WHat are your thoughts on the current status of Blizzard as a developer?

[Barkloud]

I simply cannot wrap my head around Blizzards latest decision regarding portals, there are now over 8,500 responses to their last comments on the matter.

First you had the Diablo/Blizzcon fiasco, then their stock tanked, then old employees started ranting online about their disfunction, then some of their core streamers abandoned them, which was followed up by sizeable layoffs. Instead of laying low, Blizzard doubles down by deciding to taint a major content patch with the news that portals, used by pretty much only the most die hard of players, are being removed after the better part of a decade because it will make the game more fun.

Since the Diablo fiasco, there seems to be an undercurrent of opinion that Blizzard is disconnected from their playerbase. I have also read many times that they are making gameplay changes that would improve their performance metrics for shareholders. I do not think either of these things are true, but that is not what is relevant. What is relevant is that people are questioning WTF is happening at Blizzard.

I immensely enjoyed Legion. I have tried so hard to love BfA, I really have, I just don't. Whats worse is I do not know why, I just do not find it fun. I am having more fun leveling up charactors waiting for Classic, thats me though. If there are other players, who are finding things to do in WOW outside of BfA, why do anything to alienate them?

Blizzard is one of my favorite developers. I hope they are able to ease up on their pride and dogmatic ideology and give their players a win, by returning the portals. All this mayhem over nothing. It is mind boggling.

I was wondering other peoples thoughts on Blizzard at the moment.

[Nzete]

Well, either the population has skewed much more hordeside that otherwise reported or the number of players in the game have reached a critically low level. I have a dk alt that I want to finished the class order hall line for the pets. The tank queue for dungeons (alliance side) doesn't show any kind of estimate for how long it will take to get a group. The tank queue.

For a game about two sides, some time of incentive needs to be applied to get the population a lot closer to balanced. It boggles my mind that they are putting in things that favor the high population side (mercenary mode, battleground bots) rather than use the bad sides of higher population to try to promote faction balance.

[Luxeley]

Blizzard was never an innovator, but they developed a stalwart reputation for improving existing genres and delivering polished games. Now they do neither.

[Gimlix]

Blizzard has become a joke sadly.

[letssee]

complete shite sorry to say

[Dinousek]

Outrage of a small minority over portal change was much ado about nothing. Came and went. Blizzard continues to innovate and put out massively successful products.

[George Costanza]

Blizzard has been heading downhill since 2012 i think. maybe earlier

[Morbownz]

Blizzard was never an innovator, but they developed a stalwart reputation for improving existing genres and delivering polished games. Now they do neither.

First I laughed, then I found myself agreeing.

[Mardux]

Well, either the population has skewed much more hordeside that otherwise reported or the number of players in the game have reached a critically low level. I have a dk alt that I want to finished the class order hall line for the pets. The tank queue for dungeons (alliance side) doesn't show any kind of estimate for how long it will take to get a group. The tank queue.

For a game about two sides, some time of incentive needs to be applied to get the population a lot closer to balanced. It boggles my mind that they are putting in things that favor the high population side (mercenary mode, battleground bots) rather than use the bad sides of higher population to try to promote faction balance.

What are you even talking about? Where did you come up with this idea that the numbers are skewed so much more "that otherwise reported"? The "reported" numbers are based directly off of characters.

And somehow merc mode is biased? That mode that both factions have access to? Battleground bots? Im assuming you're referring to the new AB brawl, that one that both factions can queue for...

[MoanaLisa]

They need to stop flogging old I.P.'s and develop some new ones.

They need to broaden their product range to more than just PC gaming. That will piss people off apparently but as a business it's something they need to do.

They also need to reach back into what made their games great in the past and understand that games are a lot more than just math and theory-crafting.

They could also use some different head writers.

They have talented people but they're in a rut. I think they need to change their business and become more responsive to market changes. I also think they need to listen a lot less to chronic complainers on forums. 150 people making dozens of posts a month is still just 150 people. And here, a high percentage of those aren't even a customer at this point. They really can be ignored. Blizzard wasn't listening to them when they signed up to play and don't need to hear from them now.

[Gimlix]

They need to stop flogging old I.P.'s and develop some new ones.

They need to broaden their product range to more than just PC gaming. That will piss people off apparently but as a business it's something they need to do.

They also need to reach back into what made their games great in the past and understand that games are a lot more than just math and theory-crafting.

They could also use some different head writers.

They have talented people but they're in a rut. I think they need to change their business and become more responsive to market changes. I also think they need to listen a lot less to chronic complainers on forums. 150 people making dozens of posts a month is still just 150 people. And here, a high percentage of those aren't even a customer at this point. They really can be ignored. Blizzard wasn't listening to them when they signed up to play and don't need to hear from them now.

I am glad ur not part of Blizzard. Because Blizzard has always been known for their 3 good IP's. (Older ones too obv) and they ruined it when they started trying out more IP's. see how those IP's are doing today? Worst then ever.
With the even worst downside that they abandonded their older IP's and made B team's work on them.
*Cough WoW dying rapidly* *Cough Diablo mobile*

Blizzard glory days are sadly over.
We can only hope for a new company to become great like Blizzard once was.

[Barkloud]

Outrage of a small minority over portal change was much ado about nothing. Came and went. Blizzard continues to innovate and put out massively successful products.

What exactly do they innovate?. I played fortnight the other night with a couple of friends. Although we were killed over and over again and had no idea what we were doing it was fun. The cool part is we were all in a single group, despite the fact I was on PC, another on PS4 and the third on Xbox One. Blizzard does not offer any sort of cross platform.

Smaller developers like Grinding Gear Games continues to offer a steady stream of quality gameplay for free.

Blizzard has always done other peoples ideas better. Somewhere they stopped

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Blizzard on the whole I think is currently paying the price for bad resource appropriation this decade. They put too much emphasis on creating Esports and not enough emphasis on making fun games. And their Esports-first games are now starting to belly-up. Heroes is dead, Hearthstone is struggling, Overwatch has a culture problem, and people are finally starting to realize that ever since they started designing WoW around easy-to-balance esports moves (I'll even give you a patch, 6.0) the game pretty much has rotted from the inside out.

Plus their other pillar franchises are going on ice, and Diablo Immortals has perhaps the worst PR out there.

[Soon-TM]

Blizzard on the whole I think is currently paying the price for bad resource appropriation this decade. They put too much emphasis on creating Esports and not enough emphasis on making fun games. And their Esports-first games are now starting to belly-up. Heroes is dead, Hearthstone is struggling, Overwatch has a culture problem, and people are finally starting to realize that ever since they started designing WoW around easy-to-balance esports moves (I'll even give you a patch, 6.0) the game pretty much has rotted from the inside out.

Plus their other pillar franchises are going on ice, and Diablo Immortals has perhaps the worst PR out there.

I wonder if the e-sports mania will finally give them pause, so that they can do what they do best: world building. It worked with SC1, with D2, and even with WC3 and early WoW (i.e. pre-Cata). Even in later xpacs, they managed to create interesting and beautiful places, e.g. Pandaria.

[Nzete]

What are you even talking about? Where did you come up with this idea that the numbers are skewed so much more "that otherwise reported"? The "reported" numbers are based directly off of characters.

And somehow merc mode is biased? That mode that both factions have access to? Battleground bots? Im assuming you're referring to the new AB brawl, that one that both factions can queue for...

Number of characters is the reported representation of population; however, that doesn't say anything about how much or how those characters are played. A 1 hour and 30 minute wait in the "specific dungeons" queue with "vault of the wardens" and "maw" selected as tank/dps doesn't result in a dungeon on the Alliance side. I've decided to ask a guildmate to just carry my character through that since I'd really rather not level a character that I don't like another 10 level to stomp it myself.

Mercenary mode is available to the over represented faction when the waits get "too long". At the last Blizzcon, they mentioned developing AI battleground bots, which would have be be a whole lot of development aimed at reducing queue times for the dominant faction.

[Razzako]

Tell it to you this way, same applies to Bethesda Softworks.

A year, maybe two years ago, I would've bought any single one of their products on release. Nowadays? I'll hold my credit card until I see some reviews and watch general reception.

My hype for both WoW and the TES series plummeted.

[Osmeric]

WCR's numbers are troubling. I don't recall the post-release decline from previous expansions being this prolonged or this deep.

http://warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php

[Melchior]

(Sent from the future)

I'm not interested in mobile games, so they aren't relevant to me.

[McNeil]

Blizzard is currently not in a good position imo. Way to much of their talent and major figures left the company, leaving old IP's into the hands of people who have a whole different view of how these IP's should be handled. WoW is losing subs rapidly and BFA is arguably the worst expansion yet. Overwatch and Hearthstone has gotten very stale and are slowly losing players. Heroes of the Storm is the black sheep that doesn't get attention anymore. Diablo is left in the dust with only a shitty mobile game to look forward to, while Path of Exile dominates the Hack & Slash market. Starcraft is basically done and finished.

I agree with Moana that Blizzard should try to expand more into new games and platforms, rather than hinge themselves to their old IP's with no clear end in sight. Overwatch did great when it got first released, and it stayed fresh for a long time until Blizzard stopped doing anything with the game, other than adding new maps and heroes. I'd love to see something like an open world singleplayer RPG like Witcher 3 and Skyrim. Ideally I'd like to see Blizzard trying to create trends, rather than following them like they tried with HotS. Hopefully they won't do the same with a Battle Royale.

[Eleccybubb]

That they need to sort themselves out.

The state of their current library of games is not what I'd expect from them. But well considering Activision has been digging it's claws in as of late I doubt the situation is going to get any better.