Josh Allen(Lore) leaves Blizzard

Yes. If you instead of doing your job and communicating deep issues within games avoid questions and do a “banter” ridiculing questions, laughing at the person’s name and doing basically everything other than addressing the point, some might find it offensive.

There’s nothing wrong with being offensive. But some people dislike it and it might reflect on the relationship between the people. That’s why FF’s Q&A are generally liked, while Blizzard’s Q&A considered garbage.

I don’t expect you to understand this, if you don’t work with people, but he should as it was his job. He just was bad at it and hopefully somebody who understands how to communicate with people will replace him.

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Oh no I am not blaming them for any of that, in fact I would be happy if it turns out to be case that they decided to do a WOD with SL and 10.o is going to be good. Oh no no, I am blaming them for bad gameplay decisions (which the community predicted would not go well), bad writhing and timegating the living hell out miniscule amounts of content.

I could buy that about Hazzicostas (and again my main issue with him is that he constantly lies), Denuser however is a different story. You see sunshine, he is now the lead story director, upper management can go to Ion and tell him we need more MUAs find a way to do that, but they simply don’t care enough to go to poor little Denuser to tell him "look mate we need Mr Nipples to be the be all and end all master mind, second only to the what is to come-man ", no Mr Denuser gets to play in his sandbox and then blame Afrosalami because he couldn’t pull off some story beats that he didn’t like. And you know how I know that, it’s because that same position he is now is the exact same excuse every one is using to defend him, if no one could say a word to Afrosalami’s bad ideas then no one can say no to Denusers.

We all know how Square Enix tolerates toxicity…ie. they do not. That has a ripple effect.

Josh was simply doing his job, as instructed by the Senior Management.

And he was doing it badly.
Hopefully next person will do it well.

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Bold of you to assume there will be a next person.

No, he was doing as instructed.
I appreciate that demanding to speak to the Management and not getting a 24/7/365, free hotline permitting complete control of corporate output, has come as a traumatising shock that some were ill-prepared to deal with…life can be like that.

That is what they decided.

Again, this is not because of the developers. The fault lies with management.

Blizzard’s game design runs on iteration. But iteration takes time. The developers don’t get time when deadlines are rushed internally. So that’s why players get flawed gameplay design.

Bad writing is the result of the budget for a WoW expansion being heavily decreased as a result of financial forecasts, and subsequently having to retro-fit the writing to a whole new content plan.
There is a leak floating around on the initial story for Shadowlands before it was re-written, and it’s honestly really cool. The writers know how to write. They just don’t get the opportunity to carry their writing out as they intend it.

And excessive timegating is sheer business strategy. It’s also not the developers who decide that store mounts are a great idea.

Watch this:

Or read that whole Primus-is-the-villain theory that’s looming around as well.

From what we can gather so far, then the initial story for The Shadowlands was pretty amazing. But because the whole project got haywired and the scope was diminished, the time was limited, and the budget was decreased, it turned into a mess.
I give the developers some credit for managing to salvage the pieces and make it somewhat coherent. It doesn’t fall through as much as WoD did, but it’t the same underlying management decision that’s responsible for it.

Blizzard have a history of doing this. Usually we don’t see it because it happens before their games ever get announced. Once they are announced it’s usually smooth sailing, but not always.
WoD got axed and the developers basically just had to finish it quickly and move on to Legion.
And it’s the same with Shadowlands. Wrap it up and get to work on 10.0.
Diablo III got it for its second expansion that got canned and turned into some patch content and a DLC.
Titan became Overwatch.
Various StarCraft games.
And so on.

Blizzard’s management axes projects that don’t have strong financial forecasts, because they would rather move a team onto a new task with new potential than have them slug away at something that cannot be salvaged.

And in the case of WoD and Shadowlands, then once the forecasted player retention took a nosedive - and that was prior to the games even being released! - then management brings out the axe.

And neither Hazziostas or Danuser or any other director or developer at any of Blizzard’s team have any power over that.
It is pure business. Not always very good business, but the decsion-making is pure business. There are zero f’s given about the consequences for WoW’s lore and worldbuilding by gutting Shadowlands as a project. If the expansion doesn’t look like it’ll be a roaring success, then it gets the axe.
And that will also hold true for 10.0.

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There’s a Snyder Cut, of Shadowlands?!

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We will see.

Oh so it was management that told them to cut the initial SL content into 4 separate parts which could only be accessed whit 4 different characters? It was management that told them to waste all that time “fine tunning” the covenant system instead of focusing on the core game ?

And you can still deliver a workable story without having to massively retcon the living hell out of the franchise. You don’t need Laura Bailey every time Jaina needs to say Hi to my character and you don’t need cinematics/cutscenes. As per the leak A) we do not know how legit it is, B) is a way simpler story than what is currently in the game so it makes no sense to cut the easier thing to do only to have to produce something more complicated in less time and C) is not that good either. Also speaking about cutscenes the only non controversial cutscene in SL (the Garrosh one) was done by one guy on a whim so miss me with that budged crap and how limited Blizzard are. Produce good products and maybe your budgets won’t be cut short.

As per “the writhers knowing how to write” part… That has to be the biggest joke I have heard in a while. You do realize that Golden literally retconned parts of her own book RotLK) in SL right ?

Basically yes. If we assume the leaks to be true (and I think there’s good reason to believe that), then the initial plans for the Covenants were very different from how they turned out.
So what we end up with is again the result of trying to duct-tape some pieces together in a rush. It doesn’t look very pretty, but it’ll hold.

So yes to everything you say. The executive leadership doesn’t specifically say that the developers should spend more time on tuning and less on designing the core gameplay. But that’s what ends up being the tasks for the developers when the producers turn those leadership deadlines and budgets into practice.

Watch the video I linked. If you watch the video, then it’ll make a lot more sense why Jaina is even there. And it’ll be easier to understand how impossible it was for Blizzard to re-write the story to fit a project that had just gotten axed.
There’s a context for all of this. It doesn’t excuse the fact that the story of Shadowlands is crap, but it does explain the reason why it is crap. And it’s not because the writers don’t know how to write. It’s because the leadership team brings out the axe.

Watch the video. I rarely give Bellular much credit, but I’ll join him in his assessment that the initial story that was planned for Shadowlands made a lot of sense and sounded pretty cool.

Ahm no.

The initial plans for the covenants was for them to be at war, ok fair enough. Ignoring the fact that locking us into an aesthetic choice when there is player power involved was something the community warned Blizzard not to do and that it would backfire was something that happened on the Blizzcon SL was announced is one thing. We literally had the system that would allow us to switch covenants from day 1, all they had to do was no include the 2 week time gate and problem solved SL launches with 4x more content. So yes I call BS on this excuse.

And you know what’s even funnier, they wouldn’t had to have to spend all that time balancing them either, again proven by the fact that we haven’t had a covenant balance update ever since the ripcord was pulled. Who would have guessed that you don’t really need to fine tune abilities that are near impossible to fine tune when they aren’t a permanent choice.

I have watched the video. I am not questioning why Jaina is in the shadowlands (not in this tread anyway). I am saying that you can produce a good story even with a smaller budget, instead they chose to go cosmic levels of retardation. You do not need voice actors or cutscenes to tell a good story. Golden is a good writer when it comes to books (although her last book was questionable to that statement) but she really sucks with video game writing, Denuser however has not ever produced a single good story.

It made MORE sense than what we have now, but it’s not good. And again we have no proof if this was actually what happened or is the head cannon of some rando on 4chan. The community has proven time and time again that they can write a better story than Blizzard in less time, what is to say that this is not that case again. Sure let me retcon absolutely everything that happened this expansion, let me use the characters and even I can give a better script by tomorrow and claim “this was the original plan”.

PS I love how someone named Hairyclown liked this post, it makes me feel validated XD.

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I talked about this earlier in the thread, but I’ll say it again.

Blizzard’s design goal was for Shadowlands to have a stronger sense of being an RPG with emphasis on making choices.
So that’s what they based their initial design on, with the reassurance to players that if it didn’t work out, then they could always “pull the rip-cord”.

But the players, as per usual, are not willing to play ball.
If their gut feeling is that they don’t like a certain design, then they will crap all over it until Blizzard changes it.
There’s no willingness from the playerbase to explore the possibility that maybe there’s a better alternative to the standard approach.

And I don’t think that’s a case of Blizzard being bad designers. It’s Blizzard trying to iterate on their design, which is what Blizzard are all about.

If anything, then the situation is mostly indicative of the fact that the playerbase aren’t really on board with Blizzard’s iterative approach to design.

But it strikes me as wrong to say that Blizzard messed up when players never gave the design a fair shot. People dug their trenches early on and basically just fired turds at Blizzard until they caved in and pulled the rip-cord.

So spinning that whole Covenant design debacle as players being right and Blizzard being wrong is a bit ridiculous in my opinion.

I quite like it. Alongside the Primus-is-the-real-Jailer theory, I think it’s easy to see that Blizzard initially planned for another story (just as they did in WoD). And from what I can glimpse of that story, then it sounded pretty cool to me.
But that’s of course subjective and you’re free to disagree.

I don’t think the challenge is the freestyle writing. The challenge is getting the writing and voice acting and NPCs and cutscenes to fit with the ongoing development of the zones and instances and such. And when that suddenly changes because the project gets axed, then you need to rewrite a story and retrofit voiced dialogue and characters in a setting where they no longer make sense (Hello Baine!). That’s a challenge.

Nevertheless, I’m going to sleep. Good night…

I always think it would be amusing to permit this, then watch the individual concerned terminate all internet contact and lock themselves in a darkened room for a decade, after the first Forum ‘reviews’ of their storyline.

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Shrugs

People leave positions in videogame companies for other opportunities all the time…

Hardly news.

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Yes ok cool, more power to them, I made a tread earlier about the lack of choices in WoW. Howerer permanently tying power to that choice is an obvious mistake, no other game does that because they understand that player power will outweigh almost any aesthetic choice. This was something this community was warning Blizzard since day 1. And if you think that choosing the “bad covenant” was no big deal I guess you have not seen the early performance charts of the covenant abilities, hell to this day the warlock ability is dps loss when used.

Also that marketing was BS. They based their whole “RPG element” campaign on making one choice and not choices. They tied everything into the covenants, hell even your dungeon runs depend on the covenant choice you made. This again proves that they have next to no understanding about what makes an RPG.

And then they lied that there was no ripcord, which again we had since day 1 but with a 2 week time gate. And before you go there, yes time gating is used to inflate player engagement, the 2 week thing on covenants extended nothing, ~90% of people just picked BiS and didn’t chnge, again we have chards of this.

So I ask you again, if they had to cut stuff out why did they choose to limit themselves even further by splitting up the covenants, I mean you have limited resources and yet you decide to artificially gimp yourself even further by splitting up the content into 4 parts even though you also have the system in place that prevents that. Are you starting to pick up what I’m selling ?

Fair enough mate you do you.

No, what is easy to see it that you are giving 4chan leak way more leeway because it suits your narrative of defending Blizzard. Would you go the same lengths to defend a leak that would condemn Blizzard instead of absolve them ? Give me proof that this thing is legit the original plan and then we can talk. As far as I’m seeing it it something written in hindsight by a random fan and nothing more.

Again give me by tomorrow and I will give you a better script. Also cutting your losses is a thing, I work in the entertainment industry it happens more often than you think.

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If only, considering Shadowlands was the equivalent of Superman IV…

So hilarious badly written you have to watch it through your fingers stifling fits of laughter

I like Shadowlands… I think if the patch content releases had been quicker, it would have taken less flack…content droughts are never a good thing.

Tbh, I only ever watched the first Reeves Superman flick…never been a huge fan of Superman, the character is too OP.

Watch some Superman IV and you’ll see what I mean. I was never a fan of Superman or Batman either to be fair,I grew up reading Uncanny X-Men and X-Men, its heartbreaking to me to see how the Marvel Movies butchered so many comic storylines to appeal to eye candy gobbling kids who now think they are experts on all things Marvel. Yet say to them… cough… Fatal Attractions… The Onslaught Saga…

Nothing. Blank look. Possibly the best X-Men stories I ever read.

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Nevertheless badly.
If he was instructed to do a bad job, then he still bears the consequences and is up to blame.

I don’t do anything that I don’t believe is reasonable or good. And I take responsibility for all my actions no matter whether I was advised / instructed or otherwise.
With the exception of things I do under the threat of violence, which is not this case.

Whoa whoa whoa.

I’m going to let all the rest slide as disagreements, but I’m going to have to correct this little portrayal of me as a person and what I’m trying to say here.

I think Shadowlands sucks balls.
It’s one of the worst games Blizzard have ever made.
It sucks so hard that the Warcraft franchise will suffer irreparable damage because of it.
The attempt from Blizzard to salvage the mess they’ve made is adding insult to injury.
I hate the current game so much that I can barely bother to log in and I have very little interest in sticking around much longer in this fiasco of an expansion.

Where we differ in our thoughts is that you place the blame on the individual developers who you know the names of. Danuser, Hazzikostas, Holinka, Golden, and so on.

I do not.

I place the blame on the executive leadership team. And it’s a bit harder to point fingers at them, because hell knows who any of them are anymore!

So all we differ on is who is ultimately responsible for this pile of garbage.
You say it’s the grunts in the office working 9 to 5.
I say it’s the suits in the board-room crunching numbers.

But please don’t insinuate that I am defending Blizzard here at all. I am going to far as to say that the blame for causing a billion dollar franchise to implode on itself cannot be put on regular employees. That is ridiculous. Crap like this falls squarely on the shoulders of executive management. 100%. And that is a view I will defend.

But the game Blizzard have made is absolute garbage. Remember me saying that before you next time insinuate that I am defending Blizzard on the matter.

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