They have most certainly not always been this way. Previous to WoW they had
two RPG games, neither of which were even made by the mainline Blizzard company.
Wrong again. The early games were built top-down starting with flavor and story as a springboard for gameplay. Blizzard games used to be loved for their engaging stories and great world building. Whether they were made specifically for online play is entirely irrelevant to that.
I never really paid attention to the legion story as after hearing "I’m coming my love,’ I tuned out a lot as that was the cringiest thing I’d witnessed in game.
Tag on top of that edge boy illidan was such a focus and I can’t stand his character. I sacrificed, blah, blah, blah. So annoying. I’d say that I loved everything about legion except the whole fel story and theme.
you’re right. because when you are thinking about making difficult raid mechanics or balancing pvp, ie what wow is actually about, you first have think “story” or whatever…yeah that makes a lot of sense.
it’s like saying story is the most important aspect of a game like COD, it just isn’t true by any stretch of the imagination
yeah right. you really think that starcraft online gameplay is defined by the story, really?
like they didn’t design units based around what would be entertaining or interesting to play around with?
why did they focus so much on polishing sc2 pvp then with all the balancing patches etc.
blizzard has always been a gameplay first, story second developer, that’s just a fact.
same with diablo, the reason we have so much loot is because “story” not because that loot is fun to play around with or provides power progression for our character?
We know for a fact that StarCraft 1 and WarCraft 2/3 were top-down games where the majority of the units exist due to story reasons. It wasn’t until each game’s respective expansion pack that they got units solely for balance reasons.
Because that’s post-WoW, when Blizzard turned into a wanna-be eSports king that started dumping god awful things like Resilience, “hard counters”, and Overwatch onto their consumers.
there’s simply no way that is the case i mean…
just looking at starcraft, do you really go, the reason mutas are in the game is because story not gameplay.
also i’m not saying those units are irrelevant to the story but really?
i mean most of the units don’t function in the story in any meaningful way, the whole purpose of the game is that it is a real time strategy game, not that it is story based.
same with diablo or warcraft 3 really…if diablo is story based why do people spend hours grinding the same area for loot…why is that the defining characteristic of the game…
and blizzard became an esports game with wow…really?
they were already the biggest esports developer on the market long before that with starcraft and warcraft…
they also made tons of pvp balances to starcraft then as well
So you’re calling the developers liars? Do you know what top-down design is? The rest of your post continues to ignore other points I’ve made, and I can only assume you’re being willfully obtuse or that lack basic reading comprehension skills.
i’m not saying that they didn’t think about lore in terms of developing the units.
but they clearly had plans for their games to be based around esports and competition long before wow.
and not just esports but just gameplay focused games period.
look at everything they did with starcraft in terms of online play and pvp…and you seriously want to say they were a story based developer before WOW…really?
the defining characteristic of blizzard has always been that they put more effort in terms of online play and pvp and balance for both aspects than other developers from day 1, period.
no other developer at the time would have put as much effort as they did into balancing and perfecting starcraft in terms of pvp and online…that’s a fact and that’s what has defined that game and basically all the games they have made since.
you have to be incredibly obtuse to look at the history of blizzard and determine they are primarily a story based developer, really really obtuse
eSports did not exist before StarCraft, so I doubt it, and you still haven’t even addressed the fact that regardless of how the games were designed, the stories were well-written and well-regarded. Blizzard was not always full of god-awful writers and eSports focused cancer like they are now.
I never once said that they were a primarily story-based developer. I said that their writing used to be well-liked and of a quality measurably better than the schlock we get now, but you keep arguing against a point I never said and barely even implied.
To be fair, final fantasy has always been about story driven games.
when was blizzard not multiplayer focused though i mean…wc1 had multiplayer.
and like you said, blizzard literally invented esports with sc2…they have always been multiplayer and esports focused.
and with wow i mean…the game has been around forever at this point. it’s like dbz or naruto…
fundamentally, it’s an an action and gameplay based video game. they need to create situations that throw interesting gameplay and bosses at you.
that’s why people play the game, to pvp or raid fundamentally and they need to create a way to give us gameplay content that we want…that’s basically the purpose of the story for all mmos to varying degrees. but especially for wow because wow is the esports mmo and has been pretty much from it’s inception and definitely when tbc rolled around, at the very least
They didn’t invent esports with sc2. Personally I would say Quake is reason its a thing, but I am sure there others b4 it.
well i mean they invented a genre of esports, the rts version
OK … I’m going to be a little bit of a dick here. In ALL of BfA, I don’t have an issue with how Sylvanas herself was handled (outside of the fact that the plot bent over backwards to let her get done what she wanted to get done. Likely because it sets up the next expansion).
She has been on this character Arc since “Edge of Night”, attempting to find a means to thwart her own afterlife (and nothing has changed here by 8.2.5). Everything she has done for the last NINE YEARS has been in service of that singular goal. She also has a LONG history of using others as mere tools for personal objectives, then discarding them the moment they cease to be of use. She’s been doing this since friggen WC3 for goodness sake. She did this with Garithos; with Datheroc; with the Horde (as the Forsaken Vanilla intro suggests); with the Alliance (in her crusade against Arthas in Northrend); with the Forsaken (her Arrows in her Quiver); with half a dozen other minor characters; and finally AGAIN with the Horde as a whole here in BfA. Hell, she’s also been shown to be prone to split-second emotional outbursts since WC3 too. This is ALL in character for her!
So, rather than AGAIN getting a redeemed character being frustratingly altruistic with their secret intentions (validating mass-murder and invalidating EVERYONE who was opposed to mass-murder), we have a selfish nihilist (who’s ALWAYS been a selfish nihilist) fully acting in established character. She is a terrible person, who was allowed to actually act like a terrible person; and TBH (outside of the poor execution for much of BfA) I found it refreshing as hell.
I never said that they weren’t. Please stop responding to me if you’re just going to make up arguments.
you said those games were designed around story first, gameplay second which has never been the case
They will say, “No, it’s not a fallen hero!” and “No, it’s not Garrosh 2.0!” and “This is something totally unexpected!” and it won’t be at all. It’ll be all those things the OP described.
I’m really tired of people describing something as the exact opposite of what it actually is. The public are not stupid - we see through this, regardless of what your industry is…
I said they were top-down developments. Which means that they used story as a springboard to create and built the gameplay.
Never said this. I said that they weren’t always an eSports focused developer. Even after SC1’s success they didn’t specifically go out of their way to make eSports games, they just made games.
I would say she was written as a character that was hell bent on getting revenge and would do anything at cost to do so. Not some prissy edge-lord. Issue with her character is after WotlK and how to continue her story after she got her revenge.
I would argue A prissy edgelord is the literal embodiment of a character who only exists for single minded vengeance. There could be nothing more edgy than that honestly.
However, lets set that aside and look at the current BfA Issue. The issue is not that Sylvanas wasn’t acting in character in BfA. She was. Just like with her subplot in Stormheim, she was very much acting in accordance to the character arc given to her in “Edge of Night” 9 years ago. She was also classically in character revealed to be merely using others for personal objectives like she always has. She IS also prone to snap decisions and emotional outbursts in rare occasions, and has been since WC3. And as the cinematic showed, only the initial outburst was reactionary.
The issue people have is is that: A) The character arc that was chosen for her since she got revenge on Arthas (so 9 years of content); and B) The fact that FINALLY the character she has been portrayed as for the last 9 years infringed so heavily on the head-cannon version of her that people built up, that NOW (rather than in Cata) people are freaking out about it. So, I stand by my point … how Sylvie was handled in BfA was not one of the issues of BfA’s writing (she is acting totally in character, pursuing long-established goals, and using long-established tactics in that pursuit).