I love that this thread is still around. I feel like it’s a piece of server history, now. Thanks for that, Zen.
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I like that it’s basically become the unofficial “this is where we chat about whatever” thread.
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I like it.
It can’t be off topic if it never had a topic to begin with!
It did have a topic though.At first.
Shhhhh, if we don’t mention it maybe the thread’ll stay around.
YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, YOU AREN’T MY MOM
entence omplete
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We’re all with better games now
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I feel like they can control the narrative at Blizzcon. At Gamescom, they’re more likely to face criticism they can’t control.
That’s my conspiratorial take, though. In reality, they probably just don’t want to deal with it.
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I asked this in another thread and that thread got deleted so I’ll try again–how is Alliance these days in the general sense? I never played there much on WrA.
Asking how the Alliance are is a little like asking how the living room is in a house that is currently on fire.
It could very well be a perfectly nice living room, but as the house is currently ablaze, one’s enjoyment of it is likely to be limited.
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Ah well. I appreciate the honesty, if nothing else.
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Not being at Gamescom is huge, that’s basically the only other place they’ve ever shown off big news outside of Blizzcon.
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Even if it’s not the main reason, what Enekie said was definitely a factor. They’re in an environment they don’t control at GamesCom.
Don’t forget that at BlizzCon they tried to cover up an assault one year by giving the victims a bunch of free stuff. They wouldn’t be able to be that shady at a third party con.
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That, or it’s an extension of the cost cutting mentality over the last year. Which I’m betting is far more likely.
If I’m looking to trim dollars, a convention wherein I am a guest that is across the ocean becomes secondary to a convention in which I am the alpha and omega on home turf. Especially if they’re barely more than two months apart.
This is also a good point. It does fit into the cost-cutting mentality. But if that is true, that’s somehow even more dire than the idea that they’re just grumpy they’d be called out at Gamescom.
Gamescom is huge. It’s an international games exhibition with a greater scale and impact than E3. It’s tremendous for keeping foreign interest and for generating new hype.
Cutting that cost would be the equivalent of chopping off a limb so that you need less food: possibly feasible, but still kind of ridiculous.
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That especially is weird considering their “don’t you guys have phones?” Business plan relies on an international market.
So again, just wanting to keep their heads down seems more likely than that.
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I mean, I guess I could see it as cost cutting if I didn’t know cons are hugely profitable for game companies that participate or if I thought the cost cutting initiative was new to Blizzard. But…they’ve been following this business plan for many many years now. Even the wave of layoffs that happened to inspire this thread weren’t a new practice implemented by Blizzard as of these firings. They’ve been doing lay off cycles like this for years. It just happened they announced them amid the proclamation of a record sales year that was insulting enough for people to react this time.
Everything Blizzard have done so far has been pretty standard for a company seeking to push its lowest level employees as hard as possible for maximum profits that go directly into the pockets of higher management. The only thing they’ve done here that isn’t standard is pull out of GamesCom. That’s pretty suspicious. I couldn’t begin to speculate motive here, but I doubt it was a cost efficient decision.
What makes it even more hilariously inept is that if ever there was a place where it would have made sense to announce Diablo Immortal, Gamescom would have been it.
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It just goes along with all the other ways they can no longer read their audience.
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