The story won't be good again until

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

You're in for a rude awakening.

Or not... I don't like his fangirling of Sylvanas either, but I'm guessing he HAS to learn at some point..

[Aucald]

Nope, because this never happened.

t. has been here since Warcraft 3

It definitely happened, and a quick search for something like "Ghostcrawler is killing WoW" will unearth a treasure trove of results, many of them pointing back to threads on these very forums. WoW has always had a number of public faces who serve as hate-sinks for dissatisfaction in the player base: Metzen, Tseric, Street, Afrasiabi, Hazzikostas, and Danuser.

[Feanoro]

WoW has always had a number of public faces who serve as hate-sinks for dissatisfaction in the player base: Metzen, Tseric, Street, Afrasiabi, Hazzikostas, and Danuser.

It has also always had people pretending:

1) there's no such thing as responsibility, particularly from leadership roles,

2) unpopular designs and story choices just magically appeared with no decisions being made by any Blizzard employees, and

3) the players are wrong for not loving everything Blizzard craps out.

[Aucald]

It has also always had people pretending:

1) there's no such thing as responsibility, particularly from leadership roles,

2) unpopular designs and story choices just magically appeared with no decisions being made by any Blizzard employees, and

3) the players are wrong for not loving everything Blizzard craps out.

A false dilemma. Nothing about those people being hate-sinks predicates that there were no legitimate issues with the game, or that they themselves bared no responsibility for said legitimate issues in some cases. But in general, they were often blamed for issues that they either had little or no control over, or else were always blamed for a given issue when the actual blame actually lay elsewhere (e.g. people blaming Danuser for gameplay issues when Danuser is actually in charge of WoW's narrative). Leadership roles don't imply or require that you take responsibility for things well outside your area of expertise or control.

[Orby]

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!

I will go ahead and say it, lore was never good in Warcraft after Warcraft 2. I know there are a lot of kids who grew up with Warcraft 3 and its their god game, but the story even then wasnt that great, the Arthas story was cliché and done to death even back then, and the dialogue was horrible, sure the game was enjoyable but the story and acting was pretty weak for the most part, there are some good gems in there, the orc campaign was a lot of fun and their ending was great. Although maybe the dialogue could be contributed to dialogue in video games at the time as a whole.

Warcraft went very high fantasy in Warcraft 3. And by TBC in WoW they went right out the door with the whole flying goat spaceship shit. And the state of the story now makes Warcraft 3 look like Shakespeare. Which is probably why people love Warcraft 3 so much in hindsight.

People don't remember the battlenet forums back in the day, but Warcraft 3 was very heavily criticized for alot of reasons, lore being one of them, I do remember people thinking it was too comic booky and less fantasy,. I wont use the term rose Tinted Goggles because that does undermine peoples genuine enjoyment, but to me Warcraft 2 was Warcrafts peak. I still have the instruction manual which was my bible as a kid. Back in the days when the lore was most of the book lol

[defibrillator]

It definitely happened, and a quick search for something like "Ghostcrawler is killing WoW" will unearth a treasure trove of results, many of them pointing back to threads on these very forums. WoW has always had a number of public faces who serve as hate-sinks for dissatisfaction in the player base: Metzen, Tseric, Street, Afrasiabi, Hazzikostas, and Danuser.

"Look look!!! Someone said that Metzen was killing Warcraft once 15 years ago!!!111" vs the entire first page of the Lore section frequently being filled with nothing but negative posts about Danuser. Conflating a handful of random posts that show up on Google search with the practically-unanimous enmity that the WoW fandom holds for Steve Danuser is just flat out disingenuous.

[LedZeppelin]

I think if all expansions launched in their x.3 state with x.0 levels of content (ie 1 raid at or near launch) then most expansions would be great. Seems that it always takes until x.3 to get it all right and by then we are at the end

[Woggmer]

Or not... I don't like his fangirling of Sylvanas either, but I'm guessing he HAS to learn at some point..

The fact that they're shelving Sylvanas aside is a good starting point, and given what we know about DF, it doesn't look like she'll be much on an influence since it may just be focused on the Dragon Aspects involved (though it might be more centered on Wrathion but time will tell)

Though again, I'm not a fan of the choices he went with for Shadowlands and BfA... but I don't think he ever HAD a choice to begin with as again. Afrasiabi was the one who detailed everything out from BfA up to Shadowlands. To a point where probably Danuser didn't have enough time to fix all the issues or address certain things in the lore that they had to be cut or retconned from the story... and also probably the fact that he was probably dealing with lore that was well beyond his knowledge and he had to "make shit up" as he went along which was probably how Zereth Mortis came to be.

Think about it like this... The Shadowlands were never mentioned at any point in Wrath and it was probably not something people considered exploring, and we don't get actual acknowledgement of it's existence until Legion with the Death Knight story when Afrasiabi was the narrative lead. And even if people try to dig up info about Shadowlands Pre-Legion.. only the most seasoned veterans of WoW would know about it's existence, while Danuser wasn't involved with WoW until 2017.

Which again leads me to believe that a good chunk of the Shadowlands was meant to be Afrasiabi's doing... (especially since this is coming from the same guy who made that baffling tweet that the Legion was above ALL realities and timelines.)

[cparle87]

A false dilemma. Nothing about those people being hate-sinks predicates that there were no legitimate issues with the game, or that they themselves bared no responsibility for said legitimate issues in some cases. But in general, they were often blamed for issues that they either had little or no control over, or else were always blamed for a given issue when the actual blame actually lay elsewhere (e.g. people blaming Danuser for gameplay issues when Danuser is actually in charge of WoW's narrative). Leadership roles don't imply or require that you take responsibility for things well outside your area of expertise or control.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. I especially like his second one. He somehow jumped from something like "blaming the story writer guy for a system you don't like even though it's not his thing" to a wide, sweeping generalization that "nothing unpopular is Blizz's fault with no input from their employees".

You can also tell he's biased simply by the word usage. "not loving everything Blizzard craps out."

[hzjf]

The Story was never good anyway

[Aucald]

"Look look!!! Someone said that Metzen was killing Warcraft once 15 years ago!!!111" vs the entire first page of the Lore section frequently being filled with nothing but negative posts about Danuser. Conflating a handful of random posts that show up on Google search with the practically-unanimous enmity that the WoW fandom holds for Steve Danuser is just flat out disingenuous.

"The Lore section of MMO-Champion" doesn't equate to anything "practically unanimous," or even represent a significant bloc of the WoW fandom at all. Don't get me wrong, either; I'm not a huge fan of Danuser's work myself - but that still doesn't detract or otherwise change the notion that Danuser is a totemic hate-sink for the segment of the WoW fandom that's critical of the story, and that notwithstanding people that exclaim "Danuser is killing WoW!!11!" when Danuser is only responsible for a part of the equation (and a part that is, by most players' own admissions, relatively minor in their own experiences).

[Shadowferal]

"Hate sink"
A good term. It would certainly apply to me were I allowed to rewrite the narrative.

[Sluvs]

People internally claim that Afrasiabi set the rails and they basically had no choice but to get the train through it.

I personally find it a little hard to believe because of:

A) Some problems with SL and BfA narrative could simply be solved by changing some text and a few quests

B) VA is usually one of the last things that is done on a project due to obvious reasons.

C) Some of the problems in SL also steem from simple neglect, there are things that are setup but simply dont get mentioned again.

That being said, I do not know how blizzard works, so maybe their specific work structure made things harder to change or simply it had too many obstacles. And when many sources say that Afrasiabi was the problem, you kinda have to at least consider it.

Danuser might be a problem for WoW's lore, but I will see how dragonflight measures up. Since they claim this is 100% his baby, we are about to see what he can really do. Either way we will see if he delivers it or not. Tbh, after playing some other MMOs, I can't help but feel that WoW's aproach to storytelling is weirdly outdated though. FFXIV with its blocks of text tells a better story than WoW.

If Danusers delivers an underwhelming story in DF, well, he won't be able to hide behind his predecessor any longer.
If he creates a great story, with good story beats and emotional moments, the laurels will also be all his(and his team) to claim, and the community will have to face the music that he is not as bad as they paint them.

Which one it will turn out to be only time will tell.

We literally have no choice but to give him a chance. SO might as well be a little more optimistic about that.

[Raven]

Nope, because this never happened.

t. has been here since Warcraft 3

In that case you must not have been paying attention, becouse this happened, and will keep happening, if Danuser leaves the next one will be blamed for all the story players dont like, and if Ion leaves the guy that gets hes job will get all the blame, always has been and always will be that way.

And do you want to really see the shit hit the fan, fire Ion and give he´s job to a black female, even if she is perfect for the role, people will go full crazy mode.

[tomten]

Yeah everyone knew the reason Mages never got Nerfed was because Ghostcrawler mained one come to find out he actually mained a priest.

One or multiple devs WAS playing mage at that time... Just impossible they werent biased as fuck... Hate mages... Always the pet class for devs...

[Tarba]

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.

The story won't be good again ? Wow's story was never good. The worst part is still burning crusade by far.

[Lakrin]

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?

I 'member!

[cparle87]

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.

What exactly did you expect from Arthas? It was pretty clear the Jailer was big on the "you'll be useful to me one way or another" shtick so I figured out pretty quickly if he wasn't going to use Arthas against us as a slave he'd use him as a resource. Finding Ner'zhul just solidified it.

[Feanoro]

people blaming Danuser for gameplay issues when Danuser is actually in charge of WoW's narrative

Good thing he's being blamed for story then, isn't it?

[Aucald]

Good thing he's being blamed for story then, isn't it?

Depends on who's doing the blaming. He's blamed for the story here, more or less, but I've seen him blamed for everything from Shadowlands' borrowed power systems to the proliferation of P2P gray markets. I've also seen him blamed for stories he had no part in like Cata, WoD, and even (bizarrely enough) TBC's stories.