So, last week, there was a bit of unusual timing. I’ve finished my column with World of Warcrafts Trading Post. On the same day we saw that Chris Metzen was announced of returning to Blizzard after all as a Creative Advisor for the Warcraft team. It was, of course, a surprise. However, it was too late for me to write a completely new column. It’s a difficult situation, since I wanted to postpone the next day of the event because I was a bit sad to me a little too big! I would like to write a column about it, right? It’s the holiday. Let us see snow.
This is the reason for Chris Metzen being, in multiple senses, the original origins of World of Warcraft. It’s difficult, but not even, to keep thinking about the game from thinking about his creative force. Suddenly, despite the bleakness of Metzen’s life and legacy, he’s in his back and is a melon of life that is unlikely to make it to the tainted arena.
Let’s start with the simple facts. Chris Metzen is, in all likelihood, an exceptionally talented man with a distinct style who has devoted himself to creating a very good amount of everything you think of today as Blizzard. The initial Warcraft: Orcs and Humans role was a bit bigger and more dramatic, but the author’s more recent progress was done. He’ll keep his handprints in a good fashion from now onwards. Seeing as how important it’s been to the future, it’s clear that even before Diablo and StarCraft take on his character’s adolescent ids a lot more than anyone.
It might sound disoriented, but it’s not. I have mentioned before that in the heart of WoW and elsewhere there is a fundamental adolescence. It is not a true value judgement, it is also a fact of existence. Metzen writes, draws and creates exactly the kind of things, are he meant to appeal deeply to that mindset, and he is quite well at it, posing the mythos and lore that are so revered they seldom tarnished them.
And you know that his work explains a large part of how I really connected to these games when I was young. I played Warcraft II: The Tale of Darkness first, and my forehead was so upset and attached to the story, that my 13-year-old head became stuck in the title and its characters. I wanted to learn more, explore this world more, find out about other areas and see the whole world. I would like to see a gigantic world through a tiny view like that was absolutely stunning and astonishing.
In that sense, I think that Metzen has had a big impact on this game and his legacy.
There’s also two issues with Metzens returning, the first being George Lucas.
It’s hard to reconcile George Lucas’ ages. Lucas was a very powerful, and talented creative force who invented a timeless film to transcend the space-centric fantasy story that made him famous. There are not any people who see THX 1181, American Graffiti, Willow, Labyrinth and Raiders of the Lost Ark in his filmography as amazing creatives. With time on, and a series of bombs failed to get the theater, he tried to do the story for a sequel to the bad world trilogy, and he ran out of print.
What happened? Some of that was absolutely the result of environmental effects. Lucas is certainly more effective storyteller than director. Some of it was likewise wrong to assume that just because someone has strange and idiosyncratic tendencies toward approaching stories work once once, they’ll work again. In reality, not to mention the naive idea, that anyone without an idea then fails to write about it, especially on the same property.
Is this a very large city? Since his stories were interesting, they weren’t really close to his heights, but he wrote many legendary stories in the 1970s and 80s. Hideo Kojima wanted to abandon telling Metal Gear stories after Metal Gear Solid and increasingly wanted to troll people demanding he do more. Leonard Nimoy wanted people to think of him, as anyone other than Spock.
The matter is that no matter how creative you are, then you may just run out of things to say about a given fictional universe. It doesn’t mean you dislike it, it means that you’re bored and have endless ideas flowing forever. And although I think that Metzen really liked Warcraft, just don’t forget that he was there for some pretty bad parts of WoW.
The other topic is the elephant in the room.
There are no many serial harassers and bad actors at Blizzards rank. I tend to assume it is likely to be never going to happen. If someone called Metzen, it probably would happen at that time, and nobody has chosen to paint him like Afrasiabi. So it’s OK.
But what I do not like is that his apology last year suggests that he was somehow unaware of the extent of the incidents taking place in a distance, for many years, in his proximity to his bosses, and with his colleagues.
This is more late than should have been. Here is my reply. pic.twitter.com/0h8iF6a1JR.
Chris Metzen (@ChrisMetzen) July 24, 2021.
Metzen may not be the monster in the closet at Blizzard HQ, but just like Mike Morhaime, he has authority and powers to act. Whether he ignored, neglected or misinterpreted Blizzard behavior, who he knew was inappropriate at that time.
By the way, simply an apology for ill intention and the clarification that he did not directly abuse women does not have to deprive me of consequences or guilt. And even though his departure was connected to the harassment scandal in the company, his return puts him back under the microscope, particularly because he is implicitly the big name in the room.
I don’t mean Chris Metzen’s bad health; so having him back is a sin. Just because of all the fact that Metzen is indisputably part of the games past, it’s not the only slam dunk that he plays a key role in the future of the games. There’s clearly an effort to win back the crowd, to appeal to lapsed fans, to say that LeBron is back and now we can win again, but that doesn’t always match reality.
Don’t get in anger! Metzen has a downhill road ahead of him to prove that he will win over the modern players and other players in the future, beyond name recognition. Is that possible? Sure. I’m not going to get excited about all that except because I really liked Battlecraft 2.
War never changes, but World of Warcraft resurfaces, despite decades of history and huge footprint in the industry. Join Eliot Lefebvre each week for the new volume of WoW Factor, and explore the world’s larger web gaming giant, and what’s new in the world of Azeroth and Draenor.