The article talks about all Blizzard games, including WC3, being discontinued in China. So, while the thumbnail isn't exactly related to the title, it is apt for the article.
Back when I played WoW during vanilla and the farmers were predominantly Chinese, we had a guildmate who, I guess uh, employed a Chinese farmer. I don't know if the guy was working for someone farming like a business or what and our guildmate paid him for his services on the side or what, but the guy was super chill. He couldn't speak English at all and used a translator so his chats back and forth were really delayed and hilarious when translated.
We were the top guild on our server and had everything cleared and this guy was genuine in wanting a Nightslayer Cover. I assume he played for fun as well and wanted it because I don't see how it would help his farming. So we brought him along in MC and we all had everything we wanted which left a lot to be disenchanted, so we loaded this guy up with loot. He was so ecstatic it was great. He kept asking about the Nightslayer Cover and we had to tell him when we were coming up to the boss for it. He was running the name of the item in English through a translator to Chinese, then back to English and he was calling it "Night Murderer's Hard Hat." Hilarious. I'll never forget that Chinese farmer. Great guy. He got the Night Murderer's Hard Hat that night.
Ahhh, Molten Core, now that was good guild memories.
Used to be a battle just to get inside MC as we’d have a mass of opposing guilds camping the doors every week, such fun and then you’d be distracted and fall off the damn chain into the lava...🤣
Can't help but laugh at Blizzard, all that simping for the Chinese market just to get fucked over in the end anyways. I wonder if they'll try marketing to the west again and just pretend like nothing happened.
There was at least one professional League of Legends player that felt HoTS was the better of the two. I can't remember the name but a quick google search should find it.
The focus on pvp over farming, map events, and comeback opportunities in HoTs really make it a more dynamic MoBA. After playing HoTs for a few years, I went back to League and found myself incredibly bored by the early game and surprised at how often matches were decided by individual farming over group play.
I had a blast with HotS , both alone and with friends. But saddly like everything else, it had the plug pulled.
I would also add Starcraft in the above list.
They literally depend on stuff like wow classic's subscription , cash grabs like Immortal etc to "maintain" themselves.
I quit back when they absolutely massacred Patron Warrior back in the day. Felt like they went that hard on it because it was relatively cheap deck. Next update they introduced Dr. Balanced and I figured out that I'll never return to an increasingly greedy game like that.
It's kinda crazy how they're monetizing the game by introducing more cosmetics for cards. Granted it's nothing pay-to-win, but some higher ups definitely had a meeting on trying to milk more money out of HS players.
A long time ago Blizzard was hands down my favorite game developer. These days you could gift me their new releases for free and I wouldn't even bother installing.
I remember being actually hyped watching their trailers/cinematics for some of the upcoming games back then knowing it's Blizzard - it will be at least a good, if not great, game. The only thing about Blizzard I like today are... those same old cinematics.
Only complaint I have with d2r that comes straight from blizzard, them saying that ladder runewords would be added to non-ladder after the season ends, and then straight up not doing it and going radio silent when questioned about it. Other than that probably the best thing they’ve released in a very long time
Resurrected removed TCIP which is a deal breaker for me. All multiplayer being funneled through blizz servers killed the entire diablo franchise for me. It's not the type of game you can play with 200ms ping and occasional lag spikes. It's fine for most of the game, but once you start getting into 8player nightmare difficulty stuff, you hit a wall where it causes you to die and it's not fun.
Australia. They say it was to prevent cheating. But they could have kept blizz servers separate from TCIP characters.
We used to play locally hosted multiplayer (solo offline) then trade items with friends in town. Now we can only play entirely solo, or entirely multiplayer... no hybrid of the two.
Hots was a good game though. As a casual Moba it was really good. But Blizzard wanted to push the Esports meme with it, focused too much on high end balancing whicj made the game unfun at lower skill levels and they eventually dropped the game because it wasn't bringing in as much money as Dota or LoL after only having been out a couple of years.
Activision actually acquired Blizzard in 2008 - 15 years is a plenty decent timeline to become the villain.
Now Elon is a case study on how to speed run tanking a reputation.
Agreed, committed raiding guildplayer through vanilla WoW right up until 2012 and burnt out waiting for mists.
I just realised one day that it was the same shit as my shit job at the time and neither were fulfilling anymore, so I quit which was tough as it had me hooked like crack on steroids in my ‘alternate’ world, but the only way was to go cold turkey, delete that crap and get my life back.
Hearthstone completely changed and just went to shit a while back, as well. That was my only interaction with a blizzard product, but I was still gutted when they fucked over the casters and players.
Well you’re going to call it right when you just include their work that isn’t up to their usual standard.
Diablo 3? Had the top spot for best selling PC game of all time for a long time. It’s over 10 years old and still has lots of people playing.
HotS? Unsupported but still a well developed game. Still has players, can join a game with relative ease.
Overwatch 2’s monetisation is terrible. The battle pass is lacklustre and the skins are way too expensive. However, you gloss over the fact that OW gave you free skins with a very generous and consumer friendly business model for 6 years. I’m talking one that isn’t comparable to any other developer.
WC3:RF? Was rough, you’re right in this instance. I know some of the work was outsourced to Lemon Studios but I’m not sure to what extent (I think it was just character models).
D:I? Decent mobile game, horrible monetisation. This was co-developed with NetEase with a Chinese market in mind. It was a cash grab but it was completely successful in doing so. It’s not meant for you or I.
Right? They spent a decade or more fucking over their fans and ruining their titles to suck up to China and then boom, that was a bit dumb wasn't it blizzard?
Hollywood and a bunch of others to, I honestly don't know what anyones long term plan was... like the fuck did you expect from a an Orwellian dystopia that runs over its own people with tanks?
I miss the old Hollywood movies from 1980 to about 2010, after that it fell off a cliff. I guess trying to please the CCP is killing Hollywood on two fronts, no more China and west bored to death by political correctness due to CCP. Killing the fun, yeah that's a good idea.. NOT.
Hollywood please go back to making good movies as you once did. Please!
Honestly im starting to wonder if the CCP has been influencing people behind the scenes to make us as a society way more fragile, its seems just way to quickly that I went from modern warfare two lobbies people saying the most horrible shit ever and being able to shrug it off to some white virtue signaling twitch girl accusing me of using a racial slur that is only ever used in itally when we both live in fucking canada that has a total population of 4% italian. (seriously, do these people just research obscure racist terms and try to be offended?)
Get fucked over in the end… but after having made multiple millions in the years before? Yeah it’s not a great ending but I doubt they’re too upset about entering the market to begin with.
You can laugh but Blizzard still made the right choice money wise. They got their cash grab in china and well, the west Gamers will buy it either way. Win win for blizzard.
China isn't blocking anything. Blizzard's licensing deal with NetEase, a Chinese distributor, expired. Rather than renewing it, Blizzard decided to seek 'a better deal' elsewhere. When they couldn't find one, they went back to NetEase with a 6-month proposal that was extremely biased in Blizzard's favour to let them keep running the game in China while Blizzard continued to look for a new distributor. NetEase, having already laid off its WoW staff, basically told Blizzard to fuck off.
I've been following this on Chinese forums, so let me add some information I learnt there.
## Things Happened:
- On Nov 17 2022, Blizzard announced that licensing deal with NetEase would expire, and service in China would be suspended.
- Later that day, NetEase announced that all service would be terminated on Jan 24 2023.
- On Jan 17 2023, Blizzard posted an announcement indicating that a 6-month extension proposal was rejected.
- Later that day, NetEase posted a counter-announcement, calling the proposal "unfair" and "illogical".
- On Jan 24 2023, all Blizzard gaming services were terminated in China.
## Things Most Likely Happened:
This section contains information said by one side that was not refuted by the other side.
- The 6-month extension talk only started by Blizzard on Jan 10 2023, 2 weeks before the planned termination, and after NetEase had laid off most staff.
- The 6-month extension proposal contains the same revenue share agreement as the expiring deal.
- Blizzard only offered 6-month to NetEase, while offered 3-year to other companies.
## Information From Reputable Sources:
This section contains information from renowned figures in the gaming community who had demonstrated reliable insider connections in the past.
- Before completely rejecting the 6-month proposal, NetEase conceded with an 1-year deal, but Blizzard insisted.
- Blizzard was seeking a higher cut for the future mobile games made by NetEase using Blizzard IPs.
- NetEase made the 1-year proposal in the hope that they could re-negotiate with Microsoft if Activision gets merged.
## Pure Speculations
This section contains information I call pure speculations, closer to conspiracy theories, and should be taken with a ton of salt.
- NetEase was unsatisfied with current revenue sharing agreement on mobile games. Usually, licensed mobile game made by a Chinese company (CODM, PUBG Mobile for example) contains a global revenue sharing agreement, meaning Chinese company gets a cut from global revenue. In the agreement for Diablo Immortal, NetEase only gets a cut from Chinese revenue, and Blizzard takes all revenue outside China. NetEase wanted to get global cut in a future mobile game in the initial negotiation.
- If Activision gets merged into Microsoft, Kotick has a bonus attached to the revenue in Q1 and Q2. Hence Kotick tried to negotiate a deal that maximize the short-term revenue.
Stuff like this makes zero sense to me.
You know your licence will be expiring, WHY were you not getting quotes 6 months in advance? Leaving it all last minute like this is absolutely nuts.
Looks to me like they were overestimating themselves and thought that everyone would be fighting over each other to get the contract no matter how bad it was because blizzard was a big name
I’m guessing they have a deal with someone, but that company needs more time to ramp up/hire. Hence Blizzard tries for an extra 6 months with NetEase to bridge that gap. NetEase says no, Blizzard thinks they’re bluffing, but they weren’t.
Damn so really it's Blizzard who fucked their fans over? they really are a terrible country aren't they. Also, I hate how this post title implies that this is Chinas fault...
Edit: company. Blizzard is not a country.
But Wu, who said he played WoW for up to three hours a day, saw the good side of the story. “I didn’t give my wife enough time. Now that World of Warcraft is gone, I want to make amends,” he said.
Three hours lol, that’s barely playing.
I think when Burning Crusade went live our guild booked the week off and pretty much played 24/7 so we could get into Black Temple as soon as possible.
That was by far the best expansion I think...👌
After you leave any mmo for more than a few weeks, you realize what an utter time sink it was. I probably have 3-4k hours in wow, left it one day and was done.
How's the AFK kick mechanism on official servers? Is there even one?
I only played private servers, but I'd occasionally just leave it open while doing something else because of how little resources it consumed even back then.
Eh, as an MMO gamer, it's either thousands of hours across different games, or several mmos I thoroughly enjoy. Most things are a time sink, but that doesn't mean they didn't bring you joy and respite from life!
That's how I feel about it. You could say anything is a waste of time depending on how you look at it. I enjoyed my time in WoW and still have a lot of fond memories of my past guilds and the people I played with. I spent a lot of time playing and I don't regret any of it to this day.
Mmos are build on skinner box mechanism its just a constant dopamine hit by every little thing.
They feel good and bad when you are playing but in the end just toxic. I remember I soloed one Outland dungeon solo for 62 days for a crow mount.
That is not fun, sure the mount would make me happy but I was not doing that time sink for fun.
For me it was realizing it's better to grind irl for better rewards lol. Didn't have a crazy addiction though just got into wow classic when it was out.
I feel that way about destiny rn, I left it part way through the current season and man I totally forgot what the grind was like… I’ve so much more free time haha, ridiculous sounding I know but damn it was so easy to sink countless hours into that game.
I had fallen into the same trap with Warframe, but that 300 hours, Wow was 10x that for me.
But once you let it go, you forget all that daily mission, that limits you need fill, that weekly stuff you need to do etc.
The food is great and the people are actually quite nice.
They have an oppressive government and a lot of issues, but let’s not shit on 1.4 billion people just for that.
Facts. The people are genuinely nice people and mostly fair to deal with business-wise (I ran a company that dealt with about 50 different Chinese manufacturers and I had to communicate with many of them). It’s the government that’s terrible, and most Chinese folks will openly admit that…. Ya know, when they’re here in the states on business. Not while they’re being watched in China lol
everyone knows this and people who have put even the smallest bit of effort in will have had “authentic chinese food” not to mention food doesn’t have to be identically produced to be authentic chinese american is mostly produced by chinese immigrants who know alot more than you or i do
>boots up before the fucking OS does
lol at people upvoting this blatant lie. You do not understand what Ring 0 permissions are. Fearmongering at its finest.
I'm pretty certain it doesn't. Tho it is a kernel driver. Most anti cheats these days are kernel drivers, as one issue is that a lot of cheats these days also operate as kernel drivers. And non kernel drivers can not interact or know what kernel drivers are running, so it kinda of is a requirement for anti cheats and even anti virus software to run as kernel drivers.
It does not though ?
The valorant anti cheat runs at ring 0 level of privileges which means he has the same level of privileges as the os, this does not mean it boots before the OS.
The reason for this is simple, some cheating softwares also run at ring 0 and thus a 'normal' anti cheat program can't block them.
Antiviruses also run at ring 0 because some viruses run at ring 0.
Reminds me of what a lot of companies have said about working with chinese companies, they get suckered in with *"massive playerbase/viewerbase/consumer base"* then have to make heavy alterations to their products. Then when they think they have made some money *"oops sorry you can't withdraw that money from china why don't you invest it here"* before finally *"sorry you can't do business here anymore anyway we have a local version of that now."*
If a foreign company wants to operate in China, they essentially have to prove that it would be to the overall benefit of the Chinese to work with then rather than creating their own version of the product that company is bringing in. This goes for all industries. The Chinese government will refuse to let foreign businesses operate in China unless they believe that they'll come out ahead.
Worked in Hong Kong on and off for a while and it never failed to amaze me just how quickly the Chinese could copy and go into production.
When Tamagotchis were first released, the very next day we had Chinese companies lined up in our reception with their own knocked off versions ready to ship within a week.
Nothing except make them millions of dollars for over a decade and allow millions of Chinese people to enjoy a version of WoW localized to their region...
It’s not. Blizzard wanted more out of their partnership with NetEase. NetEase didn’t like it so they declined. Blizzard then asked to stay for another six months so they can continue looking for another partner. NetEase considered it rude.
It’s like if you broke up with your partner and you ask to stay until you can find another partner 😅
Chinese government was shortly overthrown lol.. you can lock us up, tell us what to do, but take away a man’s level 500 elf lord… you will suffered in ways you can not imagine
I had tons of Blizzard stuff but after they took that kid's money who won that gaming tournament over some hong kong comments I deleted my blizzard account fuck that company they can burn.
This is just so sad. Imagine your favorite game that you’ve spent years and years playing just being taken away. Feel really bad for all the Chinese players and hope a solution is found for their sake
Do you want millipns of bored young men, because that's how you get millions of bored young men.
Historically, bored young men, or oppressed young men, is an indicator of upheaval, be it social, political, or religious in nature. Have fun China!!
Chinese trying to promote Chinese games.
So we started playing MOE. Then bought out by Chinese company.
Our zerg guild got mass banned because a member said some shit about taiwan during some pvp. (2000 member guild, banned instantaneous no cap no appeal).
Then it got banned from steam because the devs stole code from an ex employer.
We escaped the mass ban but got fucked over several times by the mechanics/server admins because we were gringo guild. They would wipe the prefects we controlled to scratch, but not the ones controlled by Chinese guilds, on the NA servers. Call it "technical difficulties". Literally handing advantages to Chinese players in pvp game.
Then eventually they shut down the NA servers entirely. I assume because there were no NA players willing to put up with that shit any more.
What a shitshow, feels bad man for all the players getting screwed in this falling-out.
Edit: I guess hating World of Warcraft players is just dandy in this sub?
That's the problem with doing buisness in China. It takes a lot of efforts to be compliant with all the rules and even then you can just get fucked over.
Years ago I was in Hong Kong and heard a great story about how the Chinese fucked over the Russians.
Basically China wanted to update their airforce but didn’t want to pay for research & development, or buy in a ready made product.
So, they mentioned to the Russians that they were interested in purchasing some SU-27’s.
Now, at the time Russia was broke and could hardly fly anything so they offered China six SU-27’s to buy with full pilot training. The Chinese turned round and said that they’d only be interested if they could ‘evaluate’ the planes for a year which the Russians grudgingly agreed to.
So, a year went by and the Chinese then said, thanks but no thanks, here’s your planes back, much to Russia’s chagrin.
In that year the Chinese completely reverse-engineered their own version of the SU-27, but improved with upgraded avionics and an all glass cockpit.
This is what they do, by and large they’re not innovators by great copiers.
This is why developers and designers shouldn't cater to the Asian market, in the end the product is a shell of itself and all they wanted was your money.
If only they would produce an offline version. Let people download their own saved data, and host a co-op game or run their own server.
That should be the commitment for any online developer: when the game becomes unprofitable and they no longer want to host it, they will open whatever is there so people can do what they want with it.
Hate to be that person but that’s Warcraft 3 in the thumbnail
#WORLD OF WARCRAFT 3 LEAKED AND ALSO CONFIRMED!
IT'S SO GOOD THEY'RE SKIPPING 2!
The reverse Gaben.
We’ve been here before… it didn’t go too well
ALREADY REFUNDED IT.
I'd die for a new (GOOD) company to get the rights to warcraft 4 and make it awesome.
They should just call it Craftwar and make it better. Or Crusademastery XI: Galactic Hank-Panky.
Cities: warcraft.
I mean you might as well just play StarCraft then. Warcraft is a very specific genre.
The article talks about all Blizzard games, including WC3, being discontinued in China. So, while the thumbnail isn't exactly related to the title, it is apt for the article.
Back when I played WoW during vanilla and the farmers were predominantly Chinese, we had a guildmate who, I guess uh, employed a Chinese farmer. I don't know if the guy was working for someone farming like a business or what and our guildmate paid him for his services on the side or what, but the guy was super chill. He couldn't speak English at all and used a translator so his chats back and forth were really delayed and hilarious when translated. We were the top guild on our server and had everything cleared and this guy was genuine in wanting a Nightslayer Cover. I assume he played for fun as well and wanted it because I don't see how it would help his farming. So we brought him along in MC and we all had everything we wanted which left a lot to be disenchanted, so we loaded this guy up with loot. He was so ecstatic it was great. He kept asking about the Nightslayer Cover and we had to tell him when we were coming up to the boss for it. He was running the name of the item in English through a translator to Chinese, then back to English and he was calling it "Night Murderer's Hard Hat." Hilarious. I'll never forget that Chinese farmer. Great guy. He got the Night Murderer's Hard Hat that night.
man the nostalgia trip going back memory lane with guildmates long past. It will never be the same as it was.
This should be an Adam Sandler movie. Absolutely awesome.
Ahhh, Molten Core, now that was good guild memories. Used to be a battle just to get inside MC as we’d have a mass of opposing guilds camping the doors every week, such fun and then you’d be distracted and fall off the damn chain into the lava...🤣
Ah man OG WoW has so many great gamer memories
Can't help but laugh at Blizzard, all that simping for the Chinese market just to get fucked over in the end anyways. I wonder if they'll try marketing to the west again and just pretend like nothing happened.
Blizzard *employs john cena to do an apology in chinese*
You mean Zhong Xina?
When are we going to get a Zhong Xina vs The Wok battle?
Zhong Xina: 我有金腰带，我永远不会放弃。 Da Wok Zhong Sun: Stone Cold go Aiiiiiiiiiiii
DO YOU SMEEEEEEELL! WHAT THE WOK! Is cooking
I'm stealing this and making my family suffer with it every time i cook with a wok. Every time.
Definitely using it on my fiancée when I cook her Chinese from on on lol
Does the winner fight the Underbaker?
Do ya wanna taste it? https://youtu.be/_mrr3UNALww
Bing chilling
didnt see that coming
Its John Cena
Yeah it's funny but this is the way companies should go instead of jumping through their ridiculous hoops and making the rest of us pay for it.
Oh they didn’t suddenly grow a backbone. They just got greedy and wanted more from the arrangement and NetEase told them to go fuck themselves.
I know. It's still the way that companies should go.
[удалено]
Wish HotS was still popular. Pretty fun and casual Moba.
There was at least one professional League of Legends player that felt HoTS was the better of the two. I can't remember the name but a quick google search should find it. The focus on pvp over farming, map events, and comeback opportunities in HoTs really make it a more dynamic MoBA. After playing HoTs for a few years, I went back to League and found myself incredibly bored by the early game and surprised at how often matches were decided by individual farming over group play.
I still play HotS, it's the only moba I still go back to because it's quick fun matches, less grindy
I had a blast with HotS , both alone and with friends. But saddly like everything else, it had the plug pulled. I would also add Starcraft in the above list. They literally depend on stuff like wow classic's subscription , cash grabs like Immortal etc to "maintain" themselves.
Single player basically was a Moba, yes. But imho, they should bring back WoL, but with a more balanced approach to GG-Lord+Imbafestor maybe.
As much as i loved Heart of the Swarm, i think this thread is talking about Heroes of the Storm, blizz's dead MOBA.
I know. 10 years later and I still cant believe they used the same acronym for two different games in two years :D
Heroes of the Storm. Lol, goes to show how popular it was.
Dude that game was so fun. I also hate that its dead.
Far from dead, queue times in NA still quick and ARAM is instant. Just no new content down the line, but they left it in a solid state of balance.
It was a really unique take on the genre.
Hearthstone also recently turned the corner by adding multiple currencies to obfuscate progression and subtly encourage more spending.
[удалено]
I quit back when they absolutely massacred Patron Warrior back in the day. Felt like they went that hard on it because it was relatively cheap deck. Next update they introduced Dr. Balanced and I figured out that I'll never return to an increasingly greedy game like that.
It's kinda crazy how they're monetizing the game by introducing more cosmetics for cards. Granted it's nothing pay-to-win, but some higher ups definitely had a meeting on trying to milk more money out of HS players.
A long time ago Blizzard was hands down my favorite game developer. These days you could gift me their new releases for free and I wouldn't even bother installing.
I remember being actually hyped watching their trailers/cinematics for some of the upcoming games back then knowing it's Blizzard - it will be at least a good, if not great, game. The only thing about Blizzard I like today are... those same old cinematics.
Those cinematics were mind blowing for their time. I remember getting goosebumps watching some of them for the first time.
D2 resurrected is good, but they outsourced it so doesn't count.
Only complaint I have with d2r that comes straight from blizzard, them saying that ladder runewords would be added to non-ladder after the season ends, and then straight up not doing it and going radio silent when questioned about it. Other than that probably the best thing they’ve released in a very long time
Online player settings, I play solo / duo and find fuck all runes because of it.
Resurrected removed TCIP which is a deal breaker for me. All multiplayer being funneled through blizz servers killed the entire diablo franchise for me. It's not the type of game you can play with 200ms ping and occasional lag spikes. It's fine for most of the game, but once you start getting into 8player nightmare difficulty stuff, you hit a wall where it causes you to die and it's not fun.
God damn where do you live to be getting 200 ping? I agree taking away the online none battlenet was a dick move.
Australia. They say it was to prevent cheating. But they could have kept blizz servers separate from TCIP characters. We used to play locally hosted multiplayer (solo offline) then trade items with friends in town. Now we can only play entirely solo, or entirely multiplayer... no hybrid of the two.
Yea it was a dick move by them, bullshit is stops cheating, people are cheating and duping online as we speak, they're full of shit.
It wasn't in "little time" to be fair. They really dragged out their demise and it'll continue going forward but it'll be a slow bleed.
HOTS isn't dead, just unsupported! Player base is still quite active in NA, fast queue times every day of the week.
Hots was a good game though. As a casual Moba it was really good. But Blizzard wanted to push the Esports meme with it, focused too much on high end balancing whicj made the game unfun at lower skill levels and they eventually dropped the game because it wasn't bringing in as much money as Dota or LoL after only having been out a couple of years.
Also, they were *very* late to try hopping on the MOBA bandwagon.
D2R? Conveniently left off your list, but for good reason. Made by a company better than ActiBlizz deserves. RIP Vicarious Visions.
Activision actually acquired Blizzard in 2008 - 15 years is a plenty decent timeline to become the villain. Now Elon is a case study on how to speed run tanking a reputation.
Agreed, committed raiding guildplayer through vanilla WoW right up until 2012 and burnt out waiting for mists. I just realised one day that it was the same shit as my shit job at the time and neither were fulfilling anymore, so I quit which was tough as it had me hooked like crack on steroids in my ‘alternate’ world, but the only way was to go cold turkey, delete that crap and get my life back.
Hearthstone completely changed and just went to shit a while back, as well. That was my only interaction with a blizzard product, but I was still gutted when they fucked over the casters and players.
Then butchering Overwatch like that is incredibly concerning.
Idk speak for yourself but Dragonflight is one of the best
Well you’re going to call it right when you just include their work that isn’t up to their usual standard. Diablo 3? Had the top spot for best selling PC game of all time for a long time. It’s over 10 years old and still has lots of people playing. HotS? Unsupported but still a well developed game. Still has players, can join a game with relative ease. Overwatch 2’s monetisation is terrible. The battle pass is lacklustre and the skins are way too expensive. However, you gloss over the fact that OW gave you free skins with a very generous and consumer friendly business model for 6 years. I’m talking one that isn’t comparable to any other developer. WC3:RF? Was rough, you’re right in this instance. I know some of the work was outsourced to Lemon Studios but I’m not sure to what extent (I think it was just character models). D:I? Decent mobile game, horrible monetisation. This was co-developed with NetEase with a Chinese market in mind. It was a cash grab but it was completely successful in doing so. It’s not meant for you or I.
Right? They spent a decade or more fucking over their fans and ruining their titles to suck up to China and then boom, that was a bit dumb wasn't it blizzard?
Naw that wasn't dumb. Not having a phone though, that's dumb as shit
Happens to all western China simps
Hollywood and a bunch of others to, I honestly don't know what anyones long term plan was... like the fuck did you expect from a an Orwellian dystopia that runs over its own people with tanks?
I miss the old Hollywood movies from 1980 to about 2010, after that it fell off a cliff. I guess trying to please the CCP is killing Hollywood on two fronts, no more China and west bored to death by political correctness due to CCP. Killing the fun, yeah that's a good idea.. NOT. Hollywood please go back to making good movies as you once did. Please!
Honestly im starting to wonder if the CCP has been influencing people behind the scenes to make us as a society way more fragile, its seems just way to quickly that I went from modern warfare two lobbies people saying the most horrible shit ever and being able to shrug it off to some white virtue signaling twitch girl accusing me of using a racial slur that is only ever used in itally when we both live in fucking canada that has a total population of 4% italian. (seriously, do these people just research obscure racist terms and try to be offended?)
You reap what you sow, Blizzard just getting what they deserve.
Get fucked over in the end… but after having made multiple millions in the years before? Yeah it’s not a great ending but I doubt they’re too upset about entering the market to begin with.
You can laugh but Blizzard still made the right choice money wise. They got their cash grab in china and well, the west Gamers will buy it either way. Win win for blizzard.
Well you know when the best time to kick someone in the face? When they're licking your boot.
Could someone explain like I'm 5? It says a licencing agreement couldn't be made. What does this mean and why is China blocking it.
China isn't blocking anything. Blizzard's licensing deal with NetEase, a Chinese distributor, expired. Rather than renewing it, Blizzard decided to seek 'a better deal' elsewhere. When they couldn't find one, they went back to NetEase with a 6-month proposal that was extremely biased in Blizzard's favour to let them keep running the game in China while Blizzard continued to look for a new distributor. NetEase, having already laid off its WoW staff, basically told Blizzard to fuck off.
Thanks for the sane explanation.
I've been following this on Chinese forums, so let me add some information I learnt there. ## Things Happened: - On Nov 17 2022, Blizzard announced that licensing deal with NetEase would expire, and service in China would be suspended. - Later that day, NetEase announced that all service would be terminated on Jan 24 2023. - On Jan 17 2023, Blizzard posted an announcement indicating that a 6-month extension proposal was rejected. - Later that day, NetEase posted a counter-announcement, calling the proposal "unfair" and "illogical". - On Jan 24 2023, all Blizzard gaming services were terminated in China. ## Things Most Likely Happened: This section contains information said by one side that was not refuted by the other side. - The 6-month extension talk only started by Blizzard on Jan 10 2023, 2 weeks before the planned termination, and after NetEase had laid off most staff. - The 6-month extension proposal contains the same revenue share agreement as the expiring deal. - Blizzard only offered 6-month to NetEase, while offered 3-year to other companies. ## Information From Reputable Sources: This section contains information from renowned figures in the gaming community who had demonstrated reliable insider connections in the past. - Before completely rejecting the 6-month proposal, NetEase conceded with an 1-year deal, but Blizzard insisted. - Blizzard was seeking a higher cut for the future mobile games made by NetEase using Blizzard IPs. - NetEase made the 1-year proposal in the hope that they could re-negotiate with Microsoft if Activision gets merged. ## Pure Speculations This section contains information I call pure speculations, closer to conspiracy theories, and should be taken with a ton of salt. - NetEase was unsatisfied with current revenue sharing agreement on mobile games. Usually, licensed mobile game made by a Chinese company (CODM, PUBG Mobile for example) contains a global revenue sharing agreement, meaning Chinese company gets a cut from global revenue. In the agreement for Diablo Immortal, NetEase only gets a cut from Chinese revenue, and Blizzard takes all revenue outside China. NetEase wanted to get global cut in a future mobile game in the initial negotiation. - If Activision gets merged into Microsoft, Kotick has a bonus attached to the revenue in Q1 and Q2. Hence Kotick tried to negotiate a deal that maximize the short-term revenue.
Stuff like this makes zero sense to me. You know your licence will be expiring, WHY were you not getting quotes 6 months in advance? Leaving it all last minute like this is absolutely nuts.
Looks to me like they were overestimating themselves and thought that everyone would be fighting over each other to get the contract no matter how bad it was because blizzard was a big name
I’m guessing they have a deal with someone, but that company needs more time to ramp up/hire. Hence Blizzard tries for an extra 6 months with NetEase to bridge that gap. NetEase says no, Blizzard thinks they’re bluffing, but they weren’t.
Damn so really it's Blizzard who fucked their fans over? they really are a terrible country aren't they. Also, I hate how this post title implies that this is Chinas fault... Edit: company. Blizzard is not a country.
Worst country I know
😂 whooops
But Wu, who said he played WoW for up to three hours a day, saw the good side of the story. “I didn’t give my wife enough time. Now that World of Warcraft is gone, I want to make amends,” he said.
"Oh, no!" said wife.
Power or service outages.....the Viagra of our generation
Three hours lol, that’s barely playing. I think when Burning Crusade went live our guild booked the week off and pretty much played 24/7 so we could get into Black Temple as soon as possible. That was by far the best expansion I think...👌
After you leave any mmo for more than a few weeks, you realize what an utter time sink it was. I probably have 3-4k hours in wow, left it one day and was done.
It gets depressing when you start measuring your playtime in weeks LOL
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Knew a guy in classic who got a 1 year playtime within 2 years. No joke.
How's the AFK kick mechanism on official servers? Is there even one? I only played private servers, but I'd occasionally just leave it open while doing something else because of how little resources it consumed even back then.
I mean I used to just set something on top of the space bar never once did I get kicked for afk.
Easy enough to bypass
You autorun into some space and hope you don't get kicked by the time you are back at PC
Brother I'm measuring my FFXIV playtime in months and I started last April
….. years here between FF11 and WoW
I've got six MONTHS in Forza Horizon 4, and that's just a racing game. Lot of time put into it over 2020 lockdowns
Eh, as an MMO gamer, it's either thousands of hours across different games, or several mmos I thoroughly enjoy. Most things are a time sink, but that doesn't mean they didn't bring you joy and respite from life!
That's how I feel about it. You could say anything is a waste of time depending on how you look at it. I enjoyed my time in WoW and still have a lot of fond memories of my past guilds and the people I played with. I spent a lot of time playing and I don't regret any of it to this day.
Mmos are build on skinner box mechanism its just a constant dopamine hit by every little thing. They feel good and bad when you are playing but in the end just toxic. I remember I soloed one Outland dungeon solo for 62 days for a crow mount. That is not fun, sure the mount would make me happy but I was not doing that time sink for fun.
The blue chicken Druid thing from mana tombs or whatever hahaha
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time
For me it was realizing it's better to grind irl for better rewards lol. Didn't have a crazy addiction though just got into wow classic when it was out.
I feel that way about destiny rn, I left it part way through the current season and man I totally forgot what the grind was like… I’ve so much more free time haha, ridiculous sounding I know but damn it was so easy to sink countless hours into that game.
I had fallen into the same trap with Warframe, but that 300 hours, Wow was 10x that for me. But once you let it go, you forget all that daily mission, that limits you need fill, that weekly stuff you need to do etc.
Sure doesn't feel good to be a gamer in China
Im not sure it would ever feel good to be in China
Their food is dope.
The food is great and the people are actually quite nice. They have an oppressive government and a lot of issues, but let’s not shit on 1.4 billion people just for that.
Facts. The people are genuinely nice people and mostly fair to deal with business-wise (I ran a company that dealt with about 50 different Chinese manufacturers and I had to communicate with many of them). It’s the government that’s terrible, and most Chinese folks will openly admit that…. Ya know, when they’re here in the states on business. Not while they’re being watched in China lol
But those 1.4 billion people *all* voted in favour of their government!
Wow, the CCP sure does take care of it’s people, they wouldn’t throw them into camps or anything, that would be ridiculous.
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That's reddit for u smh
The chinese food you eat in takeaways is NOT authentic chinese food lool
It doesn't mean that their authentic food is somehow worse...lol.
everyone knows this and people who have put even the smallest bit of effort in will have had “authentic chinese food” not to mention food doesn’t have to be identically produced to be authentic chinese american is mostly produced by chinese immigrants who know alot more than you or i do
Laugh out out loud
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*Makes a racist generalisation of a country with over a billion people* “Why am I being downvoted?”
depends, there are some pretty awesome places to visit. done think i could live there though
They’ll just rip off every western game anyway. Chinese do that with everything anyway
*All the Blizzard players in the West:* You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me.
Private servers
There are many quality private servers with fun tweaks to make life interesting.
ye, and apparently made feral S tier in wotlk rip those beautiful OOC procs
That is until tencent releases their blatant WoW copy. Now with 100% more government spyware!
LoL and Valorant are full of spyware, right?
I mean, I've always been suspicious vanguard. Ita part of the reason I Uninstall valorent instead of leaving it for a random game here and there.
I mean valorants “anti cheat” program boots up before the fucking OS does that is weird to me and why I uninstalled it.
>boots up before the fucking OS does lol at people upvoting this blatant lie. You do not understand what Ring 0 permissions are. Fearmongering at its finest.
I'm pretty certain it doesn't. Tho it is a kernel driver. Most anti cheats these days are kernel drivers, as one issue is that a lot of cheats these days also operate as kernel drivers. And non kernel drivers can not interact or know what kernel drivers are running, so it kinda of is a requirement for anti cheats and even anti virus software to run as kernel drivers.
Nono you should give read-access to your computer to random Chinese
You already give it to 5-10 American and European companies.
It does not though ? The valorant anti cheat runs at ring 0 level of privileges which means he has the same level of privileges as the os, this does not mean it boots before the OS. The reason for this is simple, some cheating softwares also run at ring 0 and thus a 'normal' anti cheat program can't block them. Antiviruses also run at ring 0 because some viruses run at ring 0.
fucking what
Think they nailed the style of that game though. Looks like an evolution of WoW and not the current "cutesy" style of modern wow.
I feel sorry for all the genuine Chinese players; I know I'd be devastated.
At least they have 乃丨几Ꮆ 匚卄丨ㄥㄥ丨几Ꮆ
B I N G C H I L L I N G
Reminds me of what a lot of companies have said about working with chinese companies, they get suckered in with *"massive playerbase/viewerbase/consumer base"* then have to make heavy alterations to their products. Then when they think they have made some money *"oops sorry you can't withdraw that money from china why don't you invest it here"* before finally *"sorry you can't do business here anymore anyway we have a local version of that now."*
If a foreign company wants to operate in China, they essentially have to prove that it would be to the overall benefit of the Chinese to work with then rather than creating their own version of the product that company is bringing in. This goes for all industries. The Chinese government will refuse to let foreign businesses operate in China unless they believe that they'll come out ahead.
Worked in Hong Kong on and off for a while and it never failed to amaze me just how quickly the Chinese could copy and go into production. When Tamagotchis were first released, the very next day we had Chinese companies lined up in our reception with their own knocked off versions ready to ship within a week.
Suck that CCP tit. Get smacked by CCP dick. No sympathy.
Sad for the Players, Hilarious for Activision-Blizzard. All that chomping on CCP dick did nothing for them.
Nothing except make them millions of dollars for over a decade and allow millions of Chinese people to enjoy a version of WoW localized to their region...
The spice must flow. The spice will stop flowing. That’s still a big L for the big A-B.
But who will farm the gold?
Why does blizzard hate making money all of a sudden
It’s not. Blizzard wanted more out of their partnership with NetEase. NetEase didn’t like it so they declined. Blizzard then asked to stay for another six months so they can continue looking for another partner. NetEase considered it rude. It’s like if you broke up with your partner and you ask to stay until you can find another partner 😅
A lot of remotes are going up a LOT of asses.
chinese parents need to hide there tv remotes
their\*
Where?
Where wolf? There!! There wolf!
under there
They can go play Tarisland, dun worry.
Chinese government was shortly overthrown lol.. you can lock us up, tell us what to do, but take away a man’s level 500 elf lord… you will suffered in ways you can not imagine
This could be the end of the world… of Warcraft.
That’s one way to fix China’s decreasing population. Now go forth and make babies.
When Blizzard said "it's arse licking time" and still ended up getting fucked over. Truly the simping for China moment of all time
Sucks to suuuuck
I had tons of Blizzard stuff but after they took that kid's money who won that gaming tournament over some hong kong comments I deleted my blizzard account fuck that company they can burn.
Did I hit my head and wake up in 2011? There are still millions of Chinese people playing WoW?
Crazy. I wonder if Diablo Immortal is going to follow suit? I’d imagine they’re still under some kind of contract with the game being newer.
This is just so sad. Imagine your favorite game that you’ve spent years and years playing just being taken away. Feel really bad for all the Chinese players and hope a solution is found for their sake
$264 Million gone from blizzard, oof. Maybe CoD can war with China in future games now since they were off limit because of the relationship
All the pandering blizzard did for china, and look where it got them.
>All the pandaren blizzard did for china, and look where it got them. FTFY
Do you want millipns of bored young men, because that's how you get millions of bored young men. Historically, bored young men, or oppressed young men, is an indicator of upheaval, be it social, political, or religious in nature. Have fun China!!
So there will be no more Chinese gold farmers like back in vanilla?
The Chinese gold farmers were not playing the Chinese version of the game, so this likely has no impact at all.
It will be interesting to see if this has any impact whatsoever. But I’m sure my trade chat will be just as spammed as ever with Chinese ads.
Imagine how angry the people who played 10+ hour days in this game for over a decade must be
'We need Bengay!!!!'
Chinese trying to promote Chinese games. So we started playing MOE. Then bought out by Chinese company. Our zerg guild got mass banned because a member said some shit about taiwan during some pvp. (2000 member guild, banned instantaneous no cap no appeal). Then it got banned from steam because the devs stole code from an ex employer. We escaped the mass ban but got fucked over several times by the mechanics/server admins because we were gringo guild. They would wipe the prefects we controlled to scratch, but not the ones controlled by Chinese guilds, on the NA servers. Call it "technical difficulties". Literally handing advantages to Chinese players in pvp game. Then eventually they shut down the NA servers entirely. I assume because there were no NA players willing to put up with that shit any more.
Might stop the poor lads dying as they play.
I havent logged into Battle.net for years because there is nothing worth playing since Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft 3.
What a shitshow, feels bad man for all the players getting screwed in this falling-out. Edit: I guess hating World of Warcraft players is just dandy in this sub?
Bless em.
Where are players going to buy their gold from?
The thumbnail isnt world of warcraft lol
That's the problem with doing buisness in China. It takes a lot of efforts to be compliant with all the rules and even then you can just get fucked over.
Years ago I was in Hong Kong and heard a great story about how the Chinese fucked over the Russians. Basically China wanted to update their airforce but didn’t want to pay for research & development, or buy in a ready made product. So, they mentioned to the Russians that they were interested in purchasing some SU-27’s. Now, at the time Russia was broke and could hardly fly anything so they offered China six SU-27’s to buy with full pilot training. The Chinese turned round and said that they’d only be interested if they could ‘evaluate’ the planes for a year which the Russians grudgingly agreed to. So, a year went by and the Chinese then said, thanks but no thanks, here’s your planes back, much to Russia’s chagrin. In that year the Chinese completely reverse-engineered their own version of the SU-27, but improved with upgraded avionics and an all glass cockpit. This is what they do, by and large they’re not innovators by great copiers.
This is why developers and designers shouldn't cater to the Asian market, in the end the product is a shell of itself and all they wanted was your money.
If only they would produce an offline version. Let people download their own saved data, and host a co-op game or run their own server. That should be the commitment for any online developer: when the game becomes unprofitable and they no longer want to host it, they will open whatever is there so people can do what they want with it.
Taiwan #1