Its interesting to see how the quality of the games Blizzard produces and the company culture both seemed to decline sharply in lockstep after being acquired by Activision in 2008.
After 2008 Blizzard produced Hearthstone, Overwatch and Reaper of Souls which consensus 'fixed' Diablo 3 and were all pretty great. So I can't comment about the culture but I disagree with the general narrative that Blizzard's games have gone off a cliff. That might still be coming, but it hasn't happened quite yet.
Edit: snipped the bit about Hero's of the Storm since that was post acquisition
In my opinion the downfall of Blizzard started even earlier in 2004. Ever since World of Warcraft their writing and worldbuilding has stumbled off a cliff. StarCraft's storyline was fantastic and its world spectacularly gritty. The weird whirring mechano-head of the adjutants and bodily entombed dragoons are just some examples of the kooky minds working at the studio at that time.
With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me. Blizzard wasn't alone in this but it broke my heart as a kid who grew up on Sabriel and The Book of the New Sun and Baldur's Gate and EverQuest to watch all those game companies lurch forward to a blank-eyed glossed future.
Meh. It is an undeniable direct Warhammer 40K plagiarism: before coming up with their own StarCraft universe, Blizzard tried and failed to secure rights for Warhammer 40K setting. So it is easy to see the source of their 'inspiration'.
They had many bright moments, but this one is not one they came up with themselves.
I think Starcraft and Warcraft before it are both stellar examples of inventive remixing and borrowing from existing worlds. That is very different from plagiarism.
Games Workshop does not own the copyright on nearly-dead-warriors-entombed-in-exoskeletons. Nor did they invent the idea of the nearly dead being sustained by cybernetics, or of using robotics to assist those of limited physical ability. We all are inspired by things.
It's especially odd to talk about about "Warhammer" or "Starcraft" as if they are managed by a single human, when in fact all of these worlds are written and envisioned by a multi-generational army of creative people who are all drawing on sources to come up with ideas. Are all of the employees of GW who write about dreadnoughts plagiarizing the employee who came up with the idea?
Starcraft copied a lot more than just that from Warhammer.
Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.
The basic look of space marines and Starcraft marines are completely different why they toned down the skulls and well that’s about it.
That’s fine at least they didn’t copy the ancient psionic technology using Eldar who, wait never mind.
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't respect creative works that are too similar to their inspirations and you think a good example of the creative work we should respect is...Warhammer?
"It’s all in here, the neolithic bones of our current game system. Borrowing heavily from Tolkein, you get all the standard Fantasy races, standard beasties (heck even the Balrog is in there by name), and so many others...There is no Old World, no Warhammer world, no history, just some little crazed and revolutionary rules for using units of fantasy lead miniatures to fight out epic battles."[1]
Tossing a huge range of different properties in a blender is fine, ripping off a single property is just lazy. Which sounds more original pure Harry Potter fan fiction or ER the TV show + Harry Potter + Cheers the TV show.
Draw evenly from M*A*S*H + Dresden Files + Mass Effect + Dexter and your going to end up in some strange and interesting places. Play through Starcraft 1+2 on the other hand and the story is fine if a bit bland.
I absolutely agree that Blizzard's worlds are weaker than Games Workshop's. GW has a real talent for genre fiction, where Blizzard struggles with the basics of plot structure.
The thing I disagree with is that Blizzard's problem is that they 'copied.' Everyone copies! The bits that Blizzard copied are the most compelling part of Starcraft. The reason it is weak is that they were not better at drawing on the ideas of others. They did not understand what was compelling about 40k, so they create this unsatisfying narrative mishmash.
Warhammer FB -> Warhammer 40k is a great example of this being done better. You could type out the same kind of demeaning summary of Warhammer 40k as you did for Starcraft: "Tyranids are gross, chitinous just like Geiger's xenomorph; the Eldar are just space-high-elves; The squats are just space dwarves." It's all true, as far as it goes. But - because GW is better than Blizzard - they went further and added other ideas (many of which also came from other works). The problem is never that they drew on other sources. In fact, looking at other worlds and using the core of what 'works' about that world before transforming it is at the center of basically all good works.
> Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.
Tyranids barely existed when Starcraft got released, most of the things you talked about was created by games workshop afterwards, so likely they copied Starcraft instead.
Tyranids where part of the 1987 version of 40k and barely mentioned. Genestealers were first introduced in the board game Space Hulk published in 1989 and introduced into the Tyranids well before Starcraft’s release date.
1993, featured the Tyranids in the supplemental books Wargear and Codex Imperialis, and then later in their own devoted army Codex.
By comparison Starcraft 1 is from 1998 at which point Tyranids had gone through multiple revisions and had fairly close to their modern lore.
>Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages.
Sounds like GW copied that from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or maybe Enders Game.
Ditto the Space Marines.
Culture is just copying/remixing, all the way down.
Enders game’s alien are quite different from both they aren’t a single unified hive mind but a species of queens and mindless drones using biological technology rather than literally being the ships or having a wide range of forms, also no rapid evolution or gene stealing etc. Starship Troupers share even less they don’t even use starships, aren’t a unified hive mind, etc their both great example of sci-fi space biological armies being a fairly huge space for different ideas.
Remixing at least involves using multiple sources, my only real issue is SC both only copied from 40k and changed so little. It’s like the figured after just crossing just past the line of copyright infringement was enough and they would go no further. But hey they did the same with the original Warhammer game to make Warcraft and that worked out just fine for them.
Like dreadnoughts? I'd argue fantasy and science fiction is all iterating over itself endlessly and there's creative ways of doing it. Plunging dragoons into a liquid bath puts dragoons at something of a cross-section of evangelion and 40k tomb-mech.
I could go on. The ghosts exhaling poison vapor with spider eyes or hydralisks vomiting buckets of saliva. Sunken colonies with their long knife-tongues; the Creep. As a whole I think Blizzard really made something special.
I grew up on Warcraft 2, and to me the cartoonish look of WoW was a direct continuation of the art style from that game. I was in the WoW beta. The first time I played it my initial reaction was that it looked exactly like I had stepped into Warcraft.
I see your point with Warcraft 2 though I do think a lot of the art from then leant more to the gritty like this one [1] that shows a troll squaring off with a human.
I think initial development/prototyping was done as an offshoot of the WC3 engine so in a sense you were stepping into Warcraft. That's not to take anything away from the great design and art direction consistency between these titles - just that it also had a practical technical component.
I agree with this. Early Blizzard games had amazing worldbuilding and great single player experiences, with good multiplayer options.
After WoW's success they seemed to try to pigeonhole all of their properties in the same direction, SC2 and D3 were quite clearly online/multiplayer first with single player as an afterthought, and the world depth felt lacking. Hearthstone's alright but feels like it has too much focus on PvP games and loot box mechanics.
Hearthstone's aesthetic reminds me of the parallel world of stuff that religious groups always make (Christian music, Christian books, etc), and I found it really offputting.
> With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me.
You're looking at it through rose tinted glasses. Blizzard has always been about a cartoonish look. That's why I like their games. Realism always falls into the "uncanny valley" territory for me.
The fact that Diablo 3 needed to be "fixed" supports the narrative. Also the fact that executives didn't realize it had been fixed and cancelled the 2nd Diablo 3 expansion. The Warcraft III remaster was a disaster. Three out of the last four World of Warcraft expansions have been poorly received. There does seem to be a pattern of decline.
Well, I think SL is alright. I wouldn't say I love it, but I do that's more of a symptom of core gameplay mechanics rather than particular content. What do you dislike about SL?
This is a common sentiment I hear from people who bailed during WoD and have just been looking at public commentary about the rest. Everyone I spoke to in-game were at least meh about BfA, loved Legion, and were still stoked on SL until the new patch just took a bit too long. There are legit criticisms of all of them, but to say they're shit is just silly. Those same people also tended to love MoP fwiw.
My only real criticism is related to the majority of all game content being kind of irrelevant, because there isn't a long road to max level and no scarcity of exp. However, I did level through BfA content, and it was really well done.
I'm odd in that I actually loved WoD, aside from Garrisons. Legion had it's moment of greatness, around the fourth patch it was great.
BfA and Shadowlands are incredibly bad, for casual players there's really nothing interesting to do, and raiders and stuck behind meaningless time gates. It's quite sad to see my friends list now, no one is playing - and a new patch has just been released.
I'm a huge fan, but I've also stopped playing. Blizzard feel like they've been ahead for so long they forget what made their games great. Saying that though, it only takes on incredible expansion for everyone to jump back.
I've gone back to level through WoD, and I was very impressed with Draenor and HFC. I have no personal qualms with that expansion other than what I hear about.
I think I agree with your commentary about SL, but I just said the same thing in a different way. BfA had a bit more interesting content though in that respect. They were not 'incredibly bad' by my estimation, just have their various flaws.
With regard to friends list, I stopped playing shortly before new patch drop, but mostly because it's summer and WoW in general just makes it way too easy to spend time indoors. I was following the world first race though, and would love to raid SoD and do BGs. But, before letting my sub expire I went and farmed out all the Mechagon mounts and most interesting rare drop mounts, had my fill of Nathria, and a bit of Mythic+ as miserable as that is. Could have been more fun with a proper gaming setup and guild, but I knew summer was coming up and I'd want to dial my playtime back to zero.
In fairness to WoD the leveling experience really was great. However they utterly gutted combat mechanics which I think is a big part of why people coming from MoP into WoD hated it so much. And then the content drought...
> I disagree with the general narrative that Blizzard's games have gone off a cliff. That might still be coming, but it hasn't happened quite yet.
Have you played the last 2 World of Warcraft extensions? Or Warcraft 3: Reforged, the only "new game" they released since 2016, which is also commonly known as Warcraft 3: Refunded? [1][2]
