Happy Friday.
It's been three months since I cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription (this time round) and longer since I stopped playing. Again. I found it boring and repetitive while continual redesigns and reworkings of core gameplay became too much and too frequent to bear. I just wasn't enjoying it and felt my time could be spent better elsewhere.
Some prominent YouTubers and Twitch streamers have also finally said enough is enough, long complaining about game quality but finally pushed over the brink by the current issues at Activision Blizzard – the lawsuit against the company for fostering an environment of abuse, discrimination and harassment. It's appalling that not only was this culture allowed to exist but that they have not taken their employees seriously when trying to report it.
Ever since the merger of Blizzard with Activision, game quality seems to have suffered. Sources have allegedly reported that all the community's fears, about Activision being driven solely by profit, have been borne out and that it is a struggle to get things done. That staff morale would have been nosediving doesn't help but it still doesn't account for some of the decisions being made.
I've said to my family that I'll probably look at WoW again come the next expansion but, with everything that's going on, who knows when that will be. The next patch for the current content is now delayed so we could be waiting for well over a year at this point.
Hopefully, by then, Blizzard itself will be in a better place and some of the previous focus can be regained. Not only do they need to start listening to their employees by also listening to their players and community. Their employees will tell them what works and doesn't work within the company while their players can tell them a lot about what does and doesn't work in game.
