Blizzard Entertainment/YMMV

• Internet Backdraft: Although there have been many examples over the years, the most notable instance was on July 6th, 2010 when the company announced how the new forum policy would display a poster's real name. The community reaction can be best described as... apocalyptic. (As of July 9th, Blizzard listened to the howls of rage and cancelled the policy.)
  • • To be more exact, they reversed course after one of their employees posted his real name, and promptly had maps to his house and all sorts of other personal information posted all over the internet.
  • Another example of a huge backdraft was when in October 10, 2019, Taiwan Blizzard removed a Hearthstone esports pro for voicing pro-Hong Kong sentiments and fired the two sports casters that are with him. It Got Worse for the Irvine California company when the apology and lessening the sentences didn't work to curb the already angry, fans, employees, and politicians, when it was revealed that Blizzard apologize to China and swore to defend the Communist country's honor.
• Memetic Badass: Red Shirt Guy
  • A guy who wears a red shirt, who dare to ask Blizzard the tough inquires or sets Blizzard straight, starting with Ian Bates in 2010.
  • "Mess with Jeff [Kaplan], get wreck!" Or "Mess with Jeff [Kaplan], prepare for DEATH!"
• Moment of Awesome: Blizzard's response to Uwe Boll's offer to be the director of the World of Warcraft movie, if there is one:

Blizzard: We will not sell the movie rights, not to you...especially not to you.

• Scapegoat Creator: Most of the company's more well-known employees have gone through turns of being one, but Chris Metzen (the head story-writer) is especially frequent a victim.
  • A frequent point that is brought up against Metzen recently is that he is supposedly largely responsible for Richard Knaak getting so much work in Blizzard's various Expanded Universe despite a damn near universal hatred of Knaak's writing style.
  • Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, due to being very active on the forums, tends to take the flak for all the games class balance.
  • Bobby Kotick has also started to be blamed for flaws in Blizzard's games after Blizzard merged with Activision.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Blizzard games tend to have detailed lore with lots of Expanded Universe material, all of which goes ignored by players who care only for the game itself.
  • On the other hand, some speculate that this has led Blizzard to pay less attention to the story in World of Warcraft (Or at least up till either Wrath of the Lich King or Cataclysm). The burning crusade is probably the best example of this, where the anti-heroes of the previous game had suddenly (with no adequate in-game reason) turned evil and gone to war against one another. Blizzard also tends to forget storylines in WoW in the original game, there was a quest that implied the forsaken had contact with one of the old gods, for an example, something which was never mentioned again. Or the new council of Tirisfal and their messiah child.