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Rob Pardo Says Farewell To Blizzard

Posted by Unknown on from the never-forget-tempest-x3 dept.

motang (1266566) writes Rob Pardo, Blizzard employee of 17 years who has worked on Warcraft and Diablo is leaving the company. "I'm looking forward to new challenges in my career, but I will always cherish the time I spent with you all and the amazing and collaborative teams at Blizzard," Pardo said. "It was both satisfying and humbling, and it made me a better developer and a better person. I look forward to playing Blizzard games as a player for many years to come. Most important, now I have plenty of time to learn how to build a competitive Hearthstone deck."

54 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Blizzad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This seems to be the second title typo in the span of three articles. Can I fetch you guys a coffee?

    1. Re:Blizzad by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Or at least a concoction that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

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  2. Not even Deckard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Stay awhile, and listen...

    NOPE

    1. Re:Not even Deckard by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      Can you imagine Deckard and Navi teaming up...

      Stay awhile and listen... Hey! Listen!

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      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  3. "Blizzad" by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now might be the point to start paying attention to the quality control of the articles. We're already seeing too many typos and editorial mistakes.

  4. Time to replace Unknown Lamer with a Robot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Time to replace all the editors.

  5. Sinking ship... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    WoW has seen better days. WoD looks like a dull rehash of BC. I just cancelled sub, despite preodering WoD. I think this, along with the departure of Ghostcrawler, signals the end of days for Blizzard.

    1. Re:Sinking ship... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed. When they started selling children's Warcraft building blocks (and by children, I mean five-year olds) I knew I would never go back.

      I miss it. I miss spending months getting to the highest level. Now, you get one character automatically set to the highest level just by joining. Or you can spend 60$ to get any other character to the highest level.

      Still, I'll miss the game.

    2. Re:Sinking ship... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      The biggest issue with pay-for-advancement is that the quality of player diminishes rapidly. I don't say this from some kind of elitist perspective, but it used to be that if you saw someone at max level with a good set of gear that was hard to obtain, you had a reasonable probability that they earned it through effort with a group of similarly skilled people.

      Now, not so much. As of the last time I logged into WoW (18 months ago) raiding has been watered down to being a weekly chore (in between collect 20 nonsense items daily quests and gardening) that you take care of in random groups, rather than something you actually made time to do with people you like, because it was enjoyable.

      I have enough chores to do in the real world, I don't need digital weeds that need digital pulling.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    3. Re:Sinking ship... by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      I agree. Remember when Wrath of the Lich King came out? DKs...terrible DKs everywhere! Starting at level 55 with no idea how their class mechanics worked.

      I was a hardcore raider (top 20 guilds on wowprogress) up through Cata. I liked Cata. Heroic Ragnaros was...challenging. But then they announced fucking pandas and I quit. Eventually I was bored and I reupped just to level and see what the expansion was like. I couldn't believe it when here I am helping pandas chase rabbits out of their gardens. Um. I'm a legendary hero. I've slayed Old Gods, defeated Ragnaros the Firelord (twice), ended Kel'Thuzad, Illidan Stormrage the Betrayer, stopped Kil'jaeden, scaled Icecrown Citadel and defeated the Lick King himself, defeated Deathwing the Destroyer...and now I'm helping goddamn pandas clear wascally wabbits out of their gardens. Fuck. This. Shit.

      Still, I leveled my favorite characters to 90 and I'll probably re-up when WoD comes out. Maybe that will reclaim some of the old glory. At least it won't be damn gardening pandas.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    4. Re:Sinking ship... by GTRacer · · Score: 1

      I played FFXI for 5 years and switched to XIV when Beta III opened (the first phase I could join as I only have a PS3 and no PC). While the art style's general realism versus WoW's colorful palettes appeals to me, I wouldn't say it has a perceptible effect on maturity.

      Honestly, since the PS4 client went live in February, I'd say the otherwise higher maturity level has dipped. And I'm saying that as a PS4 player lol. My biggest gripe is the ability of a committed player to solo or PUG almost anything in the game, meaning relationships of trust and teamwork aren't required as they were in XI or older WoW. There's your maturity issue - anyone can be a childish jerk because they can just reform the party or queue up for a random assignment...

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
    5. Re:Sinking ship... by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      What is DKs? what is Cata? what is wow progress?

    6. Re:Sinking ship... by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      DKs = Death Knights. New class introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. They started at level 55. A level 55 character has a good number of spells and abilities that a player who started at level 1 would be introduced to slowly and would have plenty of time to learn and understand. If you just start at level 55 with two action bars full of unfamiliar abilities, you basically have no idea what you're doing. Also, lots and lots of people wanted to play the new class, so in dungeon groups you wound up with tons of DKs randomly mashing buttons with no idea what they were doing.

      Cata = Cataclysm, the expansion after Wrath of the Lich King and before Mists of Pandaria. I played up through the end of Cataclysm, but quit before Mists of Pandaria because it looked terrible.

      wowprogress.com is a website that tracks competitive WoW progress. There was an addon you could get that would store the combat logs for raids, so they would show you absolutely everything that happened during an encounter. A raid member would run it and then after the raid was over, upload the logs to wowprogress which would parse them. There were guild and individual rankings. Guild rankings were based on the date you beat an encounter. So whenever a new dungeon was released, there would be competition to see who could beat the heroic (much, much more difficult version) encounters first. I was in guilds that generally placed in the top 20 of 25-man guilds when new raid tiers were completed. That's very, very good. Wowprogress also kept track of individual stats, so for a given encounter there would be rankings broken down by class for damage or healing done. There were always competitions to try to beat the scores other people set for that encounter, to squeeze out every last bit of damage you could, because the encounters were that finally tuned, where a 1% difference was absolutely critical.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    7. Re:Sinking ship... by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      Maybe there was a core problem with the WOW audience, and the expansions you disliked were responses to that problem, not the problem itself. They likely burned through all the hardcore players they were going to get. Their best opportunity to keep growing the franchise was in casual players like me, who would invest 2-3 hours per week. It's not the fault of the developers, just the product life cycle. Valar morgulis dude, all men must die.

    8. Re:Sinking ship... by idontgno · · Score: 1
      Oooh building blocks? Where can I buy them?

      World of Warcraft Mega Bloks. Hypothetically, any retailer that has a large enough toy section that Legos hasn't completely pushed out any "Lego-compatible" building brick sets. On-line too, I guess, but the few I have I actually picked up out of clearance bins at places like Target.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    9. Re:Sinking ship... by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      It doesn't have anything to do with the difficulty of the game. For years they've been expanding what the game offers to different people to be as inclusive as possible. No one has to do the heroic raids. Those are only for the top end raiding guilds that want that kind of challenge. For "regular" players there are the non-heroic raids. For casuals, they added in the "raid finder" system where you just queue up and it matches you with randoms for an even easier version of the encounters.

      And you don't have to raid at all. You can PVP, (similarly, casually or hardcore). You can just level characters and explore. You can play the auction house. You can collect pets or titles or achievements. Now there's a "pet battle" system they ripped off from pokemon. And in Mists of Pandaria they still had heroic raiding.

      What turned me (and many other people...WoW subscriptions fell by like 4 million between Cata and MoP) off was the content itself. Helping pandas chase rabbits out of their gardens. It was just stupid. Maybe the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor will be better. Pretty sure there's no wascally wabbits in Outland...

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    10. Re:Sinking ship... by lgw · · Score: 2

      Dud, you just didn't have the right gear. Farm the Spear and Magic Helmet, and those wascally wabbits are no problem at all!

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    11. Re:Sinking ship... by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      tbh that rabbit thing sounds pretty cool. are the pandas like pets, or like neighbors or wild forest animals? It would be cool if you could domesticate a panda then use it on your quests to carry your shizz. Did you ever wonder where a raider kept all his shizz?

    12. Re:Sinking ship... by GTRacer · · Score: 1

      Seriously? One bit of cheeky slang and you reduce the information value of my post to nothing?

      Oh well. I don't mind YHBT moments that much...

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
    13. Re:Sinking ship... by St.Creed · · Score: 1

      My biggest gripe is the ability of a committed player to solo or PUG almost anything in the game, meaning relationships of trust and teamwork aren't required as they were in XI or older WoW. There's your maturity issue - anyone can be a childish jerk because they can just reform the party or queue up for a random assignment...

      For me, that was the reason to quit as well. When there was no longer a need for 80 people to behave in a guild in order to even have a shot at running Molten Core, or Deathwings Lair, the pressure on behaving yourself dropped. By the time 10 people were enough for everything, every guild had fractured and you could just PUG everything. For me, the social aspect of the game was the most interesting. When that went out the door, the appeal went as well.

      I'll never regret my time spent as part of the leadership of a large guild though. It gave me a lot of experience in dealing with people - enough even to quit my job and start out for myself because I felt I had outgrown the job I held at the time.

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
    14. Re:Sinking ship... by Moheeheeko · · Score: 1

      Final fantasy was completely rebuilt about a year ago, aside from visuals its almost completely a different game from the clusterfuck that came out in 2010

    15. Re:Sinking ship... by Zynder · · Score: 1

      Yeah but watch out. That damned huntard is needing on every piece of gear he can get ahold of! I hate wabbit season.

    16. Re:Sinking ship... by Zynder · · Score: 1

      DISCLAIMER: I do not know you. This post will say "you" but I mean you in a general sense and not you personally.

      Your guilds were never strong to begin with. The only reason those 80 people played nice was because many of the big guild leaders were total aspie douchnozzles who held the raids and loot over your head like Damocles Sword. If you didn't kowtow to these guys then you weren't running shit. It didn't even matter if you were good or not. You could be the most epic player on the planet but if he didn't like you or maybe his GF wanted a seat in the raid then you were just out of luck. The term elitist jerk came around because of those guys. When you lock out folks from playing the game as they see fit they tend to leave. Pugging fixed that and didn't take anything away from you unlike what many will claim. You still had your normal raids and heroics. You could still sit in trade all day looking for a tank and then walk your happy ass to the dungeon door as always. Using LFG and LFR takes absolutely zero things away from you but opens it up to those guys you didn't think were good enough. Your guild fell apart because it was already broken. If it wasn't, then you wouldn't be here lamenting the fact your guild died. A tight knit guild would have survived. You didn't say anything specific why your particular guild died, but if it was because of PUGs then you had more problems than you were aware of. I've had 2 guilds die myself. Both were simply because of life. We'd have an awesome team going and the next thing you know, everyone has a job working 12 hour days, had a baby, moved, etc. Now I run a 3 person guild and we do what we want, when we want, and don't worry about the rat race. The stress level dropped so much when I quit worrying about raiding 3 nights a week and keeping my PvP tier fresh and maxxed out. I'll never be epic in that regard but I'll be good enough- and that's fine with me.

    17. Re:Sinking ship... by St.Creed · · Score: 1

      We were running a casual guild, open to all, no requirements except "don't be an asshole". Even that was too much for some people.

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
    18. Re:Sinking ship... by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

      What killed guilds are the large number of teenagers who joined the game and over compensated for being a nobody at high school by being massive dicks online. They would act nice until they joined and then they would troll the guild channel and create "drama" all fucking night. You can /gkick them to the cows come home and you'll find put that they left an alt character behind to continue to fuck with the guild. We had trouble managing the banks because they would constantly raid it without putting anything of value back. Not to mention they felt entitled to a rank promotion after only being a member for a week and bitch when we tell them no because we only had 4 ranks in our guild to control access to the bank ("recruit", "member", "veteran", "Guild Master").

      The guild I'm in now (when I'm online) only has about 250 characters (including alts) and because we are all working adults, we average around 11 to 17 people online during the evenings. We don't recruit anymore. We just invite friends we know personally or people who are raiding with us on a regular basis. We enjoy the Flex raid feature and do the regular raids too. We view the LFR feature positively since it allows us working folks to farm for gear that can be used during flex and regular 10-man and 25-man raids. The gear from LFR is not high enough to do anything worthwhile in the end games so it's a nice compromise.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    19. Re:Sinking ship... by GTRacer · · Score: 1

      Ha, ha... I saw this yesterday but didn't get round to commenting then. Hope you see this ^^

      There's a lot wrong with me actually. Only some of it is FF and/or MMO related. But that said, XI provided an online team-building experience I've yet to duplicate. People cared because they HAD to care. Not sure if any current / modern MMOs require such closeness.

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
    20. Re:Sinking ship... by Zynder · · Score: 1

      Are you claiming that WoW way back 2004 was nothing but responsible adults who were all perfectly mannered and knew their class? Preposterous! I bet you have the cleanest, nicest yard in Azeroth simply because you don't allow anyone on it! :D

  6. Re:"Blizzad" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Those are pheatures, not bugs.

  7. Who? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Come on editors! First a typo in the company name and then rattling off some guys name and saying he's an employee of some misspelt company who's been somehow involved in some games?

    I clicked on the article to find out why I should give a damn. Then I was going to write about why is this news. Would it have killed you to use the words "Chief Creative Officer", or "Lead Designer of World Of Warcraft", or pointed out that he was listed in Time's 100 most influential people?

    Nope apparently he's just some dude who's been working at some company too long. Much like the editors here, although it seems the word "working" in Slashdot's case would be a heck of a stretch.

    1. Re:Who? by gsslay · · Score: 1

      This is pretty common on slashdot. A hazard of submitted stories where the person submitting it is very familiar with the people/companies/concepts/software/whatever concerned, and can't imagine anyone who isn't.

      You just hope to god they don't also write documentation.

    2. Re:Who? by NotDrWho · · Score: 1

      Duh, he was that announcer on Saturday Night Live.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    3. Re:Who? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No it's a hazard of editors not doing their job. That is their job, to be the buffer between the reader and the source, to edit submissions so they make sense to the readership. If we palm that responsibility of to the submitted then there would be no point in hiring editors.

    4. Re:Who? by FilmedInNoir · · Score: 2

      Next week, a 5-part in-depth exposé on the retirement party and future plans of Bob Smith from accounting.

      --
      Sig. Sig. Sputnik
    5. Re:Who? by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      I thought Rob Pardo was SlashDot's own CommanderTico. No?

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
    6. Re:Who? by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      here you go, your first response. STFU! lol, welcome to /.

  8. You will be deeply missed Pardo. by mtthwbrnd · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have never heard of you but just want to join in with the tributes.

  9. Furor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Let me know when they fire Alex Afrasiabi aka Furor. The game would be vastly better off.

  10. This... by Dreth · · Score: 1

    ...is a blizzad of orthographical errors.

    --
    All glory to Arstotzka!
    1. Re:This... by idontgno · · Score: 1

      The editor shot his blizzwad.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  11. Re:"Blizzad" by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    Well, as the proverb goes: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today."

  12. May your blades... by Grey+Geezer · · Score: 1

    never dull.

    --
    The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
  13. Re:Rats...Ship by plover · · Score: 2

    Blizzard is dying. Minecraft confirms it.

    --
    John
  14. The best announcer SNL ever had!! by NotDrWho · · Score: 1

    And he worked at Blizzard too??

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  15. Re:Bizarre ... by substance2003 · · Score: 1

    J'aime ça. :)
    That means 'I like it' for those who are wondering.

  16. Re:"Blizzad" by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    You really think they're going to being fixing their mistakes because of your comment?

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  17. Re:Don Pardo? by GTRacer · · Score: 1

    Came for this; leaving satisfied.

    --
    Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
  18. Not sure whether to love him or hate him by towermac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I miss the game so much. I was just watching some of my last avis the other day - my glorious feral bear in Tol Barad. Charge, mangle, swipe - then charge away so they hit air. I loved it when healers and casters stand out of range - always gave me an out when things got hot (bears are quite flammable). Always on the move, running figure 8s thru my victim. 'Hey, bears aren't supposed to do this kind of damage!' Heh.

    The feral bear was so badass. I was the first to come out of the 'closet' and tank HoR out in the middle of the room. Only the bear could do that. A real epic move, hard to pull off, was to resurrect my healer while tanking. If you ever bear tanked in Wrath, then you know what I'm talking about.

    I started PVPing the bear back in Wintergrasp, back when bears were "not viable in PVP", being tanks and all. I died a lot, for a long time. PVP was hard enough, but to do it with an underpowered class... I was always the only bear (save for dying desperate restos trying to get away - always a mistake imo). It was really really hard, both to learn, and after that, just to play well and not spaz out. Epic battles... It would sometimes take a dozen men to bring me down.

    And then to get into rated BGs. That was a hell of a day, when I finally earned the best weapon in game (not counting legendary) that seemed so impossible when the season started. For a few minutes once, we had the best 10 man BG team on the server. The most fun I've ever had while looking at a screen. By far. Realize I'm a 47 year old dude at the time, and had to completely give up TV to do this.

    If you've got somebody willing to do that, *and* pay you $15 a month for it; my advice is to not eff that up. I understood that Wrath of the Lich King was going to be hard to follow. They really got the story together for that, and while story has little to do with PVP, Warcraft overall needs the backstory.

    So I guess knowing they were going to fuck it up, they actually made that the core of the next expansion. They literally broke the world, and made it part of the story. So they took away feral, my best time, and they took away Ashenvale, my other favorite thing - lost in a magical fairyland as a low level noob... Then they followed that with pandas...

    Everything I liked about the game, they changed. It's almost like I wish I had never played. Because now I know what I'm missing.

    1. Re:Not sure whether to love him or hate him by Zynder · · Score: 1

      Bears are the only class I can consistently roflstomp with very little attention payed. I don't know what you managed to do no one else could figure out but bears are still the only class "not viable in pvp". Even prot pallys are better! And that was in Cata. I gave up on pvp in Pandaria. They broke it badly. Hell, I gave up on Pandaria period. I don't care how many people want to point out brewmasters in WC3- Blizz CLEARLY copied Kung Fu Panda. Fuck pandas!

  19. The rats are abandoning the ship! by Chessucat · · Score: 1

    Poor WoW! A dead game!

    --
    "I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
  20. Re:Rats...Ship by chispito · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure how Minecraft applies, though I agree that Blizzard now is not the Blizzard of 10 years ago.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  21. Re:There is no such thing.... by St.Creed · · Score: 1

    He means he needs time to grind all those cards and get them in one deck together. Not much skill involved, no.

    --
    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  22. Re:"Blizzad" by Zynder · · Score: 1

    Sorry AC, but NETCRAFT has not confirmed CmdrTaco is dead!

  23. Re:Rats...Ship by Zynder · · Score: 1

    Whoosh! The proper term is NETCRAFT confirms it.

  24. ORLY? by Zynder · · Score: 1

    You can call them and get the preorder cancelled. If you're serious that is. Most of the folks like you aren't. You'll see thread after thread on the Wow forums with people quitting left and right but do you know how many times crackheads, alcoholics, and junkies in general say "I quit, this is it. Never again!" Pretty much all of them. It lasts a few days at most and they're right back at their addiction. I've quit wow before. I hate kung fu pandas soooooo fucking much. Guess what I'm doing now? Leveling toons on Moon Guard. I even just RAF'd a $10 account. I think the only thing that could make WoW worse would be Bronies. WoD can't be that bad.