ActiBlizzard attempts to profit off the Ukraine fad
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Man, to go from one of the best and most beloved games companies to...this, is certainly something. Very sad. Imagine if Blizzard was still churning out games with the quality of their glory days.
It really is a shame. I spent a lot of time on the Diablo and StarCraft franchises in their early years, and sometimes I still go back and play them. World of Warcraft was pretty fun as well. Former industry titans have become consumed by greed, and have shed their passionate talent in exchange for psychologically manipulative algorithms and cosmetic designs.
Starcraft Use Map Settings was basically its own game platform.
Dozens of RPGs and quest games, complex war games, Risk and strategy games, chess ( yes, really ), dozens of base defense games, dozens of tower defense games ( so many extremely original types with different mechanics ), Archon Tag, DBZ-inspired tournament games, Cat and Mouse, Creep Tag, mini-game party, Bomberman...
Oh and silly games like ''Break the Condom'' ( attack players try to ''fertilize'' the defending player's egg after breaking it's complex defenses )
There were also maps where the minimap made a picture for mature audiences only. lol.
I can't recall them all.
I dwelved a bit into WC3 Use Map Setting but only liked the DOTA maps, played those alot.
If I'm not mistaken, StarCraft's custom games lead to the creation of DotA.
Yes. While DOTA itself is Warcraft III custom game, it was inspired by a Starcraft UMS game/map called Aeon of Strife.
DOTA itself was adapted on Starcraft ( Basically making it a new vers. of AoS given SC gameplay mechanics ). I tried it, not nearly as good as the WC3 maps.
This isn't new in the slightest for them. They were just more "respected" the last couple times they pulled this so no one cared or noted it. They've been using these shop mounts/pets as charity and money schemes since shortly into Cata after That Retarded Horse proved it could print infinite money for them.
Oh, I know. They've been crap for ages. But my point stands.
I recently learned we missed out on the REAL diablo 3, being made by Blizzard North.
After WoW's astonishing success, they diverted all resources to it and canceled the original D3. Later, we got the weird arcadey 3-D D3.
Which will come as a surprise to many WoW players when the topics of Cataclysm, Warlords of Draenor, and Battle for Azeroth come up.
All were incomplete, rushed, and so badly written it permanently killed off interest in many players. WOD was so bad the company actually cut it short to get Legion out asap to stop the hemorrhaging of sub numbers.
Significant parts of those expansions were also heavily done in favour of the Horde faction in terms of what content was completed.
Cata: Goblins had so much work done on them the Worgen got nothing after their starter zone despite the plans for Silverpine. Later on the Horde intro to the Twilight Highlands involved an encounter with Deathwing while flying on a fleet of airships. Alliance got a shitty cutscene of Flintlocke flying off into the distance before a fade to black.
WoD: Dealing with the fallout of the latest Horde fuckup the story was mostly a "What if?" retelling of the Horde prior to Warcraft 1, except they were just as genocidal as when hopped up on demon blood so that wasn't an excuse anymore. Still, most of the events dealt with Thrall tracking down, then executing, Garrosh. Fighting and killing various famous faces from Horde history. Then the emergency asspull that was demon infestation 2: Hellfire Peninsula Boogaloo which ended with a fight very similar to a TBC one because the devs didn't want yet another Ork finale raid after SoO in MoP, and by that point the WoD had been shelved to make way for Legion.
BfA: the first raid was so badly connected for the Alliance they kind of just were there. Meanwhile Horde had an entire zone story leading up to it. This was the expansion which had the Horde turn genocidal yet again, for the fourth time. 🙄
Did you guys play the last MW? It was literally a plea for
SyrianUkrainian intervention. One level actually had you playing as a little foreign girl fleeing the Russian invaders.The government is most definitely incentivizing Activision to do this stuff.
I didn't pay any mind to the propaganda aspect of it back then, since I wasn't as hypersensitive to it as I am now, but I did see that MW '22 had all sorts of regressive flags before they added any national ones.
I'm about a week late, and I'm sure this doesn't come as a shock to any of you, but I thought it would be good to point out Activision-Blizzard's desperate attempt to garner attention via signaling their virtue since their products can't maintain attention organically.
It barely even makes sense. The Ukraine thing has mostly run its course in terms of people in America and a chunk of Europe caring, any money they'd be willing to part with for it has been given away.
But what it does do is convince you that those mounts/pets you need for your next meta achievement are now gainable "for a good cause" and make you feel better about parting with your money. Its directly abusing the people addicted to that little gambling system of needing the 400 mounts/1200 pets (or whatever its up to now) and being so close but getting no luck on the drops.
Is it to help displaced pets find their people/new homes? If not, not interested.
Nothing so noble, I'm afraid. They're selling in-game pets on World of Warcraft to raise money for "critical humanitarian relief in war-torn Ukraine." It's a new scam in the vain of the slew of African charities that managed to accomplish nothing in the multiple decades they were active.