Do you miss Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime, yet? You just might after watching a new interview in which the previous president of the company took a hard look at the state of World of Warcraft and the state of MMOs in general.
His verdict? The drive to make WoW increasingly casual-friendly eroded its social glue. “I would also just observe that as World of Warcraft evolved over the years, it actually kind of became less social because in an effort to achieve more accessibility, we removed some of the reasons why you need to play with the same group of people over and over,” Morhaime said. “I think that it takes away some of the reasons for some people of why they play, and why they might want to continue to play.”
The retired co-founder of Blizzard also hedged big on the future of MMOs in general: “I wouldn’t say that MMOs wouldn’t have a resurgence in the future, but maybe there are other types of games that are able to capture the social experience even more.”
