They have barely started work on either. Neither is in full production.
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Those games also had hilariously out dated graphics for the eras they released in. They where small projects. Blizzard wasn't really an AAA company until WoW. Imagine a game like WC3 was released in an era where consoles, not even talking PCs but consoles where producing games like Shenmue, Halo and MGS2. The scale dwarfs it.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I don't know why we're excited about it, truth be told. EA's graveyard's well known and we expect it from every studio they merge with. Why we'd expect different from Activision, I don't know.
Good thing there are strong alternatives to all of Blizzard's properties. Except SC2, I suppose.
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They sold their company.
They chose money not freedom.
The people who ended up owning blizzard merged them with companies they also owned.
Nobody forced blizzard to sell, and no one should be acting like bad guy activision forced blizzard here. Blizzard sold their freedom long before you likely even played their games. Sorry for the cold hard truth.
resubbed into ff14 today after i saw their shadowbringer trailer... still subbed to wow and do my weeklies n such... but with the constant memes/crap going on with blizz vs the comunity...you get tired of it eventually..... meanwhile things like smash bros ultimate, yoshi-p... good music etc.. it feels like the japanese are more connected with american players than ... american companies are.
That's all very special. Let's give you a Gold Star!
The statement under discussion was "yet Blizzard still took the easy route and decided to merge with them", where "them" = "Activision". And I was pointing out Blizzard did not decide to do that. Maybe they did horrible things earlier, but THAT'S NOT WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Actually they did, you see when you agree to sell your company you also agree to everything that happens after that because you no longer have control, and are willingly giving up that control for a short term pay day.
I'm sorry the truth isn't what you want to hear but blizzard sold it's soul for money before you knew what warcraft was.
The reaction to this has been fascinating to watch. Like the term brand loyalty is a thing but i've never seen it to the extremes i've seen on some sites with this one. Some people -probably the sort who ten years ago were getting 'addicted to world of warcraft' documentaries made about them- are going nuclear. Either their paranoid delusions of a dreaded cabal of 'hater trolls' out to 'destroy the god of games' has been proved real, somehow, or they are obi wan screaming at anakin that they were meant to destroy the sith and not join them.
Like its a american AAA game company with a very slow product output schedule. You dont grow to a certain size as a publicly traded company without turning into a corner cutting company that chases the easy buck. Its the endgame for 99% of them.
But you have people acting like their best friend betrayed them and killed their family or going full on westboro baptist church level delusional as though this invalidates all the time and money sunk into 'the blizzard brand'.
Fanboyism is god damn fascinating.
Blizzard was never on it's own. It was owned by Davidson and Assoc. who was a mega learning software company looking to grow into the traditional gaming space. Then Vevendi. Blizzard has always had the protection of a much larger company. Not that I necessarily agree that costs need to be cut all the time, but they have had free reign to do whatever they want for a long time. If 50% of everything they work on gets cancelled, that's a lot of money wasted if looking at it from a CFO/CEO level. Cutting costs, to try to speed up production ain't gonna cut it unless the cost cutting is non development, or redundancies in development.
The difference is for the vast majority of that time, their owners were very hands-off. They knew Blizzard had a good thing going and bought them as an investment, not to fuck with them. That includes most of the time Vivendi owned them as well. I see their current slide being largely related to being crushed under the weight of their own market cap of the combined company, not necessarily a huge amount of pressure from Activision. (Although it's still there and as the old guard move on it seems ex-Activision people keep moving over...)
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Blizzard had no say. You guys act like they have ever been independant. They have been owned by somebody since nearly the beginning.
I dont think this is neecesarily a bad thing. As long as blizzard still has creative freedom etc this could be good. They absolulty should be making more games more often. I think a lot of the management at blizzard is terrible. WoW devs are not bad. Its managements fault we got WoD or Cata. Lets let this play out for a year or two before we get pitchforks out.
If only Blizzard could turn back time i promise you they would never announce Diablo Immortal at a PC majority audience at Blizzcon.
Actually they did have a choice and the choose money over freedom long before Activision was in the picture. You don't get to ignore the actually history of the company just because you want a bad guy "Activision" to blame.
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Ironically there mite be truth to that.
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Do we know for a fact Vivendi didn't mess with them? Blizzard has said 50% of all their games they work on never make it. How do know Vivendi didn't force them to pull the plug. People are so quick to believe Blizzard when they said it was all about quality then, and so quick to blame Activision and not believe Blizzard today. Maybe Vivendi was forcing Blizzard to can games they felt were taking too long or wasting too much money.