So Blizzard Entertainment just randomly tweeted about Illidan Stormrage from WoW, saying “My hunt is eternal.” And the tweet must have landed like a brick. With a school shooting and an assassination attempt happening just that day, the players just seemed to feel that tweet came at rather an awkward time.
Temptedraven was one of the first to call out the company, with AfternoonEmbrace saying, “I don’t think that THIS is the post you should be making out of the blue on a day where we just had a school shooting AND an assassination, regardless of your personal or political beliefs, you could seriously damage the company’s reputation if this gets taken the wrong way.” And honestly? They do have a point: Even if it wasn’t intentional, at least optics should matter when you are that huge of a company with a global audience.
Things went wild after that. Some players began defending Blizzard. CaptainRelyk remarked, “Expecting the whole world to stop because a shooting happened in the United States is absurd. You seriously think WoW should avoid posting every time a tragedy happens?” Fair enough, but really? The world does not revolve around the US. Timing counts.
Others turned it into an opportunity to once again throw shade at Blizzard for private servers, such as femboychovy with “Your hunt of private servers seems eternal currently,” and Alvarx_7X with “Your private servers are eternal XD when your devs doing nothing for WoW.” So yeah, the community’s frustration about WoW’s current state definitely seeped into the off-track reactions.
And then the rare WoW humor came in here to save the day with palemirrrs dredging up old salty meme fame with “he didn’t get to bubble hearth,” and DavidRomanovich lamenting “Kirk didnt pop Divine Shield :(” those kinds of jokes- and if you know, you know. Then of course, rzchit gave out the obligatory “illidan did nothing wrong” comment because that’s basically a rule now.
All hell broke loose when Kittredge hit with “Um, Indian people running the Blizzard account, could you please read up on the lore before posting? Thank you.” which… yikes. Then we had AnnaHayven chiming in with, “The right-wing truly have become the snowflakes they pretend to hate.” So promptly it just turned into some weird con-fusion of gaming jokes, company bashings, and political eye-rolls.
Some of the players went proprietary about it like thorined who said, “IS THIS SOME SICK JOKE or honest mistake. With blizzard i woudnt be surprised of the first one” and another player just said, “Bad timing, even for you.” Then of course, others viewed it as an ongoing joke with GlaceonGal tweeting, “AHAHAHAHAHA 😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏 Blizz social team defs did this on purpose lmfaooooo,” so everybody tossed their own interpretation into the mix.
Ashkir tried to defend by saying, “These are likely pre scheduled weeks to months in advance,” which is actually true as most social media posts tend to be queued up at some point in time. However, with how things run in real time these days, sometimes brands just have to check the calendar and left a brief news cycle before letting this stuff go live. It is just plain sense.
Amidst the absolute madness unfolding at that time, some players stood on the sidelines cheering for Illidan, with Timesaver.gg calling him the “Peak Warcraft Character” and HindenbergTTV saying, “Yup, he is coming back for sure now.” Because in the end, Illidan is forever that dude-even if the time for this announcement really was questionable.
So, what has this whole mess taught us? Maybe gaming companies should have somebody who checks up on all scheduled tweets to double-check for anything that might conflict with an important news story. Or players will just always find more private-server guns or dev activity, or lack thereof, it to complain about. Or maybe it just reminds us that Illidan remains one of the most iconic characters in WoW history- unreally worthy and ready for any occasion, even in inappropriate ones.
Blizzard has not yet responded nor taken down the tweet, so it shall remain perched on the timeline in all of its awkward glory. And fellas? Well, this has to be very much a 2024 gaming culture thing: where nothing makes sense, and everything is a potential discourse topic. Well, at least the art was cool. Green really is his color.
Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Illidan. Yeah, he’s still out there hunting. Eternal. And Blizzard’s social media team is probably having a meeting right now on how to double-check all their scheduled posting. Or maybe not. Who knows. Back to grinding, folks.
