This is because of the ongoing lawsuit that the state of California has filed against Activision Blizzard, Blizzard’s parent company, over workplace harassment, where the company was accused of having a “frat boy workplace culture”. As a result, it appears that morale at the company is at an all time low, which in the case of World of Warcraft, has prompted developers to stop working on the game.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t have all the answers. I can tell you, almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody – not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders.
— Jeff Hamilton (@JeffAHamilton) July 25, 2021
This is according to World of Warcraft senior system designer Jeff Hamilton who posted on Twitter his thoughts on what is happening at the company where he wrote, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have all the answers. I can tell you, almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody – not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders.”
Obviously Blizzard isn’t killing off the game yet and we doubt that they will, at least not for a long time, so this feels more like a message that employees are trying to send the company. In the meantime, there have also been reports of players in World of Warcraft have staged a sit-in protest in-game following the allegation leveled at Activision Blizzard.