After 13 years, World of Warcraft game designer Chris Kaleiki has decided to move to greener pastures, leaving Blizzard for the great unknown. In a tweet accompanied by a 14-minute YouTube video, Kaleiki explains why he left, and his first-hand opinions on the state of the game’s development over the years.
Kalieki’s post isn’t meant to disparage players from enjoying World of Warcraft and the upcoming Shadowlands expansion. For the most part, Kalieki had plenty of good things to say about working for Blizzard over the last 13 years.
??PERSONAL UPDATE!??After 13-years at Blizzard on the WoW team, Shadowlands will be my final expansion!To Team 2, Blizzard, and the WoW fans - Thank You! ??For the long story of why and what thinking of next, I tried something new, doing a video:https://t.co/Xxwyl2plLC
— Chris Kaleiki (@ckaleiki) November 18, 2020
He had this to say about his reason for leaving:
For a while now, probably too long, I’ve just been unhappy with the state of the game, and it wasn’t until when Classic came out that I was able to figure out why.
He goes on to say that the direction of classic is much more well defined while the modern game has some definition, but much less so. Kalieki talks about how the multiplayer aspects have become more marginalized, with a more story focused aspect, where largely, the players should be the main story of the game. Kalieki states it quite plainly:
Lately, in the modern game I feel like the story is such a bigger part of it. I think the characters and all their own dramas soak up a lot of air in the game. I think in a virtual world, in an MMO, the players are the story.
World of Warcraft is about to release their latest expansion, which they have been gearing up for several weeks now.
