This is going to be a bit like cursing in a church, but lately it feels like Blizzard is always playing "the safe cards" every time they develop a game. Now it has annoyed me to the point where I feel an urge to spread some light regarding the issue
Blizzard is generally viewed as one of the best, if not the best, game developer in the world. Lately though I started to question if they really deserve that title. For every year that passes they become a little bit less creative than the year prior. I mainly talk from a story perspective but also from a general game development point of view. I like to do a comparison with Blizzard Entertainment in the early 1990 and Blizzard today.
During the 5 year period from 1993-1998 the following games was released:
Rock N`Roll Racing – 1993 Warcraft: Orcs and Humans – 1994 Justice League Task Force – 1995 Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness – 1995 Diablo – 1996 The Lost Vikings 2 – 1997 Starcraft – 1998 Starcraft Brood War – 1998 Plus additionally 3 SNES games that are unknown to me.
I mean look at that list. That is some damn amazing stuff. An astounding variation and quantity of games. There is RTS, RPG, racing games, fighting games and a puzzle solving side-scrollers.
The quality is also second to none, Rock N` Roll Racing and TLV2 are both in my top 5 SNES list. Diablo: well one of the best RPG: s ever. Very innovative for its time as well, pretty much created the action RPG gender. Starcraft: was apparently pretty good also I heard. Still widely known as one of the best RTS of all times, not to mention what it did for the development of e-sport including the very existence of this forum. Not to mention Warcraft, great RTS and the foundation of WOW.
From a story perspective it is also interesting to ponder a moment on these games. The fact that the games Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft where all created in a 4 year period is almost surreal. The lore of each one of those games could individually rival the lore of any game in the world in manner of magnitude and popularity.
So if we jump at little closer to present and look at the 7 years period from 2005-2012 the following has been released by Blizzard.
World of warcraft – The burning crusade - 2007 World of warcraft – The Wrath of the Lich King - 2008 Starcraft 2 – Wing of liberty - 2010 World of warcraft – Cataclysm – 2010 Diablo 3 – 2012 + most probably World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria – 2012
From a creativity point of view, both game experience and story, I would say a comparison between the two is a bit like a show match between Total Biscuit and DRG. Rather one side. Sure there are definitely good games (or most of them at least )) but they are all similar to previous releases of Blizzard.
Okay there is Starcraft 2, the story progression from SC BW make sense and over all it is just a great game. Also I can give some credit to the 2 first expansions of WOW, as they tie up some of the loose ends from Warcraft 3 the Frozen Throne and over all expanded the game in a logical fashion. I cannot say I feel the same about Cataclysm. It had very little connection to previous warcraft games and did not make for a great story or expansion over all. Then there is Mists of Pandaria….. Well for the first hours I actually thought Blizzard was trolling. I know they have many WOW accounts and they need to release an expansion every second year to maintain it… but really?
Compare for a second the magnitude of story and atmosphere in the original Diablo game or previous warcraft, then you look at Mists of Pandaria, and you tell me that expansion has a good story.
To put it simple, how did we get from this - -
To this -
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
Of course you can always make another story, problem is that the story progressively gets worse every time you do it, and when you have done this for a very long time you go from Hellscream to dancing pandas on a floating turtle. I am sorry If this offends people but cannot for the life of me understand that this is a serious project. I don’t even dare to think about the expansions after this one is going to be like.
So was when the last time Blizzard made a new story line from scratch? Around 1997 in the development of SC if I am not mistaken. Roughly 15 years ago that is <-- a large number right there. Just think about it, all the games released in the last 15(!) years has all been sequels or expansions to those 3 games that was developed between 1994 to 1998.
Would it kill blizzard to make something new instead of over using/abusing their story lines over and over again. Stories need to have an end, even the once you like. Blizzards still make great games but there should be a lot more potential than this. I for one is not buying Mists of Pandaria :p
Hopefully Blizzard has already acknowledge this and project titan is not a code name for Mist of Pandaria standalone MMO!
Edit: Many misconceptions here regarding WOW. No releasing WOW was not a safe card, never said it was. That was back in 2004 however and releasing 4 expansions is very much playing it safe imo.
They lost Blizzard North and with them the passion for making games. They are just another big company now that are owned by the shareholders who wants money, not great games.
Creativity as a whole is declining. There really is no need for new ideas because the old ones redone sell just as well. Basically we've been conditioned to accept the mediocre without pushing for the extraordinary. It also goes beyond video games to movies (reboot of the reboot of spider man anyone?), books, and other forms of art. Basically art is not made for art's sake anymore, but to be sold, and companies look for profit not for greatness.
Theyve just become more and more professional, as has the game creation business in general. meaning more development time and money per title, less titles released. And games targeted at a larger more mainstream audience, and as a result, game content "cheaper" or "dumber" however you want to call it.
Blizzard has a huge lineup for a video game company as it is, the creativity is still there a bit. 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. I'd wait until TITAN comes out to judge them on their creativity.
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.
lol, I remember seeing the panda thing before, but just thought it was some bad fanmade joke or something. I can't believe they are actually going to do that.
I agree that they are far less creative than they used to be, but for different reasons. I think it is only smart to stick with the franchises that have gotten you this far, the ones that are that popular. However, when the only units you can think up company-wide are void rays and colossi, something is wrong. It seems the only cool and unique units we have in sc2 are the direct ports from broodwar.
I spent a long time giving them the benefit of the doubt when sc2 came out, saying things to myself like, "well, it is kind of cool and original that a colossus is so "tall" that it can be hit with air-only attacks and... a unit like the void ray is kind of obligatory if you think about it, you kind of have to have one of those kinds of units." But now, with the units they thought up in HoTS, ugh. The unit-producing lurker is cool, but c'mon, that's not exactly hard to think up. They did the same thing with the guardian. They ported it to sc2 and made it shoot units instead.
They need to get whoever in that company is creative and sit them all around a table and start thinking up some cool unit ideas, because right now they're all rehashed. The coolest thing about BW was the remarkable diversity in units and just how different the 3 races were. I've never played an rts that had more different races to play.
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.
Please blizz don't mess up. I like the game and want to see it succeed in a big way.
On April 13 2012 00:34 storkfan wrote: Theyve just become more and more professional, as has the game creation business in general. meaning more development time and money per title, less titles released. And games targeted at a larger more mainstream audience, and as a result, game content "cheaper" or "dumber" however you want to call it.
Well, normally you would think more money and less time for games. I thought they started losing out on the creativity part from war3, it felt as though you had seen/heard everything before, agree with the mainstream bit At the sametime, blizzard also have to walk a tight rope, satisfy newer fans, and also satisfy older fans of the games. So the amount of leeway they're given in terms of risk is pretty low, not an easy situation to be in.
Diablo was actually not by them in the first place, they bought the company that was doing it..and later fired most of the staff after d2.
You can't expect the same innovation as in that time since the gaming industry was iin its early stages back then. Now it has been a lot more developed with clear genre's in the industry ( I.E. RTS, RPG etc.) and 10's of titles who all try to differentiate themself from the rest.
Creating WoW wasn't really a safe card. Sure it had the warcraft name but it was a mmorpg something completly new for Blizzard and it was clearly an innovative product and still is seeing the success it had. Wc3 is also one of a kind in the rts genre I've never seen such a game it was full of innovations. Only sc2 looks a lot like it's predecessor but then again it's still one of the best rts games in recent years and maybe ever so I don't see the problem.
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
This isn't cursing in the curch. People should say, correctly, how they feel. I do agree with you. BW is much more smarter story wise than SC2 which feels like cheesefest sometimes. I really hope that pretty expensive D3 isn't gonna be a disappointment. If that's so, then I'm not buying HoTS or anything else coming from Blizzard.
On April 13 2012 00:43 RvB wrote: You can't expect the same innovation as in that time since the gaming industry was iin its early stages back then. Now it has been a lot more developed with clear genre's in the industry ( I.E. RTS, RPG etc.) and 10's of titles who all try to differentiate themself from the rest.
Creating WoW wasn't really a safe card. Sure it had the warcraft name but it was a mmorpg something completly new for Blizzard and it was clearly an innovative product and still is seeing the success it had. Wc3 is also one of a kind in the rts genre I've never seen such a game it was full of innovations. Only sc2 looks a lot like it's predecessor but then again it's still one of the best rts games in recent years and maybe ever so I don't see the problem.
Well I agree that WOW was not a safe card and was creative development. WC3 was also very unlike WC2 and brought new things to the RTS gendre. But then again those two games are 8 and 10 years old. 8-10 years is a pretty long time to come up with something creative imo
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.
WoW was a safe card? Are you out of your mind? You're justifying your argument of how things were back then with things you know now. That is absolute nonsense.
Back then Everquest and UO were the models of successful MMORPGs. WoW was absolutely innovative. They made up a huge chunk of storyline just for that, in addition to enormous gameplay changes compared to the other MMOs. And it was a successful gamble.
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.
On April 13 2012 00:34 storkfan wrote: Theyve just become more and more professional, as has the game creation business in general. meaning more development time and money per title, less titles released. And games targeted at a larger more mainstream audience, and as a result, game content "cheaper" or "dumber" however you want to call it.
Well, normally you would think more money and less time for games. I thought they started losing out on the creativity part from war3, it felt as though you had seen/heard everything before, agree with the mainstream bit At the sametime, blizzard also have to walk a tight rope, satisfy newer fans, and also satisfy older fans of the games. So the amount of leeway they're given in terms of risk is pretty low, not an easy situation to be in.
wat? You thought they were losing out on creativity from War3? Sure we've seen night elves (drow) and undead in other places, but making a relatively balanced 4Race RTS (poor undead ;_;), with HEROES, a unique mechanic that essentially spawned the MOBA genre is pretty damn creative if you ask me. Sure you've seen heroes and 4races in other games, but had you seen like War3 did it?
The point stands though that they haven't made anything wildly original in a while. I'm not too sad about that as I enjoy their games regardless, but if they made something innovative and awesome, I'm sure they would reap the benefits both critically and financially.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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'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.
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.
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
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.
FPS francise? Try Quake man. Starts at 4:00
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I see it more of a dumbing down due to Blizzard wanting to reach more people. Like pop music and angry birds and farmville.
WC3 was really innovative and let's face it SC2 is a dumbed down version of BW with modern mechanics.
Admittedly losing Blizzard North must have affected a bit but otherwise it all seems rather straightforward business. They did some new and quite unique stuff for a while and after all the success why drop all those names that sell. I'm not sure if there is a decline in creativity per se but for a bigger company (and even bigger syndicate behind it) working in bigger volumes (that for example an indie-game company) there is much more pressure to play it safe in all areas of the creative process.
All things said, they have worked on risky projects before(SC:Ghost , Diablo III) and have another one ahead of them in a few years(Project: Titan). Like any company careful about their image they have kept quite silent about all those failures.
Of course you can always make another story, problem is that the story progressively gets worse every time you do it, and when you have done this for a very long time you go from Hellscream to dancing pandas on a floating turtle. I am sorry If this offends people but cannot for the life of me understand that this is a serious project. I don’t even dare to think about the expansions after this one is going to be like.
Nice rant. "dancing pandas on a floating turtle" haha.
And yes I agree that Blizzard is slowly but surely going downhill and I'm mostly blaming Activision for it. The big publishers always ruin the good game studios.
For all the cited differences between SC2 and BW, what are the differences that really advanced SC2 from BW and the RTS genre overall? MBS? Smartcasting? It doesn't really seem like that many innovative features when you consider the time lapse.
I always considered SC2 to have both lost a lot of the things that made BW interesting and yet not differentiated itself enough to be considered its own game. Blizzard was too scared to change the formula too much so they weren't *that* creative with it but in the shuffle they didn't manage to keep too much of the good stuff.
lol @ panda people. Kung fu panda?? That seems kind of silly.
I don't really follow Warcraft though; I'm a StarCraft and Diablo guy. And while the cinematics from Diablo 1 and 2 and SC1/ BW were epic, SC2 cinematics still makes my heart race (and I'm really hoping that D3 is a winner too).
I certainly don't consider Blizzard a AAA developer anymore, though of course many still do solely based on the work they did 15 years ago. I've seen the quality in a lot of areas heavily decline over the years chiefly among those being their writing team, which has taken such a nosedive all the way down into the Mariana trench; if Chris Metzen isn't forgetting half the story he wrote he is retconning most everything else in previous game installments.
On April 13 2012 03:20 setzer wrote: I certainly don't consider Blizzard a AAA developer anymore, though of course many still do solely based on the work they did 15 years ago. I've seen the quality in a lot of areas heavily decline over the years chiefly among those being their writing team, which has taken such a nosedive all the way down into the Mariana trench; if Chris Metzen isn't forgetting half the story he wrote he is retconning most everything else in previous game installments.
The Rise of the Lich King story is one of the best video game stories ever told- I guess, really, the whole Warcraft universe is just awesome from a lore perspective... until cataclysm. Much like DBZ fell off after Frieza (I'm not saying I didn't like Cell and Buu, but you can see how the series pretty much should have been wrapped up after Goku went SSJ), after the Lich King was killed the rest of the story feels tacked-on. Obviously Blizzard is smart and knows the game is dying and is making it the little brother of their offerings, and appealing more to girls/kids with Pandaria.
I'm going to wait for "Titan" before I pass judgement of Blizzard's creativity. Yes, HoTS and D3 are sequels, and I expect them to be awesome. You can't blame Blizzard for expanding on their already successful and well-received marquees. However, the new game will be set in an entirely new universe... so we'll have to see.
From the rumors, it kinda sounds like "Firefly" the MMO. So that's cool.
On April 13 2012 03:20 setzer wrote: I certainly don't consider Blizzard a AAA developer anymore, though of course many still do solely based on the work they did 15 years ago. I've seen the quality in a lot of areas heavily decline over the years chiefly among those being their writing team, which has taken such a nosedive all the way down into the Mariana trench; if Chris Metzen isn't forgetting half the story he wrote he is retconning most everything else in previous game installments.
Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
On April 13 2012 03:53 Little Rage Box wrote: Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
Yep project Titan is definitely going to be the true measurement of Blizzard. I wonder if they can actually "recreate" the MMO gender though. To me MMO seems to be the most stagnated out of all gaming genders.
To me they all seems to WOW wannabes with some minor variation (not EVE-online to be fair). PVE grinding, item gathering and so-so PVP seems to be a core piece in every MMO. If they really could make groundbreaking MMO it be interesting for sure.
On April 13 2012 03:53 Little Rage Box wrote: Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
Yep project Titan is definitely going to be the true measurement of Blizzard. I wonder if they can actually "recreate" the MMO gender though. To me MMO seems to be the most stagnated out of all gaming genders.
To me they all seems to WOW wannabes with some minor variation (not EVE-online to be fair). PVE grinding, item gathering and so-so PVP seems to be a core piece in every MMO. If they really could make groundbreaking MMO it be interesting for sure.
My only concern is whether it is actually POSSIBLE for a new innovative MMO to emerge... if it is possible to innovate MMO's further then its only a matter of time before someone does it
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!?
I never found WoW very creative either, i've played it for years though but since the first beta i've always felt like they stole every good thing from any other mmo before WoW and mixed them together into one.
These days the "creativity" they put in WoW feels shifted towards "how do we keep these idiots playing forever" instead of "how are we going to make this the best game ever?"
On April 13 2012 03:53 Little Rage Box wrote: Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
Yep project Titan is definitely going to be the true measurement of Blizzard. I wonder if they can actually "recreate" the MMO gender though. To me MMO seems to be the most stagnated out of all gaming genders.
To me they all seems to WOW wannabes with some minor variation (not EVE-online to be fair). PVE grinding, item gathering and so-so PVP seems to be a core piece in every MMO. If they really could make groundbreaking MMO it be interesting for sure.
My only concern is whether it is actually POSSIBLE for a new innovative MMO to emerge... if it is possible to innovate MMO's further then its only a matter of time before someone does it
Personally i'm looking forward to GW2, and see if they are able to set the new standard.
We didn't have much games or ideas at that time, so creativity played a big role also had a large impact on gamers. But now, there're just too many games and options from different studios.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
On April 13 2012 09:40 cozzE wrote: WoW butchered the great story that was Warcraft 1-3. It's really sad.
I'd be willing to bet you never played campaigns for Warcraft and Warcraft 2. The cannon was completely retconned and fucked up by Warcraft 3 already, and as Hikari and I both said, WC3: ROC was exceedingly similar to BW. WoW just made it 1000x worse. Like the same exact plot but in a fantasy setting.
They went from a smaller game company trying to make quality games to get customers and loyalty, to a leading company who already has a following so they only have to release fan service now rather than good games to make their money.
It makes perfect sense, and it's what happens in the entire gaming and film industry with the larger companies. You put in the minimum effort required to keep people buying your stuff. Anything beyond that is a waste of money and time.
On April 13 2012 10:17 Angra wrote: They went from a smaller game company trying to make quality games to get customers and loyalty, to a leading company who already has a following so they only have to release fan service now rather than good games to make their money.
It makes perfect sense, and it's what happens in the entire gaming and film industry with the larger companies. You put in the minimum effort required to keep people buying your stuff. Anything beyond that is a waste of money and time.
this sadly. wow has become a sham. SC2's campaign was a sham, it had virtually no lore. D3 will probably be similar. ill still purchase it, but it may very well be the last of blizzards games that i do purchase unless they fix their shit.
On April 13 2012 10:17 Angra wrote: They went from a smaller game company trying to make quality games to get customers and loyalty, to a leading company who already has a following so they only have to release fan service now rather than good games to make their money.
It makes perfect sense, and it's what happens in the entire gaming and film industry with the larger companies. You put in the minimum effort required to keep people buying your stuff. Anything beyond that is a waste of money and time.
Don't give up hope, we still have valve!
But yeah, ever since the vivendi buy and then the activision buy a lot of people left blizz, including the SC team, W3 team, and Diablo team. It's no surprise even Blizz has to answer to investors, making a game in this day and age is super expensive.
They didn't innovate because they couldn't. They were trapped by their old success in the sense that their fans want the games that are true to its predecessor. That's the reason they couldn't innovate. People who said WoW butchered WC3 lore must not know how much WC3 butchered WC2 lore if you think expanding universe is butchering lore. Blizzard stated that Titan is their chance to do something without having to worry if it will stay true to the franchise. It's brand new IP.
On April 13 2012 10:17 Angra wrote: They went from a smaller game company trying to make quality games to get customers and loyalty, to a leading company who already has a following so they only have to release fan service now rather than good games to make their money.
It makes perfect sense, and it's what happens in the entire gaming and film industry with the larger companies. You put in the minimum effort required to keep people buying your stuff. Anything beyond that is a waste of money and time.
Don't give up hope, we still have valve!
But yeah, ever since the vivendi buy and then the activision buy a lot of people left blizz, including the SC team, W3 team, and Diablo team. It's no surprise even Blizz has to answer to investors, making a game in this day and age is super expensive.
umm SC and WC team are basically the people who are high ranked in Blizzard right now. Only Blizzard North that left and Blizzard North has nothing to do with WC,SC.
On April 13 2012 02:28 Humposaurus wrote: 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
LOL Ragnarok and Tibia, I was expecting Neverwinter Nights(1991) or UO, maybe Everquest. Your games are a joke.
It just comes down to money, what gains them more money? Creating a new franchise, then creating games for it and hoping people will like it, or push out games in their existing franchises? It's such a huge risk to create stuff from scratch, especially when they can release basically anything within their current franchises and gain huge profits from it. Just look at WoW, with every expansion release people have said "this expansion sucks etc." and they're claiming the game is turning to shit, yet the subscriber numbers keep growing with every expansion. (And funnily enough, the next patch for Rift basically has half the features of the next WoW expansion but since the game wasn't built on a successful old franchise they would NEVER have gotten away with releasing expansions like that.) So basically, they would be retards to not exploit the hand they were dealt.
The new franchise they're working on might be interesting, at least it will be interesting to see if they've completely lost it.
I think something to do with it is simply that back then, games were simpler to program, so programming a racing game and a side scrolling game wasn't too different, but now you need such different engines and the programmers may have to specialize unlike just making mostly RTS (? not a programmer here)
Anyway yes there are two new games/franchise coming out, one of them is something completely new.
You're right though, never thought about the panda thing... is it going to be a serious story or what?
Also just wanna say, WC3 RoC graphics always amazes me. Can you believe that it came out only 3 years after SC:BW ? What the fuck? Look at those graphics xD It's already been 11 years. Holy fuck?
(Though of course it probably has also to do with merging with Activision)
On April 13 2012 03:53 Little Rage Box wrote: Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
Yep project Titan is definitely going to be the true measurement of Blizzard. I wonder if they can actually "recreate" the MMO gender though. To me MMO seems to be the most stagnated out of all gaming genders.
To me they all seems to WOW wannabes with some minor variation (not EVE-online to be fair). PVE grinding, item gathering and so-so PVP seems to be a core piece in every MMO. If they really could make groundbreaking MMO it be interesting for sure.
Did no one else notice he referred to genres as genders?
Anyways, I have low expectations for the Titan project. They've already stated it was meant for casuals, which means it will probably have dull/simple game mechanics, lots of limiters(to prevent hardcore players from gaining an edge), and micro-purchasing will be rampant.
Kinda random, but am I the only one who loved the cinematics in the original StarCraft campaign? They had nothing to do with the main story, didn't involve any of the main characters, but were just cool little tidbits that gave you a glimpse into the universe. Everything just felt so... yeah, I'll say it, magical back then. IMHO Blizzard has definitely lost their touch... but the kind of depressing question is, who hasn't these days?
On April 13 2012 03:53 Little Rage Box wrote: Well I think the OP has some merit. But like several other posters have stated Titan will be the true measure of the "new" Blizzard.
While I do believe that Blizzcon 2012 was put on hold so that they could push out HotS, Pandas, and D3; There is no doubt in my mind that they were thinking to the '13 Blizzcon to unveil the Titan project. I mean when could a better oppurtunity present itself for them to do so?
Yep project Titan is definitely going to be the true measurement of Blizzard. I wonder if they can actually "recreate" the MMO gender though. To me MMO seems to be the most stagnated out of all gaming genders.
To me they all seems to WOW wannabes with some minor variation (not EVE-online to be fair). PVE grinding, item gathering and so-so PVP seems to be a core piece in every MMO. If they really could make groundbreaking MMO it be interesting for sure.
Did no one else notice he referred to genres as genders?
Anyways, I have low expectations for the Titan project. They've already stated it was meant for casuals, which means it will probably have dull/simple game mechanics, lots of limiters(to prevent hardcore players from gaining an edge), and micro-purchasing will be rampant.
Funnily enough, this is exactly why I'm so interested in Guild Wars 2. Not only is it actually breaking the mold and looking to stand apart from the WoW clones, but the company making it, Arena Net, is actually made up largely of former Blizzard employees from the heyday of SC, BW, D2, WC1-3, ect.
There seems to be a general conclusion that big companies cannot take chances the same way a smaller company can/has to. Therefor larger companies are less innovative. Also there is the being own by other companies/market holders part of it to.
However I think there should be a limit to this. Blizzard is at least for me coming to an point where their games start to be obviously redundant. Also as I stated earlier there is a reason why you do not see the fourth and fifth sequel on movies, because by default the story becomes progressively worse for every installment. Which is what we see in WOW now. I mean is it only me that thinks that actually story is a main part of the Warcraft and Diablo games? You would think that when the story is turned to shit, that would affect the number of sold copies. I realize that it can work at least once but in the long run I wonder. If the story is as bad as I think it is in D3 and MoP, can they still just continue with releasing D4/next WOW expansions without any issues?
People compare it to the Super Mario genre but I do not think that it is the same thing. Because story has never been a major contributor to those games. If Bowser (or whatever his name is) is suddenly "alive" again in the next Super mario game I dont really care to much, fine he is alive once again. If Arthas on the other hand is suddenly walking around as the new evil king of the floating turtle land I want an explanation, and it better be a pretty good one at that.
"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" statement comes to mind here. If we take a look at Square Enix for instance, a company that really has gone down hill over the last years. I liked FF-XII alot, I bought FF-XIII and I cannot say I was overly impressed by that. Add to this that FF-IVX was a complete disaster I have become rather suspicious against Square Enix. I did not buy FF-XIII-2, I still have big hopes for FF-XIII Versus, but I am not buying that before I see a a couple of very good reviews of that game If Verus on the other hand fails I am not sure if I ever going to buy another Square Enix game.
I cannot imagine this being good for Square Enix and I think that Blizzard runs the danger of going down the same path with there current mind set.
I personally I do not as much of a I problem in SC2 as I consider it mainly a multiplayer game, and regardless of balance debates and SC2 story it is still one of the leading games in the development of the E-sport and that is what really matters for me. Once again Titan is the big unknown here though, better be good! Do not know what think of the expression "a casual MMO" though, cannot say it makes me jump with excitement exactly -.-
putting in some pokemon pet fights in the panda addon :D
im so happy that i "left" WoW at the mid of WoTLK. game has only getting worse since then. with left i mean i do not play it actively anymore, i might buy a 1 month sub. when i feel like i NEED to play it again because it was so much fun at a time, then i log into WoW and i feel like ive got completely robbed last time i got a sub was when the raind finder thing was introduced to kill the cataclysm endboss, i only logged in every week to clear the raid with randoms. then i logged out lol. and since i know about that panda addon i said im not gonna buy it, and i feel like i have the power over myself to NOT buy it this time because the game just got way too boring for me, i really miss something creative and special in the game.
and if u played WoW from the beginning u know that they are only grabbing out the "BEST" stuff from other games and implement those things to WoW..
There's nothing wrong with staying with your popular IPs and franchises instead of risking trying to introduce new ones, but I do think Blizzard is playing a little too safe. Hopefully this Titan thing is a sign that they're willing to try new ideas, though I don't like that it's a MMO.
On April 13 2012 11:38 LaNague wrote: there are so many sequels where i was like "whyyyyyyy didnt you just stick to the original, why!!?", so i am happy Blizzard does it.
On April 13 2012 11:38 LaNague wrote: there are so many sequels where i was like "whyyyyyyy didnt you just stick to the original, why!!?", so i am happy Blizzard does it.
You can't honestly tell me that the Starcraft II story makes any sense compared to that of Starcraft and Brood War. Magical artifact that + Show Spoiler +
magically turns Kerrigan back to a human through magic and that's it
What's wrong about Mists of Pandaria besides it being another non-related expansion pack to WoW? Today's strategy of making games is to get as much people who are not into gaming yet play the games You're making, easy as that. Easier, less complicated games without a trace of something unusual (and short, boring lore without plotholes/interesting ones). Also a lot of additional apps/accounts etc. for terrible companies.
Why would blizzard not play 'safe cards'? Almost every game has got great sales last time i checked. Seems like bad business to me to ditch a formula thats working and making lots of money.
Complaining is easy, making something that is new (and works) that has never been done before is really really hard.
OMG all these people talking about how the next WoW expansion is going to be LOL pandas have not been following the development of Mists.
The story in the box set will be about helping the pandas not be re enslaved by there old morgul overlords. And combating these evil spirits (sha) which are the embodiment of emotions, and with the entrance of the war of alliance and horde the emotions of fear hate and anger are being expounded upon.
Then in the first patch they plan to have the actual war between alliance and horde take place on the shores of Pandara. And the final boss will be + Show Spoiler +
Garrosh possessed by a Sha with the final boss fight being in Orgimmar (or so they say)
So IMO the story line looks quite amazing to me, maybe not creative but then again what would be considered creative? Is not everything based on something else? I think what makes a creative story is that the story gives a new perspective on an old story.
Truly no story can be truly unique. It all about how you tell those stories or present those ideas or maybe blending many different themes into 1 truly amazing experience. That is how I see being creative is.
As far as story line stuff goes, I think WoW is more or less them rushing to get expansions out to keep people interested. I think WC 3 story line was more epic than WoW. SC 2 had a cheesy but solid story, but I play this game more for the online. I think D3 will have a great story, since its been in production for awhile. And if D3 doesn't have a good story people wont want to play through it lol
On April 13 2012 22:56 Krowser wrote: I say, let's give Diablo 3 and Titan a chance before starting to doubt Blizzard. They never failed to dissapoint.
I thought the Starcraft 2 story was pretty good. It didn't blow my mind as hard as BW did but then again, I'm not 13 years old anymore.
That's a flaw in your evalutation, imho. Usually when I feel like that I try to check the old source, in this case - replay SC/BW. Which I did and then played SC2 single and it was pretty different.
Of all the Blizzard storylines I really liked WC3 when it just came out. It was such a refreshing experience. As for their games. Endless respect for SC/BW balance teams, not even sure if they were called like that at that time, but even without that they did an amazing job. Rock n' Roll Racing was one of my all time favorite games for older generation consoles, I still replay it every few years on emulators. And of course Diablo (didn't really like second one as much). Even being hack and slash game, it actually developed my love for RPG genre the most.
On April 13 2012 22:56 Krowser wrote: I say, let's give Diablo 3 and Titan a chance before starting to doubt Blizzard. They never failed to dissapoint.
I thought the Starcraft 2 story was pretty good. It didn't blow my mind as hard as BW did but then again, I'm not 13 years old anymore.
They never failed to disappoint? Bit harsh imo.
Their games are fine, they used to be about making quality games for money, now they're about making money from quality games. Yes their newer games tend to be made a bit more "accessible" but they have managed to do this without too much of a detriment to gameplay so its not an entirely bad thing imo.
The only gripe I have with the newer stuff blizzard has released is the system backing them, (Bnet2) which was clearly not designed by a gamer and seems to be geared towards making money at the detriment of gameplay. (looking at custom game system here)
Yeah they pretty much butchered starcraft and warcraft storylines + characters by putting stupid nonsensical crap in there and wrecking a few characters, ie mengsk but the game is still high quality.
I think blizzard is being quite creative in making a game appeal to multiple crowds, but that's the main thing thats changed with blizzard - who they are catering to.
On April 14 2012 00:48 Novalisk wrote: It's the by-product of being owned by Activision. They don't want creativity, they want proven IP's and concepts for easy money.
It's very little to do with Activision per se.
It's more to do with how money works, Blizzard are now a large company, with large budgets for games. Larger budgets mean a larger risk, you can't put out a niche game, even if its the best game in the world, if you don't make money its bad for business. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Blizzard puts its money into refinement, yes you can argue they are lacking in creativity, but the refinement is top notch and thats what you're paying for with a Blizzard game. If you want to see more creativity, or games that tailor to a niche you look at lower budget indie titles, often you're their market, you'll sacrifice polish for creativity or unique gameplay and they want to make a name for themselves.
It's the same with the movie business, just look at films like Titanic, Avatar, even a film like Inception which was hailed as breaking the mainstreams trend for dumbing down was still an action movie, not a philosophical piece like Waking Life, because Waking Life can't justify a mega budget like Inception can because the mainstream won't enjoy it.
It's odd, people want a company they like to be successful then get bitter or confused when that success inevitably changes the way they do things. Wake up, thats the world we live in, you can't have your cake and eat it.
Other companies will fill the role old school Blizzard had, you just might have to look a little harder to find them.
We are all older now and some stuff that made our eyes shine a long time ago will no more.
A great analogy is Nintendo, because they keep banging the same notes, Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong - how many of you think that any of the Nintendo games nowadays are worthy of the franchise name? If you check up lists of 'best games ever', Super Metroid will be there, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past will be there.
And then you look at what you have right now: Super Mario 3DS, Mario Kart 9 (I think that's right - I actually lost track of it), Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - all of these are not creative or innovative, compared to the 90s games.
We were all kids back then (or you may be an exception), but in the world that gaming is right now, you have 2 options: You make an FPS with a shaved head guy in which you play with brainless people shooting everything and everyone they see that's moving, or you make sequels.
The thing for today is: FPS. If you really want to sell and profit, you make a FPS and I think Blizzard is being pretty creative enough because they are staying away from this juggernaut that FPS is at the moment. We have RTS, RPG and soon an Action game. Props to them!
The games for today are meant to be fun & fast - take the mobile gaming market that is increasing exponentially. You can play anywhere, anytime you have 60 seconds at your disposal. It's not just about 'how much does this game cost', it's about 'does this person have time for this?' Everyone is battling for your time, not for your buck.
Games don't have to be fun. They can bring emotions, they can bring a challenge. Blizzard is bringing these in this way:
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria For those who want fun: pet battles, a break from destruction themed, new quests. For those who want challenge: more raids, more bosses. For those who want to feel something: No one knows yet because Pandaria is a mistery world.
Starcraft II For those who want fun: Custom games, blizzard DotA For those who want challenge: survive in the ladder, competitive play, more tournaments, ramped up difficulty in single player For those who want to feel something: cliché story for us, but for people nowadays, that's one way to gain followers.
Diablo III For those who want fun: pretty straightforward PvE with your friend, customizing banner and earning achievements. For those who want challenge: PvP (oops, not available at launch), PvE at higher difficulty (Hell, Inferno) For those who want to feel something: We don't know yet.
Well well, of all these I have wrote down, the third item is what is really misterious, because at least for me, there is no concrete answer - and that is may very well be the cause of your frustration against Blizzard's games for not being creative - maybe you don't want to have ezpz fun, maybe you don't want a challenge either, maybe you want a compelling story, with reason to make you cry, to laugh, to feel joy.
Games today lack this. If this is the case, might I recommend some games to you that touched my heart: Shadow of the Colossus (PS2), Ookami (PS2), ICO (PS2), Uncharted 2 (PS3), Bioshock (PC/PS3/360), Bioshock 2 (PC/PS3/360), Portal (PC), Portal 2 (PC/PS3), Demon's Souls (PS3/360), Dark Souls (PS3)
Hope this helped in some way contribute to the thread. I hope to see more from Blizzard, hope to see storytelling that will make me open my mouth in awe, or shed tears - and this, is very rare, but possible.
I think that you need to be a bit more reasonable with Blizzard's games. Looking at something like COD franchise, they just shit out games every year now (almost?). And it's literally the same game over and over again. This is where blizzard does shine in my oppinion, they always try to change things up, at least a little bit. Take a look at WoW. It changed so much comming from Vanilla all the way to Cataclysm. I have played on and off, and I have experienced all changes done within that game. Some were good, some were bad. They did make it easier and more casual but honestly, some of the changes are brilliant. They make the game so much better because now you don't have to go through stupid things like the whole battleground system. Previously you had to go to a city and queue for a bettleground from there, now you can do that from anywhere in the world and while that's such a small change, it's actually making it easier for you to do whatever it is you want to do, instead of waiting near by your battlemaster. There are more changes that impove the overall gameplay, and that's just one thing. They also changed the classes a fair bit, they revamped most of the classes at least once. Granted now you have a lot of homogenised classes that are virtually interchangeable at least they did go out of there way to try and change things around. From one expansion to the next, there are always some changes and addition to make the gameplay feel fresh and new. At this stage though, the game does feel stale, but that's because it's so old and most people have figured out there overall formula for it. Now if you look at starcraft 2, really the innovation there is in the gameplay. I never though their campaign could have been so exciting! So many neat new mechanics and tricks to play around with. Missions never felt the same, considering this is a RTS where the premise is "build stuff and kill the enemy", they delivered in the area of variety. I'm not going to lie the story felt too cliche and they just didn't have to insert the god damn "ancient race, that is going to destroy us all" theme in there but that can still be fixed in the next 2 games. In original game, not all the campaigns were amazing, some of them were just mediocre.
I think you should try to see beyond the obvious. It seems like you're looking for faults and cracks in blizzard's new way of making games. Almost as if you want to find something bad and say "HA! You see? I told you so! They were bad!!!"
People don't realise just how much of an incredible piece of design WoW was really, both on a ludic level (game mechanics) and a technical one. It's fashionable to laugh at it these days, but it will go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest game of the early 21st century. WoW did for the games industry what the model T did for automobiles.
Blizzard is still a great game developer. They have excellent polish and good all around skills in both design and implementation, but yes, there is a significant lack in some areas of their work. They could be pushing the boundaries of networking and social design (Bnet, matchmaking etc) harder than they are (though they are innovating slowly but steadily in WoW) and their overarching lore/storywriting has frankly gone down the toilet in the last few games (WoW expansions post BC, SC2). Not so much because it's gotten worse (even though it has, slightly) but because it SHOULD be getting better, not remaining steady or getting worse. They need to get real fantasy/science fiction authors in there. I'd love to see what for example neal stephenson could do with the SC universe, or what Jim Butcher could do with warcraft (to stay in that pulpy kind of feel it has now rather than hard fantasy like Sanderson or Rothfuss)
WoW seems bad when you play it, then you leave and play a different MMO and realize just how good WoW actually was. I don't play MMOs anymore, but if I did... it'd have to be WoW.
On April 14 2012 15:14 iGrok wrote: WoW seems bad when you play it, then you leave and play a different MMO and realize just how good WoW actually was. I don't play MMOs anymore, but if I did... it'd have to be WoW.
LotRO was much better than WoW in my opinion (still not as good as Guild Wars though).
In my opinion Blizzard ended with WCIII: TFT and WoW: TBC. Everything they released after that was not worthy of my attention. I don't even feel any emotions when thinking about D3. I think I might skip it too.
On April 13 2012 00:27 4ZakeN87 wrote: Plus additionally 3 SNES games that are unknown to me.
Blackthorne was originally (or at least simultaneously) a PC game, as-was the lost vikings. (I'm not sure what the 3rd game is). Blackthorne wasn't really innovative at all in my opinion though.
WTF are you talking about? The last video isn't a game cinematic, it's just a trailer. Not to mention, what does that have to do with game variety? The fact that there's less story or plot or such is due to the fact that it's an MMO, and an expansion. Both MMOs and Expansions aren't that huge on story. It's improper to expect the same type of things from different types of games. Not all great games have to have great plots. It's not like Unreal Tournament had significant plots.
Hopefully Blizzard has already acknowledge this and project titan is not a code name for Mist of Pandaria standalone MMO!
I don't know of anyone who thought that Titan was Mists of Pandaria. Do I not know enough people or something? You sound completely ridiculous to me. I think it's especially strange that you do this complaining when you know about Titan, which is a new universe, and I'm sure would be at least somewhat innovative.
i understand where youre coming from, but i dont think this is an issue thats specifically a blizzard issue (hell just look at the movie industry). the only thing i can say is just wait for whatever project titan will bring before you write blizzard off as completely lazy.
OP you are aware that all their work is technically borrowed from other ideas right? It's a total mix match. We see it in film and television all the time.
They're making the games people want them to make. You'll notice a number of sequels in your first list as well. Also Titan.
As for the games they have brought out, they often include new things or old things in new ways, that's creativity too and that's why their stuff is still more interesting than the copy the same thing into a new setting games most publishers put out there these days.
WoW went downhill fast after TBC atleast. They didn't have anything new to add and mostly just dumbed down things to make it easier and casual friendly i guess... pretty mounts, pets and achivements T_T
On April 13 2012 00:27 4ZakeN87 wrote: Plus additionally 3 SNES games that are unknown to me.
Blackthorne was originally (or at least simultaneously) a PC game, as-was the lost vikings. (I'm not sure what the 3rd game is). Blackthorne wasn't really innovative at all in my opinion though.
WTF are you talking about? The last video isn't a game cinematic, it's just a trailer. Not to mention, what does that have to do with game variety? The fact that there's less story or plot or such is due to the fact that it's an MMO, and an expansion. Both MMOs and Expansions aren't that huge on story. It's improper to expect the same type of things from different types of games. Not all great games have to have great plots. It's not like Unreal Tournament had significant plots.
Hopefully Blizzard has already acknowledge this and project titan is not a code name for Mist of Pandaria standalone MMO!
I don't know of anyone who thought that Titan was Mists of Pandaria. Do I not know enough people or something? You sound completely ridiculous to me. I think it's especially strange that you do this complaining when you know about Titan, which is a new universe, and I'm sure would be at least somewhat innovative.
Hello to you to.
Yeah well there is no intro/CGI video of Mists of Pandaria as far as I know, hence it is a little bit hard to show it. My point is that the story is retarded and random. Has no connection to previous story and well I dunno, what could be wrong with a story with a panda people living on a floating turtle? <-- amazing stuff right there! I wish I had come up with it first, it would have been a bestseller.
Yes I know there was a Panda in WC3, I dont even remember if it had any story connection, I guess there must have been something.
Your second statement, you say that there are good games like Unreal tournament that dont need a plot. Well I agree 100%, but then my topic is discussing that blizzards do not make creative games anymore. Not that they are not making "quality" games anymore. Which you seem to actually point out yourself. Yes Blizzard have pretty much only focused on releasing MMO expansions the last 5-6 years, and as you say are MMO expansions not very creative from either a story or development point of view.
About Titan, by the way, yes I actually 100% believe that Titan is a stand alone MMO named MoP2. Or maybe there is a second option, here is a clue: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Joke
What I have heard so far about Titan, "a casual MMO" do not sound all that thrilling to me. I am really interested if they can actually make something innovative in the MMO genre though, seems to be "the" most stagnated gaming genre.
I'm not looking for creativity for its own sake. I look for immersion, a compelling story, believability, and skill or more precisely enjoying the faculities called my brain. There are very little games now-a-days that even begin to broach those criteria, let alone shoot for them in the first place. It's why almost everyone agrees that books are superior to their movie counterparts.
You can tell when a work has been someones passion, their soul imbued into the craftmanship, and when a work has been done without soul. Most of the works Blizzard has put out lately have been bureaucratic, ill-inspired, watered-down, snoozefests.
It's why I am more and more moving my interests to smaller indie developers who create art with passion and soul. That's where you'll find the fine craftmanship that is sorely lacking with the likes of the bureaucratic behemoths. They'll soon be dead anyways, like all inefficient, soulless, bureaucracies.
It's the same reason why Square-Enix has blown ass for a long long time now. They aren't Square-Soft. The small company with a vision. You can tell their games have gotten worse and worse overtime just like with Blizzard. A shame. Well that's creative destruction. Out with the old in with the new. I'm looking forward to what the next five years holds for the Indie developers.
Lets all stop pretending that we play Blizzard games for anything other than the gameplay. From that perspective, sc2 has been the only game of theirs that was a let down ever and even then it had tons of potential (and hopefully HoTS nails it completely).
Blizzard is still the boss for PC gaming. We are too exposed nowadays to really appreciate any creative. But as they grow bigger profit matters more. They've create many good cow and now its time to milk as much from them as possible.
I really love to see what Blizzard will bring us for their next MMORPG.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
D1 was the bomb.
Warcraft 2 had some really amazing music for it's time really got me sucked in to the story line .
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
Fuck it all The Lost Vikings was the best.
WC3's singleplayer was extremly good. Far and above everything all other RTS showed only comparable to (good) RPG's... How you can call it a flop is beyond me.
Btw: I never really was into Warcraft 2. It was just another RTS among C&C1, Red Alert, KKND(!) and the others of that time.
Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Also you give two high quality cgi clips and only give a ingame cgi in return. Why dont you take these recent master pieces??
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
Fuck it all The Lost Vikings was the best.
I just replayed RoC dude, Mass Dryads owns every game. No wonder the Burning Legion got defeated, they couldn't Finger-of-Death them lady-centaurs.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2
SC2 Campaign was utter shit compared to RoC or Vanilla SC. There was no Epic Feel about it's story. Too many necessary characters. Too shallow of a plot line, (Duran = Narud ..Seriously?). Oh and don't tell me that 1st expansion coming crap. RoC, as a stand alone was awesome and SC2 SP couldn't hold a candle to it.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
As much as I agree with you on the talent part and Blizzard in general, really no disrespect to them, I don't think just because WoW has huge success it is a good game. In fact, it has many flaws. Also Diablo 3 doesn't look very good imho and to be honest I don't think it will top Diablo 2.
You can't just point at the success of a game or that you like a game and say "See they are really good", because there will always be someone who points out flaws or simply says "I don't like it.". You have to measure other things to make clear statements.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Also you give two high quality cgi clips and only give a ingame cgi in return. Why dont you take these recent master pieces?? + Show Spoiler +
Artistically they might they are top-notch, but they only produce parts and don't think of the whole.
1. Kerrigan is still running around stating, that the swarm was hers. So why did they use the artefact in the first place?
2. Then there is the urge to introduce new characters, this stupid Zerg supplementary queen. In Diablo you get Asmodan.
3. The over-use of magic in SC. It was quite an awkward moment when they showed Templars in the classic using their psi powers / magics. It shouldn't be overdone. On the battlefield it wasn't directly shown, just indirectly with a small animation. On Shakuras the Protoss required a huge machine to make use of. Now these characters do all kinds of tmagic stuff without help in the videos.
4. The diablo trailer could also be a WoW trailer. It would just need another label. What's the difference between them?
5. MoP Pandaren Monk training on stumps was inspired by some Anime.
Blizzard has lots of talented people, but their end products are really weird.
On April 13 2012 11:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I think something to do with it is simply that back then, games were simpler to program, so programming a racing game and a side scrolling game wasn't too different, but now you need such different engines and the programmers may have to specialize unlike just making mostly RTS (? not a programmer here)
Anyway yes there are two new games/franchise coming out, one of them is something completely new.
You're right though, never thought about the panda thing... is it going to be a serious story or what?
Also just wanna say, WC3 RoC graphics always amazes me. Can you believe that it came out only 3 years after SC:BW ? What the fuck? Look at those graphics xD It's already been 11 years. Holy fuck?
(Though of course it probably has also to do with merging with Activision)
It's been 11 years since ROC and I still find that game's graphics amazing. Hell, ROC's campaign is probably the best RTS campaign ever. I still play it from time to time.
Blizzard hasn't innovated since ROC either. They just polished winning formulas, which is fine with me since they keep on churning out quality title after quality title.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
Fuck it all The Lost Vikings was the best.
From wikipedia re: warcraft III: "The game proved to be a best seller and one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month.[3] Warcraft III won many awards including "Game of the Year" from more than six different publications.[4]" If that is a flop then I want my life to flop.
Warcraft 3 was pretty innovative despite not being as successful as BW as an esport, without it there would be no DOTA or LoL today, that and WoW were the last two innovative IPs they've made,. WoW really changed the MMO landscape and online gaming.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
Fuck it all The Lost Vikings was the best.
WC3 was a hit and the single player got praised by most people for gameplay, story telling and overall quality, the fact that you didn't like it doesn't translate to a global flop, it's quite the contrary actually.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Also you give two high quality cgi clips and only give a ingame cgi in return. Why dont you take these recent master pieces?? + Show Spoiler +
Please... This HotS video is pretty much craptastic. D3 one is nice but fails to invoke any kind of emotion, hardly a masterpiece.
If you want good cinematics, here you are:
Astounding quality:
Absolutely amazing story-wise and making you gape in awe when you see it during the campaign:
THIS is the kind of thing I want to see coming branded with Blizzard logo. Not this ridiculous bullshit they've been spewing out the past couple of years.
Edit: Also, I did try WoW, twice. Never lasted more than 2 weeks. MMOs I've been subscribing for at least a year/played for many: Guild Wars Age of Conan LotRO Warhammer: Online (the worst of the four)
There is less constraints concerning the technology and team's size and those constraints, I think, forced the developpers to really think about the gameplay. Now it's mostly shiny stuff, check out the tons of video games and see how many of them are actually really good? Not many. On the contrary, we can see from time to time huge home made video games like CS & DotA. Those two games were done with very limited ressources & very dedicated game lovers. Blizzard seems more & more the other way. But they're still doing some great games but not as gamebreaking as the previous ones.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Huh. I always thought it was general consensus that blizzard games were all about the game play and were lacking from a creative storytelling standpoint. This is not to say they cannot tell a good story, but rather they cannot tell an original story. It's sort of like a movie director who has been pigeonholed into romantic comedies; the director can be very good, but all he ever does make are romantic comedies.
Think about it. All three big franchises have this common theme whereby a noble hero character gets corrupted and becomes the new big baddie. It is also kind of strange to read all this glowing praise for wc3 storytelling and lore. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the story of wc3 greatly but all I remembered reading around the time of wc3 release was how badly blizzard had butchered warcraft lore. People were absolutely livid that the bloodthirsty orcs had been retconned into "noble savages" led astray by the big bad demons. Arthas was dismissed as a kerrigan clone. Heck, sylvannas was also dismissed as a second kerrigan clone. Apparently blizzard was so creatively bankrupt they had to clone kerrigan twice. There just seemed to be so many retcons and a general sense of unhappiness about the storyline.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
In time, I've come to see it that way. But when it was released, I enjoyed it but was seeing it through the nostalgia-glazed eyes of one who grew up on Warcraft 2.
Funny that I say nostalgia when Warcraft 2 was only about 7 years old then. Now it's frigging 17 years old.
Once the StarCraft II story is complete (we've only got part 1 so far), I'll probably look on it the same way as I do Warcraft III, even though for now it seems to lack the edge of the vanilla StarCraft campaign.
Yeah, I noticed this about a year ago with the release of SC2 and Cataclysm. Neither of their stories seemed to grab my attention.
I really loved the warcraft 3 story, so when that plot ran its last legs in WotLK + Show Spoiler +
God I loved the WotLK opening cinematic
I would of course be dissapointed with anything that came afterwards, so I can't fault Cat too much for it. But Pandaria definitely looks like its taking a major turn for the worse in the warcraft lore.
I was not impressed at all with the SC2 story. Most of it felt cliche and unoriginal. The whole part about the artifact just seemed like a dumb plot device. That being said, I did think it was a fun campaign to play. I just didn't buy into the story that much.
And from what I've heard and seen about D3, I can't speak to the plot, but the gameplay doesn't look to be taking any revolutionary steps. It seems like they're playing it safe and standard in a time where the market seems flooded by new RPG/adventure games. I guess I shouldn't judge until I've tried it though. We'll see in a month.
Wait a minute. Blizzard has never been about revlutionary gameplay or original stories. The only original game Blizzard ever made was The Lost Vikings....maybe Diablo, I don't know enough of that game's history to know.
Blizzard makes games that are generally unoriginal, but of very high quality and for a wider range of PC power than other developpers.
And there are extremely few game storylines that are actually interesting, let alone original. Sc2 was disappointing for Blizzard standards, but the WOW storytelling has been improved a lot since vanilla....
BTW I never heard anyone talk about Diablo and it's great storyline. I never played these games, did D1 and 2 have an orignal story apart from Evil is threatening everything, you have to save everything by killing evil ?
Blizzard is playing it safe when it comes to game development, and that's just as it ought to be.
On April 16 2012 20:31 Spitfire wrote: Funny, I felt like Warcraft III wasnt as creative as Warcraft II. Felt like Diablo II lacked something Diablo had.
For younger fans 2000 - 2005 were the glory days of Blizzard. For me it was 1995 - 1999.
In other words, not sure whether the developer gets less creative or if we just get older and more cynical.
I can agree on Diablo, but WC3 still remains the best of the best when it comes to RTS campaign, characters, innovation etc. WC2 was great, but the fact that both races were basically the same, with just models being changed and few units (which still had their exact counterparts) would take away from the total score you could give it.
Wow, thats literally the first time i heard someone praise WC3 above WC2. For me WC3 was a flop, and it was received as one globally, later it got good with multiplayer improvement and stayed as good multiplayer game, but SP was kinda meh -_-
Fuck it all The Lost Vikings was the best.
WC3's singleplayer was extremly good. Far and above everything all other RTS showed only comparable to (good) RPG's... How you can call it a flop is beyond me.
Btw: I never really was into Warcraft 2. It was just another RTS among C&C1, Red Alert, KKND(!) and the others of that time.
For RTS singleplayer I always felt Westwood destroyed Blizzard. The liveaction done by Westwood was great. The plots were fun and intriguing.
I wouldn't say a lack of creativity, but a lack of risk. Too much money being invested in the later Blizzard projects. Would be nice if they had a small division with a smaler budget just for indie type games.
I took some time to address the most idiotic posts of people after me.
It's a pretty popular opinion that sc2 campaign was shit and I can't say I disagree with it either.
Maybe you think it's not as good as sc1 campaign, but calling it shit is ridiculous. I think you need to rethink your rationality about what makes something quality and what crap. Also saying utmost brain killing things like this post here below from another thread, painfully exposes your inability to recognize good design from bad.
Loved D2, not so excited about d3 anymore, was pumped as hell the first 2 years after the announcement, but since then every new release of info they have put out has lowered my expectations, and the beta was a huge disappointment to me.
Every single thing they released about diablo 3 gave me more hope that it's gonna be a fricking good game beyond my expectations. Only focus the game on PvE instead of fucking up both PvE and PvP at the same time. The focus on the viability of massive amounts of builds instead of balancing optimal builds. Legalizing illegal item trade with RMAH, giving hardcore a seperate AH with no RMAH. This all is great and awesome game design, and something so many other games fail at. Hearing them say this should make you beg on your knees crying for having more of these people with functional brains.
1. Kerrigan is still running around stating, that the swarm was hers. So why did they use the artefact in the first place? 2. Then there is the urge to introduce new characters, this stupid Zerg supplementary queen. In Diablo you get Asmodan. 3. The over-use of magic in SC. It was quite an awkward moment when they showed Templars in the classic using their psi powers / magics. It shouldn't be overdone. On the battlefield it wasn't directly shown, just indirectly with a small animation. On Shakuras the Protoss required a huge machine to make use of. Now these characters do all kinds of tmagic stuff without help in the videos. 4. The diablo trailer could also be a WoW trailer. It would just need another label. What's the difference between them? There is a lot of difference in style. Maybe this cinematic was too short to make it obvious to you, but still it should be obvious enough. 5. MoP Pandaren Monk training on stumps was inspired by some Anime.
1. Kerrigan was saying the swarm was hers when she was zerg. She wasnt saying it when she was human right? So turning her back to human again would..? 2. What are you talking about? Has Hots and d3 already been released? Do you know if these new chars are maybe awesome or crap? Stop dealing out judgement on something that is not ready to be judged at all. 3. It isn't overdone. I think you are whining about something unimportant. 4. The biggest difference is the style: artwork and design. Maybe this cinematic was too short to make it obvious to you, but still it should be obvious enough. 5. I herd Wotlk is just inspired by Sweden... Dude have you seen the zones and art of MoP?!?! Its amazing.
Please... This HotS video is pretty much craptastic. D3 one is nice but fails to invoke any kind of emotion, hardly a masterpiece. If you want good cinematics, here you are:
The utralisk in the end getting hit by a massive siege tank shot was pretty insane, all the cgi of a ravaged city, zerg invading, close up shots from zerg units, the great intro. If only craptastic it was the growl of kerrigan as human, but the overal clip is very well made. It might not be the best yet, but its only a clip, small fragments of what will be a bigger intro.
The d3 one is very nice, but fails to invoke any kind of emotion because you don't really have played d3. You havent fought off the endless waves of hell and felt true desperation as shown in the movie. The wc3 one gives emotion because YOU know what arthas has gone through, how he has been slowly falling into darkness and finally plunging into it with a heartbreaking assassination of his dear beloved farther. Some douche who hasnt played the game only sees an emo guy disliking flower petals, coming home to his dad, a royal prick of which we dont even get to hear his welcome speech, and watching him getting killed. Omg give me a tissue. ---- Many of you are nagging about the story and cliché of blizzard. I agree with some of it. Burning legion, burning hells. Deathwing sucks, cata and Mop feel like filler, etc. BUT, I want to say two things: One, do not godamn judge something that you know yet nothing about. MoP could be awesome with instead cuta panda's a new blazing tale of war between orcs and humans. Two, for me blizzard is more creative then only in their storytelling. They are great in their gameplay design and most of all art design. The power to create a real feeling world with each land giving an unique fragrance, a scent. That is for me, the most important creativity.
It's a pretty popular opinion that sc2 campaign was shit and I can't say I disagree with it either.
Maybe you think it's not as good as sc1 campaign, but calling it shit is ridiculous. I think you need to rethink your rationality about what makes something quality and what crap. Also saying utmost brain killing things like this post here below from another thread, painfully exposes your inability to recognize good design from bad.
Loved D2, not so excited about d3 anymore, was pumped as hell the first 2 years after the announcement, but since then every new release of info they have put out has lowered my expectations, and the beta was a huge disappointment to me.
Every single thing they released about diablo 3 gave me more hope that it's gonna be a fricking good game beyond my expectations. Only focus the game on PvE instead of fucking up both PvE and PvP at the same time. The focus on the viability of massive amounts of builds instead of balancing optimal builds. Legalizing illegal item trade with RMAH, giving hardcore a seperate AH with no RMAH. This all is great and awesome game design, and something so many other games fail at. Hearing them say this should make you beg on your knees crying for having more of these people with functional brains.
1. Kerrigan is still running around stating, that the swarm was hers. So why did they use the artefact in the first place? 2. Then there is the urge to introduce new characters, this stupid Zerg supplementary queen. In Diablo you get Asmodan. 3. The over-use of magic in SC. It was quite an awkward moment when they showed Templars in the classic using their psi powers / magics. It shouldn't be overdone. On the battlefield it wasn't directly shown, just indirectly with a small animation. On Shakuras the Protoss required a huge machine to make use of. Now these characters do all kinds of tmagic stuff without help in the videos. 4. The diablo trailer could also be a WoW trailer. It would just need another label. What's the difference between them? There is a lot of difference in style. Maybe this cinematic was too short to make it obvious to you, but still it should be obvious enough. 5. MoP Pandaren Monk training on stumps was inspired by some Anime.
1. Kerrigan was saying the swarm was hers when she was zerg. She wasnt saying it when she was human right? So turning her back to human again would..? 2. What are you talking about? Has Hots and d3 already been released? Do you know if these new chars are maybe awesome or crap? Stop dealing out judgement on something that is not ready to be judged at all. 3. It isn't overdone. I think you are whining about something unimportant. 4. The biggest difference is the style: artwork and design. Maybe this cinematic was too short to make it obvious to you, but still it should be obvious enough. 5. I herd Wotlk is just inspired by Sweden... Dude have you seen the zones and art of MoP?!?! Its amazing.
Please... This HotS video is pretty much craptastic. D3 one is nice but fails to invoke any kind of emotion, hardly a masterpiece. If you want good cinematics, here you are:
The utralisk in the end getting hit by a massive siege tank shot was pretty insane, all the cgi of a ravaged city, zerg invading, close up shots from zerg units, the great intro. If only craptastic it was the growl of kerrigan as human, but the overal clip is very well made. It might not be the best yet, but its only a clip, small fragments of what will be a bigger intro.
The d3 one is very nice, but fails to invoke any kind of emotion because you don't really have played d3. You havent fought off the endless waves of hell and felt true desperation as shown in the movie. The wc3 one gives emotion because YOU know what arthas has gone through, how he has been slowly falling into darkness and finally plunging into it with a heartbreaking assassination of his dear beloved farther. Some douche who hasnt played the game only sees an emo guy disliking flower petals, coming home to his dad, a royal prick of which we dont even get to hear his welcome speech, and watching him getting killed. Omg give me a tissue. ---- Many of you are nagging about the story and cliché of blizzard. I agree with some of it. Burning legion, burning hells. Deathwing sucks, cata and Mop feel like filler, etc. BUT, I want to say two things: One, do not godamn judge something that you know yet nothing about. MoP could be awesome with instead cuta panda's a new blazing tale of war between orcs and humans. Two, for me blizzard is more creative then only in their storytelling. They are great in their gameplay design and most of all art design. The power to create a real feeling world with each land giving an unique fragrance, a scent. That is for me, the most important creativity.
Ditto.
No, but seriously.. Most of these things you're responding to are a waste of time because the opinions of these people do not matter, true story. Making snap judgements as uninformed as these are reserved for high school students.
On April 17 2012 03:24 Eeevil wrote: Wait a minute. Blizzard has never been about revlutionary gameplay or original stories. The only original game Blizzard ever made was The Lost Vikings....maybe Diablo, I don't know enough of that game's history to know.
Blizzard makes games that are generally unoriginal, but of very high quality and for a wider range of PC power than other developpers.
And there are extremely few game storylines that are actually interesting, let alone original. Sc2 was disappointing for Blizzard standards, but the WOW storytelling has been improved a lot since vanilla....
BTW I never heard anyone talk about Diablo and it's great storyline. I never played these games, did D1 and 2 have an orignal story apart from Evil is threatening everything, you have to save everything by killing evil ?
Blizzard is playing it safe when it comes to game development, and that's just as it ought to be.
blizzard's strengths in their past games lied with the way the story was able to pull you in through the characters, writing, story pacing, etc. its true that overall, the genre, plots were clichéd, it were these things that made these past blizzard games so enjoyable. sc2 is so shallow, disconnected, and generally not very well fleshed out by comparison to its predecessors. of course none of us can speak for d3 but its only a couple of weeks till we find out ...
Having been always proud to have started WoW during its Beta phase and maintained a competitive position in progression (in the US, anyway), I remember "stopping" about 3 times - each roughly one month long. The whole "you'll come back to the World of Warcrack" was funny, yet true at the time.
The true "end" for WoW happened about a year ago, but every so often I'd think about starting again. Then Blizzcon came, and they revealed Mists of Pandaria. I'm not going to go around saying it's crap, as I haven't played the Beta (got an invite, gave it to a friend), but the reveal trailer itself made my stomach turn. I had spent the last 7, close to 8 years on this game and thinking about it just made me sick. Look at this POS. Is this really what captured my attention back when I was in high-school? Did I really devote 480 hours on my main, 200 on a single alt, and who knows how many more on the other 8, just to see it end like this?
Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
I'd say specifically with wow, yes. There was a noticable drop-off in creativity. WOTLK was a pretty decent expansion content wise even if balance was imperfect. Cataclysm seems really god damn stupid recycled bullshit and mists of pandaria is just like some kind of cartoon for special needs children.
SC2 campaign was passable. Yeah I expected more, but it wasn't a massive let down either. Only time will tell on d3.
wait ,, what??? People actually enjoyed that piece of shit SC2 campaign story?? I mean yea the missions were fun but the dialogue/story/characters were fucking AWFUL .. and the retcon about the Overmind is just about the stupidest thing I ever had my brain suffer through, completely ruined the mood/feel of the Zerg race and overall SC story.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I don't know where to start. But I do agree with op. It is becoming an average big game company, but not like a great one which had been above its peers.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
Yeah I would like to give some credit to SC2 to. I complain a lot about Blizzard here but I actaully think SC2 is the exception in the last 6-7 years.
I think the story is fine in SC2, maybe a bit to similiar to WC3 but still not bad. Also it make sense to have a follow up story from BW which I think is really important as mentioned in previous post The twist with the overmind was really nice and well I just think SC2 over all is good game in both singel and multiplayer.
Not to mentioned the great development it is making for E-Sport right now.
BW's story is full of cliche's aswell and the campaign is actually very straight forward you only have to build a base and kill the enemy base. Gaming companies aren't there to provide amazing stories they're there to create amazing games and then you can create a backstory with it. If you want an actual good story go read a good book and stop playing games.
Blizzard is still full of innovation in design. You just 1) need to know where to look and 2) take into account that the further you push the envelope the harder it is to innovate further.
What's really happening is the increase in whiny little entitled kids who sweep their eyes around and quickly declare something sucks because it doesn't immediately blow their mind.
On April 17 2012 19:21 Newbistic wrote: Blizzard is still full of innovation in design. You just 1) need to know where to look and 2) take into account that the further you push the envelope the harder it is to innovate further.
What's really happening is the increase in whiny little entitled kids who sweep their eyes around and quickly declare something sucks because it doesn't immediately blow their mind.
Please show me the positive innovation with Bnet2.0 compared to... WC3 Bnet or Dota2 online client. It's not innovative, it's plain worse than its predecessors AND its concurrence.
And please, at least give me an example of something truely innovative.. .. Where is this "good" innovation you speak off?
On April 17 2012 10:04 Xpace wrote: Did I really devote 480 hours on my main, 200 on a single alt, and who knows how many more on the other 8, just to see it end like this?
It's sad. Real sad.
Age : 1791 days 10 hours 56 minutes 18 seconds. Let's talk dedication (not WoW though) And that's just time actively logged in.
On April 17 2012 19:21 Newbistic wrote: Blizzard is still full of innovation in design. You just 1) need to know where to look and 2) take into account that the further you push the envelope the harder it is to innovate further.
What's really happening is the increase in whiny little entitled kids who sweep their eyes around and quickly declare something sucks because it doesn't immediately blow their mind.
Please show me the positive innovation with Bnet2.0 compared to... WC3 Bnet or Dota2 online client. It's not innovative, it's plain worse than its predecessors AND its concurrence.
And please, at least give me an example of something truely innovative.. .. Where is this "good" innovation you speak off?
Well, innovation is everywhere! Queens, colossuses, void rays, vikings! All new and never before seen. /sarcasm
And yeah, Bnet2.0 is one of the worst things to ever happen. WC3-era Bnet was very, very good. Stuff that HoN and DotA2 have currently is way beyond even that.
On April 17 2012 10:04 Xpace wrote: Did I really devote 480 hours on my main, 200 on a single alt, and who knows how many more on the other 8, just to see it end like this?
It's sad. Real sad.
Age : 1791 days 10 hours 56 minutes 18 seconds. Let's talk dedication (not WoW though) And that's just time actively logged in.
On April 17 2012 19:21 Newbistic wrote: Blizzard is still full of innovation in design. You just 1) need to know where to look and 2) take into account that the further you push the envelope the harder it is to innovate further.
What's really happening is the increase in whiny little entitled kids who sweep their eyes around and quickly declare something sucks because it doesn't immediately blow their mind.
Please show me the positive innovation with Bnet2.0 compared to... WC3 Bnet or Dota2 online client. It's not innovative, it's plain worse than its predecessors AND its concurrence.
And please, at least give me an example of something truely innovative.. .. Where is this "good" innovation you speak off?
Well, innovation is everywhere! Queens, colossuses, void rays, vikings! All new and never before seen. /sarcasm
And yeah, Bnet2.0 is one of the worst things to ever happen. WC3-era Bnet was very, very good. Stuff that HoN and DotA2 have currently is way beyond even that.
I feel that HoN and DotA (as well as LoL) all have very good out of game interfaces precisely because they modeled themselves off of WC3. You don't need to be terribly innovative with that stuff, but it just has to do its job, which unfortunately bnet 2.0 does not do.
On April 17 2012 10:04 Xpace wrote: Did I really devote 480 hours on my main, 200 on a single alt, and who knows how many more on the other 8, just to see it end like this?
It's sad. Real sad.
Age : 1791 days 10 hours 56 minutes 18 seconds. Let's talk dedication (not WoW though) And that's just time actively logged in.
On April 17 2012 19:33 Velr wrote:
On April 17 2012 19:21 Newbistic wrote: Blizzard is still full of innovation in design. You just 1) need to know where to look and 2) take into account that the further you push the envelope the harder it is to innovate further.
What's really happening is the increase in whiny little entitled kids who sweep their eyes around and quickly declare something sucks because it doesn't immediately blow their mind.
Please show me the positive innovation with Bnet2.0 compared to... WC3 Bnet or Dota2 online client. It's not innovative, it's plain worse than its predecessors AND its concurrence.
And please, at least give me an example of something truely innovative.. .. Where is this "good" innovation you speak off?
Well, innovation is everywhere! Queens, colossuses, void rays, vikings! All new and never before seen. /sarcasm
And yeah, Bnet2.0 is one of the worst things to ever happen. WC3-era Bnet was very, very good. Stuff that HoN and DotA2 have currently is way beyond even that.
I feel that HoN and DotA (as well as LoL) all have very good out of game interfaces precisely because they modeled themselves off of WC3. You don't need to be terribly innovative with that stuff, but it just has to do its job, which unfortunately bnet 2.0 does not do.
While bnet 2.0 really does suck the wc3 one had its poblems too. You couldn't copy paste from the chat to somewhere else for example and the whole hosting custom games by opening your ports was actually a pretty big problem because most people had no idea how to do it.
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.
so true, the guys who made the great games arent in blizzard anymore
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.
so true, the guys who made the great games arent in blizzard anymore
Well, I can see your points, OP. But at the end of the day, they are providing what they consumers want. And people will be flocking to those games that will be released.
The problem as I see it is not really Blizzard, but the whole industry/consumers. Since I started gaming in 1983, game genres have disappeared - good genres, those that remained have grown to epic scale games costing millions to produce(and market), years to develope, simply because there is where the money is at. Game genres disappeared because people did not buy games of original design, and consumers themselves are going on "safe bets". Some have arisen due to internet, like MMORPGs, which in themselves comes by the dozens and offer nothing new at all.
What separates Blizzard from many other developers is the polish of their games.
In short gamers go by what they know works, and so does developers.
I still feel consumers are letting themselves get ripped off with Starcraft 2 being separated into 3 games, which is the same platform, much like the expansions of WoW adding very little new. You can always be damned by the fact that developers don't go into a new thinking box to set new standards take gaming to new places taking more risks, and are more guided by money than passion, but the "problem" is gamers being relative conservative despite the whines, and the companies are just making business sense.
Consumers are likewise conservative when it comes to sports(not eSports(yet)). Football(soccer) has become a money game, and is more popular than ever - despite everything. Same with movies vs film(where people are flocking to see movies that have been done 100s of times with different actors, while leaving empty seats with something new).
Good - bad? Seemingly/apparently not bad going by the consumer wishes at the end of the day.
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.
so true, the guys who made the great games arent in blizzard anymore
Really? Who's left? Bill Roper and.....
Some of my fondest memories of Blizzard games was Chris Metzens artwork in the manuals. His stories may not be as good as they used to be, but so long as he's still there, it's still the same Blizzard to me.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I'm sorry dude but you really didn't understand the plot in D2:LoD.
The worldstone was a piece of original god, an artifact capable of creating worlds and realms. And it was this the hell and heavens were fighting for. An angel and demon (i don't remeber the angel's name but the demon's was lilith) stole the worldstone created sanctuary and hid the sanctuary with worldstone's power. They reproduced and that's what created Nephalem(the humans). The prime evils do not represent all of the hells but they actually were overthrown and cast to sanctuary (as exiles).
So when the Baal corrupted the worldstone the worldstone had potential to corrupt all humans into joining the war in the side of Hell. That's why Tyrael destroyed the worldstone. By doing this he also distrupted worldstone's barrier and made it another battlefield for heaven and hell. (end of the days etc.)
You can know more by watching the lore discussions in the last Blizzcon. But there is a good progression and this is quite good in 'need to continue' point of view.
SC2 were the first RTS campaign where I felt that most of the actual gameplay in the missions fitted in with the story. In sc1 you attack whole planets by landing a CC there, the enemy doesn't react until roughly 5 minutes have gone by and then they send like 10 units. In wc2 you attack the dark portal which should be the most dangerous place on the planet by sending a really small army that builds a base next to it while the orcs just stands idly by doing their thing.
Therefore I think that SC2 had the best campaign. The earlier campaigns didn't make much sense from a gaming point of view. Sure the stories said that the battles where fierce and epic but there were no such things in the actual games.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I'm sorry dude but you really didn't understand the plot in D2:LoD.
The worldstone was a piece of original god, an artifact capable of creating worlds and realms. And it was this the hell and heavens were fighting for. An angel and demon (i don't remeber the angel's name but the demon's was lilith) stole the worldstone created sanctuary and hid the sanctuary with worldstone's power. They reproduced and that's what created Nephalem(the humans). The prime evils do not represent all of the hells but they actually were overthrown and cast to sanctuary (as exiles).
So when the Baal corrupted the worldstone the worldstone had potential to corrupt all humans into joining the war in the side of Hell. That's why Tyrael destroyed the worldstone. By doing this he also distrupted worldstone's barrier and made it another battlefield for heaven and hell. (end of the days etc.)
You can know more by watching the lore discussions in the last Blizzcon. But there is a good progression and this is quite good in 'need to continue' point of view.
I'm sorry but you're wrong.
Well this is really weird.
Like this. Blizzard makes the story. As a result they can per se never be wrong. What they say happen, does happen. Of course Blizzard cannot say that the story was the way I interpreted the story. Cause then there would be no sequel.
As there is not actual description of what happens in the end of D2 LoD, the consequences of the end can be what ever blizzards wants to now. And since they make a sequel obviously they are going to make an ending that fits their purpose for D3. If Blizzard wanted to make D3 were you flied dragons they would have said that the world stone contained dragon eggs that hatched all over the world and therefor you can fly you own dragon in D3. That would have been equally "true" if Blizzard has said so.
Well I guess this is a way out to continue the story of the "world" of Diablo, although to me the story is actually about 3 Prime evils and surrounding lore rather then the world they happen to be in.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I'm sorry dude but you really didn't understand the plot in D2:LoD.
The worldstone was a piece of original god, an artifact capable of creating worlds and realms. And it was this the hell and heavens were fighting for. An angel and demon (i don't remeber the angel's name but the demon's was lilith) stole the worldstone created sanctuary and hid the sanctuary with worldstone's power. They reproduced and that's what created Nephalem(the humans). The prime evils do not represent all of the hells but they actually were overthrown and cast to sanctuary (as exiles).
So when the Baal corrupted the worldstone the worldstone had potential to corrupt all humans into joining the war in the side of Hell. That's why Tyrael destroyed the worldstone. By doing this he also distrupted worldstone's barrier and made it another battlefield for heaven and hell. (end of the days etc.)
You can know more by watching the lore discussions in the last Blizzcon. But there is a good progression and this is quite good in 'need to continue' point of view.
I'm sorry but you're wrong.
Well this is really weird.
Like this. Blizzard makes the story. As a result they can per se never be wrong. What they say happen, does happen. Of course Blizzard cannot say that the story that was I interpreted as the story, is the actual story, cause then there would be no sequel.
As there is not actual description of what happens in the end of D2 LoD, the consequences of the end can be what ever blizzards wants to now. And since they make a sequel obviously they are going to make the ending that fits their purpose in D3.
If blizzard wanted to make D3 were you flied dragons they would have said that the world stone contained dragon eggs that hatched all over the world and therefor you can fly you own dragon in D3. That would have been equally "true" if Blizzard has said so.
Dude we give you all kind of advice and evidence. We told you three times already to watch the lore panel to get some sense in your head, but all you do is hating on some story you know nothing about.
On April 17 2012 21:53 Klockan3 wrote: SC2 were the first RTS campaign where I felt that most of the actual gameplay in the missions fitted in with the story. In sc1 you attack whole planets by landing a CC there, the enemy doesn't react until roughly 5 minutes have gone by and then they send like 10 units. In wc2 you attack the dark portal which should be the most dangerous place on the planet by sending a really small army that builds a base next to it while the orcs just stands idly by doing their thing.
Therefore I think that SC2 had the best campaign. The earlier campaigns didn't make much sense from a gaming point of view. Sure the stories said that the battles where fierce and epic but there were no such things in the actual games.
I think that's the first time I've seen someone value SC2's campaign higher than that of SC/BW or the WarCraft series, especially with these arguments.
SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on.
SC/BW and Warcraft's campaign did not only set technical milestones at their respective time, but they also told a compelling story with great characters. SC2 has technically brilliant missions that are, time and time again, ruined by atrocious storytelling.
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I'm sorry dude but you really didn't understand the plot in D2:LoD.
The worldstone was a piece of original god, an artifact capable of creating worlds and realms. And it was this the hell and heavens were fighting for. An angel and demon (i don't remeber the angel's name but the demon's was lilith) stole the worldstone created sanctuary and hid the sanctuary with worldstone's power. They reproduced and that's what created Nephalem(the humans). The prime evils do not represent all of the hells but they actually were overthrown and cast to sanctuary (as exiles).
So when the Baal corrupted the worldstone the worldstone had potential to corrupt all humans into joining the war in the side of Hell. That's why Tyrael destroyed the worldstone. By doing this he also distrupted worldstone's barrier and made it another battlefield for heaven and hell. (end of the days etc.)
You can know more by watching the lore discussions in the last Blizzcon. But there is a good progression and this is quite good in 'need to continue' point of view.
I'm sorry but you're wrong.
Well this is really weird.
Like this. Blizzard makes the story. As a result they can per se never be wrong. What they say happen, does happen. Of course Blizzard cannot say that the story that was I interpreted as the story, is the actual story, cause then there would be no sequel.
As there is not actual description of what happens in the end of D2 LoD, the consequences of the end can be what ever blizzards wants to now. And since they make a sequel obviously they are going to make the ending that fits their purpose in D3.
If blizzard wanted to make D3 were you flied dragons they would have said that the world stone contained dragon eggs that hatched all over the world and therefor you can fly you own dragon in D3. That would have been equally "true" if Blizzard has said so.
Dude we give you all kind of advice and evidence. We told you three times already to watch the lore panel to get some sense in your head, but all you do is hating on some story you know nothing about.
I remember from back when i finished D2... So no lore panel or anything.. That the world stone was more or less being a barrier between the Heaven/Hell/Human world and by it's destruction the doors between these worlds would actually be more open or something like this?
I no way was everything awesome and good and victory!!! It was iirc more or less that the Humans now have to be responsible for themselves instead of Tyrael and others watching over them?
On April 16 2012 21:01 seodoth wrote: Please go back to wow, or try any other mmo and go back to wow Please replay the sc2 campaign or try any other rts and go back to starcraft 2 Please get a hold on diablo 3 beta, or get the game when its out, and compare it to any other rpg of the same nature. Maybe then you can develop some appreciation to the quality of blizzards games. Don't be so spoiled. Open your eyes for once and take a good look around you. Im getting sick of people thinking people working at blizzard think they just sit in offices on piles of wow subscriber money throwing darts at game design ideas on a huge chalkboard. Its so naive I have to puke. They are talented, VERY hard working people, and the great games we enjoy are a result of that.
Edit:
Then finally the game that really made all this come to mind. Diablo 3. To be honest I don’t even get the story in D3 yet. I tried to read about it but no. How do you continue the story from D2: LoD? There is no reasonable line of story progress. The 3 brothers of hatred where killed. Their souls where literally smashed. The original hero from Diablo is dead. The world stone was destroyed = the world as we knew it had come to an end, a new era starts, the last elfes have sailed to Valinor.
And OP, please do some goddamn effort. The worldstone is destroyed so the boundaries are gone and heavens and hell can freely invade sanctuary. There are 2 other lords of hell left. Go watch the lore panel of blizzcon 2011, go watch the gameplay and AH panel. My god I was almost crying cause the development team was so good and had such good gamedesign philosophy. And people like you are fucking whining about blizzard turning soft and losing their creativity?
Well yes there is a follow up story in D3 and yes Blizzard is famous for making epic CGI:s, no one is denying that. Blizzard can always scrap up some story though, I mean they have a least a couple writers working with them. The question is rather if there was meant to be one in the first place. I do not think the ending in D2 LoD is suitable for any kind of sequel and I dont think that person who made the story of D2 had the intention of making a follow up story. It certainly does not appear that way.
Look at the original Diablo, obviously supposed to have an sequel with a brilliant ending of letting the hero transform slowly into the evil he destroyed. Same with D2 end with the cliffhanger of Bhaal escaping his destruction. D3 has nothing in comparison; all the major connections to previous games have been cut.
If we go back Lord of the Rings for a moment it is a good example of this. The underlying message in ending of LoR is that the ages of other races has come to and end, the ancient evil has been vanquished (Morgoth/Sauron) and the age of men is dawning. That is our time and age starts, it symbolize that magic and the folklore once was true but now is gone from our world.
Notice that there are some similarities between D2LoD and LoR? The ancient evils was defeated, the old world stone was destroyed, the heavenly protectors are no longer needed as the prime evils are no more. Similiar to the ending of LoR and a very good ending of an epic story I think. <-- You are not supposed to make a sequel from this kind of story! It is like taking the Mona Lisa and use it as toilet paper.
But no of course you can always make a sequel if you want to. "Sauron did make an extra emergency ring in the Mount Doom, why would he not? Who wants to bet everything one card? So he just pretended to be dead for a couple of centuries, hiding in his "The One Ring 2.0". You know to lighten up the competition a bit. No more pointy ears to mess everything up this time!"
I give you Lord of the Rings 2! Arwen can even be in it, she should still be around! Cain anyone?
This is very much the same as Blizzard have done in D3. Or well I guess they put down a little bit more time then I did but otherwise it is the same. They want to use the brand Diablo cause it sells a lot of copies, even if it dont make any sense story wise. Okay no one can actually prove this and Blizzard would never ever in hell confirm this so if you want to believe that they made D3 cause the there was such a great story to be told there you go ahead.
Beause it would of course be completely unthinkable to make a new story in a new RPG, what a gamble, I am sure no one would give it any attention.
I'm sorry dude but you really didn't understand the plot in D2:LoD.
The worldstone was a piece of original god, an artifact capable of creating worlds and realms. And it was this the hell and heavens were fighting for. An angel and demon (i don't remeber the angel's name but the demon's was lilith) stole the worldstone created sanctuary and hid the sanctuary with worldstone's power. They reproduced and that's what created Nephalem(the humans). The prime evils do not represent all of the hells but they actually were overthrown and cast to sanctuary (as exiles).
So when the Baal corrupted the worldstone the worldstone had potential to corrupt all humans into joining the war in the side of Hell. That's why Tyrael destroyed the worldstone. By doing this he also distrupted worldstone's barrier and made it another battlefield for heaven and hell. (end of the days etc.)
You can know more by watching the lore discussions in the last Blizzcon. But there is a good progression and this is quite good in 'need to continue' point of view.
I'm sorry but you're wrong.
Well this is really weird.
Like this. Blizzard makes the story. As a result they can per se never be wrong. What they say happen, does happen. Of course Blizzard cannot say that the story that was I interpreted as the story, is the actual story, cause then there would be no sequel.
As there is not actual description of what happens in the end of D2 LoD, the consequences of the end can be what ever blizzards wants to now. And since they make a sequel obviously they are going to make the ending that fits their purpose in D3.
If blizzard wanted to make D3 were you flied dragons they would have said that the world stone contained dragon eggs that hatched all over the world and therefor you can fly you own dragon in D3. That would have been equally "true" if Blizzard has said so.
Dude we give you all kind of advice and evidence. We told you three times already to watch the lore panel to get some sense in your head, but all you do is hating on some story you know nothing about.
Lovely comment, I feel enlightened now. Yes maybe I hate on the story, or well whatever. Regardless is that there should not be a continue of the story, no matter what the story is = If I know the story or not is irrelevant.
Their is no good story for Lord of the Rings 2, because it is not meant to be a sequel. The same is true for D2, the end make sense and all the major plots in Diablo series story has ended. The hero, Tristram, the prime evils all being gone, everything that the story evolved around is no more.
But as I said before I cannot be right here. Cause Blizzard makes the story, therefor it is impossible for them to be wrong. They can say whatever the like and all is "true" cause they make the truth. Blizzard is never ever in hell, not in a million years, going to say that their ending, which is open for some interpretation, is in conflict with there present story for there next big release. You would be an idiot to believe so.
Hence am I "wrong". Okay I stop here cause if you dont get this all further discussion is pointless.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
This has no basis whatsoever. Before TFT and Before D2 their predecessors were hailed for having good story and background, backed with interesting new characters. RoC was really good with characters that invoke emotions from players and D1, despite it's very little dimension, had in interesting characters and story lines like Wirt, Cain, Griswold, Farnham, Leoric, Diablo, Butcher.
What does SC2 has? Narud = Duran. Seriously, who'd knew that Duran became a white, old person name Narud!!
On April 17 2012 21:53 Klockan3 wrote: SC2 were the first RTS campaign where I felt that most of the actual gameplay in the missions fitted in with the story. In sc1 you attack whole planets by landing a CC there, the enemy doesn't react until roughly 5 minutes have gone by and then they send like 10 units. In wc2 you attack the dark portal which should be the most dangerous place on the planet by sending a really small army that builds a base next to it while the orcs just stands idly by doing their thing.
Therefore I think that SC2 had the best campaign. The earlier campaigns didn't make much sense from a gaming point of view. Sure the stories said that the battles where fierce and epic but there were no such things in the actual games.
In sc bw the ued went in with style not only landing in with command center to establish the base . They brought in valkyries man looking at those flock of mutas getting torn apart was satisfying therefore sc 1 and bw had a better campaign . Warcraft 2 had much more immersive music and voice acting to it and for it to have that kind of story telling at that time it was pretty good with the limitation of technology that is available during that era .
I don't think Sc2 had the best campaign not when I was in sc1 commanding and taking part in a renegade terran faction trying to overthrow an empire and also inadvertently was used as a pawn in furthering some one plan to become a dictator of the starcraft planet . You don't see much conflicts in sc2 or politics and betrayal shown in the game and the sc1 and bw lore was much more darker than the one sc2 is having right now .
Hoh you are wrong buddy each campaign actually made sense from a gamer point of view, take a look at all the tutorial campaign they made it in such of a way that you get the basics straight out from the start making depots and marine . I don't know about you guys but playing about a guy sitting in a bar drinking alcohol all day ain't interesting . Not when I can strap in to the boots of a commander and get in to the action right away .
Dude we give you all kind of advice and evidence. We told you three times already to watch the lore panel to get some sense in your head, but all you do is hating on some story you know nothing about.
Lovely comment, I feel enlightened now. Yes maybe I hate on the story, or well whatever. Regardless is that there should not be a continue of the story, that is regardless of the story = If I know the story or not is irrelevant.
Their is no good story for Lord of the Rings 2, because it is not meant to be a sequel. The same is true for D2, the end make sense and all the major plots in Diablo series story has ended. The hero, Tristram, the prime evils all being gone, everything that the story evolved around is no more.
But as I said before I cannot be right here. Cause Blizzard makes the story, therefor it is impossible for them to be wrong. They can say whatever the like and all is "true" cause they make the truth. Blizzard is never ever in hell, not in a million years, going to say that their ending, which is open for some interpretation, is in conflict with there present story for there next big release. You would be an idiot to believe so. Hence am I "wrong".
Okay I stop here cause if you dont get this all further discussion is pointless.
Holy shit man. Its not that hard to see a good story from a bad, which this whole discussion is about. Your example with the dragon eggs is bad, and if blizz wouldve come up with that they'd be righteously flamed. But even so we would flame, i STILL would hold back any judgement until i played the game. The info they released thus far sounds VERY good tho and thus i think its retarded to say they are "declining in creativity". But you just stubbornly refuse to watch the lore panel and inform yourself, or you just fail to appreciate good game design.
Dude we give you all kind of advice and evidence. We told you three times already to watch the lore panel to get some sense in your head, but all you do is hating on some story you know nothing about.
Lovely comment, I feel enlightened now. Yes maybe I hate on the story, or well whatever. Regardless is that there should not be a continue of the story, that is regardless of the story = If I know the story or not is irrelevant.
Their is no good story for Lord of the Rings 2, because it is not meant to be a sequel. The same is true for D2, the end make sense and all the major plots in Diablo series story has ended. The hero, Tristram, the prime evils all being gone, everything that the story evolved around is no more.
But as I said before I cannot be right here. Cause Blizzard makes the story, therefor it is impossible for them to be wrong. They can say whatever the like and all is "true" cause they make the truth. Blizzard is never ever in hell, not in a million years, going to say that their ending, which is open for some interpretation, is in conflict with there present story for there next big release. You would be an idiot to believe so. Hence am I "wrong".
Okay I stop here cause if you dont get this all further discussion is pointless.
Holy shit man. Its not that hard to see a good story from a bad, which this whole discussion is about. Your example with the dragon eggs is bad, and if blizz wouldve come up with that they'd be righteously flamed. But even so we would flame, i STILL would hold back any judgement until i played the game. The info they released thus far sounds VERY good tho and thus i think its retarded to say they are "declining in creativity". But you just stubbornly refuse to watch the lore panel and inform yourself, or you just fail to appreciate good game design.
Okay this is getting tiresome, I have to agree on the point of me being stubborn, otherwise I would not do this.
The dragon eggs was not meant to be an example of a good story. It was meant to say that Blizzard makes the story that suit what they want for there next game. And btw I might still buy the game if it get good reviews, regardless of the story I might wanne play it a bit with some mates so.
Yes I guess the story might be good. Or well the best it can be from the starting point is has. My argument is not that the story is bad, my argument is that some stories is suppose to end. I think D2 has such a story. There is no need for a sequel of D2 story wise, it has an good end.
If we go away from games and look at movies for a moment. Movies have been a medium for telling stories in over 100 years. Yet for some reason movies rarely goes beyond the second sequel, and when they do they are pretty much without exception bad. Why is this?
Cause sequels makes story progressively worse, more restrained and just plain weird. Games however can have many, many, sequels. Games can do this cause they either shift focus to the gameplay or the game did not have much story to begin with. This however does not change the fact that the same effect that happens in the stories of movies does also apply in games. Only difference is that movies cannot afford to have bad story cause they have very little else to work with in their medium.
Hence there should be an incitement for gaming companies to make new stories instead of over abusing old stories over and over again and by doing so making them progressively worse with time.
I agree with the heart of the OP, maybe not everything said, but the gist of it. Wether you believe blizzard sold their soul to Activision, it was the loss of Blizzard North, or its just time running its course.
The bottom line is they could use some new passoniate no fluff people on board. B.net 2.0 and the WoW expansions have ruined high expectations of what I once considered to be the hands down best gaming company around.
P.S. I will say from what I've played of Diablo3 is that it looks and feels amazing, those cards will all be on the table in less then a month from now so heres to hoping we get that classic blizzard feel.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
This has no basis whatsoever. Before TFT and Before D2 their predecessors were hailed for having good story and background, backed with interesting new characters. RoC was really good with characters that invoke emotions from players and D1, despite it's very little dimension, had in interesting characters and story lines like Wirt, Cain, Griswold, Farnham, Leoric, Diablo, Butcher.
What does SC2 has? Narud = Duran. Seriously, who'd knew that Duran became a white, old person name Narud!!
That's because the story is designed differently. RoC had its own story which kind of ended with the death of Archimonde while TFT explored more of Arthas' story and how he became the Lich King. Sc2 has 1 big story cut in 3 games it's just a whole different kind of story telling.
You have to see wc3 RoC as a book where the main story ends and TFT then as another book which expands on Arthas while sc2 is a book split in 3 volumes.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
This has no basis whatsoever. Before TFT and Before D2 their predecessors were hailed for having good story and background, backed with interesting new characters. RoC was really good with characters that invoke emotions from players and D1, despite it's very little dimension, had in interesting characters and story lines like Wirt, Cain, Griswold, Farnham, Leoric, Diablo, Butcher.
What does SC2 has? Narud = Duran. Seriously, who'd knew that Duran became a white, old person name Narud!!
That's because the story is designed differently. RoC had its own story which kind of ended with the death of Archimonde while TFT explored more of Arthas' story and how he became the Lich King. Sc2 has 1 big story cut in 3 games it's just a whole different kind of story telling.
You have to see wc3 RoC as a book where the main story ends and TFT then as another book which expands on Arthas while sc2 is a book split in 3 volumes.
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
The only thing that move me in sc2 was that I have to pay another $60 for a new campaign and additional units .... It really touched my heart.
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
Touched by Raynors last line to Kerrigan? bah. Kerrigan deserves to die a thousand deaths for killing the real best character of starcraft: Fenix.
Also, The warcraft 3 storylines and the WoW "storyline" is gar-bage. go play Beyond the Dark Portal and then tell me those stories are anymore than fluffy hello kitty island adventure nonsense
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
Touched by Raynors last line to Kerrigan? bah. Kerrigan deserves to die a thousand deaths for killing the real best character of starcraft: Fenix.
Also, The warcraft 3 storylines and the WoW "storyline" is gar-bage. go play Beyond the Dark Portal and then tell me those stories are anymore than fluffy hello kitty island adventure nonsense
i never understood the facination people had with fenix he is like the boba fett of starcraft why the people dont like duke or sasz goddamit!
On April 18 2012 01:19 TheFish7 wrote: Touched by Raynors last line to Kerrigan? bah. Kerrigan deserves to die a thousand deaths for killing the real best character of starcraft: Fenix.
You mean the guy who forgot to recharge the batteries in his lightsaber?
It's way better as a business, and way better for the fans of the games/company that they stick to their cards, and have a few, huge franchises. Blizzard couldn't manage rushing out 5+ different unique IP games in a year. I assure you, you wouldn't like if Blizzard was pumping out a ton of crappy games every year and the mainstay titles (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft) are lessened in quality as a result.
Those initial years were a testing period for them... they didn't have any big franchises back then, they didn't know what was going to hit and what wasn't. They were just making games, they weren't being creative in the slightest.
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
Touched by Raynors last line to Kerrigan? bah. Kerrigan deserves to die a thousand deaths for killing the real best character of starcraft: Fenix.
Also, The warcraft 3 storylines and the WoW "storyline" is gar-bage. go play Beyond the Dark Portal and then tell me those stories are anymore than fluffy hello kitty island adventure nonsense
i never understood the facination people had with fenix he is like the boba fett of starcraft why the people dont like duke or sasz goddamit!
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
Most of the cinematic was about Tychus "betraying" him, which was expected from the opening sequence. And Raynor hated Kerrigan by the end of the last brood war mission. He stated several times up until, and including at that point in time, that he would be the man to kill her for what she did.
Then a few years later, he does a 180 and risks everything in a suicide mission to save her.
Oh, and the best part is that she's going to go right back to the swarm to start another massacre. So essentially the entire first game, didn't matter. If anything it seems like the game was a set up to weaken the zerg, so that we could have a zerg game that consists of more than us just rolling over the galaxy with our massive army.
On April 17 2012 22:28 Shockk wrote: SC2's campaign is cheesy beyond any scale. Be it the humor targeted at 14 y/o's, horribly cheap storytelling (oh really, Tychus is a bad guy?), the countless side missions with zero consequence for the story except for a random cutscene or the incredibly cliched final mission / video. Oh, and there's plenty of that missing "logic" you attribute to SC1 or WarCraft - why doesn't Kerrigan attack earlier, why aren't the Protoss in the future missions simply crushed immediately by superior force, why hasn't Mengsk learned to deal with Raynor properly in the meantime ... and so forth, and so on. .
I agree with SC2 campaign employing somewhat cartoonish humor and characters.
But I fail to see how anyone who grew up with the SC1 campaign storyline could not be moved by the SC2 end cinematic, especially Raynors last line to Kerrigan
Touched by Raynors last line to Kerrigan? bah. Kerrigan deserves to die a thousand deaths for killing the real best character of starcraft: Fenix.
Also, The warcraft 3 storylines and the WoW "storyline" is gar-bage. go play Beyond the Dark Portal and then tell me those stories are anymore than fluffy hello kitty island adventure nonsense
I agree with WoW but WC3? Really?
On another note I like Blizzard's storylines where the bad guy wins a lot better. Warcraft 1 (WC1 Medivh is Blizzard's most underrated character), BW, and TFT are all quite badass. Most of the other storylines just end with the heroes using some contrived plot device to win.
On April 18 2012 06:16 killa_robot wrote: Most of the cinematic was about Tychus "betraying" him, which was expected from the opening sequence. And Raynor hated Kerrigan by the end of the last brood war mission. He stated several times up until, and including at that point in time, that he would be the man to kill her for what she did.
Then a few years later, he does a 180 and risks everything in a suicide mission to save her.
He hates infested Kerrigan. He's in love with Sarah Kerrigan.
He's had to live with the guilt of failing to save her from the swarm. Now he gets his chance to do that, as he sees it.
His line "It's okay, I got ya" is what he's wanted to say ever since her distress call that Mengsk ignored.
And there's no way of him knowing what would happen afterwards.
Whatever he said in anger at the end of Brood War, if he killed her without regret, I'd find that a lot harder to buy then him taking a chance to get Sarah Kerrigan back.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
This has no basis whatsoever. Before TFT and Before D2 their predecessors were hailed for having good story and background, backed with interesting new characters. RoC was really good with characters that invoke emotions from players and D1, despite it's very little dimension, had in interesting characters and story lines like Wirt, Cain, Griswold, Farnham, Leoric, Diablo, Butcher.
What does SC2 has? Narud = Duran. Seriously, who'd knew that Duran became a white, old person name Narud!!
That's because the story is designed differently. RoC had its own story which kind of ended with the death of Archimonde while TFT explored more of Arthas' story and how he became the Lich King. Sc2 has 1 big story cut in 3 games it's just a whole different kind of story telling.
You have to see wc3 RoC as a book where the main story ends and TFT then as another book which expands on Arthas while sc2 is a book split in 3 volumes.
Yeah, but the first volume sucks.
True but the BW campaign like I said earlier really didn't have that good of a story either maybe it was a bit better but not that much.
Did anyone ever hear of Hellgate:London? Here's an excerpt from an old BrotherLaz interview back in 2007: + Show Spoiler +
Przemo - What do you think is the future of diablo 2? blizzard isn't interested in d2
Brother Laz - Hellgate:London (www.hellgateguru.com), made by Flagship Studios, which was founded by many of the Diablo/D2 people including Bill Roper and the 1.10 programmer Peter Hu. It is basically a sci-fi version of Diablo with some first-person shooter elements.
There are paladins with auras, napalm swords and enchanted chain lightning rifles, randomly generated levels (a first for a 3D game) and quests, and tow hook cannons to pull succubi from the air so you can pummel them with your trusty electrified cricket bat.
Forget Blizzard, they're just going to release commercial crap until the players get fed up and leave.
Anyways that was waaay long ago and the hellgate game is now dead (by 2009), but Brother Laz's words still have a stinging feel to them.I am a fan of D2 and am patiently waiting for D3 to come out. Source Anyways my point isn't the hellgate game, it got ressed and died again because T3 hasn't even tried to fix its bugs and is just keeping the servers up with minimal efforts.
THIS is the kind of thing I want to see coming branded with Blizzard logo. Not this ridiculous bullshit they've been spewing out the past couple of years.
WOW, these two were absolutely amazing. Specially the top one.
nah you are right. imo they trying to hard to appeal to too many people. they cant go with anything risky since it could mean a loss of potential customers.
On April 17 2012 10:37 Arkless wrote: Ughhh, I really hate all this SC2 campaign is shit talk. You havn't even played it all. You played one part of three, and to be honest I enjoyed WoL's story more than just the terran story in bw/sc1 personally.
This has no basis whatsoever. Before TFT and Before D2 their predecessors were hailed for having good story and background, backed with interesting new characters. RoC was really good with characters that invoke emotions from players and D1, despite it's very little dimension, had in interesting characters and story lines like Wirt, Cain, Griswold, Farnham, Leoric, Diablo, Butcher.
What does SC2 has? Narud = Duran. Seriously, who'd knew that Duran became a white, old person name Narud!!
That's because the story is designed differently. RoC had its own story which kind of ended with the death of Archimonde while TFT explored more of Arthas' story and how he became the Lich King. Sc2 has 1 big story cut in 3 games it's just a whole different kind of story telling.
You have to see wc3 RoC as a book where the main story ends and TFT then as another book which expands on Arthas while sc2 is a book split in 3 volumes.
Yeah, but the first volume sucks.
True but the BW campaign like I said earlier really didn't have that good of a story either maybe it was a bit better but not that much.
It was much better, especially considering the technical possibilities now and then. Of course it wasn't perfect but it did manage to tell a story of characters, betrayal and war with the few tools the game had. SC2:WOL could have told a much grander tale but they settled for entertainment for kids, a ridiculous storyline and the most cliched characters possible.
Well maybe I shouldnt post this but.... Well in this thread I had like 10 post regarding how weird it was for blizzard storywise to continue with D3, this was then before the game was released and I argued there was no reasonable storyline left to follow from D2 LoD. Okay I know wrong place for that argument and obviously I continually ran into a wall of fanatic D3 fans.
I would love for someone to come back now and describe how fantastic the story of D3 is and how it compares to the original Diablo, Warcraft 3 and so on. Perfect story execution and everything, I am sure Bioware brought there notepads so they could implement all this great story telling into there next big franchise.
What shocks me is the very low quality of dialogs. They feel as they were written by 14 years old who just saw the lord of the ring movies and thinks he is a now a professional writter. Sadly, the reason for this is the amount of content they have to produce and it probably ends up with half of original placeholders.
I think their priorities have changed. Until 2002: Blizzard was a passionate game developer company, who mostly cared about players' experience. After 2002: Blizzard is money-making machine, with one and only goal - make more money. I don't wanna disregard those (few) people in the company who still thrive to make outstanding games, but I feel they're not valued by the company anymore. Their efforts are to please a small chunk of (old-fashioned) gamers who still value some important aspects of video games, and it doesn't help overall revenue. Instead Blizzard will try to hire someone who can work ads/item store/gift shop shits.
My complaints about blizzard can be summarised by the progression of these videos alone.
Compare either of those to.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
The Blizzard of today isn't the Blizzard most of us grew up with. Its now a pretty soulless company focused on their bottom dollar first and only then about making good games people will be passionate about.
On April 17 2012 03:24 Eeevil wrote: Wait a minute. Blizzard has never been about revlutionary gameplay or original stories. The only original game Blizzard ever made was The Lost Vikings....maybe Diablo, I don't know enough of that game's history to know.
Blizzard makes games that are generally unoriginal, but of very high quality and for a wider range of PC power than other developpers.
And there are extremely few game storylines that are actually interesting, let alone original. Sc2 was disappointing for Blizzard standards, but the WOW storytelling has been improved a lot since vanilla....
BTW I never heard anyone talk about Diablo and it's great storyline. I never played these games, did D1 and 2 have an orignal story apart from Evil is threatening everything, you have to save everything by killing evil ?
Blizzard is playing it safe when it comes to game development, and that's just as it ought to be.
Yep they indeed improved storytelling. too bad story they tell now is shit.
In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
I was going to say something about these exact videos. The top two videos alone contributed to several ruined keyboard from the fantastic amount of jizz exploding everywhere when I saw them for the first time.
On June 29 2012 20:11 MayorITC wrote: In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
It depends on what you're looking for in the game. I've tried WoW (vanilla and BC) and was left underwhelmed, it was pretty much crap compared to titles like AoC and LotRO, both of which I enjoyed a lot for quite a while. Still, the best MMO I've played so far was Guild Wars, as I've been playing it for years and still occassionally play it.
StarCraft and WarCraft would be killed by Armies of Exigo, if only EA was smart enough to put some effort into advertising it along with their Battle for Middlearth instead of throwing it into the corner. You can even check AoX topics on this very forums to see how impressed people were with it and what grand names of RTS were involved in its testing. A pity, really.
For some time now Blizzard has failed to impress me at all. I've been a huge Diablo and WarCraft junkie for many years. D2:LoD was a big disappointment for me, so was WoW and I didn't even bother with SC2 and D3 because from what little of it I saw and tried out thanks to some friends I already know that this products aren't worth their money and wouldn't bring me any joy.
For Blizzard it would take a completely new franchise, perhaps a completely new type of game we haven't seen before, that would be truly awesome to get my respect back. As it is I don't give a damn what comes out of their stable because they continue to let me down.
Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
On June 29 2012 21:45 Kickboxer wrote: Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
... cow level thereisnocowlevel nearly every single terran cinematic in the original starcraft
On June 29 2012 21:45 Kickboxer wrote: Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
Well if you were truly as adult as you think you are you'd realize people have differing tastes and opinions. There are plenty of adults who either don't care either way (like me) or find them amusing.
Blizzard nowadays assumes the majority of their customers are idiots, 12 year old kids or soccer moms. Look at the terrible story/storytelling of D3 and SC2. Look at how terrible WoW is becoming ever since 2009. They dumb down their games and butcher the great stories of their old games and still somehow continue to make money. It's good for them but looking at D3 story....damn it was SO FUCKING TERRIBLE!
There was a Jay Wilson interview of him saying "We weren't trying to make War and Peace." Well, the story wasn't even as good as a regular Scooby Doo cartoon episode let alone compare it to a work like War and Peace! It was full childish dialogues, stupid characters and bosses constantly taunting you (telling you their plans...it really felt like I'm watching Teenage Ninja Turtles but with more demons.) Aside from story, they killed the endgame by making trading competely go through gold (farming gold to buy stuff is BORING) and making legendaries suck+reducing the drop rate to ridiculously low numbers. WoW is going down because of how terribly boring it has become, and due to how stupidly easy the game has become for the sake of "Let everyone who don't want to spend some time get everything!"
SC2 story is just terrible. So terrible in fact, that I haven't(and probably won't) buy D3, as I've heard that is terrible as well. While of course the multiplayer is most important in SC2, a good single player would still be fun, and it would attract people that aren't that much into the multiplayer/esports aspect of it.
I really hope HoTS will have a lot better story, instead of the obvious and boring storyline in WoL.
On June 29 2012 20:11 MayorITC wrote: In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
It depends on what you're looking for in the game. I've tried WoW (vanilla and BC) and was left underwhelmed, it was pretty much crap compared to titles like AoC and LotRO, both of which I enjoyed a lot for quite a while. Still, the best MMO I've played so far was Guild Wars, as I've been playing it for years and still occassionally play it.
You know that LotRO was basically a straight copy of wow with textures changed to fit middle earth? They even have the same classes, LotRO's loremaster is WoW's warlock even with roughly the same leveling progression etc. They were however incredibly cheap with the implementation so they didn't add another faction properly and they didn't port all the classes. What I don't get is how you can like that game more than wow? Do you care that much about the setting? I mean, saying that you like LotRO more than WoW is like saying that you like saying that you like wotr more than wc3 even though wotr is just a poorly budgeted exact copy:
On June 29 2012 21:45 Kickboxer wrote: Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
Well if you were truly as adult as you think you are you'd realize people have differing tastes and opinions. There are plenty of adults who either don't care either way (like me) or find them amusing.
People do have differing tastes and opinions, but not all of them are different in a good way. For example, + Show Spoiler +
we never even saw hell in D3. Who the hell thought that would be an interesting and creative direction to take?
Also, I'm pretty sure whymsyshire sucks balls and I'm pretty sure most players would agree. Almost everyone would've rather had a cow level or some sort of insane hell gauntlet. And "meat bad, vegetables good" on Butcher is just flat-out dumb. WTF were they thinking?
its silly you start with the quantity argument. making a game takes up a lot more time than it used to (hence the decline in variation & quantity), as games have to be designed with a lot more things considered (server usage, esports, etc..).
I, for one, still have faith in blizzard as they have released the best games I have ever played and I have yet to see a competitor (potentially valve but fps isn't my favorite genre)
On June 29 2012 22:18 Arnstein wrote: SC2 story is just terrible. So terrible in fact, that I haven't(and probably won't) buy D3, as I've heard that is terrible as well. While of course the multiplayer is most important in SC2, a good single player would still be fun, and it would attract people that aren't that much into the multiplayer/esports aspect of it.
I really hope HoTS will have a lot better story, instead of the obvious and boring storyline in WoL.
Actually you're wrong, D3's story is 100 times worse than sc2's story. And yeah, I don't know how it's possible. But we are talking about the companie which manages to botch sc2's realease in Korea. Another thing that I thought impossible.
On June 29 2012 23:04 Gevna wrote: But we are talking about the companie which manages to botch sc2's realease in Korea. Another thing that I thought impossible.
yeah, it's pretty easy to make a game succeed in korea:
1. give it graphics from 2004 2. make it free, or easily pirated 3. instant success, top of the pc bang charts for years
sc2 failed steps 1 and 2, which sucks if you want it to crush in sk, but isn't that bad if you actually want to sell your video game
On June 29 2012 20:11 MayorITC wrote: In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
It depends on what you're looking for in the game. I've tried WoW (vanilla and BC) and was left underwhelmed, it was pretty much crap compared to titles like AoC and LotRO, both of which I enjoyed a lot for quite a while. Still, the best MMO I've played so far was Guild Wars, as I've been playing it for years and still occassionally play it.
You know that LotRO was basically a straight copy of wow with textures changed to fit middle earth? They even have the same classes, LotRO's loremaster is WoW's warlock even with roughly the same leveling progression etc. They were however incredibly cheap with the implementation so they didn't add another faction properly and they didn't port all the classes. What I don't get is how you can like that game more than wow? Do you care that much about the setting? I mean, saying that you like LotRO more than WoW is like saying that you like saying that you like wotr more than wc3 even though wotr is just a poorly budgeted exact copy:
Did you even play LotRO? It's free now so you can always try it. First of all, the mechanics are vastly different. Second thing would be that the classes aren't ported from WoW at all and comparing Loremaster to Warlock is the biggest mistake ever made. Loremaster is the healer/CC support class with very little DPS. If you were to start arguing that Burglar is the same as Rogue you'd be wrong again, where Rogue is a DPS class, Burglar is strictly CC and team-oriented character with many ways to trigger team moves. Then you run into differences in tanking, as aggro control is MUCH harder in LotRO than it was in WoW, especially that no character has any form of 'taunt' move that would make mobs automatically switch to them. And then there's totally different crafting system, much more interesting PvP and so on and on.
And I won't even get into storytelling, I have to admit that WoW --- being a mostly original setting --- has it tougher to come up with good stories, the way the LotRO story intertwines with the one in the books is really amazing. If you're not a fan it's a cool story, if you're a fan you get to experience LotR "behind the scenes".
I think the problem they has is people expect perfection and every game will get looked over with a microscope and they will get called out on the smallest issue. Look at deus ex: human revelation. It was a fun full priced game yet had many many issues with it that if it were a blizzard title it wold get ripped up. So this greatly limits the creativity, not to mention that as a big and traded company they dont want to take risks and publish a game that may not be successful. If you think about most new creative games we see almost all come from indie developers and you need to remember for every 1 that manages you have 10 or more that fail. This isnt to say i wouldn't like them to do something creative (maybe titan?) but i can see why the aren't.
On June 29 2012 20:11 MayorITC wrote: In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
It depends on what you're looking for in the game. I've tried WoW (vanilla and BC) and was left underwhelmed, it was pretty much crap compared to titles like AoC and LotRO, both of which I enjoyed a lot for quite a while. Still, the best MMO I've played so far was Guild Wars, as I've been playing it for years and still occassionally play it.
You know that LotRO was basically a straight copy of wow with textures changed to fit middle earth? They even have the same classes, LotRO's loremaster is WoW's warlock even with roughly the same leveling progression etc. They were however incredibly cheap with the implementation so they didn't add another faction properly and they didn't port all the classes. What I don't get is how you can like that game more than wow? Do you care that much about the setting? I mean, saying that you like LotRO more than WoW is like saying that you like saying that you like wotr more than wc3 even though wotr is just a poorly budgeted exact copy:
Did you even play LotRO? It's free now so you can always try it. First of all, the mechanics are vastly different. Second thing would be that the classes aren't ported from WoW at all and comparing Loremaster to Warlock is the biggest mistake ever made. Loremaster is the healer/CC support class with very little DPS. If you were to start arguing that Burglar is the same as Rogue you'd be wrong again, where Rogue is a DPS class, Burglar is strictly CC and team-oriented character with many ways to trigger team moves. Then you run into differences in tanking, as aggro control is MUCH harder in LotRO than it was in WoW, especially that no character has any form of 'taunt' move that would make mobs automatically switch to them. And then there's totally different crafting system, much more interesting PvP and so on and on.
And I won't even get into storytelling, I have to admit that WoW --- being a mostly original setting --- has it tougher to come up with good stories, the way the LotRO story intertwines with the one in the books is really amazing. If you're not a fan it's a cool story, if you're a fan you get to experience LotR "behind the scenes".
Firstly loremasters don't heal any more than a warlock, secondly warlocks weren't a dps class in vanilla wow. People got them only because they had cc, debuffs, healthstones, soulstone and because they could summon late people so you had just a few in a raid. I played Lotro when it was new and for me then the loremaster was just a gimp warlock with less options. The pvp was really lame with the monster characters sucking and no point in trying to go solo since you were so weak you could barely even do the pve quests alone with it. I don't play games for story so I found the questing to be exactly like wow's and graphics doesn't concern me that much either. Maybe it is different today but if you compare to vanilla and bc wow then you must use the early lotro as a comparison.
On June 29 2012 20:11 MayorITC wrote: In all fairness, it's pretty difficult to top the greatness of WoW and Starcraft. It's not just Blizzard. All their competitors have failed to put out something better than the aforementioned two titles. We heard about all these "WoW-killers" and how they are different from WoW, but they've all fizzled into oblivion.
D2 is also pretty much uncontested although Torchlight was superb. Maybe Torchlight 2 will serve as a wake-up call for Blizzard if it manages to out-perform D3.
I would really like to see Blizzard return to Ghost and try their hand at the FPS genre (for PC though, not console).
It depends on what you're looking for in the game. I've tried WoW (vanilla and BC) and was left underwhelmed, it was pretty much crap compared to titles like AoC and LotRO, both of which I enjoyed a lot for quite a while. Still, the best MMO I've played so far was Guild Wars, as I've been playing it for years and still occassionally play it.
You know that LotRO was basically a straight copy of wow with textures changed to fit middle earth? They even have the same classes, LotRO's loremaster is WoW's warlock even with roughly the same leveling progression etc. They were however incredibly cheap with the implementation so they didn't add another faction properly and they didn't port all the classes. What I don't get is how you can like that game more than wow? Do you care that much about the setting? I mean, saying that you like LotRO more than WoW is like saying that you like saying that you like wotr more than wc3 even though wotr is just a poorly budgeted exact copy:
Did you even play LotRO? It's free now so you can always try it. First of all, the mechanics are vastly different. Second thing would be that the classes aren't ported from WoW at all and comparing Loremaster to Warlock is the biggest mistake ever made. Loremaster is the healer/CC support class with very little DPS. If you were to start arguing that Burglar is the same as Rogue you'd be wrong again, where Rogue is a DPS class, Burglar is strictly CC and team-oriented character with many ways to trigger team moves. Then you run into differences in tanking, as aggro control is MUCH harder in LotRO than it was in WoW, especially that no character has any form of 'taunt' move that would make mobs automatically switch to them. And then there's totally different crafting system, much more interesting PvP and so on and on.
And I won't even get into storytelling, I have to admit that WoW --- being a mostly original setting --- has it tougher to come up with good stories, the way the LotRO story intertwines with the one in the books is really amazing. If you're not a fan it's a cool story, if you're a fan you get to experience LotR "behind the scenes".
Firstly loremasters don't heal any more than a warlock, secondly warlocks weren't a dps class in vanilla wow. People got them only because they had cc, debuffs, healthstones, soulstone and because they could summon late people so you had just a few in a raid. I played Lotro when it was new and for me then the loremaster was just a gimp warlock with less options. The pvp was really lame with the monster characters sucking and no point in trying to go solo since you were so weak you could barely even do the pve quests alone with it. I don't play games for story so I found the questing to be exactly like wow's and graphics doesn't concern me that much either. Maybe it is different today but if you compare to vanilla and bc wow then you must use the early lotro as a comparison.
Some mechanics didn't change, what changed was how people play certain classes. PvP sucked early because it took some time for monster players to get ranks and learn tactics, at one point they even had to patch them heavily because they were way too strong.
But I haven't played it for some years now so things might've changed. All I know is that I've spent quite some time playing this game after it was launched and WoW never really captured my interest.
I feel like blizzard games have gotten really bad lately. Diablo III was kinda meh when it came to story. SC 2 is an awesome game and I play it often, but I don't have the same excitement i use to have.
Blizzard North deserves far more than 6 mentions. So here's the 7th. Blizzard North (8th).
Blizzard North (9th) Blizzard North (10th)
Expecting anything story wise out of the company that ran WC and SC lore into the ground.. How could you expect D3 to have anything but a tired and predictable mess of a story.
On June 30 2012 01:10 Manit0u wrote: But I haven't played it for some years now so things might've changed. All I know is that I've spent quite some time playing this game after it was launched and WoW never really captured my interest.
Of course, but I think that is mostly because the lotro atmosphere appeals more to you or something like that. WoW had more classes and each class had more depth. Except for that the games were almost identical with a few different twists here and there going either way depending on your taste. Thus a large majority of the players prefer wow, same as how a majority prefer Blizzard titles within any genre. WoW was an extremely well made game, it formed the whole genre to what it is today with plenty of companies trying to copy its success to no avail, just like how many tried to copy diablo and starcraft. LotRO was an example of such a game, sure mmo's usually share a lot of features but usually not to this extent. AoC and GW are much better examples of mmo's standing on their own merits with their own way of doing things, LotRO is a product of WoW's success more than anything else. "monster players" is just a cheap way of making an opposing faction btw.
Anyway, as many already have stated Blizzard haven't done anything new in a while. The last new thing they did was world of warcraft. Now that they have done the two high profile sequels they intended to do I hope we can get another era of new games for a while starting with Titan. I don't see them making any more sequels for a while considering the more than 10 years window so it should hopefully give room for new things.
On June 30 2012 01:16 HeeroFX wrote: I feel like blizzard games have gotten really bad lately. Diablo III was kinda meh when it came to story. SC 2 is an awesome game and I play it often, but I don't have the same excitement i use to have.
This is probably also bound to the fact that you're growing up. Honestly, Blizzard as a whole is an incredible company which leaves most other major game companies in the dust.
To take WoW as an example, it's been out for 8 years and it's still by the far the best MMORPG. I don't think anyone who has played WoW can play any other MMO, especially if they played PvP because while every other game tries to copy WoW they always fail on the most important aspects. No company(except maybe Valve) comes close to designing games as flawless as Blizzard does.
Yeah, they're using the same ideas over and over but it's giving us good games. Diablo 3 might have been lacking(although I still think it's amazing and have played it non-stop since release), Starcraft 2 is incredible and even Cataclysm is incredible compared to every other MMORPG even though I personally think it was a step backwards from WOTLK.
On June 30 2012 01:16 HeeroFX wrote: I feel like blizzard games have gotten really bad lately. Diablo III was kinda meh when it came to story. SC 2 is an awesome game and I play it often, but I don't have the same excitement i use to have.
This is probably also bound to the fact that you're growing up. Honestly, Blizzard as a whole is an incredible company which leaves most other major game companies in the dust.
To take WoW as an example, it's been out for 8 years and it's still by the far the best MMORPG. I don't think anyone who has played WoW can play any other MMO, especially if they played PvP because while every other game tries to copy WoW they always fail on the most important aspects. No company(except maybe Valve) comes close to designing games as flawless as Blizzard does.
Yeah, they're using the same ideas over and over but it's giving us good games. Diablo 3 might have been lacking(although I still think it's amazing and have played it non-stop since release), Starcraft 2 is incredible and even Cataclysm is incredible compared to every other MMORPG even though I personally think it was a step backwards from WOTLK.
Haven't you read the entire discusion above your post on this page? It showed that you can play other MMOs after WoW. In PvP aspect I don't think that WoW can come anywhere close to Guild Wars though, where you need split-second reactions and awesome coordination because characters there have 200-300hp instead of thousands and some skills do 100+ damage so spiking and healing becomes really nasty job.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
On June 29 2012 21:45 Kickboxer wrote: Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
... cow level thereisnocowlevel nearly every single terran cinematic in the original starcraft
comic relief is new?
Haha.
I know right.
I think a bigger problem than Blizzard putting comic relief in their games, is the amount of people playing their games (key word games) that take themselves so seriously that they are honestly offended by comic relief in their video game experiences.
Things were so simpler when we were children weren't they? sigh.
i play games first and foremost for the gameplay, it has to be fun to get through the game or i lose interest fast. that being said i have a film degree and write screenplays and if the story is good/engaging then those are the games i really love (story combined with good gameplay, like bioshock, hl2 sc1 scbw).
personally, i still remember moments from sc and scbw story that were awesome. when i tell people to go through sc1 they are still impressed with the story to this day. sc2 story was an abomination and i didnt even finish it, something i thought would be impossible. i was so pumped to see what they would come up with for the story and it was just bad. the game itself was good, but flawed in many ways, and it takes blizzard so freakin long to fix things/respond to customer feedback. i find that frustrating.
you could say sure you are just older now and the things that appealed to you when you were a teenager naturally wont be as appealing now. that is just not true, a good game story can be every bit as involving/entertaining as a movie, they just rarely are, because companies dont believe players want a good story, or even most players wont play the full story anyway so why bother making it good.
i played WoW for about 6 months when burning crusade came out. the game was good, not mindblowing, but fun enough to lvl and get geared for pvp. the changes to skills and smoothing out the lvling curve (essentially dumbing the game down) was not appealing to me and while i understand why they would make these changes, it wasnt a game i was remotely interested in anymore. and it has just gone further and further away from what it made it good since.
which brings me to diablo. next to starcraft, diablo 2 is my favorite game. in high school me and my buddies would play hardcore mode every day after school. it was so much fun, some of my very favorite gaming memories are from those sessions. what i liked most was designing a build that i thought would be good, suffering through the first 25-30 levels so my build could get goin, and then just wiping out whole screens of enemies in a few seconds at later levels (lightning javelin amazon, and phoenix assassin were my main hardcore characters).
i was so excited for diablo 3 and got into the beta. i literally played 5 minutes and couldnt play anymore. it felt like diablo but too similiar. sc1 to sc2 many things stayed the same but it felt different enough, and modern enough to be enjoyable, gameplay wise at least. i just couldnt take diablo 3. the changes they made didnt appeal to me either. i LIKED planning my builds out and seeing how they turned out late game. the RMAH was disturbing to say the least. i havent mentioned the story of diablo 2 because it wasnt why i played the game, i dont really remember much/any of it. if sc2 story was any indication i have a bad impression in my head of what the diablo3 story turned out to be, and i dont care enough to play the game solely to see the story.
now you have to ask yourself why has blizzard gone down this path with their releases. and the answer is simple: cash money. right now, blizzard is free to do whatever they want because they bring in so much money for their parent companies. they can continue to coast for another few years at least and play things extremely safe. if there ever comes a day when their name isnt enough to move millions of copies then you can rest assured their freedom will go away also.
diablo 3 didnt appeal to me for many reasons but i am probably in the minority, what i want in a game is no longer what blizzard offers apparently. this is sad to me because blizzard games have been such a large part of my life, but it is the reality of what has happened.
Bros and bro-ettes, come on now. Blizzard of the yore was an independent game publisher who sank or swam in one of the most diversified video game markets in the history of man kind. Literally hundreds of little publishing houses were busy trying to push out games during the pre-Windows 95 era of gaming and while many of them were awful many of them were fucking awesome. Age of Kings? Dark Reign? Star Control? Master of Orion? The Fallout Series? and slightly later with Bungie with had Myth! And the original Halo. Epic epic games. But that was when video games were for nerds and 'losers.'
Today, Blizzard is part of a giant conglomerate whose biggest cash cow is re-releasing the exact same game with slightly better graphics every year and their target demographic are the common public. So yes, guys like Dustin Browder and whoever runs Diabo 3 can be hired away from terrible franchises that were already gutted, come in, fist all the creativity to death and exist because they are excellent corporate employees who do what they are told by their even-less-interested-in-games corporate overlords. Why do you think Big Studios in movies started making generic, expensive crap that they paddle to the masses in the summer? Its no coincidence that as movies became big business, garbage like the Transformers series keep getting green lights. The bland, number crunchers and political infighters whose chief expertise is sucking up to the more power who run most massive studios are neither visionary or innovative but since they operate in massive corporations that is not a negativism.
Which all goes to say is, if you want innovative games you have to take advantage of the second digital revolution and search out independent game producers and try to support them as best as you can before inevitably some boring corporation like Microsoft or Activision finds them, buys them for their creativity and intellectually property ,fires the creative people who dont want to see their intellectual property be turned into Transformers 4, MORE EXPLOSIONS edition and then proceeds to churn out over warmed garbage.
The problem is that everyone here votes with their dollars by buying the games that come out. COD breaks records with every 'new' release. Why should they do something else? The only way for this to change is for gamers to support smaller companies by buying their games, don't pirate them since pirating hurts the startup much more than the multi-billion dollar establishment game companies.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Well the D3 cinematics were not released yet when I made that post, and regarding SC2 I took it out as the exception from what I think otherwise is a bad trend if I remember correctly.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
In my opinion WC2 > WC3 >>>>>>>>>>>>> WoW in story and atmosphere Diablo 2 had way better atmosphere and story than Diablo 3 (which was TERRIBLE in that regard - how can blizzard even justify Leah and Maghda and all the stupid taunting prime evils?!) Starcraft 1 was also more interesting than Starcraft 2.
It feels like whatever change in attitude that happened in WC2 -> WC3, has increased with every single blizzard release - and for the worse IMHO
Why are you guys even arguing over cinematics? You don't really need those in a game for it to be good. And please stop praising D2 story and atmosphere as it was as nothing compared to the true Diablo.
This, my friends, is how you make the quest interesting and build atmosphere. And this is how a truly dark and terrifying game looks like, D2 is for kiddies.
Guys. I think I know the cause behind all of this.
High-End graphics..
Ranging from the Transformers of movies to the Battlefield 3's of games, the high-end graphics brought in a swooping force of low-intelligence (i say low, but it's an exaggeration) that are willing to pay top-dollar for realistic shit.
Think about the "old", "shitty graphics" games... they were cool, awesome, badass, amazing, quality. Yet who played them? People who cared about the games, and rarely the graphics themselves.
well, i guess many people are not really involved into dota 2, so id like to pint out here that valve is actually exactly doing what so many people miss in todays work of blizzard. they spent such a huge amount listening to and communicating with the community its absolutely amazing. and i would not exaclty consider valve a small company...so, no, times have certainly not change for the worse in general, but maybe its time to accept that todays blizzard is not what it was many years ago. however, there are other companies to take their place.
On June 30 2012 09:18 Keitzer wrote: Guys. I think I know the cause behind all of this.
High-End graphics..
Ranging from the Transformers of movies to the Battlefield 3's of games, the high-end graphics brought in a swooping force of low-intelligence (i say low, but it's an exaggeration) that are willing to pay top-dollar for realistic shit.
Think about the "old", "shitty graphics" games... they were cool, awesome, badass, amazing, quality. Yet who played them? People who cared about the games, and rarely the graphics themselves.
Think about it...
No. Correlation is not causation.
Homeworld series had a brilliant storyline and absolutely breathtaking graphics for its time. It STILL looks pretty good nowadays. Blizzard games have bad stories simply because they have bad writers and bad management. There's no other mystery cause. Blizzard is just a bad company nowadays. I bought SC2 and I liked it, but it's mostly because they tried really really hard not to screw up perfection. (And it still fell short of the original). D3 they tried to do the same and just blew hogballs.
All in all, Blizzard nowadays is a maggot feeding off the corpse left behind by the actual talent and creativity that made Blizzard a studio worth buying out by some soulless megacorporation.
If you want to assign blame anywhere, blame the big money publishers and companies that are run by finance people who don't know or give a shit about games and just want to pump out trash to turn a quick, reliable buck.
I feel company size is one of the attribute on declined creativity, especially if management didn't put as much effort into gameplay, instead it's all about money.
When company was small, everyone were close, people discuss what would be fun, things that people wanted to play themselves. When company gets too big, you lose the passion because you just doing small part of a project, you're just do what you're told and other things don't concern you anymore. This is what I personally experienced in a develop environment.
When company gets so big, so many shareholders and all. It's all about money as any loss will be very impact and harder to recover, a safer formula might be more appeal as well, however I could be wrong.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Oh yes it is. Diablo 2's story is amazing. And the cinematics are the best I've seen in a video game. The writing was mature, the story about chasing the dark wanderer was compelling, Marius' story was even more amazingly told, the atmosphere and tone was perfect, the ending was a mindfuck cliffhanger.
So your argument is that all games ever released by blizzard has had a terrible story so it is good/expected that they keep doing that. Pretty much saying it is okay for Blizzard to having forced and goofy story lines in there games, that is the way we like it! Thus we should expect the story of Pandaria to be shit and rejoice over the fact!
Well first I think you are going to have to search the globe to find another person that agrees with your statement that the story if Diablo 3 is equal to its to predecessors.... and.. no... Sorry your argument is just really weird and based on an assumption that no one on this forum would agree on. And I wont explain this one more time, read the thread.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Oh yes it is. Diablo 2's story is amazing. And the cinematics are the best I've seen in a video game. The writing was mature
WOOSH
that's the sound of your credibility leaving this thread
Say what you like but Warcraft used to have such a dope storyline. Azeroth, the orcs, the warlock council, the portal to Draenei. That shit was awesome. Warcraft 2 built on that with the Horde WINNING and taking Azeroth which was an awesome twist. Then it added all kinds of cool stuff like the blood elves/dwarves and ogre/goblins and the giant fleet battles. There was Admiral Proudmoore and that mage girl I forget her name and Sylvanas etc. It was totally epic.
Then WC3 came and even that was dope. The Horde lost round two and the warlock council was destroyed. So there was this cool backstory about how the Orcs used to be this proud shamanic race that got perverted by the demon powers and now they were going back to their ancient noble roots. And it was this bad ass druid/shaman native american riff with mighty, mighty centaurs and wyverns and big groaning Kodo beasts. Again, super freaking epic. Night elves were super freaking epic. Aluna, owls, werebears, etc. Undead, frozen throne, the prince, necromancer, all that shit was so so dope.
Then with WoW the story suddenly became utterly incomprehensible. There was weird stuff about a Cavern of Time. The Undead splitting into two factions but then who knows wth happened to them. The story's so convoluted and all over the place, I can't even keep track of what's going on. Oh and they turned Draenei into pink unicorn men, instead of the tough, slug-like, earthy warriors they used to be in every other iteration. I have no clue why they did that. The Draenei looked way more bad ass in old concept art. The WoW version is an abomination.
Then they brought in gnomes, which don't add anything. They're just goofy half-sized dwarves. I don't get why Blood Elves are with the Horde. That's another atrocity. Shamans on Alliance side. Paladins on Horde side. For the sake of pumping money from their MMO, they basically wrecked the mythos completely. Paladins on Horde side is just about the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
I'm sad. Warcraft was my most beloved story-setting in video games. Even more than Fallout and Planescape Torment, just because I loved orcs so damn much as a kid. Blizzard destroyed that love pandering to soccer moms and neckbeards.
On June 30 2012 17:57 4ZakeN87 wrote: So your argument is that all games ever released by blizzard has had a terrible story so it is good/expected that they keep doing that. Pretty much saying it is okay for Blizzard to having forced and goofy story lines in there games, that is the way we like it! Thus we should expect the story of Pandaria to be shit and rejoice over the fact!
Well first I think you are going to have to search the globe to find another person that agrees with your statement that the story if Diablo 3 is equal to its to predecessors.... and.. no... Sorry your argument is just really weird and based on an assumption that no one on this forum would agree on. And I wont explain this one more time, read the thread.
No.
My point is that in order for something to be declining as this thread is claiming, it has to be going downhill. Rather Blizzard has stayed pretty much the exact same over the last 15 years. If anything it's the playerbase that's changed.
On June 30 2012 20:31 StorkHwaiting wrote: Then with WoW the story suddenly became utterly incomprehensible. The Undead splitting into two factions but then who knows wth happened to them.
this was explained in great detail, everyone knows what happened with the forsaken and the whole "splitting into two factions"
On June 30 2012 20:31 StorkHwaiting wrote: Then they brought in gnomes, which don't add anything. They're just goofy half-sized dwarves.
there were gnomes in warcraft 3
On June 30 2012 20:31 StorkHwaiting wrote: I don't get why Blood Elves are with the Horde. That's another atrocity.
did you actually play through the blood elf campaign in warcraft 3?
seriously, i'm all for shitting on blizzard, but i've seen some really poor arguments over here
On June 30 2012 20:31 StorkHwaiting wrote: Then with WoW the story suddenly became utterly incomprehensible. The Undead splitting into two factions but then who knows wth happened to them.
this was explained in great detail, everyone knows what happened with the forsaken and the whole "splitting into two factions"
This conversation is certainly going on tangents from the OP's original intention.
Anyway, for all those complaining about Blizzard's lack of creativity... you guys do realize that most of their inspiration/ideas were borrowed dare I even say copied?
All the best artists do it.
The bump with regards to D3 story isn't as far fetched and yes times have certainly changed at the office and Blizzard will still play the they don't answer to anyone but themselves card, which everyone knows is total bullshit from the models they employ to the way activision deals with other studios under them.
On June 30 2012 21:11 mcimba42 wrote: oh I actually didn't remember that, just the flying machine guy from wc3
Did you mean the Goblin Zeppelin? Or the "Mechanical flying machine flown by a Dwarven pilot." (as seen on the tooltip)? I've been playing WC3 for years and I don't really remember any gnomes in there.
On June 30 2012 17:57 4ZakeN87 wrote: So your argument is that all games ever released by blizzard has had a terrible story so it is good/expected that they keep doing that. Pretty much saying it is okay for Blizzard to having forced and goofy story lines in there games, that is the way we like it! Thus we should expect the story of Pandaria to be shit and rejoice over the fact!
Well first I think you are going to have to search the globe to find another person that agrees with your statement that the story if Diablo 3 is equal to its to predecessors.... and.. no... Sorry your argument is just really weird and based on an assumption that no one on this forum would agree on. And I wont explain this one more time, read the thread.
No.
My point is that in order for something to be declining as this thread is claiming, it has to be going downhill. Rather Blizzard has stayed pretty much the exact same over the last 15 years. If anything it's the playerbase that's changed.
Wow, that is complete bullshit. Blizzard is changing the same way that the industry is changing. Games are being dumbed down rather than made more complex and awesome.
On June 30 2012 21:11 mcimba42 wrote: oh I actually didn't remember that, just the flying machine guy from wc3
Did you mean the Goblin Zeppelin? Or the "Mechanical flying machine flown by a Dwarven pilot." (as seen on the tooltip)? I've been playing WC3 for years and I don't really remember any gnomes in there.
oh, so the gyrocopter pilot was a dwarf? nvm then, i'm an idiot.
Blizzard is kidna failing with story telling right now, at least only judging from sc2, though I really woudnt be suprised if the story for diablo 3 sucked. But they are doing what Nintendo is doing, just focusing on making their strong IPs bigger and bigger. I cant blame them for it.
Also gaming is just straight up not as creativity driven. Genras are pretty much in place now, more people play games so there is more demaned for specific genras.
Also lets not completly forget at their atempt at starcraft ghost.
Well I have played every Blizzards PC and table game SC1, BW, D1, D2, WC2, WC3 - Love them, but I played them when I was very young so I dont remember much. Just pure love SC2 - Like the story so far but ye we get 2 more expansions, same for MP so I dont want to judge this yet D3 - They broke their rule. Do not release what is not done. Its short and after you kill Diablo on inferno the only thing you can do is farm for Athene so he can do world records. Story is fine but not as good as you expected from Blizz. WoW - Played since vanila. And the only thing that is wrong with this game is how easy it is to see the end game. I remember that I had to farm for 2months to upgrade my gear so I can raid. Now you can farm them since day 1 of their existence and just wait for more. Blizz wants to show the end game for everyone. I get that but dont worry blizz players will see your raids. And I think that we killed nearly everything we wanted to in TBC/Wotlk so this is going to be hard for blizz to bring us something new.
I dont know if games are esier and stories are not as good as they used to be or we are getting skilled and older.
sorry someone said making video games takes more resources now
that is BULLSHIT
making games has never been easier ... there are physics engines, there are amazing 3d programs, langauges have evolved. Before when you made a game you were literally pushing a computer to its max. Now because of consoles most PC's are far more powerful than most of the platforms you are going to be releasing on so you never run into the limits of the system ... unless you use extra high res textures or shaders wtc ... which is part of a graphics engine NOT THE GAME - thats just candy.
diablo 3 is a simplification of d2. I think sc2 is in many ways a simplification of sc - howver a lot of that is really interesting lessons in how ease of UI translates into skill cap imo. You dont know that kind of thing till you try it.
I think games in gernal aim for a much lower level of player now.
I also think that games evolution really stopped in 1998 and that the majority iof stuff since is really rehashes. Companies like bullfrog, blizzard, id, 3drealms, sid meyers company were about innovation ... people since have been about refinement.
I want a game that will only run on high end pc's much like all the greats because they are simply doing stuff that hasnt yet made it onto hardware. THAT is innovation ... and consoles get in the way of that.
There was a time when consoles really were powerful ... but moores law and cost of processors now mean that they are really just a trick to trap consumers. Before you get in my face go and read communist manifesto and you will see consoles really do reflect their ideas about how jaded capitalism is. Not trying to say i agree with it, but it is thought provoking.
Edit: blizzard has gone downhill compared to then because they ahve had no innovation. If anythign battlenet now is worse than before and their games are simpler. THAT is decline.
Also I dont care how much someone doesnt like a recent story or game by blizzard, the dumbest thing they have ever done was put some random choices in SC2s singleplayer. Thank you blizzard for not telling me what really happend. Its like they did it so they can list it on their dam box.
Its completly out of place, reminds me of GTA 4 and how much that game sucked, you have an open world in which you can do linier missions or go do those stupid social things, that are also random. The open world serves no purpose, it isnt even their for imersion, unlike in something like mafia.
On June 30 2012 22:44 MrTortoise wrote: Before you get in my face go and read communist manifesto and you will see consoles really do reflect their ideas about how jaded capitalism is. Not trying to say i agree with it, but it is thought provoking.
I think part of the decline you're speaking of is a result of sticking with the same three franchises all this time. You can only milk so much really good story out of them.
Another part of it is that, today, we see far fewer of the ideas that Blizzard comes up with because development times have become so long that much of what they think up gets weeded out by an inability to translate the idea into a workable form. Blizzard was able to create and release so many amazing games in the late 90s (and you could argue up until 2003/4 I guess) because art was vastly less complicated and simply took fewer man hours to create. You could argue that Starcraft: Ghost was canned solely because of the amount of resources it takes to make a game now, compared to back when computers were shittier.
I don't even want to think about the lack of awesome presentation, effort and cutscenes that used to go into games. It makes me want to cry what has happened to gaming. Shitty predictable games and awful story lines. Mass Effect is alright but absolutely nothing compared to Baldur's Gate. The only games I put time into are independent, small studio games or sports games cos they at least haven't been able to degrade.
i don't think it's just blizzard, but all the video game industry. I agree with what you said, also, what kind of retard would want to incarnate a panda :/ i thought it was a joke until i watched the trailer. Soon it's gonna be Duck burg with Donald.
I would not say that blizzard is losing creativity just because they are not making as many games as they may have in the past. Blizzard is simply investing more time modifying and improving their original game designs that were best sellers (StarCraft, WarCraft, Diablo, etc.) Keep in mind, these games are not as easy to make as they may have been in the past, especially because now they're actually trying to balance the games which back then, they didn't.
On June 30 2012 21:11 mcimba42 wrote: oh I actually didn't remember that, just the flying machine guy from wc3
Did you mean the Goblin Zeppelin? Or the "Mechanical flying machine flown by a Dwarven pilot." (as seen on the tooltip)? I've been playing WC3 for years and I don't really remember any gnomes in there.
The Flying Machines in WC2 and WC3 were both made by Gnomes, and they also assisted in making the Steam Tanks and made the WC2 Submarines.
On July 01 2012 02:09 H0RNET wrote: 100% agree with 4ZakeN87
i put a hope on PROJECT TITAN
Thx Nice to see that a couple of people are on the same line as me. Sometimes you feel rather lonely arguing against a swarm of fanboys ^^
But yeah I hope for project Titan to, although I am not sure about the "causal MMO" part. Just to point out again also, the point of this thread was not to shit all over Blizzard. I think the make great games in many aspects. I just seems to me that they more and more turns into the "appealing the broad audience, always playing the safe card" kind of developer. Sometimes I wonder if they even achieve that to be honest, does Pandaria really appeal the mass audience?
If the gameplay of D3 could be implemented into a story of the caliber of ME (for instance), I think it would make for one epic game.
My suggestion to Blizzard would be, just drop the franchise you have now, making new lore, a new world and put your great game developing into that. I seriously dont get what they are so afraid of. In PC gaming they must be the most well known game developer there is. What ever they do is going to get a shit load of attention. There is no need to develop the same games over and over. Stop being such f****** p****** and go back and do what you are great at.
On June 30 2012 09:59 whoso wrote: well, i guess many people are not really involved into dota 2, so id like to pint out here that valve is actually exactly doing what so many people miss in todays work of blizzard. they spent such a huge amount listening to and communicating with the community its absolutely amazing. and i would not exaclty consider valve a small company...so, no, times have certainly not change for the worse in general, but maybe its time to accept that todays blizzard is not what it was many years ago. however, there are other companies to take their place.
Valve is pretty small... 293 employees as of 2012, compared to ActiBlizzard (>4.6k from '09, who knows how much they have now).
I believe that part of it might be the fact that Blizzard is putting A LOT of work and resources into making their cinematics. I know that most of them are awesome, but why would you put so much into just a couple of minutes of content throughout the entire game when there are so many other fields where said resources would be of better use?
Take CDProjekt Red for example, their Witcher 2 was a great success and still they delegated the intro, trailer etc. work to the outside company (Platige Image in this example) to do the movies for them. This way they got a better game, as they could focus all their efforts on that, and better cinematics as they hired a company that does nothing but cinematics and is obviously better at it than they are. The result? One of the best game intros to ever grace the world of video games:
It took 40 people 3 months to do it.
I imagine that if Blizzard would likewise relegate cinematic work to someone else, they could finally focus on the story and gameplay more. This would most likely yield a better product and new title release dates a bit closer than "somewhere during the next decade".
On July 01 2012 07:49 Manit0u wrote: I believe that part of it might be the fact that Blizzard is putting A LOT of work and resources into making their cinematics. I know that most of them are awesome, but why would you put so much into just a couple of minutes of content throughout the entire game when there are so many other fields where said resources would be of better use?
Take CDProjekt Red for example, their Witcher 2 was a great success and still they delegated the intro, trailer etc. work to the outside company (Platige Image in this example) to do the movies for them. This way they got a better game, as they could focus all their efforts on that, and better cinematics as they hired a company that does nothing but cinematics and is obviously better at it than they are. The result? One of the best game intros to ever grace the world of video games:
I imagine that if Blizzard would likewise relegate cinematic work to someone else, they could finally focus on the story and gameplay more. This would most likely yield a better product and new title release dates a bit closer than "somewhere during the next decade".
I hope you realise that there are different departments in a company. Game designers weren't busy creating the cinematic.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
I know the Pandaren Brewmaster was in Warcraft 3. There were also some other incongruent heroes in there for the fun, but they were never the main focus of the story. Even Warcraft 3 had some pretty incongruent stuff in there, Warcraft 2 was the shit because everything was congruent. Just because I like Warcraft 3, doesn't mean that I think its perfect, I don't believe the Pandaren Brewmaster was a good addition to the game.
WoW is just wtf, with each expansion, the lore makes less and less sense. My point is this is just a small example of tendency for Blizzard to be pretty uncreative compared to their old past.
Maybe I shouldn't say creative, because they are coming up with a lot of "new" stuff, but its not well thought out creativity. Blizzard now just kinda throws stuff in there without really thinking about it.
Imagine if LOTR suddenly introduced a whole race of asian humanoid pandas. What would you think?
EPT
