Blizzard was once the king of innovation, what happened?

[thilicen]

Activision more or less. Innovation usually dies once they come into play.

[Echeyakee]

Warcraft has always been "cartoonish", and people pining for "return to realism" are nothing more than coping hard.

[Malania]

Blizzard almost always copied a different game's formula and refined it. Innovation has not really been their strong point.

Idk about that, I loved rock and roll racing as a kid. Never played a game like it until I found Road Rash

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Warcraft has always been "cartoonish", and people pining for "return to realism" are nothing more than coping hard.

People never wanted realism in their fantasy when Warhammer: AoR was out

[OwenBurton]

Blizzard used to be perfectionists. the Warcraft adventure game was finished but cancelled because they didn't believe it would measure up against the recently released Curse Of Monkey Island, a similar thing happened with Starcraft Ghost. with WoW though sarcrifices had to be made or content would never get released. I'd imagine that having to make compromises, along with completely taking over the MMORPG market, resulted in some changes of direction. things get released with less polish, more bugs slip through, riskier ideas get turned down and attitudes change. it often happens to small companies that make it big. it's too risky to try new innovations and so they stick with the ones that took them to success, but it's the fact that those ideas were innovative that made it work rather than the specific ideas themselves (which eventually become stale and obsolete)

I think the steady decline of Blizzard's quality can be attributed to three simple words: Chris Metzen left.

Some of Blizzard's work in post-Metzen expansions was awesome, such as in Legion, that was nearly as good as Wrath of the Lich King, quite honestly. But after that expansion, not so much. And Shadowlands was perhaps the worst expansion ever developed by their company.

There was a real sense of...vitality, of originality and creativity, of imagination and even mysticism that made Blizzard's original gameplay and lore quite refreshing and widely appealing that is simply lacking today.

[Swnem]

Blizzard almost always copied a different game's formula and refined it. Innovation has not really been their strong point.

This is very much the case.

The problem is they got arrogant and thought they knew better than everyone else and rested on their laurels. 12m lost subs later, seems like they are taking inspiration from GW2.

[Johnjohn]

For me Blizzard was never really about innovation, more polish and improvement. Wow is a little unique in that it heavily copied Everquest, a game most WoW players probably don't know much about. They took all the good things about Everquest and kept them in WoW, while discarding all the bad things (mostly way too hardcore and time consuming components).

Somewhere along the line (cough Legion) they ditched that philosophy and made WoW more like diablo. I think this is why there is suddenly such a split group on the game as it has had quite a large design change.

[Blackmist]

WoW happened.

Suddenly they had a product that made them billions instead of millions. And when you're used to billions, you can't go back.

They diverted the whole company into making sure WoW kept making money, and everything else fell by the wayside. Talent left, nobody cared.

[Preliatus]

Simple answer?

Money. Money. Money.

They want that customer money. That whale money. The phone gaming money that Netease promised.

[craigw]

Blizzards Innovations This is a list of every game they ever made...not counting expansions to anything/

RPM Racing: First game..a Racing game

Lost Vikings: Puzzle Platformer...was mildly innovative at the time due to interesting control scheme but nothing steller

Rock N Roll Racing: What if Racing game HAD LICENSCED MUSIC!

Death and Return of Superman: Forgot they made this....yay Superman Game

Blackthorne: Basic 2d Shooter

Warcraft: RTS's did exist Warcraft mearly streamlined it

Justice League Task Force: Oh I guess Blizzard did Injustice before NetherRealm in the time when everyone was trying to copy SF2's success (Oh gee look what blizz usually does)

Warcraft 2: Better Streamlined Warcraft

Diablo: Will give them this..nothing like Diablo really ever came out before

Lost Vikings 2: Oh look more Lost Vikings

Starcraft: Online play was really the clincher here and the custom scenarios you could do so yay a little innovation

Diablo 2: Better Diablo with online play...not saying this is bad but was hardly innovative

Warcraft 3: Better Starcraft

Wow: Casual Friendly Everquest

Starcraft 2: Better Warcraft 3..yet also somewhat worse

Diablo 3: Ahh yes the massively singleplayer online game..such innovation

Hearthstone: Ok...MTGOnline did it first and I'll give Blizz this they really set a standard for F2P games and they were the first online card game made specifically with being digital in mind. So yeah they took MTGOnline and made it better (Debateable)

Heroes of the Storm: Today on Blizzard was mad they didn't get DOTA..also more casual friendly League of Legends

Overwatch: Let's make the TF2 classes actual characters!

Then games not out yet OW2, Diablo 4, and Diablo Immortal which can be summed up as Mobile Diablo, Different Diablo, and Overwatch with an instagram filter.

There got that out of the way.

gauntlet came out in 1985, gauntlet 2 in 1986, and gauntlet 3 in 1991 long before diablo was released., so no blizzard didnt innovate dungeon crawling hack n slash games. as you mentioned with all their other games they took someones elses idea thought of ways to make it better and implemented it.

[Auburst]

They started to chug soy and hire idiots addicted to beans. Now all they do is slurping soy and playing with beans.

[RobertMugabe]

Dragonflight looks like it might turn out okay. Talent trees returning and the UI changes will be good. The one race one class idea could be great, or it could be a disaster. But this is an rpg, not an action game, so I’m not sure what they’re doing there really. Probably ran out of time/lore excuses to let more races be evokers. Dragon riding looks ok. It would be great if this was 2012.

All of these features could be okay, and that’s about it really. But, this isn’t Blizzard’s style; to just make things “okay”. They were once a titan of gaming, with each of their games selling like mad, with groundbreaking features and gameplay. Diablo and Starcraft were unicorns in their own right as well. And after WoW came out, it seemed like Blizzard couldn’t be stopped.

So, what the hell happened? We have two mobile games coming out that have been copy pasted from other games, a dead rts and a dead Dota clone, and a string of mediocre WoW expansions. Not to mention OW 2, which is an actual copy paste. Is Blizzard just in maintenance mode? I remember when Warcraft 3 came out, it was like the second coming for gaming. Diablo 2 probably still hasn’t been surpassed to this day as the best ARPG ever. Was it the Activision merger? Talent leaving? Entropy taking its ugly toll? Probably all of them, but the Blizzard of today is not what I remember them as a kid.

Do you think Dragonflight will bring a return of Blizzard’s old greatness?

Wdym happened?

You wrote this post saying this stuff, but what do you really expect them to do or innovate on? WoW has seen a lot of development over the years and every MMO has took heavy inspiration from WoW and they still do. But there is only so much they can do with an almost 18 year old (!!!) game.

Their games are still selling "like mad" and every game has broken new records in terms of sales and revenue. Every major game (and WoW expansion) they've released so far, controversies aside, has been a massive success.

The way you write this just gives away that nothing from Blizzard will satisfy. Even when they do good things, it won't be enough for you. Maybe you're just not gonna be blown away anymore, because 20 years ago you were a different person, possibly a child still like most of us.

Overall, just looking at the facts though, there's nothing really special in particular when Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 came out compared to the latest WoW xpacs, Overwatch, D3 and Hearthstone though, except that the later were a FAR bigger success and were far more mainstream and known than D2/WC3, which in their time were more niche and games associated with "nerds".

[Miffinat0r]

For me Blizzard was never really about innovation, more polish and improvement. Wow is a little unique in that it heavily copied Everquest, a game most WoW players probably don't know much about. They took all the good things about Everquest and kept them in WoW, while discarding all the bad things (mostly way too hardcore and time consuming components).

Somewhere along the line (cough Legion) they ditched that philosophy and made WoW more like diablo. I think this is why there is suddenly such a split group on the game as it has had quite a large design change.

Pretty much this is the truth.

WoW is EQ just with no death penalties, and more instances. They essentially took the EQ formula to it's limit and that's why players are like nahhh.

[dwarven]

So, DI ended up being a cash grab beyond anything I expected. It's literally just Diablo Slots only you don't even have the chance of winning any money back. I'm pretty sure the money goblins are just trying to cash in on the Blizzard name now, with no future vision, no reverence for the game, no respect for the players. You can make a lot of money this week doing that, but a couple years down the line and your IPs will be worth dirt.

[Gurg]

So, what the hell happened?

All original founders left the company.
With them, i figure, all the hardcore passion and dedication left.

We talk about 3 friends who founded the company in garrage. People who had insane dedication, vision and goals. They fought trough quite large hardships to put their name on the map and manage to do so.
90s were different time, different mentality and far less greedy companies.

On other hand, Warcraft is, to some extend, stolen idea.
GameWorkshop back in the day approached Blizzard to make Warhammer game, they started working on it and dropped it soon after.
From it - Blizzards Warcraft was born, more family friendly game with far less gore and darkness.
So theres that too.

[Maruka]

insert steve jobs video on how companies change from market leaders.

[Sauredfangs]

I think desire drives gameplay. Blizz seems to be most familiar with the desire of greed and lazyness. While there is a place for those, you shouldnt forget things like socializing, self expression, being part of a community, and wanting to challenge yourself. Im not saying there isnt any of those, I just think there could be more.

[Watchers]

What happened is that most of the core of blizzard has left, or gone old

So i have hopes for a new blizzard like 1997

[Kallisto]

What happened is that most of the core of blizzard has left, or gone old

So i have hopes for a new blizzard like 1997

The old blizzard core were also the rapists. They have many that are too toxic to touch, making shitty games or in jail.

[czarek]

What happened is that most of the core of blizzard has left, or gone old

So i have hopes for a new blizzard like 1997

The entire game dev industry has changed a lot. No more like games from gamers as triple A imo. May be some indie or double A companies. Cash excels rules the devs.

[deathshere]

The old blizzard core were also the rapists. They have many that are too toxic to touch, making shitty games or in jail.

The old blizzard, the people you mean who actually made fun games were.. "toxic" ? the only people left are SJW go woke! fools whos only idea consist of mobile games and somehow failing at making releases of old content from the OLD BLIZZARD.