Blizzard's future games...

[Sorrowseer]

Has there been any news on warcraft 3 reforged? Last I know the promises to fix it are like a year old now and nothing is being fixed?

[Lochton]

Has there been any news on warcraft 3 reforged? Last I know the promises to fix it are like a year old now and nothing is being fixed?

Of course not? It is a product fed by greed, nostalgia, and hype. There's not been any news about it for a year, I believe?

[shadowmatrix]

I've been replaying the SC2 releases lately and while Legacy of the Void, even without the cringe ending that killed the IP forever, was a pretty mediocre phoned in affair Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm really make you want more of that world.

How did the ending kill the franchise?

[Darknessvamp]

In all likelihood? More mobile games because they think they are a mobile game developer now after porting Hearthstone a year after release six years ago despite most of their mtx for cards and portraits coming from PC users and they see the money gacha games, King and Activision's mobile games bring in(somehow) not to mention how much they present D: Immortal as their next 'big thing' over D4 of all things.

Personally I'd like them to incubate and work on a new IP preferably with a single player RPG with grand strategy elements as their focus, especially with the Dynasty Warriors troops patent expiring soon. I hope to see more devs adapt that concept after Koei has been sat on it all this time. (Similarly an adaptation or original take of the Nemesis system would be cool but WB screwed everyone on that front)

[Black Rider]

Next years Blizzcon will show us.

[GreenJesus]

If I were going to somehow let them get my hopes up for whatever reason it would be another Starcraft or Warcraft RTS. I'll play anything in the starcraft universe but really just prefer RTS.

I'd also be open to a starcraft RTS with a first or 3rd person pov. Think Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Natural Selection, or Command and Conquer Renegade was it? IE: all of the same aspects you'd expect from the standard RTS formula, except in addition to base building and resource management, you're one of the units on the ground.

Bu again; that's if I were going to get my hopes up. =\

After warcraft reforged i hope you don't get your hopes up for another warcraft RTS.. LOL

[Lochton]

In all likelihood? More mobile games because they think they are a mobile game developer now after porting Hearthstone a year after release six years ago despite most of their mtx for cards and portraits coming from PC users and they see the money gacha games, King and Activision's mobile games bring in(somehow) not to mention how much they present D: Immortal as their next 'big thing' over D4 of all things.

Personally I'd like them to incubate and work on a new IP preferably with a single player RPG with grand strategy elements as their focus, especially with the Dynasty Warriors troops patent expiring soon. I hope to see more devs adapt that concept after Koei has been sat on it all this time. (Similarly an adaptation or original take of the Nemesis system would be cool but WB screwed everyone on that front)

Hearthstone was meant as an all-platform game in the first place.

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Next years Blizzcon will show us.

Guess it'll be BlizzConline in February/March, not GamesCom, nor a BlizzCon in 2022.

[GreenJesus]

As they told us and their investors, all of their best developers are focusing on mobile games. Honestly a warcraft version of Fire Emblem (the old Gameboy advance style) would be cool if they made it for the switch.

[Amarys]

Blizzard is incapable of releasing new games. Titan was cancelled with Overwatch barely salvaged out of it. Ghosts was cancelled. D3's 2nd expansion was cancelled. D3, SC2, HotS, and OW1 have been abandoned. D4, OW2, and Diablo Immortal are stuck in development hell. The incubation unit has never released anything. The only stuff Blizzard is actually able to release is Hearthstone and WoW, and the WoW team has been immensely struggling to barely put out any content over ridiculous timescales, despite being Blizzard's most profitable game.

They're not going to make more actual games. All of the oldtimers who were there to actually make games have long since left. Blizzard is fully corporate, and on paper the most profitable thing for them to do is to milk their IPs by making mobile games.

This is my impression as well. Not sure why this keeps happening to gaming companies. I mean Bethesda is sort of that spot as well, just rehashing old stuff, reusing old game content and assets and not actually making any new games. They could make more money by releasing tons of sequels surely. I mean movie studios do it, I mean they could just milk their hits from the 80s selling merch as well, they also spend millions on each so why do gaming companies just release a few hits and then fade away.

[Darknessvamp]

Hearthstone was meant as an all-platform game in the first place.

We know that wasn't the case as they had to adapt and make specific changes to it so that it could run and be playable on phones and the porting to tablets took nearly 9 months after release as they didn't expect the demand for it in that format. Not to mention they were initially surprised by how successful it was when it first released probably because they didn't expect the audience for digital card games to be as large or as prevalent as it was.

[Gaidax]

This is my impression as well. Not sure why this keeps happening to gaming companies. I mean Bethesda is sort of that spot as well, just rehashing old stuff, reusing old game content and assets and not actually making any new games. They could make more money by releasing tons of sequels surely. I mean movie studios do it, I mean they could just milk their hits from the 80s selling merch as well, they also spend millions on each so why do gaming companies just release a few hits and then fade away.

They are making tons of money re-releasing old stuff as well. I mean heck, Bethesda with their 500th touch up of Skyrim successfully resold.

It's easy money, publishers and studios figured out the remasters trick and it actually works - for a fraction of cost of making actual AAA game, they can resell old stuff for near AAA money and shitton of sales. What's not to like. And heck, it's almost assured hit as well, so hell yeah?

Sure eventually they all will run out of old turds to polish, but it's some good $$ while it lasts.

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Heck... looking at Skyrim, it's not long before we will see re-remasters and such.

[lolmmofuture]

Project: Titan was confirmed as an MMO, not what kind, or what setting except for characters from Overwatch being the product of class ideas (Reaper, Tracer, Hanzo), and the map, Illios (The well) is apparently made from assets meant to be used. Further than that, I do not know, I know there were hundreds of speculations about it.


I know, but it is about dreaming after all. Wouldn't mind a Destiny take on the StarCraft universe, just try and keep it more dark and hostile.

if im not wrong, titan was confirmed to be a shooter mmo, and thats either a third person, or first person, like shooters often means fps, so titan wouldve been the first true FPSMMORPG, not like destiny which is just an mmolite.

but i guess we'll never know at this point

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As they told us and their investors, all of their best developers are focusing on mobile games. Honestly a warcraft version of Fire Emblem (the old Gameboy advance style) would be cool if they made it for the switch.

i wouldnt mind mobile games, but i dont trust blizzard not to monetize them properly, which is the biggest reason people hate mobile games

[dope_danny]

How did the ending kill the franchise?

step 1: throw all established conventions out the window and just have kerrigan turn into a giant god-angel made of fire to pheonix force the enemy away in a lazy deus ex machina
step 2: her and jim fuck their way across the universe populating all planets with life
step 3: so written into a corner by a cringe ending most anime would reject Blizzard never releases another starcraft product again

I mean its not that hard to figure out. They kind of pulled a shadowlands and wrote themselves into such a corner they can't pull the scope back ever again without some "it was all a dream" horseshit and poisoned the well.

[loras]

Rather not ditch world-building in a wide media just to add world-building in a little narrower media, RTS is, after all, a popular game type but limited reach as well. I know everyone wants WC4 but then we'll also have to discuss when, or replay in a different style? Since if expansion or version after WC3.5, then it would just be an RTS style of Cataclysm.


Alas, I feel we won't see that much income from it, as it is going to share its production and income with Netease, a company that already has skeletons in the closet like Blizzard does, if not worse. This is a shared child this time, unlike NetEase's other tasks of adapting and handling WoW for other markets, this time they are part of controlling it fully.

I guess I may be salty because of them announcing and hyping people for Diablo 4, just to swing it around and it being a non-connected Diablo3 chapter when they could've done that on the side of giving a D4 announcement (which could've been done at that time too, even without a trailer).

Honestly i've not seen any game world that got better by involving newly written stories.

And the idea would be to have some parts of the story only in the RTS and some parts only in the RPG, while bridging the gap with other media fir those who do not wish to play it all.

[shadowmatrix]

step 1: throw all established conventions out the window and just have kerrigan turn into a giant god-angel made of fire to pheonix force the enemy away in a lazy deus ex machina
step 2: her and jim fuck their way across the universe populating all planets with life
step 3: so written into a corner by a cringe ending most anime would reject Blizzard never releases another starcraft product again

I mean its not that hard to figure out. They kind of pulled a shadowlands and wrote themselves into such a corner they can't pull the scope back ever again without some "it was all a dream" horseshit and poisoned the well.

Looks more your writing the story into a corner.
Step 1 is the only one that happens in any form.
Step 2 is Kerrigan and Jim leave.
Nova's story is set after Legacy of the Void showing the Kerrigan didn't hang around to solve every problem. A new game could focus on United Earth Directorate sending forces to invade. Zero reasons to bring back Kerrigan outside of a cutscene recapping previous events.

[AcidicSyn]

After warcraft reforged i hope you don't get your hopes up for another warcraft RTS.. LOL

Not another reforged. Look at the SC remaster, that was done nicely. That's all I want for Wc1 and 2, hd upgrade and some minor qol, nothing else.

[Lochton]

Honestly i've not seen any game world that got better by involving newly written stories.

And the idea would be to have some parts of the story only in the RTS and some parts only in the RPG, while bridging the gap with other media fir those who do not wish to play it all.

Are there others that have done it in the first place? Except for the Warhammer franchise? The Star Wars universe? At a stretch, pen, and paper D&D (to an extension, the MMORPG)?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What they need is to ditch those crappy comics and novels and just jumble together warcraft 4.

The MoP short stories were good. They weren't plot essential and fun extra fluff for people who wanted extra fluff, and did stuff with background NPCs like Li Li or Dezco.

Stuffing humongous plot beats into the books, like Thrall promoting Garrosh to Warchief and Cairne's death, or the Theramore campaign, or Sylvanas' motivations, etc, is pretty bad.

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Didn't they say that Titan was not really an MMO but some kind of social mish-mash with a set day and night cycle where during daytime you are just a civillian and it plays more like second life, you can do normal jobs, earn money, spend time with other players, decorate your appartment and stuff and during nighttime you put on your hero gear and fight whatever the enemy is?
That sounded really bad and it doesn't surprise me they scapped it.

That would have been great for a linear singleplayer game (the Trails games are chapter based, where the first half of a chapter is mundane city stuff, and then the second half is when you go on the adventure). For an MMO format, there have been games like Star Wars Galaxies where you could play the game entirely as a crafter just sitting in the cities, never really having to go out and fight mobs, but that wasn't mandatory gameplay like what little of Titan's concept we had heard.

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Are there others that have done it in the first place? Except for the Warhammer franchise? The Star Wars universe? At a stretch, pen, and paper D&D (to an extension, the MMORPG)?

The books aren't a problem for Warhammer because it's not like the character interactions or the story happens in the tabletop game you play. The story only advances in the books. It's bad for WoW because the video game is the main thing you're here for, but in order to understand the plot in the video game you also have to consult forum posts and wowpedia articles and youtube videos to understand the important stuff you can't actually play in the game, be it books or removed game content like the legendary questlines.

I don't pay attention to Disney's fanfic canon, but in the EU there was a loose "main plot" after RotJ.

I would recommend reading The Secret History of Star Wars (IIRC there is a free PDF of the book online, very fascinating stuff), which goes into depth about how Star Wars was created and evolved over time, and debunks a lot of myths that are parroted around. Basically George created ANH as a standalone film and didn't expect he'd get to do a sequel. He didn't even attend the premiere of the film; he went on vacation in Hawaii when he got a phone call saying that his film was a smash hit, and he shrugged and said "oh, cool" and went back to enjoying his vacation. He said at the time that he only really made TESB and RotJ for the money so he could fund the other projects he actually wanted to work on, but weren't really popular. He was planning on making more than Star Wars films than just TESB and RotJ, hoping to have other directors make those films, but TESB was very nervewracking for him so he decided RotJ would be the last one. The production of RotJ killed his marriage, so after it released he stopped making films entirely to focus on raising his kids. There was no hope for further Star Wars movies at the time, so he shrugged and just licensed out the rights to write Star Wars books to authors. Timothy Zahn was the first to get a book deal and he wrote his Heir to the Empire trilogy. After that, a bunch of other authors got deals too and made fluff adventures. Then, the Lucasfilm writing team that managed the book business came up with a new saga of novels called the New Jedi Order, which would unroll over the series of a few years and featured like 10-20 books (there were supposed to be more but they rushed it towards the end). So for all intents and purposes, that was the main story of Star Wars after Lucas started making films. But then in the mid 90s, Lucas' kids grew up and he had free time, and he started getting interested in making new Star Wars stuff again. Genuinely interested in doing it as his main thing, not as a side gig to make money, and that's how the prequel trilogy happened (which decanonized a lot of EU stuff as the authors didn't know at the time that Lucas was going to come back and that there would be anymore films).

[Fencers]

The only Blizz series I care for is Diablo. So more Diablo.

[Yriel]

That would have been great for a linear singleplayer game (the Trails games are chapter based, where the first half of a chapter is mundane city stuff, and then the second half is when you go on the adventure). For an MMO format, there have been games like Star Wars Galaxies where you could play the game entirely as a crafter just sitting in the cities, never really having to go out and fight mobs, but that wasn't mandatory gameplay like what little of Titan's concept we had heard.

I like the Trials games and i agree, something like that can be cool for singleplayer games but it seemed to me, at least, that Titan was more like "Facebook the game", it sounded like they really focused on the social aspects. Probably because they always thought a strong guild (or whatever group you are being part of) keeps you subscribed longer.

On point of the topic, i don't have high hopes for Blizzard. Just like Bioware it seems the talent is long gone, the company focus on esport and microtransactions i don't like and if it wasn't for WoW they'd be long gone.
Since most of their releases were just polishing of already established genres i don't even know what they could do. Releasing a Battle Royal now would be timing on par with Heroes of the Storm.
They could do a lot of cool stuff with the Starcraft IP, i think it is really underused, but that would require some degree of risk taking and Blizzard seems unwilling to do that. A Starcraft MMO would be the MMO that could be a quasi WoW 2 with the added bonus of a quite fresh setting. But they won't do that.