Considering the people I speak for work for Blizzard… yeah that’s not likely. But hey, you do you.
Nope, just a few folks that I share a discord with, along with a bunch of other game and software devs from studios like EA, Ubisoft, Mighty Games, ARM UK, Microsoft, etc. We talk about the games we play, game dev roles, politics, really all sorts of things depending on the day.
Of course, I’m 90% sure you won’t believe me, but that’s fine, I don’t need your approval or belief.
Unless it’s officially from a blue, you have no legs to stand on and just look like a liar, regardless of if you’re telling the truth or not. Please stop wasting folks’ time.
Quiet possibly the most ignorant post in this entire thread.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. The company was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. and Vivendi Games.
Revenue: 6.489 billion USD (2019)
Robert A. Kotick, Chief Executive Officer at Activision Blizzard, Inc. as reported in their proxy statements. As Chief Executive Officer at Activision Blizzard, Inc., Robert A. Kotick made $30,122,896 in total compensation. Of this total $1,756,731 was received as a salary, $2,870,966 was received as a bonus, $19,137,241 was received in stock options, $6,269,752 was awarded as stock and $88,206 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2019 fiscal year.
That is ONE HELL of a resource pool for this “small indie company”.
Daiyu was being sarcastic, the small indie company is a joke that everyone makes when Blizzard a BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY can’t do basic things.
Ah I c. I was like god dam some people still living in 2007~
Yeah progging on SLG that joke was made non stop because of just simple straight forward things that seemed like their QA team could have figured out.
That’s the joke
Oh, that is definitely my top guess, and unfortunately we can’t keep bumping a thread to the top no matter how much it needs to be seen unless we’re contributing to the discussion in some way, otherwise it’s spamming. But it could have also been a prelude to a new updated post being made.
To tell the truth, I was honestly hoping that once the weekend was over, we’d at least get another blue post in this thread, even if it’s just a repeat of what Bornakk’s already said, just as proof that someone was still reading.
Instead someone unpinned the thread, the figurative shoving under a rug, and nothing new has happened.
And there’s that argument again.
It’s not an argument. Blizzard doesn’t need our permission or blessings to make changes to anything. If we don’t like what they are doing, well…
Down to 7 hours left on my game time… may as well toss a last post in here, do what I can to bump it.
I started playing World of Warcraft back in September/October 2006. I played until level 20 and hit the end of the free trial. I was so amped to keep playing I contacted customer service and asked the quickest way for me to get the game and play “for real”. They were super helpful, and within an hour I had made my way to the store, bought a retail copy of World of Warcraft, and I was back on heading straight for level 21. On this character. Good Times.
During Wrath of the Lich King, my girlfriend moved to the west coast of Canada for a job. She had a character on my account (Human Priest) and we contacted Blizzard to see if there was a way they could move it from my account to her account. After about a day of emails flying back and forth between the three of us, they transferred her character to her account. Excellent customer service.
On a few occasions, many years ago, My game time would run out before I got paid. I contacted Blizzard and the CS team just popped 3 days on my account to cover until my paycheck. Above and beyond really.
One year I lost my Internet for 6 months. That was rough. Y’know what brought a little light to the end of those dark days? The time I had on my account was given back to me when my Net was restored. 31 days worth. I was pleased as punch.
When WoD brought in the WoW token I used some of all the gold I had accumulated to buy game time. That was a nice quality of life change for me. I was playing many, many, hours of WoW a day… 8… 9… 12 hours a day! (too much time lol). I had something like 20 some odd characters at that time. Then the unexpected happened… and I ended up on Disability, for life. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Social Assistance (Government Assistance) sucks. Hard. You get paid once a month, an amount that if you spit really hard (with the wind at your back) you might be lucky to hit the poverty line. But you know what I had? I had a sh*t tonne of gold from playing for years upon years. So even though the rest of my life sucked (still does obvs) I could still play WoW. I just used my gold.
As my friends started to drop off the game one by one (for various reasons) I talked family members into coming to WoW. I used my gold for battle.net balance and I used that balance to purchase them WoW, Expansions, and game time. I used that battle.net balance to get my son Call of Duty (the latest one, I can’t remember the title). I used it to buy Overwatch for myself and my son. I bought Diablo 3. Pets for xmas presents for friends, family, and guildies. I also used it to buy game time. When you have a pile of alts, nothing to do with your time, and an aversion to the AH, you need to do something with that gold. Plus Blizzard made an extra $5 off of every token I bought. So win-win, right? Apparently wrong.
Blizzard, or at this point we should just say Activision, Blizzard died long ago… it’s just a logo now. Anyway, as I was saying, Activision, decided to drop a change, with no notice, on a Friday, to the way I could use my battle.net balance. The same battle.net balance they made $5 from every token I used to fund it, I’d like to reiterate. In an attempt to remove bots from WoW? How do they expect that to work when the same botters could just, of I dunno, log in, buy a token from the AH, and instead of using it for battle.net balance just use it for *gasp 30 days of game time! Instead, they’ve alienated a long time customer… That person who bought each expansion from The Burning Crusade until Shadowlands.
Over the years I’ve watched the game decline. It is, and always has been, alt un-friendly. For Shadowlands I deleted 8 or 9 toons. I kept 8 of my favourites on Alliance and 7 of my favourite Horde. That is still a metric F tonne of alts. Customer Service is a joke. No matter what your problem, you get an automated response within 24-48 hours (I hope your issue isn’t time sensitive!) to which you have to respond saying that it didn’t address your issue… in the slightest. Of course this resets the time they have to respond by. I’ve watched the community fall apart. I remember asking a question in general chat and people would actually help you. Now you get a smarta$$ answer 99% of the time and the closest you’ll get to help is someone telling you to go look it up on wowhead. When did Wowhead become such an integral part of WoW?? Shouldn’t worldofwarcrat.com be the ultimate resource for WoW? Crazy. Elitism is rampant, in order to do anything you need a raider.io score… Really?? Forget that to make the game decently playable you need addons. I could go on but I won’t.
You can all say “get a sub” all you want. I’m not in a position where that is financially responsible. I don’t have a credit card, credit card companies won’t give it to people on assistance… at least not in Canada. (They can’t sue to recover money, well they can, but assistance can’t be garnished). I can’t use my bank account because if it comes out one day early or one day late it has a chance to impact my RL financial responsibilities. My bank charges a $45 NSF fee, I can’t afford to take that hit. There are some companies that will try to take the money again if it fails which can really tally up those NSF fees. I’m not saying Blizzard is one of them, I don’t know… I was using gold for game time (and everything else Blizzard) by the time this became an issue.
I’m left just sitting here pondering how this is something they would even consider. They brought the WoW token in to rid the game of gold sellers. They’re still here. If this change is to get rid of bots, and they think it’s going to work, they should know better.
I’ve been drifting away from the game for a while now. I don’t like many of the changes they’ve made over the years. Didn’t they also announce there would be no flying in WoD on a Friday too? I digress… The content droughts, class balancing issues, grinds for gear / rep / professions, y’know what, nevermind, I could fill a book on issues with the game I’ve had over the years and people have already heard them all before. Where was I? Right… So, when using your battle.net balance for 180 days, you got the same discount as anyone else that got 180 days from other payment methods. Makes sense, money is money right? (Well, technically they made an extra $30 from me buying 6 tokens to get 180 days). Someone else paid $25 for that token. Then the price per month went up to $18.99 CAD, now it’s $21.99CAD. That’s $3 over the exchange rate. What is that, an $8+ profit on a token if it’s being purchased by a Canadian?
I think I’m just rambling at this point. My disbelief at this change, the feeling of discouragement knowing that this will in no way get any official attention, the feeling of abandonment by a company I used to like, if not admire. The people supporting this like it’s a good thing to have options taken away. Maybe since most of the people that read these forums are Americans… if we replaced the word “options” with “freedom” maybe that would get their heads out of their … ahem … Wait, that won’t work… their attention spans are to short to have even reached this far into the message. Most of them have probably scrolled to the bottom looking for a TL;DR. Hint: there won’t be one.
I’m trying to decide whether to turn the rest of my gold to battle.net balance… I mean, Overwatch 2 is in development. Maybe something else will appear in the Shop I may want. On the other hand, there is just something fulfilling about letting it sit in my alt bank, gathering dust. Like buried treasure from an ancient and forgotten civilization. Forever lost to the vagaries of time… There is a bright side to all this, I get 80+ Gig of HD space back… No need to worry about if my addons are up to date. I’ll have to check the Steam store, they probably have a few free to play MMOs and I’ll have that space available on my SSD… Hmmm…
I’ve barely scratched the surface on what I had to say. I’m not even sure why I’m saying it. Maybe I’m just sad… melancholy over the end of an era. /shrug. It is what it is… The best of luck to those who stay. I’ll keep my eye on game news and see what ends up happening to WoW.
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” - Bilbo Baggins
– DakkarBlack
P.S I’m on Twitch… playing Dead By Daylight, Phasmophobia, and the like. Stop by some time and say Hi. I don’t need a follow, you don’t need to hang around. It’s just be nice to see people had read this post. 
Sure, Blizzard can do what they want.
I’m tired of people claiming it’s not a change, or that players can still do what they did before to purchase game time.
We can’t.
i’m really curious to know who calls the shots for these changes, i wanna see faces
You’re absolutely right, they don’t - most companies have a disclaimer that their prices are subject to change without notice.
BUT - many companies choose to inform their customers when they are going to do it, to maintain a positive relationship. Especially when the thing being changed is only targeted at a specific group of people.
There are more reactions available here than A) Quit the game, or B) blindly accept bad decisions.
I started here… and…
… ended here. Thank you for sharing your story. I remember very well the days in Wrath when custom service was some of the best folks in gaming.
It’s sad to see you go. I hope you find something to fill the void that was WoW. I am sad that it’s come to this but I’m also just waiting for my sub to run out (though I have quite a bit more game time left). Happy trails!
Blizz is its own undoing.
Okay, so you’re an insider who is “leaking” the information that blizzard employees want you to post on the forum. I’m amazed you’re willing to admit this. I’m amazed that anyone has been willing to admit this.
I’m sure it will be as effective as removing access to the group finder premade tab has been in keeping wts carry ads out of the group finder, ie not at all. In fact, that was so ineffective that I’d guess it was just an excuse to keep low levels from grouping up to do elite quests, so they would have to solo them. God forbid low levels would want to play together.
To quote more specifically: “You think you do [want Classic], but you don’t.”
That dev’s comment certainly aged like fine milk. 
So blizzard you ever get tired of screwing over your player base?
Why is the biggest wow news channel on YouTube calling it a bad thing then? Seriously why defend a company that would sell you and your family if they could get away with it?
Same here, hell I only did torghast enough to get one legendary for my warrior im so tired of blizzard stealing ideas from cell phone games torghast is a tower climbs game it’s stupid