2024-02-17 18:30:00
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Nearly ten years following his arrival in Team 2 dedicated to World of Warcraft, Steve Danuser, the game’s Lead Narrative Designer, has left his position at Blizzard Entertainment. And while one might have expected a press release explaining the reasons for this departure and possibly the name of his replacement, this is not the case. Fortunately, some players recently discovered this and our colleagues at PC Gamer were able to interview the person concerned to find out more.
Steve Danuser, from supposed hero to perfect antagonist
Steve Danuser was undoubtedly one of the most well-known developers in the World of Warcraft gaming community. Unfortunately, it did not benefit from the approval of part of it and was for many years burdened under a permanent fire of strong criticism, the fault of narrative decisions considered disappointing by some of the fans .
But Steve Danuser was, when he arrived at Blizzard, not a “little beginner” having started his career with WoW, no, far from it. Before arriving at Blizzard Entertainment in 2015, he was able to work on Landmark, EverQuest Next, Copernicus, Kingdoms of Amalur and EverQuest 2 if we rely on his profile on Linkedin. He therefore had a certain background in terms of narration, and the arrival of such an experienced narrator should have been appreciable on a game which had just lost one of its most famous figures, Chris Metzen. As examples, here are some of the themes on which Steve Danuser has worked personally (non-exhaustive list noted by PCGamer):
- The sequence of quests leading to obtaining Thas’dorah, Legacy of the Windrunnersthe Precision Hunter artifact during the Legion expansion
- The Hunter Class Domain during Legion
- Part of the quests dedicated to the first Allied Races
- The Whispers and Prophecies of Il’gynoth and N’Zoth
- Many of the books found in-game, including those from Forbidden Reaches and the Emerald Dream in Dragonflight
- Many scripts accessible when you select the “Stay a moment and listen” interaction with certain NPCs
- Many in-game cutscenes
Unfortunately, the reception given to it was much less glorious than expected, and this quite quickly following its arrival since the Battle for Azeroth expansion was already singled out even before its official release, the fault of the War of the Thorns. Over the years, distrust of the game’s narrative has grown, culminating in the story arc dedicated to Sylvanas Windrunner, her romance with Nathanos the Plaguebringer and the arrival of the very controversial Jailer. Earlier, things had already started to turn sour following the famous BlizzCon 2019 event during which he struggled to find his words while answering a question, when a YouTuber, Pyromancer, shouted at him “Titans “, allowing him to complete the theory according to which what we know regarding the universe has been told to us from a certain point of view. From there, Danuser’s entire narration worked to take up this idea.
Since then he has found himself openly criticized for his passion for the layers and sub-layers of narration having rarely been entitled to a conclusion deemed satisfactory in the eyes of the players, but also and above all for the very sentimental narration which ‘he advocated on Blizzard’s MMO, too much’benevolent“according to some, too much”realistic” for others who believe that a game should not make its players plunge back into the worries they experience on a daily basis. The arrival of these elements previously never if not rarely seen in World of Warcraft, coupled with many other factors difficult to enumerate faithfully but which might be summarized as the addition of his personal touch to stories dear to part of the community, have made Steve Danuser public enemy number one of enthusiasts of the history of the game, sometimes for very good reasons, other times much less so.
A departure welcomed with joy… and a lot of hatred
In this context and despite good narrative elements added to the game by this Lead Narrative Designer, the departure of Steve Danuser was felt more as a relief than as a real loss in the eyes of many of those who assiduously follow the story of the game Yet a mystery still remained: why had he left?
True to form, WoW fans began to speculate in order to consider a whole bunch of scenarios explaining the departure of this developer in November 2023. Some even chose to take a more tortuous path than that of criticism constructive and the search for sourced clues, going so far as to affirm to anyone who would listen that this resignation would be the result of a marked conflict between Chris Metzen (who made his official return at the same period) and Steve Danuser, like two generations of Narrative Designers incapable of coexisting.
Except here… PCGamer chose to directly question the main person concerned in order to get to the bottom of it. And the answer is much less salesy than expected for the detractors: Steve Danuser might no longer work from home teleworking because of the obligation recently introduced by Blizzard which forces employees to return to work from its premises in Irvine more regularly ( more than 3000 kilometers between his home and the premises). In addition to that, the former Lead Narrative Designer explained to our colleagues that lately he felt the need to explore new creative horizons… that he was going in circles a bit on WoW, basically!
Wanting to continue working remotely was one of the factors since I strongly believe in the effectiveness of online collaboration between teams. And then eight years working on a single game is a long time. And while helping to create the narrative architecture of WoW for the next few years was a worthwhile challenge, lately I’ve been feeling more and more like I need to expand my creativity into new areas. .
Steve Danuser
A deeper problem with WoW’s storytelling side?
The departure of Steve Danuser therefore has absolutely nothing to do with a conflict with Chris Metzen. However, there is indeed a link between these two, a link that many players seem to have forgotten over time by fantasizing that “Metzen will save WoW“. This is purely speculative, although not that much, but when we know the monumental pressure that the narrative developers of World of Warcraft are under on social networks, we can easily imagine that this decision by Danuser is not totally uncorrelated with a fed-up with the community. The teams dedicated to storytelling are very rarely exposed during interviews or events, reflecting a certain fear of the community, hence the need to be represented by a strong figure each time.
And if some would hastily judge that this makes him a “fragile“, already “fragility” is not a shame in itself, and then it would be forgetting that others before him have collapsed under the weight of community pressure with regard to narrative choices deemed questionable. Because yes, Chris Metzen had suffered a burnout when he left Blizzard in 2014, he mentioned it at the time in addition to a pressing need to recharge his batteries with his family.
Once once more, this is only speculative, but when you follow a little bit of the violence emanating from Lore fans and when you know that Steve Danuser himself has a description on Twitter (or X) “I left X for bluer skies in search (I hope) of less toxicity” in reference to the social network BlueSky, we can easily imagine not being that far from reality.
Regardless, storytelling in World of Warcraft has never been and undoubtedly never will be perfect. Nothing ever really is anyway. However, there seems to be a real problem on the side of its most extreme fans which probably pushes the narrative managers at Blizzard to take a more or less long break at any given moment.
And this is perhaps, in the end, the real problem of the Lore of WoW which pushes the narrators to curl up on themselves and follow only their own ideas without ever listening attentively to the opinion of the community. Should we limit ourselves to stories always revolving around the first versions of the game and their almost absent narration while rejecting the rest altogether regardless of what is proposed, or can we evolve the story of the game, without necessarily to agree on all points but to be open to new horizons and to put aside a supposedly perfect era (which objectively was not, very far from it)? This is work and reflection to be done by both fans and developers!
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