chrisj320ac3: Essentially, WoWs lore got hijacked by someone who didn't get to make the mmo they wanted to, so they stuck themselves to an established game to make it happen once the opportunity presented itself.

garryame4008: I miss Warcraft feeling like a metal album cover

KevinOConnell00: I've been playing Lord of the rings online and I realized that, what Warcraft is missing is kingdoms, armies, strong medieval theming. It's just strange monsters in a high fantasy setting now.

Remember when there was many orders of paladins, different orcish clans I felt like there was more depth to the core substance of the world.

chrisj320ac3: A lot had to go wrong for things to go this way

Skorpio8744: Modern writers are wild to me. You are given the keys to a franchise that visionaries spent decades building and crafting from the ground up and all you have to do is hit layups, but you can't even do that. They could have gone with the Amani trolls from the start (even move Khaz Algar over to the sea to the East of Quel'thalas) but instead felt the need to retcon the evolution of trolls to elves to fit their bastardized "Haranir" that no one asked for. And now we have this awkward pivot back to the Amani in midnight but are still stuck with the Haranir as the marketed allied race because production takes years and gotta justify that labor. /facepalm

VenTheFairy: So Steve Danuser literally tried to turn WoW into his own Amalur fan fiction because he didn't get to make an MMO. My question is, why was he allowed to do that? No one bothered to try and stop him? Ion? Holly? Imo, they were as complicit in this as Steve was.

Edit: I love how everyone keeps trying to insult my knowledge of how the corporate world works as if I haven't been in the corporate world for 6 years and counting now. Sorry that the corporations you worked for were inefficient and allowed for someone to screw something up so badly with no oversight. That's now how the businesses I worked (and currently work for) run.

mcdonnu: in short, Steve Danuser messed it up in more ways than we thought…

bloodydove5718: I miss back in Vanilla Warcraft when your character was supposed to level up to essentially be some kind of Elite... And not like some Chosen One Trope >_>

samthesuspect: I started to lose it when it dawned on me that there were no soldiers in the alliance or horde really, just faction leaders, players, then NPC fodder. Warcraft needs more named characters, especially non-faction leader characters that matter.

denikehi4579: What's that past tense? WOW lore still feels off.

jdblackwolf13: Giving too much credit to Denuzer considering Kingdoms of Amalor. Salvatore was the true lore of the game.

slothfulbehavior: WoW’s lore has felt off the moment that the narrative designers started turning it into a “high fantasy” game, vs. earlier expansions and the original WC were closer to low/mid fantasy. Magic was concentrated in specific forms across specific groups, large-scale conflicts were usually resolved with foot soldiers and siege weapons, and cosmic forces were vague entities. In high fantasy, everyone is magic, everyone is powerful, and protagonists regularly go toe-to-toe with cosmic forces because that’s really the only way you can have stakes when everyone is basically already a god.

BFA skirted this line immediately with the whole “Champion of Azeroth” thing. In high fantasy, you’re more likely to find a Chosen One of some sort who can solve any problem solo, in low or mid fantasy, your protagonists can’t always survive alone and evil is best defeated through teamwork. A lot of us who played earlier versions of the game are used to being strong, skilled, and valued by our faction, but not to the point that we were foretold to be the world’s sole savior.

wrpyo: I'd be happy with an Azeroth with murlocs, defias, undeads, kobolds, faction wars and no major villains

Lichdemonz: Thank GOD they kicked Danuser to the curb.

someguy1231: And it still feels off. Look at how they turned Danath Trollbane into a peace-loving New Age hippie in the "Legacy of Arathor" questline. Or the blood elves and jungle trolls suddenly getting along just fine in Midnight. Or all the other baffling changes to characters because Blizzard's writers apparently don't know how to write nuance or realistic grudges anymore...

Lellianna: Danuser really embraced that homeworking copy meme

goblinounours: It makes so much sense why Steve Danuser left Blizzard without any fanfare in early 2024, without a heartfelt "I really love all of my friends at Blizzard, but I decided to pursue other things etc" (same way Alex Afrasiabi was shadow-removed). He must've

Schwifter_: Did no one realise within the company he was essentially transplanting stuff he'd already done in to WoW? How could three expansions occur and no one realised this.

SrLoueiz: wow lore died with the Lich King

Tuberoth: after legion

aster4jaden: Turns out all the Warcraft Fans (like me) who said this "new" Content didn't feel like Warcraft were right, unfortunately nothing has changed and it still doesn't feel like World of Warcraft.

Lunsterful: Great video. The meta lore here is delicious. I'm not an authority, but I was around from before this all happened (yes I'm getting old). Alex Afrasabi (Furor) and Steve Danuser (Moorgard) - "met" in Everquest. Alex was the notoriously opinionated leader of one of the most famous guilds in the game, and Steve Danuser had one of the most popular EQ blogs before he eventually joined SOE. I remember very clearly, Steve - on his blog, mocked Alex's transition to Blizzard as a writer of bad fan fiction, but I don't know if Alex ever saw that. Alex had written some WoW lore before the launch of WoW and posted it online), this was after Alex threatened the SOE devs to "fix plane of time's sudden raid cap of 54 (I think, down from 72) or he would take his entire guild to World of Warcraft (this was a big deal as that guild were pretty much celebrities). I'm sure there's so much more. But I always wanted to hear more from Alex as I thought he was a smart man, and we never got his side of the story.

lbiggy: Steve Denuser's obsession with killing warcraft is such a shame.

1unrealworld: This makes so much sense now. I was following the lore up until battle for Azeroth. I was so excited for a return to the faction warfare and that’s how they framed it. Then out of no where it turned out to be old gods and threw me off and disappointed in the story direction. It’s been hard to follow ever since but I’m glad metzen is back as he’s the original lore master of the game. Maybe the Warcraft fantasy can be saved

Dec 13 2025

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