World of Warcraft "will continue to decline" unless the MMO gets a "reset," says former Blizzard boss

One of Blizzard's former leaders has some strong words for the team behind World of Warcraft following a bug-filled patch that led to the developers apologizing and promising to "do better."

Over on Twitter, former Blizzard Entertainment boss and Xbox corporate vice president at Microsoft, Mike Ybarra, weighs in on a story doing the rounds – one we covered ourselves, in fact – covering the buggy state of World of Warcraft following patch 12.0.5.

"Unfortunate," he says. "WoW has to reset and the commitment has to be clear and firm or it will continue to decline."

Ouch.

The patch itself added a few activities to offer the MMO's many denizens something new to do – from fishing activities and a prop hunt mode to new PvE activities suited to gearing your main and alt accounts. Unfortunately, though, players haven't been able to enjoy much of the new content due to various bugs.

We've already reported on the buggy Prop Hunt mode that lets some players use their minimap to find anyone, though fans have logged other issues. As a result, the World of Warcraft team released a statement promising to work "around the clock" to fix the MMO and to take the moment as an opportunity to learn from.

It's not World of Warcraft's best moment, though I'm not sure I'd say the MMO is in decline. The Shadowlands expansion wasn't a highlight for many, sure, though the following Dragonflight and the Worldsoul saga we're currently in have largely gone over well. The content is flowing at a solid cadence, and folks mostly have something fun to do. There are challenges to face, sure, though it feels like a time to fine-tune the balance between content volume and frequency rather than hitting the big reset button.

World of Warcraft's current storyline is "like a Saturday morning cartoon," former Blizzard quest designer says: "Where are the stakes?"