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On April 13 2012 04:16 Roflhaxx wrote:Show nested quote +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. Well with warcraft you can't really blame them for being similar to warhammer I mean, games workshop did hire them after all to make a warhammer rts game, but then later fired them so Blizzard made it into warcraft. Starcraft however is a ripoff to the point that it makes me disgusted to think that THEY are wants to sue valve for dota 2! I mean really!?
Can you link a source to this impending lawsuit that Blizzard is suing VALVe over Dota 2? This would be big news and I have not seen anything on it yet.
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On April 13 2012 01:45 Thienan567 wrote:
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.
Look out for Planetside 2!
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Games today are bigger than ever before, they take longer to make and teams are much bigger. For example 150 people in Capcom are working on Resident Evil 6, back in the 16 bit days, a team consisted of 15-30 people.
To me the "worst" Blizzard game (not counting expansions) was Warcraft 3, i rate both WoW and SC2 above it, so i dont feel like they have declined. Its the only Blizzard game i never really loved, and i think it has fundamental issues.
1. Starcraft
2. Diablo
3. Diablo 2
4. Warcraft 2
5. WoW
That would be how i personally would rank them, i dont know where SC2 belongs because i dont feel like it can be judged as of yet, but most likely above WoW and probably Warcraft 2.
I admire your love for the SNES games, they were some good hidden gems but i would never place them in top 5, 10 or 20 on SNES, as that console had some masterpieces, games that defined this industry.
Because the cost of development is so high, they have to rely on their hits, their brand names. And i feel that because of their general quality, and TOTAL FUCKING SLOW game development actually benefits them. Nobody is pissed that Diablo 3 is coming out, last one came out before 9/11, when the world was a different place. Same thing with Starcraft 2.
It just dosent feel like they are "milking" the cash cow, and Blizzard has done what Capcom and Nintendo did with Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter, with Starcraft and Diablo. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel they simply located what people love so much about them and added prettier graphics but kept the core design of the game at place.
They have never made original games, they are known for taking ideas and simply cutting the fat and just improving on something. They make games that popularize a genre and set a standard that nobody can really match. Just like Street Fighter 2 did in the early 90s, just like Doom did.
Their games have high production values, its why they feel so "grand" in scale and everything is polished til it shines, when you do that, spend that much money, it is financially irresponsible to try to innovate or do something original. That is for the indy scene.
TLDR: Increasing development costs of games means that no sane developer will try to do something totally new.
Valve, Activision-Blizzard, Nintendo are the 3 developers who almost always post positive financial report, because they understand that a game from 1991 can still be relevant and fun today, that if you polish your games people will view it as a much better investment.
Companies like EA, THQ, SquareEnix are in the deep red, and THQ may not even be around in 6 months. Because some of them tried new ideas (Mirrors Edge) that didnt quite pan out sales ways.
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Dont they have a secret MMO in development? Which they say is not Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo?
They are imo running out of ideas for WoW however, but i mean its the fourth expansion and the Warcraft story hasn't been developed much since, no WC4 inbetween to introduce more story, badguys and advance the plot. What is even the big bad boss in Pandaria though? Is there one? Like... they must've run out of big names to kill by now. Anyways, the panda idea doesn't float my boat, but neither did Cataclysm content wise.
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I agree, what is killing WoW is that we killed off all of the cool characters from WC3: Arthas, Illidan, Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, Kael'thas, and Vashj. There has usually been a "Big Bad" in each expansion and in Mists of Pandaria I'm not sure who it is. If they make up a new evil that wants to destroy the world, I probably wouldn't care very much about it since I haven't heard their story in WC3. Old gods and big bad dragons are hard to empathize with compared to a misunderstood demon hunter and an overzealous paladin whose desire to save his people eventually turned him into the agent of his kingdom's demise. I believe the developers are trying their best to incorporate new things in Mists of Pandaria because they're running out of things to do. The "Kung Fu Panda" comparisons are unfair because people have wanted Pandaren in the game for a very long time and the developers have been trying to add them into the game in a good way. They are also running the game on a 7 year old gameplay model and graphics engine which they should consider reworking (and hope they are considering for their new MMO). I think they will eventually reach a point where they've done all they can with WoW and need to move onto something else.
They should try to take a page from Nintendo. They have somehow been able to keep 30 year old franchises fresh and innovative. Not saying that they should incorporate Warcraft Tennis or Warcraft Golf, but they've been able to innovate the Mario franchise to not only reach out to newer fans but keep some elements that remind older players of their childhoods.
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No reason to think so. They are just playing it safe atm with what works.
Wait until they release Titan project before you make any conclusions. If that super project is meh, then ya i'd agree. However if it turns out to be the best MMO ever created, which I think is very possible considering hte time and money going into it, then I guess blizzard gets the last laugh.
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Just wanted to say, i got nerdchills rewatching the Warcraft 3 cinematics.
God these were good at the time. Specially the Hellscream/Thrall against Mannoroth one.
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People are more inclined to buy a game if it's within a popular franchise, right? I think limiting their franchises was a business decision and not a lack of creativity.
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I have to say though, voice acting in Blizzards games have severely gone to the crapper since WC3 and maybe vanilla WoW. ALot of the voice acting in SC2 is pretty bad imo, same for the WoW expansions.
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Mists of Pandaria looks stupid, thank you for shining some light on it.
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First of all, the Pandaren were introduced to the WOW universe in Warcraft 3: TFT like 6 years ago. So I'm not really sure why everyone is complaining about the Pandaren. As someone who really has a poor opinion of WoW, even I have to admit it looks pretty sweet. after all the brew master kicked ass.
But what I'm getting here is a lot of people have not been playing Blizzard RTS games for very long.
SC and SC:BW really stand out on their own in terms of the single player experience. Virtually every other RTS blizzard has made has had an abyssmal campaign, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans made the default D&D 3.5 campaign setting look amazing. WC2's single player, while having better backstory, was pretty damn boring. WC3 was pretty much the same story line as BW, just with different characters and in a fantasy setting. And TFT, with the exception of the Orc minicampaign, was ungodly boring.
I will admit the SC2 single player campaign was embarrasing. Clearly they were going for a Mass Effect type vibe, but it ended up being boring and stupid. But it's not like it was the first time that Blizzard ignored established canon and just retconned in a bunch of shit. Granted the retconnin in SC2 was on a whole new level (Jim Raynor the marshall was actually a criminal, stukov is dead AGAIN and infestation CAN'T be cured... and Raynor had hair wtf???) but in Warcraft 3 they invented an entire new continent and like 5 new races that were conviniently never mentioned before. And all that shit about Grom Hellscream and Maniroth that's in that video clip was all ret-conned in. As I recall Lorderon fell long before the invasion of the scourge, didn't the orc besiege it at the end of the orc campaign in WC2 as retaliation for the alliance closing the dark portal? I don't even know and I played all those damn games. WOW universe canon is a frickin' mess at this point, at least I give Blizzard credit for falling back and expanding something established.
The MMO-ization of Diablo 3 is another issue entirely, that's the direction of the industry unfortunately. Unless it turns out Deckard Cain was really a rebellion leading hero with a full head of hair it really can't be compared to the mess they made of the SC universe.
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On April 13 2012 04:57 Kralic wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2012 04:16 Roflhaxx wrote: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. Well with warcraft you can't really blame them for being similar to warhammer I mean, games workshop did hire them after all to make a warhammer rts game, but then later fired them so Blizzard made it into warcraft. Starcraft however is a ripoff to the point that it makes me disgusted to think that THEY are wants to sue valve for dota 2! I mean really!? Can you link a source to this impending lawsuit that Blizzard is suing VALVe over Dota 2? This would be big news and I have not seen anything on it yet.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not suing Valve for Dota2, they are trying to get an injunction that would prevent valve from copyrighting the term DOTA. As I understand it, their reasoning is that that dota has become synonym to the genre, just like you can't copyright the term RTS or FPS. They are definitely not suing valve for producing dota2. If they are successful, they will be able to create their blizzard dota game and call it just that.
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If you are looking for a creative game, it is unlikely that you would find it from a large, established company. Big companies with many franchises under their belt can easily play it safe and depend on sequels and spinoffs from their popular franchises rather than risk a lot of resources and money on trying to establish a new franchise. You see this with Activision (CoD, Guitar Hero) and EA (C&C, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, sports games).
However, smaller companies and studios need to take risks in order for them to compete against these larger companies and their popular franchises. You saw this with earlier Blizzard games before WoW, with each game up until WC3 being progressively more ambitious and epic. Heck, I would go on to say that the original WoW was absolutely brilliant for it's time.
When Bethesda was making Morrowind, they were on the edge of bankruptcy after failing with some other projects, notably some mediocre spinoffs of their Elder Scrolls franchise. They had to take a HUGE risk to finish that ambitious project or else face closing down. Consequently, that risk resulted in one of the deepest, most brilliant RPGs ever created, thus saving themselves financially. As a result, Bethesda could afford to "streamline" (some arguably say "dumb down") subsequent games to cater to casual and console audiences. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim are fine games, but their gameplay is much less complex than that found in Morrowind, which is a very deep, memorable game despite clunky combat and antiquated graphics. Plus, Vvardenfell is one of the most unique, most memorable areas ever designed in an RPG with very alien environments and the very unique Dunmer culture in general. However, Oblivion and Skyrim are more standard medieval environments that aren't as memorable, though I do like Skyrim's environment.
But I digress. If you want creativity, expect that from a smaller developer. Blizzard has grown too large and too slow to release anything unique in the near future (expect for maybe Titan). There are still a lot of other smaller developers that produce fine, creative games, like Valve.
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On April 13 2012 06:44 PetitCrabe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2012 04:57 Kralic wrote:On April 13 2012 04:16 Roflhaxx wrote: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. Well with warcraft you can't really blame them for being similar to warhammer I mean, games workshop did hire them after all to make a warhammer rts game, but then later fired them so Blizzard made it into warcraft. Starcraft however is a ripoff to the point that it makes me disgusted to think that THEY are wants to sue valve for dota 2! I mean really!? Can you link a source to this impending lawsuit that Blizzard is suing VALVe over Dota 2? This would be big news and I have not seen anything on it yet. I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not suing Valve for Dota2, they are trying to get an injunction that would prevent valve from copyrighting the term DOTA. As I understand it, their reasoning is that that dota has become synonym to the genre, just like you can't copyright the term RTS or FPS. They are definitely not suing valve for producing dota2. If they are successful, they will be able to create their blizzard dota game and call it just that.
Yea this, just that this " their reasoning is that that dota has become synonym to the genre, " Is only the 'public' reason, the REAL reason is that they want to earn more money etc.
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A lot of people seem to equate "games I like" with "creative games." These are not the same thing. Regardless on whether you liked WoW you can't refute that the game changed almost everything about the MMO genre. And I still stand by my statement that Warcraft and Starcraft were complete rip offs of Warhammer and 40k respectively. Completely and utterly uncreative. I like Starcraft and Starcraft 2 way more than WoW, but WoW was industry changing. It's absurd to think it's less creative.
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Declining in creativity? It's difficult to define creativity in the modern-day videogame scene, but to me it's almost certain. Afterall, Bashiok explicitly stated, in no uncertain terms, that Blizzard doesn't make innovative games.
Webster's Definition:
in·no·vat·ed in·no·vat·ing
Definition of INNOVATE
transitive verb
1: to introduce as or as if new
2: to make changes; to do something in a new way
Creativity require innovation... it requires looking at things in new ways. I think that when vanilla wow came out, they were most definitely innovating. They were creative. They thought of a new level of multiplayer interaction never before possible, and they made it happen. Sorry, but Everquest is to WoW as the Model T is to the Mustang. Same general idea, very very different level of execution.
Let's be real, Blizzard is not pushing boundaries very often anymore. Which isn't to say that they never do... I think there were some really creative ideas in SC2 single player. New ways of looking at the single player experience... but I don't think you can really look at Blizzard and say "these guys are changing the way people play videogames" or "these guys are delivering gamers brand new experiences" like you could 10 years ago. JMO.
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On April 13 2012 08:21 Arolis wrote:
A lot of people seem to equate "games I like" with "creative games." These are not the same thing. Regardless on whether you liked WoW you can't refute that the game changed almost everything about the MMO genre. And I still stand by my statement that Warcraft and Starcraft were complete rip offs of Warhammer and 40k respectively. Completely and utterly uncreative. I like Starcraft and Starcraft 2 way more than WoW, but WoW was industry changing. It's absurd to think it's less creative.
Yes, WC/SC are blatant ripoffs of Warhammer settings, but the difference between them and WoW is that the stories for WC/SC are both very well-written and are just great stories overall. Furthermore, WC and SC worked similar to WoW in that they really melded the RTS genre into what we see today (along with one or two other pivotal RTS's).
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Games take longer and longer to make because people these days have high expectations.
Plot wise though, it has kind of became pretty diluted and predictable. Kerrigan and Arthus imo carried a lot of similarities: both are the "overlord" of a control-base race which will go on a rampage if not "controlled". Kerrigan was captured by the overmind and turned into what she is, Arthus wielded Frostmourne from which Nezgul uses to brainwash/give command...
I really hated how world of warcraft tend to bend plotlines a lot. Some of the best recent plot such as the assassination of Caine took place off screen in novels.
Cata is supposed to push the alliance/horde conflict to high gear, but has failed to do so. Blizzard wants the players on both factions to feel like heroes: so there is always a limitation.
TBH I don't mind if the character can join a bloodthirsty horde/alliance faction and become the troublemakers and causes of conflict.
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WoW butchered the great story that was Warcraft 1-3. It's really sad.
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Activision is making billion dollars per title launch by recycling Call of Duty with new skins. So no, there is no creativity for large computer game companies. The Activsion/EAs of this world are about slightly improving last years release and getting the people to buy their stuff. The truly creative companies cannot afford to make their games pretty and so they cant be ported to console and so they cant join the billion dollar industry.
There is a reason why the golden age of gaming was around the last internet bubble, and that reason was the fact that so many smallish studios could exist and release truly awesome content. But once the Bungis and Blizzards and Black Isle studios of the world are attacked and taken over by corporations and when the Browders of the world rule supreme then all you can hope for is the best polished game.
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