Let the bells ring and the children sing! Ding dong the wicked lore man is gone! Steve Danuser is no longer working at Blizzard Entertainment. The man who presided over the disgraceful erosion of World of Warcraft’s lore has finally left the building.
Danuser is probably one of the most despised WoW devs in history. A Redditor even made a thread about all the WoW characters he ruined.
I have no idea if he simply quit or was fired. I would be willing to bet he was laid off or fired. I doubt that Chris Metzen would tolerate impertinence, incompetence, or mediocrity. Last year I reported that the newly returned Metzen was experiencing resistance from the existing lore team, so it’s quite possible that the WoW lore department was not big enough for both of them so the inferior Danuser had to go.
Danuser spent about 9 years at Blizzard. During his tenure, somehow, he managed to not get fired, rose through the ranks, and ended up as the narrative director. When WoW lore god Chris Metzen left Blizzard in 2016, Danuser assumed his role like a piece of lint being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.
What we have here folks is a good example of the perennial twin problems of cronyism and the PETER principle, which has infected the video game industry. About 20 years ago, Danuser entered the industry as a community manager with SOE for EverQuest, dabbled in some game design in EQ 2, and eventually was hired by Curt Schilling for his ill-fated Project Copernicus. Eventually, he ended up at Blizzard working on WoW.
I honestly do not know how capable Steve is as a game designer or narrative designer. About 20 years ago Danuser was indeed a very smart pundit with an excellent understanding of EverQuest. I frequented his Mobhunter blog frequently. All I know is that when he was in charge of the lore for WoW, his decisions were unpopular with the players. In recent years the lore of WoW has become so woke, feminized, and unpalatable that I could never bring myself to bother to play and/or care about the world of Azeroth.
The wages of inclusion are death. When you try to please everyone, you please no one.
What disappointed me the most about Steve is that he started overtly promoting woke ideology in WoW’s lore. I was so utterly disgusted by what he did I dedicated an entire article to it.
Irish chatterbox Michael Bell from Bellular Gaming just created a video about Danuser’s departure. Most of the video is an incoherent rambling series of Red Shirt Guy nerdy musings about the incongruity of Dragonflight lore. Why anyone cares about WoW lore at this point is a mystery for the ages.
Insipid video aside, the comments from viewers are savage and illustrate the contempt the fans had for Danuser’s acts of lore malpractice.
Of course, the ever-timid milquetoast Michael Bell fails to consider that perhaps Danuser’s descent into woke pandering alienated many fans and caused a drop in revenues. As usual, Bell plays it safe and avoids any form of real-world controversy that would put his YouTube channel and relationship with Blizzard in jeopardy.
Here are some more YouTube videos about Danuser’s departure. Again don’t forget to savor the delicious comments:
Conclusion
Every week more news of another AAA studio imploding brings tears of joy to my eyes. Seeing justice meted out as worthless parasites are finally being exposed and fired is good for gamers and good for the soul. You betrayed your players, you went woke and now you are going broke. Good riddance.
Hearing news of yet another WoW veteran leaving the disgraced Irvine studio also makes me smile. I love being proven right after years of predicting Blizzard’s demise. A glass of cold sparkling Château Schadenfreude before bedtime is good for my health.
In the final analysis, I do not believe Steve Danuser understood the WoW franchise and the target audience: white male gamers. Danuser’s ego was just too big and sucked up all of the oxygen in the room. By all accounts, he got high on his own supply, and living in the woke Irvine bubble certainly didn’t help.
To be fair to Steve, Blizzard got far too carried away with spinning narratives and stories. Players ended up becoming actors in grand plots that would continue on with or without them. If you look back at the original EverQuest, the original MMORPG, and the first few expansions were far less focused on designer-imposed narratives and instead allowed players to have the agency to create their own stories. The initial sandbox nature of EQ allowed players to have their own memories. I believe Danuser got caught up in the hubris of Blizzard developers who thought they were budding J.R.R. Tolkiens and that the players should obey and take a backseat to their “epic” tales.
Steve let his industry status change him and it was not for the better. Steve started to grovel to social justice warriors on X formerly Twitter (which he has left because he and his fellow travelers have no interest in Elon Musk restoring free speech to Twitter). Like many weak-minded unprincipled people, he got swept up in the mass formation psychosis of the George Floyd and BLM riots. He was also a willing accomplice in Blizzard’s demonic embrace of the LGBTQ agenda. Danuser sold his soul for the fleeting approval of the world and now he’s gone and will most likely fade into obscurity.
I’m not sure what the future will bring for Steve. I don’t believe he’s man enough to apologize to the millions of fans for butchering WoW’s lore. I doubt he’ll ever apologize for pandering to the zealots in the alphabet community.
Maybe it was all an act of self-preservation to stay employed to pay the bills and the mortgage. Let’s hope so. How can anyone be so stupid to go along with madness and depravity? Now that he’s no longer at Blizzard, I urge Steve to go back to the mid-west (looks like he’s already back at home in Minnesota) and work on a farm for 6 months, do some soul-searching, and find God. He should get his hands dirty in some physical labor and reconnect with the real world outside the SoCal bubble. Even better, now Steve can remove his pronouns and PRIDE flags from his X and LinkedIn bios.
If Minnesota gets too cold, I have a suspicion that Danuser might end up at Darkpaw Games working for EverQuest. Given the fact that EQ is where Steve made his bones, he could apply for the creative director position for a possible new EverQuest product. At least he has a lot of institutional knowledge of the franchise and despite his failure to augment WoW’s lore, even I have to admit that he might be a good choice for the role as long as he doesn’t kill off Lady Vox or Lord Nagafen in the first week.
Or he could end up teaching game design or game narrative at a local college. Given the pitiful state of the video game industry, that might be the safest bet.
–Wolfshead
This was about time!
Where to start with my thoughts about Danuser and what it will mean in the long run. I haven’t watched the videos yet, but yeah, the comments were interesting and telling.
Quote of one comment: “Steve Danuser was throwing all of the toys of the people out of the pram and now he finally quits because the person who he threw all the toys out came back. lol A la, Chris Metzen. I don’t think Chris Metzen will be able to do anything about Steve Danuser’s underlings.”
I have a similar fear, Danuser is gone, Metzen back in charge, but the woke agenda is still strong at Blizzard. We just talked a week ago about their cool new president…
I am not sorry for Danuser, it’s good that he is gone, but still feel sad for him. He was not always like that, quite the contrary. I don’t know him as well as you, as I didn’t play EverQuest that much, I was more into Ultima Online and Guild Wars before getting sucked into WoW. Back in these days I often argued against level-based progression and the holy trinity of tank, healer and dps, more solo friendly content etc. I also figured out that doing it differently and better than that proved impossible so far. It rather led to the current world full of people who say Hi at the start of the dungeon finder run and that was it for community interaction, yay…
Nowadays that’s no longer a thing for me, I am glad if a new MMO is even made and doesn’t crash and burn right after release. Big sigh…!
But back to Danuser. He was well, even highly respected back in the days. Even I read his postings when I was not even playing EQ! He seemed smart and knowledgeable. Then came Copernicus. This was probably a formative experience for Danuser how that crashed and failed. A lot of hopes were crushed with this game. It also proved that being top in this or that sport doesn’t mean you are necessarily good at everything else you do, too.
Curt Schilling’s failed MMO had weird organizational structures where survival was likely dependent on enduring and nice talking bullshit. Maybe that turned Danuser into the Wokeuser at Blizzard. He identified the trend and decided not only to run with it but go full bore all in with woke. I am not sure if he really believes in this nonsense. Being at Blizzard and rising in the ranks might also have inflated his ego and made him further blind. Add in the PETER principle, he just wasn’t a Metzen, no matter how hard he tried.
Whatever, it’s good for WoW that he is gone. Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands and all that woke stuff happened nevertheless, putting the game lore back on track will be quite difficult.
Danuser might be gone, but it is now Metzen versus a team that rather seems opposed to his ideas. At “Old Blizzard” the many now unjustly disgraced designers came together and created something beautiful together. Metzen was important, but he also had brilliant co-workers.
Right now, I am looking forward to play some tactical RPGs (Classified France 44, Crown Wars, King Arthur Legion IX) and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. While flawed, I enjoyed Owlcat’s Pathfinder: Kingmaker a lot. MMO-wise I don’t have a home anymore.
This is the difference between how developers (nowadays) see games as and how players (since the dawn of video gaming) see games as. The former see it as a product and a means to a goal, the goal being their salary, references, experience, etc. So it doesn’t matter if they “ruin” it, because that’s not what happens in their eyes. The latter see it as much more – a form of enjoyment, a virtual world, a social experience. For me WoW is so much memories of so many fun times, meeting all kinds of people and fooling around.
That’s why it’s difficult to see your favorite games, as a player, to be ruined before your eyes. I can imagine it being even more difficult having to write about it and trying to remain as impartial as possible.
It’s pointless at this point to be reiterating that the people who created those memories are long gone, and even if you can put them all together in a new studio, with all the funding they need and the absolute creative freedom, the chance of them creating another masterpiece is very, very close to null. Because, in my opinion, they are no longer young, they are burned out and have lost their passion.
Which brings me to my next point – I also think it’s unrealistic to expect a live service game to retain the same level of quality and level of enjoyment as it did in the beginning throughout its whole life. I can’t think of a single such live service game that achieved this. It has to be ultra niche with a very small and tight-knit community where the developer(s) are actively involved with their player(s).
I can’t even imagine this for WoW. Because Vanilla WoW is the most fun version of the game for me and just bumping to TBC, automatically makes the game 100% unfun for me, and with each subsequent expansion – even less fun, if that’s possible.
I’ve seen LOTRO doing the same, although I haven’t played it during the years, I started playing it in early 2021, and by late 2022, I was done with it and what made me quit was the game just released some fateful updates that ultimately made it 100% unfun for me.
(next paragraph involves a small rant, skipping it is an option)
Even walled trash communities like Project Gorgon where even though the players are in cahoots with the developers, patting each other on the back, but the players being more actively involved in daily worship of kissing the developers’ testicles, they are still unhappy with what changes are made to the game and yet keep kissing the nut sack that (doesn’t) give(s). And bad apples, such as myself, get censored permanently, because any kind of criticism is apparently a thorn in the eye for the developers and they don’t want to deal with it at all – not even acknowledge it. I still want to recall the time where I criticized them on Steam about still not implementing a feature that remembers UI size and position and implementing universal font size – next thing I know, I’m permanently banned, reason being “allegedly my account is an alternate account of someone previously permanently banned”. There is no evidence of that, I ask about it on their forums, Discord, get banned as well, only reason I can think of is some 50 year old manchild satan worshipper transhomo developer/moderator looked at my Steam profile representing the LORD Jesus and got triggered and permanently banned me for it.
(rant over)
So back on topic, I can’t imagine even a game like WoW staying the game. The only way would be to freeze it in some state, like Vanilla and literally doing nothing content-wise with the game, just keeping the servers running and leave it at that. But how long will players last before they completely lose interest? They can do something like Turtle WoW or other Vanilla Plus private servers or what the official WoW Classic ran by Microsoft-Activision is doing. Each is a mixed bag of the same – some are happy, some are unhappy. Some keep living the dream that whatever they suggest might actually get implemented if they concentrate really hard, hard enough to pop a blood vessel on their temple.
No, I don’t think it’s really possible to keep a live-action game with the same good quality. Even if the guy Steve Danuser did the game and the players dirty, if it wasn’t him, it would’ve been someone else. What I’ve learned from playing live action, online-only games for the past 18 years has taught me exactly this:
“Enjoy them while they last.” There is really no solution to this besides private servers and then again unless you run your own private server, there is no guarantee even that will remain. The only solution I’ve found is to avoid live action games and come to terms that even the ones you like will be made worse or killed off.
This is why I both sympathize you, because I’ve felt the same thing for a long time and yet at the same time I don’t see the point of it all. The only positive goal or lesson out of all this would be, in my opinion, to try and educate players what kind of dirty scams live action/online-only games are and to convince them with facts and examples to stay way from them. This is the pinnacle of materialism and consumerism – people willing to throw money and different kinds of objects with the hope that it will make them happy. This is a discussion I had today at work with a certain coworker – he said he will be buying “the best smartphone in the firm, better than what even the boss has”. I told him there is no point, because it won’t make him happy, but he wouldn’t listen – he was dead set that buying this expensive trinket will improve his QoL. Same is with the most mainstream gamers – they don’t think or care if the game they buy will be dead or ruined in 1 year, but they will still complain about it for the 68th time and each time they will make it look like it’s their first time this happens to them. Which is why I have little sympathy for them.
PC Gamer contacted Danuser for some comments after my article came out. Here’s the link:
https://www.pcgamer.com/steve-danuser-world-of-warcraft-departure/
No mention of LGBTQ pandering or wokeness. Cowardly journalism.
Predictably MOP does some white knighting for Danuser:
https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/15/wow-factor-steve-danuser-was-not-really-the-problem-with-world-of-warcraft/
In the comments section, resident harridan Bree Royce makes this ridiculous comment:
It pains me to watch people dunk on him because he got that job for a reason – he didn’t come out of nowhere, he earned it with a long history in MMOs.
Newsflash to Karen: You don’t earn the right to destroy an MMO franchise with bad writing and obnoxious posturing by how many years you’ve managed to exist (i.e. not get fired) in the industry. This woman has never made a video game in her life and it shows in her comments.
WoWhead reported on Danuser leaving and anticipating a mass of angry players showing up, they allowed no comments on the story.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/steve-danuser-quietly-left-blizzard-entertainment-last-november-interview-with-337634
I never liked Danusers’ storytelling on the grounds that he didn’t appear to have any respect for – or investment in – any pre-established lore; and preferred to just “vibe in the moment” when it came to moving the story forward and creating new content.
No negativity was allowed in his “dojo”, and both contradictory and lore breaking narrative and gameplay decisions were seemingly green-lit on the spot without any prior research on how this may impact the established story, races and cultures of Warcraft moving forward. If you criticised any his teams’ story/gameplay choices on social media (such as Chromie apparently being trans; black Blood Elves; and removing Garrosh calling Sylvanas a ‘bitch’), he’d block you.
Notwithstanding the political posturing to appease his masters, I also think Danuser was just desperate to leave his mark on the franchise – whether that mark was good or bad. Given the disdain Danuser and his team had towards Metzen and the so-called ‘Cosby Suite’, I’m not surprised he and his Woke team at Nu-Blizzard took the game in a direction completely antithetical to the pre-existing Warcraft mythos.
Danuser was a self-serving hack and I’m glad he’s gone, but unfortunately the rot at Blizzard goes much deeper.
Excellent analysis. You are right, the rot is deep at Blizzard all thanks to years of DEI-based hiring. Expect lots of layoffs shortly as all the pink-haired non-binary fools will be exposed.
I had no idea how fragile Danuser was that he’d block people who disagreed with him. Woke journalist Jason Schrieir does the same thing to anyone who remotely disagrees with him.
Danuser’s partner in crime flaming homosexual Johhny Cash departed Blizz a few years ago. I guess he saw the writing on the wall and bailed. Danuser also hired that woke feminist harpy to write lore for WoW. I’m sure now that he’s gone lots of people will surface with stories.
Part of the problem is that he wasted 5 years of his life on Curt Schilling’s failed MMO, so he was eager to prove himself. I’m not sure why people thought he was ever qualified to work at Blizzard let alone be in charge of the lore and narrative.
Eventually, the truth catches up to posers and imposters:
“You can fool all of the people some of time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time”.
I’ve been thinking about Danuser’s plight lately. It looks like he’s been in Minnesota (where his family lives) for quite a while. I know he’s married so he probably relocated his family back there to live, possibly with his parents, who knows.
The COVID shamdemic made a lot of people reevaluate their priorities. Seeing that the real world exists and realizing you can spend time with your family changed a lot of us. I believe Blizzard gave him an ultimatum to return to work or else. It’s not easy turning down a 6 figure salary.
Things must have gotten really bad at Blizzard for him to walk away from all that money. The return of Metzen only sealed the deal.
Recently I re-read many of his tweets and his level of pandering to the woke mob was over the top which made me despise him even more. WoW fans should be dancing in the streets that he is finally gone.