Hey. I just felt like I had to post a final goodbye, and get some things off my chest and no I do not expect my voice to matter or anyone to care this is more for me to put a nail in the coffin of my personal investment into Activision Blizzard over all these years.
I had a core of people I played with since Molten Core a month orso into classic release, we server jumped a couple of times even to get away from dying servers and keep playing and our core base stayed together all the way until Ulduar. Where we died a slow death to the roster boss after trying to absorb no less then 5 other dying guilds to supplement ourselves. People quit to not have to deal with roster issues and do RMT for GDKPs and would outright say so because no one got banned for it no one cared and openly talked about it ingame. Botting was rampant everywhere and even reporting them doing Blizzards work for them would see it take months to get banned even when botting in open world areas especially rapid spawn quest locations.
I was slightly excited for classic hardcore proper permadeath servers and thinking I could scratch my WoW itch there and was playing D2 remaster looking at D4 content when I saw the final straw… tokens in wotlk classic.
On its own it would normally not care a lot, but Blizzard have shown over the last few years that their leadership is incompetent and that their dev teams are hamstrung by poor management.
So instead of playing hardcore classic and D4 (happy I didnt pre-order) I am just quitting all Activision and Blizzard games until there is sign of change from a management level.
This is not due to annoying monetization or even pay2win. This is purely because I have no faith in this company supporting its own games.
Warcraft 3 reforged and Overwatch 2 replacing their original clients and removing access to the original games REMOVING something people paid for to force players into buying the new thing, rather then letting the old client stay there as its own thing and believing in the quality of their product to shift copies.
Incredibly slow and staggered tactical content releases in classic WoW used to optimize the failure or downtime of retail WoW rather then be on its own schedule that would be more healthy for classic WoW population.
The lack of hands on support as well as proper manual maintenance of games and services company wide (when was the last time a support ticket resulted in a human helping you with your problem in a competent way?)
As well as rampant cheating in classic WoW (flyhacking and extremely obvious botting) as well as a complete lack of support for Call of Duty to the point where modern warfare (2019) as well as its BR mode was full of cheating not even a year after launch with no statement or care from Activision.
I can tolerate a lot of monetization and pay2win bs, as long as the game is fun with regular content and properly supported by the company. However I do not have faith in this company to support its future games. To me its obvious that leadership is failing in a big way while pushing the blame and responsibility on the developers and lower end employees. And I do not want to support this company any more, I am tired of feeling messed with and lied too. WoW token in classic being the final lie I could tolerate. Idc if its the wrong or right thing to do, I care that I cant trust a single word in Blizzards public statements anymore. Be it promise of content or promise of monetization models.
I do not blame devs, I blame top leadership in the company. Leadership that gets away with everything by using proxies and mouth pieces. Big paycheck CEOs who doesnt even know what a video game is ruining the potential of fun experiences in the name of short term profit. And feeling it directly in every single game I play from Activision or Blizzard.
After many years of fun, and a roler coaster of a classic WoW journey as the final hurrah I guess this is goodbye. It was fun while it lasted, I appreciate the hard work and passion of the developers and base level employees shining through despite such awful leadership. Genuinly thank you. I wish every low level employee and game dev the best of luck having to deal with being the scapegoat of a overpaid and utterly incompetent C Suite.
Goodbye Activision Blizzard. Its been real, and its been fun. Bnet uninstalled for the first time since its release as a launcher. Not that the company cares, they will find some way to monetize or inflate MAUs to make up for the loss of worthless me.
Have fun in wow classic and other Blizzard/Activision titles everyone. It is truly sad, after having so much fun, that the fun is ruined by such poor management and shoddy game support. Truly bye.
