Is Blizzard still quality games maker?

[mvaliz]

but it's bigger than WC3 and SC1 have ever been outside of Korea. SC2 actaully paved the way for growing market of Esport we have today and is holding strong in the sea of F2p games. -snip-

I have never, ever, heard of SC2 being regarded as a popular E-Sport, nevermind the concept of it PAVING the way for a growing market within E-Sports. Hell man, I think Street Fighter IV has paved more ground for an E-Sport market than SC2 did. SC1 is probably 10x more of a popular E-Sport today than SC2.

[Durandro]

I have never, ever, heard of SC2 being regarded as a popular E-Sport

Its taken over from StarCraft: Brood War as the dominant tournament E-Sport now, especially in Korea. Its extremely popular, though LoL and DOTA get a lot more live/stream views (not entirely sure why - personal preference).

[Ratboy]

For me personally I say yes. I'm still playing WoW, I really enjoyed both SC2 Heart of the Swarm and D3 & I can't when for the next expansion for all 3.

[Wildmoon]

I have never, ever, heard of SC2 being regarded as a popular E-Sport, nevermind the concept of it PAVING the way for a growing market within E-Sports. Hell man, I think Street Fighter IV has paved more ground for an E-Sport market than SC2 did. SC1 is probably 10x more of a popular E-Sport today than SC2.

err wut? Where have you been? and what are you smoking? Esport has been pretty small market since the day of CS and SC1. With SC2 released Esport started to grow rapidly. MLG has never seen bigger number before they hosted SC2. I will tell you that SC1 is now dead. All of them transitioned to SC2 already. You are ignorance. I wonder where you get all that from. It doesn't seem like you know anything about SC1 or SC2.
http://www.sakuafk.com/2012/04/27/the-rise-of-esports/ There are articles like this all over the place.

[Darksoldierr]

WoW is still the biggest subbased MMO = true, but i would(and i bet others would as well)like to know how many "subs" wow has from China

D3 is still the biggest Hack and slash/dungeon crawler = i doubt D3 is the biggest

Starcraft is still the biggest RTS = true, but there is not that much competition in RTS market

Theres a reason, why there is no competition in RTS market, a) its very small market, b)Starcraft BW and Starcraft II dominates it, not worth throwing money at that genre, when you have to fight against those two beasts (also AoE2, and some other ones still there)

Imagine if the MMORPG genre would be really small, like globally 10M players and out of those, 9M plays WoW. Would you make an MMORPG to fight for it or just do something else?

[chaotus]

I have fond nostalgia for the earlier games made by Blizzard.(thinking of you vikings and bloodlusted trolls, dabu!)

Blizzard was undeniably a leader in the PC gaming market with its hit titles like Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft. Are they still quality game makers, no I believe they are not quality game makers at this point. They produce flavor of the month type gaming to cater to a greedy corporate overhead. Is it right? No it poisons the artistic polish Blizzard used to provide in the games it created. Is it avoidable? I'm not so sure we can say that given our economic structures. You can find fault with Blizzard being a tool of the conglomerate now, but you can't find flaw with Blizzard selling their souls for a new house. If you were offered enough money to take care of all your needs and all you had to do was ignore the minority and feed the masses what they crave... wouldn't you do it as well? Blizzard will continue to pump out game after game until it is drained of all talent and foresight, then it will be closed.

My prediction is titan is a free to play first person shooter with rpg elements. It will gets tons of people playing it because it will look awesome and cool, it will be the flavor of the month. Blizzard will make money and do it ad nauseum until they have nothing left but the kitchen sink. I can't blame them, money is everything in our world. Yet it's sad and shaming to see it happen none the less.

TLDR: No.

[Orange Joe]

D3 is still the biggest Hack and slash/dungeon crawler = i doubt D3 is the biggest

Show me one with 12 million sales, 1 million active daily players, and 3 million monthly players.

[Glorious Leader]

Show me one with 12 million sales, 1 million active daily players, and 3 million monthly players.

I didn't realize the bots were that out of hand....

[Yarathir]

Yes, yes, but you cant always measure the quality just by looking at numbers. Just because something sells it doesnt mean it's as deep and immersive as for example D2.

D2 was shit before LoD.



And it wasn't really divine either, even after LoD. BAAL RUNS!

[Ulgrim]

When they became concerned with getting out content faster more so than the quality of that content, that's when they lost their edge. This is generally what happens when a company gets too big or too successful. They try too hard to hold on to that success and lose sight of why things were so great in the first place, at the expense of the consumer. It seems to be epidemic with a lot of companies today.

[mireigi]

You have that way backwards. Blizzard was owned by vivendi for years before activision came along.

You are, of course, correct. In that case we are all doomed.

[Wildmoon]

I didn't realize the bots were that out of hand....

only if botting is exclusive to D3.

[Orange Joe]

I didn't realize the bots were that out of hand....

And how many are bots? I want proof of those numbers also.

only if botting is exclusive to D3.

lol You beat me to it.

[MoanaLisa]

Yes, yes, but you cant always measure the quality just by looking at numbers. Just because something sells it doesnt mean it's as deep and immersive as for example D2.

True enough but the fairest comparison there is to compare D3 to the original D2 minus expansion packs in which case it stacks up much better. Which is really only to say that Blizzard games often take a while to come to the point where they are really, really good. There's no question in my mind that the runup to D3 and the launch was seriously mishandled but whether or not a game is good or bad or simply does not meet ridiculously raised expectations are all different questions and pretty subjective. A lot of D3 and their other games are very good and the stuff that falls short is often improved over time. From a game design standpoint I probably prefer that over the more usual practice of putting a game out there, patching up some really obvious bugs and then moving on.

Which gets us back to the topic: Blizzard's willingness to continue to work and improve their games after release is one of the key things that make them a step above many of their competitors. In the end that's just my opinion though and other people aren't doing anything wrong by expecting everything to be perfect at launch. I don't think that expectation is terribly practical but it's understandable.

[rated]

Blizzard are still amazing game makers. Every game in the Warcraft universe has been great, Every SC game released has been amazing. The only bad piece of meat on Blizzards plate was Diablo 3 which was a massive disappointment at release and only recently got better (the game we got now, should of been the game we got at release).

[Arbs]

To me yes, no one is perfect. Blizzard learns from the mistakes & moves on. Cata sucked, MoP was great.

[Glorious Leader]

Quite honestly I fail to see the distinction that cata was terrible but mists is A OKAY. I mean I heard all sorts of people at the time say cata was A OKAY to and now in hind sight it's apparently fucking terrible. Give it some time you'll come to the same realization about mists...

[Wildmoon]

Quite honestly I fail to see the distinction that cata was terrible but mists is A OKAY. I mean I heard all sorts of people at the time say cata was A OKAY to and now in hind sight it's apparently fucking terrible. Give it some time you'll come to the same realization about mists...

If SoO is atleat on par with ToT then what you want will likely not happen.

[RickJamesLich]

To me that depends, I think MoP has had some awesome raiding content, but ignored almost everything else, and put emphasis on spots where not everyone has fun (dailies, LFR, heroics being boring, dull questing, PvP problems). The raids IMO have all been great IMO, just about as good as they can be, you can nit pick here and there, like ToT being linear, but overall, this is up there with the best stuff blizz has ever produced. Definitely think they could've developed the other stuff better. I'm a long time blizz fan, played wc 1, wc 2, and wc 3, I even played Rock N Roll racing way way back in the day, so I'm a big fan of blizzard's creativity.

[Seefer]

The reason it is no other subbased MMOs isnt because of lack of trying though. Several Subbased MMOs just cant be of the same quality of WoW and therefor loose a fair share of the subscribers and either has the choice of dyeing out or go F2P

Do you honestly think these new games can't compete or do you think the more accurate reason more people stay with WoW are they don't see the point in starting a new game they have to pay for when they are already paying for a game they have so much time and money invested in? For me if I am going to be honest it's because I have so many friends in WoW and have invested thousands of dollars into this game that I didn't stay with other sub based MMOs.