The other day, I was querying my Questing Buddy how the Friday raid went. "It went well," she said. "We downed Ony first and then got a group for TotC."
"Did you get an Ony bag?" I teased, as that was one of the reasons why people would continue to run Onyxia even late in Vanilla Classic. The "revived" Wrath Classic version of Onyxia returned in Phase 3, a month or two ago.
"Oh, I got it the other week, but I won the head!" (That's the other big reason why people would run Ony.)
"Wait, what?" I was not expecting that reply. "There's an Ony Bag in the L80 version of Ony?"
"Wait, what?" I was not expecting that reply. "There's an Ony Bag in the L80 version of Ony?"
"Oh yeah! It's a 22 slot bag."
"Huh." I just got outfoxed by Blizzard, as I wasn't quite expecting that they would put an updated Ony Bag in the loot. "I kind of expected it to be a 24 slot bag."
"No, it's like the bag out with the dragon area," she replied, referencing The Obsidian Sanctum raid from Phase 1, which also dropped a 22 slot bag.
"Hmm..." I replied, trying to remember. "I can't recall if I got that bag or not." Given the amount of effort people put in back in TBC Classic to min-max everything, including bag space, I kind of tuned out these sort of reward drops. I looked at it as representative of the problems afflicting the Classic community, and my appetite for these little quality of life rewards from TBC Classic onwards turned into revulsion instead.
My Questing Buddy, of course, didn't know about any of this. "You DIDN'T?" she said incredulously.
"I just really didn't care if I won it, so I skipped rolling a lot of times."
I could almost see her rolling her eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"
I went back through some notes I made on those Phase One raids. "Oh wait," I corrected myself. "I did win it on the last time we went through that raid. I waited until everybody else had won it and then I got it."
My Questing Buddy sighed.
***
There's another reason why I mentioned this story, and it's this:
 |
| If you need to click on the pic to bring up the original size, that's fine. But it's pretty obvious that I'm not talking about the regular maintenance window here. |
Even if I didn't have some revulsion toward Blizzard courtesy of their corporate behavior, the "fund raising" pet sale in support of Ukraine would have generated a ton of ick all by itself.
Not that I'm anti-Ukraine or anything, because I'm most definitely not, but because of the corporatization of doing something for a good cause.
It's not any sense of purity that I feel this way --okay, maybe a little, if I'm being completely honest about it-- but that I know that very very few corporations look at something as an altruistic endeavor. Over the years I've seen the man behind the curtain, and I know that at their heart most companies put only profit. Not good deeds, not society, and most definitely not people. So when I see something like this, where Acti-Blizz recruited Mila Kunis* to promote pet sales in support of BlueCheck for Ukraine, I simply can't see the altruism.
At this point, I'd much rather that companies simply stop trying to put lipstick on a pig about their corporate altruism if they're going to prioritize profits over everything else. That's their prerogative to do so, but they're definitely not fooling me into thinking that somehow Blizzard has turned a corner and will behave like a responsible corporate citizen. Maybe when the wheel turns and shareholder primacy yields to another form of corporate activity I'll change my mind about this, but until then I'll do my good deeds out of the public view and not in service of a corporate master.
#Blaugust2023
*Holy crap, she's matured. I don't know why, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she's grown up and reached the cusp of 40. Before you accuse me of being ageist or something, I think that she looks absolutely stunning, and not just "for her age". Of course, me being in my 50s, I still think of her as being young, but that goes with the territory.
EtA: Corrected spelling.
Well, I bought that pack the day it came out, and I don't usually go for store stuff in WoW. I liked that it specifically stated all proceeds go to the cause, not just x% or whatever. I have no illusions about Blizzard as a corporation, but even big corporations can do something nice occasionally? Seems like an odd thing to latch onto as "icky".
ReplyDeleteI think that the trigger was the realization that Blizz is going to basically get off scot-free on their corporate culture behavior --or at least Bobby Kotick is-- and that this "outreach" is a cheap way of trying to rehabilitate their corporate image. That it's Ukraine makes it even a bit more annoying as they just seem to be way late to the party here, like they were afraid to commit early on in the invasion for fear of pissing off some of their customer base. Or being on the wrong end of the conflict.
Delete