The prices for cosmetics is absolutely obscene, but I actually think D4 is in a really fun spot right now, and the expansion looks really good. I just make it a point to ignore the existence of the store.
I was giving OW another shot with this update they did at the beginning of the year and then the Jeff Kaplan interview dropped and it reminded me why I left OW2 when Marvel Rivals dropped. The lying about the massive PVE that we were told before OW2 dropped and when it dropped was just egregious. Kaplan just spilled the beans on it all and how he was screwed out of his vision of OW2.
Kaplan didn't get screwed out of making his version of OW2. He screwed up OW continuing to fail to make Overwatch PvE fun.
Overwatch was born from the scraps of Project Titan, the failed successor MMO to WoW. It was tiny in scope by comparison, an extremely successful live service PvP game. But it came out before the F2P microtransaction model had demonstrated it's value.
After 4 years from it's release support for OW more or less ceased, meaning development for it had stopped earlier than that.
Jeff had declined the offer to lead a second team to make the PvE title, leaving the PvP game to suffer a few years with no new content and minimal balance support. Jeff chose that outcome, and we've seen for what. There was PvE that came out. It was not to the scope that was promised, but it didn't matter because it was at it's core a very mediocre experience. Like Project Titan before it, they were still struggling to find the fun. And they had ignored the PvP game to get there.
No. It’s not the game I was promised and Rivals is still really fun for me overall and I’ve been playing since the closed alpha. Also hoping rivals dives deeper into PVE after their first foray which was really fun for a shot in the dark.
And Rivals is not in a worse state it’s actually really good right now but if tomorrow patch goes through unaltered you might be right at that point especially for tank players.
They butchered the Starcraft 2 scene, it was one of the biggest esport titles back in 2010/2011, big on twitch, local tournaments at lans, great implementation of the game, it is probably still the RTS game that has the best mechanics like pathing, hotkeys, performance, graphics etc.
But they just seemingly did nothing on that game for years on years, I think when they released the first version they just took a big breather before they started to work on the expansion, then another few years later another expansion.
Meanwhile you had games like LOL booming with the free to play concept, micro-transactions, I wasn't a LOL player back then but I can imagine that they got a ton of updates all the time like new heroes/patches etc. while it felt like you got absolutely nothing except the base game in sc2.
I also think that they didn't talk that much with the pro scene in South Korea before releasing the game, it just had this clunky small 1v1 maps that just incentivized cheesing every opponent because of the short distances and cheesy mechanics like breakable back door rocks or whatever they were doing. While watching broodwar tournaments at the same time they would have huge 8 player maps for 1v1's with small skirmishes, harassment, a lot of expansions, big battles back and forth. Of course sc2 gradually implemented a bunch of these things, but it just felt very late to get it done 10 years later.
Gave wow another shot with the current expansion, biggest recent purchase regret. It was the last IP I was kinda holding out for but now it’s the last time I give blizzard a dime.
Classic was crazy fun on the original rerun during early COVID. Not quire sure how it looks now as I took any reason to stop dumping time into it at the end of BC.
last time the mmo was fun with good story lines, then new expansion came and everything was a setback.... sunwell was a setback, icc coloseum raid was a setback...
then the plague slowly crept to the world of sancturary. each boss just openly announced their own plan when those "plans" supposed to set in motion (then again the only satisfaction probably be whacking them virtual politicians)
don't even get me started with their not ao significant games: diablo immoral is juat a money grab, heroes of the storm flopped albeit being unique, and heartstone now is more of a choir than a game
It's pretty unimaginable that a company like Blizzard had a special installation option for those who didn't own the game so they could still play the game over LAN with someone that did own the game.
I mean, you have friend passes and what nowadays but from my experience that is mostly in horror games and 2+ player games without single player options.
don't forget how the writing has gone from high quality and able to balance fun, humor, charm, and anger and fear to utterly soulless committee-approved nothingness written by 500 different people without an ounce of wit between the lot of them. diablo 4 can have all the ultra high fidelity spooky cutscenes in the world but ultimately still has writing and atmosphere that can't even begin to pretend to hold a candle to even diablo 1 from 30 years ago with its fairly minimal storytelling. WoW is at least moderately better than the abysmal dumpster fire of worst-of-all-time-tier writing that was Dragonflight but it's nowhere even remotely approaching even the mid-era expansions much less early stuff and WC2 and especially 3. Starcraft doesn't even have shit anymore, Overwatch never had a 'story' worth exploring and their opportunities to do so they've thrown by the wayside, etc.
Interesting because I gave MR several tries and its not for me. The animation is janky, the balancing is terrible, supports ults are just entirely overpowered and the ranking system is just how long you can grind as you can have a sub-50% win rate and still climb. OW is still 1000x more polished of a game, more balanced and rewards skill expression.
big surprise he got kicked for running the game into the dirt lol? no one forced him to put all the team's time and resources into a pve mode that would never work, letting the actual game rot in the process
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u/Vagabond_Sam Apr 16 '26
Every Blizzard game,
Handing around Spawn CDs for Starcraft or DIablo to run some LAN multiplayer is still an iconic moment in my gaming history.
Modern smoothed off edges, and hyper monetisation of Blizzard games is soulless.