That is nothing like how I remember it. But maybe I was too old. Unreal Tournament LAN parties were just fading, but new games were replacing them and social gaming was exploding.
But we were never more innocent than now. Zoomers need to be told that detergent isn’t food… Poor wee babs.
Keep restricting the kids to enjoy their time inside a video game… Thats why you have students with AK-47 every month in US schools doing massacre. Its your fault!
Was it. Was it really.
OK first off. Your dad shouldn’t have been letting you watch that if you were below the age requirement. That’s not your fault. that’s not the PEGI system’s fault. That’s your dad’s fault.
And wasn’t that just a bad thing. When I was aged 3 to 16 I spent every single moment of daylight outside doing stuff with kids of the same age.
Nowadays kids spend their daylight hours glued to a smartphone screen.
We played videogames yes. but we didn’t get upset when a game suddenly changed, we still looked at naughty magazines, we still got up to stupid things with alcohol and we also got into bouts of pugilism. We certainly didn’t need to jump on an internet soapbox and decry the downfall of civilization because a videogame didn’t have this or that “adahlt” stuff in it.
I think my generation won that battle.
And the removal of insignificant things like a few emotes, the switching of a crudely drawn reclining human lady on a sofa into a bowl of fruit isn’t going to suddenly transform them overnight into fanatical celibates or hordes of protestors chaining themselves to naval shipyards screaming about Trident. Sorry to break this to you chum but what Blizzard is removing is absolutely minuscule to what kids are exposed to on a daily basis. if you are so concerned about the removal of violent things that may encourage kids to copy, I’d be looking elsewhere than wow frankly.
Ever read Lord of the Flies?
Imagine those kids being written about in today’s world. Never mind the fact that we crash landed in the ocean. We have no sense of order. We are left utterly on our own. But we have no internet. NO internet!
It would only be an issue of it so desensitized you to what you were seeing you were unable to tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t.
Not. Necessarily a thing to be proud of. I would be worried if a child became so laissez-faire about what they were watching day in day out that they became utterly oblivious to it’s effect. Don’t be proud of being able to watch something violent and it not making you feel repulsed depending on it’s scale.
Cartoon mouse sticking a cartoon pin into a cartoon cat’s bum. Nothing.
Watching a human being blown to smithereens and splattering red stuff everywhere just for shock value.
Yeah. Not sure a decent parent should be exposing their kid to that.
Nintendo has been doing it for years. Seems to work for them.
Ridiculous argument and one that has been shot down so many times I’m surprised you even tried to fire up it’s engine.
But here’s what I want to know.
Just why does the removal of a few emotes and the changing of a woman (who to be frank, you’d need to have a VERY fertile imagination to get steamy over) to a bowl of fruit, bother YOU so much and also tell me how it affects YOUR gameplay.
Because from my standpoint. It changes absolutely nothing.
except to hand people who can’t accept that Blizzard are perfectly entitled to change the game to their design some sort of warped view that these changes are leading to the destruction of their way of life, That they are being forced to accept a “lefty agenda”, and most pathetic and telling of all, getting upset because they can’t see bewbies anymore.
You mean Saving Private Ryan , you really should not have watched a film like that at a young age .
The only true thing you typed in this post.
Sorry to break this to you but kids everywhere in the world do that. Yes. Even in the US.
How… Disappointing for you.
Legally. Are you so desperately clawing for anti American stuff that you actually believe that no one in the US lets any alcohol pass their lips before they are 21?
What’s the legal age for alcohol consumption where you live?
2 weeks into conception?
You may now provide examples of your “street cred” by loudly procaliming you started drinking when you were 12, stated smoking at ten started abusing illicit substances at 15… had ugandan discussions at 15… whatever combination of the above you think will score you a point and give you some more “cool points”
And again… Time to shoot you down.
All US states and dependencies have different laws regarding driving. In Florida the minimum age to hold a learner’s permit is 17. In other states it is 16. There is no federal statute for the legal age to drive.
Oh I agree. Two versions of wow would be great if it helped separate the people who know the difference between reality and fiction and those who think it’s the end of the world because a crude portrait was changed to a bowl of fruit. However will you go on?
Really…? Really. Ever since the scandal was revealed it’s been a constant “meme” to poke Blizzard with. In fact, you’re doing it right now. You ARE aware of why Blizzard is desperately trying to clean its image and making an absolute pig’s ear of it right??
And I’m gonna ask the same question to you as I did to the OP, and to everyone who continues down this ridiculous road of bandwagon tubthumping.
Just how does a bowl of fruit change your gameplay and why does it bother you so much?
Or are you one of the people who will try to claim “oh it’s the beginning of the end…”
Agree, removing the paintings, certain emotes, Garrosh calling Sylvanas a B, they are however adding some men in Karazhan and Black temple as consorts which is nice, but still, I want a rougher game then what it’s becoming.
Pffth! It builds character. ^^
I grew up on R rated movies and I’m a “model citizen”
I dont think it has to do anything with making it “childish” but rather a bunch of weirdos that got caught in the act now trying their best at damage control. To me, the worse implication is that they’re spending their resources on changing the most obscure things about the game while there are still not only big gameplay issues, but there is also barely any content to be had.
I wasn’t allowed to watch The X-Files. Which is sensible enough… and only resulted in me going to a friend’s place and watching it there. Didn’t traumatize me for life, despite recommended age rating and spookiness.
OK guys, email from the execs. “Team, because we are changing a painting of a woman to a bowl of fruit, removing some emotes and adding male npcs to certain areas, it’s going to cost you development time and resources for a raid tier, new battlegrounds and anything else you had planned. Sorry”
Oh lord the stuff people believe.
If you think the approach to age restrictions is why that stuff happens you’re delusional.
It’s because the people doing it as disenfranchised and isolated, and they reach out to other disenfranchised people who convince them their headcanon paranoia about the world is correct and this convinces them to do something stupid. It has nothing to do with age restrictions or violence in games and everything to do with what these individuals “reckon” about the world and nobody around them provides adequate pushback to their views.
Note: not every violent video game player has gone on to do a shooting. However if those who did go on to do that, pretty much all of them were members of online communities where their hateful views fermented in an echo chamber and essentially gave them a green flag.
It wasn’t the games who desensitised them, it was their moronic “Mates” posing as englightened philosophers and speculators of humanity who did that.
You only need to look at the language used in the incel subculture to see this. The amount of dehumanisation of people based on their gender, political views, race etc is absolutely unreal. The adoption of game culture and terminology is used by the group to try and conceal what they’re talking about by making it “it’s about games” but that is not what they mean.
It’s where the use of NPC as an insult comes from. To the onlooker they’re discussing how stupid NPCs in some game are and how it would be fun to cull them. But they’re not talking about NPCs nor games. Video gaming is being tarnished by the shared association with these kinds of groups.
Once video gaming was a sanctum for the awkward, the dork, the socially lacking in grace but ultimately it was a place where people who felt a bit odd could go and would find embrace.
Now it is largely the same: but the above is deterministically conflated with various forms of politics and views in order to make that “the reason” for their plight. Once upon a time it would have once been nearly impossible to find a nerd group that expressed hateful language to other groups (beyond jibes to other nerds as some kind of fan tribalism) yet now it’s extremely difficult to find a video gaming community that doesn’t have more than trivial numbers of people expressing hateful views of members of society and trying to stitch these views into the “gamer identity”.
This is why many “old school” gamers don’t do the whole discord and twitch thing as much as their younger pals. It’s got nothing to do with technical competence. It’s because the “gaming cultures” of today are very different to those they frequented in their youth. For them, gaming culture is a place to discuss why X npc sucks, or why Y episode is the best one ever made. It’s not a place to whinge about “the woke” or “how society is screwing them over and has to pay”.
That you quoted it’s actually happening in SL but whatever.
WOOHOOO A GREEN NOTIFICATION!!
Thanks (you know who you are!!)
Sweet sweet validation!
So… 6 times in 4 years (or whatever it was you claimed) now? We all know who it was. Doesn’t need a cartoon dog with 5 teenagers in a gaudily coloured van to work this one out.
“I would have gotten away with it if I hadn’t made it so bleedin’ obvious”
yes because the resources, time, and effort put into changing one piece of wall art into another piece of wall art, removing some emotes and adding male npcs to two areas is exactly the same as a new raid tier and all the trimmings, along with a new battleground.
Good Golly Miss Molly I fear you have zero idea what goes into videogame development… But I’m sure you’ll be able to work it out the when you’re not trying to score “antiwoke” points.
You do you chum. You do you.
People hate it as well, and that was mostly in the 80’s. Whenever it happens today, it’s because of the rating boards (for example, Pokémon HG/SS removed the Game Corner because for some stupid reason, the depiction of gabmling in a casino setting would be an automatic 18+ in EU). Last time I checked, all the more adult things in Zelda games for example were all in tact (like Cremia’s boob hug in Majora’s Mask, Nabooru’s “get inside the hole” joke in OoT, Link staring at Telma’s boobs in TP) and all of them were re-released pretty recently too.
Ricidulous argument. Gameplay is only one part of the experience. Turning every character into gray blobs as Madseason put it, would not change the gameplay either so why would it bother you? (tbh maybe it wouldn’t, but it would most people)
You just achieved stupidity and toxicity in one stroke, nice one.
No wonder you get reported lol
People have expressed their thoughts on how or why, but it’s clear people like you aren’t interested in hearing the why and how of it.
To me it is an erosion of the game’s history of things put in the past. Not to mention it takes some of the world’s charm away if it’s scrubbed down to ridiculous sterilization levels, all the while the game’s stories involve death, destruction and zones that are full of disease, undead and gore.
That’s a fine way of putting it.
Why do people in your region have a life expectancy of 42?
Really, the mature /spit was the essence of the whole content. I claim the last season to having been such a tragic downfall because the amount of spitting was drastically reduced.
I dare saying only someone, who wasn’t even born round that time would come to OPs conclusion there. Early 2000s were the rise of the gaming scene really. So many pioneer games had their debut round that time, from Counter Strike to Elder Scrolls (wait, that was even mid 90s…). It’s absolutely hilarious how those days are painted as if we all were living under rocks. 
But that’s probably how young generations always imagine the decades before them. x’)
Thank you for the kind words… /s
Ever thought I am maybe not that old? I am 22, man. Not 34.
That stuff actually does not matter to me. What I am worried about that it will be NOT JUST THAT being removed. From my perspective this is a policy AB will build on and remove more stuff over time. Cloth and Armor showing skin? Will be removed. Character relationships and hints to “adult stuff”? Will be removed. War crimes and story aspects of the Wars in WoW? Will be removed.
From my perspective AB is trying to make this game “family friendly” for kids over time, with no actual violence and/or shock factor to get you involved with the story.
Nintendo is a family-game based video game developing company from the very beginning. You are comparing AB having games like Diablo with Nintendo making games like Animal Crossing.
That’s like comparing apples and pears.
Did I say I have no empathy? What I meant with “being able to see violent stuff” is “not being disturbed by it like it is a horror movie”. Sure, bloody scenes are still very aweful to watch (for example the ambush scene in the tank movie “Fury”).
where a soldier shoots himself on purpose in the head to not die painfully because of his burning body
From all things I hate is violence in our real lifes a thing to be banished. But in games, where it can’t hurt anybody it should be totally allowed and embraced imo.
Its a big company. Pushing out decisions and a development cycle takes much longer than you’d expect.