World Of Warcraft

Microsoft is laying off 1900 Xbox and Activision-Blizzard employees.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and Chris Design Officer Adam Adam are leaving.

Edited by tclittle on Jan 25th 2024 at 8:50:43 AM

They also cancelled the survival games they'd been developping for 6 years.

Yet Microsoft released Redfall so makes you wonder how wretched that had to be to get the axe.

Huh. I would have been slightly interested to see Blizzard's take on the survival genre, but it feels like we have enough of those games already. The "survival" category on Steam has more games than the count of scrolls that were lost in the Library of Alexandria. You could play a new survival game every day and not run out of "content" for a human lifetime.

Okay, that's slightly mean. As a veteran player of WoW, I'm mainly concerned with the effects of the layoffs on that game.

Considering Blizzard was already bleeding staff before this due to their history of underpaying and also Bobby, it probably isnt great.

I suspect however most of the layoffs are probably administrative staff made redundant in the merger with Microsoft. Microsoft doesnt need extra PR, Marketing, Legal, etc... staff.

While that is undoubtably part of it, apparently the WoW cinematic and Overwatch narrative teams also took a beating. In the latter's case the team doesn't even formally exist anymore. Also doesn't explain Mike Ybarra leaving at the same time.

Edited by Falrinn on Jan 26th 2024 at 5:33:05 AM

It absolutely does?

Like, why would he stay. He was the head of a subsidiary, and he'd remain now as the head of a subsidiary of a subsidiary. To say nothing about how his boss just also left. Like, why would he remain.

Plus with Blizzard having been mired in controversy for the last few years, why would Microsoft keep the management when they can put someone of their choosing.

TBH with the PVE content being axed to overpriced once a season events from its original scope, the writing was kind of on the wall.

Apparently most of the customer support team also got axed. Presumably to have Xbox/Microsoft's take over.

Edited by Ghilz on Jan 26th 2024 at 9:33:09 AM

Blizzard's cinematics team is the best in the business. I hope they aren't impacted too badly.

Big News on 10.2.6

10.2.6 will release in March and will NOT have a PTR for it's initial release. It will contain an event "inspired by past musings from the community" and will be open to all players with a Warcraft subscription (both classic and retail).^note for right now I'm choosing to interpret this as "the event is available to low level characters so there's not an insurmountable barrier for players who are only actively playing classic" rather than the event existing in both versions of the game

There will be a PTR for Season 4 that will launch after 10.2.6 goes live.

Huge gamble on Blizzard's part, but I feel like a weird intermission patch like this is the time to take risks that otherwise wouldn't be worth it.

I haven’t played this game in a month, and I miss it. :(

So there's yet to be confirmed Scuttlebutt that Steven Danuser left Blizzard... back in November, and word is only just now getting out about it.

Trying to verify but the only thing I have so far is a Discord screenshot of what was allegedly his linkedin profile, which I don't have and don't particularly want to sign up for check myself. I guess we'll wait to see if one of the news sites reports it.

Edited by NaraNumas on Feb 9th 2024 at 2:38:32 PM

There have being a joke the reason marvel special efects are so bad is because blizzard keep hogging the best from itself

Yeah, Blizzard has an excellent cinematics team, and art force overall. I haven't played WOW in many years, but I have kept tabs on the development of the game, mainly because of the art. It inspires me, as I have an ongoing project of converting tabletop miniatures with Warcraft in mind, while I also wish to make terrain based on the games. Recently I built several pieces that together make terrain inspired by Ashenvale and other Night Elven locales.

Great work.

Speaking of which, refresh my memory. Is it true or false that the night elves are going to restart their civilization in Ashenvale?

Those are beautiful pieces.

According to the dialogue in 10.2.5, specifically the cutscene with Tyrande and Shandris, the kaldorei plan to build their new home in Amirdrassil while maintaining their guardianship of Ashenvale, Hyjal, and Val'sharah.

And, as Tyrande says, someday life will bloom on Teldrassil again and they'll come back to restore it.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 10th 2024 at 12:20:04 PM

So some weird news with 10.2.6.

Blizzard has announced an 8 hour maintenance next Tuesday and a significant slate of class changes (much larger than a typical hotfix)...but not the patch itself.

I think it's very probable we will indeed get the patch on the 12th/13th, Blizzard is just maintaining the secrecy a bit longer than I expected.

& Thanks! Now I also have my very own Archimonde to stomp around Ashenvale.

Looks fearsome.

The Dragonflight Season 4 dungeon structure has been revealed:

• Heroic dungeons will be scaled to the equivalent of Mythic 0 dungeons in Season 3. They will still use Heroic mechanics.
• Mythic dungeons (level 0, no keystone) will be scaled to the equivalent of Mythic +10 in Season 3, without affixes. They will award Drake's crests and Veteran 4/8 gear.
• Mythic+ dungeon keystones will scale so that a +2 in Season 4 will be the equivalent of a +12 in Season 3, and a +10 will be equivalent to a +20.
• Affixes will apply at +2, +5, and +10.
• Rating will scale accordingly, so you'll earn the same rating for a +2 as you would have for a +12. I assume that the Keystone Master goal will now be to time +5s rather than +15s.

In a nutshell, M2 through 10 are being absorbed into the new M0. These changes will close the gap on those low keys that nobody cares about and give players more tangible rewards for increasing their keystones.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 4:51:14 AM

I'd say those are solid changes. Gives all the difficulty modes much more room to breath and hopefully more use cases, which was a problem in the old system.

Though tbh, I feel like Mythic+ needs to ditch keystone downgrading completely and allow players to run lower keystone levels with a higher level keystone. Partly because that will allow players to do proper completion runs, and partly because in my experiences the majority of keystone downgrades are due to bad luck rather than the group being in over their heads in terms of gear/skill.

The dungeons selection is all of Dragonflight's initial dungeons. For me, this is a chance to do the half that was featured in Season 1 as I didn't do Season 1's Mythics at the time.

Mythic 8 will likely be the magic number of getting the best possible loot out of the end of dungeon and vault rewards.

10.2.6 announced for March 19th.

Not much else in the article aside from including a "limited time event"

MMO Champion reports that NetEase and Blizzard are reforming their partnership, allowing WoW servers to reopen in China once all of the technical stuff is worked out. To nobody's surprise, Bobby Kotick was holding things up. Now that he's out, they're getting things sorted.

I thought everything went to shit on the Netease end. Like scorched earth level.

Glad for China players to get to play again

Apparently it's going to take them a bit to rebuild since they threw everything out the window in rage, but it seems to be water under the bridge now.

I certainly didn't have "Bobby Kotick sabotages Blizzard on his way out" on my bingo card.