First Patch to Lose Content

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 3:02am

It’s a bit absurd 9.1.5 releases with nothing but system changes. There’s literally no additional content, but rather you LOSE content by them removing emotes and voice lines from your character.

Why are players being punished for something that is entirely Blizzard’s fault? The level of gaslighting it takes to blame US THE PLAYERS for what happened and say it’s “in-game toxicity that’s actually the problem”.

The blame-shifting and finger pointing is satirically awful. I am insulted that I can no longer use “adult” voicelines because apparently I’m not to be trusted with them even though I’m not the one committing misdemeanors and felonies on my employees.

Ahnohla-hyjal · November 3, 2021, 3:24am

Welcome to .5 patches since… forever.

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 3:34am

I’ve only been playing for 15 years but iirc, you most .5 patches do not remove more stuff than they add.

Vulpes-hydraxis · November 3, 2021, 3:34am

Orctang-area-52 · November 3, 2021, 3:35am

This is something that needs to change. Since the game has been losing subs since… forever!

Dreadsurge-sargeras · November 3, 2021, 3:37am

Are… you really gonna call a few emotes and NPC names content?

Rhielle-sentinels · November 3, 2021, 3:42am

No it isn’t. It’s a .5 patch. They aren’t content patches. They’re QoL and balance patches.

… that’s not content. Stop reaching.

No one is punishing you.

No one is blaming you.

GamesBeat: The World of Warcraft team has been changing or removing some of the game’s emotes and art. What’s the thought process behind those changes?

Ion Hazzikostas: As we said in, I think, a brief blog, a forum post, this has been a process that has been ongoing as a result of an internal period of self-reflection over the last few months. These are changes that are coming from the team as a whole. In the discussions we began internally in the aftermath of the lawsuit and everything surrounding that, on many levels, trying to understand how we as the current leadership of the team could do better — better for our team, better for our community. One thing that came up is that there are pieces of our game that, over the course of 17-plus years now, that were not necessarily the products of a diverse or inclusive range of voices, that did not necessarily reflect the perspective of the current team and of many of our players. There are things that people on our team were not proud to have in our game. These are many things that people, over the years, have pointed out in the community, but we didn’t necessarily listen in the way we should have at the time.

What we did was we just set up a process internally for folks across the team, as well as sourcing some feedback from the community as a whole, to flag pieces of the game for review, whether it’s old quests or specific lines. As a random example, there were a number of jokes and references made a dozen years ago about how feminine male blood elves were, mistaking male blood elves for women, just poking fun at that in a not necessarily good-spirited way. That doesn’t sit right in 2021. That’s the sort of thing that was reviewed by a broad group that reflects the diversity of our team today. We made decisions on whether to leave some things standing, because they’re borderline, but we’re not looking to reinvent everything, turn over every single stone and rewrite 17 years of WoW. It might be a little bit juvenile. It might be off-color. But this isn’t something that is really making our game feel less welcoming for people, which is what we’re aiming to change. Those things we left. Others were removed, others were rewritten or changed accordingly.

Because of the nature of the feedback loop in the community and the way we publish new builds during the public test realm cycle and fan sites data mining them, every one of these changes ends up getting a huge spotlight shone on it alongside class balance changes or new systems we’re adding. This is a massive patch, but this is not something that took the entire team offline. In the grand scheme of things these are small changes. Many of them would probably go unnoticed if not for that spotlight being shone on them. But they’re things that were important to the team, and we’ve heard from many in our community that they’re important to them. This isn’t necessarily something that we expect to do in every patch going forward, to have a bunch of changes along these lines in it, but we want to be more sensitive to how the content we make is received by our team, and by the global player base that calls Azeroth, World of Warcraft home.

Lîadrin-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 3:43am

it’s more than we got in the patch so yes

Dreadsurge-sargeras · November 3, 2021, 3:46am

We got:

Unlimited Covenant and Conduit swapping
A ton of QoL improvements for alts
Legion Timewalking ft. the new Mage Tower, when that rolls around in a month.

I’d easily argue, even as someone who actively disliked a lot of the emote changes/removals and renaming the Love Rocket mount, that we gained more than we lost and that we got pretty much the typical X.X.5 stuff.

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 4:01am

Well, that’s the reasoning they are removing every single adult theme from the game. To cover up for the crimes they committed while blaming the players and removing their freedom to responsibly act like an adult since they can’t behave in an appropriate or legal manner.

Jakkaddax-malganis · November 3, 2021, 4:02am

Don’t like it? Leave.

Rhielle-sentinels · November 3, 2021, 4:03am

It’s not and they aren’t. You’re making stuff up to be fake outraged.

Metroîd-tichondrius · November 3, 2021, 4:04am

This is what happens when you guys complained on twitter over the lawsuit. Now they censored things that women would get offended over. GG played ya selves.

Zachaios-malganis · November 3, 2021, 4:04am

Were you here for the “selfie” patch?

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 4:06am

I was, that was actually a major content patch too. Even sadder lol.

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 4:07am

It’s not their PR corporate response but its clear to anyone with minimal critical thinking. I doubt this change is “something they wanted to do before the scandal”. Why even? The jokes were far from egregious. No, it’s damage control and we suffer for it.

Rhielle-sentinels · November 3, 2021, 4:10am

No. It’s clear to anyone who wants to be a drama queen and make stuff up.

You’re not suffering because some lines are gone. No one is forcing you to stay here and nothing is getting changed back. Stop with the insane amounts of hyperbole.

Not even responding to this nonsense again.

Solvi-wyrmrest-accord · November 3, 2021, 4:15am

I wouldnt call this content as there has been actual content removed in the past like the pre-cata world, the old troll raids, pandaria cloak questline, WoD ring questline, and more recently much of the torghast storyline

Sunzsu-alexstrasza · November 3, 2021, 4:16am

Oh no you can’t /fart

Leon-zuljin · November 3, 2021, 4:21am

More like /flirt.