71–80 of 557 posts
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Riot is developing a MMO based on Runeterra. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
It will 100% be like Genshin Impact. Sure you can treat that as an MMO too but don't expect anything like WoW at all
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I've tried a bunch of MMOs since WoW... and despite newer engines and some neat features, they often end up just being... mostly WoW once the sheen wears off. I occasionally revisit WoW because if you're going to play a WoW clone, you might as well just play WoW.
You should try playing some older MMOs: EVE, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, Runescape. All stuff fundamentally untouched by the WoW design - and they are much better for it IMO. When I've played these games, even 20 years on, I am completely stunned. Makes me realize how psychologically kneecapped we are by WoW.
(Other games I spent time on, which yes, are newer than WoW: I really enjoyed the moment to moment feel of playing WildStar and Black Desert Online (largely because they replaced casting/cooldowns/calculated damage values with movement and combos), but of course, RIP the first one, and the second one is macrotransactioned to heck, my wallet couldn't take it. SWTOR's early storyline content is insanely well-done, but unfortunately, once you graduate out of it, it literally is exactly the same game as WoW.)
I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…
Examples in my opinion:
Diablo has always had repetitive gameplay, but the stories/lore seems to suffer with each release.
They are either working on SC3 in secret or have given up on the franchise.
Their management of WoW Classic and rollout of releases has been awful. Without fresh progression servers, Classic is going to truly die in a couple of weeks with the release of TBC.
I still can't believe they butchered WC3:reforged so badly. It could have been a massive boon for them were it not for the hideously greedy ToS along with all the technical issues and straight up downgrades from the original in terms of multiplayer. There have to be some epic stories of mismanagement or hubris, if only someone would tell them.
For artists, there's a concept of "moral rights". Art may not be destroyed senselessly, no matter who owns it, because it goes against the human creative spirit - rights like that. We need similar rights for old games. You can sell a new remaster or even turn down the servers, but you can't remake it into a monstrosity that you can't opt out of.
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What about Overwatch is a disaster?
I can only speak from personal experience. I absolutely adored Overwatch at launch but about a year ago I uninstalled it and never looked back. What finally killed it for me is the role-based queueing. It locked in the developer-proscribed 2/2/2 meta and made the game feel very static and uninteresting. Previously, if you saw a gap on your team you could switch to a completely different role to fill the void. Though…
"Do you guys not have phones?" -Blizzard staff in 2018, in response to booing fans upset that Blizzard wouldn't make a PC version of a game those same fans obviously wanted to play. This company has been contemptuous of their players for years. They fell into that classic trap of "If we [do something that will alienate all our customers] we can get 10x as many customers from [untapped market]" As anybody should have…
"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.
I'd almost entirely stopped playing Overwatch for a couple years, but I got back in recently and feel like the tone is overall better than it had been. I think a lot of the toxic players may have actually just moved on?
They also released player reporting and endorsements though it’s harder to say what the overall impact of those are.
I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…
> Starcraft 2 is basically dead. WC3 remastered flopped Paradoxically, I've noticed an uptick of new creative Starcraft 2 content on Youtube (similar to those "can you beat the game by doing [insert crazy premise here]" types of videos you see in the Mario community). I think the two company direction things that were noticeable for me were that they decided to try to embrace two major cop-outs: milking cash shop (sk…
If there's one business lesson to take from the history of the video game industry, it's that being a video game company is extremely unreliable. Being a collectibles company is much more reliable.
As the company leaders look for ways to make their business endure, it's natural for them to turn to more reliable business models.
Nobody likes layoffs.