This is also how the world changes. As someone who started their career in the late 90’s, this is a mirror of how the work environment in general has changed. Activism has certainly become more of a focus as division has taken center stage. Whether you “blame” those trying to forge ahead or those trying to push back is largely irrelevant. Pop culture has changed, and these things are more at the forefront.
It depends on what you notice, and what you don’t. If you are appalled or shocked by a gay dragonkin couple, it’s going to seem as if it has veered. If you are not, it’s going to seem like just another pop culture reference.
Back in the “old days” corporations were in busines to make money. Today, corporations are in busines to make money. Nothing has changed.
Around 1970 Westerns disappeared off TV and were replaced by cop shows. It’s not that people’s viewing habbits changed, what changed is that advertisers realized that the money was in producing products for the “18-49 Urban demographic”. Why? Because they had the money.
Same thing today. Corporate America has realized that the people who are against civil liberties for minorities, or what some people call “woke”, are not the people with the money.
I’ll die on this hill: Palia is what wow should have become.
Always assumed the social, sorta light aspects of this game would become much bigger. Not the story, but the actual gameplay. I expected housing and things like those pokemon pet breeding systems to be in wow ages ago. Even mount upkeep
I see it more as a sea change of an employee base that has been hired for years for skills and interest in things like monetization and metrics for success that can be used to manipulate the playerbase, with little value being seen in a coherent story, the world, or integration with the past. They happen to like soap opera-ish palace intrigue happening in a disneyesque environment, and there was no one there that said more than “whatever” about it.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s become a certain groups activist playground where any form of resistance is met with the type of ferocity I wish was put into the actual character models and storyline of the game.
I don’t play video games to ever be reminded of things happening on Earth but neu-WoW throws it in your face every chance it gets. It seems it’s being designed for the absolute most fragile of minds among us.
Which is why I adore Palia’s take on elves. There’s nothing fantastical or ethereal looking about them. They either look like purple humans or a fun purple female Orc whose a blacksmith.
