Agreed, it isn't right to claim blizzard has some ability to alter vote or view counts when no one else on the website has ever demonstrated the ability to do so, including YouTube itself on their official channels that get filled with hate constantly.
To do so, without any proof whatsoever of such a tall claim, is really unprofessional and borderline clickbait if you ask me.
This post does not help.
The core problem with your statement is that there
is proof of this, and precedent. They did this during CRZ's roll out also. Ask anyone else who watched it go down.
You'd have CRZ Feedback Threads with nearly 1300+ Up-votes, yet overnight or often in minutes the highly rated posts magically turned into low rated posts, assuming they were not deleted outright. This was happening on these very forums. Anyone intelligent knows the why.
So people really should not act like this is some new low or anything like that, or that there is no proof of it being done. There's plenty of it. It's actually a pretty standard business practice as well, since as some said there is a very real possibility of burner accounts and faked up-votes and down-votes.
Give up. Your posts are embarrassing.
You are not helping either.
To be sure, Blizzard engaged in such tactics even back then. But something that isn't as often spoken of,
is that so too did it's players and it's corporate rivals. My father had a saying.
"There's 3 sides to every story. Your side, their side, and the truth."If you think that is not the case, you are naive. The meaning behind the saying is this. The 'real' truth when spoken is
always inconvenient, and that is because neither side gets to play the morally superior / morally righteous card. Spare me the mock indignation. Both sides are in the wrong and both are in the right. But no one is ever right on every. single. count. That's because we have a little condition called being human.
The true problem is that when people refuse to accept that very fundamental fact, it can become a crushing stigma that can never be fully forgiven or forgotten and before long you have people settling into various camps and refusing to see any view except their own.
"You disagree with me! Therefore I will punish you!" It's pathetic, and not unlike the Faction War itself, or politics in this day and age.
Since I hate such extremes, I'll stick to Treebeard's thinking.
"I'm not altogether on anyone's side, because no one is altogether on my side.If you want to know what the real tragedy in all of this is, it's not the announcement of Diablo Immortal, nor even the decision to make it a mobile game
(which I disagree with). Rather there are two real tragedies here.
1.) Customer confidence in this studio is at an all time low.
2.) Studio fatigue with their playerbase is at an all-time high.
Both together form a perfect storm and vicious cycle from which no one wins.
THAT is what breaks my heart.
Unlike everyone else here who's screaming and ranting, I accept it. If I was working with Blizzard and having to deal with the players in the game, I expect I'd be mad as a hatter by now.
I accepted it way back when they pushed CRZ hard, and ignored for years all of the problems it made for the RP Servers. The fact that they later changed things was a good move. But it doesn't erase what I saw play out on the forums.
That was the point that the balance got upset and since then it's been a slow tilt to one extreme or the other, and a polarization of "us vs. them", which frankly speaking is idiotic regardless of what side your on. But can I do a thing to correct the course? Nope. So I stick to my own projects.
The reasons I play these days is for my friends, the things we've achieved, and the role-play I get. On the day the servers close, it will be bittersweet. Sad that it ended, but eager to turn the page.
I remember Eyonix, Tseric, Caydiem, Batta, Drysic, Kalgann, Tigole, and countless others. I remember well all the ups and downs over the past 14 years. Some were fond memories. Others? Well others were less so. But they were memories at the very least, so that has to count for something, right?
Instead the question for me becomes this. "
Where do I go from here?" Happily enough, I have my answer already. I'll return to what I was doing before I played WoW. Work on my own stories, and RPG series, which is actually coming along very very nicely.
If anyone wants to do something positive in the face of what is happening, my advice is that you focus on what you can actually control, and that is YOU. Find your own reasons outside of WoW and nurture them. Love the game for what it is, mourn for what it was if you must, but always remember that it is very likely that you will outlive it.
To that end, I will merely recite the toast of the USS Voyager from Star Trek.
"To the journey."