He was good, not great. Metzen was great. If he still is, remains to be seen. But Steve only did a good job when there was someone to keep him in check. When Activision took over and that probably stopped happening, well, you tell me how great the WoW story has been since then.
I liked Shadowlands much better then BFA. Without the factions stuff can’t be ruined further. Horde died when Blizzard obliterated their leadership yet again.
I personally do not like in the slightest his messing with the cosmos, it felt grotesque, bland, parasitic (because it was done at the expense of a previously established lore) and very unconvincing.
And I am far from being the only one who dislikes his cosmic nonsense. If you check “Eternity’s End dev preview” video or his announcement on the twitter, you will see how overwhelmingly unpopular and hated it is by the community.
“I gonna create even bigger guys than the titans, surely this will impress players” is not a good style of writing.
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More than that, it was just so inorganic. Basically nothing about the “cosmic forces” was treated as if it was new to the denizens of Azeroth. As soon as some new lorebook said it, everyone just knew about it, as if it was trivial. There was no resistance to any of the news that basically made the religions and laws that were thousands of years old in lore irrelevant. That’s just crappy writing.
I don’t think I’d mind cosmic stuff if it was about our small characters trying to make sense of a world that is so much vaster than anticipated - and that’s pretty much what they did before, when we explored titan stuff or old gods - but there is nothing interesting about the game just explaining the writers’ newest ideas to me directly, and the cast of characters taking it for granted.
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Are you referring the the Zeneth’s, which created the universe basically? Yeah, that’s horrible, I also severely dislike this. However, I think it’s cool, that the Titan’s are not necessarily the biggest threat as of now. It’s cool to me, that there are also Void Lords, etc. However, I agree with you, that they destroyed and retconned a lot of previous Lore like the Story of Arthas in a very disrespectful way. So, yes, shame on Danuser overall, but he did some small world building things well in my opinion, though it was not worth what he sacrificed for it with very little respect.
For example, think about how many characters Danuser has destroyed to push Sylvanas as a villain and his stupid Shadowlands story: Saurfang, Arthas, Voljin, the entire Forsaken Faction, Anduin Wrynn, Garrosh Hellscream, Draka, etc. All these characters, that appear in the Shadowlands are a massive disrespect to the writers prior to him. It’s also interesting, how most of the community agrees, that Garrosh and Arthas are both the best characters ever written by Blizzard, and then Danuser comes in, and uses his role to completely disrespect their stories. So yeah, I absolutely agree, he was overall a big negative, BUT I can also say simultaneously, that I liked how he ordered the cosmos in the game a bit, so no power really feels inferior to another.
Here another positive: Many people loved Sylvanas as a character, and he has given Sylvanas an amazing story. He wrote her very well, but the problem is what was sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Now, this is not personal against him, I wish him the best now, but I didn’t like what happened to the story as well during his role as Narrative Director.
I was referring to the so called the First Ones. I have no idea who is Zeneth tbh.
Oh I too absolutely like the idea of the power of the void, even I play a somewhat related race =)
But to my knowledge the void power and void lords were created long before Danuser had any say, so it is not his credit.
Sorry I can’t agree that he wrote Sylvanas well. For example, he retconned it that ever since Fall of the Lich King Sylvanas had been serving Jailor, the guy who created frostmourne, a weapon that took her own life and worn by the Prince whom she hated more than anything. Oh and that moment at the end of Sanctum of Domination where after 10 years of being Jailor’s biggest servant out of the blue she says " I will never serve" Danuser’s writing at his worst.
Although I get your point generally, I am sure he did write some nice minor bits of lore, afterall there was a reason why they promoted him after Metzen’s retirement. He just proved not suited for a big picture writing.
Yeah, that’s what I meant, because they constructed the universe in the Zeneths according to the Story
Honestly, I speculate he just wrote the story for himself, and not for the players/audience. That’s very common nowadays sadly.
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The Chronicles are written from the point of view of the Titans so it is obvious they are trying to surpress any informations on the First Ones since it could threaten their status as rulers of the Universe.
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Much better than BFA? Are you drunk? Not only did both factions get a separate, unique story, but the Horde actually got a story. Unlike BFA.
Bfa ruined the story beyond repair.
BFA was MoP on repeat. And yeah, the story wasn’t that good. But there was story. The Horde was present in the story and also had it’s own story. Now thre’s Thrall saying a few lines. It’s incomparable. You are talking crap. Again.
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It was awful and should be retconned.
But what they did to the Lich King that’s good writing, huh?
I despise what they did to Arthas.
The Lich King is utterly reprehensible and irredeemable. Arthas, however, was at best misguided and arrogant.
Though he’s a guy, so of course the writers and many players ignore that the likes of Vereesa and Jaina are far more arrogant than Arthas was when they decided to go on a purge of their making.
Sylvanas, too, was written terribly. It makes no sense to paint her as a victim of being raised unwillingly into undeath when that is exactly what happened with Arthas. He already had a decent sendoff back in Wrath of the Lich King.
There you go despising stuff again. What’s with you?
The Lich King has had a huge influence on the success of the Warcraft franchise. Don’t forget that.
That bothered me sooo much in SL. They had characters close to Arthas walk in his shoes, even show the same lack of mercy for the sake of their own goals, yet… they didn’t even have them reflect on it. This could have been a final send-off for the most iconic Warcraft figure. Imagine Jaina, realizing how easy it is to be seduced by anger and a acting out of a false sense of righteousness. Or Sylvanas, finally understanding the tunnel vision that drove Arthas and how he justified it all to himself.
For both of them to realize that being turned into (or being influenced by) a Lich, you leave reason and empathy behind and start to focus on just one goal without mercy.
Instead, they never really explained the connection between the Jailer and the Lich King or how his artifacts even landed on Azeroth. I still can’t believe that they prefered to tell a disconnected story about night fairies, blue angels and the therapy of a weird Titan-wannabe-pantheon, to basically sideline the REAL selling point of the expansion: The origins of the Lich King, the mystery of the Scourge and the arrival of Frostmourne on Azeroth. Not to mention that even the story of Zovaal’s original sin would probably have been more interesting than… what we got in SL.
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Yeah, I think this is one of the reasons why SL seems to be considered the worst expansion as far as lore additions and retcons go.
The fact that it had so much potential and they squandered it. That last patch really disappointed me with all the cutesy machine people and their cutesy languages. I don’t even know what was going on anymore at that point because I didn’t care - the vibe was simply ridiculous and such a far cry from Torghast and the Maw in general. Typically you start an expansion off ‘lighter’ and then go darker and darker as the story progresses.
A separate story, that’s what I’ve been missing too. I’d rather have half as many quests, if they’re faction specific than twice as many, if they’re all too generic and unrelatable.
at least until bfa we got a faction specific route. WOD too. I don’t know why they ditched it.
I think there might be a couple of reasons for blizzard to do so:
- Laziness. Doing faction specific stories & events requires twice as much effort. Why bother when you can fit generic “one size fits all”.
- Difficulty to keep a faction balance. By making one faction happy, you’re risking to make another faction unhappy. Although in BFA Blizzard truly surpassed themselves by making both the Horde and the Alliance unhappy.