Now i look at bit different at Steve Danuser

[Syegfryed]

Surely the azerothian afterlife would include more of our own races.. yet we basicly see none.. which is why i dont personally see it as an afterlife (the azerothian afterlife would to me be seen more as the emerald dream) shadowlands feels more like a seperate plane (for lack of a better word) existing side by side with our plane of existence, but still as a physical part of azeroth, hidden by the veil that was destroyed by sylvanas.. this would also be a better explanation as to why both places has similar structures (the titan constructions and the constructions of the first ones) and could explain the titans and the first ones being the one and same beings, but with access to several planes of existence, which would to me be a better story than the crap thats going on right now.

they say it exists countless of afterlives, we are just stuck with joke hell, ghotic vampires, blue man group, night elves with hooves and turbo scourge. So, yeah they already remade everything you said.

We were supposed to see the other afterlives, but they obviously cut it out, cause Danuser is awful at worldbuilding, at least, they didn't ruin lets, say, tauren afterlife.

[Jazzhands]

Lmao I fucking love how it's getting more and more obvious how little Danuser is to blame for everything, and people on here are fucking freaking out! They're not having it, at all!

It's so much fun reading these people deny anything that doesn't fit their own personal opinion about him (I know, it's really fucked to have a personal opinion about a writer in a game, but hey, people are weird). Never change, MMOC.

He was handed a pile of shit then just shit all over it himself after a family pack of Taco Bell tacos. This doesn't make Danuser look any better because his work speaks for itself either way, Shadowlands has been 100x worse than BFA and that's kind of telling, even with the atrocity he was left with in BFA, it ended up with a better story than Shadowlands. All this basically tells us is that Afrasiabi set the stage for Danuser's current "best" work.

This is also just way too conveniently timed, from clickbait hungry youtubers with a known penchant for being Blizz shills. Don't believe everything you read on the internet kids.

[zhorteye]

they say it exists countless of afterlives, we are just stuck with joke hell, ghotic vampires, blue man group, night elves with hooves and turbo scourge. So, yeah they already remade everything you said.

We were supposed to see the other afterlives, but they obviously cut it out, cause Danuser is awful at worldbuilding, at least, they didn't ruin lets, say, tauren afterlife.

Again. I really cannot see the shadowlands truly being the afterlife on azeroth, as we have never before now seen or heard about the creatures found there.. shouldve been a different game on its own.. the races doesnt even remotely look azerothian except for the jailer looking like a titan.. everything else makes no sense.

Hence why my theory of it being a seperate plane of existence, since theres no way it can be a whole planet of its own unlike draenor as an example. This would also be an actually plausible explanation as to how argus could even end up there in the first place.. (i really just dont accept the shadowlands even remotely existing as its own thing without physical ties to azeroth)
But then again, we were told that time works differently in the shadowlands compared to on azeroth.. so theres nothing hindering them in going "oh the shadowlands was actually created by sylvanas when she broke the veil" or "the shadowlands existed within the helm of domination and was let out upon its shattering) this would however completely break every piece of already retconned lore even more.

[Swnem]

Yeah... i don't watch Taliesin stuff. Can't say i like it very much. He is a mix of chill with self-righteous indignation and victimization while throwing stones at others.
I don't want anything to do with his drama.

[Syegfryed]

Again. I really cannot see the shadowlands truly being the afterlife on azeroth, as we have never before now seen or heard about the creatures found there.. shouldve been a different game on its own.. the races doesnt even remotely look azerothian except for the jailer looking like a titan.. everything else makes no sense.

But it is the true afterllife, they said many times already. the problem is there is many "places", like bastion or ardenhald.

Tirion went to blue man group, Agra went to turbo scourge, Durotar went to orcish/tauren/ancestral afterlife, etc e,tc

Hence why my theory of it being a seperate plane of existence, since theres no way it can be a whole planet of its own unlike draenor as an example.

that would require then to retcon it, as we already know "shadowlands" are all the afterlives, but we just saw 5.

[Relapses]

This is also just way too conveniently timed, from clickbait hungry youtubers with a known penchant for being Blizz shills. Don't believe everything you read on the internet kids.

You'd have a point if the purpose of the video the OP linked was to excuse Danuser's shitty writing. The OP may have felt that way after watching the video but Tali wasn't sharing the story to give a free pass to Danuser; rather to provide context to the behind-the-scenes machinations of WoW's story narrative and the actual human beings responsible for it.

[Th3Scourge]

You'd have a point if the purpose of the video the OP linked was to excuse Danuser's shitty writing. The OP may have felt that way after watching the video but Tali wasn't sharing the story to give a free pass to Danuser; rather to provide context to the behind-the-scenes machinations of WoW's story narrative and the actual human beings responsible for it.

Nah these shills are just trying to cozy their way back in with Blizzard, remembering where there money is derived from.

[Relapses]

Nah these shills are just trying to cozy their way back in with Blizzard, remembering where there money is derived from.

I can understand the cynicism but I don't think this particular story is salacious or unbelievable enough to warrant this level of conspiratorial behavior from multiple people.

[Niwes]

This "Horde were villains all along" is completely contrary to what was set up from WCIII through WotLK. Garrosh's arc was interesting because he was putting pressure on turning the New Horde into something that it wasn't. But the new generation of writers decided that the Horde were always the bad guys (and forgot/never knew that the Blood Elves and Undead were allied with the Horde, but not actual members) and his story is pointless trash in retrospect. As in Thrall's arc. And the entirety of the Horde's narrative.

100% agree.

all this „Horde are the evilz guyz“ shit, that Blizz started some years ago, drived me away playing Horde any longer and was DEFINITELY not the original setup from WC3 - WotlK. and also MoP was made great by the conflict between original Horde with ppls like Thrall and Voljin vs Garrosh. exactly because the original Horde was NOT like Garrosh.

i totally can understand that a lot of ppl (at least i know many and i saw many of them) are pissed, when they committed themselves to Horde, in the past, just to see how it became that evilz guyz shitshow today. changing stuff that heavily, that lately, sucks a lot.

but to be fair, when ppls, like Danusers team, write such shit stories as SL, i am really not surprised that such ppl turning Horde into some blatant bad guys, they never were meant in the first place. …

all in all, Blizz shows since many many years that they completely piss on their longterm loyal customers. they just hunt for the quick profit. no matter what. these greedy idiots would even shredder everything in wow, if it makes them 10 cents more a month. *rolleyes*

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She literally committed genocide against her former cousins. You mass killed innocents, and kin. There's no coming back from that.

yep. 100% true.

if your goal is to destroy a character, by making the char unrepairable, its exactly what you do. there is no coming back from. and whatever person x do with that char later, person x can just loose. so, write a char Hitler-like, put the writing on the table of your successor, and go like „repair THIS“ … well…

i personally have no problem imagine this in a big company like Blizz. experienced such stuff by myself in such companies. and i also have no problem with imagine myself that Afrasiabi did such things. just look how arrogant and pissed he acted in some interviews in the past. the harassments asside, this guy was not Yoda.

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I'd take the credibility of multiple different sources verifying the same story over boring internet forum cynicism any day of the week.

you have 3 different sources in inet. and even 1 of it (Taliesin) mentioned his own is based on 4. what do you want ? an official Blizzard PR statement saying „sorry, our godlike, overpaid, old hand longterm captain harassment was pissed and did mad writing to a character of our product. we are sorry for that.“

or what ???

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Let's completely discount multiple verified sources all saying the same thing because that's what they want you to believe.

and they gain WHAT by that ? i dont see the „cui bono?“ in your conspiracy construct, tbh.

oh and i have to ask you the same question, that i ask every conspiracy moron out there: who EXACTLY is „they“ ?

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The video aligns with my post from some time ago in terms of who gets the blame for BfA:



I must say it is weird that the story was not planned in that much depth when it was announced, though. I hope the narrative team makes better decisions at least after closing Sylvanas' narrative arc and such.

maybe its that what they wanted to say with their strange „close a book from WC3 till now“ statement.

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I think this is like an underdog situation. If it quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, and the state of California launches an investigation into you--you're probably Alex in a duck costume at a Halloween party.

lol. great analogy! great sarcasm!

[Jazzhands]

You'd have a point if the purpose of the video the OP linked was to excuse Danuser's shitty writing. The OP may have felt that way after watching the video but Tali wasn't sharing the story to give a free pass to Danuser; rather to provide context to the behind-the-scenes machinations of WoW's story narrative and the actual human beings responsible for it.

That's entirely plausible, but I trust youtubers about as far as I can throw them. The implications of this video are obvious, and anything that paints Danuser in a positive light at this point in Shadowlands is bound to turn heads.

[Relapses]

@Niwes, you realize I'm agreeing with and defending you, correct? lol.

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That's entirely plausible, but I trust youtubers about as far as I can throw them. The implications of this video are obvious, and anything that paints Danuser in a positive light at this point in Shadowlands is bound to turn heads.

Like I said before, I can understand a reasonable level of cynicism but there's a pervasive narrative that this video is excusing or apologizing for Danuser when it's doing neither.

[exsanguinate]

So they basically using the jailer to save sylvannas from alex mistake

[Sinured]

According to him, Afrasiabi basically forced the Burning of Teldrassil story despite other people objecting but was quickly removed from the WoW team after. Leaving the other cdevs to scramble and try to write the rest of his story without knowing where he was going with it.

The main take away is that about 90% of BfA and 100% of Shadowlands is the current dev team. So not exactly the redemptive story people are trying to make it out to be.

because up to that point the "story" was awesome.
people will shit on anyone to claim "see random bill cosby suit dude fucked it up".

The story was bad for 10 years straight,
it will suck for the next 10 years.

[Kithelle]

Afrasaibi's fault or not, still pretty poor of a job they're doing...like they ripped off a snicker's commercial with the whole "She wasn't quite herself" excuse and now she's gonna go free like nothing happened.

[Jazzhands]

@Niwes, you realize I'm agreeing with and defending you, correct? lol.

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Like I said before, I can understand a reasonable level of cynicism but there's a pervasive narrative that this video is excusing or apologizing for Danuser when it's doing neither.

It doesn't excuse or apologize for him as a whole, no, But Teldassil is a focal point in BFAs story and one people often feel Danuser messed up bad, and if this is true it takes some of that heat off him as it wasn't his story or idea and he had to flesh it out with little to no details, which admittedly would be a shitty situation to be placed in. This makes him look better, even if only slightly, which at this point is a pretty big thing given how deep of a hole he's dug with Shadowlands.

[MoanaLisa]

That's entirely plausible, but I trust youtubers about as far as I can throw them. The implications of this video are obvious, and anything that paints Danuser in a positive light at this point in Shadowlands is bound to turn heads.

It's not a zero-sum game. You can criticize Afrasiabi without boosting Danuser. Many posts in this thread do exactly that. I think Danuser made a hash out of the situation he was given. Fine. The notion that Afrasiabi made huge decisions on a whim without fleshing them out isn't exactly a secret. Afrasiabi's thing was essentially "shock = epic" which is why he killed off so many lore stables before they could properly develop replacements. Besides with the timelines that Blizzard takes on expansion development it's not exactly hard to believe that most of the story arcs and main elements for Shadowlands were set during BFA. They take 18 months to 24+ months to develop and expansion and before any work can really begin the story beats need to be sketched out and finalized so that art, coding, music and the rest have an outline to work from. Afrasiabi was creative director for BfA. Danuser was credited as a game designer along with about 60 other people.

[Irian]

you didn't watch the video

No I did, I just don't actually care who individual sunk the ship when everyone's still drowning anyway. Even if Afriasiabi is to blame for this Sylvanas arc, then everyone else on the team still had plenty of much less garbage routes to take the story of Shadowlands. I'm interested in a game that isn't shit, not in the inner workings of Blizzard's management and why they couldn't steer their game away from becoming a complete dumpster fire.

[Relapses]

It doesn't excuse or apologize for him as a whole, no, But Teldassil is a focal point in BFAs story and one people often feel Danuser messed up bad, and if this is true it takes some of that heat off him as it wasn't his story or idea and he had to flesh it out with little to no details, which admittedly would be a shitty situation to be placed in. This makes him look better, even if only slightly, which at this point is a pretty big thing given how deep of a hole he's dug with Shadowlands.

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.

[Gaidax]

No, this is pure smoke-and-mirrors deflection from the destruction Danuser's has brought upon the wow lore.

Absolutely none of this Alex Afrasiabi Sylvanas-Teldrassil storyline excuses for the disaster that is Shadowlands lore, and more specifically The Jailer, who is now the grand architect behind every calamitous even in Warcraft history

The Jailer is the single worst lore character in Warcraft history, and it's Danuser's fault. The only way the lore is redeemable at this point is if somehow the Jailer is written out of existence.

I normally HATE recons, but I will allow a retcon pass if it completely retcons the entire expansion as if it never happened

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.

[TheRevenantHero]

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.