My problem with Blizzard...

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The Rainmaker

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Jun 21, 2009
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I like Blizzard. Should i feel bad? :S I think they make great games, but I can see how long time fans can be dissapointed with their recent work, but I still think the games they make are FUN.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Hammeroj said:
I read your wall of text and... A lot of what you're saying rings true, no doubt. Blizzard is a bunch of hacks at this point.

But no, the SC2 expansions won't be sold full price. Doesn't change the fact that SC2 itself is a horribly cliched, holey, dumb, padded out experience, to the point where it's obvious that it isn't actually a full game. It's one of the campaigns from the previous games stretched out to fill an entire game.
Yeah, I've pretty much given up my claim on the SC II issue, as numerous people have come out with facts that I didn't know and convinced me otherwise.

The Rainmaker said:
I like Blizzard. Should i feel bad? :S I think they make great games, but I can see how long time fans can be dissapointed with their recent work, but I still think the games they make are FUN.
This topic is just an opinion piece, nothing wrong if you disagree with my opinion and like Blizzard. For me it really boils down to the fact that I, like countless others, had been waiting over a decade for SC II and very eagerly looked forward to it when it was announced. Then I come to find out that they decided to split the game into three separate games and to me it just felt like they were screwing over their fanbase, knowing how loyal they were and how eager for this game they were. I could just picture some marketing guy in a Blizzard meeting saying "We know they want this game, we know they'll pay for it...why don't we just say it's so massive that we have to make it three games? Get those suckers to pay three times for the game they've been dreaming of for years?" Though as I mentioned above and in previous posts, I have since backed away from that position.

AcidKnight said:
Yup, 6:30AM here. Totally not reading all that.
Probably should put a tldr or something in there, reading that whole thing should be an achievement lol
Don't wanna read it? Then you don't have to, it's just my opinion on Blizzard. I'm a writer so I tend to write...a lot...especially about something like this.

But if you really want a synopsis of the original post, it'd probably be something like "Blizzard seems to care much more about the dollar signs in its eyes these days then pleasing its fans. WoW has gotten to the point where many people feel like its a job or a chore that they have to pay to do rather than getting paid to do it. I had originally brought up how I thought the idea to split SC II into 3 separate games was the most soulless and greedy thing Blizzard could have possibly done, taking a game the people had waited over a decade for and deciding to make themm pay 3 times to get the full experience (I have since backed away from that argument as other posters have convinced me otherwise). I'm a conservative and a capitalist, so I've got no problem with a company doing what it needs to do to make profit...after all, that's the entire point of a company being in business: to make money. But when you unleash a monster such as WoW on the world and start taking in millions (if not billions) of dollars in subscription fees, it's hard to see any "suspicious" decisions (i.e. splitting SC II into 3 games) as being motivated by anything but pure greed...it's like the company saying "How can we suck even MORE money from these people?"

See? Even my tl/dr was rather verbose.
 

go-10

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Feb 3, 2010
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my problem with Blizzard is they canceled Star Craft: Ghost and have no plans of releasing Warcraft IV
 

mcnally86

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Apr 23, 2008
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FelixG said:
I said some things and am now misquoted.
I guess my problem is books. I don't like to have to read an expanded universe to know whats going on. I think a game should stand on its own feet and not require reading homework to understand. But I hear WOW is worse at this than SC.

Hey wait since you bring it up I do know a guy who reads all the books. He told me that bombs in the suits was something stolen from one of the SC books. Are they stealing their own ideas at this point?

EDIT: Hillbillies in a truck is not old west. There were no hillbillies in SC just people with wild west badges and dusters.
 

mcnally86

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Apr 23, 2008
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GZGoten said:
my problem with Blizzard is they canceled Star Craft: Ghost and have no plans of releasing Warcraft IV
Ghost was cannibalized. The SC2 missions for Nova(or against her) was the ghost story line. Nova was the main character from Ghost I hear. Pretty sad I wanted to play them too.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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GZGoten said:
my problem with Blizzard is they canceled Star Craft: Ghost and have no plans of releasing Warcraft IV
The story behind the cancelation of SC Ghost is that Blizzard outsourced all the programing and designing to a third party developer so that Blizzard could focus on WoW. The problem is that when that 3rd party developer turned in a draft of their product, Blizzard said they didn't like it. They were wanting more 3rd person stealth, I'd imagine in the style of Metal Gear, and the company that had been working on it was making it more of your standard 3rd person shooter. As such, Blizzard said to hell with it. As for WC IV, I knew that would never come out when they first announced WoW. Nevermind the fact that the factions were boiled back down to Horde and Alliance (meaning in WC IV there would be no undead faction and no Night Elf faction), but to date according to the WoW story line, every possible titanic threat to Azeroth has been defeated. Illidan's gone, the Burning Legion has been crushed, the Lich King is no more, even Deathwing who was supposed to have been killed at the end of WC II: Beyond the Dark Portal was brought back just to get his ass kicked.

Which brings us to the fact that they are very, VERY quickly running out of direction for WoW...as can easily be seen by the fact that the next expansion is Mists of Pandara...a concept that originated as a joke some years ago. There's nothing left for a WC IV RTS game unless they went back to the classic standard of Horde vs Alliance, but as I mentioned: all of a sudden you'd have The Horde with undead, blood elven, and goblin units and The Alliance with night elves, worgen, and draenei.

mcnally86 said:
FelixG said:
I said some things and am now misquoted.
I guess my problem is books. I don't like to have to read an expanded universe to know whats going on. I think a game should stand on its own feet and not require reading homework to understand. But I hear WOW is worse at this than SC.

Hey wait since you bring it up I do know a guy who reads all the books. He told me that bombs in the suits was something stolen from one of the SC books. Are they stealing their own ideas at this point?

EDIT: Hillbillies in a truck is not old west. There were no hillbillies in SC just people with wild west badges and dusters.
About the books: yeah, I gotta agree with you on that one. Games shouldn't have parts of their story that can only be understood if you read the books, rather books based off of games - if anything - should be the things that you can't fully understand unless you actually played the game.

As for the hillbillies: actually I gotta disagree with you on this one. The Teran race was specifically designed to essentially be Red Necks in space. Just look at the intro video to the original SC when the Protoss destroy that salvage crew, the back-and-forth dialogue between the Terans is pretty redneckian (if I can invent a word). The Teran Confederacy was built to mirror the American Confederacy, which is why most every in-game video features Teran's talking like a bunch of yokels with southern accents. It's not true about any of their actual in-game unit speech, but the videos such as the one in question where the two guys run over the zergling definitely does make the Terans out to be a bunch of space rednecks.
 

baconfist

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Sep 8, 2009
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So let me see if I got this straight. Blizzard is bad because they made you pay them for years of entertainment? To be fair $15 a month is a way cheaper hobby then anything else I can think of.

As for SC2... I can't say I was thrilled that they were releasing it in three installments but after playing it I also can say that it was worth the money I paid. Sure was a lot better then the last couple CoD games, and I look forward to the next two SC2 expansions.

Not to happy with the direction Diablo 3 is going though.
 

mcnally86

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Apr 23, 2008
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RJ 17 said:
I was all like, POWER UP!
I think on books, I'm fine with it being set in the expanded universe but not the things handled in the games. If a book hands Jim Raynor a six shooter they better explain it again in the game. Not just have him pull it out of his butt.

Old west and rednecks are two different things. We don't have an old west anymore but we still have rednecks.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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mcnally86 said:
RJ 17 said:
I was all like, POWER UP!
I think on books, I'm fine with it being set in the expanded universe but not the things handled in the games. If a book hands Jim Raynor a six shooter they better explain it again in the game. Not just have him pull it out of his butt.

Old west and rednecks are two different things. We don't have an old west anymore but we still have rednecks.
And that's what I was trying to say about the book situation. Books should expand FROM the games, not the other way around. If the game gives Jimmy a six-shooter, it'd be fair to mention it in the book. But like you said: if the book gives Jimmy a six-shooter, you should see that scene in-game so it doesn't look like he's just pullin' it out his ass.

And really I never said that the Terans were suppoed to be Wild Wild West, as you are 100% correct: there is a difference between rednecks and the old west. What I'm saying is that if you ask me, Terans aren't Space Cowboys, they're Space Rednecks.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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True, but the over-all theme of Teran civilization is based off the American Confederacy...which, correct me if I'm wrong, was mostly rednecks. :p
 

Lunar Templar

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Sep 20, 2009
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lol

sir, you wanna pay $15 a month for dress up? WoW is NOT the right game, in fact your doing it wrong

City of Heroes takes that idea and runs with it, i've spent about as much time at the tailor as i have actually running missions. best part is CoH is F2P now, XD.

but i hear ya, game gets old after awhile ya get to a point your just 'done' and nothing worng with that, just means its time to move on
 

VoidWanderer

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Sep 17, 2011
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Has anyone else noticed how closely Blizzard resembles Nintendo?

The main one being the main franchises. They both have three main franchises they focus on.
 

itaywex

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May 19, 2011
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You do need to remeber that Blizzard is a company which wants to earn money, not to satisfy us.
Personally I bought and played SC 2 WOG and enjoyed it. Maybe they are greedy but I rather them making 3 games about SC 2 rather than making only 1 game of "Starcraft Goodness".

So eventually its your choice if you want to play SC 2 or not. (but WOW is evil).

FYI I played WOW for few years before getting bored, Im not angry that Blizzard made WOW that way because after all it's our choice whatever to play these games or not.
 

Zerazar

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Aug 5, 2010
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I didn't read all of it, but it seems like you mistook an mmo with an rpg, and that you just failed to realise that you simply don't like MMOs.
I still say compare Blizzard to, well, most other developers out there. They're making high quality, high content games and selling it for the same as "Game the FPS #33 This Year" or "MMO the Almost-WoW #12".

Remember to account for rose tinted glasses. I'm sad there's no rpg that encaptures me like Diablo II or NWN1 did, but that doesn't mean the newer games are of worse quality. Time, circumstances and perception are all as much if not more relevant than the quality of the game.
 

greatcheezer2021

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Oct 18, 2011
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my problem with blizzard started after they released the expansion for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos; The Frozen Throne.

I played a little bit of Diablo, warcraft humans and orcs, and warcraft 2 tides of darkness. I got way into Diablo 2, LOD, Starcraft, broodwar, and said, warcraft 3 reign and frozen throne.

i learned most of my vocabulary at a young age with blizzard. i learned a good amount of lore, and characters taken from literature that was USED in their mythos and blizzard lore. weapons, locations, time sets almost, some technologies, sci-fi and medieval, but most of all, the experience of good gameplay and a titular story done in blizzard fashion. "in war, whoever wins, there will be a downfall, wether it be honor, or the well being of an entire race."

basically, diablo boiled down to getting the best gear and feeling like a good guy for once. RTS titles was for the maps, scenario building, custom units and occasional online play with frieeeends. gameplay was stellar, and the map editors made the experience much more worthwhile.

the enviroment and setting were all very different from each other. Diablo was dark and gothic. Diablo 2 was rough and demonic. Starcraft was gritty and demanding. warcraft was epic and fantastic. now, we have a game designer that went from RTS and the hack and slash RPG element to a massive MMORPG style game. a warcraft game with Diablo 2 kiddy friendly elements and a bigger map. no story to engage the player, only what you do with your virtual character.

STARCRAFT 2. a rehash with the "graphics makes gameplay" argument. an story that was flawlessly told in starcraft and broodwar, completely heel-turned on itself, and created more questions and plot holes. Characters that were established in the previous games, that were OUT OF CHARACTER. characters that are introduced, but why bother? they are easily predictable.
New units are nice, as they add a challenge in mastering new play styles, but changing the formula for HEART OF SWARM? AND BUTCHERING what is equivalent in my opinion the original starcraft for a half assed Phantom Menace!?? when boiled down to its roots, yes it sounds good BUT THE EXCELLENT PRESENTATION THAT BLIZZARD IS KNOWN FOR, has gone to shit...

maybe we can blame activision. maybe blizzard is going down. but we can only blame ourselves if we keep sticking around.

at this point, you are the tiny tyrannosaur who is living off his dead mother, Activision-Blizzard.

Diablo 3?? i dont even have the energy to think about it. im not buying it unless it takes the USA out of debt and puts food in my fridge.