WotC New WotC President Is World of Warcraft's John Hight

After WotC president Cynthia Williams resigned a couple of months ago, taking up the CEO role at Funko, we've been waiting to hear who her replacement will be.

WotC has now announced that John Hight--who previously managed the World of Warcraft franchise for Blizzard Entertainment--is taking over. Like Williams, Hight comes from a video gaming background.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said "I admire John’s career focus on fostering community. He is a true embodiment of our mission to bring people together through play. John’s love of D&D and Magic: The Gathering, combined with his leadership in video games, will be crucial as we expand our digital offerings to deliver what our fans crave."

Hight worked at Blizzard for 12 years, on both World of Warcraft and Diablo. According to Business Wire, his role includes oversight of Hasbro's network of gaming studios and digital licensing agreements.

 

[Aldarc]

It's a no-win situation for Blizzard, because so many players are passionately rooted in the factionalism concept. As in, I've known multiple RL players who, to this day, won't play one faction or the other.

Not to mention what has to be a crushing amount of legacy code debt rooted in the faction concept, even if (as I suspect) they would love to finally unite the factions both in lore and mechanically.

This sort of factionalism is absolutely absurd to me. Above, you talk about playing characters as if reading a book. That's my approach to these games. I played characters on both faction and of different races because I wanted to "read" those stories as someone who liked the lore of Warcraft.

I find the mindset of "my faction" to be so utterly alien. Maybe it's because I came into WoW from the RTS games, where you play through the campaigns on the different races. But refusing to play one faction feels to me like playing only one faction in the RTS games because that's "your faction." Sure, but you miss out a lot of the story, lore, or even nuances of the performances. There's a lot of the game that you are missing out on that way.

There is a very thin line between people who are passionate about their factions and those who are dumpster fire toxic about it. And going from the toxic factionalism in WoW to a factionless MMO like GW2 was a MASSIVE breath of fresh air.

 

[FrogReaver]

We know for certain that was absolutely not the case with Blizzard, so let's be very clear that you are incorrect to assert or imply that was the case here.

How do we know that?

We know that in fact Blizzard lost countless HR people because they were having their hands tied by management who were unwilling to back them up, and unwilling to punish the wrongdoers, and even at some points management seem to have directly managed cover-ups. Further HR always serve at the pleasure of management. If they're not doing what management wants, for good or bad, they're going to end up stymied or out of the business - I've seen it happen. If HR are blocking stuff, it's because management wants them to - and management will be aware (again, we know they were here).

Or was it by higher level HR management? I don’t know, but you keep making assertions without any evidence.

Your anecdotal evidence suggests HR is powerless. Mine suggests the opposite. Especially in larger companies.

Hight wasn't at the very top of the company (albeit pretty damn close), but he was absolutely in a position where he was extremely aware of a culture of misogyny and racism (and to some extent homophobia/transphobia) which was present at Blizzard and within the WoW team and leadership, and had been present for a long time. It seems like it came to the fore when Blizzard started going big with WoW, and I suspect that's because Rob Pardo lead Blizzard into some very very bad hiring practices, and they needed to hire a lot of people for WoW, so they basically hired frat bro-types (many frat bros always have been nerds, note, just more alcohol-soaked that we are perhaps accustomed to).

He was in charge, for example, when the attempted rapist whose attempt rape was covered up by Blizzard, was directly reporting to him (Hight). Most of the people who were part of "Cosby Suite" crowd reported directly to Hight, were reporting directly to the people who reported directly to Hight.

Obviously we can't say "Oh Hight was fine with it". Perhaps he was seething constantly for < checks notes > 10 years whilst he was in a position to I dunno, fire the hell out of these people. But certainly we can say that, from the various investigations, it doesn't seem like he actually did anything about it. Blizzard did eventually act, but only after the allegations became really seriously damaging.

The question is why didn’t he act. And as you just said above - we can’t actually say he was fine with it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How do we know that?

Or was it by higher level HR management? I don’t know, but you keep making assertions without any evidence.

Your anecdotal evidence suggests HR is powerless. Mine suggests the opposite. Especially in larger companies.

The question is why didn’t he act. And as you just said above - we can’t actually say he was fine with it.

We know that from the massive coverage and investigations several years ago. I'm not going to have this argument with someone who clearly knows absolutely nothing about the subject and has made no attempt whatsoever to educate himself on it. Clearly you didn't follow the subject at the time. Nor am I going to Google it for you, given the zero effort on your part.

 

[FrogReaver]

We know that from the massive coverage and investigations several years ago. I'm not going to have this argument with someone who clearly knows absolutely nothing about the subject and has made no attempt whatsoever to educate himself on it. Clearly you didn't follow the subject at the time.

Let’s say I don’t know as much as you about it. If you know so much about it then shouldn’t have been a problem to post the evidence that caused you to draw the particular conclusions in question.

Like why the heck should I take your word for it?

 

[TwoSix]

I think that's true of most MMORPGs and the people playing them, but it's definitely not true of how most people regard CRPGs, and that's incredibly easy to see if you go to any forum, subreddit, Discord or the like relating to a game - or just talking to people about them IRL, including the sort of people who never post on the internet except maybe family photos on FB/Insta (depending on their age). Most people do get pretty invested in CRPGs especially Bioware ones. SWTOR also managed this to some extent by having a story much more like a Bioware CRPG (and tailored to each class).

Oh, I know lots of people DO feel that way; it'll just never not be foreign to me.

Like, I've seen plenty of posts on various sites about people who just CAN'T turn evil and destroy the grove in BG3, or who can't stomach playing Dark Urge. Personally, I have no issue mowing down tieflings if that's the storyline I want to pursue for that playthrough.

 

[Parmandur]

He was in charge, for example, when the attempted rapist whose attempted rape was covered up by Blizzard, was directly reporting to him (Hight). Most of the people who were part of "Cosby Suite" crowd reported directly to Hight, or were reporting directly to the people who reported directly to Hight.

Obviously we can't say "Oh Hight was fine with it". Perhaps he was seething constantly for < checks notes > 10 years whilst he was technically in a position to I dunno, fire the hell out of these people. But certainly we can say that, from the various investigations, it doesn't seem like he actually did anything about it. Blizzard did eventually act, but only after the allegations became really seriously damaging.

Ew, yikes.

 

[TwoSix]

This sort of factionalism is absolutely absurd to me. Above, you talk about playing characters as if reading a book. That's my approach to these games. I played characters on both faction and of different races because I wanted to "read" those stories as someone who liked the lore of Warcraft.

I find the mindset of "my faction" to be so utterly alien. Maybe it's because I came into WoW from the RTS games, where you play through the campaigns on the different races. But refusing to play one faction feels to me like playing only one faction in the RTS games because that's "your faction." Sure, but you miss out a lot of the story, lore, or even nuances of the performances. There's a lot of the game that you are missing out on that way.

There is a very thin line between people who are passionate about their factions and those who are dumpster fire toxic about it. And going from the toxic factionalism in WoW to a factionless MMO like GW2 was a MASSIVE breath of fresh air.

I'm with you, I've played a character from both factions in every expansion. Especially the ones with actually divergent storylines, like BfA. The idea of missing out on story out of some kind of loyalty to a fictional identity just doesn't feel right to me.

The one thing I do like about the factionalism is that it gives you novel material to see in subsequent playthroughs, but there are other ways to do it that wouldn't require hard faction barriers.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm with you, I've played a character from both factions in every expansion. Especially the ones with actually divergent storylines, like BfA. The idea of missing out on story out of some kind of loyalty to a fictional identity just doesn't feel right to me.

The one thing I do like about the factionalism is that it gives you novel material to see in subsequent playthroughs, but there are other ways to do it that wouldn't require hard faction barriers.

I think that if there wasn't factions, the game could have focused a bit more on the racial storylines without having to worry about "balance" between the factions or subordinating racial stories to faction-based ones. That was something of a pet peeve of mine with WoW. Whenever the game wanted to introduce new races, it often had to create two races to balance things out so that there remained an equal number on both sides, which feels very Missouri Compromise. That also meant that development time was being spent on new starter zones for both factions, when that dev time could have been spent elsewhere. That also led, IMHO, to a bloat of new races that are woefully underdeveloped in the lore and who will likely not get much lore in future updates.

 

[TwoSix]

I think that if there wasn't factions, the game could have focused a bit more on the racial storylines without having to worry about "balance" between the factions or subordinating racial stories to faction-based ones. That was something of a pet peeve of mine with WoW. Whenever the game wanted to introduce new races, it often had to create two races to balance things out so that there remained an equal number on both sides, which feels very Missouri Compromise. That also meant that development time was being spent on new starter zones for both factions, when that dev time could have been spent elsewhere. That also led, IMHO, to a bloat of new races that are woefully underdeveloped in the lore and who will likely not get much lore in future updates.

Yea, there are definitely a few of those, although mostly from the allied race explosion of late Legion into BfA. (I think you could argue that Draenei and Worgen weren't NEEDED in terms of earlier expansions, but they've definitely been solidified pretty strongly into the lore at this point, especially Draenei.)

Most of the allied races should have just been aesthetic choices opened up under the parent race; the only real exception here is Void Elves and Nightborne opening up the Blood Elf/Night Elf models to the other faction, and of course Vulpera, which really should have been a neutral race.

 

[Aldarc]

Yea, there are definitely a few of those, although mostly from the allied race explosion of late Legion into BfA. (I think you could argue that Draenei and Worgen weren't NEEDED in terms of earlier expansions, but they've definitely been solidified pretty strongly into the lore at this point, especially Draenei.)

The Draenei exist as they are due to a massive Metzen retcon that was done for the sake of creating a playable Alliance race, and the Horde got the blood elves for the sake of the faction imbalance that existed at the time in favor of the Alliance. Again, a lot of these things exist as a result of problems of Blizzard's own making.

Most of the allied races should have just been aesthetic choices opened up under the parent race; the only real exception here is Void Elves and Nightborne opening up the Blood Elf/Night Elf models to the other faction, and of course Vulpera, which really should have been a neutral race.

I agree; however, I don't think that void elves would have been created if it wasn't for the faction system.