So Afrasiabi was kicked out and Danuser took over because of a Lawsuit over harassment.
Of course Danuser once put in charge would try to Retcon the fired head’s Lore in order to remove the stain on WoW’s legacy!
He clearly never learned the lesson learned by the Prince of Persia!
I probably won’t have a moment to read this all for a while, but before going into it, how bad is it to prepare myself? If we quantify on a scale of [severity of Ubisoft sexual harassment allegations] units, are we talking 0.5? 1? 3?
This is worse imo
I guess I just doubt that there will ever be enough evidence to establish a causal relationship between Afrasiabi’s beliefs with any particular lore event. Afrasiabi is a misogynist (Allegedly, as per my inner-lawyer) but does that make every lore decision he’s ever had a hand in inherently misogynist as well? Is this going to be the foundation of an original sin that can be used to dismiss any post-WotLK lore developments that we don’t like regardless of their individual merit?
I ask because the basis for this thread seems to be an effort to assign a relationship between a particular lore event and his misogyny that’s entirely speculative and based only on the most superficial elements of that lore event.
Surely Bobby Kotick will make an effort to purge Blizzard of the corrupt elements I.E. fire them for this outrage!
He surely would rather have a settlement that fires all the guilty parties and allows Activision to completely take over Blizzard than be forced to pay loads of Money.
This is the perfect excuse for him to fully put his agents in control of Blizzard.
Afrasiabi’s replacement was put in her position by Activison so if the Company deems that other Staff needs replacing they will do it.
Bobby Kotick is also listed as part of the problem of compensation and pay, given it extends from the Executive Board roles down to the new hires.
With any luck, the Shareholders banish Bobby entirely, the entire hierarchy
Countdown until the Shareholders are indicted as well…
Well that’s why these are discussion forums, to discuss things like this. I don’t know if we will ever know, but it’s worth considering and talking about. If for no other reason then everyone is made more aware of it and we can call it out in Blizzard’s writing going forward.
I mean the way they’ve treated characters like Jaina, Tyrande, and Sylvanas is such a huge red flag I’m actually somewhat embarrassed that it never occurred to me before that it could be from the biases of someone like Alex. I just thought Blizzard was kind of stupid or had a blind spot there for some strange reason…well now we know.
I wouldn’t fully agree but I think Ainhin has a nugget of a point in that people seem quick to imply that “Well this explains why XYZ” when we have no idea if the people behind XYZ were actually involved in this at all and that’s kind of a serious accusation to be dancing around.
This’ll go to court and we’ll find out the details then. Until then I’m not comfortable speculating on people not named in the suit itself.
I have been saying for years that if you want blizzard to truly change the night elf story bring up the fact that its anti feminist.
hell you could say the same about sylvanas etc.
Personally I’m happier to discuss this here because the General forums are reacting in the Gamer way to this in a lot of cases and I can’t take any of them seriously.
So I’m talking about it here, with people I take marginally seriously.
On another note: I am a bigger fan of Afrasiabi compared to the current story.
Anyway The “Champagne leftist” of blizzard culture isnt a surprise.
Alot of the devs seems to be SEVERE alcoholics going by their twitter pages. So the afrasiabi stuff isnt that surprising.
I might be wrong on this, but i think that we both got silenced a few days 2 week back for the same reason. Kind of even more frustrating how they got hypocrite on this subject just for us to learn this new 2 week after.
He wasn’t let go too long ago so this story likely has his fingerprints all over it in any case, especially since BfA is linked to it, which he was very much around for.
Nah I got silenced for comparing the mods to a current lore figure lmao
that was the listed reason
Oh yeah definetly.
I don’t think that it’s really disputable that Warcraft, and WoW in particular, has had sexist elements in it from day one. It’s hard to get away from given that those sexist elements were also very typical for their time, when both the creators of mainstream video games and its audience were overwhelmingly male.
The question of whether something is sexist by intent or sexist by way of society’s sexual and gender norms is hotly debated everywhere. Personally, I’m of the opinion that when sexism appears its rarely the result of someone intentionally trying to make a sexist statement, and more a result of social biases that are largely unconscious.
I don’t know whether or not this is applicable to Afrasiabi, but I suspect that when sexism has historically emerged in WoW, it’s less been because of intent and more to do with people simply writing from the perspective that they know. Which is why, regardless of what you think of their writing, having Golden and Rioux on the team is a positive development.
BfA didn’t need a writer with an agenda for it to happen, the ingredients of the expansion had been present since Vanilla.
This is looking pretty bad, yikes. I’m hoping this leads to someone like Christie Golden taking total reigns of story development. I think I trust her to fix any problems introduced by some of these awful people, while also keeping the story moving smoothly enough that it feels as if another jarring lore-overhaul doesn’t take place.
Since she’s been part of the lore team for so long, I’m very curious to hear her take on this all.
Also from new folks, like McKinney and Roux, who are younger and newer and have a lower bar for tolerating abusive people probz.
Yeah, I highly doubt Roux will ever accept a contract from Blizzard again after this.
Heck this is the kind of news that has people like Golden quit. I mean we’re definitely going to see people quitting as a direct result of this.
EDIT: And frankly J. Allen Brack has gotta go. Maybe even Kotick if the board can kick him.