wow Chris Metzen Now Full-Time Executive Creative Director of the Warcraft Universe

[Staff 1,410]

Update: Metzen has now commented on the news himself!

It’s been amazing working on Warcraft again. Like coming home. The stories we’re developing right now – how the world unfolds over the next few years… Well, I can’t wait for y’all to see where we’re headed.

SOON… 🙂 https://t.co/7hPIR8YEr0

— Chris Metzen (@ChrisMetzen) September 26, 2023

Original post:

Chris Metzen has taken on a full-time role as Executive Creative Director of the Warcraft universe!

Blizzard today announced via Twitter that Chris Metzen is now the Executive Creative Director of the Warcraft universe who is supporting the Warcraft Leadership in crafting the next generation of adventures.

Placeholder for tweet 1706715323867541734

Back in December 2022, Chris Metzen has rejoined the Warcraft Leadership Team as a Creative Advisor.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

I fail to see how this could be a good thing. The old guard led retail WoW down the road to where it currently sits. Just feels like fresh ideas with an understanding of what matters to players is the play for retail.

[Arcling 887]

32 minutes ago, TheRagingwolf said:

I fail to see how this could be a good thing. The old guard led retail WoW down the road to where it currently sits. Just feels like fresh ideas with an understanding of what matters to players is the play for retail.

Well, he was mainly responsible for stories (not all, there were many authors), but let's not forget he is behind some very bad parts of Cataclysm (Green Jesus) and all that mess with alternate Draenor. Anyway, it depends how much he is actually going to write. It seems Danuser and others are still there, so perhaps Metzen's involvement will still be somewhat limited. Not that these other writers are great.

And this was also the guy who was supposedly "unaware" of things described in that California lawsuit.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Arcling

[Grumar 186]

even he won't be able to save the train wreck of WoW's story. There is no way he is going to be able to go back to how warcraft was, we'll be lucky if he can slip something by them that is higher than a Y-7 rated content.

[Guz 20]

They need to fix the broken core gameplay i dont know if he will have anything to do with that but hopefully they will listen to his knowledge instead of profits. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Guz

[Teta 15]

Ill never forget when he shaved thrall's head

Anyway, he could simply delete shadow lands, say it was just a nightmare that nzoth shoved in our head.

[Emris87 10]

2 hours ago, TheRagingwolf said:

I fail to see how this could be a good thing. The old guard led retail WoW down the road to where it currently sits. Just feels like fresh ideas with an understanding of what matters to players is the play for retail.

Alex Afrasabi, the former Creative Director a couple others were the primary bad roots of the old guard. not Metzen. Alex led the shtshow that was some of Legion to BFA/SL Sylvanas. Danuser tried to salvage SL Sylvanas but couldnt undo Afrasabi's damage to her character, at least not yet. To blame Metzen would be stupid.

[Emris87 10]

2 hours ago, Arcling said:

Well, he was mainly responsible for stories (not all, there were many authors), but let's not forget he is behind some very bad parts of Cataclysm (Green Jesus) and all that mess with alternate Draenor. Anyway, it depends how much he is actually going to write. It seems Danuser and others are still there, so perhaps Metzen's involvement will still be somewhat limited. Not that these other writers are great.

And this was also the guy who was supposedly "unaware" of things described in that California lawsuit.

Again, Metzen was NOT the problem. The problem with the story was FORMER Creative director Alex Afrasabi.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

1 hour ago, Emris87 said:

Alex Afrasabi, the former Creative Director a couple others were the primary bad roots of the old guard. not Metzen. Alex led the shtshow that was some of Legion to BFA/SL Sylvanas. Danuser tried to salvage SL Sylvanas but couldnt undo Afrasabi's damage to her character, at least not yet. To blame Metzen would be stupid.

Quote

Again, Metzen was NOT the problem. The problem with the story was FORMER Creative director Alex Afrasabi.

He was the Senior VP of Story and Franchise Creative Design and Story Development. I'd say Metzen had his hands deep in everything and the authority to make a difference.

EDIT: Corrected after referencing official sources.

Edited September 26, 2023 by TheRagingwolf

[Dejo93 997]

On one side, I'm glad he's back. On the other, I'll be toning  down my excitement until we see the result of his work

[Baharok 234]

26 minutes ago, TheRagingwolf said:

He was the Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development. I'd say Metzen had his hands deep in everything and the authority to make a difference.

To be fair that is mainly wild speculating. personally i like Metzen and i would say he has a good reputation with the employees, but that also is just guessing / speculation.

[Arcling 887]

1 hour ago, Emris87 said:

Again, Metzen was NOT the problem. The problem with the story was FORMER Creative director Alex Afrasabi.

AFAIK, a lot of Blizzard employees used to play Everquest and this is how they met some people who were later brought into Blizzard. Alex Afrasiabi was introduced to Blizzard through Jeff Kaplan. Metzen was above Afrasiabi, he was VP, so it's strange if he didn't know anything.

Many stories were written by Metzen, and a lot of them weren't good. Thrall's story in Cataclysm and his wedding even somewhat mirrored events that happened in Metzen's life. Of course, not everything Metzen made was bad, there were good stories and they worked when they used to be simple (albeit very derivative, heavily inspired by D&D and Marvel), but it all lost a lot of consistency when they tried to introduce masterminds behind other masterminds and so on. Also Metzen kept forgetting his own lore, "isn't Falstad dead?", was among the most famous quotes.

So let's not idealize him or anyone from the "old guard". Mistakes and bad things happened even during their "golden era".

Edited September 26, 2023 by Arcling

[Migol 433]

At worst though you can say he was there when the higher quality of vanilla -> icecrown storyline was written.    Cataclysm was bad-ish in places but also dictated by the direction taken to "re do" the world...which probably wasn't easy.    bead wearing Hippie Thrall was bad, yes. 

Still, after the dumpster fires of bfa and shadowlands, I'm more than willing to say there's only uphill from here.    Dragonflight's been ok, at least, though they've swerved hard whenever they touch the old characters again (like that fever-dream plotline of Malfurion having to sacrifice himself for Ysera).

[TheRagingwolf 202]

46 minutes ago, Baharok said:

To be fair that is mainly wild speculating.

What are you referencing as "mainly wild speculating"? Because, it's published by Blizzard that Metzen was the VP of Creative Design and Story Development.

Quote

personally i like Metzen

That's great and all, but liking someone and them being good for/at their role are very different things.

 

[Baharok 234]

10 minutes ago, TheRagingwolf said:

That's great and all

If you quote me to attack me, then read the whole sentence please. I even did the "thats speculating as well" thing, which should have told you that i be objective here over subjective. 🙄

[Grumar 186]

1 hour ago, TheRagingwolf said:

He was the Senior VP of Story and Franchise Creative Design and Story Development. I'd say Metzen had his hands deep in everything and the authority to make a difference.

EDIT: Corrected after referencing official sources.

by the time they were developing legion+ he was already working on overwatch which was supposed to be his swan song, he was handing over the reins at that point of warcraft.

[Dreamcatcher 66]

I'm just happy that Icy-veins.com exists so some ppl can come here and rant and insult and trash talk WoW on every SINGLE news and post.

If you check their entire comments history you wont find even one positive comment, mention, story , opinion ... nothing just trash talking the game

There are actually positive good changes, events, stuff gets added to the game that at the least hurts no one considering how good Dragonflight is but still they ALWAYS find some asinine excuse to attack the game and developers 

More like this guys have no life but coming here and talk *filtered* about WoW 

There is no way this ppl are playing World of Warcraft with such hatred they have toward the game, the company and developers.

It's just plain stupid.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

1 hour ago, Baharok said:

If you quote me to attack me, then read the whole sentence please. I even did the "thats speculating as well" thing, which should have told you that i be objective here over subjective. 🙄

That wasn't an attack. It was a statement that liking someone has nothing to do with them being good at their job or even the right person for it.

[TheRagingwolf 202]

1 hour ago, Dreamcatcher said:

I'm just happy that Icy-veins.com exists so some ppl can come here and rant and insult and trash talk WoW on every SINGLE news and post.

If you check their entire comments history you wont find even one positive comment, mention, story , opinion ... nothing just trash talking the game

There are actually positive good changes, events, stuff gets added to the game that at the least hurts no one considering how good Dragonflight is but still they ALWAYS find some asinine excuse to attack the game and developers 

More like this guys have no life but coming here and talk *filtered* about WoW 

There is no way this ppl are playing World of Warcraft with such hatred they have toward the game, the company and developers.

It's just plain stupid.

Not sure who your target is but, I play one iteration of WoW daily whether it be retail, classic, or hardcore. I still enjoy WoW very much but that doesn't mean I am going to agree with everything Blizzard does nor am I obligated to agree with it. People are permitted to have opinions, good or bad.

[Dahaka99 46]

Wait you guys getting  good stories? 

[Ragingwolf 295]

I'm not hoping that Warcraft should go and revert to earlier forms of storytelling from previous expansions....I am hopeful that it goes into a better direction.  

[Arcling 887]

3 hours ago, Ragingwolf said:

I'm not hoping that Warcraft should go and revert to earlier forms of storytelling from previous expansions....I am hopeful that it goes into a better direction.  

Yeah, this is certainly not the way. Early WoW burned through villains and some heroes rather quickly. But later they went the opposite way and now almost no one important dies and some were even brought back, so it feels like there are no stakes (only newly introduced villains that barely anyone cares about may die, heroes are getting plot armor). Neither way is good, so they need to change this, which is unlikely.

[Swarf 101]

I loved Metzen until about the time of his asinine meltdown of regret and indecision over making the female dragon aspects sexy because his dang kid asked why they're wearing bikinis, which made his brain go full derp freeze.  His balls were completely lopped off from that point forward.  I'll never not be annoyed about it.  

That said, I do like Metzen overall and am glad he's back and am glad he has the position he now has.  If I'm honest, I'm a little excited about it and wish him the best. 

[SpilledStars 60]

Having had the experience that some people can learn from experience, even their own bad past, I'm at least looking forward to some sort of coherent core and command structure about the story lines.

A single guiding mind would be nice.

A hodgepodge of dev groups who either ignore their QA groups and PTR comments, or cut them off at the ankles as soon as a marketing roadmap says "we might miss xmas", has (in my not terribly humble opinion) been the norm for most of WoW's lifespan.

The tech debt that results from that every single xpac is not just story.  It's mechanics.  It's recipes meant to have flavor text or reasons to get, that became inaccessible or instantly useless.   It's "story" side threads full of bad puns and sometimes even worse ideas, while Story main threads sometimes stopped cold clearly 2/3 complete.

I think that coherence been missing for a long time
and
I feel that a lack of trying, would just be giving up

So I'm gonna call this reserved optimism and we can see how it goes.