wow Steve Danuser May Have Left Blizzard in November 2023

[vin1337 0]

On 2/12/2024 at 1:27 PM, Arcling said:

Since you did ragequit like an insecure child, you probably won't see this. Anyway, to make things clear (and I believe I already did so) - this is true, Shadowlands did a lot of damage to the lore. However, whole outrage about lore is exaggerated due to social media, it might seem like it was a really bigger issue than it really was. I think this poster simply ignored the facts and data presented to him and didn't grasp the context of what I really meant. Really funny to call me ignorant, when all he did was to ignore the data and context that didn't fit his opinion. WoW isn't in the center of as many people's attention as it was back in the day with its 12 million subs, there were outrages about retcons back then too, but they might have seemed smaller, because it was a different landscape - people were more spread out between various forums and communities, while today everything is more centralized, so every outrage seems bigger when you have more people concentrated in same places. Even though way less people are playing the game these days.

It's also important to note that only a smaller part of playerbase cares about lore, it was always like this. A lot of people quit the game during Shadowlands not because "Jailer story bad", but because a lot of its mechanics and systems simply weren't fun.

Jailer's story was a mess, but after such a long time a lot of people have their nostalgia going on and they forgot how flawed many other stories were and a lot of people hated them back then, too. WoW's story often lacked coherent direction, it had its own share of retcons and plotholes: Illidan's escape to Outland to hide after his failure (even though Kil'Jaeden had no problem finding him before), Arthas often acting like a cartoony villain (the way he often appeared during questlines and talked), Thrall's story in Cata, WoD with its multiverse (and also retcons to the main universe) and many other examples.

Made an account just to join in on this discussion and say that you are conflating sub count/popularity of the game with outrage, and that is a horrible comparison to make between Metzen and Danuser's work.

It does not matter if 'social media' functioned differently later in time or not. WoW itself is social media. Just because Cata existed at a time when certain websites were less popular to congregate on, does not mean there was no forums at all for people to discuss things on. We still had WoW forums, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Icy-Veins, WoWhead, GameFAQs, Reddit, 4chan, video game journalism as a whole, Tumblr, the list is endless. You're trying to make it sound as if the social media internet behemoth wasn't already fleshing out before Cataclysm existed in 2010.

As a person who has played WoW since the beginning of its inception, the other user is correct in that the 'outrage' over Green Jesus was nowhere near the level of outrage seen from Shadowlands narrative. From personal experience, people memed about Thrall, more-so out of disappointment that he was no longer the Warchief in Orgrimmar, but there was hardly an 'outrage' to the extent that Shadowlands brought out of people.

Sylvannas' Mary-Sue storyline, the Jailer storyline, the bastardization of Arthas in Shadowlands, the list goes on. None of that is comparable to Green Jesus, which you seem to be so hooked on. 

WoW being at its peak during Cataclysm does not suddenly make it so that the outrage is greater when in reality, players cared LESS about the story in WoW during Cataclysm than they did in the later expansions of WoW. Cataclysm saw a massive spike in PvP hype, and people interested to see the new world / raids / dungeons. If you think all of the new subscribers that joined WoW during Cataclysm were anywhere near as upset about Thrall's storyline than long time players experiencing Shadowlands, you're delusional at best, and egotistical because you have over 2,000 posts on a niche forum at worst.

As the game dies, the people who actually care to keep playing it as their one main game are the hardcore raiders, hardcore PvP'ers, casuals who hop on occasionally, and the RP'ers (important point) or those who care about the lore. Do you think the people who have invested the most time into a game just to see it torn to shreds are going to be more upset about the storyline than people who joined in at the peak of the games popularity? I think so, and as the other user stated, it wasn't hard to see just how much outrage Shadowlands drew from players and the internet as a whole.

Your comparison to Cata is weak, and counting how many subscriptions were active during Cata vs Shadowlands is not doing anything for your point. You can't quantify outrage in the first place, but here you are. The only "evidence" we have is the amount of backlash, and Green Jesus does not hold a candle to the entire Shadowlands storyline when it comes to how ticked off WoW consumers were with it.

Edited February 14 by vin1337

[Arcling 898]

22 hours ago, vin1337 said:

It does not matter if 'social media' functioned differently later in time or not. WoW itself is social media. Just because Cata existed at a time when certain websites were less popular to congregate on, does not mean there was no forums at all for people to discuss things on. We still had WoW forums, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Icy-Veins, WoWhead, GameFAQs, Reddit, 4chan, video game journalism as a whole, Tumblr, the list is endless. You're trying to make it sound as if the social media internet behemoth wasn't already fleshing out before Cataclysm existed in 2010.

It was really different back then, whole outrage/clickbait youtubers didn't exist in the same way they do today. Today there are way more of them and a lot of people get angry just because some youtuber told them to. 2010 had people like TotalBiscuit and JesseCox doing Cataclysm beta videos and the likes, not the "THIS IS MASSIVE, BLIZZARD SUCKS NOW" (red arrows/twisted faces in a thumbnail) type of youtubers. Twitch wasn't even a thing back then. I was there, you don't have to explain it to me. People have complained about Metzen a lot, and not just during Cataclysm, as I've mentioned. But yeah, everything was more spread out and even many of existing platforms had less users back then.

People who cared about lore were always a minority. Most people who quit Shadowlands did so because of gameplay and mechanics, its systems simply weren't fun. If game had great gameplay loop, who would have quit, because "Jailer story bad"? To majority, it is such a minor thing, you play campaign and then you move on to gameplay loop. If game remained fun, way less people would have quit.

22 hours ago, vin1337 said:

As the game dies, the people who actually care to keep playing it as their one main game are the hardcore raiders, hardcore PvP'ers, casuals who hop on occasionally, and the RP'ers (important point) or those who care about the lore.

So again, most of those remaining people only care about gameplay, not the story.

Of course, you can't quantify the outrage exactly, but the numbers were in my argument's favor, while the other user provided no numerical data to contradict this, only perceived assumptions from social media (overblown). It would be weird to think that among those 12 million people there were less people who cared about lore than among those 4 million. A lot of people who played during Cataclysm cared about lore, there were also way more people who came there from RTS games (like me), these people tend to care about lore more and since then many of them have also quit the game. Vocal minority and social media outrage really make these things seem bigger than they really were. To most, Shadowlands' issues stemmed from its gameplay. But I don't disagree that story was bad. Many were upset about Jailer's story, but retcons aren't anything new to this game and most who quit the game do this because of gameplay.

Anyway, I think this is enough of this discussion. I've explained it well enough how majority cares about gameplay and this is why they quit, while the overall interest in the game and its lore has waned due to overall decline in player numbers since these expansions (Cata peak).

Edited February 15 by Arcling