It’s sad you know, when you really think about it, what was the last Blizzard game you played that you thoroughly enjoyed?
For me it was Starcraft 2, when that game launched it was amazing to me. It took the original game and just made it so much better. It showed the potential of gaming at the time, and how there’s always room for improvement. It rewrote the book on RTS games in my opinion and created a new standard.
Then I was hyped for Diablo 3, huge fan of the franchise, loved D1 and 2 including expansions for both, great games in their own right, I figured D3 would get the same love and attention as Starcraft 2 did for its franchise. I even played the demo at Blizzcon, friend and I sort of cheated and got to play 1 and a half times before getting caught, but it was worth it. Sadly the launch was bad and that’s putting it mildly. Progression in that game was just abysmally slow, and I dare say the majority of the player base never actually finished Diablo himself on the hardest difficulty due to the horrible scaling of gear drops. Enemies were one thing, but you couldn’t even get the gear to fight off the higher level enemies. It eventually got better, but it took years, and the majority of the player base never came back. Not even going to mention the auction house.
Then Hearthstone came out, a basic card game online that originally was fun, but became so convoluted with all of the cards you had to get just to have fun that it wasn’t worth the time or money anymore. I personally believe this is the game where they started to nickel and dime us, and saw that microtransactions were the way to go for their company. One could argue it was WoW selling in-game items for real life money, but I consider WoW a completely different entity all to itself.
Heroes of the Storm made its debut in 2015, 6 years after League of Legends launched, Blizzard had missed the boat for something huge. They knew how big DOTA was in WC3, even stopped the original programmers from making their own game of it, so the programmers themselves split off, with half of them making LoL, the other half Dota 2. If Blizzard had worked with them instead, partnered with them, we could’ve had an awesome game there too.
2016 Overwatch 1, came out to a lot of mixed reviews when it first launched. Some loved it, some hated it, but no one could deny its’ impact. You paid a single price of 40 bucks, got all the heroes, and were able to play all of the modes in the game. However they introduced loot boxes, highly shunned by the player community, and just put a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Overall, looking back, it was a decent game all things considered.
2 years later, Blizzcon 2018, Diablo Panel, the most unthinkable things happen. Instead of an announcement for Diablo 4, we get Diablo Immortal. PC gamers despise Free to Play games because 95% of the time they are Pay to Win. Blizzard themselves blamed the player base for not liking their product with the ever famous, “Do you guys not have phones?” Like it was our fault we hated Free to Play games, and this was the way of the future. Imagine blaming a predominantly PC based gaming community who have been loyal fans to a predominantly PC based video game company, hating a mobile game, the audacity of the fan base!
That same year accusations against Blizzard started to become public, sexual harassment, a poor woman committing suicide, among other things happening in and outside of the workplace with employees. Lawsuits were filed, big investigations, Bobby pleading innocence, etc. There was a lot of talk about boycotting blizzard, and some may have stuck to their guns and never looked back, but the average player didn’t care, they didn’t even know about it.
Finally Blizzcon 2019, Diablo 4 is announced for PC not mobile, and everyone loses their minds. The game we’d been waiting for all these years had finally been announced, expectations are high, players came up with all kinds of theories, wondering what classes will be coming out, what new twist can they put on the story, what’s the gameplay gonna be like, etc.
Fast forward a couple of years, Jeff Kaplan originally an associate game designer, then a Lead Designer, and finally Game Director and Vice-president of Blizzard leaves the company. You all know him as the guy that made Overwatch 1 what it was, and heard his plans for Overwatch 2. This was the beginning of the end for Overwatch.
October 4th, 2022, Overwatch 2 is born, and Overwatch 1 dies, you can’t even play the game anymore, they completely erased the game for a Free to Play “upgrade”. Not even a year later they tell the player base they’re sorry they can’t fulfill the original promise Jeff had made for PVE content, e-sports is dying, and while they will be working on things for Overwatch 2, it won’t be anywhere close to the previous plans made for the game.
June 5th, 2023, Diablo 4 releases, servers are stable, players are having fun, it actually had a really good launch all things considered. A week later the flaws start to reveal themselves. Where’s the end-game? Why are there so many affixes on gear? Level Scaling? I can get banned for trading too much gold? The list goes on and on til this day.
Forums are rampant with players arguing against each other over the quality of the game, instead of fighting the company that made this mess of a game, we’ve just been fighting each other, trying to convince the other they are wrong. When the dust finally settles, both sides can agree that there are people currently enjoying the game, and that things need to change.
Doubt anyone will read this far, but all the signs were there from the early stages. Ignoring WoW completely, we can easily see the downfall of Blizzard. Activision acquired Blizzard in 2008, but it was a slow process that took many years to become what we have today, a mere shell of a beloved company that has been gutted out for microtransaction games and shady business practices. Some of the player base has become complacent and just accepted it, others speak out against it, but there’s no denying that it will never be the company it once was.
Tl:dr - plenty of breadcrumbs to see how it all went wrong