TheTome56: I'm not surprised they are doing this.
Blizzard, much like Valve, lives on the past goodwill of gamers. They've long since exhausted any creative talent they had and are now intently focused on propagating their service platform of World of Warcraft, which has long since ceased being a game and is more a social media service at this point.
That's why it takes them almost ten years to make a sequel to one of their most popular games in history and why the purchasing of another huge social media service company in King was such a good move for them.
My guess is that now that the story of Starcraft is coming to a close with Legacy of the Void and WoW's numbers keep plummeting after such a huge purchase, they are looking to recoup some of the revenue by repackaging and reselling their older, neglected properties.
It's not a bad idea for them. Remade versions of the Warcraft series and Diablo will probably sell very well, even if they are just the same games with a 4K resolution mod slapped on.
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.
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.
