There is no way that report is accurate.
Even if it was the last expansion, it wouldn’t be the end of the IP. That whole narrative is silly.
If he knew he had one foot out the door, I can believe he wanted to be as vindictive as possible before getting fired. I guess there is a reason blizz seems to be ignoring the majority that he had a hand in,
3 Likes
Google it.
I’m not going to argue your opinion on the topic.
I’ve heard vague “BFA was supposed to start with the Alliance continuing their aggression from Legion and UC and Teldrassil originally happened in reverse order before Afrasiabi changed it” claims and rumors, which makes sense and is in line with the expansion cinematics’ vibes, but I’ve never actually seen anyone claim to have direct off-the-record sources, what youtubers discuss this specifically?
1 Like
There’s a lot of accusations and theories, but I didn’t see a lot of it pointing back to anything in the way of concrete evidence. Personally doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that he was allowed be a vindictive baby on his way out the door: “We’re going to fire you for being a creep/predator, but please stick around for another year to ruin our cashcow and we’ll just let it happen for no apparent reason.”
Ignoring the team’s protests of Sylvanas torching Teldrassil and feeding souls to the Shadowlands seems plausible, but who knows what else was waiting down the line. Don’t really care, honestly, as Siege of Orgrimmar/Garrosh 2.0 was explicitly called out loudly and often as something no one wanted to do again.
3 Likes
And the devs promised that they weren’t basically doing Garrosh all over again
and they lied!
5 Likes
To be clear, the leaks I know about are just saying that Afrasiabi planned and insisted on the burning of Teldrassil, nothing about what the story was originally supposed to be before that. The YouTubers who talked about it were Taliesin (of Taliesin & Evitel) and Bellular; there may have been others as well.
Taliesin’s video (with quotes from the texts he received) is linked in this thread:
And here’s a link to Bellular’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24dtddMT07k
This thread also has links to some relevant tweets:
7 Likes
It is easier for the Blizzard developers to lie as often as they breathe, and refuse to apologize later when caught, then to be honest with their customers and fans, and admit when things don’t work out.
A sort of Fake it 'til you %#$^ up, then pile on a healthy dose of DARVO if the fans get really ornery about what you’ve done.
They do this because they perceive us like sharks covered in money, and their job is to snatch the dollars off of us without getting bitten, because the moment we smell blood in the water, it’s a feeding frenzy.
If you think I’m full of it—when was the last time you saw a legitimate Blue Name post in the Story Forums? Yeah, been a long time huh? You know why.
7 Likes
He’s not a Wendy’s employee. You don’t burn that bridge. And you don’t taint your legacy. This story was written YEARS before he had one foot out the door.
Also, we are suggesting that he went into his creative space every day, and world-built and narrative-designed an intentionally horrible story. He put probably months of actual man-hours into creating a flop, like a AAA game version of The Producers that he believed he wouldn’t even profit from, that like The Producers didn’t actually flop. That still turned a profit (even if fans spent years complaining about the opening sequence while continuing to pay subscription fees). That he secretly withheld his true intentions from multiple writers. Voice actors. Artists. Directors. Game designers and Ion Hazzikostas so he could manipulate them into being coconspirators in his Machiavellian plot to destroy Blizzard before he knew he’d be ousted, for nothing Blizzard did wrong. And it didn’t even work!
That’s not reality. That’s called scapegoating.
1 Like
If he rearranged the order of those specific events, he made it better. Even if the execution was botched.
Here is the timeline of events which are directly responsible for pushing the following events. Sylvanas and Saurfang feed misinformation to the alliance spies> The Alliance take the bait and send the remaining naval forces away from Darkshore to attack Horde forces which are not actually in Tanaris> The Horde move on Ashenvale> Malfurion is among the alliance heroes who respond to attempt to stop the horde in the absence of the alliance navy> Sylvanas and Saurfang defeat Malfurion, but Saurfang let’s Malfurion live> Sylvanas decided to sacrifice her prize (Darnassus) which was intended to be an insurance policy to protect undercity, in order to strike the “wound that cannot heal”> Sylvanas knows that Undercity is forfeit because of its isolation and the loss of the insurance policy that was Darnassus’ similar situation, so she plans her Queen’s gambit to attempt to plague the Alliance leaders when they take Undercity.> They begin evacuating Undercity at the beginning of the battle for Lordaeron.
If you switch it around the whole narrative is stupid.
That part of the narrative wasn’t bad. It was just executed in a way that didn’t resonate with fans. It’s otherwise a compelling set up for an interesting story.
Problem is, I remember MoP, and would’ve had to have been born during it to believe BfA’s faction war plot was a good idea. A second faction war kicked off by a second war criminal warchief whose deposition climaxed the expansion in a second Horde rebellion was indefensible after MoP.
“From here on forward, the Alliance will be proactive. Never again can there be another the likes of Hellscream… 
”
12 Likes
About Stormheim situation… Genn did something stupid, but I’m the only one who also sees how stupid Sylvanas was there? During the Legion invasion, she decided to catch a new Valkyr. You could say she wanted to strengthen Forsaken forces, but at that time Odyn Valkyrs were one of our strongest allies. She risked Odyn’s wrath at the worst moment.
Genn risked conflict with the Horde while Sylvanas could bring the Horde to war with the Halls of Valor. They both should suffer consequences, which would have an interesting impact on BFA. The internal conflict of the Alliance, and, knowing the content of Shadowlands, the conflict between Sylvanas and Odyn. But as we see they mostly ignore it.
2 Likes
Genn didn’t know what Sylvanas was trying to do. He did it out of revenge for Liam not because he had serious intel on her plans.
4 Likes
yeah no one is surprised that sylvanas was out for herself.
the point is that genn violated the armistice during the most dangerous moment in all of azeroth’s entire history (up until that point.) just to try to get revenge.
the narrative barely remarks on it.
but you betcher bottom dollar that the horde would be roasted for anything near that.
13 Likes
Why can’t we just let dead character be dead? Does everything need to be marveltized?
It’s funny to be now that people with media illiteracy look back with PURE SPITE and malice at the original creators of an IP and hate their guts that they killed off old characters. Back when people actually, you know could actually right a story instead of just relaying on fan service and a marvelization of never ending stories.
Like, I’ll bet you that if star wars was written today and it was still written exactly how it is now up to episode 6 they would make it so darth vader never died and we’d get 85 billion years of the continuation of darth vaders story in canon.
Garrosh do war ( WAAAAHHHH he’s evil the horde and alliance most band together and though he’ still working in horde interest)
Sylvanas “I need more people to be cursed with undead so I can own my rotting kingdom, also i’m killing a bunch of people because a guy with an edgy Z name told me to but I was controlled waaahhh, i’m also sassy”
Oh my god best character ever! for the horde!
Sick of the melodrama, Let people die.
actually funny you think that, I hate her because she’s an annoying character but people have her pegged to the level of Anton Chigurh, Darth vader or other much loved antagonists. No, her story was just melodrama, boring, trying to hard to be the trope, she was designed to try to be the trope and it failed miserably.
Arthas fit that bill
Characters in warhammer fit that bill. Not Sylvanas. not at all.
She shouldn’t have ever been leader of the horde, Vol’jin should have still been leader. but my guess is that Since metzen was leaving they killed off most of his voiced characters. and as a result it had terrible ramifications for the story. No idea why they couldn’t have just got a new voice actor.
Sylvanas is undead right now. She never fully died.
1 Like
“I wasn’t Driving I was traveling”
She was selfish, no contesting that.
But her original plan was to do her thing solo and stealthily while the forsaken helped the Horde PC out with fighting the Legion/Vykrul.
Genn’s ambush changed that.
4 Likes
That people actually bought that lie hook, line, and sinker still baffles me. Blizzard doesn’t like writing for the Alliance, they just like writing specific Alliance characters. That’s why their story in MoP was hot garbage in the first place.
5 Likes