Despite the close relation between the two companies, publisher Activision has never influenced the overall design of the Blizzard-made World of Warcraft MMO and always allowed the development team to make their vision of the game a reality.
Tom Chilton, who is a game director working on
World of Warcraft, has stated during a Question & Answer session on Reddit that, “I’ll come out and say it: Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does Bobby Kotick.”
He added, “We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once). They ask intelligent questions about why we’re doing what we’re doing, but at no point have any mandates (or even “suggestions”) about the game’s design been issued.”
Over the past few years a number of long-term World of Warcraft players have stated that the game is being dumbed down in order to appeal to a wider number of gamers and that Activision was behind the changes.
This theory can now be put to rest but it’s likely that the hardcore MMO players will now re-orient their disappointment and their fury towards Blizzard.
World of Warcraft continues to be the biggest subscription-based MMO in the world of gaming and there’s no other titles that can challenge it at the moment.
Despite this, the MMO has been losing subscribers for the last few years and Blizzard is trying to reverse the trend by introducing easier raids, more areas to explore and by adding new mechanics, like the pet battle system.
World of Warcraft will get the Mists of Pandaria expansion on September 25.
Gamers who buy it will be able to play a new race, a new class and explore a new continent and there are also a number of changes made to the skills and abilities of other races and characters.
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