Should “old people” now solve the “new problems” of World of Warcraft? Former PvP chief Holinka is back at World of Warcraft.
A WoW veteran is supposed to fix things at Blizzard now. Former “PvP Lead Designer” Brian Holinka has been back on the World of Warcraft team since last week.
What is Holinka’s job? From now on, Brian Holinka is the “Lead Combat Designer.” This roughly means that he will take care of almost all systems related to combat in World of Warcraft – and there are a lot of them.
This includes the design of classes (and their abilities) as well as PvP in general.
Where was Holinka? Last year, Holinka was temporarily no longer part of the World of Warcraft team. This was because he was working on an unannounced project within Blizzard.
Many fans suspect that it is a new Diablo title that could be revealed at BlizzCon.
Fans hope for the reversal of the GCD changes: Most players hope that Holinka will advocate for the reversal of the changes to the global cooldown.
For many, World of Warcraft feels quite slow and clunky now. Blizzard had reinstated cooldowns on many abilities that previously had none with Patch 8.0 – once this was even an April Fool’s joke that no one laughs about anymore.
Holinka is viewed ambivalently: Brian Holinka is a controversial figure within the player community. He is very popular among some because he was responsible for the battlefield Ashran.
Others accuse him of having “not done his job for years” and that under his leadership, there would be perpetual stagnation in WoW’s PvP. He jokingly said back then that he would quit if the community paid him to do so.
What do you think of Holinka’s return to World of Warcraft? Is it good to have him back on board? Or should Blizzard rather try with fresh faces?
