“It must be quite disconcerting to game companies who make a faithful
sequel to game over a decade ago and have people take issues with the
game that were present in the ‘beloved original’.”
What beloved originals could you possibly be talking about? I
sincerely hope this isn’t a reference to the Diablo series. Because
Diablo 3 is NOT good and is certainly not faithful to the original
games. I would not be surprised if five years from now, there were
more people playing Diablo 2 than Diablo 3.
Blizzard did not even make the Diablo series. Blizzard North did.
Blizzard has no experience making RPGs (WoW is an MMORPG and is
fundamentally different). They didn’t even bother hiring people who
knew how to make RPGs. They hired Jay Wilson to be their lead designer
for Diablo 3, a man who had never worked on an RPG before. In one of
their podcasts he talked about how he started playing Diablo 2 while
he was interviewing to work with Blizzard.
I don’t know why anyone isn’t writing huge essays detailing every
pathetic, stupid design decision that went into this horrible game.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter, because their player retention is going
to be even worse than SC2 if it isn’t already. Blizzard has
effectively murdered all their goodwill for all of their key
franchises at this point. The expansions to SC2, D3, and WoW will not
be setting any sales records.
I remember saying that Warcraft 3 was the ‘end of the Warcraft franchise’ because I felt it was such a failure compared to Warcraft 2. It just goes to show that our perceptions of these video games are very much warped by our generation.
It is humorous to me to see the PC gaming market (of RTS, MMO, and Action RPG) become split into two camps: the pro-Blizzard one and the anti-Blizzard one. Usually, when I don’t like a game I just don’t play it. I don’t go on a jihad against the company. So it fascinates me as to what makes an Anti-Blizzard gamer tick.
What is interesting is that the Anti-Blizzard schtick is new. What it used to be was an Anti-Warcraft or Anti-Starcraft or Anti-Diablo schtick. For example, Command and Conquer fans prided themselves that they didn’t play that ‘Warcraft filth’ with its ‘cartoony characters’. The same complaints then are being made today with the exception that now they are directed at the company instead of the franchise.
For example, if someone played another MMO instead of WoW, they would be anti-WoW saying “WoW sucks.” OK. Fine. But today, that person doesn’t say “WoW sucks.” He says, “Blizzard sucks.” What caused the shift to the company as opposed to the game?
As longtime readers know, hatred is a sign of health in the entertainment business. When a product of entertainment is loved, it (for reasons unknown to everyone) also creates vocal haters. You can’t have love without hate. It is why a sappy girlfriend totally turns 180 degrees and hates the guy and then turns around and loves the guy again. One reason why I could tell the Wii was going to be so successful was the amount of vitriol and hate it spawned. Passionate hatred is just as indicative of entertainment success as passionate love. If this is true, then Blizzard is flying high as being a lightning rod for all these passions. A company in decline would not be attracting any passion, hatred or love.
And this concerns me about the Wii U and Nintendo. I do not see any passionate hatred for the Wii U out there or Nintendo. All I see are ‘yawns’ which is very bad. The Wii U is not stimulating anyone’s passion. Maybe that will change when more people have hands on experience with it.
Emailer, I do wish to quote you something you said:
They hired Jay Wilson to be their lead designer
for Diablo 3, a man who had never worked on an RPG before. In one of
their podcasts he talked about how he started playing Diablo 2 while
he was interviewing to work with Blizzard.
Newsflash: No one at Blizzard worked on an RPG before they made World of Warcraft. They were all RTS veterans, and you can see how some of that RTS design entered the game. The current lead on World of Warcraft is Ghostcrawler who was a RTS director with the Age of Empires series.
Second Newsflash: Jay Wilson has been playing Diablo 2 since its release. It’s hilarious how people took Jay’s words about him picking up the game again once he got assigned to the sequel as if he had never played the game before. In an interview with 1up from 2008:
While the Barbarian was what I played when the game came out, my Necromancer is all I really play now. He’s in the 90s and has pretty much gotten everything he can get, so all I do is run around and kill things to see if something superawesome drops. But my Barbarian was my first class, and my Necromancer is my main. While I did play each class to take it to Hell difficulty, those two were my loves. I had a pretty cool Sorceress, but I don’t think I got her as high.
Jay Wilson comments on why he still played Diablo 2 despite the existence of MMOs like WoW:
So I think Diablo 3 fills a hole, even for people who play other kinds of RPGs, like MMOs. I’m a big fan of MMOs and most RPGs, but I still play Diablo 2 because there’s nothing that really gives me that experience of having all the awesomeness of an action game with all the reward and progression of an RPG.
So Jay Wilson was playing Diablo 2 just as long as any of the biggest Diablo 2 fans.
We don’t kow the full story of what went on with Blizzard North. What we do know is that Blizzard North’s version of Diablo 3 was to be a MMO.
Let us hear it from the horse’s own mouth. This is from Schaefer:
“You know, when I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft. Blizzard obviously changed that pretty quickly, so we left to start Flagship Studios and we brought in a lot of the guys, so they rebooted with their own team.”
What becomes apparent is that there is a business conflict here. The original Diablo 3 developers wanted to make the game an MMO, but Blizzard already had a MMO with World of Warcraft. The business runners at Blizzard did not want Diablo to compete with World of Warcraft.
Now if you listen to Jay Wilson in that interview, you hear how he differentiates the Diablo experience compared to the World of Warcraft experience. He says he kept playing Diablo 2 despite the existence of WoW because Diablo 2 was different. This emphasis of differentiation might have been what got Jay Wilson the job as director of Diablo 3.
I made an earlier post commenting about the crying about Diablo 3 and pointing out that these players were trying to play the game like a MMORPG. Diablo is not a game about progression unlike WoW. Beating Diablo on Inferno doesn’t mean you are ‘finished’ with the game. The game doesn’t revolve around progression but around loot. While the four acts use the same art and all, the gear does not. Actual progression is with the loot. When I looked at some of the complainers, I realized they were playing the game incorrectly. They kept trying to play Diablo 3 into a MMORPG.
These same players who thought Diablo 3 meant never having to play WoW again are now resubscribing to WoW and anticipating Mists of Pandaria. Because Diablo 3 differentiated itself from the MMORPG, Blizzard has retained the WoW customers. And this is why Blizzard North got fired, and why Jay Wilson got the job.
