Did Activision ruin Blizzard?

[ro9ue]

Straight up question. Was the acquisition by Activision an overall positive or negative thing?

Example
Positives: More funding and resources. Probably was the reason that we saw more new games from them besides the old 3 (Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft) as well as a new IP.
Negatives: Stripping down on game content. Seem to be more focused on making money rather than creating good games.

Thoughts?

[Darsithis]

No .

[McNeil]

No .

Thats a clever way to get around 10 characters O.o

Activision ruining Blizzard reminds me of the days EA ruined Westwood

[quras]

Ruined...? NO

but activision brought a lot more "cons" than "pros" I think.

[Tart]

They ruined the game but not the business. If warcraft goes out of business tomorrow they will still have made a killing from the game.

[Deleted]

When did this aquisition even happen? I started playing the game at the end of Wotlk so Im unsure if I can answer the question.

[Jaspias]

publishers ruin everything. they are a medium for getting decent games the funds they need to reach completion, but in WoWs case they brought NOTHING to the table

[Kazgrel]

When did this aquisition even happen? I started playing the game at the end of Wotlk so Im unsure if I can answer the question.

July 2008, so toward the end of BC's lifespan.

The only "value added service" that existed then was server transfer, which had a 3 (or was it 6) month cd and pve could not transfer to pvp (and vice versa). Now look at how many of those are available, for better or worse. Overall I believe they've had a more negative effect. Money talks, though.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Ruin Blizzard? No. World of Warcraft? Yes.

[Jewsco]

Of course they did when ever a business gets bigger it losses touch with its consumers more and more.
Now WoW is all about making money over making a good game.
The smaller company needed to make a good game to make money the bigger company doesn't.
They just milk it for all they can and will let this game die sadly.

Perfect example was the company wonder/hostess that company made it thru the Great Depression but the bigger company that bought them ran it into the ground and now it doesn't exsists anymore.
Sad how big business is run nowadays the few top executives make all the money and run these companies into the ground and they get thier golden parachute and walk away rich.

[Wythel]

Wasn't is more a merge than an acquisition ?

[TheTaurenOrc]

Wasn't is more a merge than an acquisition ?

Yes merger, but Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick became overall President and CEO of Activision Blizzard.

[Deleted]

People who think Activision had no influence on how are things run in Blizzard are delusional.

[Xilurm]

publishers ruin everything. they are a medium for getting decent games the funds they need to reach completion, but in WoWs case they brought NOTHING to the table

Couldn't have said it better myself. Having deadlines is bad for games.

[Noctifer616]

The problem with content is how much time it takes to make. It's easy to say that devs are getting lazy, but the content in modern days takes longer to make than it did in the past. The easiest example would be 3D assets. Over the years the number of polygons have increased as has the resolution of textures, and animations have become more complex. The time it takes to finish a 3D model of an NPC today takes many time longer than it did in the past, yet when you look at development tools, they haven't advanced at the same pace.

Keeping that in mind it's easy to see why they are less and less dungeons, because raids are getting more and more expensive to make. Same thing can be applied to armor sets as well. Today armor sets have higher quality and more geometry than they did in the past, they also have to fit more player races. Making a set of armor today is a lot more work than it was in the past.

That's the reason why, despite constant increase in the dev teams size, the content we get doesn't increase.

[wowisdeaderthandead]

Ruined? Doubtful. That said, they certainly didn't do anything that improved the game. I think the problems are a combination of Blizzard realizing they have a captive audience of addicts that will stay subscribed no matter how hard Blizzard exploits and neglects them. Activision enables that behavior because as a publisher all they care about is $$$.

[qwikz]

Yes and no. They're still a company passionate about making games but a lot of choices they make now are based on how much more money they can earn which is really evident in, for example, their overpriced f2p models.

[Pandragon]

Idk about content, but I do know Activision is the reason for the cash shop and hearthstone. It's how it works, they say "make more money" and Blizzard has to come up with ways to do that.

[Paranoid Android]

I say yes and I will keep it to WoW. I think Activision like any other corporation started to look at just the bottom line. By cutting dungeons, trying to revive old raids and other content. It became a game of less passion and more streamline. Coincidence or not, when purchased around Lich I believe the game lost much of its sould to me.

[RoKPaNda]

No, all of the decisions that Blizzard has made are Blizzard's decisions as they continue down a path that they started down long before I even started playing Blizzard games. I've been playing Blizzard games since WarCraft 2. Every single new entry in a series since then has lost something that the previous entry or a previous Blizzard game has had, every expansion for every game has lost features while gaining others. Every forum for every Blizzard game has accused Blizzard of only caring about money, about the quality of their product going down, etc.

Also Blizzard's position with the Activision thing is unique. You'll notice that Activision's name doesn't appear anywhere in Blizzard games, manuals, etc. I'm sure that they have some impact on Blizzard's games indirectly but the impact that they have is greatly overstated on these forums and the internet in general. While it would be nice to blame Blizzard's occasional decision that is amazingly stupid on Activision, sadly we must accept that these are Blizzard's decisions and sometimes Blizzard goes full on derp and cranks the derp dial all the way up.

Edit: And just for the sake of pointing it out, not that it makes much difference, but Activision Blizzard is a Holding Company.

Idk about content, but I do know Activision is the reason for the cash shop and hearthstone. It's how it works, they say "make more money" and Blizzard has to come up with ways to do that.

Source? Hearthstone was started as a side project by Blizzard employees that turned into a full on game afaik, and cash shops are pretty standard in the MMO genre right now. Sure Blizzard did it in their own unique and sometimes stupid way, but do you have a source stating that was Activision's idea? I mean how do "know" that? Also I should point out that if you're going to use the Vanilla era quote about not having a cash shop, I'd like to point out that again the MMO market itself has changed dramatically since then. A cash shop then would have been horrible, and now it's pretty standard.