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On July 08 2010 19:07 Necrosjef wrote:
I think the "Golden age" of gaming are long gone.
Those of us who wished for another SC1 style community in SC2 were/are obviously sadly mistaken.
Not sure if I will be purchasing SC2 or any other Blizzard titles in future.
I'm just happy I was part of the good times while they lasted. I really feel for people who are 12-16 yo now who will never be able to experience what I did.
What Blizzard are doing, doesn't really make any sense. Doesn't make sense from any standpoint, just a series of bad decisions on their part which ultimately won't work to make any additional revenue. The real test for Blizzard will be how long they can go with this approach before they are forced to go back to the tried and tested business model of giving customers what they want.
Well those 12-16 year olds will grow up with monthly fees and think of them as "normal", because the ads will tell them that they are needed to provide quality. That is actually the most depressing part of it ... people selling themselves into "slavery" and cheering the company at the same time.
After the "Facebook integration" I was annoyed enough to put off buying Starcraft 2 for a few years until it came out as a cheap 10 Euro version for all three campaigns.
After the "post with real name only" decision I wont buy Starcraft 2 at all ... ever ... until they get rid of these invasions into my privacy.
There is definetely something fishy going on in the state of Activision / Blizzard and you all know that a fish starts to stink from its head. Monthly subscriptions or maps (which could be total junk, because you cant test them before you buy them) for a "moderate fee" are all things to make certain individuals richer out of our pockets. Its not about creating a good game anymore, but rather about making tons of money and thats where I say no.
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That seems to make sense, though it would be nice to hear the blizzard people say that themselves in some manner.
What were the advantages again for blizzard to become activision/blizzard?
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On July 08 2010 19:07 Necrosjef wrote:The real test for Blizzard will be how long they can go with this approach before they are forced to go back to the tried and tested business model of giving customers what they want.
That model seems outdated. The old "customer is always right" seems to have become "customer is always wrong". Have you guys seens the IPhone thing, people get bad reception and Apple says 'lol u guys just hold it wrong thats your problem learn to hold it differently' and then they release some patch that makes it show full bars when they are holding it even though the signal still goes down.
Unfortunately all these companies can get away with the stupid crap since they usually have a good product. No one would buy a phone that you can't actually hold like a phone unless it had a bunch of wanted features. Likewise, No one in their right mind would ever buy a game with Battle.net 2.0 unless that game was super legendary and well made, i.e. Starcraft 2.
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Kotick: "there will continue to be opportunities for us to exploit the PC platform in ways that we haven’t yet."
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Did no one see this coming at all? Blizzard blew up way too big and way too fast. More so than they could handle. Any high-ranked official in their type of situation would give the OK to make more money, which is precisely the issue. Blizzard Entertainment is a BUSINESS, a BUSINESS only exists to make MONEY. Now that Blizzard has the fan-base and loyalty of its customers in the millions, it can do these things to make more MONEY. They weren't always going to be the little company blowing out "underground-cult, pc game classics", they were too good. It was inevitable that they would generate so much success because of how legendary their 3 games are. With the Blizzard community in the millions, the dawn of social-networking sites, and our increasingly connected world, it would be, excuse my language, mother fucking retarded not to tap into this pool of money.
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Of cours we can't forget the fact that they've already announced 2 expansions months befor the gams release. Starcraft will become an annual, or even semi annual game. Like cod or halo.
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RealID is a result of the korean law that requires all public forums (blizz forums) that have over 100,000 posters (that most definitely is battle net) to post with their real names. They can't have forums in south Korea unless they have a real ID system. And they definitely are going to launch in SK, thats where the most loyal fan base is.
Do I think that this law is BS? Yes. Will it come to the US eventually? Probably. So Activision (I'm not even going to say blizzard regarding BNet 2.0) says, "Hey, lets go ahead and put everyone on the realID system rather than just SK because eventually all countries will require it."
The problem is that with Women, Children, and people who work in the government and certain professional positions, this can cause a problem. Yes, there are work arounds, but there should at least be an option before we have a law here in the US for it.
That said, the CEO for Activision, Kotick turns SC2 into a micropayment system for units, maps, UMS, etc, I'm going to be pissed. I'll buy an expansion, but I'm not going to buy just units used in multiplayer competitive leagues.
The way they are driving blizzard into the ground is shameful. Its modern corporations that typically purchase a smaller, more well built company, lean on them for heavy profits, then discard them like a box of moldy tangerines and just pick up more smaller well built companies and turn huge profits.
Its what Activision did with RedOctane, Infinity Ward, and many others. If they do it to Blizzard...
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Its not about korean law, its about datamining.
The benefits are:
-Massive datamining, even retroactive datamining
-Logs that once were used to cover their asses in legal situations are now profit generators
-Making people think that its OK to have your name on everything for datamining
-Fewer resources needed to be spent on the forums
-The remaining community will put up with shit and are likely to put up with whatever they do next
-Limit liability by forcing a public record ('they knew they were posting under their name!")
-Limit liability for account securty by forcing a lot of their customers to provide false names
-Blackmails people who do actually provide their real info into buying authenticators because the risk of account compromise and the quantity of personal information is so great.
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I'm really disturbed by how they're running the RealID business. In WoW, you can view the names of "friends of your friends". In addition, WoW addons can see your real name. That's right, the guy who wrote the "turn all orc females nude" mod now has a list of every person using it if he bothers to code that in, and he can easily go onto your realm and spam about it.
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Riddle me this: how come anyone who posts is "a vocal minority?" How the hell do we determine majority/minority by the mere act of vocalizing our opinions?
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On July 09 2010 00:45 Piski wrote:For the record I agree with you that and I don't like this. But they already said they are working on it so constantly posting that "WE WANT THEM FASTER!!" doesn't really help.
When did I said anything barely similar to that?
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On July 08 2010 18:53 NicolBolas wrote:I'm sure this is a trustworthy, reliable source  Before people get too upset about this, please think about where it comes from. Or doesn't come from.
It's not important where information comes from, it's whether it's true or not that matters.
Crackheads can still talk truth, and the Governments still lie to your face. wtf is trust worth when the person you trust is wrong?
Just Sayin'.. Just Sayin'..
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Oh hey, and what ever happened to the comprehensive address we were getting? Is it still in the works or did I miss something?
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On July 09 2010 05:22 One.two wrote:
Oh hey, and what ever happened to the comprehensive address we were getting? Is it still in the works or did I miss something?
This WAS the address.. translated it means FU.
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On July 09 2010 05:22 Prophecy3 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 18:53 NicolBolas wrote:Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard I'm sure this is a trustworthy, reliable source Before people get too upset about this, please think about where it comes from. Or doesn't come from. It's not important where information comes from, it's whether it's true or not that matters.Crackheads can still talk truth, and the Governments still lie to your face. wtf is trust worth when the person you trust is wrong? Just Sayin'.. Just Sayin'..
Yes, it very well might be true. But the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And thus far, there is not even the slightest shred of evidence for this post coming out of Blizzard.
And for the sake of argument, let's assume that this person has an ex-flatmate who's sister works as a GM for Blizzard. Even that alone doesn't mean that the message was delivered correctly. The Blizzard GM heard from people they work with about the situation. That person told their sister. The sister told the ex-flatmate. The ex-flatmate told the original poster. That's 4 people between the people who have actual information and us. What do you suppose the chances are that things have been relayed correctly?
Did you never play the telephone game in school?
Getting indignant about a message of unknown veracity is silly. You should file it in the same place you file Nigerian email scams.
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On July 09 2010 05:34 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 05:22 Prophecy3 wrote:On July 08 2010 18:53 NicolBolas wrote:Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard I'm sure this is a trustworthy, reliable source Before people get too upset about this, please think about where it comes from. Or doesn't come from. It's not important where information comes from, it's whether it's true or not that matters.Crackheads can still talk truth, and the Governments still lie to your face. wtf is trust worth when the person you trust is wrong? Just Sayin'.. Just Sayin'.. Yes, it very well might be true. But the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And thus far, there is not even the slightest shred of evidence for this post coming out of Blizzard. And for the sake of argument, let's assume that this person has an ex-flatmate who's sister works as a GM for Blizzard. Even that alone doesn't mean that the message was delivered correctly. The Blizzard GM heard from people they work with about the situation. That person told their sister. The sister told the ex-flatmate. The ex-flatmate told the original poster. That's 4 people between the people who have actual information and us. What do you suppose the chances are that things have been relayed correctly? Did you never play the telephone game in school? Getting indignant about a message of unknown veracity is silly. You should file it in the same place you file Nigerian email scams.
yeah, but it actually is possible for intelligent people to view something as possibly true until they have further information.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 09 2010 05:34 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2010 05:22 Prophecy3 wrote:On July 08 2010 18:53 NicolBolas wrote:Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard I'm sure this is a trustworthy, reliable source Before people get too upset about this, please think about where it comes from. Or doesn't come from. It's not important where information comes from, it's whether it's true or not that matters.Crackheads can still talk truth, and the Governments still lie to your face. wtf is trust worth when the person you trust is wrong? Just Sayin'.. Just Sayin'.. Yes, it very well might be true. But the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And thus far, there is not even the slightest shred of evidence for this post coming out of Blizzard. And for the sake of argument, let's assume that this person has an ex-flatmate who's sister works as a GM for Blizzard. Even that alone doesn't mean that the message was delivered correctly. The Blizzard GM heard from people they work with about the situation. That person told their sister. The sister told the ex-flatmate. The ex-flatmate told the original poster. That's 4 people between the people who have actual information and us. What do you suppose the chances are that things have been relayed correctly? Did you never play the telephone game in school? Getting indignant about a message of unknown veracity is silly. You should file it in the same place you file Nigerian email scams.
This is clearly not the important part of the information.
Honestly, everything from the Battle.net side of Starcraft II and Activision-Blizzard recently seems to be a huge tremendous fuck you to its player base as it reaches out for new markets to tap. Do you really want chatrooms?
and
I think Blizzard knows exactly what's going on. Nobody is actually saying things, but dozens of threads are being locked and hundreds of pages of posts have been deleted. I don't know whether it's petition spam or copy pasted stuff Blizzard doesn't want floating around, but obviously there are people hard at work watching the thread.
Are a little more important. See that's not just his opinion. ActiBlizz has shown numerous times in the past couple years that it:
A) Is aimed at making as Much Money As Possible off You, and Me.
B) Doesn't give a flying fuck how much it enrages the community, or damages the product itself as long as money's made.
C) Will continue on its current course of action until something happens to make them decide otherwise (uprising?)
Cleary what his flatmates sister said is not the main issue. Whether what she says IS true, IS. How would we know? Well usually we'd just go, "HEY BLIZZ WTF?" and pre-Actifuck, they would have gladly talked to us. Now? well.. i'm sure you only have to look at THIS LINK you will see their recent track record of stellar performances.
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On July 08 2010 18:27 EmeraldSparks wrote:I saw this post and thought the topic might merit its own thread. Show nested quote +Nachtjäger, Suramar, 59 Night Elf Death Knight post 35821 in epic thread wroteGot in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard, to see what the internal buzz on this was. Apparently, at the moment the employees are largely as pissed as the players, and she stated that despite attempts to keep it hushed, it has become known that the big creative players within Blizzard are pretty much as unhappy about this as we are. Everybody has been told they are not free to comment on this situation outside of specially prepared statements. It's still going ahead, however (and here's where in-house rumours and hearsay really start coming into play): from what they've picked up, the Blizzard leads have been told in no uncertain terms that the non-gameplay-related direction of the game is working to a different blueprint now. GC and company are free to play with shiny new talent trees all they like, for example, but for the first time the decisions regarding Battle.net implementation, Real ID, and plans for the general acquisition of new players for the business are no longer in Blizzard's own hands, and that's not going down too well. Honestly, everything from the Battle.net side of Starcraft II and Activision-Blizzard recently seems to be a huge tremendous fuck you to its player base as it reaches out for new markets to tap. Do you really want chatrooms? I think Blizzard knows exactly what's going on. Nobody is actually saying things, but dozens of threads are being locked and hundreds of pages of posts have been deleted. I don't know whether it's petition spam or copy pasted stuff Blizzard doesn't want floating around, but obviously there are people hard at work watching the thread. It's also probably no accident that Blizzard dropped twin bombshell announcements the very day after the forum change was announced - bringing back the North America SC II Beta for the Starcraft fans and releasing a fresh wave of Cataclysm previews for the WoW players, the classic distraction strategy - break a controversial decision right before a major sporting event, hopefully it'll get drowned out. I don't know if this is their attempt at drawing attention away from the issue, and who knows how well it works, but the issue has spilled far beyond forum doors - virtually every single community with an internet presence, from blizzard fansites like teamliquid to gaming information venues (penny arcade, /v/, kotaku,) random venues (for those of you know what it is even fandom_wank has gotten in to trash the decision) and recently, hit the mainstream media websites - Wall Street Journal, British Broadcasting Corporation, Associated Press, National Broadcasting Corporation, you name it, it's there. More information in other thread, of course It goes without saying their stated justification - "too many trolls" is 100%, pure, unadulterated bullshit. That isn't even worth debating. So, why? (The "we just want to test out Facebook integration a bit, handle the server load" reason for killing Battle.net friends is also suspect; it's far more likely they wanted to push thousands of beta testers to try it out in order to get anything done, to get people used to the idea of facebook and smashing together the anonymous and real worlds in a tremendous fusion of light, heat, and cash.) It's probably not a coincidence that it might just be related to facebook and the "monetization" of battle.net (you fucking think?) There's a speculation that it might be related a Korean law that cracks down harshly on internet anonymity, but my guess is they looked at the number of Farmville players out there (eighty fucking million) and decided they were going to force Battle.net 2.0 hell for leather into the world of social media. There doesn't even have to be an explicit campaign involved. If it costs them a hundred thousand Starcraft II orders and cancelled WoW subscriptions, a half of a percent of Farmville users picking up WoW or Starcraft II would make up for that many times over. This comparison is flawed, but roughly the numbers stand. As Farmville teaches us, the power of facebook user advertising insane - Blizzard realizes that if notifications about lost cats and treasure chests can pull people into farmville by the millions, then notifications about hitting diamond rank one, slaying Baal on super duper ultra hardcore mode, or finishing some fiendishly difficult raid without a single resurrection, might do the same for Blizzard's games. This is an unbelievable shitload of money. I mean, per say, this isn't bad, or evil, it's just Blizzard wanting to use the power of social media to make hundreds of millions of dollars - every single corporation in the world wants to do this. And if something as small as forum posting isn't invasive, why the rage over this small movement? People can just not use the forums - we have TL, after all. This is worrying because it looks like Activision Blizzard has a general policy of slowly trying to get its foot into the door, bit by bit, getting people used to things here, lowering people's expectations there, until they get where they want, community rage be damned. Oh, sure, you'll always have the ability to play Starcraft II in peace and quiet the same way you can have a facebook with everything turned off - most people just aren't going to fucking bother with the additional trouble. Of course, maybe this is all trash, they could just be that (do you really want chatrooms) dumb about a "anti-troll and anti-flaming measure." Who fucking knows?
If it is indeed true, I would think about publicly proposing to donate 25$ a month to a new company formed by Blizzard employees who quit Activision-Blizzard for a period of 3 years.. This isn't much money, and the problem of what we are handling right now, and if it is true, is that if they resign en masse, they find themselves with nothing and no way to pay their rents. If they knew however a lot of people would support them to keep making quality games, then, well, that may be something different, lacking more information on the topic.
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This ended up being pretty long, and I wanted to add the disclaimer that the criticisms within aren't aimed specifically at people in this thread but at the trend I have seen for years when discussing any blizzard game. I think that TL is one of the only places to find well moderated and quality discussion about Starcraft, and we have far fewer and less frantic chicken littles than your average blizzard forum or wow fansite.
Regarding the OP, this is a neat story but we have to be careful how we speculate on this sort of thing. You lose a little credibility when you accuse Blizzard or Activision of attempting to take over the earth. The whole scenario people have been imagining sounds like some kind of movie where blizzard becomes skynet and Woodward and Bernstein figure out the plot just in time! Facebook isn't a big deal to me, and I agree with HD that more players is good for the game.
I've defended blizzard a lot over the years, especially when it came to WoW. They know what they're doing with balance changes, even though i was concerned about the appeal to casuals in wotlk - for me raids became very difficult trying to carry so many people at once. I have been concerned about Activision hindering blizzard, just like I am still concerned about EA and bioware. But I have trusted blizzard because they haven't made a bad game.
However, while we must temper our outrage with perspective and rational thought, we must be outraged by mandatory real-ID. I don't frequent blizzard forums anyway because they are a joke, overrun by children, flame wars, and trolls, devoid of quality discussion and poorly moderated, but this cannot happen. Rather than overreacting with doomsday theories, let's take real-ID for what it is. Pllayers are targeted by keyloggers and they get their accounts stolen A LOT. Security is a serious problem and it will probably affect sc2 as well. Real-ID can only make this worse. Furthermore, some people are batshit crazy and real-ID will endanger people. Parents should not allow their children to participate in any of it and I don't feel comfortable with it myself. This is a terrible idea and we should keep blizzard on track with our constructive feedback.
The problem is that a lot of our feedback is not constructive and frankly sounds childish or radical. The tea-party actually has a pretty reasonable thesis in their platform - smaller government, lower taxes, responsible spending (whether you agree with that model or not) - but do you take them seriously? No, because their public image has been hijacked by the folks that bring guns to rallies, talking about revolution and accusing the president of being a Nazi, a communist, a Kenyan, and the antichrist. Their real message gets drowned out and we can't have a quality discussion. So let's try not to sound like Glenn Beck.
This isn't targeted specifically at people in this thread, but the entire blizzard wow/wc/sc community. In general I usually don't blame the blue posters for not taking a lot of the people on their forums seriouosly, they actually show a lot of patience wading through the bullshit. I sincerely believe that well reasoned, well articulated, and well mannered discussion will yield results. They have to recognize that almost all of their customers hate the idea of real-ID.
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EPT
