I was just talking about this with a friend earlier today. It's interesting to have witnessed Blizzard go from indie maker to #1 PC game studio to whatever you would describe them now. But the reasons for their downfall shouldn't be surprising, since you see similar in tech often:

Step 1: Lose core talent that made your company what it was (Blizzard North, Chris Metzen)

Step 2: Misalign incentives between shareholders and users (Arguably: Destroying the SCBW pro scene, Diablo mobile, RMAH, WarCraft Reforged's journey so far, etc.)

Step 3: Add time

For the younger generations, Riot Games is now to them what Blizzard Entertainment was to me when I was growing up. Hopefully Riot doesn't fall victim to the same issues, or perhaps these issues are inevitable for any company after a certain growth stage.

Overwatch was a great post-Activision game. Overwatch 2 on the other hand...seems like a blatant cash grab.

We don't know much about it, but it seems like it's introducing new heroes, maps, and new abilities for existing heroes. Maybe that's enough to warrant a "2" in the title, but it sure doesn't feel like it at the moment.

I have to be honest, i've never tried overwatch and kind of forget it exists, but i just looked it up and it does look pretty fun.

I dunno I grew up with blizzard. One of the earliest PC games I remember playing was Warcraft, I still remember being blown away when I seen that box in the computer store. I just devoured the manual the whole way home. I've been addicted to most of their games up through Warcraft 3, I sort of skipped the wow phase. But, all of the sequels i've tried and just the press stuff with blizzard i've kept up with has just left me feeling meh towards them.

OW2 is supposed to add PvE-Content, as OW1 is purely PvP. If they add significant amount of content, then the "2" would be more than justified. Most games are blatant cash grabs, you don't invest millions just for fun. Delivering something good or something bad for the player makes the difference.

To be honest, I think that Diablo 3 was a pretty good game. The auction house certainly was a failure and the mechanics were a bit shallow compared to the previous well established hack and slashes. But otherwise, beautiful game, responsive controls, very enjoyable overall. The kind of game we love to hate as much as we love playing it.

The problem with the auction house wasn't really the real money part, it wasn't that much used. The problem was that the best way to get good items was to trade in the not-real-money action house, creating all sorts of unblalance. In the end, they completely killed the game economy, probably for the best.

The lack of depth is to put into perspective. Such things only matter at high level, and many people didn't get that far. Also, many of the people who (rightfully) complained about that came from late Diablo 2, or even Median, and probably don't realize how much has been done since the original game. Like its predecessor, Diablo 3 endgame improved a lot since launch.

Now everyone is on Path of Exile, great game, but way too complex for casual players like myself. Basically Median's brainchild.

My main problem with diablo 3 was that it felt more like playing a slightly more complicated version of gauntlet than actual sequel to diablo 2. After having played a bit of path of exile, i feel they definitely got closer to an actual diablo 2 sequel than diablo 3 did. Though that game's got some aggravating issues itself.