Blizzard dies and Bobby rides

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Khane

Got something right about marriage
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13,298
I work in a company with over 1000 employees. There's hard liquor on peoples desks openly and a literal kegerator in the break area.

This probably isnt as true anymore because of the current socio political environment but my first job out of college had an employee bar to placate overworked, underpaid employees with free liquor to trick them into thinking it was some kind of great place to work. And I've been allowed to get drinks at lunch on a regular basis and have done so even with my bosses at every company I've worked for since.

And everyone else I know in a white collar position has similar freedoms.
 
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Xerge

<Donor>
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I am talking beer or wine at lunch, or beer mid to late afternoon....I think your implying someone slamming shots at work and being non functional or having an obvious problem.
What the fuck. Stop fucking confusing actual 'drinking' with simply having a cold bev with your hot food.

Fcking simp.
 
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Malkav

French Madman
2,686
1,583
Yeah, there is a difference between having one at lunch, and getting fucking sloshed during working hours.

It definitely seems the retards at Blizz were doing the latter, not the former.
 

Rali

Trakanon Raider
187
321
Fond memories of my first proper job. Our CEO was an alcoholic, so there was a definite drinking culture in that company! He'd take us to the bar for lunch, and it would turn into an all afternoon drinking session. If we won a major contract, time to get drunk! If we lost a major contract, well, you know... time to get drunk and forget about it!

How he managed to sell his company to Cable and Wireless, I'll never know.

He lived out the rest of his days cruising round on his yacht in the Caribbean, drinking in the sun :)
 

B_Mizzle

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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13,439
Blizzard the independent fan beloved quality gaming company is dead. There will not be another Blizzcon.

It had cancer since Cataclysm and died in Battle for Azeroth. Even the most hardened sunk cost fallacy YouTubers can saw the corpse in the 9.0 content drought.

9.1 and the lawsuit just mutilated the corpse, the WoW to FF14 exodus started the the end of 9.0, Overwatch was already dead, Starcraft was already dead, Diablo is years away from maybe being OK.

Blizzard the corporate subsidiary generating revenue from upselling a dwindling playerbase on nostalgia is alive and well, it will be for some time.

So when you say "Blizzard is not dying" you don't actually understand what we mean by that, you are arguing a different point.

Wasn't cataclysm when furor took over over the reins?
 

Chris

Potato del Grande
18,036
-458
Wasn't cataclysm when furor took over over the reins?
No idea.

Cataclysm had a noticable drop in polish from Wrath:
1) Shitty in game cutscenes
2) Linear questing paths (talk to NPC do 2 quests, go to next area to next NPC repeat)
3) Ridiculous new points of interest that didn't respect the old feel of the zone like volcanoes in Ashenvale
4) Story beats in zone quests which quickly became outdated (Warchief Garrosh stuff)
5) Cancelled raids (Neptulon)
6) Key story progression in comic books (Varian's return)
7) Whatever the fuck Uldum was meant to be
8) Final patch was all reused Northrend assets

It seemed pretty clear that they had new hires who hadn't been properly trained and they were rushed for time. This is when they failed to scale up the company to deliver more product.

Pandaria was back to full polish but they started having problems again with Warlords, which was peak rockstar developer time. I think this is when they paid the motorbike customisation show to make an episode for them with Alliance/Horde motorbikes for no reason. I'm going to guess this is when they were all drunk doing cubicle crawls.
 
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Vedette

<Donor>
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No idea.

Cataclysm had a noticable drop in polish from Wrath:
1) Shitty in game cutscenes
2) Linear questing paths (talk to NPC do 2 quests, go to next area to next NPC repeat)
3) Ridiculous new points of interest that didn't respect the old feel of the zone like volcanoes in Ashenvale
4) Story beats in zone quests which quickly became outdated (Warchief Garrosh stuff)
5) Cancelled raids (Neptulon)
6) Key story progression in comic books (Varian's return)
7) Whatever the fuck Uldum was meant to be
8) Final patch was all reused Northrend assets

It seemed pretty clear that they had new hires who hadn't been properly trained and they were rushed for time. This is when they failed to scale up the company to deliver more product.

Pandaria was back to full polish but they started having problems again with Warlords, which was peak rockstar developer time. I think this is when they paid the motorbike customisation show to make an episode for them with Alliance/Horde motorbikes for no reason. I'm going to guess this is when they were all drunk doing cubicle crawls.

I feel like some of this could be explained by project Titan aka Overwatch when it was in development.
 

Ossoi

Tranny Chaser
15,402
7,665
I'm not sure what do you mean not real life, particularly the drinking part.

Is it your position that people in white collar office jobs regularly drink while working? And that is condoned and allowed by the employer? Don't be ridiculous.

Lots of companies have bars on site and beer fridges
 
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xmod2

<Gold Donor>
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I feel like some of this could be explained by project Titan aka Overwatch when it was in development.
I remember something I heard on one of alovingrobot's interviews that gave me a perspective I hadn't considered. I think it was with Kevin McPherson talking about Kunark, and he mentioned that to them, they thought Kunark was going to be the only expansion. They were just making an RPG that happened to be online and multiplayer at its core, they weren't thinking about making some 'game as a service' that would last for 10+ years. It would be the 'normal' game, then because it was popular an expansion and then they'd move on to the next game. I imagine WoW was in a similar boat but once they realized Titan was a dumpster fire, they had to keep limping it along.

You can see the perspective shift also after Cataclysm and more fully embraced by WoD. They start to design with the idea of things being around for a long time, design around the idea of ability bloat and start adding stupid shit like borrowed power to stave off some perceived future development challenges. Also, by WotLK, I'm pretty sure the original team was so fucking sick of working on WoW that they lost a lot of the ideological guys (Tigole) who understood the mind of the mmo/wow players at the time.

This clip from Blizzcon always stands out to me about how the original team "got it" and why I am a 2005 era Tigole fanboy.

 
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Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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It is amazing how some people can fit so many wrong things in 140 characters.


So, she quit, right?
 
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Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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Yeah, I drink medical grade alcohol all day, paaaartaaay. Fridays are BYOPropfol, awesomeness.
Wife was an cardiac icu nurse for years. She said propofol was the only reason she still believed God might care.
 
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elbas

Molten Core Raider
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The state of California recently expanded its discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Axios reports. In addition to suing the massive gaming conglomerate over its culture of harassment and abuse toward female employees, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing is now also looking into its treatment of temporary workers.
...
The updated lawsuit alleges that Activision Blizzard has not been cooperative with California’s investigation. It cites Activision Blizzard’s non-disclosure agreements, the requirement that employees must speak with the company before contacting the state department, and the hiring of union-busting law firm WilmerHale as examples of the company’s lack of cooperation.

Activision Blizzard is also accused of having human resources personnel destroy documents pertinent to California’s inquiry, which it’s required by law to keep and make available to investigators.
 
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xmod2

<Gold Donor>
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So, she quit, right?
These people have no actual standards / honor / self respect. The only thing that matters is the caricature they put forward on social media.

They are larping as strong people.
 
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Burren

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Blizzard very likely did things wrong over the years as it relates to employees. But, they are going to be made into an example and will probably be burned more than their indiscretions warrant.
 
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Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I remember something I heard on one of alovingrobot's interviews that gave me a perspective I hadn't considered. I think it was with Kevin McPherson talking about Kunark, and he mentioned that to them, they thought Kunark was going to be the only expansion. They were just making an RPG that happened to be online and multiplayer at its core, they weren't thinking about making some 'game as a service' that would last for 10+ years. It would be the 'normal' game, then because it was popular an expansion and then they'd move on to the next game. I imagine WoW was in a similar boat but once they realized Titan was a dumpster fire, they had to keep limping it along.

You can see the perspective shift also after Cataclysm and more fully embraced by WoD. They start to design with the idea of things being around for a long time, design around the idea of ability bloat and start adding stupid shit like borrowed power to stave off some perceived future development challenges. Also, by WotLK, I'm pretty sure the original team was so fucking sick of working on WoW that they lost a lot of the ideological guys (Tigole) who understood the mind of the mmo/wow players at the time.

This clip from Blizzcon always stands out to me about how the original team "got it" and why I am a 2005 era Tigole fanboy.


Good video and not just the content, it's also very much indicative of how the tone has changed over the years.
 
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Fucker

Log Wizard
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25,680
Blizzard very likely did things wrong over the years as it relates to employees. But, they are going to be made into an example and will probably be burned more than their indiscretions warrant.
I don't know about that. The degeneracy went on for a long time, and then you have lead devs doing nothing but playing video games all day. That place needed to be cleaned up and cleared out.

Also kind of amazing they can't find any real game designers to lead their games. Not a single one. These last two expacs highlight the fact that none of the people over there know how to construct a fun game at all.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
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I remember something I heard on one of alovingrobot's interviews that gave me a perspective I hadn't considered. I think it was with Kevin McPherson talking about Kunark, and he mentioned that to them, they thought Kunark was going to be the only expansion. They were just making an RPG that happened to be online and multiplayer at its core, they weren't thinking about making some 'game as a service' that would last for 10+ years. It would be the 'normal' game, then because it was popular an expansion and then they'd move on to the next game. I imagine WoW was in a similar boat but once they realized Titan was a dumpster fire, they had to keep limping it along.
Almost certainly not. By the time they launched WoW, they had seen what EQ could do. EQ kept growing and growing and growing, quarter after quarter - it only plateaued and crashed at the time WoW actually launched. I'm pretty sure they had the idea that the game could run on pretty much forever already. Titan was supposed to tap in a different market for MMO, people not/less interested in fantasy RPG and more into contemporary/scifi settings.