The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Jolly Roger]

"Danuser not being at blizzcon means nothing he's still at blizzard"
He left in November

"Blizzard is gonna be ruined by Microsoft"
Stories coming out of incompetent management and employees before the merger

I can't wait to hear about how the layoffs took down a secret cock-fighting ring because Holy shit.

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Not to sound rude here, but this feels like an obsession...

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You act like Sylvanas didn't deny the Jailer initially...

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Also odd how you call everything about SL stupid when it gave us some of the coolest concepts in the lore imo lol

Sylvanas going from "my fate is my own" to "I refuse to serve....yeah I've been serving for the last 8 years in game but I SHALL NEVER SERVE!!" was retarded

Shadowlands introduced split afterlives and a multiverse along with the idea that every soul merges with it's copies which while interesting was poorly executed.

The covenants were also something that was a letdown in terms of actual storytelling because they couldn't decide how important the leaders actually were or how powerful they were

[Murlocos]

Well, they already said they wanted to expand f.e. the Mountain Thane lore/looks to make it also a good fit for anything but dwarfes. Your warrior will be fine, after all they were Odyn's champion during Legion, so the thunder/lightning theme can also just represent that.

I don't think they said they'd expand the lore or anything, they just said they're open to feedback on what feels good vs. what feels frustrating. This is the issue I brought up earlier in that some of the hero specs just feel like generic subspecs (which is fine) and others are very specific racial classes. I'd rather the gameplay side of things entirely be generic subspecs and we'd get class skins that can be tailor made for the right races instead of trying to water down every fantasy to fit every race/class combo.

I know, but it's interesting nonetheless. Especially for alcoholics who want to be able to showcase their most important chars properly.

I hope they realize sooner than later that some players would dedicate a huge chunk of their playtime just to make their character select screen look as nice as possible. I want to see lots of background options be available and allow us to customize each character's pose.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Can confirm, his Linkedin has the same info.

Danuser really is gone.

*plays Victory Celebration from the Star Wars IV soundtrack*

good riddance, the guy wasn't responsible for everything wrong with WoW, but the way he butchered the story has harmed the game so much. I'm sure he's not a bad person, but God the guy can't write for sh*t

[Worldshaper]

*plays Victory Celebration from the Star Wars IV soundtrack*

good riddance, the guy wasn't responsible for everything wrong with WoW, but the way he butchered the story has harmed the game so much. I'm sure he's not a bad person, but God the guy can't write for sh*t

I'm unhappy with the direction of the story since BfA as well. But I don't think we have enough information available to us about Blizzard's internal processes to lay the fault entirely at Danuser's feet.

For all we know, they could have landed in awful decisions based on an unfortunate team dynamic, with too many conflicting ideas, intervening bosses, or WFH getting in the way.

Perhaps he had to deal with a bad legacy left behind from the weird transition period when Metzen had left and Afrasiabi was in charge of story for a bit.

Maybe the dude wrote literally every piece of dialogue on his own, with a gutted team and no one to brainstorm with.

Point is, it's immature and unnecessary to find scapegoats and to dance on somebody's grave. Let's all just be happy Metzen is back.

[Fahrad Wagner]

I'm unhappy with the direction of the story since BfA as well. But I don't think we have enough information available to us about Blizzard's internal processes to lay the fault entirely at Danuser's feet.

For all we know, they could have landed in awful decisions based on an unfortunate team dynamic, with too many conflicting ideas, intervening bosses, or WFH getting in the way.

Perhaps he had to deal with a bad legacy left behind from the weird transition period when Metzen had left and Afrasiabi was in charge of story for a bit.

Maybe the dude wrote literally every piece of dialogue on his own, with a gutted team and no one to brainstorm with.

Point is, it's immature and unnecessary to find scapegoats and to dance on somebody's grave. Let's all just be happy Metzen is back.

I would try and defend him, but the way Nathanos was so evidently a self-insert was enough for me to stop taking Danuser seriously

[Varodoc]

Denathrius is the best character Danuser has ever written. He has one thing that every other Danuser character lacks: an actual Personality.






The only good thing about Shadowlands was Denathrius.

The only thing about Shadowlands worth revisiting in the future is Denathrius.

Everything else can be discarded and thrown in the trash can.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'm unhappy with the direction of the story since BfA as well. But I don't think we have enough information available to us about Blizzard's internal processes to lay the fault entirely at Danuser's feet.

For all we know, they could have landed in awful decisions based on an unfortunate team dynamic, with too many conflicting ideas, intervening bosses, or WFH getting in the way.

Perhaps he had to deal with a bad legacy left behind from the weird transition period when Metzen had left and Afrasiabi was in charge of story for a bit.

Maybe the dude wrote literally every piece of dialogue on his own, with a gutted team and no one to brainstorm with.

Point is, it's immature and unnecessary to find scapegoats and to dance on somebody's grave. Let's all just be happy Metzen is back.

The buck stops at the top.

Rather he got the job in a bad spot at the end of BFA or not really doesn’t matter, while he was in charge of the story it sucked and he’s accountable for that.

[Worldshaper]

Denathrius is the best character Danuser has ever written. He has one thing that every other Danuser character lacks: an actual Personality.






The only good thing about Shadowlands was Denathrius.

The only thing about Shadowlands worth revisiting in the future is Denathrius.

Everything else can be discarded and thrown in the trash can.

I never understood the Denathrius hype, lol. Literally just a vampire doing bad things.

[Foolicious]

Denathrius is the best character Danuser has ever written. He has one thing that every other Danuser character lacks: an actual Personality.

The only good thing about Shadowlands was Denathrius.

The only thing about Shadowlands worth revisiting in the future is Denathrius.

Everything else can be discarded and thrown in the trash can.

I would argue that the voice actor of Denathrius did the heavy lifting. At its core he is just a Vampire edgelord you can find in any franchise. The voice actor gave him that campy over the top twist that was really fun.

[Varodoc]

I never understood the Denathrius hype, lol. Literally just a vampire doing bad things.

You don't understand what makes a villain successful.

A villain does not need to be cOmPlEx or MorAllY gReY to be successful and beloved. The Evil Queen from Snow White is the most generic and bland villain imaginable, yet she is one of the most popular and beloved villains in fiction history.

New gen. people need to understand that a villain does not need 230 layers of plans and 300 layers of sad sob backstory to be popular and beloved. A villain just needs a personality. Denathrius is popular and beloved because he has a personality and doesn't take himself too seriously. He is just an asshole who enjoys torturing people. A simple villain to understand, an easy villain to understand, a successful villain.

Danuser forgot to give the Jailer any semblance of a personality in over 2 years of Shadowlands. That is why Denathrius is beloved and popular, while 99.9% of the playerbase does not want to be reminded of the Jailer.

[Nibelheimy]

I'd argue that the twist about the forge was garbage too.

The only reason why it was received relatively well was because it was a thing we were mildly familiar with.
But the twist itself came out of bloody nowhere, no setup, no hints, no context, no nothing, it was just as random as most things SL tried to throw at us.

Absolutely agree. It's funny how in that little raid cinematic the forges activate and sends a beam of energy up through icecrown towards Torghast, yet it somehow ends up in Zereth Morris. Why? Would of made sense if Torghast was the actual final raid of the expansion.

I've yet to see them answer how and why the beam reaches ZM through Torghast. Quite clear the ending was re-written and SoD was originally planned as the true final raid.

[Varodoc]

I would argue that the voice actor of Denathrius did the heavy lifting. At its core he is just a Vampire edgelord you can find in any franchise. The voice actor gave him that campy over the top twist that was really fun.

No that is not the only reason why Denathrius is popular. It's also because he is a simple villain to understand.

The most popular and beloved Warcraft villains are the simple villains.

Gul'dan is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Kel'Thuzad is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Azshara is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Deathwing is just an evil asshole who wants to kill everybody.

While the voice actor of Denathrius certainly deserves credit for carrying the character, Denathrius was destined to succeed by virtue of being like the old school villains: simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.

No "I was just trying to save you" BS, No " A Cosmos divided..." BS, just an old-fashioned villain who is an evil asshole and just wants to torture people.

But we live in an age where the new consumers (mostly Zillennials and Zoomers) think that every villain MUST be complex and morally grey. What happened to the villains who are just evil for the sake of being evil? Yet they are more often than not the more popular and beloved villains.

No one really cared about the Jailer's sob sad misunderstood story, everyone loved Denathrius smirking like an asshole and throwing some poor guy into the Maw for fun.

[Gurahk]

How can Denathrius be credited to Danuser if Shadowlands is credited to Afrisiabi?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

How can Denathrius be credited to Danuser if Shadowlands is credited to Afrisiabi?

The only real answer is that a lot of the concepts of SL were likely thought up while Afrisiabi was in charge with help of Danuser and others on the team, and then direction and how said concepts were actually made was all under Danuser.

[Worldshaper]

You don't understand what makes a villain successful.

A villain does not need to be cOmPlEx or MorAllY gReY to be successful and beloved. The Evil Queen from Snow White is the most generic and bland villain imaginable, yet she is one of the most popular and beloved villains in fiction history.

New gen. people need to understand that a villain does not need 230 layers of plans and 300 layers of sad sob backstory to be popular and beloved. A villain just needs a personality. Denathrius is popular and beloved because he has a personality and doesn't take himself too seriously. He is just an asshole who enjoys torturing people. A simple villain to understand, an easy villain to understand, a successful villain.

Danuser forgot to give the Jailer any semblance of a personality in over 2 years of Shadowlands. That is why Denathrius is beloved and popular, while 99.9% of the playerbase does not want to be reminded of the Jailer.

I think that's very generous, and a low bar for calling somebody an "amazing villain" etc.

The only reason Denathrius was a hit was because of how incredibly uninteresting everyone else was in Shadowlands.

[Murlocos]

Afrasiabi was fired in the summer of 2020, roughly around when the SL beta started. In an interview for 9.1, they stated that they didn't figure out the actual story for the patch beyond vague ideas of "fight Sylvanas, go deeper into Maw" until the end of 2020/start of 2021, so after 9.0's launch. I think it's safe to say that 9.1 onwards is wholly on Danuser and the team under him, and it's yet another reminder that they make all this up as they go and don't have some intricate master plan that mysteriously goes totally awry over and over again.

[Cherry123]

Charisma and aesthetics are the key to a character’s success. If you create a new waifu with huge breasts now, she will become the number one character, even if she doesn't even have a text. Or a cool sweaty muscle man who wants to crush skulls. Unfortunately, the current agenda does not allow for the creation of such characters.

So no talent for character writing + uncharismatic characters = failure.

Maybe if people stop lying to themselves and say "yes, I like sweaty muscle men who kill each other" or yes I want all the girls from 90-60-90 as Asmongold said... Then we will bring back the old Warcraft

Asmongold is someone who is not afraid of the truth.

[Worldshaper]

Charisma and aesthetics are the key to a character’s success. If you create a new waifu with huge breasts now, she will become the number one character, even if she doesn't even have a text. Or a cool sweaty muscle man who wants to crush skulls. Unfortunately, the current agenda does not allow for the creation of such characters.

So no talent for character writing + uncharismatic characters = failure.

Maybe if people stop lying to themselves and say "yes, I like sweaty muscle men who kill each other" or yes I want all the girls from 90 60 90 as Asmongold said... Then we will bring back the old Warcraft

Asmongold is someone who is not afraid of the truth.

Just like real life, really. Hot people don't need a personality, where as plain people need to develop one to stand out.

[Nymrohd]

I would argue that the voice actor of Denathrius did the heavy lifting. At its core he is just a Vampire edgelord you can find in any franchise. The voice actor gave him that campy over the top twist that was really fun.

Pretty much. The Voice actor gave camp and camp has always worked in WoW.

[Super Dickmann]

Unfortunately, my doomer take regarding the factions is that gameplay overrides everything in their design philosophy, and their content creation pipeline would be a lot easier if the factions didn't exist. Not just them conflating the desire to do endgame content with the other faction as a desire to delete the factions in the story, but that any developer raising their hand now and going "Hey, what if we do faction-exclusive content that's scoped beyond a couple quests in this patch?" probably gets shut down very fast when the goal is to pump out content as fast as possible.

That's how I presume something like neutral Earthen came about: just make something for everyone, and (probably) ignore the fact that the "Horde dwarves, woo" was met with total silence at Blizzcon. Can't wait to play my orc warrior with a hero spec that was intended for a dwarf in TWW where I hang out with more humans and dwarves, and then go to Midnight which is about elves. At least Thrall will be there to perform the traditional Horde duty of servicing Anduin's character arc.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a faction renaissance, I'm not even expecting a WoD-tier spectacle. The fact that Anduin is being wheeled out and we're looking at a whole fucking expansion about making all the elves hold hands should make that blindingly clear. Rather, that Blizzard will tepidly begin moving back towards some form of conflict between groups once "Fight against Satan, but this time we can put Metzen on the cover" fails to patch over what's been missing since Legion, which is the acknowledgment that the franchise made its mark by presenting a variety of different takes on protagonists and one rotating gang of holier than thou clowns who act and talk the same and their subjects, who don't disagree and are by and large the same, can't cut it.

Nothing about the format prevents group conflict, if anything, dropping the factions makes it far easier to drop some of the more nonsensical alliances, e.g. the entire current Horde and have team-ups you couldn't otherwise have, e.g. tauren upset with goblins or void elves and Lightforged not actually getting along. Your only real limitation is that you can't wipe anyone out, but past that the world is your canvas. Blizzard has either not realized this or more likely purposefully avoids taking advantage of how the soft faction merge means you're liberated gameplay-wise and don't need to maintain the laughable coalitions you've had anymore. They still want (and likely always will) shill for unity between cosmetically different clones, hence why the Earthen are also a Horde race despite them being an alliance race that can team up with Horde characters is gameplay-wise effectively the same thing without infringing on common sense or future lore.