Tag: Blizzcon

BlizzConline 2022 Gets BlizzCalledOff


Won’t be happening after all.

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BlizzCon 2021 Has Been Cancelled


Blizzard announces on their website.

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Community Concerns: The Importance of Reading Comprehension


Yea, we’re still talking about Blizzcon.

It’s been a while since I talked about the whole nontroversy surrounding Blizzard and the prize pool for World of Warcraft’s Blizzcon tournaments, so I will sum up for those who don’t feel like clicking the link in this paragraph. Blizzard sold digital toys with 25% proceeds going toward a prize pool with a guaranteed minimum of $500k, and some people interpreted this as Blizzard footing $500k and then the toy sale portion being on top of that. In fact, a lot of people with direct financial incentives to the prize pool being bigger happened to think that. Crazy.

One of those people is Shanna Roberts, general manager of the esports team Method. Roberts released a statement yesterday (November 10) to talk about a breakdown in trust between Blizzard and the community because a number of people didn’t correctly read the plain English of the promotion. Roberts claims that Blizzard announced that the $500k minimum would be supplemented by 25% sales from the toys (they didn’t). I’ll put up the plain language of the promotion for your perusal:

“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”

25% of proceeds contributed toward the year’s finals with a guaranteed minimum of $500k. The misinterpretation is then followed up by conspiracy-level speculation that Blizzard deliberately backtracked on something they never said they would do to ensure that Warcraft’s prize pool wasn’t bigger than any of the other big tournaments which has no logical conclusion and would have absolutely no benefit for Blizzard.

“It is my personal hypothesis that this is exactly what caused the backtracking: Blizzard couldn’t allow AWC or MDI to have bigger individual prize pools than Hearthstone Grandmasters, OW World Cup, or SC2.”

Roberts goes on to complain about how the practice facility was only open for one day and didn’t provide adequate snacks or comfortable chairs, and how the opening rounds were held offline thus preventing players from using the streams to make money because it turns out being a WoW pro player doesn’t pay like a full time job. Who would have thought?

I’m not going to fault Shanna Roberts for doing her job which is to get her team more money.

If she had hired MMO Fallout’s Master Gaming Consultancy since I read the announcement when it came out and could have fully explained it to her and any other esports folks who were confused, this matter might have been resolved pretty quickly and we wouldn’t be here today. I have eleven years experience writing about video games and my flat fee is two grand per month which is frankly a deal since I’m not going to torpedo your business like what happened with that Sunset game.

Otherwise I think I’m done talking about Blizzcon 2019.

World of Warcraft Squishing Levels Down To 60


Blizzard is crushing your head.

Blizzcon came and went this weekend and World of Warcraft players received confirmation on a feature that many probably knew was coming months ago. Blizzard officially announced that World of Warcraft will see an arguably much deserved level crunch as the max cap goes from 120 to 60. Current level 120 players will be crunched down to 50 and be able to make their way to the new level cap of 60.

Another positive of this announcement is that alt leveling is supposed to be more user friendly. Alts will be able to level in any zone or through world quests, and while you’ll need to hit level 60 to unlock the ability to align with end-game factions, your alts will be able to take advantage of the faction alignment from the start and begin farming end-game materials earlier.

Enjoy level 120 while it lasts.

Source: Blizzard press release

Blizzcon 2019: Blizzard Eats Humble Pie, Gives Audience What They Want


As I have said over the past couple of weeks, the best thing that Blizzard could do with Blizzcon 2019 is to give the audience what they want.

Blizzcon 2019 is officially upon us and it started with President J. Allen Brack coming out and apologizing for the company’s actions and response to criticism following last month’s Hearthstone Grandmaster controversy. Brack took full responsibility for the company and stated;

“We moved too quickly in our decision-making and then, to make matters worse, we were too slow to talk with all of you,” said Brack. “We didn’t live up to the high standards that we really set for ourselves.”

Outside of the apology, Blizzard gave their fans exactly what they wanted. Wasting no time, Blizzard took its opening ceremony to announce Diablo IV and Overwatch 2, and went even further. There was also a marked absence of any news regarding Diablo Immortal. Confirming the week’s leaks, Overwatch 2 will have a more PVE-focused approach. In addition, players who own Overwatch will be able to play with those on Overwatch 2, ensuring that the two communities will not be fractured.

Nontroversial: Blizzard and the Disappearing Half Million


Now I’m mad at Blizzard just as much as the next guy, which is why this article is going to hurt me more than it does the people who I am about to point out.

Today is October 31, 2019 of the year of Arnold, and that can only mean one thing; it’s time for the internet to do what the internet does best and that’s to deliberately misconstrue a statement in order to justify being outraged at something that the collective net already does not like and has no interest in viewing criticism of with any sort of rationality or objectivity.

Blizzard! They’ve done some crappy stuff lately. Today marks the start of Blizzcon with Overwatch World Cup preliminaries today and the festival really kicking off tomorrow and running through Sunday. One of the highlights of the event are two World of Warcraft tournaments called the MDI and AWC, the Mything Dungeon International and Arena World Championship respectively. Today’s nontroversy surrounds outrage about the wording of the prize pool, specifically that people are coming out and claiming that Blizzard used deceptive tactics to withdraw $500 grand in promised prize money.

In the run up to Blizzcon, Blizzard sold items for World of Warcraft with the following language:

“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”

The wording is pretty clear; 25% will go toward the prize pool with Blizzard guaranteeing a minimum prize pool of $500k if the collective sales don’t meet that amount. But this is the internet, where outrage is king. Cue Cloud9’s Adam Chan claiming that Blizzard pulled their “base contribution” of $500k.

“Blizzard did not contribute a single cent to the AWC & MDI prize pools this year. They pulled their own ‘base’ contribution of 500k when they realised how well the crowd funding did ($2.64m USD).”

Youtuber and outrage merchant Bellular News, speaking on behalf of the WoW community, claimed that audience expectations looking at practices of companies not-Blizzard would interpret the wording as Blizzard contributing a base $500k and then the amount from the toy sales being added on top of that. He refers to the wording as “ambiguous,” which it isn’t, and he says that it is technically the case, but morally isn’t, which doesn’t make any sense.

He goes on to state that the practice is not industry standard, which it may not be. That doesn’t change the fact that the wording is very clear; The minimum prize pool will be $500k, it does not even imply that Blizzard is putting forward a base of $500k. But when you’re an outrage merchant, you gotta ramp up that hyperbole. He goes on to make numerous nonsense statements like “it goes against the spirit of such a system” which doesn’t mean anything, and how flabbergasted he is and how disrespectful the whole ordeal is to the community! Rabble rabble rabble!

I’ll be frank: There’s no fancy wording at play here, if anything Blizzard is speaking at probably a fourth grade level. Even MMO Fallout’s muse Massively has joined in to take Blizzard to task over “false pretenses.”

Right; here’s two things. Blizzard didn’t withdraw anything, let alone in a stealthy way, and there were no false pretenses. Nothing was ever stated or implied that Blizzard would put forward $500k and the money from those toy sales would be icing on the cake. It simply didn’t happen. It’s also being trumped up by players who have a financial incentive to gin up a faux outrage campaign to shame Blizzard into increasing the prize pool as well as Youtubers whose channels traffic in outrage.

It’s very plain language.

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.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Announced


draenor

Blizzard has kicked off Blizzcon with the announcement of the next expansion to World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. The expansion will introduce the world of Draenor, as well as increase the level cap to 100 and allow players to instantly boost one character to 90. According to the trailer, players will also have to defend and upgrade their garrison, and characters are set to receive a dramatic graphical overhaul. According to a Q&A, Draenor will see the introduction of new stats to gear, as well as the removal of others (hit, expertise). You can read the entire FAQ at the link below.

(Source: Warords of Draenor FAQ)