SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown

zzeris_sl said:

I agree that Blizzard is unmatched. They make great games in multiple genres. They don't just throw stuff out unfinished. They listen to their fan base. They are wildly successful because their name is still synonymous with quality. Even if their games have went downhill, no one is doing a better job overall. I can see the criticisms in an MMO based thread but overall, they make great games over and over and over.

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I agree that they are unmatched, and also that their games have gone downhill. But do you really think they don't throw out unfinished stuff? That they listen to their fan base? I feel neither of that is true at all (although for the latter that is probably a good thing).

Draegan_sl said:

What is more popular these days D3 or POE? I don't play either so i have no idea.

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No idea either, but there's also the Marvel ARPG to consider. I don't play it, but the thread manages to stay on the first page here. I'd think that makes it a contender.

True, I played the marvel one for a few hours. Game seems pretty decent.

Draegan_sl said:

True, I played the marvel one for a few hours. Game seems pretty decent.

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It's the most chill of the three. Never really feel frustrated playing Marvel. Just good old fashioned fun.

zzeris_sl said:

For the most part, yes. Sure, some things won't be caught and sometimes they have to fix a lot of problems like D3 but it was a 'finished' game. They aren't perfect but they work really hard to make releases as smooth as possible. As mentioned by Tanathalas, they fixed D3 and are constantly putting out fixes for their other games. WoW shows just how much they work at trying to add new things and change things while keeping the basics that a large crowd is willing to pay for.

Complete redesign of the old world. Hardest raid content out there(not 100% sure of this now). Tons of content for multiple player types. New garrison content. Occasional new races and classes. I haven't played since I beat Arthas multiple times but the sales speak for themselves. Over 10 million bought the newest expansion. Over 7 million still play. Over 3 million still pay a sub(might have changed some since new payment options). Sure, they don't change things based off certain players demands. But they sure seem to know how to keep people coming back. They know their core customer base and do make updates to keep them. They listen but they don't make any changes that will hurt the core audience.

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When you say occasional new races and classes, by that do you mean every 4 years or so?

Tananthalas_sl said:

They fucked Diablo III hard. Having said that Diablo III today is nothing like it was at release, they fixed every issue it had (as a game, balancing and such is always in flux). So Diablo III has gotten better not worse. Heroes is unreleased technically, Overwatch isn't out yet, Hearthstone hasn't peaked yet so it's on an upswing still, I don't play Starcraft II so I can't comment. So what exactly is going downhill? The 10 year old MMO? I'm not a Blizzard fanboy (opposite actually) but I don't see your critiscm is true at all. Maybe WoW I guess.

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You mix up two different posters in your quote, so I'm not sure if this answers your question, but anyway: What exactly is going downhill? They are delivering less and less and taking more time to do so. Blizzard used to be a giant among their peers, now they stand just an inch taller then the rest.

Counting released games, they still cling to their 3 IPs, and in none of those 3 the latest release is a better game then the previous entry (barring technical and graphical improvements of course). If I have to generalize, they are cutting depth from their game design in favor of accessibility, which is good to up to a point - but they are way past that point. They used to design their games in a way that made me play them a year+ straight, now their design grabs me for a couple of weeks once or twice a year.

The second maybe even more important point why I think they have gone downhill: development speed and release schedule. SC2 was changed from being one game with 3 campaigns into 3 games with only one racial campaign each that were supposed to come out yearly (i.e. roughly 2010, 2011, 2012). They have a nebulous claim of aiming for quick (yearly? don't remember) WoW expansions and short turnover between patches that goes back to TBC and they still fuck that up a decade later. That was not the case in 1998-2003, pretty much all of their games had an expansion within the year that wrapped it up. Hearthstone is holding up best in this regard (assuming a late summer expansion). Their management level must be really shitty these days, either too bloated or too small to properly oversee their projects.

And regarding D3, like you said yourself, they fucked the IP hard. And they made a good expansion afterwards that mostly fixed it. Then they went back to fucking it. Obviously like this entire post this is personal opinion, but compared to now D3 was a better game when RoS released.

Smed just posted. "Time for some change." on Twitter.

nm, dont care enough lol

If there's one thing every company needs to remember it's how useful trading can be. Required level on items suck in every game and the knee jerk reaction Blizzard did when taking down the AH in Diablo never becomes unbitter.

We like trading, we like twinking.

He's changing to almond milk.

Gotta love those kind of unspecific attention whore tweets

gogojira_sl said:

He's changing to almond milk.

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better be sweetened, the regular one is rough unless your eating cereal lol

Dandai_sl said:

You can shit all over their products all you want, but you can't name a single competitor with more success in any of the respective genres (with the exception of HotS, but even Dota has a fraction of LoL's popularity).

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Considering the amount of money I gave Blizzard in the last 15 years or more, no I'm not shitting on their products, I'm criticizing them (for what is worth, so almost nothing) for delivering products that keep taking distance from their original design, which I loved more. I'm not alone in having something to say about WoD, yet I played it for 3 or 4 months, I played D3 for hundreds of hours, the rest of their offers are not matching my taste, but I don't dispute they can and do make awesome games.
As someone on these very forums said: I bitch because I care. See, I love WoW, I have over 1000 levels on 11 different characters, so yeah, I played WoD too for a good while, but I still think it's not a long lasting xpack and it's not as good as the previous ones. Even Cata is better from my point of view.

I would be the first to rejoice if the next xpack is awesome and addicting. Diablo is a game I spend a little time every now and then, it's now better than it was at release and for this I'm grateful, I don't give enough of a fuck about it tho. My heart is with WoW and WoW is worse now in my opinion and apparently the opinion of another 3 million players, plus soon the banned botters. I found solace in FFXIV for my MMO needs and it may even last me a long time (alongside my secret addiction for GW2), but I love WoW and it pains me that WoD is such a mediocre expansion.

Competition? I don't think Blizzard has much competition in terms of numbers, but I don't think either that other games can't be equally good, maybe they are not everyone's taste, but some are top quality nonetheless.


EDIT: Smed, the only change worth mentioning, instead of attention whoring, would be to tell us that a great game is coming out. Everything else is bullshit.

At least he didn't say "Change is coming" and leave us with an unspecified lengthy time frame and dubious outlook on whether the payoff will be worth it.

Imagine your company just got rocked with a change in ownership. Many, many people lose their jobs. A lot of uncertainty in the air and a certain project is bleeding money like crazy. Your very socially-engaged president makes cryptic tweet about it being time for change. Probably doesn't help the tense atmosphere and maybe he should send out a company email if he's just talking about going from boxers to briefs.

Also, EQNext revision 20 incoming.

EQN MOBA. Eqn battle arena stars.

gogojira_sl said:

Imagine your company just got rocked with a change in ownership. Many, many people lose their jobs. A lot of uncertainty in the air and a certain project is bleeding money like crazy. Your very socially-engaged president makes cryptic tweet about it being time for change. Probably doesn't help the tense atmosphere and maybe he should send out a company email if he's just talking about going from boxers to briefs.

Also, EQNext revision 20 incoming.

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Naw. He's been canned but can't admit it yet due to some kind of legality or sense of corporate poise. Might be passive aggressive, might be telling the particularly slow members of daybreak that you should really get your resume` out there. But the fact that this was timed after the subs have gone out for the new progression server isn't coincidence.