Fallen Creator cleanup

Examples Are Not Recent. Replace "recent years" with "around 2017".

Id say around 2018 rather than 2017. 2017 was seen as a good year for Wo W due to Legion(generally seen as the last good expansion consistently well received through its patch cycle) and the warcraft movie(which was liked by the fans and in china) even through Wo D was seen as a “bad” expansion(through its' been getting a bit less flack reccently due to the revealations that they were pressed for time and that the initial leveling content was good).

Edited by xie323 on Aug 22nd 2021 at 4:18:25 AM

Hmmm, I can do better with that. We made multiple bullets for Konami, let's try doing so for Blizzard so it's better read (also with my entries in the Discussion page). Here we go:

• Blizzard Entertainment was once hailed by the fandom as one of the most premiere Western video game developers. Some of their accomplishments include both the Real-Time Strategy juggernauts that truly left their marks in the world and media in general: Warcraft^note Latter iterations of the story revolutionized on how people viewed the formerly Always Chaotic Evil orc race. and Starcraft^note the latter becoming a national sport for a country for its time series, and the dark Western RPG Diablo series. They also created the biggest and most profitable Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game title World of Warcraft, a status that stood and was unmatched for decades. Their entry to Trading Card Game and Hero Shooter genres, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and Overwatch were greatly praised. Even with several cracks, they always managed to get back up (such as the Diablo III launch or several poorly received WoW expansions). But unfortunately, by 2018, they started to show a lot of continuous cracks that completely destroyed the image of the company once referred as 'can do no wrong':
  • During Blizzcon 2018, completely ignoring that their playerbase are mostly Westerners with little interest in mobile, they decided to use that grand event to announce a mobile game based on Diablo: Diablo Immortal, teaming up with Tencent (a Chinese mobile company), while responding to player concerns with mockery such as "Do you not have phones?". This event was so negatively received that fans have started fearing that Blizzard has been pandering so much to China instead of their loyal fans at the West, at that point under the rule of Xi Jinping and the CCP.
  • As a direct continuation of that, a year later, during a Hearthstone tournament, one of their pro-players, the Hong Kong native Blitzchung, made a political statement to support Hong Kong protesters from China's takeover. While it was a breaching of rules, Blizzard went out of the way to punish Blitzchung by banning him from tournaments, taking away his prizes and also banning his casters. Multiple players were disgusted at this and committed a mass deletion of their accounts (and Blizzard even at one point prevented them from being able to delete their account), and even Nintendo cancelled their promotion of the Overwatch port on their Nintendo Switch (while one of its characters, Mei, was turned into an anti-CCP symbol by the fandom). While Blizzard hit the brakes for a bit by lessening Blitzchung's punishment, the damage is done.
  • And in the very next year, Blizzard launched a remaster of one of their classics, Warcraft III Reforged, only for the game to be in an extreme Obvious Beta, not giving what was promised in the trailers, coming with a lot of controversial terms of service, screwing over original owners of the game (that the older, more stable version will be forcefully replaced with the buggy version), and when Blizzard was forced to issue a public apology, it was considered 'half-hearted' and not serious. The game went on to be one of the worst rated game ever in the internet and was considered by the older fans as a proof on how disconnected the modern Blizzard was with the beloved classic Blizzard.
  • In 2021, Blizzard seemed to be on track to genuinely restoring their reputation^Examples  World of Warcraft Classic was met with much rejoicing of the older fans (although they would screw up again later), Shadowlands' day-one patch was finely received (but the latter one... see below), they announced Diablo IV as a damage control for Diablo Immortal, and Diablo II Resurrected seemed like the ultimate proof that they learned from their mistakes in Reforged. Unfortunately, they were all instantly swept away when Blizzard was hit with a lawsuit, revealing that they had such an abusive workplace environment not too different with Konami's, except based on what was called 'a Frat Bro culture' and most damningly, a female worker was sexually harassed repeatedly up until she committed suicide because of it. Rubbing the salt in the wound, the next patch of Shadowlands turned out to be greatly under-delivering in both lore and gameplay standpoints. That was the point that not only they lost more subscribers and even some crews^note one of them also happened to be the director of Diablo IV, and the other one had his name used by one of the heroes in Overwatch, Jesse McCree, even content creators that were loyal to them ^note one of them being Carbot Animations jumped ship to World of Warcraft's competitor: Final Fantasy XIV, and in their own words... they were having a much better time with better community and a development team that 'actually cared for the players, as opposed to Blizzard's developers continuously taunting the players while under-delivering', increasing the subscribers of Final Fantasy XIV to the point that it's just very close to dethrone World of Warcraft as the world's top MMORPG, one of Blizzard's definitive achievements.
  • In the end, the once mighty Western Video Game Developer is now seen as a husk of its former self (as all of the old guards have left), only filled with greedy people only interested in money and showcasing the problems within modern AAA game industry, not a single year passed by since 2018 without a serious controversy Blizzard participated in, making them look like being addicted to controversies on themselves that they self-destructed. Disgruntled fans now chant one of the phrases Blizzard games used to cite during its climax to describe the fallen company: "At long last, no King rules forever."

How does that sound?

Edited by ChrisX on Aug 27th 2021 at 10:46:18 PM

Hmm. Interesting write up expansion, though mention of negative reception towards the 9.1 version of World of Warcraft could be recommended.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Aug 26th 2021 at 12:00:26 PM

Where do I put up the 9.1 Shadowlands negative reception in the middle of the lawsuit bullet, and how?

I say put it before the "jumping ship" part, in which 9.1 was the breaking point for content creators and gamers.

OK, that was edited... how's that sound?

Hmm... some grammar corrections (such as correcting premiere as premiered, accomplishment as accomplishments, adding "genres" after Hero Shooter and before Hearthstone, adding a ' to Shadowlands between "immediate patch", which in turn should be replaced with day one patch, replace "slowly destroyed themselves" with self-destructed.). Speaking of Final Fantasy, I believe Square Enix is still going strong with acclaimed and hot-selling games, so they should be removed from FC. Also the part where The Spoony Experiment made a franchise bashing them sounds a lot like complaining and praising a creator they never heard about.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Aug 26th 2021 at 1:35:33 AM

That third bullet should be turned into a second bullet or be put into the paragraph it's hanging off of; third bullets are almost always frowned upon.

Also, "a female worker was sexually harassed to the point of being Driven to Suicide" should be changed to "a female worker was repeatedly sexually harassed up until she committed suicide because of it." - Driven to Suicide is no real life examples, and the wording was clunky anyway

Well, thank goodness for Labelnote, without it, the fourth bullet would be extremely crowded. Added the rest of the edits, though I personally believe that 'sexually harassed repeatedly' flows more smoothly than 'repeatedly sexually harassed' (so I put the former). CMIIW tho.

Do Harvey Weinstein and J. J. Abrams fit here?

Why J. J. Abrams? Did something happen?

It feels like his popularity has dropped considerably, but I was more just asking.

That's not Fallen Creator necessarily; a popularity drop can be any number of things. Or nothing at all.

Harvey Weinstein, I can understand. But Abrams? Big no. He's still doing good work, and for Weinstein, being implicated in one of the biggest sex scandals and a decrease of quality and profitable work is a big yes to me.

Edited a bit on the Blizzard part, since there's one thing that Warcraft did phenomenally when Blizz was good: "Make Orcs no longer Always Chaotic Evil." (That seems to highlight just how bad they fell.)

Edited by ChrisX on Aug 27th 2021 at 4:13:36 PM

The question is if we need multiple bullet points. I never got to the Konami entry but one of my entries was to condense it as much as possible. But if we were to keep the bullet points, change "on track to a genuine Author's saving throw" to "on track to genuinely restoring their reputation" when discussing the time where it looked as if Blizzard was picking itself back up.

And is Square Enix even considered a FC, I remember they were a LONG time ago but I feel that entry was removed.

JJ Abrams is not a FC by any means. Most likely it's Sequel Trilogy backlash seeping in.

Edited by xie323 on Aug 27th 2021 at 6:56:10 AM

Yeah, talking about the sequel trilogy is guaranteed to blow up in your face, but J.J. Abrams? They're trying to separate his name from there. So, big not to Abrams as FC.

Also like I said earlier, Square Enix is still doing good works as of today, and as such, isn't qualified for FC.

Hmm... I'll change that soon (but I'll do the Author's Saving Throw part now). But here's some other updates that may be important to the entry:

After the debacle blew over, Blizzard has been trying to also restore reputation. They finally gave out an update announcement for World of Warcraft to fix the Shadowlands 9.1 debacle (I don't have enough details for it and I don't want to dig any deeper than the shitstorm happening right now for my mental health, so any help will be appreciated), as well as attempting to rename McCree from Overwatch.

But a lot of fans right now, after 4 consecutive years of always making a mistake, consider them basically an example of Crying Wolf: The fandom know their formulaic strategy in the face of controversies like this to keep their relevance which will probably be undone like next year. So for them, it's still considered an insufficient fixing attempt.

We have to be careful in how we write the fan reaction though, there is a big chance that these fans, after so many years investing in Blizzard only to be constantly and thoroughly disappointed, felt like blowing things out of proportion to sate their frustration that they ignore common sense or calm and rational thinking. (That happened to the undying hatred to Konami even after years they weren't doing anything as ridiculous as Blizzard, though they still count as FC. At least in the west)) So it would really depend on how Blizzard handles this situation immediately (or die trying) otherwise, it would be like an 'overly recent' addition (and in terms of FFXIV, like how long are they gonna keep the 'beating out WoW' part). Even on the Konami entry, I believe we didn't put them in immediately after their fallout at 2015-2016, we had to wait for like... a year to three...?

(Also the other game-related FC that had multiple bullet points is Keiji Inafune)

... In all honesty, I think it's best that we keep building up but not editing to the page until reception of Diablo 2 Resurrected is out. After awhile it's out, then we'll know what to do. But until then, I'd suggest to import these to the link at Siegfried's signature, so others can whip out other concerns in regards of FC page instead of being stuck with Blizzard.

Edited by ChrisX on Aug 27th 2021 at 10:50:29 PM

So, let me sum up today's events...

• Square Enix is still doing strong, also that The Spoony Experiment pothole is a combination of both complaining in the wiki and praising shows you don't saw. Remove.
• Harvey Weinstein fits as a FC due to sexual harassment allegations and declining quality and profitability of works, is considered a major catalyst of the #MeToo movement. Will work on eventually.
• Blizzard Entertainment could qualify as FC, though wait until a few weeks after re-release of Diablo II is either released towards glowing reception or a repeat of Reforged. For now, discuss in Blizzard Entertainment Cleanup Thread.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Aug 27th 2021 at 9:20:45 AM

I do think maybe we should wait on Diablo II resurrected. Blizzard may well be a extremely bad instance of overshadowed by controversy at this point.

Like before the scandals were coming out, I do feel they could have restored their reputation over reforged to a degree given that like Classic was well-received and TBC Classic wasn't extremely hated either, and I don't think reforged, BFA, and 9.1 were themselves enough to consider them FC status had it not been for the scandal.

Now here is a re-writeup for George Lucas, but with the consideration that he isn't viewed as badly as in the past:

• George Lucas was once considered one of the major pioneers in the film industry. His first film American Graffiti earned him critical success and several Oscar nominations for making such a groundbreaking film. He then went on to create Star Wars, which revitalized the science fiction genre and launched the juggernaut Star Wars franchise, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark, which also launched the fairly sucessful Indiana Jones franchise. However, in the 1990s his reputation started to take a significant drop with the controversial re-releases of the Original Trilogy, the then-polarizing reception of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy that swiftly divided a once relatively united fanbase, and the tepid fan reception to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This lead to his reputation being ridiculed by many disgrunted fans, whom claimed that Lucas "ruined their childhood" and that most of the successes of his earlier works was due to more compentent actors and staff reining in his more problematic ideas. In recent years however, the polarizing reputation of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, combined with Lucas' work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars alongside Dave Filoni has led to a favorable re-assessment of Lucas' reputation, with many re-assessments of the Prequels pointing out that the Prequels had more worldbuilding and took more risks than the Sequels, and that many of the original allegations against the Prequels were overblown. Today, discussion regarding the reputation of George Lucas may focus on what Lucas' did right over solely on what he did wrong, a shap contrast to how his reputation stood during the Turn of the Millennium and the first half of The New '10s.

Edited by xie323 on Aug 28th 2021 at 9:00:16 AM

> TBC Classic wasn't extremely hated either

I don't know the details, but there was one trip up in TBC Classic where it opens up gates of 'Pay for win'. I think it was a certain 'Dark Portal Pass' or something... Most will probably take it that this is a sign that even TBC Classic would probably fall victim to the usual 'greed antics'. But take it with a grain of salt, I'm only seeing the result from Carbot Animations, and no matter how well respected he is, that's not the full picture.

But any further on how 'Blizzard has Fallen'... eh, probably can take it to the PM.

Do you think the Films folder can be divided between actors and directors?

One video dosent honestly signify anything since tbc Classic got enough positive reactions before the lawsuit hit and I think we’ve spent enough time on Blizzard and have decided to see reactions to Diablo II resurrected first.

Any thoughts on my george lucas rewrite?

Edited by xie323 on Aug 29th 2021 at 6:30:15 AM

On the topic of Weinstein, would Bryan Singer count for this?