Schreier's pieces may be controversial and paint entities (normally Blizzard) in a negative light, but I'm glad someone actually digs into these issues and exposes them rather than letting them silently fade into the night. Personally I'd prefer having something a little more objective to read, but very few actually care to dig this deep and if some bias is the trade-off then so be it.
So much for the old "when it's ready" philosophy this once great company used to have. Now it's more like "just in time for the quarterly report" so they can inflate their numbers to convince their shareholders that yes, they do indeed deserve funding as a gaming company. All the while delivering unmitigated garbage on all fronts, and basically destroying every franchise they own that used to be good but now it's just meh (see WoW, overwatch, hearsthone, hots, diablo, W3). What they don't realize is that they might be making profits now, but eventually you reap what you sow. I for one will not preorder D2 and will not even consider playing it unless it gets stellar reviews post launch. Tired of feeding into this sick machine.
Jason Schreier is being act/blizz's stepping stone.I bet he will close this company in a few years!
It's really not Activision's fault if Blizzard development overpromised on a product without really convincing upper management it was worth the budget required.
Removed
If WC3R would be the same as the classic version, but with better graphics (and the missing new features communicated early), nobody would have had a problem with the game.I don't care about ladder or other side-game stuff, but I do care about the campaign.There is a scene in the classic version where Arthas yells: "I will follow you to the end of the world, ...", while he lifts his hammer.In WC3R this animation is missing, Arthas does simply not lift his hammer to show his threatening emotions.The lack of this tiny animation in this scene takes away a lot of the original spirit of the story. I am afraid there are other unpolished cutscenes I don't know of yet.I would compare both on youtube, but I can not even get myself over to watch or play any version WC3, it feels like something got lost :(If Blizzard wants to be a good company again in my eyes, they have to:- Fix the cutscenes of WC3R in a way they are comparable and not subpar to classic WC3- Use the entire World of Warcraft for evergreen non-progression content in WoW- Make a StarCraft sequel, even an action game would be great(I know, Blizzard has other issues to deal with, especially currently. But honestly, as their customer, I care about their products foremost.I also try to be generally agnostic to politics in order to stay away from problems that are not mine to bear)
This isn't just a gaming industry problem, its-at its heart- a capitalism problem.Before anyone jumps on the bandwagon to accuse me of being a Marxist or advocating communism, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that at some undefined point in a companies growth, the gears begin shifting from a product that people care for, to a product that generates money, and money only. The larger a company gets, the more it is beholden to faceless share-holders and CEOs who rarely, if ever, do a week (or even a day) of entry-level work in the office to take the temperature of the room, to see how staff are coping and getting on, and how the morale and atmosphere is across the company with both workers and consumers alike. It becomes a race to the bottom competition for profit, at the expense of everything else: long-term sustainability, legalities, or even peoples health.Blizzard is a prime example of this: what started out as an ambitious project by a few dozen nerds, all with deep love and passion for the game in the days of Vanilla and TBC has become a corporate-driven number-crunching machine where everything is optimised to the last detail to compel their dwindling playerbase to spend as much time as possible chasing the dragon. To use the example of Classic TBC: all your gear is fairly within reach. Even if it takes a while to grind (such as, say, Consortium Exalted reputation for the unlimited key for Yor or the faction neck) one way or another, you will eventually reach it. Blizzard worked out, however, that this means that it ensures that, eventually, you'll inevitably receive it. So what they have done is lock player power and progression purely behind RNG with drops in raids, keeping people on the hamster wheel in the hope of getting the upgrade they actually need. You could get it in a single raid lockout: it could be a dozen, it could be thirty, or even more. And unlike TBC, there's no real reputation or grind alternative to gain a placeholder: crafting gear is terrible and Mythic+ has the same issue, even with the Great Vault. This isn't touching on the multitude of issues that come with borrowed power, and have grown increasingly obvious over the years: artifacts in Legion, azerite in BFA, and overall gearing issues in SL. Removal of Master Looter exacerbated these, too.The point of this example is to show that Blizzard used to reward time spent grinding for the things you wanted or needed by ensuring that it was inevitable you would get it, with no element of chance involved. Nowadays, you are at the mercy of the RNG and little to nothing is there as a backup, and what is is often sub-par compared to the upgrade you could have earned in previous expansions. They do this because offering guaranteed reward is less profitable than offering random reward: guaranteed reward means less player interaction, which in turn equals lower interest in the game. Keeping people on the hamster wheel artificially keeps players engaged and playing, even if they aren't happy with how the game is working or handling. This profit-driven mindset extends to everything else they do: from canning Heroes of the Storm because it wasnt an appealing esports game to the mind-boggling grind of Hearthstone to the disaster of Reforged, it all comes back to their profit-chasing mania.You can have a perfectly healthy manner of making money and keeping players happy. Blizzard used to have that, and now they no longer do. And unless they want to lose everything, a complete company rethink is badly needed.
It's amazing they would think a remaster/remake couldn't be a cash cow after the success Enix has had with the FF series remaster/remakes and how well the Resident Evil remaster/remakes have done.Activision was always going to be a problem. They churn out new C.O.D. junk yearly for a steady cash flow. Blizzard is the studio that outright cancelled multiple titles after years of development because they weren't good enough. Those two philosophies don't jive together and it's easy to see which one worked out.WC3 Refored made big promises and then they weren't given the time to fulfill them. The standard of quality the name Blizzard used to guarantee has evaporated. I will never pre-order a stand alone game from them again.
So Jason got picked up by Bloomberg eh? You guys DO remember that Jason was with Kotaku right? You DO recall his Blizzard favoritism right? Now he's shilling for Bloomberg and attacking Blizzard left right and center. Not that Blizzard does not absolutely deserve to be shellacked at every opportunity for their mistakes both in and out of game, but c'mon man Jason "WOKEMAN" Schrier? You gonna trust THAT hack?
Well I am not surprised, Im just glad D2 is getting the time and money it deserve.
it's so sad to ruin your reputation and games based on nothing but damn greed.... every bad decision they make comes from greed.. do the higher up boomers that don't care about games not at least realize that if they actually invested more time and money into their games they would end up making more money and make people want to come back/stay... instead of disappointing everyone time and time again and eventually losing a lot more. i'm just sad to see something i've loved for 15 years destroy itself because of pure greed...
Been saying Activision Actively sabotages its own products and here is the proof