It seems like it's not easy to work at Blizzard these days. Fans criticize WoW and Shadowlands in particular, and apparently WoW players are running in droves to the new MMO heaven Final Fantasy 14. That the work on Shadowlands is not running smoothly is also obvious to us players, because not without reason it took seven months until the first big patch for Shadowlands was released.
The pressure on the developers at Blizzard has been increasing for years, as several waves of layoffs and very sensitive reactions to various community members have already made abundantly clear. And the rant of an alleged Blizzard employee, which is currently making the rounds, also hits into the notch of "nothing is going right at Blizzard".
Who wrote the post is unknown, but by all accounts he was very frustrated when he wrote it. The post certainly paints a picture of Blizzard that seems plausible to us as outsiders, but we can neither affirm nor deny its accuracy. There are many different topics addressed in the post, but we're focusing on WoW-related topics here. Remember, none of this is official!
For one thing, "Shadowlands is a shitshow" because any measurable value within the target audience is disastrous. And no one in charge had foreseen this, either, because the company was too big in their eyes for WoW to seriously fall flat on its face. Over the past four months, the decision-makers have been trying to correct course away from raiding (which doesn't appeal to the majority of the player base) in a different direction without knowing what that direction should be, and the player response to patch 9.1 hasn't been particularly positive.
00:59The grand plan for WoW apparently involves Sylvanas replacing the judge. Warnings from Blizzard and fan ranks that Sylvanas' story would then be nothing more than a copy of Kerrigan's from Starcraft 2 are reportedly going unheard. The argument "but they're bound to like this decision eventually" would not have proven true so far.
Add to that the rising popularity of Final Fantasy 14, which has been out for eleven years now and has slowly but steadily dug at WoW's player base. Final Fantasy 14 is now the elephant in the room that no one in charge supposedly saw coming - nor do they seem to understand why FFXIV suddenly seems appealing to so many WoW fans.
The anonymous Blizzard employee describes the current plan for WoW as follows: Players are to be tied to the game for 6-month subscriptions, only then will there be the next content, so that more of these subscriptions will be taken out. Even if it wasn't for Corona, patch 9.1 wouldn't have been released for six months, the employee said - to make sure the chain doesn't break. Chains of domination on the part of Blizzard, then?
00:30WoWThe anonymous source, who according to his own information apparently works in the WoW team, also reports that the developers are working at full speed on patch 9.2 to complete the dungeon master story and then already in the spring of 2022 a new expansion for World of Warcraft (buy now € 14.99)
can be released. If this were not the case, then Activision would have to face consequences.You can read the whole article here (via Massively Overpowered) - we'll pick up a few more details in the coming days.
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