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Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

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Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#31

Post by ctvo »

void_mint wrote: post #21
ctvo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss that the OP is speaking about the current state of these games? Why even expand with an edit when you agree with more than half their points?

> Why even expand with an edit when you agree with more than half their points? "Why even post if you think 50% of a person's reviews are bad" ??? Again, it reads like a person that doesn't actually play those games/genres and just wants to dogpile, as is evidenced especially by the Diablo and Hearthstone critiques.

For WoW your reply is a fallacy without addressing the original point.

For every other point outside of Overwatch, you justified, agreed or misunderstood the OP and defended its release vs. its current state.

You think your edit justified your original reply, where you attack the OP's credibility without addressing any of their points, I disagree.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#32

Post by neartheplain »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

Fun fact, Bobby Kotick (the "zero-empathy, profit-maximizing creature" who runs Activision Blizzard) was listed in Jeffrey Epstein's black book:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/dfsrt3/activision...

Hard to draw further conclusions, but it's definitely not a positive.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#34

Post by gjsman-1000 »

mgh2 wrote: post #18
coder-3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone know why this happens? I think it's because of incentives. For-profit companies are incentivised to maximise profits. There might be resistance against doing so in unethical ways at the start but as the company grows it becomes harder to control until eventually it just does whatever is most profitable, limited only by laws (most of the time). Any CSR or ethical decision becomes a PR stunt to distract f…

Apple is a master at this. News of its child and slave labor abuses have been brushed off because people love their products.

Also because almost every other tech company (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, etc.) make their products at the exact same Foxconn factories. Apple just gets the biggest headline.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#35

Post by void_mint »

ctvo wrote: post #31
void_mint wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why even expand with an edit when you agree with more than half their points? "Why even post if you think 50% of a person's reviews are bad" ??? Again, it reads like a person that doesn't actually play those games/genres and just wants to dogpile, as is evidenced especially by the Diablo and Hearthstone critiques.

For WoW your reply is a fallacy without addressing the original point. For every other point outside of Overwatch, you justified, agreed or misunderstood the OP and defended its release vs. its current state. You think your edit justified your original reply, where you attack the OP's credibility without addressing any of their points, I disagree.

> For every other point outside of Overwatch, you justified, agreed or misunderstood the OP and defended its release vs. its current state.

The points weren't critiques, is what I'm saying. Calling a game a "hot mess" doesn't actually say what's wrong with it. For WoW, as an example, it's inarguable that it's the biggest MMO of all time with a super active playerbase, even now. Saying "Well it's a hot mess" ignores all context and any legitimate argument made in reality. Just a proxy for "I don't like this game".

All of the points were just made up abstract complaints. They aren't actual gripes against the games, and moreso, the abstract complaints don't even defend the idea that "Blizzard has been going downhill." They only support my claim, which is that the person responding just doesn't like those games specifically, which has literally nothing to do with the quality of the games Blizzard released.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#36

Post by zahrc »

wpasc wrote: post #6
zahrc wrote: post #3

Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. Some of my veteran WoW friends returned with the release of classic and TBC classic, but no one stayed for long. Blizzard has been destroying all of their franchises WoW - convoluted imbalanced hot mess Diablo - repetitive. Diablo immortal. Warcraft III - buggy and laggy steaming pile of undelivered promises Overwatch - imbalanced. Overwatc…

I find it a fascinating case study that some of the company’s most anticipated releases are just re releases: Diablo 2 resurrected, WoW classic, Warcraft 3 reforged. Death by a thousand lapses in game quality and you get a lot of hype about refurbished old games. Some of it is rose covered nostalgia but IMO there’s been a sea change in game design since the advent of the attention economy, pay to progress, micro tran…

I’ll give them that one, as people have been demanding the re-releases, especially classic and Diablo

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#37

Post by SheinhardtWigCo »

gpm wrote: post #29
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #28

So, firstly, I deplore the behavior that's been exposed recently. I hope the people responsible and their leaders end up getting shut out of the industry, sued and/or criminally charged as appropriate. But I wonder if those hoping aloud that this saga kills off Acti-Blizzard are indulging in wishful thinking. Isn't it likely that this is yet another so-called PR "disaster" that the vast majority of customers won't be…

I don't think it's customers who need to be their main concern, but employees. I have to imagine that they are going to have to pay a pretty significant premium to recruit good people going forward. Maybe related: See the criticism of their games in this thread. Potentially this is explained by blizzard having trouble employing people who can make them good games...

It would be unprecedented for one of the most profitable companies in the games industry to struggle to hire top talent.

The industry has always relied on a hiring pool that is willing to put up with untold amounts of bullshit for the privilege of working on games instead of CRUD apps.

I don't think this thread or any other social media is a good indicator of a company's ability to hire talent. Look at Google and Facebook. They get shit on constantly by online commentators, but they're doing pretty well and seem to have no problem hiring at market rates.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#38

Post by sdfsadfjaslj »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #28

So, firstly, I deplore the behavior that's been exposed recently. I hope the people responsible and their leaders end up getting shut out of the industry, sued and/or criminally charged as appropriate. But I wonder if those hoping aloud that this saga kills off Acti-Blizzard are indulging in wishful thinking. Isn't it likely that this is yet another so-called PR "disaster" that the vast majority of customers won't be…

Anecdotal evidence: I've seen so many posts of WoW players swearing to log off for 1 day in protest of recent events. One whole day. Meanwhile posts of players cancelling their subscriptions are few and far between.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#39

Post by andrewmcwatters »

Just another point of view here: all of the politics are irrelevant. I don't know anyone, nor does anyone I know know anyone who plays anything Blizzard produces right now.

Does Blizzard make any games that people want to play right now? I don't know. According to activeplayer.io[1] Overwatch's average monthly player count has never been higher, but of that demographic, I can't find anyone I know who plays it, so my visibility into this is narrow and limited. Clearly they're probably doing better than ever, and the loudest or most outspoken players just feel differently.

At the end of the day, I don't think anything else matters besides whether or not they're producing products people want to play.

[1]: https://activeplayer.io/overwatch/

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#40

Post by zahrc »

cuillevel3 wrote: post #10
zahrc wrote: post #3

Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. Some of my veteran WoW friends returned with the release of classic and TBC classic, but no one stayed for long. Blizzard has been destroying all of their franchises WoW - convoluted imbalanced hot mess Diablo - repetitive. Diablo immortal. Warcraft III - buggy and laggy steaming pile of undelivered promises Overwatch - imbalanced. Overwatc…

> Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. That was in 2008, right? So their reputation has been going downhill for 13 years?

Yes. Especially with the release of WoW cataclysm
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