Totally bang-on correct!
I mean, that's how WOW happened. Blizz wasn't no startup. They took a portion of their amazing profits from their Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft franchises, and slooowly developed WoW over many many years.
People seem to forget that Final Fantasy 15 and ES:O are also doing fantastic, they're flourishing and not going away anytime soon.
It's these dumb doinks like the developers at Wildstar who thought it was a great idea to make a multi-milion dollar game from a startup funding salary that fell apart.
Personally I'd rather have World of Starcraft.
would be cool, a top down mmo, like runescape or dofus, but obvioulsy with tradtional diablo gameplay
They said they wanted diablo 4 to be an rpg like skyrim or witcher. This may be it.
and yet they're not even successful with shooter and mobile games.
I would not expect Blizzard to make another foray into the MMORPG genre in the foreseeable future. The genre is effectively dead and nearly impossible to break into for new games.
At the end of the day, it's easier for Blizzard to just make multiple smaller projects that each target a specific audience, rather than making a single massive game that has to please everyone to stand a chance of succeeding.
Overwatch and Hearthstone were both top grossing games worldwide for years after launch. WoW and Hearthstone are still in the top ten on PC, and Overwatch only fell out of the top ten this year.
To say either of those games isn't successful is just ignorant.
WoW Classic proves nothing, the population has been at a steady decline and servers are getting smaller and smaller. By mid 2020 Classic will be filled with low pop servers during prime time with a handful of high pop servers(same as retail). Classic is still currently in it's "honeymoon stage", but a lot of people have realized they were wrong about the difficulty of max level activities and have started leaving. MMO's are a dying breed, primarily because several studios stopped caring about making a quality game/expansion and only cared about maximizing profits.
I actually disagree with that. I don't think Blizzard thought twice about "catching lightning in a bottle". I think they simply though twice about producing an FPSMMO from a parent company who, a mere few days before canceling it, announced they were releasing an FPSMMO from Bungie. People seem to forget that the Blizzard cancellation announcement of Project Titan happened a mere few days after Activision announced they were working with Bungie on an FPSMMO. To me, that's too close to be a mere co-incidence.
It ain't over till the fat lady sings. Keep in mind the genre was pretty darn obscure before WoW came onto the scene. Yes, the genre has been in its worst state since Nov 2004, but is still in a way better state than anything before that, where the biggest MMO only had a few 100k people.
Blizzard had investors sinking millions into Blizzard from day 1. It took alot more money that Blizzard had.
- - - Updated - - -
Hearthstone says hi. And Candy Crush Saga raked in $1.5 billion last year. (Yeah, Blizzard owns that game too).
I would say at least half your statement is false.
No.
MMOs are in a weird spot right now, and it would actually be prejudicial for blizzard to have two competing MMOs.
Last edited by hulkgor; 2019-10-19 at 09:48 PM.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2019-10-19 at 09:54 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
...when did I call them a small company!? o_O
Wasn't an implication at all. My implication was they became a big company (relative for its time) with the successes of WC 1-3, Starcraft and Diablo - and THATS when they started working on WoW, through successive successes to become the big company that they were at that time.
I'd say the moment they went from "small" to "Large" was when WC1, maybe 2, did gangbusters. Again, relative to the time. Blizzard wasn't nearly as big as they are today as they were when they first started working on WoW.
How the heck can you interpret publishing all those games and sequels as me implying a "Small company"? o_O
Last edited by mvaliz; 2019-10-19 at 09:54 PM.