Let’s check Battle.net shall we?
World of Warcraft - Blizzard’s most popular and profitable game. The story is told via a TON of PvE content. I mean… it IS a PvE game after all.
Hearthstone - PvP focused game yet somehow has fantastic PvE solo content. Healthy player base. Probably very profitable.
Diablo 3/4 - Legendary game. PvE focused. Probably very profitable? No signs of letting up.
Starcraft 2 - Ancient game. Again probably still profitable. Has a great PvE story mode. Seems to still be going strong.
Heroes of the Storm - No PvE. Cool concept but never followed up on. Dead game.
Overwatch 2 - Cancelled robust PvE mode. Seems like a lot of people are upset. Will probably be dead in a few years.
We see a distinct pattern here. The longest lasting, most profitable Blizzard games all very robust PvE modes. It’s almost as if their player base prefers PvE over PvP. Hmm…
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Overwatch attracted an audience that hasn’t even played other Blizzard games. There is some overlap, but not as much as you think. Overwatch is dying out because they ran the PVP into the ground, not because they canned PVE. Overwatch shares more of the same audience as games like CoD and Apex than it does WoW and Diablo.
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At what point, in the canning factory, does an ear off corn become deconstructed enough that it cannot hear itself scream?
Such are my thoughts when I consider the future of OW.
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Except Destiny 2 has set a template for how to do PvE in an FPS. Overwatch 2 should be more like Destiny 2.
Honestly I think Overwatch 2 was supposed to replace Destiny 2 after Destiny 2 left.
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i see what you mean but i think overwatch as only pvp AT FIRST was a good idea. i played world of warcraft since vanilla and i mostly just liked doing the quest pve stuff but around cataclysm i didnt do that all really. just wanted to pvp. all i did was pvp all the way up to 2016 when overwatch came out… quit wow and just played a true pvp game. although its casual if you think about it, overwatch i mean compared to ther fps’s? its one of the rare fps’s that have the trinity role system (tank-damage-heals)
thing about wow tho was you can do both. although i only pvped in the last years i played i could do pve here and then if i wanted too. would be nice if you could do that in overwatch i guess
The only good thing to come out of OW was the characters for the R34 artist fuel that is all it’ll ever be.
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These are romantic thoughts but lets be real…
OW2 pve never in a million years would have reached the size and scope of Destiny franchise.
OW2 pve was gonna be a side part of a hero shooter.
Destiny is a whole multi-game MMOFPS franchise that an entire company multitudes larger than team 4 is solely working on well besides the marathon game they revealed today during playstation showcase
Starcraft 2 would still be alive with new co-op mission/commanders and missions packs. Sadly it was not making billions for Activision.
Warcraft Reforged would have be awesome if they kept what they have shown.
Blizzard was one of the best RTS developers and those team no longer exist and the genre is kicked out because it not a massive revenue for either companies.
Blizzard has been one disappointment after another with lies and more lies.
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Both statements can be and are true.
In my experience people who like those shooters leave the game pretty quick. This is a casual game for causal gamers. Casual gamers like PvP and PVE.
Sure. If Blizzard went into it with that attitude they wouldn’t have pulled it off. It’s not like Blizzard doesn’t have access to the talent to pull it off though.
Overwatch is dying for a lot of reasons.
Focusing too much on esports after introducing a casual game experience.
Years of little to no content. (Cosmetics are not content)
Constantly changing the gameplay in drastic ways with reworks.
Promising an extensive PVE mode as justification for an egregious monetization update and then canceling the PVE.
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PVP or multiplayer games in general rely heavily on fun content updates and good game balance to remain interesting. PVE usually pushes interesting characters and story that often over comes any flaws in the game play.
If people love your world and characters, they care less about a mindless mission to kill 300 goblins.
The other thing to consider is in terms of Starcraft/Warcraft a lot of their longevity came from the campaign editor. Aka player made maps. Something blizzard barely includes in their games any more, and highly restricted if they are in the game. Not only in what you can do but blizzard flat out says these days they own every thing you ever do or think with their editor.
So things like Hearts of the Ancients (I believe that was the name) doesn’t happen again.
These two were the biggest jokes imo. I was not a fan of OWL in general, especially given they took dev’s away from OW1 to help set up with E sport with team skins and the like.
But right after that they abandon updates for the game to make OW2 and the PVE. Basically they abandon updates to a PVP game they just pushed to an E sport. Giving said esport almost no real content in terms of hero’s or maps to work with.
Thats just flat out false. Overwatch had more eyes on it during its highest than Destiny 2. Destiny 2 is very niche, where Overwatch had a much broader appeal and reach. It could have dwarfed Destiny 2 if handled correctly. But alas, we don’t live in that world and now we’ll never know. And Destiny 2 will probably be going long after OW has died
I think that is one of the metrics that is hurting gaming the most right now. Due to companies rarely disclosing information about sales or player numbers any more people have defaulted to Twitch and other streams to view popularity.
The problem is people watching the game are not always playing the game. In fact many people who do watch do so because they can’t play the game for one reason or another.
Activision Blizzard managed to scam millions of dollars from these esports teams and were then under some contract to continue supporting them. It seems like they had mostly abandoned Overwatch development, but were forced to throw breadcrumbs in their direction.
If I were an Overwatch League team owner I’d be pretty pissed about getting tricked by this whole 40 million players thing Blizzard kept saying at the time. There is no chance they even came close to turning a profit on that.
Yeah I remember reading an article that most teams never made a profit, even those that won. Didn’t help past the first year or so a lot of the big sponsors started to pull out.
And all that was with the massive number boosting they were doing with the whole token thing. Thousands if not millions of people just afk watched streams to get tokens. Every one knew you did it and Blizzard used it to make viewership numbers look better.
Blizzard has the template down for PvE. Their most profitable games are PvE. What? Do they not like money or something?
It’s actually kind of weird they wanted to compete with them selves more then they already do with COD now that you point it out.