Blizzard used to make not just my favorite PC games, but some amazing console games too (see Rock and Roll Racing for the SNES). Then we read…
Jay “F that Loser!” Wilson saying there will be no team based pvp in Diablo 3…
PvP was a promised feature for Diablo 3 which was then ‘delayed’ after release because Blizzard ‘wanted to get it right’. It was promised for this year. I was going to make a blog post at the end of this year going, “Where is my promised Diablo 3 pvp Jay Wilson!?”
I’ll never forget this. In 2004, when WoW was erupting, an Origin employee who worked on Ultima Online was telling us that Blizzard was finished. This was contrary to Blizzard really skyrocketing as a company then. He said, paraphrasing, “World of Warcraft will change the company.” We all know this is true. While some argue about the art styles and lore issues, the truly significant change was the shift of Blizzard changing their platform to the Internet. After WoW, all their games became Internet based.
Is that so bad? I didn’t think so at the time. The Internet is ripe for innovation. What better way for a gaming company to utilize the Internet more for gaming than one who is behind the biggest MMORPG? Blizzard’s rise was due to the Internet from Kali in Warcraft 2 to Battle Net in Starcraft and Warcraft 3. People say Blizzard doesn’t innovate, but they do not observe Blizzard’s relationship with the Internet. Blizzard sticking Kali onto the Warcraft 2 CD was a radical act. Blizzard creating completely free Battle Net was a radical act. Anyone who says Blizzard does nothing but ‘polish’ other people’s gameplay isn’t paying attention.
Blizzard also used to put out more products. Starcraft Brood War was released the same year as the original Starcraft. Blizzard put out products every year. You didn’t have to wait that long going from Warcraft 2 to Starcraft to Warcraft 3. After WoW, every game kept getting ‘infinitely delayed’.
The behavior of gamers is to buy games and buy more games. By shifting the platform to the Internet, Blizzard is creating hamster wheels in the online games for ‘endless game time’.
I ask: Is it normal for people to play a single game all the time for YEARS? Of course not. Just because WoW obtained that doesn’t mean every Blizzard game should have that. Yet, Blizzard is designing their games with an Internet context where a person should play the same game for years. This sounds like some sort of sick torture to me. Playing the same game for many years! I like to revisit games, but I enjoy new ones too. It would be like Nintendo putting out a Super Mario Brothers and adding nothing but DLC for half a decade or more. (damn it!)
With the expectation of playing a game for a decade (which no games have, not even the Blizzard classics were designed for the intention of playing for a decade) due to the shift to the Internet as platform, there is extreme anxiety on Blizzard.
I am sure there are fantastic ideas inside Blizzard. But the fear that a game may not be played for half a decade or more by itself creates a fear which creates the ‘actual product’.
Many people don’t remember but there used to be passionate hatred for Blizzard products that doesn’t exist today. The ‘hatred’ we see today are not directed at the game but at the company which is a very big difference. People don’t ‘hate’ Diablo 3, they think the game is just meh. What they ‘hate’ is Blizzard. However, back in the day, Blizzard was a non-issue. Some people LOVED Warcraft 2, Diablo, and Starcraft. Many other people HATED Warcraft 2, Diablo, and Starcraft.
“Who would hate these classic games?” asks the reader. First off, it would be the competitors’ games such as Command and Conquer, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, and the other RTS games. Diablo haters would be every RPG player out there. I abhorred Diablo at first because the game seemed like a spiritual successor to Ultima VIII which is not where I wanted RPGs to go.
The original Blizzard games had people LOVING it and HATING it at the same time. Today, Blizzard’s games are stuck somewhere in between. You won’t find passionate love or passionate hatred for Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, or Starcraft 2 today. All the ‘hatred’ you see is directed at the company. Everyone agrees the games are ‘competent’ which is a nice way of saying boring.
The good thing about putting out many games is that you can be more experimental. When you only put out a game every half decade, you become more risk averse.
I am sure there are people in Blizzard who want to experiment but the management layers won’t allow it. Did you know that Starcraft multiplayer revolved mostly around the map called ‘Big Game Hunters’ which was a map with absurd amount of resources? Today, Blizzard wouldn’t allow such a map into the ladder pool because ‘absurd amount of resources’ is not good for ladder play. Meanwhile, Blizzard is losing the marketshare of Internet gaming to League of Legends and other such games. While those players are not very good and the games are “terrible”, they are fun. Good games are fun games even if they are terrible.
The picture above sums up my thoughts of where Blizzard is at. Blizzard is making incremental improvements to WoW, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3, but they need to be past the Big Frickin’ Wall.
Life is short for both the gamer and game developer. We don’t want to be playing the same game for a decade. Stop making good games and start making fun games. How about making more small games like Blackthorn or Rock and Roll Racing? That’d be cool. Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo started as ‘small games’. I’d like to see Blizzard make something new.
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