Warcraft III: Reforged - Remaster - January 28, 2020

[Guitarman]

No they haven't lol.

To be clear, i meant that as an opinion. BFA was horrid and Legion was a step in the wrong direction. Still better than WoD...

[Shenrien]

Going from shit festing in blood(WoD), to just shit(Legion) is still shit.

[Boyiee]

Yeah legion wasn't bad but okay.

[Boyiee]

Preety much every other wow expansion is good. This is the way.

[Lucavi]

Pretty shitty way to be a consumer, knowing that a company releases a shit product 50% of the time, yet buying it anyway. Modern Blizzard fans are like a battered wife: getting slapped around 4 days a week and fed pancakes for breakfast does not, in fact, mean that "he can change!"

The company is run by the finance department: a bunch of suits and ties that have no interest in games aside from what revenue they can pull from the consumer. The majority of the gamers and nerds who made that company are long gone. Its a husk, but they were all paid well, so it is what it is.

[Boyiee]

Only one wow xpac has been "bad" and it's not even that bad, I didn't mean that completely literally. But every other xpac is much better almost like when SE had two different teams working on games.

Far, far from 50% of their products is shit. Like, is one even shit? Maybe one? Which one is it, mobile Diablo?

[Boyiee]

Also you named every major video game company. Every company is blizzard for the most part now and being run by the finance department. Every video game company is a company now, a true corporation and not a video game company.

[Nitsuki]

Only one wow xpac has been "bad" and it's not even that bad, I didn't mean that completely literally. But every other xpac is much better almost like when SE had two different teams working on games.

Far, far from 50% of their products is shit. Like, is one even shit? Maybe one? Which one is it, mobile Diablo?

I see you like getting dickslapped by blizzard with the amount of denial you’re spewing. Lol

[Lucavi]

Only one wow xpac has been "bad" and it's not even that bad

Okay. I see what kind of person I'm conversing with. Going to bow out so as not to waste time or energy. I hope you enjoyed the WC3 Remaster. I hope modern Acti-Blizz is everything you want in a company holding the keys to a legendary stock of IP.

[Boyiee]

I see you like getting dickslapped by blizzard with the amount of denial you’re spewing. Lol

Wow still has millions of players, think you're in the minority dude. Game isn't as good as it was this year but last expansion was one of the better ones and this one does suck in comparison but still has some good things. And classic is lit af. I don't play this expansions content as that's all I play really.

Okay. I see what kind of person I'm conversing with. Going to bow out so as not to waste time or energy. I hope you enjoyed the WC3 Remaster. I hope modern Acti-Blizz is everything you want in a company holding the keys to a legendary stock of IP.

Nah you don't but good, thank you. You're delusional if you think the games are bad. Company can still be a shit company and not what it once was with bad ethics and morals but still have good games. Also, I didn't get WC3.

[Prothescar]

A much more interesting, and amusing, metric is the one where they went from 3,200,000 players down to 1,700,000 players between BFA launch and now.

But yea BFA was great.

[Boyiee]

No one said it was.

BFA is free with a subscription to classic.

[Prothescar]

I think really the biggest problem is Blizzard's recent tendency to include features that shit on the potential enjoyment of their games. WCIIIRF and the new Overwatch seasonal banning system are good examples of this. Systems in WoW that have driven people away would be another. At their core, current Blizzard games aren't objectively bad compared to lots of others but that isn't a very high bar these days and it says nothing for future games like D4.

[Boyiee]

I think really the biggest problem is Blizzard's recent tendency to include features that shit on the potential enjoyment of their games. WCIIIRF and the new Overwatch seasonal banning system are good examples of this. Systems in WoW that have driven people away would be another. At their core, current Blizzard games aren't objectively bad compared to lots of others but that isn't a very high bar these days and it says nothing for future games like D4.

For sure. And they swung and missed with BFA and the early talks of shadowlands seem like a step back in the right direction. I also feel like this is a game where less cared about the lore or story and they thought that too, but it turns out that's wrong. The popularity of classic without those systems is a good example which shows that a balance between the two would be nice. Too many changes and adjustments and homogenization has been a real downfall for them.

[Silenka]

On the topic of OW - since I care about it because of OWL and have been following it closely -

OW seems to be the only Blizz IP that has been more or less "left alone" to do its thing. There isn't glaring evidence that their dev team has changed significantly in scope or in how they do things since OW came out and the dev team seems to still be calling most of the shots for the game. I suspect this is purely because of OWL. There is more money to be made in OWL than in OW itself so OW is the only game the finance department can't gut and leave in shambles because they'll miss out on the bigger piece of pie.

That said, OW has been struggling with a couple things for pretty much the duration of its existence. On the OWL side of things, stale metas gave us dive almost the entirety of season one and GOATS almost the entirety of season two. While people pretty much enjoyed watching dive (though there was still some complaining about the duration of its dominance), by about halfway through S2 people were sick of watching GOATS because of the focus on measured team play (clash of high HP heroes who never fucking die) over individual skill plays (Widow or Zen popping off). OWL viewership fell off really bad. By Stage4 of S2 the OW team attempted to force a meta change by nerfing some GOATS heroes but it was too little too late.

I understand that in ladder it's a question of coordination and people not enjoying how certain heroes are tuned rather than strictly meta. No amount of anything blizz does is going to fix people being toxic or not being able to communicate with each other to coordinate to win games. As far as heroes go, certain ones dominate based on how strong they are at the moment (recently I was hearing a lot of complaints about Doom, Orisa and Mei). The "meta" insofar as comp goes is whichever heroes are "must-picks" because of their ability to counter other heroes or just being grossly overtuned.

So OW team has to think about how to fix both these problems. The important point here is that they have loudly been accused of not listening to or caring about the playerbase, not listening to the pros, and not listening to what OWL viewers want. The solution they found is to

1. communicate with the players more through forum posts and dev updates
2. bring potential balance/game changes out of their own dev test environment/PTR and let players play them while earning xp under an "experimental" card
3. introduce hero pools for OWL and comp only (none in arcade or QP). In the case of comp, banned heroes will change every 1 week and be based on which heroes are being picked the most. In the case of OWL, banned heroes will change every 2 weeks and teams will be informed ahead of time so they can plan strats.

#2 and #3 are introduced specifically so a dive/GOATS situation never happens again and so people in comp aren't complaining about Mei or Moth or what have you for months on end. The dev team has already stated they are willing to change this timeframe in comp if people really hate being locked out of certain heroes for a week. I imagine they will eventually change it to being every 3 days or so. For OWL this is really big not only as a meta-buster move but also to put the focus squarely back on innovating strategies, playing a lot of different heroes (hey maybe hitscan players won't be riding the bench all season this time!) and surprising the audience instead of practicing one meta all season until the players and audience hate the game.

In the end they are attempting to communicate with players more and fix the issues the game is having so...there's actually nothing to complain about here in regards to the system. In fact, it's actually a step forward and the only Blizz IP that appears to be attempting to do anything right atm.

tl;dr wrote a novel bc I got triggered by one thing Proth said

[Prothescar]

That's a lot of words to disagree with an opinion

[silverdragontyr]

I haven't played OW in months now. I had heard about the hero pool but had not heard it would be a whole week thing. That seems like a good way to kill interest in a mode. I had assumed it would be random heroes blocked out per game. Not specific heroes blocked out a whole week. I get learning different heroes is important but going to play only to find some of the heroes you enjoy can't be played for an entire week, even a few days seems incredibly disheartening and would just turn me off the game until the timer is up.

[arus2001]

Can I just laugh derisively at those that believed mobile gaming trends wouldn't creep into the mainstream? Because here we are.

[Silenka]

They did say if people hated it they would change it... it's not like it's guaranteed to last all season. They're basically in experiment mode to figure out what's the best way to get rid of long metas that kill the game for a lot of people. Metas are too long and balance changes don't come fast enough are the 2 top complaints about OW so they're trying to react to those 2 complaints.

[arus2001]

I'd argue the concept of seasons is anathema to changes. Like, Blizzard took that stance with D3, and as a result, if a class turns out to be absolutely garbage/ignored within its own concept of GR meta, they're SOL until the next patch cycle IF and only if Blizzard decides to address them. Meanwhile, you can guarantee that any sort of bug that benefits players is squashed immediately, with rollback/punishment a mixed bag affair. In the end, it's never really a matter of can't, but more that they don't want to pay to, as it means less cash for the people who DGAF about the process as a whole.