I don’t understand the outrage

Community General Discussion
42

Here’s the truth. Tencent has always had stock ownership in Activision Blizzard. They are one of the big investors that helped Bobby Kotick purchase the company shares from Vivendi. They currently own about 5% of Acivision Blizzard. BTW, Tencent also has an ownership stake in Tesla.

43

The problems with World of Warcraft are largely design decisions. That’s not something that is going to be fixed by a couple of more people writing code on WoW.

I personally don’t have too many issues with the game since I have an active subscription to the game. But things like Azerite, that stupid necklace, and bad story are not related to development.

2 Likes
44

No, they didn’t. They dropped the 800 in order to cut some bottom line costs to justify bonuses to their stockholders and CEO.

Also, this was one of their most profitable years. Don’t buy into the “woe is me” story, this was simple greed.

1 Like
45

For a lot of people, it is because of Ythisens specifically. He became the Aerythlea of the US forums. His post frequency sometimes could rival hers. And I imagine if she were laid off too the EU forums would make the anger here in the US forums look like a county fair.

He chimed in when/where he could, did so in a humorous manner, and could through shade with the best drag queens.

And not just because of Ythisens personally, but also because he represented the direct channel of communication to the developers. He also allowed Lore to do other tasks as well. And now with his unceremonious lay-off, Lore is probably going to have his workload dumped onto him. So now Lore will either have to deal with more stuff, which inevitably causes one or more duties to suffer because he is only one person and can only work so much, or whatever else he is/was doing is going to cease.

And so what if it is true? It might be a good thing for the company. What 99% of people seem to miss when discussing mobile games and such is they look at the reaction to Diablo: Immortal as proof that Blizzard’s customers hate mobile, mobile games are bad, blah blah blah. But that is not it.

I don’t give a :poop: if Blizzard makes mobile games. People seem to forget that Activision-Blizzard already has 2 games in the Top 10 grossing games on both iOS and Android thanks to the acquisition of King Games. On iOS they’re only behind Fortnite and Pokémon Go.

What people were upset about was the fact that, on the surface, there was zero development for Diablo on the PC going on. Diablo III is 6 years old now. Seasons get boring after a while. A lot of us who play it have maxed out characters and really done all we wanted to do in that game. We want something new.

The last major Diablo announcement was in 2016 for the Necromancer DLC. That’s it. They even preemptively warned us for 2017 the there would be no Diablo announcements that year. So then anticipation built for 2018 to the point Blizzard tried to cushion its for us ahead of time but it was too late. Then Diablo: Immortal was announced. And only Diablo: Immortal. Not a single word about the PC future of the game except afterwards when they were in full-on damage control.

They can develop hundreds of thousands of mobile games per year and I would not care… as long as they do not supplant PC games as people saw Diablo: Immortal doing.

4 Likes
46

I suspect people are upset because they saw the little blue ox as one of the better parts of the wow experience. He actually had social skills (unlike certain other blizzard employees who openly disparage players…) and tried to be helpful.

Put that on top of the current expansions entire blah/meh reception and a few other things and you get this.

As for what Blizzard did overall? I can’t really comment from a business perspective (I don’t really follow the company) but a lot of gaming companies are having problems right now. I dunno.

Anyway, I wish the little blue ox well and hope he (and the others) find work quickly.

:cookie:

1 Like
47

this. care about the people i know Blizzard be fine

48

Lore did not disparage players in that big post people are still obsessed with. He even complimented the OP of that post in the first sentence of his response.

And as for the comment he made on Twitter that people also keep referring to, he said he has no problem muting people on that service who harass him. He is not referring to the entire player base.

1 Like
49

Well i think you have to sit back and look at this objectively. Seeing how the dev team for WoW remains intact tells you it did something right for the corporation and not the players. Just think about that for a minute.

If anything with a major overhaul of the corporation, it looks like business as usual fir WoW.

Dont surprised when more micro transactions roll out into the game.

2 Likes
50

… someone that had a grand total of 224 posts in the last year and a half was one of the “better parts of the WoW experience?” You have got to be kidding me.

2 Likes
51

Its goes :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth: and then some more :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

:rage::angry:

1 Like
52

Who said I was talking about Lore? o.O

Well, even though he wasn’t here often - he did at least give the appearance of trying to be helpful. Every little bit helps. I dunno, it was just a though.

:cookie:

53

Process of elimination. Ythisens is gone. I have not seen any complaints about Bornakk. And Aerthylea only posts on EU. So who is left?

First and foremost, it’s about quality, not quantity. Would WoW be a better game if it released 5 Legion expansions or 25 WoD ones?

Second, he was only there for 16 months. And we do not know what else he did other than post in the forums.

2 Likes
54

Companies lay people off. They will hire people if times get better. The video game industry is DOWN almost universally.

Man many companies lay people off… its how things work in the business world. I have been layed off in tough time. I sincerely hope for the best for those who lost their jobs but these people who think this is out of the norm are delusional.

2 Likes
55

It was stated that the cuts were to things like e-sports. It had already been announced that Blizzard was doing away with e-sports for HotS and is looking to do similar things with Hearthstone. People seem averse to e-sports around here, so was Blizzard supposed to continue supporting something that people don’t want?

2 Likes
56

The post count was secondary to my point. He didn’t say “forum experience” he said “wow experience.” Think about that for a moment.

57

So on the surface letting go of 800 people may seem like cutting the fat, but the issue is that it really means that the people at the top messed up. They mis-invested and mis-hired in the first place and now the people on the bottom have to pay for it. The outrage stems from the fact that the people at the top are getting bonuses. Which since they messed up they probably shouldn’t be getting. If they had actually grown the business there would be jobs for these people inside the company and active demand for them instead of needing to let them go.

I’m a software engineer, every time I read these words I wince. Management tends to over value the developer so much it’s painful. Often leading to development stagnation because of insular thinking and the inability to break out of locked mindsets. Moreover they cut QA/QE positions, this is a huge red flag for me as those people should have been transitioned to devops automation engineers as part of the dev team.

That’s my 2 cents… I don’t work at blizzard or activision but to me these are not good things. These are major management errors that should be punished not rewarded.

8 Likes
58

And having an open, sympthathetic line of communication to the developers, or at least the perception of one, is not part of the WoW experience?

Especially when people have as many complaints about BfA as they do?

59

Unfortunately in the business world this happens. Ive seen full departments dismissed. Not because they werent doing good things, but the failures elsewhere initiate a culling that it usually unrelated. Businesses have to look at expendable areas when essential areas break down.

Example. A product launch from a supplier goes horribly wrong in automotive. The plants operational deficiency caused backups, missed orders…OEM calls supplier to the carpet. Supplier loses millions (billions) rectifying the problems at the plants. Meanwhile across the country the “advanced design group” of the supplier is abolished to “pay” for these problems.

Nothing to do with the problem, but an unfortunate casualty.

Bonus’ to remaining employees barely receive a ripple in the pond.

60

So you had an open communication with the ox? Really? This is why I don’t take any of you seriously.

61

We live in very strange times where reactions to unfortunate news is way above what is warranted. Everything is catastrophic and earth shattering.

I blame soy.

3 Likes