PC gamer interview: Blizzard 'has completely changed,'

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Every person who wrote code to create your fav blizzard games, moved on, years ago.

The people who stayed at work until 3am working on their "baby", the ones who scrapped entire concepts because they didnt live up to Blizz quality, are gone and have been gone, and you nubs should have known they were gone when you played WoD, Legion, and BfA, and thought to yourself "What the fuck is this garbage?".

Blizzard is a fucking joke now. They are one fuck up away from being the child of EA.

This is probably every company. Can someone link statistic on this so we can stop doing this plea to emotions and fixate on facts. How many people have left naughty dog over the years? Is blizzard a different brush stroke or the average?

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I don't even think they said anything negative about blizzard. They said it a lot bigger company now and has to deal with different challenges, like worrying about having to punish a guy or not for being political, or having to worry about shareholders.

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I would be down to work for blizzard in a heart beat. Granted I'm an accountant and would be in the accounting department but I would love to work there.

I'd prefer making my own game. Game developer are generally overworked, I've read the horror stories from epic games.

[Vynestra]

And so has Apple, and Google, and Microsoft, and....every company over the last 30 years?

[McNeil]

Blizzard took a turn for the worst when they merged with Activision. Now its getting hard to tell the two apart.

[huth]

I mean aside from Nintendo, how many companies retain a majority of their original key founding members?

I'm fairly certain Nintendo has a grand total of 0 founding members still active. Mostly because they'd be well over 100 years old now.

[RoKPaNda]

westwood did, until their death -.-

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average gamer age is 35 years, and probably will be higher
we don't 'grew up', Legion showed that wow passion still alive in many hearts, they just make sh8t games, or more accurate they try to make as little effort as possible while gaining max profit possible, because calling wow sh8t is inaccurate, it is still amazing game, just a sh8t wow game in compare to previous better exps

You know you can say shit on the internet right? They still make great games and we still whine about them. When D3 was released Diablo 2 was 12 years old and people said it was a testament to how amazing D2 was that people still played it. People are still playing D3 every season and it's just about 8 years old at this point. They've always made games that people loved and played for years and they still do. The things we criticized Blizzard for today we were criticizing them for back in the 90s as well. Blizzard is still Blizzard and they still make the same mistakes and do the same weird shit.

[Roar-Powah]

Blizzard is evolving with the times ... not much more to it

More like devolving, they fix things that are not broken so they are broken like. Why change so much from MoP, yes the theme was pretty crap but the rest of the expansion (bar Timeless Isle and the introduction of CRZ) was good. Classes felt great to play, you could upgrade your own gear, you could reforge your gear, raids where fun, you could knock out daily's in no time and yet going forward they messed with it all. To me this is devolving the game, and thus has taken steps back right around the time a lot of personal changes where happening on the WoW team.

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Blizzard took a turn for the worst when they merged with Activision. Now its getting hard to tell the two apart.

Pretty much this!

[rhorle]

Blizzard took a turn for the worst when they merged with Activision. Now its getting hard to tell the two apart.

Morhaime was one of the ones that convinced Kotick to agree to the merger. So I don't think Blizzard was what you thought it was.

[Muajin76]

link
and what the fans would like."

Could be this true or just Blizz blowing smoke?

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Yup, there aren't many people who work for the same company for 30 years, but you can't expect sam86 to be unbiased.

That is completely understood in a company, especially a gaming one. People branch off to do projects with other companies or start their own company, or change their line of work/focus on family..etc

[StillMcfuu]

link
An interview just 2 days ago that interested me, specially that part "We didn't talk about Chinese government and what they might want. The only thing we ever talked about was what we wanted to do and what the fans would like."
It shows what blizz was vs what it is now the best
Also the other important point is that only 2 left from the original 180 workers of the entire starting team (which isn't normal that 99% of the team that build a company leave in merely 30 years) and the interviewer claims he is still in good relation with one of them
I think that is best thing to show why we loved blizz and why it keep disappointing us now, because it is a 1% of what it used to be

Seriously....

I like these guys generally and value their opinion, but they jumped ship 15 fucking years ago. None of them actually worked at main Blizzard and all worked in Blizz North. It's safe to say they never knew how Blizzard was. When they left Blizzard, China was still a joke on the international stage (they still are but for far more nefarious reasons.)

They are constantly attempting to insert themselves into being in the know, but they are just fans at this point like most of us.

Don't believe me? Just think back to jobs you used to work at, remember being like 1 or 2 months removed and you would talk to friends about how it was going there... and realize that you really had know way to know how it is. You can have first hand info, but you don't work there anymore, you have no idea what's going on in day to day.

[Varitok]

Blizzard took a turn for the worst when they merged with Activision. Now its getting hard to tell the two apart.

It wasn't their choice to be part of activision, it was a snowball effect.

Blizzard was bought by Davidson & Associates (1994) who was then bought along side Sierra On-line by a company called CUC International (1996) who then merged with a hotel, real estate and car rental company called HFS Corporation to create Cendant (1997). It turns out CUC was commiting accounting fraud before the merger with HFS which caused the stock of Cendant to plummet by 80% in half a year. They proceeded to sell of their software business which included Sierra On-Line (which included Blizzard) to a French Publisher named Havas (1998) which was then bought by Vivendi later that year. Blizzard was part of Vivendi Games (Which was the game making side of the company) which then merged with Activision and Renamed itself Activision Blizzard. (2008)

The morale of the story is that you should never, under any circumstance, sell your company to anyone unless you're planning to cash out.

[Doffen]

Well from being a indie company to a big corporate, of course it changed.

"At that point it was just Blizzard and then some anonymous corporate owner, Vivendi or whoever"

Vivendi or whoever...:>

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

It absolutely is normal that "99%" of a team comprised of 40+ year olds leave in the span of 30 years.
I don't know where this 99 percent stat is coming from, but either way, many of those people retired or just moved on to other projects.

Its really not Blizzard that has changed.
Its just gaming in 2019.

Games are different than they were back then, and obviously financial pressure is more of a concern when you have what 8 IPs instead of 3?

[Varitok]

It absolutely is normal that "99%" of a team comprised of 40+ year olds leave in the span of 30 years.
I don't know where this 99 percent stat is coming from, but either way, many of those people retired or just moved on to other projects.

Its really not Blizzard that has changed.
Its just gaming in 2019.

Games are different than they were back then, and obviously financial pressure is more of a concern when you have what 8 IPs instead of 3?

Gaming hasn't changed, It's companies profit balancing that has changed. Games are cheaper than ever to make but they try to feed you some bullshit line that the "cinematic" look makes it more expensive. They just refuse to lower the marketing budget below 100 million or try to cut as many corners as possible to save money for their shareholders.

Gaming is the same, game making is actually easier and capitalism is just taking it's toll on the things people love, It's a cycle that happens with every product.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Gaming hasn't changed, It's companies profit balancing that has changed. Games are cheaper than ever to make but they try to feed you some bullshit line that the "cinematic" look makes it more expensive. They just refuse to lower the marketing budget below 100 million or try to cut as many corners as possible to save money for their shareholders.

Gaming is the same, game making is actually easier and capitalism is just taking it's toll on the things people love, It's a cycle that happens with every product.

Gaming has changed.
There were no cell phones when Blizzard was created.
Saying it hasn't changed is just absurd honestly.

[rhorle]

It wasn't their choice to be part of activision, it was a snowball effect.

Yes the parent company merged with Activision. However Blizzard, specifically Mr. Morhaime, was instrumental in convincing Activision, Mr. Kotick, to merge with Vivendi. It may have not been their choice but they certainly went along with it.

[Elestia]

The graphics in their games has gone from passable to cutting edge.

The games that are produced have 10x the talent backing them now on literally all fronts.


Why the blanket dismissal of growth and progress just because you want the original 178 people at the grindstone making more games for you? How fucking selfish and ignorant to the time, effort and talent the current employees bring.

[Varitok]

Gaming has changed.
There were no cell phones when Blizzard was created.
Saying it hasn't changed is just absurd honestly.

The ways games have been delievered has changed but the gaming landscape as a whole is still relatively the same. Monetization shifted from the game unit to MTX. That wasn't what was on arguement, Blizzard hasn't bought whole hog into Mobile yet, so that excuse isn't the reason it has changed.

You still have the same safe God Of Wars, Spidermans etc selling amazingly well through the traditional channels of gaming, Just because another market emerges doesn't mean it isn't the same industry. If that was the case, Games like the ones I mentioned wouldn't be doing well in the least and companies wouldn't attempt them.

I think you confuse an expanding market with an altered market.

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Yes the parent company merged with Activision. However Blizzard, specifically Mr. Morhaime, was instrumental in convincing Activision, Mr. Kotick, to merge with Vivendi. It may have not been their choice but they certainly went along with it.

Blizzard didn't have a say though, They were still a subsidiary at that time and if their boss said Jump, they'd have too.

[rhorle]

Blizzard didn't have a say though, They were still a subsidiary at that time and if their boss said Jump, they'd have too.

So. The CEO and founder personally convincing the other companies CEO is still a powerful thing. You are a little to far along the tinfoil trail if you think a parent company can make a CEO be a puppet. This was the CEO and a founder of Blizzard you are talking about. If he was that easily made a puppet then there was nothing special about Blizzard to be ruined by Activision.

It is just another scapegoat that people like you use. Activision didn't ruin Blizzard. Blizzard ruined Blizzard.

[Doffen]

After billions of dollars we can finally have more than 4 hairstyles. What a miracle.

Hehe, it is a good point this. It is so overdue, by a long, long time. It's such a miracle that we all cheer for it

[Redroniksre]

Gaming sure has changed.

Blizzard finds new ways to nickel and dime players - selling in-game gold, mounts, pets and toys whilst simultaneously charging a box price and a sub fee. Not to mention charging ludicrous character transfer fees.

Instead of investing? Nah they are developing budget solutions like sharding which frankly - don't fucking work. Let's not invest money into bigger and better servers. Let's create shit little laggy shards.

Instead of inventing new, meaningful MMO content. Let's create endlessly repeatable grind like 4 different raid difficulties, titanforging, mythic+ and a new shiny procedurally generated tower!

How long did it take to get increased character customization? Fifteen. Years.

Hell they sold "new player models" as an expansion feature. Lmfao.

After billions of dollars we can finally have more than 4 hairstyles. What a miracle.

I mean people widely love Mythic+ and repeatable content is needed because it is literally impossible to keep up with consumer consumption. Anyone with an iota of game design knowledge knows this.