There were quite a few before WOW and a fair number during it, Ultima, Everquest, Lineage and Lineage 2, and a few licensed properties like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings Online.
WOW however set new standards and it was based on a very popular property coming in.
Those that would compete had to put on a new A game and most didn’t make the cut.
Yeah, I think thats a bad business model for a virtual world. Subscription based or some other kind of membership to something completely separate from the game, that supplies capital for the game. Saving all your best art and stuff for the metagame shop is bad… just so bad.
Im aware. But going back to MUD they all had problems either technical or gameplay or population problems, that they all tried to solve in various ways. WoW took the experiences of those developers and built on that, and solved as yet unsolvable problems in their own way.
After that, WoW earned unprecidented acclaim for the genre, and became a household name (also in part because average household internet access was increasing.) Once WoW became a giant, it had the power to block anyone who tried anything new. SWOTOR announced fully voiced quest text and cutscenes, WoW introduced a similar feature. GW2 introduced area scaling and group world events that could be automatically accepted when in the right area, something with which we are all now familiar … a pokemon MMORPG was announced, wow made battle pets and it was cancelled. Wildstar addressed gold farmers by creating the token system, and WoW adopted it. It just wasnt worth it to try to do any one revolutionary thing, WoW would make their version of it and it wouldn’t be revolutionary anymore.
All the while, the genre was smothered. The number one name in virtual worlds strayed further and further from the principles of the genre, and tainted the entire concept while keeping everyone else out.
Every year wide eyed would-be developers graduate college and take up the mantle, dreaming of making an MMORPG, their own world, and most of them never will, because the task is too huge and the genre seems to be too unpopular. I say seems because its one of the most popular dreams for developers and its not like devs are that far removed from society anymore. If devs are a microcosm of gamers in general, than the idea of virtual worlds is as popular as it was in wrath of the lich king… people are just sick of WoW.
man wrote a wow lore book and got called racist smfh
Blizzard literally removed some of their own jokes because they were racist. It’s not unfair to say racism affected other parts of WoW.
Literally tell me which ones are racist?
PS. Forsaken lady had the best joke.
Teepee and wigwam joke, the Orc and the parrot joke because it’s probably a reference to irl slavery, and the shrunken head joke.
The male dwarf and his Hammer joke. Which…giving everything going inside of blizz HQ…is quite cringe
The tent joke is racist? What?
So Blizzard has a sexual harrassment issue and we should eliminate all references to sexuality in the game to compensate?
Really?
The fact your even asking after what we all learned about the frat boy culture within Blizz is…well it’s par for the course of you not understanding why that joke isn’t nearly as funny as you think it is and why it’s not really appropriate joke to begin with.
And incase if your still confused, men making jokes about their privates aren’t clever nor funny. It’s amateurish and childish
What you don’t seem to understand is even though Blizzard had and probably still has an extremely toxic workplace environment does not mean they have the right to start eliminating the fully voiced sexual innuendos, jokes and flirts in their game.
We didn’t F up.
They did.
If we want to make innapropriate jokes in between friends in a group or guild we should be able to do so.
If we want to have skimpy armor or heck run around naked in SW/ORG we should be able to do so.
What Blizzard staff did is not reflective on us and them removing all this is nothing but an easy solution that resolves absolutely nothing.
As the IP holders, they actually literally do have the right to remove content.
Because they own it (until the buy-out goes through).
I was going to write that earlier, but I’m shaking my head that he thinks the company who owns the rights to a game they literally made themselves, somehow doesn’t have the right to remove content and or jokes from their own games.
I’m still…well confused by that line of logic
It’s obviously not a matter of racism but of something that’s a lot more touch to most Americans… explicit references to what would get this post banned if I named it.
The initial premise was that these jokes were racist.
They were not.
The next one, which you presented, was the insensitive nature of these comments and how they should be removed in light of Blizzard staff behavior somehow should reflect on us and how we play this game or interact with each other.
If this is your reasoning why they should be removed then its a poor one.
Since you have given up trying to defend this position in favor of the next pivot I will assume that this issue is settled.
The new argument is. Blizzard owns it. So they can remove it.
Sure.
if thats your only reason and logic behind it? Fine. That’s a fair point.
I am happy that we have established that these removals had no merit in combating racism, sexism or demeaning to either gender.
It took us several pivots to get here but I am satisfied.
I feel like the two tents, too tense joke could’ve stayed in if they used two different types of tents. Maybe ones that couldn’t be labelled as being racist.
It is a very corny pun I will admit.
I’m really sad they got rid of the troll joke “They say if you cut off an extremity, it’ll regenerate a little bigger. DON’T BELIEVE IT.” In fact I think Darkspear only have two joke lines now, and 80% of the time I just get “New troll here.”
Sounds like an excuse to go back and polish the old races!
More customization so their allied race counterparts aren’t “You but better”. Voice work, updated racial starting gear (that you can mog Blizzard. Give me more simple Belf gear!), heritage armor for the races that don’t have them yet, updated racial mounts, etc
Whatever happened is likely a lot more complex than saying everyone responsible for the creative development of a franchise we all love is evil. But, to say they weren’t evil, we’d have to claim some things none of us want to claim.
There is a larger problem, industry-wide. I dont think it boils down to systemic sexism/racism. I think the industry has developed the wrong way for creative genius/functional lunatic types. The creative environment that produces good art (historically) is not an office, or a place of business. We know about the sex parties and illicit substance use, alcohol and vandalism of creative geniuses going back to ancient rome. The virulent vendettas of authors and their contemporaries during each period of literature. We know about the sex in the recording booth, of rockstars. We know what happens to jazz music when the artists go clean. And dont get me started on Kieth Moon and hotel rooms.
The point is, the office isnt the place for that kind of behavior. That is without question. Everyone is entitled to a safe work environment. But the office isnt the place for certain people either, and a lot of creative geniuses fall into that category.
Computer games should be developed by smaller teams of developers, like rock bands. The studio should supply the support staff necessary to produce the works of those creative teams. And people shouldnt expect the environment of this creative process to be like an office.
So…your saying racists and sexists just need a safe space to work? Is that what your going with? 