While people are hired, fired, and leave Blizzard all the time, it’s certainly not very often that we get a lengthy manifesto on the state of the game from someone who is on the way out. However, that’s exactly what happened this week as former game designer Chris Kaleiki left the company and posted a 14-minute video explaining exactly why.
Kaleiki isn’t raging at Blizzard but rather dissatisfied at the “muddled” state of World of Warcraft. This was made clear to him, he said, when WoW Classic released to remind him of a far more clear vision of what the MMO — what a virtual world — could be. His main focus of critique on the “human element” and “player drama” that came from the older group-focused design and the way story is being told in the game today.
“I feel that we should be focusing on features that only an MMO can do,” he said. “The world is the main character, the player is the story, and the community is the content.”
And if you need a shot of WoW lore to tide you over until Shadowlands, Blizzard posted a free short story on its site called “We Ride Forth.”
