World of Warcraft: Current Year

Matches devs that hate the players

Neranja said:

"user research team" that is hiring:

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If you're hired by a company who doesn't listen to their players' feedback until it's convenient for them, it's not a far stretch to say they'd lord your job over you while working there until it's convenient for them to give a shit.

So imagine you are told to 'promote a healthy work environment' that you know will fail. Your work quality decreases as a result as you lose motivation, and thus a promotion is out of the question indefinitely. In fact, it becomes easier for a company to terminate you.

That's how you get people speaking in support of their company while they work there and after they work there. It's literally the only way they won't get terminated or blacklisted, which is a huge issue in industry. You may be working with someone you met in the future, and if you don't speak positively about your current or former employers, HR can dig up info on you showing that.

There's zero labor laws in the US that will protect you for speaking out against an employer, and if it's your primary revenue source, you don't want to make that mistake anyways - you'll lose your apartment, which may be tied to your job in a place like Los Angeles.

It's best to not have a net presence or keep your personal presence separate for a lot of reasons in games. This is one of them.

Ukerric said:

Oh, there will be a 10.0.

The thing is, it might be the first expansion to... cough... reuse previous systems. Because nobody will be paying for new ones, they'll be told to reuse code. You'll have spreadsheet-designed loot ladders, maximum model re-use with minimal recolors, and a single writer making all the lore quest with probably existing quests simply recycled as WQ once you're at level cap. And that's how you produce an expansion on the cheap, which will sell to the handful of traumatized victims still playing. As long as it costs a couple million or less to develop, it's free money.

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They should have been doing this though.

People want to play in Azeroth and have story progression in old zones (people loved the old zones again in Classic), they also wanted the old systems to stay instead of be replaced each expansion as borrowed power.

For example in BFA, Zandalar should have been one hub zone with the sand zone being Tanaris/Zul Farrak, the blood zone Stranglethorn Vale/Zul Gurub and the jungle zone Hinterlands/Zul Aman. Reuse and update assets/NPCs/quests which saves some man power to do something like have a levelling and max level version of each zone.

Then keep the artifact weapons and order halls, maybe having one new one per class or something.

Ukerric said:

The thing is, it might be the first expansion to... cough... reuse previous systems. Because nobody will be paying for new ones, they'll be told to reuse code. You'll have spreadsheet-designed loot ladders, maximum model re-use with minimal recolors, and a single writer making all the lore quest with probably existing quests simply recycled as WQ once you're at level cap. And that's how you produce an expansion on the cheap, which will sell to the handful of traumatized victims still playing. As long as it costs a couple million or less to develop, it's free money.

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Catching up with Daybreak, then. Good stuff.

Neranja said:

Well, from what we can gather from some of the things that bubbled up from the sewage sludge that seems to be the Blizzard work environment:
They always tout ... no, let me rephrase that: They brainwash their employees that they have to always give it their all because they as a company are the best, so they have to prove constantly that they belong here.

This may lead to people trying to give their best, but it also fosters:

• an arrogant, holier-than-thou attitude towards people seen as "lesser", especially customers
• competitive mindset between employees themselves, which can lead to backstabbing and sabotage

I think that's not a work environment where creativity blossoms. Instead, that's a battlefield for psychopaths and other mentally ill people, where every sane person has left the building.

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They are definitely sniffing their own glue over there. I'm sure they think they are the best at what they do simply because they work at Blizzard. That exactly like me thinking I am a chess master because I am in the same room as Gary Kasparov. Someone needs to tell them the people with the ability to make great games left the company a LONG time ago.

... More money went into making that than the last expansion

Daidraco said:

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Ohhh RIP hard coded factions now right?

Nah just selling shitty poison to fat coomer pieces of shit who still play WoW.

Daidraco said:

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That is the gayest, most moronic thing I have ever seen.

I fucking hate this world.