Sephuz Leaves Blizzard Entertainment
John "Sephuz" Yang announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment last week.

  • Sephuz first joined Blizzard in 2011 as a test analyst and later became involved in the development of Diablo 3, working on the Barbarian, Demon Hunter and the Witch Doctor classes through Reaper of Souls.
  • In World of Warcraft, he worked on designing abilities, talents, and items for all classes, and lead the design of the Legendary Items in Legion and the Essence System in Battle for Azeroth.
  • In Hearthstone, he led the design of systems and features such as the progression system, rewards, quests, battle pass, new and returning player experience, ranked modes, matchmaking, achievements, and social.
  • His last work at Blizzard as a Lead System Designer is on an unannounced game, which we'll hopefully hear more about next year. Meanwhile, we wish John Yang all the best on his next journey!



References to Sephuz can be found in both Diablo and World of Warcraft: Yang's Recurve, Yang's Other Recurve, Memory of Sephuz and Sephuz's Secret. Although Sephuz named the legendary ring after himself, it was actually the last item that he needed in order to complete his collection!



Carbot Animations - The Ancient Way (DiabLoL 2)

This article was originally published in forum thread: Sephuz Leaves Blizzard Entertainment, Carbot Animations - The Ancient Way (DiabLoL 2) started by Lumy View original post
Comments 119 Comments
  1. Log Cabin's Avatar
    O NO NOT A TIME GRIND SYSTEM GUY!!!

    Anything but that!
  1. sunxsera's Avatar
    mmochamp using IE ?
  1. Ryzeth's Avatar
    Cue armchair MMO-C conspiracy theorists attempting to say why he left.
  1. Utrrabbit's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Log Cabin View Post
    O NO NOT A TIME GRIND SYSTEM GUY!!!

    Anything but that!
    O NO NOT ANOTHER MMO-C KEYBOARD WARRIOR

    Anything but that!
  1. Holdodlig's Avatar
    Legion legios were cool, but again Blizzard fucked up in the way player had to farm them (which was somehow understandable since it was the first time they were pushing in the system expansion concept). If he was the guy behind the way to obtain them and their rarity, good ridance.
  1. Aggressive's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryzeth View Post
    Cue armchair MMO-C conspiracy theorists attempting to say why he left.

    Not going to theorize, but he is a smart man for leaving. I'll just say that.
  1. Fullmetal89's Avatar
    In World of Warcraft, he worked on designing abilities, talents, and items for all classes, and lead the design of the Legendary Items in Legion and the Essence System in Battle for Azeroth.
    Good riddance.
  1. willtron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryzeth View Post
    Cue armchair MMO-C conspiracy theorists attempting to say why he left.
    He left because he's a PoS and he's implicated in the fucked up stuff or because 10 years is a long time to be at one place.

    Either way, Blizzard, like anywhere, is becoming a ship of theseus. I'm more interested by who will replace him.
  1. Orby's Avatar
    Oh so this is the guy who did the systems? Oh lol... oh okay...

    Well I hope he lands on his feet wherever he goes next. I'll leave it at that. :P
  1. korijenkins's Avatar
    Worked on D3 (lol), legendaries in Legion (trash) and essences in BFA (also trash) and all that excrement with Hearthstone, widely regarded as one of the worst games ever now?

    Frankly this isn't even a loss. If studios have any clue at all this guy will never find work as a dev again. (He will because this has become an industry where you fail upwards sadly)
  1. Kiwijello's Avatar
    Sorry your company went to crap. We all feel the ripple. Good luck on your new quest. Haha. See what I did there? A pun... shut up :P
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Holdodlig View Post
    Legion legios were cool, but again Blizzard fucked up in the way player had to farm them (which was somehow understandable since it was the first time they were pushing in the system expansion concept). If he was the guy behind the way to obtain them and their rarity, good ridance.
    It's clear the system wasn't designed for min-maxers to mindlessly obsess over to push out yet another sliver of DPS.

    They were meant as a "wow, what a cool item!" reward for 99% of the playerbase.
  1. Pakheth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    It's clear the system wasn't designed for min-maxers to mindlessly obsess over to push out yet another sliver of DPS.

    They were meant as a "wow, what a cool item!" reward for 99% of the playerbase.
    I think that if the 4 max dropped thing hadn't been a thing it had been more acceptable but having a cap at all was idiotic. Without a cap you could technically get all eventually and would have been a lot more acceptable. But ofc the currency system we eventually got was ofc the superior solution and should have been in from the start.

    I personally didn't care about what I got and just played with what I had.
  1. Warning's Avatar
    John Yang has always seemed extremely knowledgeable about the games he worked on. Whenever there was an interview with him, his intelligent and to the point answers stood out to me. Definitely a big loss for Blizzard. No doubt he'll find a new home soon if he wants it.
  1. Fitsu's Avatar
    Feels like not long until there's nobody left at Blizzard. Lol
  1. deenman's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    It's clear the system wasn't designed for min-maxers to mindlessly obsess over to push out yet another sliver of DPS.

    They were meant as a "wow, what a cool item!" reward for 99% of the playerbase.
    cool story until you realise some legenderies almost doubled your dps as compared to others,that hurts anyone,even people doing normal or heroic,many people actualy progress and struggle with those difficulties also

    it wasnt at all cool for me getting my first 2 legenderies being a 0% output increase and literaly dragging my guild down wile other people who didnt even enter any form of challenging content got the best ones

    i loved raiding in legion,it was hard and had some great figths,but the legenderies and ap grind just ruined it all
  1. tomten's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by deenman View Post
    cool story until you realise some legenderies almost doubled your dps as compared to others,that hurts anyone,even people doing normal or heroic,many people actualy progress and struggle with those difficulties also

    it wasnt at all cool for me getting my first 2 legenderies being a 0% output increase and literaly dragging my guild down wile other people who didnt even enter any form of challenging content got the best ones

    i loved raiding in legion,it was hard and had some great figths,but the legenderies and ap grind just ruined it all
    After first getting shit on my main, switching to alt, got shit again. That was the first time since TBC that i quit wow.
    Does get easier and easier to quit wow though, can say that for sure lol...
  1. GreenJesus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    It's clear the system wasn't designed for min-maxers to mindlessly obsess over to push out yet another sliver of DPS.

    They were meant as a "wow, what a cool item!" reward for 99% of the playerbase.
    As a holy paladin getting Sephuz's Secret and Aggramar's stride before the buffs was not a "cool item". Instead of getting 8% HPS from something like Iterendi, I got 2% movement speed from my boots and a ring that didn't do anything since holy paladin lost their interrupt. Later patches added dispels to Sephuz's effect proc and Aggramar's stride got more secondary stats and scaled off the highest secondary stat instead of just one that we didn't use. But initially they were legit terrible and 7.0 will always be the worst patch ever in WoW for me.
  1. Kaleredar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by deenman View Post
    cool story until you realise some legenderies almost doubled your dps as compared to others,that hurts anyone,even people doing normal or heroic,many people actualy progress and struggle with those difficulties also

    it wasnt at all cool for me getting my first 2 legenderies being a 0% output increase and literaly dragging my guild down wile other people who didnt even enter any form of challenging content got the best ones

    i loved raiding in legion,it was hard and had some great figths,but the legenderies and ap grind just ruined it all
    Quote Originally Posted by GreenJesus View Post
    As a holy paladin getting Sephuz's Secret and Aggramar's stride before the buffs was not a "cool item". Instead of getting 8% HPS from something like Iterendi, I got 2% movement speed from my boots and a ring that didn't do anything since holy paladin lost their interrupt. Later patches added dispels to Sephuz's effect proc and Aggramar's stride got more secondary stats and scaled off the highest secondary stat instead of just one that we didn't use. But initially they were legit terrible and 7.0 will always be the worst patch ever in WoW for me.
    Or you could have just not gotten legendary drops at all, which would have been no different from just having the regular tier/raid loot drops.

    You expected those pieces of gear to be owed to you, despite the fact that content was not scaled on a blizzard-end to require every raider to have every optimal legendary or the encounter would be impossible.

    Take it from me as a mount hunter who has been running the headless horseman since WotLK and has a combined 5 years worth of lockout kills on deathwing without either a headless horseman's steed or blazing drake to show for it: you aren't "owed" any piece of loot.

    The legiondaries were quite obviously designed in the way I said: a cool bonus piece of gear as a neat reward to get every now and again.
  1. OokOok's Avatar
    Ahh Legion legendaries

    My first rogue legendary was the neck..... then it was the ring.... infact my BIS legendary... the crit shoulders and the assassination bracers? I got both last. 2 weeks after finally get my 2 BIS legendaries, my guild asked me to switch to boomkin for the final raid because moonfire spam tier bonus was OP and rogue got gutted after KJ.... BUT WAIT.... my BIS...the shoulders? YUP I didn't get until after we killed mythic Argus which was in April....

    Diablo is shit, hearthstone is shit, everything this guy did in WoW was shit, <clap> finally we're getting rid of some shit.

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