I adored Blizzard's output for ~20 years - I have every collectors edition they released from Warcraft III to Overwatch - but I'm basically done. The scandals, the shitty monetization, and the half-baked products all point to a radically different culture and company than the one that released Starcraft in 1998. No king reigns forever.
Guild Wars is the only game made by an "ex-Blizzard" staffed studio that I feel has had any significant amount of success. Just goes to show how much these things are collaborative efforts that rely on a particular environment to come together.
Not quite the same as an entirely ex-Blizzard staffed group of people, but Riot Games and League of Legends as well. Tom Cadwell[0] was there from the very beginning of League's life and has had considerable influence over the development and growth of the game. Before that, he was on Warcraft 3's development team and supposedly (supposedly because I can't remember despite being on the War3 forums, and can't find evidence of it) had a hand in developing its fairly successful esports scene. And before that, he was actually one of the first Starcraft pro gamers in the late 90's, just before the explosion of esports in South Korea.
He's kind of a one-man army, but his influence definitely has shaped the more popular games and industry landscape today.
GW was very much a result of the founders attempting to recreate all the good things (at least in their opinion) about Blizzard's work environment without carrying over the bad things. They put a lot of thought into things like code ownership policies, schedules and even office floor plans.
I still feel disappointed about GW2. GW1 had the most ambitious and innovative and interesting class build system we'd seen 'til then and arguably ever since. It was crazy what was possible. Also still the best structured PvP we've ever gotten in an MMO.
You aren't kidding. I loved GW1 and theory-crafting new builds. I had a tremendous time doing competitive Guild-vs-Guild at a high rank, random arenas, and Heroes Ascent. I remember grinding an obscene amount for prestige titles, and I found the rarest item in the game which I still remember selling for 900 ectos (it was the only sword with a different damage type, useful for min-maxing against an opposing monk, and the only place it could drop in the game with perfect stats was as a reward in Heroes Ascent).
GW2 was easily my personal biggest let-down in gaming of all time. They eliminated GW1's namesake PVP mode and the entirety of its super-deep build and combat system.
I think their main goal in GW2 was to build a "true" MMO instead of GW1's instanced gameplay. I think GW1's build system just wouldn't work very well with that design. It would be difficult to balance world content for groups ranging from 1 to 8 people - many GW1 classes would also have a hard time soloing without picking very specific secondary classes and builds.
So I can see why they went down the route they did. I agree it's a bit of a shame though. Would kill for a GW1 re-release with some updated graphics and QoL improvements.
It feels like another MMO following the WoW bandwagon. GW1 was so unique and I feel fills a niche that would still be relevant today if it had active support with new expansions and regular updates.
Maybe it made sense for them in order to reach a bigger audience and maybe it paid off for them. I just wish they hadn't gone the "true MMO" route.
That chart must be from before 2011 because the wikipedia entry for Flagship Studios (the single largest receiver of Blizzard talent in the chart) says it went belly up in 2008.
Holly "Windstalker" Lonsdale is Vice President and Executive Producer of World of Warcraft now.
That woman knows how to milk it.
She oversaw Everquest 1 and 2. Expansion prices of 150€ were common.
WoW just isn't quite there yet, but it will be eventually.
I'm not a WoW fan. I blame it for many things, but I'm bored and saw Dragonflight being in Pre-order advertising and checked out the prices. 50€ bare minimum. No thanks.
I'm no longer playing that game, I moved back to piracy.
Paying a subscription fee to play a game who's main design is to keep you playing so you spend more money in the in game shop is not my kind of entertainment.
Is there really a problem with lack of competition in video games? There may not be a ton of companies able to pull off the highest budgets, but there seems to be a lot of companies making good games and successful independent projects
I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?
One thing notable about the way Blizzard has been operating lately is that they remove the existing thing when updating the old thing. I've heard you automatically get "upgraded" to Warcraft III reforged if you have it installed and are logged into Battle.net. I hear Overwatch 1 is similarly wiped out and no longer playable.
The thing that's weird is, I don't think this is normal at all. On Nintendo's end, you can still play Splatoon 2 just fine even though Splatoon 3 came out, even on multiplayer. Multiplayer games often have a long life after they're superceded, even if it's a smaller contingent. If you boot up Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament 2004, you can see there are still players online pretty much always, even if it's a small contingent.
The only good reason I can think of for utterly axing old games is so that you don't have to compete with them. Why buy Reforged for $40 when you could get the original better Warcraft III on GoG? (You can't, of course; you can only get Warcraft I and II on GoG, at least now.) In case of Overwatch, they WOULD have to continue to run the servers. But surely, the majority of players would switch to the new game anyway, right?
My opinion should be taken as a grain of salt because Warcraft III is one of the last games I really liked that much from Blizzard, to be honest. But still, something stinks over at Activision Blizzard, and it's somehow not just Bobby Kotick.
WCIII TFT is quite easily blizzard's greatest game simply because of the world editor.
I have played a bit of WoW, SCII, and Overwatch, and nothing will come close to finding a new custom game Sunday morning at 2 am and having fun with a random lobby.
The "melee" (standard mode) matches were great too.
I have played a lot of games and genres and nothing will ever top that experience for me.
I know this sounds trite, but you should give OW2 another go with a group of regular friends. You can setup custom games with super goofy rules or use some of the excellent existing custom game codes, and not even touch the competitive aspect of the game.
Almost every single game with a group of regular friends will eventually become fun, and if he wishes to do the things you just mentioned he could do it in most source engine games with a lot more freedom.
Agreed. I mini boycotted Blizzard since 2012 because of starcraft stuff, and I fully cutoff blizzard from my spending in 2018. I didn't even try reforged, and I played both custom and standard games in WCIII religiously. I was good at both dota and 1v1 (semi pro in the latter).
This was a such a bizarre move for Warcraft III - a game that was 18 years old when Reforged came out. I kind of get OW2 more: it's basically a F2P patch, like what happened with TF2 or Evolve. If they had just said OW is going F2P it's what I would have expected - the weirdest part is calling it a sequel at all.
But Warcraft III feels like it's from a completely different era, so it's kind of shocking that they replaced it with Reforged. It's like if Valve patched CounterStrike 1.6 so that it's just CS: GO with shittier graphics.
I think there is a reasonable explanation for removing OW1. Queue times were already a huge problem (which is a large reason why they moved to one tank, as nobody wanted to play tank). Keeping around OW1 would have fragmented the player base and would have hurt the OW2 launch.
That said, there are plenty of more cynical reasons why Blizzard removed OW1 which are likely also true…
I have no sources on hand and no desire to find any, but I think that OW2 was a partial refactor of OW1, if that makes sense. They'd always planned to sunset OW1 for the release of 2.
Ages ago, there was a large update to OW1, which I believe had something to do with 'readiness' for OW2 in the form of major engine changes, etc. Nothing was really new after that patch, but it was massive, and may have actually been a full reinstall. Memory is flaky there, and I don't want to look for details while at work.
I'd bet $1 that the megapatch (and patches since) would have been designed with OW2 in mind, since OW2 took a long time in the oven. Extrapolating a bit, I think of it as running the OW2 engine in OW1 compatibility mode, or something.
To be super pedantic, you bought a license for the software. That is just the truth us consumers have to deal with, and you can support DRM-free purchases like via GOG to help turn the tide.
Also existing owners of OW1 were given additional stuff for OW2. Of course, I (as an owner myself) don't think it was a good compensation and hate Blizzard for removing the old game. But there is enough justification that your original price has been repaid in content.
Sure, that's their motives of course - to move people to a newer game and not have any distractions like lingering old stuff.
If you only played for free then it may sting but you have no right to compensation, only to annoyed venting.
But people are saying they paid $60 for it. They have a right to compensation. Moreover, it feels like this should not only be handled by individual damages related to the value of the product but also a fine or punitive damages related to what they thought they would gain from the scheme.
I mean, that's the SaaS model, and I suppose it does make sense for multiplayer games which require ongoing maintenance, but I agree, it's not what I'm looking for for my gaming.
It certainly isn't unprecedented, which is probably the worst part of the whole thing. That said, I think that it is at least a partial component of the OW2 backlash, so it's hard to ignore here :(
I think most people expected more and instead got less is the gist of the situation. I'm pretty surprised they released a game with less features, the same maps, and didn't deliver on many of the promises.
I played a final 40 hours of OW1 just before OW2 came out then played 40 hours of OW2. 5v5 in its current state has problematic balancing issues, but I will set those aside with the assumption that they'll eventually be fixed. I will also set aside the total destruction of the metagame as that is their business department's plan.
The real scandal with OW2 is that they removed all performance feedback. No more being on fire, no more end-game cards where you could give kudos to a player on either team. In its place is nothing and there is no business justification for it. Defeats are crushing, victories are hollow. No levels or loot boxes. I can't ask my friends to come back and play because it's just bad. I'm just not going to play anymore.
The original Overwatch would release new heroes for free, and cosmetics for that hero would be available for random drops/purchase just like any other cosmetic item.
In OW2, the new heroes are on tier 55 of the battlepass, if you're a free-to-play user. If you buy the pass, you unlock the hero for play instantly. As far as I know, there is no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out.
Having played the first game, the monetization model of the second feels like a slap in the face. They've added new categories of worthless junk cosmetics to pad things out. It feels like they looked at other battlepass models, and threw a bunch of random shit together to pad it out.
But hey, if you don't want to grind too much, you can always buy the Battlepass +20 package, and knock out the first 20 tiers instantly!
It's very likely that they just include the new heroes in the existing new hero grind. If you get just OW2 (without having owned OW1), you have to go through around 100 games to unlock the entire roster.
OW1 monetization was wildly better. While you could buy lootboxes, yes, the game was extremely generous in giving you free lootboxes, and you could easily earn a half dozen in an afternoon of play. That, and all content could be unlocked as a "free" player by merely playing the game which you purchased once.
In contrast you'd need to spend the full purchase price of OW1 several times over just to buy the skins that aren't even available in the battlepass.
Everyone I knew that actually played OW1 enjoyed blizzard's implementation of lootboxes, and afaict everyone dislikes the new monetization.
Someone who didn't pay for OW1 might have no ground to complain, but in my case I paid for OW1 which now doesn't exist and I am left with OW2 which locks away any kind of progression unless I pay.
It's a bait and switch and the community is rightfully angry. If they wanted to make a f2p OW they could've released OW2 as a standalone, except they knew no one would have migrated so instead they killed the old one.
No they don't. They aren't even shutting down the free to play CoD: Warzone 1 when 2.0 releases. I can still play CoD games I bought on PS3, online. But somehow OW1 had to go.
I quit OW when role queue was introduced. It felt like Blizzard was forcing a certain "meta", and while it might have been necessary for high-level play it seemed awfully restrictive at n00b level I played at. It didn't help that Mercy, who I played a lot, was balanced to be "not fun" around the same time.
For me OW2 commits the same major sin that Warcraft 3 Reforged did. Replacing its predecessor with no option to play the older game as it was. I understand not wanting to split the community, but if someone doesn't like OW2's 5v5, or monetization, or whatever, their only option is to quit.
Also, given that OW2 made every cosmetic more expensive to acquire, it's only natural that people would draw comparisons and get mad.
(sorry for the rant, but it's really all I can do at this point, and I really like[d? :( ] OW)
in the time since OW released, it has been on a long timescale average my most-played game.
There are some other good points in sibling comments, so I won't address those. The biggest problems I have are(in order):
1) It seems like they have moved from a Skill Based Match Making algorithm to an Engagement Optimized Matchmaker, or at least tipped the balance much farther away from skill based match-ups, and it really shows. Way too many games are a complete route one way or the other, and even in Competitive mode games are now often very uneven, where they used to be fairly balanced, and evidence suggests that they are using a stats based skill adjustment system rather than something like Elo that is based on wins. This would make using a non-skill based matchmaker for "Competitive" possible, and is evidenced by people getting placed in matches that have huge differentials in player rank even in metals ranks during primetime, something that virtually never happened in OW1 as far as I know.
This is really sad, and there is really a lack of awareness about these new systems and how, frankly, predatory the new generation matchmakers are. I've been playing competitive FPS(though often not competitively per se) for half my life and I'm rapidly being driven away from one of my favorite things. It's upsetting. Most people like winning, but when it constant feast or famine it really really really starts to feel like the games you win were just the MM giving you a win, and not earned.
2) They deleted a AAA, critically acclaimed, Game of the year winning game that everyone paid for, and replaced it with a buggy, janky F2P one. They removed a fair amount of content, and have had to disable 10% of the roster in the first 6 weeks because it's so buggy. They did add some content, 3 new heros and a handful of new maps, but it just barely balances out what they removed. And that speaks nothing to all of the other stuff that they removed from the UI, like Group finder. It also launched with some of the worst netcode I've seen in a non-indy game, players would briefly jump around the map before snapping back, extremely distracting in a game that is heavily based on tracking. OW1 never came close to this level of ineptness. Even today they announced a last minute delay to a balance patch that they have been promising for over a month, that was additionally supposed to re-enable a hero that has been part of the game since launch of OW1. Supposedly this is because the changes to a live service style, where they can easily adjust the game from the server side, which were-I guess-going to be a part of OW2, either weren't ready at launch or shipped in an unusable state.
But like, they could have launched OW2 as a F2P beta, and kept OW1 around until they had worked out the kinks, and then announced a sunset for OW1, or something they had already made it clear that OW1 was going to be replaced. Deleting a game that had an active playerbase of people who bought it and replacing it with a shittier, obviously half baked version, was a straight up dick move. Imagine if they did that to StarCraft when SC2 came out.
3) Meanwhile they removed one of the core features that got me to love Overwatch in the first place; it eschewed the "play to unlock" model that I have so learned to loathe as an adult, all heros and new ones were just part of the game. In OW2 new heros will be locked behind a battlepass. I have other problems with the F2P model, like it encouraging cheaters and low-investment players who don't know or care to learn to play a game that has significant depth around the cast of heroes(this is greatly magnified by the new Matchmaking which means that even someone who has >1000 hours will get in matches with them).
And to really rub the salt in the wound, they have been able to keep the new player shop filled with (shockingly expensive to this millennial) content. It absolutely feels like a cash grab at this point, especially considering today's patch delay(the second for this patch). It's also grimly foreshadowing that the hero that is currently disabled was only disabled because of an interaction with the hero that is currently locked behind the battlepass that let the new, locked hero get out of the play area and wreak havoc. Previously they would have handled it in reverse, especially considering the nature of the interaction (the new hero can teleport behind teammates).
