Has Blizzard lost sight of its audience? Or has its audience genuinely changed?

[Martymark]

Do you not all have phones?

[jazen]

Yes, the game has changed. Yes, the intended audience has changed. Amazing what 15 years will do...

[sephrinx]

I've been playing since vanilla, off and on.

Blizzard has lost sight. The audience hasn't changed.

[Vulegend]

I've been playing since vanilla, off and on.

Blizzard has lost sight. The audience hasn't changed.

If you haven't changed in 15+ years than you need some help buddy

[arkanon]

No, from what you've said, you're looking for new IPs, NOT new games.
Again, misdirection from you. You know better.

If ghost had come out, that would have been a new game with completely new ideas, inside an existing IP.

Another example outside blizzard would be resident evil 7, which was considered both an out of left field departure for the IP, and a return to form.

Blizzard have very much been regurgitating the same stuff for a very long time now, which is a real shame, because they were once considered innovators and leaders, and now they are middle of the pack at best.

[Kaibhan]

It's both actually. I have nothing against Ion, but you don't make the guy in charge of the guild that min maxed everything back int the day the game director. That's how you wind up in a game where min maxxing at all costs is most people's focus. That being said people age and min/max is not something most people have time for anymore and if they do it's all the have time for making them not want to participate in the game with people who do not.

[Pheraz]

If you haven't changed in 15+ years than you need some help buddy

xD indeed

I changed a lot and thus my playing behaviour. So I'm glad wow is so casual friendly.

[arkanon]

The writing certainly has changed for the worse. Gone are complex characters. Replaced with cardboard cutouts and check boxes. Gone are the days when a blizzard product meant quality. After warcraft 3 refunded. Gone are the days of actually having a plan. Look at overwatch. Kaplan worried more about cartoon frogs then keeping the game fun. Also content came at a snail's pace.

Don't even get me started on their e-sports garbage.

Personally, i feel their biggest failure is this commitment to making everything some die-hard hardcore gaming experience tailored for E-Sport. And i believe OW is the prime example of this - a game with oodles of potential to be a super fun game, but instead it turned into a hardcore e-sport. This turned off a LOT of players i know, as they simply wanted to jump in and go pewpewpew. Yes, that could be blamed on the community, but everything i ever saw from Blizzard was always about tournaments and pro players.

Hopefuly with OW2 they focus on casual play and FUN, you know, that thing FUN that games used to be about.

[arkanon]

Im still traumatized by arena being an e-sport. Boy they tried hard to make it one. But seeing people hump a pillar isn't fun.

I fucking LOVE the "idea" of arena, but it just doesnt work with wow - when i watch those rogues just sneaking around for 10+ minutes, and players making love to those sweet sweet pillars for minutes on end, its just horribly boring, both to watch, and to play. I understand the meta, i understand WHY people play the way they do, and i dont blame the players or Blizzard for that, but it just doesnt work in wow. If it was skillshots, that would be totally different, but its not.

[Alkizon]

Would this+this (also) count as an answer?
- also nearby thread in some sense confirms conclusions from links.

By the way, kind of discussion in the spirit of "idea of arena".

[Claymore]

It's funny how the world is progressing in so many areas in so many ways, but there are still people out there who just want:

...and they are angry that the world no longer caters exclusively to manchildren who want to feel better about themselves.



Right, of course. If someone has any more complex feelings in themselves apart from "I'm so strong and I'm gunna kill my enemies with my muscles" they are not man enough.

I genuinely wonder how people like this even exist in 2020. It's like the last 500 years never happened

There's been a lot of good comments in this thread, but just wanted to respond to this one.

When it comes to real-life, change is inevitable; you either embrace it, or get left behind. And I think the world has changed quite a lot, just in the past 20-30 years, in mostly good ways.

However, entertainment can be a little different. With Overwatch, Blizzard created a new IP and chose to cater to a particular audience. That's awesome; I've been gaming since I was a child, and if new people are able to enjoy the same hobby I do, that's great!

But the problem is that I think in some ways, Blizzard is changing something many of us already love, in order to make it for someone else.

It's like... imagine there's a bar you and your friends love going to. It's just your standard hole-in-the-wall; it's got a pool table, a dart board, maybe a jukebox that doesn't work. Your friends keep telling the owner they should spruce the place up a bit, maybe get a foosball table or karaoke machine, or a couple of TV's to watch football.

Well eventually, the owner does spruce the place up, but maybe not in the way you thought they might. It's suddenly very dark, with brightly-colored LED lights everywhere, music blaring and thumping. It starts drawing a different crowd. Over time, they stop serving some of the drinks you're used to, instead it's all mixed drinks. Over time, that hole-in-the-wall has become a nightclub.

It's not that there's anything "wrong" here, and certainly it's not your bar, you don't get to tell them how they should run it.

But surely you can understand where some people might feel like "I miss the old bar". Which hey, we have WoW Classic! So that's basically a "time-machine" in this analogy. But still, part of me would feel like "why can't we just have a regular bar? why can't they build a night-club somewhere else, for people that want to go to a nightclub?"

I dunno. Not looking to change your mind or anything, just to explain I think some of the feelings behind not being 100% on-board with Blizzard's approach to WoW lately.

[Kokolums]

The video game world is highly competitive. In order to survive, a gaming company must be able to answer the question "Why must I play YOUR game instead of a billion others?" Blizzard USED to have an answer to this question. They do not any longer. Now their games are lost in a sea of rivals. They are making Diablo 4. Great. Why should I play that over other ARPGs? Who knows!

Blizzard should be able to say "You absolutely NEED to play Diablo 4 because this is the ONLY game that offers you x,y,z". But they don't have the capability to say that because there is no vision behind the game. It just leans on the franchise name. If its me, and I cannot answer that question, I cannot make that statement, then Diablo 4 is put on hold.

[kaminaris]

I fucking LOVE the "idea" of arena, but it just doesnt work with wow - when i watch those rogues just sneaking around for 10+ minutes, and players making love to those sweet sweet pillars for minutes on end, its just horribly boring, both to watch, and to play. I understand the meta, i understand WHY people play the way they do, and i dont blame the players or Blizzard for that, but it just doesnt work in wow. If it was skillshots, that would be totally different, but its not.

This, and this bolded part specifically. Fun arenas are skillshot based.

[Gaidax]

It's 2020, not 2005...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Of course much has changed, a whole society has changed drastically in this decade and a half. Gaming world changed massively and current gamers are not the gamers of 2005. Of course Blizzard had to adjust, you can't push ancient formulas on people from different generation, especially considering the whole gaming scene is super saturated with great games all around.

[Packmule]

Well lately the infinite way of doing repeatable content with no limit on obtaining items, (diablo type of style if i may say so). And on top of that creating this enviroment that wow is this insane competitive game is verry much against anything wow used to be, but consumers just take what they can to flex, its all people want nowadays, even tho nobody watches

[Lex Icon]

as many have said they're chasing the wrong audience too late most of the time.
e-sports is out of your league Blizzard so please just stop.

[arkanon]

This, and this bolded part specifically. Fun arenas are skillshot based.

I would hate wow to go skillshot based - i think its fine how it is. Arena is the issue, not the game. The thing is, they could leave the pillars if it was skill based, but, players would be out in the open relying on their reactions and movement to avoid most attacks, instead of relying 100% on LoS.

But again, as much as i think it would improve arena, it is not a change i would want.

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as many have said they're chasing the wrong audience too late most of the time.
e-sports is out of your league Blizzard so please just stop.

I dont know that its out of their league at all, however, they are determined to try and make games that appeal to everyone, and that is where the problem lies. They make these games that at first glance seem quite casual friendly, like OW, but then try to force it into being an esport. Same thing happened with HOTS imo.

Casual games can be focused on fun and enjoyment, rather than perfect balancing and competitiveness. An E-Sport focused game can forego some of the "fun" stuff because its target audience is mostly interested in competitiveness and balance, and the fun comes from exactly that - competing. What im trying to say is when you try to draw in both crowds, you inevitably end up alienating both.

[Lex Icon]

I would hate wow to go skillshot based - i think its fine how it is. Arena is the issue, not the game. The thing is, they could leave the pillars if it was skill based, but, players would be out in the open relying on their reactions and movement to avoid most attacks, instead of relying 100% on LoS.

But again, as much as i think it would improve arena, it is not a change i would want.

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I dont know that its out of their league at all, however, they are determined to try and make games that appeal to everyone, and that is where the problem lies. They make these games that at first glance seem quite casual friendly, like OW, but then try to force it into being an esport. Same thing happened with HOTS imo.

Casual games can be focused on fun and enjoyment, rather than perfect balancing and competitiveness. An E-Sport focused game can forego some of the "fun" stuff because its target audience is mostly interested in competitiveness and balance, and the fun comes from exactly that - competing. What im trying to say is when you try to draw in both crowds, you inevitably end up alienating both.

i mean i can remember seeing SC2 battles on the TV. every title since they've tried to push that stuff without much success but they still go at it.
it's like they refuse to read the room. same thing with instanced content in WoW. they love making it but they got to jump through a ton of hoops just to get people to interact with it even on the simplest level.

[Kralljin]

however, they are determined to try and make games that appeal to everyone, and that is where the problem lies. They make these games that at first glance seem quite casual friendly, like OW, but then try to force it into being an esport. Same thing happened with HOTS imo.

I think this largely feeds into the issue that they've really forgotten to look for an actual target audience.

It's same issue in WoW, the game doesn't really have a target audience anymore.
They just dump in game modes and multiple layers of difficulty into it, that they can always say "there is something for everybody!"
Yet everything feels halfassed at the end of the day because everything is still somehow connected to each other and thus cannot be really good as it would come at the detriment of another aspect of the game.

Blizzard used to able to look at another franchise or genre, distill what is good and fun about and make it appeal to a large audience, nowadays, they just seem to skip the "distill" part and dump anything that appeals to a certain audience into their game.

The result, no audience truly gets a fulfilling experience out of the game.

Rob Pardo used to talk about "concentrated coolness", i'm not sure whether that applies to WoW anymore.

[jediknight12]

mostly people in general changed especially PC game players many hardcore gamers now play esport or games with tens of thousands of viewers to make that money.