Kotaku: WoW Senior Game Designer Jonathan LeCraft (and others) have been let go

[Noobslayer]

Next up D4 rescheduled for 2028 release. All male characters removed from game.

[Sluvs]

MAUs are the only thing that matters in the business world. If the game was successful the game wouldn't feel dead. If the game was successful the game wouldn't be creating blatantly obvious chores that manipulate the players to spending more time in the game. Period.




WoW is the main game in the Blizzard lineup. We can easily cross off HotS, Starcraft, and Diablo; all three of these have been practically dead for years and haven't even been mentioned on quarterly reports. That leaves Overwatch, which we know has been in a steady decline, it wasn't even mentioned this quarterly report. Hearthstone, if you're going to argue that Hearthstone is more popular than WoW then go at it, but it'll be a joke and nobody will take you seriously. That leaves WoW, the game that has always been at the forefront of every quarterly report. The reports do not claim "lucrative"(net bookings =/= revenue) they claim "engagement" which is average player activity within the game, it doesn't look at it as a whole, it looks at it on an average. So if 40% of players are "engaging" with the content with a player pool of(spitballing) 6M that percentage still looks better on quarterly reports when it's 70% of players are "engaging" with a player pool of 4M. This is business 101.

Yep, and thse MAUs loss are probably from overwatch. Not saying that WoW has not lost some, it probably has, but it definitely not spinning out of control just yet.

They measure engagement and their in-game bookings.

[rhorle]

MAUs are the only thing that matters in the business world. If the game was successful the game wouldn't feel dead. If the game was successful the game wouldn't be creating blatantly obvious chores that manipulate the players to spending more time in the game. Period.

Dailys, Badges, Reps, Rare drops, Rares, etc are all things designed to manipulate the player into spending more time in the game. You paint it as a negative because you are dissatisfied with the game currently. While all the similar things done in the past because you were happier at that time. Weird right?

[anveena]

Good. Fire the rest of them and hire competent people to make the game again.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Great, now we have to get rid of Ion. Any ideas how? I think it's self-evident that he should go but apparently you have to be a sex pest these days to lose your job, not an incompetent idiot.

He is already getting an underling, it is only a matter of time until he falls upwards the corporate ladder, as he has already reached the point beyond his core competence.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nope, went over the quarterly (first and second + some back into BfA prior to Classic) again, no losses ascribed to WoW, but WoW mentioned in terms of holding steady/ growing/beating engagement numbers etc.

Some of us actually bother to research before we make strong statements about shit that can easily be looked up.

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Dailys, Badges, Reps, Rare drops, Rares, etc are all things designed to manipulate the player into spending more time in the game. You paint it as a negative light because you are dissatisfied with the game currently. While all the similar things done in the past because you were happier at that time. Weird right?

Yeah exactly, I'm pretty sure that even if they had kept reporting sub numbers, the game would still have developed in the direction it currently is.

Player behaviour shaping the game and all.

[Video Games]

I hope d4 is affected too much because that's the only thing blizzard is doing that doesn't look like complete garbage

[delus]

Usually when they have been designated as "let go" -- it means that they were told to leave or be fired. This raises questions since neither LeCraft nor Barriga were involved in Cosby Suite or publicly implicated.

Yet. They have not been implicated with sexual misconduct yet but likely were responsible considering the scope of the problem.

[aceperson]

Weirdly enough, apparently Lecraft supports the walkout.

could've been trying to save face after years of abuse. apparently lecraft has been with blizzards since 2005 so he would be a "person in power" who would've been "hard to get rid of". i tried to find exactly what he worked on in wow but google isn't helping right now. best i could find was a wowpedia article covering character tributes. otherwise it's just this story five thousand times.

[Zyky]

Like vanilla and BC didn't have a lot 'blatantly obvious chores' in it that was specifically to keep people around while they did their attunements and got their fire gear together. Tell us more. This story has been moaned about for-fucking-ever. If it wasn't MAU years ago it was to keep subscriptions up. It's the game. It's always been this.

Once the resist gear or attunements were done, which took a day or two in most cases to farm, you never had to do it again. With the exception of if you wanted to start a new toon. In modern WoW the grind takes months and several hours per day to do, and then it just gets reset with the next patch release. That was never the case in Vanilla-WoD. Please tell me more on your "expertise" in misleading factual information.

[khazmodan]

He is already getting an underling, it is only a matter of time until he falls upwards the corporate ladder, as he has already reached the point beyond his core competence.

I think you are right that he is over his head running the entire game and has been since they gave him more than raid design as a job. I think they are afraid of firing him since he is a lawyer and could drag them through a very expensive legal hell. They are probably hoping that everything falling apart around him will make him want to leave on his own. Unfortunately he will probably stick around and continue making raids at the very least, maybe the underling will start covering for his weaknesses...which means the rest of the game.

[Sluvs]

could've been trying to save face after years of abuse. apparently lecraft has been with blizzards since 2005 so he would be a "person in power" who would've been "hard to get rid of". i tried to find exactly what he worked on in wow but google isn't helping right now. best i could find was a wowpedia article covering character tributes. otherwise it's just this story five thousand times.

Yeah, could also be one of the people that enabled or protected harassers because they were his friends.

[|Dexter|]

Pretty sure Jonathan LeCraft had something to do with the reason the lawsuit happens not sure what part but yes he was clearly fired for a good reason..

[delus]

Ion isn't bad at designing raid encounters but he sucks at everything else. He needs to delegate more and focus less on system micromanagement while keeping up the work on raids because that is his strength.

[rhorle]

Once the resist gear or attunements were done, which took a day or two in most cases to farm, you never had to do it again. With the exception of if you wanted to start a new toon. In modern WoW the grind takes months and several hours per day to do, and then it just gets reset with the next patch release. That was never the case in Vanilla-WoD. Please tell me more on your "expertise" in misleading factual information.

Or if you lost guild members. There is a reason why "poaching" was a thing for mid-level guilds. They were used as stepping stones for higher up guilds because you wouldn't be accepted to those guilds unless you had a attunement. It doesn't take months of grinding to get anything in modern WoW. Anima could be done in about an hour and is the only thing this expansion that required a long term comitment.

The achievement addition made it easier to get anima. 9.1 made it even easier. This tuesday with the one time campaign reward I end up with over 10k anima after doing the anima WQ's, Kothira, and Chests. Cata had dailys. MoP had dailys. WoD had Garrison grinds and dailys.

You don't seem to know what fact is at all from your posts in these threads. lol.

[delus]

Pretty sure Jonathan LeCraft had something to do with the reason the lawsuit happens not sure what part but yes he was clearly fired for a good reason..

Yeah, now that I know he was in the Cosby pic, I know why his head is rolling. Everyone in that pic needs to be cut loose.

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could've been trying to save face after years of abuse. apparently lecraft has been with blizzards since 2005 so he would be a "person in power" who would've been "hard to get rid of". i tried to find exactly what he worked on in wow but google isn't helping right now. best i could find was a wowpedia article covering character tributes. otherwise it's just this story five thousand times.

Likely trying to avoid the chopping block and hoping the whole thing would blow over.

[Nyel]

Honestly, I can’t really understand how anyone can work at the moment under these circumstances.

It just feels like you could be the next one to let go or sent to another team. No idea how they get anything done at the moment when your work position is basically pending. Until this entire mess gets sorted out properly, I guess there’s barely any major work done.

[MoanaLisa]

Honestly, I can’t really understand how anyone can work at the moment under these circumstances.

It just feels like you could be the next one to let go or sent to another team. No idea how they get anything done at the moment when your work position is basically pending. Until this entire mess gets sorted out properly, I guess there’s barely any major work done.

Maybe for some managers. Regular folk are likely doing their jobs. As well, at times like this, being productive is the best way to keep your job. It's not like artists and coders sit around making things up. They have assignments and tasks. You put your head down and do the work.

Minus the frequent parties and other goings-on discussed about their office culture, I imagine it would be possible to get more done now than ever. Losing managers is a big deal though. I've gone through that a bunch of times and it's upsetting for a day but you mostly get right back down to work ASAP. You don't want to make a bad impression on whoever is promoted to be your boss. So you get shit done.

I'm pretty sure it's a lot calmer in the offices than it is with people shrieking their agendas on forums.

[SunspotAnims]

D4 is most likely fine. Everything points to it being in late stages of development meaning changing directors won't drastically change its course.

I'm assuming McCree (the cowboy) is unlikely to be renamed since McCree (the guy) basically signed over rights to his name when they made the character. That doesn't necessarily mean that his name couldn't be changed for reasons of association but it's a lot of effort compared to just kicking the guy out of the company and never mentioning him again.

[Berndorf]

Usually when they have been designated as "let go" -- it means that they were told to leave or be fired. This raises questions since neither LeCraft nor Barriga were involved in Cosby Suite or publicly implicated.

Doesn't really raise any new questions. Cosby suite was one tiny little thing compared to what is actually outlined in the lawsuit and what has been stated on social media by former employees. Bliz has been likely doing their own investigating on all of this ever since they got word from the state of Calif like two years ago. Which would mean going back through all hr complaints and everything else for the last 5-6 years. They likely already had a list of people who would have to go if things got out of control pr wise. There's probably something like 30-40 people at least on that list.