The only shocking part to me was the part about the woman dying.
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Oh, I know that I’m not asking for anyone to censor their observations on the story. I’m saying at the end of the day; there are some very serious allegations that raises my concern more than the story. Thats all.
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It’s fair to be more concerned with the tragedy than the story, but these are the story forums and the people here are going to want to discuss the story implications.
If this were about anyone at Blizzard other than Alex Afrasiabi I would understand your concern…but how the heck can we not discuss this?
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To be honest given how fragmented Questing vs “High Lore” vs Gameplay is sometimes, I wouldn’t be surprised if all these teams isolate themselves from each other because of this, and that this has been the case for years.
It’s easy to do in corporate culture if you have team divisions and a large divided/segmented building/work area.
So while Golden/Danuser shepherded their Team post-Afrasiabi, the others are this “Cubicle Crawl” Frat culture.
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And furthermore, people like Golden have expressed a lot of passion for Warcraft’s story, so not only does she and others have to put up with terrible harassment, they have to watch as their work of love is shredded by toxic abusers.
It isn’t the top concern right now, totally right, but it is also significant that the hard work of authors and good people like Roux and Golden are now “for nothing,” and I mourn that loss, too. I mean, this was in part their lives. Losing your passion project is also a hard blow. Can you imagine the pain if someone destroyed the work you love, that you put years into? Ouch.
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Afrasiabi is better than danuser in the story department.
Do note: I like Danusers personality.
he seems like the kind of guy I would have a beer with or something.
Part of me dont want to say this but…
Hell its a funny moment. In a Very VERY twisted way I suppose.
But its funny for some at least.
"Wait and see guys the story isnt over 
"
True, but you’d definitely know it existed. I can believe that it may not have been widely known, but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that said isolation ‘bubble’, if you will, would stop them even hearing about it as a rumour.
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You realize those characters are based of real life lore crap right…
Ouch!
Now I’m trying to link rot to her book and something she may have been asked to incorporate, but didn’t want to.
Than we agree : )
I think it’s worth acknowledging that what’s being discussed here is at its core, an examination (in light of terrible accusations) that artists and businessmen may have allowed their toxic and reprehensible attitudes to influence the work they put into the world and sold to people for money.
That’s a legitimate discussion to have, and framing it ‘nerds whining about their videogames while women are being tortured to death’ isn’t helping anyone, let alone said women.
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Guys, GUYS!!!
Calm down and pay attention, please.
Could the misoginistic behaviour irl of the executives listed in this can of worms impact the “lore”? Maybe. I´t a bet in which we could be extremely right or extremely wrong, at the end of the day even Afriasiabi would had had to answer to THE shareholders.
The only thing we may infer for certain with this news is that now we DO know why Afriasiabi was dropped like the hottets potato ever by Activision. The issues described in this lawsuit impact the real life guys, ergo, let´s stay our hands from putting on the tinfoil hat and actually look at the facts… and the facts talk about real women getting abused by a company, not over imaginary women getting abused by their creators. We will never know for certain if the devs wrote the Nelves the way they wrote them because of irl misoginy, sorry but that´s objectively a reach considering we ignore the actual writting process established in the company.
The only thing we can say is that misogynistic behaviours from some members of the company exist AND that this is probably the reason why the lore executive was kicked out in the most underwhelming way ever, period.
Let´s worry more for the actual irl females that got abused and less for the pixels… the pixels can recover with a phrase in a book, the irl women (especially the woman who died)? Fat chance.
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On another note; something tells me that he and other blizz employees are done posting about alcohol for a while.
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Interestingly the interview between her and Nobbel, where she explained how much of her novel was actually not her choice, was taken down from Nobbel’s youtube channel, and he’s never addressed it, nor her for that matter. Makes me wonder if Blizzard asked him to.
Oh yeah but I get why they didn’t just leave. Golden has been around for two decades, Danuser for one decade, Copeland I believe started back in TBC in the company. That’s a lot of time.
The other real issue is how much of these ex-Blizzard people starting new studios were also involved.
eg Mortheim etc
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If you’re going to list those, don’t forget;
- Yrel - Subjected to nonsensical villain-batting despite her targets including her former slavemasters/oppressors, who themselves get whitewashed.
- Xe’ra - This naaru’s entire characterization and killing off reads like an embodiment of mommy issues (remember Xe’ra’s title was Light Mother… and it looks like Xe’ra’s getting another round of abuse tied to Yrel’s villain-batting if she’s the AU Light Mother)
Women and men are capable of the same failings. Does that mean they’re the product of misogynist writing… or just bad writing in general? Also, there’s women on the dev team or influencing the story including Christie Golden, are they misogynist too?
Plus the presence of sexism doesn’t guarantee the presence of racism or vica versa.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824673806668922882/867602436659085342/1626922446468.png
NO GUYS IT IS THE OLD GUARD
It´s speculation yes but… that speculation is constructive how exactly?
I mean, I´m serious… as much as I´d love to put the blame on the terribad writting solely in Afriasiabi´s disgusting behaviour and call it a day, fact is, I can´t. Because unfortunately I IGNORE if the absolute approval of the story rested indeed with him OR if he had other upper schelons to answer for regarding this process. Maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg and the root of the problem is waaay higher than him.
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We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I for one am very interested in re-examining everything Blizzard has done with the lore in the last decade.
And you have to discuss these things so that they never happen again. Sure you can fix the characters with a single line in a book, but how do you stop the next Afrasiabi? You have to discuss these things.
The suicide is being discussed, that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss every facet of this.
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If you want the truth (from the sound of things) it isnt just one guys fault.
But the whole teams fault.
Discussing it is good, but not a single person here has the power to stop the next Afrasiabi. When it comes down to it we are all bystanders here.