Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment from Mark Kern

[KrazyK923]

(of wich Mark Kern is not the leader, even if some want it to be like this for the sake of their argument).

Like Sodapoppin. Or Kungen? Or Heelvscrybabyface? Some of, if not the, biggest community individuals who pushed this issue the entire time.

I guess it doesn't matter that the largest supporters of the pro-side trot Kern out as if he's some validation for their nonsense because it turns out Kern is looking like a giant piece of trash who ran projects into the ground, was kicked out of his own company, personally calls out individuals on Twitter for their followers to attack them, and pretends he has some direct line to Morhaime when all he can do is write the guy an email.

[Deleted]

He publicly calls out people who disagree with him, and his "fans" go after them.

You mean like how you're going after him right now?

We'll just mirror it right back at you, only far worse, then you can see how you like it. Or is this only a one way thing?

[Relapses]

Jesus Christ, the toxicity of this idiotic movement is reaching stratospheric levels. This Panser vs. Kern bullshit is the pinnacle of human stupidity. (Rape threats because you're anti-Legacy realms? Are you fucking serious???)

Every single pro-Legacy argument can be refuted with very simple reasoning. Every single anti-Legacy argument is equally easily debunked. There is no room for a middle ground, no room to have a fucking opinion without being patently wrong. You can't take a middle ground, you have to be for or against. It's like a fucking Civil War between have's and have-not's. And while I personally feel most of the pro-Nost crowd are whiny, self-absorbed and ridiculously contrived special snowflakes, I can at least understand their position. The people on the other side of the issue are doing themselves no small favors when they're so easily incited by the inflammatory anti-circlejerk comments. I wish Blizzard would just come out and say -- unequivocally -- that the idea is dead of Blizzard-supported Legacy realms is dead in the water with a special addendum for Mark Kern to go fuck himself, but that's probably a bit much to expect.

Regardless, as long as Mr. Kern keeps trying to publicly one-up anybody who opposes him like this, it'll likely reach a head sometime soon.

[Reapocalypse]

Like Sodapoppin. Or Kungen? Or Heelvscrybabyface? Some of, if not the, biggest community individuals who pushed this issue the entire time.

He saw the demand of legacy servers and the petition and made it his responsibility to send a open letter to Mike Morhaime and deliver the petition in physical form, he is just the messenger and some poeple like him for this, some are thankful and some just dont care and would still like to play on a legacy realm, none of that makes him their official leader, ambassador or champion.

[Marakesh]

Found this thread, and felt there's even more of Mark kern some people might not know.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1321189?page=1

He's currently provoking, insult and trying to flip tables on people who are tired of hearing about this legacy stuff.
he called Panser ''a Low IQ woman becuase she dyed her hair Pınk.
and now on top of that, she is getting rape threats via YT from "the legacy" people.

good leader you lads chose hu.

You guys are incredibly sensitive ... for your own selves. First its claiming the Nost people are out to ddos bnet, nevermind someone else took credit for it. Then its using words like "forcing Blizzard" into making legacy servers and how hurtful it is that there's an actual discussion at all about legacy servers. At one point in the Nost thread here, anti-legacy people kept repeating some line about a guy early on who told them to die in a fire. Last few days those same people are going on about hoping Mark Kern would diaf. Amazing lack of self awareness.

The jab about pink hair dye isn't particularly good but they were apparently going back and forth. As for harassment, just look at this forum. Clearly, you have the much better trolls. In modern society I worry about the borderline personality types more than the directly aggressive ones.

[Bapestar]

Found this thread, and felt there's even more of Mark kern some people might not know.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1321189?page=1

He's currently provoking, insult and trying to flip tables on people who are tired of hearing about this legacy stuff.
he called Panser ''a Low IQ woman becuase she dyed her hair Pınk.
and now on top of that, she is getting rape threats via YT from "the legacy" people.

good leader you lads chose hu.

Lol there is no leader, Mark kern is just the messenger. You guys are just butthurt we have someone with credentials on our side.

[Relapses]

Asking people to back up their bullshit is not attacking them.

I was being fairly broad in my definition because there are people on this forum who will straight jump down an anti-Legacy poster's throat for anything which resembles a reasonable argument. I've seen it happen with such frequency in the pro-Nost circlejerk thread that I'm wondering how some of the people who are supporting this movement can see straight with their heads so firmly shoved up their asses. The nature of forums in general lend people to use its echo chamber as confirmation bias that they're irrefutably correct in their stance. While you're correct that it's not two sides of the same coin, it's frustrating to see the issue continue to grow further out of control due in large part to the cryptic, ambiguous wording of Blizzard's first official response.

[Kellorion]

just viewing his twitter.....What. A. Fucking. Tool!

[Eliseus]

Found this thread, and felt there's even more of Mark kern some people might not know.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1321189?page=1

He's currently provoking, insult and trying to flip tables on people who are tired of hearing about this legacy stuff.
he called Panser ''a Low IQ woman becuase she dyed her hair Pınk.
and now on top of that, she is getting rape threats via YT from "the legacy" people.

good leader you lads chose hu.

Go read the twitter feed. This is completely fabricated. Someone should respond had fabricated it is on those forums also. It wasn't even her fans that were doing the attacking either, it was directly her. She even spewed nonsense like "vocal minority" (shows how ignorant she is of the matter anyways since jumping to comments like this without posting any numbers) in an issue that a minority or majority doesn't even matter, just pure numbers of the want is what matters.

Just goes to show how gullible you people are. No wonder you think this is rocket science to create this server.

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Nope.

For all of his flatout lying about getting able to meet with Mike Morhaime, all he's done so far is grandstand, make a video, and then supposedly send an email to the guy asking to meet with him.

So much for being able to deliver those petitions personally to Morhaime.

But don't suggest that the dude is lying for attention, despite him lapping up all the lavishing the Nostalrius folks are throwing at him on his Twitter, because that's mean.

He publicly calls out people who disagree with him, and his "fans" go after them. Panser is one example (which gets ignored because she's said stuff about other topics people disagree with? I don't even like her but she's shown off the shit she's getting. Or just also go look at all of her mentions.), I've also gotten a much smaller dose of it, but still harassment from people who are upset that people dare challenge Kern on his bullshit.

The guy is a liar who ran projects into the ground and was kicked out of his own company. Yet he's this morally righteous champion of the people who came into the whole Nostalrius situation well under way and placed himself at the top of the pyramid scheme.

Good job guys, you sure picked a good champion. Now watch as Morhaime does NOTHING because why would the CEO of Blizzard meet with a stooge who is actively shitting on his company, his developers, specific individuals by name, and his games publicly on Twitter? It's almost an unprecedented level of delusion on par with flat earth theory.

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat.

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Asking people to back up their bullshit is not attacking them. This is not two sides of the same coin here. This nost thing is one of the most ridiculous threads I have ever seen on here. Its children throwing a tantrum.

Yet you still haven't provided anything to support anything you say then result to personal attacks.

[MechaMoose]

well Vanilla server DID have a chance before he got involved...

[Eliseus]

Comes across like an egotistical tool.
Literally made my spine cringe listening to this ... shudder.

Literally made your spine cringe....... You should probably get that checked out.

[Aliadra]

From what ive read from both sides this seems to be more factual, both "sides" have their "toxic minority", throwing mud at each other because shes sensible and he just dislikes SJWs in general doesnt change the subject at all, especially since she stated that she is not against this "movement" or legacy servers in general (of wich Mark Kern is not the leader, even if some want it to be like this for the sake of their argument).

Presentable facts are hard to spin into bias unless you start nitpicking which I did not do.
Never even heard about her before, but I tweeted her asking her to provide facts regarding the supposed bullying and harassment she receives and she just blocked me. Quite frankly that doesn't seem very sensible to me. And indeed, Mark is not the supposed "leader" of people who want legacy servers, but he is the best line with Blizzard.

To people continously bashing Mark "because reasons" try to at least pretend not to hate him. All you have to go on are rumors and circumstantial evidence. Yes, he made some bad decisions, but neither you nor I know exactly what happened. Most of what's out there is from an anonymous post from Reddit claiming to be an employee who could easily be very biased. What likely happened was Mark had more ambition than the company had staff, skill and budget. This can be extremely disastrous and lead to very high tensions.
Did he make alot of stupid decisions? Oh yes, and not just a few. Does that make him a bad CEO? Probably. Does it make him a bad team lead? Unlikely.
What I really don't get is why you keep placing Mike on this pedestal where he can't be bothered with such plebs as Mark. You do not know Mike, you do not know how well they know eachother and you do not know what their relationship is, stop pulling crap out of your ass.

just viewing his twitter.....What. A. Fucking. Tool!

This kind of garbage is exactly what I'm talking about. Has nothing to do with the topic of the discussion, it's only a childish attempt to attack Mark because "he dun appel to me, tharfor he bad"
I doubt your Twitter/Facebook/Whatever is filled with deep intellectual conversations.

well Vanilla server DID have a chance before he got involved...

I take it you're Mike then. No? Then kindly take your assertive shitposting elsewhere. I hear summer is near, so you should go to 4chan.

What I really don't get about this whole "discussion" (Which is mostly idiots shit-slinging at Mark because "i dun like him") is the pro-legacy people claiming it WILL be great for Blizzard to do it because it will bring back a million or more players (Come on, a realistic number might be a few houndred thousand peak and maybe between 40-80k and climbing after the peak) and even more the anti-legacy people who think Blizzard can't afford to spend what would likely be under 1M USD to set up the servers (Which is nothing compared to what has been thrown away at things like Titan)
No one wants Blizzard to remove staff from the current team and no one wants this to impact the current game.
If it fractions the community that would only mean legacy servers would be an outstanding success.

What Blizzard really needs is to come out with either a yes or no. The demand won't stop, especially not if they're going to do everything they can to avoid directly saying no and instead make up typical PR excuses.

Many pro-legacy people are acting like complete twats, and many anti-legacy people are acting like entitled children, and I see far more of the latter in here, but I won't make any assertions regarding other threads.

Throwing tantrums doesn't do anything. Telling people they are just nostalgic doesn't do anything. You don't speak for me or anyone else, so please can it or use your mind reading powers to help the police. Telling people they're wrong doesn't do anything, back it up with some arguments. And no, Blizzard's excuses are not good enough arguments... They won't say no, whatever that means.
Quit pulling retarded numbers out of your ass like "lol only 2k people will play" or "omg 2 million people will play" and look at it from a more realistic point of view, there is demand, but it's not 2 million people worth of demand.

If people are invading unrelated threads with this crap, report them and move on, don't start crying over how horrible it is.

To end post, my views on how to make the most out of it:
1: Release legacy realms during downtime in legion, this may make subscribers more likely to stay subscribed as they can play what's essentially a different game.
2: Work with the Nostalrius team to figure out the most efficient way to run the servers. Blizzard have experience running it source and Nostalrius have experience emulating.
3: Make the realms progression, not legacy. Pure legacy would die.
4: If it doesn't work, just kill it. It will cause a backlash but any intelligent person will see they at least tried.

[MoanaLisa]

Even if that's true, Moana, that doesn't diminish his previous accomplishments.

Like Kaplan says and it's a truism in the industry: "You're only as good as your last game."

[KrazyK923]

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat.

You sure showed me.

[Orange Joe]

For those who don't know, here's the Wikipedia link to Mark Kern - a lot of good things before leaving Blizzard.

Which are what? He was part of a team, not one of those things can be attributed to him alone. Meanwhile, when he did lead. He lead a company to ruins.

yeah... not a person to listen to.

[Eliseus]

You sure showed me.

Great argument.

[Reapocalypse]

Meanwhile, when he did lead. He lead a company to ruins.

"Mark E. Kern is an American video game designer best known for being team lead on the video game World of Warcraft"

Im not sure if you read that thing or even have a clue about who he is in general, while one could argue how much it was his work on WoW that lead to its success he was definetly involved as said position of Team Lead, wich made him (in his own words) "ultimately responsible for making sure the game was fun and a succes".

[Orange Joe]

"Mark E. Kern is an American video game designer best known for being team lead on the video game World of Warcraft"

Im not sure if you read that thing or even have a clue about who he is in general, while one could argue how much it was his work on WoW that lead to its success he was definetly involved as said position of Team Lead, wich made him (in his own words) "ultimately responsible for making sure the game was fun and a succes".

I know exactly who he is, and how much team leaders for blizzard actually lead. Team lead for blizzard is mostly just a title.


Meanwhile, like I said. When he actually did lead. He failed miserably.

[Eapoe]

Go read the twitter feed. This is completely fabricated. Someone should respond had fabricated it is on those forums also. It wasn't even her fans that were doing the attacking either, it was directly her. She even spewed nonsense like "vocal minority" (shows how ignorant she is of the matter anyways since jumping to comments like this without posting any numbers) in an issue that a minority or majority doesn't even matter, just pure numbers of the want is what matters.

Just goes to show how gullible you people are. No wonder you think this is rocket science to create this server.

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Keep wearing your tinfoil hat.

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Yet you still haven't provided anything to support anything you say then result to personal attacks.

Kind of hate to break up the parade, but considering last reports WoW had 5.5 mil subscribers U.S. and there was what 200k+ sigs on the petition, and out of that there are only a handful (figurative based on numbers) speaking for the matter, then yes, YOU ARE A VOCAL MINORITY! Even if you wanted to apply more figurative terms, 5.5 mil vs whoever signed the petition and if you want to count those people as being vocal in their e-sigs, you are still a minority. This isn't talking trash from one person to a group, this is stating a fact. As far as Panser and Kern going back and forth, I haven't seen that, just the posts he made in a derogatory statement about her, if there was, please link and I'll believe you.
I don't really see it as wearing a tinfoil hat. Maybe a little over the top, but he states he will personally deliver the petition, to which he did, albeit in a direct e-mail instead of in person. When people give good evidence of something that can impact retail or another project, the pro Legacy just say it's stupid and move on, ignoring and refusing to give reasons why it is bad evidence. Also, looking at Kern's track record is completely viable. Yes, he helped with WoW, he probably had some really great ideas also, but then he moves on and failed miserably. He might have been a team lead, but their are checks and balances to any team, where as in his next venture he called every shot and it didn't work out, pretty much the end.
I also agree, personal attacks are useless and do no good for anyone, but, some of the mentality has been pretty bad and can even result in being compared to the tantrum, just like the other side is responsible for also being childish. The people that try to be adults or keep professional are largely overlooked in what they say.

[MoanaLisa]

I know exactly who he is, and how much team leaders for blizzard actually lead. Team lead for blizzard is mostly just a title.

To be more than fair the job designation of team lead as it is now is likely different than it was then. The number of developers then were many fewer than now and there were probably less in the way of teams.

To be a bit less than fair his tweets about it make it seem as if Rob Pardo, Tom Chilton, Jeff Kaplan and Chris Metzen were practically bystanders. I have more than a little problem with that.

Grains of salt required. The bigger the better.