CHEERS to blizzard for having the courtesy and respect for their community to actually do this. Anyone with any experience in online gaming who read anything about this game, or even read the box it came in, should have anticipated some minor issues.
I am really enjoying the game and the servers being down at the start was not a huge issue at all.
It is my opinion that Hepler's suggestion came under attack partially because it could be misunderstood as going against the "core concept" of gaming. In a brief look back at the history of video games, as I recall them at least, the focus was always the action. Pitfall Harry didn't go through a heart-wrenching narrative when that horrid snake killed him or he fell in a hole. I recall some brief narrative in Mario World when you would clear a castle that said something like " Thank you Mario but the Princess is in another castle ". That is my first memory of a game having any narrative and it was a rather short diversion from the action of jumping and throwing fireballs. Thanks to technology gaming today has changed. If a designer wants a game to be more action oriented then that can be done. If they would like to focus on a narrative and promote a feeling of involvement that can be done as well. Think if you will, about when Aeris died in FFVII. If you were anything like me you were sad and maybe even angry with that dastardly Sephiroth !!! The event of her death invoked emotion that could not be brought about by killing dragons with swords. Moments such as those may stick with some gamers long after the mechanics of combat are forgotten. What I am trying to show here is that games have come a long way since their action - oriented beginning. I personally applaud Hepler's paradigm shifting idea and am saddened by the attacks on her.
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