Chris Metzen Reaffirms Commitment to Blizzard in New Interview | MMORPG.com

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Chris Metzen Reaffirms Commitment to Blizzard in New Interview | MMORPG.com

In a new interview, Chris Metzen talks tabletop game development versus video games, his return to Blizzard , initially to work on World of Warcraft, and whether he'd want a video game of

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The_Korrigan

People around here must know by now that I'm no longer a Blizzard fan since a quite long time now.
But THAT guy is just a legend, a reference in the industry, a true artist.
Yep, I admire him. Blame me.

McSleaz

What has he done lately?

Eldrach

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Scot

Deborahwhyte said:

What were his original plans for the night elves?
Just don't let him name anymore characters are we'll be fine.

Welcome to the forums!

ThomasO316

Eldrach said:

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Well World of Warcraft will always itself be in a downward spiral. It will never be like it was in its prime and will just continue to trend downward until such a time Blizzard releases another big MMO if they ever do that again. WoW overall is just a big cost to Blizzard compared to all of its other games.

If it wasn't for his creative art and story telling I really doubt we would have Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

Sovrath

ThomasO316 said:

Eldrach said:

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Well World of Warcraft will always itself be in a downward spiral. It will never be like it was in its prime and will just continue to trend downward until such a time Blizzard releases another big MMO if they ever do that again. WoW overall is just a big cost to Blizzard compared to all of its other games.

If it wasn't for his creative art and story telling I really doubt we would have Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

I don't think they'll release another mmorpg. They spent years working on one and realized that they just couldn't make it work; that it would fall in the shadow of world of warcraft. If memory serves.

But all mmorp'g trend downward. All of them. After a while people have gotten what they've wanted and they want something new. Nothing wrong with that.

Tokken

ThomasO316 said:

Eldrach said:

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Well World of Warcraft will always itself be in a downward spiral. It will never be like it was in its prime and will just continue to trend downward until such a time Blizzard releases another big MMO if they ever do that again. WoW overall is just a big cost to Blizzard compared to all of its other games.

If it wasn't for his creative art and story telling I really doubt we would have Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

Welcome to the forums! 

Angrakhan

So what exactly is he doing in this "Advisory" role? I'll be honest it sounds like he's getting paid a salary to basically be a marketing campaign to give Blizzard back some legitimacy. What is his actual day to day work at Blizzard? He's either head down cranking out content in which case he's not an advisor or he just sits back and attends a laundry list of meetings and poo poos other people's work like some armchair quarterback. If it's the latter forgive me if I'm not holding my breath awaiting the grand resurgence of Blizzard as a driving force of gaming innovation and quality.

Eldrach

ThomasO316 said:

Eldrach said:

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Well World of Warcraft will always itself be in a downward spiral. It will never be like it was in its prime and will just continue to trend downward until such a time Blizzard releases another big MMO if they ever do that again. WoW overall is just a big cost to Blizzard compared to all of its other games.

If it wasn't for his creative art and story telling I really doubt we would have Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

Well - true. But what i meant is that i don’t think his return will suddenly re-create Blizzards creative past. Activision won’t allow then to create anything new - it’s all about milking the cow until it’s dry now

The_Korrigan

Angrakhan said:

So what exactly is he doing in this "Advisory" role? I'll be honest it sounds like he's getting paid a salary to basically be a marketing campaign to give Blizzard back some legitimacy. What is his actual day to day work at Blizzard? He's either head down cranking out content in which case he's not an advisor or he just sits back and attends a laundry list of meetings and poo poos other people's work like some armchair quarterback. If it's the latter forgive me if I'm not holding my breath awaiting the grand resurgence of Blizzard as a driving force of gaming innovation and quality.

If you had done half the work Metzen did in his life, you'd probably also get an "advisory" role somewhere. Knowledge is power.

Wordsworth

It’s a big task to make WoW appealing again for me.  I played from launch until shadowlands, but even years later, all I can envision is the overwhelming boredom of the last few times I subbed and the good memories fade more into obscurity.  

Mensur

Reaffirmation on the confirmation is always reassuring!

Xiaoki

Angrakhan said:

So what exactly is he doing in this "Advisory" role? I'll be honest it sounds like he's getting paid a salary to basically be a marketing campaign to give Blizzard back some legitimacy. What is his actual day to day work at Blizzard? He's either head down cranking out content in which case he's not an advisor or he just sits back and attends a laundry list of meetings and poo poos other people's work like some armchair quarterback. If it's the latter forgive me if I'm not holding my breath awaiting the grand resurgence of Blizzard as a driving force of gaming innovation and quality.

His "advisory" role will entail the current creative team coming to him with their ideas as to what the story will be and he will tell them it's stupid.

Perhaps if Metzen had still been around with Blizzard in 2019 Shadowlands would not have happened.

Kyleran

The_Korrigan said:

People around here must know by now that I'm no longer a Blizzard fan since a quite long time now.
But THAT guy is just a legend, a reference in the industry, a true artist.
Yep, I admire him. Blame me.

You mean like Raph, Richard, Mark, Brad, Smedley and a host of other "former" greats?

What the heck, most great physicists in history made their greatest contributions before they were 40... perhaps the same is true of creative game developers as well.

Uwakionna

I do wonder if this otherwise empty statement from Blizz was issued to tamp down the articles from the last week regarding ActiBlizz being sued yet again after the SEC found they had no actual employ complaint procedures, and that ActiBlizz's prior internal investigation was a functionally bogus report to give themselves a false all-clear, on top of illegally impeding former employees from communicating with the SEC. Still only a light financial ding to the company though.

Jyiiga

I just feel like they brought back a face of a better time at the company. Just in an attempt to distract from all their problems. I'm sure he asked for a lot of $$ due to where the company is.

Brainy

Its really weird, Bizzard really has drove there name into the dirt.  At one point they had the top PC franchises SC, Diablo, Warcraft.  They were so set to dominate every studio.

When they fired their Blizzard North staff in 2010, that was a turning point of their downfall.  They have pretty much been subpar since.

Not saying Blizzard North staff was the only good group of employees at the time.  I am just saying it shows the culture changed when they can fire an entire popular studio like that in the prime of their development.  They were making a different version of Diablo 3 and another unnamed Space game that got cancelled, when they shut down Bliz North studio.

kitarad

Blizzard as a company prioritizes earnings over everything. The shareholders don't care about reputations or the games as long as they get their profits. The only time anything like a bad reputation or bad actors in Blizzard gives them pause is when it upsets the apple cart and it affects the profit margin. It's soulless and completely slaved to profit driven objectives. They are not worried about the reputation or what they look like to the fans of their games. They are just $$$ figures to be used and thrown away once they no longer prove to be useful to their MAU and other metric that they use to show their shareholders how well they are doing.

Most big companies become like this so we must always pray that the developers we like stay small as that will at least keep them within this realm and not sink them down into the pits of money driven hell.

corrosivechains

Angrakhan said:

So what exactly is he doing in this "Advisory" role? I'll be honest it sounds like he's getting paid a salary to basically be a marketing campaign to give Blizzard back some legitimacy. What is his actual day to day work at Blizzard? He's either head down cranking out content in which case he's not an advisor or he just sits back and attends a laundry list of meetings and poo poos other people's work like some armchair quarterback. If it's the latter forgive me if I'm not holding my breath awaiting the grand resurgence of Blizzard as a driving force of gaming innovation and quality.

It's entirely performative. The activists who co-opted and took over the company have been driving it into the ground, so bringing Metzen's name back is an attempt to draw old fans back to the franchise, but those same people who took over the company are still in charge so nothing is going to change as it concerns the direction World of Warcraft and other Blizzard titles have gone with their storytelling.

When it's time to actually start noticing what they're doing and when genuine change is going to happen is when they publicly start firing the people who openly mock and deride the target demographic for these types of games and settings. Until then, all other noise they make is just marketing tactics.

The_Korrigan

It won't being that old fan back, even if I think Metzen is a great artist.

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Theocritus

Sovrath said:

ThomasO316 said:

Eldrach said:

Fantastic artist - but he was there during Blizzards downward spiral - his return won’t change anything

Well World of Warcraft will always itself be in a downward spiral. It will never be like it was in its prime and will just continue to trend downward until such a time Blizzard releases another big MMO if they ever do that again. WoW overall is just a big cost to Blizzard compared to all of its other games.

If it wasn't for his creative art and story telling I really doubt we would have Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.

I don't think they'll release another mmorpg. They spent years working on one and realized that they just couldn't make it work; that it would fall in the shadow of world of warcraft. If memory serves.

But all mmorp'g trend downward. All of them. After a while people have gotten what they've wanted and they want something new. Nothing wrong with that.

Especially in these times...Everything is constantly changing and very temporary.