This writeup made me sad. I really miss the old Blizzard before they merged with Activision, but to be completely fair I think they lost that magic long before that happened. It was at one time...
This writeup made me sad. I really miss the old Blizzard before they merged with Activision, but to be completely fair I think they lost that magic long before that happened. It was at one time completely understandable to be a Blizzard fanboy; every game they released felt like it was a massive improvement over everything they released before. Warcraft II made the first Warcraft seem antiquated, and Warcraft III did the same to Warcraft II.
It's funny when the Activision-Microsoft merger was announced, I asked my son, "What games does Activision make?" The quick answer was "none of the ones we play." Today you might look at...
It's funny when the Activision-Microsoft merger was announced, I asked my son, "What games does Activision make?" The quick answer was "none of the ones we play."
Today you might look at Activision and think "they bought a lot of other game studios and keep making the same game over and over" but when they got started they were a bunch of programmers who broke off from Atari to establish a brand for games that were clearly better than what you'd seen before: that meant games like
and colorful packaging that communicated a brand promise. (If only the colorful gradients that the Atari 2600 could draw better than future game consoles for a decade or so)
I know they went through more than one near death experience and multiple rounds of acquisitions (going back to Infocom!) it's sad to see how featureless they've become... And soon will be part of a company that doesn't seem to care about games very much.
I'm of mixed feelings. I think the problems with Blizzard under Activision are more symptoms of the video games market itself rather than the company. They've still been capable of putting out...
I'm of mixed feelings. I think the problems with Blizzard under Activision are more symptoms of the video games market itself rather than the company.
They've still been capable of putting out good stuff. Diablo III was rough at launch but improved a lot with Reaper of Souls/the patches around that time. I haven't played Diablo IV yet, but I played the beta and it was really great. StarCraft II was, for me, a worthy sequel to the original which itself was one of my favorite games of all time -- and I played a lot of StarCraft II. My only real criticism of it would be that they bungled the UMS/custom maps stuff at release (it had an AMAZING scenario editor, but setting up/joining custom games was a hassle and kind of stunted the whole scene).
I'm not much of an Overwatch fan but clearly lots of people found something to love there. It just isn't/wasn't my kind of game personally. Neither was Hearthstone. And while I enjoyed WoW once upon a time, including after the takeover, I've never felt the need to play an MMO endlessly.
I had Diablo 3 on my XBOX for years, I finally thought I'd try it out just before Diablo 4 hit the news. My take was similar to the author's in that the technical virtuosity of the game is...
I had Diablo 3 on my XBOX for years, I finally thought I'd try it out just before Diablo 4 hit the news.
My take was similar to the author's in that the technical virtuosity of the game is amazing. My son said he didn't believe you could procedurally generate something like that. Overall I had fun but I wasn't about to play it through a second time.
I was a little disappointed I couldn't find an equipment table online to support me in making decisions, of course this is impossible because the equipment is different every time. Overall I did feel satisfaction in my character getting stronger I did feel like managing equipment was a chore which primarily revolved around keeping my inventory from filling up. It was hard to be excited about getting better gear because I'd be having to get rid of so much of it yet and it was a burden to decide what was worth keeping that probably didn't matter than much because I'd get something better anyway.
This writeup made me sad. I really miss the old Blizzard before they merged with Activision, but to be completely fair I think they lost that magic long before that happened. It was at one time completely understandable to be a Blizzard fanboy; every game they released felt like it was a massive improvement over everything they released before. Warcraft II made the first Warcraft seem antiquated, and Warcraft III did the same to Warcraft II.
It's funny when the Activision-Microsoft merger was announced, I asked my son, "What games does Activision make?" The quick answer was "none of the ones we play."
Today you might look at Activision and think "they bought a lot of other game studios and keep making the same game over and over" but when they got started they were a bunch of programmers who broke off from Atari to establish a brand for games that were clearly better than what you'd seen before: that meant games like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitfall!
and colorful packaging that communicated a brand promise. (If only the colorful gradients that the Atari 2600 could draw better than future game consoles for a decade or so)
I know they went through more than one near death experience and multiple rounds of acquisitions (going back to Infocom!) it's sad to see how featureless they've become... And soon will be part of a company that doesn't seem to care about games very much.
I'm of mixed feelings. I think the problems with Blizzard under Activision are more symptoms of the video games market itself rather than the company.
They've still been capable of putting out good stuff. Diablo III was rough at launch but improved a lot with Reaper of Souls/the patches around that time. I haven't played Diablo IV yet, but I played the beta and it was really great. StarCraft II was, for me, a worthy sequel to the original which itself was one of my favorite games of all time -- and I played a lot of StarCraft II. My only real criticism of it would be that they bungled the UMS/custom maps stuff at release (it had an AMAZING scenario editor, but setting up/joining custom games was a hassle and kind of stunted the whole scene).
I'm not much of an Overwatch fan but clearly lots of people found something to love there. It just isn't/wasn't my kind of game personally. Neither was Hearthstone. And while I enjoyed WoW once upon a time, including after the takeover, I've never felt the need to play an MMO endlessly.
I had Diablo 3 on my XBOX for years, I finally thought I'd try it out just before Diablo 4 hit the news.
My take was similar to the author's in that the technical virtuosity of the game is amazing. My son said he didn't believe you could procedurally generate something like that. Overall I had fun but I wasn't about to play it through a second time.
I was a little disappointed I couldn't find an equipment table online to support me in making decisions, of course this is impossible because the equipment is different every time. Overall I did feel satisfaction in my character getting stronger I did feel like managing equipment was a chore which primarily revolved around keeping my inventory from filling up. It was hard to be excited about getting better gear because I'd be having to get rid of so much of it yet and it was a burden to decide what was worth keeping that probably didn't matter than much because I'd get something better anyway.