Why did he leave?

>>380418108
wouldn't you retire early if you could? I bet he got tired of writing the same story over and over again.

Because Stannis died.

>>380418108

Because he's rich enough to.

Also anxiety.

>>380418108
He milked enough of money.

>>380418108
You would too if you were the head of lore for Blizzard games and had to deal with literal aspies all day.

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>>380418108
The dude was a main creative force behind Warcraft, WoW, and then OW. Dude was with Blizzard since its inception for his entire adult life. And he's mentioned his family a few times in regards to his personal life.

Dude's a family man. Just wanted to retire early and go be with his family. He's earned it at this point, the Orc-loving bastard.

>>380418469
And Diablo and Starcraft obviously too. He spread himself everywhere.

because he's a fucking talentless hack and saw the writing on the wall that his house of cards was about to be blown away.

As annoying as Metzen could be pushing Thrall, voicing characters and being a little Mary Sue, he was genuine in his passion and it was evident.

Fuck you and god bless at the same time Green Jesus.

>>380418356
But he's a literal aspie himself, would that make it harder or easier to deal with other aspies?

>>380418937
This.
There are few people left in the industry that have the same passion that he had.

>>380418937
This. The new writers are even worse than the minor annoyances Metzen was responsible for.

>>380418108
Forced out by the cucked SJW devs who took over Blizzard. Made to look like he wanted to retire early. Same thing happened to Rob Pardo.

>>380418108
Daddy

>>380419068
>>380418937
>muh passion
Anyone can claim to be "passionate" about what they do, even the retards at Bioware or Ubisoft would say they're "passionate" about the crap they produce. An amorphous and subjective concept like passion has absolutely no tangible bearing on whether or not the end product someone does is good or not, now get off /v/, Metzen, you fucking hack.

>>380418108
Real talk: When Activision bought back Blizzard, part of the negotiations had cushy benefits for the development leads, but it came with an expiration date. When that date drew closer, everyone retired at the same time. Leaving the sinking ship in the hands of RNG loving idiots.

>>380418108
He saw that he was slowly becoming villain.

>>380419336
Yep, this was probably the biggest part of all the senior guys leaving.

Maybe he wanted to leave at WoD, but it was so shit it would have left skid mark on his resume, so he left right after Legion launch which was successful.

>>380418469
>The dude was a main creative force behind Warcraft,
>Every story is just "muh corruption" while he self inserts and jerks himself off as Thrall
Fuck off.

>>380419891
Bingo. Guy doesn't have a single creative bone in his body, WoW was never propped up by lore fans, it was propped up by power gaming neckbeards who wanted to fap to elves and get leet purps.

His retirement message was full of spite.
What was going on between him and his colleagues?

>>380420452
Activision was basically forcing out as much senior Blizzard staff as they could by giving them shit contracts.

Combined with all the hate and anxiety he was getting from WoD he went home to be a family man.

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>>380420452
he can't stand seeing his baby die.

>>380418469
>who is Rob Pardo

Blizzard's games went to shit after Metzen took over. Learn the lore.

>>380420712
This happens every time an aggressive merger or partnership is coordinated by a holding company (Vivendi in this case, iirc.)

It's such a shitty practice but it's good short-term business, which is all the holding company cares about anyway.

>>380420823
God damn, not even 2 million subs after its peak of 12 million. They fucked up so hard it's kinda sad in a way.

Games suck to make. Games suck even more when you lose the spark of a perfectly synergized team.
Blizzard used to be good at recycling these miracle teams, and then they scaled up too big. Stakes became big. Stress became big.
Now it's not making badass games and knocking back coke and brews with your art bros. It's about shareholder milestones and KPIs. Of COURSE he left.
All companies are going this direction. Expect next year's E3 to be even worse.

>>380420823
>pic means literally nothing
Your autism is showing off, mate.

>>380421880
The game at its peak had roughly 12 million give or take subscribers, Blizzard announced these numbers themselves.

Now, in legion, with the data like in Anons photo, they're pulling data from the Armory, which keeps public profiles of active players, with achievements being account-wide, which means a more accurate number of active accounts can be discerned - the number being 1.9 million roughly.

By all fairness, it's still one of the most successful games in the genre, and probably the biggest MMO ever made, and probably will retain that position for the foreseeable future. The game, however, is still a shadow of itself, and if you think that blizzard is going to be making the "biggest content patches" in the history of the game for not even 1/10th of what their playerbase used to be, you're delusional.

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>>380422189
>the number being 1.9 million roughly.
Data in the anon's pic is misleading and not complete.

>he "biggest content patches" in the history of the game
According to the Q&A with Ian, 7.2 was in fact the biggest patch in the history.