I think Activision might be on the way out, they’ve had playercounts decline pretty much every quarter and even though their SEC filings show an increase in revenue thats only because Blizzard and other new properties get filed alongside the rest of Activision, now.
Rather than merged I think they were simply bought by Activision. An Acquisition is when one business entity becomes a child to another, a merger is when the two become one different entity.
“Mergers” end up being acquisitions in the majority of cases. One company culture will prevail, one companies middle management will take over the administrative sides and depending on the structure also the technical side.
Okay but the merger was Vivendi Games who merged with Activision. Blizzard Studios was never at any point Activision’s equal, they’re a bought and paid for property of Activision.
I didn’t even know they merged with Activision. And I didn’t even know that the latter has also gone worse than I expected. Which is a shame because I have fond memories of pre-2010s Call of Duty games.
I’d recognise Limsa Lominsa anywhere. I’ve been playing since 1.0, with some breaks here and there. FFXIV is one of my favourite games ever, for story and gameplay.
I hope you enjoy it and have a great experience. Feel free to join us at !finalfantasyxiv as well.
IMO the issue isn’t WotC, it’s Hasbro. WotC is their golden goose and they’re squeezing it for everything. I haven’t checked their recent earnings calls but I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC is still their only subsidiary where the revenue isn’t declining.
Just wait until GabeN retires and the inheritors of Valve start to enshittify it. Unless GabeN had a good succession plan in place, or GoG can swoop in and become the new standard, things might get rough. I might stick to retro games from then on.
I bought BG3 on GOG simply because it was on GOG, otherwise I would have waited a few years. I want to support AAA games being release on GOG at release because it doesn’t happen much. GOG isn’t gonna take over Steam, because largely the industry isn’t going to support DRM free AAA games.
Steam is privately held, so there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful. The recent rapid enshittification of what feels like every company is mostly due to US laws that require publicly traded companies to squeeze every last dollar out or face severe penalties. Privately held companies are not subject to those laws, and so they can stay actually decent and care about their customers without threat of legal repercussions. An example is Lego Group - there’s some valid criticism, but legos have stayed a top quality product for nearing a hundred years - and show no signs of suddenly degrading in quality. So, I wouldn’t worry unduly about this until Valve announces an IPO. Then you should start worrying.
It’s more complicated than just one law that says “you must be a bastard” I admit, but fiduciary responsibility is a core requirement of any publicly traded company and very much is legally enforceable (this parenthetical aside stands in for about three pages of niche caveats and overly wordy exceptions that I’m just going to shamelessly handwave away). At best a CEO might be found to be civilly liable, but peasants non-C-suite employees are criminally charged for neglecting their fiduciary duty every day in the US.
Absolutely, but fiduciary responsibility, has never and was never intended to mean absolutely maximizing profits and especially at the long term expense.
That was a twisted idea that was put forward in the late 70s early 80s as a means to justify destroying companies for short term gain.
If you breach fiduciary duty the best thing you can hope for is to be fired. Executives have been criminally charged for it as well though. And while it has to be an intentional act of malfeasance, that gets pretty blurry when the shareholders hire thousand dollar an hour lawyers to come after you.
So while yes, the root cause is greed, the system itself is setup to feed that.
My hope is that Gabe actually gets direct brain connection technology off the ground and he uploads his consciousness into an everlasting machine so he never has to retire.
Not only do they not understand, they actively don’t care: they have a product-agnostic business process that can convert any type of stable business into a pile of extracted equity and spare parts. They are literally bleeding their own society to death
At least actual vampires would probably have the good sense not to destroy the breeding stock that keeps them alive.
Because most of these MBA fucks don’t understand the concept of piracy being a service problem. They have run perfectly fine systems into the ground because they insist on making it infinitely harder to use legit services than to just rip shit off.
Thats interesting, I hadn’t connected those before. I think it would be hard to argue in favor of separate expectations for inflation of wages and the companies profits.
Like I understand having a stellar year, but the goal is still set the same, and its fine to return tk that baseline next year. Or maybe even doing well one year means we can lower the goal next year, or bank the difference for bad weather years.
Would be interesting if companies had an interest in the long term like that.
Oh geez there’s so many people tend to write articles about the general phenomenon rather than specific examples.
One of the biggest recent examples though has got to be Boeing. While they’re a publicly traded company, they resisted the call of greed above all until they merged with McDonnell Douglas and the MD executives won the battle for control of the merged company. Things went on a decades long slide after that which resulted in hundreds of deaths and a chain of high profile mechanical failures we’re still not sure is over.
For privately held corporations it’s all about that new leadership. In fact around 70 percent of family run ones fail in the second generation. But any generation can run the business into the ground or change it up. Bancroft and Barings are great examples of that. Barings was 232 years old when it went bankrupt under mismanagement.
Blizz was salty about not being able to sue their way into a cut of all of the professional Brood War revenue in Korea, which is why SC2 didn’t launch with LAN support (except when played at an Official Blizzard Event).
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
Unfortunately every other RTS only tries to copy the sweaty multiplayer 1v1 experience. Like playing guitar hero on expert mode on your mouse and keyboard while also doing strategy at the same time.
Even more unfortunately no one seems to be able to execute even that part half as well as Blizzard did.
Since we’re talking RTS, do you have time to talk about my shameless plug for beyondallreason.info?
This style of RTS appeals much more to me in recent years. Feels less like you need to perform like a speedrunner.
So much QOL compared to the APM spamfests other RTS can become.
The story was absolute crap, but the campaign levels were still really fun.
Also, each campaign did feel like a full fledged game from a content perspective. I can give blizzard shit for a lot, but how they handled sc2 (beyond dropping it completely) is low on the list.
SC2’s esport and competitive scene was incredibly successful. We got 14 years of incredible tournaments, content, personalities, streamers, etc… Seems like you are just a casual player that just missed the boat.
unpopular opinion: this phrase is right, sometimes. In that context, at that conference, bad call. But sometimes… people think they want something until they get it, and then they realize they don’t want it.
How you phrase things is also important. Never having played WoW, they came across as arrogant and out of touch. Something that’s only been reinforced by their further actions. The “Do you guys not have phones?” comment is just the sequel. The issues only be more and more serious since then.
Makes me think of that Reddit post where the guy thought he was into shitting and ordered an escort to shit on him, only to realise he was in fact not into shitting
The game kind of lost me eventually, but I’ve had some amazing experiences with it and it has a lot of good qualities. The music is fantastic, especially the parts where Soken is riffing on themes written by Uematsu like Coils and Stormblood.
Despite my reservations about the game of late, the stretch of post-ARR into Heavensward into Stormblood and post-Stormblood patch quests was amazing. And the community is unreasonably lovely for being an MMO.
I’m in love with the base game (haven’t touched any of the expansions yet). I love the music, it’s graphically gorgeous for a game of its age, and I like the characters. I will say I don’t personally care for the combat, that’s mostly because I don’t really care for MMO combat in general. But my issues have been somewhat alleviated by using a PS3 controller to play
The combat gets better, FFXIV has a massive issue of most classes only playing the way they’re supposed to on max level. I guess that’s common for many MMOs, but it’s especially bad here imo. I also stopped playing during Endwalker, so I don’t know what’s been revamped since then.
Even if they’ve continued to simplify and homogenise the classes, the dungeons and raids will get better. Once you get into the expansions you’ll start having more fun mechanics to play around.
Even if Blizzard games haven’t had a high note since 2016, I would like to remind everyone that the company still had absurd amounts of goodwill and customer loyalty for a large and corporate studio at the time, with fans owning and actively collecting literal decades of merchendise.
Things only really truly collapsed for Blizzard and saw their goodwill vanish when they openly supported and endorsed the chinese oppression of Hong Kong.
Specifically, the winner of a Hearthstone tournament was interviewed after his win and gave the pro-Hong Kong slogan “free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times”, which there was absolutely no rule or stipulation against. China demanded that the company not endorse that (because authoritarianism), but Blizzard ACTIVELY WENT THE EXTRA MILE to strip the player of his prize money and ban him from all future events alongside other punishments, specifically in the name of appeasing the chinese government.
It wouldn’t be fair to expect a game company to singlehandedly stand up to an authoritarian regime that loves to make people disappear. But it is absolutely fair to recognize that Blizzard’s actions very clearly demonstrated that they weren’t just doing this because they were threatened into it- they were more than happy to actively endorse the chinese government’s oppression of Hong Kong. And THAT is what we should always remember about Blizzard’s morals and principles, or lack thereof.
Same, was just starting wow classic with my partner as she’d never played wow before, that made us both cancel immediately and never give them another cent.
There are a couple of VERY GOOD classic pservers out there which are not only better maintained than the Blizz servers, these have also much less bots and way healthier populations and economies.
I can absolutely recommend Turtle WoW. It is such a good classic+ experience: imagine if there never were any of the wow addons but instead the base game got expanded in a meaningful and in terms of Warcraft 3 lore-friendly way. There are new and very well-done zones which were empty before. There are new items and professions without nullifying the existing ones, there are two new races and new race/class combos (to keep close to WC3 lore), there are new dungeons and raids, tons of new quests and a lot of quality of life improvements. You have many options to play how you want: restrict yourself on how much exp you get and play slow & steady, opt in for a built-in hardcore mode, activate warmode to be flagged for pvp or a combination of those. Also, pretty much all classes got rebalanced (some more than others, though) to make more builds viable without altering the game to much (more balance updates are in the roadmap). The dev team is very active and dedicated.
All the sex pests felt like a “good” reason to quit WoW but I’d say my real reason was it had become a piece of shit that didn’t value my time, and I’d honestly been looking for a reason to quit for a long time.
I might just be too casual, but I remember that half the fun of WoW was traveling. Of course, I never got into raids or pvp anyway, I leveled up and did dungeons lol
Travel (especially in older zones where you would be using portals) consists of:
Mount flying mount, point in the right direction, hit auto-run, wait.
Not really the most exciting game play experience when you’ve already flown over the area a dozen times before. Taxis are also just as bad. Other MMOs (Guldwars 2, FF14) have no problem with players teleporting directly to somewhere close to their destination. They already traveled their once, no need to force them to do it again.
There’s a community at !finalfantasyxiv if you guys have any questions.
I’ll also say that if you are using KB/M to try a controller for a little bit, too. You’ll be surprised at how well it works. I can’t even play this game with a KB/M setup it’s so foreign to me.
I played 2.0-7.0 on KB/M, and now I’m learning to play on Steam Deck (so a controller is mandatory). It is surprising easy for DPS and tanks, but I’m still struggling with Healers.
Steam Deck was how I chose to play it too for my first time yesterday (though I played on the dock with PS3 controller). I chose arcanist, and it’s really smooth sailing for me.
I started with the Arcanist too, then Scholar. I really liked the gameplay.
Then I changed main class almost every expansion, starting with the Dark Knight, then Dancer, Sage, and now back to Dancer. None of the new classes caught my fancy this time 😅.
Healing is definitely its own little animal. My main job is Scholar, so I’ve had to create a couple of mostly healer specific things to help out. (You may already do some of this, so forgive me)
I don’t really use any macros for casting spells or anything like that, but what I have found helpful are three really simple ones that help with targeting.
The first being simply a focusTarget one that lets you set up, well, a focus target: /focustargetSince as a healer you are most oftes worried about the tank, I generally set them as the focus target. By itself that doesn’t do a whole lot, but then…
…I have two others that help. One that when you use it it selects whatever your focus target is: /target <f>So no matter where you are, you can get to the tank (or other focus) super quick for heals.
And the last one is one that jumps to whatever your current target is targeting. Kind of a mouthful, that, but pretty helpful: /target <tt>So in practice if you are doing damage to the boss and just need to quickly swap to whatever the boss is targeting, you can hit this, swap to a party member, heal them, and then press it again to go back to the boss.
Along with these are some settings that you might look into if you haven’t already. Control Settings -> Filters -> Filter Customization. In this section you can filter target groups by hitting LB + [one of the face buttons]. I basically 100% of the time use one that targets only enemies because you can always hit up and down to select party members. That lets me always use right and left for bad guys and there’s no confusion.
Lastly for targeting, pressing LB + up/down will select just enemies on your enemies list (this is obviously super handy for tanks). And LB + right/left will target Alliance members on other parties. So if you see that some healers are down on another team, that’s the shortcut to cycle through those members to help.
And then lastly lastly: there are some extra crossbars you can put up on the screen at all times under the Custom tab of Hotbar Settings. You may already know about these at this point, though.
So anyway, again, if you already know these things, then obviously feel free to ignore. But I hope at least some part of that helps a little.
I ended up choosing to play with a PS3 controller for my first time. My friends all say I’m crazy, but honestly I love the controls more than the standard MMO “Hit this numpad key and then switch hotbar, then hit this key”
Review bombs and “boycotts” are frustrating because it seems like the average player has the willpower of a hungry toddler. “Hey, don’t buy this game. They make their developers work 20 hour days.” -> “Oh yeah fuck them! …ooh, but there’s a shiny angel wing skin if I preorder? Well mmmmmmm well sure it’s just $90 what does it hurt”
But I don’t know. I’m kind of in a mood lately where I feel like I’m surrounded by overgrown toddlers.
CDPR? admittedly they’re really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.
CDPR mistakes can be corrected, but blizzard games are designed from the ground up, with purpose, to be fuckup games in order to milk as much money as possible from it players. There is no correcting the boat for blizzard because for the managers of blizzard the boat IS correct
Hopefully their transition to unreal engine 5 gets away with a lot of their launch issues I genuinely love all of their games but their release dates being “game launch +1-2 years” hurts me.
CDPR is still on my “probably pass” list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and… yeah it’s still fundamentally broken.
Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn’t have the magic. To start, I really don’t like fantasy games. They’re just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you’d free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.
Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on “some”) but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.
A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I’m giving their next game a huge berth.
And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don’t let people ruin it for you.
They lied about Cyberpunk. They knew it was bad on release and maliciously made decisions so that people would still buy it. That’s not some minor thing, that’s a crime. “We leave greed to others”, yeah, right. And this problem was never addressed by CDPR, like it’s a normal thing to do, they think it’s okay.
Man, Cyberpunk was not a Homer-like fuckup. They were promising features which were nowhere near ready, while their whole game hardly ran at all. That’s a crime, at least in my country. Homer doesn’t do crimes…
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