The problem is we’re dealing with Activision now, not Blizzard.
Blizzard understood that Fun sold games, and that selling games created value in the market. Activision has ALWAYS been a big fan of the release schedule over anything else. Fun be damned. Quality be damned. Customers be damned.
If a game isn’t fun, and is of low quality, people aren’t going to want to play it. And if the only thing keeping them around is their ‘sunk cost’ in terms of friends made, time invested, and a paid subscription then of course they’re going to be irate. RIGHTFULLY SO.
And it tickles me to see all these youngsters talk about how “Its the ToXiCicItY and the MeAn sTuFf!” Some of us were gaming while you were in diapers (or before you were even born), if you want REAL toxicity go back 20 or 30 years and try cutting in line at Mortal Kombat at the local arcade. Or in your Friday Night (into Saturday Morning) 1st Ed D&D session after a few six packs. Or those first few years that PVP MUDs and online games were a thing. You literally have NO IDEA what you’re talking about.
It was the edginess of those things that made them great. The fact that they’ve lost their edge is what people are complaining about.
That’s not actually the case. There are different ways to apologize to show sincerity in an apology.
To be clear, I don’t think Blizz needs to apologize for anything necessarily (though there is plenty I think they should do / have done differently). This is just more addressing your statement. Not all apologize are equal, because how you give that apology matters.
This is also a big example. If you use but or try to explain yourself in your apology, you’re trying to give reason to your actions rather than show the hurt party that you are in fact sorry.
People on our side were thoughtful and considerate for years until we just got sick of being ignored. The responsibility to mend this bridge is entirely on Blizzard.
They will never apologize because they think they haven’t done anything wrong. In their world everything is perfect.
Conduits are perfect.
Content is perfect.
Lore is perfect.
Monetization is perfect.
Gameplay is perfect.
Anima loot is perfect.
The maw is perfect.
Korthia is perfect.
Everything is perfect.
The problem is us, they think.
And don’t you dare to criticize the game because white knights players will come and tell you that YOU are wrong and Blizzard is the perfect company and we are just whining.
My point is, they aren’t going to apologize for this sort of thing, because its not an objective issue.
They would be apologizing constantly, if they were to do that at all.
They’d find some way to twist the apology so that it wasn’t as sincere as they liked, or because it used wording they didn’t like, and as soon as they have that one negative, they can throw out the entire apology, which is what they’ve done every single other time Blizzard has apologized.
Yes it was done by a Neilson research company. It was well documented. The financial report also stated Activision as a whole was down by 30% of it’s users across the board during a pandemic where other companies grew which isn’t very good at all.
It’s amazing what customer service does when you are mistreated for so long. People go where they are treated better.
You may just want to practice a wee bit of research into topics that you are discussing to verify facts before speaking on things that you are unfamiliar with.
Bluntly, it’s not a good look.
Yoshi P has apologized on three separate occasions that I can count off the top of my head. All easily verifiable with a smidge of googling.
1: ARR launch issues and server downtimes.
2: Patch 4.1 Housing problems
3: The White Ravens problem that arose out an event.
Since Yoshi P is the head guy for FF14, and is a Square-Enix employee, it counts directly as representing both the game and SE both.
I know you want to cast the narrative that you wish to display, but folks might find your discourse a touch more honest and engaging if they didn’t run into issues with the accuracy of your statements.
I find forcing people to do exactly what they say is the hardest part, not hiding it. If you don’t like the game, I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t play it as a mod.
From a PR perspective, I would just be happy if Blizzard came across a little less gaslighty and a little less blaming their customers for not liking a product-y.
Remember when Blizzard two weeks ago literally blamed the players for why Torghast was bugged based on “We didn’t get any good feedback on beta” despite a lot of the feedback from beta being “This is okay, but you need to change these” to which they ignored?
And all of those were fairly big things that affected a lot of players. Not small things like what the OP would like Blizzard to apologize for, like Conduit Energy, Torghast design etc.
When something BIG happens that affects a lot of players negatively. Blizzard apologizes. They apologized for how patch 8.0 rolled out and affected a lot of players negatively. They apologized for how Azerite Gear was implemented before they rolled out fixes for it in patch 8.1, 8.1.5 and 8.2.
They even apologized back in WoD for flying and how they didn’t give players a concrete answer on how flying would be handled for that expansion.
But did players accept these apologies? No, because whenever Blizzard apologises there’s always a very vocal group that will pick apart any apology written or spoken, find one negative thing to latch onto and then they’ll declare the entire apology invalid and act as if it was trash or it never happened.
I can absolutely guarantee you that Ion or J. Allen Brack could make the most heartfelt, sincere apology they could muster and that same group would say: “I didn’t see any tears, total BS apology. Blizzard sucks!!”
