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[Digital Piracy] The rise of EMPRESS
I didn't write this, u/Rumbleskim on Reddit did. Their account was suspended so I can't link their profile. Original post here.
[Digital Piracy] The rise of EMPRESS - How one woman turned the pirate underworld on its head, waged a solo war against the entire game industry (and won), went mad with power, started a messianic cult based on high school-level philosophy, and faked her own arrest to spite her rivals and haters
An Introduction to Piracy
Most of us have torrented something at some point, whether it’s a game, movie, book, song or TV show, but just for those who haven’t, I’ll explain the basics.
When you go to a site like The Pirate Bay or Kick Ass Torrents, and click ‘Download Torrent’, all you’re really getting is a link. Programmes like Bittorrent or Vuze are able to open those links, and will let you download almost any file, legal or not. But you’re no
Community Update
Hello! Your friendly mod PassingDuchy again with a few community updates!
Reddit and Discord Hobby Drama communities
I did reach out to both communities. The response from both is that they're not interested in affiliating. As such we won't be linking to either community in the sidebar to respect their wishes. Going forward please don't send either community messages about partnering with this community (though I appreciate everyone who did! It was a big help).
Reposting
Based on the previous discussion post we will be encouraging an opt-out request be sent to authors, but not requiring. The only requirement currently is that the full text is reposted and a link to the original post is included at the top or bottom of the repost.
14 Day Rule
The 14 day rule for all drama being concluded (outside of Round Up) will remain instituted.
Post Titles
As Lemmy doesn't currently have flairs/tags, we will be requiring a litt
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 7: Classic and Legion) - How an illegal server birthed a protest that forced Blizzard to remake WoW, the new age of nostalgia, grinding, toxicity, and spit
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
This is the seventh part of my write-up. You can read the other parts here.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King
- Part 4 - Cataclysm
- Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
- Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard
- Part 11 - Shadowlands
Part 7 – Classic and Legion
Classic was a separate game created to emulate early WoW. Legion was the sixth expansion for retail WoW, coming
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 6: Warlords of Draenor) – How content cuts, bad communication, money-grubbing and rewrites turned WoW’s most anticipated expansion into its most hated ever
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
This is the sixth part of my write-up. You can read the other parts here.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King
- Part 4 - Cataclysm
- Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
- Part 7 - Classic and Legion
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard
- Part 11 - Shadowlands
Part 6 – Warlords of Draenor
This might seem like a bizarre topic to start with, but stay with me here. It all links together.
The Warcraf
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 5: Mists of Pandaria) - This was an expansion mired in talk of racism, furries, rip-offs, and gay baby dragon shippers, which saw three million subscribe leave
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
This is the fifth part of my write-up about World of Warcraft. You can read the first four by clicking the links below.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King
- Part 4 - Cataclysm
- Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor
- Part 7 - Classic and Legion
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard
- Part 11 - Shadowlands
Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
It was mid-2011. The final patch of Cataclysm was on its way, and B
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 4: Cataclysm) - How Blizzard tried to revitalise the world's biggest MMO but instead sent it into a shocking downward spiral
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King
- Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
- Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor
- Part 7 - Classic and Legion
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard
- Part 11 - Shadowlands
Part 4 - Cataclysm
This post is pretty short compared to the others. There were a number of smaller dramas like the banning of swifty or item duping or WoW closing in Iran, but I struggled to cobble them together into anyth
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 3: Wrath of the Lich King) - In which cheaters, anons, doxxers, torturers, zombies and corporate capitalists take the world's largest MMO by storm
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
I recommend reading the first two parts first, but you should be able to understand this post just fine either way.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 4 - Cataclysm
- Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
- Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor
- Part 7 - Classic and Legion
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - [The Fall of Blizzard](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/sym
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 2: Burning Crusade) - A tale of legendary loot, lawsuits, space goats, gay elves, and pedophile guilds
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
This is the second part of my World of Warcraft Hobbydrama series. I recommend reading the first part, which covers Beta and Vanilla, before moving onto this post. But if you don’t want to do that, you should have no trouble understanding anything.
- Part 1 - Beta and Vanilla
- Part 3 - Wrath of the Lich King
- Part 4 - Cataclysm
- Part 5 - Mists of Pandaria
- Part 6 - Warlords of Draenor
- Part 7 - Classic and Legion
- Part 8 - Battle for Azeroth
- Part 9 - Ruined Franchises
- Part 10 - The Fall of Blizzard
- Part 11 - [Shadowl
[Games] World of Warcraft (Part 1: Beta and Vanilla) - dinosaur cartels, naked gnome protest marches, racist stereotypes, funeral massacres, and elf orgies in a tavern in the woods
Original post by Rumbleskim on /r/hobbydrama.
In this series I'll be covering most of WoW's biggest controversies, dramas and scandals, as well as plenty of smaller, weird little tales. Any one of these is worthy of its own write-up, but I assume no one wants to see 50+ different World of Warcraft related posts. By the time I finished writing up all the weird shit from WoW's first release, I had double the character count of a single post. And WoW has nine expansions and several spin offs, not to mention drama at its parent company, Activision-Blizzard. So I have decided to split this post up into parts. As for the entries in this post, I’ve tried to put them in chronological order, but there are some dramas that stretched out over many years – and in those cases, I placed them where they started.
- Part 2 - Burning Crusade
- Part 3 - [Wrath of the Lich King
[Audio] The MQA Controversy: How an inferior format tried to take over the high-end audio market and caused major backlash
This writeup was originally posted to /r/hobbydramma in October 2022, and has since been deleted. This version has been slightly edited for improved clarity and to add some new details that have developed since I made the original post.
Some Background on Digital Audio
This section might get a bit technical, but it’s essential for understanding the nature of this controversy. I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible.
Audio, like most forms of media, can be encoded digitally in a number of different ways. One of the key distinguishing features when comparing digital audio formats, is whether the encoded audio is lossy or lossless. Lossless audio formats store encoded audio signals in their entirety. When decoded, lossless audio is indistinguishable from the original unencoded signal. By contrast, lossy audio formats produce a signal that is close, but not quite identical to the original, hence they “lose” information. This loss is usually intentional, and is done in order to