I sometimes know, going by what people in Blizzard have said.
So, you’re blaming Golden, an outside freelance writer who was not a Blizzard employee at the time, for Anduin being a focus character over Chris freakin’ Metzen, just because he listened to her, when Metzen had no obligation to listen to her on that point? What about the pile of other stories involving Anduin that Golden had no part in? Are those all her doing as well, or is it that the game team chose to follow that direction?
Outside writers, such as Golden when she first started writing for Blizzard, and more recently Roux, do not have final say on what characters they use or what plot they write. Blizzard gives them something to start with, such as a plot outline or notes on specific events Blizzard wants, and then the writer is given some freedom and flexibility to work around that and is free to ask for certain things or argue for certain ideas, but Blizzard retains the right to put their foot down and tell the writer no if they don’t like something. If Blizzard wanted Sira dead, they could have dictated that to Roux. If they were opposed to making Anduin a major character, they could have told Golden no, or simply killed him off any of the many times he’s narrowly escaped death.
Or, you could entirely blame the game team for not using the characters you desire, rather than blaming Golden for having the audacity to write something they liked. It’s their responsibility to direct the story and choose where it goes. Golden isn’t holding the game team hostage and refusing to write anything that isn’t about Anduin or Jaina. I’m no fan of how the game has neglected some characters and plot threads, but I blame the game team for that, not the writers whose main job is to take the ideas thrown at them by the game team and turn them into prose as requested, and I’m especially not going to single out Golden from all the other writers on her team.
I’m going to link this tweet by Golden here, since the thread contains useful information relevant to this discussion: https://twitter.com/ChristieGolden/status/1352321521025368064
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The argument that the game team are basically writing the story and these senior writers are just putting the flourish in is hilarious.
Sure the game team would develop the over arching plot, AKA a war, zones, gameplay features.
However these Senior Narrative writers then work with the game team to write the story on how to get those points into the game. They choose the characters and lay out a narrative. Sure blizzard higher ups give the thumbs up or down however if these seniors writers only choose to present certain plots or characters to be used the Higher ups aren’t going to make the completely rewrite the scenario. I’m sure there have been plenty of instances where they have told her no to a script.
If they told her to kill off Anduin and all her other favorite characters i’m sure she would actually choose to leave the project. Any author would do that if they were forced to write a narrative they had no interest in. I can’t imagine that she would have any interest in writing a story that has a Pro war narrative if that was blizzard told her to write.
However blizzard has a vested interest in keeping the award winning Author that writes best selling novels happy regardless of how the playerbase likes her books or story direction. I’m sure if the sales of her novels dropped significantly enough they would probably source a new writer.
Edit: Ill also point out the the quest designers actually do a pretty damn good job filling out zones with interesting quests. They actively keep to the Lore better than the “senior writers” and develop more interesting minor characters.
Edit 2: I would actually love to see them be more transparent with how they actually got the story through the development process. It would be interesting to actually see how they developed the story for BFA considering how atrocious it was.
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Yes, I am blaming Golden, a writer with friends on the game team, for Anduin being the character that he is, and for influencing those around her, to get people to agree with her. The vast majority of stories involving Anduin were written by her. For those not written by her, they probably wouldn’t have been made if she didn’t write him in the first place.
To say outside writers don’t have influence is ridiculous, especially those who have been writing for Blizzard for a long time, and another example I can point to is the story written by Roux about Lor’themar and Thalyssra. The idea for that was entirely her own, and now that relationship is canon, which of course Blizzard agreed to, but Blizzard rarely tells their writers no. Blizzard did want Sira dead, but Roux convinced them not to kill her in the book. Metzen was unsure about making Anduin a major character, then with some convincing, he changed his mind.
This is like going to a restaurant and getting a badly made meal, which the chef would be to blame for, but some other customer tells you to blame the management for putting the meal on the menu. I’m going to the restaurant to get a good meal. There are other characters I can enjoy. Anduin is the special item of the day though, and when the restaurant is encouraging people to consume the special item they’re putting on display, I expect it to be good, especially when the chef convinced the restaurant to put the item on the menu in the first place.
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I am highly critical of Golden. I think she is a decent writer, and mostly blame whoever the story director was for BfA for letting some things in Elegy and BtS go to print, but I also think that she is personally responsible (as a writer) for her words, and to do research concerning her subjects.
That said, what’s wrong with Anduin? If anything he is the most consistent character in the game. He represents hope, and he is the moral compass symbolized by the compass he gifted to his father. He is the voice that lets other characters in on the themes of the story, and has been at least since MoP, where he played a pivotal role and that is one of the most beloved expansions.
In a narrative where character developments seem to happen offscreen and motivations are vague, Anduin is refreshingly consistent.
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It’s because he is the most consistent character in the narrative.
Everyone else’s entire character changes on a whim, usually to make hilariously stupid decisions and the like for Anduin to oppose by virtue of being one of the few actual good eggs in the setting.
That pisses people off because it makes him a “black hole of the narrative”.
Easiest example from night elf stans.
Tyrande should go genocide the Horde but she can’t because Anduin thinks it’s wrong and because it’s Anduin, Tyrande is made out to be the villain.
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Anduin is overused, which is a result of him being one of Golden’s pet characters. I actually somewhat like Anduin outside of Legion and BFA. I’m of the mind that Anduin and Sylvanas are what made BFA a less than positive expansion. In a narrative about constant conflict, having someone who is against conflict leading one of the primary factions is a bad idea. There should be something he wants to start conflict with instead of being diplomatic all the time.
This is actually a general narrative problem that can occur in all sorts of stories, which is that the moral compass should not be the main character. I’m going to use The Walking Dead as an example, which is a series that often has characters who are moral compasses die either to protect the characters they are aligned with from the moral compasses beliefs or to advance the story in an interesting way. While the Walking Dead is an obvious term for zombies, it is also a metaphorical term for many of the people in the show, as they must make themselves dead inside to a degree in order to protect themselves from the humanity that would’ve stopped them from killing what tries to kill them, whether it’s zombies or humans. This makes some of the main characters bad people, but if they didn’t become that way then they would’ve been killed near the beginning and there wouldn’t be a show. They go to war with people out of necessity, and in World of WARcraft, you shouldn’t have the leading character be so against war that it’s all he talks about.
There’s a character named Morgan Jones, whose entire story in the franchise is struggling with finding the balance between complete pacificism and complete annihilation of everyone around him. Season 8’s plot is the group having a large war against another group that wants to enslave them, and at this point in the show he’s basically Tyrande, someone who is unstoppable that kills everyone in his way, which is obviously very useful. He leaves the show at the end of the season to be a part of the spinoff Fear The Walking Dead, because after the war he’s afraid he’s going to turn his anger on the allies around him and start trying to kill them. He manages to become a pacifist again in Fear The Walking Dead, but he becomes the show’s main character in season 5 which results in him convincing the new group he joined to also be complete pacifists, and after using the catchphrase “we’re here to help” more than literally 300+ times in that season, an enemy group like the last one shows up and manages to enslave them, with Morgan getting shot and left for dead, all because the leading moral compass was against conflict. Now the show is in the middle of season 6 and is one of the best seasons because it has main characters that are willing to fight, while season 5 of Fear The Walking Dead is one of the worst seasons out of both shows.
Didn’t she complain about the presidential debate because it was two white men discussing race?
Maybe? No idea if that was specifically how she put it, and to be fair both Biden and Trump have horrible history regarding race.
Biden being pro segregation for much of his early career, the author of the 90s crime bills that led to modern mass incarceration and militarization of police forces, was pro Muslim Ban the first time post 9/11, was pro the creation of Homeland Security and ICE post 9/11 due to anti immigrant narratives, etc
Trump being, well, Trump, and racist for many many years, and is arguably mostly responsible for how the Central Park 5 ended up, etc
Neither has The Range™.
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I’m not arguing the truth about this - I absolutely believe it - but why does the game team have the authority to push a story onto the story team?
It would seem more appropriate to have the game team say, “Hey, we have this concept of going to Shadowlands - the realm of Death - can we make this story happen?”
I don’t work for Blizzard, so I can’t say for sure, but it seems likely that the game team is at the top of their management structure, and it would not be a matter of them asking if something can be done, but rather it being their decision that something will be done.
The game team probably makes announcements to the rest of the company even before announcing things to us. It likely more goes along the lines of “The next expansion is Shadowlands, and the key feature is going to be covenants! Art team, engineers, story team, lets do this!”
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Golden isn’t a narrative designer. That’s not her job. You’re thinking of people like Steve Danuser, the Lead Narrative Designer on World of Warcraft. They’re on different teams. In-game content is mostly handled by the game team, not S&FD. Here’s a quote from Golden herself:
S&FD isn’t exclusive to any particular Blizzard IP, that’s why we have things like Golden writing an Overwatch short story, or Robert Brooks writing the Rogue announcement cinematic for Diablo IV. By contrast, Danuser specifically works on WoW.
You are certainly be free to do so, but be aware that you are essentially blaming a writer for doing their job to the satisfaction of their employer and being a decent coworker. No, I don’t give the game team a pass when they have all the power in that dynamic, and indeed have more power and tools available to them to develop characters since the bulk of lore we see is what they choose to put in game through quests.
Lor’themar and Thalyssra were already being developed as a couple in game before Roux wrote that short story. She didn’t invent that.
Yes, because novel writers are allowed to give feedback and to argue for specific things. Blizzard still ultimately has the last word. Again, from Golden on writing media tie-in novels as an outside writer:
Not quite. It’s more akin to the restaurant owner insisting that the new chef’s special use a specific ingredient, the chef designing a dish, the owner approving it because they’ve tasted it and like it, and then the owner putting that new dish on the menu. In the specific case of Madeleine Roux and A Moment in Verse (which is not how most short stories are made), it’s like a visiting chef who doesn’t normally work at the restaurant but has designed a few dishes for it in the past suggesting a new appetizer using one of the restaurant’s secret ingredients, the owner deciding they like it after tasting it, and then deciding to put it on the menu. I may not like what the chef did, and I may question their tastes and talent, but the owner clearly thinks it’s delicious, so the person with the most power whose tastes I disagree with is the owner.
I’m not saying that I never dislike what a particular writer has done, or that I don’t hold them responsible for ideas that they originated that I dislike or disagree with, or that they have zero influence. I’m saying that the game team has far more influence and power than a single writer who isn’t part of their team, and they bear the ultimate responsibility for approving a particular story element and allowing it to be published. For example, I dislike the story of Anveena Teague, and furthermore I think the implementation of it in game, which amounts to Kalecgos coming out of nowhere and saying “help me, a dragon you just met, save my girlfriend who is a young human woman but also the Sunwell” is utterly ridiculous. However, while I do question Richard Knaak’s narrative taste as a result, I ultimately blame Blizzard for looking at that story and giving it their seal of approval, because it was completely within their power to say “hmm, I don’t think so, Richard,” and instead they decided that it sounded great and put it in game.
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I get that vibe as well from the context, I just meant from a game design perspective it seems to be structured a bit backwards. The only way that I (personally) could justify the game team saying, “We want to burn Teldrassil to the ground” to the story team is if the other half of that statement is, “because we want to rebuild a better designed city and we need a way to completely remove the old one before doing so.”
And in some ways, I would agree with the sentiment - I was never a fan of Teldrassil. Back when I played as Alliance, I spent very little time there compared to Stormwind and Ironforge. I hated navigating Teldrassil. I think the only place I visited less was the Exodar. But that’s a completely tangential comment.
I think the clearest example would be Warlords of Draenor. Blizzard wanted a retro expansion to tie in with the movie that was coming out. I feel like the story/narrative team’s job is seeing all these pieces and trying to make it work.
“Garrosh goes through a time portal to get his revenge, that’s how we get the players to Draenor.” Explains why the Iron Horde was hyped to be some world ending threat but didn’t get beyond the Blasted Lands, except for the ‘sneaky’ ones that went to Blackrock Spire, likely another game dev decision to revamp an old dungeon, like they did in Cata.
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Blizzard’s decision didn’t have anything to do with removing Teldrassil as a gamespace - because they didn’t. It’s still there. All my alts are currently parked there right now.
In the Terran Gregory interview I linked earlier he went on to explain why Blizzard decided to burn Teldrassil:
- But, as we’ve discussed in similar medium that the burning of Teldrassil was very much supposed to do what it did. And that’s ignite a war. And it had to be big. It had to not be something that some people could objectively say “You know that, it wasn’t that bad, I don’t want to go to war,” right? It had to be something so absolutely war inspiring.
I don’t like the way they did it. Most people don’t seem to. But likely the game team decided BfA was going to be a total war expansion and pushed the burning of Teldrassil so no one could narratively question the war.
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Keep in mind, there are members of the game team who work on story and narrative, such as narrative designers and quest writers, and that this is different from the “story team” that writers like Christie Golden are part of. The game team is responsible for most of what is seen in game in WoW specifically, while the Story & Franchise Development team works on things like cinematics, short stories, comics, and audio dramas across all Blizzard IPs as requested by the different game teams. My understanding is that if it’s quest text, it was probably written by the game team, while a cinematic script would be more likely to be written by S&FD at the request of the specific game team.
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Sorry if I was unclear in my comment - I wasn’t intending to suggest that was the plan.
I was just saying that type of reasoning would be the only way I (personally) would think the game team hypothetically should dictate some story point to the story team.
From the interview above, the game team seems to be higher on the hierarchy and can push story points downstream. It’s just that to me, personally, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for that to be the case.
I would completely understand the game team saying (before Cata) “Hey, we need to redesign some older zones to implement flying in Azeroth, can you fit the story to allow us to make that happen?”
Then again, I suppose it’s because I think a game should be narrative driven rather than having the narrative fit the game design.
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All good. Your comment was quite clear on how you personally believe things should be. I was bringing up in contrast how Blizzard made their decisions instead.
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Only if they stay in wolf form all the time. I really don’t like the human models, which is the main reason I have no human or worgen characters.
I prefer a different approach, Alliance should be like Avengers or Justice League (straight-laced heroic group with still some level of inner conflict and characters who are more flawed than their heroic image may appear) whereas the Horde are akin to the Guardians or Thunderbolts (former criminals or evil races who reformed themselves into something more noble but still have their own self-interests at heart for their heroics.)
In this way, I would have liked Metzen to have made that comparison more. It gets even muddier when he said Worgen are meant to be like Wolverine, but overall I think factions could work better being more comparable to superhero teams than singular superheroes. If Warcraft is going to continue being superhero comic book junkfood fantasy they might as well at least borrow the good bits from the stories they’re trying to reenact from.
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