Before I start, I want to disclose that this is mainly aimed at Blizzard. This isn’t meant to be a conversation with other players.
I think we all understand why this post (as many others like it) is happening. Before we get to that though, I want to step back at look at this series of event in a more chronological order. We’ll start at the end of MoP where the game was in a pretty decent state with some odd outlying issues. 5.4 was released 9/10/2013 and was largely the end of the expansion. Being generous we’ll say that content lasted through the rest of the year and really dried up come the start of 2014.
11 months into 2014, well after the MoP content had dried up, we finally saw WoD released. We all know what WoD was and the absolute mess it was. 6.2 was released on 6/22/2015.
We then wouldn’t see a new patch until the Legion pre-patch on 7/19/2016, more than a year after the final patch of WoD. Legion itself was a solid expansion with a good cadence, while having issues as all games do we saw the conclusion of that expansion on 8/29/2017. Admittedly, there was a lot to do in that expansion and being charitable again we’ll say it took the rest of the year for players to really wrap up their goals for that expansion.
We wouldn’t see BfA until 8/17/2018, a solid 8 months after players had likely finished all of their goals (again, a charitable timeframe) for Legion. BfA being another mess of an expansion. 8.3 then would be released 1/14/2020. We then would see nothing for another 10 month span where SL was released. While covid was a thing that happened during the development cycle, the 10 month wait is actually right within the cycle of time we usually spend waiting between expansions as demonstrated already - and while plagued with problems, the problems themselves were no different the other expansion launches that were done prior to covid. In short, we have no reason to believe the SL launch was worse off or longer than any of it’s predecessors seeing as the problems with it were directly in line with Blizzard’s previous standards.
Why does this timeline matter? To show something. We spent 11 months waiting for WoD, 13 months waiting for Legion, 8 months for BfA, and 10 months for Shadowlands. That’s right, since the start of 2014 (7+ years ago), we’ve spent 42 months waiting for expansions - or 3.5 years give or take a few months. And out of all these expansions, only Legion was worth waiting for. Legion lasted roughly 17 months(or 1 year and 5 months) by the estimate we gave earlier. That means, in the last 7+ years, 3.5 have been spent waiting, ~1.5 has been in a good expansion, and 2+ was contending with the actual expansions and they were not good. They had highlights for sure, but many downsides.
What do we have to show for this time while we stuck by WoW? Massively bloated systems, strange story telling, open world content that is an absolute joke, land masses that serve as nothing but a backdrop for nostalgia, shallow characters and cultures, an alienated Azeroth, RNG everywhere, players being punished for having alts, classes are extremely restrictive, arbitrary grinds that serve only to frustrate, endless reskinned mounts in game, a growing cash shop, a pointless gear treadmill that is immediately replaced each expansion, a lack of features that are present in most other games, and so on and so forth. The list never stops growing.
Fast forward to last week with the ever growing and mounting frustration towards the game, the competition outright just spanking WoW in almost every regard, and then it breaks that Blizzard higher ups are too busy getting drunk and assaulting women to make a decent game. Instead they would rather partake in heinous acts against their co-workers and act like entitled animals in place of being respectable video game developers. I don’t need to go on about how absolutely depraved these acts were, it’s all been said.
But then it gets even worse. Instead of being a respectable company that immediately acts on these allegations (which are all but confirmed at this point) and owns their mistakes we see a miserable and whiney response from the team about being investigated for being terrible to their employees. Apparently though the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing as JAB then sends an internal email saying how shocked he is, which we all know is an absolute lie. We don’t even need to talk about how absurd the last email was.
Blizzard, you need to change. You need to own this, you need to accept your punishment from the court, pay your dues, and get back to work. Stop lying to the public, stop lying to your employees, stop lying to yourselves. No one is to blame but you, you grew fat and complacent and now you’re paying the price. You have no games worth a damn, you have a corporate culture that is predatory and destructive, and you are now the shame of the industry. Bobby K, JAB, Frances Townsend, they all need to go. They’re snakes who can’t be bothered to tell the truth. You need then to do a deep investigation and fire every last person in the company enabled or participated in this disgusting behavior. Once that’s done, give your remaining team a 20% raise across the board a long with a substantial bonus that will entice them to stay with you all. Meanwhile, ban alcohol from the workplace, ditch Blizzcon, ditch the holiday parties, hire up, implement zero tolerance policies for harassment of any sort, better leave, and get some fresh blood into your stagnant offices.
I will likely not be joining this company at the launch of 10.0, which will be the first ever expansion launch that I will miss. I have removed all Blizzard products from my PC, and I will be taking my business elsewhere until you can clean your act up. I hope this isn’t the last time I see WoW, but Blizzard it’s time to get your house in order.
~Selah
I AGREE 
