Can we talk about Blizzard dying yet? Or is this gonna be removed -_-

[Tharkkun]

in 10+ years, I have never witnessed Blizzard so out of touch with their player base. WoW players are at an all time high in disappointment, Diablo fans??? Jesus Christ dont even get me started there. A mobile game? Blizzard wtf were you thinking?

You know how you're at the end of a LONG work shift and you just dont give a crap anymore? Thats what it feels like is going on. I feel like game making has become a chore as opposed to a labor of love and when you do something NOT wanting to do it, you get crappy results.

The mobile market is huge. Did you know the new ipad has more processing and video power than the current Xbox one? /blow your mind.

Ignoring mobile because you don't like it doesn't mean it's going away. It's exploding like never before. I wouldn't be surprised to see mobile / pc's merge in some way in the next few years.

Soon you'll wake up and realize that Blizzard's games target more than just pc players...

- - - Updated - - -

Its like Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. The same but different. New Blizzard has kill old Blizzard but it actually is alive and well. From the out side it has more wealth, power, and ability than it ever had before. But on the inside its dead, dark, and ruthless as it has been consumed by greed, quick money grabs, and investor calls. So it will not die anytime soon. Just the Blizzard you knew is dead.

Nah I think you've just gotten older and just like our parents the current generation of games / tech don't really interest everyone. But the young generation eats mobile for lunch. They would rather play every game on a iPad/switch and not a console/pc. That's the direction things are going.

- - - Updated - - -

The news for WoW was depressing not even the usually blizzcon nerds cheered much for the news.
BfA will continue to suck.
Overwatch and HS keep doing very well.
Feels even more so that BfA will go down the annals as a shitty expac after the lack of changes.
Classic in summer was great news though.

Do you ever stop to think that maybe Blizzcon isn't dominated by World of Warcraft fans now since WOW isn't their only major product? HS, HOTS, Overwatch all have a bigger fan base now. Wow may have over 100 million accounts in its lifetime but it's current fan base is smaller.

- - - Updated - - -

I so want to write about 4000 words on this. I won't. Don't panic.

The TL/DR would be something like: The company is run by engineers. If they have anyone in a prominent position that concentrates exclusively on integrating social behavior/media into their games with an eye toward building real communities of different shapes and sizes I'm unaware of it. And even if they did the engineers would raise the "gameplay uber alles" flag and that would be that. The one higher-up guy in management that thought a lot about this was Pardo. He's gone but he'd lost that fight a long time before he left.

You wrote a great post. Thanks.

I will agree with this. Rob Pardo was strongly focused on building relationships and networking in this game. Hell I was aware of him and grouped with him in EQ 10 years before I knew who he actually was. Because he was such a friendly person.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Mobile is the future, unfortunate that atm it's mostly a terrible gaming-platform.

It's part of the future. I wouldn't say it is the future. PC gaming isn't going anywhere, no matter how many people think it eventually will. How many years have we waited for consoles to finally overtake PC? Still hasn't happened, largely because some games just don't work the same without the keyboard and mouse.

Of course that doesn't mean the mobile market isn't growing. And the companies that get out ahead of it will be better suited for success in the coming decades. But Mobile has to be part of the portfolio, and Acti-Blizz has a strong portfolio on PC and Console as well that won't be going away.

[buck008]

The game is dying and I know that because they're putting less EFFORT into the game.

No, they aren't. They made decisions you don't like. You can scream about it being lazy or money hungry or whatever you want until you're blue in the face. It wasn't lazy. They just made WoW into something you don't like. My condolences.

Otherwise, the game seems to be financially healthy. Blizzard on the whole is doing quite well. The mobile market is extremely lucrative and Diablo should make them a crap ton of money at very little investment of time or resources. I'm sorry they "sold out" on you. Honestly, so much of this thread reads like a 16 year old that just found out his favorite band changed styles slightly to be more radio friendly. I'm sorry you liked WoW before it was cool and now you aren't special any more.

[xpose]

Yeah, I'm sure blizzard wishes they took back hearthstone mobile development. With it making 660 million and all. How dare a company try another mobile product that can feed into development of bigger projects.

[Ghazan Julio]

No, they aren't. They made decisions you don't like. You can scream about it being lazy or money hungry or whatever you want until you're blue in the face. It wasn't lazy. They just made WoW into something you don't like. My condolences.

Otherwise, the game seems to be financially healthy. Blizzard on the whole is doing quite well. The mobile market is extremely lucrative and Diablo should make them a crap ton of money at very little investment of time or resources. I'm sorry they "sold out" on you. Honestly, so much of this thread reads like a 16 year old that just found out his favorite band changed styles slightly to be more radio friendly. I'm sorry you liked WoW before it was cool and now you aren't special any more.

You obviously just used what part of my post which would be convenient to you. Try reading again. You have no right to an opinion just by saying " It wasn't lazy. They just made WoW into something you don't like. My condolences."

Sorry but the bullshit ends there. Something I don't like? rofl

- - - Updated - - -

I already stated I enjoy the game and don't like it along with millions of other people apparently. It sounds like a personal problem or loser denial when you say things like, "No you're wrong because it's fine imo." Then you proceed to ignore the others.

- - - Updated - - -

No, they aren't. They made decisions you don't like. You can scream about it being lazy or money hungry or whatever you want until you're blue in the face. It wasn't lazy. They just made WoW into something you don't like. My condolences.

Otherwise, the game seems to be financially healthy. Blizzard on the whole is doing quite well. The mobile market is extremely lucrative and Diablo should make them a crap ton of money at very little investment of time or resources. I'm sorry they "sold out" on you. Honestly, so much of this thread reads like a 16 year old that just found out his favorite band changed styles slightly to be more radio friendly. I'm sorry you liked WoW before it was cool and now you aren't special any more.

I'm sorry you think you're special?

[Osmeric]

Vivendi owned both Activision and Blizzard, they created an umbrella company (Activision Blizzard) and both Activision and Blizzard are separate companies but both owned by Activision Blizzard.

Vivendi never owned Activision.

[Byleth]

Its not just Blizzard. There are so many major companies that are out of touch too. I feel the problem is too much corporate structure in some of these companies where it prevents creativity and just making fun games, where they just instead look at analytics, statistics, stocks, trends, etc. And you are also in a position where you don't want to rock the boat and possibly lose that promotion.

Yep, if you want an example of a company that stood up and acknowledged this problem look at Ubisoft and Assassins Creed games. They straight up said Unity was awful and they were not putting out any more in the franchise until they were ready. Origins was good, Odyssey is great! And they've already said, none next year, it'll be out when it's done.

As for 'fitting in', I mean yeah, this is a problem in every industry. I'm a squeaky wheel outsider myself in my own company. My direct bosses hate me, and that causes problems from time to time. But their bosses love me because they know I get shit done. If you're going to be the 'outsider' in your job, you got to have the skills to back yourself up!

[Osmeric]

Literally EVERYTHING they've done after 2008 when they sold their souls to Activision stinks of money grabbing and catering to the masses.

It's astounding and revealing that the you think "catering to the masses" is something to criticize a company for. Companies exist to serve customers, and "the masses" are, by definition, the largest set of customers.

The world, and Blizzard, don't revolve around you.

[Kokolums]

It's astounding and revealing that the you think "catering to the masses" is something to criticize a company for. Companies exist to serve customers, and "the masses" are, by definition, the largest set of customers.

The world, and Blizzard, don't revolve around you.

Blizzard would have been better served by being the Apple of the gaming community. That is, build around battlenet. Battlenet would be its own self contained ecosystem of gamers and you could quick launch all games off of battlenet. It would give them an exclusivity that Apple has.

[Ghazan Julio]

It's astounding and revealing that the you think "catering to the masses" is something to criticize a company for. Companies exist to serve customers, and "the masses" are, by definition, the largest set of customers.

The world, and Blizzard, don't revolve around you.

Wrong. The World revolves around EVERYONE. including everyone, every being's choice. Including those dissatisfied with a game they invested countless hours/days in.

[BarelyLegalBear]

Yeah, I'm sure blizzard wishes they took back hearthstone mobile development. With it making 660 million and all. How dare a company try another mobile product that can feed into development of bigger projects.

I don't think the problem is that it's mobile, they have no plans on putting it on PC which is what a lot of people are upset about. Considering how they partnered with Netease, that was a huge mistake. While Cygames hasn't really made many ARPGS, they would have been the best option for this project. I mean, look at Dragalia lost, it was a hit. I like phone games, just not when they are in the hands of a shitty Chinese company.

[Themanintobuildafire]

The mobile market is HUGE, if its a good game it could well make Blizzard money hand over fist, more so then any of their current games are doing atm.

Its not the game 'we' want. But that doesn't make it a bad decision to make it. Just a horrible decision to make it the focus of the Blizzcon opening.

And NONE of this has anything to do with WoW which is a completely different part of the company.

Exactly. These people have zero clue. That game that D3 mobile is based on from China - ALL the kids in China are playing it. Seriously if they make the switch, that is mucho cash for Blizzard.

[Deleted]

It's astounding and revealing that the you think "catering to the masses" is something to criticize a company for. Companies exist to serve customers, and "the masses" are, by definition, the largest set of customers.

The world, and Blizzard, don't revolve around you.

Blizzard has had a reputation of making challenging games that took a lot of time and effort to conquer. Diablo 2 and Vanilla WoW come to mind:

WoW has been pruned, dilluted and turned into a shallow and dumbed down version of its former self, i'm not going to get into this any further.

Now Diablo 2 has abysmal drop rates which means a player would have to dedicate huge ammounts of time to fully "deck out" a character. Hell difficulty is also pretty hard when you reach it and the game punishes you when you die by removing XP you've grinded. Not to mention theorycrafting on stat allocation and resistances and the likes. There's so many other such things that make people invest time and energy and actual brain matter into the game whereas its succesor, Diablo 3, is a hollow shell of a game with all of these things removed and where Blizzard holds your hand through every turn and showers you with loot. Why? Because the average joe doesn't have the time or patience to invest into such complicated shenanigans and he will move away from the game, which will mean a financial loss to Blizzard.

"The dumber the game, the more people will understand and play the game, the more money we will make". This is my main beef with Blizzard's catering to the casual approach. Like i said above, they went from being Gordon Ramsay, serving games for gamers, to a McDonald's chain serving cheapened products to everyone.

TLDR: They've dumbed down and cheapened their games and MY gaming experience to cater to people that don't really care about their games and just bring in the money. How can i not be pissed?

[Lightforged]

Diablo fans??? Jesus Christ dont even get me started there. A mobile game? Blizzard wtf were you thinking?

"We really want to make Diablo 4 but it is really risky. How can we minimize some of the risk?"

"Re-release Diablo on all consoles, including the Switch!"

"Good start but we probably need more. Something new and cool but less risky than a full blown Diablo 4."

"What if we made a mobile game?"

"Ehhhh..."

"No, seriously. There are 300 million middle class Chinese people. Mobile games are huge in China. If we partner with a Chinese developer, we could share the development burden with them and earn some serious money, money that we could then use to truly mitigate the cost of developing and creating Diablo 4."

"Brilliant!"

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Yeah, I'm sure blizzard wishes they took back hearthstone mobile development. With it making 660 million and all. How dare a company try another mobile product that can feed into development of bigger projects.

TBF they aren't even trying. Diablo Legends was outsourced to a chinese company that basically reskinned their diablo clone into an actual diablo game.

Most of the risk is entirely absorbed by NetEase, except the risk of alienating the entire Diablo fandom.

[bledgor]

Short answer: LOL no

Long Answer: Diablo is hurting, but Diablo immortal was never meant for NA/EU, it is for China, so I didn't take it like blizzard fucked my mom and killed my dad like many idiots did. WE KNOW FOR A FACT they are working on multiple Diablo Projects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwVaqS_bd-8), we KNOW some of them are PC (as we knew some of them were mobile, plenty of videos talking about them hiring for both) so while people are annoyed it will depend on how the next PC Diablo is.

WoW - is doing okay, 8.1 and 8.2 are bringing a lot of good changes, it will continue on despite nay sayers, and vanilla will bring some old blood back.

HotS - It is what it is, don't expect growth but doubt it shrinks a lot more, it is basically at its stable point.

Hearthstone - Only Blizzard game I don't touch, don't know don't care

OW - Still going strong, its slowed, but new hero new hype.

ScII - Not much, but think everyone kind of expected it. I just don't know if even Blizzard is sure where they want to take the SC universe. It still has so much potential, but they would have to do something utterly epic to reinvigorate the RTS market and with current gaming tastes I just don't see it being possible, though the potential for other genres with the SC universe is pretty open/awesome (it could work in almost every game, from FPS to dungeon crawler, MMO to xel'naga puzzle game, it could all feasibly work). I just hope they don't let it die here.

Adding on I do believe hiring has suggested a new IP and I see NO REASON TO EVEN SUGGEST blizzard is dying or even shrinking. Some hic ups, like EVERY SINGLE gaming company (look at valve and the shit storm they got with their card game a few months back and look at it now) and some positive swings. This Blizzcon certainly wasn't the strongest, but it wasn't all doom and gloom, and I think it was pretty obvious going in it wasn't going to have any big announcements, though next year is shaping up to be a big blizzcon (possible new Diablo PC game, new WoW expansion, unsure about SCII, and I'm sure the other games will have some fun announcements), toss it small, small chance of new IP and it will make Blizzard stronger than ever.

[buck008]

You obviously just used what part of my post which would be convenient to you. Try reading again. You have no right to an opinion just by saying " It wasn't lazy. They just made WoW into something you don't like. My condolences."

Sorry but the bullshit ends there. Something I don't like? rofl

- - - Updated - - -

I already stated I enjoy the game and don't like it along with millions of other people apparently. It sounds like a personal problem or loser denial when you say things like, "No you're wrong because it's fine imo." Then you proceed to ignore the others.

- - - Updated - - -



I'm sorry you think you're special?

I didn't say it was fine. I didn't defend the game at all. I gave not one indication of my opinion, other than to say that it clearly isn't lazy. Lots of people care. They just disagree as to what makes a good game. That doesn't make your opinion wrong. It doesn't make it right either. You like what you like. And right now, you don't like WoW. Millions of other people is a bit of a reach. You have absolutely nothing at all to back up that statement. I'd say that it's clear the old guard doesn't care for it, but the people who take the time to post here or reddit or even the official forums is such a tiny fragment of the total playerbase that it doesn't actually speak to a majority at all. Even if every user on every one of those forums was venomously against the current expansion, and they demonstrably aren't.

I didn't clip the part of your post that was most convenient to me. I clipped the part that was wrong. I don't care if you don't like the game. I was calling you out for making a ridiculous claim. Otherwise your post was just rehashing what we already know your side thinks about the expansion. I don't care about that at all. Wave that flag all you want. When you want someone to change something, and call them lazy in the same breath, they aren't going to listen to you. Especially if you call them lazy over something they likely worked 80 hour weeks on and missed time with their families for.

[Deleted]

They were never your friends to begin with. It's a company, they care about taking money from people by any means possible.

The "good guys" you talk about, like mike morheim and chris metzen... they sold out man. When blizzard got aquired by Activision, it was them selling out. It's just like Bioware. They are owned by the business giant that just want ALL the money by any means necessary.

With that said, the WoW team still tries to please you, but people have been hell bent on trying to destroy that too.

[Deleted]

Diablo immortal was never meant for NA/EU, it is for China, so I didn't take it like blizzard fucked my mom and killed my dad like many idiots

So they presented a game to an audience but the game wasn't for said audience and you expect said audience to not be upset? Nice logic you have there, but hey, everyone else is an "idiot".

[buck008]

Blizzard has had a reputation of making challenging games that took a lot of time and effort to conquer. Diablo 2 and Vanilla WoW come to mind:

WoW has been pruned, dilluted and turned into a shallow and dumbed down version of its former self, i'm not going to get into this any further.

Now Diablo 2 has abysmal drop rates which means a player would have to dedicate huge ammounts of time to fully "deck out" a character. Hell difficulty is also pretty hard when you reach it and the game punishes you when you die by removing XP you've grinded. Not to mention theorycrafting on stat allocation and resistances and the likes. There's so many other such things that make people invest time and energy and actual brain matter into the game whereas its succesor, Diablo 3, is a hollow shell of a game with all of these things removed and where Blizzard holds your hand through every turn and showers you with loot. Why? Because the average joe doesn't have the time or patience to invest into such complicated shenanigans and he will move away from the game, which will mean a financial loss to Blizzard.

"The dumber the game, the more people will understand and play the game, the more money we will make". This is my main beef with Blizzard's catering to the casual approach. Like i said above, they went from being Gordon Ramsay, serving games for gamers, to a McDonald's chain serving cheapened products to everyone.

TLDR: They've dumbed down and cheapened their games and MY gaming experience to cater to people that don't really care about their games and just bring in the money. How can i not be pissed?

So, when WoW was released it was accused of dumbing down the MMO genre. Catering to casuals and removing everything that made MMOs fun. Blizzard has always been about accessibility. And every time they added something that made the game a little more accessible, it took off. I played Diablo 2 for a long time. I loved it. The only thing I was pissed at 3 for was the talent trees. I didn't like when they did the same thing in WoW, and for the same reason. I'm the weirdo that liked odd hybrid builds.

It can't cheapen your gaming experience. Those experiences were yours. They were great. No one can take those away. You don't like what they make now. That's also fine. That doesn't make their games cheap and dumb. It makes them games you don't like. Plenty of people make games you would like. But you have so much personal investment in these games that you fall into that sunk cost fallacy. The version you liked is never coming back.