The story won't be good again until

[mysticx]

Even if Danuser were to just disappear in some indeterminate way right this instant, it would take years to notice any difference, the story is planned years ahead of time, with development specifics determined by what story is coming.

[A Chozo]

But when was the story actually 'good'? The last time I really cared about the story was in WotLK

Yeah I came here thinking similar. Even WotLK was heavily criticized. Before that, TBC was a dumpster fire. LMAO JUST KILL ILLIDAN

OP's memory issues aside (or maybe he's a BfA baby), Blizzard has problems with their game's story. It's franchise-wide!

[Lochton]

Steve Danuser is sacked. After BFA and Shadowlands screw ups in the lore and don't get me started on how they screwed up Arthas and Sylvanas. I don't think Dragon Flight's lore is going to be good as long as this guy is lead helm in the story department.

So, you assume, that firing Steve Danuser will solve the problem? For there is no certainty about that.

As well, Arthas' story was done in Wrath, finished. He had his moment of farewell. Using him in Shadowlands was to be a reflection point for other characters, not for Arthas. As for Sylvanas, she's been going crap since like.. what.. Cata? And just been going downhill since. Glad she's now locked away in story writer limbo for a few years.

[Calfredd]

Yeah I came here thinking similar. Even WotLK was heavily criticized. Before that, TBC was a dumpster fire. LMAO JUST KILL ILLIDAN

OP's memory issues aside (or maybe he's a BfA baby), Blizzard has problems with their game's story. It's franchise-wide!

Nah OP has a history of making these kinds of threads.

[cparle87]

@cparle87 I eagerly await some new fresh concept from your next post. Maybe something about only five star chefs have any right to criticize food?

You don't understand critics, and I don't understand being unpaid PR for a huge corporation.

And I await you having an argument instead of an ad hominem but I won't hold my breath.

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I fully admit I was one of those people (granted I was also a kid that was like 15 years ago I was saying that shit) but at the very least with their crazy balancing, is that they actually made the game fun with the chaos.

Like sure I was bitching about patches and nerfs never coming and when they did I was mad about one thing or another. But there’s a massive difference here. When I was mad about those balancing issues, I was still enjoying myself. Now I just literally quit the game

Remember Ghostcrawler promised me a pony?

You can not be enjoying the game and the game can still be good, they're not mutually exclusive. It's just not your cup of tea anymore.

[Osmeric]

Dragonflight as an expansion doesn't look interesting or attractive to me. If the story interested me (and I don't think it does either), I could just read about it without subbing.

[Syncr]

And I await you having an argument instead of an ad hominem but I won't hold my breath.

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Remember Ghostcrawler promised me a pony?

You can not be enjoying the game and the game can still be good, they're not mutually exclusive. It's just not your cup of tea anymore.

You aren’t wrong, but when your wowretail numbers are objectively in the shitter than that’s also a completely different story.

[Villager720]

Except we haven't gotten anything 100% Danuser until Dragonflight, BfA was all Afrasiabi fallout, and Shadowlands moreso. Everything else has been picking up the pieces. That said, I'm not a fan of Danuser myself, but I'm slightly hopeful, as thin as that thread is at this point.

The Burning of Teldrassil was a salvageable story beat. Blaming Shadowlands nonsense on a dude who’d been gone for several years is pure, unfiltered hopeium.

[deviantcultist]

Steve Danuser is sacked. After BFA and Shadowlands screw ups in the lore and don't get me started on how they screwed up Arthas and Sylvanas. I don't think Dragon Flight's lore is going to be good as long as this guy is lead helm in the story department.

Dragonflight basically regresses the story back to how Cata-MoP-WoD stretched a long-filler arc until we actually got Legion. I'd rather have botched attempts at storytelling like SL instead of "let's get grounded" excuses of story arcs.

It makes me think of the example where you go to review a restaurant and criticize how they didn't do their special dishes as good as you thought, only for them to serve you a relatively well-prepared sandwich and say "there you go, have a sandwich if you can't appreciate what we do".

This is exactly the case with Dragonflight. "Oh you find our storytelling bad and convoluted with SL? Have some children's high fantasy about dragons instead".

[Villager720]

Danuser wasn't even responsible for the last few expansions. Afrasiabi was and he used his control to slap down Danuser and the other writers when they spoke against his story direction.

If Danuser was in charge I doubt the tree would have burned or Sylvanas would have been set up as the bad guy at all we probably would have got a war expansion more in line with the Cinematic.

All we ‘know’ is that Alex forced the Burning of Teldrassil, which could have been an interesting story beat - or used to generate complex stories. The fact that the story has failed horrendously on everything since demonstrates a profound lack of creative talent in the writing team. They’ve had years to come up with anything sensible and failed.
Blaming Alex 5 years out is ridiculous.

[Iain]

So long as they keep tunnelvisioning on characters rather than taking their whole world into account it's gonna remain an inconsistent mess, Danuser or not.

Can't say i know exactly for what parts he's responsible, but if he is indeed behind the BfA Sylvanas stuff then yes that would qualify for a paddlin'.

Exactly!

The game doesn't need to be a soap opera. In fact, it makes everything needlessly convoluted. Movies and novels can be character-driven stories, but a MMO needs to be world-driven. It needs to be a tapestry of countless tiny stories living together in one ecosystem.

It doesn't matter what Danuser, or anyone else is going to invent next if it's again the same three characters confronting a handful of new ones in a strange realm. It's not going to satisfy players, no matter what the stakes are.

And fault lies in part with the players themselves. We're discussing the latest patch of WoW like the latest episode of The Walking Dead. We latch onto whatever Jaina, Anduin or Sylvanas did this time, make endless forum posts and youtube videos about it analysing what these overextended, milked out characters will do this time.

In turn this provides an enormous amount of feedback and pressure to Blizzard to focus even more on these characters, perpetuating this vicious spiral at the detriment of the entire world surrounding this petty tale.

I hope that Dragonflight puts all these protagonist characters, INCLUDING the player character on the backburner and lets the world speak for itself. I don't need another main villain. I'll settle for many different smaller antagonists. I don't need elaborate cut-scenes and cinematics, please keep the story in-game.

[VinceVega]

Honestly, DF is the first time he can go off on his own. I will be impartial until we see what will happen here.

If this is also shit i will agree we you completly. Right now i am not sure.
End of SL was shit but he had to finish the stupid Slyvannas storyline somehow. Did not end well... but meh.

But lets be honest here: This could be the best story ever told and half of you guys will still say it is shit because reeee danuser reeeee.
It won't be. No MMO has a really good story. I think FF14 is cringy as fuck for example.

[cparle87]

You aren’t wrong, but when your wowretail numbers are objectively in the shitter than that’s also a completely different story.

They can't be "objectively" anything because none of us know them. And no, google api searches don't count.

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The Burning of Teldrassil was a salvageable story beat. Blaming Shadowlands nonsense on a dude who’d been gone for several years is pure, unfiltered hopeium.

"Hopeium"? That's a new one. What? Copium got used up so now you have to think up a new jaded buzzword to insult people who like something you don't?

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Dragonflight basically regresses the story back to how Cata-MoP-WoD stretched a long-filler arc until we actually got Legion. I'd rather have botched attempts at storytelling like SL instead of "let's get grounded" excuses of story arcs.

It makes me think of the example where you go to review a restaurant and criticize how they didn't do their special dishes as good as you thought, only for them to serve you a relatively well-prepared sandwich and say "there you go, have a sandwich if you can't appreciate what we do".

This is exactly the case with Dragonflight. "Oh you find our storytelling bad and convoluted with SL? Have some children's high fantasy about dragons instead".

Except on the other hand we have vocal people on these forums who WANT to go back to a more grounded story and less "cosmic forces nonsense." There was a whole thread about how great Warcraft was when it was strictly high fantasy before it became a kitchen sink.

WC1 through WC3 was children's fantasy.

[Syncr]

They can't be "objectively" anything because none of us know them. And no, google api searches don't count.

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"Hopeium"? That's a new one. What? Copium got used up so now you have to think up a new jaded buzzword to insult people who like something you don't?

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Except on the other hand we have vocal people on these forums who WANT to go back to a more grounded story and less "cosmic forces nonsense." There was a whole thread about how great Warcraft was when it was strictly high fantasy before it became a kitchen sink.

WC1 through WC3 was children's fantasy.

If we are going to sit here and act like wow sub numbers are doing peachy because they stopped posting the sub counts then we smoking something very serious.

If you’re an honest person you can see that it isn’t doing so hot right now.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...I've always said they need to rewrite the lore to fix it all. But...cheaper to pretend it's all good and just retcon it to death so the remaining player base doesn't care.

[loras]

Exactly!

The game doesn't need to be a soap opera. In fact, it makes everything needlessly convoluted. Movies and novels can be character-driven stories, but a MMO needs to be world-driven. It needs to be a tapestry of countless tiny stories living together in one ecosystem.

It doesn't matter what Danuser, or anyone else is going to invent next if it's again the same three characters confronting a handful of new ones in a strange realm. It's not going to satisfy players, no matter what the stakes are.

And fault lies in part with the players themselves. We're discussing the latest patch of WoW like the latest episode of The Walking Dead. We latch onto whatever Jaina, Anduin or Sylvanas did this time, make endless forum posts and youtube videos about it analysing what these overextended, milked out characters will do this time.

In turn this provides an enormous amount of feedback and pressure to Blizzard to focus even more on these characters, perpetuating this vicious spiral at the detriment of the entire world surrounding this petty tale.

I hope that Dragonflight puts all these protagonist characters, INCLUDING the player character on the backburner and lets the world speak for itself. I don't need another main villain. I'll settle for many different smaller antagonists. I don't need elaborate cut-scenes and cinematics, please keep the story in-game.

One can hope.

[Fabled]

The Burning of Teldrassil was a salvageable story beat. Blaming Shadowlands nonsense on a dude who’d been gone for several years is pure, unfiltered hopeium.

I'm not, I know Alex and Danuser's writing is pisspoor at best. Danuser, however, blamed Alex for the fallout and keeps falling back on that as to why BfA and Shadowlands writing was crap instead of, you know, actually making something good other than keeping his waifu alive.

[Feanoro]

And I await you having an argument instead of an ad hominem but I won't hold my breath.

Good idea. I'm not inclined to try to stop you beating those dead horses that you're calling arguments.

Do enjoy the feel of the sand and remember to come out at times to breathe.

[Aeula]

You’re right but the Afrasiabi myth that Danuser didn’t do nothin’ will permeate until he inevitably fucks up Dragonflight.

[Ermelloth]

I think it's rather Christie Golden who's "in charge" of modern WoW lore atm.