With the newly filed lawsuit alleging a “frat boy culture” in Blizzard and specifically calling out Alex Afrasiabi (former Senior Creative Director on WoW) for certain behaviors and Blizzard management in general, I’m sure that Blizzard will attempt to course correct or compensate the narrative to avoid having overtly misogynistic tones as he’s accused of sexual harassment - among other accusations levied at them in general.
The story won’t have any bearing on the court hearings but will definitely have an impact in the court of public opinion in light of what’s going on. Activision Blizzard will want to shy away from even the appearance of condoning the behaviors of which they now stand accused so I’m sure there’s some type of company mandate to this end along with increased scrutiny on what the creative heads are doing with their game.
It’s probably already happened or happening given the time frame of the investigation and this lawsuit. So…
What influences will this have or has this had on the narrative?
We don’t have anywhere near enough information about how Cdev operates or who wrote what to make any meaningful connections between specific writers and specific lore events.
Nonsense. Alex Afrasiabi worked in C-dev, he was the Creative Director, same position Chris Metzen held. Anyone who understands how C-Dev works knows the influence Afrasiabi had over the storytelling.
I was certain they were going to parade Arthas around this expansion with the parallels they’ve drawn between him and Anduin as well as his involvement with Sylvanas.
That seems like a gamble now so I’m unsure if we’ll get more than a mention and am wondering if he’s been removed from any potential threads which featured him.
This also leads me to believe that we’re getting a two patch expansion because of potential re-work on top of any effort reallocated to the next expansion.
Yes, and so by that measure he influenced “literally everything” but that in itself isn’t sufficient to claim that people’s specific lore pet peeves are the result not just of him specifically, but of him specifically and his misogyny specifically.
All that’s going to come from this is people trying to advance their specific lore crusades by cloaking them as righteous stands against the social ills that plague our society. Someone already started doing this in the other thread by claiming that this proves that Sylvanas loyalists were valiant rebels defying a sexual-harasser.
It’s not just stupid but it’s gross as well. Someone is dead IRL because of this.
What’s gross is Blizzard keeping someone like Alex in charge of Creative Development as long as he was allowed to stay there.
Any lore or story that originated from Alex’s tenure in charge is fair game to be criticized and rejected.
That’s it. That’s as complicated as it gets. Blizzard should just retcon the last 10 years of lore as Old God delusions and just be rid of Alex’s corruption.
Everything must be reconsidered. He was at the top for a long, long time. His degenerate attitude towards women likely infected a great many things. Blizzard corporate culture is also under scrutiny and its influence on this IP must be considered. A racist, sexist and drunken work environment is not conducive to quality work.
Not only is this not realistic but it’s also unfair to all the non-Afrasiabi people who worked on the lore, including his victims. This is their work too, not just his.
I’m sorry, but they are tainted as well because of his tenure. No fault of there’s. Nothing anyone on the creative development team currently needs to be taken seriously from this point forward. I wish them well in future non-Blizzard related projects. But these are people who worked closely with Alex day in and day out. Close intimate members of the Dojo. Anything they wrote is worth less than nothing.
Maybe not everything is about Afrasiabi. Maybe we should consider his victims before we consider him.
Saying “tear it all down, it’s all irrevocably tainted” strikes me as not only lazy and giving Afrasiabi more power than he deserves, but it also strikes me as narcissistic preening. It doesn’t cost US anything to declare that multiple generations of writers have a decade of their work invalidated, after all.
Please refrain from off-topic discussions and quarrels in this thread.
Confine that to the existing dumpster:
In any case, the role that Sylvanas plays going forward and Shadowlands finale seems more important now.
Her soul being made whole again can be viewed as regaining her agency. But it makes her portrayal in the 9.1 cinematic somewhat odd. She seemed frightened which is uncharacteristic.
Is she going to have a confrontation with the Jailer or simply be instrumental in deposing him?
So since Alex Afrasiabi was behind Teldrassil and the Night Elves’ extinction and all of this happening to the female dominated race of the game… can we retcon it all now? Now that we know the true nature of these events?
What influence will this have? Probably none at all. While I do wish the worst upon Blizzard for what they’ve been doing with their game, story and most importantly, real people and employees, they’ll most likely just ignore the problem until it goes away.
And I really don’t want to distract from the real victims of this, it disgusts me, but since the thread is kind of designed to talk about the story…
Given that people were already demanding that the last ten years of lore be retconned even before these revelations, I find it hard to believe that them continuing to do so afterwards but with a brand new justification is entirely a good faith reaction to today’s news.