Video Game News and Miscellany

ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Probably said this before, but for decades I was a really big fan of Blizzard. I even spent a large chunk of my life making fan content for the warcraft series, going for over a decade with hundreds of posts, all of them in support of the games and series. Yes, I did make some money on it, as I started to do crowd sourcing, but I never claimed the series or characters as my own, it was always as a fan to help promote them and keep people interested in the series.

My mood on them started to darken when Mike Morhaime announced his retirement. I was never a fan of the Activision deal, but the one thing I knew was that Mike always worked hard to put the values of Blizzard first and foremost, even at great strain to himself. Example, he was the one that killed the real money auction house in D3, after asking if the developers even really wanted it in there. They said no they didn't, so he made the call to remove it, even though it pissed off Activision and their shareholders.

Not to get all conspiracy in here, but I knew straight away that this "retirement" was not his choice. I won't get into all the details and interviews and shit that pointed this out, or his mood at his final disastrous BlizzCon, all I really have to point out is that his title of "President and CEO" was changed mearly to "President". Mike's role used to have total executive control of Blizzard, but when J. A. Brack was put in charge, he was only named "President", thus they have no internal executive control anymore. They answer entirely to Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick.

Then that disastrous BlizzCon came, when they decided that their final promotion, the one they save for the biggest reveals, was for a Diablo mobile game. "Don't you guys have phones!?" they would say through the backlash. This is a company that has cancelled half it's games due to quality concerns, and now they were making their biggest BlizzCon promotion a mobile game they were having made in China. I shook my head and tried just moving forward.

Then they fired 800 employees from the company, all the while Bobby Kotick was doing shareholder calls bout the years "record breaking" profits. Still I tried to just move forward, even with the pain and fear setting into my heart.

Then my worst day came. Literally four days after Mike Morhaime's "consultation role" ended and he officially left the company, I was ambushed in my driveway while bringing home my kids, served a C&D letter from Blizzard to end all my work or suffer legal consequence. I spoke with lawyers, and was protected by Fair Use under parody, but I decided in the end not to fight it. It was not worth it to me to put my family through that for what was glorified fan work that I likely was not going to be a fan for much longer. I moved on to other series, stopped playing WoW for the most part, even though I miss my characters.

Now this new stuff with Hong Kong, it just makes me realize more then ever that the Blizzard I grew up with is gone. As much as I respect the artists and developers and all those people that work hard and make great games, the fact of the matter is, the top has been tainted. The executive order of Blizzard is now that of Activision entirely, and we all know what Activision cares about more then anything else. Cold, green cash. China gives them that.

So I ain't surprised anymore.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

*grumbles* If I unsub, there's a good chance the rest of my static just doesn't get to raid the rest of the expansion, which includes missing the Anniversary event (which I don't care about, but they do). So I'm probably stuck subbing for a few more months until we finish BFA.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I'd delete my Blizzard account except my government ID no longer matches the name they have and I don't feel comfortable giving them all my court order, etc personal info.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Just cancelled my sub. So that means I can no longer play WoW, Skyrim, Fallout....

Fuck these companies for making it so I can't play my favorite games.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
My friend, Caleb, also cancelled his sub. He and I started characters together and played them up to level 45 or so. I was just getting ready to start farming felcloth in Azshara - the thing I've been waiting for since classic came out. This sucks but I had to do it.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
Just cancelled my sub. So that means I can no longer play WoW, Skyrim, Fallout....

Fuck these companies for making it so I can't play my favorite games.
Click to expand...
What did Bethesda do? I'm not saying they've done nothing wrong, because fuck Todd Howard, I'm just curious which specifically.

And there are so many games out there made by developers that aren't shitty. Like... so many.
 
Frank

Frank

I submitted my delete account request. Not gonna miss it.

They didn't ask why, but I would have put: "The Chinese government also didn't have any factor in me wishing to delete any and everything Blizzard from my life. We both told the truth."
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Garedicus said:
They had that whole thing last year with the Fallout 76 Collector's Edition, where buyers were supposed to get a canvas duffel bag, but they switched it to nylon and claimed that their was a canvas shortage, then offered people $5 worth of in-game credit, but it leaked that they'd given other canvas bags to online "influencers." And then they made it even worse when, after adding the option for people to submit tickets to have bags made for them, the ticket system started exposing everyone's order info... to each other. Or at least, that's the first one that came up on their wiki.
Click to expand...
Oh no, I know all their controversies, which is why I was curious which one it was.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Garedicus said:
They had that whole thing last year with the Fallout 76 Collector's Edition, where buyers were supposed to get a canvas duffel bag, but they switched it to nylon and claimed that their was a canvas shortage, then offered people $5 worth of in-game credit, but it leaked that they'd given other canvas bags to online "influencers." And then they made it even worse when, after adding the option for people to submit tickets to have bags made for them, the ticket system started exposing everyone's order info... to each other. Or at least, that's the first one that came up on their wiki.
Click to expand...
Their most recent debacle was to expose people who bought Nuka-Cola Power Helmets from their store to a potentially harmful fungus (while also admitting that it only affected 25 people because that's the number they sold, despite making 2000 of them).

They are just... absolutely terrible right now.
 
Frank

Frank



This thread is wild. It's a copy editor for Chinese to English saying that the Blizzard letter hits every Chinese norm he's used to.

@bhamv3 Since this is absolutely your area of expertise, what do you think?
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

Frank said:


This thread is wild. It's a copy editor for Chinese to English saying that the Blizzard letter hits every Chinese norm he's used to.

@bhamv3 Since this is absolutely your area of expertise, what do you think?
Click to expand...
I think he may be on to something. It's impossible to say for certain that the statement was written by a Chinese speaker, and I'm not confident enough to even give an "almost certain", but the stuff he points out are do indeed happen when Chinese speakers without native-level fluency try to write in English, and now that I read the Blizzard statement again with this perspective it does sound "Chinglishy". ("Chinglish" being a portmanteau of Chinese-English, basically referring to English that sounds like Chinese because it uses Chinese grammatical structures.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top