This isn’t a Blizzard apologist post. I feel like I’ve been relatively vocal about Blizzard’s decisions as of late (I’ve consistently protested against the concept of grinding out dailies for allied races when your rep is capped per day, and a lot of it hinges on RNG), and even though prefacing my argument with that might seem like I’m deflecting, I just want to make it clear that I’m not trying to defend Blizzard here.
Rather, I’m attacking the idea that buggy patches are suddenly a new concept.
What infuriated me the most about this was when Bellular made a series of videos commenting on the state of 8.3. I can agree. It’s not great.
But this is not the first buggy patch, and it’s certainly not the buggiest, and it’s definitely not the most rushed (twitter integration, anyone). Any person who has spent time a long time in World of Warcraft should know this.
And I don’t care that people point this out. My biggest problem stems from people using it to further their agenda against Activision’s influence at Blizzard. I can’t remember a time a patch released in a relatively functional state. It existed well before Activision became relevant in Blizzard’s development cycles.
Stop propagating the ideas that buggy patches are new. We get it. You hate Battle for Azeroth. You hate what Blizzard has become. A buggy patch does not validate your arguments about why.
The purpose of youtubers is to get people to watch their videos. They generally do this with incendiary, click-baity headlines.
And through reporting on their latest Outrage of the Day.
Ignore them. Only watch videos that are guides, giving specific and useful information. General video makers like bellular, T&E, etc. are completely useless.
If your issues are related to somehow being “permanently behind”, just know that you’ve been misinformed. Too many people are buying into that idea when it’s not true.
Well the cap on cloak ranks wasn’t announced until the day before the patch, so it’s understandable that all the pre-patch videos talked about it from a ‘falling behind’ standpoint.
Because it’s not valid? You can hate Activision all you want. Your credibility (as well as the community’s credibility) is lost when you start making claims that have little weight beyond coincidence.
8.3 isn’t the first underwhelming/buggy patch and it certainly won’t be the last, and it’s not a newfound trend just because of Activision.
I appreciate where the OP is coming from, but I feel like more of the issues with 8.3 was lack of information regarding this stuff over just straight out bugs.
It seems like Blizzard keeps giving us information regarding patch mechanics after the patch has been out and if you didn’t look up 8.3 on wowhead or have someone explain it prior you might miss core upgrades to your cloak, or be confused why you aren’t getting more gear for things.
I honestly think 8.3 is interesting, but I don’t like how much I’ve had to look outside of the game to get clarification on something.
Also the only bug I’ve really been annoyed by is Unwavering Ward essence isn’t applying the 10 corruption resistance.
I can remember many functional patches over the years. Several of which came online earlier than scheduled (1pm vs. 5pm). Bug-free? Well that is a different story all together, the worst of those were back in the TBC and WoTLK days.
Not necessarily, they are quite useful for keeping folks up to date with current WoW news. I also enjoy Taliesin & Evitel’s brand of humor. If these accusations coming from Bellular are true, I worry for the current state of the game.
Maybe I’m just a person on the internet that thinks using anything to justify your stance is a pretty garbage stance to have.
I hate Activision, too. I’m not about to blame Activision for everything wrong with Blizzard the same way people blamed EA for Bioware’s problems with Anthem.
I think part of the problem is that understanding needs to happen in both parties for it to be successful. When Blizzard doesn’t listen to player feedback on the PTR, or deliverers a faction war story that many players didn’t want, or do nothing about the dislike of professions or classes, or put RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG, or force PvP and Raiders into Mythic+ for the gear, or takes out PvP and PvE gear vendors, or delivers meaningless content like island expeditions and warfronts, or holds back flying way to long, or makes the expansion very alt unfriendly, etc, etc, etc, it’s very easy to see why players are giving Blizzard grief for the smallest of things. You reap what you sow.