Kotick: The goal that I had [...] was to take all the fun out of making video games

Community General Discussion
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Well I have two trains of thought from reading it along with the article from the original post.

One: sure there is room for concern. I’d be more worried if they were cutting development jobs though, but I get it. They’re doing shady business stuff that doesn’t really fit the pure, wholesome reputation that blizz created. It is alarming to allegedly see former employees make a connection between Activision and things happening at blizz. I don’t want to see them bury wow and I will be keeping my eyes open so I can stay as informed as possible when making my decisions as a customer.

Other side: I tend to keep a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to any media source, including streamers. One example is that they mentioned the connection with Activision a couple of times and brought up a quote from a former employee that says that many people are worried about the Activision influence, but I’m not so sure I can take that at face value. Which people exactly? There’s just so much we don’t know for sure.

Apparently finance people are taking a huge interest in development. Alright, but which games? Which employees at blizz are we talking to?

I think a huge indicator will be the next expansion since Mike just recently announced leaving and all of this seems to be recent. The next expansion will be a huge indicator if the follow the usual good bad good release pattern. If they’re smart, blizz won’t let finance drive their ambition, which is their foundation.

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Yeah, there certainly is cause for skepticism. Largely because such sources have a legitimate fear of backlash and how it can affect both their current employment (for obvious reasons) along with future employment (there’s always some risk to the company’s overall “reputation” in hiring an employee who isn’t afraid to cause a stir over stuff they don’t think is right).

So we get a lot of anonymous sources as information… and you never get anything concrete and the hard facts until things are already crashing down.

While it’s technically an opinion, the phrase “the writing is on the wall” is ringing true… and barring some kind of major revolt (either from a significant portion of the playerbase or ALL of Blizz’ employees at once… not that either will happen), things are going to keep going downhill.

This is fair reasoning.

… my worry is that if we wait that long, it will already be too late.

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Too late for what? If it’s a bad expansion and crosses the threshold of what I can stand then I won’t play. If players start leaving left and right either they will correct it or they will close up shop on WoW. I definitely don’t want it to get to that point, or have to wait a whole expansion to come back, but there’s not much we can do. It will be very sad.

Then again, we don’t know if there will even be another expansion yet.

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This statement has been repeated for years, I don’t buy it. We should take into consideration that this game has been immensely popular for a significant period of time, other MMO’s stood no real chance at competing with World of Warcraft long term, hence the “dying genre”.

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Spoilers: all CEOs are like this and the only solution is to forcibly take their money away.

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Depending on your perspective, one can argue we’ve reached that point with BfA… and at this point, we can see they’re trying to correct it.

But when this is coupled with some very questionable business decisions occurring in the background, I can see plenty of reason to lose faith in Blizzard as a whole… and to be skeptical of any potential releases they have planned for the future.

No, only the sociopathic ones.
… sadly, there is a strong correlation of these days between sociopaths and CEOs.

Why the hell they’ve been allowed to rise to the top of the heap is one of the greater failings of society as a whole… and a significant chunk of human history for that matter.

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This statement reminds me of the Roman’s who were massive but eventually fell to ruin.

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They did when it was the original blizzard team.

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Kotick is a very successful businessman whether you like it or not and he will continue to be a successful businessman whether you like it or not. You people really need to stop blaming Activision for the failures of the new Blizzard. Activision isn’t developing this failure of an expansion, Ion and co. are developing it.

It’s no secret that the old Blizzard is gone and it won’t be coming back. These new Blizzard developers may have “passion” for the game but their passion isn’t in-line with the old Blizzard, the game has changed and will continue to change to the ways that this new group of indie quality Blizzard deems fit.

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All that’s missing is a toga and an olive leaf in my hair. :grin:

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Crunch membership is 10 dollars maybe you can chill out there

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As my Martial Arts Instructor said to me (following a fight in the dojo - I won, btw):

“Be both Righteous and Careful - the past tends to come knocking when you can least afford it”

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True they did…and it was also a smaller company.

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One could argue he succeded

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When I think of scummy people my first market to protect isn’t video games.

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This thread didn’t need to be necro’d, honestly. There’s enough negativity around here as it is.

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well gee whos fault is that I wonder? if WoW hadn’t been turned into a game aimed at appeasing the shareholders perhaps the players wouldn’t be so negative

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