A Date Which Will Live in Infamy, If Anyone Cares

Blizzard to unleash Cataclysm next December 7. Which makes this World of Warcraft expansion the most important add-on released on that date since World War II: Awakening the Giant, which memorably unlocked the United States as a playable nation.

As a bonus, this MMORPG.com article, entitled "Cataclysm Dated". You can probably hear the snickers from here.

I can't say I'm particularly surprised to find that a great many people had made the Pearl Harbor connection before I even learned that a date for the release of Cataclysm had been set. Still, the decision to release the game on December 7th is unfortunate -- and keep in mind that I am not American, that I am the citizen of a country that joined the Allies in September 1939, and that I never really liked the tendency of Americans to come late to the party, only after being directly threatened or attacked, and then to pretend that what happened before their own declaration of war never really mattered anyway. The American "beacon of democracy" act really started with the Cold War; during the Battle of Britain, their most generous gesture towards England was to obtain themselves bases all over British colonies, in exchange for surplus destroyers.

But anyway, December 7th; quite a smart move, Blizzard, to release an expansion called Cataclysm on precisely that day. It reminds me of the announcement by Pirates of the Burning Sea's Flying Lab Software that they would enable transfers between servers (to eventually close down seven of these, out of eleven) on the night of April 15, 2008 -- which was, if you are a maritime history buff, the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. When I pointed out the coincidence about servers going down on the same day as the Titanic, one of their staffers posted: "Oh man, the office just went nuts when I yelled this out." This points in the direction of an accidental mistake, and nothing more. Had the servers gone down a day earlier or a day later (it was first announced the day before), nobody would have noticed; even though Pirates of the Burning Sea is a nautical game, I assume that very few people bother with such dates to begin with. And Flying Lab Software had nothing to gain from choosing that date; quite the opposite.

But the attack on Pearl Harbor, that's a well-known date, especially, I would presume, to Americans. And I cannot shake off the impression that someone at Blizzard, with that someone being almost certainly an American, meticulously went through all the possible dates for release, and arrested his choice on December 7th. Why? I don't know, but I don't think it's a coincidence. December 7th falls on a Tuesday this year, but the previous World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released on November 13th, 2008 -- a Thursday -- and was successful enough, if you have seen the videos (safe for work; unsafe for your sanity). And assuming, unrealistically, that all staffers at Blizzard flunked high-school history, they should know by now, if they bother to read their own forums, that to talk of Cataclysm on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack is, to some, not only in bad taste, but also callous.

One of their subscribers posted on the World of Warcraft forums:

So do you think Blizzard is just aloof to Pearl Harbor Day being December 7th?

I mean, does anyone think it could be an accident to release a game called cataclysm on a 9/11 or 12/7?

This was the 260th post in the thread (named "Pearl Harbor Day release of Cat not P.C.?"), and was written on October 1st, based on rumours of a December 7 release. But don't look for it now; Blizzard's forum moderators deleted the thread. What remains of it can be read here. At least one other thread remains (update: it's now deleted), but I wonder for how long. It's also a masterpiece of how those who oppose the planned date are called "trolls" by those who firmly believe Blizzard can do no wrong (undoubtedly the same who were actively at work when their favourite company wanted to make real names mandatory on their cesspool of a forum a few months ago), and that 1941, unlike 2001, was a long time ago.

As I mentioned above, I have all the reasons in the world not to be bothered by Pearl Harbor; but it is because I am incapable of being entirely convinced that Blizzard isn't capitalizing on the widespread knowledge of the date for the release of a game known as Cataclysm, or that someone didn't notice the awkwardness of the situation before okaying it, that I question the choice of December 7th as the release date. Not that Blizzard is likely to change its mind, of course, when there is so much money at stake...

(The picture on the right comes from Blizzard's press kit. Ah, for the good old days when press kits were just for the press...)