What the hell happened to Blizzard?

[SirCowdog]

nose air thing

-------

It's not just blizz (not defending), it's all AAA game devs. I don't know what the shareholders are up to, but it's like they think video games are a passing fad and are trying to squeeze as much short term money out of the industry as they can before the whole thing tanks and they move on to be parasites off something else. Maybe it's the US trying to turn video games into the scapegoat for violence that's scaring them, maybe it's the anti-gambling and other pro-consumer laws coming out of Europe that's bothering them (good for Europe though, not implying these laws aren't warrented).

Incidentally, if they stopped treating the industry like it was dying and making decisions around that idea, it wouldn't be dying and they'd make a looot more money in the long term.

The craft of making video games will survive. It survived the ET crash decades ago, it'll survive the AAA dev crash.

I have to be fair. When even EA can turn things around when forced, it gives me a little hope for the future of gaming. Battlefront 2 is actually a semi-decent game these days, after the lootbox-driven game balance was removed. And Fallen Order is pretty good too. Torchlight Frontiers has had all its MTX removed, and has been converted into Torchlight 3 on steam(instead of F2P Arc). Doom Eternal has had an official statement saying it will have no MTX of any kind. Cyberpunk 2077 has made a similar statement.

There's hope for gaming. It's just the current crop of ATVI leadership that's laser-focused on the asia mobile market, or attempting to force E-sports, to the detriment of all else, that's harming their current games.

- - - Updated - - -

All the Quality people that made the company great, are gone.

That too. I think "rats leaving a sinking ship" isn't very fair to the devs that left. But the analogy gets the point across.

[Raven]

What happened to the community, back then it was something people was proud to belong too, now its a bigger shitshow then the game.

[MrLachyG]

they listened to what the players wanted. no changed cinematics, no changed lore, and no changed gameplay, it turned from a reforge, to a remaster, because players refused to let blizz make it new.

I dunno I have just finished the campaign and they added/changed a few things - the new cinematic with Arthas and Illidan was pretty good, the Sylvanas appearance change and the new quests at the start (that was a surprise to me). haven't done the bonus campaign yet

[Soon-TM]

What happened to the community, back then it was something people was proud to belong too, now its a bigger shitshow then the game.

If your game is good, your community will love it. If your game is crap, your community will hate it. It isn't really THAT hard to grasp. Be glad that you still have a lot of people wandering around in the hopes that Blizzard will get their !@#$ together and publish good games again.

When those people turn away, and you are left with nothing but the handful of Blizzard shills to circlejerk about how wonderful are Blizzard and its (remaining) fans... That's where you really should start fearing the worst.

[Gimlix]

I just noticed, you can't even talk in a chat if there is 0 people in it (you don't count)
So you are unable to talk in empty lobbies or anything. That is bullshit lol

[lockybalboa]

Have people who might be described as hopeless blizzard shills started defending a very buggy and overall disappointing WC Reforged yet?

Yes. FP has arrived. I'm still waiting for Det and his "oh every expac people QQ" excuse

[FelPlague]

They had originally intended to have both classic and reforged options when doing the campaign, it was datamined in the early alpha. This is one of those cases in which they could have done both. Likewise if they decided to not do this, they should made this clear which they didn't. They still advertise removed features on the games site.

You're also glossing over that they removed many features present in WC3.

you can still do classic and reforged, that was simply a graphics option, not a campaign option.

also what did they remove from wc3?

- - - Updated - - -

I dunno I have just finished the campaign and they added/changed a few things - the new cinematic with Arthas and Illidan was pretty good, the Sylvanas appearance change and the new quests at the start (that was a surprise to me). haven't done the bonus campaign yet

they changed a few things, but undid alot of changes.
liekly why it was delayed, cause they had to undo a ton of changes.

- - - Updated - - -

I just noticed, you can't even talk in a chat if there is 0 people in it (you don't count)
So you are unable to talk in empty lobbies or anything. That is bullshit lol

w....why would you talk in an empty lobby?

[Gimlix]

w....why would you talk in an empty lobby?

Thing is. I like to see if my PC didn't freeze or shit (ofc this is never the case) or refresh my lobby by !close, openall
this is no longer possible, same thing if you are in a game and everyone left but you are still in that means you can no longer talk.

Maps where u can have a code system, this might be an issue if you can't type !load .....

[Kiwijello]

Someone made a game. The game made money. People came to get that money. The game became secondary to the money. Now all there is is money.

[Faldric]

Money. You make more money short term by cashing in on past achievments. Screw the future of the company, I want my bonus check now.

[ThatsOurEric]

Chris Metzen did say many times how Titans failure was very negative on them, not to mention how it massively effected and costed blizzard
they were planning a mmo that would eclipse wow, and it failed

I'm more than certain that when Titan failed, it wasn't just a problem in terms of resources, investment, and time that they put in.

If you listen and read their thoughts about it, they really had their hearts and souls set on Titan. In their minds, it was supposed
to be their next big creative achievement. For whatever reason, they weren't able to bounce back when it failed, and it definitely
scarred quite a few of the big names on the staff.

[Verdugo]

Have people who might be described as hopeless blizzard shills started defending a very buggy and overall disappointing WC Reforged yet?

There was one using words like children, mongrels and imbecile in the megathread. He is banned now.

[FelPlague]

Thing is. I like to see if my PC didn't freeze or shit (ofc this is never the case) or refresh my lobby by !close, openall
this is no longer possible, same thing if you are in a game and everyone left but you are still in that means you can no longer talk.

Maps where u can have a code system, this might be an issue if you can't type !load .....

ahhh ingame aswell i thought it was just lobby, yeah that sounds like a bug.
no game has launched perfect, so hopefully that all gets fixed, if not then well... i would refund but i need the game for footage so...

[deenman]

blamign big bad activision is just silly,a couple of guys in suits at the top dont make the bad gameplay and mecanic choices,the devs do

[Obelisk Kai]

There are probably plenty of things that happened to Blizzard, small things they internally let slide, compromises they made that didn't seem so big at the time, bowing to small demands from Activision that went against the grain of their core values, that kind of thing. But the end result of these cumulative actions is clear in Blizzard's behaviour and the quality of the products they are now putting out. And as others have pointed out, Titan's failure badly scarred them.

They have been compromised and they have lost their way.

A company of their size can never be what they were, that simply isn't how it works sadly, but there are ways to retain your roots, your ethos and your quality whilst you grow. Blizzard hasn't done that. Maybe Activision is solely responsible. Maybe Blizzard management are making terrible decisions they think will please Activision. But what I think I can safely is that a reputation painstakingly built up over multiple decades has been squandered in less than six years.

What I would like to see is the company pausing, and for them to publicly acknowledge they have fallen short in too many areas and that they have delivered too many sub-par products. I would like to see an ironclad commitment to Shadowlands getting the beta period it needs to be great. I would like to see them admitting Reforged is not what was promised and committing to releasing the game they initially did sell us (and no I don't believe the excuse the idea for a revamp was abandoned due to a 'no changes' crowd. If a no changes crowd existed, they were just a convenient fig leaf of an excuse to downscale a product they felt was getting too expensive to develop). I would like to see this, but I don't think I will.

[Tazr]

For the most part wow is a cycle. You farm up your gear, get the new achievements/mounts/pets, explore the new zones and you repeat. Eventually, if you have played consecutively enough you get burned out. But that is what it has always been, an endless cycle of starting fresh and questing/raiding/pvping all over again to get all the new stuff. Every new expansion and patch will refresh this cycle.

Wow has been running for over 15 years now. Each expansion or patch is meant to introduce new things in terms of story and gimmicks (corrupted gear and horrific visions in 8.3). Sometimes they get it right and it's really interesting and fun (mage tower in legion), other times they don't. To expect a company to patch after patch, expansion after expansion, deliver fresh new content precisely to the liking of millions and millions of players is quite a high expectation.

That doesn't really tell the whole tale.

They are increasingly offering "improvements" or "updates" that are either poorly veiled attempts at making things take longer (the portal room/removal of other portals/changes of portal locations), removing popular features (flying at level cap - no one bitched about flying while it existed, now, I suspect they whine to annoy the many MORE people that hate it). They double down on unpopular decisions (Pathfinder alone wasn't punishment/nerf enough, now they put hostile flying mobs, including elites, everywhere), wastes of development resources (revamping [breaking] the AH, when the quest log is a WAY too small and poorly organized. People have been begging for quest log space for several years, and it's a more frequently used tool for most players).

I could go on and on, but they're really just lazy and sloppy as hell. If something accidental in-game is fun or beneficial, they often fix it in hours. But we see the same, game-breaking, infuriating bugs from beta, literally forever.

[Klingers]

What the hell happened to Blizzard?

Activision happened.

[Toppy]

blamign big bad activision is just silly,a couple of guys in suits at the top dont make the bad gameplay and mecanic choices,the devs do

A couple of guys in suits at the top can and did cut the funding though.

[qwerty123456]

It's all the fans fault. Had they not let Blizzard get so popular Bobby Kotick wouldn't have grown used to high quality women which were then taken away from him when he made some mistakes and everyone on the net started calling him the devil. Because of the terrible people on the internet no women would date him and he was forced to pay for sex which then cut into the lifestyle he was accustomed to which required him to make even more money by firing hundreds of people, requiring games to add more ways to monetize Activision-Blizzard games, and even getting a job at Coke.

[MoanaLisa]

I'll disagree with everyone here.

The failed MMO Titan happened to Blizzard. Specifically, the way Titan failed affected the whole company from the top down and they really haven't been back on their game since. It's been a different company ever since and I personally believe that has a lot more to do with where they are today than anything that's happening with Activision. That massive failure changed everyone and everything at the top of company reaching deep into the middle levels of management.

On top of that Vivendi came very close to hollowing out Blizzard with respect to finances, a move that Activision--love them or hate them--managed to thwart. A lot of noted stock people at the time said that if Vivendi had had its way on that, the odds were about 50/50 that Activision and Blizzard would effectively been unable to operate. I imagine that had an effect on people as well, especially at the top.

The culture there is more cautious now. Rightfully so. ATVI is still an attractive target of a hostile takeover.

But if you want to only consider what's going on with their games, designs, new releases and management of IP's the failure of Titan is where you begin. I think that's still a very traumatic thing for most everyone that went through it and has something to do with why so many people left in the few years afterward.