened, but what felt off what her absolute refusal to defend that call: But that was necessary to do their "redemption arc" plan. The big complaint about this whole story arc is that over 4 years they basically added a ton of contrivances to make Sylvanas "the Ranger AND the Banshee," which is what fans of her already felt she was, before the devs decided to give her "story focus"

I wasn't even talking about that, broski. The whole Stormheim and Helya parts. You need to be liek, blind, to not see the whole setup there already.

This is almost cute people think Blizzard suddenly decided this. It was pretty obviously very well planned and my hunch is it was planned all the way back in Cata already as one of the future stories.

I mean bruh, you legit have Ilgy spoiling half of it and Varimathras the second half.

Heck that's why they put Voljin as puppet Warchief. He was just a plot device all along to make Sylv be accepted choice as Warchief. Legit what Varimathras says, done so you would think Sylv Warchief is ok

Heck I would not be surprised they bumped off Garrosh as a prep for the whole thing.

[Kharli]

From late Legion [I believe], he's been in control of the WoW lore. I am intrigued to hear after 3 years how people critique his writing and handling of the WoW lore. Do you like it? What do you not like about it and why? Keep it civil.

it's honestly a very very biased poll at least from my opinion.

BFA writing was insanely stupid at times, just as Shadowlands is.

as its already been mentioned.

Bain= getting jailed = BAD - oh no we need to stop her
tree burning and thousands non-combatants killed - it's all good, lets go kill more elves, FOR DA HORDE!!!

I'm biased towards the Alliance for BFA, but man did the Horde do some messed up stuff that should have caused some "hold up are we the baddies" moments, but it never really did outside of saurfang/baine going; hold up now, what about honour?

----Shadowlands----

Ok, all of the lore we have for Shadowlands is new lore, nothing we really dealt with before, the shadowlands we visited before as Death Knights was the in between Life and Death as per the Kyrian Storyline where the dead goes to wait to be taken to the afterlife/shadowlands, at least from what we have been told so far.

Some of the covenant storylines hit me in the gut, the Nightfae and Kyrian specifically, The Nightfae is because my main outside of my Paladin is a night elf warrior, based on the Sentinel from Warcraft 3, and my first character was a Night elf Hunter. Kyrian is because as you go through quests to get to know denitizens of the Shadowlands and you end up seeing someone sacrificing their afterlife in order to ensure that others can go on.

Now Shadowlands are not the best thing ever, absolutely not, The whole thing with Tyrande could have been handled way way better, does not mean it didn't cause me to be feel emotional about it, Had It gone like I would have wanted it to, we would have lost a character to self-induced rage/madness a character that has been with us since Warcraft 3. Tyrande would have died, and I would most likely have been way more annoyed than with how they did it tbh, sure it could have ended Sylvanas as well, but we don't know that.

That is my biggest thing here, we simply have no clue where they are going with the story, , yes they have left old stories in the dust, at some degrees that is good, Please see Mist of Pandaria, A little patience senario. where a 40 year old human taught a 10k year old Night elf priestess/warrior of elune "patience"

I've literally never heard a single person say even one positive thing about Danuser or his work. Pretty self-explanatory imo

I guess ill be devils advocate here, some of the work he has headed, I like, for example I really did enjoy the covenant storylines, so.. you now heard at least one person.

[Dioporco]

From late Legion [I believe], he's been in control of the WoW lore. I am intrigued to hear after 3 years how people critique his writing and handling of the WoW lore. Do you like it? What do you not like about it and why? Keep it civil.

*check notes* he is a dog

[TheRevenantHero]

it's honestly a very very biased poll at least from my opinion.

BFA writing was insanely stupid at times, just as Shadowlands is.

as its already been mentioned.

Bain= getting jailed = BAD - oh no we need to stop her
tree burning and thousands non-combatants killed - it's all good, lets go kill more elves, FOR DA HORDE!!!

I'm biased towards the Alliance for BFA, but man did the Horde do some messed up stuff that should have caused some "hold up are we the baddies" moments, but it never really did outside of saurfang/baine going; hold up now, what about honour?

----Shadowlands----

Ok, all of the lore we have for Shadowlands is new lore, nothing we really dealt with before, the shadowlands we visited before as Death Knights was the in between Life and Death as per the Kyrian Storyline where the dead goes to wait to be taken to the afterlife/shadowlands, at least from what we have been told so far.

Some of the covenant storylines hit me in the gut, the Nightfae and Kyrian specifically, The Nightfae is because my main outside of my Paladin is a night elf warrior, based on the Sentinel from Warcraft 3, and my first character was a Night elf Hunter. Kyrian is because as you go through quests to get to know denitizens of the Shadowlands and you end up seeing someone sacrificing their afterlife in order to ensure that others can go on.

Now Shadowlands are not the best thing ever, absolutely not, The whole thing with Tyrande could have been handled way way better, does not mean it didn't cause me to be feel emotional about it, Had It gone like I would have wanted it to, we would have lost a character to self-induced rage/madness a character that has been with us since Warcraft 3. Tyrande would have died, and I would most likely have been way more annoyed than with how they did it tbh, sure it could have ended Sylvanas as well, but we don't know that.

That is my biggest thing here, we simply have no clue where they are going with the story, , yes they have left old stories in the dust, at some degrees that is good, Please see Mist of Pandaria, A little patience senario. where a 40 year old human taught a 10k year old Night elf priestess/warrior of elune "patience"



I guess ill be devils advocate here, some of the work he has headed, I like, for example I really did enjoy the covenant storylines, so.. you now heard at least one person.

Shadowlands is like....mostly retconned lore. We've gone to Shadowlands more times in quests than just the DK starter area. But suddenly everything that we were shown before is wrong? Then there was the retcon about Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination. Frostmourne just releases souls and incapacitated Arthas but the Helm shattering rips a whole in the time space continuum? And then there's the fact that apparently Sylvanas has been working with the Jailer since Edge of Night despite the Vol'jin questline in BfA saying that Sylvanas raising undead to serve her was preventing souls from going where they were supposed to but somehow she had also been feeding souls into the Maw?

The lore is an utter mess now. There's no point even learning any of the lore now since Danuser will likely retcon things again like he did with Chronicles being just "from the point of view of the Titans".

[Ersula]

I wasn't even talking about that, broski. The whole Stormheim and Helya parts. You need to be liek, blind, to not see the whole setup there already.

You're using Stormheim as an example of *positive* characterization? We don't have a cogent explanation for any of that. What the heck were Sylvanas & Helya even doing? It's not consistent with the Jailer's plan at all: As we see in Shadowlands, they could have had all the Valkyr they wanted. Unless of course they wanted Valkyr that were unconnected to the Jailer & the Lich King: To give them some agency against him: But woops, even that makes no sense with the whole soul-splitting nonsense.

[Reclaimer]

Idk. I just like killing things.

- - - Updated - - -

Hard to talk shit about the lore now when WC3 fucked with almost everything from WC’s 1 and 2.

Winning post. Good job but you are shooting WAY beyond the common poster here that will understand that. Most Critique about his work from this community here is summed up like this

" Danuser? I only know it from the hate he gets and it's cool to hate him, Also, the steamers I follow hate him too so I will hate him even tho I don't understand why I am hating him, What does he do again? Man, I hate him. Is it a him right? I don't know okay? I am doing it because it's cool tho. "

Kinda like how Ghostcrawler was mass hated and everyone he claimed he played mage or hunter only to find out he raided RET during VAN/BC and fixed most of the better class issues in the game up to WotLK. It's laughable.

On-topic tho, Due to the fact that I am only of the few that know the full picture of what's being worked on, I'll say people shouldn't Critique until the full picture is bought to light. Can't get in trouble again so I'll just say I am happy for the story myself, But I know people will bitch because that's the normal standard for this game. " I don't understand it clearly so it that must mean the writings shit! " Imagine someone with that logic xD

[Soon-TM]

Due to the fact that I am only of the few that know the full picture of what's being worked on, I'll say people shouldn't Critique until the full picture is bought to light. Can't get in trouble again so I'll just say I am happy for the story myself.

Heya Steve, hope you don't mind about me saving this jewel of a quote for further reference

[Menog]

Winning post. Good job but you are shooting WAY beyond the common poster here that will understand that. Most Critique about his work from this community here is summed up like this

" Danuser? I only know it from the hate he gets and it's cool to hate him, Also, the steamers I follow hate him too so I will hate him even tho I don't understand why I am hating him, What does he do again? Man, I hate him. Is it a him right? I don't know okay? I am doing it because it's cool tho. "

Kinda like how Ghostcrawler was mass hated and everyone he claimed he played mage or hunter only to find out he raided RET during VAN/BC and fixed most of the better class issues in the game up to WotLK. It's laughable.

On-topic tho, Due to the fact that I am only of the few that know the full picture of what's being worked on, I'll say people shouldn't Critique until the full picture is bought to light. Can't get in trouble again so I'll just say I am happy for the story myself, But I know people will bitch because that's the normal standard for this game. " I don't understand it clearly so it that must mean the writings shit! " Imagine someone with that logic xD

... why the hell are you trying to claim that the storytelling is anything but god awful? Are you actually trying to say that the future of this fan fic will get fixed in the next chapter? Are you serious?

The harm the lore team did to the story is beyond fixable at this point.

Destroying years of well constructed villains in a .x patch (Emerald Dream, N'Zoth, Rastakhan, Azshara) and diging the graveyard for more corpses to add to the pile (Garrosh and prolly arthas now) all so they could insert a fucking blue bald ugly giant in the story and claiming it was 5 Dimension Chess all along and this was their entire plan is beyong silly.

Not to mention the unjustifyable and plain stupid moves from sylvanas and shortly after tyrande/elune or whatever the hell they dug up from their arse only to end up and blaming the jailer for everything since the stabbie stab of sylvanas in Warcraft 3 removing all character agency and... reason... just so they can have the dumbest redeem arc ever... I don't even know what to say anymore.

They tottaly ruin the storyline with the worse fan fiction in history and you are here claiming we haven't seen the full picture so we can't call a spade a spade.

Even if you claim you know the full picture (wich I doubt) there is no fixing this shit unless we are all in a mangekyou sharingan indused nightmare since the ending of Legion.

[Skildar]

You're using Stormheim as an example of *positive* characterization? We don't have a cogent explanation for any of that. What the heck were Sylvanas & Helya even doing? It's not consistent with the Jailer's plan at all: As we see in Shadowlands, they could have had all the Valkyr they wanted. Unless of course they wanted Valkyr that were unconnected to the Jailer & the Lich King: To give them some agency against him: But woops, even that makes no sense with the whole soul-splitting nonsense.

This part has pissed me off big time during Legion, it bothered me to have Sylvanas ignore a horde player during the leveling scenario.

The fact that the only thing we get is that it was an attempt at some more leverage but nothing more now doesn't really phase me all that much though...

[Syegfryed]

Winning post. Good job but you are shooting WAY beyond the common poster here that will understand that. Most Critique about his work from this community here is summed up like this

And what and how, did Wc3 fucked "almost everything" from wc1 and 2, exactly?

On-topic tho, Due to the fact that I am only of the few that know the full picture of what's being worked on, I'll say people shouldn't Critique until the full picture is bought to light. Can't get in trouble again so I'll just say I am happy for the story myself, But I know people will bitch because that's the normal standard for this game. " I don't understand it clearly so it that must mean the writings shit! " Imagine someone with that logic xD

an yes, you see the "full" picture.

This nonsense of "shouldn't critique until the full picture is bought to light" is bs, we waited in BfA and it was WORSE than we thought

plus, we don't need to wait to reach the destination to see how the road is completely fucked. Destination is the dumpster btw,, we had plent of road signals pointing to that.

[Osmeric]

plus, we don't need to wait to reach the destination to see how the road is completely fucked. Destination is the dumpster btw,, we had plent of road signals pointing to that.

Indeed. This is why when the game feels bad you should bail immediately, not vainly hope for improvement that won't come. I did that with SL over a year ago. I feel great how that turned out. Sorry for those who couldn't bite that bullet.

[Kralljin]

Winning post. Good job but you are shooting WAY beyond the common poster here that will understand that. Most Critique about his work from this community here is summed up like this

I find this comparison always extremely close minded because one is equating the fledgling days of the franchise with it being now over 25 years old.

Bear in mind, when Warcraft 3 came out, the Warcraft franchise was merely 7 years old and by this point, a lot of stuff was up in the air, not even every campaign / mission you played was considered canon (such as the human campaign in Warcraft 1 or Orc in Warcraft 2).
However, 20 years later, a lot of it has been solidified, built up and explained, going back and "recontextualizing" stories that are two decades is something entirely different.

When a (video game) franchise gets more installments, it's not uncommon that certain elements change as the franchise grows, because the first installments are rarely written with a 10-20 year contiuation in mind, but when the franchise is frankly out of this "growth phase" (and Warcraft is certainly out of this growth phase by now), going back and trying to reframe 20 year old installments is just plain terrible.

[Asrialol]

This nonsense of "shouldn't critique until the full picture is bought to light" is bs, I waited in BfA and it was WORSE than I thought

Fixed that for you <3

it's interesting to see that some people in this thread finds the poll results to be representative. Interesting - but not surprising when the rest of their post is taken into account.

I will never understand peoples need for confirmation. And their constant need to complain about things they can do nothing about - other than leave it behind or keep being engaged to something they don't like.

Are you guys actually getting emotional (angry, upset, etc) over the lore? Or is it more like "lmao fuck this, guess I'll whine" or something else? What's the motivation to keep sticking around if you don't like it?

[Khaza-R]

Fixed that for you <3

it's interesting to see that some people in this thread finds the poll results to be representative. Interesting - but not surprising when the rest of their post is taken into account.

I will never understand peoples need for confirmation. And their constant need to complain about things they can do nothing about - other than leave it behind or keep being engaged to something they don't like.

Are you guys actually getting emotional (angry, upset, etc) over the lore? Or is it more like "lmao fuck this, guess I'll whine" or something else? What's the motivation to keep sticking around if you don't like it?

As opposed to the mental gymnastics needed to try and invalid other's opinions simply because you can't come to terms with the fact that many people don't like the current story?

[geco]

Fixed that for you <3

it's interesting to see that some people in this thread finds the poll results to be representative. Interesting - but not surprising when the rest of their post is taken into account.

I will never understand peoples need for confirmation. And their constant need to complain about things they can do nothing about - other than leave it behind or keep being engaged to something they don't like.

Are you guys actually getting emotional (angry, upset, etc) over the lore? Or is it more like "lmao fuck this, guess I'll whine" or something else? What's the motivation to keep sticking around if you don't like it?

Well we have things like Blizzard rushing Varock's cinematics because of the most received Teldrazzil was.
Let him officially say that Night Warrior Tyrande was a last second invention. And again and again they apologize for that or say that it is still left when a while ago they said it was the end now.
Apologize for Nzoth.
Zekan's novels.

And more things like that that Blizzard is concerned about how badly the story is getting received. So it is quite correct to assume that much of the community does not like History.

And we talk about Blizzard. The company that tried to say that W3 was the fault of the users.

[Lodreh]

I believe Danuser has grandiose plans that do not translate to a MMO very well. The story constantly takes player agency away... what works in a book works less well in a chose your own adventure. Great stories feel like they spring from a part of your own desires... not something that sets you apart from their happenings. I also see a narrative that is terribly punishing in it's execution. By the time another story beat drops we have either forgotten or have become apathic to the events which lead to the conclusion. This does not work well to keep your audience engaged. Each patch should feel more like a story arc rather than a single chapter in a story. That way you see actual progress and you can ride the high of the conclusion until the next patch drops.

[Syegfryed]

Fixed that for you <3

Bfa was an awful expansion, and it turns out to be worse than we expected with n'zothwasted ina aptch killed by a dragon ball z move and teldrasil was put under the rug.

it's interesting to see that some people in this thread finds the poll results to be representative. Interesting - but not surprising when the rest of their post is taken into account.

let me guess, you like the story

or even better, you are so beyond us, mere mortals, that discuss the game in the game forum.