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From the Article, "Blizzard: Activision Doesn't Tell Us What To Do".
The game director of WoW has come out and announced that Activision is, in fact, not the devil (despite popular belief). The article goes on to reference various complaints about Activision as well as what Blizzard's responsibility to their parent company entails. I've included a snippet of the article and link below.
Ever since Blizzard merged with Activision, the World of WarCraft and StarCraft studio has often been accused of kow-towing to Activision's demands. However, WoW game director Tom Chilton says that Blizzard has more freedom than everyone thinks.
"I'll come out and say it. Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does [Activision-Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick," Chilton said during a Reddit Q&A. "We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once)."
The full article can be read at the following link:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Blizzard-Activision-Doesn-t-Tell-Us-What-Do-46829.html
Cheers.
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Lol, poor Blizzard. There goes their only excuse for garbage content.
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So products with significant flaws are not the fault of Blizzard being unable to do it right because of Activision, but because Blizzard simply can't do it right.
Every time I play Diablo 3 I get smacked in the face with the realization that Diablo, a game released 16 years before Diablo 3, has more responsive and accurate controls. I don't think Activision told Blizzard, "Make it annoying as hell to pick up items and target monsters!"
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Oh really? The company they're merged with isn't the Devil because they say so? Interesting...
In all actuality I just think Blizzard has become a poor game making company with terms of customer service and overall gameplay/balance, whether that be because finances or a merger I don't know or speculate on but using this as an example to say Activiision is not bad is a rather poor choice.
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Ever since Blizzard merged with Activision, the World of WarCraft and StarCraft studio has often been accused of kow-towing to Activision's demands. However, WoW game director Tom Chilton says that Blizzard has more freedom than everyone thinks.
"I'll come out and say it. Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does [Activision-Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick," Chilton said during a Reddit Q&A. "We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once)."
Chilton adds that Activision asks "intelligent questions" about WoW's development. That's as far as the influence goes, though. They've never made any mandates, or mandates-disguised-as-suggestions, regarding the game.
Is Blizzard completely autonomous? No, they're a subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard at the end of the day. However, I think that a lot of Activision-Blizzard criticism is of the tinfoil hat territory. Bobby Kotick has gotten blamed for WoW expansions being released too quickly, Diablo 3's real-money auction house, StarCraft 2's DRM and so forth. He can apparently micromanage each of these games while also "milking" Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.
The reason the whole "Activision-Blizzard/Bobby Kotick is the devil" argument persists is that it's easy. It's much cleaner to just dump all responsibilities onto Kotick or "the evil suits." The truth of the matter, though, is that there are many, many people involved in making a game. Activision-Blizzard has several thousand employees across all of its divisions. You really think that only one guy or one shadowy room of executives is responsible for every fuck-up? Really?
That's the thing with evaluating games as a critic or player, though. You don't really get to peek inside at the process that produces the game. You can't tell whether this manager is a jerk-off or that QA tester is lazy or whatever. Our criticism ought to be focused on the final game that they produce. That seems like a better use of our time than pretending we know the exact chain of ev that led a company to produce bad DRM.
Hardly anything really noteworthy to be honest. I thought some people already knew that Blizzard does their own thing.
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On September 19 2012 00:32 -Kaiser- wrote:
Lol, poor Blizzard. There goes their only excuse for garbage content.
So true. If it isn't Activision. How in gods name do they explain Diablo 3? Worst game I ever played.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
d3's character control is pretty good. just some details like too many item clutter (a problem d2 had as well) that shouldn't be that big of a ground for complaint.
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So is this them saying that people who are upset with the low quality of games recently should just be mad at Blizzard alone, and not Activision as well? I think that one of the reason I always thought the reason the games just weren't as good as they used to be was because Activision was messing with them is because I just wanted to believe that the company I have grown up off of was not in such a decline, oh well
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On September 19 2012 00:34 Torte de Lini wrote:Hardly anything really noteworthy to be honest. I thought some people already knew that Blizzard does their own thing.
You'd be surprised how stupid some people are.
Blizzard has said this all before and they will probably say it again, but people will still insist that StarCraft 2 being 3 games was the result of Bobby Kotick threatening to kill their children if they didn't split the game.
Blizzard's situation is unlike 95% of those in the games industry because it isn't a subsidiary of Activision - they're partners. It's a merger. Bobby Kotick can't dictate Blizzard internal design decisions.
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"Yeah guys, all those poor decisions you've blamed on our parent company the past five years are actually all on us."
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I thought everyone hated Kotick for coming out and saying "We are upping the price of the game to $70 to milk as much money as humanly possible out the game (MW2)". Or something very similar to those lines.
Tbh, the mass produced, glitchy releases are a direct result of that marketting strategy than anything else. So ye, it is possible to lay it all on Kotick's feet, if that is true 
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Regardless of wether Activision influences Blizzard or not, it's obvious Blizzard is now concentrating much more on profitability and making money as oppose to game quality. Diablo 3 RMAH is probably the best example of this, and just in general it seems most of their decisions are now driven by "what is going to make our game the most appealing to the most people" as oppose to "what's best for the game itself". I mean it's pretty obvious they are getting pressure from Activision to increase the bottom line. Not really blaming them, they are a business and their main goal at the end of the day is to make money, but it shouldn't be the deciding factor behind everything. They need to balance out and be careful not to sacrifice too much game quality just to make profits.
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Well tell me whose fault it is. I won't believe that it's you Blizzard it just can't be. Is it the US goverment? Is it the Aliens? The Nazis? The Jews? The terrorists?? WHO IS IT?? I NEED TO DEMONIZE SOMEONE, but not you my precious, not you...
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Oh man this makes me feel even worse! Its one to be manipulated for business decision, its another to be plainly dull with the designs.
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On September 19 2012 00:39 Offhand wrote:
"Yeah guys, all those poor decisions you've blamed on our parent company the past five years are actually all on us."
Hahaha, exactly what I was thinking.
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Blizzard was on a downward path long before activision got involved, no surprise here.
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On September 19 2012 00:40 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
Well tell me whose fault it is. I won't believe that it's you Blizzard it just can't be. Is it the US goverment? Is it the Aliens? The Nazis? The Jews? The terrorists?? WHO IS IT?? I NEED TO DEMONIZE SOMEONE, but not you my precious, not you...
fuckin 5 star post
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On September 19 2012 00:34 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +Ever since Blizzard merged with Activision, the World of WarCraft and StarCraft studio has often been accused of kow-towing to Activision's demands. However, WoW game director Tom Chilton says that Blizzard has more freedom than everyone thinks.
"I'll come out and say it. Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does [Activision-Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick," Chilton said during a Reddit Q&A. "We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once)."
Chilton adds that Activision asks "intelligent questions" about WoW's development. That's as far as the influence goes, though. They've never made any mandates, or mandates-disguised-as-suggestions, regarding the game.
Is Blizzard completely autonomous? No, they're a subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard at the end of the day. However, I think that a lot of Activision-Blizzard criticism is of the tinfoil hat territory. Bobby Kotick has gotten blamed for WoW expansions being released too quickly, Diablo 3's real-money auction house, StarCraft 2's DRM and so forth. He can apparently micromanage each of these games while also "milking" Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.
The reason the whole "Activision-Blizzard/Bobby Kotick is the devil" argument persists is that it's easy. It's much cleaner to just dump all responsibilities onto Kotick or "the evil suits." The truth of the matter, though, is that there are many, many people involved in making a game. Activision-Blizzard has several thousand employees across all of its divisions. You really think that only one guy or one shadowy room of executives is responsible for every fuck-up? Really?
That's the thing with evaluating games as a critic or player, though. You don't really get to peek inside at the process that produces the game. You can't tell whether this manager is a jerk-off or that QA tester is lazy or whatever. Our criticism ought to be focused on the final game that they produce. That seems like a better use of our time than pretending we know the exact chain of ev that led a company to produce bad DRM. Hardly anything really noteworthy to be honest. I thought some people already knew that Blizzard does their own thing.
99% of people don't know Blizzard is autonomous from Activision
Blizzard not living up to their previous games isn't an Activision thing. It's that the people Blizzard has now aren't the same people when Blizzard released their old games.
It's massively apparent with Jay Wilson's comments and overall game design decisions in D3.
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Why in gods name would you admit that you're a terrible game designer when the public believes its not your fault?!
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company creativity kind of died right after d2
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EPT
