Ghostcrawler leaving WoW

[Trassk]

Good riddance! He dealt WoW several fatal blows through terribad design decisions and jumps ship when it's too late to save. It was also unprofessional of him to add that he was not asked to leave. I have known very few to be so egotistical and full of hubris. I need to know which company he's joining so I can boycott them.

I suddenly feel the magic of Christmas and resub WoW. /group_hug.

Again, you say that, but it remains to be seen if whoever comes in can *cough* make the game better in his absence.

[Treeba]

So this is why WoD seems so good, because he probably had fuck all input leading up to his resignation.

I imagine you're massively overestimating how much of any expansion was solely the work of GC. Even if we pretend that everything bad about WoW was his idea it would be too late for WoD. It's been under development for quite some time. You won't see an expansion free of his influence until 7.0. It remains to be seen if it will actually be better (but I have my doubts.)

How could people have not seen this coming? MoP is a flop. Like it or not it's lost more subs the previous expansions. We have seen over the course of it most the servers go dead and it's not even finished yet. Someone was going to be held to account for this and who better then the public face of WoW? He may not have much to do with what has caused the decline in subs but someone had to pay for it.

If they were trying to scapegoat him they wouldn't have let him have much/any facetime at Blizzcon.

[Softbottom]

the world is once again a better place

[PepperjackJig]

Man you guys remember the good ol' days with Ghostcrawler? WoW was never the same after he left it's gone down hill since then

[Osmeric]

Less is more.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (trans.)

[Goat7]

Blizzard was about 2 expansions late on this one.

Better late then never I guess.

[Donair]

So this is why WoD seems so good, because he probably had fuck all input leading up to his resignation.

^This. It seems like a breath of fresh air is taking over Blizzard HQ now that the Titan team is back taking command. Outstanding game changes and throwbacks to the series' roots for WoD and now we see GC slipping out the door. This is not coincidence. He's politely being asked to f*&k off while the big boys take the wheel and make this game the gold standard once more.

Glad to see him go. Seemed like a nice enough guy but too many changes were implemented under his watch that simply did more harm than good to WoW. He may have been vocal and fun to follow as Moanlisa pointed out, but ultimately at the end of the day we're not playing a game just so we can follow everything the lead game designer says on every social media outlet. We're playing the game... to play the game. I'd honestly prefer a higher quality game experience again with maybe slightly less entertaining interaction with the lead designer than a sub par game bleeding subs left and right with a very outspoken, snarky lead designer. *shrug* No loss here as long as they can get some creative fresh perspectives on board and maintain the pace they're currently on.

[Guyviroth]

I'll just post what I posted on the front page...

It upsets me.

It upsets me that the one guy who tried to connect to his audience the most is leaving. It upsets me even more that I feel that, somewhere along his decision-making, he left partly because he'd had enough of being the face-man for Blizzard and having to put up with so much shit from the fans who ultimately believe -- even to this day -- that he was the sole proprietor of what happens to WoW.

Even now people bash GC and say "good riddance" and "now WoW will be good again". It's a damn shame that retarded people like them like to sit in blissful ignorance and think that everything Blizz done was in the name of Ghostcrawler, not even realising -- or perhaps WANT to realize -- that everything Blizz had done has been because of a collective agreement, and not because of one man.

Ultimately, I give my best regards to Greg and hope that wherever he goes next he'll find a better fanbase to talk with. And I feel absolutely bad for the person who will take his place. My guess it being Tom Chilton.

[Mosotti]

Well, I'm sure that this will confirm my theory that no one can please the angry mob. I just wait for comments like "This motherfucker is ruining WoW, it was better even with GC"

[Henock]

This is like that episode of Recess when Principal Prickly leaves the school. TJ and his buddies are all happy that he's gone but they never consider that Prickly's replacement might be worse. lol

That said, it seems like GC really loves what he did and I'm sure some fans will miss him.

Good luck to him!

[Orissan]

Say what you will, but GC could do one thing very well. That dude can (could now) tank the community extremely well. He took most of the hits and kept sluggen.

Kinda like how Morello is for LoL, if anything is wrong it's his fault. Everything he says is flamed hard, yet he takes it like a champ and this allows other devs to post normally and get mostly normal responses.

Takes a certain kind of person for that. Possibly a masochistic person.

[Deleted]

Good, now Holinka should also go.

[solvexx]

Pretty interesting news, going to miss GC.

[FraQture]

Good god....... Wow ism dooomed........I leav now. Good Bye.

[MoanaLisa]

^This. It seems like a breath of fresh air is taking over Blizzard HQ now that the Titan team is back taking command. Outstanding game changes and throwbacks to the series' roots for WoD and now we see GC slipping out the door. This is not coincidence. He's politely being asked to f*&k off while the big boys take the wheel and make this game the gold standard once more.

Glad to see him go. Seemed like a nice enough guy but too many changes were implemented under his watch that simply did more harm than good to WoW. He may have been vocal and fun to follow as Moanlisa pointed out, but ultimately at the end of the day we're not playing a game just so we can follow everything the lead game designer says on every social media outlet. We're playing the game... to play the game. I'd honestly prefer a higher quality game experience again with maybe slightly less entertaining interaction with the lead designer than a sub par game bleeding subs left and right with a very outspoken, snarky lead designer. *shrug* No loss here as long as they can get some creative fresh perspectives on board and maintain the pace they're currently on.

Well, Moanlisa (sic) has one more thing to say in response to your post. Work started on WoD before MoP was launched according to Metzen. So work has continued on the systems for it all through the current expansion. Since lead system designer has little-to-nothing to do with the theme or actual content of the expansion and they're not at this point really planning much in the way of any additional system changes beyond what has already been announced (the principle new system being garrisons), it follows that he has been responsible for the development of those systems. Right? Most people have noticed that minus a new class or race with all of the requisite balancing issues that come with that, very little in the way of game systems is actually changing from MoP.

So I'm genuinely curious about what you think are the major changes from a system standpoint in WoD. Fire away.

And it's good to hear that if the next system designer provides you with much less information directly about what's going on and what the reasoning behind it is--agree with it or not--you'll be fine with that. Since it's only social media.

[paralleluniverse]

GC greatly improved the game in many aspects. In his role as lead systems designer, WoW has seen a drastic improvement in PvE balance since WotLK, and also PvP balance to a lesser extent, compared to Classic and TBC where classes like rogues remained perpetually imbalanced, and many desperately needed balance changes took years to materialize. Remember the one-class-at-a-time class revamp in Classic? That sort of complacency and tardiness, while class imbalances festered without attention was unforgivable.

Classes have also greatly improved under GC and the insight he shared on class design in the beta forums have been invaluable. No longer do warlocks have to spend half an hour farming bags of shards to prepare for raids. That pointless soul shard gimmick is dead. And unlike Classic, hybrids now have respectable non-healing roles, instead of being pigeon-holed exclusively into healing.

Perhaps the greatest change in WoW, also credited to GC, is the MoP talent revamp. After several previous failed attempts, the MoP talent system finally succeeded in killing cookie-cutter specs. The previous iterations of the talent system were terminally and irrevocably flawed, they killed player choice as optimal cookie-cutter specs were all over SimCraft and EJ. The MoP talent system fixed all that. As a result of its ingenious stratified design, where only talents with the same purpose compete with each other, SimCraft and EJ no longer prescribe cookie-cutter specs, and unlike the previous failed talent systems, players now finally have meaningful choices in talents. At long last, cookie-cutter specs are dead.

PvE content and easy-mode raids are now more accessible to players, while heroic raids now have far more complex and difficult boss fights than in Vanilla and TBC. As a result, WoW is today simultaneously easier for casuals and also harder for hardcore players. Class stacking in raids has also been killed because of GC.

With WoD, finally arena PvP will be 100% skilled-based and 0% gear-based. My main criticism of GC is that he moved to slowly, many of these changes which have greatly improved WoW simply took too long. Many people, including myself, have called for these changes for a very long time. For example, why did it take 9 years to finally make PvP skill-based, and not gear-based? Why did it take 2 expansions before hybrids were finally viable? Why design talent specs which sucked and were not viable?

WoW has progressed significantly over the last 9 years, and while there were some stumbles, overall it has greatly improved to become a more polished game that is both more casual and more hardcore. But unfortunately, change has taken far longer than it should have. It is because of GC's brilliance and design-sense versus stupid people on internet forums, that WoW has remained a far better designed game than it's competition, like Wildstar which is actively trying to recreate the design failures of WoW Classic that he solved. GC leaves WoW a far better designed game than when he joined.

[Sorshen]

the world is once again a better place

Suuuuure.
This is why we can't have nice things.

[billielecter]

Well, Moanlisa (sic) has one more thing to say in response to your post. Work started on WoD before MoP was launched according to Metzen. So work has continued on the systems for it all through the current expansion. Since lead system designer has little-to-nothing to do with the theme or actual content of the expansion and they're not at this point really planning much in the way of any additional system changes beyond what has already been announced (the principle new system being garrisons), it follows that he has been responsible for the development of those systems. Right? Most people have noticed that minus a new class or race with all of the requisite balancing issues that come with that, very little in the way of game systems is actually changing from MoP.

So I'm genuinely curious about what you think are the major changes from a system standpoint in WoD. Fire away.

And it's good to hear that if the next system designer provides you with much less information directly about what's going on and what the reasoning behind it is--agree with it or not--you'll be fine with that. Since it's only social media.

The major change lies within the content of WoD. MOP is an expansion too unfamiliar to players base thus subscribers falling like autumn leaves. WOW is a game that has to stick with originally epic story line or otherwise it has no differences compared to other MMO grinding games. Gears, mounts and pets they are trivial. Even raids without background introduced are neglected. Blizzard now has realized that if they don't keep up providing players real epic content they will just end up in having subscribers less in 5million. So they bring the Ace back and hope to see a rise again. Additionally Heroic and Normal difficulties are more friendly to raiders now as they can group between different servers in a flex scale. The whole conception of this game is restoring.

[championknight]

Classes have also greatly improved under GC and the insight he shared on class design in the beta forums have been invaluable. No longer do warlocks have to spend half an hour farming bags of shards to prepare for raids, and unlike Classic where hybrids were all pigeon-holed into healing, hybrids now have respectable non-healing roles.

This was semi done in TBC and completed in WoLTK. However since Cata classes feel too close to each other and some even play like gimped versions of class mechanics (Demonic Fury = Rage, Holy power = Rogue combo points etc) This has also increase the problem of ability bloat which lots of players are not happy about. It is like they did want this to happen, but unexpectedly the redesign is partly to blame for this issue

Perhaps the greatest change in WoW, also credited to GC, is the MoP talent revamp. After several previous attempts, the MoP talent system finally succeeded in killing cookie-cutter specs. The previous iterations of the talent system were terminally and irrevocably flawed, they killed player choice as optimal cookie-cutter specs were all over SimCraft and EJ. Now the new talent system, fixed all that. Today, neither SimCraft nor EJ prescribe cookie-cutter specs anymore, and unlike the previous failed talent system, players now finally have meaningful choices in talents.

Yeah, choosing between 3 different speed buffs, 'heals' or CC is meaningful especially when its almost the same among all 10 classes (DKs are exempted)...Not.

Cookie cutter builds will always exist no matter what Blizzard does

[Raiju]

Better the devil you know

he was frustratingly arrogant but I am concerned due to not knowing what the next systems designer intends to do. I feel overall he did a good job for me.