[HN Gopher] Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active p...
___________________________________________________________________
Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in
three years
Author : mfilion
Score : 205 points
Date : 2021-05-05 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (massivelyop.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (massivelyop.com)
| Covzire wrote:
| I still can't believe they butchered WC3:reforged so badly. It
| could have been a massive boon for them were it not for the
| hideously greedy ToS along with all the technical issues and
| straight up downgrades from the original in terms of multiplayer.
|
| There have to be some epic stories of mismanagement or hubris, if
| only someone would tell them.
| david422 wrote:
| WC3 was my favorite game ever, so much so that I bought
| multiple copies. I calculated that I probably played so much
| that my price per hour was a couple of cents.
|
| But I didn't buy reforged after how bad it was - and still is.
| It should have been easy money for them, and instead it was
| just a half finished money grab.
| Jetrel wrote:
| Ironically, having been a huge WC3 fan; I felt like reforged
| was great. I bought it, loved it, and am still routinely
| playing it (in fact, I've picked it up as a semi-regular
| routine, whereas I'd kinda mostly stopped playing the
| original). I love the new graphics, the bugs were pretty
| minor and quickly fixed, and the stuff the community
| complained about was either irrelevant (complaining about the
| game being heavier when it runs really fast on my not-very-
| good gaming rig), or was not a regression against the prior
| version of the game (not delivering the promised cutscene
| overhauls didn't make the existing game worse). The community
| complaints about the mod license changes were like - yeah, I
| _sympathize_ , but it's not relevant to my enjoyment of the
| game. I get that blizzard doesn't want to have its lunch
| stolen a second time by LoL/Dota, but it's not a change that
| had any negative impact on me as a player.
|
| If I'm angry about anything with blizzard, it's that they've
| stiffed a bunch of these existing communities by not giving
| long-term support+content updates. Like, reforged had pretty
| much the same level of bugs or unfinished stuff practically
| every game has on release, but after a couple months of the
| devs fixing a bunch of these, blizzard's management got cold
| feet and laid the whole team off. We might have gotten the
| promised cutscene upgrades. But now - now we'll _never_ get
| them.
|
| SC2 has this wicked game mode, "co-op commanders", that
| supposedly is one of their most popular things (and directly
| sells DLC), and what do they do? They stop making more
| content for it - all they'd have to do is make more DLC, and
| it'd print money. I've been playing a bunch of it lately, and
| I'm just plain mad, knowing that what I'm playing is truly
| all I'll ever get.
|
| I genuinely don't get Blizzard, these days. I could
| understand them diverting their investment towards a far more
| lucrative pot (much like how Valve has doubled down on their
| real moneymakers like Dota/CS:GO, at the expense of i.e.
| Portal), but ... what is Blizzard even investing in? I
| thought Overwatch and Hearthstone were the new hotness, but
| if even those are getting stiffed, and blizzard's making
| money hand-over-fist, then...
|
| ... ? Like, what's even _left?_
| totony wrote:
| >I get that blizzard doesn't want to have its lunch stolen
| a second time by LoL/Dota
|
| But it's not stolen -- they didn't invent the genre,
| someone did off of their platform.
|
| >I love the new graphics, the bugs were pretty minor and
| quickly fixed, and the stuff the community complained about
| was either irrelevant [...] or was not a regression against
| the prior version of the game
|
| I have played the game a lot since it came out, and that is
| not true. There were multiple network-related issues that
| might have been in the original game, but were fixed by
| custom hosting bots long ago (GHost++), which cannot be
| used anymore (so you're stuck with high-latency). Some were
| not though, you could wait ~45 seconds for someone to fix
| their network issues, whereas now they get kicked at the
| first lag from online games.
|
| There were also gameplay-related changes which have
| somewhat been fixed, although custom game development has
| become a huge pain, with crashes and desyncs way more
| common then they used to be (even before the custom hosting
| bots).
|
| Arguably they didn't break the normal games AFAIK (but they
| did break the ladder, especially 2v2, 3v3, etc), although
| there are no more tournaments, but the main fun in wc3 were
| the custom games and they:
|
| 1) Made user-hostile ToS changes (why? map makers are
| working for free to make your game better)
|
| 2) Broke the netcode making desyncs way more likely and
| removed custom bots making latency way higher (playing USA
| + EU is now a huge pain because of where their servers are
| hosted)
|
| 3) Broke an important part of the community (clans, channel
| bots, etc)
|
| 4) Made the client way laggier and heavier
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| I used my first salary to buy WC3 on 2003, so I may have an
| "exaggerated" emotional connection with that game. Two months
| before the release it was clear that they could not polish the
| (many) rough edges that the remaster had. Removing features
| like ladder and tournaments was something so unprofessional and
| unreal that even today I can't digest it.
|
| Looking at the screens for the Diablo 2 remaster, it looks like
| that they are using the same outsourced art company to create
| the new models, as its style is way too similar to the WC3
| remaster - I believe that it will flop too.
| blibble wrote:
| diablo 2 has been entirely outsourced
|
| as Blizzard aren't working on it: it's possible it might
| actually be good
| totony wrote:
| As much as I agree with you about issues with wc3 (and poor
| art style that didn't fit the old cartoonish-look), I have
| seen some people play the d2 remaster alpha on twitch and the
| changes look way more reasonable. We'll have to see
| pradn wrote:
| It's incredible that a "remaster" could destroy a game like
| that. I can't even go play a game that I love, a game from my
| childhood, with an art style and gameplay that still holds up
| unless I torrent the old client and connect to third-party
| multiplayer servers.
|
| For artists, there's a concept of "moral rights". Art may not
| be destroyed senselessly, no matter who owns it, because it
| goes against the human creative spirit - rights like that. We
| need similar rights for old games. You can sell a new remaster
| or even turn down the servers, but you can't remake it into a
| monstrosity that you can't opt out of.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's like they were trying to destroy any evidence that
| Warcraft 3 was ever anything special. I guess that's one way
| to dissuade people from making obvious comparisons.
| Covzire wrote:
| Let's say WC3 had been a smashing technical success and it
| delivered everything everyone wanted in terms of the
| remastered graphics etc, it still wouldn't have been very
| successful.
|
| Their legal team forced the ToS to include a clause where
| they claim any and all player-made content, stories or
| intellectual property belonged to Activision-Blizzard and
| not to the modders who made them. They did this because
| they believed they "lost" DOTA to Valve, instead of
| realizing that DoTA originally helped them sell a lot of
| copies of WC3 and they had no moral right to the IP anyway,
| something the courts recognized, thankfully.
|
| I have a wild theory that no honorable veteran Blizzard dev
| actually wanted to work on Reforged because they knew about
| Legal's position and therefore knew Reforged had no chance
| of actually matching it's former glory days. The chance
| that a lot of modders would want to create content for it
| were effectively zero.
| Toine wrote:
| They're losing product-market fit.
| uyt wrote:
| I am pretty hyped about playing d2 again with "Diablo 2
| Resurrected". But I guess it's a bad sign that the most exciting
| thing they have going is a remake of a 20 year old past glory.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Diablo 4 look good with its trailer but who know if they going
| to botch it like Diablo III until Reaper fix.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I'm way less excited for D2R. I was a hardcore Diablo 2 player,
| but the D2 endgame was spamming Diablo runs over and over, Cow
| Level farming, and one or two other things I've forgotten; not
| exactly dynamic content. Path of Exile has taken D2 game design
| to the next level, and the level after that, and even that game
| is aging (PoE2 is in the works). Obviously World of Warcraft
| Classic is the counter-example that will come to mind, but even
| original WoW still had plenty of content and grinds to do once
| you hit 60 (Booty Bay pirate hat, anyone?). Nothing in D2 will
| keep people around for more than a week or two once they've
| rediscovered how to play it.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Coming soon... WC3 3.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| They are trowing their traditional player-base under the bus and
| focus on milking the whales. While player numbers are
| dramatically tanking, ARPU and revenue is up.
|
| Their developer churn is through the roof, having a huge impact
| on their capability to ship quality which they compensate with
| shoveling in low effort extrinsic reward content systems.
| mbesto wrote:
| It's worth noting that this is specific to _Blizzard_.
|
| They have:
|
| - an MMO (not a growth area compared to other genres)
|
| - a FPS that tried to create a unique twist
|
| - a card game that essentially created a new genre (with a
| commercial ceiling)
|
| - remastered classics
|
| Compared to the rest of the market that is growing in the
| following areas:
|
| - large mobile presence
|
| - MOBA (HotS has been discontinued)
|
| - battle Royale
| srg0 wrote:
| counterpoints:
|
| - HS is strong on mobile
|
| - OW is arguably a MOBA/FPS hybrid
|
| - CoD/warzone is the most streamed battle royale on twitch
| t-writescode wrote:
| I've said before that it's what PUBG should have been (and
| could have been, given enough polish)
| je42 wrote:
| it seems blizzard is also screwing up WoW.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilaeRQK_FDQ
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| I quit playing overwatch and hots when they sided with SJWs (and
| by extension censorship and china). I also skipped tlou2 and
| other big titles.
|
| I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right
| to use ugly speech.
|
| I'm not saying I expect blizzard to not exercise its rights as a
| private company, but I am saying I dont support companies that
| dont support unfettered free speech.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _I 'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the
| right to use ugly speech._"
|
| Then why are you hiding behind a throwaway account?
|
| > " _I am saying I dont support companies that dont support
| unfettered free speech._ "
|
| Which companies do you support? Are there any which support
| unfettered free speech on their platforms?
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| Because I can? I said nothing about anonymity. Odd...
|
| I'm from an age when anominity was a good thing. But do
| encourage all the current folks to move away from it, because
| I want to see them fail.
|
| Lol I dont support any social media company. Social media is
| a net negative for the human experience, but that's just my
| opinion. I'm just a person who found the internet more fun
| before it needed to be safe for day time television watchers.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Because I can? I said nothing about anonymity. Odd..._
| "
|
| Not odd at all. You claim to be "standing up against
| something" but you aren't, you're not standing there,
| you're hiding. Your actions undermine your words. Rosa
| Parks didn't write an anonymous letter to the editor about
| people's right to sit on bus seats. Those who did write
| anonymous letters to the editor about it don't get to say
| "I'm standing up for black rights" because they ...
| weren't.
| kaliali wrote:
| The internet was more fun until the crybabies and control
| freaks ruined it.
|
| This site is like a Reddit for the Silicon Valley
| community, you're not going to find much support. They will
| soon completely fail though, their ideology doesn't create
| value. Just keep watching.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's going to get real awkward when he realizes his comment
| was flagged, thus prohibiting his "free speech"...
| aaomidi wrote:
| Good, players like you leaving makes the game a better and
| safer place for everyone.
|
| Players like you, and Blizzard's inaction to do something about
| it is why I left.
|
| Players Overwatch with my girl friends has been the worst
| experience. Players any multiplayer game as a woman just seems
| to be toxic. I expected more from Blizzard here.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| I'm with the GP, companies aren't there to censor (unless
| it's a kids game). I don't like the toxic nature of many who
| play games, but at most the company should look into
| harassment / abuse, not censor words. My reasoning is Poe's
| Law. One could be using a would-be censored word or phrase to
| describe something in a non-offending way. A farmer might
| say, "I have several bitches to sell, would you be
| interested?" Here, bitches is used appropriately to describe
| female dogs. My example may be shite, though I hope the point
| is made.
|
| (Nevermind the use of exposure therapy to make certain
| words/events less impactful on an individual)
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| Just want to chime in and say I'm actually personally very
| affable and I do not rant and rave online. I just have no
| issues with those who do.
|
| Smells to me we're a couple of crying fat kids away from
| banning people for pulling a Leroy Jenkins.
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| Exactly. I can tell where I'm not wanted. Enjoy!
|
| Edit: sorry I caught this before your edit to include popular
| buzzwords like "toxic". Good for you, I'm actually looking
| for games and experiences that are outside the realm of
| sanitized things my mother would like.
|
| And I'm sorry about your girlfriend, it was likely my
| girlfriend giving her so much shit. She's a real sailor when
| she gets going. And mean too!
| meristohm wrote:
| "Girl friends" isn't the same as "girlfriend", and your
| mother does not represent all mothers.
|
| It seems aaomidi is recounting personal experience, and
| from my own experience, when a person earnestly uses
| "toxic" to describe how other participants behave it is
| often an apt description.
|
| If you are human, you're a person with emotions. When a
| person describes something you might enjoy as toxic, are
| you able to pause and notice what you're feeling, and then
| choose whether or not to act?
|
| I did this before responding to you, in an effort to help
| others that struggle with this, (I do, in some contexts).
| If a person still chooses to respond in a dismissive
| manner, or worse, then perhaps they enjoy being mean to
| others.
| bluescrn wrote:
| World of Warcraft was so far ahead of the competition that it
| basically killed the MMO genre. Even 15+ years later, it's not
| really been beaten. But players have drifted away, or just grown
| up and have less time for gaming.
|
| It's kind of a shame we never got to find out what MMOs could
| have become if the market had remained more competitive.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| That explains why OW on Switch was on a 50% sale about one month
| ago (pumping playerbase numbers just before the report)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You can thank MBAs for the demise of every American company.
|
| MBAs are the reason China will eat the US.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| MBAs and excessive IP protections. The Warcraft 3 mapping
| community spawned entire new game genres and franchises.
| Warcraft 3 Reforged style TOSs means that probably won't happen
| again.
| time0ut wrote:
| The most recent WoW expansion was beautiful looking but so boring
| and convoluted I lost interest after a matter of days. I am
| playing classic WoW, which really stands the test of time as a
| game.
|
| That said, classic WoW exposes Blizzard for what they are even
| more than their recent expansion flops. Where you could write off
| the short comings of the expansion as them trying something
| innovative and failing, their support for classic is shocking
| compared to what it once was and make it apparent they are just a
| shambling zombie shell of a company.
| bob1029 wrote:
| What I don't understand is the financial equation around AAA
| studios like Blizzard.
|
| Our software company is not even 10 people big and we are able to
| deliver extremely high quality software multiple times per day to
| many customers, while supporting a wide range of business
| contexts. The annual budget for our whole team is something like
| $750k. Our part of the AWS bill is less than $400/m, but we seem
| to make due and get shit done.
|
| Blizzard in particular has something like 2 billion dollars in
| free cash flow to work with. Obviously not exactly the same
| problem domain but effectively the same sort of cost structure
| around core product development. Nothing ever works out linear at
| scales like this, but even assuming a 10x loss in efficiencies of
| scale (i.e. due to organizational overhead), you would still have
| resources to run ~200 copies of our software team in parallel on
| ~200 unique projects. How many teams would have to succeed before
| that model pays off? 1/200 figuring out how to build a proper WoW
| killer could get the job done...
|
| To Blizzard I say: Take all that capital the gaming community has
| been injecting into your money bin for the last 2 decades, and
| invest in an internal startup culture. Spin out tens or hundreds
| of smaller teams with their own independent creative direction to
| try out new ideas. If you find some hits on one of these teams,
| maybe you take a less successful team and add their resources to
| the more successful one. In this way, you can dramatically expand
| the portfolio & diversity of the product base. This has caveats
| for any "common" creative vision, but judging by the comments in
| this thread, you may want to re-evaluate any convictions around
| that idea.
| blibble wrote:
| this is more or less what they did with Hearthstone and
| Overwatch
|
| but then the standard development process sunk in, at least to
| Overwatch, and now the content pipeline is dead
| skystarman wrote:
| If this was as easy as you say Disney and other major media
| companies wouldn't have failed miserably at entering the gaming
| space.
|
| It's like thinking if you have $100 Million and the right
| production schedule, crew, actors, and producers in place and
| they work really hard you'll have a major hollywood
| blockbuster!
|
| Creative arts don't work like that.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| Have you ever seen the source code for AAA games? It's quite
| intense stuff.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| 200 copies of a 10 people team will develop 0 AAA games.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Spin out tens or hundreds of smaller teams with their own
| independent creative direction to try out new ideas.
|
| My impression is that big game studios would rather put all
| their eggs in one basket where they're (fairly) certain they
| can make a decent return rather than spreading it around a
| bunch of smaller projects and hoping one of them turns out to
| be Minecraft. This is the same dynamic driving large movie
| studios to invest huge sums of money in a shrinking number of
| huge blockbusters.
| catmanjan wrote:
| Yep another thing is that gaming is a zero sum game -
| blizzard would be competing with itself for player base
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| i used to be a active Blizzard's game player. i started to play
| WOW since the Cataclysm release but each expansion is the same
| stuff over and over again (go gather this, go kill this...etc.).
| I stopped my subscription a while back. i only play it with if i
| got enough gold to pay for the subscription time and time to
| play.
|
| Hearthstone is a money sink with each expansion release the cost
| of acquire new expansion cards is too much. the wild format is
| not balance. Blizzard rarely trying to rebalance the card after
| the expansion goes to wild. after buying couple expansion bundle.
| i stop purchasing each expansion bundle. i only buy some special
| bundle.
|
| Heroes of the Storm, its an interesting take on MOBA but it seem
| like Blizzard is abandoning it. i've spend some money on early
| deal but eventually stop playing the game.
|
| Diablo II and III, II is a great game. III suck until Blizzard
| fix it with Reaper of Souls and they wanted $15 for diablo iii
| rise of the necromancer that just add another class.
| boringg wrote:
| They should create a battle royal RTS - bring the best parts of
| Starcraft II / WC3 and integrate into a Fortnite environment. If
| they could pull that off, would be unreal.
| donatj wrote:
| I'd almost entirely stopped playing Overwatch for a couple years,
| but I got back in recently and feel like the tone is overall
| better than it had been. I think a lot of the toxic players may
| have actually just moved on?
| derekdahmer wrote:
| As someone whose been playing regularly for the past 4 years,
| 2-2-2 role lock was by far the biggest reduction in toxicity.
| It removed an entire class of bad communication like "switch
| off DPS" as well as the stress of convincing 5 strangers to use
| a particular comp at the beginning of the game. Before role
| lock it seemed like every single game was a freaking argument.
|
| They also released player reporting and endorsements though
| it's harder to say what the overall impact of those are.
| Svperstar wrote:
| I was super hyped for Overwatch, I loved my time with the beta.
| I thought Overwatch was going to be the new Counter-Strike,
| Quake, or Halo. One of those games that just defines its time
| period.
|
| Then it launched and I got bored after 1 month. Too few maps
| too few variety.
| elliekelly wrote:
| And whatever algorithm they use for match-making should just
| be completely scrapped so they can start over. It seems like
| most games are really lopsided - you're either stomping on
| someone or getting stomped on. Maybe it's different in the
| high-ranked competitive play but the hard-fought matches that
| go back and forth until the very end are infrequent, in my
| experience, and those are the best part of playing!
| blibble wrote:
| this is a nature of the game's design: ultimate advantage
| snowballing
|
| short of reducing the power of the ultimates: I'm not sure
| they can do too much about it
| boringg wrote:
| Also worth noting - while they lost 30% of their overall player
| base -- if they bring in a big game they will probably gain a
| considerable amount in the door. So to someone's comment the fact
| that their rate of attrition is so long given the lack of new
| content in their products and low turnover if actually kind of
| impressive.
| freshair wrote:
| _" Do you guys not have phones?"_ -Blizzard staff in 2018, in
| response to booing fans upset that Blizzard wouldn't make a PC
| version of a game those same fans obviously _wanted_ to play.
|
| This company has been contemptuous of their players for years.
| They fell into that classic trap of _" If we [do something that
| will alienate all our customers] we can get 10x as many customers
| from [untapped market]"_ As anybody should have been able to
| foresee, the old customers were indeed alienated and the new
| customers never materialized.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think this is more of the enthusiasts vs. causal user
| conundrum. Gaming has made the transition to a mature industry
| where mass market appeal is more profitable than a great
| product aimed at enthusiasts.
|
| I can't really blame either side. It sucks for enthusiasts who
| want games that are complex, to be offered a watered down
| experience full of MTX. But it sucks for studios when they sink
| a 10xs the money into producing a complex PC game and earn
| maybe half the revenue.
| freshair wrote:
| Brands have value insofar as the consuming public recognize
| those brands, right? I'd wager that Diablo is most famous for
| the first two games which both came out 20 years ago, and
| that the enthusiast segment of the market recognizes this
| brand more than the casual segment (who, by nature of being
| casual, know less about historic games.) In the enthusiast/pc
| segment of the market, Diablo may still be a valuable brand.
| But in the casual/mobile segment of the market, the Diablo
| brand is relatively unknown and relatively worthless.
|
| Trying to sell games to mobile/casual gamers is fine, but
| they probably should have invented a new brand for the
| purpose (like they did with Hearthstone) instead of burning
| an old brand for little gain.
| phillryu wrote:
| I feel like it's relevant to mention how huge Hearthstone is,
| and that's a mobile first game (at its best on iPad which is
| rare) that I feel is totally Blizzard tier quality with
| expected polish and substance to it, and both satisfied a lot
| of Blizzard fans + successfully tapped into that 10x market.
|
| There's fair criticism to how it monetizes but it still
| dominates its category for a reason, they continue to own it
| like the MMO genre with WoW.
|
| I don't know where I'm going with this, I guess just that
| between Overwatch and Hearthstone I actually mostly enjoyed
| this recent era of Blizzard and I'm more hopeful for what's
| next. I didn't feel contempt from them playing these games, I
| felt that old Blizzard spark.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Yeah i find that weird, viewership numbers on Twitch for HS
| have been steadily dropping for the past 2 years and have
| halfed in the time.
|
| Yet it seems people still play it.
| skystarman wrote:
| Hardcore gamers love to trash ATVI/Blizz but they are without
| a doubt dominant gaming developer/publisher in the business,
| and it's really not even close unless you count Tencent.
|
| Ask people on HN if they like CoD and they'd laugh at you but
| the games are IMMENSELY popular every release and they print
| cash for ATVI.
| drewwwwww wrote:
| you're presenting this a little bit disingenuously.
| expectations were high that diablo 4 would be announced in
| 2018, and instead there was the announcement of a partnership
| to develop a mobile version of diablo. folks were upset and the
| presenter reacted poorly.
|
| the following year diablo 4 was announced and much was
| forgiven. the mobile game is still not out (in closed beta rn)
| and early reports are good.
|
| you can fault blizzard for thinking its core fans at blizzcon
| would be excited about a mobile game, but if you are a game
| developer with a popular IP you're making a huge mistake not
| developing for mobile, as it will be the majority of the global
| gaming market for the foreseeable future.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| And that accelerated with the Activision merger. Historically
| they were better aligned with gamers.
| taneq wrote:
| "Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard,
| about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.
| scruple wrote:
| Yeah, JAB (who the quote is attributed to) is now the
| President of the company, too... To be fair to him, however,
| he did admit his failure on that one.
| knuthsat wrote:
| The thing with most companies optimizing addiction (user
| engagement) is that they use these weird optimization loops
| that improve metrics one by one (+x% then +y%) but then end
| up with a product so far from the long-term equilibrium.
|
| There's no context as to what each player wants. The loop
| just works across the whole player base, not really aimed
| towards any context of the player.
| agilob wrote:
| Was it 2018? Wow that was fast. It must suck for them since
| that fiasco, losing online players during pandemic when we're
| all stuck at homes, doubles the pain at least.
| darepublic wrote:
| I miss the days of RTS games. Used to play a ton of frozen
| throne, and was getting back into it when Blizzard announced the
| remaster. Then in the act of launching the remaster they brought
| down the online ladder, causing me to leave the game and never
| return. To me it's because they want to be a multibillion dollar
| company and all their moves have to align with that. It's no
| longer good enough to make a solid game that devs and fans love
| and make a decent profit. It's all about the billions, often
| leads companies to do stupid things.
| mikl wrote:
| Imagine my shock. Blizzard hasn't released any new game since
| Overwatch, and that was in 2016. They have been able to keep
| their old games going to some extent with updates and expansions,
| but it's mostly just been more of the same stuff, no innovation.
| Not much better on the Activision side. Other than umpteen
| versions of Call of Duty and re-releases of old games, the only
| memorable game they've done of late is Destiny (1 & 2). You can't
| just keep rehashing the same old formula if you want to keep up
| with the market.
| mbilal wrote:
| They're a group of corporate shills, they deserve to collapse.
| What they did to Warcraft 3 is a travesty.
| nottorp wrote:
| From my point of view, Blizzard has been slowly going downhill
| for ages. Some whines in chronological order:
|
| WoW died for me when they introduced the random dungeon finder in
| Cataclysm and cut down the player-to-player interaction outside
| dungeons by 99%.
|
| Starcraft 2 ... might have been polished and all, but honestly I
| don't see much difference from Starcraft 1. Also, I don't like
| memorizing openings (either chess or a RTS) and the multiplayer
| is toxic enough. Been called a stupid noob a lot, especially when
| i won :)
|
| Diablo 3... i sometimes play that when i feel like doing
| something that doesn't require even one active neuron. It's about
| like watching TV.
|
| Hearthstone was fun until I realized it's like MTG and you have
| to spend real money to improve your card collection.
|
| They made WoW classic unplayable with their decision to cram 10x
| as many people on one server (and refusal to fix it). Then WC3:
| Reforged came up. So two botched remakes/updates.
|
| Their other titles don't run on Macs, so considering how good the
| current titles are, I didn't even look. Heard that the Diablo 2
| remake will be Windows only as well.
|
| So... i guess good luck to them. They have to do A LOT to
| convince me they're worth my time now.
| idrios wrote:
| So true about WoW.
|
| Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder made it so you didn't need to
| find people or be in a guild to do these things. They also took
| the sense of enormity out of the world because you don't have
| to physically go places anymore. The deeprun tram, boats,
| zepplins were all such elegant solutions to create a
| breathtakingly open and connected world, and flying mounts &
| dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly.
|
| I do think the best thing they've done in WoW recently though,
| for bringing some of that discovery back, is adding secret
| events and global puzzles. Going into Gnomeregan, seeing a
| small hidden button, pressing it and having a lvl ?? boss show
| up and obliterate my max level character was just awesome. And
| I had a ton of fun doing the Uuna quest-but-not-really.
|
| But so much of the game has just stopped being fun.
| nottorp wrote:
| > They also took the sense of enormity out of the world
| because you don't have to physically go places anymore. The
| deeprun tram, boats, zepplins were all such elegant solutions
| to create a breathtakingly open and connected world, and
| flying mounts & dungeon finder killed the feeling so quickly.
|
| I don't know... i think they originally wanted to sell WoW by
| the hour (I think it actually was sold like that in Asia
| somewhere) so time wasting travel was more linked to that.
| Don't forget how long it takes to craft multiple items too.
|
| A lot of other WoW clones allowed some teleportation. Or non
| WoW clones. Being able to teleport basically anywhere (that
| you've walked to at least once) in Guild Wars never hindered
| socializing for me.
| witherk wrote:
| Maybe I'm just in the HN echochamber, but this really feels like
| a case of death by MBA.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Yup - spreadsheets and an absolute aversion to creative risk.
| thrower123 wrote:
| If not for World of Warcraft Classic, how bad would this be?
| Shadonototro wrote:
| They keep milking the same aging WoW userbase, of course it'll
| decline, since that demographic is becoming old enough to not
| care anymore
|
| Their business decision to re-release WoW with WoW: Classic was a
| poor one
|
| They should have made either a sequel, or a full REMAKE, not a
| lazy-milking-re-release, it just plain stupid
|
| And let's not talk about the way they "reforged" Warcraft 3..
|
| They print lot of money, but sadly it goes in the wrong pockets..
| poor management, 0 vision for the future, stuck milking an aging
| player base
|
| Doesn't sound great for the future
| dstaley wrote:
| I've been an off-and-on World of Warcraft player since the
| Burning Crusade days, and I honestly think that Blizzard is
| struggling to evolve the MMORPG genre into something suitable for
| the modern day.
|
| There was a great article in Kotaku[1] that illustrated this
| quite nicely. Essentially, what made World of Warcraft successful
| when it launched can't really exist today, especially with our
| hyper-connected world. Blizzard has made many attempts to make
| World of Warcraft more modern, more accessible to newer players
| (and some have even worked!), but nothing they've done has been
| able to recapture people in the same manner as it did originally.
| I think this isn't so much Blizzard's fault as it's just a factor
| of our world now; there's so much competition for our attention
| that the "average" gamer doesn't really have the motivation to
| immerse themselves into the game world (nor can they really when
| there's so much research you end up doing while playing).
|
| The last truly transformational gaming experience I had was with
| The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild back in 2017. I suspect
| much of that experience was due to the fact that, in those
| crucial first few days, there wasn't really anything online about
| the game. (Sure, there were articles here and there, but nothing
| near the vast amounts of information about World of Warcraft that
| exist now). To a lesser extent, I think a lot of the experience I
| had was due to the single-player nature of the game.
|
| I've said this for years, and I still stand by it: Blizzard
| should create single-player games set in the Warcraft universe in
| the vein of Skyrim. They've spent so much time and effort
| crafting these elaborate stories and worlds that I think the best
| way to really experience them now is with a single-player game. I
| could be convinced to accept a group-up mechanic for larger
| enemies (sort of in the vein of Monster Hunter), but a single-
| player narrative-driven game set in the Warcraft universe (with
| art done by the cinematics team) could be a blockbuster if done
| correctly.
|
| However, there's no indication that Blizard cares about crafting
| that sort of experience anymore. They seem to be almost
| commpletely focused on multiplayer, microtransaction-based
| gaming, which is probably the way to be the most profitable these
| days I guess.
|
| [1] https://kotaku.com/world-of-warcraft-classic-maybe-you-
| cant-...
| Meekro wrote:
| I recently got into WoW classic, and my experience has been
| much more positive than what this Kotaku writer describes. I'm
| in my mid-30s and I never got into WoW when I was younger, but
| was always curious to try. There were so many expansions that I
| wasn't really sure how to get started-- do I need to buy all of
| them? Some of them? One of them? Anyway, WoW classic made it
| simple to dive in, so I did!
|
| Since I didn't want to waste time searching for random people
| to party with, I convinced my wife and a friend to start
| playing with me. We're all about to get to level 20 and are
| eager to see if the 3 of us can complete Deadmines.
|
| I haven't experienced the kind of "ghost-town" feel that the
| writer described. Even minor towns usually had people running
| around them. Also, the writer's use of "everyone" and "we"
| doesn't apply to me or anyone I know. The 3 of us are learning
| how to play together effectively, and having a great time doing
| it. At the rate we're progressing, we probably have many
| hundreds of hours of fun gaming ahead of us even if we never do
| anything more than 5-man dungeons.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Blizzard hasn't produced even one single-player-focused game
| since... Diablo I? Their strength has always been multiplayer,
| I very much doubt they could deliver a blockbuster single-
| player open world game.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The SC2 expansions were basically three good single-player
| games that came bundled with a different multiplayer game
| built on the same engine and art assets. HotS in particular
| the single-player game arguably wasn't even the same _genre_
| as the multiplayer.
| dstaley wrote:
| Totally fair point! But I'd also like to point out that prior
| to World of Warcraft, Blizzard hadn't released an MMORPG.
| Prior to Overwatch, Blizzard hadn't released a first-person
| shooter. I totally understand your point that Blizzard might
| not have the talent to pull off a single-player RPG game, but
| I still think it's within the realm of reality.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Sure, but some of those jumps have been more gradual -
| WoW's hotkey gameplay isn't all that different from a fast-
| paced RTS, especially given WC3's dabbling into RPG
| mechanics with the hero units.
|
| Overwatch and HearthStone are much bigger jumps to be fair.
| brailsafe wrote:
| They've already done this... with WoW. Having dipped back into
| it in winter, it's more or less an single player game now, with
| more effort put into phasing players into whatever type of game
| they want to play and getting them there as quickly as
| possible. Leveling is laughably fast, and the endgame is mostly
| done with arbitrary people that will have no investment in
| decent socialization within the game.
| brundolf wrote:
| I've been boycotting them since the Hong Kong/Hearthstone
| incident a few years ago. Before that I was a regular Overwatch
| player and a semi-regular Hearthstone player. I quit cold-turkey.
| Hard to say how much of this effect would be from others doing
| the same, but it's a nice thought.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| do they have any good games still
| Lapsa wrote:
| sc2
| cevn wrote:
| The good ones (SC2, OW) are running on life support now with
| barely any updates. Blizzard died when they merged with Acti
| and now it's a slow descent to 0 players. D3 was also pretty
| good well after release (no RMAH) but that was released in
| 2012..
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Hearthstone for casual play. do not sink too much money into
| it. you can play Hearthstone for free if you do quest and craft
| a deck that you really like to play
| 1-6 wrote:
| SC1
| Lammy wrote:
| SC 1.15.1 specifically, so you can LAN with your friends who
| run Mac OS 9 :) https://web.archive.org/web/20140908015809/ht
| tp://ftp.blizza...
| spike021 wrote:
| which sadly isn't supported on M1, and who knows if Blizzard
| will ever release a patch for that.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| A hot take but I was really disappointed by it when it first
| came out. While waiting for it to be released I discovered
| Total Annihilation which really seemed like the next
| generation of RTS. When Starcraft came out it felt like
| WarCraft 2.5 or 2 with ramps. Sure the plot was much better,
| and the races were more differentiated, it did not feel like
| an evolution of the genre: just more polish. After that RTSes
| haven't grown IMHO outside of Sins of a Solar Empire, Total
| War, and Supreme Commander.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Their remastered Diablo 2 is on track to be a hit, but it won't
| be out until later this year.
| lsiebert wrote:
| It's anecdotal, but I know at least five or six people who
| stopped playing blizzard games, especially HS, after they
| punished a player and staff for expressing support for Hong Kong
| in a post tournament interview.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
| maxkwallace wrote:
| I did this, and I went through the support process to totally
| delete my account, including purchased content. Sometimes I
| wish I could still play SC2 with friends, but expressing
| support for freedom of speech in Hong Kong and the sinosphere
| is more important.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I'm one of those people, but let me tell you, they have made it
| very easy on me. They haven't made anything even vaguely
| interesting in years.
| bgutierrez wrote:
| I didn't like how obsessed I'd become over Hearthstone. When
| this happened, I took it as an opportunity to delete the app
| and I haven't played it a single time since.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| This type of thing prevented me from starting playing anything
| Blizzard at all.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I did, but none of my friends did. I went sofar as to delete my
| Blizzard account. I wasn't having fun with their games anyways
| though, and I tend to get irrationally addicted to watching
| numbers go up (WoW achievements) so I think it was a good
| choice all around for myself.
| vr1 wrote:
| Personally I feel their interface too robotic and out of touch in
| comparison with Arena of Valor funnel for example
| mewse-hn wrote:
| I'm a WoW classic player and the company is a lot different than
| it used to be. You can't talk to GMs in-game anymore and they
| refuse to fix loot problems filed by guild loot masters. It's
| like they did a cost/benefit analysis before one of their waves
| of layoffs and decided they'll just automate everything.
|
| They did a cosmetic pet thing recently, tied to donations to
| Doctors Without Borders and I found myself hoping it would fail.
| Instead of a fun thing where the community would come together it
| felt like being asked to donate to a charity at the walmart
| register in order to boost the company's profile.
|
| As far as I know war 3 reforged is still screwed up. They acted
| shamefully during the blitzchung thing and then tried to post
| some twee black lives matter stuff during the george floyd
| protests last year. The people who actually cared about the games
| have fled, most recently Jeff Kaplan.
|
| They'll still keep making money to appease the
| blizzard/activision shareholders but the soul is gone. RIP old
| blizzard
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's a small thing, but the community really needs to get over
| these "layoffs". Companies execute layoffs at the volume
| Blizzard did all the time, they were not any kind of indication
| of any major strategic shift whatsoever.
| setr wrote:
| Strategic shifts are the only reason mass layoffs exist. If
| it's a slow shift according to market pressure, then you
| expect the ratio of incoming:outgoing to drop slowly. If it's
| stable, you expect the ratio to be stable. If someone decides
| to a do a re-org, or a new strategy and this whole department
| is no longer necessary in the new model, the ratio drops
| fast.
|
| Otherwise, why would you drop a whole slew of people
| suddenly? For the fun of it?
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Not surprising, Blizzard has lost its way and its brand doesn't
| mean what it once did.
|
| The fall from grace started with the advent of paid services, and
| in game cosmetic shop in WoW and all of the issues surrounding
| the launch of Diablo 3 (let alone the disaster that is
| OWL/Overwatch, complete abandonment in HotS, etc.)
| worker767424 wrote:
| Maybe it's not that it lost its way, it's that they made very
| good games that people wanted from 1998-2005, made reasonable
| followups, but what people want from games has moved on.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I don't think what people want has moved on so much as what
| seems to make the most money from games has.
| gmaster1440 wrote:
| What about Overwatch is a disaster?
| blibble wrote:
| it's a fantastic game artistically, technically and gameplay
| wise
|
| however it's managed really, really badly
|
| it's a billion dollar franchise and can't even put out a new
| map for the regular game mode in 24 months
|
| (or slightly alter two broken ones in 12 months, hlc + paris)
| elliekelly wrote:
| It's not unique to Overwatch and applies to any team game
| that requires voice-chat but I'd play it (and enjoy it) a lot
| more if I wasn't constantly harassed by people who seem
| entirely incapable of wrapping their head around the
| existence of a woman who plays video games. Quick Play is
| usually fine because no one really uses in-game voice chat
| (on xbox at least, though you will occasionally get
| nastygrams in your inbox) but competitive play is an
| unmitigated disaster.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Game is fun (but Overwatch 2 is needed?) Characters are cool.
| Zero map rotation. Competitive scene is terrible, OWL even
| more so.
|
| Really just highlights Blizzard is terrible at esports. Lots
| of examples here for MDI, AWC prize pools vs. investment
| required to be successful.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Overwatch is quite sad in a certain sense in that it's kind
| of drifting, when it's probably one of the most approachable,
| fun, and stable games I know. I've played a few seasons in an
| esports team in a rival FPS, and the game is just full of
| annoying issues that I don't get in overwatch.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I can only speak from personal experience. I absolutely
| adored Overwatch at launch but about a year ago I uninstalled
| it and never looked back.
|
| What finally killed it for me is the role-based queueing. It
| locked in the developer-proscribed 2/2/2 meta and made the
| game feel very static and uninteresting. Previously, if you
| saw a gap on your team you could switch to a completely
| different role to fill the void. Though even before role-
| based queuing there was a (very annoying) portion of the
| community that believed you had to be playing the high-end
| "meta" even when you're at the lowest ranks or playing
| casually and would complain endlessly if you did anything
| different.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I used to completely agree with you re: 2/2/2, but I've
| been getting back into competitive lately, and the matches
| are _much_ more predictive and it 's much easier to figure
| out what you're supposed to be doing based on your role
| now. It's _very_ "coachable"/"trainable" in a way that open
| queue isn't.
| iaml wrote:
| The whole original vision for OWL was teams would travel
| around the world and play at esport arenas filled with people
| who bought the ticket. And then covid hit.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Don't forget the weird franchise model with crazy upfront
| costs to try to fund the thing. It was a wannabe LCS, but
| worse.
| hogmainsunite wrote:
| I played the game since release in 2016 and when OWL was
| announced it all felt a bit... forced.
|
| There were huge org buy-in fees (in double-digit millions)
| for even fielding a team, completely unheard of for an
| esports league, and it was coming out of the gate with
| almost zero community competitive scene to back it up.
| Esports scenes thrive on an amateur/semi-pro/pro feeder
| system and for the parent company to dump a hundred million
| dollars at the top end without waiting for organic growth
| at the bottom smacked to me of a cash-grab by Blizzard.
| Also, Blizzard established itself as a monopoly with
| exclusive rights to create tournaments, which really
| rankled with the semi-pro players.
|
| Aside from the tedious balance issues that resulted in us
| watching an entire season of OWL where top-tier hitscan dps
| players were forced to play tank, the whole top-to-bottom
| emphasis on "support team [geographical location]
| [adjective]" did nothing to foster support for particular
| squads. Esports leagues are rootless - there are no
| Wolverhampton Wanderers or Gunners on the Internet -
| instead people follow specific players for their individual
| playstyles and skills.
|
| The most hilarious example of the most tone-deaf
| enforcement of this was when Seagull (one of the OG beta
| testers that somehow exploded and got thousands of viewers
| on Twitch) got signed to Dallas [whatever adjective] and
| proceeded to spend the next 6 months benched (and offline
| on Twitch) because his skillset wasn't meta. He then spent
| a single season in competition, quit, returned to Twitch
| and made orders of magnitude more money from doing whatever
| he wanted than he would have got in the League.
|
| The thing that sealed the League as a scam for me was the
| introduction of linkage between a Twitch account and your
| OW account - you could gain in-game tokens to buy cosmetics
| from time spent watching OWL on Twitch, but this was
| trivially defeated by setting the stream to 160p
| resolution, muting the tab and continuing to do whatever
| you wanted. At that point it was obvious it was all about
| gaming metrics and not making a game, and I got bored and
| left.
| spinlock_ wrote:
| Not to mention the huge mess around WC3 reforged.
| [deleted]
| gigel82 wrote:
| I'm still playing Starcraft 2 with my buddies every weekend (even
| more so now during the pandemic). If they made a Starcraft 3 with
| updated graphics, units / structures and perhaps the new fabled
| 4th race I'll absolutely pay for it (even on a subscription base
| which I normally hate).
|
| Instead, they've scaled down the investments in Starcraft to such
| a degree that the servers were almost completely offline over the
| past winter holidays and despite hundreds / thousands of
| complaints there was no official reaction from Blizzard. :(
| sim_card_map wrote:
| "Don't you guys have phones?"
| bruiseralmighty wrote:
| Isn't this just a case of increasing irrelevancy?
|
| I can't think of a single release from them I would describe as
| 'ambitious' other than Diablo Mobile which has the distinct honor
| of being dead _before_ arrival.
|
| Speaking anecdotally, no one I game with or any of the forums I
| go to talk about Blizzard games. Many of the Discord servers I
| play with used to be big into HotS and Starcraft I/II, but I
| don't hear a peep from them about either anymore.
|
| Perhaps worst of all, several of the Path of Exile players I game
| with are no longer even worried about a Diablo 4 launch affecting
| the long term health of their favorite dungeon crawler. It's just
| expected that Blizzard will deliver a polished but shallow
| experience that will be over within two or three months at most.
|
| Maybe they just aren't nimble enough anymore to leverage their
| huge war-chest of experience and cash.
| asdff wrote:
| IMO video games are fundamentally unstable and everchanging
| things, because the customer base is continually growing out of
| it. Not to say adults wouldn't love to play, but how many people
| do you know that realistically have the time to get into
| videogames like the did in highschool, playing wow until sunrise
| fueled with energy drinks? Practically no one, especially people
| with families or a 9-5 job that punishes lack of sleep, and it's
| hard to get good enough at a video game to have a fun time that
| doesn't suck without having time to practice the mechanics. So
| even if you do squeeze in an hour here or there, that's not
| enough time to get even halfway decent at a new videogame, let
| alone understand anything about any meta that everyone else in
| the community will use against you in every game you play. It
| quite literally sucks to suck, and you end up not really playing
| video games as much because you just get slapped every match and
| you know you don't have the time to practice and actually get
| better.
|
| Publishers need to continually cater to a fresh generation. They
| risk alienating their existing playerbase when this happens to a
| firm degree, which makes this an art. Blizzard has failed to
| compete at young peoples attention as well as other distractions
| on the market, for this new generation at least.
| esturk wrote:
| That's to say in less words that Blizzard never figured out the
| formula. This is because they focused on niche genres that
| doesn't appeal to kids.
|
| Take Mario and Pokemon for example. Those IP will always
| attract new players for years to come. The formula is simple
| but it works.
|
| In contrast, people aren't as crazy about RTS games as they use
| to be.
| gekkonier wrote:
| There were times we enjoyed slaying dragons in a 40 player raid.
| But yeah, time passes, you get older, and interests shift. It was
| great!
| salusinarduis wrote:
| I have long been a big time contributor to the World of Warcraft
| scene. I've contributed to MaNGOS, I was a developer for a big
| server project - that I can't mention here :) -, a best friend of
| mine developed the most popular WoW addon of all time that I have
| contributed to, etc.
|
| I really was torn about going back to play Classic WoW, but I
| chose not to, simply because I hate Activision/Blizzard. I refuse
| to support that company with a single dollar.
|
| Their games being lifeless and greedy is bad enough, but as a
| company they are mean spirited, and will plant a boot in the face
| of anyone in their community just because they can.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Their games just don't feel like labors of love anymore.
|
| They feel like icky skinner boxes through and through.
|
| Every aspect of their games are a/b tested up the ass to convert
| as many MTX as possible and personally it's a total turn off. I
| downloaded Warzone and tried it out this weekend and uninstalled
| after 2 matches, it just felt off. Hard to describe. Like a AAA
| graphics Candy Crush. yuck!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Also, the once famous Blizzard polish is all but reversed -
| Warcraft 3 Reforged speaks for itself, but also looking into
| World of Warcraft commentary, it has become common to expect
| systems present in the game at launch to require major fixes or
| overhauls over the coming patches. The very fact that players
| and commentators alike have grown to expect this speaks volumes
| to me about the changing perception.
| derekdahmer wrote:
| Overwatch still feels highly polished to me (few bugs, great
| lore, good performance, character design, responsive dev team
| communication) though new content have been seriously lagging
| due to OW2.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I haven't played Overwatch, so I can't speak to it. It's
| very possible that my opinion only really applies to WoW,
| and perhaps WC3:Reforged was a fluke.
|
| Still, Overwatch was released in 2016, and announced in
| 2014, so there is also the possibility that there was some
| shift happening after that time.
|
| I believe HS gets major updates that are considered well
| polished, just to add another data point.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| This is something that's common across the entire industry
| (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76 as the worst offenders).
|
| Testing costs a lot of money, automated testing isn't widely
| spread / feasible, and the cost of distributing patches is
| low - so many studios opt for the economic advantage of using
| their players as guinea pigs.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's a huge problem in WoW because they're so damn slow to
| fix anything. By the time it is fixed it's about time for
| the next expansion where they throw out most of that work
| so you get to ride that same shitty cycle all over again.
|
| The last 6-8 years of WoW have basically been 1 long paid,
| subscription based beta test.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Sure, and it's always been a part of the industry. However,
| Blizzard used to be an exception - they were known for
| taking a long time and for doing tried-and-true game
| formulas, but for delivering extremely polished
| experiences, especially on the gameplay side. Basically,
| they were never the first to try out a game idea, but their
| game would always be what ended up defining that idea
| through sheer polish and mass market appeal (Warcraft
| II&III, Diablo II and WoW perhaps being the most enduring
| examples of how they defined a genre even while being far
| from the first).
| taneq wrote:
| The Blizzard we knew and loved is long dead. What you see is
| the logo with its head held up and arms being waved around by
| the moneybugs in suits.
|
| Maybe somewhere inside the carcass is a new Blizzard with fresh
| ideas and a passion for games. I hope so, but I don't hold out
| much hope.
| nawgz wrote:
| Haha, Warzone is a great game with one of the worst UI/UX
| designs I've ever seen. As a player who got it 5 months ago or
| so, I fully disagree with your assessment. It has a horrible
| and confusing store, no pay-to-win aspects, and solid gameplay
| with some actual decent depth.
|
| I am in no way condoning Activision, and I think their approach
| to Warzone maintenance has been pretty horrible (they are just
| turning a corner on that it seems), but Warzone is a good game
| without any gameplay-obtrusive MTX
| de_keyboard wrote:
| I was disappointed with Warzone.
|
| * Best load-outs are faster to unlock with the paid game, so
| it is semi play-to-win
|
| * Warzone client is MASSIVE (seriously, like fill your entire
| SSD massive) because it installs other games alongside
|
| * Servers are awful, with extremely low tick-rates, so
| movement and shooting feels pretty ropey
|
| * A general sense of sameyness crept in after a few hours. I
| have a hunch that this is due to a low skill ceiling to the
| mechanics. Whilst I'm sure this makes the game more
| accessible to a wider audience, I found it left me with no
| sense of progression. Like eating a Big Mac rather than a
| nourishing meal.
| meristohm wrote:
| I used to be trapped in those icky Skinner boxes, and feel so
| much better to have moved on. While I have some good memories
| of my time in WoW, especially the early "wonder days" of shared
| social space and learning how to communicate with people
| online, and fewer good memories relative to time spent in
| Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone, I feel like
| there are large chunks of time missing from my past. From what
| I've read about alcoholism it feels similar. Thanks to The
| Blindboy Podcast and his sharing the mental-health tools (CBT,
| TA & others) that helped him crawl through crippling anxiety I
| feel much more in control of my time and actions. Very rarely
| now do I feel like hours slipped by with no lasting benefit.
| Escaping responsibilities with games I wasn't refreshed, but
| drained. Multitasking will elicit this drained feeling still.
| Reading or listening to a good book (and I'm more and more
| willing to not finish books that aren't "good" for me), going
| for a walk in the woods, gardening, making music, and making
| useful things are how I've replaced the videogame Skinner box.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| Blizzard didn't develop Warzone. Yes, they are both
| published/owned by Activision, and they share a launcher, but
| they are from very different developers.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's odd how often people put studios and publishers
| together, when the relations are (often) a lot less close
| than people on the outside realise.
| lovelyviking wrote:
| For me being outside of thess relations are indeed it is
| not so clear. Can you describe it more ?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| In the original terms, game studios/developers made
| games, game publishers provided financing and support
| (such as distribution and marketing) to game studios.
|
| You can have hybrid entities, and you can have game
| studios/developers chose to self-publish, or whatever.
| The relationship between a publisher and studio can also
| vary. You can have one offs, where an independent game
| studio pitches a single game to a publisher, and they
| sign a deal for just that one game. Or you can have
| longer term relationships. For example, after Bungie re-
| spun out from Microsoft, they signed a 10 year deal with
| Activision (but they weren't owned by Activision). Or
| sometimes, publishers can straight up own game studios
| (they'll usually own a whole bunch of them). For example,
| Microsoft owns a whole pile of game studios (like
| recently acquired Bethesda).
|
| Activision-Blizzard is the parent holding company.
| Activision is the game publisher arm, and Blizzard is a
| separate game studio arm. Call of Duty for example is
| developed by a family of studios (for example: Infinity
| Ward) that all (well, at least IW) operate as parts of
| Activision. Like any creative-ish field, the exact
| relationship between the creative types, and the money
| types is... always contentious?
|
| Blizzard's relationship with Activision (the publisher)
| is different from say Activision's relationship with
| Infinity Ward in that Activision the publisher actually
| owns IW, while Blizzard is technically an equal business
| unit with Activision the publisher.
| nightski wrote:
| In this case though I can sort of understand it. Activision
| has invaded the battle.net launcher which was long reserved
| only for blizzard games. CoD is now right next to WoW in
| their launcher.
| gundmc wrote:
| They havent released anything major outside of a WOW expansion in
| that time period, so this is pretty unsurprising. When OW2 is
| released it will jump back up as long as they don't totally botch
| the launch.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Blizzard : Activision :: Boeing : McDonnell Douglas
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| 90% of my friend group stopped playing Blizzard games when they
| started to censor speech (specifically speech encouraging
| freedoms).
|
| As an individual cancel culture or voting with my wallet is my
| only path forward, but as a corporation (specifically in gaming)
| cancel culture is going to be a huge problem.
|
| Its not clear to me what the right solution to this is going to
| be.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but:
|
| They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't
| have the staying power of more modern online games where new
| content is added continuously.
|
| They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same
| level of pull as League of Legends.
|
| Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other
| competitive small team FPSes, and also has overlapping audiences
| with battle royale FPSes.
|
| Starcraft 2 is basically dead. WC3 remastered flopped. The RTS
| genre writ large is definitely in a waning phase.
|
| IMO, when a gaming company doesn't make new games, it is going to
| see some losses in the playerbase. To me it's more remarkable
| that they've only seen this much of a dropoff.
| AmVess wrote:
| In terms of WoW, I'm sure a lot of it is focusing on the top
| raiding guilds and leaving the casual player with few rewarding
| activities.
|
| Further, one of their most cherished metrics is how much time
| people spend doing a certain activity. Instead of making those
| activities more fun and rewarding, they made them take longer
| to complete and with fewer rewards.
|
| To top it all off, they are nearly completely deaf to their
| player's concerns, and instead focus on metrics instead of
| gameplay or fun activities.
|
| People at Blizzard certainly have forgotten that games are
| supposed to be fun.
|
| They try to cloak their declining userbase by saying they have
| the highest number of logins ever, but they quit reporting
| individual subscribers a long time ago. One of them is a
| completely worthless metric and the other keeps the lights on.
|
| The last of the original WoW dev team quit Blizzard last year,
| and they are running with a crew that don't have the chops to
| make engaging games.
| serverholic wrote:
| This is why "you can't improve what you don't measure"
| bothers me. It's rare that you can condense all useful
| information into a number and it encourages people to remove
| critical thinking from the equation. People come to rely on
| the number instead of thinking deeply about what they're
| doing.
| oriel wrote:
| This is basically Goodhart's law (quote from Marilyn
| Strathern's generalization).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
|
| > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| measure
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Definitely agree and a lot of the popular WoW content
| creators (Bellular, T&E, etc.) seem to agree. They don't
| always mention casuals, but lack of progression is a major
| issue, particularly in Shadowlands. As a person spending too
| much time playing, you are basically forced to do non-LFR
| raiding, rated PvP, or mythic+ dungeons to actually progress
| your gear at all.
|
| Not to mention they seem to hate flying yet keep creating
| terrible zones unless you can fly. There aren't clear routes
| between common locations like roads in Skyrim. That can be
| ok, but in that case they really need to have a flatter level
| design like in Oblivion.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Not to mention they seem to hate flying yet keep creating
| terrible zones unless you can fly.
|
| Yes, this is just an ongoing disaster. My sense from their
| communications over the years is that, when players fly
| through zones, that hurts the feelings of the artists,
| which Blizzard doesn't like.
|
| > There aren't clear routes between common locations like
| roads in Skyrim.
|
| I actually really liked how roads were handled in original
| WoW. They twist and turn, and yet somehow they're always
| faster than going offroad. And they were reliably safe --
| until in Duskwood there's a wolf right on the middle of the
| road, which added to the atmosphere for me.
|
| For the latest expansion, my main complaint is that they
| provide a bunch of cosmetic features, which they know are a
| draw -- but you _can 't use the cosmetics on your other
| characters_. All shadowlands cosmetics are restricted to
| characters who belong to the particular faction. (Which is,
| overwhelmingly, just the specific character who unlocked
| it.) I characterized this once in guild chat as "welcome to
| Shadowlands! To enjoy this expansion's new content, please
| wait for the next expansion to release", and got many
| pained agreements.
|
| You can't use your mail-wearing toon to unlock plate
| cosmetics, either. You need to go through the _entire rep
| grind, again,_ if you want two sets of cosmetics from the
| same vendor.
| Bayart wrote:
| >until in Duskwood there's a wolf right on the middle of
| the road
|
| More the level 39 elite zombie that bashes your head in.
| God I loved Duskwood.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Further, one of their most cherished metrics is how much
| time people spend doing a certain activity. Instead of making
| those activities more fun and rewarding, they made them take
| longer to complete and with fewer rewards.
|
| This is basically Goodhart's Law.
| talexy wrote:
| I think after Mists of Pandaria I stopped playing wow as an
| MMO and just focused on doing single player stuff for the
| past many years. To me there is a significant difference in
| something requiring to farm an instance 50-100 over when you
| have time vs. doing it over 50-100 days because of daily
| lockouts. That is just not fun and and disrespectful to me as
| a player. I don't always have the same free time every day
| and when I do get a couple of hours I can't farm due to
| lockouts.
|
| Their WOW playerbase are getting older and if you don't treat
| them will respect even more will be lost. There are so many
| games out there right now, sure not of this genre, but they
| provide options for someone who wants to pick up gaming and
| not necessarily invest in WoW.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I hate how many different grinds there are in this
| expansion for legendary weapons and such. Mythics are okay.
| WoW is just like my home away from home I go to explore
| lore and goof off for an hour or two a week. The lore and
| world is very rich. It's fun to level and do stuff on
| occasion. It's fun to collect specific armor and mounts at
| times. I just don't enjoy all the grinds and kind of refuse
| to do them.
| hhh wrote:
| I don't align with the top tier player opinion about WoW. I
| feel that this is who they have driven away from the game. I
| personally spent a large amount of time in that top-20 guild
| environment and have only progressively seen them care less
| about the edge case of boundary-pushers and more about the
| day to day player.
|
| The latest systems encourage time sinking less than they did
| in Legion, where there were infinite diminishing returns for
| playing, now there is just a full-stop end to your week.
| Legion was the most abusive expansion with regards to a
| player's time. The latest expansion fixed a lot of that for
| me and others, but it isn't enough to keep me sustained.
|
| WoW Classic actually kept me enthused and is extremely
| enjoyable, however if you were on a streamer server, there
| were artificial queues for ages and it was exhausting living
| around a queue when trying to be competitive at that top tier
| of play.
|
| If TBC fixes that (doesn't have the queues at release), I
| will be a lot happier with it.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > now there is just a full-stop end to your week.
|
| Note that I don't think this stuff is casual friendly. As a
| casual, my problem with the way Blizzard does these systems
| is you want to do something every day/week/etc.
|
| Quite frankly, it turns the game into a chore. It tells me
| that not only how much time I spend, but also _when I spend
| that time_ significantly impacts my rate of advancement.
|
| Disclaimer: I haven't played Shadowlands at all.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yeah, this sounds very mobile-gamey. Systems like this
| tend to start feeling like a job you have to do when
| you're not in the mood to play them. My preferred casual
| style of binge-rest-binge would not not be well-served.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I didn't know about Valorant before. Thank you! I'm going to go
| look into that. Every time I play Overwatch the matchups seem
| so off and if you get a bad healer or tank you are toast, I end
| up thinking "Why do I still play this game". Valorant seems to
| have a better way of dealing with differences in the classes
| and mix-and-match with the weapons, which seems like a good
| player can play solo casual and make a bigger difference
| without having their team just completely fold.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other
| competitive small team FPSes, and also has overlapping
| audiences with battle royale FPSes._
|
| The competition isn't driving away people from Overwatch. The
| game is incredibly stale, and IMO, is probably the death knell
| of full price online games.
|
| There has been little to none new content and changes to the
| game. The competitive community has always complained about the
| slow trickle of balance changes and the casual community has
| always complained about the lack of new content (maps, events,
| heroes). The communication was decent at first then fell off a
| giant cliff. A lot of competitive players and streamers burned
| out of playing boring and/or frustrating metas (for a year or
| more) and casual players ultimately got bored.
|
| My theory is (I'm stealing this from someone else) is
| essentially Activision saw they had a huge player base who paid
| $60 once and never again. The extremely consumer-positive loot
| box system (you can get ample loot boxes by just playing the
| game, _and_ loot boxes avoid giving you items you already have)
| means that most players didn 't need to buy loot boxes; in fact
| if you played the game a lot (as a potential whale) you didn't
| need to pay at all for your favorite skins.
|
| Activision saw that after Year 2/Year 3 the revenue growth for
| OW fell off a cliff and deprioritized people who would have
| been making new art/content for the game. In order reclaim that
| revenue those people were then moved to "Overwatch 2" and all
| new content was focused on that game. However that game has
| been delayed (again, and again) so now the player base is
| hemoragging even harder.
|
| I say this as someone who loves the game, and doesn't play any
| other game. The game might have lasted longer if they followed
| Riot's model and made it free to play with micro transactions.
| captaincurrie wrote:
| >The extremely consumer-positive loot box system
|
| No loot box system is consumer-positive. Its legalized
| gambling and its wrong.
|
| The Riot model is correct (except for putting new summoners
| behind a paywall): F2P, with the ability to buy exactly the
| cosmetics you want and nothing else. I spent quite a bit of
| money on LOL when i played it and i didn't feel bad about it.
| Overwatch could have done the same thing and it would have
| been great!
| phillryu wrote:
| It seems like they're setting up for that with OW1 being
| compatible with OW2 multiplayer. They'll probably just make
| OW1 free to play shortly following launch of OW2.
| vkou wrote:
| The problem is not how Overwatch was maintained, the problem
| is that the core formula isn't fun.
|
| Forcing two tanks, two healers, two DPS characters leads to
| eight minute DPS queues. But if you don't force this kind of
| team composition, the game becomes incredibly unfun for the
| team that has five DPS characters and no tank.
|
| You'd figure that this would drive DPS players to switch to
| the other roles, to reduce the time they spend in queue - but
| no, the queues today are as long as they ever were. It's
| probably because a lot of people don't find the support roles
| fun to play.
|
| Contrast it to something like League of Legends, where queues
| for each role are much closer in length - probably because a
| large portion of the player-base finds supporting roles fun
| in that game.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Yeah, they originally had it all open and found out that it
| was a mess. Having very distinct and static characters is a
| neat idea but the problem is that there is usually one set
| of them that everyone wants to play. I've started just
| playing tanks to get short queues, but it gets boring quick
| since there are so few of them and not much difference in
| play style.
|
| The other issue is that if you play casually and get a
| terrible healer, then you will almost certainly lose. Being
| a fantastic player only gets you so far.
|
| Other people mentioned Valorant, and it appears it has a
| very different style with exchangeable weapons that apply
| to all classes, but just different abilities and more
| strategic games. It seems like a really good player can
| make a bigger difference and play solo. I'm going to look
| into that now.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _The problem is not how Overwatch was maintained, the
| problem is that the core formula isn 't fun._
|
| This has been a criticism of Overwatch since day one. If
| the core problem was the actual core formula it wouldn't
| have grown so large to begin with. Millions of people
| wouldn't have billions of hours into the game in the first
| place if the core formula wasn't fun. I think you have a
| valid point, but I don't think it's why Overwatch
| hemorrhages players. None of the issues your brought up are
| any different than they were for the past 5 years (except
| role queue).
|
| Also, you can't point to queue times, then mention League
| has a better system. It wasn't rare at one point (I don't
| play League anymore) to have 30 minute queues even in
| diamond. DPS queues in OW currently are 10 minutes max even
| in GrandMaster.
| ev1 wrote:
| For the first year of overwatch, me and my friends played
| for hours. Every night. Every day.
|
| Then they started restricting your team choices. You
| could no longer have two of the same hero.
|
| You then had to be forced into meta-roles ONLY.
|
| You then had to queue specific roles and were not allowed
| to pick anything else at all.
|
| All lack of balance and content aside, what the hell?
| pizza wrote:
| But they did address that a bit by re-adding open queue,
| also flex queue helps a little bit if say one day you
| wouldn't mind playing tank and then another day you just
| wanna go strictly dps. But I guess it should be fairly
| straightforward to expect people playing first person
| shooters to want to play mostly damage characters, and
| there's probably no easy queue-based fix for that.
| ev1 wrote:
| Yeah, but by the time they addressed it, it has already
| given everyone many, many repeated large reasons to move
| on from the game.
|
| The worst part is/was (unsure if this has changed) that
| you are hard locked into specific hero categories even if
| you are queued as a full premade. Even when you are with
| a full team that is OK with swapping, you can't swap
| roles as needed. Incidentally, I played dps junkrat back
| when it was categorised as a defence hero. And the
| categories were decided and changed by Blizzard - Junkrat
| might have been the only defense hero I'd be willing to
| play, and now the only offense hero since they
| recategorised him - I would rather heal than play mccree,
| but there you have it
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's about power spiking. Blizzard committed to designing
| without power spikes and gamers prefers power spikes.
|
| Maintenance requires switchups to these dynamics, but when
| you have created a system that's devoid of these events,
| your game is going to be stale no matter what you do. New
| maps, new characters, etc.
| apetresc wrote:
| What are power spikes?
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Power spikes are moments in the design of the game where
| one player/character is really powerful relative to
| another player / character. Sometimes in League of
| Legends heroes are designed to be kind of weak at the
| start or strong at the end. Sometimes a character is just
| really strong relative to others for a period of time
| because you unlock a power before the counters are
| unlocked, or you purchase a powerful item.
|
| Power spikes can be fun because it can be fun to have a
| feeling of power, or see the balance change in your favor
| in a game. They can be frustrating because you can be
| faced with a power spiked player and feel helpless. It is
| a design choice with pros and cons.
| tokipin wrote:
| Overwatch is a frustrating game to play because they almost
| have it right. It's almost there, if they could just tweak a
| couple things. A good example is the overtime system. One of
| the worst ideas in games I've run into. For one, it creates
| artificial and spiky emotions in players, which just burns
| people out. It's amazing they don't realize basic things like
| that, which means they actually haven't had the right talent
| for a long while.
|
| The company also has a lot of hubris. They spend tons of
| effort on things like trying to make healers and tanks fun.
| There's many good reasons to do that and they gave it a good
| try, but the conclusion should have been: we aren't able to
| make healers and tanks fun, let's try something else.
| Instead, they forced people to play them.
|
| Other mistakes include not understanding "the meta." Once
| they think the meta is balanced in a game, they get
| conservative and don't want to tweak things too much. They
| don't realize that the meta is an equilibrium state found by
| the players. Change the game, a new meta will be found. They
| don't seem to get this and just let their games run stale
| because they think the competitive scene drives the player
| base, instead of the other way around.
|
| Overall the facepalm factor has been too high for too long.
| Blizzard has always understood the science of game design,
| but since at least SC2 they lost the art.
| xxpor wrote:
| This is the first time I'm hearing any complaints about the
| modern overtime system. It seems totally fair to me, the
| defending team has to actually win the final fight. What
| would you change about it?
| zinclozenge wrote:
| Diablo 3 gets a new season with some changes. It's not a lot,
| but there's still some attention being paid to the game.
| tibbon wrote:
| WoW also just got boring for me a long time ago. Sure, they
| keep adding new things, but it's still riding in very deep
| treads they dug long ago. It's still fundamentally the same
| game, and in my eyes showing its age.
|
| I'd love to play a new MMO that explores new ideas. WoW
| explores WoW.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I'd love to play World of Warcraft with Diablo/Starcraft
| fixed-POV and gameplay controls. It could be such an
| interesting story if it weren't for the camera controls that
| make me wish I had a flight simulator joystick.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I've tried a bunch of MMOs since WoW... and despite newer
| engines and some neat features, they often end up just
| being... mostly WoW once the sheen wears off. I occasionally
| revisit WoW because if you're going to play a WoW clone, you
| might as well just play WoW.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If you've played a lot of WoW, you also spot glaring flaws
| in other games very quickly.
|
| Usually the 'feel' of combat/animation/movement just isn't
| up to Blizzard standards, and UIs are often very inflexible
| compared to WoW's moddable interface (without that, nobody
| would play healers for long!). Sometimes the travel
| timesinks are just unbearable (SWTOR), or the global
| cooldown feels glacial (FFXIV)
|
| And WoW keeps getting more and more polished. Just a shame
| that it all feels as if it's being run like an F2P mobile
| project now, probably driven by analytics/monetisation
| people rather than passionate MMO players.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I would say WoW is getting less and less polished, at
| least for existing, active players (the new player
| experience has just received a massive boost).
|
| The WoW community has become accustomed to systems
| getting launched in a poor state, expecting future
| patches to fix glaring flaws in core gameplay, with the
| developers all but admitting this in interviews (if
| you're really into the details, Torghast would be the
| latest example of this pattern).
| robotmay wrote:
| FFXIV is the one that finally hooked me. It improves on WoW
| in a lot of areas. The learning curve is a bit steep and
| the hell that is mogstation are points against it, but I've
| been very much enjoying it.
| amputect wrote:
| Mogstation is truly incredible, it's like the digial
| equivalent of those "this is not a place of honor" signs,
| it feels designed to actively repel use.
|
| That said, FF14 is a ton of fun! And IIRC these days you
| can play the free trial up through the end of the first
| expansion, which is a LOT of gameplay.
| reedf1 wrote:
| You should try playing some older MMOs: EVE, Anarchy
| Online, Ultima Online, Runescape. All stuff fundamentally
| untouched by the WoW design - and they are much better for
| it IMO. When I've played these games, even 20 years on, I
| am completely stunned. Makes me realize how psychologically
| kneecapped we are by WoW.
| paulmd wrote:
| eve online's formula is... controversial. the significant
| IRL time grind (doesn't necessarily need to be actively
| played, your skills train even when offline like an idle
| simulator...) was always a controversial game design
| point since it meant newer players were permanently less
| skilled than older players, they could never catch up...
| but CCP made it so you could just pay to get higher skill
| points, which isn't great either.
|
| dust failed and it seems like CCP pivoted towards trying
| to monetize EVE Online harder. And it was already a
| fairly heavily monetized game (real-money trading was
| sanctioned even 15 years ago, the game basically required
| multiple accounts for high-level play, etc)
| vsareto wrote:
| Doing the FPS + MMO integration was a risky step, but
| they get points for trying because that was pretty
| creative back in its time.
|
| Like walking-in-stations, (now in Star Citizen and Elite:
| Dangerous) they seem to be pioneers back in the day but
| didn't get much credit for it because the execution was
| so important.
|
| I'm fine with EVE having pay-for-skill points now because
| you were always able to buy accounts and that was
| actually scam-free. You'd need to buy a lot of PLEX back
| then to pay for one with real money though.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I logged into Ultima Online recently and played a bit.
| Still fun, though the community is a lot smaller now. It
| is a shame that Origin took so long to try to fix the
| nonconsensual PvP and other issues (then split the worlds
| instead of just doing consensual flags), which resulted
| in lots of people leaving. They really did a very
| impressive thing with UO, and the original graphics still
| beat the cartoonish 3D stuff they added later. Again,
| goes to show that a solid foundation can endure for a
| long time. Lots of good memories, friends, and immersive
| play.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| No love for EverQuest? Any MMO I've played since hasn't
| held a candle to the world design and enduring sense of
| mystery and wonder EverQuest was able to spark in my
| fragile little boyhood heart.
|
| I went back to play in a "static" group on the old school
| Project 1994 servers a couple years ago. Buncha strangers
| agreeing to meet online a couple times a week to play,
| drink some fancy beers and shoot the shit. No wonder
| lost. That thing is still a place of glory.
|
| WoW was the beginning of the end for the genre, in my
| opinion. Everything about it was smoothed over in all the
| wrong places. The art design and worldbuilding were just
| not good, especially when you consider the lore was a
| hobbled together mess of inheritance. The Colosseum
| legionnaires of the Iksar in their jungle and swamped
| wilds or the truly monstrous trolls selling dwarf bits
| that could have been pulled straight from some Nordic
| fairytales: that's some love of the grim imagination.
| jointpdf wrote:
| > _the old school Project 1994 servers_
|
| You mean Project 1999: https://www.project1999.com/
|
| (LFG, by the way)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time involved in the EVE space, I was
| on the DUST 514 version of the CSM, and I've participated
| in a couple of wars, even though I am _very_ bad at
| Internet spaceships. Sometimes I wish EVE was just a
| _tiny_ bit more like WoW... I wish the environment felt
| more varied than it does today. It really solely
| differentiates the game over time and area by player
| politics. Which is definitely fun, but almost in spite of
| the game, rather than because of it. ;)
|
| (Other games I spent time on, which yes, are newer than
| WoW: I really enjoyed the moment to moment _feel_ of
| playing WildStar and Black Desert Online (largely because
| they replaced casting /cooldowns/calculated damage values
| with movement and combos), but of course, RIP the first
| one, and the second one is macrotransactioned to heck, my
| wallet couldn't take it. SWTOR's early storyline content
| is insanely well-done, but unfortunately, once you
| graduate out of it, it literally is exactly the same game
| as WoW.)
| mvzvm wrote:
| Ive recently revisited GW2, and its been fantastic.
| abakker wrote:
| given the graphics horsepower of many modern computers, I've
| been hoping for a "world of diablo" that focuses more on the
| gothic horror imagery and the backdrop of the much more
| exciting world that diablo is set in. Make it dark,
| atmospheric, and pack it with random dungeons, sorcery, and
| doom-style jump scares. Maybe as a bonus, put it in VR and
| innovate controls for attacking and spell casting.
|
| I can dream, right?
| vntx wrote:
| Riot is developing a MMO based on Runeterra. It will be
| interesting to see how that pans out.
| haunter wrote:
| It will 100% be like Genshin Impact. Sure you can treat
| that as an MMO too but don't expect anything like WoW at
| all
| ronsor wrote:
| So there's going to be a gacha system trying to extract
| hundreds of dollars from you?
| setr wrote:
| Well, they have it LoL, so that's to be expected. (the
| hextech chest stuff)
| ronsor wrote:
| These days I'd be weary of running anything Riot puts out
| since they got that new kernel anti-cheat.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| I've been taking some time away from work recently. I played
| WoW (classic version) for about three months for the first
| time ever. I made it to level 47 as a night elf hunter.
|
| The environment is beautiful. The fighting is well designed.
| Dungeons can be a nice social experience. It can be a very
| fun and relaxing game. But it gets super repetitive after a
| while. The quests are all minor variations of a few simple
| formats.
|
| I just started playing Minecraft two weeks ago and I'm loving
| it. I've never played it before either. It has the
| exploration and beautiful scenery aspects and feels like a
| much more creative game. I'm guessing it will be less stale
| after 3 months than WoW was. But we will see :)
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| You are in the no mans land of wow leveling in the mid
| 40's. As a hunter you should be able to blow through to 60
| in a few days from 47, it is one of the better classes for
| solo leveling.
|
| The real fun of wow classic is running dungoens and
| instances with a guild. A clean run of a 40 man Molten Core
| run is a hoot. I would say join a guild and run instances
| with them and see if that sparks some of the fun back into
| it.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Overwatch is just feeling stale because OW2 has been in
| development so long. I'm sure they'll get a huge boost when it
| launches. But yeah, all their current titles are pretty much
| just rolling along with nothing new, people are going to go
| elsewhere in the meantime.
|
| The FPS crowd is extremely cyclical, mostly owing to Call of
| Duty and Battlefield's annual release cycles. Gamers buy the
| latest FPS, play it for a few months until the next one comes
| out. A game like Overwatch just... feels old now, even though
| it's a high-quality well-balanced game.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or maybe Overwatch does not have staying power. It is quite
| interesting how CS still has million daily players... And
| they don't do that much either in terms of new content.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Overwatch queue times are still pretty good outside of
| Masters+ competitive play (remember most players are quick
| play or Diamond and below). I'm fairly certain overwatch 2
| and beyond will be just fine barring some massive screw-up.
| The main problem with OW was how much money they blew on
| the Overwatch League and E-sports partnerships - hundreds
| of millions of dollars invested and the top talent keeps
| leaving because they are miserable.
| plandis wrote:
| The last content added to Overwatch that wasn't new
| character skins or balance patches was in April of 2020
| when they added the last new character to the game. The
| last new non-death match map added to Overwatch was in
| 2019.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but I think CS:GO has had like two
| big updates since like Q4 2020 alone.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's pretty amazing how evergreen the CS formula has been
| considering how simple it is.
| Ekaros wrote:
| In games simplicity isn't a bad thing. Think of Chess or
| even more think of Go. A thousands of years old game,
| with two pieces/colours and very simple rules.
| aaomidi wrote:
| If it launches, one of the major faces of that project has
| left. There's not a lot of trust @ Blizzard releasing good
| updates to games anymore.
| seoulbran wrote:
| I wonder if the reason Jeff left was that he was asked to
| leave for taking so long with the game...? I would rather
| he not leave as he has been the face of OW for a long time
| and beloved by the fan base. But, this is a public company
| and deadlines and dollars matter...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I highly doubt it. Very visible employees that are
| community-loved are incredibly stupid to let go of.
| Jeff's community fame is worth dozens of other employees'
| worth to the company.
|
| My guess is that Jeff wanted to move on, either due to
| issues internally, or for something different.
| kyrra wrote:
| My money is on Jeff Kaplin joining mike morhaime's
| Dreamhaven. That studio seems to be stealing lots of top
| executive talent from Blizzard.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I'll miss Jeff, but he's not the end all of why Overwatch
| is a fantastic game. Bear in mind "faces" are often just
| that... the "face" of a large group, who generally is
| comfortable being in front of the crowds and talking with
| everyone.
| derekdahmer wrote:
| Plus Overwatch development has stagnated for the last year or
| so as their team has been focusing on Overwatch 2, which
| probably won't even come out this year.
| jandrese wrote:
| Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's
| basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it
| seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2.
|
| There are still niches for specialized audiences, like
| historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass
| market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.
| confidantlake wrote:
| I watch probably 10 hours a week between SC1 and SC2. I have
| to agree, BW is a much better spectator sport imo. Battles
| take longer, there are things happening on more on the map
| ect. But SC2 is still a lot of fun to watch.
| nosianu wrote:
| I watch both too and I disagree. After a while I have to
| stop watching SC1 games, I can continue watching SC2 for
| much much longer. SC1 just gets way too boring. It really
| is like watching chess, slow and methodical (assuming the
| perfect control only the top players can achieve in this
| game, I could not stand watching any less skilled players,
| other than with SC2). I appreciate the much faster games in
| SC2. I think SC2 game play is more significantly more
| varied too.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I love BW but it's still far from perfect. Even if things
| like single build select and max 12 unit select were okay at
| the time and worked decently within the game's design,
| they're still incredibly clunky choices. Honestly, even
| playing it in its heydey, I already disliked the 12 unit
| select.
|
| > It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came
| after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2.
|
| SC2 had a bunch of design choices that seemed to reflect a
| shallow understanding of what made BW actually super good.
| Like, how incredibly tightly units clumped together should've
| been picked out as an obvious flaw immediately, but instead
| they never fixed the underlying issue and just patched up
| some of the negative impacts via econ changes.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Like, how incredibly tightly units clumped together
| should've been picked out as an obvious flaw immediately
|
| Pretty much everyone who used air-units in SC1 abused the
| "tight" formations of Muta-stacks (or other SC:BW air
| units). In most fights: tight formations are incredibly
| superior to loose formations. (Obviously Corsairs /
| Valkyries changed that, but typical hit-and-run tactics are
| better when stacked)
|
| Automatically having tight stacks in SC2 meant the skill-
| curve of tight formations was brought down: so that
| beginners can benefit from the strategy with less practice.
| Advanced players can still use their superior APM to loosen
| the formations (if they go up against anti-death ball
| units, like Siege Tanks or Banelings).
| Jetrel wrote:
| Speak for yourself; I can't stand SC1 after all the quality-
| of-life features they added to 2.
|
| There's nothing dumber and more immersion-breaking than
| watching 15 dragoons get stuck in a small opening because the
| game's pathfinding is the very best the mid-90s has to offer.
| Or watching a reaver's scarab just ... get stuck, on the way
| to a target. They solved all of this crap (and a whole lot
| more) in SC2, and I can't go back.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Dragoon pathing is actually a bug where the dragoons think
| they're smaller than they are IIRC. They just never patched
| it because it ended up becoming a part of the accepted
| balance.
| TheCapn wrote:
| I think its because their model changed their hitbox as
| they moved. So while their pathing was calculated at one
| point of the animation they could no longer fit and would
| re-path or something to that extent.
| dragontamer wrote:
| For a "perfect" game, Dragoon / Goliath pathing is sure
| awful.
|
| Starcraft 2 units really do "what you want" most of the time:
| automatically balling up into groups or "dancing" together.
| From one perspective, elite Starcraft1 players who memorized
| "The Magic Box" and other engine-level pathfinding behaviors
| saw this as an abomination: other players can gain the same
| skills now without practice.
|
| On the other hand... lets be frank. Dragoon / Goliath
| pathfinding was bullshit from Starcraft1. The extraordinary
| measures you'd have to take to become a competitive player
| who uses those (ie: Magic box memorization. Dragoon Dance
| practice. Etc. etc.) was fundamentally unfun.
|
| This is coming from me: someone who did put in the effort to
| properly dragoon dance / Muta stack / etc. etc. We all do
| things to seek a competitive edge against our opponents.
|
| -------------
|
| The work / reward ratio needs to be there in some extent. But
| it can't be so large to turn beginners away. I'm not sure if
| anyone's found the proper balance yet, but Starcraft2
| definitely was better from that perspective.
|
| EDIT: I'm also a big fan of fighting games. Hyper-fighters,
| like Blazblue or Guilty Gear, have a nice auto-balance called
| combo proration. Combos are clearly the best way to play, but
| each combo makes the rest of the combo exponentially do less
| damage (!!!). This means that a 50 hit combo in BlazBlue will
| probably only do 10% more than a 20 hit combo, despite the
| huge difficulty curve in executing. The bulk of the damage is
| from the attacks before proration kicks in. This allows for
| the expert-community to practice for those 50-hit combos,
| while not necessarily granting huge 250% bonuses over
| beginners. A casual player may only decide to learn the
| 20-hit combo and still be 90% of the way to playing like an
| expert (compared to experts who have to work far, far harder
| to get the last 10% of damage).
| TheCapn wrote:
| I've always held that their patch/balance style is what
| ultimately killed SC2's scene compared to SC1. Just look at
| how many balance patches were required from SC2 vs. what
| they applied in SC1.
|
| While neither game is perfect IMO, letting the game mature
| without micromanaging it was a very important aspect of
| SCBW's success. Instead of mucking with units on a monthly
| basis they let things simmer and ultimately let balance be
| achieved through proper map design used in the competitive
| scene.
|
| In my personal opinion one of the biggest faults with SC2
| was their unit design philosophy. The idea that every unit
| was viable or had some special unlock created a balance
| nightmare. Its been years since I played either game
| competitively (played iCCup in BW / Collegiate StarLeague
| for SC2:WoL) but I remember always feeling like the game
| had too much "gotcha" in it that SCBW never had. Didn't
| scout proxy reapers? gg. Didn't scout fast void? gg. Didn't
| scout x? gg. It was too much rock-paper-scissors where
| missing one piece of intel was death while SCBW wasn't
| entirely the same. Taking the Terran/Protoss matchup for
| example you'd typically expect the early game to be
| vulture+tank vs. zealot+goon where if the terran player
| just a-moved into the protoss it was guaranteed loss, but
| microing the vulture and tanks gave you the chance and
| arguably the upperhand where the _skill_ of the either
| player determined the outcome. SC2 didn 't have that to the
| same extent.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree, the balance for pro level has
| almost no bearing on lower leagues who suck. I think the
| reason people stopped playing is that it's really really
| hard (tiring) and it's not a team based game and can get
| quite lonely.
| dragontamer wrote:
| That sounds more like a symptom as opposed to the
| underlying problem. A large number of patches isn't
| necessarily a bad thing, but an unstable meta is
| definitely bad.
|
| So SC2 starts off with SCV-auto split, no more manual
| splitting at the start of the game (all players now can
| play the first 5-seconds of every game like a pro: no
| practice needed anymore) But then muscle-memory people
| wanted an edge, so they added MULEs / Spawn Larva /
| Chronoboost, giving players a muscle-memory / simple
| timer countdown to play with. Etc. etc.
|
| Just back-and-forth changes like that was the real
| problem. The general balance patches had no idea for the
| final metagame they were actually going for. Did Blizzard
| want a game that rewarded manual effort (Juggle MULEs?)?
| Or did they want a game where manual-effort was minimized
| (Auto-Worker Split?)
|
| In the end: Blizzard wanted both, even if the two designs
| contradicted each other. You really can't please both
| groups of players, but by switching back and forth
| between the two designs, they only really pissed off both
| camps over the long term.
| rubidium wrote:
| AoE2 is another 20+ year old game that has experienced a
| renaissance due to new updates.
| bsder wrote:
| > Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's
| basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it
| seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2.
|
| The overall market killed the RTS genre because everybody has
| a pretty clear idea of exactly how much money you're going to
| make selling an RTS and it's not that high. RTS games don't
| port well to consoles or mobile, and that's the majority of
| people and revenue.
|
| Blizzard killed the RTS genre by completely optimizing for
| e-sports click-fests at the expense of _everything_ else. A
| pox on their house.
| mobilio wrote:
| I still play SC1:BW Remastered almost every day.
|
| It's PERFECT!
| haunter wrote:
| .
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Neither is an RTS. They're MOBAs.
| vaylian wrote:
| True. But these Mobas are descendants og these RTSs.
| WarCraft 3 gave birth to Dota 1. StarCraft 1 had the Aeon
| of Strife map.
| dgritsko wrote:
| Those are MOBAs, not RTS.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| I guess it wasn't clear but he is talking about RTS games
| of which your examples are MOBA games and would not apply.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| DOTA and LoL are not RTS games; they're MOBAs.
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I much preferred Supreme Commander, but then again, I'm not
| the eSports clicks-per-second type of gamer.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| How do you lose revenue as a gaming biz during a pandemic?
| Kotick needs to lean in and build out WOW.
| scruple wrote:
| Revenue is up, up, up, but MAU is down.
| void_mint wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| egfx wrote:
| 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.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > 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?
| novok wrote:
| 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.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| "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.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's interesting that Hearthstone is the exception. They're
| regularly releasing new content. I still play daily after 5
| years.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| 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.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| 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.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the
| same level of pull as League of Legends.
|
| Which to me isn't surprising as HotS' way to stand out from the
| rest is also why it's not fun long-term. At first it seems cool
| that every map in the game has a unique objective that the
| teams compete around. But the game is balanced in a way that
| you either win that objective 2-3 times or you lose the game,
| with rare exceptions. So now suddenly you do have a couple
| different objectives, but those never change and set the pace
| and timing for every single round, always in the same way.
|
| In comparison, LoL and DotA always have the exact same map and
| objectives on it, but the teams are free to do what they want.
| Stay in lane for 20 minutes? Sure, why not, if none of the
| teams force the next phase. Focus on teamfights and kills or
| try to get the next dragon? Whatever you want.
|
| I played HotS for 2 weeks and then I just needed to see the
| next map's loading screen to know where I'd need to stand
| exactly 2 minutes into the round. It becomes a game of kill-
| and-fetch quests where you also have to rely on 4 other people
| to do the right thing. Not fun.
| mrgordon wrote:
| I strongly disagree. The maps add tons of variety and the
| objectives force you to have team battles instead of just one
| vs one landing to last hit minions all game. Shared XP is
| another part of making it less about winning your one lane
|
| The issue is they were late to MOBAs and made the game
| entirely free so there was no reason to really support the
| game. Eventually the finance people notice
| hengri wrote:
| If that was true, we would still be using myspace and
| friendster.
| ainiriand wrote:
| All of this started with the Activision buyout. They wanted to
| milk the cow as much as possible, outsourcing ALL. It is not
| working.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Starcraft 2 is basically dead. WC3 remastered flopped
|
| Paradoxically, I've noticed an uptick of new creative Starcraft
| 2 content on Youtube (similar to those "can you beat the game
| by doing [insert crazy premise here]" types of videos you see
| in the Mario community).
|
| I think the two company direction things that were noticeable
| for me were that they decided to try to embrace two major cop-
| outs: milking cash shop (skins, voice packs) and trying to pull
| Disney-like re-runs of classics (SC and WC remastered). Many in
| the community are lamenting that e.g. the dev team behind
| Starcraft is essentially disbanded. It's like they
| fundamentally gave up being a game company, and decided to be a
| collectibles company instead.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _It 's like they fundamentally gave up being a game
| company, and decided to be a collectibles company instead._
|
| If there's one business lesson to take from the history of
| the video game industry, it's that being a video game company
| is extremely unreliable. Being a collectibles company is much
| more reliable.
|
| As the company leaders look for ways to make their business
| endure, it's natural for them to turn to more reliable
| business models.
|
| _Nobody_ likes layoffs.
| lhorie wrote:
| I dunno. I think riding on nostalgia can only get you so
| far. Disney's new Mulan and WC3 remastered getting flak
| were due to happen at some point, and the criticisms are
| well deserved IMHO.
|
| On the other hand, Mario keeps reinventing the adventure
| genre with creative mechanics, even though storyline/CGI of
| each new game is basically non-existent compared to
| Blizzard's capabilities. WoW obviously did very well in
| spinning the Warcraft lore into new directions, and
| Starcraft Ghost was also highly anticipated before the
| vaporware lost its steam. I think the main difference
| between Nintendo and Blizzard - and why Nintendo still
| commands such strong brands - is Nintendo plays the long
| term game, never getting drunk on a single unicorn success.
| meowface wrote:
| The competitive Starcraft 2 scene has definitely seen a new
| surge of excitement within the past two or so years. (This is
| just my subjective impression; no idea of the actual numbers.
| And I'm not sure what the non-professional scene is currently
| like.)
|
| I think a large part of it is that after around 10 years of
| dominating Starcraft 2 and 20 years of dominating Starcraft
| 1, there are now some European players who are repeatedly
| beating Korean players (and everyone else) in the big
| tournaments.
|
| (Including in-person tournaments, so you can't chalk it up to
| latency differences. Though of course there haven't been any
| of those in the past year, so we'll see if that'll be
| sustained.)
|
| The two main usurpers, Serral (Finland) and Reynor (Italy)
| also have a really entertaining rivalry. I'd go so far as to
| say that those two may have single-handedly kept professional
| Starcraft 2 interesting and alive.
| lhorie wrote:
| I think the notable thing about the Starcraft 2 pro scene
| is the age of some of the new up-and-coming players. Reynor
| is 18, and Clem is 17. They're clearly not coming to the
| game for the nostalgia.
|
| I think the uptick in challenge youtube videos is also no
| coincidence. These are games where there's depth in terms
| of acquirable skills, and there's definitely interest in
| the community for displays of mastery in these types of
| games.
| meowface wrote:
| Yeah, definitely. A lot/most of the top pros and
| commentators have been playing since the start of SC2 and
| often since early SC1, so all these new, young players
| are a huge breath of fresh air. They're growing up on a
| metagame that's been forming for a decade and putting
| their own creative spin on things, in addition to
| probably having a bit of a speed and reflex advantage.
| Reynor's keyboard cam is often pretty insane to watch.
|
| (SC1 was actually the first computer game I ever played,
| back in 2000 or so, which I think is why it still holds a
| special place in my heart. Funny to think "computer game"
| is kind of an antiquated term now.)
| confidantlake wrote:
| Also to a lesser extent, there is the rise of Clem
| (France). What makes that interesting is he is Terran,
| which is a race that rarely sees high level foreign (non-
| korean) players.
| meowface wrote:
| Yeah, I should've mentioned him as well. I was following
| it most closely in 2019, where Serral and Reynor were the
| main stars and Clem was mostly just a super young and
| kind of inconsistent up-and-comer. We'll see if Serral
| (23) can keep up with the teenagers.
| akmarinov wrote:
| It's looking likely that the GSL is going away after
| Blizzard stops funding it the year after, though.
|
| ASL looking strong in Korea.
| pradn wrote:
| I'm unsure if the RTS genre is in a waning phase. AoE2 is still
| a top-20 game every day on Steam. Granted, it's a 20-year-old
| game. Maybe that shows new entrants can't make it; or maybe it
| shows there aren't enough good new entrants. StarCraft 2 is not
| as popular as it was, but would still be in the top 20 games if
| it were on Steam. We'll see if AoE4 gives the genre a kick.
| Initial reactions are somewhat lukewarm because of the art
| style, but the game play looks good.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I recently started playing AoE2 again with my brothers after
| basically a 15 year gap, and it's a lot of fun. I was
| surprised to see such an active community. I've heard AoE4
| will be more like AoE2 than AoE3 was, so I'm totally
| considering picking it up at some point if my brothers do.
| The game has aged really well with its design. We are all
| casual gamers, and it's nice to have something to play with
| people who aren't into the FPS twitch skills.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I suppose they mean in the commercial sense, new RTS games
| certainly don't drive industry leading sales for instance.
|
| Certainly in the context of talking about a publisher like
| Blizzard nothing but raw profit is of any concern. Arty
| ambitions is the something for the game studios that appear
| and die off, not for the publisher that seeks to endure.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| To me it just looks like they aren't trying very hard.
|
| SC2 did something very smart with its last expansion with
| the coop mode, and it became very popular despite being
| only sort of fleshed out. I could easily see that kind of
| game mode making for a hit RTS if it was the central focus,
| and had the standard MMO-lite stuff like loot and missions
| and raids and story and customizable units/armies and
| support for other group sizes.
| BadInformatics wrote:
| As GP mentioned, AOE4 will be a good litmus test of the
| "commercial sense". Microsoft arguably squandered one of
| their most iconic franchises for the better part of 2
| decades, and yet here we are (in large part thanks to
| strong sustained grassroots support from the community).
| confidantlake wrote:
| Nothing wrong with being a solid niche imo. Classical music
| will never sell as big as pop, but there will always be
| musicians and concerts keeping it alive on a smaller scale.
| No reason the same can't happen with RTS.
| drbojingle wrote:
| RTS genre is waning, but Age of Empires 2 is still holding on.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| > don't you have phones?
|
| Blizzard isn't the same company it once was. It used to be
| known for deep gameplay and creative stories but now it's
| focused entirely on the free to play skinners boxes of card
| games, a mmo, and loot boxes to monetize the other games.
| Almost the entire early-days staff has moved on to other
| companies. Blizzard doesn't exist any more, just a big
| corporation with the same name
| neatze wrote:
| > Starcraft 2 is basically dead.
|
| Do you have source for this claim, because population in
| StarCraft is fairly stable, at least based on ranking
| statistics.
| baby wrote:
| Diablo 3 was pretty bad imo, clearly targeting consoles. Path
| of Exile is a much more faithful sequel to Diablo 2 and has a
| very active player base. It's almost like if Valve gave it the
| same treatment they gave dota2.
| baumandm wrote:
| I don't know if this is true or not, but it seems doubtful
| since it didn't come to consoles for over a year after
| release.
|
| According to Wikipedia:
|
| > It was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in May 2012,
| the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013
| baby wrote:
| If you played the game it's a given that they were planning
| to do that release a long time before it was announced. The
| gameplay was heavily dumbdowned in D3 exactly for that
| purpose.
| supernovae wrote:
| POE is dangerously close to "2nd job" territory and is
| struggling to be fun as it heads into curiously complex
| gameplay and meta game.
|
| So i struggle to see how different it is from other blizzard
| games
| merb wrote:
| yeah d3 was lacking meta and PoE overdo's it for the
| average "hardcore" audience. d2 was mostly fine and the
| reason why it was so beloved. the problem is that
| replicating what d2 did with something new is challening or
| impossible without rebuilding it (thus being a clone)
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Blizzard has released only the WoW expansion and some minor
| hearthstone expansions in the last 3 years. They have not really
| pushed any major IP releases. Acti-Blizzard is as profitable as
| ever though largely because of the MTX they've baked into COD and
| other games, their mobile games, and things like their overseas
| market penetration working out for them.
|
| That combined with the fact they've lost a significant amount of
| what constituted their top senior creative talent I'm going to
| say two things:
|
| First they're probably a sound investment, they'll probably keep
| climbing as the MTX proliferates and as things like Diablo 4 on
| the horizon release and Warzone through Activision is still
| massively popular as ever.
|
| And second they're probably not a place where you can expect
| massive innovation and polish in games any longer, and if you
| were a fan, like myself, that magical time is over, maybe look to
| Dreamhaven that some of that senior creative talent founded and
| others have gone to since leaving.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Hearthstone actually gets regular, _huge_ updates now days. Far
| more than it did in the first few years. Just today they
| dropped a surprise update for Battlegrounds. It 's clear
| there's a major, constant effort going into developing new
| expansions, new game modes, etc.
|
| They've figured out a clever model of rotating out the old
| content to make room for more new stuff. No doubt Hearthstone
| is very profitable for Blizzard!
|
| Starcraft 2 and HotS, on the other hand, have basically been
| abandoned. Even Overwatch seems to be stagnating somewhat.
| scruple wrote:
| That's true, and I love Hearthstone and play regularly (I
| really prefer the rule sets in HS to MTG:Arena, for example)
| and have played since Beta... But, Hearthstone is also
| monetized like crazy today, as well. Especially as compared
| to 3 years ago.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I think they have actually struck a pretty good balance
| when it comes to paid content. There isn't really anything
| (except maybe some of the hero skins?) you actually _have_
| to pay for and can 't get for free. You can be top-level
| competitive without spending a cent, so long as you play
| enough and spend your gold & dust wisely...
| scruple wrote:
| Yes, I agree. The paid content is good (and the changes
| they've made to F2P are good, too), and I also think that
| it's required to maintain the level of development that
| they are pumping into the game, but... IMO, it is not as
| easy to play Hearthstone _casually_ today as it was 3
| years ago and that's the time frame that the article is
| discussing wrt MAU.
|
| edit/ The addition of classic mode may make it more
| approachable for casual players. Time will tell.
| jkeuhlen wrote:
| Didn't they just copy the MtG model on cycling content for
| competitions? I could be wrong but I thought it was almost
| exactly what Wizards of the Coast starting doing in the early
| days of Magic.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Quite possibly. I'm not familiar enough with MtG to say.
| But it keeps the game fresh, while conveniently (for
| Blizzard) also ensuring the fans keep paying.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I'll admit Hearthstone is the only mobile game I've
| consistently played over the years. As a huge gamer, nothing
| else in the mobile space has had the breadth and depth of
| Hearthstone, while being accessible for 5-20 minute sessions.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Blizzard has released only the WoW expansion
|
| I think the last thing WoW needs is more expansions.
| sidlls wrote:
| There are probably several factors at play, but the two biggest
| in my view are: 1) increased competition and 2) diminishing
| quality (technical and qualitative, e.g. in terms of release
| management, story telling, etc.).
|
| Examples in my opinion:
|
| Diablo has always had repetitive gameplay, but the stories/lore
| seems to suffer with each release.
|
| They are either working on SC3 in secret or have given up on the
| franchise.
|
| Their management of WoW Classic and rollout of releases has been
| awful. Without fresh progression servers, Classic is going to
| truly die in a couple of weeks with the release of TBC.
| jvzr wrote:
| Blizzard died the day it was bought by Activision. It has been
| descending into mediocrity ever since. Many executives left, and
| many studios/teams inside Blizzard have been shuffled around and
| between projects, unlike Blizzard's doctrine of old (tight teams
| focused on a project until it's great or must be stopped --
| Blizzard's infamous "Soon(tm)").
|
| World of Warcraft is still being milked till it dries up (and I'm
| saying that as someone clocking 560+ _days_ in game). Diablo has
| been abandonned (see the announcement of a mobile Diablo game
| last year1, and its reception by the player base). So has
| StarCraft. Overwatch is stagnant (no new hero for a year) and
| Overwatch 2 is probably in development hell (pure speculation on
| my part I 'll admit). Heroes of the Storm is also pretty stagnant
| (the game went from a hero every month to only two last year,
| nothing in 2021 so far).
|
| In the meantime, there has been a very heavy push for e-sports
| with Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm (though I have not
| followed any of those). These efforts seem, to me, extremely
| centred on American audience, unlike League of Legends which has
| multiple leagues around the world. I'm sure a ton of money has
| been poured into this venture, but I'm unsure it has improved the
| games...
|
| Anyway, the last time I launched Battle.net was for Destiny 2...
| and it has migrated to Steam in the middle of 2019!
|
| 1Wow OK, that was in 2018 o_O Time flies, especially with a
| global pandemic, it seems...
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| FWIW, they did announce Diablo 4 for PC/Xbox/PS the year after
| the Diablo Immortal fiasco...
| jvzr wrote:
| You are right. Plus, the Diablo 2 remaster announced at the
| same time as Diablo 4 (IIRC)
|
| Based on past track record, I don't hold much hope, though
| k12sosse wrote:
| D2 resurrected looks like it's lining up to be fun. The
| company that was outsourced to rebuild has said they didn't
| want to fix d2. They wanted to overhaul it's graphics and
| give it QoL. Same bugs. Same game.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Blaming Activision is too convenient. Activision is pretty
| hands off of its studios creatively.
|
| The truth is a lot of the good developers left, their new mmo
| Titan was a massive flop that was rolled into Overwatch, HotS
| wasn't very compelling, and Diablo 3 never had a compelling
| endgame to be a "forever game" with constant revenue,
| Hearthstone was a creative grass roots effort that has since
| been hit with heavy competition and WOW is an aging workhorse
| but its not the phenomenon it once was.
|
| Activision is the cause of all that?
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