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This is an interesting way to look at things. You're not wrong, HOTS felt like a shift in direction, but it's not like they were some kind of pioneers all the time. They've followed some trends in the past too. For example with Warcraft chasing Dune, etc.
Blizzard has always followed trends, but its games were typically more polished than the competing products.
Mario and other platformers -> Lost Vikings
Prince of Persia -> Blackthorne
Dune 2 -> WarCraft
Diablo - graphical roguelike envisioned by a thirdparty company Condor Games
Everquest -> WoW
I am sorry, but you are fetishizing similarities and ignoring differences. Nobody who played Everquest and WoW will tell you one game is a copy of the other. There are obvious innovations, and its not just "better UI" or "less bugs". If anything, Everquest has a better UI and less bugs, and is overall more polished.
Blizzard used to be innovative and lead trends, then they started to chase trends. They became 2big2fail, so they did their market research and focus group testing, and started doing what was working for others. That was the decline and fall. Not going from Vivendi's cock up their ass to Activision's cock up their ass.
It had a million problems, but it was widely sold, played, and even watched on streams. It was not a flop, despite everything. And it was Blizzard trying to lead, introducing a radical new feature.
Diablo 3 sold on its name alone, but in result it also tarnished the brand and in effect Diablo 4 is not a smashing hit.
This is exactly like Cyberpunk - it sold great based on the reputation of Witcher games, but it also cost CDProjekt all the goodwill it had previously earned.
Quests based leveling, faster leveling in general, some narrative, instanced dungeons, instanced PvP, didn't need a loading screen to change zones, low death penalties, more linear progression from quest hub/zone to the next, I think they might've created the input batching (your inputs are put in a package and sent together to the server, depending on latency) to make the game feel less laggy, etc, etc.
You can call it streamlining, but it was stuff WoW did, that Everquest didn't do, and that people prefered. Actually over time, WoW dropped some Everquest features (languages, weapon skills) and Everquest picked up some WoW features (quest based leveling). Both teams were fully aware who had the better design.
Please don't be a caricature and argue how this is all nothing and the popular thing is shit and the niche thing is great, just because.
This is an interesting way to look at things. You're not wrong, HOTS felt like a shift in direction, but it's not like they were some kind of pioneers all the time. They've followed some trends in the past too. For example with Warcraft chasing Dune, etc.
The more I think about this the more I disagree with whydoibother regarding HOTS failing due to Blizzard not being themselves when they made it. HOTS was still made using their general design philosophy Warcraft, Starcraft and WoW followed of take something with potential, add their own spin to it to utilize that potential. I would argue here that it's not so much that Blizzard's not using their winning formula with HOTS, but rather that the market has changed and their formula was no longer as effective as it was in a non-saturated pioneering market.
Starcraft and Diablo both benefited from online multiplayer out of the box when online gaming was really just starting and back when the only way to experience multiplayer in PC games was pretty much to go to an internet cafe. Also those games and later on WoW got a lot of fresh blood not familiar with the genres into them because of the social aspect of online/multiplayer gaming especially if you were a teen back then, you played them because other people played them and it was the new cool shit in your circle. And as you had less choice back then it was easier for one good online game to get really popular, so there was a lower market barrier of entry at least as far as competitor entrenchment was concerned.
Fast forward more than a decade later to when HOTS was getting released, dial-up is almost forgotten, almost everyone who can afford a computer can get broadband internet and even the latest generation of consoles can do online multiplayer out of the box. Online experiences also undergo a bunch of innovations (and decline like Pay2Win and microtransactions) during that time and Blizzard tries with HOTS to go against not one but two well entrenched competitors that have their own large competitive multiplayer fanbases of scale similar to their Starcraft. Also at that point HOTS isn't only competing with DOTA 2 and LoL, but also with every other popular online game as far as the "this is what kids now play online" market is concerned. I doubt making HOTS more casual or more hardcore or adding some classic late 90s blizzard design special ingredient to the MOBA formula could have helped in making it more of a success and dethroning LoL or DOTA 2.
I would argue here that it's not so much that Blizzard's not using their winning formula with HOTS, but rather that the market has changed and their formula was no longer as effective as it was in a non-saturated pioneering market.
What's the difference? The quality of the output is a function of the input and the market environment. They used to fit well. Then they didn't fit well. Thus the decline.
In a sense, we can't ever judge the quality of a game without also judging its compatibility with the market, as in, comparing it to other games available at the time and what people play at the time.
This was already the case in 2004-2005, when World of Warcraft was releasing. In fact I remember a printed magazine here calling it the first game of the home broadband era. The first online game that most people even here (small town Bulgaria) played from home and not from the internet cafe.
So I have to strongly counter-signal that part of the argument, I completely disagree that HotS, which released in 2015 (!!!) had its success or failure made by home internet availability. Fucks sake, at that point we've had video streaming being normalized for a while, and that's much more data intensive.
I think they might've created the input batching (your inputs are put in a package and sent together to the server, depending on latency) to make the game feel less laggy, etc, etc.
You can call it streamlining, but it was stuff WoW did, that Everquest didn't do, and that people prefered. Actually over time, WoW dropped some Everquest features (languages, weapon skills)
What's the difference? The quality of the output is a function of the input and the market environment. They used to fit well. Then they didn't fit well. Thus the decline.
In a sense, we can't ever judge the quality of a game without also judging its compatibility with the market, as in, comparing it to other games available at the time and what people play at the time.
Your claim ITT was that Blizzard was following a trend rather than take the lead with HOTS' development and that this was them not being themselves. My claim is that they still intended to take the lead as much as they did with previous titles, indeed design-wise HotS has a lot of brave design choices breaking away from the DOTA mold.
Also I disagree with them just "not fitting well", if anything HotS was a game made way too late and the same design would have worked fine if DOTA 2 and LoL weren't already old as hell by then. Which brings me to my other point...
So I have to strongly counter-signal that part of the argument, I completely disagree that HotS, which released in 2015 (!!!) had its success or failure made by home internet availability. Fucks sake, at that point we've had video streaming being normalized for a while, and that's much more data intensive.
The effect is indirect and an example of changes that went by over the years. Broadband availability lead to a maturation of the online gaming market some years before HotS was released and thus it lead to people getting into the genre with earlier titles. There was no untapped MOBA market by the time HotS came out, no stream of new online gamers who just got broadband looking for new games and "baby's first MOBA". HotS was a project doomed to fail not because of design, but rather because Blizzard went into a mature and saturated market that didn't have any prospects to grow unlike in the case of their prior "new franchises".
It was Blizzard leading, rather than following. And it did both reboot interest in RTS (Total Annihilations, AoE 3, Gray Goo, etc) and push the esports angle. Both fizzled, with esports going to Counter Strike and DOTA2/League, but both were attempts to lead.
Same with Diablo III. It tried to do a new thing with the real money auction house, which was a popular decision at the time. Diablo II already had real money auctions, they were just on third party websites. PoE has them too. The problem was that the auction house fucked the economy, because of how drop rates were. Blizzard quit on the feature, rather than balance it. I can't stress this enough, complains were about the balance, rather than the feature. There still is a real money economy for Diablo and all such games, but its outside of the game (and therefore outside of publisher protection).
Blizzard was trying to lead, until Heroes of the Storm. That was 100% them following a trend. That was 100% them doing what Activision ordered. That's when Blizzard died, when they stopped trying to lead and started to follow.
Auction house was not a popular decision at all, and was panned by a lot of people at the time. And just because people sold diablo items on 3rd party sites doesn't mean an official way to sell them is a good idea. Not to mention it clashes with atmosphere/immersion to buy items with RL money.
Lol, it was the expansion that truly killed the "classic" wow experience (even if the decline came with Lich King, and maybe earlier). Just seems weird making this part of classic.
also some mayan themed xpansion sounds cool
though I don't play D4
but maybe i'd give it a try if the xpac ends up having cool environments idk
maybe they'll do a 66.6% off sale
Overwatch:
looking forward to new porn
Hearthstone:
nobody cares
Retail WoW:
ok i guess new zones look cool i like spiders
really retail just gets better as long as they add cool new dungeons
hopefully the new talent tree finally gives us a real necromancer dk spec
Classic WoW:
idk who has time for this shit
Rumble:
mobile gacha shit where you don't collect big tit anime babes?
no thanks
It was Blizzard leading, rather than following. And it did both reboot interest in RTS (Total Annihilations, AoE 3, Gray Goo, etc) and push the esports angle. Both fizzled, with esports going to Counter Strike and DOTA2/League, but both were attempts to lead.
Not at all. Not sure whether I made a post here or elsewhere regarding that topic before but Blizzard basically did nothing and botched everything. Starcraft 2 was in every way inferior to its predecessor. However, they wanted to succeed in a big way, so they needed to kill off SC:BW which they did by suing the Korean television companies as well as the leagues. Needless to say, that created kind of an issue attracting sponsors for BW stuff. At the same time, they also put heavy pressure on community-run servers (mainly fish and another one of which the name eludes me at the moment), forcing them to fold.
So with the lawsuits they bullied everyone to switch but, needless to say, people weren't exactly happy being forced to play/watch an inferior game, so over time, it died off...despite Blizzard pumping millions into the scene. And while they definitely used the esports angle, they simply took over the already existing infrastructure (leagues, television channels, governing body in South Korea; leagues and bodies elsewhere (like Europe, where the BW and Warcraft III communities got funneled towards SC2)). And sure, they were successful for a while, despite the game...which was simply due to their brand. At that point, you were still able to stamp "Blizzard" on it and people would come in droves. (It's still the case today but not nearly how it was back then.) And it should come to no one's surprise that despite the money, people switched back to their games where possible. It's why "Back2Warcraft" became big and it's why lots of former professionals retired and started steaming on Afreeca, making many times the amount of money they would in SC2, as hundreds of thousands of Koreans wanted to watch BW and not SC2. And that's still the case today as it was back then. If you look at what players earn from balloons alone (basically what Twitch copied and what became "bits"):
And that's only that part, excluding money from advertisements and ads from other streaming services/video websites. Last year, BW was also the most-streamed game, overshadowing LoL in Korea. What's interesting about LoL in Korea is that it took off because Blizzard started killing BW. Those who wanted nothing to do with SC2 and had trouble staying with BW (as the amateur infrastructure had yet to be built (and as I said, Blizzard also forced community-run servers to go offline)) went on to LoL. One of the most famous BW players (working as a coach for a LoL team at the time) even said that the current mood in LoL is very much like the one of those pioneering days of BW.
As a side note: CS was always very large in competitive gaming/esports, especially in Europe. LoL profited heavily from experienced BW players and personnel migrating in South Korea and elsewhere, already established organizations (ESL and the like) picked up the slack. Not to mention the attitude elsewhere had always been there. Here in Germany, we had team houses before they became a thing in South Korea. We also had a TV channel broadcasting matches of a lot of different games. The main difference was that the audience was much smaller and sponsors were more part of the scene in general (peripherals, PC parts etc), rather than how it was in South Korea with large companies sponsoring things and how it is today with DHL and the like pouring money into it. DotA 2 simply benefited from Valve, apart from China where it always had been gigantic, though, DotA tournaments and series obviously had always been a thing too. Blizzard never had the "esports crown" as it went from BW (where they had no involvement) towards LoL which was directly caused by them.
So you can say that bully Blizzard went up to BW, slapped the ball out of their hand but instead of bouncing towards Blizzard, it went to LoL instead.
My exports journey was Unreal/Quake -> Counter Strike and Warcraft III -> Starcraft II -> DOTA2, I don't have the earlier context.
I will maintain that Blizzard was an industry leader in pushing StarCraft II's esports, with its official brands, commentators in suits, models taking interviews, treating the players like athletes, etc, at least in the west. It may have been built on something older, but at the time nobody other than them was doing it.
My exports journey was Unreal/Quake -> Counter Strike and Warcraft III -> Starcraft II -> DOTA2, I don't have the earlier context.
I will maintain that Blizzard was an industry leader in pushing StarCraft II's esports, with its official brands, commentators in suits, models taking interviews, treating the players like athletes, etc, at least in the west. It may have been built on something older, but at the time nobody other than them was doing it.
I watched pretty much everything that was shown here (which was a lot): CS 1.6, Unreal Tournament, Enemy Territory, Day of Defeat, BW, Warcraft 3, Dawn of War, Call of Duty 2, DotA, Simracing etc etc, some Fifa too, although that was boring (really formulaic).
Sure, they pushed Starcraft II's esports by putting money into it, aka artificially propping it up. But they did nothing to progress esports in general. Commentators in suits, while more an Asian thing, was already present in "the West" for something like Red Alert 3. Treating the players like athletes was already a thing, like I said, with team houses, lots of interviews, dedicated websites, leagues, play days, live coverage and lots more. Heck, the WCGs
were pretty big before that. There were also female CS 1.6 teams and all that jazz with "female representation" etc but back then it was more "normal" and not as screechy and "identity politicky" as it is nowadays.
In my opinion, competitive gaming/esports peaked in the mid 00s when everything was a lot more natural. The biggest sponsors in the scene outside of Asia and worldwide events were the likes of Intel, AMD who were just happy that things got done and played. BW was surging to extreme heights in South Korea with a live attendance of 120000 for one event in 2005 (or was it 2006?), Boxer being the most popular person in South Korea, ahead of all movie/TV celebrities and the army (which is hardcore) establishing their own BW team, so that players could practice and participate even during mandatory service.
The LoL/Starcraft 2/DoTA 2/CS:GO era was/is decline because of shit like no-LAN Starcraft 2 and other games not having LAN either. The emergence of garbage programs like Discord instead of Teamspeak, Ventrilo where you could have your own servers and also the mostly-death of IRC is another point marking the decline. While the influx of money isn't bad by itself, those sponsors or gaming companies wanting to exert influence is. It's why we got stuff like Gabe Newell banning a commentator from all events, Blizzard kicking out viewers for showing some faces on signs and the general politicization of everything (Russians not being allowed to participate for their country etc).
(Meh, wanted to post some pictures of the female 1.6 teams but it seems THE German esports website closed its doors at the end of 2021. It's a shame because it had a ton of pictures from events etc. I guess it's another sign that exemplifies where the whole scene went.)
I am sorry, but you are fetishizing similarities and ignoring differences. Nobody who played Everquest and WoW will tell you one game is a copy of the other.
It's not really a controversial take, in fact I think this is something that the original devs even admitted: WoW was their own version of EQ that they made for themselves primarily. Blizzard poached a lot of EQ talent both from their development team and top end guilds to come work on WoW. But not everything was just taken from EQ. For example the talent trees, the UI and instanced dungeons were copied from Asheron's Call 2.
Also as a side thought I always felt in Vanilla that there was something off about WoW in that the WarCraft stuff wasn't done in reverence of the previous games. The characters you played as and their skills didn't really hearken back to WC1-3. A lot of the iconic skills and spells were only added in later expansions after much bitching. It didn't feel like they cared too much to make it a proper WarCraft game so they used the aesthetic but went off to do their own thing.
amazing on so many levels. pay us to relive your youth when our game wasn't an overgrown mess, except we're going to successively reintroduce all the mess, so that you may relive your youth ending and you growing up to be jaded.
perhaps i shouldn't cast stones myself, given that i played guild wars instead lol
It was Blizzard leading, rather than following. And it did both reboot interest in RTS (Total Annihilations, AoE 3, Gray Goo, etc) and push the esports angle. Both fizzled, with esports going to Counter Strike and DOTA2/League, but both were attempts to lead.
Same with Diablo III. It tried to do a new thing with the real money auction house, which was a popular decision at the time. Diablo II already had real money auctions, they were just on third party websites. PoE has them too. The problem was that the auction house fucked the economy, because of how drop rates were. Blizzard quit on the feature, rather than balance it. I can't stress this enough, complains were about the balance, rather than the feature. There still is a real money economy for Diablo and all such games, but its outside of the game (and therefore outside of publisher protection).
Blizzard was trying to lead, until Heroes of the Storm. That was 100% them following a trend. That was 100% them doing what Activision ordered. That's when Blizzard died, when they stopped trying to lead and started to follow.
I would argue two of your points. I think the primary issue with the auction house was how difficult it was to find and compare items. This is due to the affix system and random quality levels on a single item. I think it would have succeeded if, say, you could only list unique/set items and gems and every pair of Frostburn gauntlets had the same stats.
Second, Heroes was too late. They did try to lead that genre away from some bad design conventions, but by the time they launched those decisions had become calcified. (Last hitting, only playing on one map, etc) They didn't understand that since that game was basically a sport, people would be open to adding a 3 point line, but nobody wanted the game to fundamentally change. They built too many and too complicated maps.
Map selection was a big element of RTS esports, so it's no surprise that people who didn't really play MOBA thought that could be their unique value proposition.
