Well maybe. We’ve seen this before, people make all sorts of claims about how many people are actually playing but there is no solid evidence. You would expect player numbers to be down considering it’s an old game but even if that’s true it’s only speculation as to what other reasons may be coming into play.
Yea, their team doesn’t even know how people hold an axe or other 2h weapon. Why the hell are we holding them in the middle of the shaft. Even the art team has suffered from a drop in quality and passion.
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There are data points like raid participation we can look to. Ian never really understood why WoW became popular and has taken the game in the direction he personally enjoys. Its not a surprise raiding has become a far cry of what it started out as, when the game is run by the guy who created elitistjerks.com.
There really should only be one raid difficulty, maybe 2. (normal and mythic). The damage 4 tiers has done to itemization, socialization, and the overall game is huge. And the difficulty is just too much. The difficulty of raiding should be from managing teams, loot, and 39 other boomers, not from insane mechanics and rotations.
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That may well be. Of course raiding and dungeons are only one part of the game. There’s the story line, gathering items, achievements, PvP, etc.
Look, you can push your religious views all you want, but you are wrong. No society has ever had their armies be made up of women enough for war to not be considered a male domain. That is also why it was common for conquered nations to have their male children killed and young women spared.
It is also the reason why male children are drawn to playing with toy weapons, fighting, and moving objects when they are little. It is ingrained into humanitys DNA. You can point to exceptions. Anyone with kids and eyes has seen this fact.
The fact that you seemingly despise western civilization makes your world view pretty clear to me. Its also despicable and dishonorable as a former service member. Easy to discount other cultures beliefs, and only focus on the “negatives” of ours.
Your religious views are not popular, and they don’t lead themselves to creativity or good story telling. And the reason for that is because good stories are truthful to human nature and struggle. Blizzard shoehorned in female captains to both starting zones to fulfill a checkbox, without giving a rats @ss about writing good female characters.
This thread is about the tone of warcraft. Go compare the starting experience of Orcs and Humans in WoW classic vs the new starting zones the current team created and it should be obvious to you. The AI voiceover addon really makes it clear.
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The problem is not with owners alone. Owners want $$ presumably.
The owners may be squandering chances to make $$$ every year by trusting the current people under them sure. But unless they are tanking their corp on purpose it’s not all on them.
The major problem is the lack of creatives and people with talent, confidence and vision willing to say NO.
The problem may be that there are 1000s more people every year with degrees from game dev programs because “I like games and wouldn’t it be cool if I was a game dev” but have 0 imagination or talent and the industry is now mostly CRUNCH TIME assembly lines for gaming products because that’s all these people can do.
Like the last 5 Xpacks for example.
Gaming doesn’t need assembly line workers right now it needs CREATIVE PEOPLE WITH TALENT AND BALLS.
And yes those people have 100% been leaving Cali for awhile now.
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Yea, I can’t imagine what its like to be someone against this weirdo rising tide in the dev circle. That’s why moving the studio is a good idea. Because in CA you are surrounded by people who will make it their crusade to ruin you for wrongthink and if you stand against their religion. When you are surrounded by this culture when you go home, when you socialize, when you are at work, etc. It affects everything. A lot of these types will already be looking at you suspiciously just because of your race and gender.
A lot of people with balls have left blizzard and we can see the result today. No innovation, no new ideas, just people following orders and being browbeaten into going along. The game might die a slow cancerous death but atleast the ESG score is decent! Take a look at the 10.2 dev interview. If that is the senior narrative designer making decisions this game is truly done for.
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That right there identifies you as a contrarian. NO WHERE in any of my posts did the subject of religion come up … When you have to invent things to support an unsupportable position, the conversation comes to a screeching halt. Thanks for revealing your true colors.
Have a nice day.
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Just because this kind of world view is not called a religion yet, does not make it not so. It is the main reason why any disagreements or counter opinions are dealt with in such a hateful manner in our country. Its why saying war is a male domain, something so blatantly obvious, made you react the way you did.
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Kid, no.
When you are the owner of a company and aren’t involved at all in the direction of the game beyond mandating that it make more and more money without any concern for the talent or staff that you hire then it is absolutely a case of the fish rotting from the head down.
We see this time and again with Blizzard where the game’s essence is good but it’s marred by decisions that you can feel rolling down from the top.
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Many devs who have left blizzard have said activision is a very negative influence on the company and have eroded their standards and practices.
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Like, there is a reason why I keep insisting that the problems with WoW aren’t new, they’re not things that come from the woke or shadowlands bizzare plot or BFA’s glut of systems; It goes back to when the merger went through and Blizzards absolute dedication to quality above all else began to erode and disintegrate in favor of maximizing profits.
And that’s why I said 5 days ago:
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The aesthetics still feel WoW like for me. But the questing is way too melodramatic and verbose. I dread catching up on the new questlines.
And the new content is always just a new skin of the same basic stuff. Haven’t tried the dream things but they look like they are the same as the time rifts and everything before it his expansion since pre-patch.
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He occasionally visits the Trading Post looking for a weapon;
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We got our cyborgs…
Mechagnomes are awesome and only weirdos looking for clout really care about the mog issues.
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This dude is really mad about women fighting in a fantasy universe where a dragon with 100x your mass smacking you only does 5% of your hp in damage.
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That’s not the issue. Vanilla wow and warcraft had plenty of female characters who were well written. Even the random female guards felt fine.
The issue is that the tone has changed in such a hamfisted and poorly done way it just reeks of political activism and resentment towards the player base by the new team. Like they felt the need to “correct” warcraft and have no interest in the world they inherited, other than to reshape it to fit their own worldview. They don’t even care that it is bringing down the company either.
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Right, women existing is destroying the game and company. Right.
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I admit I really really like DF. I’m finally enjoying professions again this expansion, the raids are fun, I love setting up the talents for my alt army, and I live gearing them through war mode pvp and LFR.
But there is something missing from the game that made me fall in love with WoW. The last expansion that had it in my view was indeed BfA. Some will say it was lost before, but I still saw it when Sylvanas burned Teldrassil (even if it was a horrific genocide), and when Anduin manned up and went toe to toe with the Horde in Lordaeron, when Baine was the only one with the sack to defy Sylvanas, and with just about ever bad-a Jaina moment, and I especially saw it when Saurfang challenged Sylvanas to Mak’gora knowing he’d die, but he still did it to save his Horde.
I guess it’s like an old enemy said: “Times change…”
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Corporate Bloat isnt isolated in California. As more companies merge, you end up getting boards of directors who oversee many departments and products. They make decisions based on a Profit and Loss Statement and the recommendations from accounting. Game developers are given directives, guidelines and numbers to hit, and if they dont hit them, they are replaced.
This is corporate culture. And this is short term gains business. Strategies and directives in order to maximize shareholder profit in short term quarterly gains. Nothing exclusively CA about it.
One thing I will agree with, is that moving out of CA would be much better for growth. The cost of living in other cities, would be much more attractive to developers and designers, considering Blizzard plays below market rate.
And you are just making up headcannon that makes no sense. The developers at Blizzard are there because they want to be. Blizzard is notorious for paying upwards of 20%-30% less for comparable positions. If they had a problem with the culture or workplace they would find another job.
Are you referring to a workplace where there are levels of leadership? Where there are departmental bosses, who report to their bosses, and so on, until they reach the board and the boss?
Sorry friend. You are ridiculous.
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