Blizzard was once the king of innovation, what happened?

[Williamsheikspare]

Agreeing with your statement

[TheRevenantHero]

Real question: Do people ACTUALLY think Blizzard innovated ANYTHING outside of maybe the first Diablo game?

[Niter]

Isn't it a combination elements that have caused them to be where they are at right now?

See, most gaming companies that grow so big end up in a sorry state when they have to protect investors' and shareholders' money. I don't mean to demonise the practice, but investors didn't get rich by taking constant risks. Investors want a predictable scenario, and that doesn't go extremely well with innovation. This is why we see so many companies focusing on iterating rather than innovating. Gaming companies that didn't get bought and remained independent for the most part have been the most successful, and for the longest. Some, like SEGA, maybe took risk-taking too far and paid dearly for their incompetence.

Another common issue with such companies is that they will try to spend less and less in order to maximise profits. It might be better to have a fraction of the players they once had than investing so much in infrastructure and development. We can't know for sure, but WoW has remained profitable and it seems that they are making more money than ever before. We just don't know, so this point may be invalid. I haven't played that many Nintendo games for a long time due to copying assets and formulae from previous games too often (kind of combining the two points I made before).

There is also the hubris. Warcraft was a non-copyrighted version of Warhammer Fantasy. Then, Blizzard had their own 'Blizzard metaverse / expanded universe'. This is why we see so many storylines and undertones shared amongst their products. There is no denying that the Protoss and the Draenei share so much, for instance. Kerrigan and Sylvanas became quite similar sometimes, and I strongly believe that they would do to Sylvanas what they did to Kerrigan to end the Starcraft 2 games. Old Ones, Xel'Naga, Ancient Ones, Dark Lords and such are forces so alien and so disconnected from the settings they were put in that it feels impossible to defeat them. Even the Diablo mythos, which used to be its own thing, became a story of chosen ones in a world where everything special happens (and it just feels wrong, all lore prior to Diablo 3 felt different, but what came with Diablo 3 was a massive retcon to the point that those who were familiar with the lore would have a hard time even recognising the setting). It is a shared universe, and little by little stories from their different IPs spilled over to other IPs.

Finally, it's the rule of cool and gameplay decisions happening before the story. If you read the now ridiculously retconned Warcraft lore, it was obvious that the Horde didn't stand a chance in a faction war against the Alliance. As a matter of fact, the Kaldorei alone might have been able to destroy all the Horde on Kalimdor considering the lore they had built up to that point. Instead of going with the Horde having much better/stronger warriors to justify the existence of a faction war, they decided to ignore the ludicrous numerical and power differences, and pretty much destroyed each of the Horde's and Alliance's identities, so we're back to Humans vs. Orcs (with some sidekicks in the forms of elves and cows). Even the Forsaken, who never made sense not to be their own faction, got the short end of the stick and the only development they got was via an overpowered Lilian Voss (whatever happened to her?) and then following a saviour who was never a major character in the form of the 'light-made undead' former princess of Lordaeron. Then, they slaughtered both the lore and the characters to have in-game content (Malygos dying like he did? He could/should as much of a threat as Deathwing if he decided to go wage a war on Azeroth! Ysera dying the way she did when she could have done way more? N'zoth being the worst offender in the missed opportunities department? The list could on endlessly!) and the worst is that it's not just Warcraft that suffered this fate. Starcraft 2 had so many stories that pretty much undermined and downplayed many of the events in the original Starcraft and its expansion. The story barely moved at all and ended in a very unsatisfying way. Not to mention the 'high stakes' they went with (which, for me, much like movies these days) relied on shocking the audience in order to show how important it was (both Varian and Vol'jin dying the way they did; Tirion dying the way he did; Teldrassil, which was very much a massive ISLAND/mountain in the shape of a tree burning somehow; Zeratul dying to Artanis just because; Tychus dying pretty much in a cinematic... and the list goes on and on). To many 'sacrifices' that happened because they were not able to adapt stories others had created, or because they went with what sounded cool or made sense from a gameplay standpoint.

Too much went wrong, but they are just one more example. It simply hurts a lot more because we are fans.

[Nymrohd]

Real question: Do people ACTUALLY think Blizzard innovated ANYTHING outside of maybe the first Diablo game?

Diablo and Battle.net. Nothing else is particularly original. I am not sure about Hero Units in RTS? Never really played RTS games that much.

[NineSpine]

The only thing i consistently hear about art style and direction is how its by far the strongest aspect of the game, and has been for a long time. One thing i noticed when playing classic was how terribly childish the hole thing looked. Sure, SL isnt my taste at all - far too airy fairy and 'soft' looking overall, but thats just my opinion. I hated BFA but it had a very strong visual style and theme. Classic was and is pure childish comedy.

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Because although many of us made similar statements on page 1, or 2, or 3, people continue to argue thats not the case.

The art style is amazing, but it is also more like an American children's cartoon than it used to be. You seem to be assuming that being like a children's cartoon is terrible thing, so you need to assign that quality to the version of the game you like less. It's undeniable that the game is has shifted to that style. It used to be more reflective of three primary influences:

1. 80s indie comic books
2. Pulp fantasy art
3. Warhammer Fantasy

Now, it is indistinguishable from a Pixar film. Pixar films are absolutely beautiful, but they aren't reflective of the above three influences at all.

[Aedruid]

I'm sorry, but what?!

I mean, I'm not arguing the systems and content part (even though I don't 100% agree) but graphics are "all awful"? Do you honestly think that the vanilla skins and models for all races are superior to the update they got in WoD? That the tree models we had in vanilla are superior to what we got today? The mob models from vanilla are superior to today's models?!

Why would we assume that I'm saying that graphics from 2004 are better than today's graphics? That's just silly. Graphics are awful because of the direction Blizzard took since 2004. Textures looked more real in 2004, but the polygon count was lower. Why not keep / improve realistic textures and increase the polygon count? I feel like I'm in Loony Toons every time I log into WoW... which drops the games coolness factor a lot for me. When I first started playing WoW in BC, I thought the game looked sick as heck, now as time goes on I look at projects that other people did in the Unreal Engine and really wish WoW went that direction.

The art style is amazing, but it is also more like an American children's cartoon than it used to be. You seem to be assuming that being like a children's cartoon is terrible thing, so you need to assign that quality to the version of the game you like less. It's undeniable that the game is has shifted to that style. It used to be more reflective of three primary influences:

1. 80s indie comic books
2. Pulp fantasy art
3. Warhammer Fantasy

Now, it is indistinguishable from a Pixar film. Pixar films are absolutely beautiful, but they aren't reflective of the above three influences at all.

This is exactly what I mean. I really despise this direction for WoW with all of my being, and yes, being like a children's cartoon does drop the quality of the game for me personally, and RL friends, who think WoW doesn't look remotely good as Elden Ring or any other modern game with realistic graphics. Personally I break the quality of a game down by 3 things: Game Design, Graphics, and Fun Factor. If the graphics account for 33% of the quality of WoW, then a "0" in graphics means it WoW has a score of 67% (failing). Personally I'd give it a 15 out of 33% when it used to be a 28/33 back in BC

[HansOlo]

To the crowd with no insight and repeating itself with the "They are not inventors" =

No game was invented. You only have same products, but better finish. WoW is better product than million other "WoW killers" who equally got inspired by WoW - including FF and even the director of FF admits, that his devs played WoW actively to get inspired from WoW.

But before Steam there was Battlenet. You give them that.

The discussion itself is based on complete nonsense by the way.

[arkanon]

To the crowd with no insight and repeating itself with the "They are not inventors" =

No game was invented. You only have same products, but better finish. WoW is better product than million other "WoW killers" who equally got inspired by WoW - including FF and even the director of FF admits, that his devs played WoW actively to get inspired from WoW.

But before Steam there was Battlenet. You give them that.

The discussion itself is based on complete nonsense by the way.

You have confused invent with innovate. They are not the same thing at all.

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This is exactly what I mean. I really despise this direction for WoW with all of my being, and yes, being like a children's cartoon does drop the quality of the game for me personally, and RL friends, who think WoW doesn't look remotely good as Elden Ring or any other modern game with realistic graphics. Personally I break the quality of a game down by 3 things: Game Design, Graphics, and Fun Factor. If the graphics account for 33% of the quality of WoW, then a "0" in graphics means it WoW has a score of 67% (failing). Personally I'd give it a 15 out of 33% when it used to be a 28/33 back in BC

You think wow is unrealistic, but Elden Ring is the example you use for realistic graphics? Where do i even start......

[uuuhname]

pfffft, innovation... they simply made good games. let's not kid ourselves into thinking even 90% of blizzard's IP's are in anyway original and not lifted whole sale from something else.

[Flutterguy]

Blizzard was popular for three main things... regularly patching their games, allowing mods to a certain extent, especially in WoW, and they used to really communicate with players in and out of game. Of course much of the staff that made that possible don't work there anymore.

[Metta World Peace]

Kings of refinement yes, but they never were kings of innovation.

[Aedruid]

You have confused invent with innovate. They are not the same thing at all.

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You think wow is unrealistic, but Elden Ring is the example you use for realistic graphics? Where do i even start......

It was just one game on the top of my mind. My expectations for WoW graphics are not too ridiculous. I don't expect them to convert to photorealism in an MMO, but I do expect them to do better.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Oh god the pyramids. I was playing a bit later when Rachel was out. Fighting grand pecos, mantids, and metallings in the north for a couple percent a day. Also nothing like getting one shotted by an MVP from offscreen and losing the last hour of farming. Stormy Knight and his instant cast blizzard, anyone?

The game was also fantastically broken in so many ways, especiallys the earlier days. AGI builds that had no cap and you could evade a sea of enemies constantly for hours, aoe pulls that would all instantly respawn if nuked down at the same time and therefore doom anyone not being a knight, all the firewall exploits like lodging enemies between them and bouncing back and forth or the originally nigh infinite vertical firewall, same for magnus exorcism, hunters/archers that would stand on cliffs and farm enemies that couldn't reach them, because the cliff was only reachable through another zone, broken OP card effects, monks oneshotting bosses. Players constantly found new broken stuff, ah those were the days.

[Ielenia]

Why would we assume that I'm saying that graphics from 2004 are better than today's graphics? That's just silly.

"Graphics from 10 years ago". Guess what expansion came along roughly ten years ago? Warlords of Draenor, which is when Blizzard decided to update the game's graphics to a better polygon count.

Graphics are awful because of the direction Blizzard took since 2004. Textures looked more real in 2004, but the polygon count was lower. Why not keep / improve realistic textures and increase the polygon count?

Because WoW was never "realistic". WoW had cartoony graphics since its debut. Hell, the Warcraft games were also cartoony. Warcraft was never realistic.

[Velerios]

Booby Kotick and the merger with Activision happened. Thank Vivendi for it.

[Chadow]

Im sure already many people said this but...Blizzard was never king of innovation...it was the king of POLISH.

"Blizzard polish" was a term used on the internet for long time

[cparle87]

The game was also fantastically broken in so many ways, especiallys the earlier days. AGI builds that had no cap and you could evade a sea of enemies constantly for hours, aoe pulls that would all instantly respawn if nuked down at the same time and therefore doom anyone not being a knight, all the firewall exploits like lodging enemies between them and bouncing back and forth or the originally nigh infinite vertical firewall, same for magnus exorcism, hunters/archers that would stand on cliffs and farm enemies that couldn't reach them, because the cliff was only reachable through another zone, broken OP card effects, monks oneshotting bosses. Players constantly found new broken stuff, ah those were the days.

My biggest disappointment coming to WoW was the evade mechanic. Rather than reward clever ranged players for finding ways to trap and murder mobs, maybe even ones way out of their range to fight directly, it penalizes them. And opens everyone else to evade bugs when the code goes wonky.

[Infinity Cubed]

Man, I wish warcraft would go back to having gritty evil badass artstyle

"Alex, I'll take 'Intentionally Feigning Ignorance' for $500."

Sorry, but you know that's not what I was referring to. As the person who posted the differences in hyenas pointed out earlier. This would be another example:
https://blizzardwatch.com/wp-content...ale-Face-5.jpg

The original model was of a lower polygon count, duh, but the actual style was less childish/drawn for a cartoon aimed at toddlers. It looked scraggly, wrinkly, and had way better use of shadows to accentuate his features. Hell, it had more features, like a cleft chin, sunken eyes, and a snarly expression. And so on and so forth. The new one looks like his name is Mr. Gumblehump, the whimsically 'evil' candyman from Pumpkin Seed Lane running a scam to keep the tooth fairy in business, that rascal. The old one looks like someone who'd gut you from behind like a fish if he even suspected that you had a 50-silver bounty on your head, then sell your organs on the black market for some extra jink.

And that's just a lesser offender that occurred even after they already started their campaign to do... whatever this is to their art.

Those sorts of changes have been slowly insinuating the game for ages. Sure, there's been a few actual improvements, such as (arguably) with most of the Human models--and then only mostly because the originals were bad even by WoW's standards--but then you have Orcs whose models who lost practically almost all their distinguishing features in favor of a more derpy, smooth-brained looking style. FFS, the orc face actually had facial hair, as opposed to whatever that slightly greyish spraypainting-tool to their chin is supposed to be.

[Aedruid]

"Graphics from 10 years ago". Guess what expansion came along roughly ten years ago? Warlords of Draenor, which is when Blizzard decided to update the game's graphics to a better polygon count.


Because WoW was never "realistic". WoW had cartoony graphics since its debut. Hell, the Warcraft games were also cartoony. Warcraft was never realistic.

So are you considering newer assets and textures are magically created from 2014? The old world was updated to align with their current art direction, which is not an appealing style to me. They could have simply increased the polygon count and refined the textures and it would have looked way better in my eyes.

[Celement]

So are you considering newer assets and textures are magically created from 2014? The old world was updated to align with their current art direction, which is not an appealing style to me. They could have simply increased the polygon count and refined the textures and it would have looked way better in my eyes.

True but that is a taste thing and happens in almost every genre.

Take a look at old pokemon designs from the orginal games. Pokemon have a more... wild? It's hard to describe design then the softer look of modern ones.