First of all, this is incredibly long, I’m writing this because I’ve played Blizzard games since WC2 (and even went back and played stuff like RPM racing in their arcade collection), and after 30 years… I think the run might be coming to an end. I want to be clear to people out there, maybe a random Blizzard employee that might read this forum, why I think the topic is accurate, and my evidence for it, in concrete detail, so that in the possibility there is a way for it not to be true, it could be proven false, there’s no reason every game company shouldn’t be the best it can be. Anyway,
And yes very long, maybe I should of made a youtube video.
So, in my early years, I spent a lot of time playing Nintendo and Sega games and stuff like that, then there was a brief period with the playstation before I more or less focused entirely on PC gaming.
That isn’t to say I didn’t play a lot of early PC games like Doom or whatever, I remember the days when something like Hexen was on the shelf and it looked kind of awesome. LAN parties, there’s so many cool things about PC gaming.
And to a larger extent about the geek culture that spawned things like Warcraft and Diablo, it’s all rich in the spirit of what it meant to be an American gamer or dork in the 90s or 2000s or perhaps even today.
I played the early MMORPGs and moved before things went bad, pretty much every time, like I left EQ when it peaked, DAoC when it peaked, all because they just made mistakes.
I think if you checked my post history, I’ve never been one to go “I’m quitting” and come back kind of person, or “such and such is the WoW killer” no, I think a lot about the games I play and play a lot of them, mainly because they just make me feel better and something needs to give that good feeling after the day is done.
Well the simple truth is that for the last 10 years… my WoW playtime has dwindled steadily, in fact it basically completely halved after WoD, it killed the addicting spirit right out, WoD was a failure on both a story and gameplay level so completely that they’ve spent basically the 10 years since reversing nearly every aspect of it.
I say nearly because I don’t think they’ll ever truly make the orcs pay for Theramore, which would be simultaneous with introducing High Elves. In fact, if they introduce High Elves now it would be meaningless because faction conflict is dead and they would just be sanitized and it would be strictly a superficial thing.
But, even more to the point, I don’t even think that’s relevant any more. I don’t think it’s relevant that wowpedia is longer than a typical encyclopedia, that they’ve spent 20 years refining the world to create the biggest thing since Tolkien. It’s like every fantasy author GRRM Robert Jordan everyone combining efforts into the ultimate fantasy universe.
But the reason that’s not relevant, is that we’re just dealing with… dun dun dun… video games. Game being the other part of the equation, and in those droughts where I wasn’t playing WoW, I got a Sega Genesis mini and played through like 30 old Sega games. Alex Kidd, Shinobi, Contra, everything. It was an entirely different world, and having played so much WoW, it was crazy to revisit all those old games. I played a bunch of games on the SNES mini and the Neo Geo Mini, Metal Slug 1 2 3 4 5 KOF 95 World Heroes, so many Japanese games.
And classic JRPGs as well, ones I had played before oftentimes, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger.
I made a point actually of kind of pushing myself to play all those old Japanese and current games, because in my mind, WoW could not be beaten, but I knew there was something there I was missing.
I don’t know when it happened, but I think it was when I was playing some Gamecube games like Tales of Symphonia and Sunshine and Wind Waker, when I realized the reason why the Gamecube or some other Nintendo console didn’t become like Warcraft, was quite simply because gamers weren’t ready for it.
Even a JRPG like Symphonia, you can’t just expect everything to work as easily as it does in WoW, and yet at the same time, Symphonia in some ways easier than WoW, the dungeons are short, it’s single player, you have powerful abilities. The combo ability system is simplified in a way that allows even amateurs at fighting games to figure it out and have really satisfying gameplay.
No Nintendo game has ever come close to comparing with WoW’s storytelling, but it doesn’t matter, the stories are cool enough and the actual game is much more compelling.
For years, this wasn’t an issue, because Nintendo and Japanese game fans went separate ways from PC game fans, and WoW focused entirely on beating other competitive MMOs in the west. I played all those MMOs also, like Warhammer, Wildstar, TESO, Rift, the list goes on. I’ve played other single player PC games like Dragon Age and System Shock and Bioshock. Every time, WoW adapted to meet the challenges, when Vanilla was old, they released Catalcysm, when the tome of achievements was in Warhammer, they put Achievements in WoW, etc, etc. Anyway, I’ve just played a lot, it just kinda happens you get knowledge when it’s like your only real hobby.
Then Microsoft bought Blizzard, and now it’s shaping up to be a different landscape in the 2020s. No longer does Blizzard just have to beat Epic or Riot, they have beat the OG of Video games, the motherland, Japan. The land of 30 billion dollar revenue games like Space Invaders.
I know this probably doesn’t mean a lot to people here, who are dedicated PC game fans probably, and don’t really want Nintendo games ever for whatever the reason, but a lot of people that have played Blizzard games or WoW over the years are not the committed people, they’re just more ordinary people, and they’ve always been game to play Super Mario Party on the couch with their family or whatever, and those people are always going to be the main driver of video game revenue, not quite casual, but not people who will sign up for Blizzcon tickets for 300 dollars or whatever it is now.
Anyway, this is rambling and kind of long, I know, but there’s a lot of points that need covering, and I think the focal point is that Japan’s games are just kind of ahead of their time, gamer knowledge and skill hasn’t progressed enough to the point where people can comfortably play and master Nintendo games the way they mastered WoW, but that is gradually changing, and soon people will realize that you can easily sink 100 hours into Kirby Air Ride going after every achievement, because Sakurai makes arcade games in minature, and it’s a far more elegant craft than the generic landscapes and architecture of a typical Blizzard expansion.
I think Blizzard’s game designers are talented, but the layout of a typical quest is pretty random, sometimes it’s over there sometimes it’s close, mostly it’s about the same distance which is boring, and even though they tried hard to modify quest design, it’s become a new formula that was sort of set in WotlK where you did the simple quests to build to the epic quests and finally you get a vehicle and close out the chapter sort of thing, but in many ways WotlK still kinda did it better because they ignored the rules entirely with like the DK questline and Dragonblight Scarlet Crusade quests. Scratch that, basically all of Dragonblight was unique.
It boils down to spaces, and programming, and choice of text and font, the peripherals your using, mouse and keyboard versus a control pad, there are so many factors, and I just burned through 90 hours on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Switch and it was so intense not because I beat it, which many people have, but I feel like it beat it “completely” in a way PC gamers started to beat games. It felt rich and complete, it wasn’t an epic journey, everything progressed naturally.
So now with Nintendo no longer wasting time, well, I don’t think the time was wasted, but basically focusing on just consolidating their formulas, they’re headed for a clash with WoW, in my opinion.
And I think Nintendo will win, simple as that.
So what does that mean for PC gaming? For Geek culture? Well, I think in the event Blizzard does fall, it will not be the end of Geek culture or PC gaming? Why? For the same reason Blizzard would lose to Nintendo, the game in video games. I know this part sounds crazy, but I still play two PC games basically, Planetside 2 and Guild Wars (1 and 2). And quite honestly? Even after my mega binge with Japan, I still want to play Planetside 2 and Guild Wars, they’re are just really good games, and they have classical western narratives of a sort so you can still scratch that itch.
I think the odds are quite small that Arena net or Daybreak games revives the PC gaming industry if Blizzard falters, if anything Steam will probably just become bigger, and maybe I’m wrong that WoW will finally lose steam.
I just can’t help but think of the grind and crush of daily life though, and how it affects our endless need for more, better games and content. It’s just kind of perpetual, and no matter how good the story is, the random rotations I used to just sorta insta gib anything on the screen isn’t as compelling as Mario Kart (take your pick which one).
So that was a lot, but I wanted to state my opinion somewhere, I think something dark is coming Anduin, and for many geeks, the world needs some light, from somewhere.
Well you can see why I’m not on the Blizzard story team at any rate, if you read this far.
Have fun people.
