World of Warcraft: Current Year

Cybsled

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What does "mandatory arbitration" mean in the context of blizzard abuse allegations? Does blizz force accusers and accusees to sit in a room and try to work it out?

A lot of employers in the past decade or so, when they hire people, make people sign employee contracts that indicate they agree to mandatory arbitration. Basically means you can't flat out sue through the normal courts - you have to go to an arbitration hearing where both sides present the case and the arbitrator/judge makes the decision and then both sides have to abide by it. Usually you can't appeal the decision either. It usually favors employers, which is why it is a more common thing now than it would have been 15-20+ years ago or more.
 

Mist

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A lot of Terms of Service for a lot of products you use daily also have mandatory arbitration, meaning you can't sue the company who provides the service without going through arbitration.

It's a thing that should just plain be outlawed.
 
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elbas

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The number of streamers clutching their pearls and 'protest quitting' WoW and switching to FFXIV to make them appear morally superior is fucking laughable. Don't like WoW? OK.. fine, switch, but the fake outrage and desperate attempt to continue making money from this situation is beyond pathetic.
It won't be long before a WoW streamer posts something like "If you want to quit WoW, that's fine, but realize that WoW streamers like me are just trying to make a living. Please don't stop watching my WoW stream. If my viewership goes down, I won't make my ad revenue target and won't be able to pay the stable fees for my dressage horse."
 
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Chris

Potato del Grande
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^^^ Fucking this!

The number of streamers clutching their pearls and 'protest quitting' WoW and switching to FFXIV to make them appear morally superior is fucking laughable. Don't like WoW? OK.. fine, switch, but the fake outrage and desperate attempt to continue making money from this situation is beyond pathetic.
The streamers started switching the week before this happened.

FF14 has been improving over time and WoW has been getting worse over time, we are now at the point where FF14 is better than WoW and worth switching to.

The moral stuff with the sexual assault, bullying, incompetance, poor communication, fan hating and corporate greed is just extra incentive to switch.
 
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Neranja

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Shit JAB as much as a worthless smug cunt that he is, surely got a sweet golden parachute and is playing in Bobbys Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool as we speak. You don't fall on the sword for free.
You're basing this mostly on the "you think you do, but you don't" and the bad perception that followed. But remember: The autistic screeching "no changes!" crowd doesn't have that of a great reputation, either.

Not to defend JAB, but he was never formally a "C-Suite" exec, he was just "president". That was already discussed at length when he replaced Morhaime. And he most likely didn't fall on the sword out of his free will. Bobby probably saw him as "one of the old guard" at Blizzard, far too long at the company to be malleable for the strategy change Bobby has planned out for Blizzard.

The situation right now is that ActiBlizz bides their time until this story blows over, so they can test the waters with Diablo Immortal in 2022, and then monetize the fuck out of the two Warcraft mobile games they already have in the pipeline.
 

Neranja

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It won't be long before a WoW streamer posts something like "If you want to quit WoW, that's fine, but realize that WoW streamers like me are just trying to make a living. Please don't stop watching my WoW stream.
1628348610794.jpeg
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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^^^ Fucking this!

The number of streamers clutching their pearls and 'protest quitting' WoW and switching to FFXIV to make them appear morally superior is fucking laughable. Don't like WoW? OK.. fine, switch, but the fake outrage and desperate attempt to continue making money from this situation is beyond pathetic.
It's all part of the gaming culture that gets cultivated by Twitch, really.

There are legitimate reasons to be pissed off about Blizzard that do affect players.
Before the drama, people were stating, 'the game sucks, and XIV does not'.

Streamers need to justify it because it attracts profit to them (money in the form of subs/bits/donations/ad revenue which are given by viewers)

They're using a cause, sure. But let's not pretend like WoW Shadowlands is amazing. It's overwhelmingly bad compared to XIV, or even previous versions of itself, imo, and I think many people share that sentiment. That's why they are switching. Much like people swapped from EQ -> WoW for the same reason.
 
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Neranja

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Streamers need to justify it because it attracts profit to them (money in the form of subs/bits/donations/ad revenue which are given by viewers)
This depends if you are a personality streamer (people watch the streamer, not the game), or if you are "game" streamer.

I think Asmongold had serious anxiety about what category he was in, but a recent poll on his stream stated that 85% of his viewers don't even miss WoW.
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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This depends if you are a personality streamer (people watch the streamer, not the game), or if you are "game" streamer.

I think Asmongold had serious anxiety about what category he was in, but a recent poll on his stream stated that 85% of his viewers don't even miss WoW.
I think that 85% of WoW players that give XIV a chance would not miss WoW or WoW streams. The point I am making is that the game sucks, and it's not fun to watch if you have no attachment to the game anymore. I can't recall the last time I watched a WoW stream besides someone linking me a clip that I had zero interest in.
 

Bubbles

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It won't be long before Bellular posts something like "If you want to quit WoW, that's fine, but realize that WoW streamers like me are just trying to make a living. Please don't stop watching my WoW stream. If my viewership goes down, I won't make my ad revenue target and won't be able to pay the stable fees for my dressage horse."

fixed your comment
 
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Malkav

French Madman
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Man Bellular really is trying to milk that shit for all its worth. Man can't stop posting and streaming about WoW and Blizzard instead of just trying to switch over to something else.
 

Merrith

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Man Bellular really is trying to milk that shit for all its worth. Man can't stop posting and streaming about WoW and Blizzard instead of just trying to switch over to something else.

Little weird b/c he seemed like one of the first to kind of jump ship, although he wasn't streaming himself playing XIV. Wonder if they looked at their data and saw that it was causing them to lose a lot of their normal base of viewers/donations and decided he quickly needed to go back hard on WoW content.
 

Neranja

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Wonder if they looked at their data and saw that it was causing them to lose a lot of their normal base of viewers/donations and decided he quickly needed to go back hard on WoW content.
They do a weekly 2+ hours livestream discussion + Q&A, and they push out multiple clips per day from that livestream on their new clips channel during the week.

Bellular himself said he was surprised how that clips channel took off.
 

Malkav

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I honestly wonder how they still have things to say for 2 hours a week about WoW.

Clip channel took off probably because nobody has time nor is interested enough to be subjected to 2 hours of his bullshit.
 
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Merrith

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They do a weekly 2+ hours livestream discussion + Q&A, and they push out multiple clips per day from that livestream on their new clips channel during the week.

Bellular himself said he was surprised how that clips channel took off.

Yeah I just thought the clips channel took off when he started talking about XIV and his experiences playing it. I know he tried New World as well, but not sure if he's actively playing through XIV anymore or just back to WoW full time for that revenue.
 

nu_11

Avatar of War Slayer
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^^^ Fucking this!

The number of streamers clutching their pearls and 'protest quitting' WoW and switching to FFXIV to make them appear morally superior is fucking laughable. Don't like WoW? OK.. fine, switch, but the fake outrage and desperate attempt to continue making money from this situation is beyond pathetic.
I’m just about done reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. It’s really strange finding myself in agreement (about how people behave) with someone who lived so long ago. She basically observed that most people are just mirrors reflecting the opinions of other people and they’re shocked when confronted with this truth. But in the end these people continue on living in the same way as prisoners of the collective.
 
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Urlithani

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WoW lore is dogshit because it lacks any substance beyond 'o thing is evil, lets fight it' and then ignore the fact that it exists. Has nothing to do with the amount of clothing. If you read my reply you'd understand that, but you have the IQ of Chris fucking playing this game with a controller.

And they cut corners for multiple patch cycles across multiple expansions. I have zero fucks given about the tit size of Sylvanas, or Steve Danuser's self-insert boyfriend. They kept adding in the bare minimum of meaningful content while making a steaming pile of shit that made the MMO genre into even more of a laughing stock than it already was.

The only saving grace Blizzard actually did correctly was arenas during Mists of Pandaria, and keeping older content relevant during Classic (up until Naxx which invalidated the whole tiered progression system) and for most of TBC.
Beyond that, there was no content that was engaging that I personally experienced - story, raid, group, solo, pvp or otherwise.

I dreaded playing the game (lol) because it was devoid of any meaningful content that allowed normal people to play the game without having it feel like a chore. My decision to hate that game is because instead of making a game that was fun, they made playing an MMO into a single-player dish-washing experience.

WoW was the game I had to build myself up to play because I didn't find it fun, but my friends were playing it. It's the kind of game you'll look over your friend's shoulder in highschool and see them with their epic'd out paladin, except to get to that point would mean ruining interpersonal relationships and your career/future to log on for internet points.

That was a recurring theme. Every fucking time I'd play WoW it was like, "Oh, this xpac is gonna be amazing!" and i'd have 5-10 friends offer to transfer me to their server to play with them. Except I didn't actually.

I'd play around them, and then I'd realize I am doing 80% of the stuff by myself that was akin to fetch quests, or reputation grinds, or farming potions, or carrying retards in arena. I had zero attachment to the character I played because no one had any attachment to the game. And WoW did nothing to get me hyped for it, except for prerendered CGI (which was awesome, mind you) that put out a premise for an expansion.

I don't understand why people play/played it to this day. That includes you. Why the fuck are you playing the boosting crusade still, again?

Haven't you learned by now that Blizzard makes subpar games and that people are unafraid to admit it now that there's better, more engaging games with more content? And a free trial that includes A Realm Reborn and the first expansion Heavensward, and you can play up to level 60?

View attachment 365775

My wakeup call about how much WoW sucks was trying to imagine explaining it to teenage kids.

"Let me get this straight: you collect 10 bear asses to level up, move to another area where you collect 10 bear asses, and you basically mash these 4 buttons while you do that for levels 1 through 60. Then the real game starts where I repeatedly do the same chores to collect 10 bear asses so I can join a dungeon or raid to get gear that will let me collect bear asses quicker than before?"

"Jesus, Urlithani. I thought you were actually one of the cool adults. This shit is fucking dumb."
 
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Xerge

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My wakeup call about how much WoW sucks was trying to imagine explaining it to teenage kids.

"Let me get this straight: you collect 10 bear asses to level up, move to another area where you collect 10 bear asses, and you basically mash these 4 buttons while you do that for levels 1 through 60. Then the real game starts where I repeatedly do the same chores to collect 10 bear asses so I can join a dungeon or raid to get gear that will let me collect bear asses quicker than before?"

"Jesus, Urlithani. I thought you were actually one of the cool adults. This shit is fucking dumb."
Mean while in New World,

"Son, we chased those Syndicate scum off the cliffside like they were buffalo."
 
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Elidroth

Trakanon Raider
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The streamers started switching the week before this happened.

FF14 has been improving over time and WoW has been getting worse over time, we are now at the point where FF14 is better than WoW and worth switching to.

The moral stuff with the sexual assault, bullying, incompetance, poor communication, fan hating and corporate greed is just extra incentive to switch.

I play both. I like both. What I'm referring to are the people making such a big deal about switching to show their solidarity, when in reality they're really mostly just concerned about losing viewers for supporting (streaming) THAT game..