The story won't be good again until

[VladlTutushkin]

The story won't be good again until Blizzard stops caring how people view it through the faction lens. The good story that fueled WoW's meteoric success from launch through Wrath all came from the RTS games in which players played as all factions through the story campaigns. Blizzard either needs to stop development on WoW and advance the story through a new RTS endeavor or they need to craft lore and stories without caring who thinks their faction is being wronged.

Think about how Arthas's story would have been received had it been delivered through WoW. It would have been Sylvanas 0.5. Alliance players would have cried that their beloved prince was being taken away and turned into a villain. Conversely, I believe Sylvanas's WoW story development would have been far better received in the faction agnostic environment of a Warcraft RTS game.

Well, people wont stop now EVER since the "last encore" of the faction war was merciless flogging of the Alliance , with stakes raised so high some people genuinely considered that devs would "pull the plug" and end the WoW here and then with some apocalyptic faction massacre and then do Warcraft 4 and WoW 2. And then Horde lost its Warchief, again, and that was... well, Blizz hoped it would be "it".

But they are wrong. BfA left festering, infected wounds which will continue to poison the game for ages now, leaving no hope for people ever "moving on" since it was made too personal, and after too many subsequent lies, false promises and insultingly low efforts to fix things.

[Utrrabbit]

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.

Except Danasur was maybe 20% responsible for BFA and SL. Afrasaibi has 80% to do with both lore/storyline for those expansions. So blaming someone who came in after the fact is pretty telling about you.

[cparle87]

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.

I'm not arguing either way. I'm saying no one can objectively argue them because no one has the information.

There's a logical fallacy for this, argument from ignorance. Normally it's used in the context of "you can't prove X doesn't exist therefore it does", but it can also be used in context of refusing to acknowledge the answer to the argument is unknowable.

You can argue the game is doing well or not based on your own anecdotes, but sub numbers cannot be objectively discussed. There's a difference.

"I look around my server and it feels empty." Fine.
"I look around my server and it feels empty therefore sub numbers must be super low." See the difference?

[Syncr]

I'm not arguing either way.

I love it when people say this stuff and then literally in their whole post that’s exactly what they do.

Yea, you are in fact arguing one way.

I'm saying no one can objectively argue them because no one has the information.

No one can objectively say that Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a transgender person. But we can take a look at all the evidence around us and be fairly certain of some metrics.

Raiding attendance at an all time low. Has been consistently dropping for awhile now.

Que times for normal casual stuff is astonishingly higher than it use to be

Pvp participation in arena is also at all time lows that have been dropping for awhile now

Google trends showing less and less interest in world of Warcraft

Whole communities of popular wow players all leaving the game and talking about how terrible it is

Activision blizzard quarterly results almost never mentioning world of Warcraft in the highlights for sub counts or even profits, and when they do they almost ALWAYS mention it’s because of classic. And even when wow is in the highlights it’s always with lawyer-esq wording like “deepest engagement” or they mention how much revenue they have received from micro transactions.

Wow viewer counts nearly non existent for ‘big events’. Seriously the largest viewer counts tournaments and events bring in are like 1/3 of a random league of legends player smurfing in solo q.

The list goes on and on and I can continue to point to stuff in that direction. Find a game that’s killing it right now and tell me if you can even list 2 of these things.

Like I said, if we want to play the “well no one really knows” card while actively sitting in a burning house you be my guest. But no one is going to take what you say seriously.

[There's a logical fallacy for this, argument from ignorance. Normally it's used in the context of "you can't prove X doesn't exist therefore it does", but it can also be used in context of refusing to acknowledge the answer to the argument is unknowable.

“Unknowable” ok sure. It’s unknowable to know gravity exists so I guess let’s just act as if it doesn’t.

You can argue the game is doing well or not based on your own anecdotes, but sub numbers cannot be objectively discussed. There's a difference.

Sweetheart you’re either blissfully ignorant or you are just arguing to argue. No one is buying it. Literally no one.

[Aucald]

Let's drop the aside about unknowable MAU statistics as it has nothing to do with the game story or lore, and return to the topic at hand.

[Magical Mudcrab]

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.

Except, you know, basically everything after Sylvanas' decision to burn the World Tree appears to not be Afrasiabi's fault. He had an idea of how that storyline would play out, forced the burning of Teldrassil through, and it's the current team fumbled it badly because they wanted to do rewrites to salvage Sylvanas (i.e.: the story arc had not been fully developed by the time Afrasiabi was moved off the team). What we got was the single worst overarching story we've ever received in WoW, including the total destruction of Scourge lore, and the throwing away of characters like Kel'thuzad, Arthas, and Ner'zhul.

[Super Dickmann]

Except, you know, basically everything after Sylvanas' decision to burn the World Tree appears to not be Afrasiabi's fault. He had an idea of how that storyline would play out, forced the burning of Teldrassil through, and it's the current team fumbled it badly because they wanted to do rewrites to salvage Sylvanas (i.e.: the story arc had not been fully developed by the time Afrasiabi was moved off the team). What we got was the single worst overarching story we've ever received in WoW, including the total destruction of Scourge lore, and the throwing away of characters like Kel'thuzad, Arthas, and Ner'zhul.

Notwithstanding the main point, since Afrasiabi was still on the team and actively running interviews for it as late as mid-BFA and you can see his take on Sylvanas as the devil incarnate in Shadows Rising, Sylvanas deliberately fucking up at the Wrathgate natch, or that SL pales in comparison to both BFA and TBC in terms of being a complete fucking shambles, the last bit is one I can't follow. KT is, even with the mach 5 backtracking done later to disavow their own material since it offended even the atrophied taste buds of the writing staff, completely wasted. The Scourge, Arthas and especially Ner'zhul though have basically no changes to the story. Whether one personality deprived half-naked Bald Man who's power they co-opted was in charge or not when the Scourge broke into their own faction is basically irrelevant. I'll remind that Ner'zhul died off-screen in a book last time the MU one made a major appearance as anything but an echo and then his AU self died like a monologuing joke in a 5-man while his role and influence were downplayed heavily in the book. The SL appearance is the only one that can even be defended, because it doesn't consume narrative oxygen, is short and is actually properly bleak. Arthas went from being a perpetually tortured child in hell, to kindling, but the game still felt the need to have Uther angst about throwing him into hell for 90% of his story in the expansion.

On topic, Danuser, Afrasiabi and so on have their own obsessions but the whole lot of them need to be fired. No matter what percentage of BFA and SL was done by who and whether Sylvanas is the devil or a tarded victim, the boiling cancer on the story, that being the endless march towards the Unifaction where every race is a palette-swapped homogenuous blob in total peace with each other is something both worked towards. Consequently, Danuser and Afrasiabi's treatment of the elements most aside from them, i.e every Horde institution, the worgen and night elves, have been identical. Writers who think they're telling overwrought morality fables, whatever hits or misses, are fundamentally unsuited to the game because they would and did inflict stacking damage over time. Even the best version of the morality fable story of this kind, i.e Mists, was still ultimately poison that handicapped the setting and did irreparable damage to a premier race. Anyone who doesn't grasp that conflict between actually morally and culturally varied groups and against giant bads is the meat and potatoes of the game and this is meant to go on endlessly has no place writing for it.

I propose the following simple test, hearkening back to Metzen. Ask any prospective hiree on the story team if they liked Starcraft 2's story. If they did, can them immediately.

[Smallfruitbat]

The story won't be good until...

They hire some outside content editing -or if they have some, then pay attention to what they're being told.

It seems to me, that they are so fixated with heading in a particular direction, they fail to see how it is received and what does/doesn't make sense. What we got in the Sylvanas book should have been in game, much as I disliked the arc we got, it would have been far more palatable if we'd seen what she saw. Writing books to make things make sense is just lazy storytelling.

The whole expanding the cosmos doesn't seem to have landed well with the player base if forum comments are to be believed. 'There must always be another secret' works well for some fantasy authors with massively developed world. By contrast, in WoW it just seems they've pulled more and more out of their asses to justify something. How many times are they going to use the tired trope 'I was only doing bad things to save you from something super mysterious and badder'

[Fabled]

Except, you know, basically everything after Sylvanas' decision to burn the World Tree appears to not be Afrasiabi's fault. He had an idea of how that storyline would play out, forced the burning of Teldrassil through, and it's the current team fumbled it badly because they wanted to do rewrites to salvage Sylvanas (i.e.: the story arc had not been fully developed by the time Afrasiabi was moved off the team). What we got was the single worst overarching story we've ever received in WoW, including the total destruction of Scourge lore, and the throwing away of characters like Kel'thuzad, Arthas, and Ner'zhul.

Oh I know, but you know they'd rather blame it on the past than themselves.

[Soikona]

Remember when it was Ghostcrawler or Metzen who were blamed for everything and people said the game wouldn't be good again until they were gone?

Ghostcrawler never did story afaik, and metzen peoblem was with green Jesus which they did put on the back burner when he was still there. Not really relevant

[cparle87]

Ghostcrawler never did story afaik, and metzen peoblem was with green Jesus which they did put on the back burner when he was still there. Not really relevant

It's totally relevant. You guys want to blame people for the game not being what you want it to be. The fact you even brought up "Green Jesus" literally reinforces my point, since the main bitchiness about Danuser is people call him a Sylvanas simp and Nathanos his self insert. Well, whadduyanow? Who was the first person Blizzard liked to satirize as having a self insert?

[Khaza-R]

It's totally relevant. You guys want to blame people for the game not being what you want it to be. The fact you even brought up "Green Jesus" literally reinforces my point, since the main bitchiness about Danuser is people call him a Sylvanas simp and Nathanos his self insert. Well, whadduyanow? Who was the first person Blizzard liked to satirize as having a self insert?

I don't find them very comparable. Really the only time Thrall was forced into the story where it didn't belong was Cataclysm. Even at that, it was mostly condensed to the Dragon Soul patch and then he got shelved for most of MoP. The backlash was more about his sudden savior status rather than him being presented as an important lore character. It just wasn't a popular direction for Metzen to try and take the character. However, Metzen didn't force us to through an entire expansion trying to "fix" Thrall. He mostly just moved the story forward and addressed it again in WoD where it made sense.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

Removing Danuser isn't gonna fix anything. In fact, it might just make things worse.

When Afrasiabi was in charge, he had a direction all planned out and wanted Sylvanas to be a full-on bad guy. That was his original goal until his termination and was probably setting up stuff for Shadowlands like having the Primus be the original Jailor and Sylvanas joining forces with him. This would explain that one screenshot of those ghosts ships suddenly appearing in Stormwind Harbor that went around.

After he was fired (or rather he "mysteriously left the company") the job fell into Danuser's hands... unfortunately, Danuser didn't share the same end goal as Afrasiabi or knew what ideas Afrasiabi had.. or that he had to change gears and deviate from Afrasiabi's plan into something else. Possibly to avoid association with Afrasiabi regarding the scandals that he left behind. Hence why the Jailer and Shadowlands became what it is now.

Now that Danuser is in full control.. He's the one laying the groundwork for Dragonflight. Changing him out NOW, would be a repeat of someone changing Danuser's original plan into something else that makes no sense what so ever.

I'm not a fan of Danuser's changes especially the directional shift that Sylvanas went through, he wanted to absolve her of her sins but the sins were too great to sway public opinion in wanting her gone. HOWEVER... If he's responsible for the direction of Dragonflight and he decided to quit, midway through the expansion like Afrasiabi did then the story would change drastically like what happened in BfA.

True!

I'm interested to see what a full-fledged Danuser expansion would look like without interferance from past fuck-ups.

When Dragonflight is over, we might think different regarding Danuser

[Nerovar]

True!

I'm interested to see what a full-fledged Danuser expansion would look like without interferance from past fuck-ups.

When Dragonflight is over, we might think different regarding Danuser

You're in for a rude awakening.

[LordVargK]

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!

Honestly, the best original WoW story was in MoP.
WotLK was pretty much a sad ending to WC3 in terms of storytelling. TBC's story didn't make sense and didn't even do justice to any of the starring characters (which all were WC3 characters) and Vanilla did not really have a coherent story and served more as world building (which it did great).
Cata was the first time we got "new" story and it was... mediocre. MoP had at least an original WoW main character and setting.

But the grand story telling of WoW was never that good, I agree. Although on a smaller scale exceptions exist. Many zone stories are quite well written and interesting. Just the overarching story is often noncoherent.

[Nerovar]

Notwithstanding the main point, since Afrasiabi was still on the team and actively running interviews for it as late as mid-BFA

Can you link these interviews? The last one I could find was from November 2018 apart from one video where he plays WoW Classic. From January 2019 onwards you only see Danuser interviews and in November 2019 he first gets described as lead narrative designer. There are also Danuser interviews from 2018 that already foreshadow some of the terrible shit we get to see in Shadowlands. In any way, Danuser was always pushing for a realignment of Horde/Alliance and all the subfactions and cultures they encompass... a sort of "great reset" of the Warcraft setting if you will.

[Super Dickmann]

It's totally relevant. You guys want to blame people for the game not being what you want it to be. The fact you even brought up "Green Jesus" literally reinforces my point, since the main bitchiness about Danuser is people call him a Sylvanas simp and Nathanos his self insert. Well, whadduyanow? Who was the first person Blizzard liked to satirize as having a self insert?

Green Jesus was the original writer's pet and unmatched in that regard, and Shadowlands is essentially a marginally less bad version of the Cataclysm Thrall story and SC2, both from Metzen. All message mongering is an outgrowth of existing flaws in the material, not alien to it. That doesn't excuse the new material though, for several reasons. Among them that writers following in the footsteps of the bad material and producing more bad material in its image are still making crap, just derivative crap. That Mists had an ending with shit consequences doesn't absolve Afrasiabi of making an exponentially worse version in BFA and Metzen being fixated on us being Thrall's marriage counselors and how cool noblesavages in a vegetative state were doesn't absolve Danuser or Golden from their multi-expansion insufferable soap opera about Anduin and Sylvanas. The other reason for this is the context they exist in. When you're just starting out and don't know how long you've got, making a shit expansion where you kill the entire WC3 expansion cast as insane villains and lobotomize the newly introduced playable race by having them learn about Jesus is bad. When you know you're doing this indefinitely, you've less excuse, especially not with signfiicantly more experience, tools and money. Being able to construct a story more functional than TBC doesn't even rise to the bare minimum that should be expected out of you.

[Super Dickmann]

Can you link these interviews? The last one I could find was from November 2018 apart from one video where he plays WoW Classic. From January 2019 onwards you only see Danuser interviews and in November 2019 he first gets described as lead narrative designer. There are also Danuser interviews from 2018 that already foreshadow some of the terrible shit we get to see in Shadowlands. In any way, Danuser was always pushing for a realignment of Horde/Alliance and all the subfactions and cultures they encompass... a sort of "great reset" of the Warcraft setting if you will.

The one in November is the one I mean. This was right after the 8.2 announcement, the events and assets of which were set in stone by that point. Given the time and money cost of the Saurfang cinematics and his own association with the character and his prominence, going as far back as Stonetalon, it stands to reason that the Sadfang saga was his baby throughout.We also know that there were Shadowlands assets already in the works by 2018, which means they were commissioned earlier, as was the expansion. You can pretty much chart Danuser and Afrasiabi's influence on the story by Sadfang and Sylvanas. For all of BFA Saurfang is honor incarnate and a symbol of our unity, up to and including Shadows Rising, while Sylvanas is a barely characterized satanic cipher. Right afterwards, Saurfang is mentioned once until he comes back as a trinket and then as a sop in a shit cinematic in 9.2, while Sylvanas starts making doe eyes at the camera and Anduin. They've no major difference in terms of their pro-Unifaction lean, only their path to getting there.

[Blackmist]

Again?

Has this game ever had what could be considered a good story?

[defibrillator]

Remember when it was Ghostcrawler or Metzen who were blamed for everything and people said the game wouldn't be good again until they were gone?

Nope, because this never happened.

t. has been here since Warcraft 3