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On April 13 2012 01:08 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2012 00:53 Kralic wrote:On April 13 2012 00:45 4ZakeN87 wrote:On April 13 2012 00:37 Kralic wrote:
Blizzard has a huge lineup for a video game company as it is. Titan is going to be their new addition to their line up and that is a big risk for them. Making video games today also requires more resources than it did 15-20 years ago. To me Blizzard is just playing it safe because they have to.
A newer company has to take the risk because the video game industry is clogged with companies now, so you need to risk it all to stand out.
I usually try to stay out of these threads because the Blizzard hate is strong in people these days and it usually leads to people being angry at the company for not living up to their entitled expectations. Yes that is definitely true but does not even that "truth" have a limit? You would think it would come back and bite them eventually. I mean is really everyone going to buy mists of Pandaria? It seems that at least a fairly big chunk of the community has the "I cannot believe they are actually doing this" approach to the entire project. A bit like playing defensive in starcraft, good in the beginning but becomes a bit sad when you released that it is the enemy creep spread that is coming up your ramp  That is the hard part for Blizzard to tell. The large chunk of the community usually isn't vocal, the vocal minority are the ones bitching and complaining. I am not the biggest fan of Panda land but apparently a lot of people were for them to approach it. I don't know if that's necessarily true. They just weren't going to lose a huge chunk of subscribers no matter what. Pretty much anything they came up with would've followed the same WoW trend. That said, I do think WoW was a major risk and I think MoP is a major risk as well. Maybe not as much stylistically for the reason stated above, but the talent revamps and everything are.
Yeah, the talents are weird right now, I have tried a little bit of the beta and I couldn't figure them out right away. Have to spend more time tonight seeing if I am just dumb. Making gameplay changes is a big risk especially in an older game.
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"CEO Mike Morhaime confirmed that it was a new game and not a sequel to any existing franchises in a 2008 interview with Wired magazine."
From wikipedia. here's hoping to another new brilliant Blizzard franchise.
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Well how many people that worked on Diablo 1 +2, Warcraft 2 +3 and Starcraft BW are still working and making games at Blizzard? Hell how many of original vanilla WoW team members are still working on WoW or better how many are there left to makeTitan as awersome as WoW once was? Who the hell are these guys that are making Diablo 3? No wonder quality went downhill bad when some talented but still random dudes from gaming industry are running the show now.
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the whole fucking gaming industry declining in creativity?
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On April 13 2012 01:27 lunar3force wrote:
Well how many people that worked on Diablo 1 +2, Warcraft 2 +3 and Starcraft BW are still working and making games at Blizzard? Hell how many of original vanilla WoW team members are still working on WoW or better how many are there left to makeTitan as awersome as WoW once was? Who the hell are these guys that are making Diablo 3? No wonder quality went downhill bad when some talented but still random dudes from gaming industry are running the show now.
pretty much sums up my feelings about Blizzard. I hope that Titan will be something good and not another casual MMO. A great RPG that would be good to see from Blizzard but I kinda lost my faith in them. I dont think that they are willing to try anything risky. In the end we will most likely get a WoW clone with a new story and upgraded graphics.
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I think they've just gotten progressively worse at story-telling.
To be fair you didn't compare Warcraft III cinematics to World of Warcraft cinematics. The Warcraft III ones are still better but it wouldn't look so one-sided if you used one of the four WoW cinematics.
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What I really want Blizzard to do is to make a FPS that isn't a CoD clone. Ever since MW2 I've basically ignored all the 'big' FPS franchises: Cod, Medal of Honor, Halo, etc. The last FPS that I genuinely thought was fun was Serious Sam 3 and Tribes: Ascend; and from what I've heard their predecessors were even better.
Tbh yeah blizz has been stagnating, but don't give up hope yet. Maybe if blizz makes an FPS that's fun and uses the GOOD elements of FPS, the hype around it might just be able to push the video game industry back on the right track.
Maybe.
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United States22883 Posts
Try Metro. Cowering in a corner has never been so much fun.
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That was a fantastic read. Lately I've lost faith in blizzard as well, but you reminded me why I had faith in the first place.
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as long as they make awesome games like SC2 I dont care shit about anything else
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I think one of the things is the longer a company is 'alive', than the creativity in a sense goes down. Assuming that a company does not explode in size and stays relatively the same size, than it is difficult for them to create new games.
SC came out, and we've been demanding a sequel for years until SC2 was announced. Same for Warcraft, WOW and Diablo. Unless Blizzard expands exponentially, they just cannot support any or many (completely) new games.
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storywriters in the us got worse in general, but thats mostly because they switched from interesting storytelling, to storytelling that is hard to follow if you miss something of it.
And why the old games where so grand ... simply, the team was smaller and there was a way better exchange between passionated devs, thats why indie games are in general 100 times more entertaining then stuff the bigger corps deliver. Now only the bosses of each team exchange their ideas, and they in general get employed to coordinate people and have the game make money and be done in time, not to make a good game.
The issue though was that microsoft and ea bought every small game smith that was out there, which basically killed alot of potential good games over a long period. And because of a sudden esport hype, some killed themself trying to create an esport game.
Personally I am impressed that Blizzard is still able to stick to what made them great, atleast to some extend, despite being on of the big ones. Lately i played way more indie games then anything else.
And that they are adding a new franchise is so pre WoL. (so the op is a bit to late to complain about it)
About mmos, they life from constant content updates, this will not stop unless they will abandom wow. And well Ultima online is still up and running, so i doubt wow will get abandoned anytime soon.
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On April 13 2012 01:53 Zeon0 wrote:
as long as they make awesome games like SC2 I dont care shit about anything else
I don't know if I'd call sc2 awesome. Its definitely better than most RTS games, but its not everything it could be.
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On April 13 2012 00:55 saynomore wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2012 00:50 RA wrote:
This isn't cursing in the curch. People should say, correctly, how they feel. Do you have any idea where you are?
Joined TL.net Thursday, 6th of October 2011 - you
Joined TL.net Monday, 27th of October 2008 - me
Do you know who you are?
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i hope this isnt seen as a flame post.... i'm just being brutally honest here...
the top 10 Blizzard guys who have all been with the company for 15+ years are all 40+ years old.
the cutting edge of their creativity is over.
this is one of the reasons they hired DUstin Browder on the SC2 team... to give them team some new blood...
but even DUstin Browder.. he looks 30+ easily.. and already has a long track record of "sequel creation" ...
which means he is really good at building consensus and making compromises every one in the company is happy with
so dont expect the pinnacle of radical creativity from this group...
also, i'm not really sure most hard core RTS fans want SC2 radically changed any way.
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On April 13 2012 00:40 danl9rm wrote:
I'm not saying it's easy. I think it's probably pretty hard, but c'mon, do it big. If I had to sum up sc2's creativity so far in 2 words, it'd be reaver -> colossus.
This pains me greatly as well and sums up the shift in design philosophy going from BW to SC2. In the words of Browder, 'terrible terrible'.
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To say that Blizzard has lost creativity and using Warcraft and Starcraft as examples seems strange to me. These 2 franchises are some of the most unoriginal ideas in the history of video games having been ripped off of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. Even the system of RTS stems from this tabletop Army vs. Army game. Blizzard made almost no changes to the setting and general feel of the races at first. They've altered their path significantly from the original source inspiration in later games.
Mechanically I think they're still leading the industry in some significant ways. Every MMO gets compared to WoW. We'll see how their new talent system works out in MoP. They certainly haven't been afraid to constantly try out new mechanics with WoW in the past. As much as people bash Blizzard for not supporting E-sports enough, no other company has been trying to make Starcraft 2 clones. This is something unprecedented for a commercially successful Blizzard game. This may speak to the market of PC games or the RTS genre both having declined in recent years. But I think it also speaks to the fact that nearly all large gaming companies don't want to or don't know how to invest game development into E-sports or competitive gaming. Like it or not, Blizzard is at the forefront of developing the E-sports market which could speak to the creative challenge that that presents.
So I guess my conclusion is that they face different creative challenges than they did in an earlier era of gaming. The well of unoriginal IPs to draw from may last another 5-10 years. Once that's over they'll be met with a different set of challenges.
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Well I completely disagree.
I'm not much into WoW, in fact I never touched it once. So I don't have much of an opinion about it other than "I love the cinematics".
Now, I love Warcraft 3, I love Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 looks insanely amazing. I've followed the development of Diablo 3 very closely and I'm overall just so damn happy about the changes.
I don't think Diablo 2 is a very good game. It's good, for its time it's especially good. But other than the story telling (which is mostly done and interesting in the cinematics) I think the game has a crapton of flaws.
Every change to the gameplay of Diablo 3 in comparison to Diablo 2 is just so much better. And I cannot stand people that just keep complaining about ridiculous stuff like "less customization due to no Skill Trees" while in reality the new system is just infinitely better and actually allows for customization. Oh, I don't have to replay the game every time I want to play with another skill? How disappointing! Also, looking up a skill build list is so much fun right? No, in fact that's about as stupid as it gets.
But I don't wanna get into depths of that discussion now.
Starcraft 2 to me is just a great game. I didn't even give a shit for the campaign until release and was blown away with the production quality of it. Story was just fine, not necessarily great but hell, I enjoyed and from time to time still enjoy the campaign a LOT. In anything but story it EASILY dwarfs the boring mission design in Starcraft 1, and that's just to be expected considering how damn old these games are. But when people try to tell me, the mission design in Starcraft 1 was better I must shake my head in disbelief.
I think for the first iteration the multiplayer turned out great too. I do want more stuff in it which we will most likely get with the release of HotS as I think some of the strategies are just so worn out by now and for example I as a Zerg would just like to have more options but anyways, the multiplayer is far from bad.
And to stuff like Graphics- and Game Engine, Cinematics, model and animation quality, pathfinding, controls etc., you name it, FANTASTIC. That in an RTS is even more impressive these days, considering that there just aren't any good RTSs coming out if you're into that oldschool type of gameplay.
Also I don't think Starcraft 2 should be Broodwar 2. I always cringe about the complains which go like "BW MECHANICS - ALL AWESOME, SC2 MECHANICS - ALL BAD".
Play Starcraft 1 if you want to play Starcraft 1. The games are different but it's ignorant as hell to call out Sc2 on just about everything calling it bad due to some, more often than not worthless, BW comparison.
But whatever, these forums aren't all that much better than say the Blizzard forums. Every second thread it seems like the OP is actually a super skilled Software Engineer, Gamedesigner, Progamer and whatnot. Blizzard probably is just a piece of shit in comparison, right?
Edit:
Just look at the "Developers Update : Heart of the Swarm" thread in the SC2 section. Negativity all over the place, must be like 90%. And that's just a slight update on what 's going on with that development, nothing final. Same as Blizzcon of course.
Yet, most people act like if it's a disaster already.
But then again, that's often the vocal minority. I think the overall audience of this and other sites aren't that narrow minded. And some are probably thinking the same as I do. I don't even want to post in threads like that one (or this one too actually) anymore. It's like one positive comment drowns in the usual hatred immediately.
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On April 13 2012 02:14 Arolis wrote:
To say that Blizzard has lost creativity and using Warcraft and Starcraft as examples seems strange to me. These 2 franchises are some of the most unoriginal ideas in the history of video games having been ripped off of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. Even the system of RTS stems from this tabletop Army vs. Army game. Blizzard made almost no changes to the setting and general feel of the races at first. They've altered their path significantly from the original source inspiration in later games.
Mechanically I think they're still leading the industry in some significant ways. Every MMO gets compared to WoW. We'll see how their new talent system works out in MoP. They certainly haven't been afraid to constantly try out new mechanics with WoW in the past. As much as people bash Blizzard for not supporting E-sports enough, no other company has been trying to make Starcraft 2 clones. This is something unprecedented for a commercially successful Blizzard game. This may speak to the market of PC games or the RTS genre both having declined in recent years. But I think it also speaks to the fact that nearly all large gaming companies don't want to or don't know how to invest game development into E-sports or competitive gaming. Like it or not, Blizzard is at the forefront of developing the E-sports market which could speak to the creative challenge that that presents.
So I guess my conclusion is that they face different creative challenges than they did in an earlier era of gaming. The well of unoriginal IPs to draw from may last another 5-10 years. Once that's over they'll be met with a different set of challenges.
I would argue that you almost need to make an esport worthy game to even be considered now. Look what happened in the MOBA series, all within 6 months I think all of the games announced significant esports events. The million dota tournament, 5 million dollars in league of legends prizes, and hon being on nasl season 2. To even put this in further words, the new Twisted Metal game is considering getting into esports. Hell we've even heard SirScoots on Live on Three say that CS:GO HAS to be an esport.
Companies are looking into esports as they see the longterm passion in their game from their consumers. Its another way for people to get excited about it.
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I totally agree with the OP, but this goes with most game developers anyways. They all just copy their successes and make it prettyer just looks at the gta series or the halo/cod/fifa series.
And WoW wasn't really an innovative product it was just a polished up version of Ragnarok and Tibia <-- the only two true mmorpg's 
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EPT
