Larian Studios calls out Blizzard

Community General Discussion
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You’re here talking with me on this, so you clearly do care.

If i tell you right now “I don’t care” at any point, you wouldn’t believe it for a single minute. Because you know, you can’t just say it, you got to actually mean it. Actions speak louder then words.

And it’s totally fine to care. Nobody is gonna make fun of you for caring. :man_shrugging:

Maybe PvP Pauls would with their obsession of Carebears, but… their PvP Pauls, forgettaboutit.

If you don’t care, why you think they shouldn’t buy it then?

It’s like if i ask my roommate “What soda do you want?”
And they go “I don’t care”
And i bring them back root beer and they flip out and go. “WHAT THE HECK?! I DIDN’T ASK FOR THAT!!”

Why is this so hard for you to grasp that i’m telling you that… “Your entire argument is about profits, and how bad that is, so naturally, you wouldn’t be against the idea of piracy”?..

What is actually confusing about that? Do you not actually believe in your own words here?

What is literally bad with me taking your words here and running with it? I mean, you’re implying it’s bad for publishers/devs to make money off of MTX games, yes?

Lack of Microtransactions doesn’t equate to positive quality.

…That’s honestly setting the bar a bit low but… ooooooooo… kay.

Not the people who pirated it.
Not the people who bought the game used, and on consoles.
Not the people who got it off of Epic games for free.

GOG is DRM free, and Epic Games give free AAA games like almost routinely.

Well, yes but also no. I’m kind of alluding to the fact that people really gave the devs crap over making this game because they believe JK Rowling was going to profit off of this which… she profits way more off then this game. To a point where one of the head devs left the project before it was completed.

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I think these problems come from business interests at the game studio, not the developers.
We need to stop using “devs” as a blanket term for the entire studio because the developers are catching a lot of hate from people for things that aren’t their decisions to make.

But yes, we obviously want less crap in our games.

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226

I mean, you ARE trying to put words into my mouth.
I would rather people do NOT do that.

Because I think it is bad for the industry to support those games.

And my response is.
I don’t care if you pirate it.
I just won’t tell you to pirate it.

But somehow I care about not caring and I care not for caring. I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.

No, I don’t think you should buy games with microtransactions in them.
No, I won’t care if you buy it despite my arguments.
No, I also won’t care if you pirate it.
No, I also will not care if you do it anyway.

I care about the hellhole that the game industry turns into.
But I do not care enough to try and control what YOU do despite of it.
And I won’t eat cereal while thinking about you buying a game I think you should not buy.
Aka… I don’t care.

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227

It’s not something with Shadowlands specifically. The game itself has wildly changed over the 18 years it came out. There’s been “generations” of WoW players who have all been enchanted, then alienated for a newer audience over time with a few still around. Wrath was probably the first instance of it where the game hit a plateau because you were getting so many new players but you were losing so many veterans from Vanilla and TBC who felt the game was no longer for them.

These Wrathbabies later began getting alienated in favor of the MoP babies, who then got shafted for the Legionbabies who are the current new crop of players. Shadowlands had a player boom that Blizzard did report in their first quarter of SL, but that fizzled out fast.

As for why the reasons are many, from as significant as the game just doesn’t feel like the game we adored playing when we started, to as simple as they just don’t feel their time ever amounted to anything that justified continued play.

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You said/implied to me it’s bad to buy games with MTX in then. Was that wrong?

If not, what’s wrong with me saying “Then you don’t have a problem with pirating games” then? I mean, am i not suppose to run with this? Am i suppose to just blindly agree without any question? What you want me to do here?

Okay. So now you’ve established that it’s bad to buy games with MTX then, then there should be absolutely no or little problem with getting the games free or not buying the publishers/devs then. Right?

…Then what’s the problem with me saying “there isn’t a problem with you, pirating” then???

If you don’t care, what’s the problem?

Simply commenting at all, shows you care.

Actions. Speak. Louder. Then. Words.

And as i’ve said, if i’ve told you “I don’t care”, you wouldn’t believe it either.

Though now i wonder, would you do believe it if i do said “I don’t care” at this point?

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I think it is bad, yes.

I don’t care if you do.

Nothing? I just think it is bad to buy games with microtransactions in them.

I like discussions.

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What sort of leap do you have to execute to get from ‘Microtransactions are bad for the video game industry’ to 'therefore it is appropriate to condone/encourage theft"?

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Okay. So you think it’s bad to buy games with MTX then.

Okay, so we established that you don’t have a problem with this. Alright.

And discussing is caring.

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And that is not the same as saying it is acceptable to steal those games.

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233

Piracy does not equal morality like your implying here.

But if you want to talk about morality, this argument Ena is presenting also revolves around morality of some sort. A sort of “i think it’s bad (morally) to justify this practice by supporting them directly, i,e Buying their game that isn’t from a used market”.

And used market, morally, is worse then pirating, because somebody else is getting the money.

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Indeed!

With pirating? I don’t care if you do. I won’t tell you to do it though.

Just not about what an individual decides to do.

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No, I think it is bad for the industry itself, it is bad for the products, and it is bad for the customers.
Therefor, I think it is bad to buy games with microtransactions in them, especially single player titles.

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…That’s the morality part.

Granted, if you wish to swap that word with something else, sure, but it serves the same function anyways as you’re still saying it’s bad to do it.

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There is no morality here.
I do not think you are a bad person for doing it.

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What is there to do in multiplayer online games besides time wasting activities? Raiding, Mythic+, World Events, PVP are all “time wasting activities.” Can’t even compare online games to titles like Baldur’s Gate. Single player (even with limited cooperative play) usually have to have more story to get people through 100+ hours of gameplay.

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  1. Do you think MTX are bad practices?
  2. Do you think Publishers/Devs shouldn’t be paid for the MTX?
  3. Do you think it should have an effect on the game industry?
  4. Do you think players should buy into it?

Any of these questions here, play into morality to some extent, because it assumes the blame of both the publishers/players. This isn’t just a simple “Oh greedy publishers gonna greed”… And even that relates to morality somehow.

Let me put it to you simply, if somebody thinks it’s bad to support something though buying, they naturally will think the buyer, is not making good decisions. I.E, you think their doing the wrong decision. This is morality at play here.

Morality is simply principles of what’s right and wrong or good and bad behaviors.

The Hogwarts Legacy example is such one example, as it relates to trans people, indirectly though J.K Rowling’s indirect (or lack there of since the video games before HL didn’t make any money) involvement of Hogwarts Legacy.

As for the case of Piracy vs Buying… it’s complicated. Long story short, piracy a lot of the times, come into play because of anti-consumer practices (that isn’t MTX btw), high conversation rates in your country, or a lot of the times, old/delisted games.

Okay, so now we have established that then.

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No… it simply is not beneficial to the customer. Aka, it is a bad business transaction for the customer to buy a game with microtransactions in it.

A bad business deal does not have to do with any morality at all. Bad or good does not have to be summed up by a right or wrong behaviour.

You can certainly talk about behaviours that lead to someone making the decisions that they do in terms of business, like you can certainly argue that microtransactions is manipulation and manipulation is bad. But really, I don’t care about that, as far as I am concerned, that is just business.

As a customer, you just get the shorter end of the stick if you take that deal.

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I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere if you don’t understand or just keep ignoring what i’m saying or… honestly what you’re saying… so… Agree to disagree until then.

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Who is the brain behind WoW? It is a game designed by committee. Probably everyone on the team has something valuable to contribute, but since it doesn’t have a single direction it suffers from design-by-committee

EDIT: this isn’t an awful thing btw, just nothing like Sid Meier or Will Right being in charge of a game from top to bottom

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And yet Legion is regarded as a phenomenal expansion after WoD. And WoD was far worse than Shadowlands.