Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
Everything about the expansion sounded like a terrible idea to me.
But then, I've thought like half the design ideas they had for each WoW expansion have been bad since Pandas.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
Everything about the expansion sounded like a terrible idea to me.
But then, I've thought like half the design ideas they had for each WoW expansion have been bad since Pandas.
Well for me I've never really like the "conflict" part of WoW anyways. Like I know the rts games were all horde vs alliance but WoW has always back burnered it AND this expansion is all "it matters" and then you end up doing so very little against the other faction at the start I was like "it does? really? REALLY?" Hell there is a new mount coming for having done both sides of the conflict as a player thereby saying "nah lol play both sides."
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
the only people left playing WoW are the people who love this and eat this shit up though
they found their niche market and they're milking it
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
I'm honestly a bit baffled that this kind of design is still a thing in MMOs. Maybe I'm spoiled by primarily playing Final Fantasy XIV, where your character can be any (or all) of the jobs in the game and switching between them is trivial, but I don't really see the appeal of needing to play multiple alts to experience the totality of a game. Like, right now, I'm playing WoW on the side with a friend. We both decided to start at character level 1, and both chose Worgen because we hadn't played through their starting story. I decided on rogue, but there are times where I'd like to switch to paladin, or mage, or, simply, something else. Having to roll up a completely new person, one who has no access to the resources I've already built up on my rogue, is asinine.
Then again, I've been disappointed in WoW's constant push towards base homogeneity while stubbornly clinging to odd design decisions since vanilla, starting with hunter pet normalization. I'm currently only playing via time card because it's one of the few ways I can actually talk with my friend.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
I'm honestly a bit baffled that this kind of design is still a thing in MMOs. Maybe I'm spoiled by primarily playing Final Fantasy XIV, where your character can be any (or all) of the jobs in the game and switching between them is trivial, but I don't really see the appeal of needing to play multiple alts to experience the totality of a game. Like, right now, I'm playing WoW on the side with a friend. We both decided to start at character level 1, and both chose Worgen because we hadn't played through their starting story. I decided on rogue, but there are times where I'd like to switch to paladin, or mage, or, simply, something else. Having to roll up a completely new person, one who has no access to the resources I've already built up on my rogue, is asinine.
Then again, I've been disappointed in WoW's constant push towards base homogeneity while stubbornly clinging to odd design decisions since vanilla, starting with hunter pet normalization. I'm currently only playing via time card because it's one of the few ways I can actually talk with my friend.
It's all about drip feeding content. You just spent 200 hours leveling this character? Why would Blizzard want you to switch from Hunter to Rogue without you spending another 200+ hours? The userbase likes it because it's familiar and safe.
My biggest issue with modern WoW is feature abandonment.
I do not like how we put all this effort into building up Halfhill Farm, making friends with the locals, helping out around the farm, and then just ditching it. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep Halfhill relevant in future expansions.
I do not like how we put all this effort (and gold) into building up the Garrison in WoD, plus doing it a second time with the shipyard, recruiting all these dudes into our private army, and making this awesome base, and then abandoning it when the next expansion rolled around. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep the Garrison relevant in future expansions. The Garrison should have served as permanent player housing, and we should still be adding on to it to this day.
I do not like how we put all this effort into the class order halls, ascended to the highest rank in our respective classes, and in some cases became the leader of those order halls, and then just abandoned them. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep the class halls relevant in future expansions. They could do this by even a slow trickle of class quests. It doesn't need to be as robust as a complete expansion campaign or anything, but just a quest here or there to get you to return home, say hi to your friends in your order hall, make sure they know that their fearless leader is still alive and well. That sort of thing.
Basically, the two year cycle of use it and abandon it is a frustrating way of building a game, because that basically just sets this perpetual expectation that nothing you do matters for more than 2 years.
No, I'm not talking about dungeons and stuff. It's fine for old dungeons to become irrelevant. Or they could even resolve that by making timewalking a permanent thing so that old content is always relevant in the dungeon finder. That would be an easy fix too.
Jason Schreier covers some of the fallout of yesterday. Also in part, Activision is kinda fed up with Blizzard's glacial game development cycle with regards to new titles and after this year we can likely expect Blizzard to be pushed towards an Activision-style annualized release schedule - most likely at the cost of the "Blizzard polish" Blizzard has been well known for in the past.
I feel like the last WoW expansion had much less "Blizzard polish" then we are use to
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
I'm honestly a bit baffled that this kind of design is still a thing in MMOs. Maybe I'm spoiled by primarily playing Final Fantasy XIV, where your character can be any (or all) of the jobs in the game and switching between them is trivial, but I don't really see the appeal of needing to play multiple alts to experience the totality of a game. Like, right now, I'm playing WoW on the side with a friend. We both decided to start at character level 1, and both chose Worgen because we hadn't played through their starting story. I decided on rogue, but there are times where I'd like to switch to paladin, or mage, or, simply, something else. Having to roll up a completely new person, one who has no access to the resources I've already built up on my rogue, is asinine.
Then again, I've been disappointed in WoW's constant push towards base homogeneity while stubbornly clinging to odd design decisions since vanilla, starting with hunter pet normalization. I'm currently only playing via time card because it's one of the few ways I can actually talk with my friend.
It's all about drip feeding content. You just spent 200 hours leveling this character? Why would Blizzard want you to switch from Hunter to Rogue without you spending another 200+ hours? The userbase likes it because it's familiar and safe.
the way alts work in WoW has changed substantially in the last 2 or 3 expansions though
in the days of old, the burden of creating an alt was spending 20-40 hours grinding levels, and then you coast him through raids with your guild that is farming content while waiting for the next release. that was sort of your reward for putting up with the grind
this has always been a very popular Thing To Do in WoW
but now that item level and power creep is so tightly controlled, Blizzard has figured out how to structure the game so that it's impossible to have an alt character go Super Saiyan as soon as they reach level cap, so in addition to the grind (which you can pay $60 goddamn dollars to skip) you must also endure more or less the same end game progression curve your main went through
I'll grant them that it's much less severe in BFA (in Legion it was brutal since the curve was tied to your weapon), but there are also a lot of other things going on concerning this, like gating flying mounts behind grinds, etc
Yeah boycotts won't teach publishers anything, they will always fall back to what bumps their stock price this quarter. The only thing that will change anything is legislation.
Hypothetically a boycott can work, if the impact is profound and the cause/effect is irrefutable. But it'll never work in gaming - if the game is good, people are gonna buy it. I think reviewers could have a bigger impact if they started explicitly dinging points, but that's not going to happen for labor practices.
Boycotts don't work for the same reason we just saw hundreds of layoffs while the company reported record profits and the new CFO got 15 million dollars as a hiring bonus. The way we have businesses set up allows everything to buoy the leadership at the expense of the workers. Even if a boycott successfully destroyed Blizzard as a company, the people responsible for the state of the company would feel 0% of that pain, and would move on to have successful careers elsewhere. You'd only be teaching a "lesson" to the helpless developers and employees at the lower rungs of the organization, who are by and large enormous enthusiasts of the field and who only want to express themselves, make cool shit, and otherwise participate in the video game industry for your benefit.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Boycotts work when they're actually organized. That never happens in video games ever.
In this situation though, AB laid people off when success was reached. So whether or not the company continues to get profit growth, job security is non-existent. Honestly I say you may as well not buy their products anymore if you don't want to. You're not harming the employees. That WOULD be the case normally, but Bobby Kotick has demonstrated his mind is not normal.
Boycotts don't work for the same reason we just saw hundreds of layoffs while the company reported record profits and the new CFO got 15 million dollars as a hiring bonus. The way we have businesses set up allows everything to buoy the leadership at the expense of the workers. Even if a boycott successfully destroyed Blizzard as a company, the people responsible for the state of the company would feel 0% of that pain, and would move on to have successful careers elsewhere. You'd only be teaching a "lesson" to the helpless developers and employees at the lower rungs of the organization, who are by and large enormous enthusiasts of the field and who only want to express themselves, make cool shit, and otherwise participate in the video game industry for your benefit.
As ActiBlizzard has demonstrated, they're going to trash on their workforce whether they're making money or not. So boycott them, or don't - it doesn't make a difference against Blizzard, but you can at least save yourself some money by not playing games you don't enjoy anymore. We live in an age of the largest selection of video games in history - there are plenty of other studios big and small right now that actually deserve your time.
Boycotts work when they're actually organized. That never happens in video games ever.
They might "work" in the sense that they would damage the company or even tank it. Let's grant that a boycott would erase Activison Blizzard. That doesn't change corporate culture. It just changes its face. The CFO and shareholders and whoever you want to actually learn a lesson have at that point already bailed with their bonuses and dividends and found a cozy new home somewhere else. That's what I mean when I say boycotts don't work. You're not going to prevent Bobby Kotick from being this guy somewhere else if he's still earning shareholders tons of money while the company's reputation burns down. Shareholders only care about a company as a means to a cashout, and it doesn't really matter what that company's name is or how long it lasts, as long as it pays.
People think names and reputation carry weight to the shareholders and CEOs. They don't.
Obviously if you don't want to buy Blizzard any more, that's completely fine. If buying WarCraft Reforged makes you feel gross because of who you're buying it from, don't buy it. Like Donnicton posted, there's no reason you have to buy from any one developer, especially now that there are more games being released than anyone could ever play in two lifetimes. But if you want to poke Bobby Kotick in the eye, or show the corporate world that this sort of behavior is unacceptable, you can't. Not this way. It takes government regulation, which means political action, which means for the love of god vote.
Us peasants will appreciate that jab. But the people who need to see that, take it to heart, and amend their ways will likely never see it, and if they do they won't care.
I dunno man PC gamer directly making an article about a competitor that made money and didn't fuck over its work force is pretty much shots fired in the games industry
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
if there was an actual organized global boycott of WoW, Blizzard would probably just stop making WoW, instead of fixing it
it's pretty much to that point
the horse has not only left the barn, it's currently on an airplane to Dubai
It's not like the financial success of the company means nothing to the executives. They don't want to lose their jobs either, which they might if their decisions tank the company. So yeah if a boycott is killing the game, and making a simple change will make it stop so the game is profitable again, they'll do that. The only reason they made the unpopular decision in the first place is because they decided it was the way to maximize profits.
PC Gamer has long been the biggest fanboy publication for Blizzard (and I mean long), so yeah, that's gotta sting a little.
It's also unsurprising to me that they'd give that jab. None of us are talking about this because we've hated Blizzard titles for our entire lives. We care because this is the company that churned out gold like 5-6 times and then supported it forever. You can still play Diablo II, with very recent patches, in 2019, for zero fucking dollars.
We're angry because this is the company many of us have loved for literal decades.
I dunno man PC gamer directly making an article about a competitor that made money and didn't fuck over its work force is pretty much shots fired in the games industry
It would be great if gaming outlets would refuse to cover Activision games, but that's probably asking too much.
I dunno man PC gamer directly making an article about a competitor that made money and didn't fuck over its work force is pretty much shots fired in the games industry
It would be great if gaming outlets would refuse to cover Activision games, but that's probably asking too much.
Yeah, though it would be nice if they started adding "Activision which showed us a game that cost at least 800 people their jobs earlier this year..."
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
There are still 400 more employees in France that still don' t know if they're fired yet, and because of France's labor laws it could yet be months before they know.
By now, many of the people caught up in this week’s massive Activision Blizzard layoff have been informed that they’ve lost their jobs. But at Blizzard’s office in Versailles, France, more than 400 people are still waiting for news. And, due to complex French labor laws, it might be months before they find out what happens to them.
...
Complicated French labor laws make it difficult to lay people off immediately and without notification, which is why Blizzard’s Versailles office is in this position following the massive layoffs that took place across all of Activision Blizzard’s companies this week. The legendary developer of games like Diablo and World of Warcraft was hit hard. Although rumors of incoming layoffs had circulated for months, the company did not inform employees at its main campus in Irvine, California until Tuesday afternoon, alongside Activision’s quarterly financial earnings call.
"This game, which is very good and which is the best game made in the last 20 years, receives a 45% because of all the debt carried by the Activision name.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited February 2019
Y'know if I was those one of those people working at Le Blizzard I'd be looking for a new job right now. I wouldn't wait to see if I got laid off and I wouldn't care if I was one of the lucky ones that didn't. Just, get the fuck outta Activision-Blizzard.
edit- Actually I'd extend that advice to everybody who works for Activision-Blizzard. Find a new job while you're still employed.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Y'know if I was those one of those people working at Le Blizzard I'd be looking for a new job right now. I wouldn't wait to see if I got laid off and I wouldn't care if I was one of the lucky ones that didn't. Just, get the fuck outta Activision-Blizzard.
edit- Actually I'd extend that advice to everybody who works for Activision-Blizzard. Find a new job while you're still employed.
This is a real danger for a company that hires the best talent on the basis of their prestige. When it stops feeling like the best place to work, your best employees can have offers lined up in a few weeks and it becomes a downward spiral.
Doubt he gets fired or even reprimanded , for the people that actually makes decisions it begins and ends with the fact that they made money. No way to hurt them either without hurting everyone beneath him much more and much sooner. Not to mention they would have to fire a few hundred more people to be able to afford his multimillion severance package. Because you know he has one.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Plus they'd have to give the new guy a 15 million dollar signing bonus. I mean who would take such an unrewarding job without such a bonus?
I had a thought about Sekiro this weekend. I had been considering boycotting it as a general principle of "I don't want to give Activision my money anymore, because they are run by filthy whores" but after pondering that stance I realized, if I stop giving my money to singleplayer games, that is going to send them the message that singleplayer games are not worth the investment and that is not the message I want to send.
So unfortunately (fortunately), I will be buying Sekiro because I want them to know that there is still an audience for singleplayer games.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Y'know if I was those one of those people working at Le Blizzard I'd be looking for a new job right now. I wouldn't wait to see if I got laid off and I wouldn't care if I was one of the lucky ones that didn't. Just, get the fuck outta Activision-Blizzard.
edit- Actually I'd extend that advice to everybody who works for Activision-Blizzard. Find a new job while you're still employed.
This is a real danger for a company that hires the best talent on the basis of their prestige. When it stops feeling like the best place to work, your best employees can have offers lined up in a few weeks and it becomes a downward spiral.
Oh for sure. I've personally witnessed such an event myself.
On a similar note, as a piece of general career advice that can apply to everyone; Do not be afraid of a side-grade!
In my experience most people when looking for a new job (while employed) will look for a job that pays more or is a better position. While there certainly isn't anything inherently wrong about that most of those people do not even consider taking a job that pays the same or even a little less.
The thing is though, all companies are different. They have different cultures or priorities. Taking a side-grade could really enhance your quality of life depending on the circumstances.
As an example, at my previous employer I was a salaried employee working 60-70 hours a week and was on call all the time. The job itself also came with a fairly high level of stress. Eventually I had enough of that and took the same job at a different company. The salary was a little less than my previous employer, but I was working a fixed 8 hours a day, Mon-Fri with the very occasional overtime. I cannot began to describe how big an impact this career change had on my personal life and well being.
So don't discount a side-grade!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Posts
It had a lot of bizarre change for change sake things that they rolled back. And things that should have been there at release because they were added late in legion as good changes (like emissary caches at max rep rank).
But honestly one thing I do find myself getting more and more annoyed by is having to unlock the new races. Like ok I could put up with it a bit in Legion because they added them late as like "please keep playing" but when you launch an expansion with new races and I have to grind a bunch of bullshit to get that content when you feel like unlocking it? I feel like your just jerking me around.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Wow, didn't realize that was Blizzard.
Between that and Rock 'n Roll Racing, I was a Blizzard fanboy before they were Blizzard.
Shame it had to end like this.
The very idea of spending shit-tons of time with one character to unlock character build options for other characters you'll have to spend hundreds of hours playing to get to where you are now, is absolutely carnival-game ludicrous.
According to Wiki, it was Silicon & Synapse, the company that became Blizzard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess
That's the other thing really. Especially with how the gear up cycle works in Wow. "Ok I just spent 4 weeks with time gated content to finally unlock this character, unfortunately I now have to delete an older character to put this brand new one in, level it up and gear it up and that's assuming I like the character in the first place."
pleasepaypreacher.net
Everything about the expansion sounded like a terrible idea to me.
But then, I've thought like half the design ideas they had for each WoW expansion have been bad since Pandas.
Well for me I've never really like the "conflict" part of WoW anyways. Like I know the rts games were all horde vs alliance but WoW has always back burnered it AND this expansion is all "it matters" and then you end up doing so very little against the other faction at the start I was like "it does? really? REALLY?" Hell there is a new mount coming for having done both sides of the conflict as a player thereby saying "nah lol play both sides."
pleasepaypreacher.net
the only people left playing WoW are the people who love this and eat this shit up though
they found their niche market and they're milking it
I'm honestly a bit baffled that this kind of design is still a thing in MMOs. Maybe I'm spoiled by primarily playing Final Fantasy XIV, where your character can be any (or all) of the jobs in the game and switching between them is trivial, but I don't really see the appeal of needing to play multiple alts to experience the totality of a game. Like, right now, I'm playing WoW on the side with a friend. We both decided to start at character level 1, and both chose Worgen because we hadn't played through their starting story. I decided on rogue, but there are times where I'd like to switch to paladin, or mage, or, simply, something else. Having to roll up a completely new person, one who has no access to the resources I've already built up on my rogue, is asinine.
Then again, I've been disappointed in WoW's constant push towards base homogeneity while stubbornly clinging to odd design decisions since vanilla, starting with hunter pet normalization. I'm currently only playing via time card because it's one of the few ways I can actually talk with my friend.
It's all about drip feeding content. You just spent 200 hours leveling this character? Why would Blizzard want you to switch from Hunter to Rogue without you spending another 200+ hours? The userbase likes it because it's familiar and safe.
I do not like how we put all this effort into building up Halfhill Farm, making friends with the locals, helping out around the farm, and then just ditching it. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep Halfhill relevant in future expansions.
I do not like how we put all this effort (and gold) into building up the Garrison in WoD, plus doing it a second time with the shipyard, recruiting all these dudes into our private army, and making this awesome base, and then abandoning it when the next expansion rolled around. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep the Garrison relevant in future expansions. The Garrison should have served as permanent player housing, and we should still be adding on to it to this day.
I do not like how we put all this effort into the class order halls, ascended to the highest rank in our respective classes, and in some cases became the leader of those order halls, and then just abandoned them. Blizzard should have tried harder to keep the class halls relevant in future expansions. They could do this by even a slow trickle of class quests. It doesn't need to be as robust as a complete expansion campaign or anything, but just a quest here or there to get you to return home, say hi to your friends in your order hall, make sure they know that their fearless leader is still alive and well. That sort of thing.
Basically, the two year cycle of use it and abandon it is a frustrating way of building a game, because that basically just sets this perpetual expectation that nothing you do matters for more than 2 years.
No, I'm not talking about dungeons and stuff. It's fine for old dungeons to become irrelevant. Or they could even resolve that by making timewalking a permanent thing so that old content is always relevant in the dungeon finder. That would be an easy fix too.
the way alts work in WoW has changed substantially in the last 2 or 3 expansions though
in the days of old, the burden of creating an alt was spending 20-40 hours grinding levels, and then you coast him through raids with your guild that is farming content while waiting for the next release. that was sort of your reward for putting up with the grind
this has always been a very popular Thing To Do in WoW
but now that item level and power creep is so tightly controlled, Blizzard has figured out how to structure the game so that it's impossible to have an alt character go Super Saiyan as soon as they reach level cap, so in addition to the grind (which you can pay $60 goddamn dollars to skip) you must also endure more or less the same end game progression curve your main went through
I'll grant them that it's much less severe in BFA (in Legion it was brutal since the curve was tied to your weapon), but there are also a lot of other things going on concerning this, like gating flying mounts behind grinds, etc
Small clarification:
Silicon & Synapse/Blizzard did the Commodore 64 version. Interplay was the original devs.
Hypothetically a boycott can work, if the impact is profound and the cause/effect is irrefutable. But it'll never work in gaming - if the game is good, people are gonna buy it. I think reviewers could have a bigger impact if they started explicitly dinging points, but that's not going to happen for labor practices.
In this situation though, AB laid people off when success was reached. So whether or not the company continues to get profit growth, job security is non-existent. Honestly I say you may as well not buy their products anymore if you don't want to. You're not harming the employees. That WOULD be the case normally, but Bobby Kotick has demonstrated his mind is not normal.
As ActiBlizzard has demonstrated, they're going to trash on their workforce whether they're making money or not. So boycott them, or don't - it doesn't make a difference against Blizzard, but you can at least save yourself some money by not playing games you don't enjoy anymore. We live in an age of the largest selection of video games in history - there are plenty of other studios big and small right now that actually deserve your time.
They might "work" in the sense that they would damage the company or even tank it. Let's grant that a boycott would erase Activison Blizzard. That doesn't change corporate culture. It just changes its face. The CFO and shareholders and whoever you want to actually learn a lesson have at that point already bailed with their bonuses and dividends and found a cozy new home somewhere else. That's what I mean when I say boycotts don't work. You're not going to prevent Bobby Kotick from being this guy somewhere else if he's still earning shareholders tons of money while the company's reputation burns down. Shareholders only care about a company as a means to a cashout, and it doesn't really matter what that company's name is or how long it lasts, as long as it pays.
People think names and reputation carry weight to the shareholders and CEOs. They don't.
Obviously if you don't want to buy Blizzard any more, that's completely fine. If buying WarCraft Reforged makes you feel gross because of who you're buying it from, don't buy it. Like Donnicton posted, there's no reason you have to buy from any one developer, especially now that there are more games being released than anyone could ever play in two lifetimes. But if you want to poke Bobby Kotick in the eye, or show the corporate world that this sort of behavior is unacceptable, you can't. Not this way. It takes government regulation, which means political action, which means for the love of god vote.
it's pretty much to that point
the horse has not only left the barn, it's currently on an airplane to Dubai
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's not like the financial success of the company means nothing to the executives. They don't want to lose their jobs either, which they might if their decisions tank the company. So yeah if a boycott is killing the game, and making a simple change will make it stop so the game is profitable again, they'll do that. The only reason they made the unpopular decision in the first place is because they decided it was the way to maximize profits.
It's also unsurprising to me that they'd give that jab. None of us are talking about this because we've hated Blizzard titles for our entire lives. We care because this is the company that churned out gold like 5-6 times and then supported it forever. You can still play Diablo II, with very recent patches, in 2019, for zero fucking dollars.
We're angry because this is the company many of us have loved for literal decades.
It would be great if gaming outlets would refuse to cover Activision games, but that's probably asking too much.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Yeah, though it would be nice if they started adding "Activision which showed us a game that cost at least 800 people their jobs earlier this year..."
pleasepaypreacher.net
There are still 400 more employees in France that still don' t know if they're fired yet, and because of France's labor laws it could yet be months before they know.
"This game, which is very good and which is the best game made in the last 20 years, receives a 45% because of all the debt carried by the Activision name.
I'd love that
edit- Actually I'd extend that advice to everybody who works for Activision-Blizzard. Find a new job while you're still employed.
Sim Jerlingson's Monday video goes about where you'd expect.
This is a real danger for a company that hires the best talent on the basis of their prestige. When it stops feeling like the best place to work, your best employees can have offers lined up in a few weeks and it becomes a downward spiral.
Currently Playing on Steam - Journey down Ch 3/ Shadowrun: Hong Kong
So unfortunately (fortunately), I will be buying Sekiro because I want them to know that there is still an audience for singleplayer games.
Oh for sure. I've personally witnessed such an event myself.
On a similar note, as a piece of general career advice that can apply to everyone; Do not be afraid of a side-grade!
In my experience most people when looking for a new job (while employed) will look for a job that pays more or is a better position. While there certainly isn't anything inherently wrong about that most of those people do not even consider taking a job that pays the same or even a little less.
The thing is though, all companies are different. They have different cultures or priorities. Taking a side-grade could really enhance your quality of life depending on the circumstances.
As an example, at my previous employer I was a salaried employee working 60-70 hours a week and was on call all the time. The job itself also came with a fairly high level of stress. Eventually I had enough of that and took the same job at a different company. The salary was a little less than my previous employer, but I was working a fixed 8 hours a day, Mon-Fri with the very occasional overtime. I cannot began to describe how big an impact this career change had on my personal life and well being.
So don't discount a side-grade!