Rob Pardo leaves Blizzard

[Deleted]

So why do people think this is the end of WoW or some internal conflict?

I think Blizzard will be better without Pardo. The current sexism-PR desaster wasnt really anything that helps blizzard.

And about Rob Pardos new Job.. well, i heard theres a free game director Job for Scarlet Blade. Wouldnt he fit to such a game?

[Deleted]

we are actually on the same page on most stuff but I just don't see where he was gonna have a billion bucks in 2008.

Aye, no idea what his actual net worth is, all those billion dollar numbers are just rumors. I'd bet he is fairly well off though (like in economically independent). C-level people tend to do fairly well when they leave and Pardo has been a big part of Blizzard for a long time.

[paralleluniverse]

Rob Pardo leaves behind an impressive legacy at Blizzard. As chief creative officer, his role was to supervise the game directors for all of Blizzard's games, so he was ultimately responsible for basically everything, both the good and the bad. In particular, he was lead designer on WC3, arguably Blizzard's best game, and also lead designer on WoW and the first few expansions. Over almost 10 years of WoW, the game has progressively gotten better.

Pardo strongly rejected microtransactions and gold buying in WoW. But unfortunately, that has failed to translate. Microtransactions are all over WoW. Gold buying was legalized with the guardian cub, which I argued against, and is now gone. But I laud them for retaining the $40 expansion model, despite the industry moving decisively towards the model of selling worthless DLC and microtransactions. As Jay Wilson's supervisor, Pardo was also ultimately responsible for the RMAH that destroyed D3. I also argued against that, and it's gone too.

Amongst his most major failures was the disastrous launch of Battle.net 0.2 that came with SC2. It was the biggest regression of any online platform ever. It launched without chat channels, without even whisper functionality, it gutted all the amazing game features and social features of the 2002 WC3 Battle.net, it had one of the worse and most meaningless ladder systems, it was lifeless and barren because you didn't know if anyone was online and it was impossible to interact with anyone not on your friends list. And he got up at Blizzcon, and announced Battle.net 0.2 as if it was the greatest thing ever, when in fact, it was worse in every single regard, with not one single new or innovative feature... other than Facebook integration, obviously. While, over a very long time, Battle.net 2.0 improved, there's still nothing--not one feature--new or innovative about it.

So under Pardo, the game design at Blizzard has been set at an extremely high level of quality and polish. The gameplay in Blizzard's games is the best in the industry, and has only improve because of Pardo. Heroes of the Storm fixes the many fundamental game design mistakes in Dota 2. WoW's game systems are better than ever. And for this reason, Pardo will be greatly missed. But Blizzard's business model has gotten more greedy and unfair over time, for example, D3 launched with a RMAH and Hearthstone uses an unfair "buy advantages for real money" model. But it's not entirely clear whether Pardo was fighting for or against this distinctive and indisputable shift to more greedy and unfair business models. I suspect, to a small extent, it was the latter.

I wish Rob the best of luck for the future.

[dope_danny]

Bioware is still fine doing better than ever even

There are rules on mmo champion about posting reaction images, so with that in mind just imagine an experession of shocked incredulity.

[Deleted]

Who other than Ghostcrawler and Rob Pardo has left Blizzard in the last 3 years?

In 2012 they sacked 600 people.

Reuters Article

And i seem to remember a few of them were well known Wow staff... a couple of the admins of the forums got sacked and there was alot of discussion on the official forums about it.

[Slant]

I think Blizzard will be better without Pardo. The current sexism-PR desaster wasnt really anything that helps blizzard.

And about Rob Pardos new Job.. well, i heard theres a free game director Job for Scarlet Blade. Wouldnt he fit to such a game?

That sexism desaster is hardly Pardo's fault. I could find sexism anywhere, I just need to ask the right questions. It's ridiculous. Blizzard is a game developer, it's their piece of art and they can do whatever the hell they like with it. And the journalist writing that piece was one of the worst kinds of journalists. When asked why not more female developers worked at Blizzard, Pardo said he didn't have the applications from female developers and the author of that article immediately proceeded in disbelieving him and quoting some obscure bullshit to discredit what Pardo says. Good job, man. Why ask him in the first place, just go ahead and say he's a sexist along with the rest of the Blizzard HR team.

Blizzard is troubled enough as they are, no need to go and invent shit just because it's fashionable.

[Deleted]

I believe he left couse of all the rage on Mmo-c forum and Wow forum /joke

[TyrianFC]

.And probably why WoD looked like a really kickass expansion for a while. I think the delays in pushing it out and with both Pardo and GC leaving indicate that someone (I'd guess Activision-side) else forced a late change in the direction of the expansion (which is also why they're spent some time rewriting /redesigning it, resulting in late release).

Expecting a cash-shop-galore to emerge any minute now. Also expecting more departure announcements.

This. If, not too far in future from now, players see 'features' pop up that lead to huge outcry (eg: Garrison cash-shop integrated ingame) you can bet they influenced his decision. (Not so much the feature itself, moreso the suits higher up in the ActivBlizz chain pushing Blizzard in that direction).

[BenBos]

Of course he did. And with Titan scrapped, he was actually one of the devs in WoD.
https://twitter.com/Rob_Pardo/status/261898014640205824

And probably why WoD looked like a really kickass expansion for a while. I think the delays in pushing it out and with both Pardo and GC leaving indicate that someone (I'd guess Activision-side) else forced a late change in the direction of the expansion (which is also why they're spent some time rewriting /redesigning it, resulting in late release).

Expecting a cash-shop-galore to emerge any minute now. Also expecting more departure announcements.

Same old BS.

People can not distinguish between the ATVI Holding and the 2 independant working divisions underneath it, Blizzard entertainment and Activision Games.

Far more likely it is an internal Blizzard struggle. I saw Pardo as a possible future CEO for Blizzard after Morhaime, because Pardo was the real face of Blizzard's game design (KISS and overpowered players).

-----

------->>>> People forget that it was PARDO who had a huge press conference in 2011 on the RMAH in D3. His statement was clear: with the Rmah players would play D3 much longer after being gear capped ...
It was clearly HIS idea to introduce the REAL money system trading and he was even mentioned as lead Producer of D3 ! at the end credits.


Of course - as always - he was right. The new tradeless D3 is a complete dead game after downing the last boss on hard mode. Despite what forum trolls said: no trading made D3 worthless in long term play.

So my bet is that internal conflicting visions caused the break up. Kotick gives designers much more freedom than people think. That was clearly stated by the initial designers of Skylanders recently.

If you want to comment on things, at least look at the history before spamming these same idiotic theories.

This is a loss to Blizzard's management as Pardo clearly had visionary ideas. And the D3 AH's was one of the most challenging ones. A pity the gamer's community was not ready for this.... we would rather loose meaningless time with meaningless trashing monsters. Players are spending billions on pixeled goods with games like Farmville and Candy Crush, ... for once mr Average could have sold some goods in a video game, but the moronic gamer's community was not ready for this idea.

----

In any way let's hope Blizzard will keep to Pardo's most used statements: game play first and KISS with overpowered avatars to play with.

But if Pardo will show up again and tries to build further on RMAH's in future games I 'll be the first to pre order. The man is a giant in futuristic game visions.

[Ghaleon]

BioWare is now essentially a meaningless label EA throws on random development teams that they've got (check it out, there's like a dozen "BioWares" now). The situation with Ray and Greg is probably close to what's happening at Blizzard. Owners want to push towards mass production of mediocre crap to exploit the existing IP, while the guys who had long careers focusing on building great games and new IP "burn out" and get swept away.

I have to disagree, take Dragon Age Inquisition for example the game looks incredible probably the best i have saw from Bioware in a long time.
Dragon Age Inquisition was suppose to release a year ago but they told EA they need more time and EA was fine with it. so i am not entirely sure they will be mass producing crap.

Believe i read between 3 teams Dragon Age team a new game every 4 to 5 years, Mass Effect team a new game every 4 to 5 years, the team behind the new IP they are making i am not sure, but they said we will know more in the next year or so.

On topic a bit more i wish great luck for Pardo, but his quitting i doubt will change much at all.

It will not herald the coming of the great cash shop, most things will still be earned in game, we may see some garrison things in the shop but cosmetic only like themes, Blizzard will Never go pay to win IMHO.

[Osmeric]

Expecting a cash-shop-galore to emerge any minute now. Also expecting more departure announcements.

Depressingly plausible. Oh well.

- - - Updated - - -

that sounds like weasel words, possibly his blizzard contract specifically had forbidden poaching.

It could be a problem even without that (tortious interference).

[dejaa]

Yeah, this is a really big deal. Especially for those that were holding out for Titan, even after it was withdrawn for a reassessment.

No, he's not fired, no more than Greg Street was fired.

We don't, and can't, know that.

[zorkuus]

It will not herald the coming of the great cash shop, most things will still be earned in game, we may see some garrison things in the shop but cosmetic only like themes, Blizzard will Never go pay to win IMHO.

It shouldn't be 'pay to anything' aslong as it remains a sub only game imo.

[rda]

I think the "Rob Pardo left because Blizzard was sinking" angle is actually somewhat reversed.

Guys like Pardo can't leave out of the blue. They have to take that up to the board or whoever they are reporting to, there has to be a transition period. Perhaps it is Pardo leaving and the transition occurring because of that, that contributed to the perceived disarray inside Blizzard, not the other way around. Transitions can and do hit projects hard all the time, whatever problems have to be resolved due to the guy leaving tend to be resolved in a quick-and-dirty manner (just patch it this way, I am leaving in two months, we don't have time to do it right), not to mention that any transition like that causes movements in seats, which gets a lot of folks very agitated and concentrated on politics of on actual work.

This is bad news for WoD and for WoW in general in that it indicates that things are probably bad.

[Vargur]

I hate speculations.
And they're just going to not reply or say something shitty like "need to know" if you somehow manage to ask them. Worse still, they can just lie "everything will be all right", because that's good business practice.

[Xeroz]

I think the "Rob Pardo left because Blizzard was sinking" angle is actually somewhat reversed.

Guys like Pardo can't leave out of the blue. They have to take that up to the board or whoever they are reporting to, there has to be a transition period. Perhaps it is Pardo leaving and the transition occurring because of that, that contributed to the perceived disarray inside Blizzard, not the other way around. Transitions can and do hit projects hard all the time, whatever problems have to be resolved due to the guy leaving tend to be resolved in a quick-and-dirty manner (just patch it this way, I am leaving in two months, we don't have time to do it right), not to mention that any transition like that causes movements in seats, which gets a lot of folks very agitated and concentrated on politics of on actual work.

This is bad news for WoD and for WoW in general in that it indicates that things are probably bad.

Ofc he didnt just leave out of the blue lol. Blizzard must have known this for a while. They only announce it once when he actually leaves . Its not like he gets to work and said ohh well i quit, then makes a post about it then leaves lol. And tbh i think they already have a replacement for him rdy.

[Deleted]

I think the "Rob Pardo left because Blizzard was sinking" angle is actually somewhat reversed.

I think it is Rob Pardo that is sinking. Blizzard? They will survive any crisis.

[Deleted]

It will only go worse from now on. And that's good since this game is now a shade of it's former glory and needs to pull the plug.

Also,

Blizzard's senior vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, has said players would feel "betrayed" if a micro-transaction system, of the sort common in free-to-play MMO games, was implemented in World of Warcraft.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/mi...betray-players

[Xeroz]

It will only go worse from now on. And that's good since this game is now a shade of it's former glory and needs to pull the plug.

Lol do you really think they will pull the plug because 1 person leaves xD?

[Deleted]

Lol do you really think they will pull the plug because 1 person leaves xD?

2 actually. And they weren't the local janitors.

Ofc they won't wont pull it but one can dream...