Bingo.
Companies are hotbeds of gossip. People talk, at work and outside it. In-jokes develop. Metzen may never have been in the Crosby Suite, but he must have known about it. And how many times did J. Allen Brock have to have a talk with Afrisiabi about his behavior?
There’s being ignorant of what happened, and choosing to turn a blind eye/believe what you’re hearing. Metzen chose the latter.
Hopefully Warcraft’s story goes back to just being “fun.”
I’m genuinely exhausted of all this contrived intro-spective, depressing dialogue heavy mop sessions that have been dominating WoW lately which I subscribe as just the preference of the writing team transforming the game into something they prefer/grew up with. And that’s cool in balance. I don’t mind it myself but I really want WoW to have moments of just brainless spectacle again. I want Orcs and Humans to punch each other again and not having to spend a whole year examining decades of parental trauma to justify why sometimes.
Sinking ship gunna keep sinking no matter how much scotch tape they use to patch the massive hull breaches.
I’ve been thinking on this for awhile and I still don’t know how to feel about it.
I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I’m sure he wasn’t isolated and unaware. I don’t know how much responsibility he officially had during the issues we know about (and others I’m sure we don’t), but I feel like he was in a high enough rank within the company that putting his weight behind saying it was unacceptable behavior would have helped.
But there’s also the knowledge that he left while suffering anxiety and panic attacks. It may be that he was just not in a position to speak out. I try to remember that not everyone has the same capacity for being vocal. Or maybe he did speak out, but we don’t know about it and may never find out because of legalities. Who knows what kind of gag orders have been enforced by the legal team. I tend to believe when someone’s statement sounds like it was written by lawyers, it probably was.
All that aside, I do feel that if Metzen is back, it means we’ll be seeing more Orcs and more Thrall. I don’t think they’re the big draw they were 20 years ago, so it feels like it’s a step backward as far as storytelling. Warcraft isn’t Thrall and Varian anymore. It’s not focused on Orcs vs Humans. The game isn’t ever going to have an audience big enough to support faction wars again unless they start combining/closing the smaller servers and if they do that, it’ll be openly admitting that their player base has shrank in retail. They won’t do that because stockholders.
Metzen is going to step into a game where the Alliance and Horde are in an uneasy truce ICly because they have to be OOCly to support cross-faction guilds. There aren’t any more Garrosh or Sylvanas to beat up with a villain stick. I suspect villains will no longer come from within simply because we don’t have any main characters to vilify unless he suddenly makes Anduin the next Lich King. Or makes Anduin and Bolvar duke it out for something along that line. But then where’s the Horde in that story? It’s much too soon to try to bring back Sylvanas, and I don’t think a Lich King story works without her, unless you force Calia into a role she hasn’t earned, not to mention her lack of leadership skills. Maybe Lillian Voss steps in? Idk…
I do feel that Metzen can deliver a better, more acceptable story than Shadowlands, or that another expac with a weak story might benefit from him going over it to retouch areas that need it.
For those of us paying 15 dollars to a company that has done unforgivable things for entertainment I’m not sure we can speak on someone who has created and loved the game and stories who has been friends with and been betrayed by people he once trusted and makes their livelihood from doing these things
But that’s just me idk go off tho. Also thrall is so hot
I’ve come around to this style of thinking, too.
Warcraft’s faction conflict is really fun when it’s the developers playing with action figures. It’s really un-fun when it’s the developers trying to write Apocalypse Now with Goblins.
The problem is that if the violence ever gets too goofy, it ceases having an effect and just gets tedious. Punting marmots is fun, but it’s not a story. So they definitely do need to dip into the maudlin well from time to time, but there are fun ways of doing that, too.
only thing i know about metzen is that hes thrall.
and we had way too much thrall in Cata
Hell yeah. Return of the King
I agree that not all of Warcraft needs to be brain-less testosterone and that it does not hurt itself from adding nuance and layering to it’s plotlines. Honestly, the novels do that very well in my opinion. Excluding “Night of the Dragon” which I will say is the only WoW book I forced myself to finish. But in that medium is where WoW can do all of it’s slow burn, focused character introspective. Lately in WoW I feel like I’ve been constantly having to sit through the character’s public therapy sessions and I’m genuinely not having fun doing so.
I miss having moments explaining to my co-workers the cheesy reveal of “And Lady Prestor was a dragon the whole time!” and “Yeah and think of Blademaster’s like Orc Samurai”. Instead we have “Alexstraza talked down one of the Primals…so we’re allies I guess”
So yeah, if Metzen brings that part of WoW back. I’m all for it.
Honestly I feel bad for Metzen getting reeled back in, dude just wanted to retire but now the company he helped solidify is in a free fall and getting their rock star back in the office will instantly make stocks increase, right?
Boi really be channeling Thrall near the end of BfA huh?
I’ve wondered how much Metzen knew, tbh, in part because he often talked about his story “jam sessions” with Afrasiabi, and singled him out as the person he missed most after his Blizzcon appearance, post resignation.
Despite his later claims to the contrary, he and Afrasiabi at least APPEARED to be friends. Close friends, even, who worked closely together.
But unlike many i don’t take this as evidence that he did know, but potentially evidence that he didn’t. Perpetrators like Afrasiabi don’t tend to cackle in corners in their spare time, they tend to be very good at hiding their evil actions from the world, or at least from certain people. That’s why you sometimes get perpetrators of crimes too awful to name who have families, families who are entirely ignorant of what they’re doing. They are deceitful people. Furthermore if Metzen and Afrasiabi really did seem super close at work, then one would be understandably nervous to wander up to Metzen and make those allegations. It’s the sort of thing you’d fear would backfire.
From what i know, correct me if I’m wrong, Metzen didn’t ignore emails on the matter like Morhaime and others did. He simply never noticed that his friend was a perpetrator. I’m more inclined to blame the manipulative scumbag Afrasiabi than Metzen himself.
We can never know for sure what’s gone on behind closed doors, and in people’s hearts and minds. I’m not certain of my theory, but I’m prepared to give Metzen the benefit of the doubt at least until more information comes out regarding his role in it. So far his crime is not noticing, and I’m not convinced that not noticing is beyond reasonable doubt in this case.
This a trillion. Warcraft is incapable of being complex with being twists and turns and nuance because it’s fundamentally a story with increasing complexity about Orcs invading a Human village, at its root.
That isn’t to say it can never be effective storytelling, or even that it can never have gut-punch stories told with 2003 era graphics and text bubbles (Morgan Ladimore, Pamela Redpath, Smiling Jim).
Give us a world to explore. Give us more Lands of Mystery. The RPG books kinda sucked, but that’s the world I wanted to play in, and did, and Metzen coming back might help.
Don’t feel bad. I’m pretty sure he is here because he wants to and gets paid. It’s not like he’s here by some punishment lol.
I don’t care.