In cooperation with the Make-A-Wish foundation, Blizzard bumps a kid with a terminal brain tumor up to level 70, clears Black Temple for them, adds a quest written by him, complete with an NPC that has his voice… oh, and gives him a crossbow that shoots fire. Seems appropriate.
“I’d like to be paid to test and play the game and test weapons, but I don’t think I meet the age requirements,” he said. “I’m only 10.”
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I think this is the first time I’ve ever in my life that I’ve ever just not been able to compose and opinion for a situation in a virtual world. Seriously, I’ve hit a wall. I’m stuck halfway in-between “don’t alter the game for the sake of one person you nimrods”, “that poor boy, Blizzard really did a nice thing”, “what a cheap PR stunt” and “this is the beginning of a very slippery slope for everybody”.
I think for a 10 year old about to die from cancer and in near constant pain, we can bend the rules a tiny bit.
I think it’s the wannabe designer in me clashing with the humanity in me.
Funny to think that the wannabe designer in me isn’t humane.
God, if the mods can actually distract from this kids pain for a while then they’re blessed for having the opportunity to do so.
This is one of the most heartwarming things I’ve read in a long time. Major props and kudos to the Blizz guys for giving that kid his dream.
As interesting as the issues raised by this might be, I’m not thinking you’re gonna get too much controversial discussion on this one, Scott.
There are some things even Alb-hating programmers won’t touch…
Just reading those articles gave me warm fuzzies. I’m with Mike; it would be difficult to take a dim view of a child’s wish.
Just bump it back down when he dies so that his folks can’t sell his account and/or friends take it over. Other than that hell make him invulnerable and able to solo all the instances if it makes him smile.
Y’know, I’d post a snarky comment here, but I don’t have one. I think that’s great.
“…became the envy of the 8.5 million World of Warcraft players worldwide…”
Um, no.
This was a really nice thing for Blizzard to do.
I hope he had a great time.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but are games like WoW really suitable for 10 year olds these days? I guess it works out for him, but I gotta wonder.
If you read the article it states that it was a family activity that he and his father shared after his parents divorced.
So yes, it was appropriate and good. Some dads throw the pigskin or baseball around, his ran Scholomance.
Kudos to dad for finding an activity to share with his spawn and kudos to Blizzard for injecting a smile into a situation that should make every single person who encountered it to weep.
I think Blizzard is being irresponsible. This is just rewarding kids for getting cancer. Next thing you know kids will be getting cancer just so they can get fire shooting crossbows. And then there’ll be guilds where they’ll be all like “You don’t have cancer? Sorry, cancer only guild.” And for those of us who only have a limited amount of cancer, how can we possibly compete? They should totally make non-cancer servers.
That’s all I got.
Amber,
I”m not real worried about the Cancer only guilds… they’ll die out pretty fast..
Ok in all seriousness, this was a very cool thing to do on all rounds. There’s no real slippery slope, this was a matter of Blizzard aiding a well respected Charity.
Other people asking for this sort of treatment had best have a massive charity behind them or they’ll rue the day!!!! RUE I SAY!
Where Origin always went wrong with this concept was to leave it in the hands of the staff. I remember being a voice in an extreme minority when staff would talk to counselors and seers to get input about a customer request for “special” services.
The classic example was an in-game tribute for a player who died. It was always my opinion that these special favors were, in general, a bad idea on three grounds. First, it was almost impossible to decline a request after you grant another. Second, it was almost impossible to verify the veracity of the request. Third, it requires more event policing than EA was good at – these things being havens for people seeking attention by disrupting events.
Eventually, as I harped would happen a thousand times, we got a request for a player funeral, accepted it, and found out weeks later that the dearly departed was just a highly disturbed kid who was very much alive, and craved the attention of internet drama.
The beauty of the Blizzard example is that, by associating with the make a wish foundation, an external foundation has much more to lose if the claims turn out to be false. Make a Wish Foundation is thoroughly qualified to act as a screen for the problem of drama queens vs. children whose quality of life is low because of legitimate medical concerns. This also sidesteps the problem of snowballing requests for special cases, and puts Blizzard in the position of worrying about code, which is their comfort zone, and so-called crowd-control, which they seem to be better at than EA was during UO, not that that’s saying much.
This is a lot better than the ad-hoc way EA approached this in UO. Good job, Blizzard and MaWf. As far as the “worthiness” of the wish, that’s irrelevant. If a dying child really wants one of his last wishes to be r0xx0ring high level content, or being in a room with a thousand kittens, who am I to judge?
Kittens!
“these things being havens for people seeking attention by disrupting events.”
In our defense holding player run weddings in Haven complete with half hour long toasts was pretty much an open invitation to anyone who hadn’t been out PKing lately. And generally runes and keys were more in demand than attention.
They were paying to be sheep dammit!!! Sheep I say!!!!!
Amber, you are embarrasing yourself. To imply or state anyone would try to get cancer for a game……Does the word terminal mean anything to you other than where you play your game? Good job blizzard on doing something real in the cyber world.
The internet needs closed captioning for the humor impaired.
A nine inch nails fan with bad skin cancer got to visit the studio back in January to hear early edits of Year Zero, the latest album, in cooperation with The Frances Foundation.
His name was also added to the list of “dissidents” of the near future for the Alternate Reality Game (think ilovebees for Halo 2) promotion, which featured a future Internet telling us that the whole world’s about to go to hell.
I thought it was a class act, anyway. Read more about Darren Kroupa here.
Oh yeah, and unfortunately, Darren died before he could become a real-world anti-government subversive. But his name’s still part of the story.
Mooofwhisperwind, please be a fakepost.
Mooofwhisperwind has fallen into the sarchasm…
Ha-Haaa….. (Nelson Muntz laugh)
The Grand Canyon, Humpback whales off the coast of Alaska or Hawaii, the pyramids of Egypt, The Taj Mahal,
I think Mooof may be onto something. Amber clearly seems jealous that this kid has spent his entire life getting all this cancer and she just spends her time writing bitter, snarky posts about how people with cancer get treated better than she does. Go smoke a few cartons of Skoal or something to catch up and stop whining. Dang casual cancer people.
Well done Blizzard.
The game is perfect for 10 year olds. The people in it aren’t. Thus, the father was very much involved with his play time. I think that is great.
Good job Blizzard.
When a UO guildmate of mine died in a motorcycle wreck Origin made a monument for him, I didn’t know what to think personally; however it did help to soothe his family and close friends a little bit, I’ll always be greatful for that. Though I did wonder about other players having tragedies, how to handle it? What Blizzard did in this case is super awesome. Maybe they could make some sort of Make a Wish program for other kids/parents? I think that many players would jump at the opportunity to pay an extra monthly fee/donation to support it…
That made me cry:( Such a wonderful thing for them to do!
If this happened in EVE the forums would be shitting fire.
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