You need to consider it from Blizzard’s point of view. Good will isn’t something that management/executives will agree to, so Vanilla WoW servers need to make money.

In China and Korea, MMOs are one of the top genres on mobile. Their markets are much more core-gamer focused than our’s. Japan isn’t quite like that, but still closer to that dynamic than the west.

Because the pirates did it in a self-contained environment away from everything else. If Blizzard did it, they’d need it integrated into their account system, their launcher/CDN service, the website, forums, update schedules, spin off the team to service it, customer support, marketing, community management...

If the world worked the way you think, then we’d never have the Witcher 3. Poland was an emerging market with no real development scene 15 years ago, now they have arguably the best RPG developer in the western world. Home grown talent the lot of it.

More than a little annoyed that I’ve been signed up for Beta since the beginning but never got an invite :(

It is only a matter of time before the newcomers get up to speed. To think that game developers in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil and any other emerging market are never going to be as good as those in America, Japan or Britain is just insane.

I’ve spent ten years in the games industry, whilst there have been a few below average project managers, the reality is, it isn’t their fault that crunch exists. It isn’t the executives either.

Usually a team is given a project date to deliver a product for, they pitch what they want to make within that time frame. Executives green light it, and the work begins.

53k is a little on the low end for a programmer, regardless of where they are based.

Monopoly, it is strange to think this, but the games industry doesn’t actually have a large number of potential employers in some countries. If you want to work at a “safe” corporation within the games industry you are pretty limited and they all operate in a very similar fashion.

Mass produced entertainment products aren’t art. They are no more art than a plastic toy doll of Captain America or episode 500 of Oprah.

Indies aren’t always better, but finding one that has the luxury of not needing money might help.

It is only art if the purpose of it is to creative something imaginative and inspiring to others.

The non-compete clause rarely holds up in court, but the poaching of staff is.

All I can think whilst watching this is... they’ve played so much that they have the time to not even play it properly anymore, but I still can’t get into the damn beta :(

That is the reason why I don’t think it will work. It doesn’t feel like an FPS, it feels like LoL with a different camera angle.

Battleborn, Overwatch, Paragon and Paladins.

Well, they will get a few with this, but if it is staff only then they won’t get the amazing engine that powers Driveclub, so they’re going to still be stuck with the rubbish that powers their current games.

Just to add one thing, as I don’t care for either side of this little argument.

I wonder if her husband knew what she was doing...