Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#81

Post by username90 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #28

So, firstly, I deplore the behavior that's been exposed recently. I hope the people responsible and their leaders end up getting shut out of the industry, sued and/or criminally charged as appropriate. But I wonder if those hoping aloud that this saga kills off Acti-Blizzard are indulging in wishful thinking. Isn't it likely that this is yet another so-called PR "disaster" that the vast majority of customers won't be…

The main thing people lost here is hope. Before they were angry with Blizzard products but hope remained that the next game, the next expansion or the next patch would fix things. But now hope is lost, the community views this event as the final confirmation that Blizzard is run by really shitty people and their releases will just continue to get worse instead of shaping up.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#82

Post by BigJono » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

praisewhitey wrote: post #59

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #39

Just another point of view here: all of the politics are irrelevant. I don't know anyone, nor does anyone I know know anyone who plays anything Blizzard produces right now. Does Blizzard make any games that people want to play right now? I don't know. According to activeplayer.io[1] Overwatch's average monthly player count has never been higher, but of that demographic, I can't find anyone I know who plays it, so my…

Maybe this is not the best heuristic, but I'd look at where their games are ranked in number of viewers on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/directory?sort=VIEWER_COUNT and their long term viewership https://sullygnome.com/game/Overwatch/longtermstats https://sullygnome.com/game/World_of_Warcraft/longtermstats https://sullygnome.com/game/Hearthstone_Heroes_of_Warcraft/l...

I can't speak to the others, but Twitch as a heuristic is going to be extremely misleading for WoW, since it's centered almost purely around the competitive aspects (raids and M+), and almost in sync with every other part of the game going to shit, those two have grown in popularity with proper "e-sports" style coverage being introduced.

The WoW devs are still very good at making raid encounters and competitive dungeons. And they have literally zero competition in that area. So as long as they don't do anything catastrophic, they'll maintain that segment of the playerbase by default.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#83

Post by temp8964 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #71

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cite sources for that claim please.

You can look it up online. Xbox Series X and S Manufacturer: Flextronics and Foxconn Nintendo Switch Manufacturer: Foxconn Sony Manufacturer: PlayStation 5 In-house (my mistake on them). PlayStation 3 and 4 were both made by Foxconn assisting. But it also applies to others: Google Pixel 5 Manufacturer: Foxconn Kindle Manufacturer: Foxconn (Fire Tablets are made in Hong Kong by Quanta due to AOSP Anti-Fork rules) Nint…

Foxconn has lots of factories in lots of different places. Does it matter to specify which factory / place has the problem?

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#84

Post by 411111111111111 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

michaelbrave wrote: post #67

cuillevel3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. That was in 2008, right? So their reputation has been going downhill for 13 years?

It was a slow death, one by a thousand papercuts, you can see the changes in Wow as an example. Classic Wow and BC were not convenient, to enter a dungeon you had to travel to it, often you had to finish the quests in an area to unlock it, if someone wanted to come who hadn't done this yet you were compelled to help them, often these were quests that were beyond what one person could do. It was built around teamwork…

Convenience features are not the issue. Sure, there are people that don't like them but there are even more that would never bother playing without them.

It's a convergence of multiple factors that's destroying WoW, and not all off them is entirely in Activision Blizzards control. I cannot remember playing any games in recent history that had a community as toxic as WoWs to non veteran players.

Their effectively P2W Cashshop didn't help either, as it created the situation where people basically cannot find normal content groups anymore. Everything pushes you too buy gold and then get carried through relevant content for gear.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#85

Post by Foomf » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #73

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #39

Just another point of view here: all of the politics are irrelevant. I don't know anyone, nor does anyone I know know anyone who plays anything Blizzard produces right now. Does Blizzard make any games that people want to play right now? I don't know. According to activeplayer.io[1] Overwatch's average monthly player count has never been higher, but of that demographic, I can't find anyone I know who plays it, so my…

I was a very active Starcraft 2 player up until the Blitzchung controversy in late 2019. For me, Starcraft was and has been the most engaging RTS made, both to watch and play. I still haven’t found a satisfying replacement. RTS as a genre is getting dwarfed but other game types, but it has its niche. I was engaged enough with the game that I was paying for seasonal War Chests—-essentially skins, to bump the tournamen…

Age of Empires 2 is still getting regular updates. There aren't too many RTS games nowadays but you should give AOE2 HD a try.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#86

Post by endgame » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

wpasc wrote: post #6

zahrc wrote: post #3

Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. Some of my veteran WoW friends returned with the release of classic and TBC classic, but no one stayed for long. Blizzard has been destroying all of their franchises WoW - convoluted imbalanced hot mess Diablo - repetitive. Diablo immortal. Warcraft III - buggy and laggy steaming pile of undelivered promises Overwatch - imbalanced. Overwatc…

I find it a fascinating case study that some of the company’s most anticipated releases are just re releases: Diablo 2 resurrected, WoW classic, Warcraft 3 reforged. Death by a thousand lapses in game quality and you get a lot of hype about refurbished old games. Some of it is rose covered nostalgia but IMO there’s been a sea change in game design since the advent of the attention economy, pay to progress, micro tran…

It's also telling that the team doing SC: Remastered cared enough to make an emulator for EUD maps (SC1 maps which used a buffer overflow accessible from within the map scripting language to execute arbitrary code), but the War3: Reforged release was a big steaming turd of missed promises.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#87

Post by Clubber » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #16

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

Think of it from the perspective of a zero empathy creature who favours profit maximisation over any and all human cost. What are they going to do with their life? What would need to happen for them not to end up in charge of companies? This is a standard thing that has been happening for centuries as people try organisational structures that rely on good people being in charge. Turns out that there isn't a divining…

>This is a standard thing that has been happening for centuries as people try organisational structures that rely on good people being in charge.

Honestly, if your organizational structure relies on good people do be in charge, you've already lost. The trick is so that people in power never have too much power, and don't have the power to destroy it. It can be a simple system like requiring 3 keys of 3 people to launch a nuclear strike, or something way more complex, like the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution.

When creating the structures, you have to think of it like a video game designer to a degree. You have to always keep in mind how would a bad actor hack this to his or her advantage, then remove whatever it is you find.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#88

Post by username90 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

411111111111111 wrote: post #84

michaelbrave wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a slow death, one by a thousand papercuts, you can see the changes in Wow as an example. Classic Wow and BC were not convenient, to enter a dungeon you had to travel to it, often you had to finish the quests in an area to unlock it, if someone wanted to come who hadn't done this yet you were compelled to help them, often these were quests that were beyond what one person could do. It was built around teamwork…

Convenience features are not the issue. Sure, there are people that don't like them but there are even more that would never bother playing without them. It's a convergence of multiple factors that's destroying WoW, and not all off them is entirely in Activision Blizzards control. I cannot remember playing any games in recent history that had a community as toxic as WoWs to non veteran players. Their effectively P2W…

> P2W Cashshop

That is branded as a convenience feature though, it is very convenient to buy a maxlevel character or buy gold.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#89

Post by brundolf » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

> I think company founders are often great, idealistic people. People who genuinely want to make the world better.

> When they step aside, however, the people who take over after them tend to be terrifying: zero empathy creatures who favor profit maximization over any and all human cost.

Seems to me like this has more to do with going public. When a company starts being treated as a money-printing machine, and its actual business is nothing but the implementation details of that machine, it either crumbles or it becomes a destructive force. Almost all companies whose products thrive and/or have a net positive effect on society have somebody at the helm who cares about what the company is actually doing. At a public company, investors are the ones at the helm, and they usually just want money. The company tends to switch from value-creation to value-extraction. If their dominance is entrenched enough that innovation and quality aren't very important anymore, they become vampiric. If it isn't, they slowly whither away.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#90

Post by thrashh » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #70

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

> Does anyone know why this happens? Oh it's easy to explain. Steve Jobs said it best [1]. He talks about innovation at Pepsi being a new bottle. That's what Activision Blizzard is. They have a "monopoly" with their key franchises, most notably CoD and WoW. They just release a new "bottle" every 1-2 years. Game studios are a bit like a large film studio. They don't like the creative process. It's too unpredictable. T…

I think you’re more explaining what happens than why it happens.

Personally I know every project or initiative I’ve pushed for is because I have a vision of how things should be. When I give up the reigns to someone else, usually they’re just doing it because they have to.

There’s no replacement for passion.