Blizzard Breaks For Independence As Kotick Plans $8.2 Billion Dollar Buyout 203
MojoKid writes "The CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, announced this morning that he would lead an investor buyout of the company worth approximately $8.2 billion dollars. The move would free Blactivision (how has this moniker never caught on?) to become an independent publisher and free it from the clutches of Vivendi, the evil French entertainment conglomerate. Vivendi has reportedly been attempting to sell Activision Blizzard for years, due to an apparent hatred of actually turning a profit, given than the game developer owns some of the most popular franchises on Earth. Kotick has previously been known for his comments regarding exploiting game franchises and for gems like this: 'We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.'"
The Achievement of the Glorious Gamer in Splendor (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:The Achievement of the Glorious Gamer in Splend (Score:4, Interesting)
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What?! When was that? The mid 90s? And even their signature franchises (warcraft, diablo) are pretty derivative in their origins... it took several iterations of rehashing to make them more original!
Re:The Achievement of the Glorious Gamer in Splend (Score:5, Funny)
What Diablo III? There were only two games released in that series, though I really wish they'd make a third sometime.
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Someone should create a petition for Blizzard to make Diablo 3.
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Its because new game in D2 = new maps/monsters.
In D3 new game = kill the same monsters after turning the same corners. no thought, no exploration. just beeline to the exit switch.
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500 hours?
It's fun until Inferno. Then it gets pain in the ass ridiculous. I'm saying this as someone who got a DH into act 4 inferno. That's when it becomes a deliberate grind and has no association with the fun of games like Diablo. The game is positively and entirely crap after that. it makes you realize how much the game is just "level up = win" even if the levels in inferno roughly translate to gear. Even D2 wasn't like that. There are fairly valid reasons for people to hate D3, and most of it is bec
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I found the exact opposite. I found diablo 3 to be the best only when you finally hit inferno. Granted, I played before they added the power levels, so it was constantly stuck on power level 4, and found the game to actually be fairly challenging. I finished inferno just before they added the power levels and I wouldn't change a thing, but there are a lot of really bad players in the game that simply don't know what they are doing, and I got tired of carrying them everywhere.
When they added the power lev
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The notion that griping about Diablo 3 is all due to the first week's disaster is truly myopic. I soldiered through that, as stupid as the whole Blizzard-caused situation was, and had a fine time for awhile in the game. It has its good points, but it also has its truly negative points.
On the plus side? I love the skill system, and combat in general is quite fun. The health orb system is kindof goofy, but I got used to it. The skills are generally well-thought-out.
On the negative side? The item system sucks.
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Diablo3 is actually a really fun game for the first 500 hours. It gets tedious, but that's the point of a treasure grinding game.
Or are you still butthurt over the initial user experience the first month after launch last year? Shit takes time to get figured out and some things, like server capacity, can only be figured out after launch.
There would have been no need to figure out lots of that stuf it they hadn't stuff D3 with that crappy DRM.
For most people Diablo3 only sucked because someone told them it sucked. And that person that told them it sucked? He got his opinion the same way. Everyone that bitched about Diablo3 did so only because they didn't understand what they bought.
Diablo3 is not a game that you will want to play forever, it is maybe a 30 hour game from start to finish and a complete grind fest after that, exactly the same as Diablo2. If you get bored of repetition then the game sucks pretty quick, but no more so than Diablo2. After grinding a few hundred hours, in my case over 700, the game gets old and genuinely better games like Skyrim, Fallout, or Starcraft2 reclaim their appeal.
Continuing to hate Diablo3 because the first month sucked and a bunch of bloggers called it crap is about the most pathetic excuse to avoid a game that I've ever heard. Go play it some time, it's actually a lot of fun if you give it a chance instead of prejudicially taking the word of others.
Diablo 3 is a "click to level up" game, no challenge or anything alike. The only difficult part is getting the really hard-to-get items, which is really a matter of time, unlike D2, where you actually had to know what you were doing.
Also, I can't LAN D3.
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D2 had replayability because it wasnt the same game every single time. the maps and onsters were randomly generated every single game, which believe it or not does a LOT to the replayability of the game.
the only random thing in D3 is items, and that's irrelevent because most of it stays on the ground anyway.
what is the point in "unidentified" items when there is no identification mechanic, or rather its been so reduced that you just right click to open you useless vendor trash? its like they included it jus
Corporation Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
"Blactivision" (Score:5, Funny)
Blactivision (how has this moniker never caught on?)
Because it's fucking stupid. It's fupid.
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Blactivision (how has this moniker never caught on?)
Because it's fucking stupid. It's fupid.
Years from now we'll see:
fupid adjective , fupid, fupid-dest, fupider
adjective
Re:"Blactivision" (Score:4, Informative)
To me it's always been Actiblizzard (Score:3)
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Blactivision is troll-feed though.
Just search the comments in this thread. The trolls ate it up.
Fortunately, it's also not a good portmanteau. Although I think most portmanteaus of names are stupid.
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I think Actilizzard sounds better.
Vivendi has a fine to pay. (Score:2)
The fuck did I just read? (Score:4, Insightful)
That exceeded the standard threshold for painfully aspergian jokes and obnoxious editorializing in an article write-up.
You have one job, Unkown Lamer, one job!
different goals (Score:2, Informative)
I thought his goal was to make games that weren't any fun to _play_. After a couple of hundred hours milling in WoW, I just gave up. Beautiful scenery, ok music, shitty combat system, horrible $160 annual fee for playing online plus $50 for new game options. No fucking thanks.
Re:different goals (Score:5, Interesting)
The two go hand in hand. I've worked in a couple game development houses, and found that the good games we released were all titles we had fun making. Of course, there were fun games to make that we were flops as well, but literally every game that wasn't fun to make, indeed, felt like work to make, felt like work to play.
A fun game will always be fun to make. If your dev teams ever, EVER reach the point of, "Fuck this shit, I hate my job, kill me now," I promise you the game will be utter garbage.
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Wholeheartedly agree. Especially in light of Shadowrun Returns launching yesterday, where it's $40 to get the engine and the campaign made by the game producer, and all the tools and editors necessary to make and share your own campaigns on Steam Workshop.
A great game based in a fantastic universe with over 20 years of development behind it. Funded by Kickstarter.
A bit of change is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
They need to take some risks.
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but you got it by being locked into a year of wow. Their perogative was to keep wow numbers inflated, and it worked, around 4-6 million subs locked in for 12 months.
Yeah well I was going to pay for a year's worth of wow anyway, so why -wouldn't- I want get a free Diablo 3 out of it?
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Well Then (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been involved with Blizzard since the early days when they weren't so popular despite being so young. Before WoW, before Warcraft 3. I'm sure there were many people who can go back further, but ever since Starcraft, I've been more than a hardcore fan: I've been a modder. I've probably spent more time on b.net than a person does sleeping in the same time period.
It kills me to say this, but Blizzard took a turn for the worst ever since Activision acquired them. And oh yeah, that's the problem: Blizzard turns a profit and that's all they seem to care about these days: monetizing and milking the hell out of their franchises. At the expense of the games they're producing. It's a business strategy of money now and let's not worry about the later.
Well now later has come, and Diablo 3 is complete and utter crap, Starcraft 2 is borderline crap, WoW has turned into little more than a glorified cash cow, and their new big thing was a trading card game (whoo?). They were riding on their popularity and fan base, but now it's just... Ugh. They've shifted over the pro gaming scene, but us modders and level designers have been left in the dark (once again).
Not only is their EULA damn near totalitarian (they own everything you make with your editor, including characters, plots, etc... At least that's what it says), but the editor is a pile of crap that seems to have been coded by interns.
As for the actual game itself. Well, it's about three years old at this point and with a GTX Titan and a 4770K Haswell processor you'll still only be pulling around 30-40 FPS with max settings (1280x720, no AA/AS). That's freaking ridiculous and shows just how badly coded the game is.
I'm moving onto bigger and better things. This French company is quite smart to get rid of the sinking ship.
Re:Well Then (Score:4, Funny)
I've been involved with Blizzard since the early days when they weren't so popular despite being so young.
Wow, so Slashdot has hipsters.
Or slipsters, as MojoKid might call them.
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Only 90's kids will understand.
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Well I use the term modding because the line is pretty blurred at the level I worked with, I actively used modding tools, and mostly, for the understanding of a nonmapper audience :p
Re:Well Then (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been involved with Blizzard since the early days when they weren't so popular despite being so young.
Wow, so Slashdot has hipsters.
Or slipsters, as MojoKid might call them.
Wannabe hipster. "Early days" is apparently:
Before WoW, before Warcraft 3.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but that really doesn't feel like that long ago to me.
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You aren't wrong. That means he learned about them about Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, which was a good 5+ years after their first breakout hit of Warcraft.
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Yeah really, I remember playing Lost Vikings (before they became Blizzard), Blackthorn (first game as Blizzard), and the reviewer demo for Warcraft (one of the voices for the orcs said "give good reviews please" if you clicked on him a few times =)
Those are early days =)
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Re:Well Then (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Blizzard breaking free from Activision would be much more welcome news than Activision breaking free from Vivendi.
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If Blizzard were to seek independence from Activision then it would just become the vassal of Activision's liege.
Hasn't Crusader Kings 2 told you anything?
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Actually, I missed that one somehow. And I'm a big fan of turn based strategy. And it's officially supported on Linux. Thanks for the recommendation!
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It's a grand strategy game but it's not turn based. Everything progresses for all "players" at the same speed though you have a variable speed control. Make sure you understand succession laws and exhibit foresight on marrying off your children so as to accumulate titles or claims to titles in order to expand your domain.
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yeah, because in the old days the games were really months late because they loved to make sure it was perfect. and not as a marketing stunt to hype the game for months
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But that's the industry standard back then. Limited resources and with a small team, you can only do so much. The technology can only do so much.
Now? Completely different story. Blizzard had the resources to do the game right, but they didn't. They could have implemented features that were standard for games five years ago, but they didn't. SC2 is a poorly designed game riding on the coattails of its predecessor (same design formula, just tweaked in BAD ways).
Well okay it wasn't all bad. There were s
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Blackthorne got me started on Blizzard, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans got me stuck on Blizzard. Playing Warcraft 2 on Kali.net was the best gaming I ever experienced. I even had my animated gif filled Warcraft 2 strategy guide site published in one of those early internet yellow pages books, which seemed awesome at the time but is hilariously awkward in retrospect.
Battle.net was and still is annoying crap that really is just a way to chain you to them. I have never paid to play WoW and have passed on Diablo
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So far, SC is just a lazy reworking of WC with 'surprises' that tend to bewilder any expectations of competence.
Can't agree with you there. In WC2 at least (never played 1), the Orcs and the Humans had units that were fairly analogous to each other. There were differences, but they weren't massive, and if I picked a human unit and asked what the equivalent orc unit was, there's an obvious answer that shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the game.
SC on the other hand set up each side as completely distinct units. The human, zerg, and protoss units are all dissimilar from each other and you need to take different
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All true, except they started going downhill even before the merger. They did this to themselves. Activision may have accelerated it, but Blizzard certainly started their own downfall.
Since when is Vivendi the villain? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Blactivision? (Score:2)
Haters gonna hate (Score:3)
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This is good news... If all posts were this venomous, all PS3 / XBONE / WiiU posts would sound like an expletive filled angry drunk rant by a person with turrets syndrome
Oh, so you DO read online gaming websites. :-)
Do or die, Activision (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that the move to buyout the company also has do with Vivendi trying to force Activision to issue a $3 Billion dividend. Vivendi is a majority owner of Activision. Vivendi will get $2 Billion out of the deal, and if it works well enough, may force additional dividends in the future until Activision is rung dry and some or all of Vivendi's enormous debt is paid down. The buyout is a matter of survival for Activision.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/22/vivendi-activision-idUSL6N0FS0OQ20130722
And [not] free it from the clutches of Vivendi (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently we're getting the TL;DR of the TL;DR. The real truth is this:
Following the close of these two transactions, Vivendi will retain about 12% of Activision Blizzard and will no longer be the majority shareholder. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/07/26/activision-buys-majority-vivendi-stock/2588675/]
This is only a partial buy-out. While they would lose the majority reign over A/B, they'd still have a 12% say in everything they do.
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There's 1.12 billion shares of Activision. These two deals alone acquire control of 601 million of them, or 53.6% of all outstanding shares. If I have 53% control of a company, you know how much leverage your 12% gives you? Absolutely none.
I will never forgive them for what they have done (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the same mob who killed Sierra. And they nearly killed Ghostbusters: The Video Game. And not forgetting the bnetd lawsuits.
I refuse to purchase any of their product (not that it matters, all the games they make are crap anyway)
Video Games Quote (Score:2)
Why would you want to take the fun out of making video games? Did he not get the memo that happy employees means better products, better team spirit, better morale in the office etc etc etc ?
Who is Vivendi? (Score:2)
For whoever is interested in what kind of company Vivendi is: they started with water distribution monopoly in many France cities. That is a good cash cow, as if you cut expenses on water distribution infrastructure maintenance, it is not obvious before many years. And of course your customers have no choice and will accept your price.
All that money had to be invested somewhere, this is why Vivendi started purchasing many media companies, in France and abroad. Universal was one major Vinvendi acquisition.
No
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WoW was initially released in the last 10 years, and I'd argue their expansions have been pretty good in adding new mechanics and content. I'd concede that WoW as a platform is no spring chicken.
Agreed as well on the D3 business. Requiring a persistent Internet connection, and having RMT, ensure that D2 is the last installment I'll buy. Feeling a bit burnt by Blizzard, so when I'm finally done with WoW I'm thinking it's the last title I'll play.
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You realize that according to the list you just posted, the only good game Blizzard has released in 9 years is Starcraft 2.. right?
And from what I've read, most SC2 players would agree that it's not as good as the first one. Most veteran WoW players would agree that WoW's done nothing but get worse since Vanilla or TBC at the latest.
It's not a good track record for Blizzard in recent history, and their latest "milestone" has been one of their worst.
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WOW may be losing subscribers, but it's still insanely profitable. Lst I heard was it dipped from $200m/mth to only $150m/mth.
Somehow I doubt they are hurting.
Not to mention all the other IP they have, including some no name game called Call of Duty that I heard is becoming popular.
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Although it should be pointed out that declining at all as opposed to growing drives down stock prices, which is much, much worse to some of these people.
That said, it is probably the signal to them to start working on something else (which they likely are already doing). Here's hoping that they can actually put something out that is at least as enjoyable. Diablo III was a bit of a misstep in a lot of ways, which is too bad.
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Re:Hrm. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what's leading them to lose subscribers. If it's just fatigue, since the game is so old. One pattern I've noticed is as they've shortened the timeline between patches and expansions, players seem to quit more often. Once and expansion is announced, in game players (and I would assume subscriptions) drop. It seems like now it even happens in between patches. I assume it is because players feel whatever they earn will be worth less by the new patch/expansion. I wonder sometimes if they wouldn't be better served by not announcing patches so early, and having longer cycles between expansions.
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It's not so much the game as the competition. They are getting better and better at taking pieces of the WoW market. WoW is still far ahead, and it simply can't appeal to everyone at the same time.
Wow can't play the "I've eared my gear though lots of gameplay" as well as it used too. With facebook games and the like abusing that angle for as much as it's worth the general public has wisened up to the continual formula that this proposes. So, for now they have to ease up on that approach and allow people to
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>It's not so much the game as the competition
Eh, what competition? The same reason that I quit WoW (due to being dumbed down) has been copied by its competitors, which makes me utterly uninterested in playing them. I sometimes long for someone to do something along the lines of the original vision for Ultima Online. (Not how UO turned out, but the original vision.)
The only MMORPG I've enjoyed recently is The Secret World, which allows for a much more interesting customization of characters, and no monthl
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Your playing a different MMO, one that appeals to what you want more. If there weren't alternatives, there would be a higher chance that you wouldn't quit, or if you did you would return.
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No, since quitting WoW in 2007, I have played hardly any MMORPGs at all.
It has left a massively bitter taste in my mouth which has ruined the entire genre for me.
All the WoW clones and F2P crap do nothing to try to lure me back.
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You should give Guild Wars 2 a try. It does many things differently (for the better), is not free to play, and yet is not a subscription either (you pay once).
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It's the content. Or lack of new content.
Much of the last two expansions have been rehashed content that has already been played. In fact, one of the expansions literally WAS content that had already been played, but that they refreshed up to current max level difficulty.
Players recognize when they are being given the same crap with a different spoon, and take their money elsewhere.
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Upon reflection, Lich King really was the high point of the game. Hardcores and casuals alike marching on Arthas.
I think Lich King dealt the game a blow that it never recovered from. For the first time, five-mans were -easy- (and boring). The initial raid was drop-dead easy (and had no hard mode). It set expectations in a lot of peoples' minds that everything should have been easy. Fortunately one of their worst raids (Naxx 10/25) they followed up with possibly their best (Ulduar). Cataclysm reintroduced challenging 5-man heroics (as it should have been all along) but halfway through the expansion Blizzard reversed c
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next content patch (5.4) provides another desired emotional salve: finally getting to smack Garrosh upside the head.
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Aside from the game being too easy at the beginning, the end game "content" can be done at various difficulty levels... kind of like many other games. Heroic difficulty raids are hard enough that even after 3 1/2 months of the content being out, only 2% of players who actually seriously try that content have managed to clear it, and that is including the fact that you get better gear to make it easier as time goes on. The first players to defeat everything this current content took just under a month to do
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The problem is the game offers no challenge so its easy to lose interest. Anyone can play a character without ever grouping, max their level, and have good gear. Then you can do random dungeons with LFR in which you just sit and are thrown in a group, run the dungeon, get some raid gear. Once you have decent raid gear you do LFR again for big time raids and just walk through them. Without any real effort you can see 98% of the games content.
With just a little effort, you can skip the heroic dungeon stage, and go straight from levelling to LFR. Do world bosses for a while, get the gear from that, make a bit of crafted epic. If you're a healer, there's no way I'd go thru heroic 5 man LFG. Its a totally thankless thing to do.
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Yet, jerry-rigged is still somehow acceptable. I am not suggesting we should go back to using racist phrases, just we should abandon them equally.
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It's "jury-rigged" and is a nautical term based on Latin etymology. Jerry-build is the other one though.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jerry-rigged [merriam-webster.com]
Those are two different terms. Jury-rigged is nautical in origin. Jerry-rigged is a racist term first used in ww1 or ww2 by british soldiers. It started in ww1 as jerry-built.
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Jerry-rigged is a racist term first used in ww1 or ww2 by british soldiers. It started in ww1 as jerry-built.
This struck me as odd, seeing as the Brits seem to venerate German engineering, so I went digging. All the sites I read said that it pre-dates WW1 and has nothing to do with Germans.
Do you have a reference which says otherwise?
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Upon doing more investigation it does appear the term predates what I had thought. I guess whoever taught me this gypped me.
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Not if you ask them.
The older set might find that insulting and the younger would likely pretend to be offended for the humor value of it.
I am guessing you are not white, or are an american fi you are. For non-american whites and even in america in places with strong ethnic neighborhoods white is not a singular group. Where I live there are still polish, italian and irish neighborhoods. This means you will often hear the use of the words Polack, Wop, and Mick used in either a joking or serious manner.
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Nationalism != Racism
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They might not be equivalent, but they are both stupid and outdated ideas. What's the point of nations? Nations and countries are as artificial and deserving of being abolished as the idea of race.
Fuck your country. Fuck all countries. And fuck nationalism.
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Working in development/management/sales/etc, yeah.
But working in QA for a video game is a *lot* more interesting than working in QA for Microsoft Word, for instance.
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Down to 7.7 million at the end of the second quarter according to Eurogamer this morning. [eurogamer.net]
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Wow. They're losing subs even faster than I thought they would.
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The last expansion I played was BC, and it definitely had it's high points, but it also had it's low points, like the insane attunements to get into places like Tempest Keep, Hyjal and Black Temple. And worse than that, they nerfed all the requirements as they went along, so the ridiculous amount of work that I needed to get my guild through in order to even attempt the bosses all went to waste. Needless to say, I was less than pleased with that development. I can understand a barrier to entry to make ha
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Blizz could turn it around, but you are right, they've accumulated corporate garbage in their structure and that is like the stuff that accumulates in the brain when someone develops Alzheimer's. It's hard to get rid of, and even if you still have the same abilities at the outset, it is eventually going to destroy you despite being a genius.
Best thing that could happen is that their creative team hooks up with a leaner business team and drops out of Blizzard. One should keep an eye on the people and the s
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Best thing that could happen is that their creative team hooks up with a leaner business team and drops out of Blizzard.
That's already happened, and not just once.
That's why Blizzard has done nothing but go downhill the last decade, why they haven't released anything actually new, and why even their rehashes range from not that good to utter shite.
The first time it happened was while WoW was still in development. Yes, even as good as it was, WoW could have been better. That first time around, the people who left started ArenaNet. And despite having significantly less development time, the first Guild Wars was more polished t
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Looks like Activision was almost bankrupt back in 1990:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/business/bobby-kotick-of-activision-drawing-praise-and-wrath.html [nytimes.com]