Blizzard Deleted All Threads About My Article?
I think Blizzard locked and later deleted all the threads on the worldofwarcraft.com forums that had to do with my article. I see censorhip is their solution (not censorship of me, but of all the players who wanted to talk about the topics I raised). Is it their right to delete these threads? Of course it is. It seems like a pretty juvenile thing to do though. Either the ideas have merit and should be discussed or they don't and should be attacked by the other players. Either way, censorship is a pretty unenlightened way of solving a problem.
Edit: There does seem to be one thread left here.
For some reason, it took me over and hour to find it. Weird.
--Sirlin
Edit: There does seem to be one thread left here.
For some reason, it took me over and hour to find it. Weird.
--Sirlin
5 Comments:
At 11:06 PM, James M said…
Would it surprise you? That's what Blizzard does. They do treat their users like children. On the other hand, their users do act like children for the most part.
As far as the article goes, one thing that is worth following up on is the idea that 40 person raids "deserve" the best stuff. This is interesting for a couple of reasons:
1: The logic usually given is that 40 person raids are hard to organize and take a lot of time. The implicit statement here is that 40 person raids aren't fun, so they need a larger reward to make up for that fact. To me that's a sign of broken gameplay.
2: The logic that 40 person raids take longer to run and organize does not hold water. It would be quite possible to adjust the drop rates in 5 man raids to drop the same items just in lower quantities. To begin a 5-man raid should drop 1/8th the items, because they have 1/8th the players. Then maybe they take 1/2 as long to organize and run, so now items drop 1/16th as often. If you want to you can factor in the fun and say that 5 man groups are twice as fun so items should drop 1/32 as often. The point here is that adjusting the drop rates to be "fair" is pure math. You could make it so that people doing 5-man raids and 40-man raids for the same amount of time with the same skill level get the same quality of items.
For some reason people are incredibly resistant to this logic.
At 12:48 AM, James A. Bardin said…
Blizzard is very infamous for deleting posts about controversial topics. Chinese gold-farming, rampant server instability, all swept under the rug whenever it threatens to create negativity in thier forums. It is a laughable endeavor, of course: they forget that half of us lurk in many, many forums, and that Blizzard can't shut us all up.
I would like to say that the article is mostly spot on, though I would like to take a moment to address two things, one minor, one greater.
The minor thing is the quip about the free speech issue. The profanity filters are not a limitation of freedom of speech, as WOW is not a public domain. Even if I disagree with such filters or any other limitation of communication (I actually like to role-play, after all), I also have to choke down the fact that it is their house, and their rules. So while I empathize with the limitations on speech, it's like someone asking you not to swear in thier house for thier kids' sake.
The other item is in regards to the group not teaching anything. I don't think the group isn't about learning cooperation and communication with other human beings, myself. Those are vital skills if one is to learn teamwork in life. Teamwork is a very good, very useful thing. People can accomplish just as much with the help of others as they can on thier own. Even Einstein's theories would be collecting dust, without others to help get the word out.
But... where I think WOW fails is that is smothering creativity and reinforcing a most horrific idea: absolute, unthinking loyalty and conformity. These "raiders" are being force-fed the notion that the group expects you do perform a specific task, and that deviating from that task is tantamount to treachery.
Case in point: druids. For a long time, they were told they were only there for healing the other group members in a raid. Then, WOW fixed the class to allow them to off-tank in combat, helping take on foes alongside warriors and such.
What was the initial reaction of raid leaders? They basically refused to allow druids to do such a thing, and actually kicked out those who tried to do anything differently from the scheduled, programmed tactics they had been drilling for a year now. Many druids simply quit raiding, or were never taken as they demanded to be allowed to fulfill this new role. Only recently have a few raid leaders out of the hundreds of servers started allowing druids to prove they can do what they say they can now.
This is not the only example, but it is the easiest to use at the moment to illustrate a point: that WOW is encouraging gamers to forget puzzle-solving and deductive reasoning as ways to overcome problems, and is basically making a whole population of gamers adhere to blind strategies created by a few who discover some formula that permits the player to win every time.
This mentality has also tainted PVP. If enough people tell a lie that a class is "gimped", others begin to repeat it, with conviction no less. Soon, a class is nerfed or buffed purely based on opinion. Warlocks got the worst of this treatment, even when Blizzard representatives fully admitted that they simply didn't care to play the class much.
Overall, though, the article was on target about the point that WOW is eroding "real" gaming skills. Hopefully, another MMO will rise to the challenge and dethrone WOW, and produce a game where every playstyle can be used with equal ease, and a plethora of strategies and tactics will earn victories based not on the amount of time spent mindlessly fighting an AI, but on the player's knowledge of the game's mechanics and how to use them.
At 5:30 AM, Anonymous said…
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=7228827&P=1
I found this one, though I don't know if it'll still be there later. :)
-JLC
At 8:47 AM, Anonymous said…
The big problem is not that the thread was posted about your article, it was that, like the GBLT issue people posted 3 million fucking threads on the same thing.
At 8:56 AM, Griffith said…
"Blizzard is a great company, and I might even end up there some day, though this article probably rules out that possibility."
--Sirlin
Unlucky there, Sirlin…
Looks like Blizzard are sending you a clear message concerning you, and a potential position at their company.
Post a Comment
<< Home