J. Allen Brack steps down

[Berndorf]

CEO is different. President is different. Mike Morhaime was CEO with much more company influence.

President means - in this case - you will obey Bobby K and you will pick up the crap left from the former CEO.

"Co-leaders" is less prestigious than the president(the two new people who are in charge now). Or we can turn it around and say - they are supposed to be much more hands on, than looking at charts/graphs(maybe that's why JAB was suited for the job - he was just much less read type).

I'm well aware of the differences in ceo and president and JAB was responsible for Bliz. Bobby K is going to be much more insulated from all of it. Thus why Bobby is still ceo and JAB is out right now. What I'm saying is that JAB had to have known these problems existed and was more than happy to do nothing about them just like his predecessors. Now that the problem is out in the open, he was the obvious fall guy. Which many of us predicted from day 1.

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That's actually supremely awesome. Can you provide a link to this information?

The link showing all of his in game achievements has already been posted in multiple threads. Look around and you will see it.

[HansOlo]

That's actually supremely awesome. Can you provide a link to this information?

There are different threads going on ATM. And it's super legit - he gladly posts achievements screenshots, long prior this shitshow - so it got nothing to do with PR and the new influence. I guess they specifically picked him for that reason.

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1411...635684867?s=19

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...ic/1056850/129

[arkanon]

Wonder how big the golden handshake was......

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Mike Ybarra, one of the new "co-leaders" are actually playing the game. He got full 20s Mythic plus cleared in time and he posted his achievements on Reddit 6months ago - long before this shitstorm. And he is actually more dedicated than the average player.

THAT for me is a major turn on - good direction or not. More of that.

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1411...635684867?s=19

Not sure if saying it's a "major turn on" is appropriate, given the situation.

[cuafpr]

Who are you talking about specifically?

Most of the head-honchos have left, and the main name (Afrasiabi) has been let go a couple of years ago. Some of the 'enablers' from random pics revealed are also long gone. The few remaining i'm not even sure they work at WoW, which is Ion's team, as you put it?

Welcome to US corporate life.... your team gets named in a lawsuit for its behavior, you get a bullseye on your back, and if top execs think axing you will help or if investors want you gone as the face of the team cause they think it will help public perception you are gone. The fact some people are gone won't help less there is hard proof you took over the team and changed the culture (which doesn't seem to be the case). is it fair? likely not... but I wont be surprised if he goes. Nor would I be surprised if he took another job offer just to get away from the mess.

[Hollycakes]

I don't think that Hazzikostas as a semi-engineer/technocrat has a creative vision for the game either. I think that they need someone like that but I wouldn't have any idea who that is. Certainly not Danuser.

Have to agree here. Was it Metzen and Sam that brought that before? Blizzard has definitely lost its creative soul in that sense.

Also, have to disagree with the comment about Holinka. I understand the shoot the messenger point as that happens a lot yea but,
he made pvp objectively worse.

And for some reason I'm reminded of Tseric lol.
Poor guy.

[Sorrowseer]

Obviously. Before Ion it was GC and holinka people CONSTANTLY blamed. If Ion would go away everyone would just instantly jump on the brainless bandwagon to blame his successor.

They should replace the community interaction with a none gender specific person in a large costume and mask with a voice scrambler and just call them 'Being who talks to you' so the community can complain and ask for 'Being who talks to you' to be fired as it will fix all of the games problems.

[Lora]

Do you consider Ion Original?

considering he wasnt on the team when the game launched, no.

[Th3Scourge]

Hate to break it to you but your not paying a subscription for the promise of future development of WoW. Your paying to access the game as it is. And last I checked they didn't take down the servers so you are entirely getting what you payed for.

Except you're completely wrong, no one pays their ongoing subscription for Blizzard to just maintain a server. Much like no one pays the box price for an expansion to never have ongoing development. Everyone and their dog knows that the ongoing subscription cost is for ongoing development and server maintenance.

Would you be willing to accept that the 9.0 release candidate for SL was the final product? I would be that you would be pissed off if you pay a box price for an expansion only to get 1/4 of the intended product, whilst paying $15/m just to access a server.

[deviantcultist]

WoW won't change until Ion is replaced

Major issues like the lore/storytelling being utter trash as of now have nothing to do with the Gamer Director.

[muto]

Mike Ybarra, one of the new "co-leaders" are actually playing the game. He got full 20s Mythic plus cleared in time and he posted his achievements on Reddit 6months ago - long before this shitstorm. And he is actually more dedicated than the average player.

THAT for me is a major turn on - good direction or not. More of that.

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1411...635684867?s=19

You would think that would have an impact, but Ion raids Mythic and the game is boring, soooo.

[Thuunda]

thank fucking god, this guys is jsut the biggest tool.

[gobio]

I think I feel sorry for the dude but I don't

[FelPlague]

while Alex Afrasiabi was the only named person in the suit, they did have a further 10 'john does' to be named at a later date who were/are high level management etc as part of the suit, and obviously we don't know who they are but in time we might, so who's to say he didn't get a bit handsy earlier on in his career.

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Adham left and came back so wasn't around for a long time and probably isn't an issue in the suit, tom chilton was seen in many of the old photo's and in the different chatrooms, so it's fair to say he is involved somewhere, as for samwise, i haven't seen/heard about him for a long time now, while he may still be at the company he hasn't made much in the way of public appearances in a few years (that i can recall at least), and my impression of him is that he was a bit more of a reserved figure and wasn't that big on being the front and center of things.

1. tom chilton is not in those, i think you are confusing him and greg street, ghostcrawler, as the two look rather similiar.
2. yeah, most of the OG's dont like the attention so they stay silent, idk if you know but MOST devs do not want the attention, based on "who we see" there is only like 8 people who ever worked at blizzard, but there is atleast 10,000 now.

[Hastis]

ion is good in raids, dungeons content and thats all what he should do

[Gorsameth]

Except you're completely wrong, no one pays their ongoing subscription for Blizzard to just maintain a server. Much like no one pays the box price for an expansion to never have ongoing development. Everyone and their dog knows that the ongoing subscription cost is for ongoing development and server maintenance.

Would you be willing to accept that the 9.0 release candidate for SL was the final product? I would be that you would be pissed off if you pay a box price for an expansion only to get 1/4 of the intended product, whilst paying $15/m just to access a server.

And yet, legally, that is EXACTLY what your paying for.

[sam86]

i highly doubt he was in any control of anything since years, he probably was just a figure to have a target mark on his head, and so whoever replace him
activision didn't show EVER they don't control everything, check why Bungie left them and why destiny failed
So i'm sad that he just decided he took enough shit and left, instead of trying to fix the biggest problem: join satan's teacher company activision

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Hate to break it to you but your not paying a subscription for the promise of future development of WoW. Your paying to access the game as it is. And last I checked they didn't take down the servers so you are entirely getting what you payed for.

there are a LOT of games that are online and have online servers and u pay 0 dollar for server online and maintenance
so no, u pay for everything not just 'sub', u also pay for artists who create mounts for cash shop, so u pay for the cash shop bullshit
as literally proven in industry everywhere, this isn't how it works
wow should either have cash shit shop, or sub, not both

Again, Activision DOES NOT pull the strings. Activison and Blizzard are two separate companies under one holding company, Activision-Blizzard.

Bungie says hi and tell u that activision doesn't understand idea of partnership or anything except i own everything and u are all slaves to me

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Blizzards inner problems isn't our problem. As consumers we just want our product. I don't think any other industry coddles its employees with "they worked sooooo hard.. stop saying product bad!" than gaming. Its honesty pathetic.

100% agree

[Sinaa]

Do you consider Ion Original?

I don't know, but I would be happy if he changed occupations.

[rogoth]

1. tom chilton is not in those, i think you are confusing him and greg street, ghostcrawler, as the two look rather similiar.
2. yeah, most of the OG's dont like the attention so they stay silent, idk if you know but MOST devs do not want the attention, based on "who we see" there is only like 8 people who ever worked at blizzard, but there is atleast 10,000 now.

i wasn't talking about the 'cosby suite' photo, i'm talking about old blizzcon photo's and the like in regard to tom chilton who was game director on WoW prior to Ion taking over, and a lot of the issues being raised by public testimony is when he was in charge of the wow team, meaning that he will likely be one of the un-named 10 in the suit, as for samwise, he used to be very prominent in the community often responding to forum posts and talking to people regularly about art related stuff and seemed to genuinely enjoy it, for a little while i haven't seen nor heard anything from him, and as you term it 'the OG's' were all very prominent on social media/on forums early on until the activision corporate mentality set in and likely got told not to interact as much from the legal department.

as many familiar with these forums know you to be a rabid blizzard fanboy/girl and will jump to their defense at every opportunity, there's no need for your condescending tone, i'm fully aware that most devs don't want to be in the public eye and that they are happy to remain anonymous, those people i wasn't talking about in any way.

[rrayy]

Bungie says hi and tell u that activision doesn't understand idea of partnership or anything except i own everything and u are all slaves to me

Doesn't matter because that is nor what is happening here. Activision does not own Blizzard. Period.

[Dhrizzle]

Was expected to have JAB step down (or be forced to).

Bit dumbfounded with all the requests for Ion's head on this thread, since he has nothing to do with the big scandals and is probably one of the guys holding WoW together, and apart from some minor issues, Shadowlands has been great. 9.1 is great as far as end game goes. So yea, stop asking for his head, i'd say.

It's just another example of parts of the playerbase pretending to care about more important issues when really they're just mad because a game entertains them less than it did a decade ago. Like when they all pretended to care about China while drowning out the actual message about the Hong Kong protests with their cries about entertainment.