Will Blizzard ever tell the truth?

[Eapoe]

Not blaming the game itself.

Blizzard does like to lie, often.

For instance, about Arcanocrystal - "We don't want to nerf something players already have."
Ok, fair point...
...except they nerf legenaries in the same time.

Ok, legendaries, OP! So let's nerf dungeon items.

Say, Drape of Shame? YEAH, nerf!


When (IF) is Blizzard going to stop lying?

They employ quite a few competent designers.

It is sad that they are not allowed to express themselves.

Saying don't want to nerf doesn't mean will not nerf. Honestly, how is your point a lie?
At least use better a example(s).

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You know, people say they said that, but I can't actually find a firsthand source. Only references to a deleted post by a forum poster speaking on their behalf as a software developer.

The closest I can find to that sentiment are from CM posts in 2008 and 2010 by Drysc and Zarhym, respectively:

Drysc: "...We were at one time internally discussing the possibility fairly seriously, but the long term interest in continued play on them couldn't justify the extremely large amount of development and support resources it would take to implement and maintain them..."

Zarhym: "...There's no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes, and we don't intend to invent one so that a very small minority of players can play what we feel would be an inferior cousin of the World of Warcraft of today."

Back in 2010, Tom Chilton said that, at the time, they "probably" wouldn't consider "pre-Cataclysm" servers because the team didnt think they would retain enough players to be worth creating, maintaining, and supporting a second version of the game. In 2012 GC expressed the same sentiment on Twitter.

I don't think it was a dev comment, it was a comment made by [cant post them by name] that was discussed when Blizz flew them to HQ to talk.
As far as their points, well, only time will tell if Drysc is correct or not with long term investment. After all, there is the issue that people's will have to pay a sub again vs playing for free. People say they are willing to do that, and I'm willing to believe there are players that will pay for the stability alone of what a Classic server provides.
Zharym is also being truthful in stating a switch doesn't exist. AS FAr creating classic servers, it seems that the recent job openings they advertised for would be to make Classic. So it seems Blizz disagrees with him and wants to create them.
Only time will tell if they succeed and have the staying power to keep it going and making more servers.

[Kathranis]

I don't think it was a dev comment, it was a comment made by [cant post them by name] that was discussed when Blizz flew them to HQ to talk.
As far as their points, well, only time will tell if Drysc is correct or not with long term investment. After all, there is the issue that people's will have to pay a sub again vs playing for free. People say they are willing to do that, and I'm willing to believe there are players that will pay for the stability alone of what a Classic server provides.
Zharym is also being truthful in stating a switch doesn't exist. AS FAr creating classic servers, it seems that the recent job openings they advertised for would be to make Classic. So it seems Blizz disagrees with him and wants to create them.
Only time will tell if they succeed and have the staying power to keep it going and making more servers.

Times have also changed a lot since 2008-2012, when those statements were made. Back then, WoW was Blizzard's only real revenue stream and SCII, D3, and Project Titan were all in development, meaning their resources were already being spread across multiple projects that weren't self-sufficient yet.

Compare to 2017. They've grown the WoW team considerably and the game has by all accounts stabilized with Legion. SC2 and D3 are winding down, HotS and HS provide strong revenue streams, OW was a massive GotY-winning hit that has already generated over $1 billion in its first year, and several unannounced projects are in incubation.

Additionally, interest in legacy servers seems to have grown (at least as a topic of discussion), there have been shakeups in the senior staff, and the live game has continued to progress further and further from ye olde Classic gameplay, with even more permanent changes to the world coming.

I'm not at all saying it'll be a success, but I can totally understand why now would be the time they choose to give it a try. It is probably a relatively low-stakes investment considering their overall portfolio of games.

[Eon Drache]

Would most of you actually believe them if they did tell the truth? Conspiracy runs deep in the WoW community these days.

They would not, actually. When WoD launched live without all of Tanaan Jungle people claimed it was changed. They pushed it back because they couldn't get it up. When they stated pre beta that Tanaan would be patch content added later. Even to this day a huge part of the player base STILL believes Tanaan was pushed back.

[Rekz]

The reason people believe there is malicious intent is a lifetime of watching corporations in every field (not just video games) around the world swear up and down they are doing things honestly only in the end to reveal that, yes, there really was malicious intent. Its in the news every day that yet another corporation was corrupt, rigging the system, taking bribes, promising oversight and then ignoring crimes, etc. of course theres going to be plenty of people who suspect that, behind the scenes, blizzard is guilty of similar things such as rigging arena rankings, failing to fix problems out of sheer laziness, lying because they can, etc. it doesnt really help when they hire a lawyer like ion who gives very lawyer-type responses. Sometimes ion sounds like he is defending Enron with his carefully chosen words.

Im not saying i believe blizzard is corrupt. Im saying that they are a corporation and that will draw criticism from people who have been wronged by corporations.

Good point and by the way, Blizzard IS corrupt.