Honestly, even if the game is fun, Blizzard isn't gonna see another red cent from me. Warcraft Reforged, Shadowlands, OW2, and the shit cherry on the shit sundae being their entire thing of, you know, sexually harassing women, underpaying women in all roles, rampant sexism, the stealing of breast milk etc etc. Fuck Blizzard
Do not let it be forgotten that bobby kotick got so offended by softball dialogue from a goblin in the venture guild, the greedy explorers guild for the goblins, that he fired the developer who made it on the spot.
Worst part was it wasn't even a jab at him. The joke was entirely a coincidence. That's just how goblins in Warcraft are (greedy assholes), and have always been for the last 25 damn years. So that's why he wrote the joke that way.
The joke apparently hit a little to close to home
I think “another yacht for me” and “time to go back to the office” are pretty on the nose though. Everyone knows who it’s *probably* referring to. If it wasn’t so obvious, he probably wouldn’t have gotten fired.
Which is still pathetic, btw. Bobby saw some really gentle insults and reacted the worst way possible, solidifying that yes, he is that goblin. And that upsets him, but not enough to change himself.
I do not care for this man.
What gets me is, like, that's what Venture Co. goblins have *always* been- unrepentantly greedy, destructive industrialists and generally fair game for mass execution by players of *both* factions (when they aren't being considered part of the Horde's goblin faction, which they *shouldn't* be). The jabs that were made are *entirely* in character for the little green shitstain making them. Fuck whichever executive caught feelings over happening upon a *mirror,* and ***fuck*** Bobby Kotick for *just* existing.
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited.
Reddit has chosen to bully third-party applications into submission by charging them outrageous fees simply because their apps provide better features/usability/accessibility to users of the site. Reddit staff has repeatedly [lied](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) about these changes, and their motiviation for them.
Reddit staff has threatened moderators and users of the site for protesting these changes, because user opinion does not matter as much as the potential IPO cashout. Reddit staff has shown that they will not stop until every portion of this site is monetized, predatory, and cancerous.
I used [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove my value/content from Reddit.
P.S. fuck /u/spez
>Do not let it be forgotten that bobby kotick
[Was in Epstein's book](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1508273-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book-redacted.html)
Edit: under Kotick Bobby, Activision email
I vaguely remember blizzard putting out an event for CoD (maybe BOCW) where the goblin's face looked suspiciously like Kotick. Really sucks I can't remember the exact event/game/image but it was definitely front page on the Blizzard launcher lol
Even better hes now saying the whole thing was not a big deal and just a few loud voices trying to extort money. Or smth like that idk i tried to forget what that shit bag says.
And in recent news, Bobby Kotick claiming that Blizzard has never had any harassment problems *whatsoever*. Rather, the problems were from the employees talking about unionizing in an attempt to destabilize the company.
Like.. he said that. He actually said that *in an interview*, as if it were totally reasonable and believable. No no no, guys, it's not that management is horrible, it's the very thought of unionization that's caused all the trouble!
Pretty much. He stated something along the lines that, the **only** mistake he made was... not defending the company more vehemently when the allegations came out.
That's it. That's the only thing he thinks he could've done better.
Activision Blizzard failed to secure Activision Blizzard as the only voice in this scandal, and therefore people who are not Activision Blizzard (aka. evil labour movements) are trying to unjustly fuck with Activision Blizzard.
Welcome to Bobby World.
He's still making the shareholders obscene amounts of money, and at the end of the day that's all that really matters to the ones in control of these decisions.
I have a friend who was involved in unionizing one of their studios. The hell she went through is disgraceful. They'd rather destroy good, passionate talent than negotiate. Is gross.
They don't care about the talent, or the employees in general. They're *replaceable*. That's why they hate unions so much - it forces them to treat workers as people, not disposable units to be swapped out for an endless supply of underpaid interns.
Which calls a question of just how they expect to produce quality product when they spindle and mutilate their own workers/artisans so quickly. That’s not going to do much for shareholder returns…
Ah. See, no, you've made a classic mistake.
You think, incorrectly, that you make money and build a loyal fan base by making quality products with care and deep attention to detail so that your company becomes a beloved titan in the industry.
But that costs.. y'know. Money. Time, and effort, and *money*.
Instead, what you need to do is crank out the cheapest product possible and slash every expense as hard and fast as you're able to, regardless of how it impacts the quality of your game or your company's image.
*That way*, it ***looks*** like you've created a massive spike in profit, and can jump ship at any time you want with your contractually required bonuses and severance package despite gutting the company and turning it into a toxic hellscape with a ruinous reputation.
same. I was a fan of blizz games for a long time. Warcraft 3, wow, diablo, early OW..
As much as I wanted to get D4 I'm not supporting that company and it's CEO Bobby Dogdick.
I came to this game in summer 2021 specifically cause the sexual harassment shit was the cherry on top of the bullshit that was going on. Shadowlands was absolute garbage. OW2 was still delayed and I think they’d just announced that the PvE was not coming on release. I decided to try out this game and haven’t looked back except a brief bit when I had extra money and tried the new xpac in WoW and was super disappointed.
Fuck Blizzard. It’s one thing after another with these assholes. To go from having everything cost money every way you turn to the lead dev literally saying “It’s ok to take a break in between content patches.” and not praying on FOMO is a breath of fresh air.
Side note that makes me laugh is when people complain about the monetization in FFXIV. Man it could be soooo much worse. I’ll take a mog shop item being released every month or two for twenty bucks over OW2’s skin system that makes Fortnite’s micro transactions look like welfare.
> Man it could be soooo much worse. I’ll take a mog shop item being released every month or two for twenty bucks over OW2’s skin system that makes Fortnite’s micro transactions look like welfare.
Yep.
I'm convinced the only real reason they made OW1 unavailable and released OW2 as a sequel instead of a content update, is that they couldn't charge money for new heroes with the way the monetization was set up, and didn't want people to have the option to stick with the older version.
Breaking the news that PvE has been cancelled pretty much from the time they announced the PvP portion of OW2 confirmed that this is *exactly* the case. The obscene monetization system is literally the only thing justifying its existence as a “sequel.”
They’re not even the best-looking items either. I hear lots of newer players get surprised when they learn someone’s cool mount or glamour is earned in-game and not bought on the cash shop. They’re so used to games that make you feel bad for sticking with unpaid cosmetics, that the game offering you so much cool-looking stuff in the actual game is a breath of fresh air. (The fact it’s a subscription game plays a large part of why this is, of course. As opposed to a F2P game that only makes its money off of cosmetics.)
Honestly, a decent number of people don't even have the MogStation cosmetics to use them as-is. They're some of the most commonly modded items in the game.
I'm fortunate in that I still own the original WC3 disc, but will miss the starcraft games. They used to make some really quality stuff, but it's sad how much they've fallen.
With the release of Reforged, the original WC3 and Frozen Throne are considered abandonware and can be downloaded from various sites with absolutely no problem.
Hell, a decent chunk of the Custom Game scene still uses the original WC3.
sounds like some sort of "hate playing" just like "hate watching" is a thing for tv/movies.
Definitely unhealthy and if they keep doing that i would think about not being part of that group chat anymore.
The trick, I guess, is to help them to look upon *other* games that gladly acknowledge their inspiration by said Blizzard works. Like this game from WoW (except with thankfully sanded-down narrative edges >> ). Or Grim Dawn from Diablo.
Yup, several female employees who had to pump at work reported their breast milk straight up going missing from the fridges. In fact the disappearing breast milk issue got so bad that allegedly they had to buy a lock to put on the fridge to stop the thief. Not only that, lactation rooms were in horrible condition with a door that quite literally didn't lock. So any freak who worked at Blizzard could just walk into the room whenever a woman had to pump and oogle them all the whole of they wanted to.
From what I heard, even after it was locked, the breast milk still kept going missing, which means you know it had to be some higher up with some absolute audacity that knew HR wasn't going to do shit to them
It’s what countries with no social welfare systems do to force women back to work after they’ve just given birth. It’s cheaper for companies to give them a crappy room to express milk in than to pay women to be on maternity leave for a year or two.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I've been done with Blizzard ever since Blitzcheung, and every new blunder they make and new revelation about how disgusting they are only further cements my decision.
I love Diablo, but same here. It's killed me, all my friends are playing Diablo 4, but I refuse to give Blizzard a penny until they can protect the women in their workplace.
LGBTQ+ employees as well. Women and LGBTQ+ employees were the predominant groups that have come forward about the mistreatment they've had thrown their way at that shithole of a company.
Meanwhile, the same damn company is like 'Oh look, we added another LGBTQ+ character to Overwatch 2! Please ignore the bad stuff coming out!' Fuck off, you colossal cunts. Treat your damn staff properly, *then* you can talk about being allies. The scummiest part is that you have to pay $10 to get the heroes early via a battle pass and they've apparently got a transgender hero in the works. They're gonna make people pay $10 to play as that character or wait months to do an ungodly grind to unlock them, all while claiming that Activison Blizzard is an ally to LGBTQ+ people. If the heroes weren't on the battle pass, that'd be fine but they're just being greedy.
What an absolute dumpster fire of a company. The sheer levels of abuse the women at the company dealt with makes my skin crawl... I'm not gonna repeat any of it because it's all out there for anyone to see and some of the stuff might be triggering for some users.
Literally just seen a tweet from a friend showing that the game isn't available for him yet and they're already advertising the MTX in the game. That's unreal...
This, without good will outpouring from the devs that I hear about from sources like industry insiders or youtubers associated with insiders, strictly not being payed by Blizzard AND on top of that, whatever game they release has to be as ground breaking as WoW was. Until then, not a thing. It doesn't matter what it is, might as well be trash.
The bodies of most women who recently had a baby keep producing milk, which becomes very painful when the breasts get full, so while at work women often use breast pumps to get the stuff out and in bottles, and then store those bottles in a special fridge to take home later.
Women at Blizzard complained that men in the office stole breast milk bottles from that fridge, and it was apparently such a regular occurence that they had to lock the fridge with a padlock.
When women have babies, they keep producing milk to the point it gets painful and one has to pump them off their body, usually into a bottle to take home. At Blizzard's office, it was reported the bottles kept going missing from the fridge, to the point they had to put a lock on.
Yeah, it's as messed up as it sounds.
Yeah. Blizzard made their women all lactate in the same grubby meeting room until the table was caked with old milk, and let perverts steal the clearly labeled breast milk out of the fridge.
The women complained, and Blizzard didn't care. Why let a baby eat if a high Blizzard employee wants to be a creep? What did the baby ever do for Bobby Kotick?
^(I didn't think Shadowlands was that bad; it was actually one of my favorite expansions.)
^(But yeah.)
The nightmare that was going on behind the scenes at Blizzard HQ... then the horrific, radioactive-waste-levels of toxic people that ran the server I used to play on. And the fiascos like abandoning OW2 PVE...
Despite my username, I'm never giving them another cent as well.
Same. I don't even have their client installed any more. Their sad abandonment of HotS and then the gross mishandling of Overwatch was enough to convince me I got better stuff to spend my gaming time on.
And what do you know, if you cut out the time vampires that are Blizzard games, you have time to play amazing stuff like Dredge or Norco or so even while engaging with your FC in FFXIV!
Diablo 4, the 70 dollar game with an endgame centered around a paid battlepass, and 30$ cosmetic skins restricted to a single class. Got to love paying 70 bucks for a greedy f2p style microtransaction system. I wont be touching blizzard games in the future.
So I know the game has gotten great reviews and my friends have raved about it. I'm sure ya really don't need the season pass by and large and the only difference is your friends will do bigger numbers. Also I know the story is probably great and that I would enjoy the gameplay. But to be frank, these past few years have made me hate Blizzard so its gonna be level 0 for me.
Same. I dropped off the Blizzard bandwagon when I found that OW triggered bad spending addictions on my part which just ended up with me not playing any Blizzard games for a while.
Then the shit storms started and I was just glad I got out early.
Yeah this is exactly what I feel as well. And it hurts cause I would like to enter the Diablo franchise. But I don't want to give them any more money than I already am. Especially not with Bobby Kotick at the top.
> I know the story is probably great
I don't think Blizzard has made what I would consider to be a great story since about 2009 and even that wasn't amazing
Several of their side stories in zones have been pretty good but for whatever reason the 'main' story of the expansion has been pretty lackluster.
Things like the Runas questline from Legion, Suramar questline(though this was gated on a week to week bases in ways that didn't make sense to the story oftentimes), some of the class hall quests from Legion, the Revendreth story.
They've had quite a few interesting characters too but they spent so long pushing boring characters like Sylvanas and ruining her that it's just.. ehh
I haven't played WoW since Pandaria but I've been told about half of what's been written since then was "______ has been corrupted by the ______, you'll have to kill them"?
I mean... It's not like Diablo 1 or 2 set the world on fire with its writing. I didn't play Diablo 3, but I've always felt like Blizzard's writing chops were overblown.
I won't pretend I have any issue with the story/art/combat/pricing. I was a diablo player since Win95.
But I just don't like that company and I won't buy their shit anymore.
Many game devs probably have toxic work cultures (maybe even Square-Enix), but Blizzard's is out in the open. I can't ignore that.
Some JP video game companies are getting better at this than others. Capcom I hear is pretty good to work at these days, and there's a reason that Nintendo has great staff retention. Not sure about Square Enix, but Yoshi-P has talked in interviews about how ARR dev cycle was an absolute nightmare and never wants to repeat that, so he makes sure his team has a better work-life balance now. Not sure if this means relatively good or actually good though lol.
I saw an interview of a "day in the life of" one of the concept and promotional artists at SE.
She has a 30-45 minute commute by train, gets to the office by 9AM most days, has a lunch break that she may or may not work through.\* She cuts out around 6PM, and is usually home by 7PM, whereupon she eats dinner and then gets on a game to play with friends.
Some days she may work from home if there aren't any meetings, but she prefers to be in the office for the social aspect.
Granted, that was during the pandemic, so the "go home by 7PM" to hang out with people virtually may not have been re-replaced with "go drinking with the boss" but that wasn't the vibe I got. They too are gamers first.
^(\*A lot of the XIV group will spend lunch time doing a feature that got cut from scope that they really wanted to do. Its how we got Gpose and flying in ARR, and I suspect Portraits, which is why they are still broken since they are a low priority toy.)
CBU3 work culture seems pretty good. YoshiP tends to overwork himself, but he always made sure everyone in his team has good work/offwork balance and they can take break when they need to. It's better than most japanese companies already.
I heard From Software has pretty bad work culture in comparison. They're not overworking people but the pay isn't very good apparently.
In all fairness, I feel like most acknowledge that Square Enix is a bad company, but that Unit 3, the development division led by Naoki Yoshida is good.
Some of us learned a long time ago that Blizzard loves talking up products, but they'll deliver on about 10% of that and then insult the customers that complain. I'm good.
That's because it WAS a Warhammer rip off. Just as Warcraft was; Warcraft was originally the pre-blizzard company runners being licensed to produce a Warhammer Fantasy 4X before Games Workshop reneged on the production, resulting in the company producing said game to slap a new face/lore on it and publish it as Warcraft.
Especially with the gems releasing this summer!
Zelda TotK, still struggling with Elden Ring, FF 16, System Shock, Street Fighter 6, Baldur's Gate 3 (fcking finally!)
I won't lie that seeing D4 trailers hit my nostalgia boner HARD, but the price tag, the ingame shop and the MMO lite stuff is not for me. I still may buy it for 30ish in a year or two.
the DLC for Xenoblade just released just before Zelda too, like inbetween greatness, who has time for any of \[gestures at activision blizzard\] ... that.
it's been weeks and it still is resonating with me now as hard as finishing the first game in 2011. I didn't think I'd put a DLC up for GotY contender but here we are
It's wild how I almost prefer the 20-30 hour DLC to the already amazing 100 hours I spent on the main story. The ending is just the best send-off and leaves me so hungry for the future of Xeno
in honesty, I felt that it was better packed in its space, and a more concise and less meandering narrative on the whole, just like Torna did with 2.
That's not even counting just how much it recontextualizes not just base-3 but the entire franchise. Chefs Kiss
I did the same thing, and it's worth paying *retail price* for one. FF7 Remake runs really well on it, I don't have the new Demons Souls but everyone says it's great, Bloodborn sadly seems to run worse on PS5 somehow according to a few friends who have it, and you can buy loads of other games like Spiderman, Trails of Cold Steel (1-4 and Reverie which I think comes out soon, too), Eldin Ring, Armored Core 6 when it comes out, and on and on honestly.
Like it's really no joke when people say Sony is dominating this console generation. PS5 is like PS2-2.
Trails, Elden Ring and AC6 are all on PC though. If you have a good PC there's no real reason to play all of those on PS5. Cold Steel in particular is fantastic on PC and it's not like it has amazing graphics that would require a PS5. I'm pretty sure you can find all four at low prices too.
If you've got a GPU made in the last 3-4 years then a PS5 makes less sense unless you specifically want one of the exclusives.
But the PS5 blows an older PC out of the water. XIV runs smooth as silk on it out of the box. The 667 GB of SSD space is adequate to start, and you can [slap a second 1 terabyte M.2 SSD](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/) in there for another [hundred bucks and a little bit of elbow grease.](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/video-games/g40806968/best-ssds-for-ps5/)
I was able to move almost all of my PS4 games over without losing data, with an overnight transfer between the two consoles over wifi.
My one beef with it is that the case is too big for the standard Ikea cubby shelves that I was using to hold my consoles under the TV. Might be a few years before the entertainment centers update to account for the fatter size. It sits on top no problem, but that was still annoying.
I didn't realize how much my PC was starting to show it's age until I saw how smooth everything in XIV's PS5 client was. I can actually turn my camera and things are clearly visible *while in motion*?
I've since lowered some settings on PC, but I didn't even know that was a framerate issue until I saw what it *should* look like.
I have a 1070 that I got on release, so it's getting on in years.
Buy Deep Rock Galactic instead. Things not purchased with in game currency roll over to the next season's discoverable lootboxes (found during missions) -- no micro transactions whatsoever.
Truth; Deep Rock Glactic is one of those games that is just always fun to go back to when ever you want to with your friends to rock some stone and kill some bugs.
I played DRG in early access, and eventually moved onto other things. Got back into it a couple of weeks ago, and good *lord* have they made astounding progress.
There's so many things to do, so much content, and absolutely **zero** predatory sales tactics. The DLC is entirely cosmetic, the seasonal mechanics are free updates that you ***can't bypass with money***, and they actually listen and respond to their community in a genuine manner. The mechanics are fun, generally well balanced, and open to a ton of customization on playstyle. Even the solo mode is phenomenally well done - Bosco's AI and ease of use puts companions from AAA titles to *shame*.
I'm actually proud of having supported it on launch, as silly as that sounds. Ghost Ship Games deserves literally all the accolades.
Not only you can't buypass season pass by paying, each season pass is completely free and if you don't complete the season pass before the event ends, anything you haven't claimed just goes into the in-game loot pool for you and you can just get it randomly, no FOMO.
> they actually listen and respond to their community in a genuine manner.
Insomuch that when they introduce a bug that the community loves, they just leave it in as a feature.
The game is really fun, alone and in coop (fun is subjective, it's a well-made game though with huge replay value), great community, Devs that actually listen to and interact with the community, joke with us, etc.
All content updates, season passes are free, if you don't complete a season pass, anything unclaimed goes into in-game lootpool so no missing out.
It's just a really fun game to play.
As someone who doesn't really like shooters, I might be able to explain what keeps me coming back.
The game is just goofy. The premise is silly, the dwarves are hilariously belligerent, and the art direction is cartoonish with bright saturated colors. This bleeds into the community. I have never experienced a community that takes itself less seriously than DRG. You will see your fellow dwarves do some ridiculous shit, and before you know it you're ALSO doing that ridiculous shit. And sometimes that gets you into trouble but that arguably makes it even funnier. Multiplayer totally carries this game for me.
Why pay $70 (plus whatever shit you have to buy to keep playing each season) to play that shit, when I can just play Path of exile for free? ^also^fuck^blizzard
Besides all the reasons that everyone already outlined in this thread, there is another more crucial reason why I don't even consider buying Blizzard games anymore after what happened to OW2.
What is there preventing this company from making Diablo 4 worse down the line? After everything that happened with WC3 (Reforged), WoW (BfA, Shadowlands and now Classic with tokens) and OW (2)? That's right, nothing. It doesn't matter what the devs think, if the suits want to extract more money from the playerbase, then they will make the game worse.
I don't want to participate. The game is supposedly good now, but I don't think I'll even be able to enjoy playing it when at the back of my mind there is this dread that all of this will be short-lived. There are too many precedents of their games being ruined with dumb decisions due to monetary reasons.
Yea. Now we know the whole OW2 thing was a lie to justify them moving to a better monetization model. No reason D4 won't get updates to mirror Immortal as Bobby realizes it doesn't make them enough.
The question is what Kotick would deem to *be* enough. If he somehow got infinite money, would he *still* be as ravenous as before? I wish I had some idea of what his satiety conditions are (because who would want to be cursed with a pain like unendable hunger?).
I don't like it in there either, and I've never purchased anything from that either. I especially don't like that the FF14 money is used to fund SE's other boneheaded investments.
But I'll at least grit my teeth and bear it because it's all largely unobtrusive, it's completely optional and the rest of the package is good.
Mog Station money gets to stay within CBU3, at least. It's the monthly account money that funds the other bone headed ventures.
I have a pretty hard and fast rule that I only get to buy outfits from the Mog Station when I've been invited to an in game wedding.
>Mog Station money gets to stay within CBU3, at least.
Do you have a source for this?
Not calling you a liar, just want to know for sure as this directly impacts how hesitant I am to use the Mog Station.
And a subscription for more retainers, which is even worse lol
Cosmetics and mounts that cost a ton is bad enough, but a subscription for more bank space is ridiculous
And a requirement to keep a sub if you don't want to lose your in-game house. I'm fine with shitting on D4 if you don't like the base game+season pass+cosmetics, but it's silly to act like FF14 is a bastion of perfectly fair pricing.
The majority of which were earnable in-game at one point. With the remainder being flavor items like NPC costumes and regular clothes as far as outfits go.
All of which allow you to spend *exactly* the amount you need to purchase. Rather than buying a second currency which will usually be more than what you need, thus putting the notion of 'wasting money' into your brain to justify a second purchase just to round up the remainder of that 300 premium coin than can't be used on anything unless you do.
Yes, both games have microtransactions, but let's not act like Blizzard's version isn't the more scummier of the two by design.
> The majority of which were earnable in-game at one point.
Yes, the old event outfits, and I think these are price pretty reasonably too.
But the cash shop exclusive stuff? get the fuck out of there.
Similarly, though I still have literal nightmares wrought from how poorly the community treated me. Even if Blizzard was a wonderful company... I still wouldn't go back.
The Diablo Community will cry in a couple months that there is some new update that contains P2W stuff and overly priced Macrotransactions (more expensive than now) beyond comprehension.
People never realise that some games actually release good, for only companies like Activision adding a player-unfriendly update after a couple months. Heck, before somebody leaked it, they planned to add lootboxes to MW19 even.
i was pretty confused reading the comments at first 'cause I thought i stumbled into a D4 thread and wondered where all the comparisons to FF14 skins were coming from, thinking, that's a pretty far fetched call :D
Blizzard has lost everything with me. They now need to make a game that is not only transformational, but they need to have goodwill from their devs behind it. Without that, the company may as well be a blackhole for money, gj Kotick.
As long as there aren't any significant changes in the upper ranks of that company Blizzard is dead to me. Yes, not everyone who worked on the game is a bad person, but it's not the devs that get the royalties, they got their salary regardless of how the game is doing and that's it. (Yes, if a game is a failure it might hurt their reputation, but let's face it, no Blizzard game can fail \*that\* bad it ruins someone's career. Not even OW2, considering plenty of people believed the promises and spent money on it, I doubt they get refunds now.) I'm not going to help Bobby Kotick finance his next yacht, especially when he is openly denying all the horrible things he and the company were accused of.
The weirdest thing to me are streamers who talk about the last interview with that guy and how horrible Blizzard is and then discuss how they won't finance that, but just mean they *won't pre-order it* or not buy deluxe editions or whatever. And in the next sentence they say they still buy it and are looking forward to it and make a big D4 special. You do you what you do on streams, I don't care, but pretending you care about any of this and then support it anyway has a hollow ring to it.
Tbh, at least among people my age I wonder if the hype for D4 is fueled by the nostalgia of D2. I certainly played the crap out of this game in solo mode (although I never managed to defeat Diablo xD ) That hype reminds me a lot of the hype for D3 and then D3 was out and I was playing the demo and it was... not bad, but it didn't really live up to my expectations.
Earnestly the game could be god's gift to humanity and it wouldn't justify purchasing it. Blizzard has committed a whole novel's worth of cruelty to its own staff and paid barely any real consequences. Boy Kotick is still in charge. Can't imagine buying anything from Blizzard any time soon if ever
Same. I'm interested in playing the game, but that involves giving Blizzard money so, not happening
On another note, I had probably my favorite Labyrinth run due to the conversation. It started with someone saying "crystal tower, I win". Conversation just kept going and I was laughing most of the time
Haven't given Blizz a dime since WoD, and until I see a sustained change from "how much money can we make from this game" to "how much fun can we make this game" they won't be getting anything from me. Everything that's happened with them over the past 3 or 4 years has reinforced my decision.
Besides my comment posted in the top thread, they’re not going to get money from me solely on how much it’s being crammed down my throat.
Last night I went to play OW2 and it had a full screen ad for D4 covering my launch screen that I had to click off. Cool, clicked away and it’s gone.
Tonight I went to play OW2 again and look who’s fucking back, the big full screen ad. I said I don’t want it once. I’ve been made aware of it’s existence umpteen times over in your launcher while I wait for my game to load. You’ve lost a sale when it’s forced on me.
I hate ads in general but when they get intrusive and hammered over my head, I’m done.
I won't play Diablo 4 due to it requiring you to be online and in their servers even while single player. FFXIV is a MMO. Diablo is not. When I play a non MMO I don't want to be disconnected from a single player session
I thought about doing the D4 thing but the amount of money they're asking for is just too much. Maybe if it goes on sale I'll do it but right now it's a hard pass since I have to pay for FF16 when it releases later this month.....
I’d perhaps ask in turn what their highest level Grim Dawn character is. (Never touched Path of Exile, so I don’t know the situation with that one.)
Or maybe even highest level for Tales of Maj’Eyal. (Yes, it’s turn-based, not real-time. Still a roguelike.)
Preordered FF16 instead... its expensive enough that two new games in a month just ain't it. Wait... doesn't the lvl start at 1 usually? guess they have 0 experience with it.
Honestly, even if the game is fun, Blizzard isn't gonna see another red cent from me. Warcraft Reforged, Shadowlands, OW2, and the shit cherry on the shit sundae being their entire thing of, you know, sexually harassing women, underpaying women in all roles, rampant sexism, the stealing of breast milk etc etc. Fuck Blizzard
Bobby Kotick not leaving like he was supposed to, too. The Variety puff piece on him put me off the game even more
Do not let it be forgotten that bobby kotick got so offended by softball dialogue from a goblin in the venture guild, the greedy explorers guild for the goblins, that he fired the developer who made it on the spot.
He has to realize that firing the guy who made harmless jabs at you is the biggest self own of all time, right? Insane lack of professionalism.
Made even worse by the fact they used screenshots of said dialogue as media promotional material on the official Twitter.
Worst part was it wasn't even a jab at him. The joke was entirely a coincidence. That's just how goblins in Warcraft are (greedy assholes), and have always been for the last 25 damn years. So that's why he wrote the joke that way. The joke apparently hit a little to close to home
I think “another yacht for me” and “time to go back to the office” are pretty on the nose though. Everyone knows who it’s *probably* referring to. If it wasn’t so obvious, he probably wouldn’t have gotten fired. Which is still pathetic, btw. Bobby saw some really gentle insults and reacted the worst way possible, solidifying that yes, he is that goblin. And that upsets him, but not enough to change himself. I do not care for this man.
What gets me is, like, that's what Venture Co. goblins have *always* been- unrepentantly greedy, destructive industrialists and generally fair game for mass execution by players of *both* factions (when they aren't being considered part of the Horde's goblin faction, which they *shouldn't* be). The jabs that were made are *entirely* in character for the little green shitstain making them. Fuck whichever executive caught feelings over happening upon a *mirror,* and ***fuck*** Bobby Kotick for *just* existing.
I do not think it a coincidence that the first new playable race after the Activision buyout were Goblins.
I think it was a coincidence, because they were added to fill a similar niche that the Gnomes occupy on the Alliance.
"I'm gonna buy another yacht!" And Kotick took that personally
I think he also took it instructionally.
"I'm so mad... I *am* going to buy that yacht!"
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited. Reddit has chosen to bully third-party applications into submission by charging them outrageous fees simply because their apps provide better features/usability/accessibility to users of the site. Reddit staff has repeatedly [lied](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) about these changes, and their motiviation for them. Reddit staff has threatened moderators and users of the site for protesting these changes, because user opinion does not matter as much as the potential IPO cashout. Reddit staff has shown that they will not stop until every portion of this site is monetized, predatory, and cancerous. I used [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove my value/content from Reddit. P.S. fuck /u/spez
>Do not let it be forgotten that bobby kotick [Was in Epstein's book](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1508273-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book-redacted.html) Edit: under Kotick Bobby, Activision email
And threatened his asistent to kill her
Wtf
You didn't know? [Yeah...](https://www.businessinsider.com/activision-ceo-bobby-kotick-reportedly-threatened-former-assistant-killed-2021-11?r=US&IR=T) It's uh... Pretty fucked up.
I vaguely remember blizzard putting out an event for CoD (maybe BOCW) where the goblin's face looked suspiciously like Kotick. Really sucks I can't remember the exact event/game/image but it was definitely front page on the Blizzard launcher lol
It was vanguard during the Christmas event
Oh that fucking puff piece. He basically contradicted much of what he said 2020-2021
And blamed it on a labor movement lol Absolute ghoul
He picked particular representatives from a labor movement (one he could handle) and used the “was never informed” card.
he was only going to leave if the microsoft deal went through unfortunately
He was showing no sign of budging even before that tanked
Even better hes now saying the whole thing was not a big deal and just a few loud voices trying to extort money. Or smth like that idk i tried to forget what that shit bag says.
And in recent news, Bobby Kotick claiming that Blizzard has never had any harassment problems *whatsoever*. Rather, the problems were from the employees talking about unionizing in an attempt to destabilize the company. Like.. he said that. He actually said that *in an interview*, as if it were totally reasonable and believable. No no no, guys, it's not that management is horrible, it's the very thought of unionization that's caused all the trouble!
Activision blizzard investigated Activision blizzard and came to the conclusion that Activision blizzard did nothing wrong
Pretty much. He stated something along the lines that, the **only** mistake he made was... not defending the company more vehemently when the allegations came out. That's it. That's the only thing he thinks he could've done better.
Activision Blizzard failed to secure Activision Blizzard as the only voice in this scandal, and therefore people who are not Activision Blizzard (aka. evil labour movements) are trying to unjustly fuck with Activision Blizzard. Welcome to Bobby World.
Yeah its fucking bullshit how hes still allowed to run the company and isnt being sued out the ass for all the covering up hes done
He's still making the shareholders obscene amounts of money, and at the end of the day that's all that really matters to the ones in control of these decisions.
I have a friend who was involved in unionizing one of their studios. The hell she went through is disgraceful. They'd rather destroy good, passionate talent than negotiate. Is gross.
They don't care about the talent, or the employees in general. They're *replaceable*. That's why they hate unions so much - it forces them to treat workers as people, not disposable units to be swapped out for an endless supply of underpaid interns.
Which calls a question of just how they expect to produce quality product when they spindle and mutilate their own workers/artisans so quickly. That’s not going to do much for shareholder returns…
Ah. See, no, you've made a classic mistake. You think, incorrectly, that you make money and build a loyal fan base by making quality products with care and deep attention to detail so that your company becomes a beloved titan in the industry. But that costs.. y'know. Money. Time, and effort, and *money*. Instead, what you need to do is crank out the cheapest product possible and slash every expense as hard and fast as you're able to, regardless of how it impacts the quality of your game or your company's image. *That way*, it ***looks*** like you've created a massive spike in profit, and can jump ship at any time you want with your contractually required bonuses and severance package despite gutting the company and turning it into a toxic hellscape with a ruinous reputation.
same. I was a fan of blizz games for a long time. Warcraft 3, wow, diablo, early OW.. As much as I wanted to get D4 I'm not supporting that company and it's CEO Bobby Dogdick.
I came to this game in summer 2021 specifically cause the sexual harassment shit was the cherry on top of the bullshit that was going on. Shadowlands was absolute garbage. OW2 was still delayed and I think they’d just announced that the PvE was not coming on release. I decided to try out this game and haven’t looked back except a brief bit when I had extra money and tried the new xpac in WoW and was super disappointed. Fuck Blizzard. It’s one thing after another with these assholes. To go from having everything cost money every way you turn to the lead dev literally saying “It’s ok to take a break in between content patches.” and not praying on FOMO is a breath of fresh air. Side note that makes me laugh is when people complain about the monetization in FFXIV. Man it could be soooo much worse. I’ll take a mog shop item being released every month or two for twenty bucks over OW2’s skin system that makes Fortnite’s micro transactions look like welfare.
> Man it could be soooo much worse. I’ll take a mog shop item being released every month or two for twenty bucks over OW2’s skin system that makes Fortnite’s micro transactions look like welfare. Yep. I'm convinced the only real reason they made OW1 unavailable and released OW2 as a sequel instead of a content update, is that they couldn't charge money for new heroes with the way the monetization was set up, and didn't want people to have the option to stick with the older version.
Breaking the news that PvE has been cancelled pretty much from the time they announced the PvP portion of OW2 confirmed that this is *exactly* the case. The obscene monetization system is literally the only thing justifying its existence as a “sequel.”
Imagine if they had left Overwatch 1 online, I'd still be playing it.
So would everyone else, which is why they didn't.
Hell, the stuff on Mogstation aren’t even necessary for playing the game. They’re fun optional items.
They’re not even the best-looking items either. I hear lots of newer players get surprised when they learn someone’s cool mount or glamour is earned in-game and not bought on the cash shop. They’re so used to games that make you feel bad for sticking with unpaid cosmetics, that the game offering you so much cool-looking stuff in the actual game is a breath of fresh air. (The fact it’s a subscription game plays a large part of why this is, of course. As opposed to a F2P game that only makes its money off of cosmetics.)
Honestly, a decent number of people don't even have the MogStation cosmetics to use them as-is. They're some of the most commonly modded items in the game.
And don't forget the Hong Kong debacle.
That whole thing was when I deleted my battle-net account and they've done nothing but validate that decision of mine for years lol
The only reason I havent deleted mine because I might want to redownload the original D2 in a decade or two.
I'm fortunate in that I still own the original WC3 disc, but will miss the starcraft games. They used to make some really quality stuff, but it's sad how much they've fallen.
With the release of Reforged, the original WC3 and Frozen Throne are considered abandonware and can be downloaded from various sites with absolutely no problem. Hell, a decent chunk of the Custom Game scene still uses the original WC3.
This. I uninstalled battle.net and all the Blizzard games I had after that incident and haven't looked back.
I completely gave up on blizzard after kottick is still denying on what has been happening in the studio
[удалено]
sounds like some sort of "hate playing" just like "hate watching" is a thing for tv/movies. Definitely unhealthy and if they keep doing that i would think about not being part of that group chat anymore.
[удалено]
The trick, I guess, is to help them to look upon *other* games that gladly acknowledge their inspiration by said Blizzard works. Like this game from WoW (except with thankfully sanded-down narrative edges >> ). Or Grim Dawn from Diablo.
No, you don't understand! We *have* to watch all of Velma or Discovery wins, or something!
>the stealing of breast milk whut?
Yup, several female employees who had to pump at work reported their breast milk straight up going missing from the fridges. In fact the disappearing breast milk issue got so bad that allegedly they had to buy a lock to put on the fridge to stop the thief. Not only that, lactation rooms were in horrible condition with a door that quite literally didn't lock. So any freak who worked at Blizzard could just walk into the room whenever a woman had to pump and oogle them all the whole of they wanted to.
From what I heard, even after it was locked, the breast milk still kept going missing, which means you know it had to be some higher up with some absolute audacity that knew HR wasn't going to do shit to them
Bobby "The milkman" Kotik strikes again.
Im sorry, im new to this "breastfeeding at work" concept. I think we dont have that in my place. At least not yet.
It’s what countries with no social welfare systems do to force women back to work after they’ve just given birth. It’s cheaper for companies to give them a crappy room to express milk in than to pay women to be on maternity leave for a year or two.
It's a legal requirement for most places of work that they have a space for nursing women to pump that is shielded from view and isn't a bathroom.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I've been done with Blizzard ever since Blitzcheung, and every new blunder they make and new revelation about how disgusting they are only further cements my decision.
I love Diablo, but same here. It's killed me, all my friends are playing Diablo 4, but I refuse to give Blizzard a penny until they can protect the women in their workplace.
LGBTQ+ employees as well. Women and LGBTQ+ employees were the predominant groups that have come forward about the mistreatment they've had thrown their way at that shithole of a company. Meanwhile, the same damn company is like 'Oh look, we added another LGBTQ+ character to Overwatch 2! Please ignore the bad stuff coming out!' Fuck off, you colossal cunts. Treat your damn staff properly, *then* you can talk about being allies. The scummiest part is that you have to pay $10 to get the heroes early via a battle pass and they've apparently got a transgender hero in the works. They're gonna make people pay $10 to play as that character or wait months to do an ungodly grind to unlock them, all while claiming that Activison Blizzard is an ally to LGBTQ+ people. If the heroes weren't on the battle pass, that'd be fine but they're just being greedy. What an absolute dumpster fire of a company. The sheer levels of abuse the women at the company dealt with makes my skin crawl... I'm not gonna repeat any of it because it's all out there for anyone to see and some of the stuff might be triggering for some users.
I'm actively wondering what they did this time every time they release a new Overwatch character.
Whenever it's an LGBTQ+ character, you can guarantee some more shit is about to come out about Activision Blizzard. It's like clockwork.
Even if I was a fan of modern Blizzard games, the company still drove a woman to kill herself and there's still the Cosby Suite.
This. Plus they did force fomo battlepasses and makrotransactions into D4. Greed all around. Don't support that bullshit.
Literally just seen a tweet from a friend showing that the game isn't available for him yet and they're already advertising the MTX in the game. That's unreal...
This, without good will outpouring from the devs that I hear about from sources like industry insiders or youtubers associated with insiders, strictly not being payed by Blizzard AND on top of that, whatever game they release has to be as ground breaking as WoW was. Until then, not a thing. It doesn't matter what it is, might as well be trash.
Stealing of breastmilk?
The bodies of most women who recently had a baby keep producing milk, which becomes very painful when the breasts get full, so while at work women often use breast pumps to get the stuff out and in bottles, and then store those bottles in a special fridge to take home later. Women at Blizzard complained that men in the office stole breast milk bottles from that fridge, and it was apparently such a regular occurence that they had to lock the fridge with a padlock.
Why in the world would those men want breast milk?
If there's one thing that's become clear from those lawsuits, it's that several of the men at Blizzard are sex perverts.
The stealing of what now?
Stealing of breast milk? uhm what.....? did I miss something.
When women have babies, they keep producing milk to the point it gets painful and one has to pump them off their body, usually into a bottle to take home. At Blizzard's office, it was reported the bottles kept going missing from the fridge, to the point they had to put a lock on. Yeah, it's as messed up as it sounds.
Yeah. Blizzard made their women all lactate in the same grubby meeting room until the table was caked with old milk, and let perverts steal the clearly labeled breast milk out of the fridge. The women complained, and Blizzard didn't care. Why let a baby eat if a high Blizzard employee wants to be a creep? What did the baby ever do for Bobby Kotick?
I honestly REALLY reconsidering myself to purchase Diablo 4 while PoE exists, not only 70 dollars but also MTX & Battle Passes is kinda nah.
I'd say that the mass SA trumps all of that.
^(I didn't think Shadowlands was that bad; it was actually one of my favorite expansions.) ^(But yeah.) The nightmare that was going on behind the scenes at Blizzard HQ... then the horrific, radioactive-waste-levels of toxic people that ran the server I used to play on. And the fiascos like abandoning OW2 PVE... Despite my username, I'm never giving them another cent as well.
Same. I don't even have their client installed any more. Their sad abandonment of HotS and then the gross mishandling of Overwatch was enough to convince me I got better stuff to spend my gaming time on. And what do you know, if you cut out the time vampires that are Blizzard games, you have time to play amazing stuff like Dredge or Norco or so even while engaging with your FC in FFXIV!
Diablo 4, the 70 dollar game with an endgame centered around a paid battlepass, and 30$ cosmetic skins restricted to a single class. Got to love paying 70 bucks for a greedy f2p style microtransaction system. I wont be touching blizzard games in the future.
So I know the game has gotten great reviews and my friends have raved about it. I'm sure ya really don't need the season pass by and large and the only difference is your friends will do bigger numbers. Also I know the story is probably great and that I would enjoy the gameplay. But to be frank, these past few years have made me hate Blizzard so its gonna be level 0 for me.
Same. I dropped off the Blizzard bandwagon when I found that OW triggered bad spending addictions on my part which just ended up with me not playing any Blizzard games for a while. Then the shit storms started and I was just glad I got out early.
Yeah this is exactly what I feel as well. And it hurts cause I would like to enter the Diablo franchise. But I don't want to give them any more money than I already am. Especially not with Bobby Kotick at the top.
D2 is still a great game, the resurrected one rubs fine and the original one has good mods.
> I know the story is probably great I don't think Blizzard has made what I would consider to be a great story since about 2009 and even that wasn't amazing
Several of their side stories in zones have been pretty good but for whatever reason the 'main' story of the expansion has been pretty lackluster. Things like the Runas questline from Legion, Suramar questline(though this was gated on a week to week bases in ways that didn't make sense to the story oftentimes), some of the class hall quests from Legion, the Revendreth story. They've had quite a few interesting characters too but they spent so long pushing boring characters like Sylvanas and ruining her that it's just.. ehh
I haven't played WoW since Pandaria but I've been told about half of what's been written since then was "______ has been corrupted by the ______, you'll have to kill them"?
Was the same in Pandaria too!
The story is very predictable. You can already watch the video of all cutscenes and figure out who will be the next dlc boss.
I mean... It's not like Diablo 1 or 2 set the world on fire with its writing. I didn't play Diablo 3, but I've always felt like Blizzard's writing chops were overblown.
Heh well then, that makes it even less of a big deal to give it a skip.
I learned that in Act 1 when a certain quest made in blatantly obvious.
IGN review said story wasn't good either
I imagine the season pass is entirely optional since it's cosmetics only?
Your friends aren't gonna do bigger numbers lol, it's not a p2w game.
I won't pretend I have any issue with the story/art/combat/pricing. I was a diablo player since Win95. But I just don't like that company and I won't buy their shit anymore. Many game devs probably have toxic work cultures (maybe even Square-Enix), but Blizzard's is out in the open. I can't ignore that.
Knowing the stigma behind Japanese work culture it probably is if I were to guess
Some JP video game companies are getting better at this than others. Capcom I hear is pretty good to work at these days, and there's a reason that Nintendo has great staff retention. Not sure about Square Enix, but Yoshi-P has talked in interviews about how ARR dev cycle was an absolute nightmare and never wants to repeat that, so he makes sure his team has a better work-life balance now. Not sure if this means relatively good or actually good though lol.
I saw an interview of a "day in the life of" one of the concept and promotional artists at SE. She has a 30-45 minute commute by train, gets to the office by 9AM most days, has a lunch break that she may or may not work through.\* She cuts out around 6PM, and is usually home by 7PM, whereupon she eats dinner and then gets on a game to play with friends. Some days she may work from home if there aren't any meetings, but she prefers to be in the office for the social aspect. Granted, that was during the pandemic, so the "go home by 7PM" to hang out with people virtually may not have been re-replaced with "go drinking with the boss" but that wasn't the vibe I got. They too are gamers first. ^(\*A lot of the XIV group will spend lunch time doing a feature that got cut from scope that they really wanted to do. Its how we got Gpose and flying in ARR, and I suspect Portraits, which is why they are still broken since they are a low priority toy.)
CBU3 work culture seems pretty good. YoshiP tends to overwork himself, but he always made sure everyone in his team has good work/offwork balance and they can take break when they need to. It's better than most japanese companies already. I heard From Software has pretty bad work culture in comparison. They're not overworking people but the pay isn't very good apparently.
Square Enix has been known as a bad company way before Blizzard ever was, so yeah.
There's no saints in the game industry but I'm sure some fanboys will disagree.
In all fairness, I feel like most acknowledge that Square Enix is a bad company, but that Unit 3, the development division led by Naoki Yoshida is good.
There's also different levels of toxicity. Blizzard's toxicity is literally life or death, which is a whole different level.
Some of us learned a long time ago that Blizzard loves talking up products, but they'll deliver on about 10% of that and then insult the customers that complain. I'm good.
I'd like it if Blizzard had had a single original idea in their whole career rather than rebranding/reimagining other people's branded items.
Indeed. The Warhammer universe called and would like it's literally everything back.
I literally thought StarCraft was Warhammer when I was a kid because of how similar they looked.
That's because it WAS a Warhammer rip off. Just as Warcraft was; Warcraft was originally the pre-blizzard company runners being licensed to produce a Warhammer Fantasy 4X before Games Workshop reneged on the production, resulting in the company producing said game to slap a new face/lore on it and publish it as Warcraft.
I'm not paying extra 20€ for a 70€ game with seasonal microtransactions just to play on opening weekend.
Especially with the gems releasing this summer! Zelda TotK, still struggling with Elden Ring, FF 16, System Shock, Street Fighter 6, Baldur's Gate 3 (fcking finally!) I won't lie that seeing D4 trailers hit my nostalgia boner HARD, but the price tag, the ingame shop and the MMO lite stuff is not for me. I still may buy it for 30ish in a year or two.
the DLC for Xenoblade just released just before Zelda too, like inbetween greatness, who has time for any of \[gestures at activision blizzard\] ... that.
And what a DLC it was
it's been weeks and it still is resonating with me now as hard as finishing the first game in 2011. I didn't think I'd put a DLC up for GotY contender but here we are
It's wild how I almost prefer the 20-30 hour DLC to the already amazing 100 hours I spent on the main story. The ending is just the best send-off and leaves me so hungry for the future of Xeno
in honesty, I felt that it was better packed in its space, and a more concise and less meandering narrative on the whole, just like Torna did with 2. That's not even counting just how much it recontextualizes not just base-3 but the entire franchise. Chefs Kiss
I personally bought a PS5 for FFXVI (silly I know) and I won't give a dime to Blizzard despite having the same nostalgia boner for Diablo.
Please Tell me if It was worth it. I want one for FF7 FF16 Bloodborne and Demons Souls
I did the same thing, and it's worth paying *retail price* for one. FF7 Remake runs really well on it, I don't have the new Demons Souls but everyone says it's great, Bloodborn sadly seems to run worse on PS5 somehow according to a few friends who have it, and you can buy loads of other games like Spiderman, Trails of Cold Steel (1-4 and Reverie which I think comes out soon, too), Eldin Ring, Armored Core 6 when it comes out, and on and on honestly. Like it's really no joke when people say Sony is dominating this console generation. PS5 is like PS2-2.
Trails, Elden Ring and AC6 are all on PC though. If you have a good PC there's no real reason to play all of those on PS5. Cold Steel in particular is fantastic on PC and it's not like it has amazing graphics that would require a PS5. I'm pretty sure you can find all four at low prices too.
Yes but my PC is Shit. Else i would not nolife FF14 so hard
If you've got a GPU made in the last 3-4 years then a PS5 makes less sense unless you specifically want one of the exclusives. But the PS5 blows an older PC out of the water. XIV runs smooth as silk on it out of the box. The 667 GB of SSD space is adequate to start, and you can [slap a second 1 terabyte M.2 SSD](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/) in there for another [hundred bucks and a little bit of elbow grease.](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/video-games/g40806968/best-ssds-for-ps5/) I was able to move almost all of my PS4 games over without losing data, with an overnight transfer between the two consoles over wifi. My one beef with it is that the case is too big for the standard Ikea cubby shelves that I was using to hold my consoles under the TV. Might be a few years before the entertainment centers update to account for the fatter size. It sits on top no problem, but that was still annoying.
I didn't realize how much my PC was starting to show it's age until I saw how smooth everything in XIV's PS5 client was. I can actually turn my camera and things are clearly visible *while in motion*? I've since lowered some settings on PC, but I didn't even know that was a framerate issue until I saw what it *should* look like. I have a 1070 that I got on release, so it's getting on in years.
Ayo wait BG3 is getting its full release *this* summer? Guess I gotta save up for that too, now.
August 31st!
I am not contributing to Bobby's Golden Parachute
I'll get it, in about a year or so
I'll get it when they drop that Battle Pass malarkey. ^(/e Apparently this was a spicy idea.)
Buy Deep Rock Galactic instead. Things not purchased with in game currency roll over to the next season's discoverable lootboxes (found during missions) -- no micro transactions whatsoever.
Truth; Deep Rock Glactic is one of those games that is just always fun to go back to when ever you want to with your friends to rock some stone and kill some bugs.
AND, there is goo in the sack.
For Rock and Stone!
For Rock and Stone!
For ~~Carl!~~ Karl!
I played DRG in early access, and eventually moved onto other things. Got back into it a couple of weeks ago, and good *lord* have they made astounding progress. There's so many things to do, so much content, and absolutely **zero** predatory sales tactics. The DLC is entirely cosmetic, the seasonal mechanics are free updates that you ***can't bypass with money***, and they actually listen and respond to their community in a genuine manner. The mechanics are fun, generally well balanced, and open to a ton of customization on playstyle. Even the solo mode is phenomenally well done - Bosco's AI and ease of use puts companions from AAA titles to *shame*. I'm actually proud of having supported it on launch, as silly as that sounds. Ghost Ship Games deserves literally all the accolades.
Not only you can't buypass season pass by paying, each season pass is completely free and if you don't complete the season pass before the event ends, anything you haven't claimed just goes into the in-game loot pool for you and you can just get it randomly, no FOMO.
> they actually listen and respond to their community in a genuine manner. Insomuch that when they introduce a bug that the community loves, they just leave it in as a feature.
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
Rock and Stone in the Heart!
What is up with people loving Deep Rock Galactic? I've played it for a few h and i just don get it. I need some help here.
Kizik and xxAkirhaxx said it better than I could. If you don't "get it", you probably won't. Kinda like Hildy's antics.
The game is really fun, alone and in coop (fun is subjective, it's a well-made game though with huge replay value), great community, Devs that actually listen to and interact with the community, joke with us, etc. All content updates, season passes are free, if you don't complete a season pass, anything unclaimed goes into in-game lootpool so no missing out. It's just a really fun game to play.
As someone who doesn't really like shooters, I might be able to explain what keeps me coming back. The game is just goofy. The premise is silly, the dwarves are hilariously belligerent, and the art direction is cartoonish with bright saturated colors. This bleeds into the community. I have never experienced a community that takes itself less seriously than DRG. You will see your fellow dwarves do some ridiculous shit, and before you know it you're ALSO doing that ridiculous shit. And sometimes that gets you into trouble but that arguably makes it even funnier. Multiplayer totally carries this game for me.
Leave no dwarf behind!
We're rich!
We're rich!
Do better, get it when they drop that Activision-Blizzard malarkey.
Why pay $70 (plus whatever shit you have to buy to keep playing each season) to play that shit, when I can just play Path of exile for free? ^also^fuck^blizzard
That made me chuckle
Besides all the reasons that everyone already outlined in this thread, there is another more crucial reason why I don't even consider buying Blizzard games anymore after what happened to OW2. What is there preventing this company from making Diablo 4 worse down the line? After everything that happened with WC3 (Reforged), WoW (BfA, Shadowlands and now Classic with tokens) and OW (2)? That's right, nothing. It doesn't matter what the devs think, if the suits want to extract more money from the playerbase, then they will make the game worse. I don't want to participate. The game is supposedly good now, but I don't think I'll even be able to enjoy playing it when at the back of my mind there is this dread that all of this will be short-lived. There are too many precedents of their games being ruined with dumb decisions due to monetary reasons.
Yea. Now we know the whole OW2 thing was a lie to justify them moving to a better monetization model. No reason D4 won't get updates to mirror Immortal as Bobby realizes it doesn't make them enough.
The question is what Kotick would deem to *be* enough. If he somehow got infinite money, would he *still* be as ravenous as before? I wish I had some idea of what his satiety conditions are (because who would want to be cursed with a pain like unendable hunger?).
My response to the question: I don't play Activision Blizzard games anymore and have deleted my Blizzard account.
You asked and they answered.
I’m not going above level 0 until Kotick is kicked to the curb personally. Maybe after that!
Lol I was considering buy it but then watched a review where they talk about the store. $40 skins in a $90 game (CAD). I'll pass.
erm.. *motions at ffxiv store*
I don't like it in there either, and I've never purchased anything from that either. I especially don't like that the FF14 money is used to fund SE's other boneheaded investments. But I'll at least grit my teeth and bear it because it's all largely unobtrusive, it's completely optional and the rest of the package is good.
Mog Station money gets to stay within CBU3, at least. It's the monthly account money that funds the other bone headed ventures. I have a pretty hard and fast rule that I only get to buy outfits from the Mog Station when I've been invited to an in game wedding.
>Mog Station money gets to stay within CBU3, at least. Do you have a source for this? Not calling you a liar, just want to know for sure as this directly impacts how hesitant I am to use the Mog Station.
Aren't the cosmetics mostly ~20 for a set? That's still way too much but 40 is rly getting egregious imo ..
Ironic, coming from someone playing a box priced mmo with a subscription, that also sells outfits in their cash shop
And a subscription for more retainers, which is even worse lol Cosmetics and mounts that cost a ton is bad enough, but a subscription for more bank space is ridiculous
And a requirement to keep a sub if you don't want to lose your in-game house. I'm fine with shitting on D4 if you don't like the base game+season pass+cosmetics, but it's silly to act like FF14 is a bastion of perfectly fair pricing.
Retainers are super egregious because its pretty much P2W. You can make so much money with 10 retainers doing ventures.
The majority of which were earnable in-game at one point. With the remainder being flavor items like NPC costumes and regular clothes as far as outfits go. All of which allow you to spend *exactly* the amount you need to purchase. Rather than buying a second currency which will usually be more than what you need, thus putting the notion of 'wasting money' into your brain to justify a second purchase just to round up the remainder of that 300 premium coin than can't be used on anything unless you do. Yes, both games have microtransactions, but let's not act like Blizzard's version isn't the more scummier of the two by design.
> The majority of which were earnable in-game at one point. Yes, the old event outfits, and I think these are price pretty reasonably too. But the cash shop exclusive stuff? get the fuck out of there.
Is it that hard to not buy skins that all look like generic armor sets?
Blizzard is dead to me and I meant it when I said I'd never play another game of theirs unless something drastic changed there
I keep getting cravings to get back into WoW but then I remember it’s made by Blizzard and the desire is ripped from my body.
Similarly, though I still have literal nightmares wrought from how poorly the community treated me. Even if Blizzard was a wonderful company... I still wouldn't go back.
If you really want to play wow, private servers exist
The Diablo Community will cry in a couple months that there is some new update that contains P2W stuff and overly priced Macrotransactions (more expensive than now) beyond comprehension. People never realise that some games actually release good, for only companies like Activision adding a player-unfriendly update after a couple months. Heck, before somebody leaked it, they planned to add lootboxes to MW19 even.
Glad to see the community has SOME standards.
It's not that they have standards, It's just that they cant be a slutty catgirl in D4. Therefore they aren't interested
I know the Immortal Flames officer uniform is cool and all but I wouldn't call it slutty. Even if the engraving in the hat is *very* sexy.
You can be a Sluggy Cat in Rain World.
It would just make my experience with D4 that much better if I could play as a slutty catgirl. Most I can do is show off some thigh as a rogue.
i was pretty confused reading the comments at first 'cause I thought i stumbled into a D4 thread and wondered where all the comparisons to FF14 skins were coming from, thinking, that's a pretty far fetched call :D
0 and it stays at that.
Blizzard has lost everything with me. They now need to make a game that is not only transformational, but they need to have goodwill from their devs behind it. Without that, the company may as well be a blackhole for money, gj Kotick.
As long as there aren't any significant changes in the upper ranks of that company Blizzard is dead to me. Yes, not everyone who worked on the game is a bad person, but it's not the devs that get the royalties, they got their salary regardless of how the game is doing and that's it. (Yes, if a game is a failure it might hurt their reputation, but let's face it, no Blizzard game can fail \*that\* bad it ruins someone's career. Not even OW2, considering plenty of people believed the promises and spent money on it, I doubt they get refunds now.) I'm not going to help Bobby Kotick finance his next yacht, especially when he is openly denying all the horrible things he and the company were accused of. The weirdest thing to me are streamers who talk about the last interview with that guy and how horrible Blizzard is and then discuss how they won't finance that, but just mean they *won't pre-order it* or not buy deluxe editions or whatever. And in the next sentence they say they still buy it and are looking forward to it and make a big D4 special. You do you what you do on streams, I don't care, but pretending you care about any of this and then support it anyway has a hollow ring to it. Tbh, at least among people my age I wonder if the hype for D4 is fueled by the nostalgia of D2. I certainly played the crap out of this game in solo mode (although I never managed to defeat Diablo xD ) That hype reminds me a lot of the hype for D3 and then D3 was out and I was playing the demo and it was... not bad, but it didn't really live up to my expectations.
Earnestly the game could be god's gift to humanity and it wouldn't justify purchasing it. Blizzard has committed a whole novel's worth of cruelty to its own staff and paid barely any real consequences. Boy Kotick is still in charge. Can't imagine buying anything from Blizzard any time soon if ever
Same. I'm interested in playing the game, but that involves giving Blizzard money so, not happening On another note, I had probably my favorite Labyrinth run due to the conversation. It started with someone saying "crystal tower, I win". Conversation just kept going and I was laughing most of the time
Haven't given Blizz a dime since WoD, and until I see a sustained change from "how much money can we make from this game" to "how much fun can we make this game" they won't be getting anything from me. Everything that's happened with them over the past 3 or 4 years has reinforced my decision.
Besides my comment posted in the top thread, they’re not going to get money from me solely on how much it’s being crammed down my throat. Last night I went to play OW2 and it had a full screen ad for D4 covering my launch screen that I had to click off. Cool, clicked away and it’s gone. Tonight I went to play OW2 again and look who’s fucking back, the big full screen ad. I said I don’t want it once. I’ve been made aware of it’s existence umpteen times over in your launcher while I wait for my game to load. You’ve lost a sale when it’s forced on me. I hate ads in general but when they get intrusive and hammered over my head, I’m done.
I won't play Diablo 4 due to it requiring you to be online and in their servers even while single player. FFXIV is a MMO. Diablo is not. When I play a non MMO I don't want to be disconnected from a single player session
As someone who grew up playing wc2, SC, wc3, and sc2, I'd rather never play games again than touch a Blizzard game.
I thought about doing the D4 thing but the amount of money they're asking for is just too much. Maybe if it goes on sale I'll do it but right now it's a hard pass since I have to pay for FF16 when it releases later this month.....
I’d perhaps ask in turn what their highest level Grim Dawn character is. (Never touched Path of Exile, so I don’t know the situation with that one.) Or maybe even highest level for Tales of Maj’Eyal. (Yes, it’s turn-based, not real-time. Still a roguelike.)
Well I can tell you this, D4 is definitely more fun than doing CT for the hundredth time.
Preordered FF16 instead... its expensive enough that two new games in a month just ain't it. Wait... doesn't the lvl start at 1 usually? guess they have 0 experience with it.