Blizzard is getting more and more greedy

[Evilsausage]

Its strange I constantly hear people complain on EA and Ubi soft. But none mention anything about Blizzard. Especially reviewers rarely critcize anything from them.
As if they are this sacred company that does nothing wrong. But Blizzard are not what they used to and they are exploiting their loyal fans as much as they can.
So im gonna list the shit they are doing:


Diablo 3
1. At launch 60 euro for a mediocre game, Okay thats no big deal many companies charge that.

2. Real money auction house. No the 60 Euro that people had payed for the game wasn't enough. People could now pay/earn money from the auction house while Blizzard got a some of the money.
The entire game was balanced around the auction house and had a terrible impact on the game.
RMAH got removed eventually to get more people to come back and buy Reaper of Souls.

3. Microtransactions is now on its way to D3. So far only cosmetics but who knows whats next. The game is starved on content yet they put the resources on shit like this. That doesn't feel right.
Diablo 3 will also be launched in China and it will be free to play and all out pay to win.

4. Maximizing profit by getting as mainstream as possible. Anything from dumbing down the game and the cartoony graphics where obviously there to lure a new young audiance.


5. Online DRM. Any way to prevent losing money to piracy. But many don't want to play online and the game had major issues at launch when the servers didn't respond.



World of Warcraft

1. More expensive expansion packs(WoD) but we get less content. According to Blizzard they got bigger staff then ever working on WoW. Then how come Warlords of Draenor had like half the content the 8 year old Burning Crusade had? And how come it receives less content in patches today then what it did 7-10 years ago? No wonder people are quitting faster then ever.

2. Microtransactions. Since people are paying every month for content it shouldn't even exist. Shouldn't they spend resources on adding more content for everyone?

3. Buying gold and levling services was something Blizzard once upon a time banned people for. Now its all possible to do in the game.

4. Dumbed down and streamlined game. Like Diablo 3 changes made for the sake of reaching as big audiance as possible. Even if it has a negative effect on the gameplay.



Hearthstone

Overall I have been enjoying the game without having to pay alot of money.
But the game is still new and im worried how much they will milk this cash cow...

1. The small expansions. Concidering how little content you get its kinda pricy. There is usually a few must have cards that force you to pay up.

2. Pay 10$ for a different portrait of your hero. Okay its no big deal and I know its totaly optional. But its still greedy and could be alot lower.





Heroes of the Storm

1. Well its obvious they are jumping on the Moba free to play train because they know it yeilds more money then for example making a Warcraft 4.

2. Dumbed down version of Lol, which in return is a dumbed down version of Dota. Not saying its all bad, but once again its all about catching as wide audiance as possible.

3. The price on the Heroes you can buy is more expensive then other Moba games. You also got rediculus prices for mounts. 20$ for a unicorn mount..wtf.


Starcraft 2...can't say anything about it because i haven't played it.
But people are free to mention things I have missed.
I don't think Blizzard are as bad as EA, but its kinda alarming. They used to be one of my favourit developers, so it hurts to see what they have become.
Not only have they gotten more greedy but it feels like there less passion behind their products has decreased.
Especially in WoW and Diablo, they also haven't made anything really grounbreaking for a long time now.
Im afraid Activision has had a bad influence on them.

 

[mad825]

Starcraft 2...can't say anything about it because i haven't played it.

You're not missing much.

While I have to admit the gameplay is pretty good the rest sucks or medicore. It's a glorified TV show about Romeo and Juliet with the emperor scene ripped out of the Return of the Jedi.

 

[CritialGaming]

I don't think Blizzard is getting greedy at all.

Actually I think they are getting desperate.

They have rode the coattails of WoW for 10 years and now the train is finally breaking down. So in a panic they are throwing microtransactions into other games which have no other ways to generate revenue for the company.

Diablo 3 is basically a dead end for them. No more real money AH means no more revenue from that game but they still have to eat the cost of the servers because 100% online was a super idea.

Starcraft 2 has one more expansion that will net them a nice chunk of change, but yet again the revenue stream from that game will dry up shortly after release.

Heroes, well who the fuck knows how that will work out. Im sure fans will dumb cash into the game, but it is too simplistic of a MOBA to keep a large following for very long.

And Overwatch? Nobody knows yet.

 

[Flammablezeus]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

 

[Tony2077]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

oh so what do you say about the people that like the games?

 

[Flammablezeus]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

oh so what do you say about the people that like the games?

I say if they were playing the games when they were good then they wouldn't be so chipper about the state of things now. Honestly, with the state of WoW now people are just better off playing Facebook games. They're much cheaper and provide the exact same experience. It hasn't been a real MMO for a long time. They've been incentivising people to just sit around and queue up for things like some regular multiplayer game hub.

I never played Diablo 3 after a few hours in the beta because games like Path of Exile and Titan Quest seem to offer more for a lot less money (although I did spend a bit on Path of Exile because I felt they had earned it.) So again I would say that anybody playing Diablo 3 is probably doing it for the name or simply isn't aware of what other games have been doing.

 

[Tony2077]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

oh so what do you say about the people that like the games?

I say if they were playing the games when they were good then they wouldn't be so chipper about the state of things now. Honestly, with the state of WoW now people are just better off playing Facebook games. They're much cheaper and provide the exact same experience. It hasn't been a real MMO for a long time. They've been incentivising people to just sit around and queue up for things like some regular multiplayer game hub.

I never played Diablo 3 after a few hours in the beta because games like Path of Exile and Titan Quest seem to offer more for a lot less money (although I did spend a bit on Path of Exile because I felt they had earned it.) So again I would say that anybody playing Diablo 3 is probably doing it for the name or simply isn't aware of what other games have been doing.

comparing a facebook game to one that will always be better no matter how bad it gets. well they could like the games but that couldn't possibly happen if they played other ones

 

[Flammablezeus]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

oh so what do you say about the people that like the games?

I say if they were playing the games when they were good then they wouldn't be so chipper about the state of things now. Honestly, with the state of WoW now people are just better off playing Facebook games. They're much cheaper and provide the exact same experience. It hasn't been a real MMO for a long time. They've been incentivising people to just sit around and queue up for things like some regular multiplayer game hub.

I never played Diablo 3 after a few hours in the beta because games like Path of Exile and Titan Quest seem to offer more for a lot less money (although I did spend a bit on Path of Exile because I felt they had earned it.) So again I would say that anybody playing Diablo 3 is probably doing it for the name or simply isn't aware of what other games have been doing.

comparing a facebook game to one that will always be better no matter how bad it gets. well they could like the games but that couldn't possibly happen if they played other ones

I'm honestly not really sure what you're trying to say there.

 

[Tony2077]

Yeah Blizzard started rolling down a hill many years ago as a little snowball. They're now an avalanche plummeting as fast as physics will allow. Anybody still bothering with them deserves what they get to be honest.

oh so what do you say about the people that like the games?

I say if they were playing the games when they were good then they wouldn't be so chipper about the state of things now. Honestly, with the state of WoW now people are just better off playing Facebook games. They're much cheaper and provide the exact same experience. It hasn't been a real MMO for a long time. They've been incentivising people to just sit around and queue up for things like some regular multiplayer game hub.

I never played Diablo 3 after a few hours in the beta because games like Path of Exile and Titan Quest seem to offer more for a lot less money (although I did spend a bit on Path of Exile because I felt they had earned it.) So again I would say that anybody playing Diablo 3 is probably doing it for the name or simply isn't aware of what other games have been doing.

comparing a facebook game to one that will always be better no matter how bad it gets. well they could like the games but that couldn't possibly happen if they played other ones

I'm honestly not really sure what you're trying to say there.

they couldn't like the games unless it for the name or they didn't play other ones

 

[PinkiePyro]

I don't think Blizzard is getting greedy at all.

Actually I think they are getting desperate.

I agree with this never played WoW but I know they are losing players at a rapid rate right now so right now blizzard is a bunch of people trying to bail out a sinking ship...

the real greed is going on in EA and Ubisoft right now

 

[Redryhno]

I don't think Blizzard is getting greedy at all.

Actually I think they are getting desperate.

I agree with this never played WoW but I know they are losing players at a rapid rate right now so right now blizzard is a bunch of people trying to bail out a sinking ship...

the real greed is going on in EA and Ubisoft right now

Well yeah, but that was a long process that happened over several years and people are seeing the start of it with Blizzard now. Can't do a huge amount ot save Ubi and EA from themselves, but people can try to get ahead of Blizzard before they pull a THQ or Relic and we lose their franchises in dev limbo.

 

[MonsterCrit]

I don't think Blizzard is getting greedy at all.

Actually I think they are getting desperate.

They have rode the coattails of WoW for 10 years and now the train is finally breaking down. So in a panic they are throwing microtransactions into other games which have no other ways to generate revenue for the company.

They could generate more revenue from wow is they actually put more design ethics into it. Not just the tacking bigger numbers onto everything. They sadly abandoned lateral development for linear devlopment. Nothing wrong with that but... yeah, when things go linear there's not much replay value. and the paid leveluup idea more or less came back to bite them in the lumps. Because they get up to highlevel so quickly they more or less don't spend as much time in the skinner box. thusly it's much easier for this new blood to tune out and get out of the game after a while.

Diablo 3 is basically a dead end for them. No more real money AH means no more revenue from that game but they still have to eat the cost of the servers because 100% online was a super idea.

Another bite in the ass there. I bought Diablos 1 and 2 .. still play them but I wound up skipping 3 because funnily enough Diablo's always been the sort ofgame I play when I don't have a net connection.

 

[CritialGaming]

I just hope Blizzard doesn't become an American version of Square Enix. Where their cinematics fucking rock my balls off, but their games are just fucking lazy and uninspired.

Honestly Overwatch seems that way. It's like "Fuck it we made Blizzard: Magic the Gathering, and Blizzard: DOTA, Let's make Blizzard: Team Fortress 2."

"Will Overwatch have a story campaign?"

"A What?"

"Story. Will it have story?"

"Umm...no. But we'll post lazy paragraphs on the website so if you want story you can go to Overwatch.com and immediately become a sad panda."

"So literally you are making Team Fortress 2 then."

"Yeah, but we have FUCKING GORILLAS!"

 

[Janaschi]

Blizzard has always been nostalgic for me. I was born just as the 90s first came around, and so I grew up with games such as Planet Blupi, SpyFox, Freddy Fish, and yes; Warcraft 1 which introduced me to Blizzard. Grew to love their games, with WCIII(TFT) still being one of my favourite games of all time (even if the BNet has become plagued with hostbots -sigh-)

But I do have to admit that I am growing very weary of their current strategy in regards to milking gamers out of their disposable income. I still love their games to death - they are some of the most beautiful out there, and you can genuinely tell that the games are developed with the common gamer in mind.

Ever since the release of Hearthstone, though, I have decided to be more careful with my Blizzard purchases. Up until this point, I have bought every game Blizzard has released. But after seeing the way they are shoehorning players into spending money on a F2P game (Hearthstone), by having absolutely crucial cards in the adventure expansions, and then seeing the absolutely skewed prices seen in Heroes, the decision came pretty soundly to me.

I hope my new-found caution is not justified.

 

[Tony2077]

other then the moba game and card game i play and like blizzard games yes even wow

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I dunno about "dumbing down", although of course anything I were a purist in I would probably hate it, but I do understand that in the end they are a business, and if it makes more business sense and will bring in more cash then they are going to do it. In the same token though, they express greed in a myriad of other ways such as those you have listed.

I've never given Blizzard a free pass. In fact I had a low opinion of them since long before, but the final nail in the coffin was Diablo 3 and it's always-on, microtransacting crap shit. Their true colors are usually revealed when they take legal action against people who steal from them. Like that private server Scapegaming (ok what they did was wrong and the owner had it coming, stealing is wrong even if it is from a mega corp raking in $100m a month on WoW alone), but an $88m lawsuit on an individual is a little excessive. Making an example out of one person by ruining their life really.

 

[Redryhno]

Oh, damn me and my expectations. I was expecting a nice critic on how expensive the cosmetic items are in Blizzard, but given you keep listing 'dumbing down' as a criticism for 'greed'... well, I'm disappointed now.

Well, it's seemed to be an acceptable criticism of certain other companies in the past around here people like to use so much they're the dust of dead horses by now...don't know why you're expecting more really.

And really, dumbing down is easier to get the idea across than "making it more and more overly accessible and simplistic, thereby alienating parts of the existing audience in order to pick up 'new' customers and not work with what they have to turn into a polished sheen".

I mean, what I understand of WoW is that they took out the need for ammo, effectively making half the tradeskills and ammo quests in the game that people had spent literal months and years on with their builds cosmetic in all but name. Not to mention how hard some ground out faction to get these UBER rare blueprints to make these bragging rights mounts and armor only for them to then take out the need for faction to get them(which was honestly the only reason you had to grind faction to begin with because these guys had nothing else to offer other than completion points), and not even having to get blueprints if you bought them with real money.

Or how they pushed their trading card game hard on everyone by doing the stuff people are starting to get upset with about Amiibos a few years back, then taking it out of print about the time they started developing Hearthstone, making it impossible for people to get the content they locked behind these special cards you had the barest chance to get in the first place. And then issuing "no sells without us getting the lion's share of the loot" to sellers online that had these rare cards that didn't have used codes on them. Hell, at least WoTC, moronic lying sacks of shit that they are(long story short, they said they weren't ever going to put their packs on walmart shelves to get small business gaming stores to buy into their product at a con, then the next month had the cards rolling out to Walmart shelves as soon as the checks cleared I think after Arabian Nights went out of print) allow their third-party market to flourish without them issuing strikes and "GIVE US YOUR MONEY YOU WORTHLESS PAYING CUSTOMERS".

Or how they acted towards Warcraft RTS fans for the last ten years, telling them to get on WoW if they wanted the story anymore, despite the numerous retcons and to get their asses over to Starcraft if they want RTS despite the vast differences between Starcraft and Warcraft RTS'.

But take into account all of this information is a few years out of date, as the guy I played board games and other tabletops with in high school and my first year of college I haven't been able to talk with for a few years, I've moved and I work six days a week, don't have time to drive that far if I even had a car that could get there. Also he's in remission so isn't always in the best of moods or health considering how much shit he's put through his body because of it. And he wasn't the healthiest to begin with despite his wife's attempts.

Blizzard is far from the "great ol' uncle" everyone likes to think of them as in the industry, and they've been like this before they merged with Activision a few years back.

 

[Zeljkia the Orc]

I dont play WoW anymore, but has it really been 8 years since Burning Crusade?

thanks for making me feel old ;o;

 

[Flutterguy]

Blizzard went downhill after cosigning with Activision. They still make quality games, but they have been doing the Nintendo dance for years and just kind of milk the old creations.

Hearthstone, I play it when I want to relax and watch a TV show, but find I'm not really engrossed in the show. Every expansion they release makes the game less fun for me though. I won't spend money on it, it's not that good, so my winrate becomes nil until I scrap up enough daily gold to make a decent deck. I did buy a few packs when I first started, but with the price of content released now its not worth the money.

Diablo 3, I waited until it was 20$ and really enjoyed it, not much else to say. I wish I could get the expansion, but it's double what I payed for the game, and only one more act.

WoW, well, WoW isn't really a game. It's a social hub consisting mostly of narcissists showing off how much they've spent. I did play it heavily for 2 years starting in BC, and a few months here and there since then, but I don't really feel the urge to play it anymore.

Starcraft 2? Now that was a good game, a great game. I only got 1/2 way through the story, and dabbled online a bit with friends, but I do really suck at RTS games. The story wasn't amazing but no Blizzard games ever have a great story honestly. If you play online with friends you play with all the expansion content unlocked, provided your friend owns it, which is a VERY cool feature.