This in general. Of course I wasn’t particularly interested to see Furor’s big face, but this is what I got today (assuming my guess is correct). Looking like a slightly oversized version of Clark Kent. It was somewhat amusing to see the FoH’s guys going: “Who is Alex?”

Alex being Alex Afrasiabi. No, not that guy in Might armor in the Valley of Heroes right outside Stormwind, that’s only his e-peen. This being the real one, Furor, former leader of the “Fires of Heaven” catass-stereotype guild and pensionate EverQuest ranter that finished to get hired by Blizzard. He is a quest designer now. Or at least he was. Maybe he got a promotion and joined the fun trio, or maybe he is just working is ass off to get there and command the team to replace the sun with his big smiling face during the sunny days in WoW.

And now we even discover that Foton’s favourite scapegoat may even be responsible of some nice content. UNPOSSIBLE! That’s one of the signs of the Apocalypse. In fact we know that he is responsible for everything broken in Alterac Valley! We need scapegoats after all. And one definitely isn’t enough.

Well, from this other report we can finally blame him about something concrete: “Alex designed the Dire Maul Tribute Run.” Wait. It cannot be. That cannot even remotely live up to his reputation. Honestly, I don’t remember anything in particular about DM North. There’s nothing about it sticking out. Neither good nor bad. It’s a fairly decent run, not too long with a couple of good ideas. If he designed Gnomeragon I would have to praise him but I didn’t get any particular feelings from DM. So there, I don’t have much of an opinion, you can have your own.

It’s also worth noting that the lead designer is now Tigole. What happened to Rob Pardo and Allen Adham? Good or not, this seems to be the new Blizzard. It’s interesting how the innovation could come from here. Passionate players with some crazy ideas and with almost no practical experience as devs. Maybe Blizzard dared a bit and gave these guys a possibility. Maybe the worth of the game is the result of those choices and not in spite of them.

You know that it’s what I would like to believe.

I’ll end with a quote from MIA Anyuzer:

The end result is this. Online, Furor was an asslord. A monkey fucker if you will. A loud mouthed, egotistical, over the top bastard, and hardcore gamers loved him for it. In real life? Probably has a massive amount of knowledge in his head, loves MMOGs (obviously to stick around for so long) and wanted to get into the industry. He kept his eyes open, saw an opportunity, went for it, and made the right impression. Now he’s involved with what he loves, and everything he’s vocally screamed about in the past is pretty much a non issue. Good luck man, don’t make quests that suck.