World of Warcraft Recent Changes – My Thoughts

Over the past few months Blizzard Entertainment has been a rollercoaster, with their lawsuit and extremely long patch cycle. Well after the lawsuit Blizzard started releasing patch notes for changes coming in 9.1.5 for World of Warcraft. These changes were kind of positive for the most part. Then came changes that make you turn your head.

Many of these changes were semi-understandable and most weren’t bothered. For example the removal of Alex Frisabi references didn’t really bother people as he was part of the problem. Then they started removing/changing old in game art. One of the items got changed to a Bowl of Fruit. It has become pretty clear that Blizzard is trying to deflect and recover their image.

They are doing this by removing emotes that could be “deemed harmful” like /spit since it could be used to harass other players. They have also removed references to players, and others from their game. While this could look like they are a diverse company that cares. It comes off as pandering to the rest of us. As I stated above some changes I can understand, especially related to people who were named specifically in the lawsuit.

The issue I have is Blizzard seems to be making knee jerk reactions to everything. Many of these changes were not at request of their player base but the “devs”. While this may be true it seems more than likely they are trying to remove any problematic item from their games to hide from being called out.

On a plus note, they added Legion Time Walking with the Mage Tower. A fan favorite addition from legion with custom Transmog Items. They also added covenant swapping and a few other QoL changes that should have been made in the Beta for Shadowlands. This shows the lack of interest from the devs to listen to their player base.

If it takes a year, plus a lawsuit to make the changes. Does that mean that the next time us players say something isn’t working we will see the change? Highly unlikely, this is meant to appease those who are still playing the game. Many of us who were loyal have jumped shipped and unsubscribed after 17 years of playing and paying for a game that we love. What’s sad is they have also announced a “Community Council” to try to be more transparent with the players.

The thing is, this has been done before. They did it with private forums, a discord server and so on. It seems like it’s great idea, but unless they will actually follow through this time and listen and not just show us lip service. You will probably not see many of us returning. I love Warcraft since the first game I played and my dad got me hooked on the multiplayer.

I hope that Blizzard will have success in the future, however they need to learn to listen to players, and stop pandering. Make some substantial changes that are still at the core the game instead of hiding away because it’s 2021. I am sure I will get written off for my opinion, but it’s clear they are running around with their heads cut off.