In 2009 RuneScape had ~200,000 daily players. WoW had ~5.5 million.

Current estimates are RuneScape at ~150,000 and I'm being generous. WoW is at ~1.1 million.

I don't like WoW either, but it's the king for a reason.

That reason is they paid addiction specialists to tune drop rates and combat to make children addicted to their product.

Would a commercial with Jesus on the cross saying he is thirsty and having a Roman Soldier pass him an ice cold Coca Cola be better?

I tried it using Sora, but "This content can't be shown for now. We're still developing how we evaluate which content conflicts with our policies. Think we got it wrong? Let us know."

This was the prompt:

Give me a Coca Cola commercial where Jesus has been nailed to a cross, and says "I'm thirsty", after which a Roman Soldier passes him an ice cold Coca Cola.

I tried replacing "Jesus" with a man, but no dice

Pride is political now?

Pride movement is as political as Christmas is political. There will be people that make it a political issue, but that doesn't mean it is actually political. A company that celebrates a holiday that big part of the population celebrate is not siding with a political party or even with a religion. The rights for any minorities in a government or a state is political, but pride is a celebration and as such it is not political. A state making a religion official and forced/encouraged is political. Celebrating Christmas is not political. And celebrating Christmas as a company doesn't mean they alienate customers or employees that don't actually follow the religious side of the holiday.

Don't get sucked into the idea that a company cannot show support for minorities or make events depending on the celebrations socially occurring because you need to be neutral. That's not neutrality, that's self censorship.

To take it to the extremes, are we expecting companies to say they are not against slavery but also not in favor, because it is political? Child labour is bad, but I don't want to support any side because it is too political. Terrorism attacks? Well we don't have a stance against or for them, it's just too political.

There's a big difference between siding with one party or another and not showing a stance into what should be universal human rights. Are universal human rights political? Well kinda, but we shouldn't support, or allow any company that is afraid of supporting human rights because it might alienate some customers... Pride and lgbtq rights might not be on the same level as slavery, terrorism and child labor but hell who someone spends their life with is a human right and has nothing to do with politics.

I genuinenely did not know that WoW was still running, tbh.

Yeah, 43 here, went to school with a kid who's parents must have been from the 19th century, and named him Gaylord. Holy shit, I left that school after middle school, but I would honestly not be surprised if he killed himself.

Dis u?

I'm not comfortable with companies using any kind of marketing tactics.

Now, I felt like I was fairly gentle in pointing out the absurd nature of that statement. I even readily acknowledged what I assumed to be your intent, i.e. there are absolutely marketing tactics which go beyond the pale. But, as I, and others, have pointed out, you're the one operating on your own personal definition of marketing here, which is in contradiction to what that concept actually is. Any intro to business class will tell you that marketing is, essentially, ANYTHING an entity does to inform people of its services. It's an enormous umbrella, which includes tactics both odious and innocuous. It is as readily applicable to the gal who posts on Facebook that she'll do your hair for $20 as it is Facebook selling that information to a third party so she can be served targeted salon equipment advertisements.

All I'm saying is, if you say "all marketing is bad", you need to be prepared for people to call you out on the hyperbole of that statement. Therefore, you might consider arguing the point you actually intend to make (which is good and I agree with you about!), instead of leading with a statement which you don't actually believe.

Calling you Chicken Little was facetious, but meant to be a gentle dig at the hyperbole. Still, I shouldn't have said it, and I apologize.

A lot of them are. You're not wrong. There are a few gems, but I feel like technical limitations made a lot of early ones pure grindfests. Never my favorite genre. I did like Ragnarok Online back in the day. Total grindfests. Lol.

Game companies need to focus on making good games. Take "pride" in that.

No, it's definitely political. So was the Civil Rights movement in the US. So was Womens' suffrage.

Pushing for change is political, even if it's nearly universally agreed that the particular change is necessary and good. I agree with LGBT rights and as far as I care, they can have a month long pride if they want, it doesn't in any way chafe my willy. However, I agree with the person you replied to. As a business, ANY stance on ANY political cause risks alienation of some part of your customer base. Doing a 180 on your stance like Jagex did is of course the worst thing you can do, because then you alienate the people who agreed with you, but the others will still remember when you disagreed with them. Once they decided to do pride, they should've fucking stuck to it, at least for the year where they already had events scheduled!

If I ran a public-facing business at all, it would have literally no political allegiance or opinions. No stance on LGBT rights, no political donations (not really a huge thing in my country anyway), etc. Just do my thing, provide a great service, make sure my employees and customers are happy, and... The LGBT folks can do whatever they want, I'm just not voicing support for them as a business. Even if I as a person root for equal rights, I just don't want to take a stance as a business owner. Donations to charities, including LGBT charities, are fine - I just don't want it to be particularly public. But then I just prefer privacy in these kinds of matters.

Holy shit......being named "Gaylord" in the 80s/90s as a kid?

Fuck.

R.I.P. Gaylord.

May your bullying been short and merciful.

he tried to go by his middle name, but was only able to convince a small number of people to call him that.

Christmas celebrations

Christmas is more of a cultural celebration than a Christian one, and thus not political.

I'm atheist, but I still celebrate Christmas, because it's a good excuse to gather friends and family, and have some fun together.

Not the person you replied to, but agree with them to some degree, at least on the fact that any strong political stances are dangerous for a business.

If I ran a service and gay people are celebrating pride on it, that's none of my business and they can keep on doing whatever they want. Similarly, if conservatives want to throw a straight party without outright saying gay people deserve fewer rights, it's fucking weird, but it's their business. The moment anyone advocates for harming someone else, THAT's when it becomes a problem for me. Goal of a business, in my opinion, is to serve as many people as possible.

I just wouldn't want to voice support for, or against, anyone's rights, as a business. It's horrible that LGBT rights are a politicized issue, sure. But if I ran a business, and there are 30% otherwise quite well-behaved customers who would drop my business because I changed my logo to a rainbow colored one... I just don't see myself doing that. If I'm providing a service at the best price/quality ratio, it would just mean they drop me to go pay a homophobic business owner even more money for the same service. Does that actually benefit anyone, other than the hypothetical homophobic business owner?

But the worst, most cowardly thing, is supporting LGBT rights and then WITHDRAWING that support. If you're political already, fucking stick to your beliefs. Don't abandon them the second the political landscape starts changing.

In 2009 RuneScape had ~200,000 daily players. WoW had ~5.5 million.

Current estimates are RuneScape at ~150,000 and I'm being generous. WoW is at ~1.1 million.

I don't like WoW either, but it's the king for a reason.

That reason is they paid addiction specialists to tune drop rates and combat to make children addicted to their product.

OSRS hit almost a mil concurrent last leagues iirc, so it isn't like it's a small irrelevant game.

RS3 is pretty dead though

........part of me wants to know the middle name. Part of me wonders if that might be doxxing him at that point.

Because middle names are weird, but with a name like Gaylord, he doesn't have much to risk.

He might be like "Call me Olive!"

And it's somehow better than being Gaylord in the 80s/90s.

I think I'd just create a persona. Thats what a kid at my school did. His name was Adam, but he was like "Call me, The Jew!"

Not "Jew", not "The Jew Kid" he specifically called himself "The Jew". Pro wrestling was popular, and it was like how there was "The Rock". Except he was "The Jew".

Then one kid thought it would be funny to come in with a red armband with swastika on it. He asked The Jew if he thought it was funny. And The Jew said no......with his fist. Over and over and over and over. Usually school fights had an honor to them. Kid falls down, you won the fight. You walk away. Anyone tried contining the fight on a downed opponent, and the whole crowd would step in. They'd end the fight for you, and it wouldn't be good for you.

That didn't happen here. This kid went down, and The Jew just kept punching him. Over and over and over. For what seemed like forever. Nobody stepped in. Usually during fights, the crowd was rowdy. It was exciting. This was dead silent.

In normal times, The Jew was the most chill laid back easy to get along with guy. It's 20+ years since I saw him last, and I still remember him and refer to him as that. By his request. So you can kind of get an idea of how he didn't let things get to him. No ego. Just a good kid really.

When he saw that swastika, he just went off. And everybody had the same silent collective thought. Not to step in, and when teachers get here, we all stand behind The Jew. And we all did. Literally 30 kids all got detention for a month, because not one of us ratted out who beat the fuck out of gary. Eventually the teachers pieced together what happened, when gary came out of the hospital and was able to talk again. We still had to serve detention. Even after they "knew", we still didn't talk.

And now, I've gotten so sidetracked that I don't even remember the point of this story. Other than to say fuck nazis. Fuck gary. And fuck anyone who owns a swastika armband. Gary had it coming.

It was joyful and the players made it amazing as well. You weren't alone was the best part in some games.