WoW: “Because of their shame, I had to leave Blizzard”

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Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick has caused a stir with an interview. Employees, including a former developer of World of Warcraft, respond to some of his statements. Says he got fired for a pretty weird reason.

Who is the developer?

  • Eric Covington worked at Blizzard from May 2014 to March 2023. He was fired just before his 9th anniversary.
  • At WoW, Covington has been involved with Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight, among others, and has designed various systems, including enemy design and in-world content. One of his projects was the new area in patch 10.0.7.
  • Covington also worked on Diablo. Already Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls is in his vita, but also the new Diablo 4.

    • What was he fired for? As Covington explains in a tweet, he wrote a few lines of dialogue for the Venture Co. goblins. These goblins are part of an extremely greedy organization looking to capitalize on anything without regard for the environment.

    Accordingly, these NPCs often come across as quite unsympathetic and only concerned with their own advantage. Lines of text include statements such as:

  • “Let’s call this a cost of living adjustment!”
  • “Sounds like a new yacht to me!”
  • “No profit sharing!”
  • “Time to go back to the office!”
  • “Another record for the quarterly report!”

    • Actually, according to Covington, these lines should just be general company talk, which one knows from particularly ruthless companies. After the submission was blocked for new lines of text, he went back to developing Dragonflight.

    Activision Blizzard’s boss was so angry about the lines that they simply decided to resign behind his back without giving him a chance to change anything.

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    Interview with Bobby Kotick causes criticism

    Covington shared his story on Twitter after a new interview with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick emerged. Speaking to Vanity, Kotick claims there has been a “malicious distortion” of Blizzard’s image in recent years since he’s been at the helm of the company.

    After the interview, other voices also came forward, such as Dylan Snyder, a senior designer at Blizzard for Overwatch 2. He explained on Twitter that everyone at Blizzard would want Activision’s crap to be made public.

    And Activision is punishing everyone on the Blizzard team by trash-talking things he and his colleagues have worked tirelessly to create.

    Snyder didn’t come forward to chatter away at Activision, but because he believes in his colleagues and “Team 4” (the internal term for the Overwatch division).

    MeinMMO asked Blizzard for a statement on the matter. There is currently no answer.

    A number of big names have been leaving Blizzard for some time to pursue other goals. Most recently, the studio lost the developer who granted players one of their greatest wishes:

    Another one gone: WoW loses the chief developer who brought back the talent trees

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