Video Game discussion

[linklord231]

Poor THQ.  Just about every game they ever made, valued at $25.  And so soon after the Humble THQ Bundle, too.

[trappedslider]

I recently got skyrim and the guide,i'm enjoying it now that I have a sense of what i'm doing and all that.

[Unbeliever]

Speaking of Blizzard and money, I wonder how profitable Diablo 2 has been when looking over its lifetime. I mean, it's sold a large amount of units, but those servers and the paychecks for people working on patches etc must've added up to a lot over the years, and there's only been one expansion to add to the revenue stream from that game.

You're probably onto something there, but there's a big intangible benefit, or at least a potential one.  The amount of goodwill and street cred among gamers, especially RPG/aRPG gamers, that Diablo 2 garnered Blizzard was huge.  I think there's an argument -- I'm not positive as this is reaching back years and years -- that things like WoW would not have done nearly as well if it hadn't been for D2.  And, D3 obviously benefited from it.

They didn't cash in that goodwill very effectively by sitting on sequels, direct or spiritual, to D2 until many years after the original was already enshrined into the canon.

I also was very much under the impression that Blizzard was having serious financial troubles.  The MMO space is ... saturated, to put it mildly, so there's not a ton of money there.  And, there's good reason to believe that D3 was rushed out (an ironic statement if there ever was one) in order to be a cash infusion.  There's other evidence, based on attempted mergers, which I can't recall off-hand. 


P.S.:  I like THQ, in part b/c I'm a sucker for Warhammer 40k.  But, they do a good job at capturing that kind of wacky world.  They just haven't quite hit the ball out of the park with a really great game with it.  Dawn of War was the last one, and that's some time ago already.

[Halinn]

I also was very much under the impression that Blizzard was having serious financial troubles.  The MMO space is ... saturated, to put it mildly, so there's not a ton of money there.  And, there's good reason to believe that D3 was rushed out (an ironic statement if there ever was one) in order to be a cash infusion.  There's other evidence, based on attempted mergers, which I can't recall off-hand. 

Activision Blizzard is doing very well as a company, and WoW still has over 10 million subscribers (had around 9m before MoP launch). I don't feel as if D3 was rushed out, compared to the feel of their previous games on release. People just compared it to the later, more polished versions of their other games.

[brujon]

The problem with D3 is a problem only for those of us who are old enough to remember the good old Diablo 2 days. What they tried to do with D3 is to bring the feel of D2 and merging it with the gameplay aspects that have been introduced with the last console generation.

We have to face facts: The videogame market targets the demographics of people aged 12 to 20 something. Diablo 2 is over 10 years old... The majority of that demographic was just too young to have had any contact with Diablo 2. Most won't have played it, only maybe heard of it through it's lingering popularity. But sure enough they'll have heard of other games of a similar genre and gameplay that have come on the later years, and probably played them and liked them. And they have a lot of things that don't sit well with the style of D2... Like the music, which is nothing like the gloomy music from D2, which made you feel like you actually were in that dark dank cave full of demons... Or the combat, which is much more fast paced and flashy, and many other things, like the graphics, which were "cartoonified" to an extent, compared to the graphics of D2, which aspired to be more realistic.

No small wonder the diehard fans of D2 didn't like D3 very much. Many of the elements that made it unique are gone... Everyone looked at D2 like the natural step forward from D1, but that didn't happen with D3. This is what went wrong.

[Unbeliever]

I also was very much under the impression that Blizzard was having serious financial troubles.  The MMO space is ... saturated, to put it mildly, so there's not a ton of money there.  And, there's good reason to believe that D3 was rushed out (an ironic statement if there ever was one) in order to be a cash infusion.  There's other evidence, based on attempted mergers, which I can't recall off-hand. 

Activision Blizzard is doing very well as a company, and WoW still has over 10 million subscribers (had around 9m before MoP launch). I don't feel as if D3 was rushed out, compared to the feel of their previous games on release. People just compared it to the later, more polished versions of their other games.

There was a lot of talk about Vivendi trying to sell its stake in Activision/Blizzard, and also, as I said, all the numbers are not great for WoW.  Despite its size, it is by far not dominant, and Mists of Pandaria's sales were actually disappointing, I believe.  Again, not bad per se, but not up to what it was expected to be, which for a major business can be actually pretty terrible.  There was also a big layoff at Blizzard, 300 employees if I can recall.  Although they claimed there were no "game personnel" that were laid off, that's usually not a sign of a thriving firm.

This is according to financial reporters, Forbes, Bloomberg, etc., who do seem to know what they are talking about.  Although in the interest of full disclosure, most of my info is from the summer, when I was paying attention to such things, so it might be out of date.  Although I don't think the landscape has shifted in any major way. 

EDIT:  apparently Mists of Pandaria numbers, and what they portend, are a matter of some debate among analysts.  Some think it's fine, some think they are terrible.  Compare that to Black Ops 2 (owned, coincidentally, by the same company) -- no ambivalence in the financial analysts there. 

I just think D3 is a bad game.  Or, mediocre maybe.  It's not just that it's not identical to D2, but I think it is objectively bad on a number of important metrics.  I am told it is much better now by one of my friends who still plays it, but when major sub-systems need to be overhauled in a game 6 months after release, no one can say that (1) the game is really quite good, if it were, the overhaul wouldn't be needed, and (2) that, kind of like Brujon argues, that it's merely a difference in taste in a generation gap.  Again, if that were the case, then they wouldn't bother revising it heavily, they'd just be content with capturing the younger market. 

The video game space is crowded, to say the least.  There are better put together games out there by the dozens, and especially for someone like me who doesn't have a ton of free time to go through games, I guess I can afford to be picky. 

[Kuroimaken]

In my days games used to be challenging and not cater to the tastes of stupid preteens.

We also had to game uphill both ways in the snow with no gloves through forests of razor wire.

[oslecamo]

Heh, crappy games always existed, in particular those exploring the latest big name movies that preteens loved.

I am told it is much better now by one of my friends who still plays it, but when major sub-systems need to be overhauled in a game 6 months after release, no one can say that (1) the game is really quite good, if it were, the overhaul wouldn't be needed, and (2) that, kind of like Brujon argues, that it's merely a difference in taste in a generation gap.  Again, if that were the case, then they wouldn't bother revising it heavily, they'd just be content with capturing the younger market. 

That's an awfully pessimistic view. One of the main reasons Blizzard is still one of the top dogs of the gaming industry is that they're willing to admit they screwed up and patching stuff up again and again in order to improve their games. WoW for example is a completely diferent beast than the game that launched 10 years ago under the same name.

An even better example would be the first Starcraft, where in the first version zerg was literally unbeatable as zergling rush simply couldn't be countered, but then a patch came out increasing the cost of hatchery and some other details and from there came out the greatest RTS of history.

Diablo 3 started as "too easy", then after a series of major nerfs ended "too hard", but now they've finally managed to hit a better middle spot.

THQ meanwhile became infamous by "abandoning" their own games after just a few patches, and  they're the ones that ended up filling for bankrupcy.

[Kuroimaken]

I think pretty much any company can do reasonably well as long as they build up their street cred. For example, people tend to hate Day One DLC and In-Disc DLC. (I know I do, at least.) If you keep those to a minimum you're pretty much halfway there.

Pre-existing engines will take care of any graphics you'd like your game to have. Making good use of said engine and creating a fun and engaging story or gameplay, however, is entirely YOUR JOB.

[Halinn]

To add on oslecamo's point here, my feeling is that the reason Blizzard is/was known for long delays, was that they wanted to release their games as bug-free as possible. That they were extra polished at the same time comes as a consequence of that, because the bug-fixing people aren't the same as the ones who are cleaning off the plot and juggling class/race numbers.
Aside from an at-launch lack of server capacity, I can't remember hearing complaints about any major bugs in D3. Releasing not late would in that context mean that the polishing guys had to work the numbers into place over a series of live patches.

[SorO_Lost]

Friend of mine on Skype has a long list of bugs if you need one. And their forums too

Honestly, after the rainbow thing I kind of stopped caring to track it. When it was released I got an earful of how terrible it is. So I'm waiting for it to have a dozen patches for stability and to appear in bargain bins. Actually, to add to that I'm waiting on a piratebay version cracked to be malware free too.

[Unbeliever]

...
Aside from an at-launch lack of server capacity, I can't remember hearing complaints about any major bugs in D3. Releasing not late would in that context mean that the polishing guys had to work the numbers into place over a series of live patches.

Having logged a couple of hundred hours in the game there are (were, as of this summer) a lot of terrible issues with it.  The gameplay has serious issues, the number of skills and abilities that actually saw use were a narrow subset of those in the game.  Loot, also known as the whole point of the Diablo series is pretty terrible and uninspired.  A number of people on D3's forums, and indeed people who I know personally who are big fans of the game, acknowledge the overwhelming importance of the auction house.  A number of people have referred to it as "an auction house simulator with a monster game attached to it."  And, in my experience, there is something to that claim. 

And, that's in addition to some fatal errors with regards to plot -- which has a number of wallbanger moments, arguably the whole thing is kind of a wallbanger -- and even more importantly things like having the gameplay constantly interrupted by prattle from your companions or other NPCs. 

Note that Halinn and I seem to be talking about two different things.  Halinn is referring to bugs, I think, things like clipping or whatever.  I'm talking about terrible design decisions.  I don't know how many technical bugs D3 has/had.  But, if you spend millions of dollars and several years designing a game, it should be fun and engaging and the whole thing should fit together.  D3 is plagued by a litany of design decisions.  One of which, constant online, was covered by the media.  Many of which weren't apparent until you actually played the game for a fair bit of time, in large part b/c the game doesn't actually start till midway through Hell (the 3rd difficulty) or Inferno (the 4th and hardest difficulty). 

As to Oscelamo's point, I think if that was Blizzard's model -- i.e., "patch it till it's good" -- then a lot has gone wrong.  First off, it's at odds with their stated motto, which is "we'll release it when it's done" (tm).  That's just a lie to the fans.  Second, I think it's a design philosophy that will not enable them to survive in the modern gaming environment.  Nowadays numerous high profile AAA titles are being constantly released for the PC.  So, I can buy Blizzard Game #1 on release, confident that it will be kinda sucky when I buy it but will (probably) improve in 6 months?  In that case, I'll just hold off on buying BG#1 and play Dishonored or Spec Ops the Line or Borderlands 2 or [insert the new hotness here].  6 months from now, when BG#1 has morphed into BG#1.7, odds are I'll have forgotten about it, or will have been soured by launch-day negative reviews, and it will have to compete with whatever is the new hotness then.  And, again, this is for a studio that releases games at a glacial rate.

Based on my non-scientific survey, consisting of all the PC gamers I know, it seems that between Starcraft 2:  we'll release a third of a game at a time and maybe you'll the the whole one before the Rapture, edition, and some level of frustration or disappointment with D3, Blizzard has burned a lot of whatever street cred it had.  And, it's worth noting that street cred really applied to older gamers, like myself, who recall D2 and Starcraft fondly.  As it stands, it's a studio house with essentially one title -- World of Warcraft -- in what is I believe the most saturated game space in the market.  D3 was the first title in its IP in a decade, Starcraft 2 seems stalled, and they haven't made a Warcraft game in forever. 

[Jackinthegreen]

I've read a bit about D3 and I can definitely say I won't be buying it, and not just because it won't run on my current PC.  Some of the design decisions they made just don't sit right with me, but keep in mind I have been playing D2 for several years now and recently picked up Torchlight 2 so I'm rather biased.  I'd be playing Path of Exile if my computer could handle it.

The short version of my rant is that I think Blizzard has lost its balls.  They used to kick ass but now they seem tamed.

[linklord231]

I don't think Blizz will be making a new Warcraft game for the foreseeable future.  It would directly compete with Starcraft, and it would be too difficult to integrate the lore with whatever's going on in World of Warcraft at the time. 

Has there been any news on Project Titan, other than "we have a secret project called Project Titan; it'll probably be online in some manner"?

[Jackinthegreen]

I don't think Blizz will be making a new Warcraft game for the foreseeable future.  It would directly compete with Starcraft, and it would be too difficult to integrate the lore with whatever's going on in World of Warcraft at the time. 

Has there been any news on Project Titan, other than "we have a secret project called Project Titan; it'll probably be online in some manner"?

If they do any Warcraft stuff it wouldn't be RTS or ARPG, agreed.

As far as I've heard there hasn't been a damn thing mentioned about Titan since that schedule was released years ago.

[brujon]

I play Starcraft 2 - It isn't stalled AT ALL. Blizzard made a FUCKTON of money off of Starcraft 2. It was one of the most hyped, if not THE most hyped RTS of all time. At first, they made it into a pay-to-play model. You could get the lifetime license, but it cost a fuckton. So, many people had to keep paying monthly to play it. And that, they did. It did awfully well at pre-order, and people just kept buying it. But when Heart of the Swarm was finally announced to be pre-sold, they simply gave lifetime licenses to everyone that had bought the game - I was a little pissed by this because by that point i had already bought my lifetime license, but nevermind that. Keep on reading.

In South Korea, where Brood War was like a national sport, SC2 was accepted with open arms. It's growing there even as we speak and it's supplanting Brood War. Which, i sustain, is something to be really impressed by. These people have been playing professionally, on a level that's completely alien to 99,9% of gamers, for over 10 years. They know the game inside and out, and they are accepting this new game as an IMPROVEMENT over the old game.

They had some pretty big shoes to fill, and fill them they did. Which is one of the reasons i was SO disappointed with D3. If they did with D3 what they did with SC2, i guarantee you, i wouldn't be complaining. I would buy a T-SHIRT and sing their praise wherever i want, like a Bard of Vidya.

SC2 never stopped releasing patches, and at one point, near launch, the patches were almost weekly. They tweaked every aspect of the game, every imbalance. They listened to the community, and the result is that nowadays, there are hard & soft counters to nearly every strategy for each of the 3 races. The game sits on a balance point that's very, very hard to see in any RTS. And from what i've been seeing of the Heart of the Swarm beta, they continue doing it, nearly weekly, tweaking the balance for every one of the new units that came out, polishing the game while listening to the feedback of the community. I mean, when the game launched, Terran was all but invincible. Siege Tanks were just too fucking strong, they mowed down any unit and Terran could just turtle and not give a single fuck, all the while building macro, and steamrolling with Thors and Battlecruisers - another two problematic units. They nerfed Siege Tanks, and the balance point came for Zerg. Mutas were too strong - terrans didn't have a hard counter, you literally had to build Missile Turrets on EVERY single mineral line or else you'd be endlessly raped. Then came the Thor buff - They now had an aerial area of effect. Mutas now had to be microe'd hard against Thors or lose, so mass mutas didn't work anymore. Then came the other problem. Early on, marines were too strong. So they had the Terrans have to build a Supply Depot before being able to build a barracks. Just that 30sec delay meant the other races had a way to counter an early rush by marines/workers, and MMM wouldn't get the ball rolling just as fast. And a slew of other problems that don't exist anymore. Now, every race still has some niché strategies and all-ins, but these can now be properly countered, and there are no - to my knowledge - sure-fire win conditions. Like silly cannon rushes that carried you to Diamond League, Planetary Fortress rushes that made even pro-players ragequit... etc...

The game is set to be released in March 2013, and by then it will have been in beta for about 7 months. There are near weekly patches and there's a fuckton of videos that showcase every tiny little change, and tournaments with thousands of dolllar prizes still take place in vanilla SC2 all around the world. SC2 is most certainly, not stalled at all.

TL;DR version: Starcraft 2 never stopped releasing patches, it was a resounding success even in the hardest market for it - South Korea - and the beta is at full throttle even as we speak, and i hear the preorders for Heart of the Swarm are doing pretty good.


Blizzard *CAN* make some very, VERY good games still. It's just that they still have to cater to the masses of pre-teens that are accustomed to inane games that are released nonstop nowadays. WoW is their flagship. Starcraft 2 is their aircraft carrier. In that environment, Diablo 3 turned to a less prominent position. Diablo 2 is a name that carries weight in the industry, but it's no SC2 or WoW. In fact, i would not be surprised if the sequel to Diablo 3 is their new MMO. In fact, i half expect it.  WoW's been getting some age in it, it's engine is not what it was when it launched. They surely will release a WoW2 or some major graphic overhauls for it, but now that they had a major success in the MMORPG genre, they're going to want a second milk cow. The world of Sanctuary, with it's abundant lore & history, is the perfect target for this. Diablo 3 is more of a launching pad for their not-even-rumored new MMO. I'm theorycrafting here, but i would bet serious money on this.

[oslecamo]

Most videogames can only dream they're as “stalled” as SC II. The community is as huge as it gets for an RTS. There's so many high-money tournaments worldwide that you can literally make a living just out of playing SC II. The guys doing reports on the game reach super-star status in youtube. Most other games would kill for the coverage and hype  Heart of the Swarm beta is getting.

And yes, great balance is something that takes lots of years to acomplish. And then they release it to the public and people still find problems and then Blizzard further polishes stuff up, because they're not delusional enough to believe they're perfect and everybody can learn from trial and error. After all even chess took centuries of work to properly refine to the state we know it nowadays.

As for MMOs, yes the market's pretty saturated, but WoW's not only still the top dog after a decade, they're still the guys setting the standard in that enviroment.  Countless other MMOs claimed they would be “The WoW-killer” and now lay  at its feet feeding off scraps. Alas the reverse of the medal is that they won't release Warcraft IV while World of Warcraft is still going strong.

I'm somewhat intrigued by project Titan, but it seems Blizzard has managed to avoid any leaks on that so can't comment much. Starcraft II will still have a 3rd installment, so it most probably isn't World of Starcraft. As for genre-wise, it could be either divine-giant “Titan” or “space sci-fi” Titan... My personal guess would be some large-scale strategy game, where you conquer planets and build up fleets. Probably with some strong online component.

In fact, i would not be surprised if the sequel to Diablo 3 is their new MMO. In fact, i half expect it.  WoW's been getting some age in it, it's engine is not what it was when it launched. They surely will release a WoW2 or some major graphic overhauls for it, but now that they had a major success in the MMORPG genre, they're going to want a second milk cow. The world of Sanctuary, with it's abundant lore & history, is the perfect target for this. Diablo 3 is more of a launching pad for their not-even-rumored new MMO. I'm theorycrafting here, but i would bet serious money on this.

I would definetely accept that bet. Blizzard already has a fantasy MMO in the form of WoW, and they've shown to have little trouble adding new lore to it as they see fit. If Titan was an mmo, it would most definetely be a lot more sci-fi based.

[brujon]

Apart from Warcraft, Blizzard only has two other worlds that have as much lore as it. And it's Starcraft and Diablo. Now, SC2 is sailing some smooth winds. You and i agree about that. Diablo 3, not so much.

And i think that was expected. They never released a RTS followthrough for Warcraft 3, because it tanked in the RTS department. In fact, if it wasn't for the mods, DOTA and others, Warcraft would probably never have become World of Warcraft. Diablo 3 is tanking in the Action RPG genre.

But Diablo 2 had a whole community built around it. Built on looting, on picking up items, on trading, on PVPing. Isn't that the whole point of MMO's? Levelling up faster than anybody else? Getting the highest tier equipment? Getting your guild to clear the instances first? Owning so much ass in PVP that your name/guild name got to be known throughout the realms?

Look at the whole way Diablo 3 is set up, and tell me that it doesn't remind you of similar set-ups in MMO's. They tried to "improve" on the formula of Diablo 2, and it didn't work as well. Not at all. But are they going to give up on a whole fucking decade of development? Of lore built up? Godsdamn, they won't. They'll milk that cow for what it's worth, and sure, Diablo 3 may be still young and kicking.

But there are a lot of ARPG's kicking out there. Dark Souls made more success than Diablo 3 did, and it's a new franchise. They botched the release for that game. They surely expected much more profit from it than they got. The next Diablo is going to have to be a whole different beast. It's going to have to not only improve on D2, but it's going to have to have some of the aspects of D3 that resonated with the community. This is why i fully expect a Diablo 3 MMO.

Blizzard already tanked a lot of FPS/RPG developments for SC2. They're going to confine it to the RTS genre, because there's where it's at. Diablo, on the other hand, is already an RPG franchise. It's not that hard to push a MMO based on it. And i guarantee people will buy it. Hell, if it was as well developed as WoW, wouldn't you? For me, Diablo is a much more interesting world than Warcraft will ever be.

[trappedslider]

As for MMOs, yes the market's pretty saturated, but WoW's not only still the top dog after a decade, they're still the guys setting the standard in that enviroment.  Countless other MMOs claimed they would be “The WoW-killer” and now lay  at its feet feeding off scraps. Alas the reverse of the medal is that they won't release Warcraft IV while World of Warcraft is still going strong.

I remember when SWTOR was announced and everyone was like "Oh yeah now WoW will have a serious challenger"

[littha]

Bought dark souls, played for 6 hours without getting passed the undead parish. Even ninja gaiden wasn't this hard...

Still, it's good fun but my frustration level hasn't been this high in a long time.