Why do the people never blame Mike Morhaime?

[Cerus]

WotlK was developed without the Activision influence. The deal only happened at the end of the development, so not much influence was possible. Cataclysm is the first real expansion fully made under the Blizzard-Activision influence.

Merger was final in April 2008 - LK launched Nov 2008. They had no influence then or now.

[Deleted]

Can't the CEO say, Hey WoW team, what are you guys doing?

The CEO only cares about money, that's his job and wow is still very profitable even with 5 million subs, so in his eyes wow is a very good game.

[unbound]

Isn't he the boss of Blizzard, why does it always come down either to Activision or some lead developer dev, when it comes to hate?
Doesn't Mike Morheime decide what he wants in the games and not?

Or how do i need to see his position?

He should be blamed. If you look at the Blizzard financial statements, you can see how much budget is being cut from WoW year after year to show better and better profits. This is undoubtedly the primary reason the game has less and less content each expansion.

However, most people don't understand how the corporate world works, so they aren't going to get this important fact. Instead, they'll just listen to the "Rah! Rah!" statements that he makes.

"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." - Winston Churchill

[Thage]

Isn't he the boss of Blizzard, why does it always come down either to Activision or some lead developer dev, when it comes to hate?
Doesn't Mike Morheime decide what he wants in the games and not?

Or how do i need to see his position?

He runs the company. The lead devs are responsible for the work their teams do or the lack thereof, ergo, it's on their heads when their teams fail to deliver, no matter how badly they try to twist themselves into pretzels to disseminate the blame. Chilton arguably also has to take responsibility (which seems to be a four-letter word amongst the WoW teams other'n the art department) as the head designer whom the leads answer to.

[pfbe]

Oy vey, OP, we aren't anti-semites here, to go around blaming one of the chosen people.

/pol/ giggles aside, people don't blame Morhaime for multiple reasons:
- he's got better things to do in life than micro-manage the multiple projects going on in his company. If he's paying professionals to do those jobs, it's their responsibility to get shit done.
- the game only really took a significant sub tumble in the last half year - even if we could see it coming from a mile away.
- he's not a game designer.
- he's already got enough on his plate, what with being a manlet and having to put up with the fat "I once drew a panda and it ruined wow" guy and the guy who thought he was Bono. I don't know about you, but I would have had an aneurysm having to listen to those two manchildren every single day at work.
- he's actually a really cool guy.

[makketota]

Let's blame the CEO of Blizzard that has nothing to do with the development of the game or balancing! OR WAIT a new idea, let's not blame any dev/community workers at Blizzard. NOT ONE AT ALL and just enjoy the game they made for us!

What's the point of finding out where to direct the blame anyway ? it doesnt accomplish anything. The only logical thing to do is providing quality feedback

[Deleted]

Merger was final in April 2008 - LK launched Nov 2008. They had no influence then or now.

all the paid services (change race, looks, fraction, etc) came right after blizzard-activison settled in. and then in cata the whole game changed immensly. you must be pretty blind to not see an influence.

[Shekora]

Goddamn it, Gimlix, why do you keep making these threads?

[Thimagryn]

The disappointing truth is that despite all that WoW has done to spurn its audience, it's still the best MMO out there. Even FF14 has a ways to go to even come close to WoW.

[Gadzooks]

Ultimately the overall design of WoW falls currently on Tom Chilton, with a lot of responsibily on Kazzistokas and Asfrabiasi, so in effect the 3 of them are sort of the triumverate that combine for overall design responsibilities for wow. Morhaime does not directly influence their decisions, EXCEPT that Morhaime as CEO can fire any or all of them if he wants. As CEO, your main responsibility is finding the right people to delegate responsibilities to.

You could criticize Morhaime for not firing Kazzistokas, who seemed the most hell-bent on removing flying, but that's a tough thing to go over the head of the person directly responsible you know? Overall Morhaime has done a rather phenomenal job as CEO of blizzard, they have a bunch of lucrative IPs and a rabid fanbase, and while WoW has been sinking for a while, the overall company has been doing great, so it's hard to really criticize him even if one of his teams is majorly fucking up right now.

You're forgetting J. Allen Brack, who is the game's producer. He's the top dog who reports to Morhaime. Ion and Afrasiabi aren't on the same level - Afrasiabi is higher on the chart than Ion. Ion is a lead content designer (mostly raids, according to him), along with Stockton and Barriga (Who?) (Exactly.) The lead quest designer, who would be the most vocal on flying, is Craig Amai. (Who?) (Exactly). You really should take a look at the end credits of the game for who works on the game, not just to two most visible devs.

Singling out Ion as the most "hell-bent" on removing flying is laughable.

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because blizz downhill literally started after merge with activision + satan bigger more evil brother (activision) has the unique history of almost destroy entire video game industry alone, so its really hard to not count 1+1
blizzard 'fall' started after merge with activision, activision has a very horrible history in video game industry, bobby kodick (wrote name wrong on purpose) the current ceo - the 'defacto' leader - of both blizzard and activision is well known for hating video games with many anti video game quotes u can find them extremely easy by just google his name (u don't even need to make big search, just google his name is enough, also why the F8CK someone who hates video games that passion work in that field in first place...)
Mike might been the big head, but now surely not, activision has the last call in anything blizz decide, and anyone who 'think' otherwise never worked in system like that

This is so preposterous, wrong, childish, and utterly dumb, it's not worth refuting any of your "points".

[NoiseTank13]

Ion and Afriasiabi are really who you need to be up in arms over.

Afra is a known EQ diehard and a shithead.

[SpecterDK]

I like Morhaime. He's a nerdy little dude that seems to be genuinely passionate about gaming and cares about players more than most suits. I agree the blame should be laid on Chilton. Maybe Morhaime made some bad choices with his employees but that doesn't mean he's ruining the game on the levels that the lead developers are.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Uh, no. Morhaime is not involved in deciding what features go into the game. Thats the job of the lead developers and their teams.

That's like saying the general manager doesn't choose what players go on his baseball team.

It is quite strange no one ever brings him up.

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He's one person of a whole content board of people. You can't technically blame a single person at all.

yet there are hundreds of threads that blame Holinka all day?

[derpkitteh]

Ion and Afriasiabi are really who you need to be up in arms over.

Afra is a known EQ diehard and a shithead.

yes, these two would be out on their ass so fast they wouldn't know what happened if it were up to me.

[SpecterDK]

I don't get why Ion gets so much hate. The raids have been successful even in the turd sandwich that is warlords, and he's one of the few developers that treat players with an ounce of respect. Chilton, Afrasiabi, Holinka, and Stockton are the clowns that have driven the game into the ground. Ion is one of the few that actually deserves to keep his job.

[Faenskap]

I'm just so happy when I see Mike Morhaime! He's just so cheerful and friendly! Well, only seen him twice, during a Blizzcon stream and the video that ddd linked, but omg, how can you not like him?

[SpecterDK]

Yes, lets say that he did. But do you really think that he is the one who personally made decision and said "fuck you all! It is going to be my way and we are putting this in game" and other workers just went "well nothing we can do there...." ?

As lead game designer, yes it is entirely likely that could have happened. The boss gets the final say.

[Spinster]

Why don't you get a life outside of this forum ?
Why don't all the hate threads on Blizzard ?
Why are you still not banned ?
Why are you so dumb ?

I don't know the OP at all, but he/she comes off as vastly more intelligent and interesting than you. I mean, you DO realize that 25% of your sentences here make no sense at all, right (why don't all the hate threads...do what?)? 50% make no sense if you expect both coherent sentence structure and logic (guy on the forums calls out another person on the forums for. . .being on the forums?). So you wrote four simple sentences and half of them are wrong. Basically the best you could come up with is to call the OP "dumb." Yeah, right. Agree with the OP or not, at least he comes off looking better than you.

[edmorte]

This is the truth, he's the major reason why things are in such a dire state. He should be axed to save the game.

People asked for Kalgan's head in the past, what happened? He got promoted.

Like, he broke PvP then Blizzard gave him the entire game to broke. PvP "Guru"... what a joke.

[Osmeric]

If I had to list the features of WoD that I thought were horrific failures, I wouldn't list garrisons as one of them.

I would. Garrisons had the sad property of having no stickiness. Almost no one said "I'd quit WoW, but then I couldn't play Garrisons."