Maybe the real reason why Blizz brought Metzen back is that after the World Soul Saga, The universe does a hard reset. Since expansions are apparently planned long before their arrival on live servers, the saga could end current wow narratives to old wow narratives that made the game great in the first place…war, player character is just a nobody again that rises up to face whatever is happening only to fade to obscurity again. A Rambo of sorts. (I guess).
IMO, I don’t see much Metzen influence on this Saga we are in now…maybe Danuser?
Just thought I would ask the lore council (this forum) what their thoughts are on this.
We already underwent one “setting reset” attempt, it was called Shadowlands and everyone except the devs hated it (I still remember that one dev bragging he doesn’t have to draw just trolls anymore before SL came out). I think they will inevitably eventually try to go full cosmic nonsense again, but if they are smart, they will tie into something people are at least marginally interested in (like the other side of Azeroth).
Let it go, Danuser is gone since DF launched, so for almost 4 years now. Per Metzen’s own words, he’s the one who outlined Worldsoul saga, so either he’s just a bad writer or a liar, pick your poison.
If you ask me, Metzen barely did anything, he might have tried back in TWW, was put off by the writing team now being “a democracy” and is around as a mascot since then. Pretty sure the person mostly responsible for Midnight writing is Anne Stickney of all people.
I do vaguely suspect that the setting is heading towards some massive time jump or reset. Midnight does have the feeling of a lot of loose ends being abruptly tied up/tied together, with a sense that it’s meant to consolidate groups and erase divisions so they won’t have to be acknowledged in plots moving forward. That does leave the options that either a) the writers just don’t want to write about them again, or b) they’re ‘finishing’ a lot of stories in preparation for jumping away from them permanently.
I don’t think a reset would be a good idea, though. It means that all the built-up history and details of the setting get erased, and everyone has to start over building up their knowledge and recognition of the setting. It’s like marketing an entirely new game story-wise, except old customers don’t see the things that drew them to it before, and new customers still see it as an old game.
And it only really matters to the story - the players who are here for the gameplay, the players who skip quest text and cinematics already, probably won’t care whether there’s been a reset/time skip or not. I have no statistics on how many players care or don’t care about the story, but the story-skippers do typically seem to be treated as the majority, so a reset can’t be justified as being for them. The best argument for that would be that a reset could simplify the setting, so the story could make sense to more new/casual players - but the framing in Midnight that explains past lore (Windrunners being a messy family, blood elf and Amani conflicts, etc) is the same sort of lore-drops that a new story would need to build from scratch, anyway, so a reset wouldn’t change much in that regard.
But I can see why a new batch of writers would like the idea of a reset. If they feel they’re on a different wavelength than fans who are asking for things like “Horde writing” (“But we did add Horde characters?”), “WCIII night elves” (“Uh, Shandris and Bel’ameth got to feature in the latest chapter?”), or faction conflict (“What, you mean violent racism? Why would anyone want that? No!”), then it seems a good choice to wipe the slate clean and start from (essentially) scratch, so that they control the new building blocks of the concepts that players will be expecting to see. If there is a reset/timeskip, I suspect it’ll be for this reason.
I don’t think I quite understand what you’re suggesting. Are you saying they want Metzen to help de-escalate the power level so that PCs can fight bandits again?
Honestly while it lacks some of the former political conflict, the themes in Midnight are very Metzen.
Metzen delivered us Warcraft 3 remember? The Horde, the Alliance and the Night Elves banded together to defeat the Burning Legion. That was the key plotline. And don’t get me wrong, I loved Warcraft 3, and I think it was done in an excellent way.
But. Come on. Elf unity? The disparate elven peoples of Azeroth forced to unite against a greater threat?
That’s a little bit Metzen. I’m genuinely a Metzen fan. But I do see the echoes of his style here.
The other thing is that when he did an interview about the Worldsoul Saga, he outright said that the writing process at Blizzard is more democratized now and he’s had to adjust to that. So we’ve got the echoes of Metzen’s ideas… and a lot more democratic input from the writing team. So this isn’t pure Metzen anymore. Which I think is what could have killed some of the nuances around faction conflict. We got a softer version of “uniting against the threat” than Warcraft 3. I wonder how much of that was influenced by the broader team and the “democratic” process.
That’s the current rumor floating around after a slack timeline that showed off accurate dates for WoW expansions (and other warcraft projects) was leaked. Once TLT is over and done with, WoW as a setting gets “reset”
We’ll know if the leaks are accurate if Classic+ is released this year around Blizzcon and/or if TLT is released later in 2027.
He allegedly changed a few things around such as with the Haranir and Xala’tath, but I think Metzen is just there to exist as a marketing tool.
they cna release this eyar classic and ltt in netx year and it stillw ouldnt confirm leaks as absoltue truth
midnigth hasnt even had 12.1 release yet
let aloen 12.2
and a patch is half a year genelry ish
and blziz been hinting at something for new for classic for long time and said well we have classic anouncement at blizzcon so generald ecent chance will be
Which would be funny as we had a 3 year time skip between Shadowlands and Dragonflight.
I will say it would be interesting to see what Blizzard does following TLT. I doubt we will get an actual ‘WoW 2’ in the same vein as what Bungie did for Destiny. Although if they did I wonder if we could port over our characters. But I think it is too late to do anything like that. WoW is just too massive of a game in comparison so actually being forced to move from ‘WoW 1’ to ‘WoW 2’ would be a massive slap in the face. Again this is a big IF but I doubt Blizzard would allow you to keep any mounts, achievements, transmogs etc if you are allowed to port over your characters.
But at the same time, it is clear that WoW’s age is showing. Not in the sense of graphics but code. A bug from Siege of Orgrimmar that involved the elevator after Nazgrim crashed housing. A bug from WoW’s 4th expansion crashed one of the core evergreen features that came with Midnight. Yeah I think a WoW 2 might be on the table if stuff like that continues to happen.
I could see an even bigger time skip occurring but unlike the SL → DF one, there needs to be some massively noticeable changes. Not just pretend we had a time skip but nothing actually happened.
Examples could be certain characters dying off screen. For example some older characters dying from aging. Cities getting expanded to fit with the sizes of Valdrakkan, Dornogal and Midnight Silvermoon. New characters, some of which could be offspring of the ‘current generation’ of characters. They don’t have to be fully grown adults but at least something to show time has progressed. Maybe further changes in leadership. Or maybe some off screen weddings between certain characters. Give us something to show that things can happen off screen without everyone being in a state of lore limbo whenever they are not on screen.
There is also a whole section of Azeroth yet to be explored and something Blizzard has been teasing with in both Dragonflight and The War Within.
One thing I do reckon that will happen post TLT is another level squish. We are most likely going to be level 100 in TLT. Two expansions after that we will be 120, the same level we were in BFA prior to the level squish in Shadowlands.
A reset could very well be in the cards - though the purpose and outcome remain unclear.
This… reset could double down on unity and “homogenization” - I say that to point out the pejoratives used by the discontented, not because I feel that way.
I think we have a good foundation for a reset. The Titans and Keepers are being revealed as possibly not totally aligned with our existence and free will. Sylvanas has mused about the nature of the Shadowlands - which itself was an expansion that set up lore about resetting existence.
Throughout BfA, I thought it would end with Sylvanas leading us into the Shadowlands to figure out what’s wrong with it. I figured the Battle for Azeroth would conclude in a truce to invade the Shadowlands, like maybe Sylvanas would convince the Alliance to follow her by revealing the magnitude of the looming threat. It didn’t exactly end that way….
But now I am like …. or did it….
Maybe she will end up doing precisely that. She has pointed out that something is wrong with the Shadowlands. Perhaps she initiates a reset with the help of the players. And in the new setting, she will be winking and nodding to everyone from the shadows.
perhaps they are writing this way bc they painted themselves in a corner on the broader narrative of kumbaya…a hard reset can give the writers much more freedom to go wherever they want.
There is no way of going back to Vanilla style narration of being a random adventurer when right now, we are multiversal/globally renown hero…there is no shot that the universe of Azeroth as well as the other planes of reality that our names aren’t of legend or urban legends…