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  1. #41
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by santwant View Post
    They attempted faster scheduling during wod. Everyone considered it a disaster and they dropped it.
    We're not talking about WoW expansions here, but about genuine honest to goodness new games.

    Nobody is expecting a studio to release new game every year, but right now we're looking at 5 years gap between last time they released something new and next time they will release actual new game that's not some shitty remaster.

    Even without that, pray tell why Starcraft was abandoned? 4 years and counting since. Why is there no new game in pipeline there?

    I am not even talking about any sort of new IP, which is a dream beyond a dream now.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    While I always find it cute when people type in this raging kind of way, disregarding spelling, grammar and structure - at the end of the day you have a point.

    A company has an idea for a product and invests the money. So you could say they take the risk and the risk is to lose everything. So now the product is out, it gets exposed and reviewed and maybe consumed. But people DO NOT need to buy it. Especially not a computer game. It is a choice. They are not selling food or water or housing (and even there you can chose from different sources)

    So yeah....the "problem" (for everyone angry) is people buying what companies put out there. Goes for everything outside of gaming as well. Which is why I am asking myself if all the people who have replied here angrily all quit playing ANY Blizzard game?

    You better have if you don't want to look like fools.
    Not only have I quit WoW, but the blizzard launcher is off my computer entirely. I have no interest in Diablo seasons, or Overwatch. Never liked HotS as it seemed like a cash grab. Starcraft 2 lost me after they wanted to try and re-sell the same game 3 times with only slightly more units each time. Hearthstone is a weaksauce version of MTG, which never caught my interested, and was utterly blown out of the water by MTG: Arena.

    As for Activision...lol? The last Call of Duty I played was MW2 the original release.

    I don't know. Live service games have lost me entirely. I'm so sick of paying for access to half of broken game that wants to charge me for the rest of it over the course of 6 months, all while pitching micro-transactions at me, sometimes with basic functionality locked behind a paywall. I REALLY don't understand how anyone finds that acceptable, much less promoting or defending it like I see some people on these forums do.

  3. #43
    I haven't played let alone paud for a blizzard game in 2+ years. I'm done, or rather they're done.

    Move on and don't settle for mediocrity.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    Yeah, that is the way to do it. Pretty much with all things in life - stay true to your own principles.

    How can people promote or defend it? Because they have different views on things. That goes, as I said, also for things outside games. I have more trouble understanding people who are sick of it, yet keep buying.
    I think it's understandable. If you have a beloved franchise (or multiple franchises) with big, passionate playerbases you can pretty much do whatever you want and still retain a large part of that playerbase because they're emotionally invested. Furthermore, having people unsatisfied with the game (to some degree) while they're still playing is probably not the worst thing. If you're bored, you're more likely to spend money after all.

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by det View Post
    I have more trouble understanding people who are sick of it, yet keep buying.
    That's a tricky one. For instance, despite how outspoken I am in criticizing Blizzard in regards to WoW, I resubbed for a month for 8.2 because of how they listened to the community in regards to Azerite traits on armor, and the implementation of benthic gear and essences. Sadly that was immediately thrown in my face with the whole Blitzchung/HK thing.... 1 step forward, 2 steps back, it seems.

    The point being that even now, with someone like me who knows how bad of a company Blizzard is, I still REALLY want to enjoy WoW. It has a lot of potential to be a fun game. I can see the possibilities if Blizzard would just stop being so god damn greedy. It's a strangely ambivalent place to be. I really want to play, because it's fun. But I also don't want to play, because giving them money sends the wrong message. :/

  6. #46
    Bloodsail Admiral Moggie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DesoPL View Post
    Warcraft? Cataclysm was first sign, that something went wrong. And let's don't forget that recently people started acknowledge that MoP was good, but still complaining about Pandas.
    I kinda disagree with this only because I think between the unreleased (and scrapped) Titan project and the subsequent reorganization of personnel to and from it, and the fiasco that was actually WoD as well as the change in leadership around the same time, they simply never found their groove and lost a lot of folks while the new Devs and Blizz were trying to clean house and systematically undoing anything and everything they could which had made the game so popular with fans. MoP was fine...mostly. WoD was and is still widely panned as a failure. (GC and co. mostly left right before or soon after release). Legion they tried, but were very unfocused and BFA we know how that's turning out I don't think this comes down to Activision interfering but does come down to the new Dev team thinking they're hot stuff. Ion is not a good leader. Celestial before she was taken off WoW was bad news. And Holinka screwed up a ton pvp side. *cough*Ashran*cough*[/i] And many others who've had their hand in the pot.

    But, it's all opinions. YMMV

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Seranthor View Post
    Why, because people want to see Activision as the boogeyman.
    I mean, they are up there with EA in terms of being the boogeymen and women of the gaming industry. With or without blizzard, activision would still be what it is, a con using gaming as their front of house illusion.

  8. #48
    The Unstoppable Force Super Kami Dende's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Calfredd View Post
    Why did Blizzard thrive under Vivendi and not under Activision? Why are most, if not all, of Blizzard's screw ups blamed on Activision-Blizzard instead of Blizzard?
    Because People that don't like the Direction of a Game think it is some grand conspiracy that the Company must have been totally changed.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Very rare pepe View Post
    I mean, they are up there with EA in terms of being the boogeymen
    Funnily enough EA Published Warcraft 2 on PS1.


  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by insert random number View Post
    I have no idea how things are organized between Blizzard and ATVI but in my personal experience a parent company has always had significant influence on it's subsidiaries.

    P.s. You did just ask us again by not asking.
    It was directly meant for the person I was quoting, but since you've now also googled it - I'm hoping the "Activision forces them to appeal to investors" sounds as silly to you as it sounds to me.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Shaetha View Post
    It's hilarious when people say things like this about Diablo 3. Like it or not, the loot was almost exactly like it was in D2.
    Nah. I played D3 from the first day of release, the loot was nothing like D2. Loot 2.0 fixed it, and it became very much like D2 - on purpose. I stopped playing D3 after leveling a character to cap, without getting a single legendary or decent piece of gear, and the end game was literally unplayable without gear. Within a week the botters and farmers had taken over the RMAH, and I refused to pay for mediocre gear - the good stuff was too much real money.
    Loot 2.0 and the expansion made the game playable again.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by TwoMana View Post
    We've gone through this in so many other threads, I really can't be bothered to ask you to google "Institutional investors" one more time. But I'll just say you're dead wrong about "investor pressure". And I say this as ATVI investor.
    I've given up trying to get the point across - people are going to believe what they want to, some more stubbornly than others.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by SirCowdog View Post
    Not taking a side in this discussion, but didn't Blizzard try the whole "Yearly release" thing with WoD? Wasn't that their entire plan that backfired? It would explain why they haven't gone back to it, at least for WoW.
    and they didnt,plus expansions dont count

  12. #52
    Even when Blizz is considered bad, it's still putting out better products more consistently than any other developer. Seriously when was the last "bad" blizz game? The early 90s. Even games that fail to be game changers like Blizz hopes are still great, HotS is still a great game, so is Hearthstone.

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    I think Titan broke Blizzard and they have yet to pull their shit together because of it.
    Call me crazy, but I still think project Titan was a collaboration effort with Bungie to bring Destiny to the table; how else would a company with no MMO experience push out a game like that so quickly? And Blizzard announced that Titan was canceled right around the time Destiny came out.... just saying... lol

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by deenman View Post
    and they didnt,plus expansions dont count
    Each expansion is basically a whole new game for most practical purposes. Power resets, gear resets, progression resets. I don't view a wow expansion as much different than a yearly Call of Duty, when you get down to it.

    Regardless. I think the reason why we don't see yearly releases according to some kind of Activision imperative is because of the simple reason that they tried it and it didn't work. Granted, I could be wrong. Seems like these days ATVI is more concerned with quarterly reports than anything longer-term.

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by cozzri View Post
    Call me crazy, but I still think project Titan was a collaboration effort with Bungie to bring Destiny to the table; how else would a company with no MMO experience push out a game like that so quickly? And Blizzard announced that Titan was canceled right around the time Destiny came out.... just saying... lol
    I've seen all kinds of conspiracy theories on these boards, but man... What are you smoking? (And where can I get some?)

  16. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by Shaetha View Post
    It's hilarious when people say things like this about Diablo 3. Like it or not, the loot was almost exactly like it was in D2.
    well i didn't play d2. so acting like i hate d3 and love d2 is a stupid straw man argument on your part.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Neuroticaine View Post
    What about D3 was buggy and unpolished? The game itself was polished to high heaven and back. There was some minor balancing issues but the only real glaring issue was the garbage real money auction house system.
    if you read my post, you'd already know what was buggy and unpolished.

  17. #57
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SirCowdog View Post
    Each expansion is basically a whole new game for most practical purposes. Power resets, gear resets, progression resets. I don't view a wow expansion as much different than a yearly Call of Duty, when you get down to it.

    Regardless. I think the reason why we don't see yearly releases according to some kind of Activision imperative is because of the simple reason that they tried it and it didn't work. Granted, I could be wrong. Seems like these days ATVI is more concerned with quarterly reports than anything longer-term.
    Here's why they can't do yearly expansions: They're too slow. They announce an expansion at Blizzcon and it won't be out for likely close to a year. So, they're going to announce the next expansion when the one they announced last year is either 1) Not out quite yet or 2) only been out a couple of weeks? That's not going to happen.

    They're too slow to do yearly expansions. They have always been too slow and their pathetic attempt to design an expansion with a single year's content in it (Warlords) failed for exactly that reason. It isn't that they abandoned Warlords halfway through which is the popular conspiracy theory; it's because it was planned from the start to be much shorter than it turned out to be. Why was it out so long? Because APPARENTLY people want to believe that Activision is telling Blizzard to be too slow although I think that Blizzard has always and is now slow and that Activision has nothing to do with it.

    Blizzard can't design and execute a yearly expansion if the life of their business depended on it.
    Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2019-12-01 at 05:04 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."

  18. #58
    I'm not sure how Activision could be responsible for terrible game design decisions. Class Design, Azerite Armor, Island Expeditions, Warfronts... the Sylvanas storyline. "Suits" don't even have the vocabulary to dictate these things to game designers. They don't care.

    All of these issues rest on the shoulders of Blizzard game developers and no one else. IMO, early WoW had people who played games like EQ. They just wanted EQ, but polished and better. They did that. As those folks got older, moved on, they probably started pulling in developers who didn't come from that background. They came from other genres or didn't really understand the roots from where this genre came from, and instead filled it with all Arcade-y game design that's shallow, gimmicky and frankly garbage.

  19. #59
    Blizzard merged with Activision the moment where their quality started to drop so it might just be a coincidence. It felt like Blizzard was already tired of making more WoW and just decided to try to please to everyone rather than their core playerbase. I'd say that the cancellation of Titan is what broke the companies spirit and they have never recovered from it. It took forever for a new Diablo and Starcraft to release, and they both didn't live up to the hype and expectations of the playerbase. Diablo 3 was being ruined by the black market auction house while SC2 was a genre that was already dying out, and on top of that ruined their story by turning Kerrigan into... that. Overwatch was at least a new IP built by the remains of Titan, but it has been forced into e-sports so much that people stopped caring about the game for some reason. HotS and Hearthstone were little side projects where one of them succeeded while the other failed, don't think I have to tell you which did which.

    Blizzard should be willing to take risks more often rather than always playing it safe. WoW is a dinosaur at this point and it isn't going to bring in new blood. Something like having WoW take place on a whole different planet the size of Azeroth or jump thousands of years into time might shake this game up and bring it back on the map. But they are afraid of people quitting who have invested so many hours into the game and not willing to give everything up they have collected. So now we're just stuck in a cycle of rushed expansions where all we do is meaningless farming... but hey at least we can collect cute pets and such.

  20. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by Seranthor View Post
    You DO realize that Blizzard sold their soul way back in 1994. This blaming Activision is intellectually dishonest if you know anything about Blizzard's ownership history. I know that bashing Activision is supposed to be cool. But its a lie. It has always been about making money, if making quality games happened thats cool too, however it has ALWAYS been about making money.
    Very true. Talented and creative game designers working out of a basement want to make it big and sell their IP for millions of dollars as much as anyone that gets into any business.

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