Chris Metzen Starts New Company Warchief Gaming, Dave Kosak Leaves Blizzard

[RoKPaNda]

Yeah, because things such as one button rotations, insane class imbalances, 1-3 mechanic(s) boss encounters or utterly broken PvP systems is essential to old school RPG's.
Not to mention that Blizzard made it objectively worse by sticking strictly to the 1.12 code.

Maybe you should seperate the issues that simply stem from the game being made in 2005 from the philosophy that was applied to create the game.

So it's Blizzard's fault? What about the dozens of games that tried to recreate that golden age of MMOs and failed miserably? Ironically the only other MMO that's been largely successful is one that copied WoW's later ideas and that's FFXIV.

- - - Updated - - -

All OG people who gave a shit are gone and now we get fairy wings paid DLC.

I'm sure that's nothing to do with the MMO / gaming in general market right now and everything to do with a handful of people leaving Blizzard.

[munkeyinorbit]

Activision better be sweetening up any OG Warcraft devs if they want any chance of surviving at this point.

Do you mean the original devs where the WoW is dead meme started? Give me a break. If they are actually still there then they are likely to be bottom of the barrel as no one else has bothered to pick them up. If Activision actually had anything to do with WoW, which they don't, then it would be better to actually fire these guys as their ideas are apparently cancer. They've been here forever and look at the state of the game.

[Shinagami091]

Metzen could still be commissioned to do voice work for Thrall like the other voice actors are. Tabletop gaming is a growing industry for a few years now. I have quite a collection myself. Looking forward to seeing what they put out!

[Kralljin]

So it's Blizzard's fault?

I don't necessarily blame them for how they released Classic.
A lot of people didn't want them to make changes, so Blizzard held their hand.

However, one should be able to admit that adhering to their reference client like a god given code wasn't the most sound decision as far as longterm health of the product is concerned.
Not to mention that certain issues with Classic (such as rotations) is simply beyond the scope of what Classic is.

Classic is what is, and i'll say it again, it's a game made in 2005, but if you cannot seperate the issues that simply arise from the game being that old and the philosophy behind it, then that's your problem.

Mind you, Blizzard badly chases the phantom of Classic and TBC even right now, yet they fail at it because the rest of the game no longer fits that philosophy.
That's not a problem of the philosophy, that's just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

What about the dozens of games that tried to recreate that golden age of MMOs and failed miserably? Ironically the only other MMO that's been largely successful is one that copied WoW's later ideas and that's FFXIV.

That's just a strawman.

Plenty of other MMO's existed but i don't think this discussion has room to debate over every single MMO that has existed to determine where it exactly went wrong.
Coming to the conclusion "all of them copied the original philosophy of WoW and thus failed" is extremely reductionist and i don't think every MMO that has failed even copied that philosophy to begin with.

In my opinion, there were a lot of execs that saw the money that WoW was printing and wanted a slice of that pie, but as it is with chasing trends in online games, those rarely leave room for a lot of competition and tend to cannibalize each other.

[Toybox]

This is actually pretty damn hype. I hope we can get some digital editions out of them.

[Nubpwn]

Yeah that worked so well for Classic past the initial hype. Or any of the dozen MMOs that tried to appeal to the nostalgia of the early WoW days. The industry has changed and Kaplan is stuck in the past. I'm happy for you that you like him but I'd trust some posters on these forums over him when it comes to MMOs tbh.

Yes, Classic is a success story as much as people like you want to hate it. It quite successfully recaptured the early days of WoW, just because you aren't the same person anymore and don't get a first time experience like before does not make that any less true.

[Popastique]

Tabletop? Ok.....

[Igzorn]

you know . i for one cant wait to see waht they working on. eventho it will probs be hell to get my fingers on it in europa.

[RickJamesLich]

Yes, Classic is a success story as much as people like you want to hate it. It quite successfully recaptured the early days of WoW, just because you aren't the same person anymore and don't get a first time experience like before does not make that any less true.

Is there any way of knowing how many people are playing retail vs classic? That being said I love classic and it's definitely lived up to the hype.

[TigTone]

I most likely won’t buy the table top game.

But I am Looking forward to what kind of new world they will create.

[Kralljin]

Is there any way of knowing how many people are playing retail vs classic? That being said I love classic and it's definitely lived up to the hype.

Back in Spring, Warcraftlogs tweeted that there are more recorded players *raiding* in Classic than in retail (the amount of players that doesn't raid at all in Retail nowadays shouldn't be underestimated).

Obviously Classic has hemorrhaged players over the past months as a new raid that gets cleared within week one by a lot of players doesn't keep everyone statisfied (not to mention the other issues that Classic has).

[Kaelon]

Honestly, the hate here for Blizzard (for "losing" all of these OG devs) and for folks like Chris Metzen, Mike Morhaime, etc. (for "starting" new companies / careers), is so ridiculous and toxic. Here are my two cents, that basically amount to "everyone is human" but based upon actual numbers, which I track based upon Blizzard's press releases and data analysis based upon Activision-Blizzard revenues.

Source (my tracker):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lxJPRQLxNRCgCd68czD3AVinaQweO6VIs76wwxI0n3o/edit#gid=0

• The OG Team at Warcraft succeeded, and then failed.
  World of Warcraft was always designed to be an 'EverQuest killer,' and this was their stated design objective. ("EverQuest is cool. We could do it the right way, make it so much better. Let's go!"). And they did - to the tune of 12 million players within the span of ~6 years. But then, populations crashed and the OG team presided over a "rinse-and-repeat" approach to innovation seen in Cataclysm and Pandaria, until finally, with Warlords of Draenor, the bottom fell out an populations plummeted from their highs to around 5 million. Many of the OG team started leaving in 2015 and 2016, and the rest is history.

• The New Team, led by Ion Hozzikostas, et. al., have seen uneven successes.
  There is no denying that Legion was a masterpiece of production, but by the time Battle for Azeroth came out, the player base had stabilized to ~2-3M subscribers, where we sit today. Many other 16-year-old titles would have simply packed up and shut down or transitioned altogether to new owners (and, in fact, Blizzard has end-of-lifed products with far shorter lifespans than WoW). The biggest culprit right now that seems to be driving wild peaks and valleys (as low as less than ~1M subscribers just before Classic was released, for instance) is entire systems that are released, redesigned, and then ultimately, retired from one expansion to the next. Star Wars: Galaxies encountered a similar see-sawing effect when it strove for a New Player Experience, re-leveling and re-designing all abilities for an expansion (sound familiar, Shadowlands players?). Blizzard's IP, design standards, and quality is far higher and the company is riding upon generations of goodwill from the player base. But true innovation, the likes of what we saw in Legion (by this very team!), is going to be necessary in order to drive meaningful recovery and growth.

TL;DR -- WoW Teams are human. They have both successes and failures, and running a 16+ year old game is hard, serious business. Everyone deserves some credit for their work, and a legitimate understanding if they want to move on and try something new with their careers.

[Jastall]

I don't play tabletop games, but it seems like a far less saturated and capital-demanding market than video games and so might actually satisfy Metzen who seems to mostly want creative freedom more than money. Wish him good fortune.

[Ghostile]

Back in Spring, Warcraftlogs tweeted that there are more recorded players *raiding* in Classic than in retail (the amount of players that doesn't raid at all in Retail nowadays shouldn't be underestimated).

Obviously Classic has hemorrhaged players over the past months as a new raid that gets cleared within week one by a lot of players doesn't keep everyone statisfied (not to mention the other issues that Classic has).

warcraft logs doesn't record raids that aren't logged and uploaded there.

This combined with the fact no sane person logs LFR makes the statement "More people raiding than retail" most likely false.

[Eazy]

They look like two dudes that already made a great career and now want to focus on the things they always wanted.

C. Metzen had enough for sure, seeing what Blizzard has done to his legacy. Imagine making a great worlds about human versus orcs(and then with night elves and undeads)... and then it slowly became the abomination with vulpera and every kind of elves we've got right now.

[Kralljin]

This combined with the fact no sane person logs LFR

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/ra...4#difficulty=1

Quite a few insane people.

[Lery]

We loved table top and D&D type games back in the day because we didn't have these amazing things called computers that we could game on!

[RoKPaNda]

Yes, Classic is a success story as much as people like you want to hate it. It quite successfully recaptured the early days of WoW, just because you aren't the same person anymore and don't get a first time experience like before does not make that any less true.

I actually don't want to hate it. I was pushing for a WoW classic version when this community was still copy and pasting the "wall of no" every 5 minutes. I actually didn't expect Classic to drop off nearly as fast as it did. It generated a lot of hype and then it failed spectacularly.

That's just a strawman.

Plenty of other MMO's existed but i don't think this discussion has room to debate over every single MMO that has existed to determine where it exactly went wrong.
Coming to the conclusion "all of them copied the original philosophy of WoW and thus failed" is extremely reductionist and i don't think every MMO that has failed even copied that philosophy to begin with.

In my opinion, there were a lot of execs that saw the money that WoW was printing and wanted a slice of that pie, but as it is with chasing trends in online games, those rarely leave room for a lot of competition and tend to cannibalize each other.

That's not what I said at all. I never said that everyone MMO that failed tried to be WoW. Not even close to that. What I said was that the ones that did try all failed. Huge difference there. Ones that specifically tried to recapture the golden era of MMOs like say Wildstar were pretty much DoA. The only MMOs that haven't failed miserably are ones that don't take themselves seriously and don't put all the emphasis on no-lifing the shit out of them. Like FFXIV.

Kaplan's ideals appeal to players like me who played MMOs when they were a super niche genre and that play this game at the highest level. But Classic WoW's philosophy of catering to players like me almost exclusively doesn't work anymore. Devs like Ion understand that and he caters to a different demographic while still making sure that content for players like me is there. An MMO by Kaplan would likely in the modern market just instantly collapse, though prior to collapsing it would be immensely enjoyable for me. There just aren't enough players like me to make a game that caters primarily to us sustainable. On the other hand something like modern WoW that is very appealing to the casuals while still giving me enjoyable content through Mythic raiding is a much better business model.

[Nubpwn]

I actually don't want to hate it. I was pushing for a WoW classic version when this community was still copy and pasting the "wall of no" every 5 minutes. I actually didn't expect Classic to drop off nearly as fast as it did. It generated a lot of hype and then it failed spectacularly.

Again, it didn't fail spectacularly. It's still going strong and arguably has more players than retail. Seriously, who told you it failed?

[Neotokyo]

Having followed Chris Metzen's twitter for a while I am not surprised... He has a huge passion and an insane amount of Warhammer (40k,fantasy and AoS) stuff. It's always nice to see a fellow hobbyist share their stuff with such passion. Can't wait to see what they produce and hopefully I'll get a chance to paint some cool stuff soon.