Now i look at bit different at Steve Danuser

[Gaidax]

FWIW, I agree with this take for the most part. There were many things they could've done with the burning of Teldrassil and this was probably one of the worst. Danuser deserves to get shit for it because it is, by most accounts, a pretty boring, almost by-the-numbers story. The introduction of The Jailer hasn't been very well received or executed; he reminds me of a discount Deathwing without the cool factor of being a really big fucking dragon that occasionally lights the world on fire. And while we were likely planned to get to the Shadowlands one way or another regardless of whether Danuser had anything to do with it, I doubt many will look back to this expansion's story and think fondly of it.

The biggest silver lining I see, if this story is true, is that 10.0 will be an opportunity for us to see what Danuser can crank out without being constrained by the road map put in place by other narrative leads. Whether that's a good or bad thing is entirely up to individual players (I'd say his work in SL lends itself to a fair bit of skepticism) but I'm willing to look at this from an angle of at least giving him the benefit of the doubt here.

The Jailer should have been introduced in BFA already, if not even frikkin' teased in Legion.

I'm not sure how you can blame that on some dude who was not even at the reins at the time.

I understand there is this whole "Danuser is the great destroyer" fad of the month going on here, but bruh, them numbers - they don't match on this one.

[LorDC]

Okay, I've decided to compile a timeline to understand things better:
2016 August - Legion comes out. That's roughly the time when BFA development starts. Afrasiabi is already Creative director. Danuser is Senior Game Designer.
2017 October - Danuser becomes Senior Narrative Designer.
2018 Aug - BFA releases. SL development starts.
2019 May - Danuser becomes Lead Narrative Designer. This is first time where he gets to "Define setting, character arcs, and story goals for WoW expansions and content updates." as linkedin says.
2020 Jun - Afrasiabi leaves Blizzard.
2020 Nov - SL releases

If you look at it you can see:
1) BFA and burning of Teldrassil can not be Afrasiabi's "last laugh" or "parting FU". Timeline just isn't there. Those events where planned out at least two years prior to him leaving Blizzard.
2) On the other hand, BFA events aren't really Danuser's fault, unless you credit him for being some kind of evil office mastermind, pushing his agenda through at least two levels of corporate hierarchy.
3) With SL things aren't that clear, because for at least half of it's development timeline Danuser was one of the people responsible for overall story direction.

So, my take on it:
1) Story shitshow probably isn't some kind of revenge. It simply is a rash decision that was made without thinking about consequences.
2) SL is child of both Afrasiabi and Danuser.
3) We'll have to look at next expansion to see what Danuser is truly capable of.

[Rageonit]

I don't believe even for a second that this was some kind of sabotage job. Sounds more like people trying to justify Danuser's and Golden's absolute fucking garbage writing.

Do you know what a camel is? It's a horse designed by a committee.
Goes for everything in life, writing too, obviously. You shouldn't expect any better.

[thesmall001]

Why would you look at him different? Shadowlands still is hot garbage and The bald man being retroactively introduced as mastermind of the scourge and other events are still awful regardless if Afrasiabi wanted to make her a villain.

His attempt to "redeem" her or "fix" is worse than the damage Afrasiabi did.

Let alone how he though Teldrasill was good and he was part of BfA writing project, he seemed very onboard on everything, since he evens self insert as Nathanos there.

I dunno, kind of puts into perspective the idea that there is a hateful wraith working in the background, dictating everything, manipulating things against those with free will and trying their best, their fight to get rid of him even though he's a primeval force that cannot be destroyed or defeated. And, finally, an external force comes in and gets rid of him leaving the rest to figure out how they make things right despite the literal scars with which he's left them all.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you know what a camel is? It's a horse designed by a committee.
Goes for everything in life, writing too, obviously. You shouldn't expect any better.

I, too, love Parks and Rec.

[Verdugo]

I don't believe even for a second that this was some kind of sabotage job. Sounds more like people trying to justify Danuser's and Golden's absolute fucking garbage writing.

I believe it, especialy since I was saying it years ago.

Of course that doesnt change the fact that the attempt at fixing the problem was terrible.

[Gaidax]

Okay, I've decided to compile a timeline to understand things better:
2016 August - Legion comes out. That's roughly the time when BFA development starts. Afrasiabi is already Creative director. Danuser is Senior Game Designer.
2017 October - Danuser becomes Senior Narrative Designer.
2018 Aug - BFA releases. SL development starts.
2019 May - Danuser becomes Lead Narrative Designer. This is first time where he gets to "Define setting, character arcs, and story goals for WoW expansions and content updates." as linkedin says.
2020 Jun - Afrasiabi leaves Blizzard.
2020 Nov - SL releases

If you look at it you can see:
1) BFA and burning of Teldrassil can not be Afrasiabi's "last laugh" or "parting FU". Timeline just isn't there. Those events where planned out at least two years prior to him leaving Blizzard.
2) On the other hand, BFA events aren't really Danuser's fault, unless you credit him for being some kind of evil office mastermind, pushing his agenda through at least two levels of corporate hierarchy.
3) With SL things aren't that clear, because for at least half of it's development timeline Danuser was one of the people responsible for overall story direction.

So, my take on it:
1) Story shitshow probably isn't some kind of revenge. It simply is a rash decision that was made without thinking about consequences.
2) SL is child of both Afrasiabi and Danuser.
3) We'll have to look at next expansion to see what Danuser is truly capable of.

That'd be my take on the whole thing too.

Although I'm not sure whether these supposed godlike powers Afrasiabi and Danuser command actually pan out in reality. But again, this is one of the saner takes here so far.

- - - Updated - - -

The important take out here is that if anything else, it's a compounding mess where every person big and small contributed to the ongoing mess.

I, personally, do not even think the story itself is bad - my problem if anything is with storytelling. I do find us going into 9.2 not knowing even half of what we should have known by now at 90th minute endgame, is the actual fuckup in the whole thing.

Few vague cutscenes here and there do not help and some things are absolutely needlessly obscure even at this point.

[Th3Scourge]

I am sorry, but my BS detector went off heavily on this one, bub.

I'm not sure how much more one should repeat the obvious that the whole Jailer/Sylv arc thing was jumpstarted before Legion even shipped. The very first patch of Legion was filled with the whole thing, in between "serve six master but bow only to one" and heck whole Stormheim line with all the death motives and HelyaXSylv, Eye of the Jailer and all.

The whole thing was setup and greenlit already there. We would end in Shadowlands and we would be fighting Jailer and Sylv. you have frikkin' Ilgynoth spoiling half the thing 5 years ago - whether it's 5 keys opening the way (literally first moments of 9.2) or Dreadlords bowing to One, Circle of Stars and practically many major events of this arc.

It's not some "suddenly Jailer grand architect" thing - the whole thing was already planned 6 years ago and counting, if not longer than that.


The storytelling failure was that Jailer was only introduced this expansion, where as we should have already got a more concrete clue in BFA if not Legion even. And despite the MMO-C posters love of singling out that one guy who "destroyed it all... again" - it's really a cumulative fuckup on the whole story and narrative team, the plan and the story were there, their storytelling and pacing was lacking however.

That is the issue. Not one Danuser or one Afrasiabi.

Sorry, bub, you're just making excuses for the current team. They are in charge, they set the direction. They decided to fist the jailer into the lore without fleshing out his character, and now we're left with a 'titan ++' lore character that invalidates all the lore that came before him but there's zero build-up, development or reason to care.

The current team is to blame for the current problems

[Pheraz]

Even if afriasabi seems like a disgusting person and it is good that he is gone, I find the SL story MUCH more terrible than Bfa and legion.
Actually legion and bfa are my fav expansions. The atmosphere when you hang around in bfa or legion zones is soooo good. Music, zone design, colors, models. The story at least makes sense in the warcraft universe. Even if we were already annoyed by Sylvanas in Bfa, those were all interesting plots. Warbringers were top notch and I wanted to follow the stories throughout the expac. Including Azshara and even 8.2 EVEN THOUGH the azerite system was super crappy.
In SL the gameplay is actually a bit better but I just hate to be there. I am done with the tmog I can do without raiding outside of LFR so I just do alt stuff on legion and bfa zones because I just like to be there. And the stories are still cool. The whole theme of SL is just... wrong. It should not have been made and it feels some a weird mix of themes that do not fit together. Hell, I would even say that WoD was a better theme. And we are talking about time travel orcs here.

[Geckoo]

Even if this was true, there has been enough time and content for Danuser to do his job and apparently people don't like it. I really don't get the need some people have to defend, justify or attack some developers, judge their work with your wallet, be a customer not a fanboy.

I do believe that treating SL as the end of a long saga that started many years ago is a way to dettach the current developers from something that almost none of them created, meaning that they can probably have more freedom to create whatever they want and that's a good thing honestly. But time will tell i guess.

[Akta]

To judge Danuser for his work we have to wait untill we see how 10.0 turns out. This will be his first project as the lead from start, is not like you can turn shit to gold in the turn of a cut project like shadowlands. It is clear they are working full force on the next expansion.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah nah. Danuser is still a fucking hack.

[TheRevenantHero]

I believe it, especialy since I was saying it years ago.

Of course that doesnt change the fact that the attempt at fixing the problem was terrible.

Considering Danuser created Nathanos as a self-insert so he could bang Sylvanas, I don't believe for a second this conspiracy theory holds any water. The timeline for it also makes no sense. As I said, this is just people trying to blame things on Afrasiabi instead of admitting the current writing team is absolute garbage.

[Verdugo]

Considering Danuser created Nathanos as a self-insert so he could bang Sylvanas, I don't believe for a second this conspiracy theory holds any water. The timeline for it also makes no sense. As I said, this is just people trying to blame things on Afrasiabi instead of admitting the current writing team is absolute garbage.

Everyone is making selfinserts in this game if you didnt notice.

[Weezull]

2020 Jun - Afrasiabi leaves Blizzard.
2020 Nov - SL releases

So the non-Afrasiabi crew had plenty of time to undo the whole Nathrezim thing and make it so the Dreadlords made a deal with the Jailer for the Helm of Domination/Frostmourne. This deal could have been brokered by, unsurprisingly, some brokers, who you then have to chase down to learn more about it and those artifacts. Such a deal could have been for the soul of Argus or something, which is what caused the arbiter to be disabled.

[LorDC]

Considering Danuser created Nathanos as a self-insert so he could bang Sylvanas, I don't believe for a second this conspiracy theory holds any water. The timeline for it also makes no sense. As I said, this is just people trying to blame things on Afrasiabi instead of admitting the current writing team is absolute garbage.

Nathanos actually existed in WoW since vanilla. Like, 10 years before Danuser joined Blizzard.

[Syegfryed]

I dunno, kind of puts into perspective the idea that there is a hateful wraith working in the background, dictating everything, manipulating things against those with free will and trying their best, their fight to get rid of him even though he's a primeval force that cannot be destroyed or defeated. And, finally, an external force comes in and gets rid of him leaving the rest to figure out how they make things right despite the literal scars with which he's left them all..

respectfully, i have no idea what you tried to say here. im bad at picking sarcasm too.

[Utrrabbit]

He will not rest until his waifu has been fully redeemed. If you get between him and Sylvanas you can bet he will crush you with everything he has. How you think all the Afrisabi thing got actually started? Danuser has the power and strength many are missing - his love to his waifu that will grant him strength to push aside and crush anybody that are in the way to accomplish his quest.

It started by people outside the circle of people involved coming forward and speaking up about what was happening.

- - - Updated - - -

I tried but could not past 2 minutes.

And yes, Danuser was part of BfA writing, he was not the lead writing, but he was part of it.



What m saying its bullshit that people are now trying to excuse Danuser and his hot cocked garbage of story saying it was afrasiabi fault

like "oh my, Danuser is just trying to fix Afrasiabi "sabote" making Sylvanus a villain, because he had beef with Kosak, Danuser is just trying to fix the wrongs!"

Its Bullshit, if anything Afrasiabi did a better job at writing wow and Sylvanas, than Danuser, even if "revenge" was his goal.

No. He really was not. He was not on or anywere near the bfa writing team. He literak just started in SL.

[justandulas]

Still doesn’t change that SL is his baby and SL is arguably the worst narrative in any mmorpg history

[Syegfryed]

No. He really was not. He was not on or anywere near the bfa writing team. He literak just started in SL.

He wrote the nathanos shortstory, the maghar scenario as well other quests, so "literally started in SL is BS.

[LorDC]

Still doesn’t change that SL is his baby and SL is arguably the worst narrative in any mmorpg history

Not really. He wasn't in the leadership position at least until it was halfway done. And Afrasiabi didn't leave Blizzard until it was almost done.

2018 Aug - BFA releases. SL development starts.
2019 May - Danuser becomes Lead Narrative Designer. This is first time where he gets to "Define setting, character arcs, and story goals for WoW expansions and content updates." as linkedin says.
2020 Jun - Afrasiabi leaves Blizzard.
2020 Nov - SL releases