What happened to blizzard?

[Bosen]

They milk you mate. They milk you of every single last cent they can possibly milk you for, and then they try to milk you some more. If they could charge you for every time you open your game they would.


The only purpose wow has right now is to get your 15$ per month then atempt to milk you of every possible microtransaction the game offer. LvL boost, faction/race/class/name change pets, mounts, items etc. If they can think of any way to take monney from you THEY WILL.

Those are optional items and services.

[Mormolyce]

You went from a game that had arthas playing with a rose petal before slaying his father. To a game like diablo 3 where azmodan keeps going "YOU WILL NEVER DESTROY MY CATAPULTS! YOU DESTROYED MY CATAPULTS BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY ARMY. YOUVE DEFEATED MY ARMY BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY CONSORT. YOUVE DEFEATED MY CONSORT BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME! "
The story is simple so that anybody that plays the game can understand it. Its to appeal to the wider audiance and so that they can get more cash rather then to provide the maximum of entertainment.

You know Diablo and Warcraft are different franchises yeah?

Remember what the story was in Diablo 1? "There's demons under Tristram, go kill them!".

[Yig]

Context is fun and all, but I wish someone here could prove Blizzard isn't actively working to lobby for meat packaging plants who kill their animals inhumanely. If so, it's disgusting of them, especially if it's true. And good game.

[Zephre]

Bought by Activision..could be worse...coulda been bought by EA..then we'd have to pay for every raid tier and pvp season

Nightmare worthy imo.

[Mormolyce]

Blizzard has been full of assholes long before Activision came along. They weren't this innocent little studio that eventually became corrupted by a giant evil monster. No, many of them were always greedy. They made some amazing games back in the day, but most of those people are gone now.

Dunno what to say to this kind of nonsense.

Is there an organ in your body somewhere that gets stimulated whenever you hate a video game company? It must be releasing endorphins somehow...

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Is the bait every second thread on the forums? I don't even know anymore. I hope they - and this - are all bait, I really do.

Yeah we passed the satire threshold almost a decade ago.

I just noticed your name. I hope BG&E2 lives up to the original! Except in terms of length... fuck me that game was too short.

[Bepples]

What have we seen happen in the 10 years with WOW since vanilla WOW?

We have seen an increase in quality of content upon release (remember most raids in Vanilla/BC being unbeatable due to glitches on release?), for one. We have seen a drastic increase in the quality of both questing and dungeon content, as well as infinitely better class design and PvP balance.

It's funny to hear people complain about class design or pvp balance today: you think its bad that shadow priests' single target DPS is lacking or warriors are overpowered in low-level PvP? Try playing in a time when paladins could neither tank nor dps AT ALL, and they could barely heal too. They were practically there to refresh buffs/res people/DI for wipe recovery. As for PvP balance, go look up "World of Roguecraft".

That's not even mentioning the pants-on-head retarded itemization that existed (spirit on warrior/rogue tier gear) or boss fights that severely lack mechanics and any sort of complexity (i.e. any Molten Core boss). Let's not forget the limited soundtrack or far poorer overall graphics quality.

Yeah, yeah. It was good for it's time. I agree, but if you are going to compare the "good old days" to now and argue that they were better, I get to apply today's standards to those "good old days".

No cinematics

I must have completely dreamt the CGI cinematics for every expansion, then.

lack of dungeon content with each expansion

In 5 mans, maybe. There is more end game content outside of dungeons to compensate, however (end-game quest/daily zones, pet battles, challenge modes etc)

selling pets and mounts and finding new ways to take money from players without giving them its worth

If they are "taking money" from us, they must be doing a pretty poor job because I still haven't paid a cent on the blizzard store.

Seriously, how does this detract from your gaming experience? These pets/mounts have no effect on your experience whatsoever; you can easily just NOT buy them. If you are going to make a post arguing that the gaming experience provided by Blizzard has deteriorated, make sure you stick to things that actually matter to gaming experience.

We as players are paying 15 bucks a month for this game and now close to 80 bucks for a streaming expansion that we have to wait close to 9 months for its release.

First I managed to evade Blizzard's forced pet/mount purchases, now I fool them again by paying only $50 for the expansion!

As for the implied "taking too long" argument; the time between MoP release and WoD release (assuming an October release) will end up being about 2 years and 1 month. The time between Vanilla launch and BC launch was 2 years and 2 months. NEXT!

So what did we get for this 80 bucks? A pet, a lv 90 and a flying mount that you will not be able to use at all in the next expansion.

Let's make this clear: we didn't all buy the deluxe edition (i.e. collector's edition). There was a collector's edition for every expansion launch + the original game launch, so using the $80 figure is pointless.

Flying mounts are to be added in 6.1. Lately it seems Blizzard has been considering having no flying in Draenor at all through the expansion, but everything they have said about it has been extremely ambiguous. They seem to be waiting to see how players react to it, in which case there definitely will be flying added in 6.1 due to the inevitable shitstorm on WoD release regarding no flying (which is somewhat justified).

Also, are we just going to ignore...you know...the entire expansion? Those 10 levels, the new continent, new raids, garrisons....none of that gets to be counted here?

On top of that this includes all the mounts you paid for in there store as well. So they technically are telling you the consumer, "Thanks for you money here's some useless mounts". People should be pissed off.

But they won't be useless: they are still usable as ground mounts.

As for the 15 bucks a month we pay they should be putting out new content for us every month(ex a new 5 man, raid or pvp zone etc.) and if they are saving that content for expansions then we the loyal customers who have been playing this game since vanilla should be getting these expansions for free. We have paid close to 200 a year playing this game and it doesn't come close to what we have paid for. They are milking the franchise and that's there excuse for no flying mounts. They want you to use your 100 speed mount and keep taking your money. So that they can take longer creating expansions they should be pumping out every 6 months(Yes it can be done).

You have no idea how costly in both time and money development really is...
Do you honestly think that the conceptualisation, lore relevance, modelling, texturing, encounter design, tuning and implementation for any 5 man can be done within a month? That's 4 weeks. I'd like to see any gaming company pull off such a feat.

An EXPANSION every 6 months is ludicrous. That isn't even allowing for any sort of life cycle for any of the raids. We are 6 months into SoO now and the vast majority of players have not even started Heroic yet. let alone finished it. Unless your idea of an "expansion" includes only a couple new zones and one raid, it absolutely CANNOT be done within 6 months.

[inceptionz]

EA and Activision have been fighting over the title of "Most Hated Video Game Company" for years, but that's besides the point.

Blizzard has been full of assholes long before Activision came along. They weren't this innocent little studio that eventually became corrupted by a giant evil monster. No, many of them were always greedy. They made some amazing games back in the day, but most of those people are gone now.

Now, while turn-over is normal for companies like this... Blizzard is almost unique in the fact that its suffering from a fatal case of World of Warcraft. WoW changed everything for them, and they will never recover from it. WoW is too successful for its own good. Its SO successful, that Blizzard doesn't actually need to try. They can half-ass everything they do for the next 10 years, and still be successful.

Blizzard can put out the worst MMO expansion ever, and it will still make millions. Diablo 3 was poorly received by many, many gamers... and yet it broke the record for most units sold on launch day. Lots of people wish they could go back and tell themselves not to buy it, but the damage was done.

That's what you get when you're that successful. There really isn't much competition out there for WoW. Its a monster of a game, and has made a disgusting amount of money through subscriptions and micro-transactions.

StarCraft has millions of fans. Diablo has millions of fans. Warcraft has millions of fans. These are huge names that people recognize and usually associate with nostalgia and happiness. Blizzard can coast on these for decades. And they will.

The bottom line is this: Blizzard has little to gain from trying very hard. They're like Apple. Anything they release will sell by the truck-load. Even if its awful.

What happened to Blizzard? They won.

This is what happens after "Happily Ever After". Success corrupts and you enter a state of accepted mediocrity.

Amen! 10 chars

[korruna]

Prices increase per expansion, Like everything else in this world.

You know why the $15.00 a month model was originally created? It was due to bandwidth expenses. Back in the times of EverQuest and later on vanilla WoW, those costs were substantial enough to require pay to play.

Fast forward until now: It's much, much, much cheaper. If you look at Blizzard's quarterly reports, the expenses for server and networking is so insignificant that it's just part of a small footnote (literally) when tallying their costs and overhead.

Most of your $15.00 a month goes towards paying their designers, artists and programmers to create an expansion and develop other games which they then sell back to you. Once you get your facts straight you'll stop living in denial.

[Archmage Arugal]

What have we seen happen in the 10 years with WOW since vanilla WOW? No cinematics, lack of dungeon content with each expansion, selling pets and mounts and finding new ways to take money from players without giving them its worth.

WoW is an MMO, they can't do alot of cinematics in the same way that RTS games can. That said, WoW finds ways to put alot of cinematics in their game.

Dungeons are not as popular as raiding, arenas, RBG's, or any of a handful of other activities. They're a stepping stone to bigger and better things and often get ignored after they're no longer needed, just as old raids get ignored after a new tier comes out. Blizzard could put out more dungeons if they chose to, expansions would likely take longer because of it, but it can be done, but what's the point? Unless they did the WotLK model of putting out new dungeons with every raid tier for the sole purpose of being gear catch ups

Pets and mounts are completely optional, and in no way are they 'taking' money from you. The only money you ever 'have' to pay for WoW is the monthly subscription which covers server costs, and the expansion. That is it. Anything else is completely optional

We as players are paying 15 bucks a month for this game and now close to 80 bucks for a streaming expansion that we have to wait close to 9 months for its release. So what did we get for this 80 bucks? A pet, a lvl 90 and a flying mount that you will not be able to use at all in the next expansion.On top of that this includes all the mounts you paid for in there store as well. So they technically are telling you the consumer, "Thanks for you money here's some useless mounts".

It's $70, and that's specifically for the Digital Deluxe version, the base is the standard $50. It also includes the extra portrait for SC2 and the banner item for D3. If you want to do a price breakdown, pet would be $10, mount would be $25, and the 90 boost would be $60, so $20 extra nets you $95 worth of extra services, plus the cross game extras

Every flying mount in the game (or almost every, haven't seen a list of exclusions yet) is being re-coded to also work as a ground mount, so that every mount (in theory) will be usable during the No-Fly period of WoD

What they are specifically telling the consumer is 'We stand by our decision to not allow flying until our first patch, but we want you to be able to use your favorite mounts anyways'

People should be pissed off. As for the 15 bucks a month we pay they should be putting out new content for us every month(ex a new 5 man, raid or pvp zone etc.) and if they are saving that content for expansions then we the loyal customers who have been playing this game since vanilla should be getting these expansions for free.

People shouldn't be pissed off, but they will be regardless. Putting out a new piece of content once a month, as you suggest, would mean those pieces of content are of a lesser quality than the rest of the game. Likely they'd be horribly unoriginal, buggy, glitchy messes that no one would want to touch after the first few days

And here is where your post stops being about what 'WE' the players want, and what 'YOU' the play want. You're already excluding anyone that joined on during BC, WotLK, Cata, and MoP. Why should only Vanilla players get the free expansions? I'm a Vanilla player myself, and I certainly don't want that kind of special treatment, as it would mean a massive player drop in the game

They are milking the franchise and that's there excuse for no flying mounts. They want you to use your 100 speed mount and keep taking your money. So that they can take longer creating expansions they should be pumping out every 6 months(Yes it can be done).

Hold on a second, that's quite a massive jump. They're milking the franchise for money, so that's why they're making an unpopular decision for the game, and re-coding every mount in the game to work during the No-Fly period....Why don't you try rethinking that one again, and try taking steps this time, not leaps.

Again, they're not 'taking' your money. You are free to stop paying at any time for any reason. Many people already have because of that decision, but Blizzard is still standing by it. If they wanted your money so badly, why would they do that?

Expansions can be done in 6 months, yes, but I'd rather have the longer expansions like what Blizzard puts out, instead of the last 2 expansions that EA/Bioware put out, which is just bad space PvP combat and play housing...woo. Or do you perhaps mean the old EQ expansions, which were very small in comparison to the WoW ones

The same has happened with Starcraft and diablo. Starcraft a game that we can play 3 campaigns has now become a separate gaming experience that we have to pay more for. As for Diablo 3 well some of you paid 40 bucks for a single character and campaign with a drawn cutscene at the end and not a high end cinematic.

The original Starcraft game has 30 missions spread across the Zerg, Protoss, and Terran. Brood War had 27 missions, again split between Zerg, Protoss, and Terran. Wings of Liberty has 29 missions, most of them for the Terran side (small handful for the Protoss). Heart of the Swarm, admittedly, only has the 20 main missions (19 for Zerg, one for sorta Terran), with the 6 or so side missions for the Zerg evolutions. Legacy of the Void is likely to have between 20-30 main missions

Diablo 3's 'drawn' cutscenes are still very good looking, and they're only played after sub bosses in an Act. Main bosses that end an act are still followed by full on cinematics. The drawn cutscenes are used as an outline of the path forward as told by your character specifically, so they're different in small ways from class to class and gender to gender.

[Kathranis]

Dunno what to say to this kind of nonsense.

Is there an organ in your body somewhere that gets stimulated whenever you hate a video game company? It must be releasing endorphins somehow...

They also weren't bought by Activision.

Vivendi bought Activision and merged it with Vivendi Games, which was Blizzard's previous parent company. Vivendi Games was then renamed Activision Blizzard. And Activision Blizzard recently bought themselves out from Vivendi.

Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment are still seperate companies, albeit subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard.

Blizzard is just as beholden to its stock holders as it ever was.

[Norjak]

This company has made billions of dollars manipulating there consumers that less content is more money. I enjoy playing these game but these lazy, unproductive methods this company has been using is killing my ability to enjoy these games.

They are, in some ways, a victim of their own success. WoW became too successful and the only way to reliably sustain the success is to destroy the things that made it popular in the first place. I don't think there's ever been a video game as successful as WoW has been. They are doing whatever it takes to sustain the sub numbers in today's video game marketplace.

[Deficineiron]

No, no they weren't. Stop getting caught up on myths; Blizzard was owned by Vivendi. It had been for most of it's time in existence (only recently did they break from Vivendi). They were MERGED with Activision; this merged company was to be owned by Vivendi (really Activision and Blizzard are sister companies; neither company has oversight into the other company's game development). For some context: this merge happened in December 2007. Stuff like pets/mounts on the store didn't happen until 2010 and you would have to be naive to think that Activision made Blizzard do that; it was Blizzard's decision.

this is partly correct, and partly misleading.

vivendi reverse-merged their game division into activision. they were issued enough shares that they had a slight majority stake. they didn't have the power to just run the company their way - there were bylaws set up relating to this, and in any event Kotick wouldn't give up his independence in such a deal.

blizzard, after the merger, no longer reported to vivendi at all. they reported (and still report to) bobby kotick and his a/b management team. He is their ultimate boss, aside from some bylaws limiting his ability to do certain things with blizzard without vivendi board seats voting for it (I think this is all gone now, since vivendi is nearly gone from a/b) for publicity reasons they don't spell that out since there are a lot of fans who don't understand how publicly traded companies work but do have 'faith' in blizzard, and none in Kotick, as far as game design.

In the real world, of course, the idea of a very successful ceo of a publicly traded company just sort-of letting this huge division that is nearly half his revenue run rogue, totally outside his control, etc, is just laughable, worse than most comic-book plots. No one serious is saying he is telling them how to tune rogues, but more appropriately how to tune revenues, and what markets in general their games should target.

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They also weren't bought by Activision.

Vivendi bought Activision and merged it with Vivendi Games, which was Blizzard's previous parent company. Vivendi Games was then renamed Activision Blizzard. And Activision Blizzard recently bought themselves out from Vivendi.

Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment are still seperate companies, albeit subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard.

Blizzard is just as beholden to its stock holders as it ever was.

the bold is a common misconception.

vivendi reverse-merged their games assets into activision, coming out with a slight majority stake. notably, the largest shareholder in activision prior, ceo kotick, was the 2nd largest shareholder after the nerger (and is now the largest again). They didn't buy his shares, and they didn't buy activision.

more specifically, blizzard isn't accountable to stockholders anywhere, nor has been since the merger. Blizzard is accountable to Kotick. Kotick is accountable to the board of directors, though in real practice he and his group own so much of the company I am not sure what sort of terrible thing would have to happen to oust him. The board is elected by stockholders.

[Nurvus]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how anyone agrees with the OP.

Not only are the cinematics for Burning Crusade, Cataclysm and MoP good, they have some great parts in them.
However, Wrath of the Lich King has arguably the best cinematic ever. From the theme, to the message, everything - just brilliant.

Beyond cinematics, the game has improved GREATLY since Vanilla.

Blizzard shot themselves in the foot the first time they sped up progress:
- less attunements
- less gating
- less time needed to level
- less time needed to gear up and get into raiding

However, Blizzard also made HUGE improvements to the game most ungrateful players refuse to acknowledge:
- Vastly increased depth of class/spec design - do you even remember how classes were back then? Apart from Paladin seal twisting - which was easy too - any class would be mind-numbingly easy to play by the "You" of today. "You" improved with time.
- Vastly increased skill cap - if you don't know what this is, not gonna bother explaining it either.
- Vastly more complex encounters - do you even remember encounters back then? The only thing they were better than today was in terms of how finely tuned against available gear they were - but only because classes were so simple and boring, that figuring out their output was infinitely easier.
- Insane amount of content

Compare Blizzard to ANY other MMO company of today. Any.
Lineage? Guild Wars 2? Tera Online? Aion? Rift? FF XI? FF XIV:ARR?
What did those companies do with your money over the years?
In what manner did they improve their game?
How much were they willing to change their game to improve it? Nearly nothing - just minor tweaks and additional content.

There has been no company giving more importance to player feedback than Blizzard so far.
It's a shame they get so much crap thrown at them.

This company has made billions of dollars manipulating there consumers that less content is more money.

This is a pearl of a fallacy.
Blizzard isn't producing less content.
They just made the mistake of making it EASIER for YOU to enjoy it.
As a thanks, people rush through content, ignoring 90% of it, cross the finish line, and demand more.

Let me ask everyone a question:
If Blizzard slowed leveling, added back attunements, gating, multiple reputation requirements for mandatory recipes and alot of farming for their respective mandatory gear; lots of 5man grind before you can do heroic 5mans; lots of heroic 5man grinding before you can start raiding, greatly increased trash difficulty, and considerably increased boss difficulty - essentially making you take weeks or months after you reach max level before you can think of raiding, and then months to complete a raid tier, giving you the ILLUSION of MORE content, would you enjoy the game more?

[yjmark]

I agree that Blizzard makes mistakes in some choices. However, I also think they are very successful in many choices too. No one is perfect. /shrug.

I sense a lot of frustration in the OP. Sorry you feel that way. Hopefully WoD will bring back some if what you like about early WoW. If not, maybe it's time to move on.

[Deficineiron]

They are, in some ways, a victim of their own success. WoW became too successful and the only way to reliably sustain the success is to destroy the things that made it popular in the first place. I don't think there's ever been a video game as successful as WoW has been. They are doing whatever it takes to sustain the sub numbers in today's video game marketplace.

I think this is correct.

Wow was a video game success that may not be repeated for decades. So many factors at once converging to lend themselves to the success of the product far beyond the wildest dreams of anyone behind it. All of a sudden after 3 years, this game was producing a BILLION dollars a year in high-margin revenue. during this bc period, the company was combined with activision and became accountable to kotick's team - who, as a very responsible and talented ceo, sought to oversee making every last possible dime for as long as possible from the product, in general terms, following his own Accessibility philosophy of getting people who didn't play video games or who weren't traditional gamers to try wow- making wow the McDonalds of mmo's. How could he do otherwise?

[Calfredd]

What happened to Blizzard? They got bigger, better, and generally all around more experienced with game design. However, they also got experimental. I see Mists, and arguably Warlords, as an attest to that. Blizzard is throwing a bunch of ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks. Flex Raiding, Isle of Thunder, and Timeless Isle all seem to stick while 5.0 dailies, linear questing, and (arguably again) the theme of the expansion, seem to have flopped. I can only think of companies like Blizzard who have to income needed to throw around these ideas with little backlash on their overall profit to attempt something like Mists whether you like the Pandaren or not.

[Deficineiron]

Look at the casualisation of not only gameplay, but even story.

You went from a game that had arthas playing with a rose petal before slaying his father. To a game like diablo 3 where azmodan keeps going "YOU WILL NEVER DESTROY MY CATAPULTS! YOU DESTROYED MY CATAPULTS BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY ARMY. YOUVE DEFEATED MY ARMY BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY CONSORT. YOUVE DEFEATED MY CONSORT BUT YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME! "

I noticed this even in wotlk, they turned arthas into some kind of comic-book bad guy, with dialogue you expect to find on saturday morning cartoons. also they started using soap-operatic tactics of making some prominent npcs that most players were SUPPOSED to hate - varian and/or garrosh. the hook there is that some small % of folks would get engaged enough in wanting to see what they do to that npc that it translates into lower lost-sub rate.

I have read that they do this on 'reality' elimination shows, keep the character everyone wants to see lose into next to last round.

[Peyj]

Blizzard isn't producing less content.
They just made the mistake of making it EASIER for YOU to enjoy it.
As a thanks, people rush through content, ignoring 90% of it, cross the finish line, and demand more.

This is well said.

The community has asked for convenience to be able to get into the "end game" more quickly, and then complains that there is "nothing to do".

There is plenty to do.

People seem to think "I don't feel like doing XYZ" translates into less content.

Also, what's the harm in logging off? If you don't feel like doing anything, log off for a bit. You're not required to play 24/7 to get your money's worth. Hell, at $15 a month, I could play for 3 hours every month and I'd have roughly the same amount of value as seeing a single movie at the cinema...

[Immitis]

and a flying mount that you will not be able to use at all in the next expansion.

stopped reading right here.

seriously, how long have we had mounts that scale with riding skill? since like wrath right?

EVERY SINGLE MOUNT FROM THE STORE OR CE CAN BE USED AS GROUND MOUNTS.

not only that but even if they COULDNT be used as ground mounts blizzard is making all flying exclusive mounts usable as ground mounts in warlords of draenor.

[Deleted]

As for Diablo 3 well some of you paid 40 bucks for a single character and campaign with a drawn cutscene at the end and not a high end cinematic. Do I believe its worth 40 bucks? NO. I need a full game experience for 40 bucks.

Stop that... 20 years ago games always were double that amount. Addons maybe 20 less.
Just go for a key shop if it is still too much. I consider it okay for today's standards.