Blizzard/Activision, how far will they fall?

[Blayt7hh]

Blizzard/activision can suck my dick. I loved Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft and WoW. Modern wow lore is absolute trash. I don’t play retail but I’ve read on the shadowlands storyline and all it’s done is take a giant shit on lich king/scourge lore. On top of that they’re ruining the TBC classic servers by catering to the horde despite horde having a hilarious population advantage in pvp and server population. But whatever, they’re getting their server transfer buys and subscriptions. Fuck you blizz/activision.

How are they catering to the horde? By having horde vs horde battlegrounds?

 

[KaNesDeath]

That just isn't entirely accurate. WoW has never lost so many users so fast and so soon after an expansion release.

Their own data shows a constant downward trend every quarter year after year in MAU. Today is just a new low compared to previous years new low at the same time.

Releases such as expansions for retail, WoW Classic and TBCC didnt stop such MAU losses.

 

[Corona]

How are they catering to the horde? By having horde vs horde battlegrounds?

horde vs horde BGs and no more premades really. Horde already dominate most pvp servers and arena due to superior racials. They complained a lot about long queues, which is to be expected as the dominant faction. Now alliance AV ques are 20-30 minutes and alliance manage to lose 75% of other bgs being that the majority of better players rolled horde. Blizzard tried to throw alliance a bone with the new loot boxes for winning a bg but those are hilariously shitty. Human rogues in 2s are pretty much all alliance has going for them in the pvp world. Go check out the classic wow subreddit, it’s full of memes regarding faction imbalance lol. Blizz is probably stoked though cuz a bunch of alliance are transferring to non horde dominated servers now.

 

[KaNesDeath]

Places a whole new perspective on why Blizzard were paying female employees to track their menstrual cycle.

 

[The Clinch]

Shadowlands sucks a tremendous amount of ass. It’s like someone wrote a shitty concept for Diablo that was passed on, so they applied it to WoW instead for whatever reason.

And this was after Battle for Azeroth, which also sucked a sizable amount of ass.

And this is coming from someone who enjoyed Cataclysm.

Classic WoW doesn’t interest me at all, I played through beta and all that shit. Grinded those grinds, not doing them again.

 

[Blayt7hh]

horde vs horde BGs and no more premades really. Horde already dominate most pvp servers and arena due to superior racials. They complained a lot about long queues, which is to be expected as the dominant faction. Now alliance AV ques are 20-30 minutes and alliance manage to lose 75% of other bgs being that the majority of better players rolled horde. Blizzard tried to throw alliance a bone with the new loot boxes for winning a bg but those are hilariously shitty. Human rogues in 2s are pretty much all alliance has going for them in the pvp world. Go check out the classic wow subreddit, it’s full of memes regarding faction imbalance lol. Blizz is probably stoked though cuz a bunch of alliance are transferring to non horde dominated servers now.

To be clear though the horde que times were completely unacceptable.

 

[KaNesDeath]

And this is coming from someone who enjoyed Cataclysm.

RBG's was the best thing about Cata. For new players the starter zone revamps modernized the game. One thing they went overkill on were the amount of new flight paths in the revamped zones.

Even made a bug support ticket showing how fucked the flight path selection map was from all the clutter. As someone who played on a TV from my sofa the flight path map selection was impossible to use. Its wasnt addressed till BFA.

For context SWTOR came out around that time. Their first patch a month after release changed the visual indicator that showed cooldown on abilities. Problem was the new visual indicator was the exact color of my abilities. Making it impossible to see from my sofa when abilities were off cooldown. Bioware reverted the visual indicator change one week later after my 15 minute phone call with one of the game developers.

 

[WhiteMousse]

Everything after Wrath was just garbage.

And honestly there were signs of that garbage in Wrath. The cutscene at the WrathGate is one of the dumbest things they ever did. It's so disturbingly "generic action", clearly catering to people who don't speak English, broadcasting to as wide an audience as possible.

Arthas Menethil is my favorite character. Ever. I mean of any story, any medium. I interviewed Justin Gross for a dissertation. The tale of how he became the Lich King is still one of the most compelling narratives in video game history.

But Wrath was a huge step down from BC. Burning Crusade was superior in almost every way, aside from the obvious advances in geographic visual quality (not the actual subject matter).

When I played Cataclysm that was the end for me. Cancelled the account, and haven't batted an eye since. Every dumb cinematic that pops up on Youtube pisses me off more and more. They've butchered every character, they've homogenized every nuance. WarCraft III is in my top 5 games of all time and seeing its spine just rot away over the years with these retarded expansions is depressing.

People say that Blizzard died in like... what, 2012? With Overwatch? It was long before that. I love StarCraft 2's gameplay and balancing in multiplayer but the story has that same shitty generic fabric as the aforementioned Wrath Gate narrative.

What an absolute spiral into retardation. And the worst part is I don't even think this is rock bottom.

 

[Corona]

Everything after Wrath was just garbage.

And honestly there were signs of that garbage in Wrath. The cutscene at the WrathGate is one of the dumbest things they ever did. It's so disturbingly "generic action", clearly catering to people who don't speak English, broadcasting to as wide an audience as possible.

Arthas Menethil is my favorite character. Ever. I mean of any story, any medium. I interviewed Justin Gross for a dissertation. The tale of how he became the Lich King is still one of the most compelling narratives in video game history.

But Wrath was a huge step down from BC. Burning Crusade was superior in almost every way, aside from the obvious advances in geographic visual quality (not the actual subject matter).

When I played Cataclysm that was the end for me. Cancelled the account, and haven't batted an eye since. Every dumb cinematic that pops up on Youtube pisses me off more and more. They've butchered every character, they've homogenized every nuance. WarCraft III is in my top 5 games of all time and seeing its spine just rot away over the years with these retarded expansions is depressing.

People say that Blizzard died in like... what, 2012? With Overwatch? It was long before that. I love StarCraft 2's gameplay and balancing in multiplayer but the story has that same shitty generic fabric as the aforementioned Wrath Gate narrative.

What an absolute spiral into retardation. And the worst part is I don't even think this is rock bottom.

wc3/frozen throne is some ATG lore. Now blizzard shit all over it with their retcons lol. I actually enjoyed the zones and dungeon finder in wrath. I never raided though since I started late. Cata was a shit show. Quit after 1 arena season.

 

[Corona]

To be clear though the horde que times were completely unacceptable.

yeah I mean, that’s a consequence of being the dominant faction though. If anything it should’ve motivated more people to roll alliance but that didn’t happen lol. Stuff like this is a big reason why #nochanges was really popular for the classic release. Now they’re doing a bunch of changes and people are pissed. If they’re gonna do all these changes they might as well put dual spec in now.

 

[Blayt7hh]

yeah I mean, that’s a consequence of being the dominant faction though. If anything it should’ve motivated more people to roll alliance but that didn’t happen lol. Stuff like this is a big reason why #nochanges was really popular for the classic release. Now they’re doing a bunch of changes and people are pissed. If they’re gonna do all these changes they might as well put dual spec in now.

Most of the #nochanges have since change their mind about it. The way players have learned to exploit this 15 year old game has fundametnally changed the experience anyways. I don't think most people are rolling horde for the racials in PVP. Aside from the Forsaken, theyre mostly useless anyways. Most people are probably just playing horde because undead and orcs are cooler than dwarves and gnomes. In fact, I would say the single biggest change in TBC was cattering to the aliance by giving their paladins the Blood Elf paladin spell.

You say its a "consequence" like thats what you get, but BGs are neutral ground. There is no advantage having more players once your in the BG. The ques were flat out unaccaptable, to the point where I don't play in the BGs at all anymore. We are talke like 90 minute averages for an AV, 20-30 minutes to get into AB. It's a video game. What is the point of playing it if you can't, you know, play it?

 

[Corona]

Most of the #nochanges have since change their mind about it. The way players have learned to exploit this 15 year old game has fundametnally changed the experience anyways. I don't think most people are rolling horde for the racials in PVP. Aside from the Forsaken, theyre mostly useless anyways. Most people are probably just playing horde because undead and orcs are cooler than dwarves and gnomes. In fact, I would say the single biggest change in TBC was cattering to the aliance by giving their paladins the Blood Elf paladin spell.

You say its a "consequence" like thats what you get, but BGs are neutral ground. There is no advantage having more players once your in the BG. The ques were flat out unaccaptable, to the point where I don't play in the BGs at all anymore. We are talke like 90 minute averages for an AV, 20-30 minutes to get into AB. It's a video game. What is the point of playing it if you can't, you know, play it?

It’s a 15v15 in the bg but when you have say 100 horde queing versus 45 alliance queing of course the ques will be longer. That is directly a consequence of rolling the more popular faction. At least alliance got those badass loot boxes though. I got 2g and 3 draenic water the other day after losing 3abs in a row(can’t premade anymore) and finally winning one. It only took me like an hour and a half too, huge. Thank god I honor capped in the prepatch cuz farming honor is miserable without premades on alliance. It’s especially annoying cuz blizzard says they care about faction balance but they really haven’t done anything to try and fix it.

 

[Corona]

To add to my previous post, you can see how poorly balanced the servers are becoming. People are starting to transfer off servers where their faction is dying because the game is almost unplayable in the open world. Blizzard really needs to fix this.

Spoiler

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

wc3/frozen throne is some ATG lore. Now blizzard shit all over it with their retcons lol. I actually enjoyed the zones and dungeon finder in wrath. I never raided though since I started late. Cata was a shit show. Quit after 1 arena season.

I haven’t touched the series since the Frozen Throne. Have never played even one second of WoW. What kind of retcons etc have they done to the lore?

 

[Corona]

I haven’t touched the series since the Frozen Throne. Have never played even one second of WoW. What kind of retcons etc have they done to the lore?

the newest expansion created a new realm(shadowlands) where souls go after they die. There’s essentially a few gods in the shadowlands and one of them is pretty much the the god of hell(the jailer). So now they’re saying that rather the Lich king being created by the burning legion and nerzhul/arthas/frostmourne eventually becoming its own entity that the jailer actually planned this all along and was manipulating the burning legion into creating the lich king. And that he somehow made the helm of domination and frostmourne instead. The Lich king was supposedly a servant of the jailer the whole time rather than being a boss himself, and that his job was to kill people so their souls go to the shadowlands and big bad guy can absorb their power. So basically everything that happened in wc3 was false and that it was all orchestrated by this jailer who appears 20 years and like 8 expansions later lol. It basically takes a dump on the entire scourge storyline which is a shame cuz arthas was a really good character.

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

the newest expansion created a new realm(shadowlands) where souls go after they die. There’s essentially a few gods in the shadowlands and one of them is pretty much the the god of hell(the jailer). So now they’re saying that rather the Lich king being created by the burning legion and nerzhul/arthas/frostmourne eventually becoming its own entity that the jailer actually planned this all along and was manipulating the burning legion into creating the lich king. And that he somehow made the helm of domination and frostmourne instead. The Lich king was supposedly a servant of the jailer the whole time rather than being a boss himself, and that his job was to kill people so their souls go to the shadowlands and big bad guy can absorb their power. So basically everything that happened in wc3 was false and that it was all orchestrated by this jailer who appears 20 years and like 8 expansions later lol. It basically takes a dump on the entire scourge storyline which is a shame cuz arthas was a really good character.

 

[Madmick]

the newest expansion created a new realm(shadowlands) where souls go after they die. There’s essentially a few gods in the shadowlands and one of them is pretty much the the god of hell(the jailer). So now they’re saying that rather the Lich king being created by the burning legion and nerzhul/arthas/frostmourne eventually becoming its own entity that the jailer actually planned this all along and was manipulating the burning legion into creating the lich king. And that he somehow made the helm of domination and frostmourne instead. The Lich king was supposedly a servant of the jailer the whole time rather than being a boss himself, and that his job was to kill people so their souls go to the shadowlands and big bad guy can absorb their power.

Jesus Christ, what a shitshow.

 

[Corona]

Jesus Christ, what a shitshow.

The writers keep trying to make the new expansions have bigger and badder villains than the previous. I dgaf what they say/retcon, nobody is stronger than Sargeras/the burning legion. They should try and make a more cunning villain like zemo in civil war rather than continuously trying to create some new entity that’s actually stronger than the previous one lol.

 

[Minnja]

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily...zard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture



This is pretty terrible stuff. And the fact there has been a 2 year investigation into this kind of eliminates a lot of doubt as to the veracity of at least some of the claims.

I'm sure some people on the board will say "if they didn't like it they can leave!" lol. Seems to be the reaction some people have whenever these things come up.

I do enjoy some Blizzard games but not really a huge fan or anything like that. As others have mentioned their "virtue signaling" is pretty apparently more of a cash grab than anything else. I'm all for companies wanting to be more inclusive if they want to but it also makes them look like clowns when they are getting blasted by their own employees. Choosing to be more inclusive/diverse should be something devs want to do not something they do because they want the spotlight on them.

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

The writers keep trying to make the new expansions have bigger and badder villains than the previous. I dgaf what they say/retcon, nobody is stronger than Sargeras/the burning legion. They should try and make a more cunning villain like zemo in civil war rather than continuously trying to create some new entity that’s actually stronger than the previous one lol.

Thats how I largely felt about Diablo III. The retcons in that really fucked with Diablo I and II lore imo.