- "You think you do, but you don't" response to a fan's question,
- Shutting down Nostalrius; the largest, non-profit, private vanilla WOW server ever
- Ignoring the very loud legacy community
- Censoring any and all discussions on the official forums about private servers and legacy content in general (players are reporting that they have been banned just for bringing up things they liked in older expansions)
These actions have effectively broken most of Blizzard's core values.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html
Specifically the values I feel Blizzard have broken are as follows:
- gameplay FIRST - Everything we do at Blizzard Entertainment is based on the success of the gaming experiences we provide our players. The goal of each discipline within the company -- be it art, programming or customer support -- is to make our games as fun as possible for as many people as we can reach.
- commit to QUALITY - “Blizzard polish” doesn’t just refer to our gameplay experiences, but to every aspect of our jobs. We approach each task carefully and seriously. We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great.
- every voice MATTERS - Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players and of each member of the company. Every employee is encouraged to speak up, listen, be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.
- lead RESPONSIBLY - Our products and practices can affect not only our employees and players -- but the industry at large. As one of the world’s leading game companies, we’re committed to making ethical decisions, always keeping our players in mind, and setting a strong example of professionalism and excellence at all times.
- learn & GROW - The games industry is ever-changing. Technology improves, techniques change, and design philosophies become outdated. Since the founding of Blizzard Entertainment, we’ve worked to improve through experience, teaching one another and cultivating the desire to be the best at what we do. We see this as an individual responsibility as well as a company one. Employees can count on their peers, managers, and the company itself to be supportive and help them gain the knowledge and training they need.
I would love to see Blizzard go back to their roots. Go back to what made Blizzard, Blizzard. And even though they are, hands down, one of the most successful gaming studios in the world it's not about the money; it's always been about the fans. After all without us, the legacy server community, there would be no Blizzard today. We helped build Blizzard. All we're asking for is Blizzard to listen to our massive movement to bring legacy servers online. We're not asking for this to be free. We will gladly pay the normal subscription for this. We would even pay the normal subscription plus an extra fee to access legacy content. However, I think it would be a wiser decision to just make the regular subscription an ALL-ACCESS PASS to retail and legacy.
Keep this in mind. A long time ago a very popular game dominated Warcraft 3: DOTA. For years this mod existed and Blizzard did nothing with it. Had Blizzard captured the opportunity they could've been the absolute leaders in MOBAs today. Don't let history repeat itself. Blizzard has an opportunity to capture and embrace the idea of Legacy servers. By doing this they would become leaders in the MMO scene by being the largest studio to set a trend that could potentially lead to other MMO studios mimicking.
This has been a long time coming. I think now is the great time for Blizzard to embrace their Legacy.
