Is Blizzard still quality games maker?

[Raven]

But back then when Diablo and Starcraft was big what did they have to contend against ? there was nothing Diablo3 and Starcraft3 have alot of other games to contend with and its pretty much impossible to get everyone go oohh this is the best game ever, when both Starcraft3 and Diablo3 are pretty much the same as Diablo1 and 2 and Starcraft 1 and 2 just better graphics, but the hole gameplay are pretty much the same game as it was 10 years ago. other than improved graphics its pretty much the same game and just becouse people get tired of a game much quicker now than 10 years ago don´t mean the game is bad or have bad quality, it just takes more now to keep players invested in a game than it did 10 years ago and the hole way starcraft3 pve and diablo3 are made are outplayed a long time ago. .

[Grummgug]

Well, 'lets take a look at Blizzard's recent track record:

Warcraft 3:

This game was Blizzard's first true failure. No-one played it. I was on battle.net every day back when this got released. On battle.net 1.0, there is a /users command where you can see how many people are playing each game per realm. Starcraft was regularly around 90k users. Warcraft 3 was around 30k users. Warcraft 3 was getting its ass kicked by a game in the same genre that was several years older!

The ONLY thing that saved Warcraft 3 was DOTA. As it turns out, DOTA was a genius creation. But Blizzard didn't make it and can't take credit for it. So you had Warcraft 3, which had great sales, but few logged on to play, and of those that did, the overwhelming majority did NOT play it as it was intended, but played a custom map called DOTA.

Warcraft 3 also failed to displace Starcraft in standard RTS tournament play. That wouldn't happen until SC2, years later.

There is no way to look at Warcraft 3 other than it failed HARD. Although that failure led to DOTA and WoW.

World of Warcraft

Unquestionable success. What is there to say really?

Starcraft: Ghost

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA Well, Blizzard infamous FPS vaporware title gets included in the list. What the hell happened here? They spend years secretly developing it, we got some screenshots, then they announced they are moving staff off the title and resetting it, and then it quietly disappeared.

A second failure for Blizzard

Starcraft 2

It seems to be a successful game. I'm not sure, I haven't bought it, and I don't plan on buying it until well after the SC2X. But I haven't heard the same amount of crying over this title. It has successfully replaced Starcraft in tournament play.

Diablo 3

Another failure for Blizzard. Sure, it sold a lot of copies, 12 million of them, blah blah. But they sold those copies because people had fond memories of D2 and Blizzard still had brand name recognition. People played D3 a lot for the first 2-3 months, then everyone quit, which was quite obvious as friends lists died off collectively. Battle.net 2.0 takes a large bit of blame here, IMO. Its a much less social place. In Battle.net 1.0, players could log in, sit in chat channels, have conversations with other players, and wait for others to log in, then have a big group and go play some D2 or SC or even War3 (on rare occasions). There's no doubt that friends playing with you encourages people to stick around, and the bnet 2.0 friends list is a pale imitation of bnet 1.0's chat room interface. You also can't make named games, which helps a ton.

The actual game isn't BAD. End game needs work. But the primitive social features likely killed this title. And there is a ton of bad word of mouth about this game now. It will be very interesting to see how many people actually buy D3X, and how many play.

##########################

Blizzard failed games (3):

Warcraft 3
Starcraft: Ghost
Diablo 3

Blizzard successful games (2):

World of Warcraft
Starcraft 2

That's my count.

On the drawing board is Blizzard all-stars (their DOTA clone), Hearthstone, and Titan. Titan thus far sounds like another Starcraft:Ghost. Just vaporware.

[Deleted]

No, they're only a quality money makers. One day all fanboys would finally be disappointed in them and they'll hopefully go bunkrupt.

[Shullski]

Well, 'lets take a look at Blizzard's recent track record:

Warcraft 3:

This game was Blizzard's first true failure. No-one played it. I was on battle.net every day back when this got released. On battle.net 1.0, there is a /users command where you can see how many people are playing each game per realm. Starcraft was regularly around 90k users. Warcraft 3 was around 30k users. Warcraft 3 was getting its ass kicked by a game in the same genre that was several years older!

Theres an entire generation of gamers that are in love with that games entirely story line. Youre insane if you say it was a failure, idc how many average users were on

[Wildmoon]

Well, 'lets take a look at Blizzard's recent track record:

Warcraft 3:

This game was Blizzard's first true failure. No-one played it. I was on battle.net every day back when this got released. On battle.net 1.0, there is a /users command where you can see how many people are playing each game per realm. Starcraft was regularly around 90k users. Warcraft 3 was around 30k users. Warcraft 3 was getting its ass kicked by a game in the same genre that was several years older!

The ONLY thing that saved Warcraft 3 was DOTA. As it turns out, DOTA was a genius creation. But Blizzard didn't make it and can't take credit for it. So you had Warcraft 3, which had great sales, but few logged on to play, and of those that did, the overwhelming majority did NOT play it as it was intended, but played a custom map called DOTA.

Warcraft 3 also failed to displace Starcraft in standard RTS tournament play. That wouldn't happen until SC2, years later.

There is no way to look at Warcraft 3 other than it failed HARD. Although that failure led to DOTA and WoW.

World of Warcraft

Unquestionable success. What is there to say really?

Starcraft: Ghost

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA Well, Blizzard infamous FPS vaporware title gets included in the list. What the hell happened here? They spend years secretly developing it, we got some screenshots, then they announced they are moving staff off the title and resetting it, and then it quietly disappeared.

A second failure for Blizzard

Starcraft 2

It seems to be a successful game. I'm not sure, I haven't bought it, and I don't plan on buying it until well after the SC2X. But I haven't heard the same amount of crying over this title. It has successfully replaced Starcraft in tournament play.

Diablo 3

Another failure for Blizzard. Sure, it sold a lot of copies, 12 million of them, blah blah. But they sold those copies because people had fond memories of D2 and Blizzard still had brand name recognition. People played D3 a lot for the first 2-3 months, then everyone quit, which was quite obvious as friends lists died off collectively. Battle.net 2.0 takes a large bit of blame here, IMO. Its a much less social place. In Battle.net 1.0, players could log in, sit in chat channels, have conversations with other players, and wait for others to log in, then have a big group and go play some D2 or SC or even War3 (on rare occasions). There's no doubt that friends playing with you encourages people to stick around, and the bnet 2.0 friends list is a pale imitation of bnet 1.0's chat room interface. You also can't make named games, which helps a ton.

The actual game isn't BAD. End game needs work. But the primitive social features likely killed this title. And there is a ton of bad word of mouth about this game now. It will be very interesting to see how many people actually buy D3X, and how many play.

##########################

Blizzard failed games (3):

Warcraft 3
Starcraft: Ghost
Diablo 3

Blizzard successful games (2):

World of Warcraft
Starcraft 2

That's my count.

On the drawing board is Blizzard all-stars (their DOTA clone), Hearthstone, and Titan. Titan thus far sounds like another Starcraft:Ghost. Just vaporware.

This list is quite accurate and fair but I think you are a bit too harsh on WC3. WC3 was great in its own right. Its campaigne was great. The game was innovative and was undeniably foundation of Dota. Dota use mostly WC3's mechanics with no basebuilding. SC:Ghost was not really a failure because they didn't even release it.

[Belisaurio]

SC2 is the only game tha can maintain the quality for me.
WoW, for me, It's like McDonalds: Popular and has lot's of little things to do, but they don't accomplish anything. An MMORPG without MMO and RPG.
Diablo 3 is Diablo+WOW mentality. All players seems the same (ignoring items). No stats, no skilltrees/builds. Just some guides to go and stright build guides for every moment/difficult. The ingame scenarios are awesome...but it's the only thing good in the game.

Hope in Blizzard allstars+hearthstone.

[Repefe]

We can look at it from different PoV. Unanswered questions about Blizz games that boggle ppls minds.

WoW: I don't really have any. I hope Blizz can reform the classical MMORPG genre to fit more the MOBA style of gaming ppl like these days, but as far as old school MMORPG that does not focus on open world go Blizz did their best.

Well ... maybe they could get somebody more capable to write their stories. (goes for WoW and D3)

SC2: Haven't paid much attention to the genre, but from what I gathered SC1 was super popular in Korea because of modes other than 1v1 ... which Blizz threw away for MOBA games to pick up. We know how the story goes from there. But whatever. For ppl who like 1v1 SC2 is probably a success.

D3: Why was the itemization so shitty. Why was the story so shitty. What was the reasoning behind switching from gear grind to ah manager. Why was there no focus on character spec. Why did it take 2+ years to come up with pvp duels. ... I can't think of D3 as a success.

Heartstone: It generates some positive buzz ... I guess.

So you can say they are quality game developer. Just if you expect the awe you got from when they started their franchises ... you have to look somewhere else.

[Wildmoon]

We can look at it from different PoV. Unanswered questions about Blizz games that boggle ppls minds.

WoW: I don't really have any. I hope Blizz can reform the classical MMORPG genre to fit more the MOBA style of gaming ppl like these days, but as far as old school MMORPG that does not focus on open world go Blizz did their best.

Well ... maybe they could get somebody more capable to write their stories. (goes for WoW and D3)

SC2: Haven't paid much attention to the genre, but from what I gathered SC1 was super popular in Korea because of modes other than 1v1 ... which Blizz threw away for MOBA games to pick up. We know how the story goes from there. But whatever. For ppl who like 1v1 SC2 is probably a success.

D3: Why was the itemization so shitty. Why was the story so shitty. What was the reasoning behind switching from gear grind to ah manager. Why was there no focus on character spec. Why did it take 2+ years to come up with pvp duels. ... I can't think of D3 as a success.

Heartstone: It generates some positive buzz ... I guess.

So you can say they are quality game developer. Just if you expect the awe you got from when they started their franchises ... you have to look somewhere else.

It's actually impossible to capture the feeling you got from the first time you play any original game. The job of developers is to make the sequel as memorable and good in other ways without taking away the franchise identity. SC2 continued SC1's legacy really well. D3 not so much.

[xenogear3]

In term of story, Warcraft 3 is far better than Starcraft 2.
World of Warcraft is based on Warcraft 3's story. Look how successful it is.

In term of gameplay, you will like starcraft 1 or 2 if you are 5 or simple mind.

[Jaxi]

It's actually impossible to capture the feeling you got from the first time you play any original game. The job of developers is to make the sequel as memorable and good in other ways without taking away the franchise identity. SC2 continued SC1's legacy really well. D3 not so much.

I've actually been fairly disappointed in Starcraft 2's storyline. Perhaps Starcraft just set the benchmark so high that anything that falls short seems like a failure, but the story itself hasn't been very captivating to me. Especially Heart of the Swarm.

[Wildmoon]

I've actually been fairly disappointed in Starcraft 2's storyline. Perhaps Starcraft just set the benchmark so high that anything that falls short seems like a failure, but the story itself hasn't been very captivating to me. Especially Heart of the Swarm.

When thinking about Starcraft, story is not the first thing that comes to mind of but I personally think SC1 is the best story Blizzard ever done. SC2's story is not that great but it's not that bad too. Incredibly fun gameplay of WoL and HotS's campaigne make up for that. They have the most varied campaignes I have played in this genre. Historically, RTS campaigne is usually just "make an army and go kill them". This is true for both WC3 and and BW. SC2's campaignes are heavily scripted and they have a lot of gimmick and that made it really fun. I still remember the great train robbery mission from WoL and the one in HotS where you send 1 larvae to infest the whole Protoss's ship.

[The Stormbringer]

LOL @ people claiming D3 to be successfull. There we go again: because it is popular it must be fun!!!

Someone said: there are 1 million people playing D3. So wait.. they sold 12 million copies... and only 1 million people still play it. Yeah perfect game!
Sure you could argue that everyone probably enjoyed it for a couple of days or even a few weeks. But almost everyone I played WoW with bought D3. Almost everyone dropped the game after getting to max level. It was not worth repeating AGAIN (the game). D2 had a huge replayability even D1 had this imo. D3 was a huge failure on that part. D3 sold so many copies due to its name and predecessors.

So yes marketingwise and seeing how many actually sold it was a huge success. But I think we have about 11 million desillusioned people.

Tho what has going for it. Apparantly normal games do not have a lifespan of more then a few weeks. So if everyone goes by that score then yes D3 was a huge success. I don't agree with this because of its predecessors.

Maybe the reason Diablo 3 isn't being played over and over again is because it's so much LIKE Diablo 2 and Diablo 1 in that regard. Running the same content over and over again to get marginally better gear isn't that fun for some people. I beat the game twice, plus again on Nightmare mode, and then rolled up all the classes to try them out, and I only rarely jump on to continue.

I think Blizzard is still a quality game maker.

[epLe]

None of the games released by blizzard can be classified as a failure.

Diablo and Warcraft has both been atop of their genre in all their iterations.

People who whine about D3 have not a single p100 character, nor have they spendt 1000s of hours on Diablo 1/2.
This is usually the same people that run LFR every week complaining about how terrible it is.

[Aredyl]

To me, the biggest reason why Blizzard became a success wasn't a single game - it was Battle.net. They eliminated the need for players to install 3rd party software to play online. Also, Battle.net was free while other popular 3rd party software came at an additional cost (some had free trials). Think back at Diablo 2 and Starcraft - how successful were these earlier Blizzard games would have been without Battle.net?

[Deleted]

A very biased question, and depends on the reference point people have.

Well, 'lets take a look at Blizzard's recent track record:

Warcraft 3:

[...]

Not sure why you count Warcraft 3 as recent since it just isn't. It is 11 years old. I wouldn't even call WoW vanilla recent.

For example, my first Blizzard game was Lost Vikings on the Amiga. Then, it'd be Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Starcraft. But these games are from a different age. They didn't focus on networking and multiplayer over the internet much. Multiplayer back in the days was pretty much a niche for LAN parties, or something like a console with multiple controlers. During this time, gaming was for nerds and if you gamed you were a loser or nerd. Nowadays, you're weird if you don't have a mobile phone, Facebook, or play some computer game in one way or another.

It was only after WC3 Blizzard started to embrace the multiplayer, subscription-based MMORPG business of WoW.

Now, WC3 might not have had the features you'd like to see in a game nowadays. But back in the days, WC3 was an amazing RTS game. It was received as a success, indeed. From Wikipedia:

Reception of Warcraft III was extremely positive; the game averages a 93.02% at GameRankings.com,[33] and "Universal Acclaim" at MetaCritic, based on dozens of reviews.[34] While GamePro noted that "WarCraft III doesn’t revolutionize the RTS genre", they still praised Blizzard for delivering a title with "a well-executed story, drum-tight game-play and a long shelf life as a multi-player title."[31] GameSpot noted that as with StarCraft, the ability to experience the action from all sides "is of great appeal." The reviewer also noted that Warcraft III made the early stages of the game more interesting and less formulaic; in most RTS games, he noted, "the initial build-up period in such games is merely a race to get to the best units first."[32] Most reviewers noted that Blizzard had finally fleshed out the storyline of the first two Warcraft titles, finally giving each side its own motivations and differences beyond cosmetics.[35] IGN noted that "There's not a ton that's new to RTS buffs out there, but it's done well enough that you either won't notice or won't care."[30]

However, reviewers noted that the character models were of mediocre quality, especially when viewed up close during in-game cinematics.[32]

The story-line in WC3 was absolutely amazing, complete with cutscenes. It was miles ahead of previous RTS titles. The diversity in each faction was quite unique as well. If you remember, Dune 2 did not have that much diversity in its units, with lots of homogenization taking place. The same was true for Command & Conquer although it was a step into the right direction.

[Wildmoon]

It was only after WC3 Blizzard started to embrace the multiplayer, subscription-based MMORPG business of WoW.

Actually, Blizzard started going down the multipalyer path since D1.

[panterarules]

I personally don't enjoy Blizzard games much anymore. Though I still play DoTA on WC3 regularly, WoW semi regularly as a time killer. In regards to WoW and D3 i absolutely hate how they balance spells around infinite resources and GCD spam, AOE and single target, it's really depressing to see the combat mechanics 'use this spell on one target, use this spell on 3 targets, use this spell on 3+ targets, keep DoT up' in both games.

I strongly believe that infinite resources (ie. no downtime) is killing MMO's in general.

[Deleted]

Actually, Blizzard started going down the multipalyer path since D1.

And? I wrote:

multiplayer, subscription-based MMORPG business of WoW.

There is a comma there.

Either way, it doesn't matter. Multiplayer gaming in the 90s was very archaic. Heck many games did not even had native TCP/IP implementation. RTS on the internet with a central server was a new concept. Games, back then, just weren't made to be played online, en masse. Consumer internet was still pretty new, too. WC3 was developed from 1999-2001.

From Diablo Wikipedia entry:

Multiplayer can be done with up to four players.[4] Multiplayer characters' states are saved periodically.[4] Players can either be aggressive towards, or play co-operatively with, other players.[4] Players can connect by one of the following: direct connection, modem connection, Battle.net connection or IPX network connection.[4] The game lacks the stronger anti-cheating methods of Blizzard's later games and as a result, many characters online have been altered in various ways by common third-party programs known as trainers and/or game editing programs such as Cheat Engine.[6]

I really doubt the game had Battle.net support during its release. Back in 1996, TCP/IP wasn't even the defacto standard for networking, it was becoming that though. Heck, Windows 95 did not even come with TCP/IP support by default. You had to install that seperately. And Windows 95 was released end 1995. Even Windows itself wasn't even the standard for PC gaming, yet. And in DOS you had to also get TCP/IP working seperately. Multiple computers you could connect with null modem cable or parallel port. It was much easier using IPX/SPX for gaming, and this was used on LANs as well.

WC3 comes from the time where Internet starting to become more widespread, and gaming via the internet started to become the defacto standard. Its not from after that time; that is my point.

[smagusen]

They released garbage three time in a row: Cata, Diablo III, MOP.

How many times more should they fail to lose their seal of approval in the eyes of gamers? The old Blizzard we used to admire is gone, dead, kaput. It's Activision, get used to it.

[apepi]

I think most video game companies lost it.