Mark Kern about todays Activision Blizzard

[Yankee Zulu]

News flash

Game developer Activision Blizzard accused of hosting 'struggle sessions' for white developers to discuss their 'privilege'

https://www.theblaze.com/news/activisio ... ions-claim

https://thatparkplace.com/report-call-o ... ropagated/

[Irenaeus]

Can't hope enough for this joint to be closed as soon as possible. How's the WoW player count, the only thing propping this ****** dev up? Well, I guess they have the even shittier Deablo games.

[nyxnyx]

between **** like this and overall terrible state of game development industry, you really gotta wonder how ******** one has to be to waste their education and knowledge on this ******** (especially programmers and other software engineers).

[Element]

Until now I thought Grummz was just some random dude.

[rusty_shackleford]

Until now I thought Grummz was just some random dude.

Former Blizzard designer Mark Kern

This is actually really underselling it.
Mark Kern was one of the lead developers(credited as 'Team Lead') of the original World of Warcraft, and a producer on Diablo 2/Starcraft.

https://www.mobygames.com/person/9179/m ... n/credits/

[Irenaeus]

Mark Kern was one of the lead developers(credited as 'Team Lead') of the original World of Warcraft,

Great, one more person to hate with the power of a thousand suns.

[gastovski]

Mark Kern was one of the lead developers(credited as 'Team Lead') of the original World of Warcraft,

Great, one more person to hate with the power of a thousand suns.

But why, he is one of the best former "awaken" devs out there

Also i suspect former overwatch head left the studio because of this

[Yankee Zulu]

It is actually good to know that at least someone disgruntled or not is willing and able to talk about these things. There are few people who are willing to listen though.

[Irenaeus]

Mark Kern was one of the lead developers(credited as 'Team Lead') of the original World of Warcraft,

Great, one more person to hate with the power of a thousand suns.

But why, he as one of the best former "awaken" devs out there

Just an undying hate of WoW and its success steaming from the mid 00s, nevermind me.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

How's the WoW player count

At least 4 million.

Warlords of Draenor had a troubled development, with the dev team doubling in size, which meant that devs had to waste time not developing the expansion to teach the new hires the tools. The expansion got overhauled at least once, with the original version being "too Orc heavy". So the expansion launched at the end of 2014 unfinished. A lot of cut content like being able to place your Garrison in different zones or Garrison customizations, no Farahlon or Hellfire Peninsula zones at launch (Hellfire would be added in a patch), and no reputation questlines to progress through at endgame. So the game had no endgame. You just logged in to do the facebook mission table for a few minutes and then log off because there was literally nothing else to do. WoD had the biggest marketing campaign to date and had an exciting levelling campaign, and WoD sold the most amount of boxes since Wrath, but then the subscription numbers began to plummet due to there being nothing to retain people. Then Blizzard released the infamous 6.1, which didn't introduce any actual content but a facebook selfie camera. Subscriptions nosedived and Blizzard became too embarrassed to continue publishing the sub numbers. This also coincided with vanilla WoW private servers reaching peak popularity like Nostalrius, and the "you think you do, but you don't" line. Blizzard didn't want to admit that they screwed up.


Official sub count published until mid way through WoD.


From then on, the playerbase has used their tools to estimate the size of the playerbase. There are websites that scan the entire WoW armory and detect if a player character has changed within a certain period (ie, new piece of gear equipped, new pet or achievement obtained, etc). A large percentage of the playerbase also uses an addon called Raider.io which automatically uploads information to that website. For the past decade, WoW has followed the Call of Duty model of releasing box expansions every two years where the playerbase spikes in popularity as people return to check out the new levelling questlines and the old content they missed before resubbing. From these websites we know WoW seems to always have at least a couple million people even in between expansions.

A couple months ago, Blizzard released a subscriber graph at GDC which appears to continue from where Blizzard stopped publishing sub count during WoD, but no hard numbers were attached to the graph so again we have to rely on player made tools and estimates.


Blizzard's graph shown off at GDC



Bellular trying to estimate numbers on the GDC graph using figures from armory scans, raider.io, etc

[J1M]

Mark Kern was one of the lead developers(credited as 'Team Lead') of the original World of Warcraft,

Great, one more person to hate with the power of a thousand suns.

But why, he is one of the best former "awaken" devs out there

Also i suspect former overwatch head left the studio because of this

Pretty sure the overwatch guy was a male feminist unless you are talking about someone else from early in development.

[J1M]

How's the WoW player count

At least 4 million.

Warlords of Draenor had a troubled development, with the dev team doubling in size, which meant that devs had to waste time not developing the expansion to teach the new hires the tools. The expansion got overhauled at least once, with the original version being "too Orc heavy". So the expansion launched at the end of 2014 unfinished. A lot of cut content like being able to place your Garrison in different zones or Garrison customizations, no Farahlon or Hellfire Peninsula zones at launch (Hellfire would be added in a patch), and no reputation questlines to progress through at endgame. So the game had no endgame. You just logged in to do the facebook mission table for a few minutes and then log off because there was literally nothing else to do. WoD had the biggest marketing campaign to date and had an exciting levelling campaign, and WoD sold the most amount of boxes since Wrath, but then the subscription numbers began to plummet due to there being nothing to retain people. Then Blizzard released the infamous 6.1, which didn't introduce any actual content but a facebook selfie camera. Subscriptions nosedived and Blizzard became too embarrassed to continue publishing the sub numbers. This also coincided with vanilla WoW private servers reaching peak popularity like Nostalrius, and the "you think you do, but you don't" line. Blizzard didn't want to admit that they screwed up.


Official sub count published until mid way through WoD.


From then on, the playerbase has used their tools to estimate the size of the playerbase. There are websites that scan the entire WoW armory and detect if a player character has changed within a certain period (ie, new piece of gear equipped, new pet or achievement obtained, etc). A large percentage of the playerbase also uses an addon called Raider.io which automatically uploads information to that website. For the past decade, WoW has followed the Call of Duty model of releasing box expansions every two years where the playerbase spikes in popularity as people return to check out the new levelling questlines and the old content they missed before resubbing. From these websites we know WoW seems to always have at least a couple million people even in between expansions.

A couple months ago, Blizzard released a subscriber graph at GDC which appears to continue from where Blizzard stopped publishing sub count during WoD, but no hard numbers were attached to the graph so again we have to rely on player made tools and estimates.


Blizzard's graph shown off at GDC



Bellular trying to estimate numbers on the GDC graph using figures from armory scans, raider.io, etc

We are still waiting for someone to paste the second graph onto the first? Sad.

[Manny V]

anyone with a shred of dignity still working at Blizzard really just needs to jump ship, there's no saving that dumpster fire

[SoLong]

I've proudly only ever played WoW on private servers. Blizzard can go **** itself.

[WaterMage]

I've proudly only ever played WoW on private servers. Blizzard can go **** itself.

Ironically, those who pay have an inferior product. Much less optimized, a lot of woke nonsense(body types instead of gender in character creations, only I miss RPGs where male and females where different in stats and dialog options?), they censored even paintings




According to a Blizz former employee, Blizzard is dead

[Norfleet]

only I miss RPGs where male and females where different in stats and dialog options?), they censored even paintings

I can't think of terribly many RPGs that actually had different stats for male and female characters. Arcanum is the main one that comes to mind, and it's definitely not a common feature...or even a particularly meaningful feature, in a genre where the difference between a human and a hobbit is 1-2 points.

[Xenich]

only I miss RPGs where male and females where different in stats and dialog options?), they censored even paintings

I can't think of terribly many RPGs that actually had different stats for male and female characters. Arcanum is the main one that comes to mind, and it's definitely not a common feature...or even a particularly meaningful feature, in a genre where the difference between a human and a hobbit is 1-2 points.

Wizardry is another. I think a lot of older games that were based on early AD&D "tended" to hold to things like this (depending on how much effort they put into the game system), but a lot of this type of nuance disappeared over the years I think at first due to "simplicity" of the designs, and more recently are avoided due to political virtual signaling. The ******** gender confusion changes to systems currently is pure political pandering and has nothing do to with any logical or intelligent design to the system.

[Xenich]

I've proudly only ever played WoW on private servers. Blizzard can go **** itself.

Ironically, those who pay have an inferior product. Much less optimized, a lot of woke nonsense(body types instead of gender in character creations, only I miss RPGs where male and females where different in stats and dialog options?), they censored even paintings




According to a Blizz former employee, Blizzard is dead

What is odd as a lot of these types will go on about objectification in something as simple as the art, claiming cleavage is sexist and demeaning, but then you will see these types sometimes label themselves as nothing more than cum buckets for ******* and seriously can not see the conflict.

[WaterMage]

I can't think of terribly many RPGs that actually had different stats for male and female characters.

Wizardry, Arcanum, Dungeon Lords, The Elder Scrolls(had till oblivion), Arcanum, many Early roguelikes(including Rogue himself). VtMB din`t had different stats per say but had a different quest options and dialogs only for males and females and same for FL1/2.

objectification

Their morality doesn`t makes sense. Is all about oppressor X oppressed, since they view straight white males as the devil in their religion, anything which the average white cis straight male likes is heresy. Everything that he does not like is """progress"". This is why they worship Bear sex in Baizuo`s gate 3 but believe that cleavage is the ultimate heresy. This is why Animu games(that I don`t like) are censored but the Last of US can have sex scenes with no problem.

[Gregz]

How's the WoW player count

At least 4 million.

Warlords of Draenor had a troubled development, with the dev team doubling in size, which meant that devs had to waste time not developing the expansion to teach the new hires the tools. The expansion got overhauled at least once, with the original version being "too Orc heavy". So the expansion launched at the end of 2014 unfinished. A lot of cut content like being able to place your Garrison in different zones or Garrison customizations, no Farahlon or Hellfire Peninsula zones at launch (Hellfire would be added in a patch), and no reputation questlines to progress through at endgame. So the game had no endgame. You just logged in to do the facebook mission table for a few minutes and then log off because there was literally nothing else to do. WoD had the biggest marketing campaign to date and had an exciting levelling campaign, and WoD sold the most amount of boxes since Wrath, but then the subscription numbers began to plummet due to there being nothing to retain people. Then Blizzard released the infamous 6.1, which didn't introduce any actual content but a facebook selfie camera. Subscriptions nosedived and Blizzard became too embarrassed to continue publishing the sub numbers. This also coincided with vanilla WoW private servers reaching peak popularity like Nostalrius, and the "you think you do, but you don't" line. Blizzard didn't want to admit that they screwed up.


Official sub count published until mid way through WoD.


From then on, the playerbase has used their tools to estimate the size of the playerbase. There are websites that scan the entire WoW armory and detect if a player character has changed within a certain period (ie, new piece of gear equipped, new pet or achievement obtained, etc). A large percentage of the playerbase also uses an addon called Raider.io which automatically uploads information to that website. For the past decade, WoW has followed the Call of Duty model of releasing box expansions every two years where the playerbase spikes in popularity as people return to check out the new levelling questlines and the old content they missed before resubbing. From these websites we know WoW seems to always have at least a couple million people even in between expansions.

A couple months ago, Blizzard released a subscriber graph at GDC which appears to continue from where Blizzard stopped publishing sub count during WoD, but no hard numbers were attached to the graph so again we have to rely on player made tools and estimates.


Blizzard's graph shown off at GDC



Bellular trying to estimate numbers on the GDC graph using figures from armory scans, raider.io, etc

There was a time when Blizzard was a great company capable of making great games. That time is gone.

[Manny V]

only I miss RPGs where male and females where different in stats and dialog options?), they censored even paintings

I can't think of terribly many RPGs that actually had different stats for male and female characters. Arcanum is the main one that comes to mind, and it's definitely not a common feature...or even a particularly meaningful feature, in a genre where the difference between a human and a hobbit is 1-2 points.

nerf women pls

[Nooneatall]

between **** like this and overall terrible state of game development industry, you really gotta wonder how ******** one has to be to waste their education and knowledge on this ******** (especially programmers and other software engineers).

And they get paid like *** dude. There's no upside. Sometimes they don't even know common software engineer patterns because they were stuck working on some ****** hacked together c++ code base for years that is held together with gum and has memory leaks and segfaults everywhere (go look up the gta5 json reader)
They are not really hireable as normal devs after **** like that

https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA ... mes-by-70/

[LemonDemonGirl]

Ah yes, turning women into fruit. Still don't understand why they couldn't've remastered the woman lying down but ok

[Mondain]

Women aren't allowed to be valued for being attractive.