If you wait long enough, a bad penny turns up. I just learned that Steve “Moorgard” Danuser has completed time off from working on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and taken a role with Epic Games on their popular Fortnite game. Danuser filled in for Chris Metzen and created much of the main narrative for World of Warcraft expansions such as Shadowlands, and Dragonflight.
WoW fans do not suffer fools gladly. Throughout his tenure at Blizzard, they were not kind to Danuser and blamed him for many of the lore problems in the past few expansions. Under Danuser’s reign, WoW became more “inclusive” and feminized which alienated loyal players. Fans accused him of poor character development, inconsistent plots, and narrative direction that lacked cohesion with established WoW lore.
His partner in crime former ex-Blizzard LGBTQ adjacent developer Johnny Cash is also now working at Epic as a quest designer for Fortnite. Danuser’s long-time friend and co-worker Ryan “Blackguard” Shwayder also works at Epic as a Game Director. The Three Amigos are reunited once again.
While working in the SoCal ideological bubble during the zenith of wokeness and DEI madness, Danuser was infamous for performative virtue signaling and pandering to far-left radical causes by promoting gender dysphoria AKA transgenderism in the plot line of WoW. Given his propensity to kowtow to the LGBTQ agenda, he will be a perfect fit at Epic as Fortnite has featured many overtures to various woke causes.
Conclusion
The video game industry is rife with nepotism, cronyism, imposters, and hucksters. I believe Danuser was over in over his head when he was at Blizzard. For years he was coddled by Curt Schilling at 38 Studios during pre-production on the ill-fated Copernicus MMORPG. He had no real track record of notable accomplishments before coming into Blizzard. He should hang his head in shame for how he sold his soul and brazenly promoted LGBTQ idealogy while working on WoW.
Under the misguided Mike Morhaime and J. Allan Brack’s leadership, while Blizzard was hiring talentedless pink-coiffed non-binary malcontents, it was simultaneously purging talented old-school white male devs from its ranks. Blizzard got what it deserved and then some.
After two straight expansions of declining WoW subscriber numbers, the writing was on the for Danuser. He finally left Blizzard in November 2023 to the delight of many WoW players. Chris Metzen returned to Blizzard the same month. While I am speculating here, I believe he was terminated because he was redundant. It’s obvious that Steve Danuser is no Chris Metzen.
Working at Epic is the perfect place for Danuser as he will be free to promote woke causes all he wants to the sophomoric Fortnite demographic.
–Wolfhsead
Wow, this is three, if not four times amazing! But also sad proof how the games industry is not based on merit and talent. Large studios tend to suck in such people.
These three have so much in common, not just visually over time looking at their profile photos and where they worked. Woke imposters, all of them. The fourth amazing thing is that Fortnite is still going strong.
I cannot comment on Fortnite. Never played and NEVER understood the appeal. Seems my gaming time is over, I so-so can live with all that survival game stuff, sometimes its still nice, but all that survival-minecraft-shooter and woke looks and design… I wondered years ago and still wonder why Fortnite is such a success. In AI times I asked several AIs to explain to me the success of Fortnite.
It is made for a crowd I don’t want to belong to. They seem at least not as crazy woke as Blizzard’s Overwatch (2).
I worry for future gamers. They are raised on a steady diet of… this. Politely phrased without going in detail.
LGBTQ activist Johnny Cash got hired because his father worked at Blizzard. Danuser and Shwayder both had blogs and parlayed that into jobs with SOE working as community reps for EQ. Then they got hired by Curt Schilling at 38 Studios for the failed MMO project. Danuser got hired at SOE to work on EQ Next. Then they ended up at Blizzard working on WoW.
The entire industry is populated with mid-wits i.e. the same small incestuous talent pool which is continually recycled.
The faster the AAA video industry dies, the better for gamers.
@AnonEntity,
I think you’re looking at Fortnite the wrong way. It’s designed to appeal to kids, just like when I was a kid in 1999 and I played Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Diablo 2, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 99, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Need For Speed Porsche and Worms Armageddon and I thought those graphics looked amazing. Now I come back to them and they look so old, but the nostalgia affects my perception and they still look nice to me.
Same is with Fortnite – it has the currently best game engine, best graphics, they are colorful and vibrant, there is lots of time sink, gacha, lootboxes, gambling, stupid dances, ugly outfits. And the kids today have minds that are susceptible to this propaganda. It teaches them to become gamblers. I never bought a skin in a game, sometimes I earned them for free, I haven’t even used them, because I prefer the original looks and the skins look corny and ugly to me.
It also teaches kids to be materialistic, because they care about having more and more and what they have, soon stops satisfying them and they go look for more.
It teaches kids sheep mentality, because they copy what they see in the game – you can look on YouTube and see hundreds of videos of kids copying the stupid Fortnite dances. One kid even became famous somehow somewhere for doing one such stupid dance, for this one look up “fortnite dance backpack kid”. The “dance” is so stupid and simplistic, it barely qualifies as a dance and when I watched it, I felt pain in my soul.
It also teaches kids to have short attention spans and to not think for themselves. It teaches them about woke, DEI, LGHDTV garbage and how good and normal it is.
Overall, it’s not a game, it’s a brainwashing tool. This is why you’re looking at it wrong. They are no longer entertainment, You view it as a game and you wonder why you can’t get into it. I view it as a weapon against the next generations and I understand why I can’t get into it. You and me can’t get into it, because we are not kids and our mentality has already been shaped (probably by the older propaganda we experienced when we were kids) and we are no longer susceptible to THIS propaganda. This weapon doesn’t work on us, because it’s not aimed at us.
On the bright (and funny side), adults 30 and over who are really into Fortnite are indicative of being on the bottom of society – so immature, susceptible and outright stupid, they get into games for children. It’s the same as watching some TV series for kids aged 4-5 as a 35 year old – it’s embarrassing, sad, pathetic and troublesome.
I also view all games as weapons against us, not as source of entertainment. I also went through a phase where I wad disgusted and disillusioned with the state of media – movies, TV series, games, music and how bad they suddenly felt to me, I was angry and frustrated for a few years, even concerned that I won’t be able to consume anything new anymore. But after I saw some truth and started seeing them as weapons against our minds and souls, I am no longer frustrated or concerned, I am actually thankful that I can finally see through the lies.
Even our old games have the same propaganda – Counter-Strike 1.0 is a prime example of a game which teaches you that it’s perfectly normal to kill people to solve problems.
World of Warcraft is the same, one of my favorite games that I still play on a Vanilla private server, the game is chock-full with hidden satanic, freemasonry and other symbols. It teaches players that magic is good – you are a Mage fighting undead or demons to save the innocent people. Or you are a warlock, summoning and controlling demons to fight for the good. Or a druid/shaman – speaking to the “spirits” to ask them for power to fight the bad guys.
All this is to teach you that magic is normal and good. In real life, people who practice magic, be it white or black magic, they end up paying one of the highest prices when they meet The Lord Jesus Christ, but they also cause harm to a lot of innocent people with their magic.
Same is with Diablo – it teaches you that you can go to hell, kill the devil and then come back and live a happy life. Once you go to hell in real life, there is no going back and you burn and suffer for eternity.
All of these things are interconnected. We are really living a lie, bombarded from every direction with propaganda and brainwashing lies.
The sooner you realize this about mass media (especially games and movies), you will be more free and will no longer care if new games that release are crappy or not. I just don’t play new games anymore and don’t care about them. Used to be excited about a few games, one FPS, one 1st person RPG like Daggerfall/Morrowind, several MMORPGs, now I no longer care. I only care about the real life, my family, my friends, and Jesus.
Excellent analysis!
Thanks a lot, Allwynd!
Seen from that angle… yeah, it appeals to young kids. What I saw was teens playing it, shows how immature many kids are still close to 20 years.
You explained and lined out how this works, it is really sick and awful!
BTW, did you know my first WoW char was a male human Paladin, but the char I played the most after being too often turned into a healer (it was pure stress for me to heal with my Pally, and Pally tanks were initially not well accepted either) was my human female Warlock. Sounds damn woke, but I was a bit tired of the too extra wide shoulders of human males and liked my pretty witch a lot… 🙂
Nowadays I really no longer can play a female char anymore in games. I am too fed up with the whole lot behind it.
@AnonEntity,
On the Vanilla private server that I play on, namely Turtle WoW, they have made changes to all classes, now Retibution and Protection Paladins are viable in group content. Although, the ideal spec would be Holy if you want to be invited to raids. Retribution is especially overpowered in PvP as they added an ability called Crusader Strike.
https://i.ibb.co/zQK4d2d/image.png