Removed
Yes the article is clearly meant to show us that while games are fun to play they are like any job and can be hard to make and even harder to stay focused on 5, 10, 15 years on.Blizzard has a lot of cool things in the works so it will be interesting to see if we can come to rely on good old "TM soon" again.
Intriguing article! All in all, I wasn't overly surprised when employees would move on from Blizzard. Turnover is a natural process in any industry and company, and not necessarily reflective of anything terrible happening there. This report is a very interesting insight into the inside workings of these events.
I think the main thing people tend to gloss over is that Blizzard's long-standing legacy of keeping people on for a decade plus being the norm until so recently makes the rash of departures very unusual. Also, Alex Afrasiabi's departure was extremely silent and so far neither party have spoken much on the subject beyond Blizzard removing him from their Linkedin (which itself is atypical as many ex-employees are still linked with Blizzard on Linkedin); it's strange because Afrasiabi is never quiet about anything which suggests Legal was involved in his departure.That this rash of departures has been steadily increasing in rate since 2018, and can be tracked pretty well with Blizzard increasingly adopting Activision's corporate culture, suggests that the departures are coming because Activision Blizzard's leadership is taking a more active oversight role and passing more edicts down onto Blizzard's leadership. There's not many other reasons I can think of that would incite large-scale brain drain from a company that leads to so many in a leadership role leaving en masse in such a short span of time, with their replacements visibly being underprepared for the role and their lack of experience inviting backlash from poorly-thought-out PR attempts.*edited for clarity
I don't want to be negative but just see how they avoid talking about wow... Instead they are very busy with their new franchises. Wow just isn't their main focus anymore and that is natural if you have this much franchises to maintain but is rather painful for the people loving that one franchise that is not getting the love it deserves while the others get developed.
Second Diner did announce they were in the process of making a Marvel-related game. But the game itself has yet to be announced.
Never believe Corporate PR; not just with Activision, but in general. They will always slant a story to their advantage and will absolutely lie if its in their best interest to do so.
I think Blizzard have been hit by brain drain, low morale, poor long term management, low baseline pay and also the pandemic.It’s a shame to see a once great company in such a state. But there’s plenty of other games and media to consume while Blizzard gets itself sorted.Rather than stay subbed / pre-order and complain, I think it’s a smarter move to step away and experience other games and then come back to WoW when they have content, or when Diablo 2 resurrected or Diablo 4 are released.Not only will you be happier, but it will show Blizzard what we want from them (fun content to play) and what we don’t want (content drought and bad systems), and it’ll do so in the language they speak the most fluent in: money.
Sounds like internally they're hoping diablo immortal and their other unannounced (mobile) projects will turn things around for them. Doesn't sound like a good thing for WoW.
Alright. So then it's the devs being out of touch, which is just worse.
This is a somber reading experience. It's hard to imagine Blizzard without these guys even now, and there's been a clear shift of philosophy when it comes to creating games within Blizzard over the last half a decade or so in a way that has transformed what used to almost feel like an ascended garage band of the industry into what is by and large just another group of developers putting out inane products made to wring as much money out of the consumer as possible without any of the same measure of heart and dedication as was present before. It's a shame, and we know who's to blame. Oh well.
Depressing read, and not because it's depresssingly written but because they try to paint a positive picture of the company while the games and the players are not happy/suffering. To me it says a lot that "I think" Shadowlands is WAY better than BfA, but I don't really feel it.What is felt however are all the bad news about monetization, dev departures, delays and crappy design philosophy -> Is WoW for me? Is WoW for 14 year olds? Is WoW for mobile costumers? Removed Or maybe more plausible at this stage, is WoW just a money laundering machine made for execs, shareholders, boosters and criminals?TLDR: Depressing.
Content droughts aren't the problem, people should learn to unsub for awhile and play other games. The problem is when you delay the release of an expansion and then it's still so rushed that you need a 9.0.5 patch. The problem is when there is a drip feed of content and changes that should have been there at launch to try and keep people playing. They say they don't care about the money but then the game suffers greatly because they need high numbers every 3 months for the thrice-damned quarterly earnings report.Blizzard needs to stop worrying about people who burn through all the content by playing 14 hours a day for weeks and they need to 'rationing' content because a great product on launch is always going to be infinitely better then a 'Well it's actually good now..." a long time after the fact. BFA taught us that.
1 of the biggest patches? LMAO WTF?they are adding a new raid and mega dungeon and 1 new daily quest area. that's it!8.2 added so much more and bfa was still considered bad.1 whole year for a trash new raid, a dungeon no one cares about and daily quest zone when nobody does dailies is good content to you?this is not worth 15$ a month!this little content should take a few months to make tops! take blizzard's outa you kid!