#Afrasiabis

[blizzweirdo]

Hey, so the news finally hit that Steve Danuser left Blizzard last year.

I'm sure that had NOTHING to do with Metzen coming swinging in and everyone blaming Danuser for Shadowlands.

The truth is that blaming or giving credit to any one person for an expansion is myopic at best. Expansions are made by hundreds of people in a myriad of capacities.

On top of that, Shadowlands was made during the worst part of the harassment suites with one of the main, powerful harassers at the helm of WoW--Alex Afrasiabi--who was accused of assaulting both men AND women, destroying property, and was a notorious, barely-functional alcoholic. He finally left during Shadowlands' development and based on my experience with MMO cycles, probably left the team a pile of incoherent shit. If anything, the fact that Shadowlands has a story AT ALL is a testament to Danuser and the remaining WoW team.

If you liked Dragonflight, you like Danuser's writing and his story choices.

And now out with Danuser and back in with Metzen. You'll probably never see something like Dragonflight again. Under the hood are the same people, but the driver is again different. Will The War Within be bad? No, probably not. Will it be better than Dragonflight? Perhaps... if Metzen doesn't let his ego get in the way.

But what it will probably be is just different and that's a sad reason for Danuser to have left or have been forced out.

[daeluin]

it's gonna be seven fucking years and the broken shore alliance cinematic still makes me cry like a fucking baby

[swampgallows]

(fyi you are under no obligation to answer this at all. thought i'd ask bc youre THE garrosh person (iconic!) and i dont recall seeing anything related to this? or mobile is being dumb) me + a friend on twitter were talking about garrosh and the stonetalon mountains questline and how blizz came out and said that apparently that whole questline was a mistake, yadda yadda. i was wondering if you did have any thoughts on that, even in general or like specifically @ blizzard or about garrosh's characterization during that zone.

hi, thank you so much for the question! I always like talking and answering questions about he. as such, this will be quite long...

here is the interview where alex afrasiabi declares stonetalon's creation as "miscommunication". personally, it's very hard to believe that among all the different teams necessary in a zone's completion—quest designers, quest writers, environment designers, prop designers, voice actors, QA, and so on—absolutely no one stopped at any point and went "hey, uh, what exactly is this that we're building here?" unless it's Marvel-levels of secretive where they filmed fake scenes or prohibited actors from reading the full script to allegedly prevent spoilers, or Oblivion-levels of convoluted where they compiled voice lines in alphabetical order, i figure that eventually someone somewhere down the line MUST have pieced together that all the blind mice had discovered an elephant.

that elephant in the room however, now in 2024, is afrasiabi himself. in the wake of all that had been revealed in the activision-blizzard lawsuit of which afrasiabi is a main offender, i think we now have more context for why cataclysm might have been a "pretty crazy time". i don't have any concrete evidence for this of course, but considering afrasiabi's track record a la sylvanas torching teldrassil, one has to assume that he simply took the reins on what he, personally, wanted for garrosh—"Garrosh was my guy"—and brute-forced it to make it happen. just as entire teams were beholden to sylvanas burning the tree—engineering quests, designing gear, animating and storyboarding and scripting and voice acting the Warbringers cinematic, not to mention the entirety of the following 2 expansions that hinged on that action—the labor for a throwaway zone like stonetalon is a drop in the bucket in comparison. stonetalon was probably finished in a handful of weeks. recording garrosh's voice lines probably happened in an afternoon.

i don't have any text-based evidence for this either as it occurred in an open Q&A session over discord, but ex-wow dev john staats also remarked that in the early days of wow's development, individual teams were kind of left to their own devices. it was really easy for devs to simply publish whatever they wanted into the game (innocuous things like the happy face under karazhan intended to be seen only by map designers, or the karazhan crypts with the infamous upside-down sinners). for instance, one employee was adamant about ogres becoming the fourth playable race for the horde until they decided on trolls, hence why ogres have several unique animations as well as a dance, all animated by the same one guy who was passionate about it. sometimes events and items were completed in single weekends; staats said a couple of dungeons (iirc stockades and rfc) were implemented this way. these topics might be touched on in staats' book The WoW Diary, but i dont have it.

i think cataclysm as a whole is a monument to blizzard's growing pains and to afrasiabi in particular bucking against the corporate restraints of wow's astronomical success. cataclysm is tonally abhorrent in a number of different ways and it's not always easy to point fingers at who is responsible for what, but it's undeniable the amount of leverage afrasiabi had. even if it wasn't him specifically, it's evidenced by both the details of the lawsuit and the game itself that certain elements of what was prominent in 00s gamer culture and the general "boy's club" wolf of wall street atmosphere at blizzard heavily influenced cataclysm's execution. the boys were resting on their laurels from the skyrocketing popularity and success of wrath, getting tv spots, mtn dew collabs, and so on, and felt empowered to infuse even more of their indulgences into their unstoppable juggernaut. wow had enough power in the industry to dictate what made a successful mmo and and who these games were "For", leading to a circuitous perpetuation of toxic masculinity by creating a game that catered to that kind of audience and thus propagating that mindset within it. no one could challenge WoW nor the people at its helm, be they industry competitors or blizz employees themselves.

at the same time, however, bobby kotick had just recently become CEO, simultaneously tightening the ship and imposing new structure as decorum slipped and hedonism flourished. the old guard lost some freedom to the demand for an overall throughline and schedule of what content to expect and commit to and when to release rather than the loose "jam sessions" of previous patches. as such, afrasiabi couldn't just drag and drop his blorbo wherever he wanted into their digital playground. he says others didn't get the memo, but he is probably the one who got the memo of "our fanbase of millions of players hates your idiot character and we would like to phase him out please" and disregarded it. he admits to wanting to turn garrosh around, and in his mind might view stonetalon as a last stand to prove the worth of his character, but it was in opposition of what was most likely decided upon at an executive level, a cog in a number of different turning cranks to get cataclysm done on time and off of shelves.

afrasiabi says "there was a little bit of miscommunication on my part that kind of led to Garrosh going down another, darker path. So there's an interesting tidbit for you." i imagine this "miscommunication" to be along the lines of 'fine, people can hate him, but he stays'. i feel this is also why the team instantly leapt at the chance to permanently eradicate garrosh—along with anything else tainted by afrasiabi—after he was quietly fired in 2020. i would not be surprised if the team was essentially forced by contract or social pressure or otherwise to keep garrosh in the game as long as afrasiabi held the whip. again, this is all conjecture. i don't actually know what went on behind the scenes at blizzard.

unfortunately the end result is that, yes, thanks to stonetalon we DID end up seeing a garrosh that could have changed for the better, just as afrasiabi wanted, but ultimately would have been—"from a story character development perspective" (well said, alex. lol)—banal and redundant for wow. i assume afrasiabi just wanted his self-insert alongside metzen's (thrall), which is a level of meta that i do not feel like unpacking tonight. so while it does add a little more glimmer to the theory of garrosh as "the horde's arthas", stonetalon's impact mostly serves as fodder to stoke endless Garrosh Did Nothing Wrong ragebait on twitter.

much like arthas, what makes garrosh so compelling to the majority of (non-fascist) people who like him is his fall from grace. despite his efforts to free himself from the shackles of his lineage, garrosh steps in it over and over to a point where he is instead encouraged to deliberately emulate the legacy he had spurned and embrace his rage. knowing that a character has the capacity to be honorable and good and instead chooses with full conscience to be evil makes for a much more interesting character than a clueless crying fawn that clumsily ambles its way into becoming prince of gumdrop forest. of course it's more satisfying for afrasiabi to have his self-insert get both a rags-to-riches story AND 2.5 expansions' worth of gary stu headpats; for everyone else, gristle mcthornbody uncritically absolving the sins of the father and dunking on the cursed prophecy while flexing and spouting edgy one-liners as he overpowers and outsmarts everyone is downright cartoonish. it's the lecherous tiefling bard who wants to remain in the tavern to hit on npcs instead of engaging with the campaign your dungeonmaster created: fun for him, and an interminable bore to everyone else deprived of the adventure.

in afrasiabi's hands, there is no greater narrative to garrosh hellscream. he's a big buff warrior because afrasiabi wishes he were a big buff warrior. garrosh is a racist, sexist scumbag because afrasiabi is a racist, sexist scumbag. garrosh has tattoos of no specific shape or meaning because afrasiabi only has a superficial appreciation for tattoos as something badass and cool. he kills people and blows stuff up because that's alpha sigma tiropita and badass and cool. the history of the orcs and fel was retconned so that garrosh could be a Shiny. grom and thrall had a special bond all throughout warcraft 3, but here comes grom's secret son to usurp the title of #1 favorite orc!! and he's just like grom but actually he's even MORE cool and badass??? this is 'playing power rangers at recess'-tier character development. it is transparently afrasiabi's wish fulfillment independent of the ongoing storyline, which at minimum is not befitting of a multi-million dollar AAA gaming franchise.

the inverse to garrosh's story being a fall from grace is that it is a story of unmet potential which is, both in a doylist and watsonian sense, exactly the oedipal kind of destiny afrasiabi ushered in for his doomed character. garrosh was doomed from the start to be a lackluster simulacrum of grom, both in azeroth and at blizzard, grasping for nostalgia for the RTS days while actively refusing to engage with the culture and landscape of modern day WoW. the more afrasiabi meddled, the more it illuminated just how hollow his vision of this character was and the failure to reach the potential of the kind of character garrosh could be. afrasiabi says "Garrosh was my guy" but his own ego will forever prevent him from understanding all of the dimensionality to his character that he threw away. and this, too, in true afrasiabi fashion, is reflected in garrosh's character. his ego overshadows his ability to listen to the people around him and results in his inevitable, shameless downfall... because that's exactly what afrasiabi would do. did.

so, no, alex. garrosh is not your guy. he's mine. he's all of ours. because world of warcraft belongs to all of us. and because i engage with the character of garrosh hellscream within his narrative, i can look at the beginning and end of his story and say that stonetalon is canon. because despite the years of frustration and confusion, there is so much closure for me in knowing that the reason he sucks so bad is because his creator—grom, afrasiabi—abandoned him, his story, his soul. trying to pare him down and sand his edges and curdle him into something he was never meant to be. he was never meant to exist, and he shouldn't exist, and that's what makes him so irresistibly, infuriatingly compelling, and why i love him so. garrosh hellscream is the only character in the entire story, both within the narrative and without, from beginning to end, in any timeline or on any planet, who is acutely aware that he is not meant to exist.

[fitzefitcher]

Out of curiosity why is Cataclysm worse than say, Shadowlands?

every single bad awful character, lore, and story-destroying thing that has ever happened in warcraft ever is either a direct result of alex afrasiabi taking over the creative lead for cataclysm or can be traced back to it and his stupid rotbrained fuckboy decisions

I have been screaming about the sins of cataclysm since the expac itself and will continue to pin the majority of warcraft's sins on it or on afrasiabi himself for all of time

shadowlands had the misfortune of being the last of his victims and ergo never had a chance to begin with, but cataclysm by all accounts is patient zero. SL in the form it is now could never have happened if not for cataclysm's storyline radically, irreparably derailing every single facet of warcraft's lore.

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 24, 2022

Compensatory variability in network parameters enhances memory performance in the Drosophila mushroom body. Abdelrahman, N. Y., Vasilaki, E., & Lin, A. C. (2021). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(49), e2102158118.

The memory trace of a stressful episode. Bierbrauer, A., Fellner, M.-C., Heinen, R., Wolf, O. T., & Axmacher, N. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5204-5213.e8.

Motor memories of object dynamics are categorically organized. Cesanek, E., Zhang, Z., Ingram, J. N., Wolpert, D. M., & Flanagan, J. R. (2021). eLife, 10, e71627.

Balanced Enhancements of Synaptic Excitation and Inhibition Underlie Developmental Maturation of Receptive Fields in the Mouse Visual Cortex. Fang, Q., Li, Y.-T., Peng, B., Li, Z., Zhang, L. I., & Tao, H. W. (2021). Journal of Neuroscience, 41(49), 10065–10079.

The neural basis of delayed gratification. Gao, Z., Wang, H., Lu, C., Lu, T., Froudist-Walsh, S., Chen, M., … Sun, W. (2021). Science Advances, 7(49).

Non-preferred contrast responses in the Drosophila motion pathways reveal a receptive field structure that explains a common visual illusion. Gruntman, E., Reimers, P., Romani, S., & Reiser, M. B. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5286-5298.e7.

Proactive and reactive accumulation-to-bound processes compete during perceptual decisions. Hernández-Navarro, L., Hermoso-Mendizabal, A., Duque, D., de la Rocha, J., & Hyafil, A. (2021). Nature Communications, 12, 7148.

Nigrostriatal dopamine signals sequence-specific action-outcome prediction errors. Hollon, N. G., Williams, E. W., Howard, C. D., Li, H., Traut, T. I., & Jin, X. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5350-5363.e5.

Relative salience signaling within a thalamo-orbitofrontal circuit governs learning rate. K Namboodiri, V. M., Hobbs, T., Trujillo-Pisanty, I., Simon, R. C., Gray, M. M., & Stuber, G. D. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5176-5191.e5.

Individual differences in information-seeking. Kelly, C. A., & Sharot, T. (2021). Nature Communications, 12, 7062.

Distinct “driving” versus “modulatory” influences of different visual corticothalamic pathways. Kirchgessner, M. A., Franklin, A. D., & Callaway, E. M. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5121-5137.e7.

Population receptive fields in nonhuman primates from whole-brain fMRI and large-scale neurophysiology in visual cortex. Klink, P. C., Chen, X., Vanduffel, W., & Roelfsema, P. R. (2021). eLife, 10, e67304.

Flexible filtering by neural inputs supports motion computation across states and stimuli. Kohn, J. R., Portes, J. P., Christenson, M. P., Abbott, L. F., & Behnia, R. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5249-5260.e5.

Reinstatement of Cortical Outcome Representations during Higher-Order Learning. Luettgau, L., Porcu, E., Tempelmann, C., & Jocham, G. (2021). Cerebral Cortex, 32(1), 93–109.

Executive Function Assigns Value to Novel Goal-Congruent Outcomes. McDougle, S. D., Ballard, I. C., Baribault, B., Bishop, S. J., & Collins, A. G. E. (2021). Cerebral Cortex, 32(1), 231–247.

Predictive Feedback, Early Sensory Representations, and Fast Responses to Predicted Stimuli Depend on NMDA Receptors. Mohanta, S., Afrasiabi, M., Casey, C. P., Tanabe, S., Redinbaugh, M. J., Kambi, N. A., … Saalmann, Y. B. (2021). Journal of Neuroscience, 41(49), 10130–10147.

Overexpressing Histone Deacetylase 5 in Rat Dorsal Striatum Alters Reward-Guided Decision-Making and Associated Neural Encoding. Pribut, H. J., Vázquez, D., Wei, A. D., Tennyson, S. S., Davis, I. R., Roesch, M. R., & Li, X. (2021). Journal of Neuroscience, 41(49), 10080–10090.

Predicting speech from a cortical hierarchy of event-based time scales. Schmitt, L.-M., Erb, J., Tune, S., Rysop, A. U., Hartwigsen, G., & Obleser, J. (2021). Science Advances, 7(49).

Attention improves information flow between neuronal populations without changing the communication subspace. Srinath, R., Ruff, D. A., & Cohen, M. R. (2021). Current Biology, 31(23), 5299-5313.e4.

Supervised Multisensory Calibration Signals Are Evident in VIP But Not MSTd. Zaidel, A., Laurens, J., DeAngelis, G. C., & Angelaki, D. E. (2021). Journal of Neuroscience, 41(49), 10108–10119.

[jtuohey]

Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, arrested in Watertown in 2021, named in prisoner swap between Iran, US

http://dlvr.it/SwHt29

[warningsine]

DOHA, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Iran and the United States have been informed that $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds were transferred to accounts in Qatar, a source said, triggering a carefully choreographed swap on Monday of five detainees each between the two arch foes.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said the funds, which had been frozen in South Korea, would be in Iran's possession on Monday so the deal mediated by Qatar during months of talks could go ahead.

There was no immediate public U.S. comment.

"Both parties have been notified by Qatar that all $6 billion has been transferred from Switzerland to bank accounts in Qatar," the source briefed on the matter told Reuters.

"A Qatari aircraft is on standby in Iran waiting to fly five soon-to-be released U.S. citizens and two relatives to Doha on Monday morning."

Under the deal, the five Americans with dual nationality are expected to leave Tehran and head to Qatar's capital Doha and then from there fly to the United States.

In return, five Iranians detained in the U.S. will be released. The Iranian Foreign ministry spokesperson said two would return to Iran while two would stay in the U.S. at their request. One detainee would join his family in a third country, he added.

The deal, first made public on Aug. 10, will remove a major irritant between Washington and Tehran, although the two sides remain deeply at odds over issues ranging from Iran's nuclear ambitions and its influence around the region to U.S. sanctions and America's military presence in the Gulf.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry had said on Monday it was working with all parties on the deal "to ensure smooth progress of all procedures so that it will be resolved once and for all."

SANCTIONS WAIVED

The U.S. dual citizens to be released include Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Sharqi, 59, both businessmen, and Morad Tahbaz, 67, an environmentalist who also holds British nationality. They were released from prison and put under house arrest last month.

A fourth U.S. citizen was also released into house arrest, while a fifth was already under house arrest. Their identities have not been disclosed.

Iranian officials have named the five Iranians to be released by the U.S. as Mehrdad Moin-Ansari, Kambiz Attar-Kashani, Reza Sarhangpour-Kafrani, Amin Hassanzadeh and Kaveh Afrasiabi. Two Iranian officials previously said that Afrasiabi would remain in the United States but did not mention others.

Ties between Washington and Tehran have been boiling since Donald Trump, a Republican, pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal between Iran and global powers when he was president in 2018. Reaching another nuclear deal has gained little traction since then, as President Joe Biden prepares for the 2024 U.S. election.

As a first step in the deal, Washington waived sanctions to allow the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar. The funds were blocked in South Korea, normally one of Iran's largest oil customers, when Washington imposed tough financial sanctions on Tehran and the cash could not be transferred.

Under the agreement, Doha agreed to monitor how Iran spends the unfrozen funds to ensure it goes on non-sanctioned humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine.

The transfer of Iran's funds has drawn criticism from U.S. Republicans who say Biden, a Democrat, is in effect paying a ransom for U.S. citizens. The White House has defended the deal.

[wyrmguardsecrets]

the "Afrasiabi WC2 Horde enthusiasts" wouldn't be so much a problem if they didn't make "being an asshole to everyone not 100% Horde loyal" their whole personality, but don't dare talk down to them about that ICly or they will bitch to others OOC because they can't handle what they dish out as they continue wonder why less people want to RP with them except other jackasses.

.

[boilingheart]

Was afrasiabi with blizzard during TBC??? Cuz now that I think about it the wing of concubines feels like something he would do

very 2007 type of shit beat happening there. also yeah i'm pretty sure he probably was, he worked at blizzard for a decent while so you're probably not too off here

[consequencesofargentdawn]

Please do a hot take on Matowa's incredibly ironic and borderline tone deaf comment in the "How is Horde RP in DF?" thread.

(To the surprise of absolutely no one Matowa ended up resurfacing like a case of bad herpes in a PCU guild)

Despite being a completely reductive and false statement (and one they know is false) Magatha Matowa Grimtotem continues to highlight their complete elitism and hypocrisy they have been know for the last ten years or so on Argent Dawn.

The audacity that someone in the PCU, and someone with such a storied history as Matowa, would claim that "most" as in, the majority, of Alliance roleplayers are lorebreakers is frankly hilarious. The same PCU which is quite happy to treat players like a resource to be counted up and used like tokens, the same PCU which blatantly disregards any lore they dislike for their own "war themed" lore, despite not realising the faction war is over.

The same PCU who quietly pardoned themselves for war crimes their characters did during the poorly implemented pseudo-fascist Afrasiabi-era "Sylvanas Loyalist" while at the same time railed immensely around supposed "Alliance war crimes" in BFA and against the Mag'har/Iron Horde characters being allowed re-integration after the Garrosh saga.

We certainly suggest to avoid roleplaying with the PCU unless you want to have a black stain stuck to your name for associating with deluded and clownish hypocrites.

[carcharadroid]

@renaulting​ Don’t give them ideas please I beg of you

Anyway yeah, fair point. I’m never not going to be grumpy at all of the stuff that was axed from Shadowlands. :’)

I will say I think the odds of the Infinite thread going somewhere vs how nothing that was set up before and during Shadowlands went anywhere feel higher, because Afrasiabi isn’t involved anymore. I can’t remember if I actually read this or if I just got stoned and imagined it at 3 AM, but I swear I remember something about the team trying very deliberately hard to cut short all of the threads he’d laid out.

It’s why we got three gimped expansions worth of content in BfA, and why Shadowlands wound up being pretty much entirely about them trying desperately to make some sense of Sylvanas, instead of being about fucking anything else.

The timeskip that happened between Shadowlands and the current pre-Dragonflight era of the game makes me think they’re officially done with all of that and are now laying down their own threads to hopefully remember to do something with.

[swampgallows]

I've been following you for a few days. I don't know if it's a good idea to talk to you by asking questions, but I did it anyway. I feel that most people on the Internet don't have a good opinion of Garrosh (it's true that he did a lot of bad things in the later plot), but these people have gradually evolved into attacking you 100% if you say something good about Garrosh. They even send some vulgar meme expressions to attack this poor guy 😢. So do these people really understand the shaping of Garrosh's character? Maybe they only know the later version of Garrosh's blackening to curse him as a complete villain, or maybe they just want to curse this character for the sake of cursing? I really can't accept this kind of thing. If they really haven't understood Garrosh enough and come to attack him, then I think they are completely lacking in connotation, either stupid or bad. I just started playing World of Warcraft recently and immediately fell in love with Garrosh. Now I'm trying to learn about Garrosh from the TBC version and through some veteran players' stories. I learned that this character was messed up by internal struggles among the screenwriters. He was essentially supposed to be a positive and heroic character, not the big villain who collapsed later. But there are always people who don't want to analyze the core of this character, but simply attack him from the worst version. I feel very uncomfortable 😭 and this kind of misunderstanding is particularly serious on Twitter. I'm very sad 😢 and sometimes I'm even influenced by this kind of misunderstanding and have self-doubt. I really can't stand it. They say Garrosh is a tumor, but I feel that they are the real tumors and even more toxic than tumors. Oh...I really feel sorry for Garrosh 😢 and hope to eliminate this misunderstanding 😭。

first i want to say that anyone is welcome to talk to me in my askbox, that's why i have it open and have anonymous on! i can be a bit caustic in my interactions with online strangers however, and that's my fault. i am sorry if i had ever made you feel like you couldn't talk to me; it is one of my major weaknesses. I am trying to get better at reining in my emotions, but i do have a hard time with it.

Second, I apologize because as a newer WoW player, this may all be a bit overwhelming to you.

The situation with Garrosh is complicated because yes, it is true that his story was changed partway through, but yes, it's also true that Garrosh's "worst version" is his canon, or "true in WoW" version of himself. He has zero regret or remorse for his actions, and his fictional villainy has inspired violence and hatred in real life (mass shooting trigger warning at this link).

Garrosh is characterized as a fascist—by both fans and by Blizzard themselves—and many people have drawn parallels to real world hateful, racist leaders like Trump and Hitler. Also, the Blizzard (ex-)employee most responsible for Garrosh from the very beginning is Alex Afrasiabi ("Garrosh was my guy"), who is one of the main perpetrators of the sexual harassment and discrimination mentioned in the recent Blizzard lawsuit. As a result, Garrosh as a fictional character and Garrosh as a representation of real-life hatred and violence across history and behind the scenes at Blizzard bleed together, which is why so many fans (appropriately) have such a strong negative response to him. Many fans also played through the years of Garrosh's character shift and felt betrayed for ever having believed in him, or they started playing later in his story and know him only as the incredibly evil character that he is. That impact may be lost on a newer player; although that culture shock is one of the reasons I became so fixated on Garrosh.

Therefore, many people are right to be wary of die-hard Garrosh fans (or "Garrosh apologists") who say things like "Garrosh did nothing wrong". The "[x] did nothing wrong" meme is originally "Hitler did nothing wrong", after all, and there are many people who believe Garrosh truly "did nothing wrong" despite the canon itself saying otherwise (again) (and again). It's also why I try to make it abundantly clear that I may like Garrosh as a character, but my love for him is only as a fictional character. It's fine to be a fan of the character and wish he turned out differently; the game itself acknowledges his wasted potential. But it's also important to know why people dislike him and may react strongly, although that does not give them any excuse or right to be cruel to you.

Oof. I really ought to make a video essay about all my complicated Garrosh feelings one day, lol. Anon, I am always happy to talk about Garrosh any time and at great length, so you are free to send as many asks as you like :)

[fitzefitcher]

As someone who started WoW in Cata and has been playing on and off since, I would legit love to hear the details of how Cata was the "patient zero" for ruining the lore for good (I'm not joking or being snarky, I actually do want to hear your thoughts).

I personally left the first time in WoD because I felt the alt timeline was the moment they really got loosey goosey with lore.

I could do a whole ass feature length essay about this but it would take me entirely too much time and energy so instead, borrowing from @swampgallows tags on the previous ask this refers to:

So the tl;dr is that characters were completely warped under afrasiabi’s hands to the point where going from wrath to cata felt like fucking whiplash. He leaned away from the game’s strengths and into its flaws, those flaws being the churning undercurrent of toxic masculine bullshit now on full display and every part of the game now being used as a vehicle to enable and facilitate this

I might come back to this later with more detailed examples but I do genuinely do not have the energy bc of health stuff, and doing this sort of thing takes a lot out of me

[sanjosenewshq]

This Australian Entrepreneur Is Wanting To Hold the Authorized Trade Transferring Ahead With Expertise

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own. Companies are at all times searching for methods to develop and appeal to purchasers or prospects. Making your product attraction to a bigger demographic is a key to going from a small enterprise to a big operation. Expertise is enabling companies all around the world to increase their customer-base. Social media, web sites, and on-line providers are only a few ways in which companies can shortly increase. On the click on of a button, you may get virtually something shipped proper to your door. Comfort is changing into king. Since COVID-19 struck in 2020, even hands-on service industries, just like the medical and healthcare discipline, are taking a shot at ‘digital care’. Rex Afrasiabi of M A Authorized has been searching for to carry digital comfort into his industries of experience: authorized. Handout The authorized trade has been a slow-moving trade from the start. Being a really face-to-face kind of service, the legislation strikes at its personal sluggish and usually unsteady tempo. Papers, processing, and cellphone calls are the standard method that the majority legislation providers are carried out. The furthest technological advances the legislation trade has seen is instituting emails and e-signing paperwork as an alternative of simply conferences and cellphone calls. That’s till Rex created his digital platform for his agency. “I noticed a niche out there, and I knew how issues might be made extra environment friendly,” says Rex. He additionally expresses that the rationale the legislation trade is caught prior to now is due largely to the dearth of time and technological ability set of most legal professionals, and the bills of incorporating expertise into the enterprise. This led him to develop expertise that allowed his purchasers to deal with a considerable amount of their work on-line. “This enables for higher effectivity, communication and repair, in addition to being more economical for our purchasers.” His new legislation agency, Bond Conveyancing, is a digital enabled legislation agency that may assist individuals have easy accessibility to authorized actual property providers and transactions: proper from their cellphone or PC, while additionally the flexibility to make use of conventional strategies of partaking with the lawyer, like the phone or head to head conferences. Purchasers may have the flexibility to have on-line reside entry to their authorized affairs, in addition to the flexibility to obtain paperwork and progress their matter. On the similar time referral companions to the legislation agency even have their very own on-line portal, the place they’ve 24 hour reside entry to their consumer’s affairs. In his expertise, Rex has seen that the majority profitable companies create their very own digital software program to boost their companies potential. Rex himself did not possess the entire proper expertise to make that doable on his personal, so he has teamed up with Invoice Nikolouzakis, a former CEO and COO of two completely different public listed entities within the expertise and actual property trade. Afrasiabi and Nikolouzakis have been capable of see the advantage of their enterprise partnerships, as they every contribute their very own distinctive expertise for the general advantage of Bond Conveyancing. “Relationships are essential,” explains Rex, and he has been capable of develop many profitable companies by way of his emphasis on nurturing his enterprise relationships. With M A Authorized and now Bond Conveyance on the rise, Rex has been capable of be taught, develop, and assist individuals by way of the supply of authorized providers. A real entrepreneur is ready to see a necessity and develop a sensible resolution. Rex has spent over 19 years growing his expertise and talents to higher serve individuals in each trade he participates in. Originally published at San Jose News HQ

[legitgamersgaming]

More Details Surface on Alex Afrasiabi's "Cosby Suite" and Lawsuit Allegations

More Details Surface on Alex Afrasiabi’s “Cosby Suite” and Lawsuit Allegations

Kotaku has published a detailed report on Alex Afrasiabi’s “Cosby Suite” mentioned in the Activision Blizzard Lawsuit allegations, as pictures and chat messages from a 2013 group chat called the “Blizzcon Cosby Crew” have surfaced. This report, published Wednesday morning, comes alongside a walkout organized by Activision Blizzard employees in protest of the official handling of the…