Chris metzen can, as we all know, admit when he doesn’t know things and seems (in older Blizzcon videos and forum posts at least) be okay with mistakes since they can be corrected.
Which is why he won’t be on the panel because that would invalidate the entire current writing team’s philosophy.
Chris metzen
Hero worshipping Metzen isn’t really the answer and he’s not the fix. Short memories really have influenced the broader perceptions of him - back when he was running the show, particularly in the Cataclysm era, he was not well-regarded, primarily because of his fixation on ‘Green Jesus’ (Thrall).
That’s not the cause of my own issues with Metzen’s return, but it was a very common view to have at the time.
The devil you know, etc. The botching of shadowlands and blatant on the fly retconning of current content destroyed any trust I had in this batch of lore writers.
Oh I remember well how Metzen was seen back then, I was there among everyone else who celebrated when he finally hanged his hat and left. It didn’t get any better when the man revealed over time that his portrayal of Thrall and Jim Raynor also reflected the troubles of his own IRL relationship…
I’m at the stage where I just am saying “If it got this bad without Metzen, might as well have him back in a more restrained role.”
Oh yeah, for sure. The point I was trying to make was that turning back the clock isn’t the fix either. The old guard of the WoW development team have mostly been turfed out for good reason.
It’s not a fix but an improvement. The lore engine broke with these fancy new parts so we’re screwing some old ones back in to keep it together.
Just like Ork engineering.
If people really believe it’s gonna work with him back, the psychic energy shall will it into reality.
I think the ‘Green Jesus’ points against Thrall and Metzen were kind of largely unwarranted tbh, god forbid a main character of the series who’s known to be the most powerful and only real shaman character [checks notes] do anything at the endgame of the biggest shaman expansion in the game’s history?
We also know Metzen didn’t like a lot of Cataclysm because he had a bigger scope for it and a lot of it came up short due to cutoffs, budget, management etc., but at least he was able to hold his hand up and say “yep, even I didn’t like [various parts] of this expansion, we had a much bigger vision and didn’t have the team or development time to pull it off, we’re sorry.”
Cata being butchered the way it was set the tone for WoD and more to come. Naga raid to save Neptulon? Nah, he’s just okay and fine in Legion again, no sweat. No we won’t elaborate.
Elemental Bonds was so bad (in my opinion) that it caused me to check out of caring about Warcraft lore until the end of Legion and beginning of Battle for Azeroth.
Thrall was also the first real example of the current trend that people currently dislike, which is faction leaders and important lore figures accompanying the players on their adventure and hogging the spotlight.
It’s great that Metzen is able to acknowledge his mistakes and issues with what he makes, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t responsible for happened during his tenure as Senior Vice President of Story & Franchise Development at Blizzard. Additionally, I think that overestimating the scope of a project and not being able to live up to what you intended to create isn’t enough for me to brush all of the problems with Cataclysm under the table. Its story was awful, in my opinion, and no amount of rose-tinted glasses or current catastrophes will convince me otherwise.
In the end, if we’re going to shake our fists at Danuser for everything we don’t like about Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands and Dragonflight, then I’ll shake my fist at Metzen for the stuff that rubbed me the wrong way before the Battle for Azeroth trailer.
Remember the Thrall marriage patch where we had to collect his fragmented soul or something so he can marry aghra on time in Hyjal or something?
That’s the Elemental Bonds questline, yeah.
Honestly i’d put the selfie patch or voice chat patch above that in terms of quality. Purely because the Elemental Bonds quest was that bad itdeserves to be put in the deepest, darkest memory hole.
It has been put in a very effective memory hole for most players.
I look at complaints like:
Man, I hate this new World of Warcraft that is all about characters talking about their feelings in a slow, dramatic voice and plots that revolve around resolving their trauma, I don’t want to be a therapist for NPCs.
And all I can think is “yeah, I hated 4.2 too.”
I’m being a bit facetious since this is a much bigger and more frequent issue in Dragonflight, but it’s not like it’s an entirely new problem to World of Warcraft.
Yeah well until Danuser apologizes for Legion BFA and SL (And DF, lets be honest), his crimes to the lore are like a drop in the ocean compared to Metzen’s Bizarre Adventure, thrall edition. Which he apologized for, as shown earlier.
Hell, bad as it is to say this, but Stonetalon Garrosh, a storypoint created by literally the face of Blizzard’s frat boy culture, Afrasiabi, is gold compared to all of SL’s storytelling.
Not that I am defending the guy n any way shape or form for his actions and I am glad he is gone. It’s just that even someone as twisted as he was seemed to have a better idea of how to make compelling stories than mr. Danuser does. Which, granted, isn’t much of an achievement but here we are.
To be honest, I don’t see it. In a sense, it was bad. Did it make Garrosh seem ‘layered’ in a vacuum where he only exists in that one instance? Yes, sure; but it heavily feeds into the issue where Garrosh, ever since WoTLK’s end, had this weird Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on where the writers flip flopped him between being a honorable orcish version of Napoleon and an utter moron that makes Warhammer Fantasy orcs look like milsim roleplay characters.
It’s a bit of a huge question mark when, in the same expansion, you have Garrosh restarting a war that was just narrowly avoided because he wanted lumber from Ashenvale, right after the expansion where every character around Garrosh had to practically babysit him every single time he showed up.
That is why I mentioned just Stonetalon as an example- I do not disagree with you at all that the way Afrasiabi was shoving Garrosh into the narrative was disruptive, as he (allegedly) shoved Sylvanas into becoming a villain in BFA… But as a standalone narrative with no strings attached, Stonetalon is a fairly good piece of story.
And certainly far better than anything Stanuser has created.
Not all complaints are valid either. Remember when Cataclysm got a lot of hate for… [checks notes] the Dungeons were too hard?
That being said, I don’t really remember the Thrall marriage quest line. It’s a memory I repressed super heavily, I guess. Because I’m sure I’ve done it, but simply have 0 recollection of it, other than looking back at the marriage location after having walked away from it.
Funnily enough I don’t share that problem now. I guess I kinda just grew up and found a newer interest in those more personal stories than Michael Bay adventuring through blood, guts, and explosions to some deeply unoriginal story plot. The latter is partly responsible for WoW trying to one-up itself every time that leads to reaching for some cosmic plots as there always has to be a new, bigger villain.
F.e. if Fyrakk is the end boss of the expansion how would he even compare to Jailer, the literal death god or w/e his role was in Shadowlands.
Never forget, the ending of Cataclysm where Alexstraza palms Aggra’s womb and Thrall goes “we really were the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm™”.