World of Warcraft: Current Year

I saw the second plane hit live. Dunno what had alerted me to switch to the news but I remember there was still a lot of speculation about why it happened and wondering what the size of the plane was then all of the sudden fucking BAM.

I was asleep when the planes hit, but I was woken up after the 2nd plane/Pentagon hit and first thing I was told was "we're under attack! they just hit NYC and the Pentagon" and my first thought was thinking that WW3 had begun or something because no one explained anything after they told me that.

Needless to say, I woke up pretty fast after that

Elidroth said:

Everything alleged happens. SOE had it going on too.

Before I worked there, there were at least two female employees with restraining orders against other male employees for shit that they did both at work, and off-site, yet those male employees weren't fired. It happened to some of our female employees while I was on EQ as well, and while it wasn't anywhere as bad as this, it DID happen. A couple of my former co-workers told me stories this week about things that I had no idea were going on. 3am texts from bosses asking them to come over and fuck, when they had no dating history or relationship outside of work.

Our lead designer on Free Realms was using the dev team as his dating pool, and when a female on the team wouldn't sleep with him, he gave them bad reviews, and openly talked shit about them to other team members. And we had a woman leading the entire dev team, so that isn't any protection either.

This isn't cancel culture. It's fucking real.

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Honestly sexual harassment and employees being forced into suicide is only the surface of shitty behavior. Your stories align up with drama I have heard before.

Hell, I think Elidroth could speak about Margaret Krohn and what happened at SOE regarding her position as a designer and how they forced her into being a Community Manager because she's a woman and someone or a group of someones believed that women could not be good designers at SOE.

Their G.I.R.L Scholarship likely was used as a breeding ground for Alan Crosby (Brenlo)'s office love affairs. The EQ programming team is now entirely female-run. They're some of the smartest people that have ever graced that fucking game. People of all genders who touched that game for years prior didn't decide to

He left SOE after having an interpersonal relationship with Christie Renzetti (Kiara) and it was allegedly impacting others at the office. I wonder what his ex-wife has to say about SOE's office affair, or other girls there.

SOE was full of fucked up interpersonal relationships that were dismissed because they were all posted on Encyclopedia Dramatica and people thought it was a just a bunch of 4channers who wanted to 'start shit'. And when you're a company like Activision Blizzard or SOE, no one will question it because they make your favorite game and developers could never do anything wrong.

What's funny is people dismissed my earlier posts about 'how this shit was fake' and in reality, harassment is the tip of the iceberg. Employees being treated shitty happens everywhere. You don't even have to be in the industry that long.

I've been in there for 6 years, I still feel afraid to tell people of my experiences because of shitty behavior that if I didn't accept as 'normal' or 'standard', I could be blacklisted or judged on a future hiring process. Lots of people move on from games because they just don't want to deal with that BS. That's why a lot of ex-games industry folks end up in application or business programming.

Making some web or backend app pays better, has less egotistical megalomaniacs, and more opportunities as a whole for well paying job with decent benefits and no office drama. For context, I have never made above $85k even as a generalist remotely, mostly because I want to work *on* games and most opportunities have me required to move from where I am physically located and become subserviant to the company I move to. I just work remotely and have since 2015 and keep a distance from getting too attached.

tl;dr - Game devs need to unionize and have needed to for a goddamn while.

Unions are crap. That is all.

They would accomplish more by moving out of the big city bubbles that breed this shit

Tidalwave said:

Unions are crap. That is all.

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Getting literally exploited for labor isn't much better.

Seen artists get $0 for 3 months of work at a place I was at. Was told by a superior not to question it.

Saw a CFO and a studio head call each other fucking cocksuckers in emails that were accidentally CC'd to the entire studio as it was dying.

Months later, was told by that same person to leave the company as it was collapsing and 'never look back at it'.

Big Phoenix said:

At some point if you are working for three months without pay that's on you. Half of not being mistreated is standing up for yourself and establishing boundaries.

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And that's a whole lot easier to do as a collective.

Secrets said:

Their G.I.R.L Scholarship likely was used as a breeding ground for Alan Crosby (Brenlo)'s office love affairs.

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So now we're getting somewhere with this Crosby thing.

Tell us about the real Crosby room-- not Furor's knockoff emulator.

Did Bing Alan Crosby lay the groundwork for what would become known as the "Crosby suite" in the California filing?

... said:

They would accomplish more by moving out of the big city bubbles that breed this shit

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While being in high cost of living areas contributes a bit, there are other shitty employer practices which cause issues, like permanent "Consultant" roles where you're never actually an employee, thus they get out of having to give you benefits and also you have a lot less protections from unfair labor practices.

Then there is the unpaid intership because people are so desperate for a possible chance of landing a role at a major company and are willing to basically subject themselves to slavery to get in.

jayrebb said:

Did Bing Alan Crosby lay the groundwork for what would become known as the "Crosby suite" in the California filing?

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You know, I don't know. I would hope it doesn't and that spelling is just a coincidence, but this timeline is so dark and fucked that I wouldn't be surprised at this point. It's stupidly predictable.

Ever seen Furor cook a steak?

Chris Metzen cucked.

But not surprising given he has "global citizen" in his bio.

Elidroth said:

Everything alleged happens. SOE had it going on too.

Before I worked there, there were at least two female employees with restraining orders against other male employees for shit that they did both at work, and off-site, yet those male employees weren't fired. It happened to some of our female employees while I was on EQ as well, and while it wasn't anywhere as bad as this, it DID happen. A couple of my former co-workers told me stories this week about things that I had no idea were going on. 3am texts from bosses asking them to come over and fuck, when they had no dating history or relationship outside of work.

Our lead designer on Free Realms was using the dev team as his dating pool, and when a female on the team wouldn't sleep with him, he gave them bad reviews, and openly talked shit about them to other team members. And we had a woman leading the entire dev team, so that isn't any protection either.

This isn't cancel culture. It's fucking real.

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It is absolutely nuts what goes on in some companies. We had a zero tolerance policy at our company. No second chances, just pure GTFO.

Big Phoenix said:

At some point if you are working for three months without pay that's on you. Half of not being mistreated is standing up for yourself and establishing boundaries.

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Yep. I very briefly worked at a company. Execs froze our pay and denied our annual bonuses. The very next day they leased themselves new Mercedes. The result of that was an instant loss of their entire tech crew. We walked out on the spot. They went from being a tech company to being a maid service for other companies. That was the most epic flameout I'd seen before or since.

I wish I could get into FF14, but the anime art style really puts me off... and so many of the character models look like trash.

I have no interest in Amazon's new grind-fest MMO. Nothing from Korea interests me. I have done my time in EverQuest and have no intention of going back.

Having played some sort of MMO since EQ came out, this might be the end of the genre for me.