Blizzard can't create good games anymore

[arkanon]

Well, there are not many new games from blizz. I enjoyed every SC title, i enjoyed D3 and wow.

D4, D2R and OW2 look amazing to me so far. I dislike nearly every aspect of SL (nearly no char progression, grinding fpr dumb cosmetics, itemisation, Balance, M+ tuning, and so much more) - so my sub runs out. That is ok for me, i have had a lot of good time in SL, spend many hours in it.

From my point of view, i can still buy any blizz game they release. i will have my fun with it and it will be worth it. Looking forward to buy wow 2.0 from them in the far future

What in particular about OW2 and D4 look "amazing" to you so far?

Personally I like that they are refocussing OW into more of a COOP shooter Vs a sweaty pvp meta game - but for those who love the current iteration of OW i am concerned they will be left behind. They have shown next to nothing really - I would have expected a dozen new characters to be added, not just some new maps and new game modes - personally, that sounds an awful lot like a DLC / Expansion, not a sequel.

[DarkAmbient]

Diablo 3 was a great game on PS4. Recently completed it again for the necro DLC trophy. I'm confident that D4 will be good too, despite the issues I have with Shadowlands. That said, their heyday is definitely over.

[A Chozo]

Shadowlands sells like good bread and people here are like "Blizzard can't make good games"

Some of you got some weird complexity regarding Blizzard games. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they are bad games, in the same way that lots of people here probably dislike Counter Strike but it's still a good game.

[arkanon]

Diablo 3 was a great game on PS4. Recently completed it again for the necro DLC trophy. I'm confident that D4 will be good too, despite the issues I have with Shadowlands. That said, their heyday is definitely over.

Yeah although i had played it on Pc extensively, i bought it on sale for the xbox and really enjoyed it - its different enough that it feels like a new experience.

[ro9ue]

What in particular about OW2 and D4 look "amazing" to you so far?

Personally I like that they are refocussing OW into more of a COOP shooter Vs a sweaty pvp meta game - but for those who love the current iteration of OW i am concerned they will be left behind. They have shown next to nothing really - I would have expected a dozen new characters to be added, not just some new maps and new game modes - personally, that sounds an awful lot like a DLC / Expansion, not a sequel.

OW2, at least what I gathered from the panel, is going to be very Destiny-esque. A world map with missions, a talent progression system (instead of gear), and now a lot of story and voice acting. All of the existing maps are getting expanded and added to, lots of new robots and enemies and AI stuff... that feels like a full game to me. I really don't want them to just add a dozen heroes either, I'd rather quality over quantity. I do think they should continue to add heroes to OW1 though in the meantime since they confirmed no OW2 this year.

[Santti]

I feel that they still could make good games. But they just can't, because the shareholders are the top priority. Like in every large corporation.

Minimum effort, for maximum profit.

Our baby (Blizzard) is all grown up now.

[DarkAmbient]

Shadowlands sells like good bread and people here are like "Blizzard can't make good games"

Some of you got some weird complexity regarding Blizzard games. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they are bad games, in the same way that lots of people here probably dislike Counter Strike but it's still a good game.

Not that I have any particular desire to diminish Blizzard's success, but I think a lot of WoW's box sales are driven by a mixture of nostalgia and hope rather than confidence in the quality of the product.

[arkanon]

OW2, at least what I gathered from the panel, is going to be very Destiny-esque. A world map with missions, a talent progression system (instead of gear), and now a lot of story and voice acting. All of the existing maps are getting expanded and added to, lots of new robots and enemies and AI stuff... that feels like a full game to me. I really don't want them to just add a dozen heroes either, I'd rather quality over quantity. I do think they should continue to add heroes to OW1 though in the meantime since they confirmed no OW2 this year.

TBH I really don't think destiny is the right game to compare it to, however you are right that they are building upon the systems already added in Ow1 - they are just building on the coop stuff used in seasonal events, like Halloween for example.

Again, im glad they are doing it, but I really havnt seen anything that comes even close to "amazing" - i have seen some stuff i think might turn out good, but thats about it.

[ro9ue]

Diablo 3 was a great game on PS4. Recently completed it again for the necro DLC trophy. I'm confident that D4 will be good too, despite the issues I have with Shadowlands. That said, their heyday is definitely over.

D3 gets a lot of shit because it didn't live up to D2. But really when I look at what I paid for the game vs how many hours I got out of it, I feel like it was good. It wasn't close to the lose my life level of time investment of D2.

I think in general that's what people are really after right now. Of course Blizzard can make good games, they still are, what people really want are like... Blizzard of old games. WC3, D2, original WoW. Games that just felt so fucking good you could spent a zillion hours in, didn't care about other games... you had your 'main game'. I don't think Blizzard is going to do that anymore - potentially they can with OW2 if they keep moving in the direction of the Destiny model from what they showed at Blizzcon.

Personally I thought HotS was good but they tried to oversell the eSports shit instead of just making it the fun, casual MOBA it should've been.

Time will tell but WoW is really showing its age and Diablo I'm kinda weary on. We'll see.

[Alydael]

Basically- the same thing happened to Blizzard and MMO's in general that happens to everything in this world.

1) They created something great
2) Corporations realized there was money it.
3) Corporations swooped in, used the money they had to buy people out and took over.
4) These corporations then examined all the little details of the product and tried to squeeze every red cent out of their "investment" (the product you used to love). In doing this- they changed the product so that it no longer resembles what you really loved and is now a "cash cow" for investors that threw up some money in Step 3 (above). Most of these investors have no real first hand knowledge of the product or field- they just want a "return" on their "investment" (surely you can understand). They don't even care if the product fails (some investors will even bet against it in a "play") as long as they make the profit they expected from it.
5) The original fans of the product slowly lose faith and go elsewhere and the product dies a slow death as the corporation tries to bleed whatever funds are left in it- leaving an empty husk.
6) Product/ genre is somewhat dead and the corporations move on to the next victim.

Sorry that's just how greed works, it doesn't care about your little "game"- it only cares for $$$$$$. There's ways to fix it, but people are just too lazy in general to bother.

[arkanon]

D3 gets a lot of shit because it didn't live up to D2. But really when I look at what I paid for the game vs how many hours I got out of it, I feel like it was good.

Myself and small group of friends had an interesting situation with Ghost Recon: Wildlands. We started playing it because we all got the gold version for like.....$8 or something crazy like that. Anyway, we spent the first few weeks playing Coop taking the piss out of the game, mocking it, laughing at it. Then i said something "hey.....you know we all have like 200 hours into this?" and we laughed that we had got more than our $8 worth without a doubt.

We finished up everything in that game, spending hundreds and hundreds of hours playing it - god knows just how high it got in the end. But even at full price we easily got our money worth out of it, no doubt at all. And I think that's a really healthy way to look at any entertainment. There were plenty of times I spent $40 on tickets and snacks to go see a movie that ended up being shit - so people shouldnt freak out when they spend $15 on a cheap game and "only" spend 200 hours before saying how terrible it is.

[Luxeley]

the talent at Blizzard is rather thin and long in the tooth. If you do look across the entire industry, however: there aren't a lot of new games popping out. And, the new games we do see here and there tend to be sequels of some kind. Dev costs for new games, whether its a MOBA, BattleRoyale, MMO or plain and simply RPG do NOTHING but go up and up and up in expenditures. Therefore: its a hell of a lot less risky sticking on the beaten path and popping out WOW part 8 than starting a brand new "unproven" project from ground zero. Look at Ashes of Creation, the game has been in various stages of development over the 4 or 5 years and still hasn't delivered a beta. New titles take a very long time to develop. Despite a plethora of resources (in engineers and $$$) publically traded companies like Activision can't delay/ wait for even half that time for a revenue source that may or may not sell.

[Dracullus]

Not that I have any particular desire to diminish Blizzard's success, but I think a lot of WoW's box sales are driven by a mixture of nostalgia and hope rather than confidence in the quality of the product.

Sure, 4 times in a row, every two years xD And increasing btw (WoD 3.3M, Legion 3.3M, BfA 3.4M, SL - 3.7M). Hell, trend basically started with 3.3M in Cata, but MoP theme disgusted maaany people on launch.

As for Blizzard, they almost always create solid games. But they take little risk, which is obvious for company that size who stay around top for 20+ years. And they know how to suck money from their playerbase, that is certain.

If you want to find something innovative, search for studios that still have something to prove.

[Jamais]

Imagine if Blizz released Classic in 2021, people would say wtf Blizzard, making us play a walking simulator for MAUs and profit.

The only reason why WoW has declined is time. It is an OLD game. And still a good one.

Also, the only reason you people are hating is because you were probably a kid/teenager when you started playing, and are having selective memory when it comes to past WoW expansions. I've played WC3 as a kid, classic-Wrath as a teen, from Cata to WoD as a student and now i am pushing thirties, having a job and other things in life.

Nostalgia is a powerful tool, almost intoxicating. We all sometimes wish we could go to a simpler past, when things felt easier and without a care in the world. Old WoW was imprinted in our memory from those times - neither of us is the same person as we were back then, and neither is Blizzard the exact same collective - which doesn't mean they've lost their soul.

[arkanon]

Personally I thought HotS was good but they tried to oversell the eSports shit instead of just making it the fun, casual MOBA it should've been.

Man I couldn't agree with this statement any more - Hots had so much potential as a fun, casual, chilled out game, but they pushed the competitive nature so much, and it just cant compete with the big dogs in that department.

[Demithio]

With the mass of old games being remastered to feed the hungry nostalgic player and the criticism that blizzard receives for almost everything that has been released recently, I am not surprised. Blizzard simply lacks developers with a feeling for that certain something, developers who are children themselves and like to develop games, real games.

Games are simply no longer developed out of passion or because developers obviously enjoy doing them, but only so that they don't end up in the red at the end of the year. How can you develop games without much effort to keep the player on the hook, this is what 99% of all game industries are pursuing today. And don't get me wrong, that's fine too. But with the amount with which players are just getting f*cked over it no longer funny.

I also think it is not because blizzard doesn't want to create good games with effort anymore, they just can't. It feels like their games are currently being developed by lawyers and tax advisors instead of real developers with a burning passion for it.

Just wanted to get rid of.

Cheers

This has been true for quite a number of years. Blizzard is simply a corporate machine now, not a real developer. What you described about passion, drive, enjoyment are long dead and are now foreign concepts at Blizzard-land. Of course they aren't the only "developer" where design decisions are made at a boardroom, with completely detached and overpaid three-piece suits calling the shots. Its just sad to see such a once incredible company, a company where you simply bought their product almost without question, be reduced to something to held with suspicious and contempt.

"were going to take the fun out of developing games" - Bobby Kotick

[MatPandaZ]

i am not looking for a reason to play, i already do.

Sounds like you might have addiction issues if you think the game is so bad yet still play.

[Garretdejiko]

Eham, I don't know man, I think Activision Blizzard™ is pretty capable of making quality games for you, for a fair price of couse.
Can't wait for Diablo Immortal!

[EntertainmentNihilist]

Blizzard gets constant criticism because:

A. People like to hate popular / successful things.
B. People hate big companies.
C. People hate it when other people make lots of money.

Not to say Blizzard doesn't make any bad decisions. But when you want to hate something, it's easy for basic human cognitive biases to exaggerate the bad decisions and dismiss the good decisions.

[Osmeric]

Blizzard should take a page from the pharmaceutical industry and buy promising indie game concepts. Sort of like what happened with Portal.