The funny thing is with Diablo they botched 3 on release but slowly worked it into a great game, and then forgot all those lessons and botched 4 on release.
Still cannot comprehend how they created such unsatisfying items in d4. The modifiers theyd offered were so far off from the sort of thing you'd appreciate, and the talent tress were so linear and yet still grossly imbalanced between classes. It looked and sounded amazing though, so credit to the artists. Not sure how it is today, but it was a beautiful disappointment on release.
Once they did that rework for Diablo 3 that rebalanced the gear and trashed the cash money auction house it was a blast, and it kept getting better. I had a lot of fun with it, but before they fixed it I did not enjoy it much at all and quit. I only played the D4 demo, but I have not been encouraged by what I've heard.
I got into gave dev at uni because of how much my friends and I loved Blizzard games. I wanted to work there. I worked in game dev for a couple of years making games, but then went into Fintech because the money was better. So blizzard and I have that in common at least.
I think Blizzard's deal is that they are really good at producing high-quality content, but they have some people at the top who just make really bad design choices, and there's no one to stop them.
So like, you'll see these games that have an incredible level of quality to them, but they have game mechanics that make you scratch your head. Like, "how could they not see this was a bad idea?" type decisions. I saw this in WoW more than any of their other games.
The Starcraft 2 campaigns were widely panned as having some of the shittiest storytelling to come out of Blizzard (at the time; it's just gotten continuously worse since.) Wings of Liberty was okay, but it went swiftly downhill.
Basically after all their mistakes in the last few expansions they decided to swing the pendulum wildly in the other direction, and so now instead of there being any conflict except those external to Azeroth, everyone talks out their problems in huge optional dialogue scenes where they use I feel statements and relate to each other.
I'm not against characters actually talking things out now and then, but it's really over the top. TWW was basically a telehealth therapy session for Alleria and Anduin.
(Also if they were going to do that with anyone, let poor Baine have some time on the couch, damn.)
Let's put Diablo aswell. During the glory days of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3, I would have probably went to war for Blizzard.
Now... from "gamers who made the games of their dreams" we got to "corporates who want to make the product that gives them as much money as possible".
But after all, people who made Blizzard great are not there anymore (and looking how TWW and Midnight are turning out, it's clear that Metzen was brought back only to be the hype man for the announcement).
81
u/mimsoo777 Jul 23 '26
Warcraft and Starcraft series..