What the hell happened to Blizzard?

[Nerovar]

Reposting this.

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." - Bobby Kotick

The work environment was transformed over the years to be more efficient when the men in suits came in. Apparently it came at the cost of the creative freedom of Blizzard's employees. People claiming that "nothing has changed" are lying to themselves.

[dope_danny]

I understand shareholders don't care about players liking a game so long as it makes them money.

But I'm wondering what these shareholders are thinking when Blizzard loses a lot of players due to a bad reputation, which costs these shareholders money. What will they do then? Will they just sell their stock and be done with it or is it possible to make a company culture change?

Blizzard will go down a dark road if they continue like this.

Look at people like a certain warlock afficianado on this forum doing volunteer damage control for free. As long as there is a stable paypig population of enough people who will buy literally anything "BECAUSE ITS BLIZZARD! XDDDD" they can put out any old trash and make bank. Star Wars logic to a T. They have literally no reason in their minds to change as long as its profitable to put out trash on a lower budget and rubes pay.

[Nightstalker]

Quarterly numbers 2020 happened. They had to sell/release before announcing them.

[Wangming]

Half of it is Activision and Bobby Kotik are calling the shots.

Half of it though is that "Blizzard Quality" was 20+ years ago, and the people who made it great have all retired.

Also Blizzard Quality was 20+ years ago, but the bar was raised in that 20 years and if you deliver the same thing, it wil not work again.

[MasterHamster]

ActiBlizz weren't immune to becoming soulless corporates just like everyone else. They are essentially EA Games, but with higher fan loyalty.
People want to think the Blizzard of today is the same as it used to be, when it very obviously isn't. Or that their philosophies regarding game design is the same. It isn't.


Naturally they couldn't avoid following the overall gaming market changes, more "drop-in-and-win", focus on MTX, sacrificing polish in favor of pushing out content "good enough" to pass a basic quality check with the remaining playerbases. Why postpone content for polish and improvements, when you can just release some garbage mount for the price of a decent Steam game.
Of course, BFA, WC3: Refunded (why make it good when so many people preordered due to nostalgia?) and the shitstorm regarding SC2 and Overwatch shows that they are bleeding internally.

Tl;dr: ActiBlizz is just like EA Games but enjoy fanbases with higher levels of denial.

[oplawlz]

Look at people like a certain warlock afficianado on this forum doing volunteer damage control for free. As long as there is a stable paypig population of enough people who will buy literally anything "BECAUSE ITS BLIZZARD! XDDDD" they can put out any old trash and make bank. Star Wars logic to a T. They have literally no reason in their minds to change as long as its profitable to put out trash on a lower budget and rubes pay.

This is sadly the truth. Several very vocal people have become so emotionally invested in Blizzard as a company that they actively shout down anyone who disparages them. If you point it out they flail their arms about how mean people on the internet are to the megacorporation, completely failing to understand that for any entity to improve it needs to understand and overcome it's flaws, not preen over it's accomplishments.

[Zandalariprelate]

Yep. HoTS, Diablo 3 launch, Snorelords down the Drainor, Dragon Soul patch, BFA, and now WC3.

At least with Hots they tried a few times to save it but again Blizzard came at the end of the party for the Moba market

[Asrialol]

I understand shareholders don't care about players liking a game so long as it makes them money.

But I'm wondering what these shareholders are thinking when Blizzard loses a lot of players due to a bad reputation, which costs these shareholders money. What will they do then? Will they just sell their stock and be done with it or is it possible to make a company culture change?

Blizzard will go down a dark road if they continue like this.

Well, since Blizzard is earning more money now than before, even with reduced sub numbers, I don't really think they care that much. It's not like WoW is the main source of income for Blizzard anymore.

[xChurch]

Blizzard went from being an industry leader to being just another follower. They for some stupid reason decided an MMO that would be even bigger than WoW was their next big thing which ended up bogging down the company in a boondoggle that prevented them from capitalizing on the profits WoW had brought in. They released HoTs after the Moba market was pretty much controlled by other games. They released Overwatch right before Battle Royales became the big new thing in FPS'. They spend a bunch of time and money on a real-world AH for Diablo that should have just seemed dumb on its face.

It's crazy to think where we might be if Blizzard had created Overwatch in the first place instead of trying to make Titan. If they had released HoTs when they Moba market was just begging and if they had actually cared about making content for SC and Diablo. Or hell, if they had taken some of that sweet WoW money and made a single-player RPG, something I personally have wanted forever, old IP or new.

[Zorachus]

People saying the old Blizzard is long gone, and the great creators have retired and left.

Well I thought Legion expansion was great, the best in awhile, so Blizzard was able to create a fantastic game again back in 2016 to 2018..

Whereas BfA is one of the worst. It's not THE worst, but of the 8 expansions so far, I'd put BfA around 6th place, and put Legion like 2nd or 3rd place.

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Would love to see a brand new next gen MMO from Blizzard, World of Diablo, a darker more mature themed WoW sort of, but all new game engine, and utilizing a true Artificial Intelligence AI system for NPC's and Bosses and all enemies, using cutting edge state of the art A.I. that can think and react to the real human player in nano seconds.

And graphics from the Unreal 4 engine;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKu1Y-LlfNQ

Call it Blizzard's "Moonshot" game of all games to create.

[Velshin]

examples or you just gunna make a blog post?
Cause idk if you know, but they have not delivered on promises since back in the days before activision.
and no, its no where as bad as EA.

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no it didnt, they have done this since before activision, all game companies have, they set an idea, and then obviously cant go as far.


if you lot are talking about reforged, sadly alot of the playerbase screamed and cried for them to undo things they planned to do, so blizz decided against it, and now everyone is mad that is not there.

So showing us in Blizzcon 2018 about Warcraft III reforged being an awesome remake with awesome high quality cinematics (the one they teased about Arthas and the culling of Stratholme) but when they released the game it was nothing like they showed us, not only that but also the features and the custom maps that used to be in the original WC3 is missing in the reforged game. And I am not including all of the other problems of the game like connection or some performance color issues.

Sorry but this is not "they set an idea and then obviously can't go as far" this is just lying and scamming your fanbase players and there is no defending that at all.

To add salt to injuries they didn't even apologize or said anything like "Sorry guys if Reforged launch wasn't as smooth as we wanted we will make it better very soon" and they kept banning people for helping others about how to refund? yeah no defending that really I am curious to see what reply can you do to defend them now?

[Eapoe]

Look at people like a certain warlock afficianado on this forum doing volunteer damage control for free. As long as there is a stable paypig population of enough people who will buy literally anything "BECAUSE ITS BLIZZARD! XDDDD" they can put out any old trash and make bank. Star Wars logic to a T. They have literally no reason in their minds to change as long as its profitable to put out trash on a lower budget and rubes pay.

Except according to everyone complaining Blizzard has been changing nonstop over the years. Also, just to point out, people like Felplague aren’t doing damage control, they are calling out the bullshit non freethinking sheep spew time after time.
“It’s all Activisions fault!”
“It’s all the fault of (insert whoever is currently in the spotlight (Greg Street, Lore, Ion, etc))!”
Hell, there’s even a thread now stating that Activision has little to nothing to do with Blizzard’s design choices because “Bellular has a source,” which completely goes against everything people spew about Blizzard becoming shit due to a merger.
I still play WoW because I enjoy it. Do I think I will play forever? Probably not. I also know that when I get done with things with WoW there’s an entire world of real life shit and other media to keep me busy, and so I never care about content draughts. There’s enough in game to keep me playing I enjoy.
There’s also the downsides. I hated WF/TF, and I hate Corruption even more. I’m not a fan of RNG style rewards as some people get extremely lucky while others just do okay and still others are way behind the bell curve. That said, it’s not enough of a deterrent and/or outweighs the things I enjoy.
If Blizzard changes something, or cancels a patch because of design choices, I don’t look at it as some great betrayal towards a fan. I just take it as a design choice. If I get bored playing then I will stop. If they change something that kills the game for me then I will stop. As it stands, nothing like that has happened.
Oh, MTXs? Who cares. They don’t make or break the game. They’re purely cosmetic. Some of them even go towards a good cause, and yes, that includes people going “just donate anywhere else.” Well, human nature dictates some people don’t donate out of the kindness of their hearts and souls, but give them incentive and they will. So yes, Blizzard charity cosmetics are a nice cause.
Guess what I am trying to say is this: take it or leave it, but play for your enjoyment or leave for your lack thereof. Just don’t spew the same shit multitudes have stated before you like it’s gospel and the sole reason for the game being good or bad.

[MoanaLisa]

Well, since Blizzard is earning more money now than before, even with reduced sub numbers, I don't really think they care that much. It's not like WoW is the main source of income for Blizzard anymore.

All of this BS talk about ATVI "shareholders" as if WoW is the primary thing that institutions like pension funds worry about. Never mind that ATVI's stock price is much more dependent of how Candy Crush is doing than anything Blizzard contributes. "Shareholders" that actually matter--80+% of ATVI's stock is held by institutional investors--do not follow individual games at that level as a rule. They don't know anything about players leaving. It's fucking laughable.

[LemonDemonGirl]

There was a LOT that went into the failure of Wildstar. It was not exclusively because ex-WoW devs tried to do their own thing.

I highly recommend watching some videos detailing everything that happened, if you're actually interested. Don't leap to conclusions.

Ahh I see. I'm not really that interested in Wildstar right now, but I'll probably watch some videos later.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but I just think that trying to make a brand new mmo probably wouldn't work these days due to other games being competition

[SirCowdog]

Ahh I see. I'm not really that interested in Wildstar right now, but I'll probably watch some videos later.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but I just think that trying to make a brand new mmo probably wouldn't work these days due to other games being competition

The short version is that they had a great vision. But implementation, budgeting, and feature creep took their toll. Add in some meddling from NCsoft(who are notorious for shutting down games prematurely - see City of Heroes), it just got even worse. By the time the game was really starting to clean up and be worth playing, it was already too late.

I think a large part of it also has to do with WoW simply suppressing almost every other MMO in the market. Any time someone makes an attempt at another game, WoW fanboys shit on it, and Blizzard does their best to release major patches or expansions to counter. And that too many players are entrenched with WoW, and use it as a benchmark. Quite frankly, nobody has the money or the capacity of Blizzard, so no other MMO can match up outside of VERY niche gameplay. FFXIV survives based on its own heavily invested fanbase and trademark style. Same with SWTOR and ESO. But Wildstar was a totally new IP, with no history or foundation to build on. And that hurt them badly as well.

All in all, there are a lot of factors. Wildstar really is an interesting case, and a little sad. There was a LOT of potential there that went to waste.

[Osmeric]

Well, since Blizzard is earning more money now than before,

I don't think the numbers support this statement. Justify, please.

[Orby]

they listened to what the players wanted. no changed cinematics, no changed lore, and no changed gameplay, it turned from a reforge, to a remaster, because players refused to let blizz make it new.

I'd like to see where all these people were asking for no changes to Warcraft 3 Reforged, because if that's the case they would have just re-released the original game. So I don't buy the whole 'they listened to player feedback'. Maybe they did maybe they didn't but we cannot be sure either way. Unless you gt some insider scoop :P

I know me and many of us on the mega-thread and on the hype train were there for the reforged, not the remaster, if there were complaints about Blizzard making changes to Warcraft 3 (and there were 2 or 3 people in the thread saying this), then they listened to the few and not the many...

But since we are making assumptions I just honestly think Blizzard didn;t want to throw their money at an RTS, they pulled out their funding and just told the devs (a skeleton crew in Malaysia) to get it out.

[Ielenia]

That's not how math works.

That is how math works. Any number is nearly infinite times greater than zero.

Now you're further moving the goalposts and I'd have to limit examples to only AAA games and companies. omegalul, as they say.

Even if we are not talking only about the triple-A industry (which make for the majority of gaming news and events), I can still name you many, many indie games and indie developers that prove how the "gaming industry has not changed for the better." Kickstarter scams, broken promises, heavily unfinished/unpolished games, etc.

Have fun pretending Blizzard was ever something other than what it is now.

I don't have to, since that was never my argument. But, hey, the fact you're saying this only proves how your arguments have absolutely zero foundation to stand on.

[kaminaris]

I don't see any quality drop.

Me neither, people seems to have goldfish memory. If anything I see quality INCREASE over time in couple of aspects of game:

1. WoD, MoP was literally unplayable for a day when expansion released, anyone remember clicking on items 5 hours to finally build a garrison?
2. A lot more bugs were evident back then, hopping thru invisible walls, walljumping, falling to core of earth, don't encounter that anymore.
3. Bugged quests - can't remember bugged quest from BfA.
4. Class imbalance, in MoP having +100% of dps was pretty common between classes.

I really really don't understand what people are talking about.

[FelPlague]

I'd like to see where all these people were asking for no changes to Warcraft 3 Reforged, because if that's the case they would have just re-released the original game. So I don't buy the whole 'they listened to player feedback'. Maybe they did maybe they didn't but we cannot be sure either way. Unless you gt some insider scoop :P

I know me and many of us on the mega-thread and on the hype train were there for the reforged, not the remaster, if there were complaints about Blizzard making changes to Warcraft 3 (and there were 2 or 3 people in the thread saying this), then they listened to the few and not the many...

But since we are making assumptions I just honestly think Blizzard didn;t want to throw their money at an RTS, they pulled out their funding and just told the devs (a skeleton crew in Malaysia) to get it out.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wa...ginal-lore/270
https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/comment..._war3reforged/
https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/comment...rydialogue_to/
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1207302573771776000
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads...pinion.309901/
just what i could find without going through hell.

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this happened:

Reminder, this

gave you this

and this