Aug 23 2010
Is Blizzard shooting itself in the foot lately?
I will admit first and foremost that I am basically a Blizzard fanboy. I even own Blizzard stock as well. It is a company who always comes thru with their finished products being top notch and a success. They are famous world wide for their big motto on releasing games “when they are finished”. So to their credit they have not strayed from this formula since joining up with Activision, like some would have thought they would.
My views on this is not that they are going to but I am wondering why some things are just taking so damn long to release. Before you scream “they don’t want to release crap and get everyone pissed about it”, let me explain myself here. 1st my argument isn’t that it would be rushed it’s that with their resources and talent they should be done with everything to their extent already. OK let’s rewind about 3 years. About when Burning Crusade (1st WoW expansion) was coming out they made a comment at a Blizzcon that they “intended” or would like to come out with a WoW expansion roughly every 18 months. I won’t get too crazy fanboy and accept this as bible but I think it’s all possible and at the same time think some of their content patches may have taken the place of some of this as well. Although I think this last content patch of Ruby Sanctum was a big fat FAIL for the mainstream WoW market. Once again Blizz puts out content for only the 5-10% of the playing public will even see which to me is complete and utter fail. It’s not really Pug-able and arguably only people who have downed Arthas will or can even go there, so not a good thing in the eyes of even the harder core casual gamers. But , as usual I digress… Back to expansion talk… We are now looking at just under 2 years that Wrath of the Lich King has been released, and we have been hearing about Cataclysm for over a year now as well. Everyone is well aware that Blizz was working of Cataclysm well before this announcement as well. All along they have been saying “sometime in ’10” for the release. Yet with them changing so much this late in the year and so much more they claim is “not even close to being finished” how in the world can they release it this year? And with all the people they have hired to work on it and all the beta-testers out there how the hell is it taking this long. Ok I will back up some more. How is it that you can seriously still be overhauling complete class talent trees in AUGUST??? Come on guys the trees should have been 75% done before the beta phase even started. It’s an embarrassment to be this behind this late in the year. I have said it before but anything but a pre-blizzcon release is absolutely absurd and a complete waste of money. This will bring more attention of Cataclysm to blizzcon and fans do not want to see that as a main focus for this years blizzcon. We want something fresh. Even spending the majority of blizzcon on Diablo 3 would be fine with me, but just don’t spend any hunk of press on Cataclysm. There are even huge hunks of the community who are hoping that we will get a glimpse of the new “top secret” MMO project Blizz has been working on at this years blizzcon. How perfect of an announcement of the Con would that be??
While I am on the semi-subject of Diablo 3 I will use that as my next point of complaining of Blizz taking it’s sweet ass time. The last incarnation of Diablo was 10 years ago. Sure I will give em some lee-way and say they had probably taken some time off after the 2nd one to rest up or think of other things. BUT, as much of a smash hit as it was, and cash cow you HAD to know you were making another one. It’s only common sense. Now there is no way this is anything but a separate team of programmers etc, working on Cat and D3 and still we keep hearing that it might not even be next year, that it is out. Again WTF is taking you guys so long. Sure everything looks good so far and some great new innovations to the game but not much has changed in about a year since we saw some more Monk footage. They still only have 4 Classes announced and I am guessing that 5 will be in game at launch. Right now they have the Barbarian (basically same as D2 Dual Wielding hack and slash fest which we all love), Which Doctor (more of a pet class, caster, curses), Wizard (caster duh) and Monk (pure damage and some new niche abilities Blizz is really pimping). As always I suspect Blizzard will announce a primarily ranged class, something akin to the amazon or Hunter (from WoW). A class that can do melee or ranged. Unless they are holding back 2-3 classes for a planned expansion to D3 which is likely to happen as well.
So my Q about D3 is this. How is it Runic games (whom have a bunch of ex-Diablo programmers) can put out such an amazing game like Torchlight in a fraction of the time to get D3 out, and WORST of all how can they put out a Torchlight 2 all which working on their own MMO before D3 is even out! And make no bones about it Torchlight is a kick ass game. If you have not played the 1st one, GET IT NOW. It will help to keep you happy while you wait for D3.
After saying all of this above I have two big answers to my own questions but yet I still have the above gripes. First, I am well aware that it’s just not smart business for Blizz to put out two games too closeto each other. So with the huge release (and success) of Starcraft 2 this summer, it only makes some sense not to take any chances of losing potential sales of it to WoW players or vice versa. This is also prob why they have never put out a computer version of the WoW TCG which I would 100000% love to see happen. With the success of MTG: Duals of the Planeswalker, it’s entirely still possible I hope. Now granted I know many people who play Starcraft are just not those who play WoW but there has to be some significant overlap to warrant the issue of pushing Cat back as long as possible. And naturally the separation of D3 from WoW:Cataclysm b.c well frankly I would think a HUGE HUGE percent of people who play WoW play Diablo as well.
Second of my own counter argument is, well even if they ARE shooting themselves in the foot, do we or they care? Is it even going to hurt them? I mean is anyone NOT going to buy Cat if it comes out in Jan? Prolly not. Prolly the same billion people who want it now will still want it then. Same thing with Diablo. The whole world is going to get it anyway so what do they care. All these things just need to be out before SWTOR or else they can see a huge chunk out of profits with people in love with that title.
So as a gamer, as a fan-boy, as a stock holder. PLEASE, blizzard get off your collective butts and get these titles finished. We would like to both play them and see you proffit off them as well.
GeekJock out.
This just popped up on my google alerts
Here’s part of the reason for everything Diablo and Torchlight related: Diablo 1 was invented by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer (his brother), and David Brevik – all of whom stuck around for Diablo 2 and then left when they got tired of Blizzard being passed around like a bad cold. After they left Blizzard shut down Blizzard North and lost 99% of the original Diablo team’s developers – including the people who invented it in the first place.
It took Blizzard years to even get a team together that could produce anything they could actually be proud of (the original team’s D3 work got trashed and the next team’s first work also got trashed, so the current D3 is literally try number 3). Meanwhile the Schaefers went off to found Flagship Studios, and they would be ruling the ARPG market right now if Mythos hadn’t been lost to the Korean business takeover. Seriously, Mythos was everything you would ever want in an MMO with Diablo-style gameplay. Now from what I hear it’s been koreanized into a grindfest with the best parts taken out.
When Flagship died the Mythos team stuck together to found Runic Games and just try to put out a finished game for the first time in years (losing Mythos so close to release was an insult at best). The founding team had 3 years of experience working together, they knew exactly what was a problem when they worked on Mythos, so for Torchlight they basically put themselves into an optimized position to put out a game as fast as possible. Now they have a completed game to base the sequel off of and put everything into it that they didn’t have time for in the first 11 month production cycle.
In the end, I’d say it comes down to Runic having a smaller team that works better together that lets them make good games fast. Blizzard has just gotten too…. bloated.
Webbstre
I loved the article on them in PCGAMER last month. It was a great insight into it all. (Like your site as well). I didn’t know that Blizz had scrapped so much of D3 over the course of it all… good info for sure. I only hope they can keep up the good that we see now.
As for Runic I am a huge fan of theirs. I think they set a good goal and do good work. Sure TL has some faults but I think they are learning from them all and putting it towards the development of TL2 and the MMO. I really can’t wait to see what they have in store next. I have about 100 hours + played in TL and suspect just as much for the future with TL2. I even think their attitude towards their MMO with the way they plan to do Micro-transactions is a great approach and attitude to keep.
Thanks for coming and hope you come back for some reads!
GJ
GeekJock
It is a matter of gaining and maintaining top talent in the field. The really good people in the industry usually defect off and start their own little pet projects. As for Blizzard, I suspect they have gotten too big and are involved in so many projects at the same time that it takes them longer to complete one individual project. Plus I always assumed that for a huge release like Cataclysm wouldn’t you want a release date closer to the big holiday shopping season instead of a summer release? The reality is that Blizzard’s earnigs are hugely 4th quarter weighted when more people buy discretionary purchases like games. And I would also argue that new updatees to big franchises like WOW should have a little more content for people that are new to WOW to try and convince new gamers to give the game a try. Those expansions usually just involve new maps and new level for high level users that already play the game like mad. And yes, new content will maintain the interest of the majority of players so getting out expansions in a timely manner will help maintain the game’s popularity! Blizzard’s biggest challenge in my opinion will be maintaining top talent going forward!
The Redheaded Pharmacist