I recently watched a video on the whole Diablo Immortal fiasco. It was about an ex-blizzard employee stating why he was dumbfounded that Blizz thought Diablo Immortal wasn’t going to get as much backlash as it did. Here is the video:
He brought up the point that Blizzard does not care about gamers. They are looking at their games as money machines. And i have to agree. HoTS is a bland MOBA with loot boxes, Hearthstone is a P2W card game, Diablo is becoming a mobile game most likely with micro-transactions, and WoW is now a subscription based game that locks you in with time gated content and mobile game mechanics.
But OW stands out. Sure, they push OWL super hard. I think that is more Activision’s doing more than anything, but here is my point: Who is directing OW? Jeff Kaplan. He is a gamer at heart. He directed WoW at it’s peak. After he left to work on Titan (Which became OW) the game slowly started to spiral downwards. OW is successful because they know who their audience is. They are making a game that they enjoy. And after watching the video, you can see which teams are doing it because it’s a job, and which teams are doing it because it’s their passion.
So, with that said, i will end on this:
OW Dev team: Do not bow down to corporate tactics. You will fail if you do so. Do what you love, what the gamer inside you loves. If you are going into work because it’s your job, and not because it is your passion, you should consider finding another career.
OP Edit: In my opinion OW is in NO WAY perfect. Nothing can be. You can not satisfy every one. I have tons of gripes with this game. But, damn, it is my fav Blizz IP by a long shot. I would just hate to see it fall like all the other games i used to enjoy from Blizz.
This hit me harder than I thought it would.
I started with Starcraft 1 in the late 90’s.
I loved Diablo 2 in the early 2000’s. I put way too much time in that game.
I even loved Starcraft 2, buying all 3 expansions.
But I stopped liking starcraft…
I stopped liking Diablo with Diablo 3…
All that I have left is OW… If it dies, Blizzard is dead to me.
I wasn’t a big Diablo kid. I knew how massively popular it was though. I got into Blizz games because of Warcraft 3. After that, it was WoW. I was a huge WoW fan all the wat up until Cata. After that… Didn’t care much about it since. The game got a new director and they made everything simplified and easy. Starcraft 2 was fun, and i enjoyed Diablo 3 on PS4.
I’m surprised you haven’t brought up the Jay Wilson meme and how the auction house ruined Diablo3 for a long time. Google search that…also…They eat their own kind.
Eh, I think corporate blaming is frequently just a convenient scapegoat for when people do a bad job.
Passion doesn’t necessarily make a good result and a person just doing their job can frequently do a good job.
Back when I was modding the stuff I was actually passionate about the player base liked the least and the things I didn’t care about but did/helped make because other people wanted are the more popular. It’s been over a decade since I last helped on the mod yet looking at the players online list for it today you still have someone flying around on one of the ships I modded to be pilot-able.
Blizzard isn’t exactly a small company and Blizzcon isn’t a small event. Even if the people in charge didn’t care in the slightest about games or gamers a bit of market research would tell you hardcore gamers frequently are not big fans of mobile.
Here’s how Microsoft releases a Mobile Game for a continuing series:
Microsoft is plenty corporate and even they picked up on the idea that launching a mobile alone wasn’t a great idea unless you mean it as a troll.
It’s not a corporate issue it’s a somebody messed up issue.
Because Actavision has the least amount of influence over it, so it remains uncorrupted. Once Actavision starts pushing their weight on OW we will see the decline of OW.
Actavision has now KILLED Diablo, and is in the process of killing WoW. Everything they touch rots from greed and microtransactions. It’s all about the shareholders, the gamers don’t matter to them.
We can complain about many things and agree on ways OW can improve, but at the end OW and maybe alongside Warcraft are the ips getting the best treatment.
The backlash over the backlash of Diablo Immortal is probably the funniest part of this fiasco. So many people that have no investment in this game or history are coming to defend Blizzard for no particular reason.
People just love to feel like the superior person.
They’re all doing it because it’s their job AND because it’s their passion. It’s not a one or the other scenario.
Do you really think Jeff & co. gets to do whatever they want simply because they’re passionate about it? They don’t. They still have to make sure to work towards the one main goal: profitability. It just so happens that making things the OW fanbase wants can lead to profit.
Bland to you, but for the dozens who enjoy and play it, it’s not.
It’s not, but that’s the excuse people make. A person can win without paying and they can get the cards they want/need through playing (albeit excessively and via luck when opening packs).
Pure speculation, but we don’t know what kinds of microtransactions it’d even have: either purely cosmetic (e.g. specific transmute skins) or fluff (eg. pets, banners, etc.)
It’s always been a sub-based game with time-gated content ever since they first had seasonal events and the like. Not sure mobile-game mechanics you’re talking about though.
OW is their most successful because it actually helped fill a niche: the only other “big” hero shooter (or at least, the most known one) at the time of it’s reveal was Team Fortress 2. It also introduced new, likable characters as their newest IP that wasn’t a spin-off of some kind (e.g. Hots/HS). The look (art & aesthetics) and feel (gameplay) were solid too.
I don’t think you understand how these companies work. Corporate still presides over them, it just so happens that corp is happy with the money OW is making so there’s less need to interfere.
I think it’d be a neat app to try out. Perhaps a witch doctor for a few minutes or something fun while waiting in line. As for arguing about greed and the goal of the company and such, I don’t think it’s that easy to draw lines.
You have to balance out cost of making a game, quality of game, the cost to the gamer, longevity of the game and other factors. How much did something like Legacy of the Void cost? $40 That’s how much Brood War cost, and it was 2D with sprites. No 3D models or maps. Cinematics were not in 3D. No, they were not.
Look at all the free stuff they throw in to whatever you’re buying. Free HS cards/gold for just playing. Free OW skins, credits for just playing. Free heroes in HOTS for just playing. There are 6 heroes in HOTS I do not have right now, and it’s only because I am not a big fan of how they play, and I’m sitting on 40,000 gold. Last hero I put money on was Morales. Playing is literally free heroes.
Sure, companies want to make money. People want to eat when they go home. Maybe those at Blizzard are not the same scrappy gamers they were back in the beginning, but they work hard and make good games for us to enjoy.
They support their games much more than I’ve seen Steam games supported. There’s so much neat looking stuff in there, but then when no body is there to play it with you, it’s no fun. Battle Royal alone has a loooong line of games over the years, year after year and so much complaint on it. You’ll find good bad stories all over in any company, but I think Blizzard does pretty good stuff.
I just wish they’d fix the left arm psi blade graphics on the zealot in StarCraft II in the menus when selecting protoss. Come ooooooooon!
You can’t just write off Hearthstone as some “pay to win” card game, if you’ve ever played card games like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh, paying for packs in Hearthstone is wayy better.
I love Overwatch, and I agree I think it’s one of the most successful, if not THE most successful game Blizzard has right now.
The loot boxes that they’ve been adding to their games, and this recent Diablo Mobile game reveal, absolutely reeks of Activision, and it only serves a reminder of how angry I was when I heard they merged.
All of the Blizzard games have become money machines and Overwatch is no different. The state of the game is poor and OWL is part of the problem. Instead of concentrating on balance and new content (maps, lore, game modes ect) we get nothing but new skins and a new character here and there that will either be useless or break the game. Meanwhile resources and money get pumped into OWL.
Don’t really play Overwatch anymore, I occasionally play WoW, because I still can enjoy the lore there. But Overwatch is not really enjoyable and it’s just another cash cow as well.
