I’ve given that man mountains of crap and I’m willing to stand by pretty much all of it. But I will admit most of the story developments made under him weren’t bad ideas in a vacuum, they were bad because they were happening in the Warcraft universe where they didn’t work.
I feel like if he had implemented all his ideas and story decisions into his own original universe instead of trying to cram them into preexisting universe like WoW I’d have liked them a lot better.
Similar how a lot of the worst aspects of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy would have actually been mostly alright if they weren’t also supposed to be Star Wars movies.
Anyway I hate what he did to WoW and am more than happy to see him go. But I hope he’s doing alright, I don’t want to wish ill on the man himself.
Danuser is FRACTALING with his THE FRACTALS somewhere. I hope he’s happy. But most of all, I hope he learned a valuable lesson; don’t rush to get all your crap in all at once.
Because I’ll go a step further and say Danuser’s crap wasn’t even bad for WoW, not by its nature. It was bad for WoW because it was way too much, way too quickly.
Ignoring Zovaal and the whole “7000D master chess player” gunk, because I don’t even think that was his own original addition. I think it’s something he inherited from He Who Will Not Be Named.
I think Danuser’s bag was the cosmic shenanigans, and his shenanigans were all thrown into one single expansion.
We got the Eternal Ones, a brand new titan-ish pantheon of death gods. We got the big bosses the First Ones, a mystery box bigger than titans. We got the first real hints that a Life Pantheon exists via Elune having a whole sister, and maybe pantheons for every cosmic force. A mystery seventh cosmic force that threatens everything. A combo-force that may be tied to Azeroth. A pre-existing, mysterious war between the six known cosmic forces. Zereths and Fractals and more!!
That’s… A whole lot for a single expansion. And worse, most of it was utterly extraneous to the main plot. It quickly becomes too much, and it felt like it just kept getting unnecessarily bigger each patch, without bothering to even hint at a purpose for any of it. It was like Concept Goulash in Baby’s First DnD Campaign.
Any one or two of those ideas dropped into an expansion and built up over the next year or two would be great. But getting all of them in rapid succession, with none really built up, just made the entire thing feel extra.
This is also something I’ve been thinking about since the Metzen interview where he said that the creative department was more democratic than when he left.
Makes me wonder how much was actually Danuser’s ideas.
Also I think the narrative being decided by a group instead of just one or two visionaries is one of those things that sounds great on paper but are terrible in execution. It kind of explains why DF felt so all over the place narratively.
I don’t even blame that on him. I blame that mostly on That Other Guy, but also the writer’s room in general. I think as soon as Volume 1 released, all of the writers/developers kinda realized they would never be able to fully stick to what was published. Heck, technically it didn’t even make it past WoD before we saw small contradictions creeping in with the fate of Suramar and the Pantheon.
Design by Committee, where everyone wants their own special bird dog written into the canon, is always a bad idea.
You can’t blame Danuser for Shadowlands. He was not in charge of writing during the time it was being written. He was appointed during it’s release which is way way too late to change anything. He was handed a bag of crap and knew it was a bag of crap and made the most sensible decision with it, to get rid of it as fast as possible. Better to get it out of the way to make something you actually WANT to be known for right?
So if we wanna levy criticism at Danuser, we levy it at Dragonflight. Which, yeah the pacing was a bit odd. But it is also trying to reset the scale and get back to more grounded content as jumping the sharks we did in shadowlands, trying to go even HIGHER on those stakes is impossible or at least impossible to do AND still have a good game. So in all, I think Danuser did a decent job. But writing by committee really only waters down stories, however when you need Quantity for an MMO, writing by committee can work for that if you properly delegate, if everyone’s all only on main story though… then yeah you fail to work the strength of multiple writers and slow things down…
Particularly when Blizzard has admitted that they value “rule of cool” over consistency when it comes to the stories they tell. To the point that the “lore” reason why we do X does not happen. Looking at you Battle for Mount Hyjal raid from TBC.
Outside of that example, WoD as a whole feels like that tbh. The fact that it was released alongside WoW’s 10th anniversary (and Warcrafts 20th anniversary) and how said anniversary was a key part of WoD’s marketing. Saying how “cool” it would be to fight these iconic WC1-2 horde characters but not really. In retrospect it honestly felt like Metzen and co where stroking their own ego’s. It honestly felt like TBC all over again when it came to characters like Gruul, Vashj, Kael’thas and Illidan. Killed for the sake of being killed. Because it would be “cool” to fight these iconic characters (well except Gruul in this case lol).
Exploring a pre-demonic Draenor is interesting, don’t get me wrong. Seeing the Arakkoa before the Sethekk cult took full control along with the Ogres having a waning Empire, akin to the Roman Empire (in more ways than one) was amazing to see. The little hints we had in TBC about those cultures in full display. But the whole time travel plot and the one Burning Legion across all timeways really messed up the lore moving forward. As someone pointed out in a different thread, how does that work when it came to the Sargerei? They did not exist in the MU so in theory there could be a Draenei that is still a Draenei in the MU but became a demon via being a member of the Sargerei in the AU. There is an item from the Order Hall mission table that references the Sargerei, but I wouldn’t call that proof that they existed in the MU. Given the whole “one legion across all timelines”, it could be from AU Draenor. Or look at Socrethar.
Prior to WoD the only time travel we saw were cases of
These things already happened and we are just experiencing it from a “first person” point of view (Culling of Stratholme, Battle for Mount Hyjal)
The changes are small that a simple short-term memory wipe is enough to set things back on track (e.g. Old Hillsbrad)
They completely rewrite the timeline (WotA novel trilogy)
Like Avengers Endgame with the Infinity Stones, we take something but that thing gets returned at the exact moment it was taken (Well of Eternity w.r.t the Dragon Soul)
But a completely different AU really messed things up.
Given that Vol 1 was probably written alongside Legion, I think those were intentional as to not give away spoilers.
Although the whole Argus patch could’ve been a revision on Legions main story at some point after Chronicles Vol 1 was in the publishing stage or even post release. I mean they did cut out an entire Island that was going to be a patch destination because it was just more Night Elf ruins. And they repurposed the name of said Island to be the original name of the Broken Shore. The name being Thal’dranath. You can see it on promotional material for Legion. Such as what the world map was going to look like.
This is why I think Legions original patch cycle was going to be this.
7.0 - gather pillars of creation, ending with the Nighthold Raid
7.1 - Return to Karazhan + Thal’dranath
7.2 - Tomb of Sargeras
And the Argus stuff was probably going to be a full on expansion but was repurposed as patch 7.3. Most likely due to the attempt to release expansions yearly failed. But that wasn’t the only change to Legions story. Trial of Valor was added in between EN and NH to conclude a story arc that would’ve gone unfinished. ToV was probably added between the two main raids of Legions launch because EN was cleared too quickly (World’s first mythic Xavius was killed within 18 hours of launch) and how powerful Mythic + was to gearing. Therefore Nighthold needed to be rebalanced. This pushed NH back to 7.1.5.
Chronicles vol 1 does mention the Pillars of Creation, the portal the Legion opened under Suramar’s Temple of Elune and how Elisande used said pillars to close said portal. So the Suramar stuff was probably intentional to not give away spoilers or key plot details when certain people got early release copies of the book.
All things considered, I think Danuser may have been OK enough to be the best on the Payroll to navigate the Shadows of the horror show that was the Cosby Crew. I give him credit for that. It was no small feat.
I think Danuser was basically handed an Armada of a Franchise that was adrift. He followed dastardly fiends at the helm who had all but wrecked it.
I think BfA and Shadowlands were likely laid out before he could alter the greater narrative, and he could only shift that narrative so much by the time he had any impact. I lay all that on the Cosby Crew.
I tend to agree that Dragonflight was where Danuser can get credit for righting the ship, yet get blame for not doing it in a steady manner. It was all over the place. Maybe that’s what it took to leave the past behind.
You can’t pin SL on him, but fractals, zereths, and the genesis of WoW’s deconstructionist arc were under his watch. I think I largely agree most with the sentiment that he isn’t a bad writer, just not a good fit for writing Warcraft specifically.
Well it kind of has to do with where the buck stops. People were understandably angry about the writing and the guy whose title was “Creative Director” was the only face they could pin their grievances on.
Outside of one glaring example, there’s a lot of blame to go around. Pretty much every peek we’ve been given behind the curtains is that it is an extremely collaborative process, so it is probably impossible to know who wrote what and when.
On the other hand, someone has to sign off on all of it, and it is unrealistic to expect people with complaints to accept “hey, it’s not my fault, it’s any one of dozens of vague, unnamed writers under my direction who are to blame!” as an excuse.
The problem with this argument is when you have someone with a strong personality combined with the power to back it up. When that happens you often find groups just slipping into follower mode and while the individual in question might not have written it, they were the reason it was written.
Which is likely how we got the tone-deaf Sylvanus heel turn arc.