Metzen Interview about Fandom and Toxicity

[Eggroll]

customers have full rights to complain if product is subpar.

and wow is lately old outdated shitty cash grab - a shade of its former self.

so its natural that customers are complaining.

Metzen is just bitter he got fired and they hired Christie.

1. Metzen didn't get fired
2. Christie Golden is not the replacement for Chris Metzen
3. You really have no clue

[Osiria]

Are you sure he made good arguments? That whole talk about "hating on Teldrassil but enjoying the Old Soldier cinematic"? Because, apparently, in his view, you either like everything or hate everything. Still, they're both bad and product of the same issues.

Anyway.

Typical bad behavior aside, like going to twitter to harass specific professionals, I got the vibe this interview is more of a way to blame the community. As usual. Devs are right and period. You're allowed to dislike but never to talk about their work as if it were bad or developers were incompetent. Else, it's not "contructive" and "it's toxic".

People have plenty of good arguments as to why this expansion is full of problems. But we're going to pretend all of that doesn't exist because some players go too far in the way they express their hate? Quite silly.

And it's specially funny it's Metzen talking about it, one of the guys responsible for making the lore this bad, thanks to all his Thrall and Horde bias. Anxiety or not, all he's doing is play the victim. By justifying this state, he justifies his own mess back in the day.

[Jastall]

Toxicity should have been expected considering how low quality the War of Thorns was in-game. The short stories immediately retconned the entire thing, making the entire event rather pointless.

I'll be the first to call the entire pre-patch event mediocre writing at best and horrible at worst, but that's not what Metzen is talking about. Criticism is more than fine and I do loads of it myself, but angry nerds dogpiling Golden on Twitter because the story doesn't go their way (and, let's be freaking honest here, because they already had an axe to grind with her politics and saw in her the perfect scapegoat) was just pathetic and he's right to call them out as the idiots they are.

I do think Blizzard don't help themselves. If you ask me the whole faction pride nonsense breeds more toxicity and blind tribalism than interesting conversation. But it also generates hype so....

[Eggroll]

I am not sure what exactly you mean by your comment but I would say if it is what I think I agree 100%

Lemme help you What exacly is unclear about my comment?

[Donkeywing]

Metzen himself is throwing a tantrum when he talks about Star Wars fans. It's all about how he liked it. He litteraly says he doesn't understand the hate, only hearing 1-2 negative things, and that much is obvious from hearing him talk. He hasn't read the criticism or went indepth on it and that's fine, but if he wants to constructively criticize a group like that for its behaviour then maybe he should have done his research. He also projects ridiculous things on those fans, he wrongly assumes the fans are mad because it's not ''their loot''. He renders his not-so-righteous judgement while clearly not having the full picture, and he knows it. Honestly that whole segment was full of prejudice and hate against certain groups of fans. Easily countered in a real life debate.

[Cel]

Yeah, people are used to Blizzard having a more all inclusive approach, most of the time we had a birds-eye view of the story, but the fact that a lot of people reacted emotionally to what was told (rather than how), it proved succesful. I'm ready for more of this.

Perhaps they should have been a bit more clear about their new way of storytelling way before War of Thorns

The problem there is all the people that are speaking out about how the story was told, rather then what happened in the story and are being ignored by being lumped into the same category.

My personal criticism of the game is entirely about how characters and the story was portrayed, and not actually what happened. I explained my POV in a earlier post and honestly, its not the horde and alliance conflict starting up again that irked me. It wasn't the loss of Teldrassil and Lordaeron that that annoyed me. These are excellent things to incite the right kind of emotion in a story and the right kind of riling up of the players.

But a lot of players are let down with how shallow characters are portrayed. How much they are banking off the 'WoW' factor (pun only slightly intended) of good effects and characters showing over the top powers.

I actually like Jaina as a character. She is one of the few that has had real character development over the years. But I felt this last story arc did negatives to her representation rather then positives. I loved Sylvanas's background. Its complex and a interesting position she is in. But I dislike how they developed her character over the years (or rather, didn't develop) as her most interesting time in the spotlight for me was during Wrath and that was despite being through the representation of 'revenge' which is used so many times.

As another poster put, there really isn't any negative press, so yah, maybe Blizzard succeeded in what they were trying to do. But IMO, I think being emotionally charged by the events within the game is a much bigger success then emotionally charged players debating on how the game is being presented.

[Daveon]

Why a flying ship? To get out of harms way? have a dominating presence on the battle field? Ok, I can make up excuses in my head even if some of them are reaching. Why arcane canons to fire a spell she could do without the arcane canons? Its just purely visual fluff at that point. And while this is a mundane example, but its one of countless.

This is off topic from the original post, but I've seen so many people ask "why a flying ship?" when I thought it was obvious. They were trying to show her connection to the Kul'Tirans (you know, the humans with the big navy of ships). It clearly didn't hit the mark because of the number of people questioning it. But in my opinion, it was obvious what they were trying to do, connect her story of going to Kul'Tiras to this story. It's a fantasy story, it doesn't seem that unreasonable that a society built around having a strong navy that also has powerful mages might have magical ships with arcane cannons. Or maybe my imagination is just over-active.

Now I had other issues with the Lordaeron story, but I didn't think the flying ship was that bad...

[cparle87]

To be fair, I'm along the lines of "please put that stuff in the game regardless, in case I don't bother leaving the game to hunt it."

I do think it would be great to double dip into that writing.

The guys I'm talking about are a bit more extreme than that. These aren't the "I don't like to have to look outside the game to find the lore" guys. These are the "I refuse to look outside the game to find the lore, if it's not in the game I'll just assume Blizz's writing is crap if I don't understand something and complain about it endlessly on the forums ignoring everyone who tries to tell me what it is I haven't seen."

[Deleted]

No it doesn't. Folks like you pick up all kinds of words and concepts on the internet and use them interchangeably, and generally erroneously, all the time.

Yes it does. No need to get so upset.

[Cel]

This is off topic from the original post, but I've seen so many people ask "why a flying ship?" when I thought it was obvious. They were trying to show her connection to the Kul'Tirans (you know, the humans with the big navy of ships). It clearly didn't hit the mark because of the number of people questioning it. But in my opinion, it was obvious what they were trying to do, connect her story of going to Kul'Tiras to this story. It's a fantasy story, it doesn't seem that unreasonable that a society built around having a strong navy that also has powerful mages might have magical ships with arcane cannons. Or maybe my imagination is just over-active.

Now I had other issues with the Lordaeron story, but I didn't think the flying ship was that bad...

Well, in my same post, I did say I could come up with personal reasons i could understand the ship, but it was still a bit of a stretch. Maybe its harder for me to see as a old WC rts fan, I have long known of Jaina's connection to Kul'Tiran and the history there. Introducing new people to old story isn't always easy and to this point, the ship does makes perfect sense in a lot of ways, just not so much in actual story telling.

Story telling wise, I feel that its just over the top fluff. Jaina could have been portrayed as powerful as she was, do the same things she did without a un-needed flying ship. I mean, the first thoughts through my mind when I saw that was:
Wait, why is she still floating it through the air, does she not know how to put it down?
And then, trying to actually rationalize it was: well I guess it does keep her out of projectile range and yah, she's making a statement of "I'm back" though in a fairly cheesy way. But honestly I could have stomached it without issue.

It was the arcane cannons that sort of put the whole thing over the top of absurdity for me. Yes, I know its fantasy, yes I know they are trying to excite people. But from a actual story telling pov, what the hell? They are a very minor part also, so don't assume I am getting hung up on the cannons specifically, but at the same time, they represent a lot of little things in WoW that sort of follow the same illogical path. Its there just to be there, but actually thinking about it from a story context, why?

I may be alone in this, but when they add things just to add things (specially in such a glaring spot like the main story arc) I feel it takes away from the game and the experience.

Jaina turning the boat in the air to bombard Lordaeron with nonsensical arcane canons wasn't good story telling. It was just good visual effects. All the manifestation of the cannons did for people that thought about it was probably confuse them. There is nothing wrong with shutting off this portion of your brain and just enjoying what you are fed, but I have a hard time doing that. I see something that doesn't make sense and it puts me off. Luckily the game does have good story moments, not all the characters are bland (and even the bland ones have time in the sun) and i can still enjoy it outside of the story.

It doesn't mean I wont look back and question the imagination of the ones that came up with the things that didn't make sense to me.

[Niwes]

cheesus. how hillarious. that metzen shit stuff. really, what a pussy.

ppl in crowd were assholes long before inet. no news here. it seems more that today literally EVVERBODY is a douchebag:

- the complainers totally go „oh my gosh, sky is falling“ after 1s. baam. douchebag.
- the fanboys totally go white knight attack „kill all complainers, blizz marry me“ after 1s. baam. douchebag.
- the creators and creatives go 1s after some crowd idiots mass complain „oh my gosh, they are so bad to us“ pussy mode. baam. douchebag.

no differentation. no patience. no thick skin. everybody always on steroids and stressing and/or stressed. omg.

in short: its just all more extreme. everything that happens happened before. nowhere nothing new here. the only difference is, that every fukin shit today is hyped, most important, super hot and looked at by a giant magnifier.

just chill. all of you. just fukin chill and differentiate.

[The Stormbringer]

everyone who uses a word like toxicity needs to define it not just blizzard

Okay, my definition of toxicity is being a complete jackass, offering only negative opinions rather than constructive criticism, threatening people needlessly, and being too stubborn to change.

[DarkAmbient]

It's over an hour long, is there a tl;dl or relevant timestamp?

[Relapses]

It's over an hour long, is there a tl;dl or relevant timestamp?

Metzen to community: Quit being a bag of dicks and let Blizzard tell the story they want to tell.

[oland138]

They talked a lot about the Star Wars stuff but didn't acknowledge that Disney/LucasFilm handled the situation very poorly. Metzen also seems to doubt that people are actually not going to bother watching episode 9, which I found kinda funny considering how 8 left very little to look forward to. And it also set the precedent that even if there is something to look forward to, the next film won't even address it.

But overall I do agree. People need to not take things out personally on writers etc. If you don't like something just voice reasonable criticism and spend your money on something else. For the record, I like bfa so far.

[Pull My Finger]

Yes it does. No need to get so upset.

But you're the upset, quarellsome nerd Metzen finds so embarassing, remember? I'm the mature, intelligent Pull My Finger. You can't be something you're not.

[Fetus Rex]

Metzen, most probably Sephardim who liked his own share of cheesy sci fi and fantasy, finally has embraced(at least publically) Ashkenazim big business narration. Victim olympics were never so bright.

[The Stormbringer]

Metzen, most probably Sephardim who liked his own share of cheesy sci fi and fantasy, finally has embraced(at least publically) Ashkenazim big business narration. Victim olympics were never so bright.

I don't think these are real words, or at least not English. Mind speaking plainly so we can understand what the heck you're saying?

[Gelannerai]

His message is fine, but I can’t help but feel there’s a little element of crocodile tears here. Blizzard actively fostered/fosters a major division in the WoW player-base. The AvH aspect is something they stubbornly refuse to let go of no matter how little sense it makes and no matter how much it actually harms the game. Tribalism is a major thing in human society, and Blizzard has gleefully attempted to tap into that as much as possible as long as WoW has been a thing. The toxicity is garbage, no doubt, but it’s not like Blizzard’s hands are clean. Of course it’s also possible that I’m jaded against the WoW devs and I’m talking outta my ass because of it.

[Sky High]

ALL fandoms are toxic cesspools and must be destroyed, news at 11.