Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021, Activision Blizzard Sued By California

Update: Added Blizzard's statement on the lawsuit

Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
  • Druid
    • Born Anew's (Conduit) primary stat bonus reduces to 20 upon the beginning of a new encounter.
      • Developers’ note: The intent of this bonus is to provide a benefit when using resurrections in combat. But it is best to avoid situations where players might feel compelled to min/max something like this before starting a pull.
  • Priest
    • Shadow
      • Shadow Crash's (Talent) ground visual will now match the area effect.
      • Void Volley's (PvP Talent) ground visuals will now match the area effect and has more defined edges.
  • Warrior
    • Arms
      • Fixed an issue where Swift Patrol (Niya Soulbind) caused the auto-attack timer to reset.

Creatures ad NPCs
  • Players now have a 2 second grace period to keep their vision of targets within the area contained by the Soul Chains between the Soul Cages during the Mor'geth encounter.
  • Reduced the number of Prince Renathals in Sinfall. Press F to pay respects.

Dungeons and Raids
  • Sanctum of Domination
    • Defeating Sylvanas Windrunner on Mythic difficulty will now reward 2 Vengeance’s Reins.
    • Remnant of Ner’zhul
      • Players can no longer cause a second orb to become non-interactable while carrying an Orb of Torment.
  • Plaguefall
    • You must now defeat the first three bosses of the dungeon before the door to Margrave Stradama opens on all difficulties.
      • Developers’ note: The first two bosses of the dungeon were frequently being skipped in lower-difficulty dungeons, typically by groups who were trying to earn Renown much faster than intended. To improve players' Renown earnings, we've also added a chance for Renown to be earned by completing layers in Torghast (see hotfix below).

Items and Rewards
  • Teleporter Repair Kits should no longer have a Unique count and will now stack to 50.
  • Repaired Riftkeys will also now stack to 50.
    • Developers’ note: Early in development, Teleporter Repair Kits and Repaired Riftkeys were only available from the vendor. Based on player feedback of not knowing if they were worth purchasing, we decided to have them drop occasionally as well. Now that these items dropped and became out of player’s control, we should have removed the unique cap on the Teleporter Repair Kits then. Also, since you have access to purchasing the Teleporter Repair Kits or Repaired Rift Keys, we are disabling them from going to mail if you loot one with a full inventory so they will no longer fill up your mailbox.

  • The item levels of Conduits sold by the Rated PvP vendor have been corrected.
  • Fixed an issue where the Salvaged Fusion Amplifier was not dropping for Marksmanship and Beastmaster Hunters.

Quests
  • Fixed an issue during “Nal’ragas” that caused internal text to be visible to users of certain nameplate addons.

Torghast
  • Renown is now a possible reward from Torghast completions, with better chances at Renown coming from higher Torghast difficulties.

Activision Blizzard Sued By California
According to a Bloomberg law article, Activision Blizzard is being sued over 'frat boy' culture after a 2-year investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. For more information, check out the article below, and read the full court filing.



Blizzard provided Polygon with a statement responding to the lawsuit:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
We value diversity and strive to foster a workplace that offers inclusivity for everyone. There is no place in our company or industry, or any industry, for sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind. We take every allegation seriously and investigate all claims. In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue.

The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.

The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past several years and continuing since the initial investigation started, we’ve made significant changes to address company culture and reflect more diversity within our leadership teams. We’ve amplified internal programs and channels for employees to report violations, including the “ASK List” with a confidential integrity hotline, and introduced an Employee Relations team dedicated to investigating employee concerns. We have strengthened our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and combined our Employee Networks at a global level, to provide additional support. Employees must also undergo regular anti-harassment training and have done so for many years.

We put tremendous effort in creating fair and rewarding compensation packages and policies that reflect our culture and business, and we strive to pay all employees fairly for equal or substantially similar work. We take a variety of proactive steps to ensure that pay is driven by non-discriminatory factors. For example, we reward and compensate employees based on their performance, and we conduct extensive anti-discrimination trainings including for those who are part of the compensation process.

We are confident in our ability to demonstrate our practices as an equal opportunity employer that fosters a supportive, diverse, and inclusive workplace for our people, and we are committed to continuing this effort in the years to come. It is a shame that the DFEH did not want to engage with us on what they thought they were seeing in their investigation.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 9.1 Hotfixes - July 21, 2021, Activision Blizzard Sued By California started by Stoy View original post
Published on 2021-07-22 02:18 AM
356 Comments
Comments 350 Comments
  1. RaoBurning's Avatar
    Never been happier to let my sub lapse and play some FF14 instead. These shit heels aren't getting a penny for the foreseeable future.
  1. bonch's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    "California Department of Fair Employment"

    Government agencies often twist everything out of context to try and be as obnoxious as possible. Willing to bet most of the accusations are greatly exaggerated.
    This isn't going to work.
  1. Sorshen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    "California Department of Fair Employment"

    Government agencies often twist everything out of context to try and be as obnoxious as possible. Willing to bet most of the accusations are greatly exaggerated.
    The woman that killed herself was just pranking her supervisor, right?
  1. Doombringer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    I see the twitter witch hunt has also started. Random accusations against Morheim and Metzen being thrown around. Does anyone ever wonder whether there is any real justice in going after people decades later for something that was just the normative culture at the time?

    This is just another example of a rabble of social justice mobs trying to virtue signal by being as mindlessly aggressive against any of the suspects, even if they have to make up some. These are the modern day witch hunts instigated by everyone with a social studies degree trying to desperately prove to the world they have a use and purpose.

    There is neither sense nor justice behind any of this.
    I don't agree with witch hunts. People are going to point fingers all over the place because of this, it's just human nature.

    One can certainly wonder if Morhaime and Metzen's departures were related to A) seeing Blizzard become a shell of its former self under Activision or B) getting out before they could be blamed for the garbage culture that took root and began to fester inside their company. Or both.

    I want to believe it was purely A.

    Was it Blizzard's rocket upward to hugenormity that did it? Hire scads of people to fill the ranks as your company so rapidly expands... suddenly you realize you hired a bunch of creeps, but now you're too dependent on them to let them go? Worse, they get good-boy points from higher ups installed by Activision, so they're doubly protected? Who knows. One can let speculation run rampant. Any way you slice it, there's been something rotten at Blizzard for a while now.
  1. Video Games's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sorshen View Post
    The woman that killed herself was just pranking her supervisor, right?
    yeah. It's on youtube to watch even
  1. thelordymir's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    I see the twitter witch hunt has also started. Random accusations against Morheim and Metzen being thrown around. Does anyone ever wonder whether there is any real justice in going after people decades later for something that was just the normative culture at the time?

    This is just another example of a rabble of social justice mobs trying to virtue signal by being as mindlessly aggressive against any of the suspects, even if they have to make up some. These are the modern day witch hunts instigated by everyone with a social studies degree trying to desperately prove to the world they have a use and purpose.

    There is neither sense nor justice behind any of this.
    Someone's an incel by the looks of it.
  1. FuxieDK's Avatar
    Plaguefall
    You must now defeat the first three bosses of the dungeon before the door to Margrave Stradama opens on all difficulties.
    Developers’ note: The first two bosses of the dungeon were frequently being skipped in lower-difficulty dungeons, typically by groups who were trying to earn Renown much faster than intended.
    I did Plaguefall yesterday (double weekly quest), and we skipped the first two bosses without any problems.

    Also, how is Renown earned from dungeons?
  1. Dracullus's Avatar
    No matter what will happen, truth is always good. I won't lie, I liked Afrasiabi when I saw him on Legion or BfA panels, he had really good charisma on stage. But can't deny his departure was VERY fishy.

    As for rest, in situation like that you can't even tell who was monster, who was good guy, who was a victim and who pretended to be blind. But I don't think Brack will keep his job if he's mentioned in document, doesn't matter if he's guilty (ignoring this stuff) or not, he will go just for PR reason.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    I see the twitter witch hunt has also started. Random accusations against Morheim and Metzen being thrown around. Does anyone ever wonder whether there is any real justice in going after people decades later for something that was just the normative culture at the time?

    This is just another example of a rabble of social justice mobs trying to virtue signal by being as mindlessly aggressive against any of the suspects, even if they have to make up some. These are the modern day witch hunts instigated by everyone with a social studies degree trying to desperately prove to the world they have a use and purpose.

    There is neither sense nor justice behind any of this.
    Funny thing, cause Blizzard was part of SJW 'culture' and witch hunts. I remind that people like Swifty or voice actor for Kael'Thas were thrown under a bus just with accusation as well. I guess this is karma. I think more people from community would back Blizzard in hard time like now if Blizzard wouldn't pretend they don't know a guy from community 5 minutes after witch hunt starts.

    Or HQ though if they double down on all of this SJW stuff and pretend to be more californian than California, their future problem will magically vanish, which is typical upper corporate behaviour.

    Quote Originally Posted by FuxieDK View Post
    I did Plaguefall yesterday (double weekly quest), and we skipped the first two bosses without any problems.

    Also, how is Renown earned from dungeons?
    Probably you did it before hotfix. And Renown is earned in dungeons randomly, but only as catch up. You always get final 3 Renowns before weekly cap from two weekly quests (1000 Anima + Korthia one) and campaign (it will be 2 a week after campaign finish).
  1. Zmagoslav's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Doombringer View Post
    You're not going to score any points white-knighting for Blizzard on this one, I'm sorry to say.

    They have and will have plenty of testimonies to back this up. Sounds like it was a cesspit there that tried its damnedest to make you think it was the most magical place on earth.

    The only place more 'frat boy' than a big video game developer is a video game publisher, and ActiBlizz is both.
    He's not wrong...
    As somebody who works at a company which both develops and publishes games (it's just online slot-games, not video-games, but that doesn't matter here) i have experienced these "cube-crawls" and "video-gaming during office hours".
    What i can tell you about it is: It's not just men participating.

    The allegations state:
    - male employees do this
    - male employees do that
    ...

    Can we deny it? No
    Do females participate? Yes --- Does the court care? No, that's not the topic of these allegations. Kaching...
  1. Thelxi's Avatar
    Things are really unraveling over there lol.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Discussions of witch hunts are irrelevant. This is not twitter or reddit trying to cancel Blizzard, this is the state conducting a long and thorough investigation resulting in legal action against the company.
  1. Foxhoundn's Avatar
    So - ALL those players who crucified and left Method last year because of the Priest, what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna still play the game made by literally the same type of people?

    What about all the streamers and hosts that were so quick to cut all ties with Method, you better not be playing any more WoW, unless you're the hypocritical **** we think you are
  1. Dracullus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Foxhoundn View Post
    What about all the streamers and hosts that were so quick to cut all ties with Method, you better not be playing any more WoW, unless you're the hypocritical **** we think you are
    Who is "we"? More hypocrites? I hate when someone pretend it's above it all like he descent from fucking heaven.
  1. sanaubia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Foxhoundn View Post
    So - ALL those players who crucified and left Method last year because of the Priest, what are you gonna do now? Are you gonna still play the game made by literally the same type of people?

    What about all the streamers and hosts that were so quick to cut all ties with Method, you better not be playing any more WoW, unless you're the hypocritical **** we think you are
    My guess is that they will just ignore this and keep playing
  1. Ticj's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lorgar Aurelian View Post
    sounds like it goes back to atleast 2013.

    https://twitter.com/skrutsick/status...06293495762944
    Lol, so right when WoD was in development? There was no content because all the male developers were busy playing call of duty
  1. Aesahaettr's Avatar
    The state wouldn't sue if it didn't believe it had an almost watertight case either, so it's pretty damning. Seen some former employees on Twitter raising their personal anecdotes about the work culture, sounds like it's been going on for many years, and if that behaviour was so embedded in the culture as it seems it's going to have been going on long before that. As pointed out, the named individuals had been with Blizzard pre-merger. So this isn't even a Actiblizzard bad thing. It goes way back into the golden days.

    I am considering letting my sub lapse because of this. Not going to play that other game because I think it looks shite, but I'd walk away from MMOs entirely and get some time back quite gladly.
  1. Sett's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Thelxi View Post
    Things are really unraveling over there lol.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Discussions of witch hunts are irrelevant. This is not twitter or reddit trying to cancel Blizzard, this is the state conducting a long and thorough investigation resulting in legal action against the company.
    Thanks you said it nicer to whatever I was gonna type.


    Wish this was uncovered sooner.
  1. Azerate's Avatar
    Horrible stuff. Afrasiabi sounds like a completely demoralized degenerate. Sadly, these kinds of behaviors are very frequent it seems. It's good all of this is coming to light so that the change may come. It sucks to be a woman in the gaming industry, as well as in any other workplace, if this is the kind of shit you have to deal with on daily basis. What a shame.

    Of all the controversies so far, this is the actual bad stuff, and I hope the gamerzzz forget their idiotic idea of defending predators "because they haven't been punished by a court", which should be easier cause they hate blizz already for completely irrelevant things

    Just eww

    Quote Originally Posted by Yas-Queen Rochana View Post
    I see the twitter witch hunt has also started. Random accusations against Morheim and Metzen being thrown around. Does anyone ever wonder whether there is any real justice in going after people decades later for something that was just the normative culture at the time?
    Just because sexual harassment was rampant and no one dared speak about it doesn't mean it was "the normative culture" you piece of shit. People like you genuinely disgust me and I don't care if I get infracted for this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    If she was a victim of this and had such a horrible experience then why the hell she brags about working for Blizzard in her Twitter bio?

    Also. the rest of that bio screams #metoo #feminazi bullshit to me. Cancel culture at its best.
    Oh look, another idiot.
  1. uuuhname's Avatar
    people on one hand saying fuck Blizz but also saying it's woke to treat women like human beings. gamers still wondering why people call them incels.
  1. BaumanKing's Avatar
    Huh, so that's why Alex Afrasiabi just vanished. When will Blizzard remove all references to him in the game?
  1. MrLachyG's Avatar
    Does nobody here want to talk about the hotfixes?
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