Zul’s problem was making him a generic Old God cultist doing it just because “the whispers told me to!” when all his build up in Cata and MoP was wanting to genuinely help the trolls, just being an awful person about it. That was way more interesting than what he ended up as.
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I’d say that Troll villains never get to be nuanced despite often being in extremely dire situations (Zul’Jin had a lot to be angry about!), but that’s not really a troll only problem.
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Yeah, but GD has been overrun by trolls and reactionaries trying to defend the indefensible. The discussion here is much more sensible (which is slightly more a reflection of the current state of GD)
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I’m curious what makes you say so.
When someone’s creating a story, their story will be influenced by their own biases – conscious or unconscious. Heck, even scientific research is impacted by unconscious bias. Why do you think that the attitudes of the people working at Blizzard don’t impact the final product?
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I’m genuinely interested, this is not a rhetorical question and I don’t have an opinion on it one way or the other just yet, myself. It sounds like you’re talking about folks making the same complaints but with different motivations. If that’s the case, then if the complaints are valid and justified, why does the motivation of the person making the complaint matter?
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To use the most recent example- and apologies if this has been cited- the dev team had zero problem invalidating Sylvanas’ agency since Wrath, by having had her “good half” stolen from her. By a man.
On its own, this is nothing. In the context of this bombshell and that this kinda happens all the time in Blizz (like soft ret conning Kerrigan from Brood War by having Jim Raynor “save” her in WoL), it becomes a piece of evidence indicating a pattern of behavior.
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As I mentioned elsewhere; correlation need not mean causation.
However; Blizz’s weird treatment of women characters has been pretty thoroughly pointed out for awhile now. They all seem to have a penchant for becoming hysterical to the point where their personality and values turn on a dime.
That’s not to say of course they haven’t had loud, emotional male characters. Garrosh died as he lived, twice; mad as hell and shouting at the top of his lungs.
But that was very much in character for him. Jania pulling an ethnic cleansing and nearly going Old Testament on Orgrimmar is some wild ish. Sylvanas going from cold, calculating master tactician to throwing literal tantrums even when they foil her own plans sure was something. Tyrande, pope of the moon and the pointy things, has to learn that millenia of dedication to martial prowess was apparently not the right move- shame Elune didn’t send that memo a few thousand years ago.
Hell even Azshara went from powerful, commanding and the most obviously royal and in charge villain we’ve encountered to brutalized damsel we’ve to rescue from her shadowy boss in about a patch.
And man, even if it’s purely coincidental, that last bit sure tastes rotten right now.
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Because the complaints are used as the basis for specific proposed solutions which coincidentally happen to align with preferences that they have held for a long time that have no direct causal relationship with the complaints. The motivation matters because specific actions need to be considered on their own merits, and it’s less likely for that to happen if the proposal for specific actions is tied to a cause that most people wouldn’t object to.
A decent case in point:
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Exactly. He was built up as a villain from the beginning that’s true, but at least he was a villain with a legitimate cause and just wanted to prevent the impending extinction of his people.
Let’s not forget, he was a prophet who foresaw Zandalar being swallowed by the sea with the Cataclysm, and that vision turned out to be true until it was ( fortunately ) retconned later.
But yes. That’s how it was. The MoP Zandalari prophecies even praise him for acting when his king chose to do nothing.
Of course now we know the Zandalari managed to avoid the worst and Rastakhan was in the right not to listen to Zul, but he still pardoned his old friend, likely because he understood that his actions were committed out of desperation and with the intent to secure the survival of his people.
And then suddenly in bfa he is just another case of “power hungry creep going crazy from Old God whispers and turning traitor”. Lame.
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Huh. That’s valid, and I agree that if someone’s using this as a lever to try to move unrelated pet issues along, that’s not okay. I guess in my reading I missed the disingenuous specific proposed solutions and how they differ from the genuine specific proposed solutions. But then, most of the proposed solutions I’ve seen are both unrealistic and overly broad, the whole, “fire everyone and start over,” “roll back to before Cata and hire all new everyone,” “nuke the place from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure” sort of thing, which will never happen and would hurt many of the people already hurt by the toxic atmosphere described in the allegations. There’ve been a lot of pixels spent on this topic and I have been trying to do the job they pay me for, so I’ve been skimming those bits.
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Theory time.
Steve Danuser was handed a crap sandwich after Alex A. left Blizzard. Now, he and others are trying to correct the mistakes made in the past.
Remember how late the narrative came for 9.1? It’s possible that Danuser finally convinced enough people that the story was crap and needed reworking. That’s why it was late.
Is it perfect? Heck no. But I theorize that Danuser and the team are at least trying to fix the mess. For all the crap he gets, it appears he’s one of the good guys.
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Dude you’re playing a blood elf 
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I want to believe that, but it’s hard to accept that a number of upper management were unaware of this.
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That’s not fair at all. Even at her Lowest, she never lost that Royal countenance and grandiose sense of Superiority. She may of had her moments of wavering during that fight but she never faltered in the sense you’re suggesting.
Does anyone think that perhaps Sylvanas getting the other half of her soul is supposed to represent, on some level, Blizzard getting back its true self? A symbol from the story department laying it all at Afrasiabi’s (and friends) feet and indicating “this isn’t who we really are” after his departure?
I doubt it.
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The quality of a person doesn’t mean it matches the quality of the story they make. Sylvanas since BFA has been Danuser.
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Afrasiabi left Blizzard in June 2020, half a year after the release of Patch 8.3, and Danuser and Terran Gregory were still pitching ideas to Afrasiabi for project approvals all throughout BfA.
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Why would everything in the story that is made by a “TEAM” be judged solely because of one persons biases?
The game developers barely know the story. The Game developers also decide the story direction. The story devs are there for consultation.
HELL they literally decided what was going to happen in 9.1 at the start of THIS year.
But sure that is all on Afrasiabi who left a year ago
It’s not one person though. It’s a pervasive culture.
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