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Falci: I don't think you're right about past goodwill.

While at start Diablo 3 was somewhat rubbish (to be fair, it was good, but not really amazing) they kept improving on it and giving people like me reason to go back and play a bit more from time to time. I honestly have more than 120 hours in that game and it is literally the only game that I have played for anything even remotely close to that amount of time.

People may whine as much as they want about how the game ruined the series by being so different from D1 and D2, but even though I enjoyed those games a lot, I never felt as much desire to go back and spend more time on it and try to achieve new and different things as I feel with D3. Yes, it sucks royally that it is online only, but it works, so it's acceptable. Hell, I even want those guys to put out another expansion pack just so that I can have more content to explore and have fun with.

Like Valve, Blizzard doesn't always get things immediately right, but they have the resources and will to keep iterating and eventually fine tune their games into really good stuff.

And if you think this is a modern trend, that in the past they would always get it right first, well, when I played D2 all those years ago, right after it launched, I didn't enjoy it much. But when I bought a complete copy about a year before D3 came out, boy, did I have fun with it.

As for resurrecting old games, in recent years Blizzard has been looking into low cost projects that could be profitable, instead of always spending millions and eras in their next major iterations of their famous IPs. That's the sole reason Heartstone exists and I think that Overwatch follows the same vein as well. So bringing back legacy titles is another way to generate money with low investment. It makes business sense; it makes cultural sense as well.
A lot of people will rebuy games if the modern port feels convenient and if it improves anything at all, that’s a big bonus.
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TheTome56: If their games suck at the start but get better over time and this is fine, then why don't other companies get the same treatment?

Evolve and Civilization: Beyond Earth have both undergone drastic improvements since they were first released as well and are almost completely different games now. But you'd never know that looking at Steam reviews and Metacritic pages which blasted them. Why is it ok in the eyes of the community that Blizzard can release a mediocre product and improve upon it later, but 2K Games can't?

It's because Blizzard is living off the past goodwill of gamers. There's no other explanation for it. They are allowed to get away with the same business practices that gamers crucify other publishers and developers for because those same gamers keep giving them passes on it out of nostalgia for the things Blizzard did years ago.

Blizzard knows this, and they are exploiting this to the maximum. That's why Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are all based on past Blizzard IPs. They are constantly trying to say to you "Hey guys, we made Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft! Remember? Keep forgiving us for the real world money Auction House in Diablo 3 and lying to you all about it being a 'necessary' part of the game design that we can't remove while you review bomb Overkill Software for doing the exact same thing in Payday 2, because of those awesome games we made once!"

It's wrong, plain and simple. The way we heap so much praise on Blizzard, Valve, Sony and any other of the gaming greats is wrong. They should be held accountable for what they are doing and they should be treated the same way we would treat EA, Ubisoft and Konami when they do they same things.

Re-releasing their old IPs is going to be a very effective strategy. There's no doubt in my mind that HD remakes of Diablo and Warcraft will sell great and everyone will praise Blizzard for it. But I'm concerned that what everyone is going to forget about is that Overwatch is the first original idea Blizzard has had in over 20 years. And for a company that apparently had $6 billion dollars laying around to spend on buying out the guys who made Candy Crush, spending 20 years to do something new is inexcusable.

And so long as Blizzard continues to have nostalgic player goodwill, they'll be allowed to make inexcusable mistakes that their fans will excuse them for. I may not be able to change that, but at very least, I can call it out for what it is.
I dunno about you but I seem to remember Blizzard getting all sorts of grief from the gaming public with DIII launched with the real money auction house as well as the 'always on' aspect of it. There wasn't much benefit of the doubt there. In fact I'd argue that they probably don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. There was a ton of skepticism with Hearthstone launched, there is skepticism with Overwatch, etc. Of course Blizzard will always have their core fans but every company has this, how do you think EA is able to continually shovel out COD every year?
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synfresh: EA is able to continually shovel out COD every year?
Who does what?
Thanks for pointing that out, will forward it to a friend, I'm sure if he get's his hands on these games we'll be able to play them on modern OSes as flawlessly as we are used with Blizzard titles, which imho have the best performance(optimization)/beautiful graphics ratio.
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synfresh: Of course Blizzard will always have their core fans but every company has this, how do you think EA is able to continually shovel out COD every year?
EA doesn't make Call of Duty

COD is made by.... guess who?

Activision Blizzard.

A prime example of how they still get away with bad business by exploiting past goodwill.

And there's another COD coming out soon too. They are still getting away with it.
Post edited November 04, 2015 by TheTome56
It would be great to get to playing those games in DRM-free form in their original versions, without revisions (and widescreen nonsense for people who don't see difference between PC monitor and cinema), rebalances and "anti-cheat" measures (using hero editors added quite a number of hours to my Diablo 2 playtime). Only thing which is truly missing is combat feedback, which was a glaring flaw even 20+ years ago, especially for loot-based games.
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TheTome56: It's because Blizzard is living off the past goodwill of gamers. There's no other explanation for it. They are allowed to get away with the same business practices that gamers crucify other publishers and developers for because those same gamers keep giving them passes on it out of nostalgia for the things Blizzard did years ago.

Blizzard knows this, and they are exploiting this to the maximum. That's why Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are all based on past Blizzard IPs. They are constantly trying to say to you "Hey guys, we made Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft! Remember? Keep forgiving us for the real world money Auction House in Diablo 3 and lying to you all about it being a 'necessary' part of the game design that we can't remove while you review bomb Overkill Software for doing the exact same thing in Payday 2, because of those awesome games we made once!"

It's wrong, plain and simple. The way we heap so much praise on Blizzard, Valve, Sony and any other of the gaming greats is wrong. They should be held accountable for what they are doing and they should be treated the same way we would treat EA, Ubisoft and Konami when they do they same things.

Re-releasing their old IPs is going to be a very effective strategy. There's no doubt in my mind that HD remakes of Diablo and Warcraft will sell great and everyone will praise Blizzard for it. But I'm concerned that what everyone is going to forget about is that Overwatch is the first original idea Blizzard has had in over 20 years. And for a company that apparently had $6 billion dollars laying around to spend on buying out the guys who made Candy Crush, spending 20 years to do something new is inexcusable.

And so long as Blizzard continues to have nostalgic player goodwill, they'll be allowed to make inexcusable mistakes that their fans will excuse them for. I may not be able to change that, but at very least, I can call it out for what it is.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. That said, I'd be glad to play an updated Warcraft I and II. Next to actually releasing the Lord of the Clans Adventure Game (in whatever unfinished state it exists, I don't care) it's probably the most interesting thing Blizzard can do for me right now. For me the biggest problem isn't even that they keep using the same three IPs, it's how they use them. In fact even once they announce something brand new, Overwatch, it's still a game I have no interest in. Blizzard just isn't in the business of making the kind of games I like any more, so getting their classics is all I can possibly care about.
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synfresh: Of course Blizzard will always have their core fans but every company has this, how do you think EA is able to continually shovel out COD every year?
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TheTome56: EA doesn't make Call of Duty

COD is made by.... guess who?

Activision Blizzard.

A prime example of how they still get away with bad business by exploiting past goodwill.

And there's another COD coming out soon too. They are still getting away with it.
My mistake, I meant Madden. I also don't think it's 'still getting away with it' anymore than there are those gamers that are always going to buy certain games from a certain publisher, no matter what the publisher does. A lot of gamers are not putting cerebral thinking into why a publisher does this or that or what they did. They just want to play games that they think that are fun.
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TheTome56: EA doesn't make Call of Duty

COD is made by.... guess who?

Activision Blizzard.

A prime example of how they still get away with bad business by exploiting past goodwill.

And there's another COD coming out soon too. They are still getting away with it.
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synfresh: My mistake, I meant Madden. I also don't think it's 'still getting away with it' anymore than there are those gamers that are always going to buy certain games from a certain publisher, no matter what the publisher does. A lot of gamers are not putting cerebral thinking into why a publisher does this or that or what they did. They just want to play games that they think that are fun.
Hrmm.... you know, man, you might be right, actually.

Maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I'm making gamers out to be more political and nostalgic then they actually are. You and Breja brought up some good points about the reactions to Diablo 3 and how they use their IPs I hadn't considered.

Past accomplishments shouldn't free a company like Blizzard from modern criticism, but by that toke, neither should modern criticism cancel out the legacy of past accomplishments. I wonder why I didn't think of that before now?

Heh, I probably need to spend less time on the Steam Forums and on Metacritic. The massive amount of negativity there might be warping my worldview.

It's honestly refreshing to see that in the GoG Community I can expect a reasonable discussion.
Post edited November 04, 2015 by TheTome56
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synfresh: My mistake, I meant Madden. I also don't think it's 'still getting away with it' anymore than there are those gamers that are always going to buy certain games from a certain publisher, no matter what the publisher does. A lot of gamers are not putting cerebral thinking into why a publisher does this or that or what they did. They just want to play games that they think that are fun.
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TheTome56: Hrmm.... you know, man, you might be right, actually.

Maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I'm making gamers out to be more political and nostalgic then they actually are. You and Breja brought up some good points about the reactions to Diablo 3 and how they use their IPs I hadn't considered.

Past accomplishments shouldn't free a company like Blizzard from modern criticism, but by that toke, neither should modern criticism cancel out the legacy of past accomplishments. I wonder why I didn't think of that before now?

Heh, I probably need to spend less time on the Steam Forums and on Metacritic. The massive amount of negativity there might be warping my worldview.

It's honestly refreshing to see that in the GoG Community I can expect a reasonable discussion.
Also consider that even with games there is 'brand loyalty' that goes beyond whatever wrongs most others would consider. Ask any Apple fan. ;)
Perhaps it's just not a simple update (widescreen support and etc). I guess it's possible they want to re-release those titles as remake/redux versions + you need a battle.net account even if you want to play single player mode.
Since when do games/companies not get credit for making bad initial releases good over time? Am I missing something here?

D3 wasn't that great at release but aside from one (admittedly too costly) expansion the game has evolved dramatically and a good 90% of the improvements have been in the way of free patches. Does that mean Blizzard should be forgiven for the crappy launch and bad ideas? No, but they should be applauded for taking steps to fix their mistakes and support for a game that's pretty old by today's standards.

Civ 5 is a pretty good example of the exact opposite where the fixes are buried in paid Expansions that cost 30+ dollars at launch. If you didn't have them, you didn't get the fixes. That's bad development even if the expansions did wondrous things to the game.

Most AAA games are abandoned within six months and many indies are as well as developers move to new projects or can't support fixes. That's not even mentioning all the games that never get fixed including many of the classics on this site relying on community patches and fixes to make the games work as intended.

I seriously must have missed a memo to have a game being supported and fixed up past-launch, largely for free, is a negative thing now. Some of my favorite games of all time are the ones that have gotten constant love and attention from studios.
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itchy01ca01: I can see those Diablo 2 and original starcrafts games on your battle.net account going bye bye!

"Here, have a new one, with smashier graphiks and coolio other things you don't need, plus we raised the price. Isn't that awesome?"

Yea.
Go fuck yourself, blizzard/activision/owner of king.
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P1na: well, at least I got those DRM-free installers on my backup hard drive. It's something.
How long until those are pulled offline and replaced? How long until those key activation servers are replaced with "Play this Cherrypop game and win BIG, but remember to spend more money first".
This whole thing does not bode well. Fortunately i opted not to get D3 and have been VERY happy with the money I saved :) Actually, I have really touched ANY blizzard/Acti game since COD:MW2. I didn't even play WOW.
You can worship my money-grubbing later.
Does this mean they have run out of ideas for new games while sitting on piles of cash?. Sounds like a quick cash grab to me (i liked D1+D2/LOD. D3 was shite).
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Niggles: Does this mean they have run out of ideas for new games while sitting on piles of cash?. Sounds like a quick cash grab to me (i liked D1+D2/LOD. D3 was shite).
Honestly, i feel relieved and glad that i am not the only one who thinks that way... 3 was indeed that bad, not me alienated geek and strange... +1
Post edited November 05, 2015 by KiNgBrAdLeY7
Update Starcraft a little bit so it doesn't look so antiquated... isn't that what Starcraft 2 is?