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What's going on at Blizzard I see occurring at Cryptic
galacticgoo
Member Posts: 61 Arc User
in Ten Forward
In fact the whole gaming industry seems to be following this path.
https://imgur.com/KH4wspv
Response from WoW Team lead at Blizzard
The recent disabling of the Joystick code in STO is from this same mentality and another let's TRIBBLE on the customers because we can. The Joystick code worked fine for at least 6 years, but some idiot at Cryptic decided to disable it and didn't give a rat's TRIBBLE perpendicular how it would affect customers. No comment in the release notes and poor QA told to respond with "we never supported it" which only pissed off customers. Because of this, I can't play parts of STO. All that time and money invested wasted. I've gone from "go Cryptic, we're all cheering your small development house on" to "Cryptic, what have you done to justify the recent price increases? All you've done is remove/disable stuff." Something I think all of us should be asking.
https://imgur.com/KH4wspv
Response from WoW Team lead at Blizzard
The recent disabling of the Joystick code in STO is from this same mentality and another let's TRIBBLE on the customers because we can. The Joystick code worked fine for at least 6 years, but some idiot at Cryptic decided to disable it and didn't give a rat's TRIBBLE perpendicular how it would affect customers. No comment in the release notes and poor QA told to respond with "we never supported it" which only pissed off customers. Because of this, I can't play parts of STO. All that time and money invested wasted. I've gone from "go Cryptic, we're all cheering your small development house on" to "Cryptic, what have you done to justify the recent price increases? All you've done is remove/disable stuff." Something I think all of us should be asking.
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Funny thing is... back when WoW was the KING of MMOs, all these other companies tried to make new games and tried to pass them off as "The WoW Killer". Yeeeeaaa... that never worked. And yet... it seems as though the prophecized WoW Killer has risen, but from an unlikely source. It was not a new game, but an older one. One that had itself struggled and was even terrible at one point (1.0). However... it is a game that never forgot what really mattered. FUN. And thus... Final Fantasy 14 became the WoW Killer, thanks to a different focus on what matters, and stupidity from WoW Devs for thinking "We're too big to fail".
You know what they say... the bigger they are... the harder they fall.
And WoW is falling hard. Just look at all the streamers and their take on many things. One did point out this "leak", being skeptical as well, but still noting that things aren't going very well over at Blizzard. One of the BIGGEST WoW streamers actually decided to check out FF14... and LIKED it. He was even blown away by FF14's housing system and its sheer ability for customization. Someone even went through the trouble of recreating that streamer's room IN FF14, which blew him away with how accurate it was.
And what was a top Blizzard Dev's response to a bigtime streamer checking out the competition? Insulting him on twitter, which pretty much sanctioned a campaign to harass the streamer in FF14 in an attempt to get him banned from FF14. Had the opposite effect. The harassers got banned. A Blizzard Dev... insulted one of his players. That's not how you treat your playerbase.
As much as I would love to see new stories in the WarCraft and StarCraft universes... I'm afraid that it may not be possible with the current environment over at Blizzard. And who knows how that's going to manifest in the upcoming Diablo 4.
And even with Activision we see some of this BS. And what truly sucks... is that both companies (granted Activision acquired Blizzard) once understood that fun was more important. Activision was part of the Golden Age of Star Trek games back in the 90s and early 2000s! Blizzard was a titan of storytelling! Now... its... kinda sad to see how far these titans have fallen.
Honestly I wouldn't say FF14 was a WoW killer, WoW killed itself and FF14 took the vacant throne.
As it is I am probably involved in too many games already anyway (STO has been my main for about three years now so the others don't get a lot of my time though).
How is that even possible? Those things are supposed to be infinitely generatable.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
That makes sense. So it looks like instead of generating them on the fly for the different platforms which could get out of sync and cause account overlap problems they apparently generate blocks in batches.
I wonder how much of a percentage that Steam concurrency is of the total, 58k concurrency is about the average peak for Second Life in 2020 according to published data (during their heyday it used to get up in the 70+k range at times), so if Steam handles 20% of FFXIV's population it would be five times that for the total concurrency which is impressive.
Guess I should wait longer to preorder Endwalker expansion...
Getting a Joystick to work with STO still meant to jump through several burning hoops, and in a game without actual SdoF it's just not fun to use IMO. Even EVE Online could make better use of a joystick, and that's quite telling.
And by "stuff like this", I take that to mean "getting caught and being held accountable", but eh.
A lot of allegations are coming out targeting current and former bigwigs and the general "frat boy" culture (what a copout that term is... then again I suppose "drunken predator" doesn't have the same ring to it). And it's gone on for years, if not decades. They also forgot to mention to their shareholders that an agency of the state of California was conducting an investigation - and had been for two years - and so their stock started to fall a bit.
Personally, I think this can only end in tears. The best-case scenario, all the people who conducted a walkout yesterday (at least 200 who consented to be photographed, and there are probably a lot more) and have spoken up will all be fired, they'll get slapped with "oh, look, retaliation", and just pay fines. And nothing will change. Worst case scenario, the corporate goons cut their losses, and goodbye Blizzard.
"There's No Way Like Poway!"
Real Join Date: October 2010
On the other hand 2500+ current and former employees signed a letter protesting Corporate's response, so there are still good people in there. They're just overshadowed by the BS and Corporate attitude.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
As much as I don't like Blizzard, and some of these accusations seem bad, I trust the government of California about as much as I trust a man offering candy in an unmarked van. That state has been run into the ground, and is well known for its absurd laws, corrupt politicians, and excessive taxes and regulations running businesses out of the state. This lawsuit to me looks like a lot of BS padding it, with a few individuals that the company should have dealt with but didn't.
Sad thing is, all the people working there are likely to pay the price for this suit, win or lose. They are probably better off elsewhere, but if things are so bad there, why haven't they already left?
The case isn't about responding to a few complaints, the DFEH almost never takes direct action on those. It is about setting precedent, a first step in making wage parity and other labor protection fair practice laws actually enforceable. As it is now, many companies ignore them, hiding behind closed payroll record books and using dodges based on criminal prosecution procedures (like demanding a criminal warrant even though it is a civil law) to avoid opening them to inspection.
In a precedent setting situation like that it means that Blizzard/Activision is almost certainly generating the most whistleblowing and complaints per number of employees of the companies they have jurisdiction over or are otherwise bad enough to be made an example of like that, and that would include not just game companies.
In the long run worker protection laws like that are good for productivity for the companies and good for the economy in general for a number of reasons, a big one being when employees know that kind of BS is happening they tend to get discouraged and just "phone in" the performance of their duties (I know this from experience, for a while I was in a company as bad as Activision is said to be and saw it happening first hand). That F*-it attitude is a big damper on creativity, and creativity and enthusiasm are the the most important things a game company needs.
I'm sorry, but the lawsuit reads like a typical "progressive" and marxist laundry list of vague subjective claims and likely hyperbole. If there really are legitimate sexism problems there then great, enforce and fix it.
However, when the lawsuit uses disgusting language like "women of color," uses horribly misleading stats like claiming women are 50% of gamers (definitely not Blizzard games they aren't) and makes all kinds of allegations of harassment, without police ever being involved except in the suicide, and offers only one sided claims for the allegations of pay discrimination, I'm not inclined to believe anything going on here because it seems politically and financially driven.
This is one side of the story, don't forget that. There could be very legitimate reasons there was "discrimination." Just asserting that these women did the same or more work than the men doesn't make it true.
Blizzard is a fat, juicy target, many other corporations are quitting that state and its crime infested cities, and its not like they can keep bleeding PG&E dry because they are already defacto a state run utility. The first line in the prayer for relief is pretty clear, they want punitive damages against them, aka money for the state. This is a state that tries to sue people who no longer live in that state for income they didn't earn in that state, and which has wasted billions on the most ridiculous train project ever instead of say, desalinization plants, despite having perennial droughts and a massive shoreline.
Again, if there is truth to it all, then I hope Blizzard gets hit with the warhammer they deserve, but skepticism is all I am willing to offer California's government. And I don't play Blizzard games, they aren't interesting to me, so it isn't like I have some brand loyalty here or whatever.
In STO, you can for the most part still just use the same old reputation-gear and traits plus whatever you like in order to perform appropriate for the content. And other than missing out on sometimes fun but rarely mandatory event-gear/ships, there's no actual reason to log in every day. You can quit for a time and come back without losing anything because the game is free, you don't have a subscription to consider.
Everything else, from expensive store-bundles, to new lockbox/promo-ships, which players crave for, is completely optional.
If STO was like WoW, then you would get like five new reputations and at least ten new MANDATORY ships every expansion and the old ones would become complete TRIBBLE and you'd immediately struggle with new content if you don't start grinding the new sh*t rightaway. And on top of that, you'd have to pay for every month you "enjoy" the game.
Also, in STO, unless you want the highest numbers possible, it doesn't matter which "class" you play.
In WoW, new expansions can make a good class that worked well previously utterly useless and completely unfun to play.
WoW has a much deeper underlying problem: The lead-devs don't understand or give two effs about their product anymore.
They literally just add stuff they think people will at least log in to do every day in order to keep the subscriptions going.
They don't play their game. Some of the devs in the teams may do so, but they don't make decisions.
This and certain other issues I won't get into just adds to the overall decline of Blizzard, a company that once made amazing games which still stand the test of time to a degree.
What's happening over at Blizz now is essentially just the collapsing house of cards which was waiting to happen for about a decade now.
The only actual parallels between blizz and cryptic right now is that most of the original developers left their teams; but despite all criticisms STO is still in better hands than WoW is.
I am going to keep this short and to the bare facts because it is getting too close to political debate and putting in opinions only tends to cause more problems than it solves in political and near-political discussions.
First off, the kind of archaic formalized terms you point out are typical for civil rights cases, it is not a sign of some conspiracy or whatever, it is just normal procedure.
Second, recent studies have shown that women do indeed make up approximately 50% of gamers nowadays, though that varies by category. In RPGs and artistic games (such as the builder-centric Second Life) they are actually a slight majority (about 53.6%) whereas men outnumber them in non-RPG MMOs and shooters where approximately 66% are male.
Third, even with most states having laws against discrimination it still happens quite often in businesses. The unrealistic attitude that women have no brain for business, that married women are just skating along to make some pin money while their husbands take care of all the financial necessities, or that unmarried women are just there temporarily for the purpose of hunting husbands hoping to land an executive and then leave the workplace, still exists in a lot of companies.
With Shadowlands the tedious grinds for gear and declining player base threw me off the game. By the time you did get your piece of gear your so annoyed the reward felt like a punishment rather then a reward.