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Blizzard to restore Classics: Diablo 2 Resurrected September 23rd!

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Posts

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    Namrok wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    I'm still largely confused why Activision has seen a surge of hate again over the past few weeks.

    It's just a pile on. The dam finally broke around the BlizzCon announcement, and a general downturn in the market, especially tech stocks, cratered them along with it. It made for good clickbait headlines about how their stock tanked in response to the Diablo announcement, but it's a stretch to imply that causation.

    I will say, they were hit marginally harder than other tech stocks, and the NASDAQ which leans tech heavy. About the same as Nvidia, and a little worse than Apple. But I'd wait longer to see if it actually sticks.

    I don't think it is that much of a stretch, it literally nosedived immediately following BlizzCon and most analysts cite it as the cause.

    Now to say their current woes are do to Diablo Immortal is certainly incorrect. There are a whole bunch of problems at work. But that initial nosedive? Yeah Diablo Immortal is to blame.

    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Warcraft seems to be on a loop of Good Expansion/Bad Expansion right now, and BfA is the worst it has ever been from a quality control perspective. They let so many bugs out into the field at release. And then they had their 8.1 messiah patch that was supposed to right all the wrongs and fix the game, and it was super buggy and required many hotfixes and supplemental patches as well, oh and it didn't really fix any of the issues it was designed to fix.

    I still contend that I hated the shit out of Legion :P Though I seem to be in the minority there.

    Also Hearthstone pissed me off because they kept banning cards from ranked play, including a lot of the standard (aka "F2P") cards. I had my deck I liked in that game and they basically ruined it, making the game not fun anymore. (I always just played enough to get the new card back anyways... I eventually quit because I realized this was a dumb chore and I wasn't even enjoying myself anymore)

    Warlock82 on
    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    3clipse wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Activision's biggest moneymaker is Candy Crush Saga. Remember. They own King now.

    Activision is not in danger. Yes, their stock took a hit after they flubbed the Diablo Immortal announcement and pissed off their fans. But they still have a mobile game in their house that generates like a billion dollars a year or something.

    The easy money they make from Candy Crush is also why their executives are eager to tap the mobile market even more. It sucks for us as hardcore PC fans, but it totally makes sense from a business perspective.

    The real issue here is a clash between two things: the passion of hobbyists vs making money.

    Game companies exist to make money. They are a business just like anything else. The thing that truly sucks isn't that they want to make money. Because that is understandable and relatable. The downside is when making money hurts the hobby itself, and business practices warp the thing we love.

    And that happens whenever anything goes mainstream.

    I'm not trying to sound like a hipster here, but video games were cooler 10-15 years ago when they weren't mainstream. I liked video games back when people were still considered "nerds" to play games. Now that everyone and their grandmother is a gamer, gaming sucks, because the entire hobby has warped. People saw business opportunity and they took it. It's a conflict of hobby vs money.

    I couldn't agree harder. Gaming used to be far more counter cultural. Which is to say it risked offense far more gleefully, and it was people outside the hobby moralizing at them, like Jack Thompson. Now that it's mainstream, it's forces inside the hobby moralizing against it's counter cultural aspects, like PC Gamer or RockPaperShotgun. The few indie studios that dare still be counter cultural get ostracized from the SanFran moralizing indie clique. Like the guy behind Rimworld for the most subtle and milquetoast transgressions from SF moral norms.

    So, first of all, it's impossible for counter-culture to remain counter-culture indefinitely. Eventually the youths who adopted that grow up and are the tastemakers for the generation and it just becomes culture. For example, see: all genres of music and film, ever, since the beginning of time. Attempts to remain counter-culture during this very natural progression are inevitably an utter cringefest.

    Also I don't know much about Rimworld but the lead dev (I think?) did say this delightfully inaccurate thing:
    "I've known some bi women," he writes, "and a large proportion of the nominally straight women I've known have discussed bi impulses or experiences they've had. In contrast, every bi man I've ever known has ultimately ended up identifying as gay. These patterns seem to apply even in very gay-friendly social contexts. Of course I'm sure bi/bi-curious men exist, but the research and what I've seen supports the conclusion that they're rarer than bi women. Conversely, gay women seem to be rarer than gay men."

    If that's what you're referring to, people aren't mad because of "moralizing," they're mad because that's a) completely incorrect and contradicted by decades of actual research and b) a profoundly shitty way to talk about basically everyone who isn't straight (which is a fucking lot of people). I'm not sure that's the guy I'd use as a shining example of the last bulwark against gaming's decline, because he's an idiot.

    Personally, I'd rather not go back to a time when gamers were just internet edgelords trying their god-damndest to recreate bad 80's comedy and morning radio shock jockey routines, but you do you!

    Not to pull this too off topic, but I do sort of agree I lament all the PC-ness in gaming these days. This is not to say they shouldn't be inclusive - I actually love seeing more stuff like that. I just hate every "You didn't make this character female/gay/whatever so you are scum of the earth" kind of thing that has been prevalent lately (recent example: people bitching that Overwatch doesn't have a black female hero in it yet. Dude, give them some fucking time...) I always say, let artists do their art the way they want to do it. If you disagree with how they're doing it, go somewhere else - there's never a shortage with the indie scene being so huge these days.

    Edit: I will say though I have no idea who this Rimworld guy is, I don't agree with what he's said there tho.

    I don't really feel comfortable commenting on this because I'm a big straight white guy, so the vast majority of games star someone who looks like me as the protagonist and I have no frame of reference for groups who feel unrepresented in media.

    I do think it should give us some pause that the default setting for games seems to be heterosexual white people, especially because globally whites are a minority and even within America we're only ~60% of the total population. If nothing else it's an inaccurate representation of the actual population.

  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    i recently got my BFA character to 120 and i haven't really noticed anything other than I have almost no taste for the game anymore

    i kinda sorta 1% liked Legion, so that was the bright spot between the tragedy of WoD and the mediocrity (? i guess ?) of BFA

  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    I would like to point out that the topic of this thread is not "spout your weirdly regressive political beliefs about how there's too many of them there gays in video games these days".

    Like, go to Reddit, that's your place. That's aaaaaalllllll for you. Here, we stick to the topic.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    True. Call of Duty has been helped by EA's penchant for shooting themselves in the foot, repeatedly, with Battlefield and Battlefront's unenviable cycle of "Extremely high enthusiasm followed by event x followed by a roller-coaster-like plummet of said enthusiasm." But even then, it's not where it was in the last console generation, and no doubt some of that is owed to Fortnite being the biggest game in the world and Call of Duty trying to awkwardly respond/compete from its more exacting FPS genre perspective.

  • NamrokNamrok Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    And back on topic to Activision, you also have the Respawn Entertainment fiasco with the Titanfall series, and how Titanfall is basically already a dead IP.

    Small nitpick but I'm pretty sure that was EA and not Activision?

  • EspantaPajaroEspantaPajaro Registered User regular
    Namrok wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    And back on topic to Activision, you also have the Respawn Entertainment fiasco with the Titanfall series, and how Titanfall is basically already a dead IP.

    Small nitpick but I'm pretty sure that was EA and not Activision?

    Yeah that’s EA. Still TF2 is a really good game.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    3clipse wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Activision's biggest moneymaker is Candy Crush Saga. Remember. They own King now.

    Activision is not in danger. Yes, their stock took a hit after they flubbed the Diablo Immortal announcement and pissed off their fans. But they still have a mobile game in their house that generates like a billion dollars a year or something.

    The easy money they make from Candy Crush is also why their executives are eager to tap the mobile market even more. It sucks for us as hardcore PC fans, but it totally makes sense from a business perspective.

    The real issue here is a clash between two things: the passion of hobbyists vs making money.

    Game companies exist to make money. They are a business just like anything else. The thing that truly sucks isn't that they want to make money. Because that is understandable and relatable. The downside is when making money hurts the hobby itself, and business practices warp the thing we love.

    And that happens whenever anything goes mainstream.

    I'm not trying to sound like a hipster here, but video games were cooler 10-15 years ago when they weren't mainstream. I liked video games back when people were still considered "nerds" to play games. Now that everyone and their grandmother is a gamer, gaming sucks, because the entire hobby has warped. People saw business opportunity and they took it. It's a conflict of hobby vs money.

    I couldn't agree harder. Gaming used to be far more counter cultural. Which is to say it risked offense far more gleefully, and it was people outside the hobby moralizing at them, like Jack Thompson. Now that it's mainstream, it's forces inside the hobby moralizing against it's counter cultural aspects, like PC Gamer or RockPaperShotgun. The few indie studios that dare still be counter cultural get ostracized from the SanFran moralizing indie clique. Like the guy behind Rimworld for the most subtle and milquetoast transgressions from SF moral norms.

    So, first of all, it's impossible for counter-culture to remain counter-culture indefinitely. Eventually the youths who adopted that grow up and are the tastemakers for the generation and it just becomes culture. For example, see: all genres of music and film, ever, since the beginning of time. Attempts to remain counter-culture during this very natural progression are inevitably an utter cringefest.

    Also I don't know much about Rimworld but the lead dev (I think?) did say this delightfully inaccurate thing:
    "I've known some bi women," he writes, "and a large proportion of the nominally straight women I've known have discussed bi impulses or experiences they've had. In contrast, every bi man I've ever known has ultimately ended up identifying as gay. These patterns seem to apply even in very gay-friendly social contexts. Of course I'm sure bi/bi-curious men exist, but the research and what I've seen supports the conclusion that they're rarer than bi women. Conversely, gay women seem to be rarer than gay men."

    If that's what you're referring to, people aren't mad because of "moralizing," they're mad because that's a) completely incorrect and contradicted by decades of actual research and b) a profoundly shitty way to talk about basically everyone who isn't straight (which is a fucking lot of people). I'm not sure that's the guy I'd use as a shining example of the last bulwark against gaming's decline, because he's an idiot.

    Personally, I'd rather not go back to a time when gamers were just internet edgelords trying their god-damndest to recreate bad 80's comedy and morning radio shock jockey routines, but you do you!

    Not to pull this too off topic, but I do sort of agree I lament all the PC-ness in gaming these days. This is not to say they shouldn't be inclusive - I actually love seeing more stuff like that. I just hate every "You didn't make this character female/gay/whatever so you are scum of the earth" kind of thing that has been prevalent lately (recent example: people bitching that Overwatch doesn't have a black female hero in it yet. Dude, give them some fucking time...) I always say, let artists do their art the way they want to do it. If you disagree with how they're doing it, go somewhere else - there's never a shortage with the indie scene being so huge these days.

    Edit: I will say though I have no idea who this Rimworld guy is, I don't agree with what he's said there tho.

    Hold on.. Overwatch is over two and a half years old, after being in development for who knows how long. How much time are people supposed to give them, exactly?

  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    3clipse wrote: »
    I don't really feel comfortable commenting on this because I'm a big straight white guy, so the vast majority of games star someone who looks like me as the protagonist and I have no frame of reference for groups who feel unrepresented in media.

    I do think it should give us some pause that the default setting for games seems to be heterosexual white people, especially because globally whites are a minority and even within America we're only ~60% of the total population. If nothing else it's an inaccurate representation of the actual population.

    Why though? That's by far what the majority of the gaming population is so of course that's who a lot of games are catered to. Does that mean you exclude everyone else? Of course not. But I don't think we're going to get real representation by holding game devs at gunpoint and forcing them to tokenize various groups into their game. That's not a good way to get more representation. At least, I don't think it is. And I mean, I enjoy experiencing these different perspectives too through games, but I'd rather do so through an authentic experience than someone just checking a box. Maybe I am asking too much :/

    (side note, I think Overwatch is a decent example of a game I feel that does it pretty right... Blizzard at least I think puts a lot of care into accurately representing all the different cultures in that game and they also don't feel "jammed in" - it makes total sense from a story perspective too)

    Warlock82 on
    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    We have now passed the window of plausible "I guess they didn't see my post telling them to get on topic" deniability.

  • RussadRussad MARegistered User regular
    Axen wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    I'm still largely confused why Activision has seen a surge of hate again over the past few weeks.

    It's just a pile on. The dam finally broke around the BlizzCon announcement, and a general downturn in the market, especially tech stocks, cratered them along with it. It made for good clickbait headlines about how their stock tanked in response to the Diablo announcement, but it's a stretch to imply that causation.

    I will say, they were hit marginally harder than other tech stocks, and the NASDAQ which leans tech heavy. About the same as Nvidia, and a little worse than Apple. But I'd wait longer to see if it actually sticks.

    I don't think it is that much of a stretch, it literally nosedived immediately following BlizzCon and most analysts cite it as the cause.

    Now to say their current woes are do to Diablo Immortal is certainly incorrect. There are a whole bunch of problems at work. But that initial nosedive? Yeah Diablo Immortal is to blame.

    Didn't Activision have an earnings call with investors at the same time, announcing that they were coming in under projections? I feel like that is more relevant to shareholders. Like, regardless of my personal opinion on mobile Diablo, I feel comfortable gambling on Activision stock in the context of "will a mobile game with microtransactions aimed at the Chinese market be good (for share value)".

    Also, dragging back on topic a bit, I'm super hyped for War3 reforged. I am super bad at StarCraft multiplayer, but I loved playing team vs. games of War3 in college. I'm hoping a modernized take will rekindle that, and I can drag some of my old college buddies back.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    38thDoe wrote: »
    Is there a link to this shutting down of heroes of the storm or a summary or something? I have a lot of friends playing it and I haven't heard anything about this story from them.

    I don't think this got addressed, but it was announced back in early December. Here's a link to the post; the tl;dr is that HotS hasn't been popular enough so they shifted some of the dev team onto other projects and killed the blizzard-run HotS esports, and will be releasing new content on a less frequent cadence.

    https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/22833558/heroes-of-the-storm-news

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    3clipse wrote: »
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    3clipse wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Activision's biggest moneymaker is Candy Crush Saga. Remember. They own King now.

    Activision is not in danger. Yes, their stock took a hit after they flubbed the Diablo Immortal announcement and pissed off their fans. But they still have a mobile game in their house that generates like a billion dollars a year or something.

    The easy money they make from Candy Crush is also why their executives are eager to tap the mobile market even more. It sucks for us as hardcore PC fans, but it totally makes sense from a business perspective.

    The real issue here is a clash between two things: the passion of hobbyists vs making money.

    Game companies exist to make money. They are a business just like anything else. The thing that truly sucks isn't that they want to make money. Because that is understandable and relatable. The downside is when making money hurts the hobby itself, and business practices warp the thing we love.

    And that happens whenever anything goes mainstream.

    I'm not trying to sound like a hipster here, but video games were cooler 10-15 years ago when they weren't mainstream. I liked video games back when people were still considered "nerds" to play games. Now that everyone and their grandmother is a gamer, gaming sucks, because the entire hobby has warped. People saw business opportunity and they took it. It's a conflict of hobby vs money.

    I couldn't agree harder. Gaming used to be far more counter cultural. Which is to say it risked offense far more gleefully, and it was people outside the hobby moralizing at them, like Jack Thompson. Now that it's mainstream, it's forces inside the hobby moralizing against it's counter cultural aspects, like PC Gamer or RockPaperShotgun. The few indie studios that dare still be counter cultural get ostracized from the SanFran moralizing indie clique. Like the guy behind Rimworld for the most subtle and milquetoast transgressions from SF moral norms.

    So, first of all, it's impossible for counter-culture to remain counter-culture indefinitely. Eventually the youths who adopted that grow up and are the tastemakers for the generation and it just becomes culture. For example, see: all genres of music and film, ever, since the beginning of time. Attempts to remain counter-culture during this very natural progression are inevitably an utter cringefest.

    Also I don't know much about Rimworld but the lead dev (I think?) did say this delightfully inaccurate thing:
    "I've known some bi women," he writes, "and a large proportion of the nominally straight women I've known have discussed bi impulses or experiences they've had. In contrast, every bi man I've ever known has ultimately ended up identifying as gay. These patterns seem to apply even in very gay-friendly social contexts. Of course I'm sure bi/bi-curious men exist, but the research and what I've seen supports the conclusion that they're rarer than bi women. Conversely, gay women seem to be rarer than gay men."

    If that's what you're referring to, people aren't mad because of "moralizing," they're mad because that's a) completely incorrect and contradicted by decades of actual research and b) a profoundly shitty way to talk about basically everyone who isn't straight (which is a fucking lot of people). I'm not sure that's the guy I'd use as a shining example of the last bulwark against gaming's decline, because he's an idiot.

    Personally, I'd rather not go back to a time when gamers were just internet edgelords trying their god-damndest to recreate bad 80's comedy and morning radio shock jockey routines, but you do you!

    Not to pull this too off topic, but I do sort of agree I lament all the PC-ness in gaming these days. This is not to say they shouldn't be inclusive - I actually love seeing more stuff like that. I just hate every "You didn't make this character female/gay/whatever so you are scum of the earth" kind of thing that has been prevalent lately (recent example: people bitching that Overwatch doesn't have a black female hero in it yet. Dude, give them some fucking time...) I always say, let artists do their art the way they want to do it. If you disagree with how they're doing it, go somewhere else - there's never a shortage with the indie scene being so huge these days.

    Edit: I will say though I have no idea who this Rimworld guy is, I don't agree with what he's said there tho.

    I don't really feel comfortable commenting on this because I'm a big straight white guy, so the vast majority of games star someone who looks like me as the protagonist and I have no frame of reference for groups who feel unrepresented in media.

    I do think it should give us some pause that the default setting for games seems to be heterosexual white people, especially because globally whites are a minority and even within America we're only ~60% of the total population. If nothing else it's an inaccurate representation of the actual population.

    (What follows is utterly speculative and probably very limited.)

    As, well, an Asian person I would note that the current cultural construct* of "political correct-ness" in North America really doesn't reflect all that well on...hmm...global demographics beyond "~51% of humans are women". Which is important, in fact, though female protagonists are a kind of a slow development in the North American market compared to some others. We do need more women protagonists, and I'm going to continue to favor games that give me the option to do so for a a variety of reasons.

    That being said, good luck finding an Asian protagonist in a game not made in Asia. It's not easy, though at least it's not outright impossible--god help you with finding an Indian protagonist in any game from anywhere (I can't think of a single one from an American publisher, and they're rare everywhere else). American games, including those striving towards a "progressive" or "P.C." character, are still completely comfortable with either starring exclusively Americans, or people with very clearly American mannerisms (throw in a Scottish person here and there, because at some point "Scottish" meaning "Fantasy psuedo-European" in American gaming). With ~4% of the world actually consisting of Americans and all. Games in general seem very comfortable with limiting their non-Americans to the "scary foreigner" role, and it's hard to say if what politically correct culture is successful in overcoming that tendency.

    One rather specific case comes to mind, not something that could somehow "condemn all political correctness", by any means, but still rather disappointing: I was particularly (not) impressed by a tendency to look specifically at Kingdom Come: Deliverance--a game with its own cultural conservatism to deal with, no doubt, and a discussion was had about it--and decide, "Do we really need another game about white people? Haven't we already had enough of them?" Because apparently screw those medieval Czech Bohemians, they don't get one game because white people are white people, and all Slavs or Slav-adjacent people have been reduced to caricatures rather than a culture or characters.

    Granted, it's neither at all surprising, nor particularly unforgivable. The progressive or political correct model, if a thing to strive for (I'd wager I'm probably "extremely PC" personally, at least by the standards of Southpark) has its own pretty clear limitations. It's probably a good model for an inclusive American audience, when something is clearly needed. An inclusive world audience? Not as much. But we still need more female characters of some variety.

    *I mean, in the end of the day, all this shit is cultural constructs, gaming included.

    Synthesis on
  • EspantaPajaroEspantaPajaro Registered User regular
    Aka it got mothballed ala diablo. That said I dont have strong feelings about hots like I did with diablo so it didn’t bother me.

  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    [
    Russad wrote: »
    Axen wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    I'm still largely confused why Activision has seen a surge of hate again over the past few weeks.

    It's just a pile on. The dam finally broke around the BlizzCon announcement, and a general downturn in the market, especially tech stocks, cratered them along with it. It made for good clickbait headlines about how their stock tanked in response to the Diablo announcement, but it's a stretch to imply that causation.

    I will say, they were hit marginally harder than other tech stocks, and the NASDAQ which leans tech heavy. About the same as Nvidia, and a little worse than Apple. But I'd wait longer to see if it actually sticks.

    I don't think it is that much of a stretch, it literally nosedived immediately following BlizzCon and most analysts cite it as the cause.

    Now to say their current woes are do to Diablo Immortal is certainly incorrect. There are a whole bunch of problems at work. But that initial nosedive? Yeah Diablo Immortal is to blame.

    Didn't Activision have an earnings call with investors at the same time, announcing that they were coming in under projections? I feel like that is more relevant to shareholders. Like, regardless of my personal opinion on mobile Diablo, I feel comfortable gambling on Activision stock in the context of "will a mobile game with microtransactions aimed at the Chinese market be good (for share value)".

    Also, dragging back on topic a bit, I'm super hyped for War3 reforged. I am super bad at StarCraft multiplayer, but I loved playing team vs. games of War3 in college. I'm hoping a modernized take will rekindle that, and I can drag some of my old college buddies back.

    The earnings call came after. A few days after and certainly didn't help matters.

    Actually as I recall, as much of a hit they took after the Diablo Immortal announcement (10% drop) they took an even bigger hit when they surprised everyone with micro-transactions in CoD weeks after it had been launched. This too happened before the earnings call.

    Then the earnings call happened and well things continued to spiral. It was a pretty bad week/month for them.

    Axen on
    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • RoeRoe Always to the East Registered User regular
    Russad wrote: »
    Axen wrote: »
    Namrok wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    I'm still largely confused why Activision has seen a surge of hate again over the past few weeks.

    It's just a pile on. The dam finally broke around the BlizzCon announcement, and a general downturn in the market, especially tech stocks, cratered them along with it. It made for good clickbait headlines about how their stock tanked in response to the Diablo announcement, but it's a stretch to imply that causation.

    I will say, they were hit marginally harder than other tech stocks, and the NASDAQ which leans tech heavy. About the same as Nvidia, and a little worse than Apple. But I'd wait longer to see if it actually sticks.

    I don't think it is that much of a stretch, it literally nosedived immediately following BlizzCon and most analysts cite it as the cause.

    Now to say their current woes are do to Diablo Immortal is certainly incorrect. There are a whole bunch of problems at work. But that initial nosedive? Yeah Diablo Immortal is to blame.

    Didn't Activision have an earnings call with investors at the same time, announcing that they were coming in under projections? I feel like that is more relevant to shareholders. Like, regardless of my personal opinion on mobile Diablo, I feel comfortable gambling on Activision stock in the context of "will a mobile game with microtransactions aimed at the Chinese market be good (for share value)".

    Also, dragging back on topic a bit, I'm super hyped for War3 reforged. I am super bad at StarCraft multiplayer, but I loved playing team vs. games of War3 in college. I'm hoping a modernized take will rekindle that, and I can drag some of my old college buddies back.

    I like that they are remaking the games, but a part of me is worried they will turn out just like StarCraft remastered did. I logged in to play some multiplayer with the remastered graphics and sound, only to meet the same old player base that the game had before remastered.

    I don't know for sure even if Blizzard remade Diablo 2, that they would actually revitalize the game that right now is plagued by bots, map hacks, dupes, and the toxicity that surrounds 'd2jsp.com'.

    oHw5R0V.jpg
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    Overwatch has one of the most diverse casts in the entire gaming marketplace and Blizzard has been widely applauded for their inclusion of all sorts of types of people in that game. Just because they don't have "X" is not an indictment on that game. That game is revolutionary in how diverse its cast is. But the cast is also limited to like 29 heroes or something (actual number not known). There's a lot more than 29 types of people in this world. Of course not everything is going to be represented.

    If anything, Overwatch is the current jewel in Blizzard's cap, even if it still does have loot boxes in the game. Overwatch is the game you can look at that goes against the grain of all the negativity that is being hurled at Blizzard. You can look at Overwatch and say "Blizzard got this game right, and this game is proof that the Blizzard we all know and love still exists."

  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    Tube wrote: »
    We have now passed the window of plausible "I guess they didn't see my post telling them to get on topic" deniability.

    For the record, I didn't, so I won't say anymore on the issue.

    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • RussadRussad MARegistered User regular
    I looooooved Diablo 2. Played for I don't even know how many hours. But I just would not be interested in a remaster. Especially if they took the StarCraft approach of "change nothing, just make it look nicer." I was in high school when I played Diablo 2. I had all the time in the world for that game.

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Citing stock may be a bit tricky right now because the USA is being fucking stupid and it's impacted the NASDAQ and Dow alike. Everything is down.

    The past month summary has Activision floating at around 47, with a brief peak on the 10th at 51. Still, this is all lower compared to what it used to be before October, which was when it began to decline. Blizzcon was at the start of November, for perspective. Nov 7th was the start of the largest drop though, I guess.

    Here's the thing. If you expand out to a 5 year summary, the value being between 40 and 80 only started in early 2017. It could be an investment bubble popping more than it is the Diablo Immortal thing or anything else.

  • NamrokNamrok Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Namrok was warned for this.
    Tube wrote: »
    I would like to point out that the topic of this thread is not "spout your weirdly regressive political beliefs about how there's too many of them there gays in video games these days".

    Like, go to Reddit, that's your place. That's aaaaaalllllll for you. Here, we stick to the topic.

    It's a good thing literally no one said that.

    Tube on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited January 2019
    geth, kick @Namrok from the thread

    Tube on
  • GethGeth Legion Perseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
    Affirmative Tube. banned from this thread.

  • GethGeth Legion Perseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
    Affirmative Tube. @Namrok banned from this thread.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    you know what's wild is HotS tournaments actually got really good viewers

    like... better than any fighting game tournament ever. and yet still cancelled... just gives you a perspective of what type of success Blizzard is looking for

    they threw away what some other companies only dream of

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.

    Crazy thing is that they did this right after the big "We're making original characters for HotS!" announcement, so it reeks to me of a decision passed down from on high.

  • RussadRussad MARegistered User regular
    I don't have a sense for esports scenes and how they compare, but I did enjoy watching HotS streams periodically, or throwing them on as background noise while I did something else that didn't require my full attention. Was pretty bummed when that piece of news dropped.

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.
    I'm kind of relieved to be frank. I'm all for e-sports but not every game should be given that sort of spotlight. It's an investment on the part of the publisher and if you try to run multiple e-sports you're not gonna get much back at all.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Jasconius wrote: »
    you know what's wild is HotS tournaments actually got really good viewers

    like... better than any fighting game tournament ever. and yet still cancelled... just gives you a perspective of what type of success Blizzard is looking for

    they threw away what some other companies only dream of

    I mean, not that it wasn't enviable--but I doubt the costs (particularly the funding contribution expected from Blizzard) were, for things like the Winner's Purse, advertising, venue, etc.. At least, I think that's how it typically works.

  • RoeRoe Always to the East Registered User regular
    edited January 2019
    Preacher wrote: »
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.

    They have tried time and time again to make HOTS as good as LOL, but they were not quite as successful as they had hoped.

    I think they had a decision to make. Keep throwing money like they have to try and get fans to play, or just pull the plug. This is the same pattern Blizzard has shown in the past by scrapping almost complete games because they just aren't fun. Even though the development was ongoing with free content, they were not seeing a return for that work even if they continued to add well known characters and support Esports.

    Roe on
    oHw5R0V.jpg
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    HotS is really fun though. One argument that has been made that I agree with is that the pressure Blizzard was facing to "force" HotS to be popular was actually strangling the game

    A theory is that now that the pressure is off, the team left on the game might have a free hand to fix the game up and get it back to where it should be...

  • EspantaPajaroEspantaPajaro Registered User regular
    Were they not gaining profit? Or were they just not gaining enough? Did anyone actually publish the numbers?

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Were they not gaining profit? Or were they just not gaining enough? Did anyone actually publish the numbers?
    The NPD wouldn't have access to that sorta number and I don't know if there are any independent bodies that track that sort of thing. It'd be up to the publisher and/or event organizer to disclose, and if things weren't a crashing success, it'd be in their best interest to keep things hush hush.

  • EspantaPajaroEspantaPajaro Registered User regular
    Henroid wrote: »
    Were they not gaining profit? Or were they just not gaining enough? Did anyone actually publish the numbers?
    The NPD wouldn't have access to that sorta number and I don't know if there are any independent bodies that track that sort of thing. It'd be up to the publisher and/or event organizer to disclose, and if things weren't a crashing success, it'd be in their best interest to keep things hush hush.

    Yeah that’s what I was thinking , but decided to ask just in case.

  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.

    Crazy thing is that they did this right after the big "We're making original characters for HotS!" announcement, so it reeks to me of a decision passed down from on high.

    Yeah something was super suspicious about the timing of that. It feels like it was a very last minute thing and even the devs didn't know.

    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • EnigmedicEnigmedic Registered User regular
    Jasconius wrote: »
    you know what's wild is HotS tournaments actually got really good viewers

    like... better than any fighting game tournament ever. and yet still cancelled... just gives you a perspective of what type of success Blizzard is looking for

    they threw away what some other companies only dream of

    I dunno, some specific fighting game tournaments are pretty huge. Part of why HotS failed is because there arent any “celebrities”. In starcraft youve probably heard of Boxxer back in the day, in smash bros melee you may have heard of Mango, in League youve probably heard of Faker. In HotS i cant name a single person who was on a competitive team. Grubby was the person with the most viewers but he completely dropped the game because of the direction it was taking and just focuses on wc3 now. People latch onto personalities not necessarily the sport/game. Imagine how much less interesting say the nfl would be if we didnt know the players’ names and had no outside of the game coverage of any of them.

    I hope wc3 remastered is more popular than the sc remaster. I think it might because it is a bit more involved of a remake. Not to mention the proximity to classic release. Still patiently waiting for the diablo 2 remaster, because i think that would be a moneybomb for them and could probably be expanded a little like their new runeword patch and they could even add expansions to it.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    I'm the opposite I hope their remakes do poorly and they have to make new things and not just dust off things people previously liked.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    Warlock82 wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    The thing about the HOTS stuff is that they literally canceled the esports thing like without any indication at all. People were waiting for dates for 2019 and then "nope all canceled fuck you". Its not a good look for a company.

    Crazy thing is that they did this right after the big "We're making original characters for HotS!" announcement, so it reeks to me of a decision passed down from on high.

    Yeah something was super suspicious about the timing of that. It feels like it was a very last minute thing and even the devs didn't know.

    Everything I've heard from pros/streamers/etc indicates this to be the case, yeah. To the point that even a few people were privately telling pro players "don't worry, they're working out details or something, but HGC [Blizzard's HotS eSports League] is definitely still coming in 2019"

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