Thing is, those in finance and in marketing, make decisions about where the money goes, and how to market the game. Theya re professionals and money is their game.
However to make a game and develop a franchise everyone would love takes passion. I wonder if anyone has that sort of passion left at blizzard for warcraft, or is it just a job to make moeny.
If just a job, you will do the minimum required, albeit do it well to thebest of your ability and no more.
If a passion, you would want to make it the best world, the best fantasy and the best game EVER. You will work more ohours, you wouuld come up wtih more adeas, you would go … “oh, we definitely need to make this a movie or get a tv show started and really show this cool stuff and lovely stories out”
You’d want to develop great game systems but also do more stories, better stories and branch out into the more profitable entertainment movie and tv show sector… ESPECILALLY when you have a following.
But without people passionate about this,… you will get the minimum and a rather soulless money making franchise that only puts out things to get money, and the bearest minimum they can get with… because it’s just another job.
the best entertainment , gaming and franchises out there, all happeend with peoel who had a great love for the world they were making. This si why Peter Jackson’s Lord of the RIngs was so good, they loved it so much they wanted to make his vision of his incredibly detailed world, didn’t even change it to refelct their own politics and ideals
The original makers of this game, they loved their warcraft univers, wanted to make it the best world, the best of the fantasies… the vision of the night elves is perfect example, they wanted “the best of the dark elves and the forests elves” and the original makers made them both the greatest magical and advanced civilization Azeroth had ever seen and the greatest practioners of both forest/nature and arcane magic within their group - this is head and shoulders of th vision other fantasies normally have for elves.
But once the passion went elsewhere, things dwindled,. Legion was the last time I really felt the designeres were passionate about warcraft. I felt a bit of it in BFA, but it seemed a little less than before.
Shadowlands seems to be more new blood injecting their own vision rather than continuing or making better what is established. Nothing wrong with building your own vision, just make sure it’s great, and don’t remove , rubbish or ignore the existing.