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I wonder how long Blizzard can still stay in the game. It seems they 're only repeating themselves now. EA is boring but they keep doing their job, as for Blizz

I wonder how long Blizzard can still stay in the game. It seems they 're only repeating themselves now. EA is boring but they keep doing their job, as for Blizzard they seem to be fully stopped creating things. Recently they are only remaking old games StarCraft, WarCraft, World of Warcraft. Basically, the remake doesn't touch the functionality. They seem only want to juice money from their current market. For more 'real' new games from Blizzard like Overwatch is Okayish, and Heroes of Storms (I can't even be sure about the name) are bad. Anyway, I think I would play Classic for a while, but I guess it wouldn't be long. Although It was and still is the best game I ever played, without constant releases, it just won't persist - World of Warcraft doesn't mean to be modeled as a game with infinite replay value without new releases. And there won't be new releases because would be branching the game.

aeonflux 7y ago
I doubt branching would stop them from releasing new content for Classic WOW, if only people would be interested in playing that and paying for the game. I am sure they won't do full blown expansion for Classic, but new content within lvl 60 cap does actually make sense. It's also possible, that at some point, when people get bored with this content they can bump the tier to TBC (1st expansion). They could probably also keep all of those running at the same time, and people could choose which tier they wan't to stop them. It all comes down to people voting with their wallets I guess.
abledon 7y ago
its Activision wearing blizzard's dead skin. Most blizzard "minds" have left for other pastures.
- gizmo385 7y ago
  Oh come on, Activision has owned Blizzard for over a decade, during which Blizzard has released many of the most popular games and expansions for WoW.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    But WoW was basically the death of the Warcraft series. There hasn't been a mainline game since.
  - baud147258 7y ago
    Wasn't there a few articles recently (like end of last year) on how Activision was increasing their control of Blizzard, with, for example a voluntary redundancy plan?
  - kryogen1c 7y ago
    Oh wow i didnt know that. The acquisition happened much earlier than I thought! Like who you replied to, i sort if blame activision for the death of blizzard, but that timeline doesnt really line up. I wonder whats going on? Changing demogrpahics, I suppose.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Blizzard had a fair amount of inertia. They had been working on Diablo III (2012) for years but it shows how quickly Activation destroyed what made Blizzard great. The problem was not really core gameplay mechanics at release, it was the final balancing being completely out of whack that destroyed the game. This meant early review where generally positive, but gamers quickly stopped playing as late game was simply broken. Similarly, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are pure Blizzard. Cataclysm (2010) was controversial. On the other hand Mists of Pandaria (2012) was generally disliked, Warlords of Draenor (2014) was an inane mess.
    - fruffy 7y ago
      I'd disagree that Wrath of the Lich King was pure Blizzard, in fact I'd claim the final patches of Burning Crusade marked the beginning of the end for many players. IIrc, monetization efforts such as faction transfers[0,1] and pets were introduced during that expansion and "casual-friendly" tools such as the dungeon finder[2] and heirlooms[4] were developed to attract more players. All of these changes were already extremely controversial. [0] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer [1] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service [2] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder [4] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom
- davedx 7y ago
  I dunno. In one of the AMA's one of the engineers spoke about rediscovering the code he wrote for vanilla WoW back when he was a younger programmer. That sounds like a pretty long stint at a single games company (many people don't last that long in the games industry as a whole). Also possible Blizzard asks their more senior people to do these AMA's I guess...
  - muse900 7y ago
    This is my own perspective from what I've been reading/ seeing as a customer for the past few years and how the company has changed from its warcraft/diablo even world of warcraft days to now. Yes there are still people working for Blizzard that have been there for 15 years or longer. (Is that a good thing? yes and no. The motivation declines the longer you are at a specific job, not that it applies to everyone but I consider that to be a a big factor) The issue here though isn't about how long someone has been working on a project like WoW or for the company itself. The main issue is that like any other company out there that became successful it went in full corporate mode. That dev that has been working in wow since 2002 and before the game was even out, has probably very little say of what happens to the game. The game as any other game that is coming out from blizzard right now feels like its build by pure stats. It feels like a marketing specialist, sat down with a stats guru and they decided on what people like based on trends and what people are doing. That combined with the business people demanding more money, more game currency transactions, more gambling involved into the game and RNG being the top, have made games like WoW being awful to enjoy. The difference between Blizzard back then and Activision-Blizzard now is that Blizzard a small/medium game studio was building games that the team would love to play. WoW was a pure unexplored world ready to accommodate any kind of player - it was an adventure. Nowadays the WoW of today is like a themepark where every ride is very specific. Again personally I spent so much time in WoW during the first 2-3 expansions, and nowadays I want to play but the game is just not good enough. So as a player yes I'd say you are right to say there are people still working for Blizzard that were working back then but the small/medium studio that would put passion behind their games, turned into a corporation trying to build games based on stats. And I hope that there will be another indie company that will eventually become like valve, blizzard or ea. Us gamers need that, we need a company that will produce amazing games with loads of passion and not just for the moneygrab.
- kyrra 7y ago
  Vanilla server (run on private servers (pservers)) is actually a rather popular niche. This is bringing that experience back. How it does at-large will be interesting to see. The other argument is that Blizzard tends to do remastered releases of games ~15 years after their original release, and guess what, it's been 15 years. So it fits into that bucket as well. While it's definitely a grab at more players, people are also asking for it. Go poking around to see how much people are excited about this thing (there are various podcasts, https://countdowntoclassic.com/ https://countdowntoclassic.com/ being one I've listened to).
gizmo385 7y ago
> For more 'real' new games from Blizzard like Overwatch is Okayish, and Heroes of Storms (I can't even be sure about the name) are bad. This sounds like a matter of opinion. Overwatch is a relatively new game and Blizzard is continuing to release expansions for WoW. They have also long been rumored to be working on various new IPs (both in-universe and entirely original) for a few years now.
- baud147258 7y ago
  Overwatch is 3 years old, but it's relatively new in the sense of online-MP
scottmcf 7y ago
Overwatch and Hearthstone have been hugely, hugely successful for Blizzard. The Diablo mobile game is going to be a license to print money too, PR snafus or not.
vbezhenar 7y ago
They will remake The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, that's almost for sure. And some players actually like playing the same game. I think that I would happily play Classic like forever, if only enough players stick around, as it's a MMO after all. They are expected to present some new games in the next year (probably they'll announce it at Blizzcon).
nickthegreek 7y ago
They have 2 other great properties, Diablo & StarCraft. Give me a World of either of those MMO and I will disappear for years.
- piffey 7y ago
  World of StarCraft would be the end of my productive adult life.
- MrMember 7y ago
  Activision/Blizzard like to pretend Diablo and Starcraft don't exist for some reason. Diablo 3 is one of the best selling games of all time, yet the next Diablo game is a free to play mobile game developed by a Chinese company known for their exploitative microtransactions model. Diablo 4 might be in development but we don't know anything about it and if it exists it's likely 5+ years from release. As far as I know Starcraft is mostly dead. They did the remastered version of the first game but I don't think there are any new projects on the horizon.
leftyted 7y ago
I have a much different perspective on this. This seems like a case where demand and financial motivations have happily converged. > Although It was and still is the best game I ever played, without constant releases, it just won't persist - World of Warcraft doesn't mean to be modeled as a game with infinite replay value without new releases. And there won't be new releases because would be branching the game. We'll see. As evidenced by a thriving private server community built on reverse engineered servers, a lot of people simply disagree. They want to play the old game and have no interest in seeing it updated. I always felt a bit sad that parts of my childhood are simply gone (i.e. patched out of existence). So I see this development as positive. It makes me happy. I think I feel like my dad felt when he bought The Prisoner (60s TV show that he watched as a kid) on VHS and we watched it together.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >They want to play the old game and have no interest in seeing it updated. This is subtly different from what I have heard. They'd love to have more features in Classic WoW, but present-day Activison Blizzard doesn't employ any of the original game designers, so more Classic isn't possible - only a leakage of present-day ideas into Classic (which they don't want).
soneil 7y ago
There is a roadmap for Classic releases, rolling through the major milestones of Vanilla - content that went through gated or staggered releases last time, is being staggered again this time. It's unclear what happens when that reaches its natural conclusion, however. Best guess is that it's going to depend on the userbase - which I suspect will see high attrition rate as the reality takes over the rose-tinted specs.
krzepah 7y ago
Well this is pretty much it I think tbh : / ; I will enjoy playing classic a bit tough !
wowzugzugger 7y ago
This is a relevant thread for clearing out everything related to this title, I just post here as it's an answer to loads under this thread, and will be beneficial to everyone here. Not affiliated by the way. Just a fan. Regardless: https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ct08c7/welcome_to_the_rclassicwow_subreddit_ama_with_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ct08c7/welcome_...
jjakque 7y ago
Personally, it become very disappointing when multiplayer games become less and less interesting for players who seeks for challenges and problem solving. I like to think today's gamers are mainly going for bragging rights, and studios are catering just that with IAP, loot box, decos etc. I checked out let's plays for Nier Automata, Zelda BotW and had my expectation blown out of the water. While on the other side of the spectrum I see big name franchises packed with microtransaction ideas yet no substances to back it up.

aeonflux 7y ago

I doubt branching would stop them from releasing new content for Classic WOW, if only people would be interested in playing that and paying for the game. I am sure they won't do full blown expansion for Classic, but new content within lvl 60 cap does actually make sense. It's also possible, that at some point, when people get bored with this content they can bump the tier to TBC (1st expansion). They could probably also keep all of those running at the same time, and people could choose which tier they wan't to stop them. It all comes down to people voting with their wallets I guess.

abledon 7y ago

its Activision wearing blizzard's dead skin. Most blizzard "minds" have left for other pastures.

gizmo385 7y ago
Oh come on, Activision has owned Blizzard for over a decade, during which Blizzard has released many of the most popular games and expansions for WoW.
- grawprog 7y ago
  But WoW was basically the death of the Warcraft series. There hasn't been a mainline game since.
- baud147258 7y ago
  Wasn't there a few articles recently (like end of last year) on how Activision was increasing their control of Blizzard, with, for example a voluntary redundancy plan?
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  Oh wow i didnt know that. The acquisition happened much earlier than I thought! Like who you replied to, i sort if blame activision for the death of blizzard, but that timeline doesnt really line up. I wonder whats going on? Changing demogrpahics, I suppose.
- Retric 7y ago
  Blizzard had a fair amount of inertia. They had been working on Diablo III (2012) for years but it shows how quickly Activation destroyed what made Blizzard great. The problem was not really core gameplay mechanics at release, it was the final balancing being completely out of whack that destroyed the game. This meant early review where generally positive, but gamers quickly stopped playing as late game was simply broken. Similarly, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are pure Blizzard. Cataclysm (2010) was controversial. On the other hand Mists of Pandaria (2012) was generally disliked, Warlords of Draenor (2014) was an inane mess.
  - fruffy 7y ago
    I'd disagree that Wrath of the Lich King was pure Blizzard, in fact I'd claim the final patches of Burning Crusade marked the beginning of the end for many players. IIrc, monetization efforts such as faction transfers[0,1] and pets were introduced during that expansion and "casual-friendly" tools such as the dungeon finder[2] and heirlooms[4] were developed to attract more players. All of these changes were already extremely controversial. [0] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer [1] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service [2] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder [4] https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom
davedx 7y ago
I dunno. In one of the AMA's one of the engineers spoke about rediscovering the code he wrote for vanilla WoW back when he was a younger programmer. That sounds like a pretty long stint at a single games company (many people don't last that long in the games industry as a whole). Also possible Blizzard asks their more senior people to do these AMA's I guess...
- muse900 7y ago
  This is my own perspective from what I've been reading/ seeing as a customer for the past few years and how the company has changed from its warcraft/diablo even world of warcraft days to now. Yes there are still people working for Blizzard that have been there for 15 years or longer. (Is that a good thing? yes and no. The motivation declines the longer you are at a specific job, not that it applies to everyone but I consider that to be a a big factor) The issue here though isn't about how long someone has been working on a project like WoW or for the company itself. The main issue is that like any other company out there that became successful it went in full corporate mode. That dev that has been working in wow since 2002 and before the game was even out, has probably very little say of what happens to the game. The game as any other game that is coming out from blizzard right now feels like its build by pure stats. It feels like a marketing specialist, sat down with a stats guru and they decided on what people like based on trends and what people are doing. That combined with the business people demanding more money, more game currency transactions, more gambling involved into the game and RNG being the top, have made games like WoW being awful to enjoy. The difference between Blizzard back then and Activision-Blizzard now is that Blizzard a small/medium game studio was building games that the team would love to play. WoW was a pure unexplored world ready to accommodate any kind of player - it was an adventure. Nowadays the WoW of today is like a themepark where every ride is very specific. Again personally I spent so much time in WoW during the first 2-3 expansions, and nowadays I want to play but the game is just not good enough. So as a player yes I'd say you are right to say there are people still working for Blizzard that were working back then but the small/medium studio that would put passion behind their games, turned into a corporation trying to build games based on stats. And I hope that there will be another indie company that will eventually become like valve, blizzard or ea. Us gamers need that, we need a company that will produce amazing games with loads of passion and not just for the moneygrab.
kyrra 7y ago
Vanilla server (run on private servers (pservers)) is actually a rather popular niche. This is bringing that experience back. How it does at-large will be interesting to see. The other argument is that Blizzard tends to do remastered releases of games ~15 years after their original release, and guess what, it's been 15 years. So it fits into that bucket as well. While it's definitely a grab at more players, people are also asking for it. Go poking around to see how much people are excited about this thing (there are various podcasts, https://countdowntoclassic.com/ https://countdowntoclassic.com/ being one I've listened to).

gizmo385 7y ago

> For more 'real' new games from Blizzard like Overwatch is Okayish, and Heroes of Storms (I can't even be sure about the name) are bad. This sounds like a matter of opinion. Overwatch is a relatively new game and Blizzard is continuing to release expansions for WoW. They have also long been rumored to be working on various new IPs (both in-universe and entirely original) for a few years now.

baud147258 7y ago
Overwatch is 3 years old, but it's relatively new in the sense of online-MP

scottmcf 7y ago

Overwatch and Hearthstone have been hugely, hugely successful for Blizzard. The Diablo mobile game is going to be a license to print money too, PR snafus or not.

vbezhenar 7y ago

They will remake The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, that's almost for sure. And some players actually like playing the same game. I think that I would happily play Classic like forever, if only enough players stick around, as it's a MMO after all. They are expected to present some new games in the next year (probably they'll announce it at Blizzcon).

nickthegreek 7y ago

They have 2 other great properties, Diablo & StarCraft. Give me a World of either of those MMO and I will disappear for years.

piffey 7y ago
World of StarCraft would be the end of my productive adult life.
MrMember 7y ago
Activision/Blizzard like to pretend Diablo and Starcraft don't exist for some reason. Diablo 3 is one of the best selling games of all time, yet the next Diablo game is a free to play mobile game developed by a Chinese company known for their exploitative microtransactions model. Diablo 4 might be in development but we don't know anything about it and if it exists it's likely 5+ years from release. As far as I know Starcraft is mostly dead. They did the remastered version of the first game but I don't think there are any new projects on the horizon.

leftyted 7y ago

I have a much different perspective on this. This seems like a case where demand and financial motivations have happily converged. > Although It was and still is the best game I ever played, without constant releases, it just won't persist - World of Warcraft doesn't mean to be modeled as a game with infinite replay value without new releases. And there won't be new releases because would be branching the game. We'll see. As evidenced by a thriving private server community built on reverse engineered servers, a lot of people simply disagree. They want to play the old game and have no interest in seeing it updated. I always felt a bit sad that parts of my childhood are simply gone (i.e. patched out of existence). So I see this development as positive. It makes me happy. I think I feel like my dad felt when he bought The Prisoner (60s TV show that he watched as a kid) on VHS and we watched it together.

whatshisface 7y ago
>They want to play the old game and have no interest in seeing it updated. This is subtly different from what I have heard. They'd love to have more features in Classic WoW, but present-day Activison Blizzard doesn't employ any of the original game designers, so more Classic isn't possible - only a leakage of present-day ideas into Classic (which they don't want).

soneil 7y ago

There is a roadmap for Classic releases, rolling through the major milestones of Vanilla - content that went through gated or staggered releases last time, is being staggered again this time. It's unclear what happens when that reaches its natural conclusion, however. Best guess is that it's going to depend on the userbase - which I suspect will see high attrition rate as the reality takes over the rose-tinted specs.

krzepah 7y ago

Well this is pretty much it I think tbh : / ; I will enjoy playing classic a bit tough !

wowzugzugger 7y ago

This is a relevant thread for clearing out everything related to this title, I just post here as it's an answer to loads under this thread, and will be beneficial to everyone here. Not affiliated by the way. Just a fan. Regardless: https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ct08c7/welcome_to_the_rclassicwow_subreddit_ama_with_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ct08c7/welcome_...

jjakque 7y ago

Personally, it become very disappointing when multiplayer games become less and less interesting for players who seeks for challenges and problem solving. I like to think today's gamers are mainly going for bragging rights, and studios are catering just that with IAP, loot box, decos etc. I checked out let's plays for Nier Automata, Zelda BotW and had my expectation blown out of the water. While on the other side of the spectrum I see big name franchises packed with microtransaction ideas yet no substances to back it up.