Is Blizzard still quality games maker?

[Seefer]

Easy...don't apply logic on internet forums

We find a justification for anything....

ET for the Atari sold quite well (for it's time) but it was BEYOND horrible.

[Vankrys]

Congratulations for not being able to read, I guess?

I said I can't see a single reason other than nostalgia.

calling nostalgia is already being judgemental on people opinion, can you see that?
maybe it is, maybe it is not, but you simply cannot call it, you do not have the proof. You just assume what people thing and qualify it as nostalgia

Do you know why that is? If you took a closer look to your so called "polls" it's always the same pattern right? First Vanilla is the best expansion, then TBC, Wrath and then Cataclysm.

Do you not see it? Are you really that blind? It's called nostalgia. People miss things because it's human to do, you simply block out all the bad memories and focus on the good once. I still enjoy MoP more than I did any other expansion but I think I had the most fun with my friends in Wrath because of the people I played with but MoP is a far superior expansion in every single way.

would you admist just one thing, TBC was very different than current wow (dungeon difficulty, no automated tools for grouping, progression path completely different, etc...)

on the basis that TBC was different than MoP and that people like different thing, why is it that people that prefer TBC are necessarly wrong according to you?
I hate coconut, i just hate it, don't ask. Do i say that people that like coconut are wrong? are nostalgic? have no taste?

[Deleted]

Yes, they are still a quality game maker that I pay close attention to.

But they aren't as impeccable as they used to be.

Blizzard used to place the players above all else, but now it's all about milking them for as much money as possible.

[TyrantWave]

calling nostalgia is already being judgemental on people opinion, can you see that?
maybe it is, maybe it is not, but you simply cannot call it, you do not have the proof. You just assume what people thing and qualify it as nostalgia



would you admist just one thing, TBC was very different than current wow (dungeon difficulty, no automated tools for grouping, progression path completely different, etc...)

on the basis that TBC was different than MoP and that people like different thing, why is it that people that prefer TBC are necessarly wrong according to you?
I hate coconut, i just hate it, don't ask. Do i say that people that like coconut are wrong? are nostalgic? have no taste?

I just explicitly asked you for a reason why it's so much better. If your only reasoning is "It's not nostalgia", then it's nostalgia.
Again: I haven't been given a reason yet that didn't turn out to be nostalgia. There hasn't been a single objective or, for that matter decent subjective reason why it's supposedly the best. I'm not assuming anything, people are assuming I can read their minds and know why they liked it, but just giving me "Because" as a reason.

You're the one being judgemental here assuming I'm just dismissing reasons and saying I think I know what people are thinking then classifying that as nostalgia.

[lolo855]

The fact that you even need to state this speaks volumes to the pathetic state of video game culture. Obviously if you're stating it.. it's your opinion. And if you're implying by the "personal" preface that you are the only one who has that as their opinion, then you are wrong. But you're not "simply" wrong. You're also rather moronic because *obviously* many other people feel this way as well. You feel the need to punctuate your statement with a reminder that it is your opinion because that will mitigate the fallout, which usually arrives in the form of angry kids slinging insults and threats over the internet. That is the state of video game culture. And internet culture. And the culture of anonymity.

That said, Blizzard has certainly fallen from grace.

They've become a very greedy, very profit-focused company. Is this a redundancy? I don't think so. But even if it is, there are other companies, like Valve, that are more committed to an ideal than they are to at least -immediate- profits.

Diablo 3. Had one real not-Blizzard's-usual-level-of-quality flaw. And that was its pathetic length.

Having to pay to transfer to a different server is corrupt. It is corrupt and evil and people should have (and maybe did and if so I am glad, but more than likely they didn't and therefore I am further ashamed) quit in droves over the insult. A lot of the time people want to transfer servers because, due to Blizzard's evil, greedy, shareholder-impressing-motivated refusal to merge servers, their server has died. In this case, they need to transfer because a failure on Blizzard's part has forced them to need to leave. And Blizzard wants to charge them for it.

Disgusting. How can anyone tolerate this?

We hear an exciting announcement that Blizzard is introducing a new IP. What is our waiting rewarded with?

Hearthstone. One of the biggest slaps in the face in video game history.

In-game auction house for D3? Disgusting. How can anyone support this?

Promises of Arena in Diablo 3. Years later. No arena in diablo 3. How can anyone support this? Disgusting.

Wait what, still complaining about having to pay for server transfers ?

What people like you don't seem to understand is if it was free, people would transfer non stop, making it a HUUUUGGEEE load for blizzard, imagine having to wait for a month before a server transfer is completed.

Paying for server transfers is fine and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, don't want to pay ? level a new char !

And stop complaining about it, because it's the most idiotic thing that has ever been complained about.

[Seefer]

I just explicitly asked you for a reason why it's so much better. If your only reasoning is "It's not nostalgia", then it's nostalgia.
Again: I haven't been given a reason yet that didn't turn out to be nostalgia. There hasn't been a single objective or, for that matter decent subjective reason why it's supposedly the best. I'm not assuming anything, people are assuming I can read their minds and know why they liked it, but just giving me "Because" as a reason.

You're the one being judgemental here assuming I'm just dismissing reasons and saying I think I know what people are thinking then classifying that as nostalgia.

Better dungeons, more community involvement, better raids, no LFR/LFD

- - - Updated - - -

Wait what, still complaining about having to pay for server transfers ?

What people like you don't seem to understand is if it was free, people would transfer non stop, making it a HUUUUGGEEE load for blizzard, imagine having to wait for a month before a server transfer is completed.

Paying for server transfers is fine and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, don't want to pay ? level a new char !

And stop complaining about it, because it's the most idiotic thing that has ever been complained about.

Rift does free server transfers, and no not everyone would transfer 10000000000 times because a lot of people like their realms!

[sanaubia]

Well lets put subjective opinion aside. If we look at the game in an objective view you see that the quality of the game is high. And the gaming populace is still very fond of the games.

WoW is still the biggest subbased MMO

D3 is still the biggest Hack and slash/dungeon crawler

Starcraft is still the biggest RTS

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

[lolo855]

I just explicitly asked you for a reason why it's so much better. If your only reasoning is "It's not nostalgia", then it's nostalgia.
Again: I haven't been given a reason yet that didn't turn out to be nostalgia. There hasn't been a single objective or, for that matter decent subjective reason why it's supposedly the best. I'm not assuming anything, people are assuming I can read their minds and know why they liked it, but just giving me "Because" as a reason.

You're the one being judgemental here assuming I'm just dismissing reasons and saying I think I know what people are thinking then classifying that as nostalgia.

Well the reason I prefered Wow back then was because of it being an actual MMO.

- I made plenty of friends looking for groups ( most I still speak or even meet these day's )
LFR / LFD pretty much ruined this although I agree it is a great tool, it has some serious downsides for me.

-There was plenty of stuff to explore, I don't know if you remember but it was fun to go explore the old CoT before it was completed
Sadly they removed a lot of those things, I remeber making a trip with like 10 friends, wall walking with levitate up to Mount hyjal (the old one)

-WoW was cooler to level back then, although it took way much time, your char growx slowly but you had time to do plenty of other things, now even without leveling gear you just fly trough it !

[Vintersol]

Indeed they are, but they have unlearned the skill of making games intense...

[lolo855]

Better dungeons, more community involvement, better raids, no LFR/LFD

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Rift does free server transfers.

And do you know how many players Rift has, and how many shards they have ? Because I do, and it's not nearly as much as WoW.
You can't pretend free server transfers would mean a huge workload extra for blizzard (one that would cost me money since it's free )

[TyrantWave]

Better dungeons, more community involvement, better raids, no LFR/LFD.

Subjective, although the MoP ones aren't exactly interesting either. Disagree as I see just as much now as back then. Disagree as the raids were all round more boring. LFR/LFD are great additions, but that's had enough arguments.

Anyway, for the better dungeons/raids: Why were they better? What did they do better that new ones don't?

For dungeons I'll agree needing CC is something I miss (So long as any single class doesn't get singled out because they can't do a vital task in the dungeon), which is why I love the Challenge Mode dungeons now. Would be nice to have this in standard dungeons.

[Seefer]

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

I love how they tote that they are still the biggest sub based MMO..............funny thing is I think there are only like maybe 2 others?

- - - Updated - - -

Subjective, although the MoP ones aren't exactly interesting either. Disagree as I see just as much now as back then. Disagree as the raids were all round more boring. LFR/LFD are great additions, but that's had enough arguments.

Anyway, for the better dungeons/raids: Why were they better? What did they do better that new ones don't?

For dungeons I'll agree needing CC is something I miss (So long as any single class doesn't get singled out because they can't do a vital task in the dungeon), which is why I love the Challenge Mode dungeons now. Would be nice to have this in standard dungeons.

Better dungeons and raids because they weren't linear "Go this way" crap, you could get lost if you took the wrong turn or if you didn't want to mess with a boss right off you could skip it and go back later, as for the community involvement? I saw a lot more back in BC and WOTLK than now because nobody needs to SEEK a group with people in your realm when you can click the little button.

[Vankrys]

I just explicitly asked you for a reason why it's so much better. If your only reasoning is "It's not nostalgia", then it's nostalgia.
Again: I haven't been given a reason yet that didn't turn out to be nostalgia. There hasn't been a single objective or, for that matter decent subjective reason why it's supposedly the best. I'm not assuming anything, people are assuming I can read their minds and know why they liked it, but just giving me "Because" as a reason.

You're the one being judgemental here assuming I'm just dismissing reasons and saying I think I know what people are thinking then classifying that as nostalgia.

sigh...

you wanna be right, right? you want to show people that liked TBC and don't like current wow the error of their way?
have more respect than that.

I can't pretend what was it for other player, why do they like TBC better.

For me it was a whole. it was a combination of design, lore, atmosphere, gameplay.

I loved my prot warrior back then. I love to stance dance to use various ability. I love that tanking multiple target require work and skill. I love that maintaining aggro was not straight forward and threat was really calculated very tight between dps and tanks.

I love to see all the major character of warcraft 3. vashj, keal thas, illidan, sargeras, kil jaeden. The story was far more complex that current story (i don't know mop story, i have a feeling it has none, basing on the trailer release last year, it's just a break). it's not about a bad guy that want to destroy the world (for no reason whatsoever). I love to be able to relive the Final mission of WC3 on the mount hyjal, it was incredible, i recognize everything. Loved the trash in mount hyjal too, as a tank i struggle to gain aggro of everything, fun time.

i loved the progression path. I just made sense. Wolk and cata progression path made no sense. Every tier you can just buy previous tier from dungeon currency. lore wise, that make no sense. You kill things, you loot their own weapon/armor and use them against stronger enemy.

I love 1-2 hours heroic dungeon. It's an adventure. pulls requires strategy, boss requires tactics. Shadow labs and arcatraz was one of ly favorite dungeon

and i disagree, the community was infinitely better. so incredibly patient by today standard. It was a time were wiping was ok. It was a time that showing up fully repaired in a dungeon was the norm because there was going to be a few wipe.

You are gonna refute all those arguments, saying that i am some sort of a social case to love all this, but hey, i'm the one being judgemental right?

[sanaubia]

And do you know how many players Rift has, and how many shards they have ? Because I do, and it's not nearly as much as WoW.
You can't pretend free server transfers would mean a huge workload extra for blizzard (one that would cost me money since it's free )

ofc it would cost a lot for blizzard and there would be huge workload for them, but that's just because they are too stubborn to close servers that are empty and let ppl go to more populated server for free

[Deldavala]

I love how they tote that they are still the biggest sub based MMO..............funny thing is I think there are only like maybe 2 others?

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

[TyrantWave]

Well the reason I prefered Wow back then was because of it being an actual MMO.

- I made plenty of friends looking for groups ( most I still speak or even meet these day's )
LFR / LFD pretty much ruined this although I agree it is a great tool, it has some serious downsides for me.

That is 100% your problem, and not the games. I STILL make new friends in groups weekly, I STILL run with new people and old people alike all the time, and I STILL find just as many assholes as before. LFR/LFD are not stopping that, you are by not interacting with people.

-There was plenty of stuff to explore, I don't know if you remember but it was fun to go explore the old CoT before it was completed
Sadly they removed a lot of those things, I remeber making a trip with like 10 friends, wall walking with levitate up to Mount hyjal (the old one)
I do like going into Kara Crypts on occasion, I'll agree with that, but other than areas we shouldn't be in (Which will always be fun to try and get into regardless of xpac), what's stopping you all going out on a journey now? Last week me and some guildies got drunk, got on mammoths, and went on a quest through Jade Forest to slap as many hozen as we could find. We were very drunk...
Anyway, this is mostly a case of losing the sense of wonder of a new world - that's fair enough, and I can see why once that's gone you'll never reclaim it, but you know exactly what I'm gonna call it.

-WoW was cooler to level back then, although it took way much time, your char growx slowly but you had time to do plenty of other things, now even without leveling gear you just fly trough it !
Levelling's been the same in every game, the relative speed from each *xpac* seems to me the same. Vanilla took an age but for most people that was their entire game, so that's a thing. Levelling throughoud Outlands was... well, meh. Except for Nagrand, every zone was ugly as fuck, and the quests didn't really seem to have much or anything to do with.. anything. Kill this, gather that, the usual MMO quest stuff. I can't recall anything memorable about outland levelling.

Responses in red, take from it what you will. Note I'm not bashing or dismissing your opinions, this is just what I personally see from them.

[Ephilia]

Both yes and no..

Blizzard is still by far the best company imo. Yes they've had their ups and downs, but i still love the way they stick to their products and improve them.
Diablo 3 was a huge letdown, but i think a lot of the letdown was actually me thinking back to D2 so much and spending so much time on it. A lot have happened with games since then, Hack'n'slash is just not what it used to be after all the new games out there. A lot has changed in the game industry between D2:LoD and D3.

I do love how they stick to D3 and continuely improve it and try to make it far better. Some game-companies would've released game, seen everyone complain about it, released 1-3 patches and move on. Blizzard sticks to it and continues to allocate resources etc to make it better. I admire that.

Also i think a lot of the hype from expecting new games kinda wears off as you get older. Yes i still look forward to them announcing new games, and shivers at their cinematics. But nothing compared to when they announced Wrath. Always LOVED The Lich King and the undead scene, so the Wrath announcement, and Heart of the Swarm for SC2, getting to play the Zerg Campaign was amazing. Never been much of a competing person for SC2, i play it for the lore, achievements and singleplayer campaign, which they imo sure know how to deliver.

TLDR:
It varies. All companies has their ups and downs. Blizzard continuely improve their games, even D3 which was unpopular, that's something i admire.
Also you get older, and might not hype that much about games anymore compared to when you were 15, thats the case for me anyway

[Gimlix]

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.

Don't do that.
D3 is still growing massively, it had 10M months ago, and already has 12M. People who still play D3 claim that the game got much better.
I assume you don't play it anymore, so you can't argument about it. D3 isn't a failure, it's still one of their biggest games, if we don't count WoW.

[TyrantWave]

sigh...

you wanna be right, right? you want to show people that liked TBC and don't like current wow the error of their way?
have more respect than that.
I don't want to be right (Well, I do, because I'm human), I want actual reasons that have merit. I see so many reasons that were either flat out not true, wrong, or completely and utterly made up I'm getting sick of it.

I can't pretend what was it for other player, why do they like TBC better.

For me it was a whole. it was a combination of design, lore, atmosphere, gameplay.

I loved my prot warrior back then. I love to stance dance to use various ability. I love that tanking multiple target require work and skill. I love that maintaining aggro was not straight forward and threat was really calculated very tight between dps and tanks.
To my knowledge isn't stance dancing still in? Honestly I don't play a warrior, but if you preferred how they played then to now, then by all means that's a reason I can agree with. Maintaining threat as tanks now is indeed a useless thing. I prefer tank gameplay now, but if threat management were still there and implemented well I'd probably like it even more, yes

I love to see all the major character of warcraft 3. vashj, keal thas, illidan, sargeras, kil jaeden. The story was far more complex that current story (i don't know mop story, i have a feeling it has none, basing on the trailer release last year, it's just a break). it's not about a bad guy that want to destroy the world (for no reason whatsoever). I love to be able to relive the Final mission of WC3 on the mount hyjal, it was incredible, i recognize everything. Loved the trash in mount hyjal too, as a tank i struggle to gain aggro of everything, fun time.
Again: Not a single one of those is a reason for WoW, that's a reason for WC3. What did WoW do with those villians, on its own merits, that made them so epic? Illidan, according to WoW, was kinda building an army to hold off the legion so we went and killed him because.. reasons?. And also, "I have a feeling it has none, basing on the trailer release last year" -> So, basically, without even looking at the story of the new xpac, you've said the old ones were better. No, that is 100% nostalgia and refusal to play anything new

i loved the progression path. I just made sense. Wolk and cata progression path made no sense. Every tier you can just buy previous tier from dungeon currency. lore wise, that make no sense. You kill things, you loot their own weapon/armor and use them against stronger enemy.
I agree that just up and buying previous tier for JP/tokens completely makes old raids redundant. That's not the case now though. You need to gear up for those like everyone else - from the raid

I love 1-2 hours heroic dungeon. It's an adventure. pulls requires strategy, boss requires tactics. Shadow labs and arcatraz was one of ly favorite dungeon
I do if it doesn't just become repetitive. As I mentioned in my prevoius post, I'll agree dungeons need a rework to be a helluva lot more interesting. Challenge Modes are a step in the right direction - and the fact they make it so you can't outgear them is great. But I'd like more in the base dungeons next xpac, so yes I agree on that point

and i disagree, the community was infinitely better. so incredibly patient by today standard. It was a time were wiping was ok. It was a time that showing up fully repaired in a dungeon was the norm because there was going to be a few wipe.
Also, you'd stick around because you spend 45 minutes spamming chat for a tank. That wasn't fun. Especially after one pull the tank just leaves, so you'd need to spend another 45 minutes hoping to get a tank. Also, if the community so wished, they would up and blacklist people. Good in theory, in practice it meant any new player that didn't meat an elitist groups expectations would be instantly blacklisted simply because they were new. There were just as many assholes on a server back then as now - and IMO, just as many pugs on a server now as back then. We just have much more exposure through the LFG/R.

You are gonna refute all those arguments, saying that i am some sort of a social case to love all this, but hey, i'm the one being judgemental right?

I'm not gonna refute all of them, no, because you actually gave some decent ones that I rarely if ever see. Responses in blue. Take from it what you will.

[Tokas]

It isn't Blizzards fault servers died, but they are doing the virtual realms to fix the problem. Besides, I think my guildies and I have spent well over a thousand dollars transferring over the years, pretty good way for them to make money. I don't really see the problem with this at all, playing on dead realms isn't fun, but it isn't Blizzards fault they're dead and if you want to leave the realm you can. Rerolling is free.

It's not our city's fault the roads are full of holes after every winter, let drivers fix it themselves. Logic back online.
Can we have some logo saying "retarded" and be able to stick it to some posters?