Is Bioware the biggest tragedy of gaming history?

[Vankrys]

Actually Blizzard's IP have very deep stories,

cataclysm story: Bad dragon wants to destroy the world (nevermind he live on said world and destroying it will destroy himself too), you kill his lieutenant (that you thought you already killed 8 years ago), then you kill him and save the day.

deep mon, very deep.

[NoiseTank13]

Actually Blizzard's IP have very deep stories, but there is only so much that they can put into an MMO. Also, if you actually toon tye time to read the quests and the captions, you will get a lot more out of the WoW experience.

Reason why Bioware's writing is "better" is because they had only a few - one or two writers working on the main stories, where as Blizzard has whole teams of story writers collaborating on the plot. Key point: Bio's game feel like novels because they are consistent in writing and have same feel. Blizzard's stories are made up of bits and pieces from many many people.

I will grant that MMO's are generally terrible at storytelling, unless they designed it with the story being focus, and even then just look how far that got ToR.

But Diablo 3 was a massive letdown on all accounts. Villains were non-threatening Saturday Morning cartoon villains like Azmodan, Aspect of Honest, and Belial, whose one great lie was that he was a good liar, and Diablo who was... non-diabolical, or frightening.

It's too late but even SC2's storyline is just full of ugh. Nova's sudden, perplexing reveal, and the completely no-brainer decision that entailed, how trivial Mengsk seemed and the dialogue between characters which were a hallmark of the original are just bland, floppy one-liners.

Lately all WoW seems is: if it doesn't involve Thrall or the Orcs, ignore them.

cataclysm story: Bad dragon wants to destroy the world (nevermind he live on said world and destroying it will destroy himself too), you kill his lieutenant (that you thought you already killed 8 years ago), then you kill him and save the day.

deep mon, very deep.

Deathwing was an agent of an Old God and he wanted to destroy Azeroth even if it meant killing himself. He was fully aware he was going to die.

[Ausr]

Well they have explained, and it sounds like they are going to do it eventually and they will be selling charms as well.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5?page=88#1745

Yeah, to the market that thrives on micro transactions: Asia

Much like they only allow their raids to reset twice per week and not the rest of the world. Because it's Asia. They have short attention spans when it comes to sub based games.

[Frenegade42]

What made me quit SWTOR was the horribly clunky engine. Animation tied actions, noticeable input lag which wasn't fixed, insane loading times and multiple loading screens at short intervals when switching areas, very low fps in relation to visual quality. And this was with very decent hardware and SSD. Once I timed the loading screen transitioning to the Imperial fleet it and it was very close to a minute. With 400 MB/s+ read SSD.

I knew SWTOR wasn't the game for me when I was first dropped into the hangar with my smuggler character. Frowned, then figured a quick trip to the graphic options and preferences would get it ship shape. Hopes fading as I exited the hangar area and entered the "world". hooked a right down beside the hanger before stepping up to the first quest giver and found a barren area of terrain running down to water I couldn't swim in, no NPCs, no critters, lifeless with no *zing*. Those guys didn't make a game, they made a "product".

[Wildmoon]

I will grant that MMO's are generally terrible at storytelling, unless they designed it with the story being focus, and even then just look how far that got ToR.

But Diablo 3 was a massive letdown on all accounts. Villains were non-threatening Saturday Morning cartoon villains like Azmodan, Aspect of Honest, and Belial, whose one great lie was that he was a good liar, and Diablo who was... non-diabolical, or frightening.

It's too late but even SC2's storyline is just full of ugh. Nova's sudden, perplexing reveal, and the completely no-brainer decision that entailed, how trivial Mengsk seemed and the dialogue between characters which were a hallmark of the original are just bland, floppy one-liners.

Lately all WoW seems is: if it doesn't involve Thrall or the Orcs, ignore them.



Deathwing was an agent of an Old God and he wanted to destroy Azeroth even if it meant killing himself. He was fully aware he was going to die.

You can't really say its d3 exclusive problem when the villians in D1 and D2 were like that too. The first time I killed Duriel and Mephisto I didn't even realize how high rankign they were on the burning hell. Diablo was also not frightening in any of those games too. Diablo hardly had any lore until it got expanded by novels from Knaak. I would tell you that MoP is the best xpac lore wise imo. Storytelling,interesting plot,not so predictable,Not "big bad who will end this world" and involving a lot of characters. The reasons I love Blizzard's franchises aside from their gameplay are their characters and expansive universe Their characters are so well designed art wise.

[pickley]

No, their games were always massively overrated.

Rare/THQ is a much bigger tragedy.

[Deleted]

All we have is Bethesda... and Blizzard..

Have u played Diablo 3? It's short game and was stripped to be as streamlined as posible. It's nothing what Blizzard stood for. Only thing why they give a shit about wow is because it's so profitable, it got nothing to do with passion to make great games anymore, it's almost completely all about money. I remember that even 5 years ago I waited for Blizzard games always eagerly, but now you wait for their games more like "hope they dont fuck it up" -kind of attitude. There is one exception in their games however, that is Starcraft 2.

[Nerraw]

It's short game

So, an ARPG in a nutshell.

[FobManX]

Bioware has definitely disappointed in recent years. I actually still like ME2 and 3, but agree that it was terrible what they did with them(turning them from RPG with shooter elements to basically dumbed down shooters with very few RPG elements). DA: Origins was awesome, but DA2 was an abombination. KOTOR was awesome, SW:TOR sucked(well the leveling was good, but endgame was a bust).

[Wildmoon]

Have u played Diablo 3? It's short game and was stripped to be as streamlined as posible. It's nothing what Blizzard stood for. Only thing why they give a shit about wow is because it's so profitable, it got nothing to do with passion to make great games anymore, it's almost completely all about money. I remember that even 5 years ago I waited for Blizzard games always eagerly, but now you wait for their games more like "hope they dont fuck it up" -kind of attitude. There is one exception in their games however, that is Starcraft 2.

Diablo3 didn't really live up to Blizzard's standard but being short is not really one of its problem because D1 and D2 were this short. I love MoP though. Blizzard has been doing really good job with MoP imo. I love this xpac's raids and lore.

[Edge-]

Have u played Diablo 3? It's short game and was stripped to be as streamlined as posible.

Most ARPG's aren't very long if you simply do the content once for the story (or a few times to play through multiple difficulties) and then that's it. They're designed to promote longterm farming for items and longterm character progression as a way to prolong gameplay. D2 was pretty short. PoE is short. Torchlight 1/2 aren't too long, if I remember correctly Titans Quest actually has a decent length.

Don't get me wrong, I have more than my fair share of gripes about D3, but it's not really all that short when put alongside many other ARPG's.