First comments from Rob Pardo in a long while. Commenting the last controversial “news”:

Nothing in that rumor is true in regards to Blizzard. If I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its game division versus what Blizzard has planned. While Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, their game division operates seperately from Blizzard.

-Eno

Since WOW shipped, we have lost some artists, and a few other folk, none of which were designers. As to faction grinding…I agree that it is way too “grindy” and we are looking to overhaul the way faction works in the expansion. It was one of those features that was put into the game in late beta and never really received the polish and refinement that it deserves.

-Eno

I really do wonder if he’s always been there or if he quite WoW for a while to work on something else. If he’s back it could be a very good thing.

He does not really convince me with that “if I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its game division versus what Blizzard has planned”. Those quotes from Vivendi were quite precise and they were analyzing WoW’s costs and development time.

SirBruce, wake up and give us the slides (if they weren’t bullshit).