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.

 

[Michael Linke]

Well, there's this one idea where you take people who are already familiar with your company and industry because they already work for you, and you promote them to fill openings in your leadership.

Yes, radical and crazy, I know.

I mean, at the company I work at? yes, it's crazy and radical. All of our executive hires come from outside except for one guy who had left the company like 12 years prior, gained a lot of experience at another job, and was rehired at the C-level. Other than that one weird situation, executives exclusively come from outside.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ah, he had contact with WoW. I'm sure the D&D community won't have any terrible takes and conspiracy theories based on that. what? They couldn't find someone from Studio Ghibi or a Zoomer to conjure maximum rage?

 

[Michael Linke]

That's relatively rare at the Executive level...and as much as I respect Jeremy Crawford or Chris Perkins, they probably don't even want the job, and wouldn't be able to work directly on D&D anymore.

This guy has a pretty solid resume, from software designer to producer to Executive, having worked at EA, Sony, Atari, and Blizzard.

Given that WotC is primarily a software company, makes a lot of sense.

The people who are passionate about doing a job, whether it's building a TTRPG, writing code, or balancing an accounting ledger, are usually NOT passionate about sitting behind a desk watching other people do the work they used to love doing. +1 to the idea that Crawford and Perkins almost certainly don't want the job.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Considering the direction WoW and Diablo has gone color me yikes.

Just my opinion though

 

[jayoungr]

Three duds as far as WoW is concerned: Warlords of Draenor, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands. These are generally regarded as the three worst expansions out of the nine released so far.

I doubt Hight had much to do with the problems of those expansions, though. I don't think he'd have been involved with gameplay or story decisions. Maybe he greenlit the concepts for them, but that would be as deep as it goes.

If John Hight managed World of Warcraft during its decline and worked at Blizzard as an exec during the scandal that resulted in an employee committing suicide, I am a little worried about what he brings to the table as the new President of WotC.

For what it's worth, the employee who committed suicide was in Blizzard's finance department, so I don't think Hight would have been in her chain of command. I could be wrong, though--and of course, we have no way of knowing what his knowledge of or complicity in the other sexual harrassment scandals within the WoW team may have been. Still, I haven't heard any allegations that he was personally involved in any of them, so there's that. (Again, if anyone knows more, please correct me.)

 

[Michael Linke]

Considering the direction WoW and Diablo has gone color me yikes.

Just my opinion though

The direction those games went isn't necessarily anything to do with him. I don't know how Blizzard does things or what kind of creative control the Project Lead had for a given game. From my understanding, the company would have some stakeholders plan out the project, and it would be Hight's job to give those stakeholder what they asked for, while trusting the teams that report to him to find the best way to tick all the boxes on the stakeholders list. He'd be responsible for making sure the stakeholders got what they wanted, that the teams below were able to work efficiently without being bottlenecked by or held up by other teams, and for making things run smoothly. He would not have been in charge of deciding whether or not a given expansion pack ended up being one the community loved or one the community hated.

 

[jayoungr]

Considering the direction WoW and Diablo has gone color me yikes.

What are you thinking of specifically?

 

[DarkCrisis]

it shows that the focus is on digital, but employee numbers alone tell us that already, so choosing a computer guy makes sense, games or otherwise.

I have nothing against the guy, know too little about him to have an opinion. I assume he is competent and just as good or bad as a bunch of potential alternatives.

All it does is confirm the digital focus of WotC

What? No…. What? No….. I’ve been told over and over not to worry about that. No….. what?

BtW this goes great with my post about finding people for at-store game and most of the replies be “digital is the preferred method, old man!”

 

[DarkCrisis]

What are you thinking of specifically?

Purely opinion but I think Diablo peaked at 2. And most MMOs get long in the tooth after so many bloated expansions.

 

[jayoungr]

Purely opinion but I think Diablo peaked at 2. And most MMOs get long in the tooth after so many bloated expansions.

I don't disagree, but I also don't see what an administrator can do about either of those issues. Short of pulling the plug ... but if they're still making money, why would they want to do that?