Blizzard Entertainment cleanup

In light of Blizzard Entertainment's certain actions, a massive amount of complaining has been added to their pages that bash the creator over their actions, along with invalid examples. DorkAge.World Of Warcraft was one example of this, and I would like to verify that most of the example are valid examples that actually offer good points or invalid examples that simply serve to bash the creator in a toxic way. I would kindly require assistance on this.

I found this example on Digging Yourself Deeper (Which I have been trying to see if I can get RL examples banned). It has been on there in some form since January 1st, 2019.

• At the end of Blizzcon 2018, spokesman Wyatt Cheng announced there would be a new Diablo game called Diablo Immortal, but announced that it would be a mobile game. Those in attendance didn't like this one bit, with one person asking "Is this an out of season April Fools joke?" (which briefly made him a Memetic Badass among Diablo fans). Another person asked if it would be available on PC, to which Cheng replied that it would not. A bunch of people in the audience started booing, to which Cheng replied with "do you guys not have phones?" Probably not the right thing to say to a crowd of people who've likely each spent a few thousand dollars on their gaming PC rigs. The resulting controversy was a black eye on the game and Blizzard Entertainment as a whole.

Really, I think this was all an result of pressure from angry fans making him say that, as well as just Blizzard's upper management thinking it was a good idea to make him present the game like this, without anything else to go along with it.

There's also this example on OvershadowedByControversy.Real Life

• The BlizzCon 2018 convention is mostly remembered for the intense fan backlash to the revelation that the then-latest game in the Diablo franchise, Diablo Immortal, was to be mobile-exclusive after teasing fans of a new Diablo game being in the works for a while, thereby leading fans to naturally believe they were working on a Diablo IV (which has since been announced as of BlizzCon 2019), their decision to announce it as The Climax to a convention aimed at Blizzard's most dedicated fanbase which is almost exclusively comprised of PC players, who had paid $200 each to attend the event, and Blizzard designer Wyatt Cheng's tone-deaf response to the crowd's booing, "Do you guys not have phones?", which rapidly became a meme for corporate insensitivity to their customers' requests.

I think the last bit of it is a bit complain-y, but seems fine otherwise.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Apr 19th 2021 at 1:12:54 PM

Would it be best to take all the OBC entries about Blizzard on the page and make them subbullets under one Blizzard entry? Though the walls of text should be reduced, I was thinking of something like this:

• Blizzard Entertainment has seen its reputation plummet starting in 2018 for several incidents, including the layoff of 800 employees while simultaneously announcing record revenue for that year.
  • The BlizzCon 2018 convention is mostly remembered for the intense fan backlash to the revelation that the then-latest game in the Diablo franchise, Diablo Immortal, was to be mobile-exclusive after teasing fans of a new Diablo game being in the works for a while, thereby leading fans to naturally believe they were working on a Diablo IV (which has since been announced as of BlizzCon 2019), their decision to announce it as The Climax to a convention aimed at Blizzard's most dedicated fanbase which is almost exclusively comprised of PC players, who had paid $200 each to attend the event, and Blizzard designer Wyatt Cheng's seemingly tone-deaf response to the crowd's booing, "Do you guys not have phones?", which rapidly became a meme for corporate insensitivity to their customers' complaints.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft had its esports scene overshadowed by the Blitzchung ban. During an October 2019 qualifier tournament, player Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai made a public call to liberate his native Hong Kong in light of China's harsh crackdown of protestors. In response, Blizzard Entertainment banned "Blitzchung" for the season and took away his winnings. Needless to say, many angrily accused Blizzard of censoring Blitzchung to appease both the Chinese government (who had censored support for the Hong Kong protests) and the Chinese company NetEase (who is a partial owner of parent company Activision-Blizzard) out of fear that their games would become Banned in China otherwise. Not helping matters is how Blizzard had previously given lighter punishments for Overwatch League players who made racist gestures and comments on-camera, leading to allegations of a Double Standard. The outcry and legal implications lead to US congressmen of both parties penning an open letter urging the company to reverse the ban. Even going into June 2020, the Blitzchung incident still lingers with many accusing Activision-Blizzard's apparent solidarity with the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement of being hollow and hypocritical (especially since their justification for the ban was due to prohibiting any discussion of political topics during official events). Ironically, all of the reporting on the controversy ensured that way more people could hear Blitzchung's message, inspiring many (including people who didn't care about Hearthstone in the first place and would not have heard of Blitzchung otherwise) to adopt anti-China and pro-Hong Kong sentiments.
  • Any discussions of Warcraft III: Reforged (2020) inevitably become subsumed by its disastrous launch and questionable actions that further damaged Blizzard's reputation in post-2018. Announced as an Updated Re Release to the much-loved Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002), Blizzard promised to align its lore with World of Warcraft while remaining faithful to what made the original game great and co-existing alongside it in the Battle.net client, which generated a lot of excited anticipation from fans. It was released to complete derision for being an Obvious Beta and completely failing to deliver on its promises. The cinematic cutscenes from the trailer were unexpectedly removed, several features were missing from the original game, and it was riddled with Game-Breaking Bugs including disconnection problems. What solidified its infamy was that the original game was removed from the Blizzard store while being automatically overwritten with the remaster in the client, even to those who already had the original, the remaster's EULA grants Blizzard exclusive ownership over any and all user-created content ^note A big deal, considering that user-created WCIII maps such as Defense of the Ancients and Tower Defense were the Trope Codifier for some extremely popular genres of games - there would probably be no League of Legends or Bloons Tower Defense without those two maps to pave the way, and Blizzard's official response to the backlash was seen as Blizzard blaming their own customers for having their expectations too high.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Apr 20th 2021 at 12:52:32 PM

Sure, why not? Just make sure it isn't a List of Transgressions.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Apr 24th 2021 at 11:38:51 AM

Anyone ok if I add this to the Franchise Original Sin page for Warcraft?

• Many exansions for World of Warcraft like ‘’Burning Crusade’’ and ‘’Mists of Pandaria’’ drew criticism for having large amounts of Horde heroes fall victim to both Sudden Sequel Heel and Death Syndrome. The thing is similar happened as early as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, in which two Horde heroes betrayed their faction and died at the end of their campaign. The difference was both characters Gul’dan and Cho’gall, eventually turning traitor later in the campaign, was heavily foreshadowed in the manual and the games were much less character focused back then.

Many extremely popular threads with other ten thousand likes and replies have mentioned player's being frustrated with Horde characters both turning heel and then being killed.

Edited by Monsund on Jun 6th 2021 at 8:50:11 AM

Fixed some parts for ya:

• Many expansions for World of Warcraft like Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria drew criticism for having large amounts of Horde heroes fall victim to suddenly becoming evil and abruptly dying afterwards. The thing is similar happened early as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, where two Horde heroes betrayed their faction and died at the end of their campaign. The difference was both characters Gul'dan and Cho'gall, eventually turning traitor, was heavily foreshadowed in the manual and the games were much less character focused back then.

That being said, like someone else suggested, if you're having problems with grammar, you should consult the Get Help with English Here thread.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Jun 6th 2021 at 8:24:51 AM

I'm ok, sometimes I just type too fast.

Okay, just asking.

Now that I think about it, Franchise Original Sin happens to be one of the tropes in TRS. I'll put the entry in and then consult them about FranchiseOriginalSin.World Of Warcraft in case there happens to be some remaining complaints.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Jun 6th 2021 at 11:51:15 AM

So, excuse me, I'm gonna save this portion of future Fallen Creator addition, so others can discuss on other possible problems that pop up. Generally, I believe that we may want to wait for at earliest a few months after the release of Diablo II Resurrected so we can finally know whether we're being too hasty or not.

Also I found out that in the Dork Age page, the Blizzard part is written in a similar manner than this. Any ways to encapsulate it, making it look truly like a Dork Age entry instead of List of Transgressions? That looked like something more fitting on FC.

Edited by ChrisX on Nov 9th 2021 at 5:41:04 PM

Correct Latter to later in the Warcraft labelnote.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Aug 27th 2021 at 9:21:32 AM

Fixed. In the meantime, here's my proposed writeup for Blizzard's Dork Age entry:

• While Blizzard Entertainment had many of its downs and ups ^note such as, in case of World of Warcraft after the missteps at Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor, they managed to bounce back with Legion; or the Diablo III Reaper of Souls addressing the problems at the disastrous vanilla launch, fans have believed that the whole company entered a massive, lowest-point of Dork Age since 2018, with them generating controversy once per year, each of them getting more ridiculously damaging and showing how disconnected they are to the fandom (2018 was the year they announced Diablo Immortal, which damaged their fanbase; 2019 was the year they unfairly banned the Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft pro player Blitzchung for voicing a political concern for his country; 2020 showed that Warcraft III Reforged was a massive disaster that screwed up creators and fans alike; and in 2021, they got hit with two damning lawsuit that condemned their toxic workplace environment and sexual abuses that led to a female worker committing suicide), in addition of World of Warcraft expansions released around this timeline (such as Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands) were considered the newest lows of the game. This is to the point that even the most loyal followers no longer believe Blizzard, especially based on their yearly basis since 2018, thus the Dork Age is an ongoing, long one.
  • For some, the Dork Age of Blizzard started the moment they merged with Activision, which is considered to be a small problem for its time that eventually spiraled out of control due to not being attended well in its early stages as noted above, while the earlier merging times saw the decrease of quality in World of Warcraft after their peak at Wrath of the Lich King as well as the disastrous Auction House for Diablo III vanilla release. Though they did find some successes with the releases of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm released in that time span to mitigate this, a lot has considered that the merging with Activision was the beginning of the time Blizzard start entering the Dork Age.

So let me know if the writeup was fine, and the comparison between 'merge with Activision' and 'one controversy per year' was apt.

Edited by ChrisX on Aug 28th 2021 at 1:30:10 AM

Dork Age is reserved for periods of downturn in work quality, Seasonal Rot is a permanent downturn in quality (and even then it only applies to various series, not companies).

Well it's been awhile. The game is out. While people has been... the usual, on them... We've got a score from Metacritic.

It's 3.4.

Granted, it's better than Warcraft 3 Reforged, but it's still pretty low for a legendary game and several connection issues are still happening. In those regards, is it a right time to finally push in the Fallen Creator proposal, or do we wait more?

Can we get to the main issues first (as in, what is the cause of those low scores aside from negative reception towards Blizzard)

From what I heard, there were also troubles for those trying to log in to the Battle.net servers. I don't know if it's a repeat of Diablo 3's disastrous vanilla launch, but... there's that. Additionally some takes offense on the art directions, but I feel that it was just minor nitpicking over 'agenda-pushing' or 'controversy damage control', which I think don't have much weights in it.

Probably you're gonna need to ask those in VG forums.

All right, the Fallen Creator post have been updated, though I think it could use a lot more trimming now. I'm hoping that we don't end up instead making a List of Transgressions.

Don't follow Blizzard, but I do have two things:

1. It definitely needs to be trimmed, and I'd recommend condensing some of the points - I don't know if Fallen Creator has different rules, but that many third level bullets definitely ain't kosher - and the amount of double bullets is pushing it as well.
2. Regarding Nintendo and Overwatch, I feel it's notable to mention that Nintendo offered refunds of the game following that fiasco, which they rarely do.

In Fallen Creator, occasionally there is a case that we ended up having to list down the process of how the creator fell from grace. We've done that to both Konami and Keiji Inafune, although it's still open for trimming if necessary (I will try later).

But back on Blizzard, the thing about Blizzard that it is important to lay out the 'Screwing up once per year in 4 consecutive years', one of the most important aspects of their ultimate fall from grace (Diablo Immortal -> Blitzchung Incident -> Warcraft III Reforged -> Workplace Abuse Lawsuit).

The last one probably could use a big trimming though, so... here's my attempt:

How does it go? Let me know your version if you have objections.

Edited by ChrisX on Nov 9th 2021 at 11:30:25 PM

Alright, looks good

Should we make a note about Microsoft purchasing Blizzard Entertainment?

Later on. We'll need to see if all of these had any effect on them.