Yeah, as I said, some things -should- be changed, but you can go too far, like with turning all portraits of women with cleavage into fruit.
Does it bother me deeply and will it bother my gameplay if they do? No, it won’t, and if they must -absolutely- do that, then that’s how it is, it is not like it is an absolutely game-breaking change, but… I still feel that you can go too far.
But, maybe it’s indeed as you say, that personnel finally feels ready to speak out about these things, I’ll give you that.
I really, and I mean really don’t care about the removal of dated jokes or new icon for a flying mount. What I care about is Blizzard heeding the demands of their workers and acting on that, and to my knowledge they aren’t even halfway towards that goal.
And yet… they have the time to go back through past content and sanitize the game in the name of good taste. I don’t know. There’s just something about that disconnect screaming “Red Flag!” to me.
What I think you might be missing there is that those are likely two seperate departments. Development of a game and management of personnel aren’t necessarily a strict overlap - though obviously in some parts they have to.
The way I’m seeing it is that they’re doing minor things that they feel they’re able to while the more important things are still being prepared.
I could very much be wrong, but I don’t think that the time spent going through the game to clean it up is cutting into workplace standards and worker safety, I think they’re likely happening in paralell but we’re only seeing the result of the former at this time.
Equally, people can choose to target the said devs and call them out for the said decisions and keep complainign till they budge and/or the people in question leave the company. I’m okay with either option.
The sad part is that this is how players get changes in the game. Not through nice, civil feedback. Not through some nice and calm theorycrafting and/or discussion with the devs. No, instead, the only way players get changes in this game is by spamming all the social media and forums of Blizzard and ousting people for bad things happening.
And whose fault is that? Their own. If they were competent and knew what they were doing, or had the humility to admit they get things wrong or even try an open dialogue with the playerbase, we wouldn’t be here. They chose this, not us. If you want changes to the game, this is the only way you go on about it. Or you unsub. The choice is yours.
By this argument you could turn anything and every feature/thing in the game away if you just say “actually this x person added this and creeped me the f out”. Not only can it be disingenuous and outright lying (they seem to love to lie, after all) to drive their agenda, but a far more important train of thought remains:
You can still enjoy/deal with something, even if you do not subscribe to some ideas or people or their work. You do not need to or even should live your life through fantasy worlds and works of fiction. HP Lovecraft, Tolkien George RR Martin, just a few names but I could add way more. All of these said authors have had some very problematic things in their literature yet they’ve not been changed because of more woke audiences- Because as Warner Brothers put it:
If your big point here is that just because a few people ask for something doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be trumped. I agree.
However, if a large portion of the playerbase opposes the said changes, then you shouldn’t change them. Obviously.
Nobody’s saying they are the death of the game. Hell, if Azerite armor, Esssences, Corruptions and Covenant ripcords and the whole sexual debacle haven’t killed the game yet, then these certainly won’t kill it either. That’s not the point.
If I were to condense my displeasure and spite toward Blizzard + the devs into one word, it’d be arrogance.
The arrogance of the devs that STILL, after being proven wrong 7 years straight, think they they know better than us what we want.
The arrogance of the devs that think that they can just keep lying so long as their agenda is “woke” or whatever buzzword they want to use. The boy that cried wolf, anyone?
And lastly, the arrogance of the devs that, instead of humbling themselves and admitting they screwed up (see: No-man’s-sky) and owning up to it and working to fix things, have the audacity to instead blame the customers when they do not like the outcome.
I sincerely hope you’re right. Which really summarizes my feelings on a lot of things concerning this mess, hoping for the best and trying not to be a cynic.
Already did quite some time ago my friend and it seems you’re getting pretty upset as well but whatever lets leave it at that.
Of course they aren’t the downfall but they are just one of many completely decisions by devs who rather stroke their egos and arrogance. I’ve already showed my disgust plenty of times regarding the creeps who can’t keep their hands to themselves and it’s one of the big reasons why I haven’t touched this trash heap since March.
I don’t think anyone really began to play WoW for the and le funny sexks jokes so I don’t know why you brought this up. The earlier point I gave where WoW helped me get through parts of my life? Well, whoever it was that said if it were the sex jokes etc. that helped me through; first of all that is quite ridiculous to say and secondly you have to be as dense as a neutron star to even think that. WoW had a great world, it had the lore, the gameplay, all the friends and great moments I had and all of that is gone now, driven into the ground over the years by the cube crawl crew and devs who care more about their Twitter reputation and how morally right they are along with boasting that us customers; the Gamers, are wrong.
I don’t have a grain of respect for these cretins for they have showed us zero, null, niente, nada as of recent times.
No, what? Targeted harassment is the most counter-intuitive way you can get things done, and they’ve even said so constantly. I do not disagree that Blizzard in general has a large disconnect with the playerbase and has often chosen to be silent to their wishes, but in this part that’s largely not what we’re talking about anyway. Don’t conflate changing /flirts with Blizzard’s desire to stay silent and ignore heaps of feedback they got from beta for a game design point of Shadowlands, because some can’t objectify women any more. What?
I mean, in the end you don’t know what goes on in their workplace. Very few do and those who indeed do are also threatened into silence. This is why private feedback exists. Your earlier suggestions that each change needs to have exact names attached to them is incredibly horrible, which I hope you aren’t trying to get at here too. Because in the end - Blizzard lies, with names or without.
Of course, and I agree with this point on a larger scale too, but in this case the devs have explicitly said that they don’t really want to have problematic things in the game so it can be the most inclusive to all players. I’m not sure how seriously I should take you when you keep referring to woke audiences, but also - WB is way more historic than WoW. It also functions differently, by playing in the beginning of the cartoon. Do you want to see a pop-up for each /flirt, /joke, or an addendum to a quest text? Something tells me people did not enjoy the popups for consent to /kiss.
The point is, RPers are also seen as meaningless players who get so offended over XYZ, so why even care about RPers or their meaningless suggestions? It should be raid tiers only, right?! Why focus all your resources onto some RP functions?
You can make the connection yourself, don’t be obtuse.
I mean, it depends. It might get a little semantic, but just because the large majority agrees on (or opposes) something does not always mean it is correct. The large majority might not really care about a minority group’s issue with X, the large majority likely never even has to think about X so they don’t speak about it, but it ends up being something that is indeed bad, damaging, inappropriate, or many other things that is brought up.
My main point there however was, that just because you haven’t heard about these complaints does not mean these complaints haven’t existed. And just because now you see changes to said complaints, does not mean it came out of the left field and because the large majority might have indulged in making fun of minorities does not mean it is also correct, and it should be changed appropriately.
I don’t think we’re currently dealing with arrogance. I don’t think this is also being done for some woke agenda or SJWs or whatever.
You’ve been arguing about changes to inappropriate at best and offensive at worst text in the game, not how the lore or gameplay is being driven into the ground.
I do agree (and is why I have unsubbed myself), but I still realise that you can work on several things at the same time, and these changes overall are still positive (even if sometimes inconsistent in what is being found problematic). That does not mean I’m going to give them leeway on how terribly they’re handling the lore or gameplay, or that I’m going to say they’re excused in their cube crawls now.
This in part is also the problem I have with people saying that these smaller changes should suddenly now mean that ‘wow, sexism is defeated ’. These never meant to defeat sexism, or any other bigotry. These are small, effortless changes that simply help.
I should have made it clear, I didnt bring it up as a point towards you or anyone specifically in this thread, but in a general sense. Many of these talks I’ve seen lately has just boiled down to “Blizzard is bad because they’re sjws. They are that because they removed this joke. WoW is dead because of it!”.
I’m guessing these are just people that are bad at expressing themselves clearly and just grab onto the latest thing with some momentum to channel their dissatisfaction with the game
There is also a category of players who will just nitpick anything even vaugely sniffing of what they label as “politics” and go bananas. Which muddles up alot of discussions.
Whether people get angry about these changes or not I am less concerned with, all I hope is that people don’t stop pushing Blizzard. Don’t let them think they can get away with only doing superficial changes like these, changes no one were actually asking for. I know Blizzard isn’t the best at understanding how much work someone has to do to earn a redemption story, but hopefully they will learn.
Coming from WoW, it actually was a bit shocking to see a game that pulls no punches on the subject at all.
I mean sure, it’s realistic and all that I am sure, but it’s still honestly a little bit uncomfortable. But there’s a lot less of it from Shadowbringers on at least.
True but honestly I think it’s give or take fine since it’s a tone that’s set from the get-go and maintained, instead of constantly randomly being jerked around with no sense of direction whatsoever.
(i pray that 1 day blizz decides whether it wants wow to be gritty, funny, or fantastical )
I’d still argue harassing employees to get what you want is an extremely reprehensible tactic, and it’s very sad to see someone say that’s the only way to get changes now.
I do agree that Blizzard needs to have more open communication between players and devs, though, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be afraid of it given how toxic the WoW playerbase itself is anyway. I guess it’s what you get from starting in 2004 or 2006, whichever launched WoW.
I completely agree and I think it’s really a shame that it’s the only angle that gets some kind of result.
It really shouldn’t be a surprise that ignoring your playerbase unless they resort to extremes results in them perpetually maintaining said extremes as the norm just to get through to the developers, I would say.
decisions by devs who rather stroke their egos and arrogance. I’ve already showed my disgust plenty of times regarding the creeps who can’t keep their hands to themselves and it’s one of the big reasons why I haven’t touched this trash heap since March.
and le funny sexks jokes so I don’t know why you brought this up. The earlier point I gave where WoW helped me get through parts of my life? Well, whoever it was that said if it were the sex jokes etc. that helped me through; first of all that is quite ridiculous to say and secondly you have to be as dense as a neutron star to even think that. WoW had a great world, it had the lore, the gameplay, all the friends and great moments I had and all of that is gone now, driven into the ground over the years by the cube crawl crew and devs who care more about their Twitter reputation and how morally right they are along with boasting that us customers; the Gamers, are wrong.
’. These never meant to defeat sexism, or any other bigotry. These are small, effortless changes that simply help.