World Of Warcraft: Million-Gnome March
Well, it’s certainly a distraction from the semi-recognized civil war we’ve cooked up in Iraq: World of Warcraft has its own organized civil unrest a-brewing, and Blizzard appears none too pleased. Seems that some self-motivated player got himself worked up about the upcoming Warrior nerf that players are expecting to come with Burning Crusade. Thing is, instead of whining endlessly on the boards or starting a flame war with a posse of forum-trolling smacktards, this little Warrior decided to organize a protest: he called for all players displeased at the upcoming Warrior redux to create a level 1 Gnome Warrior on the Thunderlord server at 4pm, December 6, and march naked from Ironforge to the gates of Stormwind.
Blizzard promptly closed the thread and slapped up a message in big blue text that read:
“Anyone caught participating in this event or any event with the sole purpose of disrupting the game play for others will be punished.”
Wait, “punish?” For real? If Blizzard thought that many disgruntled gamers would show up, perhaps downing the server, they may want to rethink their Warrior do-over as well as their customer service policies. Because the only thing that’s “punishing” is spending an ungodly number of hours building a character only to have the rug pulled out from under you by the developer; when the 2.0 patch sliced off my Hunter’s Night-Elven nuts, I wanted to raise a naked gnome or three in protest myself.
Anybody know if the stunt went off as planned, or if there’s more in the works for the WoW resistance?
Blizzard threatens players who plan ‘Gnome March’ for Warriors [WoWInsider]
[Via: Game|Life]
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 8 December 2006
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: blizzard, gnome march, protest, punish, wait did you say naked gnome march?, world of warcraft
One thing I like about single-player offline games is that the developer can’t come along later and screw it up for you.
This little protest would do about as much good as ‘whining endlessly on the boards or starting a flame war with a posse of forum-trolling smacktards’.
Blizzard do with WoW whatever they want. No matter what the consequences to pre-established storyline or gameplay (balancing my arse).
This isn’t the first time Warriors have done this. Right around launch they took down a server in a similar way. Blizz was none too happy.
Eventually enough gamers interested in MMO’s will have had their bottoms pinched by Blizzard’s roaming nerfing shears and the whole thing will collapse anyway. EQII anyone? I remember when Blizzard claimed to be at the forefront of new “NextGen” MMORPGs. Now a newer generation of MMOs is gearing up to swarm the net and Blizzard is just as guilty as Sony by stomping on the heads of its subscribers and poking the hornet’s nest of discontent with a stick.
Honestly, as someone who plays a Warrior, I think this is a good thing. I’m sorry, but if you have a healer with you, you’re an unkillable juggernaught. More DPS then most Rogues, heavy armor and a crapload of hitpoints. Unless your protection specced, then you just take an hour to die.
This is a little OT, but these developers can still alter games after release – it’s called patches. And since the boxed games these days are riddled with bugs and general errors and such, forcing some unwanted changes down your throat along with necessary fixes is a piece of cake – think Sprite ads in Splinter Cell, introduced in a patch that also fixed serious glitches.
I agree with Mythology. Blizzard knows what they’re doing. They know what classes are too stong and too weak. Hence, the need sometimes to nerf…
There will always be whiners.