Month: October 2011

Blizzard itself finally responds

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3424798330

Dear members of the Blizzard community,

I have read your feedback and comments about this year’s BlizzCon, and I have also read the feedback to the apology from Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. I’d like to respond to some of your feedback here.

As president of Blizzard, I take full responsibility for everything that occurs at BlizzCon.

It was shortsighted and insensitive to use the video at all, even in censored form. The language used in the original version, including the slurs and use of sexual orientation as an insult, is not acceptable, period. We realize now that having even an edited version at the show was counter to the standards we try to maintain in our forums and in our games. Doing so was an error in judgment, and we regret it.

The bottom line is we deeply apologize for our mistakes and for hurting or offending anyone. We want you to have fun at our events, and we want everyone to feel welcome. We’re proud to be part of a huge and diverse community, and I am proud that so many aspects of the community are represented within Blizzard itself.

As a leader of Blizzard, and a member of the band, I truly hope you will accept my humblest apology.

– Mike Morhaime
President, Blizzard Entertainment

Firstly thanks to Mike for getting the apology out, while there will be some people who still want more I think this is a good response.  It’s a clear apology and it makes no bones about where the buck stops.

On the US forum there are still those wondering what it was about, complaining about people being oversensitive etc etc, however I strongly suspect those are the same muppets we see spamming [Anal] in trade.  I doubt whether any of them will change their attitudes or behaviour for a few more years, maybe when they’re old enough to vote, drive, drink, have kids, be responsible etc etc their views will settle down and spend less time proving themselves through abusing others.

Could they have handled this better, hell yes.  The blues could have not knee-jerked so much in their rush to dismiss it all as a bit of fun, nothing to worry about, L90ETC could have written an apology which did just that without trying to explain themselves.

Blizzard could have crushed this issue within 24 hours by doing what Mike did overnight.

So here’s to a new dawn and the hope that lessons have been learnt, understood and will be remembered next time.

As Ratshag says we have other things to discuss, such as Pandas.  Epic leveling experience or a good source of meat and leather for adventurers?

Message from Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3424906852

Hey guys, we read and heard all the feedback from BlizzCon this year. The Corpsegrinder bit was never intended to be taken seriously. We are sorry that we offended anyone; everything at our shows is just meant in fun. Thank you all for speaking up. We’ll definitely keep this in mind for future shows.

Our humblest apologies,

Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain

I’m entirely happy with that response from L90ETC, in fact it’s better phrasing than we get from most companies and politicians who normally weasel with “We’re sorry you took offence”

Now.  Blizz.

They’re still dodging

Thank you everyone for your feedback regarding the closing night performance at BlizzCon. While we had some other messaging worked up we were going to post, the members of band wanted to instead address it themselves: – Bashiok

Blizz, admit you also have some culpability in this and accept you need to look to yourselves in how you setup the shows, agree with the performers on what’s go and what’s no-go.

Stop dodging.

Edit:

Something I wasn’t aware of until I read Ratshag today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlizzCon

The closing ceremony had a performance by Blizzard’s own in house band, The Artist Formerly Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftains (TAFKL80ETC), who changed their name mid concert to Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftains (L90ETC). Foo Fighters performed afterward.

Which puts another spin on the whole thing, L90ETC are not some band Blizz can distance themselves from, nor can they claim that “they didn’t know”, because they are Blizzard in all the senses which matter.  In much the same way if I as a blogger put a trash piece against one of my employers competitors out on the company home page.

So Blizz, I say yet again, pull your heads out of your collective arses and accept you screwed up, and accept that as Blizzard not by shuffling it off trying to wash your hands of the affair as some in house company prank which went wrong.

 

So,Blizz. You certifiable, crack-brained, dumbkopfs…

Let’s open up with the uncensored version of the rant which was shown to all the attendees and virtual ticket viewers at this year’s Blizzcon, the bile begins to spew at around one minute in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_Lv0r-l4c

Now some commentary from a couple of other sites:

Piercing Shots & Huggywuggles

Now the Terms of Use Blizzard require us to abide by:

Section B
Rules Related to “Chat” and Interaction With Other Users. Communicating in-game with other Users and Blizzard representatives, whether by text, voice or any other method, is an integral part of the Game and the Service and is referred to here as “Chat.” When engaging in Chat, you may not:
(i) Transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard, is deemed to be offensive, including without limitation content or language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;

(vi) Harass, threaten, stalk, embarrass or cause distress, unwanted attention or discomfort to any user of the Game;

Some blue responses to complaints regarding the broadcasting of the video:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/203999/official-alliance-hate-from-blizz-at-blizzcon
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/203994/complaint-about-blizzcon-closing-concert

Now apparently no one at Blizzard has seen the uncensored version before, all they’ve seen is the bleeped version used at Blizzcon.  To be honest I call bullshit.  Can anyone seriously believe the lawyers weren’t all over that? Well, thinking further about it, I actually can because they and the PR people should have looked at it prior to the broadcast and shouted loudly “this is a disaster waiting to explode in our faces”.  Given how much the mainstream media like to paint gaming companies in a bad light I’m surpised they’re not all over this (though given that it’s about some semi-celebrity using abusive, homophobic language and not cute girls wearing very little getting hit on by “nerds and geeks”, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised).

This isn’t about the inter-faction rivalry, though there is a whole other post there and how much responsibility Blizz has for behaviour outside the game (verbal attacks, physical abuse, spitting and the like).  Some morons will be morons and take things far too far, always.

Whether it’s Horde / Alliance; Rangers / Celtic; England / France; Ale drinkers / Lager drinkers.

Slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging, fuckwits will ever be the same.

However, large companies do have to weigh their actions because of the sheer numbers they broadcast to.  With Blizzcon 2011, it has been estimated at 26,000 attendees[1]. What we have is a company which, in it’s ToU, demands a certain level of behaviour from its customers, which is fair enough.  Then it goes and smashes their own Terms to pieces and implicitly endorses the levels of mindless thuggery and abusive crap seen day in, day out in the /trade and /general in-game chat channels.

So, Blizz, that was a first class move on your part. Do you have an encore?

It does reinforce the view that you are run by sub-25 year old males who’ve not yet got a relationship with anything that doesn’t have staples and are still fapping off to images of Jaina without her clothes on. The type that have to stress how masculine they are by putting [Anal] in trade and hitting on anything which appears to have boobs in the game.

I know you’re not a stupid company, stupid companies do not keep businesses of the scale of Blizzard running successfully for so many years.  However big companies can have their reputation trashed and, given the way – as I mentioned above – that the media likes to blame the evils of the world on computer games, I would have thought more business sense would have kicked in.

So…  Stop hiding, stop claiming “it’s a joke”, stop telling yourselves and others “it’s not serious” and start acting like you belong in the business world and not staring at dirty mags behind the bike sheds.

Edit: Online petition

Chaos Orbs

Finally we will be able to trade them as of patch 4.3, some good news.

Naturally a certain class of player has started to complain that anyone will be able to get hold of them and this will affect their profits.  Seriously guys get over the fact that you’ve had a monopoly on supply for approximately one year and been able to charge what you like.  With an artificial depression in supply thanks to those who have a pile in their bank they can’t use effectively.  Personally across the alts I’m sat on 40 of the damn things.

So yes, the price of orbs is going to tank relative to the /trade price.  This is nothing unexpected, you’ve made your gold from the closed market suck it up and deal with having to find a different source of income.  It’s not as if making gold in wow is hard these days.

I only have one request to Blizz, make them greed or need only, allowing need and greed will take us back two years to the hell of last bosses in wrath.