Chris Metzen Rejoins Blizzard

[Utrrabbit]

It hasn’t gone anywhere. Their first TTRPG book, Auroboros, was shipped to kickstarter backers recently.

It is most likely why he is back as an "advisor" since his other project is from all looks going strong. Perhaps his condition for returning was an advisory role while all his other stuff was happening. That would make sense.

[Yunravel]

Welcome back King

[Daronokk]

He's an advisor, so his influence can only be secondary in nature.

Metzen himself also was not exactly the most skilled writer, he's been excellent at world building, less so telling stories within them.
It's a bit of a trope but he's a lot like George Lucas in that regard, created the universe, laid out some really cool stuff but once it came to continuing the story from a given point, it started to fall apart.

Contuining any story for too long pretty much always gives these results. That's not Metzen's fault, also WoW as a game doesn't favor good storytelling since you always need loot pinatas.

The strategy games were fine. Warcraft 1 to 3 had decent story. Original WoW was fine as it was down to earth. With TBC it went downhill with retcons and offing notable characters for loot. I'd say Metzen was good for the story, but he's not faultless.

[Kralljin]

Contuining any story for too long pretty much always gives these results. That's not Metzen's fault, also WoW as a game doesn't favor good storytelling since you always need loot pinatas.

The strategy games were fine. Warcraft 1 to 3 had decent story. Original WoW was fine as it was down to earth. With TBC it went downhill with retcons and offing notable characters for loot. I'd say Metzen was good for the story, but he's not faultless.

You can argue however when "too long" is happening.

I don't think the story was going on "too long" in TBC already, the problem simply was (among other things) that in TBC they were just throwing characters under the bus with little care.
Yeah, you need loot pinatas, but between Kael'thas & Zul'jin, they just very carelessly used established characters for the sake of raid bosses.

They could've replaced Kael'thas with any Illidan / Burning Legion loyalist, who *somehow* usurped Kael'thas in Outland and you still could have had roughly the same story for TBC.

I think what you're referring to is the point post Cata, when any previously established character was largely dealt with (putting the Burning Legion aside), but neither, TBC, Wotlk or Cata were exactly highpoints of storytelling.

[rrayy]

Finally some good news regarding Blizzard.

Not that I'm expecting him to fix everything bad, but his advise could at least take away the most extreme bad stuff. Overall it would improve WoW for sure.

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Except you're missing the point where Activision merged with Vivendi (Blizzard's parent company) and thus Blizzard isn't equal to Activision, it's owned by them. They just conveniently named the new company Activision-Blizzard as if they're equal but they're not. They just use the publicity of the name, it doesn't have the same leverage.

You are missing the part where BLizzard and Activision bought themselves back FROM VIvendi and put both companies under one roof called Actiision-Blizzard.

As I said Activision and BLizzard are two separate compaines with their own leaders under one roof called Activision-Blizzard, lead by Bobby Kotick. The Activision CEO has no power over Blizzard. Bobby Kotick of A-B does.

[Tupolew519]

that's a very fantastic news. i hope it will fix this company up.