please react
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Hope they keep him away from troll lore.
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I’m contented. My favorite lore bits tended to happen when Metzen was at the helm. I’ll wait to see what he comes up with though before celebrating anything.
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He’s like miyazaki, gonna quit, come back…quit again?
I’m honestly indifferent towards him and I was actually kinda a hater for a bit. Yet I read/listened to an interview with him and honestly he seems pretty chill about the creative process. I just like the bit when he was like yah we were all really into samurai shodown and that’s why thrall got the ball necklace cuz my favorite character to play was wanfu. I’m like heck yah I can respect that lmao.
Anyway when he left I thought the writing would improve but then we got BfA and shadowlands lmao. I think with all the internal staff shake ups and efforts to do better, diversify and address past issues I’m optimistic.
I don’t have high expectations for WoW’s writing but Dragonflight has been very fun and I hope they continue the current trend.
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On the one hand, this is good news and potentially is flagging we’re going to get a combination of Dragonflight’s more coherent and modern story-telling and tone, and the return of Metzen’s passion for this sprawling, fantastical world he created in a basement with his friends playing tabletop games.
On the other hand? Metzen was well aware of what was happening in Acti-Blizz and left rather than speak out about it, amongst other things. I can understand protecting your friends and wanting to believe only the best in them, but there’s a difference between a line in the sand and a gulf between what good people do, and what Afrasiabi, Morhaime and others who were charged, convicted and implicated in over a decade of sexual abuse, harassment, racial profiling and intimidation of their staff were doing.
I can fully give Metzen the benefit of the doubt of dealing directly with the scumbags, and not their staff, and being in a bubble of his own, but surely, at some point, something must have twigged, some ‘gut feeling’ must have come up and surely, as a husband and a father and knowing damn well how the world works, he must have put out some feelers to figure out what was going on. I’m happy to see him come back, but all the rose-tinted glasses are in the big right now. If he can right the Blizzard ship and bring it back to being a good company that people want to work for, and with, well and good, but his role in the company’s descent into infamy also has to be remembered. If you smell smoke, odds are there’s fire, and saying nothing, doing nothing, after people have died because you never spoke up makes you complicit in the crime in my mind.
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Biggest of Dubs.
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I’m not gonna lie, I’m a huge fan. Celebrating the news on my end. This guy gave us Warcraft 3. He has a passion for the universe which has become all too scarce in recent years.
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Thrall is sooooooo hot and dreamy
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I am concerned for what this portends for the expanded danuserverse, Shadowlands 2: Sylvanas’s return, that chronicle magical power chart, and rope theory
It makes me a little sad to realize that the two most notable creative directors to this game have both forced us to play house with their favorite Horde characters.
I just did the Orc Heritage Armor quest and, uh, it seems to have glossed over some parts of the Orcs’ history.
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Majority are going to gloss over this for one reason or another, which is a little saddening. It’s incredibly hard to believe he also didn’t help foster and enable that environment, not just with his silence, but the rockstar status was something he embodied.
Was some of the old lore and storytelling good with him around? Sure, there’s parts everyone loves. But he was there for the decline and nonsensical parts, too. And a lot of his contributions and sign offs on lore in the past have been questionable, even more so recently. Auroboros: Metzen’s old ttrpg world that features great world building spots, such as fantasy desert with fantasy races, poc architecture and wear inspiration, but no poc among said races.
Published in 2022.
Who here wants to kiss thrall
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Oh boy, back to the age where only human and orc lore gets positive things to it.
I want to kiss him right on his tooth
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Who didn’t see this coming?
Corporate titles can be annoyingly imprecise. I’d love to know who is the big story boss out of the two men
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Major win for the game/franchise. Metzen gave us some of the most beloved storytelling in Warcraft.
I don’t think he is perfect by any means, but at this point, I am willing to concede that there isn’t really any magical panacea for WoW. It’s going to take a lot of combined steps in the right direction, and I think this is one such step.
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I debated on even responding to this.
I stopped giving people the benefit of the doubt in situations like this a long time ago.
His response to what happened at Blizz read like a Third Person essay that took very little personal responsibility for what occurred.
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For me, I can understand them not showing the scummy side around him, and I can forgive Metzen for not being observant of what’s happening, creative people are often oblivious to social clues and things that don’t grab their attention, but I just simply cannot accept that he had, after so many years and working with these people for so long, that no inkling that something was going down.
But yeah, his response was very Big PR Company Speech for ‘I am not accepting anything to do with this’, nearly textbook dodging of responsibility. And that slammed shut the door on any real good will I had for the man. Its a bit like Rowling and Lovecraft. I respect the work, not the creator.
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I’m not quite as psyched as a lot of people seem to be, but I will say this. Metzen has always had so much fun with Warcraft, even if the story can become plain dumb. He’s got a very bombastic style. And if my choices are dumb (fun) or dumb (depressing), I’ll take dumb (fun).
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