Former blizz employee Q/A

[darkvexen]

If you take this is truth, keep in mind that you must also take this quote as truth: "Activision has no direct role in any of the decision making done at Blizzard." - Which undermines most of the anti-Blizz conspiracy theories on the forums.



Well if you fabricated the entire experience, your impression of the persons involved would be fake.



There isn't proof at the top though, and it's not an article it's a transcript of an AMA. I click the link to the proof and I get a 404. You assume that you got banned because Blizzard is trying to hide the truth, but you don't think they'd ban you for posting slanderous lies also? Not that I think that the person doing the AMA was lying about working for Blizzard, but we don't know that person's motivations. Also I'm playing devil's advocate here to show you that your position of "They banned me so they're guilty and lying." is illogical.

perma ban. ussually they would ban for a month with warning before hand. nope. straight up slammed me.

[ComputerNerd]

"QA didn't really have any say in what went into the game, or what was really fucking stupid and shouldn't be in there at all, but we did have a suggestion forum internally where we could post our ideas to the devs. The problem was that most of the devs were very full of themselves and believed that we didn't know any better, and we were just there to test the games, and apparently couldn't even do that right in their eyes, so most of our suggestions were laughed off."

Sounds an awful lot like how they treat the playerbase, too. And they wonder why there's posts about how to refund your pre-order of Warlords of Timeless Isle Continent.

People are often citing the non-flying for refunds, but that was well covered in Blizzcon and many interviews long before pre-orders were made available.
Quite simply people are using that as an excuse, because they want a reason to justify their decision so that someone else can be blamed.
Rather than being mature enough to just leave, they instead must have an audience and kick up as much fuss as possible.
Just like the "I quit" threads we have been seeing for years.
The game is better off without people like that.

[RoKPaNda]

perma ban. ussually they would ban for a month with warning before hand. nope. straight up slammed me.

Since you know so much about forum bans we can logically conclude that this is not your first rodeo. If you have a history of forum bans, that counts against you.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Didn't feel genuine at all to me, positives or no positives.

[Tharkkun]

"QA didn't really have any say in what went into the game, or what was really fucking stupid and shouldn't be in there at all, but we did have a suggestion forum internally where we could post our ideas to the devs. The problem was that most of the devs were very full of themselves and believed that we didn't know any better, and we were just there to test the games, and apparently couldn't even do that right in their eyes, so most of our suggestions were laughed off."

Sounds an awful lot like how they treat the playerbase, too. And they wonder why there's posts about how to refund your pre-order of Warlords of Timeless Isle Continent.

Sounds exactly like someone who was either A.) Fired, B.) Incompetent at doing their job or C.) Thought they had a great idea that was shot down.

This is all too common in the software industry and business in general where the lower man on the flagpole thinks they are more important than they really are. If your job is quality assurance your job is to test games and duplicate bugs.

[Queen of Hamsters]

People are often citing the non-flying for refunds, but that was well covered in Blizzcon and many interviews long before pre-orders were made available.
Quite simply people are using that as an excuse, because they want a reason to justify their decision so that someone else can be blamed.
Rather than being mature enough to just leave, they instead must have an audience and kick up as much fuss as possible.
Just like the "I quit" threads we have been seeing for years.
The game is better off without people like that.

They did cover it at Blizzcon with flying being in 6.1 through a questline or something to that effect, then information was tweeted about them considering NO.FLYING.AT.ALL in Draenor, period. If you don't WANT to think that this pissed enough people off to make them want a refund for the Deluxe edition costing extra thanks to a FLYING mount, that's fine, but how about you stop pretending to know that they actually had some other agenda/that the game would be better off without them? You don't know them, you just don't agree with their reasoning.

I'd say that making one statement, selling pre-sales, and then making another statement which spurrs tons of people into wanting a refund is a failure, NOTHING else. Wouldn't have had to be flying, could have been them revoking the "place your garrison anywhere"-thing.

[Tharkkun]

well of course blizz claimed it was fake. lots of negativeness towards blizzard. also there is proof at the top of article. AND if anyone cares i was banned from forums for posting this lol .just kinda of shows you blizzard isn't being very truthful.

Posting this on the official forums breaks the TOS. That's why you would be banned. The forums aren't a place to ridicule Blizzard employees. They are to talk about WoW.

[Gimlix]

I do find it odd like that he has alot of hatred towards Blizzard and that Blizzard is a very rude company to work with it feels like.
But Blizzard seems best company out there, they seem so friendly and nice!

[mercychan]

If your job is quality assurance your job is to test games and duplicate bugs.

You make it sound like making suggestions or offering opinions should be frowned upon

[Queen of Hamsters]

I do find it odd like that he has alot of hatred towards Blizzard and that Blizzard is a very rude company to work with it feels like.
But Blizzard seems best company out there, they seem so friendly and nice!

Which is why it feels made up by someone hoping to get a few kicks off in Blizzard's direction. Especially how crude he was about GC.

[Yimereh]

I do find it odd like that he has alot of hatred towards Blizzard and that Blizzard is a very rude company to work with it feels like.
But Blizzard seems best company out there, they seem so friendly and nice!

I really think you are using "hatred" a little to loosely here. He definitely seemed to have his problems with Blizzard but "hatred" is a large exaggeration. I think most people who work at what is considered a "lower ranked level" of any company has a slightly lesser opinion of the greater whole. It is usually a thankless job and how Blizzard appears in their PR will most definitely not represent how they interact with their employees.

[IxilaFA]

well of course blizz claimed it was fake. lots of negativeness towards blizzard. also there is proof at the top of article. AND if anyone cares i was banned from forums for posting this lol .just kinda of shows you blizzard isn't being very truthful.

Negativeness towards Blizzard? Maybe you missed these parts:

"It had it's highs and lows, but overall it was a great experience. I didn't take it as seriously as other people did just because video games were never a passion of mine, but it was one of the best places to work. Mike Morhaime is a really nice guy too."

"QA without a doubt. It was like night and day compared to being a GM. The atmosphere was more relaxed and I felt like I was treated like a human being rather than another "number"."

"I haven't really gotten back into the industry, and not sure if I want to at this point in my life. It's tempting, but I know I'm not going to find another gaming company like Blizzard."

"Hey, go for it! It's a thankless job, but working for Blizz is a great opportunity that you won't regret."

GC's review in this interview wasn't exactly positive so I don't blame him for saying it was fake but that doesn't make him right, nor does it make the one interviewed. When I read the part about GC all I read was a man who was busy with more important things than evaluating lower tiered personnel which to be honest is to be expected. Ghostcrawler probably had more important things to worry about as a whole than evaluating a new employee which I would expect someone in his position to have.

Exactly what I thought. If I was Lead Developer for a game project as big as World of Warcraft, I'd find it hard to stay focused on a day where I'm forced to sit behind a guy who does customer service all day. Hell, I'd do that now and I'm not anywhere near as important as GC.

perma ban. ussually they would ban for a month with warning before hand. nope. straight up slammed me.

Sounds like you know what being banned is like then? Maybe that's why you got perma-banned? Three strikes, you're out.

Also the WoW forums are not and have never been as lenient as the MMO-C forums when it comes to people straight up posting inside information and bashing Blizzard. The person also may have been under an NDA and there is a current lawsuit going against them or something that would require Blizzard to remove mention of the case facts from their forum.

Sounds exactly like someone who was either A.) Fired, B.) Incompetent at doing their job or C.) Thought they had a great idea that was shot down.

This is all too common in the software industry and business in general where the lower man on the flagpole thinks they are more important than they really are. If your job is quality assurance your job is to test games and duplicate bugs.

Exactly what I thought when I read it. Ridiculous that people with no experience developing games and working behind the scenes think that their ideas are more important than the developers. Leave the developing to the developers.

Then again, I have the same opinion of people here on the forums.

I do find it odd like that he has alot of hatred towards Blizzard and that Blizzard is a very rude company to work with it feels like.
But Blizzard seems best company out there, they seem so friendly and nice!

See my quotes above. He mentions 4 times very specifically that Blizzard is a great place to work for.

You make it sound like making suggestions or offering opinions should be frowned upon

Offering opinions is fine, but you should be prepared for people whose career it is to approve or decline opinions and possible ideas to reject yours.

- - - Updated - - -

I really think you are using "hatred" a little to loosely here. He definitely seemed to have his problems with Blizzard but "hatred" is a large exaggeration. I think most people who work at what is considered a "lower ranked level" of any company has a slightly lesser opinion of the greater whole. It is usually a thankless job and how Blizzard appears in their PR will most definitely not represent how they interact with their employees.

It honestly comes down to what you think is important when it comes to the workplace. If you value a workplace that treats you like an adult and has less lenient rules and policies, you don't care if the people who are higher than you are douchebags who think they're better than anyone. However, if you value a workplace where everyone works together as equals, you don't care about what kind of hoops the company makes you jump through to achieve success, etc. There are a thousand different ways to analyze and come up with an opinion about the quality of a workplace. I think my current company is amazing but one of my coworkers who does the exact same job thinks it's shitty. So to each his own.

But I think you're spot on, that it's just the musings of your typical low-level employee, who are characteristically under appreciated in all companies.

[TheSerialSniper]

If you think they guy was being all negative you did not read the article that was posted. This guy seemed rather in favor of Blizzard overall just pointed out that some of the people he worked with were assholes. I am pretty sure everyone has their assholes they have to deal with at their jobs.

[Tharkkun]

You make it sound like making suggestions or offering opinions should be frowned upon

He specifically said they had an internal forum for this purpose. But after he was terminated he talked shit because his ideas weren't entertained.

I work in IT for a company with roughly 38k developers. I spent 3 hours writing up a document for feedback/changes to an internal website we use. Small changes which would optimize performance for all users of this particular application. I don't expect a single change to get implemented. That's just how it goes.

[Gimlix]

I really think you are using "hatred" a little to loosely here. He definitely seemed to have his problems with Blizzard but "hatred" is a large exaggeration. I think most people who work at what is considered a "lower ranked level" of any company has a slightly lesser opinion of the greater whole. It is usually a thankless job and how Blizzard appears in their PR will most definitely not represent how they interact with their employees.

Blizzard gives awesome gifts for those who work there for long, they have awesome events, and if you look through the tour of their company it looks like a home more then an office.

I don't think they are that much different

[FuxieDK]

It wasn't common knowledge to me, and there is proof at the top.

The proof, in form of a non-working imgur link?

Also, it have been mentioned several times in interviews that all Blizzard employees get a WoW gamecard that lasts 25 years when they are hired. That's just one example of one of the common knowledge thing, he answers.

[prwraith]

guy worked for bliz, ok.
says AMA all you want, ok.
says on a fake burn account, ok. (assumes he took all precautions to hide his location)

Asked about titan..says nothing. The fuck.

[Kaleredar]

GC's review in this interview wasn't exactly positive so I don't blame him for saying it was fake but that doesn't make him right, nor does it make the one interviewed. When I read the part about GC all I read was a man who was busy with more important things than evaluating lower tiered personnel which to be honest is to be expected. Ghostcrawler probably had more important things to worry about as a whole than evaluating a new employee which I would expect someone in his position to have.

Edit: I'm just saying even if the part about Ghostcrawler was true, I don't blame him the dude probably had far more important shit on his plate.

Yeah but it's ghostcrawler's word, a guy we know who worked for Blizzard, versus random anonymous person on the internet.

And even though several people may dislike GC for their own inane contrived reasons, I don't really feel that makes "random internet person" more believable.

[LilSaihah]

I'm actually really not sure why people think GC is a dick/asshole/not very cool/i hate you.

[Kaleredar]

I'm actually really not sure why people think GC is a dick/asshole/not very cool/i hate you.

He didn't tell them every idea they had to buff their class was a good one, so people started disliking him.