"WoW is a game about war": Ex-Blizzard president wants to create World of Warcraft 2 instead of a bunch of identical WoW 1 expansions

WoW is a game about WAR. About conflict, struggle, risk, reward, achievement. That's what WoW is about. "There must always be a Lich King." I wanted an expansion that would return to that idea and develop that story much further. There's still so much more to tell. Much more time should be spent on raids and new ideas for the core (hardcore) audience, not casuals. And finally, WoW 2 instead of the same old WoW 1 expansions that just re-skin content over and over again. But for about 10 years now, we haven't had a team capable of doing that. Too much has changed, Kaplan and others have left.

The President of Blizzard doesn't propose ideas for games. He has little influence on the games themselves, other than participating at various stages and occasional discussions of ideas — usually directly with the game director (who is responsible for the creative vision of the game). At Blizzard, at least historically, it's the game director who decides what to do with the game. The President is just one source of opinion that can be completely ignored if desired. Ion Hazzikostas didn't ignore [me] — he weighed many factors and ultimately decided where to take the game himself. Who knows, maybe my ideas would have been a terrible direction for WoW's development. Most likely, they would have been!