Can someone please explain to me on how was it possible for Steve Danuser to write / create shadowlands when he was still a quest designer during most part of BFA (August 14, 2018-Jan 14, 2020). When Alex Afrasiabi was still the Creative Director for Battle for Azeroth and his termination date was (June 2020) so that means Alex Afrasiabi already worked on the early part of Shadowlands before his termination. And then Steve Danuser was promoted to creative director (late 2020) and worked on 9.1 and 9.2. So again how did Steve Danuser worked / created the shadowlands expansion within that limited timeframe? When Shadowlands expansion was released on (November 23, 2020).
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Who said he did?
The distinct lack of his garbo self insert fanfic character in SL seems like a pretty big indication that he wasnât meaningfully involved with the story this go around.
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Itâs pretty weird how youâre digging into his employment history.
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Not really?
People generally want to know about the people who are going to be kicking their fantasy universe in the leg-forks.
Like the poor Trek fans.
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Furorâs psychosis required that he give WoW the kiss of death. Hence the War of Thorns and the assassination of Sylvanas Windrunnerâs character. In his mind if he wasnât in charge, WoW should not exist. I knew him in EQ, and that was about the speed of his ego.
But like typical mindless sheeple, the puling spawns that spew their worthless opinions on these forums, instead choose to blame the guy charged to clean up his mess for the problems, instead of the human filth that caused the problem because⊠Ready?
The mobs of psychology claim: âHe didnât work on it / was fired etc.â.
Itâs kind of like what we deal with in the Presidency tbh. The prior moronâs mistakes get imputed to the poor sap who has to fix the problems of their precursor. I do not envy either of them.
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Probably the best sign of hope for Steve is Sylvanasâ fate was handled pretty well. After such a train wreck of a story, I didnât think there was anyway they could resolve things for her character without pissing off most people. But his team came up with a satisfactory ending.
On the other handâŠthe Jailerâs end left a lot to desire.
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Quoted for truth.
Sometimes the person taking over is simply that. They get a stack of papers dumped on their desk, a new title, and a pat on the back with a chuckle of, âGood luck!â
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I look at the government like a really giant diesel powered wheel or train thatâs 700 ft tall.
One administration works tirelessly day and night to get it to go clockwise. They spend years to finally get to turn and then finally start getting some speed as well as just turning.
Then the next administration comes in puts on the parking brake as the entire thing comes to a screeching halt. They want everything to go counterclockwise.
Warcraft is a lot like that it just has a dozen or more big systems that you canât just simply put in reverse.
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Par for the course.
Whenever you want to attack someone these days you find that one racially insensitive or sexist thing they said 12 years ago.
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He was usually the face of writing in BFA and no he wasnât a âquest designerâ when you noted. That was pre Oct 2017.
Senior Narrative Designer
Oct 2017 - Apr 2019
Senior Game Designer <âthat is the quest stuff among other things that he did
May 2015 - Sep 2017 <-quests and other stuff
While it wasnât steveâs expansion [SL] fully. He had weight in what was done, especially later on. He had more involvement in SL than you give him credit for.
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Fact is that even with bad set-ups taken into account, the writing for Shadowlands was incredibly bad. The Jailer is the pinnacle of this. Maybe⊠maybe⊠you could argue all the key decisions on how the Jailer would fit into WoW history were decided before Danuser was in charge. Letâs even assume thatâs true to give benefit of the doubt.
Even so, the Jailerâs scenes and dialogue were all done by the âShadowlandsâ team. The guy we were told was the master manipulator of all of history in WoW came across as an incredibly shallow and dumb villain. While their Sylvanas book (written by Golden) has the Jailer engage in conversation and persuasion, the game version we got was just like, âlol, I destroy souls and will make everyone serve.â
Sylvanasâs turn on him and split-soul stuff, even if pre-ordained, was super poorly handled. âI will never serveâ was a line and scene cooked up by the current team, and made everyone roll their eyes. And letâs not forget the decision to just annihilate Arthas off-screen (except for one spark that gets to fade in front of us) after teasing his return with the Uther animated vid when Shadowlands launched. His send-off was an obnoxious, âbe forgottenâ speech by Sylvanas.
All of that is 100% on the current game team.
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Even if he hadnât had control over SL initially, he still didnât handle what he was handed very well.
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As was pointed out, he wasnât a âquest designerâ and hasnât been for some time.
He was SENIOR NARRATIVE DESIGNER. That means the vast majority of the story is/was his and has been for some time.
Yes, Afrasiabi was higher up on the totem pole, but Afrasiabiâs job was managing the writing team, not writing the story. He may very well have said he wanted âSylvanas to burn down Teldrassilâ, but how it was written and handled was on the writing teams shoulders, particularly Danuserâs. Trying to blame everything wrong with the current story on Afrasiabi is, at best, disingenuous. At worst, well they know the guy isnât exactly going to stick up for himself publicly.
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The idea that consumers of fictional media âownâ that media because of their nominal financial contribution and their emotional entitlement is ⊠unrealistic.
This stuff ainât yours. Youâre just paying for the privilege of witnessing it. And you can close your eyes, turn away, and quit at any time.
Iâm all for art criticism. This isnât art criticism. This is a claim of ownership. And itâs false.
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What you will find even more weird is when he starts digging into Your employment history!
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Steve Danuser did nothing wrong âŠ
This was an interesting take, completely unrealistic, but interesting.
Can you explain how Afrosalami can be responsible when Ion outright said most of the story developments were created earlier this year?
Danuser is using him as a scapegoat because heâs an easy target now. The failings of SL are 100% on him. Only a horrible writer can take a concept of the God of death vs the afterlife and make it one of the worst stories in fiction.
Even I could do more with it.
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Right.
But thereâs a huge difference in âOoh who is this author of this book?â verse âI hate this guy. I need to figure out ways to slate him onlineâ.
I hate his story writing too. But thereâs just a mental barrier I think you have to be unstable to cross to seek out this sort of information just to use it was fuel.
WoW community and picking an individual to blame everything on is one of my least favorite things about my games player base.
People trashed on Ghost Crawler. Soon as he left, omg bring him back.
People trashed on Holinka, as soon as he left it was bring him back.
Then people moved to Ion.
Then Brack.
Then Bobby.
Back to Ion.
Now Danuser.
I donât really get the rabid hate people have for Danuser. The Jailer is a pretty boring villain (which I have some very specific thoughts on how this could have been fixed but will leave them out of this lol), but Shadowlands has had some pretty good stuff. I genuinely enjoyed most of the covenant campaigns (Kyrian was great, Ardenweald was a bit disjointed and I am convinced we were going to get more Drust stuff but it had to get cut, Venthyr was fun and nothing will ever beat seeing Kaelâthas getting his butt handed to him, Maldraxxus was⊠honestly meh haha). I genuinely liked the Korthia campaign and also really liked Zereth Mortis.
Also I feel like weâve gotten more and better character beats than weâve had in a while - both for âmainâ characters and in side quests.
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