No, certain accounts are flagged to be rigged. Accounts that haven't spent any money at all are highly likely to be flagged so you go on long losing streaks and therefore buy packs. This has been proven by a a few people saying this is what they think happens. Blizzard wants to keep people at silver and gold ranks because this will increase their profits.
I'm lucky in that my account hasn't been flagged but I did play against 3 rogues in a row the other day, so my time in the sun may be coming to an end. I can't see how that is possible, 3 games against the same class, the odds are just way, way off based on my feelings and therefore I am justified in asserting that it's rigged because Blizzard are greedy.
The logic here is flawless. I cannot argue with that. If a few people said that this is what they think happened than it's 100 % proven. Then again a few other people said that you should wear a tin foil hat. Therefore, it's 100% proven that tin foil hat is the solution!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You face Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the... sacrificial pact
No, certain accounts are flagged to be rigged. Accounts that haven't spent any money at all are highly likely to be flagged so you go on long losing streaks and therefore buy packs. This has been proven by a a few people saying this is what they think happens. Blizzard wants to keep people at silver and gold ranks because this will increase their profits.
I'm lucky in that my account hasn't been flagged but I did play against 3 rogues in a row the other day, so my time in the sun may be coming to an end. I can't see how that is possible, 3 games against the same class, the odds are just way, way off based on my feelings and therefore I am justified in asserting that it's rigged because Blizzard are greedy.
Lol, this is the dumbest comment I’ve read here in a long time. How do you know this? And how can you prove it? You’re obviously a tin foil hat kind of guy.
And to the discusion: it is possible, tho unlikely, to get the same outcome 20 times in a row. And to be able to prove any of this, you cant say its rigged because it happend 19 out of 20 times. Do you know how many games you would have to play to say that any of this is statisticly or mathematicly significant? An insane amount of games..
I also feel Felmaw too often hits face, but I dont think its rigged because of it.
This is not confirmed, but it's obvious that Imprisoned Felmaw's RNG isn't purely random. Its RNG is 50% face, 50% board. This means that adding more minions (than 1) on the board won't help you avoid an attack to the face.
Is Archdruid Naralex the same? Because I swear I get Nightmare like 50% of the time.
I am absolutely 100% sure thats how Imprisoned Felmaw works, even if people sais different. many things are rigged right now,like "lets grow shaman power level" and here u go,perfect mana curve on all shaman decks playing on ladder at the moment
No, certain accounts are flagged to be rigged. Accounts that haven't spent any money at all are highly likely to be flagged so you go on long losing streaks and therefore buy packs. This has been proven by a a few people saying this is what they think happens. Blizzard wants to keep people at silver and gold ranks because this will increase their profits.
I'm lucky in that my account hasn't been flagged but I did play against 3 rogues in a row the other day, so my time in the sun may be coming to an end. I can't see how that is possible, 3 games against the same class, the odds are just way, way off based on my feelings and therefore I am justified in asserting that it's rigged because Blizzard are greedy.
Lol, this is the dumbest comment I’ve read here in a long time. How do you know this? And how can you prove it? You’re obviously a tin foil hat kind of guy.
And to the discusion: it is possible, tho unlikely, to get the same outcome 20 times in a row. And to be able to prove any of this, you cant say its rigged because it happend 19 out of 20 times. Do you know how many games you would have to play to say that any of this is statisticly or mathematicly significant? An insane amount of games..
I also feel Felmaw too often hits face, but I dont think its rigged because of it.
manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person
1) In the manner of "rigging" something, we have to agree that the only person(s) who could "rig" this game would be Blizzard unless every opponent you play has figured out to actively hack Blizzard's games to change the results of a random card generator.
2) If we agree that it's not 1) and Blizzard is the one doing the supposed rigging, how would changing the outcome of a random outcome for specific players be advantageous to them in any way? It isn't. There's no Naralek shift at Blizzard to watch every outcome and decide, you know, I don't like the name Garglespore because it just sounds gross and RandomNinja is awesome sounding so I'm gonna give Garglespore a card that won't help him.
3) It's NOT RIGGED. It's bad luck OR the choice pool is intentionally seeded to produce specific outcomes more often than others. That's not rigging because the intention was to make certain outcomes appear less often than others, not to gain advantage. If they are doing it, it's probably altering the power of the card at 3 cost to not be as powerful as the card at 9 cost in the case of Naralex.
4) Naralex just has bad dreams.
The entity rigging the game is blizzard, the rigging is done to promote player engagement and stimulate spending. This is common practice in fremium games and is becoming common practice in premium games as well as they become more and more about micro transactions. This is because it is extremely profitable. To really understand what is going on, you need to do some research. I can give you a couple of links to get you started so you know what you are dealing with.
Here is a seminar provided by a blizzard employee which illustrates everything is on the table in terms of rigging matchmaking and other parts of the game to promote player engagement.
The overall practices have had an interesting effect on blizzard as a whole, blizzard has become more profitable while losing players. This means their practices have extracted more money from some players while driving away another part of their player base.
What always fascinates me are the accounts that show up and vehemently deny what is simple common sense at this point. That Hearthstone is rigged in a myriad of ways. I no longer am allowed to state why those accounts do this because I have been repeatedly reprimanded by the mods here for doing so.
So yes, I do show up on these threads because I went on my own journey with hearthstone which led me to believe the game is rigged, and I want to prevent others from being gaslighted regarding this issue.
If you repeatedly come into a thread and provide no evidence of actual in-game tampering, then no one is going to take you seriously. (Having a matchmaker that tries to give you fair matches is not really rigging the game, which is what those links are primarily talking about. Unless you just want to have total bedlam and there is no algorithm for playing evenly skilled players at all.)
"The game tries to find you a fair opponent" is not the same thing as "NARALEX IS RIGGED INTO GIVING YOU BAD CARDS AND YOUR OPPONENT GOOD CARDS TO GET YOU TO BUY STUFF WHEN YOU LOSE."
It's no use: the dude shows up every chance he gets, spouts off the same idiocy, and tries to mislead the gullible. I used to think he was well-meaning, but wrong. But the fact that he continues to offer no evidence for his claims and use debunked/ misleading/ irrelevant "evidence" demonstrates that he's either a troll or delusional. In either case, he's not worth listening to.
I guess you guys are allergic to reading and reason......or maybe it is something else I am no longer allowed to say.
For bonus points look at what Activision is doing to shooters with SBMM. The same player engagement/retention policies designed to keep noobs is now currently destroying FPS.
To people mocking other people for saying blizzard rigs the code to favour paying customers:
There are literally enacted pattents for systems in games where the game will give you favourable RNG if you have spent money, and even matchmake you against someone who you are favourable to win against with what you have just purchased.
There is no need for tinfoil hats, when the people in the games industry are literally and publically availably declaring that they have made systems for this exact purpose.
What you are saying isn’t evidence for any of these claims.
Believing Blizzard COULD be manipulating RNG for nefarious reasons because of these things is fair enough, but trying to claim 100% that they ARE is where you’re going wrong, and where you come across as a zealot.
To people mocking other people for saying blizzard rigs the code to favour paying customers:
There are literally enacted pattents for systems in games where the game will give you favourable RNG if you have spent money, and even matchmake you against someone who you are favourable to win against with what you have just purchased.
There is no need for tinfoil hats, when the people in the games industry are literally and publically availably declaring that they have made systems for this exact purpose.
If that's the case, it's absurdly easy to prove. For the "favorable RNG" claim, find someone on the forum who spends a sizable amount of money on the game every year and another person who's f2p. Each of you use the same deck, play 50 games with it, and track the cards you draw. (I presume by "favorable RNG" you mean that the chance you have of drawing your better cards increases.) See if there's a statistically significant difference between your card draw rates. Similarly, for the latter claim, play 100 games or so, tracking the deck archetype of your opponent. Then craft a good legendary and repeat. See if the decks you face are significantly different. (This is somewhat harder to prove, since your MMR, and hence the decks you'll be matched against, will change during this period. But if there is such an system, it should easily overwhelm these confounding variables.)
I and others have said it repeatedly: we're not saying it doesn't exist, what we're saying is there is no evidence that such a system exist in Hearthstone. What other companies do or don't do is irrelevant. What Activision does or does not do in other games is irrelevant. What is technically possible is irrelevant. All that matters is HS-based evidence.
I just did a Google search on this, and apparently a former Activision has come out and revealed details about the matchmaking for Warzone. (I don't follow or play this game, so forgive me if this is inaccurate.) Why is this important? Because, to the best of my knowledge, no former employee who has worked on HS has ever come forward making a similar claim about HS. That does not, of course, prove anything but it is certainly evidence against your position.
Blizzard rigs RNG in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. But some on this site will continue to deny it as if their livelihoods depended on it.
Please gather some data to prove it then. The legendary pity timer for packs was rigged, and the community proved it. It was even a pretty complicated one, as not hitting a legendary in 40 packs is already pretty unlikely, but it was still proved it was impossible.
Nothing else has been proved, so it it is a non issue. But you are too lazy to do that kind of work, and you are more than happy riding your convictions based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence. Sigh.
Blizzard rigs RNG in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. But some on this site will continue to deny it as if their livelihoods depended on it.
Please gather some data to prove it then. The legendary pity timer for packs was rigged, and the community proved it. It was even a pretty complicated one, as not hitting a legendary in 40 packs is already pretty unlikely, but it was still proved it was impossible.
Nothing else has been proved, so it it is a non issue. But you are too lazy to do that kind of work, and you are more than happy riding your convictions based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence. Sigh.
The simple statement that without definitive proof it is a non issue is so misguided it is not even funny. How about you prove they are not rigging it because circumstantial evidence and common sense assures us that they are.
There are literally enacted pattents for systems in games where the game will give you favourable RNG if you have spent money, and even matchmake you against someone who you are favourable to win against with what you have just purchased.
One other point you all fail to mention: you guys make a very big deal out of a patent. Understand that the VAST majority of patents are never commercialized. Companies may develop a technology or process that they think, one day, may be useful, so they patent it. Later, they find that the patent doesn't fit their business model, strategy, and/ or plans, so they don't do any more with it.
So even if such a patent exists, that does not necessarily mean it's been fully developed, much less used.
If any of this was true, HSReplay would have blown the lid off the whole thing a long time ago. They have the statistical data to prove the probability of Fel attacking face. They know the stats of getting dream cards. Statistics reveal themselves over large buckets and timelines, not tiny pools.
I realize it gets frustrating when you see statistics in real time going against you. But this is like rolling snake eyes twice in a row at a casino and screaming to anyone that will listen that the dice are weighted. Your opinion is anecdotal at best, and easily countered by folks who have access to much larger data sets.
And, as in with any conspiracy theory, you have to ask yourself "why would they do this?". If they wanted people to buy the new mini-set, wouldn't they tilt Naralex to give useful dreams more often?
"To really understand what is going on, you need to do some research. I can give you a couple of links to get you started so you know what you are dealing with."
Let's go ahead and take a look at the smoking gun evidence that is so strong 3nnu1 thinks it will entice us down the rabbit hole.
This was reporting on an exploratory patent done by an Activision R&D team, not affiliated with any particular studio. At the time. it had not actually been implemented any where. I've not seen any confirmation of it used in any game. If they do actually do something like this, then he **does** have a point imo. This system is pretty scummy, but the way the patent is structured, the system couldn't possibly be used in Hearthstone.
It rewards users who buy items by placing them in scenarios that the item is good. IE: You buy a sniper rifle, your next game is on a map where sniper rifles are very effective. End result: you feel good about your purchase and might want to buy more. It also puts people who it thinks might want the sniper rifle in that game with you so that they see how awesome you do with it and they want to buy it too. Since we dont directly buy items this system wouldn't work in Hearthstone. We also dont have variables like maps that it can use to highlight the new item so the only way this could be adapted for Hearthstone is to have better RNG when you first play with a card and then normal RNG after. But then that directly conflicts with the claim in this post so its a weird thing to use to try to agree with the OP that the game is rigged.
This being in the "Science" section is pretty laughable. There is barely any actual science and its basically is just someone bitching about how they got sucked into the Candy Crush craze. I just can't take seriously people who act like there's some nefarious purpose to a game being easy at first and harder as it goes. That's just good game design. Seriously, that's something I use as a milestone when trying new games on my phone. Too hard at first? Uninstalled. Too easy after more than 30 minutes of play? Uninstalled. Its not some conspiracy. Its basic logic. If a game is too hard at first then it's not fun and difficult to learn. Then if its too easy once you've learned it then you never have to overcome any challenges and it gets boring very quickly.
The only bit of science that it actually references is when it goes into the bit about how Candy Crush locks you out of the game for a while. I will admit that this is a mechanic that instantly turns me off of a game and I think is completely annoying. But trying to link it to evil intentions because of hedonistic adaptation is a bit of a stretch. That's just their monetization model. Hedonistic adaptation is one of the reasons that the business model can work but if the game wasn't engaging without the break then users would get scared off once they made the mistake of spending that money and got very little satisfaction out of their purchase.
Regardless, I'm not really sure how this relates to Blizzard rigging things. King was also known for being highly successful in the mobile space which Blizzard was looking to expand in to. Acquiring a company like King brings in a lot of employees with experience that they were missing, a bunch of technical data and code that they could use to optimize their entries into the market, and multiple highly-profitable IPs which they have to invest very little time and money in to. I'm not sure why anyone would think there needs to be hidden motives on this one.
"Here is a seminar provided by a blizzard employee which illustrates everything is on the table in terms of rigging matchmaking and other parts of the game to promote player engagement."
Thats just a talk about the concepts behind Skill systems, Matchmaking systems, and Ranking systems. I've seen it before but I rewatched it just to confirm: Absolutely nothing about rigging matchmaking, for player engagement or otherwise, is mentioned. There is nothing nefarious there at all. I'm not sure what 3nnu1 is trying to prove linking a presentation about the work that goes into quantifying player skill so that they can have players of the same skill level play against each other. Doesn't seem to support the idea that the game is rigged at all.
"The overall practices have had an interesting effect on blizzard as a whole, blizzard has become more profitable while losing players. This means their practices have extracted more money from some players while driving away another part of their player base.
This link is broken but I'm pretty sure its meant to go to the article on gamespot. I'm just going to go ahead and quote from the article itself "While Blizzard's total number of players might be down year-over-year, it's not altogether very surprising. Q1 2020 marked the beginning of the pandemic, which led to a surge in people playing games, so a comparison to that quarter was always going to be difficult to match." The article itself basically says don't jump to the conclusion 3nnu1 jumped to. Yikes.
say anything about the RNG and 3nnu1 will be in that forum.
The logic here is flawless. I cannot argue with that. If a few people said that this is what they think happened than it's 100 % proven. Then again a few other people said that you should wear a tin foil hat. Therefore, it's 100% proven that tin foil hat is the solution!
You face Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the... sacrificial pact
I bet that you believe the earth is flat.
Lol, this is the dumbest comment I’ve read here in a long time. How do you know this? And how can you prove it? You’re obviously a tin foil hat kind of guy.
And to the discusion: it is possible, tho unlikely, to get the same outcome 20 times in a row. And to be able to prove any of this, you cant say its rigged because it happend 19 out of 20 times. Do you know how many games you would have to play to say that any of this is statisticly or mathematicly significant? An insane amount of games..
I also feel Felmaw too often hits face, but I dont think its rigged because of it.
I am absolutely 100% sure thats how Imprisoned Felmaw works, even if people sais different. many things are rigged right now,like "lets grow shaman power level" and here u go,perfect mana curve on all shaman decks playing on ladder at the moment
L M A O
The entity rigging the game is blizzard, the rigging is done to promote player engagement and stimulate spending. This is common practice in fremium games and is becoming common practice in premium games as well as they become more and more about micro transactions. This is because it is extremely profitable. To really understand what is going on, you need to do some research. I can give you a couple of links to get you started so you know what you are dealing with.
https://kotaku.com/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-1819630937
Blizzard recently acquired King who is notorious for manipulative bad practices
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/01/candy-crush-saga-app-brain
Here is a seminar provided by a blizzard employee which illustrates everything is on the table in terms of rigging matchmaking and other parts of the game to promote player engagement.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pglxege-gU
The overall practices have had an interesting effect on blizzard as a whole, blizzard has become more profitable while losing players. This means their practices have extracted more money from some players while driving away another part of their player base.
amespot.com/articles/blizzard-loses-millions-of-monthly-players-but-is-making-more-money/1100-6491037/#:~:text=Login%2FSign%20Up-,Blizzard%20Loses%20Millions%20Of%20Monthly%20Players%20But%20Is%20Making%20More,fewer%20players%20in%20Q1%202021.&text=Blizzard%20had%2027%20million%20monthly,38%20million%20in%20Q1%202018.
What always fascinates me are the accounts that show up and vehemently deny what is simple common sense at this point. That Hearthstone is rigged in a myriad of ways. I no longer am allowed to state why those accounts do this because I have been repeatedly reprimanded by the mods here for doing so.
So yes, I do show up on these threads because I went on my own journey with hearthstone which led me to believe the game is rigged, and I want to prevent others from being gaslighted regarding this issue.
If you repeatedly come into a thread and provide no evidence of actual in-game tampering, then no one is going to take you seriously. (Having a matchmaker that tries to give you fair matches is not really rigging the game, which is what those links are primarily talking about. Unless you just want to have total bedlam and there is no algorithm for playing evenly skilled players at all.)
"The game tries to find you a fair opponent" is not the same thing as "NARALEX IS RIGGED INTO GIVING YOU BAD CARDS AND YOUR OPPONENT GOOD CARDS TO GET YOU TO BUY STUFF WHEN YOU LOSE."
It's no use: the dude shows up every chance he gets, spouts off the same idiocy, and tries to mislead the gullible. I used to think he was well-meaning, but wrong. But the fact that he continues to offer no evidence for his claims and use debunked/ misleading/ irrelevant "evidence" demonstrates that he's either a troll or delusional. In either case, he's not worth listening to.
I guess you guys are allergic to reading and reason......or maybe it is something else I am no longer allowed to say.
For bonus points look at what Activision is doing to shooters with SBMM. The same player engagement/retention policies designed to keep noobs is now currently destroying FPS.
To people mocking other people for saying blizzard rigs the code to favour paying customers:
There are literally enacted pattents for systems in games where the game will give you favourable RNG if you have spent money, and even matchmake you against someone who you are favourable to win against with what you have just purchased.
There is no need for tinfoil hats, when the people in the games industry are literally and publically availably declaring that they have made systems for this exact purpose.
What you are saying isn’t evidence for any of these claims.
Believing Blizzard COULD be manipulating RNG for nefarious reasons because of these things is fair enough, but trying to claim 100% that they ARE is where you’re going wrong, and where you come across as a zealot.
If that's the case, it's absurdly easy to prove. For the "favorable RNG" claim, find someone on the forum who spends a sizable amount of money on the game every year and another person who's f2p. Each of you use the same deck, play 50 games with it, and track the cards you draw. (I presume by "favorable RNG" you mean that the chance you have of drawing your better cards increases.) See if there's a statistically significant difference between your card draw rates. Similarly, for the latter claim, play 100 games or so, tracking the deck archetype of your opponent. Then craft a good legendary and repeat. See if the decks you face are significantly different. (This is somewhat harder to prove, since your MMR, and hence the decks you'll be matched against, will change during this period. But if there is such an system, it should easily overwhelm these confounding variables.)
I and others have said it repeatedly: we're not saying it doesn't exist, what we're saying is there is no evidence that such a system exist in Hearthstone. What other companies do or don't do is irrelevant. What Activision does or does not do in other games is irrelevant. What is technically possible is irrelevant. All that matters is HS-based evidence.
I just did a Google search on this, and apparently a former Activision has come out and revealed details about the matchmaking for Warzone. (I don't follow or play this game, so forgive me if this is inaccurate.) Why is this important? Because, to the best of my knowledge, no former employee who has worked on HS has ever come forward making a similar claim about HS. That does not, of course, prove anything but it is certainly evidence against your position.
Please gather some data to prove it then. The legendary pity timer for packs was rigged, and the community proved it. It was even a pretty complicated one, as not hitting a legendary in 40 packs is already pretty unlikely, but it was still proved it was impossible.
Nothing else has been proved, so it it is a non issue. But you are too lazy to do that kind of work, and you are more than happy riding your convictions based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence. Sigh.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
The simple statement that without definitive proof it is a non issue is so misguided it is not even funny. How about you prove they are not rigging it because circumstantial evidence and common sense assures us that they are.
He isn’t saying it’s not rigged so there’s no burden on him to prove anything, at least in this thread.
You cannot make definitive statements without correctly backing them up. Especially if you’re attacking those who disagree.
One other point you all fail to mention: you guys make a very big deal out of a patent. Understand that the VAST majority of patents are never commercialized. Companies may develop a technology or process that they think, one day, may be useful, so they patent it. Later, they find that the patent doesn't fit their business model, strategy, and/ or plans, so they don't do any more with it.
So even if such a patent exists, that does not necessarily mean it's been fully developed, much less used.
If any of this was true, HSReplay would have blown the lid off the whole thing a long time ago. They have the statistical data to prove the probability of Fel attacking face. They know the stats of getting dream cards. Statistics reveal themselves over large buckets and timelines, not tiny pools.
I realize it gets frustrating when you see statistics in real time going against you. But this is like rolling snake eyes twice in a row at a casino and screaming to anyone that will listen that the dice are weighted. Your opinion is anecdotal at best, and easily countered by folks who have access to much larger data sets.
And, as in with any conspiracy theory, you have to ask yourself "why would they do this?". If they wanted people to buy the new mini-set, wouldn't they tilt Naralex to give useful dreams more often?
"To really understand what is going on, you need to do some research. I can give you a couple of links to get you started so you know what you are dealing with."
Let's go ahead and take a look at the smoking gun evidence that is so strong 3nnu1 thinks it will entice us down the rabbit hole.
https://kotaku.com/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-1819630937
This was reporting on an exploratory patent done by an Activision R&D team, not affiliated with any particular studio. At the time. it had not actually been implemented any where. I've not seen any confirmation of it used in any game. If they do actually do something like this, then he **does** have a point imo. This system is pretty scummy, but the way the patent is structured, the system couldn't possibly be used in Hearthstone.
It rewards users who buy items by placing them in scenarios that the item is good. IE: You buy a sniper rifle, your next game is on a map where sniper rifles are very effective. End result: you feel good about your purchase and might want to buy more. It also puts people who it thinks might want the sniper rifle in that game with you so that they see how awesome you do with it and they want to buy it too. Since we dont directly buy items this system wouldn't work in Hearthstone. We also dont have variables like maps that it can use to highlight the new item so the only way this could be adapted for Hearthstone is to have better RNG when you first play with a card and then normal RNG after. But then that directly conflicts with the claim in this post so its a weird thing to use to try to agree with the OP that the game is rigged.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/01/candy-crush-saga-app-brain
This being in the "Science" section is pretty laughable. There is barely any actual science and its basically is just someone bitching about how they got sucked into the Candy Crush craze. I just can't take seriously people who act like there's some nefarious purpose to a game being easy at first and harder as it goes. That's just good game design. Seriously, that's something I use as a milestone when trying new games on my phone. Too hard at first? Uninstalled. Too easy after more than 30 minutes of play? Uninstalled. Its not some conspiracy. Its basic logic. If a game is too hard at first then it's not fun and difficult to learn. Then if its too easy once you've learned it then you never have to overcome any challenges and it gets boring very quickly.
The only bit of science that it actually references is when it goes into the bit about how Candy Crush locks you out of the game for a while. I will admit that this is a mechanic that instantly turns me off of a game and I think is completely annoying. But trying to link it to evil intentions because of hedonistic adaptation is a bit of a stretch. That's just their monetization model. Hedonistic adaptation is one of the reasons that the business model can work but if the game wasn't engaging without the break then users would get scared off once they made the mistake of spending that money and got very little satisfaction out of their purchase.
Regardless, I'm not really sure how this relates to Blizzard rigging things. King was also known for being highly successful in the mobile space which Blizzard was looking to expand in to. Acquiring a company like King brings in a lot of employees with experience that they were missing, a bunch of technical data and code that they could use to optimize their entries into the market, and multiple highly-profitable IPs which they have to invest very little time and money in to. I'm not sure why anyone would think there needs to be hidden motives on this one.
"Here is a seminar provided by a blizzard employee which illustrates everything is on the table in terms of rigging matchmaking and other parts of the game to promote player engagement."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-pglxege-gU
Thats just a talk about the concepts behind Skill systems, Matchmaking systems, and Ranking systems. I've seen it before but I rewatched it just to confirm: Absolutely nothing about rigging matchmaking, for player engagement or otherwise, is mentioned. There is nothing nefarious there at all. I'm not sure what 3nnu1 is trying to prove linking a presentation about the work that goes into quantifying player skill so that they can have players of the same skill level play against each other. Doesn't seem to support the idea that the game is rigged at all.
"The overall practices have had an interesting effect on blizzard as a whole, blizzard has become more profitable while losing players. This means their practices have extracted more money from some players while driving away another part of their player base.
amespot.com/articles/blizzard-loses-millions-of-monthly-players-but-is-making-more-money/1100-6491037/#:~:text=Login%2FSign%20Up-,Blizzard%20Loses%20Millions%20Of%20Monthly%20Players%20But%20Is%20Making%20More,fewer%20players%20in%20Q1%202021.&text=Blizzard%20had%2027%20million%20monthly,38%20million%20in%20Q1%202018."
This link is broken but I'm pretty sure its meant to go to the article on gamespot. I'm just going to go ahead and quote from the article itself "While Blizzard's total number of players might be down year-over-year, it's not altogether very surprising. Q1 2020 marked the beginning of the pandemic, which led to a surge in people playing games, so a comparison to that quarter was always going to be difficult to match." The article itself basically says don't jump to the conclusion 3nnu1 jumped to. Yikes.