Let's not forget, Blizzard isn't just Blizzard, and hasn't been for a long time.
Its activision-blizzard, and activision has been as bad as EA. And there's
something about being voted "worst company in America" for years
that just "sticks" in my mind. Unfortunately as of late, Blizzard's name
has been dragged to the pits.
As someone who grew up in internet cafe's in my teenage years (I'm 31 now)
and in the very early rise of WoW, I saw a craze like no other. It was devastating.
Everyone and their grandma wanted or went to net cafe's to play WoW, because
PC's were expensive and internet unreliable, so it wasn't worth it, it was cheaper
to pay to play in net cafe's, even if getting a WoW account at that point was very hard.
Net cafe was literally "renting" accounts, because nobody had one.
That was the vanilla I remember. The madness that took the world by storm.
And you know what Blizzard did after they made all the money in the world?
When Burning Crusade came out, they made all gear so far,
obsolete.
And that's all they had, the acquiring of gear. That was their main hook.
And you know what vanilla players felt when years of their life were
replaced with "new content"? Betrayal. And most stopped playing.
And vanilla was the pits, the hardest grind ever, as hard as old school runescape.
Here are my two chars on runescape, played for literally decades, both old school
and new old school.
https://secure.runescape.com/m=hisc...71.496214644.1555188044-1956840339.1541792161
https://secure.runescape.com/m=hiscore_oldschool/hiscorepersonal.ws
WoW made the same mistake Jagex did. They tried to cater to new audiences
and reshaped WoW into something old players didn't recognize or care for.
I quit runescape after 15 years playing, because Jagex had no shame,
ruined their franchise with a shittier version of the old runescape
because they wanted to make another "WoW-clone" for the kids.
And WoW has never captured the same crazed fanbase ever since.
No, I'm not surprised if Blizzard started selling real life kittens through their
in-game store now. Or baked beans. They might as well at this point.
My two cents.
