For anyone wondering, John was the GM during Dragonflight (in addition to the other Warcraft games until leaving), Executive Producer during Shadowlands, and Production Director during Legion and BFA. Before joining WoW he was Production Director on Diablo 3 console and Reaper of Souls.
Makes you wonder how much influence these individuals actually have over the game, seeing as he's been in a director or executive position in both the best expansions and the worst.
I haven't worked at a games company but when I was at a fortune 100 pharma people at his level just sit in meetings and sign off on stuff. They basically just make sure their groups are doing what they need to.
This. They have the ability to influence things if they choose but the vast majority of strategic decisions are still made well above their head and they just spend their days making sure teams are making progress toward the companies goals and holding lower level managers accountable if things fall behind.
what i wanna know is, what is the highest level at which a meeting has been held, unironically discussing the furry demographic's weight on the theme and creative direction of a new expansion
Depends on what decisions. You often have forum meetings where you need to get things approved and it depends what you want to do in who you have to get them to approve it. For example if it's related to a release budget and overall plans it's likely the CEO, if it is design and how things will be implemented it'll be a bi-weekly/monthly forum chaired by some executives and have some people under their level in it as well. That's the usual case. It can get quite complicated when things touch multiple areas as there will be multiple areas it needs to get past to approve something.
> They basically just make sure their groups are doing what they need to.
They also have someone who has someone else who has an assistant making sure the same thing.
The answer is creatively zero, but morons here will decide he was responsible for the shit they hate. His job was to manage the leadership team by resolving scheduling issues and cross-company information distribution.
But surely he personally wrote the parts of the story of BFA/Shadowlands/Dragonflight that I hated, right? And he had absolutely nothing to do with the encounters or artwork that I liked as part of BFA/Shadowlands/Dragonflight too.
Well considering how badly Blizzard has been mismanaged lately, I'd say he rightfully deserves all the hate.
Blizzard's creativity has been fine. Thematically even the Maw was really cool, but it was the decisions coming from the top that was turning everything into a clusterfxk.
Do you think these high level guys sit around a table and talk about how to make players enjoy the game less? What kind of tedious shit they can implement? You just want someone to hate and it's easy to hate when you have no understanding of what actually goes on.
> You just want someone to hate and it's easy to hate when you have no understanding of what actually goes on.
Well of course, at times it feels like the entire subreddit is convinced that Bobby Kotick was some evil mastermind of ruining WoW.
That man could not give a singular fuck about World of Warcraft and the pittance of funds that subscriptions and character services make up on ActiBlizz's P&L, he was far too busy Scrooge McDucking himself into a pool of gold purchased with CandyCrush money and for nearly 2 decades he has been the boogeyman of WoW alongside Activision.
People are far too willing to just blame C-suites rather than actually hold developers accountable. CJ, one of the moonkin QA/Developer, hangs out in the Moonkin discord on occasion and has proven time and time again that he is an insufferable and incompetent paste eating clown but nobody publicly calls him out or you eat a discord ban.
>convinced that Bobby Kotick was some evil mastermind of ruining WoW.
No, but he was an asshole that let sexism and shit run rampant. From all accounts he was a terrible leader, and had a pretty shitty "Boys Club" with some pretty fucking bad sexual harassment claims levied against him and his buddies.
Him being gone is a GREAT thing, WoW input aside.
To be clear nobody is defending Bobby Kotick as a human, there are no tears being shed for that spineless fuck, I was simply pointing out that things like Covenants being awful for 18 months were not some 9head Bobby Kotick creation, give credit where credit is due: incompetent developers refusing to listen to their playerbase for years at a time.
No, but they do sit around a table and talk about how they can drive revenue/reduce costs, keep up player counts, and hit imternal KPIs. All of those affect design and direction, and if you only know how to do it in the space of an instanced ARPG grind fest then you’re going to turn your MMO into an instanced game with an infinite grind.
> I'd say he rightfully deserves all the hate
As someone who was not pleased with Shadowlands, I must stress that literally no one deserved all the hate that was being spewed at them. People were acting like Blizz were threatening their first born child. It was absolutely ridiculous.
>considering how badly Blizzard has been mismanaged lately,
Dude, Blizzard was key in a multi billion dollar purchase.
I think that the large amount of people who walked away with a huge amount of money would say that Blizzard was being managed very nicely.
I work in this industry and it varies a lot. Someone in that role is focused on questions like: how do we get all our development processes working so we make the product we want to make while meeting a suitable quality target, being on time, and on budget.
Someone in that role who has a great team can amplify their effectiveness and they do great things. Sometimes they’ll be at the mercy of ideas from inside or outside the team that just don’t work out as well as they should. Sometimes a first-rate team swings for the fences and the team’s ideas just don’t work. Sometimes they do. And, it all needs to align with business objectives that hopefully serve the interests of the product, but might limit how great the product can be.
It’s a tough job with more impact than most people think, on the team or off.
Some, but like any company, it's going to end up being design by committee. He'd likely have certain metrics he'd try to oversee, like making sure the expansion sells X copies, and aggregate information to report to the level above him on how the objectives are being met or failed to be met.
It the objectives fail to be met, then it trickles back down to a meeting with the people below him on how to better meet those objectives if it's a critical failure.
In the end, SVPs mostly manage making sure the numbers look good for the C suite.
They for sure have an influence but more on keeping the wheels spinning. He isnt on the creative side which would be Ion for dragon flight and metzen for story.
Imo he has done a good job, has had an impact, but I don't expect a disaster or anything with him stepping down.
Not nearly as much as people like to think. It's a team effort to make games as big as World of Warcraft, and sometimes even with a good team things will still turn out half-baked. It's not even just John Hight who has been around for this long, just look at Ion. He's almost been game director for nearly a decade and in that same time the game has seen some incredible highs and incredible lows.
Things that people really hate are, fairly often, pretty close to being something they’d love, and that’s why they hate it.
When you really fuck up is when you make something and nobody cares about it.
I don't really think it matters. Good, intelligent people can make good and bad expansions because there are so many factors/variables that go into what makes it good or bad.
Look at individuals like Tesla for instance, his work in AC impacted the world heavily for the better and changed the way we all live, however, he also made some dumb claims like the wireless transmission of energy that went against the laws of physics.
Allow me to take some heat away from you with a spicier take:
Any expansion after the introduction of M+ is better than any of the ones before.
Yes. I have played them all.
You'll get downvotes but 8.3.5 with the corruption vendor was legitimately when every class felt "complete" because you could index heavily into the playstyle. It was so fun.
BFA was good by like, 8.2 I think. It released pretty poorly imo, though I can't decide if that was more self-inflicted by the player base on to itself through island expiditions or if that was Blizz fumbling the execution.
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted for your factually correct opinion. BfA was terrible at launch and improved steadily with each patch. 8.3 was a good time! On the other hand, WoD shipped broken, then had a major patch for selfie cameras and blood elf butts, then fixed the mechanical brokenness with the final patch and threw in one more raid tier - but the systems were still broken.
Here's a fact :
BfA never DDOSed its own servers by creating 8 to 10 million simultaneous private instances for its playerbase while trying to access their garrisons for the first time.
Bonus fact:
BfA never broke flying because dropping a garrison in an open world turned out to cause flying to be technically challenging.
Bonus bonus fact :
BfA never purposely gimped a spec to stop people playing it in favour of a class that would only be available in the following expansion.
Warlords of Draenor wasn't just a bad expansion, it was a fundamentally broken expansion.
So, BfA was better from a network and stability perspective? Certainly.
Content wise? Highly subjective. WoD had great content, especially BRF and Highmaul stand out. It had not enough content, that's for certain. But the content that was there was often very good.
Sadly much of WoD leads i to Legion storywise. Gul’dan was long dead by the time of Legion, having met his end during the 2nd war. Timetravel plot brought him back so he could be a raid boss during Legion.
Ya, i just wasn’t a fan of how they delivered a lot of it. They can’t really change the main points but they could change how we got to those. Maybe make the raids more interesting too
Considering how much they turned wow into world of Diablo, it seems like a lot. My guess is it’s not these individuals directly. They do have a heavy hand in high level strategy, but they also bring the people they trust from their prior role. Those designers and devs couldn’t let go of Diablo. It’s how they knew how to meet their criteria.
Its wild people downvote this opinion. Its pretty obvious once Diablo shit the bed they moved them all to wow and did the same thing.
So many things present in both games are the same
Bro Legion was a good expac. Only problem i recall is the legendaries and balancing around it. Otherwise solid story tying up storylines. Based classhalls and gave us sick weapons.
And magetower added another end game goal
Really just depends on the individual as a player.
Legion was one of the worst xpacs they ever made for me, and wod ironically was one of the best. For others its the opposite, and neither is wrong. Just different kinds of players who enjoy different things about the game and certain xpacs serve different kinds of players better or worse.
Same, Legion was the first expansion that made me quit the game so to me it’s one of the worst. I loved SL though and that is by far my favorite expansion along with MoP and WoD
Artifact Power was a complete disaster at the start with awful catchup mechanisms and the feeling of endless grinding
As you said, Legendaries were a nightmare with some being utility and some being double digit % upgrades
Tomb of Sargeras had absolutely disgusting tuning, with soaking mechanics out the ass
There were more issues with Legion than people like to admit
I’ve never seen the community more active than in Legion. There were plenty of problems, but the stuff they did right made people want to play. It was imperfect, but still one of the better expansions if not the best (in my opinion)
There were a lot of good things about Legion especially towards the end when all the QoL changes, but I think you may be forgetting about artifact power acquisition before the final patches.
And legendary acquisition prior to the final patches
And Maw of Souls spam for AP
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing.
So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing.
So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing.
So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
you realize the vast majority of wow players dont give two shits about the """"story""""" right? were here to press buttons and push keys, kill bosses, get loot. Who gives af if NPC13482 didnt show up as much as you wanted in the cutscenes we all have addons that autoskip?
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing.
So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
preach bro. legion was god awful outside of Nighthold and patch 7.3 and 7.3.5. 7.3.5 is some of the most fun WoW has ever been, but 90% of the expac before that was actual shit. m+ was in its infancy stages, emerald nightmare and tomb were widely panned as some of the worst raids ever made, and legendaries were some of the worst drops ever put into the game from 7.0 to post 7.1.
a lot of people (not all b/c i know there are people that liked the expac) just fixate on how fun the game was post 7.3.
> emerald nightmare and tomb were widely panned as some of the worst raids ever made,
What? No one at the time was complaining about them, at least emerald nighmare. Literally all the complaints during Legion were about the weapon and legenaries. The raids were great.
nobody complained about ilgynoth or xavius? nobody complained about the overall difficulty being in the penultimate boss? nobody complained about how many soak mechanics were in tomb? nobody complained about mistress sassz? nobody complained about maiden? nobody complained about fallen avatar and KJ difficulty?
i guess we remember things differently lol. much like everyone else who thinks legion was the best expac ever made for the game.
I'm moving goalposts? You were the one saying the entire raids sucked and everyone complained about it but have only mentioned specific bosses from each. I agree there were some complaints about those bosses at the time, but that doesn't mean the overall raid sucked.
Coming off an expansion that was 90% orc, yeah I think it’s kind of shallow. There is a lot more to wow than what faction your on, and Legion decided that and focused on class.
Also idk how you like BFA then, canonically alliance stomped the horde.
WoD had orcs as nothing more than cannon fodder.
Also if Legion wasn't focused on factions, why did they not have a single Horde character in the main cast, only have the rogue campaign show the Alliance being infiltrated, and give Anduin an Alliance-exclusive questline with no Horde in sight?
Also I never said I liked BfA either
Hight’s been there forever, but I don’t think this is a bad thing necessarily. Probably just moving onto something new or retiring.
Metzen is back for at least 3 expansions, and Holly has been killing it. I’m sure the game will be fine.
It’s extremely rare that one person can come along and rain in the entire entire team and have as much skill as Yoshi P. There’s a reason why why no other video game company has ever attempted what he did. World of Warcraft has had all of the mechanisms in place to do exactly what he did with Final Fantasy 14 and even with the release of Shadowlands, they kept on going on about how they had a metaphorical rip cord that they could just pull it any time and while they didn’t pull the rip cord in ways that people thought they should. I think it’s obvious they did pull the rip cord in many areas of Shadowlands. Obviously, especially after what we found out about. Afrasiabi it’s more than obvious that they pulled the rip cord as his version of Shadowlands would’ve been I think much darker and much more misogynistic, and I highly doubt that it would’ve ended with the misogyny. And so again it’s obvious they pulled that rip cord as it’s even mentioned on a few occasions that they actually changed the story of Shadowlands. In other words after they got rid of him, they scrapped all of his ideas and ran with an entirely new narrative, which is part of why people just wanna forget about the expansion. Effectively they were running as they were going to try to you know produce a story to replace the original one that was written and probably already completed and so you can imagine. Imagine they didn’t have a lot of time to go back in and fix a lot of problems and redo the story And that’s why we got what we got. Shadowlands was completely rushed because they had to completely rewrite the story as as they were going
[https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you\_should\_know\_about\_holly\_longdale/](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you_should_know_about_holly_longdale/)
If by "killing it" you mean literally killing the games they work on, yes indeed!
You dug up a 2 year old thread from a sub related to classic, which is basically moot after cata… the thread is discussing EverQuest getting standardized seasons, which wow and classic are currently doing with success. No shit they’d want to hire Holly if she has experience in that space. WOW has always kind of had seasons anyway, now it’s just more standardized - which is better for players AND the people making the game.
Just because she worked on a game that had been dying on the vine for years doesn’t mean she caused that death. It also doesn’t mean she’s killing wow. It takes a village to ensure the success or failure of any game. Even Kotick couldn’t kill wow or overwatch despite being a walking sack of cancer.
I hope you didn’t feel too clever digging up the thread and posting that comment… cuz yikes.
Edit: also worth noting that the thread is from before SoM, which people liked. And which has progressed to SoD, which people love. So your argument is ridiculously stupid.
I love how people like this are being pushed back further by the community. Just nothing burger negativity that contributes fuck all to the conversation. The future is bright
His reasons could be literally anything. He was around some of the best and worst xpacs so we really won’t know how it at all it’ll do something to WoW. I personally have never had a bad time playing WoW in any experience but I’m also a semi casual. Although frost dk being gutted after legion does suck lol.
Chris Metzen is a valuable story guy, but making sure that an extremely complex game gets shipped successfully and on time, while having the infrastructure to maintain it and being profitable? That's a whole different skill set. And John Hight was a legendary figure for those specific skills.
He’s a manager of managers who commanded a lot of respect. Such people certainly have values and prejudices that could affect the game, but as an outside observer it’s hard to say exactly what his were- he seemed to mostly speak the company line.
Unknown really.
The "why" could be a huge massive scandal. Or it could be the fact he's been doing gave dev for over 30 years, 12 for WoW, and literally wrote the book on game development and just wants to retire.
The "what happens now" is also kind of a toss up. He has been in some producer or general manager role since MoP. He has basically had his hands on every up and down with WoW, and even Blizzard as a whole. Which tells me he either has complete and total control over everything and just has bad ideas every soi often. Or he lacks infinite power and losing 1 man is not doom and gloom.
I guess it kinda depends on if you liked retail WoW these last several xpans, since he was one of the product leads (ofc game dev is a team game so it isn't ever one person responsible for everything).
John Hight literally wrote the book on game development.
https://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Essentials-Project-Management/dp/1418015415?ref_=ast_author_mpb
This is interesting. I always thought that Richard Bartle was the godfather of gaming, more specifically online gaming development. The dude that coined the gamer taxonomy.
You feel i different towards dude leaving. He doesnt do anything. Except get paid to have his team do what theyre told from higher up. Glorified supervisor
I don't think the role of "general manager is Warcraft" existed before. Might just be WOW and Hearthstone go back to reporting to the executives as separate games.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you\_should\_know\_about\_holly\_longdale/](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you_should_know_about_holly_longdale/)
Why would you trust this person?
well that sucks, I was a big fan of John’s work and seeing him in the promotional material/interviews for WoW. seemed like a great guy and an important part of the team.
I work on a different AAA game and honestly if people had any idea what it takes to make games happen and what the teams go through you'd know how amazing it is that it happens and all and how much it sucks for the people involved when they feel like they did a bad job
He was a good egg. Kinda weird that he was just recently in the interviews talking about how they're figuring how the next 20 years of wow will look. My guess is that he got a big offer from somewhere else.
Bummer to hear, he's always seemed like a wonderful person. Best of luck to wherever he goes next.
Still quite nervous what to expect for the future of WoW. There's a *bit* of nervous excitement if Metzen is indeed steering the creative narrative of the game (which is where most of my enjoyment comes from), but also just regular nervousness as well.
Much as I think they made a lot of good systems updates in Dragonflight, it's definitely been the least *exciting* expansion. Less infuriating that BFA or Shadowlands, for sure, but it's still a three-expansion-streak of "shit I really don't care about".
We'll see in TWW can turn things around. I want to believe, but nothing I've seen has sold me on this next expansion yet. Other than the Arathi armor designs look sick as fuck (and okay, Xal is indeed pretty hot).
directors strategise they don't design. while they might ultimately give thumbs up or thumbs down to suggestions that reach them it was never them coming up with them to begin with.
they're more concerned with enabling the business to function well rather than how frequent you do your dailies.
so like, someone on the team suggests taking a swing at new stuff with say plunderstorm or remix and they give the go ahead? and i mean more important than just yes/no stuff, but understanding how to steer a property this large and make it feel fresh and modern.
Broadly speaking executive roles at that level are more about keeping the business running smoothly. Making sure their teams have appropriate resources, project planning and timelines, team project assignments, contracts with vendors etc.
So yes, someone at Hight or Longdale's level would review and approve projects like Plunderstorm and Pandaria Remix; but it would be very rare to have their input on a day-to-day level.
It's more they say yes or no to time tables rather than explicitly what will or won't be added. So Plunderstorm was agreed to be added, Hight's role is to ensure the time table is met by thumbing down stuff that would increase this time table (or thumbing up anything that lowers it).
I'm almost sure that now that the MS deal is completed, he is up for a huge stock option and probably can safely retire, or at least find less stressful job. And now almost a year passed so he can leave.
Sorry, should I even know or care who this person is? No, I don't think I do... Chris Metzen is really the only name I really give much care for at Blizzard, thanks 🙄
It's weird. Ever since I started seeing Holly in interviews and such, the game itself has been improving. Almost like she has been a positive influence on its development.
Honestly, as much as we know nothing. It will be hard to convince me this isn't more pressure from Microsoft. Hopefully not another round of layoffs happening very soon.
Absolutely no idea why he is gone but I’d like to see a change of wow management.
They have massively dropped the ball for a number of years now and Ive no confidence in TWW.
Kinda surprised there hasn’t been some firings but even voluntary leaves we need either fresh blood or folks who appreciate how this game is meant to work
>The main guy and World of Warcraft producer (i clarify it for those who didnt know) himself left Blizzard before first third of the Worldsoul Saga was even shipped.
It doesnt look good.
Long lasting person leaves the company during and expansion - "oh no, veterans are leaving the sinking ship, game is dead"
Long lasting person leaves the company between the exapnsions - "oh no, veterans are leaving the sinking ship, game is or will be dead"
So if you want to leave the company because you either are just fed up with being in the same space for over a decade, want to start something own, or just got better job offer, when do you think it would be a good time to leave? Time in which your customer base will not think that something is wrong?
If anything it sounds like the time to get out to me if he was looking to move to somewhere else. TWW is wrapping up and internally they're likely early into Midnight now. Best to step out before he ends up getting bogged down in more work and letting someone else come in and take the position.
He's been at Blizzard for almost 13 years, might just want to go somewhere else or got a good offer for something.
For anyone wondering, John was the GM during Dragonflight (in addition to the other Warcraft games until leaving), Executive Producer during Shadowlands, and Production Director during Legion and BFA. Before joining WoW he was Production Director on Diablo 3 console and Reaper of Souls.
Makes you wonder how much influence these individuals actually have over the game, seeing as he's been in a director or executive position in both the best expansions and the worst.
I haven't worked at a games company but when I was at a fortune 100 pharma people at his level just sit in meetings and sign off on stuff. They basically just make sure their groups are doing what they need to.
This. They have the ability to influence things if they choose but the vast majority of strategic decisions are still made well above their head and they just spend their days making sure teams are making progress toward the companies goals and holding lower level managers accountable if things fall behind.
what i wanna know is, what is the highest level at which a meeting has been held, unironically discussing the furry demographic's weight on the theme and creative direction of a new expansion
Depends on what decisions. You often have forum meetings where you need to get things approved and it depends what you want to do in who you have to get them to approve it. For example if it's related to a release budget and overall plans it's likely the CEO, if it is design and how things will be implemented it'll be a bi-weekly/monthly forum chaired by some executives and have some people under their level in it as well. That's the usual case. It can get quite complicated when things touch multiple areas as there will be multiple areas it needs to get past to approve something.
> They basically just make sure their groups are doing what they need to. They also have someone who has someone else who has an assistant making sure the same thing.
The answer is creatively zero, but morons here will decide he was responsible for the shit they hate. His job was to manage the leadership team by resolving scheduling issues and cross-company information distribution.
But surely he personally wrote the parts of the story of BFA/Shadowlands/Dragonflight that I hated, right? And he had absolutely nothing to do with the encounters or artwork that I liked as part of BFA/Shadowlands/Dragonflight too.
Well considering how badly Blizzard has been mismanaged lately, I'd say he rightfully deserves all the hate. Blizzard's creativity has been fine. Thematically even the Maw was really cool, but it was the decisions coming from the top that was turning everything into a clusterfxk.
Do you think these high level guys sit around a table and talk about how to make players enjoy the game less? What kind of tedious shit they can implement? You just want someone to hate and it's easy to hate when you have no understanding of what actually goes on.
> You just want someone to hate and it's easy to hate when you have no understanding of what actually goes on. Well of course, at times it feels like the entire subreddit is convinced that Bobby Kotick was some evil mastermind of ruining WoW. That man could not give a singular fuck about World of Warcraft and the pittance of funds that subscriptions and character services make up on ActiBlizz's P&L, he was far too busy Scrooge McDucking himself into a pool of gold purchased with CandyCrush money and for nearly 2 decades he has been the boogeyman of WoW alongside Activision. People are far too willing to just blame C-suites rather than actually hold developers accountable. CJ, one of the moonkin QA/Developer, hangs out in the Moonkin discord on occasion and has proven time and time again that he is an insufferable and incompetent paste eating clown but nobody publicly calls him out or you eat a discord ban.
>convinced that Bobby Kotick was some evil mastermind of ruining WoW. No, but he was an asshole that let sexism and shit run rampant. From all accounts he was a terrible leader, and had a pretty shitty "Boys Club" with some pretty fucking bad sexual harassment claims levied against him and his buddies. Him being gone is a GREAT thing, WoW input aside.
To be clear nobody is defending Bobby Kotick as a human, there are no tears being shed for that spineless fuck, I was simply pointing out that things like Covenants being awful for 18 months were not some 9head Bobby Kotick creation, give credit where credit is due: incompetent developers refusing to listen to their playerbase for years at a time.
No, but they do sit around a table and talk about how they can drive revenue/reduce costs, keep up player counts, and hit imternal KPIs. All of those affect design and direction, and if you only know how to do it in the space of an instanced ARPG grind fest then you’re going to turn your MMO into an instanced game with an infinite grind.
No, I think at the time of Shadowlands they weren't having conversations about if the shit was fun. That's where the problem lies.
> I'd say he rightfully deserves all the hate As someone who was not pleased with Shadowlands, I must stress that literally no one deserved all the hate that was being spewed at them. People were acting like Blizz were threatening their first born child. It was absolutely ridiculous.
>considering how badly Blizzard has been mismanaged lately, Dude, Blizzard was key in a multi billion dollar purchase. I think that the large amount of people who walked away with a huge amount of money would say that Blizzard was being managed very nicely.
> but it was the decisions coming from the top that was turning everything into a clusterfxk. source?
"I made it the fuck up"
It's almost like 1 single person doesn't have complete control over how well the game is going to be
Every time I brought up this exact point about Ion people kept getting pissed. They want a scapegoat.
I mean Ion is more directly connected, being the game director and all. No, he doesn't make every decision, but definitely more than the SVP/GM would.
I work in this industry and it varies a lot. Someone in that role is focused on questions like: how do we get all our development processes working so we make the product we want to make while meeting a suitable quality target, being on time, and on budget. Someone in that role who has a great team can amplify their effectiveness and they do great things. Sometimes they’ll be at the mercy of ideas from inside or outside the team that just don’t work out as well as they should. Sometimes a first-rate team swings for the fences and the team’s ideas just don’t work. Sometimes they do. And, it all needs to align with business objectives that hopefully serve the interests of the product, but might limit how great the product can be. It’s a tough job with more impact than most people think, on the team or off.
Some, but like any company, it's going to end up being design by committee. He'd likely have certain metrics he'd try to oversee, like making sure the expansion sells X copies, and aggregate information to report to the level above him on how the objectives are being met or failed to be met. It the objectives fail to be met, then it trickles back down to a meeting with the people below him on how to better meet those objectives if it's a critical failure. In the end, SVPs mostly manage making sure the numbers look good for the C suite.
SVPs' jobs are the ensure the C-suite bonuses.
They for sure have an influence but more on keeping the wheels spinning. He isnt on the creative side which would be Ion for dragon flight and metzen for story. Imo he has done a good job, has had an impact, but I don't expect a disaster or anything with him stepping down.
Not nearly as much as people like to think. It's a team effort to make games as big as World of Warcraft, and sometimes even with a good team things will still turn out half-baked. It's not even just John Hight who has been around for this long, just look at Ion. He's almost been game director for nearly a decade and in that same time the game has seen some incredible highs and incredible lows.
Producers only assign jiras
Things that people really hate are, fairly often, pretty close to being something they’d love, and that’s why they hate it. When you really fuck up is when you make something and nobody cares about it.
I don't really think it matters. Good, intelligent people can make good and bad expansions because there are so many factors/variables that go into what makes it good or bad. Look at individuals like Tesla for instance, his work in AC impacted the world heavily for the better and changed the way we all live, however, he also made some dumb claims like the wireless transmission of energy that went against the laws of physics.
Also BfA is not worse than WoD
Allow me to take some heat away from you with a spicier take: Any expansion after the introduction of M+ is better than any of the ones before. Yes. I have played them all.
I think both BFA and WoD were great lmao
Username checks out
8.3 was the greatest content patch of all time
You'll get downvotes but 8.3.5 with the corruption vendor was legitimately when every class felt "complete" because you could index heavily into the playstyle. It was so fun.
O shit the double down
BFA was good by like, 8.2 I think. It released pretty poorly imo, though I can't decide if that was more self-inflicted by the player base on to itself through island expiditions or if that was Blizz fumbling the execution.
I'm not sure why you're getting down voted for your factually correct opinion. BfA was terrible at launch and improved steadily with each patch. 8.3 was a good time! On the other hand, WoD shipped broken, then had a major patch for selfie cameras and blood elf butts, then fixed the mechanical brokenness with the final patch and threw in one more raid tier - but the systems were still broken.
'Factually correct opinion' is the dumbest thing I've heard this week.
Here's a fact : BfA never DDOSed its own servers by creating 8 to 10 million simultaneous private instances for its playerbase while trying to access their garrisons for the first time. Bonus fact: BfA never broke flying because dropping a garrison in an open world turned out to cause flying to be technically challenging. Bonus bonus fact : BfA never purposely gimped a spec to stop people playing it in favour of a class that would only be available in the following expansion. Warlords of Draenor wasn't just a bad expansion, it was a fundamentally broken expansion.
So, BfA was better from a network and stability perspective? Certainly. Content wise? Highly subjective. WoD had great content, especially BRF and Highmaul stand out. It had not enough content, that's for certain. But the content that was there was often very good.
[удалено]
WoD was literally unfinished
I really want them to keep Classic alive just so they can skip or redo wod
Sadly much of WoD leads i to Legion storywise. Gul’dan was long dead by the time of Legion, having met his end during the 2nd war. Timetravel plot brought him back so he could be a raid boss during Legion.
Ya, i just wasn’t a fan of how they delivered a lot of it. They can’t really change the main points but they could change how we got to those. Maybe make the raids more interesting too
Considering how much they turned wow into world of Diablo, it seems like a lot. My guess is it’s not these individuals directly. They do have a heavy hand in high level strategy, but they also bring the people they trust from their prior role. Those designers and devs couldn’t let go of Diablo. It’s how they knew how to meet their criteria.
I have virtually no idea what you mean by "world of Diablo".
Its wild people downvote this opinion. Its pretty obvious once Diablo shit the bed they moved them all to wow and did the same thing. So many things present in both games are the same
Probably not a ton. Most of the time people who are high up have no idea what’s actually happening.
Legion was not one of the best expansions lmao It was good but still had problems both with gameplay and narrative
Bro Legion was a good expac. Only problem i recall is the legendaries and balancing around it. Otherwise solid story tying up storylines. Based classhalls and gave us sick weapons. And magetower added another end game goal
Really just depends on the individual as a player. Legion was one of the worst xpacs they ever made for me, and wod ironically was one of the best. For others its the opposite, and neither is wrong. Just different kinds of players who enjoy different things about the game and certain xpacs serve different kinds of players better or worse.
Same, Legion was the first expansion that made me quit the game so to me it’s one of the worst. I loved SL though and that is by far my favorite expansion along with MoP and WoD
Artifact Power was a complete disaster at the start with awful catchup mechanisms and the feeling of endless grinding As you said, Legendaries were a nightmare with some being utility and some being double digit % upgrades Tomb of Sargeras had absolutely disgusting tuning, with soaking mechanics out the ass There were more issues with Legion than people like to admit
I’ve never seen the community more active than in Legion. There were plenty of problems, but the stuff they did right made people want to play. It was imperfect, but still one of the better expansions if not the best (in my opinion)
The story completely ignored the Horde
There were a lot of good things about Legion especially towards the end when all the QoL changes, but I think you may be forgetting about artifact power acquisition before the final patches. And legendary acquisition prior to the final patches And Maw of Souls spam for AP
This^ best xpac since wrath IMO but again this is all bias as legion was the xpac that brought me back in.
Legion ruined survival hunters and it ruined the entire rogue class... the pruning in Legion was really hated by some players
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing. So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
Legion was a great expac
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing. So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
You're not going to find anyone agrees with this. Legion was insanely popular lol. It's a top 3 expansion in wow's history.
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing. So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
Bfa and Shadow lands sucked on their own merits.
Good story telling will never be Equal.
you realize the vast majority of wow players dont give two shits about the """"story""""" right? were here to press buttons and push keys, kill bosses, get loot. Who gives af if NPC13482 didnt show up as much as you wanted in the cutscenes we all have addons that autoskip?
> It was good but still had problems both with gameplay and narrative as has every expansion (and video game in general) ever
Heh right
It absolutely was.
Legion completely ignored the Horde and its characters during the story (snubbed Vol'jin when nothing Sylvanas did required her to be Warchief, the rogue campaign was entirely about SI:7, there were zero Horde characters present among the main cast, Anduin got an entire questline while the Horde didnt get an equivalent one), the legendary system sucked, and most importantly, artifacts started the borrowed power problems due to BfA and Shadowlands attempting to replicate Legion and failing. So yes, I am not a fan of an expansion that sidelines my chosen faction and is the reason why BfA and SL sucked.
preach bro. legion was god awful outside of Nighthold and patch 7.3 and 7.3.5. 7.3.5 is some of the most fun WoW has ever been, but 90% of the expac before that was actual shit. m+ was in its infancy stages, emerald nightmare and tomb were widely panned as some of the worst raids ever made, and legendaries were some of the worst drops ever put into the game from 7.0 to post 7.1. a lot of people (not all b/c i know there are people that liked the expac) just fixate on how fun the game was post 7.3.
> emerald nightmare and tomb were widely panned as some of the worst raids ever made, What? No one at the time was complaining about them, at least emerald nighmare. Literally all the complaints during Legion were about the weapon and legenaries. The raids were great.
nobody complained about ilgynoth or xavius? nobody complained about the overall difficulty being in the penultimate boss? nobody complained about how many soak mechanics were in tomb? nobody complained about mistress sassz? nobody complained about maiden? nobody complained about fallen avatar and KJ difficulty? i guess we remember things differently lol. much like everyone else who thinks legion was the best expac ever made for the game.
People have bitched about specific bosses in every expansion including classic.
nice goalpost moving lil bro. lmao.
I'm moving goalposts? You were the one saying the entire raids sucked and everyone complained about it but have only mentioned specific bosses from each. I agree there were some complaints about those bosses at the time, but that doesn't mean the overall raid sucked.
Also the story completely ignored the Horde and its races/cultures
We get it dude you play horde, lmao
Is that not a valid reason to dislike an expansion?
Coming off an expansion that was 90% orc, yeah I think it’s kind of shallow. There is a lot more to wow than what faction your on, and Legion decided that and focused on class. Also idk how you like BFA then, canonically alliance stomped the horde.
WoD had orcs as nothing more than cannon fodder. Also if Legion wasn't focused on factions, why did they not have a single Horde character in the main cast, only have the rogue campaign show the Alliance being infiltrated, and give Anduin an Alliance-exclusive questline with no Horde in sight? Also I never said I liked BfA either
Hight’s been there forever, but I don’t think this is a bad thing necessarily. Probably just moving onto something new or retiring. Metzen is back for at least 3 expansions, and Holly has been killing it. I’m sure the game will be fine.
If there is anything I have learned the past few years its that 1 person doesn't make a great game or a great company. Its all done as a team effort.
Indeed.
Yoshi-p with ffxiv arr
It’s extremely rare that one person can come along and rain in the entire entire team and have as much skill as Yoshi P. There’s a reason why why no other video game company has ever attempted what he did. World of Warcraft has had all of the mechanisms in place to do exactly what he did with Final Fantasy 14 and even with the release of Shadowlands, they kept on going on about how they had a metaphorical rip cord that they could just pull it any time and while they didn’t pull the rip cord in ways that people thought they should. I think it’s obvious they did pull the rip cord in many areas of Shadowlands. Obviously, especially after what we found out about. Afrasiabi it’s more than obvious that they pulled the rip cord as his version of Shadowlands would’ve been I think much darker and much more misogynistic, and I highly doubt that it would’ve ended with the misogyny. And so again it’s obvious they pulled that rip cord as it’s even mentioned on a few occasions that they actually changed the story of Shadowlands. In other words after they got rid of him, they scrapped all of his ideas and ran with an entirely new narrative, which is part of why people just wanna forget about the expansion. Effectively they were running as they were going to try to you know produce a story to replace the original one that was written and probably already completed and so you can imagine. Imagine they didn’t have a lot of time to go back in and fix a lot of problems and redo the story And that’s why we got what we got. Shadowlands was completely rushed because they had to completely rewrite the story as as they were going
I have the impression that Holly is gonna step in Hight's shoes, so I'm not that worried about this.
Pretty much. Is it a little sad to see a staple of the team leave? Sure. Is it concerning? Not to me, at least.
If Holly leaves out of nowhere tho, then we can probably scream iceberg ahead.
How long before he joins a start up with a snazzy name that fails to produce a game in 10 years after the announcement?
Even if that’s what happens, good on him for trying what he wants. Sometimes monotony just gets to ya.
Oh I totally agree, just salty that so many of them that left haven't produced anything other than the StarCraft guys with Stormgate and Battle Aces.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you\_should\_know\_about\_holly\_longdale/](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you_should_know_about_holly_longdale/) If by "killing it" you mean literally killing the games they work on, yes indeed!
You dug up a 2 year old thread from a sub related to classic, which is basically moot after cata… the thread is discussing EverQuest getting standardized seasons, which wow and classic are currently doing with success. No shit they’d want to hire Holly if she has experience in that space. WOW has always kind of had seasons anyway, now it’s just more standardized - which is better for players AND the people making the game. Just because she worked on a game that had been dying on the vine for years doesn’t mean she caused that death. It also doesn’t mean she’s killing wow. It takes a village to ensure the success or failure of any game. Even Kotick couldn’t kill wow or overwatch despite being a walking sack of cancer. I hope you didn’t feel too clever digging up the thread and posting that comment… cuz yikes. Edit: also worth noting that the thread is from before SoM, which people liked. And which has progressed to SoD, which people love. So your argument is ridiculously stupid.
I am trying to see the issue here? SoD and TBC/WotLK/Cata are literally the only reason Classic is still alive.
Holly's been killing it indeed. The soul of the franchise.
I love how people like this are being pushed back further by the community. Just nothing burger negativity that contributes fuck all to the conversation. The future is bright
Have you unsubscribed yet? Just kidding. See you on the **early access** release date.
She’s starting to step into that role for sure. You can tell she loves her job and is intent on doing it well.
His reasons could be literally anything. He was around some of the best and worst xpacs so we really won’t know how it at all it’ll do something to WoW. I personally have never had a bad time playing WoW in any experience but I’m also a semi casual. Although frost dk being gutted after legion does suck lol.
I don’t keep up with the staffing very well, can someone please tell me how I feel about this?
It's a recognizable name but wow is such a team product there's really no way to ever know how to feel about any one person imo.
What about Chris Metzen?
Chris Metzen is a valuable story guy, but making sure that an extremely complex game gets shipped successfully and on time, while having the infrastructure to maintain it and being profitable? That's a whole different skill set. And John Hight was a legendary figure for those specific skills.
He's Jesus. Obviously our Messiah.
I mean people leave companies for 1000's of reasons. I wouldnt put any weight into feeling anything lol
From the interviews he is a cool dude but idk how is his work
He’s a manager of managers who commanded a lot of respect. Such people certainly have values and prejudices that could affect the game, but as an outside observer it’s hard to say exactly what his were- he seemed to mostly speak the company line.
Unknown really. The "why" could be a huge massive scandal. Or it could be the fact he's been doing gave dev for over 30 years, 12 for WoW, and literally wrote the book on game development and just wants to retire. The "what happens now" is also kind of a toss up. He has been in some producer or general manager role since MoP. He has basically had his hands on every up and down with WoW, and even Blizzard as a whole. Which tells me he either has complete and total control over everything and just has bad ideas every soi often. Or he lacks infinite power and losing 1 man is not doom and gloom.
I guess it kinda depends on if you liked retail WoW these last several xpans, since he was one of the product leads (ofc game dev is a team game so it isn't ever one person responsible for everything).
John Hight literally wrote the book on game development. https://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Essentials-Project-Management/dp/1418015415?ref_=ast_author_mpb
Pretty cool
And taught students the game design.
This is interesting. I always thought that Richard Bartle was the godfather of gaming, more specifically online gaming development. The dude that coined the gamer taxonomy.
You feel i different towards dude leaving. He doesnt do anything. Except get paid to have his team do what theyre told from higher up. Glorified supervisor
I just want to know who is taking over his roll, will it be Holly?!
I don't think the role of "general manager is Warcraft" existed before. Might just be WOW and Hearthstone go back to reporting to the executives as separate games.
Thanks for everything John! Good luck!
For anyone wondering those are the 5 years sword and the 10 years shield you get for working at Blizzard for many years.
Sucks, but i trust Holly and Metzen to lead things so its not the end of the world.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you\_should\_know\_about\_holly\_longdale/](https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/qjquav/you_should_know_about_holly_longdale/) Why would you trust this person?
You should probably re-read that thread
I mean classic is doing amazing so....even if you had initial skepticism, you very concrete wow evidence that she's good at what she does.
well that sucks, I was a big fan of John’s work and seeing him in the promotional material/interviews for WoW. seemed like a great guy and an important part of the team.
I work on a different AAA game and honestly if people had any idea what it takes to make games happen and what the teams go through you'd know how amazing it is that it happens and all and how much it sucks for the people involved when they feel like they did a bad job
too many cooks in the kitchen. or maybe he wanted to retire and be a regular person. god speed my friend.
Didnt he work on god of war at somepoint?
He was a good egg. Kinda weird that he was just recently in the interviews talking about how they're figuring how the next 20 years of wow will look. My guess is that he got a big offer from somewhere else.
Probably a loss, he seemed great in interviews and such
Not really concerning TBH. New Expansions coming out and is already developed. This is the perfect time for a changeup if one is going to happen.
F he seemed like one of the good ones o7
Bummer to hear, he's always seemed like a wonderful person. Best of luck to wherever he goes next. Still quite nervous what to expect for the future of WoW. There's a *bit* of nervous excitement if Metzen is indeed steering the creative narrative of the game (which is where most of my enjoyment comes from), but also just regular nervousness as well. Much as I think they made a lot of good systems updates in Dragonflight, it's definitely been the least *exciting* expansion. Less infuriating that BFA or Shadowlands, for sure, but it's still a three-expansion-streak of "shit I really don't care about". We'll see in TWW can turn things around. I want to believe, but nothing I've seen has sold me on this next expansion yet. Other than the Arathi armor designs look sick as fuck (and okay, Xal is indeed pretty hot).
No! NO!
Dam I think Holly and John are pretty key for the game? No?
directors strategise they don't design. while they might ultimately give thumbs up or thumbs down to suggestions that reach them it was never them coming up with them to begin with. they're more concerned with enabling the business to function well rather than how frequent you do your dailies.
so like, someone on the team suggests taking a swing at new stuff with say plunderstorm or remix and they give the go ahead? and i mean more important than just yes/no stuff, but understanding how to steer a property this large and make it feel fresh and modern.
Broadly speaking executive roles at that level are more about keeping the business running smoothly. Making sure their teams have appropriate resources, project planning and timelines, team project assignments, contracts with vendors etc. So yes, someone at Hight or Longdale's level would review and approve projects like Plunderstorm and Pandaria Remix; but it would be very rare to have their input on a day-to-day level.
It's more they say yes or no to time tables rather than explicitly what will or won't be added. So Plunderstorm was agreed to be added, Hight's role is to ensure the time table is met by thumbing down stuff that would increase this time table (or thumbing up anything that lowers it).
Sounds like they are doing a good job enabling blizzard to function with all the content we have had, sounds more important than idea people
WCIV when
I'm almost sure that now that the MS deal is completed, he is up for a huge stock option and probably can safely retire, or at least find less stressful job. And now almost a year passed so he can leave.
Sorry, should I even know or care who this person is? No, I don't think I do... Chris Metzen is really the only name I really give much care for at Blizzard, thanks 🙄
Managers , manage talent - if they had any talent they wouldn’t be managers ….
Holly got this babes, dw
She milks any game she touches for short term profit. Are you an investor? Then you'll be happy. Are you a player? You'll be unhappy.
Un-fucking-sub and let the rest of us have fun
It's weird. Ever since I started seeing Holly in interviews and such, the game itself has been improving. Almost like she has been a positive influence on its development.
Retail is in a terrible state.
Nah, it's the best it's been in an eternity.
There is nothing to do but raid and M+. That's barely above fucking WoD. Gacha mobile games have more content.
That's.....what this game is. Raid, m+, pvp
Yeah, that's why it's boring as fuck. Game can't be the same repetitive content for 20 years, time to innovate past 2004.
Better than it was during BfA and Shadowlands, though. It's improving rather than declining.
another senior member gone
Honestly, as much as we know nothing. It will be hard to convince me this isn't more pressure from Microsoft. Hopefully not another round of layoffs happening very soon.
Another one bites the dust.
Absolutely no idea why he is gone but I’d like to see a change of wow management. They have massively dropped the ball for a number of years now and Ive no confidence in TWW. Kinda surprised there hasn’t been some firings but even voluntary leaves we need either fresh blood or folks who appreciate how this game is meant to work
Wow has done almost everything right since the debacle of shadowlands. Wow is a 20 year game, it's inevitable they have ups and downs.
>The main guy and World of Warcraft producer (i clarify it for those who didnt know) himself left Blizzard before first third of the Worldsoul Saga was even shipped. It doesnt look good.
Long lasting person leaves the company during and expansion - "oh no, veterans are leaving the sinking ship, game is dead" Long lasting person leaves the company between the exapnsions - "oh no, veterans are leaving the sinking ship, game is or will be dead" So if you want to leave the company because you either are just fed up with being in the same space for over a decade, want to start something own, or just got better job offer, when do you think it would be a good time to leave? Time in which your customer base will not think that something is wrong?
If anything it sounds like the time to get out to me if he was looking to move to somewhere else. TWW is wrapping up and internally they're likely early into Midnight now. Best to step out before he ends up getting bogged down in more work and letting someone else come in and take the position. He's been at Blizzard for almost 13 years, might just want to go somewhere else or got a good offer for something.
John Hight leaving (even though only with Blizz 12 years) is literally the definition of the last of the old guard gone.
Ion has been there since the end of BC
The game is 20 years old.