Decline Blizzcon 2024 November 3-4

[Don Peste]

amazing on so many levels. pay us to relive your youth when our game wasn't an overgrown mess, except we're going to successively reintroduce all the mess, so that you may relive your youth ending and you growing up to be jaded.
perhaps i shouldn't cast stones myself, given that i played guild wars instead lol

Like watching your best friend being murdered again while he tries to flee to the south.

 

[Nathir]

SC2 was good, but not oldBlizzard-tier good and it failed to replace SC1 as an e-sport in Korea or to revitalize the RTS genre.

It was Blizzard leading, rather than following. And it did both reboot interest in RTS (Total Annihilations, AoE 3, Gray Goo, etc) and push the esports angle. Both fizzled, with esports going to Counter Strike and DOTA2/League, but both were attempts to lead.
Same with Diablo III. It tried to do a new thing with the real money auction house, which was a popular decision at the time. Diablo II already had real money auctions, they were just on third party websites. PoE has them too. The problem was that the auction house fucked the economy, because of how drop rates were. Blizzard quit on the feature, rather than balance it. I can't stress this enough, complains were about the balance, rather than the feature. There still is a real money economy for Diablo and all such games, but its outside of the game (and therefore outside of publisher protection).

Blizzard was trying to lead, until Heroes of the Storm. That was 100% them following a trend. That was 100% them doing what Activision ordered. That's when Blizzard died, when they stopped trying to lead and started to follow.

I would argue two of your points. I think the primary issue with the auction house was how difficult it was to find and compare items. This is due to the affix system and random quality levels on a single item. I think it would have succeeded if, say, you could only list unique/set items and gems and every pair of Frostburn gauntlets had the same stats.

Second, Heroes was too late. They did try to lead that genre away from some bad design conventions, but by the time they launched those decisions had become calcified. (Last hitting, only playing on one map, etc) They didn't understand that since that game was basically a sport, people would be open to adding a 3 point line, but nobody wanted the game to fundamentally change. They built too many and too complicated maps.

Map selection was a big element of RTS esports, so it's no surprise that people who didn't really play MOBA thought that could be their unique value proposition.

Heroes was not too late. With matching up Blizzard characters from all franchises up against each other it should have been a huge success. The problem was that it was just fundamentally a bad and boring game, just like all Bllizard games in the last 10-15 years. Lol was better by far and Lol sucks. Complicated maps? Lol. They were just visually different, the core mechanics didn't change between them.

 

[Arbiter]

It's not really a controversial take, in fact I think this is something that the original devs even admitted: WoW was their own version of EQ that they made for themselves primarily. Blizzard poached a lot of EQ talent both from their development team and top end guilds to come work on WoW. But not everything was just taken from EQ. For example the talent trees, the UI and instanced dungeons were copied from Asheron's Call 2.

I am sure that whydoibother knows that very well. He is simply disappointed with his 24 votes.

 

[Bester]

They were just visually different, the core mechanics didn't change between them.

Looks like you didn't play the game much.

 

[whydoibother]

It's not really a controversial take, in fact I think this is something that the original devs even admitted: WoW was their own version of EQ that they made for themselves primarily. Blizzard poached a lot of EQ talent both from their development team and top end guilds to come work on WoW. But not everything was just taken from EQ. For example the talent trees, the UI and instanced dungeons were copied from Asheron's Call 2.

I am sure that whydoibother knows that very well. He is simply disappointed with his 24 votes.

WoW was an MMORPG that came out after Everquest, in a genre where Everquest was the leader, and took a lot from everquest.
This does not mean that the game was a clone, and added nothing, and didn't seek to change and grow the genre. It clearly sought that, and clearly did that.
You are repeating slogans that I used to repeat a decade ago, while dodging the very obvious truth that WoW changed Everquest, and it is those changes that helped it succeed. WoW became the genre leader due to its difference to Everquest, rather than due to its similarities.
Should be plenty of proof that further Everquest development added quest based progression, and that since WoW most MMORPGs that release and succeed have that as a core feature.

By the way, Everquest in its original state can be played today. Go play for a day, you might be SHOCKED what the game is like and stop comparing it to WoW with such certainty.

They were just visually different, the core mechanics didn't change between them.

Looks like you didn't play the game much.

I also didn't play it much, but I remember there were multiple maps, and each map had a unique gimmick to it that you should interact with.
LoL and DOTA2 just have the one boss you can kill, but Heroes had some pirate ship you donate gold to, and it fires its cannons at the enemy base or something? Can't really recall, but it definitely was different.

 

[Nathir]

They were just visually different, the core mechanics didn't change between them.

Looks like you didn't play the game much.

They all had a timer where at a certain point an objective would appear and teams fought over it (funneled teams into specific areas at specific moments to teamfight). Then the result was either the spawn of powerful mobs that attacked lanes and you pushed with them. Or nukes like the cannonship that damaged buildings, but without a spawned mob. If a map had 2 or 3 lanes, it always played out the same. Early laning > fight over objective > team that wins inflicts structural damage > return to laning > repeat till a base falls. Core gameplay didn't really change much. Which was all about moving around with slow heroes and using abilities that hit like a wet noodle, with no items and a shared xp progression across the whole team. No excitement, no individual expression. I fell asleep whenever I played that game. Actually, it was the only MOBA I've ever played where people would regularly dc and leave and nobody cared or said anything.

The only reason it didn't completely bomb after 3 months is because you can play as Arthas vs Ilidan and because it's Blizzard with a huge playerbase. The fact this game did so poorly like it did is solely because the actual gameplay is the worst out of all the MOBAS.

 

[Bester]

They all had a timer where at a certain point an objective would appear and teams fought over it

It's like saying "on these maps you had to right click on things, so they were the same maps". LoL also features elements that you cite, such as Dragon and Baron -- it doesn't mean LoL even remotely resembles Hots maps.

Different Hots maps favored different strategies and champs. I find it takes about 150-200 games to start appreciating the game. It had depth that isn't on the surface. As someone who mained only one champ, I sucked on some maps and excelled on others. They're vastly different. It's not "just visuals".

 

[Lucumo]

Actually, it was the only MOBA I've ever played where people would regularly dc and leave and nobody cared or said anything.

Meanwhile in DotA, we (myself included) used custom banlists where you could ban a player with a simple button. Of course, it didn't really matter if you didn't host games and most players were too stupid to open ports, so... Unfortunately, creating a new account was really easy and quick, so it didn't matter much. Still, great times.

 

[Bester]

With all the ignored people on the list, I don't know if anyone posted the numerous links to reddit where the casual cattle is extremely butthurt about the $90 price for starting 3 days earlier than everyone else (and at the same time they'll buy it).

Their arguments is that "it matters a lot for progress". Couldn't be further from the truth. I started in classic and when TBC came out I was at school and had a difficult year, so I waited until the summer vacation to jump in. I had 5 months delay and killed Illidan as one of the first guilds on the server, before Sunwell came out and removed the attunement to Black Temple. Half a year of delay, no biggie. These zoomers cry about 3 days. It's beyond laughable how weak they are.

 

[abija]

My exports journey was Unreal/Quake -> Counter Strike and Warcraft III -> Starcraft II -> DOTA2, I don't have the earlier context.
I will maintain that Blizzard was an industry leader in pushing StarCraft II's esports, with its official brands, commentators in suits, models taking interviews, treating the players like athletes, etc, at least in the west. It may have been built on something older, but at the time nobody other than them was doing it.

How can you follow SC2 esports and not realize everything was taken from korean SC scene?

I had 5 months delay and killed Illidan as one of the first guilds on the server, before Sunwell came out and removed the attunement to Black Temple. Half a year of delay, no biggie.

Your argument ("I started late and finished THE SECOND tier in the expansion first on server") is absolutely retarded.

It's true though that it won't affect progression (apart from bleeding edge) but sure as hell targets all the people that take days off for WoW expansions. A long weekend of no lag, will be a no brainer purchase for them.

 

[Nathir]

They all had a timer where at a certain point an objective would appear and teams fought over it

It's like saying "on these maps you had to right click on things, so they were the same maps". LoL also features elements that you cite, such as Dragon and Baron -- it doesn't mean LoL even remotely resembles Hots maps.

Different Hots maps favored different strategies and champs. I find it takes about 150-200 games to start appreciating the game. It had depth that isn't on the surface. As someone who mained only one champ, I sucked on some maps and excelled on others. They're vastly different. It's not "just visuals".

I feel like you aren't listening. Not sure why LoL maps are relevant, but now that you mention it lol actually has different maps, with different gameplay. The 5v5 1 lane ARAM mode plays out completely different than the 5v5 3 lane map. Imagine if Lol had another 5v5 3-lane map, but Nashor was in a different spot and killing him would reward you a strong minion that would push down 1 lane. That's a very minuscule difference, wouldn't you agree? I'm not saying certain heroes aren't better on different maps... I was merely replying to a guy who said different maps were too complicated... when the gameplay was the same across all of them. ARAM in Lol offers more variety to the classic 5v5 than any 2 maps in HOTS comapred to each other.

I haven't played the game in a while but I'm sure I played 100 games... The problem is... to appreciate HOTS in the first place one must never have played any other competitive game... Again... Blizzard heroes duking it out against each other should have been a massive success. There is only one reason why it was such a flop. It's the gameplay.

 

[Hellraiser]

Heroes was not too late. With matching up Blizzard characters from all franchises up against each other it should have been a huge success.

It only wasn't one by Blizzard standards TBH. While a nice timeline and exact number of players over the years with a clear peak is hard to find, it seem it did reach 6,5 million (unique?) players within a month at one point, which by the same metric was over half of what DOTA 2 had around the same time, while LoL dominated with some obscene number of 100 million of I guess mostly gooks:

https://twinfinite.net/gallery/most-played-games-ranked-monthly-players/5/

The problem is of course that it didn't last on a BW/WoW like timescale, although the above was still what, about 3 years after HotS was released? Normally this would be a huge success as far as online multiplayer games go, I mean the above list is a top 10 most popular and HotS was 8th back then. Games like BW, CS etc. that dominate for over 10 years are outliers, while the rest comes and goes, so by the numbers shown above it was huge success, just not a legendary multiplayer timeless classic kind of success. The question here is though, how much money Blizzard burned along the way to try to get good numbers? They did decide to kill off the game eventually for some financial reason, so maybe the game did flop from a RoI point of view.

I'm inclined to believe that for all it's flaws if HotS was released in the tail end of the 00s before or around LoL it might have taken its place as the "more accessible/casual" alternative to DOTA. Although the big IF here is the individual expression and connected to it lack of items that you mentioned. Contrary to what Blizzard thought or banked on with HotS design centered around team play, the mass appeal of the genre might be more of a snowballing powerfantasy, where people/primadonnas get to stroke their egos by getting their hero fed to the point where they can claim they won the game for the 4 useless noobs on their team, showing off how "good at the game" they are.

Blizzard probably actively tried to tackle that with HotS design, but that might have been kind of like attempting to make vodka that wouldn't have alcohol. Every other "bad" thing about the game though, well it is not hard for me to imagine how people would get cargo cultish about slow heroes or other bad according to you design choices, creating justification why it's good for the "competitive/spectator" side of it once the game got popular. People watch real life ballsports, FIFA (or how is EA calling it now) is a popular e-sport, and there's probably a bunch of other examples that people will watch or follow of absolutely unspectacular games or boring shit TBH. Good gameplay is not a strict requirement, it just has to be good enough for the masses or flip the right psychological switches.

 

[abija]

The thing is Blizzard didn't see enough value in dota at the time. Yes hots is a good game but was built on analyzing lol/dota. No idea what a hots released before lol would have been.

As for profitability seems pretty clear WoW and HS are the standards and the games not measuring up get put on life support or they try to rerelease with different monetization systems.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dragonriding will be a permanent aspect of WoW and the player can use his other mounts instead of just the dragons like the game director implied a while ago, so they're smart enough not to drop the expansion feature that people liked.

 

[Hellraiser]

The thing is Blizzard didn't see enough value in dota at the time. Yes hots is a good game but was built on analyzing lol/dota. No idea what a hots released before lol would have been.

From a marketing perspective of tapping that market LoL captured, I don't think that matters much if the general design principle of streamlining DOTA would have still be followed and if the game was free to play, as DOTA in WC3 already provided ample data to mine. Although the F2P part begs the question if HotS would have been free to play back then if not for LoL, but I am sure Blizzard would do the streamlining, that was already a habit of theirs by that point.

Anyway I believe LoL's success is more of a timing thing due to lack of serious competition and the fact it was free to play more so than due to some specifics of its game design as compared to the OG DOTA, which is why I think HotS or whatever Blizzard's take on the genre would be back then could have taken its place if it launched around the same time.

 

[J1M]

Bellular suggested that Microsoft might revive HotS for game pass. Seems like a good move for them to do. Could stop paying for whatever other MOBA they have now.

 

[Lucumo]

Heroes was not too late. With matching up Blizzard characters from all franchises up against each other it should have been a huge success.

It only wasn't one by Blizzard standards TBH. While a nice timeline and exact number of players over the years with a clear peak is hard to find, it seem it did reach 6,5 million (unique?) players within a month at one point, which by the same metric was over half of what DOTA 2 had around the same time, while LoL dominated with some obscene number of 100 million of I guess mostly gooks:

https://twinfinite.net/gallery/most-played-games-ranked-monthly-players/5/

The problem is of course that it didn't last on a BW/WoW like timescale, although the above was still what, about 3 years after HotS was released? Normally this would be a huge success as far as online multiplayer games go, I mean the above list is a top 10 most popular and HotS was 8th back then. Games like BW, CS etc. that dominate for over 10 years are outliers, while the rest comes and goes, so by the numbers shown above it was huge success, just not a legendary multiplayer timeless classic kind of success. The question here is though, how much money Blizzard burned along the way to try to get good numbers? They did decide to kill off the game eventually for some financial reason, so maybe the game did flop from a RoI point of view.

What kind of weird list is that? The link in the DotA 2 part leads to the Playstation store apparently. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the DotA 2 numbers don't include the Chinese players.

BW dominated South Korea but Warcraft III was more popular in Europe and far more popular in China. So I would put them side-by-side when it comes to reigning over the RTS genre. 1.6 dominated in the Americas and Europe but Asia had Crossfire and Sudden Attack. DotA dominated MOBAs, even with HoN and LoL, until LoL went into the stratosphere and DotA 2 started siphoning numbers as well. I think DotA 2 overtook DotA in China in 2014 or maybe even a year later.

Anyway I believe LoL's success is more of a timing thing due to lack of serious competition and the fact it was free to play more so than due to some specifics of its game design as compared to the OG DOTA, which is why I think HotS or whatever Blizzard's take on the genre would be back then could have taken its place if it launched around the same time.

DotA and HoN were serious competition and LoL didn't get popular until later aka when Blizzard was killing BW in South Korea. Since Warcraft III there was kind of subdued due to a scandal many years prior, most Koreans never played DotA and at best some other MOBA (in the Warcraft III engine). LoL wouldn't surpass DotA in China and DotA/HoN in the SEA region until much later either. The success in South Korea helped it in Europe and the US, as HoN was a simple clone of DotA and the DotA environment was messy with players divided between different clients (official one (BNet), custom ones with reconnect options etc). You also didn't need a (possibly pirated) copy of Warcraft III which helped immensely. The artstyle which appealed to a certain audience helped as well. Riot also pushed for LoL to become popular which is, for instance, why it gained a decent following in Japan eventually, despite Japan being absolutely not primed for that.
DotA 2 "failed" because it was ~1 year too late and, in my opinion, because it forced their shitty and bloated Steam client. The artstyle is also terrible and looks much worse than DotA. Not sure which people it's supposed to appeal to.

(LoL also circumnavigated the issue of straight up copying heroes like HoN and DotA 2 did by stealing DotA hero designs (mechanical) which hadn't been accepted (yet). It's why LoL's base was solid.)

 

[Nathir]

Heroes was not too late. With matching up Blizzard characters from all franchises up against each other it should have been a huge success.

It only wasn't one by Blizzard standards TBH. While a nice timeline and exact number of players over the years with a clear peak is hard to find, it seem it did reach 6,5 million (unique?) players within a month at one point, which by the same metric was over half of what DOTA 2 had around the same time, while LoL dominated with some obscene number of 100 million of I guess mostly gooks:

https://twinfinite.net/gallery/most-played-games-ranked-monthly-players/5/

The problem is of course that it didn't last on a BW/WoW like timescale, although the above was still what, about 3 years after HotS was released? Normally this would be a huge success as far as online multiplayer games go, I mean the above list is a top 10 most popular and HotS was 8th back then. Games like BW, CS etc. that dominate for over 10 years are outliers, while the rest comes and goes, so by the numbers shown above it was huge success, just not a legendary multiplayer timeless classic kind of success. The question here is though, how much money Blizzard burned along the way to try to get good numbers? They did decide to kill off the game eventually for some financial reason, so maybe the game did flop from a RoI point of view.

I'm inclined to believe that for all it's flaws if HotS was released in the tail end of the 00s before or around LoL it might have taken its place as the "more accessible/casual" alternative to DOTA. Although the big IF here is the individual expression and connected to it lack of items that you mentioned. Contrary to what Blizzard thought or banked on with HotS design centered around team play, the mass appeal of the genre might be more of a snowballing powerfantasy, where people/primadonnas get to stroke their egos by getting their hero fed to the point where they can claim they won the game for the 4 useless noobs on their team, showing off how "good at the game" they are.

Blizzard probably actively tried to tackle that with HotS design, but that might have been kind of like attempting to make vodka that wouldn't have alcohol. Every other "bad" thing about the game though, well it is not hard for me to imagine how people would get cargo cultish about slow heroes or other bad according to you design choices, creating justification why it's good for the "competitive/spectator" side of it once the game got popular. People watch real life ballsports, FIFA (or how is EA calling it now) is a popular e-sport, and there's probably a bunch of other examples that people will watch or follow of absolutely unspectacular games or boring shit TBH. Good gameplay is not a strict requirement, it just has to be good enough for the masses or flip the right psychological switches.

"New Blizzard games has a big number of players at start". Wow, very relevant info. Diablo 4 also sold 10 million copies in a few months, and this at a time where everyone hated Blizzard and after their myriad of fuckups. Twitch vievershhip for Hots was always low though, despite being a "competitive" game with millions of dollars poured into it. I don't even know what the rest of your post is trying to say. Just a bunch of "what if" wishful thinking.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Has there been any mention of a new rts game or a rts sequel to Warcraft/Starcraft?

 

[abija]

The word strategy was mentioned a lot alongside that gatcha mobile game.

 

[Hellraiser]

"New Blizzard games has a big number of players at start". Wow, very relevant info. Diablo 4 also sold 10 million copies in a few months, and this at a time where everyone hated Blizzard and after their myriad of fuckups.

Except the figures I referred to weren't from the start, the list I linked to was supposedly based on 2018 data, that's at least 2 and half years after HotS released, maybe more than 3 but the exact source is deadlinked on that page so the exact month (HotS was released June 2015) is unknown. A shame HotS and DOTA's links to the source of those numbers on that page are broken, unlike Rocket League's and a few others also mentioned there. Anyway the figures especially HotS vs LoL vs DOTA 2 gave much needed context into how much of a relative success or failure HotS was 2+ years after release, although the quality/reliability of the source is debatable due to the dead links. Still as already mentioned it would have been better if there was a timeline so that it would be clear how quickly and when the game started to die off.

Furthermore, putting aside any obvious D4 vs HotS data comparison issues related to the above, I am not sure what you wanted to emphasize with the hyperbole about everyone hating Blizzard when Diablo 4 came out this year. That Blizzard games sell on brand name alone regardless how shit they are from a design point or how much justified outrage there is about it online? Sure they sell well despite that, they're hyped-up mainstream AAA games since at least WoW if not Warcraft 3 or Diablo 2. If the bulk of gamers weren't tasteless retards that buy shit, we wouldn't be whining all the time about decline here on the codex.

Or maybe that it's just initial hype and the numbers will drop off with the game dying when people wake up to how shit it is? Hard to say with Diablo 4 at the moment since it was just released, for all we know it might not drop off significantly. Diablo 3 might have been a better case to check regarding such a hypothesis, but I can't find a nice timeline regarding active player count that could prove or disprove that. Only thing I can find is just that they supposedly had some insane number of sales and total players after 10 years, which is as unsurprising as it is depressing.

 

[Sarathiour]

Second, Heroes was too late. They did try to lead that genre away from some bad design conventions, but by the time they launched those decisions had become calcified. (Last hitting, only playing on one map, etc) They didn't understand that since that game was basically a sport, people would be open to adding a 3 point line, but nobody wanted the game to fundamentally change. They built too many and too complicated maps.

I think it really boils down to just being too late, doing your own thing can assure some secondary playerbase, but Dota and LoL are just too fortified at this point, and unless one of those just let the game decay, they aren't going away any time soon. It would be even more difficult than to try to dethrone CS, given the absolutly massive playerbase.

 

[Sarathiour]

They all had a timer where at a certain point an objective would appear and teams fought over it

It's like saying "on these maps you had to right click on things, so they were the same maps". LoL also features elements that you cite, such as Dragon and Baron -- it doesn't mean LoL even remotely resembles Hots maps.

Different Hots maps favored different strategies and champs. I find it takes about 150-200 games to start appreciating the game. It had depth that isn't on the surface. As someone who mained only one champ, I sucked on some maps and excelled on others. They're vastly different. It's not "just visuals".

I feel like you aren't listening. Not sure why LoL maps are relevant, but now that you mention it lol actually has different maps, with different gameplay. The 5v5 1 lane ARAM mode plays out completely different than the 5v5 3 lane map. Imagine if Lol had another 5v5 3-lane map, but Nashor was in a different spot and killing him would reward you a strong minion that would push down 1 lane. That's a very minuscule difference, wouldn't you agree? I'm not saying certain heroes aren't better on different maps... I was merely replying to a guy who said different maps were too complicated... when the gameplay was the same across all of them. ARAM in Lol offers more variety to the classic 5v5 than any 2 maps in HOTS comapred to each other.

I haven't played the game in a while but I'm sure I played 100 games... The problem is... to appreciate HOTS in the first place one must never have played any other competitive game... Again... Blizzard heroes duking it out against each other should have been a massive success. There is only one reason why it was such a flop. It's the gameplay.

LoL used to have three different game mode, classic (summoner's rift) , 3v3 (twisted forest) and CTF map (dominion). At the very beginning, they were also some talk of adding something called volcano's chamber, but this one never saw the light of day.

Hots objective map could vastly differ, playing a 5v5 for objective inside a pit isn't the same scenario at all as running across the jungle.

 

[Dr1f7]

Has there been any mention of a new rts game or a rts sequel to Warcraft/Starcraft?

 

[J1M]

They all had a timer where at a certain point an objective would appear and teams fought over it

It's like saying "on these maps you had to right click on things, so they were the same maps". LoL also features elements that you cite, such as Dragon and Baron -- it doesn't mean LoL even remotely resembles Hots maps.

Different Hots maps favored different strategies and champs. I find it takes about 150-200 games to start appreciating the game. It had depth that isn't on the surface. As someone who mained only one champ, I sucked on some maps and excelled on others. They're vastly different. It's not "just visuals".

I feel like you aren't listening. Not sure why LoL maps are relevant, but now that you mention it lol actually has different maps, with different gameplay. The 5v5 1 lane ARAM mode plays out completely different than the 5v5 3 lane map. Imagine if Lol had another 5v5 3-lane map, but Nashor was in a different spot and killing him would reward you a strong minion that would push down 1 lane. That's a very minuscule difference, wouldn't you agree? I'm not saying certain heroes aren't better on different maps... I was merely replying to a guy who said different maps were too complicated... when the gameplay was the same across all of them. ARAM in Lol offers more variety to the classic 5v5 than any 2 maps in HOTS comapred to each other.

I haven't played the game in a while but I'm sure I played 100 games... The problem is... to appreciate HOTS in the first place one must never have played any other competitive game... Again... Blizzard heroes duking it out against each other should have been a massive success. There is only one reason why it was such a flop. It's the gameplay.

LoL used to have three different game mode, classic (summoner's rift) , 3v3 (twisted forest) and CTF map (dominion). At the very beginning, they were also some talk of adding something called volcano's chamber, but this one never saw the light of day.

Hots objective map could vastly differ, playing a 5v5 for objective inside a pit isn't the same scenario at all as running across the jungle.

HotS has 19 different maps with different objectives.