In 3.5 years, CD Projekt Red developed a game that takes an estimated 103 hours to complete both main and side quests. By comparison, Overwatch 2 was announced over 3.5 years ago. It’s probably been in development for closer to 5 including this weird “live service” model. I also think the OW2 in-house dev team is larger than the Witcher 3 in-house dev team.
I think this realization really sheds a light on many things:
Corporate lacks confidence in this game.
There isn’t any clearly defined visionary behind the game.
This is probably the worst realization, but Blizzard isn’t hiring the best developers anymore.
What are they doing with all their time and resources?
Leave the small indie company with 5 developers alone, they’re trying their best to provide new content to the game and make everyone happy and not steal your wallet.
They did have a vision for Overwatch, but it wasn’t a PVP or even a PVE FPS game. It was for an MMORPG. And they spent the better part of the last 5 years trying to build an MMORPG again, with a PVP/PVE FPS as a point on a roadmap rather than the intended destination.
That was Jeff Kaplan’s vision. It was never going to happen. Team 4 had already been down that road before, failed and were doing it again. It is his fault.
It is likely that corporate told him to reign in his team and ship something and he resigned in protest.
Yeah, this idea of crawl, walk, run was honestly pretty damn stupid. OW is a PVP hit, if you want to make a PVE game, get another dev team to make it, the fact that they stopped production on the PVP side of things for almost 4 years, than had to cancel PVE as they can’t work on both at the same time is just stupid levels of silly. Blizzard isn’t a small indie company, they have resources, use them.
Eh, the idea of expanding Overwatch to PVP/PVE is fine. But actually make a PVE game.
They didn’t do that. They spent 5 years working on an MMORPG with a PVE game as a byproduct - an even bigger waste of time.
I maintain that people would’ve been disappointed with Hero Mode if it wasn’t cancelled because even that would have still been a half-completed product - just the leftover bits of the MMORPG that Team 4 has always been incapable of making.
The change of direction to focus on the game they actually have is a good thing. Hopefully it actually plays out.
They can and should be making both at once. This idea that they can’t have two developer teams working on both sides of the game at once I always found strange.
One team shouldn’t be working on both games at once. Blizzard could absolutely spin up a separate team to build an Overwatch PVE game. Seems to mostly be a cultural thing stopping them from doing so.
I’m convinced that there’s only about 5 people working on this game. Many studios are able to put out yearly sequels with a single player and multiplayer component… OW “went dark” for three and a half years, and produced an hour and a half of a mediocre story mode. There should be, by now, an incredible amount of assets and it shouldn’t take until sometime in 2024 for retool them for a simplified mode.
OW1 was made with a staff of 60ish people, by about 2022 OW2’s staff had grown to about 240 people. Literally all they had to do was this 120 is PVE, this 120 is PVP. And considering how little these 240 people made for PVP in the past year, it makes me thinks its just gross levels of incompetence at this point. Even Diablo 4 was made in a span of about the same time OW2 was in production.
From recycled assets from a failed MMORPG project.
…who spent a bunch of their time working on yet another failed MMORPG project with a PVE/PVP FPS game as its byproduct.
It was Kaplan chasing his Titan MMORPG dream. Is it incompetence or Blizzard’s oldschool “it’ll be done when it’s done” ideology take to its logical conclusion? Maybe both?
It all comes down to Activision’s insatiable greed. They cut every corner and do the bare minimum to make as much money as they possibly can. Anything that had any amount of effort put into it has a price tag placed on it, i.e. skins and PvE missions, but everything is way overvalued in their eyes and as a result is way overpriced.
Doesn’t help that bobby (who I have nothing but awful things to say about) has no vision and is unfit for leadership and the game industry.
He ruined this entire company. He ruins everything he touches. He ruined Overwatch. He probably ruined OW2. With the resources he had, Jeff probably could’ve made it work this time.
Actiblizz has no vision. It deserves to burn. Disgusting, soulless company deserves to die alongside all its leadership. Screw anyone who stifles art. They are disgusting human beings
Make no mistake, titan was killed by Bobby. It’s kinda obvious they were not looking to make another mmo when they already at the time had the most massive successful mmo in the market, WoW. Why compete with yourself? Was not gonna happen. Blizz pre Activision would have released Titan.
We now know that not only was Jeff Kaplan not interested in Overwatch 1, he wasn’t even interested in Overwatch 2. He was focused on the MMORPG.
The thing this community needs to come to terms with is that even if 2019 Overwatch 2 had shipped as originally planned, it probably still would’ve been a disappointing PVE game because it still just would’ve been half of a vision. It would’ve had the skill-trees of an MMORPG but none of the gameplay - that would come “later”.
Bobby is a problem, absolutely. Team 4 Leadership’s lack of focus on the game that they had is their problem though.
The one good thing that Blizzard management have done (no idea if it was Ybarra or Brack or Kotick or some combination of the three) is force Team 4 to give up on the MMORPG fantasy and actually focus on their current game.
What people fails to understand, is that in Witcher you are 1 dude exploring 1 world. In Overwatch there are an insane amount of heroes in comparison and the permutations per talent + items + bonuses etc makes it a nightmare to balance/develop.
The idea is beautiful but the investment/return ratio would be awful. Like all MMOs, that genre is dying and for a good reason.