What Did The Danuser Era Do -Wrong-?

The original Nathanos was presented as an extremely capable hermit ( SI:7 agents sent after him all died ) who yes, was very rude towards the player, but then again the player was a nobody back in Vanilla and he’s a dead guy protecting his own lawn in the Plaguelands, I doubt he gets a lot of human contact over there. It makes sense for him to be a total ahole. Undead are already very negative from all the trauma they suffered and being dead, this guy is spending his days, isolated, in the exact spot he got murdered. Like… yeah. Probably not very sane.

He was also only HINTED ( and HINTED is doing a lot of work here, people were theorising back then but it wasn’t certain ) at being Sylvanas’ love interest. Back then we knew that he was the only Human Ranger Lord ( Farstrider ) the High Elves ever took in, we knew that Kael’thas requested Sylvanas to fire him and that Sylvanas told him ( Kael ) to go kick rocks.

If I recall correctly he sends you to the High Elf Lodge in Eastern Plaguelands to steal/destroy those documents, probably because he’s worried someone will learn about him and Sylvanas being close like that. Back then it was still a secret to the world.

a makeover (because at the time no iconic undead characters were allowed to look undead) and romantic subtext for his relationship with Sylvanas.

Well, that was part of the problem. They made his entire character about Sylvanas. And now that we’re talking about missed potential and that one short story, the end of it spells it out that he feels shame/regret for sacrificing his own ( living ) relative in order to get a stronger body.

He just feels like wasted potential. Nathanos should’ve flipped on Sylvanas in BFA and then they could’ve explored who he is without Sylvanas. Give him a personality, then have him save her/bring her back to the sane side in Shadowlands, just like how she saved him from being a mindless undead.

I think Blizzard did a cardinal mistake with both the Nightborne and Blood elves.

Sunwell shouldn’t have been restored but destroyed. Same with Nightborne.

Then we would have crackhead belves and whiskey aunt nighbornes going feral whenever they detect even small traces of magic, because their bodies can not physically sustain themselves without magic. They need magic like our bodies need oxygen.

Alliance on the other hand have exception to this rule via night elves who have learned ro live w/o magic, and void elves who took the forbidden void soup.

Forsaken have this really well built into their society: Without necromancers and val’kyr, no new forsaken can be made and they will eventually wither away.

6 Likes

Just you wait until Queen Calia raises light forsaken.

Kurt angle stare.

2 Likes

Many things, yet the treatment of Arthas and Kael’thas is forefront in my mind.

Two iconic characters, one of which already had a fitting closure to his story back in WOTLK and the other who deserved the same sort of ‘second chance’ that Illidan received after it was acknowledged that killing off Illidan, Lady Vashj and Kael’thas in the course of a single expansion wasn’t the greatest idea around.

Arthas was defiled as a character to prop up Danuser’s tiresome waifu, a character who has long since deserved to be killed off for her many, many crimes (such as murdering Liam Greymane in cold blood alongside…countless innocent civilians, many of whom were raised into undeath).

Kael’thas, meanwhile, should have been portrayed as closer to his Warcraft 3 era and he and Lady Vashj would have benefited from maintaining a greater degree of respect for one another due to their shared history and tentative alliance in life, perhaps even bonding over both effectively being thrown under the bus by Illidan as part of his schemes.

EDIT: I suppose to clarify I should point out that I also think that Sylvanas was also badly mishandled as a character but the problems with her writing predate Danuser, particularly in regards to the Cataclysm era. A character better suited to being written as morally grey and manipulative, but still not entirely against the Horde and prone to nostalgia where her former people are concerned would be inherently more interesting than…what ended up being the second coming of the Scourge in all but name.

She’ll probably be back at the forefront in Midnight but at the same time, it’s going to be really difficult to ignore all the baggage.

3 Likes

The bit with Sylvanas (She’s good now :upside_down_face: ) and the last sliver of Arthas soul is not in my opinion, a well written moment or cinematic. It feels off.

I’ve thought how to word it, but I think that honestly covers it.

1 Like

All of them should have something meaningful to say as their own backstory is deeply intertwined with Arthas but nope. It’s one of the instance in the game where the characters in the cinematic don’t seem to be talking to each other but delivering a meta dialogue to me.

The nihilistic space slop expansion that keeps ruining everything is telling me that one of the main character arc across multiple books and game… Ultimately is small and meaningless by an vastly more controversial character.

I couldn’t help but think I was being insulted back then.

2 Likes

this cinematic proves again that Shadowlands is the most hilarious trashmovie I have ever played
Its just so insanely funny to think that someone wrote this Thanos wannabe and thought “yeah this is epic!!”

2 Likes

Tbh im starting to think arthas, whilst a fantastic story at the time, became a lead weight over wows neck that the writers were never able to move past.

Part of me kinda hopes Danuser has seen this thread.

Sometimes people need a damn ego/reality check. Like, there’s been bad expansions, but SL was so bad, man…

If the Arthurian legend with the twist “what if sword bad” was a lead weight then how in the hell did they ever manage to become writers in the industry to begin with

3 Likes

I’ve never bought this argument. It’s thanks to the established lore that these morons even have a job to begin with. It’s entirely possible to move on from the past all while respecting it, we just happen to live in the timeline where for some reason it’s impossible and beloved franchises are nothing but self-referencial these days because “Muh recognizable icons”.

Moreover, I can’t exactly feel sympathetic to people whom despite their repeated failures and butchering , still hold a job for years. This is the job they chose, a field where they supposedly trained and eventually display sufficient skill to be hired for. “Oh it’s hard to respect Canon, continuity ties our hands guys we just can’t deal with it.” it’s unbelievable!

3 Likes

I can see what you’re saying yeah, not a lead weight to the story but to maybe the writers being pushed by non writers for whatever reason to idk, bring something back like arthas cause people who work in marketing dont understand their markets or just devs cause they thought this one character was really cool and needs more screen time or maybe indeed the writers themselves worried about having to write something better then arthas while all they had to do was just something new and good

1 Like

I absolutely could do the job better, frankly.

3 Likes

If it´s any consolation to you, it´s pretty much guaranteed he knows how much people hated his story, given that he was replaced by Metzen. I doubt it´s a coincidence that the guy known for being the face of WoW story was rehired right after literally the first failed expansion in terms of launch sales in WoW history (which DF was, while the expansion had amazing retention, it sold worse than Shadowlands in its opening months).

Then, as 2023 was progressing, there were constant rumors about “some” people on WoW´s writing team disliking Metzen´s vision, all the while Metzen was being promoted again and again. And, in the end, Danuser left the company right as 10.2 was releasing.

The impression I´m getting (judging by the pieces that fit into each other perfectly) is that 2023 for Danuser was him getting sidelined more and more because in an otherwise amazing expansion (the retention numbers speak for themselves) the story was constantly being panned by the playerbase.

The guy knows.

1 Like

The fact that he was quietly kicked out the door the week before Blizzcon as well. It could’ve been entirely a mutual decision, but it has weird vibes.

Not only that but we know from the word of Mr. Kotick which, whilst I don’t doubt he probably lies as much as tells the truth, that Metzen was shown the plans for 2 of the planned Danuser expansions just-after or before BFA ended and his comments were “These aren’t good. You need to change this.”

1 Like

Wait, so Metzen said that Shadowlands and DF weren’t good and they still went for it anyway?

Judging by what the WoW Streamers/YouTubers were saying throughout 2023 (yes, they aren´t 100% reliable source either, but they know people within Blizzard and have some internal info), people within WoW story team were fighting Metzen even when he was part of the company again because they wanted to do their vision for what ended up being War Within.

Said vision seems to have been travel into the core of the world alongside Earthen and Haranir through the Coreway, exploring how Titans are evil, probably with Iridikron heavily involved. No Xal´atath, no fall of Dalaran, just literally another “here´s 4 new zones in a new landmass” expansion exploring the “umm, aktchually” themes of Titans and Order.

If you want to take a guess who these people were, well, Steve Danuser and Christie Golden were removed from the company in relatively short succession.

We don’t know what plans he saw. It could’ve been Slands, DF, it could’ve been DF and TWW, it could’ve even been the original idea for Midnight. It’s somewhere between Slands-Midnight, so you’ve got 4 expansions to guess at.

The only thing we really know is that its just around the time BFA was ending and that Kotick was, according to himself, begging Metzen to come back and fix it. Which, at the time, he didn’t do until the end of DF when his return was announced.

Edit: BFA was 2018. . .good god. It might’ve been around Slands then that Kotick approached him to rejoin. Which’d mean TWW-Midnight? Or TWW-Midnight-TLT?

Well, he returned as a “creative advisor” in December 2022, just after Dragonflight’s release. It was only around September 2023 when he took over as Executive Creative Director and I get the feeling that during those nine months, there must have been a lot of heads butting over Warcraft’s direction.

Considering that the Worldsoul Saga got announced only two months after his promotion, either it was planned all along or it really was a last minute change that he was (at least partially) responsible for.

I disagree. Xal’atath has Danuser’s creative fingerprints all over her, and the destruction of Dalaran seems to fit his philosophy of replacing old and beloved material with his vision for Warcraft.

4 Likes