I made this post to honor Kevin Jordan and his team for creating this amazing game. Their world and ideas entertained generations of gamers and still do. They gave us the tools to explore and immerse ourselves in a fantastic world full of dangers, heroism and gains! we have enjoyed multiple flavors of gameplay, from PvP to raiding, from dungeons to RPing. Please, if you have time check his interviews on youtube, while he is describing his philosophy behind game design and what inspired the world you are in, even now, 16 years after!
It’s a shame too, because while I do clearly take issue with some of the decisions that were made, I don’t think Kevin Jordan got as much credit as he deserved for doing things right, or at least trying to.
I want to give a different perspective on this. I’ve heard him talk and a lot of times he sounds like a player and almost like he tries to make things up that fit the current narrative as its viewed now. Like, he will retroactively say that certain things in classic design were done a certain way to fit a narrative now. The other issue is that according to his wiki he was one of three designers, but the other two have tons more achievements and apparently he was rejected to come back to blizzard.
I do agree with many of his philosophies he describes. I do not know if he changed his narrative to fit the designing choices he made 16 years ago though. I do agree with you about the achievements. He mentioned that he used to be a bartender, then a tech support at blizzard and ended up being a designer without some formal education to the art. Although he did mention that he left blizzard in 2010, because he wanted to focus raising his kids and have some life quality. This is a trend I saw with Chris Metzen, who also mentioned how stressful was to be there and that he wanted to focus on his newborn kid and have more time.
No expansion can compete with Classic WoW because they were designed with faction bias and profits in mind.
Despite WoW being heavily influenced by Everquest, and many hardcore MMO players trash talking it, it managed to make its own path.
But…since TBC, the game has just been repeating the same formula and attempting to copy whatever new game is hot on the market.
Making money is fine but they turned WoW in a scheme with a solo-purpose of emptying their fans pockets and joining up with Activision only accelerated that.
There was a bunch of talk about remastering D2 until D4 was forced into announcement due to the “dont you guys have phones” Diablo immortal embarrassment.
Lots of companies do this. COD and Battlefield copied each other back and forth and now Battlefield is as trashy as COD. BF4 Was amazing and then it went down hill.
Everything Activsion touches goes to shiznit. Lots of companies are selling out because of the sheer amount of sheep in today’s society. Look at GTA V, what a terrible thing that turned into.
I like the perspective of being skeptical, but at the same time, we don’t know who is spinning what narratives, and what sort of politics are at play.
I like WoW. I also greatly enjoyed Diablo II and D2 LoD, as well as Starcraft. I’m also looking forward to what will come from Mike Morhaime’s Dreamhaven.