Message from J. Allen Brack

[RobertMugabe]

But there were almost no developpers fired. One guy from IT. Rest were just people hired for diversity quota, or are we really going to just ignore that most of these people represent a certain part of the lgbqt community?

So you've also made a thread saying exactly the same thing. But are you ever gonna back up this claim?

Otherwise I call bullshit on this

[bobrock1982]

Scum. You are absolute scum!!! I felt sick reading this corpo drivel. You've lost a customer. Was planning to renew my sub for 8.1.5 after being unsubbed since September. Not anymore. Go to hell.

[sylenna]

I love how we have somehow put a gate as to what "gaming" is... Remember back when anything that was electronic and was a little game was... A game? Most games we used to get called nerds for playing, are now "casual mobile ripoffs" ice climbers, there is hundreds of games like that on mobile that... Apparently arnt games, but back then sure as hell were


Its like going to a baseball game and saying. "You fucking 12 year olds. This isn't real baseball, get the fuck off the field casuals, your ruining real baseball just by existing!"

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So the fans hating on and meming diablo immortal is the cause of these firings? I'm confused what your saying.

when you look at the curve of the share you can see one specific date where it all went downhill.


well, mobile games are casual. quick startup, quick actions, put down in an instant, mostly not real-time. a real game per my definition is something where you sit down in front of your pc monitor and fire up something with a few gigabytes on your drives. a game which lets you mod it maybe. that is a real game to me.

[EkyuGames]

I just can't make sense of any of this. Garrosh seeing Thrall's Horde for the first time.

[apelsinjuice]

20% more content wont help when the content is trash

[Depakote]

It's getting kind of pathetic. To go from the most successful game developer in the world that designed monsters like Wrath of the Lich King and Diablo to apologizing and justifying greed-based corporate decisions after hemorrhaging money and subscriptions from years of bad decisions. The artists get a severance package while the rats in suits re-structure to suck the last bit of blood out of the IP's they still have treading water.

This 100%.

[Al Gorefiend]

Please stop pretending this is the first massive layoff Blizzard did. They had one in Cataclysm/MoP era as well. They then hired a bunch more professional developers and spent all of WoD training them. Y'all don't remember their excuse for why WoD sucked? "We had a bunch of people to train!"

[Pacster]

Please stop pretending this is the first massive layoff Blizzard did. They had one in Cataclysm/MoP era as well. They then hired a bunch more professional developers and spent all of WoD training them. Y'all don't remember their excuse for why WoD sucked? "We had a bunch of people to train!"

Well, we currently got a pretty toxic community around Blizzard. What I do not understand is how certain people can blame the community for it. I mean, it wasn't always like that...it turned into it in many, many years. Blizzard cut CMs and GMs(not only in numbers but as well in rights), the community felt more and more like Blizz does not really care for them at all(let's let scripts handle the community).
We had Betas where most reported bugs ended up in the release version(which have in some cases been a shame for an AAA-title). We get more and more lootboxes, time sinks and obvious cash grabs introduced. At the same time we had to listen to stuff like this post of Brack that had nothing to do with the reality we see on our screens. The community got pissed and toxic for a reason(and not over night)...and the reason is directly linked to Blizzard. Cutting even more public relations staff will not make that situation ANY better. Many players put a lot of faith in Blizzard and they would have bought any Blizz title without of even reading a review ahead. You have to make quite a number of mistakes to jeopardize all that and end up in this publicity hell Blizz is currently in. And I think hardly any of those mistakes have been made by the people that are getting fired now(and whoever is repsonsible for that decision likely made the next big mistake. But why stopping when you are on such a great run, right? =))...

[Claymore]

Let's face it, we all knew that when J. Allen Brack got this position he'd just become a mouthpiece for the ones who have real control.

It sucks, but this was my initial thought as well. Brack doesn't seem a bad dude, but he also hasn't ever really conveyed much passion, either. Obviously, everyone always goes back to the "You think you do, but you don't" moment (which, yeah, was SUPER bad and condescending), but even beyond that, he rarely comes across as someone passionate about the *games* or the *gamers*. Could just be that he's camera-shy, but he definitely hasn't conveyed any sense of leadership so far. I mean... WoW is in a tough spot, Heroes of the Storm is basically on maintenance mode, Overwatch isn't looking so hot anymore, and obviously the "Diablo Immortal" fiasco...

And then to top it off with THIS...

Yeah, this isn't looking good. At this point, it's going to be hard to associate him with anything *other* than Blizzard's increasing number of failures. If he's really President of the company now, and he really gives a shit about Blizzard -- both its games and its employees -- then he needs to start showing some real leadership, and take some kind of meaningful action to restoring Blizzard to its former glory.

Also, I really wish someone would tell Bobby Kotick to go fuck himself. Brack can't do that, because I'm sure there is a board that would remove him from his position, but *someone* needs to.

[FelPlague]

when you look at the curve of the share you can see one specific date where it all went downhill.


well, mobile games are casual. quick startup, quick actions, put down in an instant, mostly not real-time. a real game per my definition is something where you sit down in front of your pc monitor and fire up something with a few gigabytes on your drives. a game which lets you mod it maybe. that is a real game to me.

and when did casual become a bad thing? Wow is THE CASUAL MMO
the whole reason it succeeded was because compared to the other MMO's it was casual.

[Neufab]

Bobby's salary in 2017 was 28 millions, or 775 * $36.000.,
Activision CFO Dennis Durkin made more than $15.000.000 last year.
Last year was also the best ever for the company.

What a bunch of corporate assholes and J.Allen Brack is sadly nothing but a lapdog who's been ordered to control the damage.

[FelPlague]

It's getting kind of pathetic. To go from the most successful game developer in the world that designed monsters like Wrath of the Lich King and Diablo to apologizing and justifying greed-based corporate decisions after hemorrhaging money and subscriptions from years of bad decisions. The artists get a severance package while the rats in suits re-structure to suck the last bit of blood out of the IP's they still have treading water.

So like every company ever? nintendo with thier horrid online services, the shitty partner system and their absolute fuckwitt sesne on youtube and streaming.
Valve with just... everything...
Bioware with all its bullshittery
What company has NOT had a point of "oops we fucked up... Well we are just gunna ignore/deny it"

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Bobby's salary in 2017 was 28 millions, or 775 * $36.000.,
Activision CFO Dennis Durkin made more than $15.000.000 last year.
Last year was also the best ever for the company.

What a bunch of corporate assholes and J.Allen Brack is sadly nothing but a lapdog who's been ordered to control the damage.

Well yeah... thats his job... if he didnt he would be fired, what can you suspect?

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Please stop pretending this is the first massive layoff Blizzard did. They had one in Cataclysm/MoP era as well. They then hired a bunch more professional developers and spent all of WoD training them. Y'all don't remember their excuse for why WoD sucked? "We had a bunch of people to train!"

1. they did not make that excuse we did, what they said is that "Development may be slow as we train our new devs" which lead to the long ssiege of orgrimmar drought, followed by possibly the wod drought.
2. yeah pretty much they wil be hiring a bunch of devs again.

[Deventh]

How about we just let you die, because there are about 3,000 people employed by Blizzard.

How about you shut your mouth, huh? Because losing a job at a corrupt company is not the same as losing a single life. And Blizzard deserves to go down. I mean Activision, this is not even Blizzard anymore.

[barrsftw]

Only thing I must say to J Allen Brack:

mobile gaming is not gaming, its mild entertainment at BEST.
Hardcore gaming, real gaming, ESport is PC. focus on PC gaming or you will loose way too many gamers.

Unfortunately it seems as though Blizzard is willing to lose these gamers to appeal to a market that's 20x bigger than the PC gaming market. It sucks for us, but can you really blame them? They'll be getting their games in the hands of more people and will make more money from it. It's a win-win for them... the niche PC gaming community is the odd group out though.

[arandomuser]

after watching bellulars video on it, he seems to know his stuff, it seems right on, increasing developer staff 20% more game and more content, + +

[barrsftw]

and when did casual become a bad thing? Wow is THE CASUAL MMO
the whole reason it succeeded was because compared to the other MMO's it was casual.

Exactly. You can't really blame blizzard. It's what people want (obviously).

[FelPlague]

Exactly. You can't really blame blizzard. It's what people want (obviously).

Casuals are not a bad thing, they are just a different section of gamers.
its like saying "RTS gamers are not real gamers" yes they are, just a different genre.

Casual is a sub genre, like "Action adventure"
but yeah wow is the casual mmo and succeeded becuase it was casual

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How about we just let you die, because there are about 3,000 people employed by Blizzard.

Actually there is almost 10,000 but...

[Lorgar Aurelian]

While it sucks for thoses who are out of a job cutting unneeded people to get more devs seems like a good thing to me.

[dacoolist]

Sadly layoffs are part of life - Blizzard had too many employees. As much as we would like to point fingers and call people out on mmo-c.com for being 'experts' when most of us are fucken clueless to the corporate layoff process.. You need to have a level head and move forward.

I'm sorry to hear about my loved community managers, but this is life fam

[sylenna]

and when did casual become a bad thing? Wow is THE CASUAL MMO
the whole reason it succeeded was because compared to the other MMO's it was casual.

casual as in i can play for ten minutes while waiting for something / someone. WoW is casual or maybe normal, since hardcore is only fun to a niche player demographic. mobile games are only casual since they fit into small spaces of time whilst WoW and other "bigger" games take up much more time, hardware and dedication. even if they are casually played and definitely when you play competetive.

also, WoW isn't anywhere near p2w whilst many smartphone games are blatant cash grabs.