6 ms·

Misleading title, should read "How Blizzard stayed focused on quality games for 17 years" It's been all downhill since the Activision purchase...

grillvogel 11y ago
thats like your opinion man
dang 11y ago
Alright, we took the number out of the title since it arguably goes against the HN guidelines anyway.
eugenekolo2 11y ago
HOTS is good. Just hasn't taken off. Hearthstone is an amazing success and very fun. Overwatch looks very promising. WoW is just old now, and it's still an alright game, but it's been out for too long. I believe TBC and WOTLK came out after Activision purchase and those expansions were great. Starcraft 2 is okay. They messed up a lot with trying to be social allstars with bnet2.0. Diablo 3 kind of missed the mark, can maybe blame Activision here. As the real money auction house wasn't that great of a success, and it seems Activisiony to me.
- dexwiz 11y ago
  D3 is a completely different game than on release. On release it was all about maxing a few stats (main stat, attack speed, crit chance, crit hit). The differences between one piece of the gear and the next was just a few points. Also gear was almost 100% random drops. This made the AH better, as you could never be expected to find a full set of top tier gear. Now it's much more based around set bonuses and builds. No more AH, so all gear is self found. But now you have random drops, rift drops, blood shards, cube upgrades, rerolls. So multiple ways to acquire and improve existing gear.
  - toast42 11y ago
    I'm fairly certain that D3 was originally built around the auction house. They started with a solid stream of monetization and then built a game around that.
    - sangaya 11y ago
      The thing about D3 though is that Blizzard continued to take feedback from the community and iterate through the game by adjusting and introducing new game mechanics with each update. The current 2.4 is so far different from the original release that its shocking. I played at the start and quickly got tired of the horrible drops and Auction House. Now the variety of entertaining builds that are possible is huge. I'm playing Season 5 and my friends have started again too. It's great for both short (<10min) sessions as well as long ones.
      - toast42 11y ago
        That is certainly a good sign. I played in the beta and decided it wasn't for me, so maybe I owe it another chance!
- dtparr 11y ago
  Just as a fact-check, TBC was well before the merger (Jan '07), and WOTLK came out in Nov '08 a few months after the merger in July '08 (dates per Wikipedia). Likely by the time they merged it was far enough along that you couldn't argue it was done on Activision's watch, but I'm also not proposing later expansions were "Activision's fault".
  - eugenekolo2 11y ago
    You're correct. I find WoW's success difficult to judge recently. As, perhaps Activision ruined it, or perhaps it's just a game that's now 10 years old. And MMORPG gameplay is down overall.
- Zancarius 11y ago
  > WoW is just old now, and it's still an alright game, but it's been out for too long. I believe TBC and WOTLK came out after Activision purchase and those expansions were great. Those were my two favorite expansions. I quit when Cataclysm was released. That said, I recently resubscribed and have been enjoying playing it periodically. Unfortunately, the skill set "crunch" feels too much like the game mechanics have been dumbed down, sapping away the spirit of the game. I thought I liked the changes at first until I discovered they ripped out a ton of core class skills and pushed forward with some really bizarre decisions. (My girlfriend is playing a death knight, and she's perplexed as to why only frost spec allows her to dual wield--almost as puzzled as I was to discover that shaman totems feel more like a bolted-on mechanic than they were before.) But, I assume this change was an attempt to pull new people into the game and not leave it with a decidedly intimidating number of talents and spells. I liked it the way it was, some people didn't, and that's just the way things are, I suppose. Nostalgic folk aren't the target demographic at this point, and while I think I can live with that, I'm still undecided if I'm going to continue my subscription after this month. MMOs seem to be in a race for the bottom, and I don't really have the time anymore to invest in new ones. C'est la vie. One thing I wish they'd do is bring back the old expansions in a manner that would allow you to play them mostly as they were (perhaps with some improvements, such as reduced raid sizes, but keeping the spirit of the game as close to how it was when that expansion was released). I wouldn't even care if I had to re-roll, but if I could level through all the expansions as I did before--the ones I enjoyed, anyway--or lock into one and play that content at the appropriate level, I'd happily pay the subscription indefinitely. Sure, there are private servers out there (requiring one to break the EULA) that attempt to recreate older versions at various points, but the quality varies so wildly they're almost not worth it--legal issues and ethics aside. Hey, I can dream. It won't happen. It'd be too costly to implement with very little reward, and I doubt it'd bring back many of the older players who swore off the game due to whatever recent changes drove them away (possibly alienating the new players in the process). WoW is a cash cow now, so there's unlikely to be any disruption that could threaten that income. Sadly.
- toast42 11y ago
  > HOTS is good. Just hasn't taken off. It's good but it's not great. League of Legends and Dota2 are both superior games in just about every way. Honestly Blizzard is just really late to the table with this one, which is surprising seeing as how MOBAs started in War3. > Hearthstone is an amazing success and very fun. Hearthstone is Magic: The Gathering with most of the pain points removed. I'm not saying it isn't fun or commercially successful, but there's nothing innovative about it. MtG never produced a viable online game, so Blizzard did. > Starcraft 2 is okay. > Diablo 3 kind of missed the mark I agree with both statements. SC2 will never be as popular as Brood Wars, and they seem to be struggling with game balance a lot more. D3 completely missed the mark with the auction house. What I see happening to Blizzard is a focus on micro transactions, with gameplay coming second. I think this article accurately summarizes their history, but ignores recent changes to their company that paint a different picture going forward. I'm not expecting SC3 (should it ever happen) to be as amazing as SC1, and I certainly won't be happy to pay $1 each time I run out of pylons.
  - harmegido 11y ago
    When you say "there's nothing innovative about it" regarding hearthstone, you could say that about several of the games Blizzard has made. WoW is a direct, improved copy of EQ and others. The default hotkeys for EQ and WoW were even the same - NumLock was autorun on both. How is this a bad thing? You could just as easily have critiqued google for not being "innovative" - they weren't the first search engine. Taking an idea and executing it well is a skill, and a profitable one for Blizzard.
    - toast42 11y ago
      > When you say "there's nothing innovative about it" regarding hearthstone, you could say that about several of the games Blizzard has made. This makes them good at making money, not necessarily good at making games. I personally see WoW as the beginning of Blizzard's decent. I can't argue that it made a boatload of money though, or that millions of people love it. As for how it's a bad thing, Blizzard used to develop some seminal games in the RTS genre. These games showed significant innovation and shaped the genre (though they didn't invent it). Compare that to their current lineup of rehashed and cloned games. I don't see the same level of innovation anywhere. I think Blizzard is so focused on profits at this point that monetization is the primary concern of any new game. It's just my personal, anecdotal opinion but it's also the reason I don't buy Blizzard games at release anymore.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  > Starcraft 2 is okay. They messed up a lot with trying to be social allstars with bnet2.0. Have you seen LOTV? It's amazing, I'm having so much fun playing it lately.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Activision has "owned" Blizzard for much longer than it has been "ActivsionBlizzard" as they've owned a major stake in Vivendi Games which owned Blizzard, before that Blizzard was owned by Comp-U-Card and before that by Sierra Entertainment. WoW is still the biggest meanest MMO out there when it comes to subscription based games they still have a larger market share than all other subscription games combined and more than any western MMO combines regardless of the business model. They aren't in their peak of 12M players but the market just doesn't have place for such whales anymore. As for the RMH I don't think you can "blame" anyone, especially not Activision, Blizzard always has done pretty much what it wanted and they've always wanted to monetize multiplayer beyound the usual sub/cash shop that WoW has, they had plans to introduce a map market in SC2 but it never gotten of the ground. Any business will strive to make as much money as possible game companies are not excluded from this paradigm so it's a bit funny that people think that some game developers are some angelic unicorns.
navait 11y ago
As a long time blizzard fan, I think their games are about the same quality. Highly polished and fun competitive action games (I've found their games significantly less buggy than most PC games). In many respects, they managed to revolutionize entire genres of gaming. Even people who weren't into nerdy things back in the day loved them. The problem is, most of them are repeats of games I played as a teenager. They just aren't what appeals to me anymore. Excessive masculinity, simple stories, sexy women. I think they're still this; I see college students playing hearthstone all the time. I don't think Blizzard changed after Activision, but rather I did. And I don't want Blizzard to change - I'd like the next generation to enjoy the games of my adolescence even if I've moved on.

grillvogel 11y ago

thats like your opinion man

dang 11y ago

Alright, we took the number out of the title since it arguably goes against the HN guidelines anyway.

eugenekolo2 11y ago

HOTS is good. Just hasn't taken off. Hearthstone is an amazing success and very fun. Overwatch looks very promising. WoW is just old now, and it's still an alright game, but it's been out for too long. I believe TBC and WOTLK came out after Activision purchase and those expansions were great. Starcraft 2 is okay. They messed up a lot with trying to be social allstars with bnet2.0. Diablo 3 kind of missed the mark, can maybe blame Activision here. As the real money auction house wasn't that great of a success, and it seems Activisiony to me.

dexwiz 11y ago
D3 is a completely different game than on release. On release it was all about maxing a few stats (main stat, attack speed, crit chance, crit hit). The differences between one piece of the gear and the next was just a few points. Also gear was almost 100% random drops. This made the AH better, as you could never be expected to find a full set of top tier gear. Now it's much more based around set bonuses and builds. No more AH, so all gear is self found. But now you have random drops, rift drops, blood shards, cube upgrades, rerolls. So multiple ways to acquire and improve existing gear.
- toast42 11y ago
  I'm fairly certain that D3 was originally built around the auction house. They started with a solid stream of monetization and then built a game around that.
  - sangaya 11y ago
    The thing about D3 though is that Blizzard continued to take feedback from the community and iterate through the game by adjusting and introducing new game mechanics with each update. The current 2.4 is so far different from the original release that its shocking. I played at the start and quickly got tired of the horrible drops and Auction House. Now the variety of entertaining builds that are possible is huge. I'm playing Season 5 and my friends have started again too. It's great for both short (<10min) sessions as well as long ones.
    - toast42 11y ago
      That is certainly a good sign. I played in the beta and decided it wasn't for me, so maybe I owe it another chance!
dtparr 11y ago
Just as a fact-check, TBC was well before the merger (Jan '07), and WOTLK came out in Nov '08 a few months after the merger in July '08 (dates per Wikipedia). Likely by the time they merged it was far enough along that you couldn't argue it was done on Activision's watch, but I'm also not proposing later expansions were "Activision's fault".
- eugenekolo2 11y ago
  You're correct. I find WoW's success difficult to judge recently. As, perhaps Activision ruined it, or perhaps it's just a game that's now 10 years old. And MMORPG gameplay is down overall.
Zancarius 11y ago
> WoW is just old now, and it's still an alright game, but it's been out for too long. I believe TBC and WOTLK came out after Activision purchase and those expansions were great. Those were my two favorite expansions. I quit when Cataclysm was released. That said, I recently resubscribed and have been enjoying playing it periodically. Unfortunately, the skill set "crunch" feels too much like the game mechanics have been dumbed down, sapping away the spirit of the game. I thought I liked the changes at first until I discovered they ripped out a ton of core class skills and pushed forward with some really bizarre decisions. (My girlfriend is playing a death knight, and she's perplexed as to why only frost spec allows her to dual wield--almost as puzzled as I was to discover that shaman totems feel more like a bolted-on mechanic than they were before.) But, I assume this change was an attempt to pull new people into the game and not leave it with a decidedly intimidating number of talents and spells. I liked it the way it was, some people didn't, and that's just the way things are, I suppose. Nostalgic folk aren't the target demographic at this point, and while I think I can live with that, I'm still undecided if I'm going to continue my subscription after this month. MMOs seem to be in a race for the bottom, and I don't really have the time anymore to invest in new ones. C'est la vie. One thing I wish they'd do is bring back the old expansions in a manner that would allow you to play them mostly as they were (perhaps with some improvements, such as reduced raid sizes, but keeping the spirit of the game as close to how it was when that expansion was released). I wouldn't even care if I had to re-roll, but if I could level through all the expansions as I did before--the ones I enjoyed, anyway--or lock into one and play that content at the appropriate level, I'd happily pay the subscription indefinitely. Sure, there are private servers out there (requiring one to break the EULA) that attempt to recreate older versions at various points, but the quality varies so wildly they're almost not worth it--legal issues and ethics aside. Hey, I can dream. It won't happen. It'd be too costly to implement with very little reward, and I doubt it'd bring back many of the older players who swore off the game due to whatever recent changes drove them away (possibly alienating the new players in the process). WoW is a cash cow now, so there's unlikely to be any disruption that could threaten that income. Sadly.
toast42 11y ago
> HOTS is good. Just hasn't taken off. It's good but it's not great. League of Legends and Dota2 are both superior games in just about every way. Honestly Blizzard is just really late to the table with this one, which is surprising seeing as how MOBAs started in War3. > Hearthstone is an amazing success and very fun. Hearthstone is Magic: The Gathering with most of the pain points removed. I'm not saying it isn't fun or commercially successful, but there's nothing innovative about it. MtG never produced a viable online game, so Blizzard did. > Starcraft 2 is okay. > Diablo 3 kind of missed the mark I agree with both statements. SC2 will never be as popular as Brood Wars, and they seem to be struggling with game balance a lot more. D3 completely missed the mark with the auction house. What I see happening to Blizzard is a focus on micro transactions, with gameplay coming second. I think this article accurately summarizes their history, but ignores recent changes to their company that paint a different picture going forward. I'm not expecting SC3 (should it ever happen) to be as amazing as SC1, and I certainly won't be happy to pay $1 each time I run out of pylons.
- harmegido 11y ago
  When you say "there's nothing innovative about it" regarding hearthstone, you could say that about several of the games Blizzard has made. WoW is a direct, improved copy of EQ and others. The default hotkeys for EQ and WoW were even the same - NumLock was autorun on both. How is this a bad thing? You could just as easily have critiqued google for not being "innovative" - they weren't the first search engine. Taking an idea and executing it well is a skill, and a profitable one for Blizzard.
  - toast42 11y ago
    > When you say "there's nothing innovative about it" regarding hearthstone, you could say that about several of the games Blizzard has made. This makes them good at making money, not necessarily good at making games. I personally see WoW as the beginning of Blizzard's decent. I can't argue that it made a boatload of money though, or that millions of people love it. As for how it's a bad thing, Blizzard used to develop some seminal games in the RTS genre. These games showed significant innovation and shaped the genre (though they didn't invent it). Compare that to their current lineup of rehashed and cloned games. I don't see the same level of innovation anywhere. I think Blizzard is so focused on profits at this point that monetization is the primary concern of any new game. It's just my personal, anecdotal opinion but it's also the reason I don't buy Blizzard games at release anymore.
ktRolster 11y ago
> Starcraft 2 is okay. They messed up a lot with trying to be social allstars with bnet2.0. Have you seen LOTV? It's amazing, I'm having so much fun playing it lately.
dogma1138 11y ago
Activision has "owned" Blizzard for much longer than it has been "ActivsionBlizzard" as they've owned a major stake in Vivendi Games which owned Blizzard, before that Blizzard was owned by Comp-U-Card and before that by Sierra Entertainment. WoW is still the biggest meanest MMO out there when it comes to subscription based games they still have a larger market share than all other subscription games combined and more than any western MMO combines regardless of the business model. They aren't in their peak of 12M players but the market just doesn't have place for such whales anymore. As for the RMH I don't think you can "blame" anyone, especially not Activision, Blizzard always has done pretty much what it wanted and they've always wanted to monetize multiplayer beyound the usual sub/cash shop that WoW has, they had plans to introduce a map market in SC2 but it never gotten of the ground. Any business will strive to make as much money as possible game companies are not excluded from this paradigm so it's a bit funny that people think that some game developers are some angelic unicorns.

navait 11y ago

As a long time blizzard fan, I think their games are about the same quality. Highly polished and fun competitive action games (I've found their games significantly less buggy than most PC games). In many respects, they managed to revolutionize entire genres of gaming. Even people who weren't into nerdy things back in the day loved them. The problem is, most of them are repeats of games I played as a teenager. They just aren't what appeals to me anymore. Excessive masculinity, simple stories, sexy women. I think they're still this; I see college students playing hearthstone all the time. I don't think Blizzard changed after Activision, but rather I did. And I don't want Blizzard to change - I'd like the next generation to enjoy the games of my adolescence even if I've moved on.