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> I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: "The Blizzard Way" doesn't work anymore. Fortnite releases content monthly/quarterly. Massive upda

> I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: "The Blizzard Way" doesn't work anymore. Fortnite releases content monthly/quarterly. Massive updates with huge out-of-game tie-ins, changing worlds, in-game events, etc. Other games have changed to match/compete. CoD and Valorant both implement similar season-pass style systems. Blizzard, on the other hand, insists on delaying/cancelling games, releasing "only when ready", continuing to lose touch with their playerbase, etc. They made it public that there would be no more Overwatch updates until Overwatch 2 (and also made it public that Overwatch 2 is actually a PvE expansion). There is no release date for OW2, so Overwatch players will be sitting with no new content for over a year. It is very obvious why Blizzard is losing players and not really competing in 2021.

AlexandrB 5y ago
This analysis is probably correct, but it's also depressing as hell because Fortnite is a shallow, money-hungry game. Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX.
- void_mint 5y ago
  Eh I mean. It's the biggest game in the world for a reason. It's shallow and money hungry to you, but a huge % of its players love it. > Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX. The people responsible for that iteration of Blizzard no longer work there, is the problem.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  I don't think there will ever be another successful game without "season passes" or other MTX. Overwatch may be used as a singular reason in the industry why the old model doesn't work. Fortnite can afford to keep artists and programmers on staff to develop a huge amount of content because they have consistent money coming in. This isn't the case for OW and I hypothesize this is why they struggled to crank out new content.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    I must be getting old. I don't get why everyone's so obsessed with new content or the lack thereof. Overwatch is already huge compared to older FPSes, adding more characters actively makes the game even harder to balance. New maps are incredibly hard to get right (Paris, HLC, Havana...).
    - cpuguy83 5y ago
      Quake3 is still one of my fav games. I could literally play the same map all day even. I think it may be more that the content is getting stale too quickly. Like place once and done.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Maps get stale when they lack depth and an evolving meta. Map size, assets, etc are almost completely irrelevant. Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.
      - xxpor 5y ago
        The meta is almost completely dependent on the hero balance at the time IME though, outside of Havana always having snipers at the top levels.
        Retric 5y ago
        StarCraft I meta evolved for decades even though blizzard stopped updating the game. It’s hard to get that kind of depth from a FPS game, but CSGO’s Dust II is iconic in part due to it’s constant refinement but also near perfect balance adds strategic depth when players explore subtle interactions.
        jrockway 5y ago
        I think you could revert Overwatch to the launch day build, and people would play it a lot differently now than they did back then. The community learning to play the game will happen no matter what balance changes show up on the backend; balance changes just force people out of their local maximum towards a new higher local maximum. But, you could do that without balance changes. Just try something new. There is probably a better strategy out there.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Capitalism broke down and now to exchange goods and services there is an awkward balance of giving everything away for free and implementing a subscription or other model of a perpetual payment scam.
- ehsankia 5y ago
  While Fortnite is one of the bigger games doing it, I don't think it's unique to Fortnite. Many games have seasons and constantly updating content. That's the bigger takeaway, not that Fortnite is successful with it. Players will no longer stick around a year or more for new content. Back in the days when there was a dozen different games, maybe, but nowadays there's so much other content out there, why would someone play Overwatch for 4 years straight?
- raydev 5y ago
  > Fortnite is a shallow Hate to take offense to this, but as someone who plays Fortnite competitively, it is absolutely not shallow. It's so much more than just another FPS.
  - gizmo385 5y ago
    I think Errant Signal has a great video [1] dissecting the appeal and breadth of content in Fortnite. It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly don't think you can call it "shallow". On the other side, Folding Ideas has a great video [2] (that the Errant Signal video references) dissecting the monetization systems in Fortnite and their negative aspects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0
    - raydev 5y ago
      Absolutely, I won't argue the dark patterns to get kids to spend their parents' money. It's kinda gross that it's simply the industry standard now. I just know it's by far the most interesting competitive real time game I've played in years.
      - Kaze404 5y ago
        Can you expand on what about it is so interesting to you? My only experience with Fortnite is watching my 13 year old brother practice crazy fast building, and every time I can't help but wonder why they'd rather play that than Apex Legends. I sincerely don't understand.
        raydev 5y ago
        Grinding fast builds helps you when you're fighting. :) Boxing someone and then editing a hole to shoot them is sort of "top tier" gameplay. In general, not only do you have to shoot people as in a typical FPS, but you have additional defenses you can put up (builds), you can use those builds for mobility and gaining height quickly, Epic constantly rotates the weapon set, they add/remove mobility items all the time which forces you to change how you move across the map, and the map changes. And then when I just want to chill there are all sorts of non-fight challenges and (relatively shallow) lore to chase down. It's never not interesting, and if you like grinding and seeing your own skills and reaction times improve, it's all there edit: I should link some videos. 1. One of the best players in the game right now getting 25+ kills in ranked play (ignore the rich kid chatter, he's 16 and already made nearly a million in comps which makes him insufferable sometimes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk 2. One of the best teams placing 2nd in the last FNCS, what typical "endgames" look like in tournaments (lots of yelling): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w
jonny_eh 5y ago
It's interesting that Hearthstone is the exception. They're regularly releasing new content. I still play daily after 5 years.
slowmovintarget 5y ago
"The Blizzard Way" works just fine. The problem is there isn't any Blizzard left in Blizzard, as near as we can tell. Put more directly the people that made the method work, don't work for Blizzard anymore.
egfx 5y ago
I basically agree with this kind of answer. I’m an old Blizzard alum circa 2000. Blizzard was a personal company filled with a medium sized collective of people doing ambitious work. It was about me getting patti melts with a mythical figure named Chris Metzen at lunch. And then inspired to spend the next 14 hours in the office on my level design application submission. No matter what we did it was either worth it and/or scrapped. This may be why blizzard had lost touch. It is very difficult to recapture the early magic. It’s been copied and even newness does not bring the original energy back because it lost touch.
novok 5y ago
I wouldn’t say that about fortnight, in the past 3 years fortnight revenue dropped from 5 billion to 3 billion, a similar %40 drop.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
The Blizzard Way absolutely works. The problem is Activision is your run-of-the-mill quarterly-targets-chasing company. Vivendi was very hands-off with Blizzard and allowed them to thrive and become the legendary name in gaming they once were.
ehsankia 5y ago
> there would be no more Overwatch updates until Overwatch 2 I honestly don't get wth they were thinking with OW2... In what world is it the right decision to fracture your game community in two?
obviouslynotme 5y ago
It still works. The problem is that when they used to delay titles, they came out as blockbusters. The death knell of Blizzard as a premier game maker was WoW. WoW became so amazingly profitable that Blizzard became "the WoW company." I remember being excited for Diablo 3 until I heard that they took away 8 player games so that D3 wouldn't compete with WoW. I never bought D3 and was completely unsurprised to find out no one liked it. No other game can survive in that company long term.
- enraged_camel 5y ago
  Diablo 3 was a disappointment at release due to the always online requirement (which was rare back then), the ultra boring campaign, real-money auction house, and no end game. Diablo 3's expansion though fixed all of those mistakes set a solid foundation. It was very good for several years. But then they stopped developing it, presumably (hopefully) because they started to pour all their resources into Diablo 4... which I have high hopes for, but with Path of Exile 2 on the horizon, I'm not going to be too disappointed if it flops.
  - wink 5y ago
    Fully agree. Bought D3 at launch, played a bit. Meh. Came back after the real-money AH was gone, then played the expansion - have sunk many hours into it since then, coming back again and again for a week of play in a fresh season. It's a good game now. And I like it a lot more than D2, that always felt too grindy and I hated that there were no talent resets. (AFAIK they added them at some point, but not when it was current.)
    - bmhin 5y ago
      The auction house was just a terrible, awful idea. It became pretty obvious that they broke the entire premise of the game loop: do farming runs, try to get good gear that aligns with your targeted build, get real excited when that thing you were chasing suddenly falls into your lap, update build and go for more loot to realize it further. Instead you would just grind hoping for general "good" things, flip them on the AH for gold, then use that money to buy the exact thing you wanted from said AH for your build. Completely killed the little human spark from the loot roulette that basically underpins why people play it.
bick_nyers 5y ago
The problem is that "The Blizzard Way" is not what Activision Blizzard has actually been doing for the past many years. Diablo 3 was a rocky launch, and the always online requirement was indicative of poor choices by management. Recall, that they wanted a healthy real money auction house (presumably to take their percentage off the top), and always online is typically utilized to block piracy. Of course, anyone with a brain and not currently trying to get a promotion knows, that piracy is a distribution problem. D3 came back into popularity with the Reaper of Souls expansion, a lot of the early problems in the game were fixed, and it still today is incredibly fun to play. In addition, the tone deafness of "do you guys not have phones?" tells you everything you need to know. Some dude at the top saw that mobile is a big trend (good job!), then drew from a hat a name of a Blizzard game, then blessed that title with his brilliance. Heroes of the Storm, they tried to push as an esport, and invested heavily into... everything except the game itself. What happened to build it and they will come? The truth is, it is a very fun MOBA, it fixes a lot of the problems of the entire genre. In doing so, it rewards team play so much more than being a lone hero. You would think it helps the competitive scene, but in the case of the MOBA playerbase that's often the most toxic and egocentric, it doesn't mesh well. They could have easily enjoyed having the most player friendly, low toxicity MOBA experience that tons of people crave. But no, if there wasn't a world championship scene on par with League of Legends, it wasn't worth Blizzard's time. Hearthstone had some problems catering to China but I do think with the recent battle pass system and the increased in game economy, there are some great steps in the right direction. Good turnarounds in the monetization area for sure. Overwatch you would be surprised to know has some very impressive player numbers even now, for a game that gets no updates. Now that Jeff Kaplan is gone, I'm afraid the last of the best of original Blizzard are gone. I really, really, really hope Overwatch 2 is good. I will give it a few solid chances and I will revisit it. I fear the worst though, I don't think Jeff would leave his baby like that. Warcraft 3 Remastered was a disgrace by management. Truly. You could have literally, and I mean literally, took Warcraft 3 source code, and dropped in touched up models, sounds, and textures. It would have sold like crazy. That's it, no excuse. Why did they have to reinvent the wheel, with a team comprised mostly of interns and fresh college graduates, rush it, with no communication with the delays, oh and did I mention that the main menu is an unoptimized web app running on chromium? The story of Activision Blizzard is monetization for the sake of monetization alone, and management decisions formed solely on the basis that they sound good to other managers. Overwatch had the pleasure of being shielded by Jeff Kaplan, so it suffered less than it had to. The other large projects usually launch like crap, but after management has had their way with the game for the first year or two, the devs slowly but surely bring it back and make it fun at the very least. Do they have the financial resources on their side? No. But be damn sure they will improve and polish the core gameplay loops. I have watched this slow death since around 2014 at least, but it's hard to know where along the way the roots became so badly damaged that Blizzard became destined to be EA-like.
jrockway 5y ago
Overwatch had that April Fools card last month, and it was a ton of fun. They should do something like that every month -- shake up the core of the game for no good reason whatsoever. There's no way to monetize that, though, so I guess it's not a priority. That's the downside, for users, of the "buy once" model. Unlike most people here, I have fun pretty much every time I open the game. It's exactly my style. Nearly 100% uptime where you're gaming. Lots of dumb voice lines and silly characters. Always something to do or see or be amused by. I didn't play computer games at all before Overwatch, I bought it on a whim, and it became my thing. There is always some way to play better, a new hero to explore, new custom games, new friends to meet, etc. I'm still getting a lot of value for that initial $40, probably more value than I've ever gotten out of anything. At least for me, Blizzard made something I didn't even know I wanted. That is really impressive for a Fortune 500 company.
lightfooted 5y ago
> Blizzard, on the other hand, insists on delaying/cancelling games, releasing "only when ready" Starcraft Ghost :(
- jwilber 5y ago
  Seriously, I’m so bummed this never was released. Still remember the gameinformer cover piece on it :,(

AlexandrB 5y ago

This analysis is probably correct, but it's also depressing as hell because Fortnite is a shallow, money-hungry game. Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX.

void_mint 5y ago
Eh I mean. It's the biggest game in the world for a reason. It's shallow and money hungry to you, but a huge % of its players love it. > Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX. The people responsible for that iteration of Blizzard no longer work there, is the problem.
nemothekid 5y ago
I don't think there will ever be another successful game without "season passes" or other MTX. Overwatch may be used as a singular reason in the industry why the old model doesn't work. Fortnite can afford to keep artists and programmers on staff to develop a huge amount of content because they have consistent money coming in. This isn't the case for OW and I hypothesize this is why they struggled to crank out new content.
- xxpor 5y ago
  I must be getting old. I don't get why everyone's so obsessed with new content or the lack thereof. Overwatch is already huge compared to older FPSes, adding more characters actively makes the game even harder to balance. New maps are incredibly hard to get right (Paris, HLC, Havana...).
  - cpuguy83 5y ago
    Quake3 is still one of my fav games. I could literally play the same map all day even. I think it may be more that the content is getting stale too quickly. Like place once and done.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Maps get stale when they lack depth and an evolving meta. Map size, assets, etc are almost completely irrelevant. Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.
    - xxpor 5y ago
      The meta is almost completely dependent on the hero balance at the time IME though, outside of Havana always having snipers at the top levels.
      - Retric 5y ago
        StarCraft I meta evolved for decades even though blizzard stopped updating the game. It’s hard to get that kind of depth from a FPS game, but CSGO’s Dust II is iconic in part due to it’s constant refinement but also near perfect balance adds strategic depth when players explore subtle interactions.
        jrockway 5y ago
        I think you could revert Overwatch to the launch day build, and people would play it a lot differently now than they did back then. The community learning to play the game will happen no matter what balance changes show up on the backend; balance changes just force people out of their local maximum towards a new higher local maximum. But, you could do that without balance changes. Just try something new. There is probably a better strategy out there.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Capitalism broke down and now to exchange goods and services there is an awkward balance of giving everything away for free and implementing a subscription or other model of a perpetual payment scam.
ehsankia 5y ago
While Fortnite is one of the bigger games doing it, I don't think it's unique to Fortnite. Many games have seasons and constantly updating content. That's the bigger takeaway, not that Fortnite is successful with it. Players will no longer stick around a year or more for new content. Back in the days when there was a dozen different games, maybe, but nowadays there's so much other content out there, why would someone play Overwatch for 4 years straight?
raydev 5y ago
> Fortnite is a shallow Hate to take offense to this, but as someone who plays Fortnite competitively, it is absolutely not shallow. It's so much more than just another FPS.
- gizmo385 5y ago
  I think Errant Signal has a great video [1] dissecting the appeal and breadth of content in Fortnite. It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly don't think you can call it "shallow". On the other side, Folding Ideas has a great video [2] (that the Errant Signal video references) dissecting the monetization systems in Fortnite and their negative aspects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0
  - raydev 5y ago
    Absolutely, I won't argue the dark patterns to get kids to spend their parents' money. It's kinda gross that it's simply the industry standard now. I just know it's by far the most interesting competitive real time game I've played in years.
    - Kaze404 5y ago
      Can you expand on what about it is so interesting to you? My only experience with Fortnite is watching my 13 year old brother practice crazy fast building, and every time I can't help but wonder why they'd rather play that than Apex Legends. I sincerely don't understand.
      - raydev 5y ago
        Grinding fast builds helps you when you're fighting. :) Boxing someone and then editing a hole to shoot them is sort of "top tier" gameplay. In general, not only do you have to shoot people as in a typical FPS, but you have additional defenses you can put up (builds), you can use those builds for mobility and gaining height quickly, Epic constantly rotates the weapon set, they add/remove mobility items all the time which forces you to change how you move across the map, and the map changes. And then when I just want to chill there are all sorts of non-fight challenges and (relatively shallow) lore to chase down. It's never not interesting, and if you like grinding and seeing your own skills and reaction times improve, it's all there edit: I should link some videos. 1. One of the best players in the game right now getting 25+ kills in ranked play (ignore the rich kid chatter, he's 16 and already made nearly a million in comps which makes him insufferable sometimes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk 2. One of the best teams placing 2nd in the last FNCS, what typical "endgames" look like in tournaments (lots of yelling): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w

jonny_eh 5y ago

It's interesting that Hearthstone is the exception. They're regularly releasing new content. I still play daily after 5 years.

slowmovintarget 5y ago

"The Blizzard Way" works just fine. The problem is there isn't any Blizzard left in Blizzard, as near as we can tell. Put more directly the people that made the method work, don't work for Blizzard anymore.

egfx 5y ago

I basically agree with this kind of answer. I’m an old Blizzard alum circa 2000. Blizzard was a personal company filled with a medium sized collective of people doing ambitious work. It was about me getting patti melts with a mythical figure named Chris Metzen at lunch. And then inspired to spend the next 14 hours in the office on my level design application submission. No matter what we did it was either worth it and/or scrapped. This may be why blizzard had lost touch. It is very difficult to recapture the early magic. It’s been copied and even newness does not bring the original energy back because it lost touch.

novok 5y ago

I wouldn’t say that about fortnight, in the past 3 years fortnight revenue dropped from 5 billion to 3 billion, a similar %40 drop.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

The Blizzard Way absolutely works. The problem is Activision is your run-of-the-mill quarterly-targets-chasing company. Vivendi was very hands-off with Blizzard and allowed them to thrive and become the legendary name in gaming they once were.

ehsankia 5y ago

> there would be no more Overwatch updates until Overwatch 2 I honestly don't get wth they were thinking with OW2... In what world is it the right decision to fracture your game community in two?

obviouslynotme 5y ago

It still works. The problem is that when they used to delay titles, they came out as blockbusters. The death knell of Blizzard as a premier game maker was WoW. WoW became so amazingly profitable that Blizzard became "the WoW company." I remember being excited for Diablo 3 until I heard that they took away 8 player games so that D3 wouldn't compete with WoW. I never bought D3 and was completely unsurprised to find out no one liked it. No other game can survive in that company long term.

enraged_camel 5y ago
Diablo 3 was a disappointment at release due to the always online requirement (which was rare back then), the ultra boring campaign, real-money auction house, and no end game. Diablo 3's expansion though fixed all of those mistakes set a solid foundation. It was very good for several years. But then they stopped developing it, presumably (hopefully) because they started to pour all their resources into Diablo 4... which I have high hopes for, but with Path of Exile 2 on the horizon, I'm not going to be too disappointed if it flops.
- wink 5y ago
  Fully agree. Bought D3 at launch, played a bit. Meh. Came back after the real-money AH was gone, then played the expansion - have sunk many hours into it since then, coming back again and again for a week of play in a fresh season. It's a good game now. And I like it a lot more than D2, that always felt too grindy and I hated that there were no talent resets. (AFAIK they added them at some point, but not when it was current.)
  - bmhin 5y ago
    The auction house was just a terrible, awful idea. It became pretty obvious that they broke the entire premise of the game loop: do farming runs, try to get good gear that aligns with your targeted build, get real excited when that thing you were chasing suddenly falls into your lap, update build and go for more loot to realize it further. Instead you would just grind hoping for general "good" things, flip them on the AH for gold, then use that money to buy the exact thing you wanted from said AH for your build. Completely killed the little human spark from the loot roulette that basically underpins why people play it.

bick_nyers 5y ago

The problem is that "The Blizzard Way" is not what Activision Blizzard has actually been doing for the past many years. Diablo 3 was a rocky launch, and the always online requirement was indicative of poor choices by management. Recall, that they wanted a healthy real money auction house (presumably to take their percentage off the top), and always online is typically utilized to block piracy. Of course, anyone with a brain and not currently trying to get a promotion knows, that piracy is a distribution problem. D3 came back into popularity with the Reaper of Souls expansion, a lot of the early problems in the game were fixed, and it still today is incredibly fun to play. In addition, the tone deafness of "do you guys not have phones?" tells you everything you need to know. Some dude at the top saw that mobile is a big trend (good job!), then drew from a hat a name of a Blizzard game, then blessed that title with his brilliance. Heroes of the Storm, they tried to push as an esport, and invested heavily into... everything except the game itself. What happened to build it and they will come? The truth is, it is a very fun MOBA, it fixes a lot of the problems of the entire genre. In doing so, it rewards team play so much more than being a lone hero. You would think it helps the competitive scene, but in the case of the MOBA playerbase that's often the most toxic and egocentric, it doesn't mesh well. They could have easily enjoyed having the most player friendly, low toxicity MOBA experience that tons of people crave. But no, if there wasn't a world championship scene on par with League of Legends, it wasn't worth Blizzard's time. Hearthstone had some problems catering to China but I do think with the recent battle pass system and the increased in game economy, there are some great steps in the right direction. Good turnarounds in the monetization area for sure. Overwatch you would be surprised to know has some very impressive player numbers even now, for a game that gets no updates. Now that Jeff Kaplan is gone, I'm afraid the last of the best of original Blizzard are gone. I really, really, really hope Overwatch 2 is good. I will give it a few solid chances and I will revisit it. I fear the worst though, I don't think Jeff would leave his baby like that. Warcraft 3 Remastered was a disgrace by management. Truly. You could have literally, and I mean literally, took Warcraft 3 source code, and dropped in touched up models, sounds, and textures. It would have sold like crazy. That's it, no excuse. Why did they have to reinvent the wheel, with a team comprised mostly of interns and fresh college graduates, rush it, with no communication with the delays, oh and did I mention that the main menu is an unoptimized web app running on chromium? The story of Activision Blizzard is monetization for the sake of monetization alone, and management decisions formed solely on the basis that they sound good to other managers. Overwatch had the pleasure of being shielded by Jeff Kaplan, so it suffered less than it had to. The other large projects usually launch like crap, but after management has had their way with the game for the first year or two, the devs slowly but surely bring it back and make it fun at the very least. Do they have the financial resources on their side? No. But be damn sure they will improve and polish the core gameplay loops. I have watched this slow death since around 2014 at least, but it's hard to know where along the way the roots became so badly damaged that Blizzard became destined to be EA-like.

jrockway 5y ago

Overwatch had that April Fools card last month, and it was a ton of fun. They should do something like that every month -- shake up the core of the game for no good reason whatsoever. There's no way to monetize that, though, so I guess it's not a priority. That's the downside, for users, of the "buy once" model. Unlike most people here, I have fun pretty much every time I open the game. It's exactly my style. Nearly 100% uptime where you're gaming. Lots of dumb voice lines and silly characters. Always something to do or see or be amused by. I didn't play computer games at all before Overwatch, I bought it on a whim, and it became my thing. There is always some way to play better, a new hero to explore, new custom games, new friends to meet, etc. I'm still getting a lot of value for that initial $40, probably more value than I've ever gotten out of anything. At least for me, Blizzard made something I didn't even know I wanted. That is really impressive for a Fortune 500 company.

lightfooted 5y ago

> Blizzard, on the other hand, insists on delaying/cancelling games, releasing "only when ready" Starcraft Ghost :(

jwilber 5y ago
Seriously, I’m so bummed this never was released. Still remember the gameinformer cover piece on it :,(