Determinance screenshot

Blizzard

I was having a drink and a bit of games industry analysis with my good friend Liam last night and we got into a discussion about Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, and I realised that there are some real concerns.

Start off, a disclaimer.  I am not a Blizzard fanboy and I haven’t played Diablo or Starcraft in the last two years.  However I was a MASSIVE fan of both games (and D2) when they were new.  I’ve probably put more hours into those three games than most I wax on about here.

I haven’t paid a massive amount of attention to the unvelings, I’ve only read previews and news items on the major sites (ie what Blizzard want the general populace to hear).  Here’s what I’ve heard:

“We’re making sequels to Diablo and Starcraft!  They won’t offend you!!”

That’s message number one.  Here’s message 2:

“No, seriously, we won’t offend you.  We especially won’t offend Starcraft tournament players!”

And 3:

“Starcraft 2 will have physics for corpses“

I want to know why the richest games company in the world (or one of the top three at least) is being such a pussy with it’s ultra-heavy weight IPs.  Let’s take these case by case.

Starcraft 2

You cannot win with this tactic Blizzard.  You just cannot.  You have two options.  Either remake Starcraft exactly but with amazing graphics (yeah yeah better netcode and I’ll let you have your corpse physics that’s fine), or make a new RTS in the SC universe with at most THREE old units.  Three is probably too many.

Listen.  How often has a sequel to a game you loved been better than it?  Hardly ever.  That’s not because sequels are worse, it’s because when you love something a sequel can never live up to the strange affections you have created in your heart for it.  I can prove this: how often have you played a sequel without having played the prequel, loved it, then played the prequel and preferred it?  Again, almost never.

Aparently, Blizzard keep dropping new units anyway.  Maybe they agree with me and are just making Starcraft+.

And honestly… corpse phsyics?  That’s the first thing you wanted to tell me about?  I don’t care about your aesthetics, I know they’re going to have amazing production values, be very accessible and popular, and (nowadays) just be a little teensy tiny bit soul-less.  I’d like to know how you’re going around doing what you (used to) do best – taking a genre and really pushing it to the next level.

Diablo 3

I thought Diablo 2 was an add on pack.  It introduced almost nothing new, it just doubled the size of everything old.  And it had a LOT less character.  And it ended up being nowhere near as good as Diablo’s real add-on pack, HellFire.  Shut up

You know what I’ve heard about D3?  I’ve heard monsters drop health so you don’t have to carry potions.  I’ve also heard you don’t have to go back to town to identify stuff any more… BING, yes you did just hear the sound of something being made more accessible.  Ouch.  Did you also hear Diablo 3 is being published by Popcap and is a browser game now?

I’m calling Diablo 3 being a mess which struggles to score 80 in the respectable magazines.

I can understand Bliz being ultra-conservative with Starcraft.  The RTS is the worst genre in gaming (no more letters please) and they probably realise they can’t make it any more mainstream than Red Alert 3 has anyway.  It’ll get good reviews and 30% of the fanboys will like it and within 4 months more people will be playing Starcraft 1 online.  But they’ll make some money and it won’t hurt their reputation.

D3 on the other hand could be a real car crash.  The action-rpg is a slightly dodgy genre and noone’s managed to make a game which people like more than Diablo.  Usually, I’d say Bliz are the ones who could manage it.  But they’re not going to do it without a big innovation in actual combat mechanics and that’s now what I’m hearing coming out of Glendale.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 5:38 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Blizzard”

  1. chiguire:

    § November 27th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    > I can prove this: how often have you played a sequel without having played the prequel, loved it, then played the prequel and preferred it? Again, almost never.

    Well… there’s always Half-Life 2 :-> I’m playing HL1 right now, and they both have their charm.

  2. wrongfire:

    § November 27th, 2008 at 10:16 pm

    I thought it was clear that Blizzard no longer cares about creating good games, and just wanted to make a quadrillion dollars?

    Or at least.. that was my impression after WoW..
    Starcraft 2 is NOTHING more then an expansion with a graphics update.

    Diablo 3 looks like a gimmick to Diablo fans, they will buy it, no matter what its like.

  3. Starcraft 2 Keys:

    § July 20th, 2010 at 9:16 am

    Your layout is not viewed clearly in Netscape, but I have joined your reader subscription regardless

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