It just feels to me things are irrecoverably tainted. When you examine things under this new hellish light of recent events, things start to click into place. The fact the ethnically coded Horde are perpetually painted as the aggressors. The fact the pristine Alliance are the victims. The characterization of Warcraft’s three big female characters as hysterical victims. The victimization of the female-orientated race by the brutish “savage” warrior cultures. The dodgy and questionable portrayal of things such as Troll accents, Goblin greed, and Draenei history.
One cannot help but question the motivation behind previously sketchy writing when put under the lamplight of a corporate culture that defended sexism and racism and put down or brushed off all previous attempts for victims to see justice enacted, up to the point where now the State of California is stepping in to investigate. Up to the point where the lead creative office was euphemistically called the “Cosby Office.” Disgusting.
I won’t consider a mere reshuffling and a few fired persons to be nearly enough to course correct at this junction. The only slim, faint chance of seeing myself ever return to engage myself with this IP is with an entirely new product under an entirely new team and leadership, such as a World of Warcraft 2. But given this company’s adherence to delivering a minimal viable product and its higher-ups trying to color the investigation as farcical or the crimes minimal I doubt I will ever see the day when Warcraft is respectable one more.
The lore hasn’t changed and a lot of people were pointing all of this out for many years, myself included, even suggesting that the lore itself is a smoking gun/red flag as for blizzard internal culture.
I think a lot of people are being dishonest about what they knew or didn’t know even from who we have heard from.
As I’ve said before:
Top priority is holding the people who were abusers accountable, and reparations for those survivors both still at and who left the company because of this.
Second priority is a restructuring plan and long term plan of action, as well as full transparency as to internal census numbers (multiple devs have stated there are a negligible amount of POC at Blizzard, Questifer mentioned she can only recall 7 over her entire tenure in her team of hundreds) and altered internal processes so we can all bear witness to change being made.
Then when the dust has settled for the team to be honest with what parts of the game are products of that culture, including what elements of the lore were shaped with that explicit internal intent.
My main worry is that, corporations being what they are, nobody will be held accountable or they’ll just pick a singular sacrificial lamb (again).
If the survivors employed do a mass exodus out of Blizzard in the wake of what may come, then the responsible and just thing would be for the players to follow suit.
Ideally we should follow the lead of the survivors.
I of course agree with what you’re saying - but for those who will be remaining - I do want to provide an alternative viewpoint.
I still have reservations about Warcraft being stewarded by present management - and we cannot escape at this point that World of Warcraft was the product of a sexist culture - but Taliesin does have a point worth considering here. Video games are never just the work of the author - we contribute to them. We craft our own stories in them in ways that we probably don’t recognize as stories. If you want an example of what I mean, go look up “The Mighty Jingles” on Youtube and watch any one of the replays he features - each one itself is a story, and that is the impact of community that goes far beyond what the alleged “creator” does.
Video games are the only medium that’s like this, where the author never has complete creative control.
It doesn’t remove my decision to distance myself further from the franchise, but it may be helpful for you.
I canceled my auto renewal but since I’ve always been on 6 month sub since I started (after my free trial after my birthday), Blizzard has until November to do something for me.
Okay let’s not go too far, nothing about the reports said Blizzard was racist, and characters like Jaina and Sylvanas were just as emotionally unstable under Golden’s portrayal as anyone else. While I’ll agree that the beastial races all happening to be the ones given non-white cultures, while the more civilized humans and elves are derived from European culture is pretty insensitive, it’s unfortunately omnipresent in fantasy derived from Tolkien and D&D and I chalk that more up to WoW just aping those than any true malicious intent from the writers.
Incorrect. The lawsuit singles out unique abuses for women of color, bringing up two Black women, and many of the tweets outline women of color had it worse, there was rampant racism normalized at Blizzard, and in general Blizzard avoided hiring people of color (one person noted only 7 people of color in a team of hundreds over many years), and the company rejected a national organization and shareholder’s recommendation to establish a Rooney Rule standard for all positions at the company (the articles I linked above).
This isn’t what is being criticized, it’s the fact that instead of writing a balanced story with these elements (a good story, if you will), the Horde has been villain batted beyond redemption narratively. The nonwhite cultural bestial races have been thoroughly demonized in the story.
How on EARTH did you look at all this and come to the impression that any of this was about the quality of the content, and not about the horrific revelations from this week?
It’s a meme. If you suggest that the game has become so unpalateable that you’ll unsubscribe, Blizzard’s defenders will come out of the woodwork to mock you for it.
Night Elves lost less than those cultures tho? Why is everyone pretending that Teldrassil, with its army at sea, is worth more than Tirisfall, Sylvanas, Nathanos, Saurfang, the Horde army being turned into undead slaves? Than the Horde being irrevocably evil? Sylvanas gets a free redemption slip because her soul was missing, but the Horde doesn’t.
Correct me if I’m wrong, I heard an employee killed herself over the what she faced. If that’s true, there should also be some compensation for her next of kin.
Plus I fear they’re going to go the scapegoat/sacrificial lamb route (especially based on what I saw in a similar thread on the subject).
By the way, most Blood Elves have Caucasian skin-tones and are more refined than most Alliance groups, plus the Forsaken - for the most part - are literally undead white humans; both are part of the Horde. Finally, you can get dark-skinned humans and pale-skinned Orcs (eg; check out Kargath and the Shattered Hand clan). How does that all fit in with the "demonization of “nonwhite cultural bestial races”?
It gets tiring to see from the same faces every other week, or when ever the story doesn’t give them their every wish. It is hard to take seriously from some people. Especially when they continuously said they were quitting for a long time before any of this was released.
I get it - Blizzard suggests making a post on the Forums about your reasons for quitting. But I dont think they meant to post that you are quitting every other week for 2 years while you never actually quit.
Someone announced that they were leaving? Everyone seems to be moaning about how bad it is, how bad it will be, or how bad it was. Of those who left, only Elesana announced her retirement, no?
Sylvanas being an abuse victim who killed herself, and came back and decided to be the most conniving evil person possible does look to be at least horrifically tone-deaf at the very minimum with the recent allegations (that I would presume nearly everyone knew about).
I wouldnt care about blizzard being terrible people, the industry was already crawling with these fiends.
Now had their game (WoW) actually been fun to play instead of just logging in every 3 days or so for whatever reason to just afk around or do a weekly raid. if that were the case I wouldnt whine as much as i do.
I am homever very surprised most people on the forums didnt assume this about blizzard.
Knowing how america is and how backwards it is in culture I thought this would be a given.
