Has there ever been a bigger fall from grace than Blizzard...

Has there ever been a bigger fall from grace than Blizzard? 15 years ago everybody absolutely loved them and now most people hate their guts and its rare to see a positive word spoken about them. What happened?

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they started to make money, money started to talk... you know the whole story.

activision

They started making good games.

starcraft literally killed the rts genre

What are you talking about? Overwatch is critically acclaimed

Activision.

You know how I know you never go anywhere other than Sup Forums?

They were always shit

Yeah so is everything they make, but more people have bad things to say about overwatch and everything else they made after the first two wow xpacs than good things. Theres actual reasons for why people feel this way and not just because "oh people hate everything".

Their games had such longevity in part because they were really good, but also because on smaller computer platforms there frequently wasn't much else to play. Blizzard built a lot of good will that way, even unofficially supporting some platforms through third party compatibility layers.

Then more games started coming out for those other platforms, and upper management at Blizzard started seeing them as an unnecessary expense and actually started banning users for playing through compatibility layers. That made the rose tinted glasses come off, and the core of players on those minor platforms started to drift off to play other things which created a net effect of their friends also leaving to play other things.

Fast forward to today. Management has made Blizzard into a console-first company whose only recent game is Windows-only on PC and engineered in a way to purposefully make compatibility with other platforms difficult. This at a time when Windows is going to shit and arguably their biggest competitor who used to be Windows-only has fully embraced cross-platform gaming bringing thousands of games to Linux.

Terrible WoW expansions, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 being far from decent, HotS being... HotS.

Overwatch is the first decent game they've made in a long time.

micro
transactions

it made them able to be successful whether they make a good product or not

You are talking about how Sup Forums sees blizzard right?

Well what happened was that Sup Forums decided to be Contrarian

They're appealing to a more casual audience which kills the game in the long run.
Overwatch will also fail if they don't improve competitive (which they're trying to do)

>and now most people hate their guts
You should not base the consent of the internet on Sup Forums alone.

>rare to see a positive word spoken about them
Only on Sup Forums who collectively hate anything modern

You're delusional. Stay off Sup Forums.

Activision

You do realise this isnt centralized to just Sup Forums, right? Sup Forums has shit on Blizzard forever, regardless of what goes on with them.

>Management has made Blizzard into a console-first company
Do you actually believe this or are you just fishing?
>This at a time when Windows is going to shit and arguably their biggest competitor who used to be Windows-only has fully embraced cross-platform gaming bringing thousands of games to Linux.
I have no idea what you are trying to say, but I'm going to laugh at you for having "thousands of games" and Linux in the same sentence

Exactly, Contrarian.

>people are STILL blizzdrones in 2017
what the fuck
even in 2007 i thought you people were pathetic

>I have no idea what you are trying to say,

I can play Dota2 or TF2 on any of my machines.
It runs on my Apple laptop which is good for casual gaming, or my Linux desktop which is hooked up to a big monitor for work but which is also great for gaming, or on my Windows tablet which really isn't very good for gaming.

Overwatch would only run on my Windows tablet, or on consoles I have no interest in buying.

>"thousands of games" and Linux in the same sentence

Keep living in denial. Lots of developers have no interest in being locked in by Windows 10.

Steam 3085 Linux games
GoG 1906 Linux games
Itch.io 8292 Linux games

That's Linux native only, not counting emulators or compatibility layers which is kind of weighting things against Linux since Windows 10 runs legacy Win32 games the same way but nobody seems to have counted all the games that are broken.

...

I can't imagine what kind of bubble you must live in to have this delusion that people overwhelmingly dislike overwatch

Windows tablet is not designed for gaming

Developers are also not interested om wasting time, money and man power on products that nobody uses

They figured that it's okay to be hated when you're making approximately all the money.

Well they literally have 3 games, 4 with Overwatch. Nobody cares about Blizzard except people who play on battle.net.

Even then their last truly great game was Warcraft 3, and I say this as a faggot that has played WoW since vanilla.

Bioware is worse. Blizz got greedy, but Bioware turned into something horrible. I still give Blizz games a chance. I tell other people NOT to try Bioware games.

They employ PR people and psychologists, they abuse cheap tactics to get advertising and keep people playing their shit.

In the past they just used to make good games, it's cheaper and more effective to be cuntrags tho.

Valve fell more than Blizzard

At least Blizzard still makes games

Sup Forums isn't real life. People love blizzard and their games are incredibly popular.

One of the lead WoW devs simplified all the classes because he couldn't play his hunter properly on his tablet.

15 years ago the internet basically didnt exist

if you HAPPENED to be on a forum or newsgroup 15 years ago, there was just as much hate for blizzard back then for selling out and ruining WC by making WC2

all in all, if you think this is anything new youre confirmed for being

...

>15 years ago the internet basically didnt exist
>the internet didn't exist in 2002

Valve are far worse than Blizzard

Draw pad, not tablet. And you're probably overestimate how much power that one guy has

15 years ago was 2002, not fucking 1990

Fuck, I'd been playing Runescape for a year in 2002

>Has there ever been a bigger fall from grace than Blizzard?
Yeah, lots. EA, Ubisoft, THQ, Bill Cosby.
>15 years ago everybody absolutely loved them and now most people hate their guts and its rare to see a positive word spoken about them.
Completely false; you might rant about them here constantly, but almost everywhere else people are still at least warm towards them.
>What happened?
You made the hate part up, and based your entire post on it.
Which was stupid.

This user is right.
Also HS is overlooked in this thread but was absolutely succesful and drained some of the MtG potential players out of WotC's reach.
Blizzard has been delivering commercially succesful consistently, and it is still seen as a video game company, contrary to Valve.
Plus they will go down as the company who created the longest/most succesful MMORPG in history with WoW and that alone makes them vidya gods.

You gotta get off Sup Forums user.

Blizzard is still loved my MANY people. Just because you never leave Sup Forums and for some reason have yet to grasp the idea that this board will always be the vocal minority, doesn't mean Blizzard fell from grace. World of Warcraft is still pushing good numbers despite being a fucking 12 year old video game, Overwatch is well-received by pretty much everyone, Diablo 3 is somehow still kicking, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm still make shit tons of money with their in-game currency systems. You want to talk about ACTUAL fall from grace? Let's talk about Bioware, a company that's not even safe from Youtube comments tearing them up. They can't catch a break and don't deserve one because they are pure dogshit.

Contrarians everywhere.

I don't think people hate Blizzard at all. Sure, maybe here on Sup Forums every thread that mentions them gets shitposted to oblivion, but then again any thread that mentions any kind of publisher gets shitposted to hell. You really can't use Sup Forums as a metric.

To this day Blizzard is still a company that produces probably the most polished games you can find on the market, and I suppose that is part of the reason why they are held in such high regards. Whether you like their games or not, they are still very well done. If you look at Overwatch, for example, that game has so much thought put into the sound design alone and it really shows that the people who made it knew what they were doing.

Also Blizzard has probably the least intrusive cash shops of any current developer. And with games being as expensive to produce as they are today, cash shops are a necessity to ensure ongoing support and development of the game.
You can spend quite a lot of money in Hearthstone, but then again that is free to play. Overwatch was released as a 40€ title, which is really low for an AAA game, and the cash shop the game has is not only relatively hidden away, but it only gives you boxes with random cosmetics, the same thing you get for playing.

Blizzard didn't change.

Blizzard's staunchest fanboys grew up.

i blame Activision

>CasualSlowAssBabyWatch
>decent

Time killed rts genre. No one plays that shit anymore.

After they banned me from lol for shittalking i have been playing HoTS and its fun.

"Critical acclaim" means shit for video games. Blizzard makes games for retards now.

dude normies love OW. even Sup Forums only irnoically "hates" the game. we wouldn't bitch about it if we didn't play it and cared for it.

>blizz makes the most popular rts of our time with large tourney and a lot of players even 7 years after its release
>there is literally no other good old school rts in the market
>nobody plays rare rts releases
>BLIZZ KILLED RTS BY MAKING A FUCKING GOOD RTS WHEN NOBODY MAKES THEM ANYMORE REEEE
you are fucking retarded
When will this meme of starcraft is bad cause I can't play it die?

>Heroes of the waveclear

>7 years
Try almost 20, they're having BW starleagues again this year.

They killed Blizzard North. And went into MMO.

Blizzard still makes games the truly cucked purchase out of masochistic whim. All in vain hopes the money will somehow make them stop hiring SJWs, cronies of shit tier devs like Jay Wilson, and create a Camelot dev team that produces Warcraft 4: The Game of the Century.

Valve stopped making games entirely. Though a bigger fall from grace, still a more merciful one.

sjws run the company nowdays and ruined every game they had

>now most people hate their guts and its rare to see a positive word spoken about them. What happened?
redditors love overwatch

>people overwhelmingly dislike overwatch

Does it really matter? I'm an individual, I think MOBA is shit. I recognize that lots of people like it and that it makes billions.

Doesn't change my own opinion one iota.

redditors aren't people

Public Relations is basically a loan you grant. You live on the interest it provides on a yearly base via mouth to ear to increase revenue, but eventually you want to demand the loan back and convert it to extra cash.

Blizzard may have had 11 million customers, of which 40% could have been considered fans.
Now by cashing in on the PR and maximizing revenue, it still has tens of millions of customers, of which 12% are fans. Still a gain in actual numbers.

A corporation is not your friend. It exists to take your money. If it can exploit your brand appreciation to increase profit it will, once policymakers decide on it.

No one actually thinks they did something wrong. Kotick simply more efficiently realized its potential.
Instead of buying games, you should have bought its stocks.

This whole thread is just a showcase of how ignorant Sup Forums is.
Nobody like Blizzard? Are you for real, m8? Like it or not but Blizzard is one of the largest players in the video game market. They completely dominate 4 whole genres (RTS, card games, MMO, team hero shooters). Every game they make sells like hot pies and while games from other developers die in a year or 2, Blizz games have large player base after many years. Normal people fucking love Blizz games.

Remember that the few autists and underages from Sup Forums are not representatives of video games consumers.

I'd argue that the entire mainstream games industry aren't people. And then I take my meds.

They continue to use an outdated update model of one huge update every 6 months with occasional bug fixes in between.

...

>every body hates them
>Their games are more popular and profitable than ever

Who is this "everybody" you talk about OP?

Sup Forums

>15 years ago everybody absolutely loved them and now most people hate their guts and its rare to see a positive word spoken about them

businesswire.com/news/home/20170309005629/en/Activision-Blizzard-Recognized-Fortune’s-“100-Companies-Work

>GoG 1906 Linux games
Roughly 650 Linux games*

ASSFAGGOTS killed the RTS genre

>15 years ago the internet basically didnt exist
Do you actually believe this?

micro/gookclick killed rts.

I unironically hate overwatch. I hate it so much, I decided not to purchase it after 2 games in closed beta.

So you're wrong.

Are we destined to repeat the same cycle over and over again?

fucking jews they are so good at everything

the spark has died, micro transactions, etc
nothing is intimate with the player anymore.

>Methodology

>To identify the 100 Best Companies to Work For®, each year Fortune partners with Great Place to Work to conduct the most extensive employee survey in corporate America.

>Employee survey

>"Hey, you do you like working at the company that marks the pinnacle of your career from an outside perspective?"

>"O-OHHH YES. PRAISE BE TO BLIZZARD. COTYAY. HEHheh---heh...."

eldergame com/2010/09/no-seriously-bobby-kotick-really-is-a-jerk

Doesn't really work that way. People who have good positions (not necessarily management, just good positions like programmers etc) in Fortune 500 companies can usually move pretty much at will between one another. Its a closed circle, and while a big one, a closed circle nonetheless which means you know a lot of people who can get you a job in another F500 company. If you work in a shitty one and want to move all you have to do is make a call.

...

>Employee survey

>"Hey, you do you like working at the company that marks the pinnacle of your career from an outside perspective?"

Those surveys are anonymous. There's no point in lying in any anonymous survey or on an anonymous image board, for that matter.

>Only played 2 games a year ago
>Still shitpost about it

Oh boy

the funny shit is that everyone hates blizz games but you have to show that you like them.

>15 years ago everybody absolutely loved them and now most people hate their guts and its rare to see a positive word spoken about them.
Outside of Sup Forums people love Blizzard. They might not produce amazing innovative games anymore, but they produce games that work* and deliver on what they promise. The same can't be said for other big western developers like Bethesda or Ubisoft.
It wasn't hard to compete with Overwatch but every company failed. Paladins had a decent chance and was a good game but of course Hi-Rez completely fucked that up by being massive jews.

Also, you're not supposed to like the company. You shouldn't like any company, they only do all this for the money. People don't remember the lawsuit for Starcraft when people found out Battle.net was spyware (attrition.org/errata/company/blizzard01.html). All the people who ate up the Nintendo Switch because it's Nintendo are morons.

I'm a videogame consumer and I don't play Bloodborne, Overwatch, Horizon and whatever else is popular right now. Stop generalising.

>They might not produce amazing innovative games anymore, but they produce games that work* and deliver on what they promise.
Sure their games are still big but there's been a massive decline in quality which is reflected in the sub numbers for WoW.

Oh no. Some random asshole gamer thinks I'm pathetic for liking games he doesn't like. My world is shattered.

WoW is also 12 years old. It's amazing that it still holds the sub numbers that it does. Blizzard just changes shit every expansion in an attempt to see what sticks and almost nothing does, but it doesn't matter because it still generates a fuck-ton of cash. There's really no happy ending for WoW, but there's no happy ending for any MMO.

Despite the drop in popularity, Blizzard still supports all six of their modern games. That's incredibly rare, even if people have no desire to play, the people who do aren't stuck with an unsupported game. It might go unappreciated, but it's important to some.

>WoW is also 12 years old. It's amazing that it still holds the sub numbers that it does.
EVE is like a year older than WoW and it still has an active fanbase, is profitable, and as far as I know has never had problems with hemorrhaging subs like WoW has so I don't think age really has anything to do with it.

>as far as I know has never had problems with hemorrhaging subs like WoW has so I don't think age really has anything to do with it.
Is there anything to really prove that though?

The fact that there are still active communities for games that are 10+ years old is pretty indicative, especially with EVE since WoW started copying its sub model.

WoW still maintains an active community but the old sub reports are what lead to people realizing it was dwindling. Without anything like that for EVE it just comes down to actually playing the game.

It doesn't help WoW that there's so many empty servers so the community is completely split up.

Now it's all numbers, sales, for Valve.
Why didn't they spinoff Steam into a separate company, if they want to get BIGGU so much?
Maybe then we could have actual studio making games without getting cucked by staff management and shit

They were consumed by greed. 15 years ago they care. No they don't

Its a decent casual shooter, shitty quotas aside.

K O N A M I

Every fucking day. Every single fucking day when I think of developers that got ruined by suits this little faggot just sits there and gives me this stupid look on his face.