Inkidu said:
You keep trying to make Blizzard out to be some cowardly, miserly, soulless corporation. But for what it's worth they didn't get where they are now by playing it safe. I may be wrong but i don't think it's much of a stretch to say that they created the RTS. I'm going on the preconception that Warcraft was the first of its kind and if not it certainly generated a lot of previously non-existant excitement for the genera. Blizz also gave us the MMO, and no one has been able to give us a better one yet. When i say that i'm talking straight numbers and unless you want to count face book games as mmos, there are none as popular as WoW and even facebook games don't generate as much money as WoW.
But that's all in the past right? It doesn't matter what they've
done it matters what they're doing
now. Well lets extend that to encompass recent accomplishments for the sake of argument. Most recently, yes it has been sequels and expansions. Now i want to put it out there that it's impossible to invent a new genera with every game, (Blizzard has had an enormous effect on 2 genera already though) so it makes scene to stick to a few that you're good at. This logic alone doesn't excuse the sequels and expansions though. What does excuse them is that Blizzard continues to innovate within each expansion (i don't want to add sequel because I've never played either starcraft or either diablo).
So i'll speak from my experience with WoW. They've done quite a bit of work on that game, it's very different from when it was released. My experience with the game starts with the release of Burning Crusade, and ends just below the level cap of Cataclysm. I replayed a nice chunk of the 1-60 content on a new toon as well.
I started to write an in-depth analysis of raids and instances, and by the time i got half a paragraph on just the affects of changing the
number of players i decided it would be much more efficient to list the significant changes and you can ask if you don't understand why i picked them.
I tried to focus on changes from the original version to the present one.
1. The number of players required for a raid reduced from 40 to 10-25
2. The difficulty of raids is adjustable from normal to hard
3. The length of instances significantly reduced and condensed
4. Instance bosses now usually have a unique ability that must be accounted for, especially in lesser geared groups, there are much fewer Tank & Spank bosses
5. Ability to join random groups for instances across realms without waiting at the summoning stone
6. Quests have become much more varied in type
7. Quests have been centralized into distinct hubs scattered across zones with linear progression from one to the next (there were and are always a few different questing zones to choose from at most levels if you get bored)
8. Leveling speed is constantly being modified to be most appropriate to the current state of the game
9. Battlegrounds were created for PvP
10. PvP zones with (potentially) whole server battles were created (Winter's Grasp and the concept was tested in BC)
11. PvP quests and daily quests were implemented (although to debatable success)
12. PvP arenas were created, along with the rating system
13. Entire zones were re-imagined in order to benefit from past lessons
14. Guild achievements and leveling were implemented (but i'm unsure exactly what their intention was, i have little experience with them)
Well there, 14 reasons off the top of my head, not in any particular order but generally Raids, then Quests, then PvP. WoW is a constantly evolving game, and is helping to push the Genera forward by fine-tuning the unique dynamics that were created with the MMO. Yes, the core game-play is the same, and i got bored with it eventually. But the core game-play cannot be changed without starting from scratch. From what little Blizz has said about the game, I believe that the Titan project will be significantly different from WoW. They see the two games able to Co-exist, neither competing a significant amount with the other. I believe them, Blizzard
knows how to make games, and they see potential in the MMO market that many of us don't(is it there?). They're not going to make a second WoW. It would be incredibly stupid. No WoW clone has done as well as the original, and though i have no doubt that Blizzard could make a WoW clone that is also a WoW killer, who would be
STUPID enough to do that!?! I mean seriously? Kill your own game? (i want to go on a tangent about the longevity of an MMO being important but i won't.) No, they are aiming to expand the market, they want to put out a new game, and fix some of the flaws WoW has simply by virtue of being WoW (and believe me, they
ARE there). They want a game that will appeal to
new people, and possibly to customers that have simply gotten tired of WoW.
Blizzard isn't stagnating, not from what i can see. I believe the company still has what it takes to make a great game and they are not simply relying on past success to pull them forward. It may take them a while to get there, but when they do i think that Blizzard will have some great games for us. And frankly i don't care if they take place in existing universes. Gameplay has always been #1 for me, after all, it's what we use to define genera, not story, or subject matter, not even the quality of graphics. Yeah some of thous matter more than others, some more to different people, but you would be a fool to call Warcraft and WoW the same game.
oh, and i see nothing "desperate" about them, they take their sweet sweet time and they know they
can.
