Poll: Activision destroying Blizzard?

[Sketchy]

Games have been $80-110 AUD for as long as I can remember. So $60 USD is... $65 AUD?

You guys have it tough... But I don't like Activision anymore, due to Bobby Kotick, and his policy of EXPLOIT EVERY FRANCHISE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

 

[Arcticflame]

I've seen this game for 130$ in some stores in Australia.

No way will I buy it retail, if I can get it for 50$ US I might.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Activision and Bobby Kotick destroy everything they touch. It's the digital Kiss of Death. So far, I don't see any changes in WoW, but then again, I'm not a player.

It's only a matter of time, though.

It's a pity that us gamers can't fire him with a vote of no confidence.

 

[itari]

Well, the dark influence indeed seems to be spreading into wringing out more money sure. But at least activision doesn't seem to be pushing their noses into the actual game development part of Blizzard. And if Blizzard continues to make awesome titles, I don't think they would dare to.

No they wont but they will milk the gamer for everything it's worth

Sure they will. I mean we all know both activision and blizzard are in it to make money. We cant expect corporate entities to not be greedy. That's one of their prime characteristics.

They wouldn't dare want to upset their sacred cow after all; primarily because they both know Blizz could go it alone if they really wanted to.

And what a sacred cow it is.

 

[Tartarga]

Activision is like King Midas, only instead of everything turning to gold it turns to shit.

 

[Plurralbles]

It seems totally worth it to me. As long as I can play the other factions than Terran within the skirmishes(online and off) I'll be glad to lose that much. Hopefully the expansions are $20 affairs.

To actually consider your othe rpoint... Links or something so I know what you are talking about?

 

[DjDuskReborn]

Seriously?
You're QQing about a 60$ PC Game?
When console games are like 90-120$ you should be happy with the low price.
Blizzard are not being changed at all.

 

[Tharwen]

They've kept them separate. They still release games under the names of each individual company, and they haven't merged the individuals who work on the games.

 

[Pendragon9]

It's Activision's fault alright.

I wouldn't be surprised if they force Ubisoft's horrible DRM on Starcraft 2.

I can understand requiring constant online for Battlenet of course, but imagine if they do something even worse, like forcing you to provide a password every five minutes, or interrupt a match just so they can verify your copy is legit.

OR even worse. Making you pay monthly for Battlenet. :/

 

[Plurralbles]

OR even worse. Making you pay monthly for Battlenet. :/

If it had more features maybe that would be acceptable. At the moment, HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAH.

 

[Eremiel]

Blizzard have changed since the merger, there's no denying that.

However, their games have been priced at 60 USD since way before the merger.

 

[Iwata]

Activision and Bobby Kotick destroy everything they touch. It's the digital Kiss of Death. So far, I don't see any changes in WoW, but then again, I'm not a player.

It's only a matter of time, though.

It's a pity that us gamers can't fire him with a vote of no confidence.

Well, continuing with the Mafia analogy, I was thinking more of getting Robert de Niro to give a speech about team play, a fancy dining table, and a baseball bat.

 

[John Funk]

It started out with me thinking about new PC games that are coming out and I decided to look up StarCraft 2. Now I have been on the fence for this game for a long time, at first when I heard it was going to be split up into 3 different games I felt that Activision had started to destroy the Blizzard I had grown up with, but after a while I started hearing good things about the game so i thought I might be able to put up with it and with my uncle talking about it like crazy when he was here this weekend I had finally just said screw it, the missions will be long so it will be fine.

That was until I got a look at the price and saw it was $60, and that was the main reason I didn't get MW2. It got me thinking that this was probably because of the merger with Activision or more to the point a merger with Activision's CEO AKA "the man who wants to take the fun out of games". So I was wondering what you guys and gals thought about all of this is Activision destroying what Blizzard used to be, or am I just some crazy cheap guy who is reading to much into a $10 mark up?

WarCraft 3 and Diablo II were both $60, and that was well before the ATVI merger.

So unless you're saying Bobby Kotick is so evil his corrupting influence extended to Blizzard years before Vivendi ever bought Activision, I'm thinking the answer here is "no."

 

[Echo136]

If the game is popular enough, people are going to buy the game with the $10 markup. MW2 proved that, and Starcraft is insanely popular so its barely even going to hurt their sales at all.

 

[JerrytheBullfrog]

I dislike both dev's so I don't really care/know

EDIT: wait a minutes... $60? so that's like ?42?

That's not expensive, most games around here(Belgium) cost about ?50 ($68)

60$ always translate to 60? in Western European countries: http://www.amazon.de/Blizzard-Entertainment-StarCraft-II/dp/B000R5DU6E/

If you want to play StarCraft 2 you'll have to eat through a pile of shit anyway, as I posted before:

- Matchmaking
- More ads (thanks to contract with Massive - company for commercials owned by Microsoft), they also collect your IP and "standard information"
- More spyware (Blizzard has the right to store and read every message you transmit over it, for security reasons of course)
- More control (Blizzard has the right to any content (redistribute, modify and sell) you transmit or post on the Battle.Net including pictures, sounds and most certainly maps)
- Map "Marketplace" (no more "free maps" for everyone like in the first StarCraft or WarCraft 3, they got IG shops you can pay money for 3rd party maps in, and the authors even get A PORTION of the earnings, how generous of you Blizzard)
- Facebook like "ID-page" so you can "distinguish" yourself, includes your Real Name if you put it in for Payment Details, which is awesome for Phishers and Hackers alike...
- No Offline-play of the SinglePlayer Campaign, you always have to Login to the Battle.Net before. (it doesn't break up the game if you don't have a connection anymore), Saves (can?) be saved Online.
- No LAN or playing with friends anymore, everyone HAS to be logged in to the great Overlord hivemind B.Net and every person HAS to have a key of the game (and every following Add-On) to be able to play with friends or family.
- 3-parter (if the first part costs 60$/60?... what do you think the so-called "Expansions" will cost? If you think below 40$/? you're out of your mind xD)
To play the full multiplayer (with all units and buildings etc.) and play competively you will have to buy all 3 and register all 3 CD-keys.
- Achievements (yay, thanks for keeping track of how awesome I am Blizzard... everyone's been eagerly awaiting those on the PC)


Personally, I'm not eager to eat through those bowls/piles of shit to play the game, I'll just skip this one, I've played the Beta and that should be enough anyway.

Also a few nice excerpts from their terms of service: https://us.battle.net/account/creation/tos.xml

you hereby waive any moral rights you may have

you hereby provide your irrevocable consent to such monitoring and recording

You acknowledge and agree that you have no expectation of privacy concerning the transmission

WE ALSO RESERVE THE RIGHT, AT ALL TIMES AND IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION, TO DISCLOSE ANY USER CONTENT AND OTHER INFORMATION (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION CHAT TEXT, VOICE COMMUNICATIONS, IP ADDRESSES, AND YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION) FOR ANY REASON

I'm just bolding the parts that I *know* for a fact are false. There is offline play for the singleplayer (you just don't get f-list, stat tracking, cooperative play, achievements or decals), and there will be free maps. Mapmakers have the option to put theirs on the store (for high quality stuff like DotA) or just release theirs for free.

WTF is wrong with matchmaking? StarCraft had it, it just sucked. WC3 has it, too. It's not like you can't start a custom game with your friends, because that's what I've been doing all the time in the beta.

The spyware/control thing sounds like bullshit tinfoil hat paranoia (you know, Blizz could do that in the current B.net too), and wouldn't you rather have ads and let B.net stay free than have them have to charge money for the service because bandwidth and shit don't come free?

Brood War xpac, Lord of Destruction xpac, Frozen Throne xpac were all $40, and WC3 and D2 were both $60. There's just going to be one more expansion than with the other games. Goddamn I can't believe you whiners, if SC2 had just been announced and then they were all oh yeah, it'll have more than one expansion since we couldn't squeeze the story into just two games everyone would have been all YEAH AWEESOME MORE STARCRAFT WHOO.

There's nothing in this post even remotely worthwhile other than paranoid whining because a company is popular and trying to make money while simultaneously making a great game.

 

[02y211]

I dislike both dev's so I don't really care/know

EDIT: wait a minutes... $60? so that's like ?42?

That's not expensive, most games around here(Belgium) cost about ?50 ($68)

60$ always translate to 60? in Western European countries: http://www.amazon.de/Blizzard-Entertainment-StarCraft-II/dp/B000R5DU6E/

If you want to play StarCraft 2 you'll have to eat through a pile of shit anyway, as I posted before:

- Matchmaking
- More ads (thanks to contract with Massive - company for commercials owned by Microsoft), they also collect your IP and "standard information"
- More spyware (Blizzard has the right to store and read every message you transmit over it, for security reasons of course)
- More control (Blizzard has the right to any content (redistribute, modify and sell) you transmit or post on the Battle.Net including pictures, sounds and most certainly maps)
- Map "Marketplace" (no more "free maps" for everyone like in the first StarCraft or WarCraft 3, they got IG shops you can pay money for 3rd party maps in, and the authors even get A PORTION of the earnings, how generous of you Blizzard)
- Facebook like "ID-page" so you can "distinguish" yourself, includes your Real Name if you put it in for Payment Details, which is awesome for Phishers and Hackers alike...
- No Offline-play of the SinglePlayer Campaign, you always have to Login to the Battle.Net before. (it doesn't break up the game if you don't have a connection anymore), Saves (can?) be saved Online.
- No LAN or playing with friends anymore, everyone HAS to be logged in to the great Overlord hivemind B.Net and every person HAS to have a key of the game (and every following Add-On) to be able to play with friends or family.
- 3-parter (if the first part costs 60$/60?... what do you think the so-called "Expansions" will cost? If you think below 40$/? you're out of your mind xD)
To play the full multiplayer (with all units and buildings etc.) and play competively you will have to buy all 3 and register all 3 CD-keys.
- Achievements (yay, thanks for keeping track of how awesome I am Blizzard... everyone's been eagerly awaiting those on the PC)


Personally, I'm not eager to eat through those bowls/piles of shit to play the game, I'll just skip this one, I've played the Beta and that should be enough anyway.

Amazing how misinformed you are if you've played the beta.

- Matchmaking:

True there's matchmaking, but there's also the option to create your own games, these games doesn't rank you for obvious reasons(exploits fx)

- More ads (thanks to contract with Massive - company for commercials owned by Microsoft), they also collect your IP and "standard information":

I am in the SC2 beta, and I've seen no adds at all on Bnet 2.0

- Facebook like "ID-page" so you can "distinguish" yourself, includes your Real Name if you put it in for Payment Details, which is awesome for Phishers and Hackers alike...:

Only real life friends you agree to add can see your name

- No LAN or playing with friends anymore, everyone HAS to be logged in to the great Overlord hivemind B.Net and every person HAS to have a key of the game (and every following Add-On) to be able to play with friends or family.:

You have to authenticate with Bnet 2.0 yes. I don't see how it's a problem that you have to have a unique key to play with other keys, we're not living in the "Don't copy that floppy" days anymore afterall.

To play the full multiplayer (with all units and buildings etc.) and play competively you will have to buy all 3 and register all 3 CD-keys.:

Source plz, I have heard the exact opposite. You only have to have Wings of Liberty to play online competitively.

The expansions are only extensions for single player.

 

[John Funk]

Blizzard have changed since the merger, there's no denying that.

However, their games have been priced at 60 USD since way before the merger.

Err...no. Every game they released, including and up to WoW at its day-one retail price, was $50. Not that the extra $10 really matters, what with production costs being much higher now. People just need to stop whining.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010204015800/www.blizzard.com/press/000717.shtml

http://web.archive.org/web/20020802110624/www.blizzard.com/press/020722war3.shtml

Diablo II and WC3 were both $60 at release.