Shadowlans launched November 2020.
He “left” in the summer of 2020.
That’s when he left Blizzard altogether. But the word is that he was removed from the development of BfA considerably earlier than that. Taliesin’s tweet said it was “after it [i.e. Sylvanas’s villain turn] was announced but before it was properly worked out.”
I’m still not sure whether “after it was announced” means Blizzcon 2017, when it was announced that the tree would burn, or July 2018, when the Warbringers video revealed how it happened.
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If he was resonsible for Sylvanas’s villain turn he wouod habe been also responsible for the Loyalist ending and Shadows Rising. Madelije Roux implies she was pushed to write the epilogue. So eariest he left was shortly before June 2020 maybe as early as September 2019, before Blizzcon of that year.
For BFA Ogmots jurnal describes what will happen, I dont think they drastically changed the BFA story after pre patch.
That’s what I’m trying to pin down. When was he yanked from the WoW team? Would he have been calling the shots at the time those things were decided?
My understanding (from Bellular) is that the first part of Shadowlands would have been decided before he left. So that , up until about now, they could only have changed lesser things.
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I thought we knew when he was yanked because Baal made a thread about it sometime during early Shadowlands/late BfA when he noticed his linkedin was updated or something like that.
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According to the devs it was. When questioned as to why the dev explanation in interviews contradicted Sylvanas’ internal monologue in BtS, they said they werent sure where they were going with Sylvanas yet at the time. This was in the midst of BfA and caused a lot of eye-rolling at the time. I cant remember if it was Danuser, but I think it was. I dont want to misquote the guy.
This means that the major cinematics, and the BFA story in general, which went into production before Before the Storm was commissioned, was shifted sometime after Before the Storm was released, but before Shadowlands went into closed Beta. Since the lesser in game cut scenes are rarely finished before they hit the PTR, those and quest text as well as transnarrative and dev interviews are the most likely candidates for last minute retcons.
All speculation, and I dont want to heap much praise on the guy, but it would make sense that he wrote a lot of Sylvanas’ major developments through BFA, and the original vision probably had BtS making a bit more sense, and the major changes came after his departure. This would explain why he defended the burning as completely in character for Sylvanas instead of saying “… stay tuned to find out why Sylvanas is acting so strange.” That is to say, I dont think Afrasiabi had Sylvanas under the thumb of the jailer. I dont think there was a split soul story. I dont think most of the important plot points of SL were planned under Afrasiabi’s watch.
Again, that was when we knew he’d left Blizzard. But the recent videos reveal that there was a period when Afrasiabi was still on the Blizzard payroll but was no longer working on WoW.
Except we’ve been explicitly told that he was off the WoW team before the details of Sylvanas’s villain turn had been worked out. Whatever that means.
I agree with this. The question is, how much of her BfA story did he plan? The reports we’re hearing make it sound like he was making it up as he went along, so he wouldn’t have left a lot of plot points in place whenever he did move off the WoW team.
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Yes, I think so. If Danuser loves Sylvanas as much as people say than he wouldn’t have been responsible for her story up until the epilogue of Shadows Rising.
Yeah in August 2020.
I kind of said as much in the rest of the post.
I guess it depends on what is meant by “before the details were worked out.” Does that include all of BfA, or not?
It means “We changed some things after he left.” Which is consistent with everything else that we know.
Major cinematics take a much longer time than any of the other parts of the cdev machine. We know that the For the Horde Battle for Lordaeron cinematic was the last thing Metzen worked on with Blizzard before he left, if you want some timeline for when they had major plot points ironed out enough to start production in earnest. Since that cinematic is very much about the old soldier, we can presume that the idea for Mok’Gora was already circulating when they were producing that cinematic. In fact, all three cinematics, (Battle for Lordaeron, Mok’gora and Breaking the Veil) were likely all produced around the same time (speculation but could probably be confirmed), saving money and embodying the same creative spirit.
That would mean that the Goddess of Death forshadowing that goes back to EoN, is revisited in BtS and inspired the Kerrigan 2.0 claims could very well have been leading us to the Shadowlands. The job of cdev post Afrasiabi was seems to have been just getting rid of anything the fans predict, because subverting expectations is more important for GoT fans than following the rules of storytelling.
Given that the horde was earmarked to lose from the get go, doing anything was always a mistake.
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Not all of the CGI cinematics were created at the same time. The last possible cinematic that could be made before the change in plan would be Anduin talking to Saurfang in the Stockade, assuming that Sylvanas was always meant to burn the tree. A lot of Baine’s involvement in BFA was supposed to be done by Thrall, but Metzen had back surgery which prevented him from being able to do VO. Thrall being on the farm in Outland was created to explain his absence. CGI cinematics take awhile to make but not longer than the usual time a patch lasts for ingame.
Before 8.1, as me and Baal worked out above.
Dude, Varian was notorious for being hot-headed and not being patient. His rage caused him to accidentally hurt anduin. I think by nearly breaking his arm during the time anduin wanted to study with velen.
Like it or not it has been accepted in canon that Teldrassil was an act of genocide. Her being pissed off at genocide isn’t meaning she is unhinged.
So I found out that he was actually terminated in June 2020 just as I suspected.
He was terminated mid-production of 9.1
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If you see me reference card suits, I’m probably talking about Dr. Richard Bartle’s Taxonomy of Players
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