Is Blizzard just the god at making games?

[bmjclark]

one of the worst RTS games on the market (Starcraft 2).

There are other RTS games on the market? Didn't even know.

[berdrek]

before, maybe on that leve or even higher,the origal warcraft games were a force to be reckoned with when they came out, now? theyre a bunch of mediocare parasites that only care about money grabing there entire fan base and youre lying to yourself if you believe otherwise. just look at the current state of wow and d3, you dont have to go any further then that. for what is worth, they make me want to play their games with the hype but lose me once they start trying to money grab.

[Zenny]

Can you list a source.

Apologies, 12 million, but considering this was almost 1.5 years ago...

http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1489...arnings-report

This has risen to just over 15 million at the end of last year:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-wow-subs-rise

Also about a year ago:

http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1509...llion-each-day

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before, maybe on that leve or even higher,the origal warcraft games were a force to be reckoned with when they came out, now? theyre a bunch of mediocare parasites that only care about money grabing there entire fan base and youre lying to yourself if you believe otherwise. just look at the current state of wow and d3, you dont have to go any further then that. for what is worth, they make me want to play their games with the hype but lose me once they start trying to money grab.

Funny you should mention that. They shut down the real money AH and fixed a fuck ton of issues with the base game. The fixes don't even require you to buy the expansion!

But I guess shutting down the AH is just some nefarious ploy of Blizzards to milk our cash in other ways.

[Deleted]

ESO: 7k viewers

Wow: 5.5k viewers

.....wat

hmmmm? Where'd you get those?

These are current:

WoW: 19k

Pokemon Emerald: 4.8K

ESO: 4K

RuneScape: 3K

But it doesn't really matter anyway. It's a poor measure of popularity.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Blizzard has a cashcow no other company has. This gives them resources that other companies can only dream of. They can afford to spend time tweaking this and that.

Both D3 and SC2 took an awful long time to arrive. I doubt any other companies can afford that long to wait between games.

So Blizzard has an big advantage which they use. It would be interesting to read how profitable those games are, compared to the cost to make them.

I am sure companies would prefer to spend 10 million, sell 20 million, making 10 million than spend 45 million, sell 50 million and make 5 million.

If it hadn't been for the massive success WoW became Blizzard would have put more work into finishing StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 earlier than they were released. They could afford putting their other titles aside since WoW needed all the attention it could get. Ironically, WoW's success was too big for Blizzard to be handle the development several games, and it took them years just to get such a large studio to be able to work on several big titles at once.

You have to remember that Blizzard was not a massive company before WoW (not saying it was small, but it was certainly not massive like now). That only came after years of massive growth that WoW provided. Things would have certainly looked quite different if WoW never became this popular.

[Sansnom]

You sound like someone presented Blizzard their cash cow for Christmas. They risked a lot when they started wow, and suddenly had huge profits out of it. So, they earned their money, don't you think?

Feel free to name me at least one company who is better than Blizzard in making games. Noone says Blizzard games are the pinnacle of perfection. Problem is, other devs make way worse games.

I never said they did not earn it, or do not deserve it. But they do have a cashcow that gives them the edge. For some companies, they survivability is at the mercy of their publishers and the results of their previous game.

Blizzard can have a bigger budget and longer development time. As I mentioned, D3 and SC2 took a long time to arrive from their their previous incarnation. I doubt any other company can survive that long without any releases. Blizzard can because WoW was more than enough to keep the company going.

I don't regard Blizzard to be the pinnacle of game development. SC2 is very good. WoW is still doing going. D3 was just, ok. People know Blizzards, trust them and will buy their games at release. Look at D3. Highest selling PC game at launch but was slated after people played it. They have recovered by correcting many of the issues and saved the franchise. So they do make mistakes.

Personally, I think TSW is a better MMO in many areas but it will not flourish because WoW is just too big. It is like Windows. It is now so ingrained that it is almost impossible for a competitor. I feel the same is like WoW at the moment.

[BenBos]

Apologies, 12 million, but considering this was almost 1.5 years ago...

http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1489...arnings-report

This has risen to just over 15 million at the end of last year:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-wow-subs-rise

Also about a year ago:

http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1509...llion-each-day

Actually you can add the latest official figure of 2.7 million for RoS in its first week of launch (against 6 million for the Vanilla D3 in its first week)...

Recent sale figure listing from various amazon sites (German, English, US, French) show that both D3 and RoS are in the top of PC games over these past few weeks.

So it is safe to say that by the end of next month D3 games sold more than 20 million copies already.

So D3 had an estimated gross overall revenue of at least 600 million dollars. And it didn't even launch yet on the newest consoles.

What keeps me intrigued for the coming year though is the total gross revenue Hearthstone will make. Over the same period I think it could even beat D3...

If only Blizzard would make some interesting new "adventures" (PVE) in Hearthstone to lure the millions of casual gamers in...

It is very clear over these past few months that these games take as much priority as WOW at Irvine. Yes WOW is still the huge money maker, but other genres within the Blizzard stable are catching up.

It is a very smart move, because it is better to produce/market other games besides WOW, but still attached to "WOW Lore".

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before, maybe on that leve or even higher,the origal warcraft games were a force to be reckoned with when they came out, now? theyre a bunch of mediocare parasites that only care about money grabing there entire fan base and youre lying to yourself if you believe otherwise. just look at the current state of wow and d3, you dont have to go any further then that. for what is worth, they make me want to play their games with the hype but lose me once they start trying to money grab.

Heuh, I consider the current D3 absolutely the BEST game published in the last year. I think you should catch up on the latest news about D3.

And I Always wonder why some gamers are semi communists these days. Without those HUGE production houses and invested RESOURCES you would still play Pac Man dude. Almost 5000 people work at Blizzard to give you the best polished products possible in this highly competitive world. No one is holding a gun to your head to buy anything from them. But just be assured that the quality you get is tx to the hard work of these 5K people day in/day out.

[l33t]

I never said they did not earn it, or do not deserve it. But they do have a cashcow that gives them the edge. For some companies, they survivability is at the mercy of their publishers and the results of their previous game.

Yet again, you sound like its not fair. Bethesda also had a huge budget and a ton of time to develop their ESO. Bioware had them too. Did it help? Money can win over a talent only if you buy a greater talent for your money to work for you. Though it is of course great to be able to publish your own games, I admit. But don't forget that Blizzard is making its money on a genres considered dead or almost nonexistant. Not to mention that they are the people who in fact invented those very genres - this is just for people crying about lack of innovations in Blizzard's games.

I don't regard Blizzard to be the pinnacle of game development. SC2 is very good. WoW is still doing going. D3 was just, ok. People know Blizzards, trust them and will buy their games at release. Look at D3. Highest selling PC game at launch but was slated after people played it. They have recovered by correcting many of the issues and saved the franchise. So they do make mistakes.

They have balls to actually admit their mistakes, although if their loot 2.0/no AH was in d3 from the start, the game would be perfect. So they just corrected what needed to be corrected, without idiotic lunatic talk about "artistic vision" (yes, I hate mass effect 3's endings with a passion, and swore not to touch any Bioware game with a 100m stick ever since). Now, after all the changes, game is great at the Blizzard's level of greatiness.

[DriveKnight]

Yep. I was 6 years old now I'm 18 still the best for me.

[nekobaka]

Best no. Blizzard is good and does take time with their games with less of a focus on just pushing deadlines which a number of developers fall pray to, but even then Blizzard has released games with issues. The lore Blizzard has put together is a strong suit of Blizzard in creating a fan base especially one that will ignore a number of issues and mistakes that would have crushed other developers. We are still waiting on what ever Titian will be and if it will have the following like Blizzards current IPs that are over 10 years old have created.

To those saying Blizzard admits their mistakes, Blizzard has admitted a number of mistakes, but not all and at times admits to things years later while holding a stance prior saying otherwise or hold back some clarification that shifts the bias. Due to the evolving and forward moving nature of some of the games like WoW mistakes can and have been just left to rot. DiabloIII had a lot of shit gutted from it and many bitches about it that have still yet to be fixed and even some BS nerfs including to something that was apparently "bug" for two years. Blizzard might not be like some other companies, but they are no saint and will manipulate PR to their advantage when available and Blizzard is not the most transparent. Blizzard also isnt the best all around customer service. On call service is excellent and could be the best, but drops down else where especially with other services like moderation and forums for example.