World Of Warcraft Community, Rally Blizzard To Support Modder In Need

Edit a game like World of Warcraft can make you cheer widely, but it does not pay the bills exactly. For all the honors that the developer Adam Williams has received for Deadly Boss Mods, a raid tool considered indispensable by SensationalThe community, he was always exhausted and too poor to pay for the dental care he badly needed at the beginning of the month. The gaming community came to his rescue.

Deadly Boss Mods exists since the time of vanilla Sensational. This is a mod interface that gives you alerts and helps you coordinate strategies with group members, a boon against the ever-changing rogue trick gallery of the game. Williams is his only developer. Over the years, it has become his life.

"I do not just work on DBM full-time," he said in a message about how he left office. SensationalThe Mythic raid scene of the elite. "That's all I do by period. I do not have life, no friends, no time to do anything else. It's not just about coding mods here or playing games for money. It's not as clear as that. He commits to every PTR / Beta even though I have a raid character to maintain live and raid later in the night. He grinds the dungeons, the power of the artifacts, the quests of the world, the collection of carpets, the upgrade of the forge to be able to manufacture even more raid gear, etc. Many hours, EVERY DAY.

Stress and money have become serious problems, writes Williams. Every day he divided his time between the mod and the races for his 70-year-old mother, who he says is disabled and has had two heart attack attacks lately – making the prospect of working away from home worrying. On top of that, he stated that his own health had also begun to fail and that he could not afford to get help.

"I have health problems because I can not afford medical insurance or need dental surgery," he said. "I take fish-based antibiotics to manage an abscess tooth that I've had since [the] Legion pre-expansion event. Unfortunately, as my body became more resistant to antibiotics, the infection spread to two other teeth and even began to spread to certain parts of my jaw. If I do not treat it quickly, it could degenerate into a blood infection. . "

He insisted he was not arguing for money and said he was thinking of using his new free time pieces to do odd jobs and earn a little more money. But more raid at the mythical level no longer meant practical testing of the Deadly Boss Mods features at the mythical level, so he asked the community for help in testing. He ended by saying that his love for Deadly Boss Mods "has not changed," but he had to "focus on my health for a minute and try to rejuvenate and reduce my stress."

Then, its publication exploded on social media. It did not take long for the messages of support to start flowing. People said they did not realize how hard Williams worked, or how difficult things were for him. "Man, I've been around since Vanilla and have always used DBM," wrote a player on Reddit. "I thought it had to be done by a team of people. I mean, the updates are so constant, and I can not think of many times where I went, "Man, DBM failed me."

Donations to Williams Patreon went through the roof, reaching his personally defined maximum level. He could finally afford to take care of himself. "I can not wait for Mom to come back from church and I can finally tell her that I have to shave my beard," he wrote about Patreon. "She hates it, I love it, but if I'm going to have surgery in my mouth / jaw, then it must go."

Then, yesterday, Blizzard World of Warcraft The team, with the help of the computer hardware company MSI, also offered Williams a new high-end PC to replace his old computer. "We hope that this small mark of our appreciation takes a little stress on your shoulders", the Sensational The team wrote in a note accompanying the PC.

"I can not thank the community enough or Blizzard or MSI for all the new support I've received, other than [by] focus on health, family and keep on doing DBM best mod I can for [the] Sensational community until the end of SensationalDays, "Williams wrote in response to the gesture.

It is very pleasant and comforting, but it is also difficult to look at this situation and to feel quite comfortable. It may not be companies that need to take care of all modders or offer them jobs or what you have but DBM is a Sensational fixture – a key element of the game for countless players. It may be a simple passion project, but it is much more than that. With games lasting over a period of more than ten years, these ecosystems, characterized by a voluntary and unpaid workforce, even though Patreon partially takes charge of them, are starting to become more and more questionable. If a person who has played a vital role in a game for a day can not bear, what about the society and the game in question? What does it mean when a company like Blizzard benefits from an add-on like Deadly Boss Monsters arguably more than its creator, while doing nothing to do it? That may be the way the gaming industry has been doing things for a while, but that does not mean it's the way to keep doing it.