Writer Christie Golden Let Go in Latest Round of Blizzard Lay-Offs

Community General Discussion
21

AI will take that over

Lets not pretend DF lore and questlines were complete total forgetable garbage. If Christie was responsible for that ofc she was fired.

And do shoudl be ion for being director responsible for this failure of expansion

22

Blizzard is starting to become the ship of Theseus.
They’ve lost so many senior developers over the last handful years that there hardly seems to be anyone left that wasn’t recently hired straight out of college.
The internal company culture must be bizarre with such a quickly revolving swing door.

Really enjoyed Golden’s novels over the years. Definitely the best novel writer Blizzard have had, for Warcraft and StarCraft.

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23

Thoroughly unimpressed with this decision. I won’t lie and pretend she was the best writer on the team, but she was well up there.

I love many of the little lore details she’s behind, and Thrall is to me one of WoW’s best characters.

Starting to? Blizzard we grew up with is dead and buried. They’re nearly all gone. This carries their name, but it doesn’t carry their legacy and skill - unfortunately. But they have a foundation better than most other gaming companies and are thus able to deliver expansion packs. Only expansion packs; new games is something they appear to be unable to make. Just look at how long Diablo 4 took to make.

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24

I am pretty sure Roux was outsourced for one book (which I did not like) and not part of the team.

Baffles me why Golden was chosen to be laid off, her Sylvanas was absolutely brilliant. Her novels always have me hooked.

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25

That’ll be a while. A very, very long while, if it ever happens.

As AI has developed it has become increasingly clear that it likes to do one of two things:

  1. Add things that don’t make sense to be there
  2. Create something completely average og standard

Getting creativity that fits the rest of the pieces out of that thing is nearly impossible, and getting emotionally inspired creativity out of it is impossible, and we’re already at a point where just training the model costs tens of millions of dollars and running it even more than that, and on top of that the people running these models are censoring the everliving daylights out of them.

Creating a story like Warcraft 2 with OpenAI would be impossible, and not purely for technological reasons - it will not allow you to explore the themes that are part of that game. It will either stop the discussion, declare itself uncomfortable, break down, try to evade plot points for as long as possible so as to avoid talking about it, etc.

There is no chance in Hell that an AI would be able to write a WoW expansion story. Not now, not in 5 years, not in 10 years. Probably never.

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26

I see it as positive change. Never liked Golden’s books and lore compared to Metzen’s and especially Knaak’s. I still believe, when Golden became a main lore writer near the Cataslysm, the lore went the wrong way.

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27

Isn’t Madeleine Roux the one who keeps hateposting about white men on X(formerly known as Twitter)? Damn.

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28

It will be nice but we won’t see somethink like this again because it does not suit to Blizz/Microsoft new vision. They will continue with this crap of H and A being brothers and fighting together to eliberate the universe etc. And the fact that Christie Golden will be no more with Blizz is a proof of that. In this days Blizz/Microsoft writers has to be politically correct. I just read a short interview with Seinfeld and unfortunatley he is right.

29

Really? I’ve read 1 or 2 books by her, they were ok-ish, an enjoyable read nothing more, compared to other fantasy authors she’s kind of mid.

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30

really? i found knaak boring since he wrote Dragonlance novels.

31

The one that really hits it home for me is this video:

That video basically lined up all the Blizzard rockstars and prominent Warcraft developers.

There’s like 23 I think.

How many are left today?

3 or 4.

That’s insane!!

The company is completely eroded of its senior developers. The RTS team with decades of experience with StarCraft and Warcraft? Completely gone. The Blizzard North folks behind the Diablo games? Vanished.

There’s maybe a handful old senior developers left on each team. The rest are fresh hires.

Yeah I am a bit perplexed as to what on earth Blizzard’s strategy is for the day when they can’t milk Warcraft anymore.
Laying off the senior developers who have proven track records with making successful Blizzard games from scratch in order to hire fresh college graduates for cheaper money doesn’t seem very smart to me. But what do I know!?

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32

Every man to his own taste :man_shrugging: I personally find War of the Ancients trilogy are best books in Warcraft universe.

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33

They have to lay off half their staff, that’s the only thing they can do given their current structure.

34

Sure. Maybe. Arguably. But it’s still pissing your pants to keep warm. They are absolutely on a short-term focus track. I don’t care about “the next 20 years of adventure” and other such pep talks. If you’re laying off your senior developers who on earth is going to make any future games in any of the existing franchises?! Who are the torch-bearers inside that company these days?!
It’s pretty darn hard to put an add in the newspaper and expect to find a candidate with a proven track record in game development and extensive knowledge about the lore/story/characters/worldbuilding of Blizzard’s IPs - and able to work in California. Those people don’t hang on trees. And the ones that there are were already working for Blizzard. And now they’re laid off.
It boggles the mind. It is flabbergastingly crazy how the company has come to this. They had every opportunity to cement themselves as an industry leader with the success of WoW. Instead they have completely eroded themselves inside out as a company.

35

Good riddance. WoW lore is sh*t lately

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36

boo blizz

37

His name is Bobby Kotick.

I am sure Blizzard can recover and make it work again - as an example nobody who worked on DOOM 2016 and Eternal worked on DOOM 1 and 2, but they did an amazing job regardless. Far better than those who made DOOM 1 and 2 did on DOOM 3.

But the question is… can they figure it out? I don’t know.

38

Overwatch 2. Diablo Immortal. Warcraft Rumble. Diablo IV.

Those are Blizzard’s recent new games.

They’re average at best.

And notice the sheer absence of deep lore, story, and worldbuilding in any of those games. I mean…

39

The answer is they will always milk warcraft.

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40

I actually think Diablo 4 has a good story and atmosphere. It’s basically the one thing it does right. Once you hit the end-game and the gameplay takes center stage though, the flaws reveal themselves quickly, chief among them its absolute inability to provide a sense of progression.

All the other games they’ve made recently have been uninspired mess. They just don’t feel cool or interesting. I get bored.

And their mobile games have monetisation practices I am simply not comfortable with supporting.