World of Warcraft dev posts exit manifesto
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.To get more news about
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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.”There are also some quality of life additions that were pleasing to me as a long-term player. For example, quest navigation now comes with a little diamond overlay icon that shows you your objective within the game space and not just on a two-dimensional map, which should help solve one of the fifty thousand times Blizzard stick quest objectives inside a cave with a single, underwater entrance, a bugbear of many a WoW veteran. In Exile’s Reach, I’d argue you don’t need it - it’s an incredibly well designed island full of slight, but obvious detours and some of the nicest scenery I’ve seen in the game in years, but it’s a hugely welcome upgrade.
One of my favorite improvements is the added delineation between major storyline quests and side objectives, indicated by the former having a shield shape around the ! and ? icons that are so familiar at this point. This is useful whether you’re brand new and not sure which objective will move the campaign forward, or if you’re cruising through on an alt (alternate character) and ignoring the side stuff in your speedrun towards the level cap.
For players like me, who are incapable of just having one character and for whom sketching out an alt is as natural as breathing, Shadowlands is a paradise. Exile’s Reach is a huge improvement in terms of levelling time - it took me an hour and fifteen minutes to go from 1-10, and won’t take new or returning players that much longer. After you’re done with the region, new players are taken straight into Battle for Azeroth and on to Shadowlands. Existing players (who can in fact skip the new island and do 1-10 in the original WoW) can instead pick from one of any of the non-Shadowlands expansions and journey down memory lane in their trip towards level 50, before customizing their alts further by picking one of the new Covenant factions towards the endgame.
This brings me to the biggest concern I had for new players - is the entire WoW story going to make a lick of sense? Honestly, I expected a “sort of, maybe with some wiki reading” experience, but what I’ve come away with is a new perspective on the state of the game’s lore. For new players, Sylvanas and Anduin are your leaders heading out of the gate, and all the older faction leaders, major enemies, and old lands are references to a history players can experience later on. Rather than trying to force Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms as the starting point and have new players wonder who the hell the several Warchiefs are and why each expansion jumps around in time, their A to B is streamlined into Exile’s Reach, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands.
It also reframes Sylvanas such that her sudden heel-turn into Destructo-Queen of the Dead isn’t sudden, anymore. She’s introduced as dark and mysterious, and it escalates from there. Of course, players are welcome to explore that history - there are several expansions to pick from, to travel back in time and fully grok those lore beats. But doing so isn’t required anymore, and that’s a huge deal.
Shadowlands, of course, is in itself a beautifully dark and lore-heavy expansion. Its central experience is about journeying into the land of the dead, joining one of four mysterious and powerful Covenants, and trying to solve the mystery of why Sylvanas fell so far, so fast. But that experience feels like a storyline I can actually get my friends to dive into now, rather than a wall of expected knowledge and antiquated onboarding that would quickly dull their excitement. As a result, I’m the most excited I’ve ever been about guiding new and returning players into World Of Warcraft.
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