Wot in an Oppressed Nation

The quarterly earnings call is in. They’re down 3 million Monthly Active Users and are dedicated to “investing in their biggest internal franchises.”

Considering the huge cost-cutting measures, we can probably assume this is misleading.

This statement is also curious:

  • Activision Blizzard continues to enhance their leadership position in esports.

I’m not sure this makes a lot of sense. HotS got unceremoniously axed from eSports, no one has ever cared about WoW or Starcraft eSports, and LoL and Fortnite continue to eat their lunch with their own events, if coverage is any indication.

All they really have left is Overwatch, whose viewership is apparently growing and that’s all well and good, but it also feels like the playerbase outside of eSports is dwindling. Overwatch is just too frustrating to keep up with for many players.

I understand we’re dealing with incomplete information, but I can’t help but think that Blizzard might be not revealing all that’s going on.

So much this.

Not having some stupid faction war around being used to beat me over the head with is so nice. I can play with friends -regardless of their choice of race-.

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Activision Blizzard continues to enhance their leadership position in esports.

What position lol

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Their position? In that they hold esports?

That’s like me saying I’m proud of my position as a football player, because I can technically throw a football.

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That raised an eyebrow for me as well. When was the last time anyone in esports really cared about Blizzard games?

This is, amazing, so

I really started to miss the game, because I have nothing in the way of sanity. And despite all of this relevant discussion I thought “what the heck, it’s been two months, that’s a good break and I’ll be good to go”

Pay my iron price, log in

Rediscover that everything I wanted is gated behind long, long rep grinds I am extremely behind on

I feel like I’ve just been roughly slapped in the cheeks and mouth with a sopping, moldy, excrement-laden dishrag. Like if someone just swung it from behind and it wrapped like

around my face such that I cannot even cry out to object to my fate

and it’s all warm and drippy

That’s how this feels and that $15 is gone. $15 and five minutes to remember why I walked out.

Overwatch League is real successful.

It being a lot closer to traditional sports in terms of length and team design really lends to its popularity. It lets story-lines develop and it lets people grow attached to teams and players because of the length.

Just think of the Shanghai Dragons last year. One of the most popular esports teams despite the fact hey ended up losing every match they played. The perpetual underdog, people wanted to see them win despite all their problems going on.

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How dare you.

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This is vague enough that it could be referring to a bunch of people watching Method stream raiding.

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The Overwatch esports coordination team has a lot of baggage attached to it. You google Overwatch development team and the first results are stories about racism and sexual assault.

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Taldor brought this to my attention, thought it was worth sharing.

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Don’t you guys have privacy?!?!?

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Oh hey look, reason number 435 I’m glad I unsubbed

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Inb4 one of them makes a joke along the lines of “So you DO all have phones!” thinking it’s funny, and literally gets a shoe thrown at him.

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A storm of shoes, preferably.

And I will weep not a single tear.

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They pick the weirdest people to speak at those things. They all have the social awareness Sloth from the Goonies, and the charm of Harvey Weinstien.

Hey now, those two don’t deserve to get compared to these hacks.

Well maybe not Sloth. He seemed nice enough.

That’s a pretty gross thing to say tbh.

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(Taldor, google Harvey Weinstein :grimacing:)