Rob Pardo Leaving Blizzard Entertainment

Originally Posted by Delondial

There was an Off/Topic Warning further up, but it got lost in the transition. He's pointing out the previous poster's admittedly limited perspective. Warcraft is implied through previous posts as well.

Thank you for that.

What I'm pointing out is that the argument by the poster - which has largely been echoed by Blizzard over the past two years (mostly the last year) - is very out of touch with both the WoW audience and with gamers in general.

Pardo did a lot of great things for the game, but we've evolved as a society and it's become clear that Blizzard's upper management are producing a corporate culture that doesn't just "not value" most of the gamer audience (45% of gamers are women, I don't have the LGBT numbers but it's clearly going to be more than 5%), it's disdainful of them in a very passive-aggressive way.

If Pardo's leaving is a sign of some corporate culture housecleaning (again, I'm a COO so I really focus on this stuff as it's a core part of my role in leading our organization) then I think the future for WoW and Blizzard could be very bright. If not, if it's really just Pardo taking an exit after 17 years and going to leave in place such a rotted out gamer-dude culture within the company, then it's a huge missed opportunity for the organization.

Originally Posted by Lolercaust

I would rather Blizzard tell a story that they made up and want to tell than one that has a character of every creed and sexual orientation that they were asked to tell in order to seem progressive.

Again, we're talking about side characters here. Random NPC quests, bar patrons, that sort. It's like you're reading my posts and ignoring all of the actual content to pursue some misguided crusade of against some imaginary adversary to expression. No one is asking Blizzard to change anything. Nothing. Keep the whole thing as is. It just would be a nice gesture to throw some flavor in is all.

Originally Posted by shadycharacter1

So women who dress however they want are not people?

Dress however they want? Character designers dress the characters.

no intelligent warrior woman is going to dress in full plate with a giant "stab here" boob window to distract her male enemies

Originally Posted by tristannarutofan

Ok. The person u quoted feels the same way....

like he said its just weird how people get defensive. Like its a big deal

Well the reason I am defensive is that I don't want the purity of an artistic vision ruined by someone else's hand.

Originally Posted by Delondial

Again, we're talking about side characters here. Random NPC quests, bar patrons, that sort. It's like you're reading my posts and ignoring all of the actual content to pursue some misguided crusade of against some imaginary adversary to expression. No one is asking Blizzard to change anything. Nothing. Keep the whole thing as is. It just would be a nice gesture to throw some flavor in is all.

No. You are asking Blizzard to change things. You want representation for the homosexual orientation in small side quests and the like, which is not what Blizzard is currently doing, so that would necessitate a change.
That is what I'm hesitant to agree with. I don't wish for there to be change for any reason that doesn't come from Blizzard themselves.
If they feel inspired to write homosexuality into a story, then that's great because everybody wins. But I don't like having stories changed to fit someone else's agenda. Call me narrow-minded and self-centered and say I have a limited perspective all you want. I won't yield for something I don't agree with.

Originally Posted by tristannarutofan

Dress however they want? Character designers dress the characters.

no intelligent warrior woman is going to dress in full plate with a giant "stab here" boob window to distract her male enemies

Good thing she's not a warrior then.

Originally Posted by Lolercaust

Well the reason I am defensive is that I don't want the purity of an artistic vision ruined by someone else's hand.

To reply to this in the way I want to would send us off into the stratosphere in relation to the topic. I'll restrain myself and just say that we aren't trying to ruin the purity of your story.

So much restraint.

Originally Posted by Delondial

To reply to this in the way I want to would send us off into the stratosphere in relation to the topic. I'll restrain myself and just say that we aren't trying to ruin the purity of your story.

So much restraint.

If you're having that much trouble restraining yourself you could always send a PM.

Originally Posted by jason1975

One way to determine if your argument holds water is to flip the point of view and see where it lands. Like this:

"I don't agree with adding heterosexual male characters or storylines purely for the sake of pushing boundaries or getting respect from male fanboi gamers. If Blizzard sees fit to add a male heterosexual character, I trust them to do so in a way that fits logically into the story, and I would enjoy experiencing such a story. I get enough of the male heterosexual dominant culture shoved down my throat as it is so if WoW is going to give me the same business it better be palatable."

So what did we learn about the original argument from this exercise?

1. It assumes that Male Heterosexual characters are the default value.
2. It assumes that only having male heterosexual characters is somehow a "neutral" value, rather than affirming a particular world view (in this case that only male heterosexual's are important and have stories anyone would be interested in).
3. It's naively at odds with the real world (50% of which are women)

Originally Posted by Lolercaust

I have no idea what you're trying to communicate here.

Obviously. And that's one of those things that makes me sad. Again, I think the views you express here, and your inability to see outside of your own point of view are exactly the issue with Blizzard's corporate culture right now.

Look, Blizzard isn't alone here. I'm not trying to single them out. And corporate culture goes bad for a lot of reasons, and in a lot of ways (sometimes it's just complacent, sometimes it's a mess of fiefdoms, sometimes it's a blame culture). But they're the big dog in the MMO world, and a huge player in the overall game market. And they happen to make a game that I love, but am falling out of love with it's developer's attitude on women.

So sometimes you can't change the attitudes at the top, so you have to show them the door. . .

Originally Posted by Lolercaust

If you're having that much trouble restraining yourself you could always send a PM.

That wouldn't be lucrative. You've demonstrated my "tight ship" point. I do think you are being a contrarian, and only because of the content. Narrow-minded, yes. Continuing to illustrate how absurdly misplaced your obstinate stance is would be a waste of both our time and energy. Carry on the good fight against "the agenda".

Originally Posted by tristannarutofan

Just cus wome are sexually attracted to attractive men doesnt mean that EVERY single area of fantasy doesnt exploit a womans body. And a thousand times more than men.

jaina is one of the most respectable powerful and intelligent world leaders on their planet....yet wears a giant boob window no one with her personality would wear

http://www.burnsson.ch/sylvara/monke...eclothes02.jpg
Well gee, that was so difficult to disprove... That google search took me nearly 5 whole seconds.

In other news, trivial trite in the quoted post.

Originally Posted by Delondial

That wouldn't be lucrative. You've demonstrated my "tight ship" point. I do think you are being a contrarian, and only because of the content. Narrow-minded, yes. Continuing to illustrate how absurdly misplaced your obstinate stance is would be a waste of both our time and energy. Carry on the good fight against "the agenda".

What would it look like if I wasn't narrow-minded and still didn't agree with you? Or am I narrow-minded simply because I don't agree with you?
I'm not trying to halt the advance of the LGBTQ cause; I've indirectly helped in furthering it by supporting the normalization of LGBTQ in our culture.
But there are some things I simply find more important.

Originally Posted by Lolercaust

What would it look like if I wasn't narrow-minded and still didn't agree with you? Or am I narrow-minded simply because I don't agree with you?
I'm not trying to halt the advance of the LGBTQ cause; I've indirectly helped in furthering it by supporting the normalization of LGBTQ in our culture.
But there are some things I simply find more important.

If you weren't narrow minded, you wouldn't be so silly as to prop up some sort of imaginary grand artistic vision that would somehow come crumbling with the inclusion of some random side quests or NPCs. This is Blizzard we're talking about here. If there is one thing the community at large can agree on, it's how disposable the lore has been. And it's hard to take your noble claims seriously when you've already stated the LGBT is "shoved down your throat", and how they're promoting some sort of "agenda". It makes it looks more like you're just hiding under a "free expression" banner rather than admit you're just against putting that content in because you're sick of it.

Happy 4th.

No one really cares about your sexuality, only you do. I'd play the fuck out of a game with a bunch of gay men or only gay men characters if it was fucking awesome. I wouldn't ask for there to be straight men. It wouldn't make sense, if the Universe was consistent to it's writing.

World of Warcraft is a fictional Universe. LGBT's don't have to exist in a fictional Universe, quit projecting your own struggles into a video game and is FICTIONAL Universe. Which is what Rob Pardo was saying.

Who is he and what did he do? I mean what did he do that i can see. I can google that he was producer yada yada, but what did he actually did?

Obviously this is because of a mess he caused at D3. Sad, but oh well

Originally Posted by ataraxia123

Obviously this is because of a mess he caused at D3. Sad, but oh well

So guy who fucked up D3 is leaving? Sounds like things might get better at Blizz, this is good news then. Hurray!

Originally Posted by Oluchi

Who is he and what did he do? I mean what did he do that i can see. I can google that he was producer yada yada, but what did he actually did?

He was the lead designer for Vanilla wow and TBC. He's been a designer for the other expansions as well, but not lead unfortunately. I think his title was Chief Creative Officer.

Rob Vs Ghost Crawler comments? lol this doesn't make sense

never heard of him as far as im concerned we could do with a clean sweep fire all the devs and replace them with harder working more passionate and more skilled game programmers.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/mi...betray-players

"Blizzard's senior vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, has said players would feel "betrayed" if a micro-transaction system, of the sort common in free-to-play MMO games, was implemented in World of Warcraft."
Even the old dev's were against the cash-shop Actiblizzard decided to implement. No wonder he left. The only people left playing the game are the ones who think it's okay to have no content for a year and happily pay subscribtion fee for them to design more store mounts and pets (and patches that require you to pay another fee to get, except they call them "expansions")