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danniswrites · 4 months ago

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World Of Warcraft Took Away Wrath Of The Lich King. They are changing Classic, a mode that is supposed to be like the early days of WOW. It's more challenging. People tend to be much older, and nicer! We who are signing this petition want our servers back, and we want the game not to be updated as the petition-writer explained so well.

Think of a video game as a novel with a very interesting plot. You'd be upset if a character you liked died for no reason, wouldn't you? I write young adult science fiction. So I am well aware of what makes a good story. A huge part of that is the characters you write about. Blizzard has good writers, but this decision to kill off characters we cared about, just to jerk our emotions around is beyond me. Like many other gamers on WOW, I couldn't understand how killing off dozens of NPCs who had backstory and were likeable characters, added in any way to the story of Cata. I didn't when the expansion was new. I still don't.

I went over to Classic because the servers are a lot less hostile, and because my favorite guild is there. A guild is like a club. You help each other out by doing quests together that you couldn't complete alone, or making things for them to wear or use through your professions.

I use the reporting function often when on World of Warcraft because players are so toxic. With a right-click of the person's name, I can send a report to a Game Master [GM] so one of WOW's terrific customer service reps can address the problem.

I know since COVID it's hard to get enough people to handle these positions, and I've seen plenty of complaints online in my social media from workers who feel overloaded and sexually harassed working for Blizzard. These reports distress me very much. There is a larger problem in our country of housing being too expensive for low-income workers, many of whom work for these large companies. So worker shortages are common, and WOW is suffering, too.

I also play Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, or SWTOR. This game is a lot more pleasant because chat is not as toxic. So, I spend more time over there. These games are similar in that the maps are huge, and quests have interesting stories. NPCs or Non-Player Characters, are the characters you interact with in the game who are not other players. They sell you things and buy your junk items. They open a window for you to use the Auction House where you can sell things to players [Galactic Market on SWTOR]. NPCs give you quests, they have a problem and ask you to solve it, either by gathering things, killing animals, or killing enemies, or doing other tasks. As you do these tasks, you learn things about that NPC, their backstory.

I was really enjoying Wrath Of The Lich King Classic. Really enjoying it. My guild had just moved to Myzrael server and I moved all 14 of my characters over there. I was actively working to level Viae from 65 to 80 so I could do dungeons with my guildmates and made a lot of progress across my toons with professions. I logged in one day and ALL of my characters are gone. All that work I put into them. All of those hours. Gone!

Retail is not as much fun! And, Cataclysm was traumatic. Those NPCs Blizzard so casually destroyed were a part of my game life. I cried over their deaths. It still hurts not to be able to go to Auberdine. And that was years ago. It is a rule of good storytelling, you don't kill off characters without a very good reason. Blizzard just broke our hearts without a thought as to whether it made good sense to the story to kill off these NPCs. A lot of us were very fond of these characters.

I wish Blizzard would listen to us gameplayers and give us back all the expansions of Classic without making it into Retail. And don't force us into Cataclysm. Didn't you learn anything from that awful experience, Blizzard? Your subs dropped like a rock. It was the most unpopular expansion in the history of World Of Warcraft. And you want to force it on me.

Keep in mind that almost half of all games' player bases are women. I can't understand other players' insistence in Trade Chat that there are no women players. There are a lot of fellas who play female characters because they like to look at them. Okay. I have some male characters because I like to look at them. I prefer fully-clothed characters. Dress my characters as I would myself. That can be hard with some of the armor you get in playing the game! World Of Warcraft has always been plagued with costumes that are scanty and embarrass me. I consider this a form of sexual abuse.

When Microsoft acquired Blizzard, I had high hopes that maybe, their toxic workplace would turn into a safe place for employees of color and women. That they would truly listen to their gamer database. I am female and a gamer. I do not enjoy immodest armor. Thank goodness, I don't have a boyfriend to push me into dressing my characters immodestly and I consider that a form of abuse and domination over women. I am happy to see more choices over the way our characters look. I'm white, but I think there should be characters of color in games, and adaptations for disabilities, a lot more than we have access to now. My disabilities get in the way of my gaming. A quarter of people globally have a significant, life-limiting disability. ADA doesn't help me as much as I think I need. We should have a bigger voice, but that's a story for another blog post.

So, why do I still play WOW? Because my friends are there. Granted, I mostly play alone, but I am working on things that will make me a more useful guild member. I want to level up my characters to do some of the harder things my guildmates are doing. I often chat on Discord with my fellow guild members while I am playing alone. A lot of work goes into leveling a character, so most of that has to be done during the time I am not playing with guild members.

Will Microsoft turn this situation around where all of us players have a voice about the games we play? I've been playing since 2007. Other players can be nice, but chat [text chat for those who don't play] is divided into categories. Trade Chat is the most active, and the most toxic. People will get on there and troll players over politics and religion and say very offensive things. Common attitudes are things like, 'women don't play WOW' and insults to women like Trump says.

If you are a parent and just turn your kid loose in these games, shame on you! You should play with your kid and see just what toxic mess is spewed in Trade Chat and how players doing holiday activities can be persecuted by the over-aggressive Player-vs-player people. For those of you who don't know, PVP [Player Vs Player] is when teams of players face off against each other in dungeons. A few years ago, Blizzard made it so PVP mode can be active in a lot more of the game, not just in battlegrounds. I have suffered a lot when I'm trying to gather materials for professions, to make myself armor or potions, and had people jump ahead of me to get that herb or mine that ore when I was headed to it. There are things in the game to help stop some of that misbehavior. But, when I used to go in dungeon groups [5 people who join a dungeon group to fight powerful bosses for good loot], I got traumatized by people who fussed me out for doing the wrong thing. When in a dungeon I like to take the quests and do extra things while in it. But, too many times, whoever ends up being the leader often won't let us take time to loot before rushing to get the dungeon done, and they won't wait for someone completing quests. It has made me cry so much, I don't do dungeons unless it's with my very understanding guild. WOW can be very bad for your mental health! So I mostly play alone or with my daughter.

My daughter Maggie and I were so angry over this, we tried to cancel our active subscriptions and demanded a refund on the new expansion. We couldn't. So, I am signing this petition with much anger and frustration.

I don't often talk about my gaming life. When I get stuck working on my latest novel, I'll hop on a game and do something mindless while I work out the plot. Often, that's fishing in World Of Warcraft, or just riding a mount on a road through a pretty area. Or flying someplace. The music and pretty scenery makes it easy to just go into my universe in my head and figure out what my characters are going to do next. Then, I'll log out and go write it. Or, if I'm really frustrated, I'll do something in game to get my mind off it that takes all my attention. I spend a lot more time writing that gaming, but gaming gives me an outlet for writing frustration, and writing gives me an outlet for Real Life [RL] frustration. I do talk things out, and my daughter is very helpful with that, but I have a lot of traumas, and talking too much about them equals bad depression or just a really rotten mood. So, there's a balance that I keep. Gaming is a nice hobby--when I'm not as frustrated as I am right now!

I hope we get enough signatures to convince Blizzard that those of us who enjoy Classic enjoy it for reasons that this petition poster clearly expresses. We don't want Cata, thank you. We want to keep all our Classic servers as they were. I like Wrath Of The Lich King, but think players of Vanilla and Burning Crusade deserve to keep their servers, too. We are all united in this cause. I hope everyone who plays WOW will see this and consider adding their signature.

#worldofwarcraft #gaming #petition #classic #blizzard @microsoft @activision-blizzard #rant #wrathofthelichking #vanillawow #burningcrusade #players #femaleplayers #cataclysm

Video to come later. The one I made is 15 min and too big!

#worldofwarcraft #gaming #petition #classic #rant #wrathofthelichking #vanillawow #burningcrusade #players #femaleplayers #cataclysm #blizzard #@activision-blizzard

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