Tag: Blizzard

Bad Press: Disappointed With Diablo? You Are Toxic and Hate Women


The next Diablo game has been announced and this is only the second time that Blizzard is playing damage control. Yesterday at BlizzCon, Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal, a mobile spinoff set in the franchise universe between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. The game will be coming to Android and iOS devices, with pre-registration already open as of this article’s publishing.

Needless to say, the crowd was not amused after Blizzard revealed the title, and it looks like the developer was caught heavily off guard by the overwhelmingly negative response. The BlizzCon announcement was met with heavy booing from the crowd, several sarcastic questions during the Q&A (“Is this an April Fool’s joke?”), with Blizzard’s reps eventually shouting at the crowd. The Youtube videos have been heavily downvoted with the cinematic trailer sitting at 227k downvotes to 7.6k upvotes, and Blizzard went as far as to reupload the trailer in an apparent effort to reset the like/dislike ratio.

But this wouldn’t be a Bad Press article without examining how certain members of the games media have used this as an excuse to show their contempt for gamers, like Gamespot’s Mike Mahardy who in response to the April Fool’s joke stated:

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Don’t be too harsh on Mike, his company has bills to pay and the Blizzard advertising coffers are enormous. Madeleine Rose over at J!nx, where you can buy hundreds of Blizzard-branded products at a fantastic markup ($70 for a Diablo III hoodie), was astonished and grossed by the “entitlement” of the community.

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IGN’s Sean Finnegan went on the offensive, calling gamers the “most cynical, toxic, and entitled fandom in all of entertainment.” Sean fights for the users, just not the ones who don’t like the products made by the guys who advertise for the website he gets a paycheck from.

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Over at Mashable, the website for superfans and not for the casually curious, Adam Rosenberg penned the Op-Ed “Diablo Immortal controversy is really just entitled gamers shouting,” where he proceeds to call gamers assholes for not responding positively to the announcement. (Archived link to article)

“A segment of the Blizzard fan community is mad because of some stupid bullshit they’ve manufactured entirely out of their own ignorance. That “April Fool’s joke” guy was an asshole for asking that question. And if you’re holding that guy up as some kind of a hero, or even just attacking Blizzard for making something you’re not into, you’re an asshole too.”

Mashable’s Kellen Beck responded to a self-described tantrum by throwing a tantrum with an op-ed titled “Diablo Immortal is actually fun, you entitled babies.”

“From what I saw and played, Diablo Immortal is a fun, quality Diablo game that retains that special something that makes the franchise so special. You don’t have to play it, but whining online makes you sound like a literal infant.”

Professional public relations account director Will Powers (formerly DeepSilver and Playstation)

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Thankfully there are plenty of members of the press taking a level headed approach and actually discussing the game itself. Polygon’s Ryan Gilliam wrote “Diablo: Immortal feels like a Diablo game, just not one that’s for me.” Owen S. Good of the same Polygon wrote a piece noting concern that the game is being developed by NetEase and looks a lot like a reskin of another one of NetEase’s mobile titles. James over at IGN posted a hands-on noting that the controls are intuitive, the dungeons are impressive with more complicated bosses, however characters do not show armor changes in this development build and there is no resource pool.

A number of photos have circulated of the Diablo: Immortal booth at BlizzCon being virtually disregarded with hardly anyone in line or using the demo units.

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Of course, this is just a small snippet of what can be found on the web. It’s always good to have a reminder of how quickly some people in the press get angry when customers don’t just shut up and get excited about products.

Forbes Accidentally Leaks Diablo III On Switch


Whoops!

Blizzard was hoping to WoW the world tomorrow with the announcement that Diablo III would be coming to the Nintendo Switch, a reveal that may go down as one of 2018’s worst kept secrets thanks to a long series of rumors and possible teasers that the game would indeed be coming to the platform. Unfortunately Forbes blew the news a bit too quickly, with coverage of the embargoed news briefly going online before quickly being pulled off.

As they say, the internet never forgets, and intrepid young sleuths were able to get their hands on the announcement and its details. It looks like the game will be sold as the Eternal Collection, including Reaper of Souls and the Rise of the Necromancer expansion, and will also include a number of Nintendo exclusive cosmetics. Cosmetics include the Ganondorf cosmetic armor set (naturally), tri-force portrait frame, and chicken pet and Echoes of the Mask wings.

Diablo III on Switch will also allow up to 4 players on a single system, four players on separate systems wirelessly, and online on Nintendo Switch (launching in September) and will cost $59.99. Forbes’ details were confirmed by Kotaku who also had access to the embargoed news. As Nathan Grayson points out, this is also the first Blizzard game on a Nintendo system in 15 years.

Blizzard is reported to have several Diablo projects in the works, with this presumably being one of them. Most assuredly there are more announcements in the works, however your guess is as good as ours on when Blizzard is ready to have them leaked announced.

World of Warcraft Classic Takes Azeroth Back to the Past


Winter is coming, but this year’s Blizzcon has brought with it a much anticipated and long demanded announcement from Blizzard: Years of players asking for classic World of Warcraft servers has finally heeded an answer and that answer is yes. According to an article by PC Gamer, the Classic World of Warcraft server will be an endeavor taken on by an entirely different team at Blizzard,

There is no set launch date for World of Warcraft Classic.

Blizzard Again Promises Tough Punishment For Overwatch Trolls


If you could formulate a plan to effectively punish, and get rid of, toxic players in your community, you might just become the richest person in the gaming industry. Until then, we’ll need to sit back and watch as developers continue to commit to punishing toxic community members and hope that everything works out for the best.

For Blizzard, the ongoing discussion of toxicity has come back up after director Jeff Kaplan posted on the official forums regarding an account that had miraculously accrued more than two thousand complaints, been silenced for more than a year’s worth of time, and has been suspended three times.

"That account has a total of 2247 complaints filed against it — making it one of the worst offending accounts we’ve seen. The account has also been silenced for a total of 9216 hours. There are 3 gameplay suspensions on the account as well as 7 silences against this account (these are for abusive chat and/or spam). There is also a manual GM account suspension for "massive griefing" levied."

Blizzard’s plans to alleviate grief include removing silencing altogether and utilizing suspensions/bans more. For competitive, Kaplan stated that the company is in the process of handing out bans/suspensions for players who boosted in Season 5 of competitive mode, also adding that players will be permanently banned from competitive if they are found to be abusing it repeatedly.

"We will do this as it is our responsibility but we’d like to spend more time rewarding good players rather than having to focus on poor sportsmanship and unacceptable bad behavior so much. Like it or not, this is an "us, the OW community problem" and not just an "OW team problem". For better or for worse, we’re in this together."

Long term plans involve promoting positive behavior. Toxic behavior is a problem that MMO Fallout has reported endlessly on, with various developers flexing their muscles and threatening harsher punishments and longer bans. For developers, especially those with large competitive communities, the fight against toxicity is a constant uphill battle.

Overwatch Promises More Bans For Bad Behavior


Blizzard wants you to know that they are completely committed to dealing with toxic behavior in Overwatch. Effective immediately, offending players will begin receiving harsher punishments for cheating, griefing, trolling, spam, and match disruption (intentional AFK). Exactly how strict Blizzard’s punishments will be will need to be seen.

We know that making Overwatch a truly welcoming environment is an ongoing process, and this is only the first step. Over the next several months, we have plans to make additional improvements based on your feedback, including scaling competitive season bans, a notification system that will alert you when a player you’ve reported is actioned, and functionality that will allow us to more aggressively penalize players who attempt to abuse the in-game reporting tool.

Overwatch has had ongoing problems with toxicity, a concept not at all unfamiliar with heavily competitive titles.

(Source: Overwatch)

Hearthstone Tells Non-Americans To Pay Up: How Prices Are Changing Worldwide


The Hearthstone community is responding with frustration as Blizzard announced that the price of card packs in countries that are not America are set to rise, some as high as 30%.

Announced via the Hearthstone forums, one can find a list of new prices set to go into effect on March 22 in countries all over Europe, Africa, and South America on PC, Mac, and Android. In America, the cost of a two pack is $2.99, the two pack containing ten cards total. The price increase in some regions marks upwards of a 30% boost over what Americans are paying.

According to the announcement, this will not affect the price of the Un’Goro prelaunch bundle:

We regularly look at our pricing around the world, and from time to time we make changes such as these to align with local and regional market conditions. The price of the Un’Goro prelaunch bundle offer will not be affected by this change and will remain the same until launch.

The analytically driven among you can find a work in progress chart of the price changes here, showcasing exchange rates and how the prices will change in the coming weeks. It is worth noting that in many regions, the prices have been lower than they are in the states. How this will affect player’s purchasing decisions will have to be seen.

Blizzard Promises Bans For Overwatch AFKers


Blizzard has put AFKers on notice: According to a recent forum post, Overwatch is targeting some bad hombres, specifically players who create or join custom games with the intent of farming experience. Going forward, if players even think about joining a custom game with the intent of farming experience while away from keyboard, they may be on the receiving end of an account ban.

If you create a Custom Game that in any way encourages players to gain experience while inactive, you risk having your account banned. If you join any game mode – including Custom Games – with the intent of gaining experience while being inactive, you risk having your account banned. Also, do not name your Custom Game that in anyway even implies that gaining experience while inactive is OK – please do not even do this as a joke – because you are putting yourself at risk of having your account banned.

Director Jeff Kaplan asks that the community not force Blizzard to remove experience gain from custom games by reporting servers and not joining in on such shenanigans. More information can be found at the link below.

(Source: Overwatch)

[Video] Nano-Boosted Bastion Is Nearly Indestructible


Who says using the test server can’t be fun? Blizzard’s latest test patch for Overwatch is up for players to enjoy, take advantage of, and suss out potential game breaking issues not unlike the one you see in the video above. Among the various changes to heroes are a variety of tweaks meant to make Bastion more viable. While Bastion’s deployment time has been reduced by a third and his magazine size buffed from 200 to 300, bullet spread has increased and both critical hits and head shot multipliers have been removed. Bastion can now heal while moving, however this is tied to a limited resource that refreshes while not being used. Oh and he also gains a passive defensive buff reducing damage by 35% while in sentry mode.

That last bit is important, because as players are finding out on the server, that buff stacks with Ana’s Nano Boost ultimate, which reduces damage by 50%. Nano boosted Bastion may be one of the best things to come out of the Overwatch test realm, but if you want to check it out for yourself you’ll need to do so before Blizzard patches it out.

Video: World of Warcraft Patch 7.1.5 Survival Guide


World of Warcraft is implementing patch 7.1.5 and Blizzard wants you to know what to expect. You can check out the entire list of patch notes here, or watch the video above to get the gist of things. Putting it short, the patch contains more class balances to make each type more enjoyable, the return of the Brawler’s Guild with new rewards and items, as well as new bonus events every few weeks. Micro-holidays will dot the calendar, lasting 1-3 days and generally being pretty quickly completed events with small rewards.

As always, please refrain from placing your class complaints in the comments below. I do not work for Blizzard.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

[Column] How Nostalrius Killed Its Credibility, Image With One Dump


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A few weeks ago, Blizzard revealed that they would not be discussing legacy servers at Blizzcon this year, however the idea was not off the table and that the company was still considering such servers. In response, the folks at Nostalrius decided to make a threat upon which they have no moral or legal standing: To discuss vanilla servers or the team would release the source code for the Nostalrius private server. Blizzard didn’t discuss vanilla servers, Nostalrius dumped its code.

Still, we should not forget that Blizzard is the owner of World of Warcraft and would be for sure the most able to restore it. Until they disclose a schedule (if they do), the Legacy community will have to assume there will not be an official Blizzard release of Legacy WoW – possibly for very long time. So, it’s time for us to release our source code and additional tools to the community in the hope that it will maintain the Legacy community as much as possible until Blizzard announces an official Legacy plan – should they decide to do that.

Like an entitled child denied a much desired toy, the Nostalrius team responded to demands that they had no leverage on with the equivalent of a flailing tantrum. Let’s get a few things straight: Nostalrius has already lost this battle, they acknowledged that they didn’t have any footing when they bowed to Blizzard’s cease & desist and shut down their servers. They have no ownership of the World of Warcraft game, the brand, nor do they have the rights to operate their own private server. It doesn’t matter if Blizzard ultimately says no to a vanilla server, it doesn’t matter if they take ten years to release it, and it doesn’t matter if they say yes and never follow up on it. Nostalrius has no ground to stand on, zero, none.

And while I won’t take the route of some internet commentators and claim that this could kill Blizzard’s enthusiasm in legacy servers, something which is about as low on the totem pole as you can get in terms of priority, I will say that it has killed any potential of Blizzard working with the Nostalrius people, a killing blow to a group that feels entitled enough to demand regular progress updates from Blizzard corporate and make threats if senpai doesn’t notice them. They threw a fit when Blizzard didn’t respond in a timely manner, let’s see how they take it when the company stops acknowledging their existence entirely.

And what they’ve done by releasing this code is effectively to poison the well with a tracer, with everyone who drinks it being tagged for eventual plucking. Now that the code is out there, everyone is talking about this Elysium server like it’s the next Nostalrius. What do you expect is going to happen when Elysium launches? I’ll clue you in: Blizzard’s lawyers are going to send a cease & desist and the Elysium team are going to buckle and shut down. And none of this is going to have any effect on whether or not Blizzard launches a legacy server.

Which, I will reiterate, they still want to do.

Via IGN:

“There’s no question it’s something we want to do,” said Hazzikostas. “I am a 2004 World of Warcraft player myself. Tons of us came to work at Blizzard because we fell in love with that version of World of Warcraft. And we met with the Nostalrius developers on our campus over the summer and were really impressed by the passion they had for the game and what they’re trying to do to recreate what they see as a lost experience.

So where do we stand now? Nostalrius has burned its bridge with Blizzard, likely taking Mark Kern along with them, any servers that use the Nostalrius code and attract any respectable level of traffic will be nuked from orbit by Blizzard, and the timeline for a legacy server very likely has not moved a millimeter. Not a productive day by any sane metric.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.