I feel like their entire mission changed around the time of their merger with Activision. I remember reading a long time ago the original devs saying they made

I feel like their entire mission changed around the time of their merger with Activision. I remember reading a long time ago the original devs saying they made games they would want to play, and I believe it showed. The most obvious example of that to me were the game stories. Back then the stories and background lore had depth and were fascinatingly interesting. Characters felt like they had real motivations and reasons for doing things, the worlds felt believable, gritty, and sometimes unforgiving. I don't know if it was Activision's influence, many of the original devs moving on, or World of Warcraft coming out, but since then everything about the company seems to have changed. So much of what they do nowadays just seem like money grabs. They release pay to win content meant to be addictive, dumbed down their art style to looking like cartoons that appeal to the least common denominator, follow trends instead of doing anything innovating, and seem to have completely stopped caring about making any interesting story. The villains in Diablo 3 were comically badly written. At some point they even tried to force users to use their REAL WORLD names on battle.net[1]. It really isn't the same company as it used to be in the early 2000's. [1]https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzard-requires-real-names-on-forums https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzard-requires-rea...