Blizzard’s last six months have shown a rapidly changing company

erek

[H]F Junkie
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Opinion? Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 (unless first-person 3D) are of no interest to me.

"Granted, Blizzard didn’t have fixer Rod Fergusson in its ranks for Reforged. And based on what we know of Diablo 4, it’s looking to be the sort of grim, badass action game that fans are hoping for. The next game in the demon-slaying franchise just happens to be shaping up during a period of sweeping cultural change at the development studio, and that’s bound to influence the game somehow.

“We have more new products in development today at Blizzard than we’ve ever had in our history,” Adham said at BlizzCon 2018. “And our future is very bright.”"


https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/7/21...reforged-overwatch-2-activision-rod-fergusson
 
Diablo 1, Starcraft, Warcraft 1-3 (including xpacs) are my PC gaming childhood.

Not sure what this shit is they’re trying to peddle.
And before anyone freaks the fuck out D2 was a fine game. Perhaps their best. Just wasn’t one I was super interested in.

In fact the only other company I remember super fondly besides Blizzard is Westwood. God I love early RTS games before it became a who can click 300 times per minute.
 
You can call me a heretic, but about the only game of theirs I actually enjoyed was warcraft 1. Sure I haven't tried all, but tried a lot. But by far the game I was most excited for was cancelled by them, and that was about the last time I had any interest in a Blizzard title.
 
You can call me a heretic, but about the only game of theirs I actually enjoyed was warcraft 1. Sure I haven't tried all, but tried a lot. But by far the game I was most excited for was cancelled by them, and that was about the last time I had any interest in a Blizzard title.
Stab in the dark: Starcraft ghost? I still wish they had dropped that game.

The idea sounded hella fun back then.
 
Unsurprisingly, about the time it became Activision Blizzard, is when it went to shit.
While I agree it started it down hill slide when they got brought by Activision. It is the past 2 years that Blizzard really started shitting the bed. I am guessing as the years went by the old guard at Blizzard were slowly replaces with Activision people and now completely taken over. Don't expect Blizzard to ever rebound. The people who made Blizzard what it was is gone.
 
Stab in the dark: Starcraft ghost? I still wish they had dropped that game.

The idea sounded hella fun back then.
I have an acquaintance who worked on that title, he once drunkenly referred to it as a second rate metal gear re-skin with better ASS-ets, that was little more than an attempt to enter the Asian Waifu market.

If he was telling the truth it was for the best, as many of the people he was working with moved on to later work on Metroid: Other M....
 
You can call me a heretic, but about the only game of theirs I actually enjoyed was warcraft 1. Sure I haven't tried all, but tried a lot. But by far the game I was most excited for was cancelled by them, and that was about the last time I had any interest in a Blizzard title.

I really enjoyed Warcraft 1 and 2 but absolutely hated 3. I messed around with the original Diablo but never played the full game. The demo was pretty fun, though. Other than those games I have no interest in anything Blizzard has done or will do.
 
"The next game in the demon-slaying franchise just happens to be shaping up during a period of sweeping cultural change at the development studio, and that’s bound to influence the game somehow."

That there is some quality journalatin'.
 
I played Overwatch and COD a fair amount but I'm trying to limit my support for companies I know to be in bed with China and their anti human polices.
 
WarCraft, WarCraft 2, StarCraft, StarCraft 2.

That's Blizzard to me.

For me, it's Blackthorne, The Lost Vikings, Warcraft 1 and 2, Starcraft.

I would include Diablo 1 and 2, but Blizzard was only a publisher of those games while the designing credit goes to Condor which was bought by Blizzard and then renamed Blizzard North. I'm not sure Blizzard deserve credit there since Condor say they were constantly fighting Blizzard over the dark nature of the game (which Blizzard apparently didn't like - explains Diablo 3) and since Diablo 3 was an utter pile of garbage.


I had my 'Blizzard is dead" realization moment when I played Warcraft III upon its release. What a waste of the IP, lore, and world that was. I consider it one of the games that disappointed me the most in gaming history. Since Warcraft III, Blizzard has continued along the same downward trajectory that game (or the Battle.net re-release of Warcraft II, which cut out some of the game's music and reportedly also lowered audio and video quality to fit 2 CDs onto one disc) marked the start of. But now their long descent from quality has crossed a threshold that even the average casual gamer sees it.

Chris Metzen was one of the worst things to happen to Blizzard. If his influence had been restrained more, I'm sure we would have gotten better games and less cringy and vapid fairy-fart garbage that weakened undermined the games Blizzard released. He should have been kept on artwork duty and maybe some scenario design contribution, but not writing or lead design. His writing in Blizzard games is cinge-worthy.


Blizzard 'has completely changed,' say Diablo's original creators

"Brevik and the Schaefer brothers all stated that even during the development of Diablo 2, there was a constant battle over its gory, satanic aesthetic between Blizzard North and Blizzard Entertainment, the main branch of the company that was originally founded by Mike Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce. But as Blizzard continued to grow after the success of Diablo, Warcraft, and StarCraft, it became harder for the trio to focus on creative design and avoid corporate bureaucracy."
 
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Chris Metzen had some of the best artwork I remember from any video game. The diablo 1/2 and Warcraft and Starcraft manuals were amazing bc of it.

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Chris Metzen had some of the best artwork I remember from any video game. The diablo 1/2 and Warcraft and Starcraft manuals were amazing bc of it.

Yup. His art at Blizzard is brilliant. Like I said in my post, Metzen should have been kept on artwork duty. While he was great at art, he mostly sucked at everything else and he brought the quality of Blizzard games down due to having too much influence over them. I can't even bring myself to play Starcraft II because the writing and dialog are too campy, cheesy, and cringy. He did the same thing to Warcraft in Warcraft III.
 
I'd gladly pay for new Diablo 4 expansion every year as long as it adds plenty of new fun stuff to do.
It's a pure grind/hunt for new loot game so it wouldn't be frustrating to grind for brand new gear every year.
I find current seasons in Diablo 3 lackluster and not really making me want to play. They mainly just change how stuff works but it's still the same gear.
 
I don't mind Diablo 3, I just kick back and cruise around killing shit. The rest of their catalog is fair garbage though...
 
I would include Diablo 1 and 2, but Blizzard was only a publisher of those games while the designing credit goes to Condor which was bought by Blizzard and then renamed Blizzard North. I'm not sure Blizzard deserve credit there since Condor say they were constantly fighting Blizzard over the dark nature of the game (which Blizzard apparently didn't like - explains Diablo 3) and since Diablo 3 was an utter pile of garbage.

At least it appears they're heading back towards the darker nature and color pallet with D4, the gameplay teaser last year looked promising in this regard:

Quite the contrast to the constant color-explosions that was D3, which I wasn't a fan of. Played 3 quite a bit, but it never pulled me in like D2 did.
 
It's not so much the color scheme of Diablo 3, but the lack of a good cow level and massive amount of mobs. Diablo 3 has too many spotty patches and too much travel time, which is weird since they keep making momentum builds.
 
At least it appears they're heading back towards the darker nature and color pallet with D4, the gameplay teaser last year looked promising in this regard:

Quite the contrast to the constant color-explosions that was D3, which I wasn't a fan of. Played 3 quite a bit, but it never pulled me in like D2 did.


Given the debacle that was War3 Reforged, I'm not even sure if any of this will make it into the actual D4.
 
I am hoping D4 is closer to D2 and to dark/satanic/evil/gory aesthetics.

I enjoyed the very candy-coated WoW-art-style D3 for what it was at the time. But it got to ridiculous levels, to the point where "legendary" and other high-end drops weren't even good anymore. Sometimes you could find a regular quality item that was better. I don't know, it just feels like over time they kinda ran it off the tracks. I think D3 before a bunch of its patches was a better game than D3 is today.

However, I constantly go back to D2 and I never go back to D3- which says a lot about the design of the game to me. D2 constantly seems to be able to pull me back in.

Edit: War3 Reforged and other stuff Re: Blizzard lately has given me zero confidence in any new products from them, however.
 
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Given the debacle that was War3 Reforged, I'm not even sure if any of this will make it into the actual D4.

If it does it does, and if it doesn't, it can be just another missed opportunity by Blizzard. Trying to remain optimistic here, but I hear ya on their track record...
 
Ive been playing bliz games for a long time, and their quality has slipped a lot. I do not have high hopes for D4, and I really expect it to be full of MT and maybe even have a sub for the game. Wasnt a fan of D3 at launch as I waited along with many of my guildies to play a game we couldnt log into. I miss single player games you can play offline.
 
I don't see how anything in that article relates to changes, they hired 1 guy who yeah is known for getting shit done GREAT, but aside from that they only other change is their shareholders being upset over their lack of growth and financial returns. There have been no real leadership changes, no announcements of new IP, just some terrible remakes for quick cash to play on that nostalgia factor which gave some short term boosts but completely lacks any long term viability.
 
To me it feels like there is still an old guard at Blizzard holding on as best they can. When they are given undeliverable timelines from the activision overlords they deliver what they can in the timeline provided and tell them either publish this trash or give us the time needed to do it right. Sadly the corporate overlords at activision have said. "It's blizzard people will buy it." then released it. Only to scramble once it's been published because it's trash.

Activision and Blizzard need to split. Get the corporate out of the art of making video games. Give them deadlines but be reasonable and understand push happens.
 

This game, which is going to be the same "3/4 view, click to move, click to attack things while special effects flash on the screen and monsters explode in piles of blood and ash and bones" is going to be grim and badass.

Guys, it is going to be a click-click-click-RNG-lootfest. It will be prettier than the last one. The cutscenes will be look nicer. People will play it for a while and have fun, and then realize... there's no "endgame" and it's not going to have an endless amount of content. They will move on to whatever comes next, and a small percentage of the player base will keep coming back every season for a week or so. Let's not pretend Diablo is some kind of immersive experience.

The whole thing is just Blizzard saying "well, we dug our heels in about this whole Diablo 3 endgame thing, so we can't release the next expansion as an expansion or we'll look like hypocrites. Let's just call it Diablo 4 and people will go nuts for it."
 
This is just a reflection of what happens when games become big business. When you have shareholders life becomes exclusively about maximizing profits. I'm sure the Devs over there know how fans are going to react to most of their recent choices. It doesn't matter when you have Steve in accounting showing the board how much money DOTA 2 would have made them with these policies in place or how big the mobile gaming market is and how much cheaper it would be to make D III run on a phone than it would be to develop D IV.
 
To me it feels like there is still an old guard at Blizzard holding on as best they can. When they are given undeliverable timelines from the activision overlords they deliver what they can in the timeline provided and tell them either publish this trash or give us the time needed to do it right. Sadly the corporate overlords at activision have said. "It's blizzard people will buy it." then released it. Only to scramble once it's been published because it's trash.

Activision and Blizzard need to split. Get the corporate out of the art of making video games. Give them deadlines but be reasonable and understand push happens.
I doubt a split will change anything. The blizzard guard is gone and replaced by Activision's lackies.
 
While I agree it started it down hill slide when they got brought by Activision. It is the past 2 years that Blizzard really started shitting the bed. I am guessing as the years went by the old guard at Blizzard were slowly replaces with Activision people and now completely taken over. Don't expect Blizzard to ever rebound. The people who made Blizzard what it was is gone.
Very likely this is exactly what happened. Its typical when theres a takeover or buyout and change in culture. Slowly but surely they check out until its nothing but a shell of its former self. Going through that first hand right now.
 
It's not so much the color scheme of Diablo 3, but the lack of a good cow level and massive amount of mobs. Diablo 3 has too many spotty patches and too much travel time, which is weird since they keep making momentum builds.


The cow level in D3 is exactly like the cow level in D2.....
 
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