Danuser+Ion Sriracha Take on retcons and lore

Posted without comment.

TLDR: everything we’ve seen is said from the perspective of a particular person, and also Chronicles is “clearly” Titan-angled

À propos de la Cosmologie justement, certains joueurs estiment que l’histoire de World of Warcraft se limite au fait de retcon des éléments déjà retcon, et ainsi de suite, la Cosmologie présentée dans Chronicle par exemple. Quelle est votre position à ce sujet ? Corrigez-vous réellement certains fragments passés de l’univers de Warcraft afin de rendre les suivants plus intéressants, ou bien tout est prévu depuis longtemps déjà ?

Steve Danuser : "La façon avec laquelle je vois cela c’est que tout ce que l’on sait, tout ce que l’on a appris au fil des années dans l’univers de Warcraft est issu de la perspective de quelqu’un en particulier tant que les joueurs n’en sont pas directement témoins. Nous faisons confiance au narrateur du livre nous offrant nos informations, et bien sûr une grande partie de tout cela est conté d’un certain point de vue. Comme je l’ai mentionné précédemment, si vous lisez la série Chronicle par exemple alors on constate clairement que cela a été écrit par quelqu’un descendant ou parlant en faveur des Titans. Mais il existe sans doute d’autres façons de constater les informations qui sont relatées dans ces écrits : quelqu’un qui a vécu durant l’ère de l’Empire Noir ne se voyait pas nécessairement comme un terrible méchant par exemple.

Beaucoup d’autres histoires restent à raconter, des histoires qui ajoutent d’autres couches, textures et points de vue à l’histoire de World of Warcraft. Prochainement, un livre sera publié. Il se nomme “Grimoire of the Shadowlands and Beyond”. On y découvre le point de vue d’un Négociant enquêtant sur certains mystères, mais aussi la mention d’un certain Al’firim, je vous recommande donc d’y jeter un œil. Cela nous offre la perspective de l’Ombreterre du point de vue de quelqu’un qui en est natif, et bien sûr un être issu de la magie de la Mort voit la mort d’un autre œil que de celui d’un mortel ou d’autres entités issues d’autres forces cosmiques.

Ce que nous essayons de faire, c’est de vous proposer de nombreuses perspectives, de nombreuses pistes auxquelles vous intéresser et que vous pouvez creuser. Il ne s’agit pas de modifier l’Histoire mais plutôt de recadrer les événements que nous avons pu voir par le passé sous un autre prisme. C’est très amusant à faire et nous pensons que cela apporte beaucoup de profondeur à l’univers de Warcraft."

Google transate:

About Cosmology precisely, some players believe that the history of World of Warcraft is limited to the fact of retcon elements already retcon, and so on, the Cosmology presented in Chronicle for example. What is your position on this? Are you actually correcting certain past fragments of the Warcraft universe in order to make the following ones more interesting, or is it all planned for a long time already?

Steve Danuser: "The way I see it is that everything that we know, everything that we have learned over the years in the world of Warcraft has come from the perspective of someone in particular as a players do not directly witness it. We trust the narrator of the book offering us our information, and of course a lot of it is told from some point of view. As I mentioned before, if you read the Chronicle series for example then it is clear that this was written by someone descending or speaking in favor of the Titans. But there are undoubtedly other ways of observing the information which is related in these writings: someone who lived during the era of the

Many more stories remain to be told, stories that add more layers, textures and perspectives to the history of World of Warcraft. Soon, a book will be published. It is called “Grimoire of the Shadowlands and Beyond”. We discover the point of view of a Trader investigating certain mysteries, but also the mention of a certain Al’firim, so I recommend that you take a look. This gives us the perspective of the Shadowlands from the perspective of someone native to it, and of course a being of Death magic sees death differently from that of a mortal or other entities from other cosmic forces.

What we’re trying to do is give you lots of perspectives, lots of avenues that you are interested in and that you can dig into. It is not a question of modifying history but rather of reframing the events that we have seen in the past under another prism. It’s a lot of fun to do and we think it brings a lot of depth to the world of Warcraft. "

“We had the sense that players would be contending with Sylvanas for a while now, that they would be delving into and learning more about the nature of the Maw, and the Jailer’s power in this first major content update,” Ion says. “But, the specific details of the twists and turns the story is going to take, who the bosses in the Raid are, even some of the major narrative moments that we’re going to see play out in the coming weeks are things that came together at the end of last year, and the beginning of this year.”

"Some of it is seeing how the stories resonated with the community, with our players, as they were delving into it,” Ion adds. “One of the great things about working on a live game like this and this iterative content cycle is that we can see what players are excited about, they’re confused about, want to learn more about, what preconceptions or ideas they have about the way things are going, and pivot to make sure that what we’re doing is going to hit the mark.”

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How is this news?

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Because the interview took place yesterday.

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So, Danuser is saying that we don’t even directly witness the things we do in-game? We never actually experience anything that actually really happens?

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Yeah but the stuff Danuser says is about as new as “Teldrassil killed alot of night elves”.

Its just “ok and that stuff has been known for more than a year”.

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He’s talking about the history of Warcraft. Our characters start in WoW, everything before the point where Vanilla started is functionally in-game hear-say.

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The absolute state of warcraft media.

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They should just be honest and say there are retcons, and they decided to change some things. Because if they say that, then Chronicle (and any other info-dump source) is objectively canon until they decide otherwise. Whereas now, with these kinds of comments, they’ve sown distrust of the narrator so that ALL info-dump sources are subjective always.

There’s no reason for them to sow this kind of distrust of the narrators. It works better to just admit they’re retcons. If they’re retcons, then we at least have a “running canon” that is objectively true at any given moment—even if it is subject to change. Now? There isn’t.

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More importantly, it makes all of Warcraft 1, 2, and 3 “perspective”

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I might even get a little hyperbolic and claim that interviews like this completely shred even the concept of canon. A super-complex, continuously retconned and fluid—but still objective—canon is far better than the complete lack of one. F that, to be blunt.

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I think this is taking things too far.

Needing to be on the lookout for something other than an omniscient third party narrative is not new. The idea that NPCs may be biased or incorrect is also not new. I as an auditor do not get to take Management’s statements as gospel, they can help to provide context to evidence, but they are not as reliable as actual documents. There’s a similar problem here, and in fiction in general.

I know that makes people who are looking for “confirmation” of this and that upset because it challenges the basis upon which they understand the world, and that people would rather tack to a standard where they don’t have to worry about whether statements may not be reliable, but you don’t get to adopt unreasonable standards like that just because it’s easy or convenient.

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The whole ‘unreliable narrator’ in Warcraft is a recent phenomenon that’s come about with Danuser, everything before his arrival, events were taken as fact unless otherwise stated. I don’t know if I should be upset or just pity the man at this point.

He just seems like the person that will never admit he changed something. The Chronicles was marketed as cleaning up the lore, it wasn’t trying to add perspective. Him saying, "Oh, it’s obvious it was a PoV, is just him justifying his own actions. If there is a new perspective, that’s modifying events because things may not have played out as we were led to believe.

I don’t want to dwell of this too much because it just makes me far too negative, but I look forward to the day Danuser is gone, if I even care at that point anymore.

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I think he’s saying if our characters didn’t see it, then maybe it didn’t happen the way it was recorded, aka all non directly in-game lore is liable to be soft retconned.

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Amen, end of thread, right there. That’s the crux of the issue, I suspect.

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So, that I guess is their explanation for sudden invention of Dar’Khan Drathir even though the original version of W3 portrayed the fall of Silvermoon differently.


Also, the thing is… “interesting”. “I called that old book a PoV, and made this new book, so it’s clearly not a retcon since I say so”.

If you mean the state of the lore currently - I agree with you.


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I don’t.

I have watched people, time and again, assert that because an NPC claimed something that said NPC’s claims were fact. If an NPC said at the end of a quest “thanks to you, victory will soon be ours!”, this community would rush out and say “VICTORY CONFIRMED!” even though the NPC was expressing their opinion on how things would go, and more importantly could be wrong.

For instance, I have seen certain members of this community recently claim that because Saurfang thought that the Horde took Ashenvale that the Horde took Ashenvale. The context being omitted from that is that Saurfang said that in Astraanar, just before his forces were nearly decimated by his opponents. This context didn’t appear to matter - because that statement was what they took as their confirmation. I really hate this practice, and I think that much of the reactions I’m seeing to this news is just anger that, more and more, this practice can’t be applied.

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You know I kind of agree with you.

No wonder everyone thinks Sylvanas cared about anything or anyone because she well, wouldn’t say so to your face.

Well, I do distinguish “experienced myself” from the other sources of information, but even that is not a guarantee.

I mentioned the fall of Silvermoon which we saw in W3, but it was retconned to be different and now that is a retroactively applied justification. There are few events in the game where the character also sees one thing, and other time - it shows differnt stuff.

Like, numerous visits of the same place in BfA by different factions. Or, my favourite, Jaina warbringers cinematic. Because it is avalable after the siege iirc. And that is not what’s happening in the game when Jaina uses her medalion. The game also confuses the motivations, like Sylvanas ordering to burn the tree, only then to say “I did not foresee this outcome”.

“Unreliable narrator” is a tool and can work rather well. Morrowind did it amazingly almost 20 years ago. But here - it looks like justification of sloppiness of their work and retconning the old lore.


gl hf

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Thinking on it, I took it more as Danuser saying Not everything you hear in game or read is cannon. It’s the classic Don’t believe everything you read/hear

Which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing, if blizz wasn’t so reckless and haphazard with how they retcon stuff at the drop of a hat/on a whim. :wolf:

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That and Chronorabbit’s sentiments are certainly fair. But my point again is that I think people are going too far with this. A statement about an unreliable narrator is not necessarily the same as “all lore is now subjective and therefore wrong” - which I think again is an overreaction.

As an aside, subjective also doesn’t equate to undefined or undefinable - it means that there’s an exercise in judgment in there. Commonly accepted truths can still be derived from “subjective” content.

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