Dave Kosak leaves Blizz

[Verdugo]

That’s not how any thing works, you don’t Hire some one to put a story to paper in novel form and then go back and ask them how to direct said story past that novel.

He does, if he is an idiot.

[Scathan]

"Sylvanas was rightfully proud to be the first female Warchief" - From one of Golden's books.

That was so cringy.. Sylvanas would NEVER give a shit or second thought to that trash. I cannot stand these writers putting that sort of garbage in a world that has no use for it.

[Martymark]

That was so cringy.. Sylvanas would NEVER give a shit or second thought to that trash. I cannot stand these writers putting that sort of garbage in a world that has no use for it.

Sylvanas would care a lot more about being a High Elf Warchief or a Forsaken Warchief. Not once was her gender important to any story involving her previously.

[Strongstyle]

Exciting news, I don’t think it’s a sign of the great activision take over and more of just need to change the scenery. 12 years is a long time to spend doing the same or similar things, especially when your job is basically driven by being creative. Likely just got burned out of the same old and the corporate pressure likely made the candle burn down faster.

[Lurker1]

I guess people aren't allowed to move on if they decide they want to do something else in there life really? give me a break!

[Eurhetemec]

We basically have Red 5 (where Mark Kern was heavily involved), Carbine (where i'm rather curious considering the Wikipedia page for Wildstar says that said devs wanted to do anything but WoW, but ended up with some hardcore MMO).
The only of the newer studios where it's reasonable to expect a release would be Bonfire, the remaining ones are still pretty fresh.

I mean, i'll say it again, the only thing worth of value there is ArenaNet, which also involved people from WoW, a big chunk then comes from Blizzard North and then you Carbine & Red 5.
Once you remove the ones founded by Blizzard North, you end up with a rather small number of studios.

Re: WildStar, I always thought it was bizarre that they said that (I too remember them saying it), then basically made a game that was incredibly close to WoW, with the only major deviations being:

A) It was like an exaggerated version of TBC/WotLK in terms of overall requirements/attitudes for endgame PvE.

and

B) It had vaguely GW2-ish action-y combat. Unfortunately the designers didn't seem to realize that if you design a game that way, and then give people grindy-as-fuck quests like WoW, it's just really tiring and boring (moreso than WoW-style combat).

Unfortunately I believe WildStar is pretty damn dead since it was shut down. Because the code for the server-side bit never really leaked (unlike most MMOs), they've had to try and rebuild it from the ground up and haven't got very far, so if you didn't get to play it, you've got videos and that's about it. It was a really confused game generally, which clearly had a ton of money poured into it, but just made a lot of bad judgment calls. Even the visual design, which initially basically just read as "sci-fi WoW", was a little bit "off". It's hard to express exactly how, but it was a bit try-hard in this kind of very specific way that... really seemed very Furry-ish. Even the completely the non-Furry races had that sort of visual style you see associated with Furries (which is a distant derivative of Looney Tunes and '80s comics, really). It was just a little bit too sexualized as well. Like not enough to be making people frown, just enough to make you feel slightly like "HMMMMM" about the whole thing. All that might have worked if it went for a really casual-oriented, fun-oriented game design, but instead it had slightly punishing PvE even leveling (less fun than WoW), and the endgame was brutal key grinds and demanding dungeons/raids and so on.

- - - Updated - - -

People dont like garbage, it smells and doesnt look nice. Any other hot take?

So your point is that WoW's story has always been terrible and even after 16 years you're somehow both:

A) Still flipping-tables mad about it.

and

B) Playing despite it.

To me that seems like the issues are maybe not with the quality of the story.