One of the reasons Blizzard caved for refunds, at least in Europe, is because they are forced by European Union law to accept them, I really doubt outrage and gestures of good will were the main deciding factor.
@@RazanaArcclaw Please stop lying, they really did not have a good policy for refunds and it was not enforceable upon them if you even looked in the direction of the purchased item. Blizzard refund policy: "We'll refund most items that you buy with real money and receive in-game within 14 days of purchase, as long as you have not claimed, opened, or otherwise used the item". What this means is that if you bought a game and opened it (even if it was opened for 1 minute) then you are not legible for a refund, even more stringent for ingame microtranstactions which do not care if you used them or not, you will not get a refund!
The funniest part of that whole long line of fuck-ups is that blizzard was pandering so, SO hard to the chinese market with all that phone game bullshit. And then one of their employees made a tweet that was *slightly* critical of the Chinese government and now they've got a company wide lifetime ban from selling any of their shit in china, forever. They sold out and alienated their core western audience trying to suck China's dick and now they have nothing and nobody. What a loser company run by by losers.
Diablo Immoral was still a massive financial success, they just didn't realise that BlizzCon isn't the place to market it, since mobile users tend to be on the casual gamer side and dont really go to gaming conventions, while more serious PC gamers go to BlizzCon.
I can't imagine anyone I've met who loves video games, being able to say those words to an audience with a straight face. If their entire audience was neglected alpha babies who were stuck on tablets all day, they might be right, but a lot of Blizzard enjoyers haven't even touched a mobile game beyond, like, an idle game.
My favorite fun fact about the McCree naming situation is that after they changed McCree's name in the game, they gave everyone a free rename token so that players with the name McCree could change it to avoid having their accounts tied to that name. This resulted in EVEN MORE players named McCree.
In my opinion, with or without the controversy, Jesse McCree just sounds way better cooler than Cole Cassidy, not to mention how long it's been in use so it's not like people will get used to the name change or accept it so easily.
I think the quote from FUNKe describes blizzard perfectly, “whenever they get into a PR controversy they’ll drop a trailer with no release date for one of tracer’s new skins.”
I remember that Hong Kong event. I cancelled my WoW subscription during that. I was required to provide a copy of my drivers license to close my blizzard account (despite not being required to provide it to open one). I have not touched a Blizzard product since. I don't miss it.
Its almost like thats been their policy for years. If someone has an account that they paid for shit on and then the user wants to delete the account they want to make sure its actually you and not some random so they dont have to deal with legal issues. Their privacy policy goes over this in detail.
@@Noriaela on mobile if you click on a username you can see the other comments they've made on that video. You may want to switch to your alt soon so that you can hide your embarrassing blizzard cuckolding.
I feel that all this controversies around Blizzard started happening after Overwatch and Legion ended or stopped being popular. Say what you will about Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and or Heroes of the Storm, but if you look back at those games you will see that they are much better quality than what they offer today (BfA, Shadowlands, Overwatch 2, Diablo Immortal, etc...) I basically stopped playing Blizzard games after the massive disappointment that was BfA and the Hong Kong event added insult to injury. Certainly don't regret it one single bit, no more subscriptions to play games I already own, no more lackluster content, FOMO, collectionist hell and predatory tactics to keep you engaged every day (Radiant quests, Raid limits, tedious leveling system, etc)
You forgot the part in 2012 after the Acti/Blizz merger, Activision forced Blizzard to lay off 600 employees to "cut cost" after a record profit year. The first time ever Blizz had laid off any employees and it was a HUGE deal. They even had police escort for laid off employees thinking they would go on full rage mode.
The fall of blizzard was due to the executives yet they have the gall to blame and fire the devs who were just following and were actually forced to follow orders and yet no manager gets fired
@@Omega-mr1jg Happens everywhere; the overseer's boss(es) demands improvement, and the blame-whip lands on the actual workers. The overseer's boss(es) receives boons and bonuses galore, the overseer receives a head pat and the whisperings of how he is such a good boy, while the workers receive unemployment and/or homelessness should they be out of a job long enough. The stupidest, greediest or most immoral people rise to the top, while the ones who really want nothing to do with this horrible system but to simply be able to work long enough without getting fired for no reason in order to provide for themselves and/or their families and work their way into a better job/life get pushed down.
Executives make a huge difference to the culture of your company. If you have an executive that just wants to cut and slash your employee base, doesn't provide value for customers, and doesn't please employees, you're just going to destroy even a great company. Losing their founder and replacing him with a jughead, was a HUGE deal.
i like it when war craft 3 reforged launched they removed the old warcraft 3 from my library when I contacted support they denied that I ever owned it. When i contacted my bank and had the receipt of the purchase and showed it to them, they still denied then I told my bank to force refund which they agreed to and got a cease and desist from blizzard which went fucking nowhere because of my country's customer protection laws. it's about sending a message and giving some poor blizzard employee a stroke in the process.
_"Well, Blizzard is dead. It is a corpse being puppeteered by Activision and Bobby Kotick and it's going to be used as basically a factory to put the Blizzard stamp on things and stoke nostalgia to get sales and that's it. So, stop holding out hope that Blizzard is going to come back. Everyone who founded Blizzard; all of the principles that Blizzard was founded on, they're gone or they're dead... The principles that Blizzard was founded upon are dead. They've been desecrated and are destroyed. So, let Blizzard go. That's my main message. Let Blizzard go. Appreciate what was created back when it was done and stop holding out hope that it's going to come back, because it's not."_ _-Former Blizzard designer_
The main founder realized there was no plugging the hole on the sinking ship and realized better to leave with his dignity than stay and be used as a scapegoat
The best part of coming back in April of 2024 and watching this is knowing that by "Sprinkling in some PvE missions every few seasons" they meant "We are going to give you 3, and then nothing else ever again. Whomp whomp."
I remember when they promised stuff like Nova covert ops would become "the new age of Starcraft story content" only to later be announced (like a few months later, not that long) that it was indeed the last story and content Starcraft was ever getting beyond coop commanders (Which also got dropped some time later, with Mengsk being the last and ironically most interesting, he was probably the last love letter from the devs to us and I still love the lad or lass who designed him, such a good concept). The poor writing team spent so long building up so many new (and refining old) characters in the second trilogy, especially during LoTV, and Nova Covert Ops was the beginning of an "expanded universe", if you will, maybe we finally get to get some loose ends tied up from stuff like books and such. Only for the higher ups to go "Yeah, no, we change our mind, some of you go work on Diablo Immortal and Overwatch, while the rest of you - out, you're fired. The future is quick dopamine fixes with "quirky" and "relatable" characters like in marvel movies cracking constant one-liners, compounded by freemium style mtx and battlepasses, not this... interesting and finished game garbage". And Hots.... ah... my dream game as a moba addict. Blizz characters, completely casual but not without skill ceiling, and arguably some of the most interesting character mechanics on the market. Stuff like Abathur and Cho'gall are characters other mobas don't have the guts to make. Canned because it didn't get to league popularity in half the time it took for League to really pop off. Blizzard REALLY wanted to be king off the bat, and anyone with half the sense for the industry realizes is cause it needs time. It was finally gaining popularity but they just axed it before it reached it's potential. Now it's a dead game on maintenance mode. I will never forgive Blizzard for this game in particular. It could've been something really special, for those of us who don't wanna be tryhards. A callback to the olden days of League and mobas where building funny was always viable.
Just to clarify on 23:00 The reforged launch did not can the classic team. The classic team got canned HALFWAY THROUGH DEVELOPMENT because Activision said to the OG team "nobody is going to buy this. It's not like diablo immortal". You can find this information by hearing one of the original devs talking about it on a stream he hosted. Reforged WAS gonna have all of the promised features, it just couldn't because people got fired before they could even start working on them.
Such a shame. I noticed it genuinely got a bit of attention on release (e.g on Twitch it was in like the top 10 or so streamed games for a few days) but it was such a garbage 'reforge'. I still keep up with the Wc3 scene a little because the original game is just so well designed and fun to watch. I don't think it would have been huge if it had been good but I think it genuinely would have expanded the small pool of dedicated players to have modern conveniences with the UI, graphics, world editor, and controls.
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a kiddie diddler and pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard, you shouldnt believe anything he claims as he was caught lying and censoring people on his youtube vids.,
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a kiddietoucher and pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard, you shouldnt believe anything he claims as he was caught lying and censoring people on his youtube vids.
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard.
It is a true travesty. Their name was once synonymous with uncompromising quality. I had been playing their games since back in the days of Blackthorn and Rock 'n Roll Racing. The last Blizzard game I bought was Diablo 3. I doubt I will ever buy another Blizzard game again, which is just sad. I grew up on their stuff.
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
@@chjk122_ Oh no, a youtuber uses ads to make money? Not a sell out, would be if it was an ad for gambling or something as damaging as that. Blizzard screwed up through a history of bad choices and poor management... Hopefully they recover, I loved diablo 2 and Overwatch when it was released, it just got worse the longer it was out.
Guess thats what happens when accountants run the company and not gamers. Its funny how 3 blokes in their mums cellar can make a world changing game that kickstarts a company with thousands of employees, but a multi billion dollar company can’t do much of anything.
Research on this topic indicates that marketers rise above the rest in corporate environments because their increase in profit is far more visible than a designer's influences. Unchecked capitalism is a wealth extraction schema in which all money in the world is funneled upwards on a tiering system. It has no inherent truth or good qualities to it, and its ultimate end point is that all wealth is owned by a couple people and meted out only for the benefit of those people to continue to extract wealth, as it has no end-point. It's a finite system based on a principle of infinite trends, which are impossible, and therefore it is structurally impossible for unchecked capitalism to last.
To be fair, they DID in fact redefine what a sequel means. It means you slap a '2' at the end of the title of the first one, throw in extreme predatory monetisation, and call it a day.
Don’t forget to add plenty of salt to the player base, and a generous dose of extra spicy toxic social media “infotainment” streamers, to really zhuzh it up
Man the state of star craft 2 now. The ladder means nothing as you constantly fighter former masters players in bronze and the player base is so low that you are likely to be pitted against current masters players in bronze league just so it can find you a game.
@@АнтонДемин-ю4з i imagine the scene from the last airbender, when the gang passes through the village on the polluted river, and there is one guy pretending to be three by switching hats.
thing is as much as i hate blizzard , this is not even core of problem , core of problem is stock exchange , once game companies stopped seing people who buy their game as "clients" , but "product" , (investors are clients now) things went down hill , and its not just blizzard or bigger studios doing this , cyberpunk is forever tainted by same reason and had one of worst releses in recently history.
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
This video isn’t just a work of art. It’s entertaining, educational, historical. It needs to be watched by anyone who has ever played or thought of playing a Blizzard game.
This all boils down to the flawed notion of Shareholder Primacy that almost all corporations seem to be addicted to. A company's priorities should be its customers, its staff and its products or services. Get those fundamentals right and the success of the company is sustainable. Sadly, todays modern notion of shareholders is that once they arrive and start investing in the company the priorities shift and staff and customers are there to be squeezed to achieve short-term profit and bulging shareholder dividend payouts. This utlimately results in low staff morale which affects product or service quality and angers customers to the point that company success fails. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy.
It's unfortunately not a notion. The shareholders who have power over the company can switch CEO's as may times as they'd like until they get the one that will do their bidding.
It's not merely a corporate fad, it's actually a _law_ in the US. Look up Dodge Brothers vs. Ford. Henry Ford had been doing very successful for himself and decided to increase the wage of his workers, cut the cost of his cars so it was more affordable to the average person, and also decided to divert money from dividends to new plants. Some have made the argument this was purely in self-interest, however even if it was, more people were benefitting from it, more people except one small group, that being the shareholders (of which Henry Ford was the biggest, so if it was in self-interest, he must have had a lot of faith in what he planned). In come the Dodge Brothers, who also owned shares in Ford, and took Ford to court. The court ruled that corporations must be organized around the profit of shareholders, and that set the precedent going forwards.
A CEO's job is to please the shareholders. Us "customers" are the product, the real customers are the shareholders. This can only be fixed by removing shareholders from gaming, buisness ruins everything it touches
@@don_chanGDconsidering it was a massive esport and was stupidly popular for a long time and IS still played and this is a video about the history of Blizzard, I assume people watching this care about this being accurate
I have not played one single Blizzard game ever and this made me sad. I know that fans of these games are even sadder. But the devastation the original founders must feel to see how their dream was tarnished, undermined and destroyed beyond recondition, while they are forced to just sit and watch it happen before their very own eyes, helplessly, not being able to do anything about it has to be one of the highest forms of sadness one can feel...
The original warcraft 3 was out of this world. The polish and attention to detail was breathtaking. It's absolutely heart breaking now. It feels like meeting your highschool sweetheart, realizing she has been doing crack for 10 years
Yes, they were upset for a while, but they are still millionaires so we can't feel too sorry for them. It's the slaves in suits working at Blizz that are the sorry bunch. Being a corpo drone is one of the worst jobs in the world.
Fun Fact..ughbarf: The HotS esports layoff situation was so bad that South Korea passed a law with the games namesake to make similar situations illegal.
Im right there with you. At least we got to enjoy the golden days of gaming and the internet.. it is sad to see what all my beloved franchises and IPs have morphed into. I dont even recognize them anymore.
Same, I distinctly remember Starcraft 2 being one of my staple childhood experiences. It is great to revisit the old glory days sometimes, while not paying current Activision a cent.
Honestly the players are as much at fault as Blizzard is for that. The $15 horse mount for WoW made more money than one of the Starcraft games in like 2 weeks, so I mean if you're literally giving blizzard your money for trash why wouldn't they capitalize?
Yea, some sad sh^t really. It's like I had to go and work out of town for the Summer. But when I came home I found out that all of my friends turned into homeless fentanyl addicts and are all living in a van down by the river, smfh.
@@CT2507not if its labeled, its super important for a woman to preserve milk in the event she has an issue and needs extra (also letting it build up is painful apparently) the gross thing is feeling entitled to taking someones stuff.
@@when-do-we-get-a-block-button A lot of things in this world are important. Why not keep blood vials in the fridge? Why not keep medicines in the work fridge? It's still disgusting to keep your bodily fluids in the fridge others use to keep their lunch. Every time someone opens the fridge, they get reminded about someone else' breast fluids. They have to worry if they accidently touch the container by chance, they could get someone's fluids on them, and so on. So, if someone removed the breast milk from the work fridge as a protest, I can fully understand it.
Right? I jumped ship after Wrath of the Lich King, after it had become clear that Blizzard no longer cared about making quality content. Not gonna lie, I got excited when Warcraft 3 reforged was announced, and was keeping an eye on it, but knew better than to pre-order a blizzard product. And I'm glad I went with my gut. Idk how you can so badly botch a masterpiece of the game that you already made and have as a reference point, but it's clear to me "Blizzard" no longer makes games for the fans. It makes them in spite of the fans.
The last expansion I enjoyed was Legion. Since then, we have always received the same thing in slightly worse quality. They deliberately lower the quality. I hope one day there will be a usable single player mode for it.
@@robbnoble1509SAME DUDE after wrath and cata the game wasn’t the same and seeing what they did with diablo 3….. I also jumped shit. So glad for grinding gear games for path of exile which has true blizzard engineering in it
You forgot 2 huge moments: first when Blizzard threatened all players that they will track what they do/say on the internet outside the Blizzard community and if they find out that they say unpleasant political stuff on any other outlet online they will ban them on the Blizzard community, and the other gem when they started banning players from Overwatch for playing too much with one particular character. These 2 show the absolute insanity of Blizzard and too bad they were left out of the video.
For the case of Overwatch, their balance team has 0 braincell and created the non-counter hero to turn OW into Shield and Support. They did not even make ban/pick system used on tournament of DOTA2 and LOL as the countermeasure of so broken meta
@@DaRealKing303 You aren't kidding. I was a Day One player (beta player) and that first year was magical. I'm not sure I slept more than 4-5 hours a night in 2005.
I lost my eight years long job at Blizzard at the end of 2018. Also, we were shown the Diablo Immortal trailer in April that year, way before it was public and everyone was silent when normally, we all clap our hands when then announce something. It was apparent to everyone that it was doomed.
I don't understand.. It was unanimously disliked by literally every single person.. Every single higher up in the meeting where that game was pitched KNEW it would suck. Why would they do it? I'm trying not to put on a tinfoil hat but it really seems like they're TRYING to destroy the company and I cannot understand
@@Cairo40000 so wouldn't you want to be the one guy who tried to save the multi billion dollar company by saying the obvious? you'd surely be promoted to a million dollar job for doing nothing
@@moralesterthats thinking like a mentally stable human being. to the higher ups, the goal is money, not legacy, at the end of the day, they get to swim in their money while everyone else loses jobs. Making a good product is always a risk, but using an already established ip is a guarantee that it will at least sell and get word of mouth before release. doesn't matter if its good or not, just that it sells enough, and the less money you put into it means higher profit. if the company fails completely from a bad product, the higher ups jump ship and move on like the parasites that they are to the next company cashing out on the one theu ran int the ground cutting corners. fir Activision/blizzard they knew the company would last longer to make more anyway after this but thats not what you were asking. its the mentality of certain psycho paths (they aren't all this bad) but usually the ones that get into business get to the top and thats why you see this same issue repeat itself in every corner of established media when corporate is to blame.
Who are these absolutely moronic executives in charge of Activision-Blizzard? How could they not forsee that firing 10% of their workforce would reduce their revenue in the future? How could they not see that destroying HotS would reduce revenue? How did they not realize that creating a classics department to remake older games, and then not giving that department enough resources to make a decent product would result in a terrible product, and reduce revenue How did they not realize that destroying Overwatch gameplay by filling it with microtransactions, then changing the game to make more money from microtransactions, would reduce player numbers, prevent Overwatch from developing into an esport, and would reduce revenue? How did they not realize that doing all that would destroy any possible goodwill left from the fans? That goodwill puts money in their pockets. Like, I get that they want to make money, but destroying future earning potential for a quick payday today just seems so shortsighted, and just plain... Stupid.
They're literally not morons because they're making more money now than ever before. Their plans worked and they have suctioned vast amounts of wealth out of the lesser number of players who stuck around. They aren't dumb, gamers are.
Welcome to modern business. The first and only rule: Number go up = good / Number go down = bad. Shortterm record profits all the way baby.. At. Any. Cost.
Thank Jack Welch, the man who enriched himself and his cronies destroying GM, because layoffs drive higher stock value. Or thank Milton Friedman, who gave us the moral position that the only responsibility of a company is to increase shareholder value. This is the system working as intended, it's not about providing better values/products. It's about hoarding wealth. It will purchase art to suck any and all value from it.
The saddest thing about Heroes of the Storm is that it is currently the least predatory monetized blizzard game there is, simply because it hasn't been touched since 2019. (Excluding SC2 because it never had any loot boxes or shit like that)
Yup, and they could easily revive the game and do a lot with it. The engine is amazing, I just hope they dont make a 2nd one and kill it with a less smooth experiance. Current hots feels like sc2 and has the best champions in any game. When I quit playing LoL I went back to HoTS and play it all the time. Tried going bsck to league and I cant play it, it doesnt feel smooth.
Dota 2 is better than HotS due to its lightning in a bottle beginnings, the cumulative effort that has been put into it since Dota Allstars (2 decades of balancing), an extremely successful custom game option that has spawned moba subgenres like chess aka Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords, and so much more. But I will say that from personal exp, HotS is a much more enjoyable game to play with friends on a casual and competitive level, and is actually an amazing game altogether
I don't think I've ever played a game like I played HotS. It hit a perfect spot for me and felt like the first online community I was ever a part of. I played it so much I unlocked every character for free. I put money into it because I wanted to reward the game, in some misguided hope that support above and on top of what I put into the twitch scene could keep that community alive. And look how Blizzard rewarded all of us...
Dota in the hands of Blizzard would've lasted 1-2 years and then died, forever forgotten. Thankfully papa Gaben took it and made the biggest e-sport game in history out of it
"you all have phones, right?"...that's like Ferrari disappointing fans at a launch by announcing a range of running shoes instead of the anticipated new supercar...and responding to the disappointment by asking "you all have feet, right?"
Kind of, but more a lack of discipline in a lot of these cases. A product blows-up so the next logical conclusion is to hire more staff and go bigger on the next game / product. Except, that isn't the logical conclusion, because then you have to factor-in the time between game releases & how much money you need to support those extra employees over that duration, and that's where the failure point is & all of these stupid quick cash grab choices come from. If they had the discipline to reel it in a bit once that first big game went Platinum, opted to make minor changes or research what people want from the next game, only grow the employee base slightly and take their time over things, they'd never have hit these issues. Same across a lot of companies! So the greed comes mainly from the desperation of their ill-made choices that were a result of their monetary success. These mofos were never business people....
that's why Blizzard competitive games suck. They're entirely propped up by the developer. the competitive scenes in games like Dota2 and CSGO happened naturally and were then supported by the developer.
IceFrog went to Blizzard with the offer to work as a designer on their take on Dota. Blizzard declined the offer. Valve, instead, acquiesced to his requests. They lost on the MOBA craze, so now they had to show they were valuable even without a successful MOBA. This was the beginning of the end, the start of all the other bad choices. All because they didn't want IceFrog to maintain ownership of his creation. Absolutely mental.
@@SyRose901 DotA was popular before IceFrog's involvement. IceFrog contributed to it over the years. It would be highly speculative to say what would have happened if someone else had maintained it. It certainly wouldn't have become nothing. IceFrog's interaction with both Blizzard and Valve is also very simplified in the above statement. He was said to be difficult to work with and insisted on not changing anything about the game, which may have been why Blizzard declined. Heroes of Newerth's failure had already demonstrated that this stagnation was not a good idea. It could be argued that Valve's Dota 2 succeeded despite rather than because of IceFrog. Blizzard's 'dota-like' game, Heroes of the Storm, is also a reasonably well-designed game that still has active players nearly a decade after its release. The reasons why it did not become as popular as others in the same genre make for an involved topic that includes plenty of mishandling by Activision, but IceFrog not designing it was likely not a major factor.
@@KoresaurusAlso "Icefrog's interaction was simplified" doesn't change the fact that they're idiots and didn't see ANY reason to acquire the rights to the actual game
If a company gets bought out and has to appease share holders; it's only a matter of time before they go under. There is a reason why EA and Activision are both know as the killers of game studios.
Literally? Literally? It was literally, huh? Was it, literally? Oh, literally? Literally literally literally! Literally is all I can say! Literally! I HAVE TO USE IT IN EVERY SENTENCE, CORRECT OR NOT!!! LITERALLY!!!! LITERALLY LITERALLY!!!!!
The more money is on the table, the worse the product is going to be. You start getting the corporate stooges involved, responsible for making millions/billions, you can expect the end result to be a travesty.
Even Cyberpunk was a victim of corporate greed. I don't think there is one gaming company that didn't ruin their reputation other than perhaps Supergiant. Unfortunately, the future seems bleak for all games since gacha-models inherited and refined from early games like Maplestory have taken root in the industry. When games Clash of Clans or Genshin Impact both make 10x more money than amazing projects like Elden Ring or BG3, you know the industry is doomed. Over 80% of gaming is mobile nowadays too. I remember when between 2005-2015 amazing games released every year, but now that gap between truly amazing games is getting wider and wider. Even BG3 took so long. Quantity over quality dominates the industry now.
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
@@superspies32 I think the other Diablo franchise releases had the same effect, although not as bad as Immortal. Back when D3 released, I only knew the genre from Titan Quest or Torchlight. I saw some footage of D2's horadric cube recipes, class trees, good old attributes, etc. and naively bought D3 expecting some intricate gameplay mechanics. Anyway, after that I racked up about 2k hours in PoE. I haven't played it for years though. Are toucans still praised as often?
@@Gnulcho Toucan still be praised but you will be muted for do that. And when you are muted you cannot listed items for trade since you always be offline, cannot pm and basically ssf
I think the change from "kinda bad" to "everything rapidly becoming terrible" happened around 2016 but yeah, it's going to mark this entire decade. People were still pretty optimistic in the early 2010s.
We're getting some of the most banger modern games in the market, though. The old giants are dead and decaying, those that remain stumble upon rotten limbs. The new sprout from their corpses and the now-fertile soil. It's sad, but I feel like the gaming industry is slowly going back to the way it should be. Slowly.
Original WoW was pretty amazing. But the context of its time was important. My stepson had the Legendary An-Qiraj mount as he rang the gong. What an event! I knew people who _planned their vactions_ around the release of Burning Crusade so they could rush the level-cap for endgame. It was a wild time!
Damn dude, your editing is superb. As someone who's done editing, I can't imagine how long it took you to make this 30+min video. And your delivery and style made it both easy to follow and kept my hooked.
The real question is. Does he do Internet historians editing, or does Internet historian's editor do his. Cuase this is exactly how I.H's content looks and sounds
Absolutely. The memes and clips throughout the entire Blizzard history was exceptionally well done. That absolutely took a lot of time. Just finding all of that shit to use would have taken forever. Let alone editing "Blizzard" and whatnot on people's foreheads in videos he used.
I played the warcraft 2, 3, starcraft 1, diablo 2, wow burning crusade & the lich king and i still have the CD copies of those games. Those were the most fabulous and the most fun times i've had. Maybe im getting too old now, but nothing will replace those great feelings back then. Blizzard games today are not just as good as they were back then.
Oh dude..... Get back into D2. It's ALL had a MASSIVE graphics upgrade and looks STUNNINGLY beautiful. Instead of 2D art getting rendered in 2.5D iso to give the ILLUSION of 3D, it's all been redrawn in 3D.... and whats more, the Runewords still work, the Cow King has been fixed (yes you can now kill him and re-enter the same level for more killing), and that annoying Multishot-Lightning Enchanted combo has been removed.
@@chalk6ix_nz950Oh yeah the D2 remaster is totally awesome! Im huge fan of D2 and this blew my mind how great the remaster actually is. Although i find myself sometimes switching to the old graphics just for the nostalgy.
Just not as good is quite an understatement. Those old games revolutionized their respective genres. Even if their releases were delayed multiple times and Blizzard just gave their "when it's done", people knew the hype was justified. Now, D2R is the only game that wasn't a huge disappointment.
A year after Warcraft 3 Reforged launched my grandpa gave me his copy of Warcraft 3 (Version 1.00) and later I bought the expansion The Frozen Throne and still never had to update because I was playing on an actual dvd version
24:08 - Fun fact: Activision-Blizzard had a "The Boys" show crossover event for the current CoD game at the time, with even the actor of Homelander getting a tour of the studio. So for those who watched the show and know all of Homelander's quirks, it all makes perfect sense. 🧐
@@jannesrosenberg926 just look it up weirdo. I understand it’s cool to hate and follow the trends, but it’s in good state. Classic and retail have been insanely popular for the past few years
I think this is why people are hesitant to leave or boycott. They have a lot of love and connection to what they USED to be . They keep holding out hope , when they should just outright refuse . It’s yet another layer of exploitation.
Everything goes in cycles. Usually guys who can start a studio and make good games cannot also handle a big company. Bungie is a good example of the same problem. 20 nerds in an office making a masterpiece is not the same as 9000 people across many countries trying to coordinate on something. One is going to figure it out and the other simply costs too much sustain without screwing the player-base for every cent just to keep this 9000-person machine going. I'm convinced you could strip Blizzard down to like 50 people and they would make better games. They wouldn't be live service, and they wouldn't be as big as e.g., D4, but they'd be playable. They'd be priced fairly and they'd patch mistakes (instead of showing up at camp fire chats and over-promising on some BS no one really wants anyway).
Still remember that day. Playing in Path of Exiles, preparing to end league and my PoE Discord gone uts because of this. Entire PoE subreddit exploded with joy and beginning guide for Diablo players switched to. The final cherry on the cake is GGG announced the next league: Betrayal league with entire content and trailer were a mockery to this moment.
Bit of a shame that nobody's mentioning that Blizzard's horrifying abusive workplace culture is directly responsible for one one of their enployees being driven to suicide, because, like, that was a thing that happened and honestly is the main reason half the executive staff ought to have eaten punishments far worse than simply being laid off with all their bonuses intact. Like, if justice was a thing that existed in the world, they would have been jailed over that.
how would that be justice? if you call someone an idiot for walking in front of your car and it turns out that was the last straw which lead them to suicide, do you deserve to go to jail?
What's the freedom of Hong Kong versus hundreds of millions of dollars of China's market money? As being a soulless company there wasn't really any other option to logically take.
This took me down such a memory lane lol. Oh lord I remember so much of that. I remember being so mad and then hearing, "Do you not have phones?" The slow decline of trust and eventual just not caring about Activation Blizzard at all. My friends and I love playing wc3 as well, but we have all have to use a really janky modded version that is untouched by Activision. And some crazy Europeans run a server as well, but you'd be surprised how active it still is. But I honestly started to forget how there once was an age where game companies cared. Where game companies made good games. Though I will admit, in the past few years, we've had some amazing freaking games launch that took me by complete surprise. Honestly I was giving up on good games coming out, but I think a lot of indie companies are really taking advantage of this huge gap in the game industry of good development (not that all the banger were indie in the past few years).
PVE was always popular… i mean… look many years back at the PvE Servers of World of Warcraft. Or Other games like Halo with the Coop, Dead Island… there are so many positive examples. But the industry is always thinking that PvP and Competitive things are the holy grail…
WoW is mainly PvE. The PvP is just a game mode (minigame) that a couple tryhards keep alive by being super loud and toxic towards any actually positive change.
@Nathanyel the tryhards are the pve nerds who rage when they keep wiping to the same mechanic week after week 20 times per raid and then nerd rage at eachother. 😂 can't even beat the damn computer lol. Your comment was a clownboi comment😂😂😂
It would have been massive for OW2 if there was even a small amount of PVE content on launch, they fumbled the bag so hard and practically killed the franchise for a second time before the sequel came out. Its gotten better, but its still impossible to justify all the money and dev time that went into what boils down to removing a tank and some graphic overhauls.
LOL huge props on the very effective use of memes and movie snips. This short documental was both very informative, and laughed all through with the memes. You sir have become everything Michael Scott could not in his office meetings; Teach something and entertain at the same time.
I only bought Diablo 4 to beat it for my Grandfather, who had played Diablo since the very, VERY first Beta. He was actively playing D3 for almost a decade, and he loved it. He sadly passed away in the fall of 22’, so I promised myself I’d beat D4 for him.
@@Tamyndris Not really? Just took some time to beat as all. My only problem with the endgame was how we didn’t get to choose if we wanted to side with Lilith or Inarius, which we really should have.
It blows my mind that they could've had Dota but didn't reach out to the guy. Og Dota was nuts and they probably could've scooped the modder up at a discount and had another massive hit.
I like hots more, it feels like starcraft smooth but has the charecters I like. If they did a lot with the game to make it more in depth like dota but keep it the same champion wise and feel it would be one of their best games. It was a big missed opertunity on their end.
it's a good thing they never got it. imagine a dota 2 owned by blizz. the game would have been super casualized and probably discountinued already lol. valve getting it was the best case scenario.
? bad video games drop people outta the sky trapped in a cylindrical death box 40000 above the pacific? and boeing execs r@pe and drive female coworkers to near suicide???? man whatever youre smoking that sh!t need to be confiscated cause its *S T R O N G*
also. "happened to"? sh!t didnt know boeing was an innocent victim that was just minding its own business instead of actively putting thousands of people's lives at risk to save a buck
@@aa-tx7thYes, happened to. A bunch of grifters with no technical skills and a document saying they're better than the engineers take over and force everyone to cut corners.
I had a motorcycle accident in November the year WoW came out. I was bed ridden for a year so I started playing it. I was bed ridden for 14 months, and played it non stop 12+ hours a day. Soon as I was able to walk again I sold my account for £850 and never looked back.
Good story, but nobody will buy account for £850. I really doubt that you have something like spectral tiger or scarab lord title. Maybe mutli glad title/mounts. So i hope that you did enjoy your time in WoW, but dont lie to us. Especially, when you mostly cannot even borrow your account to friend, bcs Blizzard love to ban for sharing :D . But as i said, nice fairy tale.
heres something funny guys; im playing prison architect lately and guess whos one of my guests? "Bobby Kotick" His info card is saying "He deserves everything thats happening to him" :-D
Issues arose prior to Vinvendi. Things started already to go wrong around a half a year after the debut of WOW... around that time the good people started to leave and the greedy ones increased.
I love how every “the fall of blizzard videos” never mentions the disgruntled SC2 players and the franchise of starcraft. StarCraft made esports. Fuck blizzard
Because SC2 was a good game and the players' "disgruntlement" is due to the genre falling in popularity, which isn't Blizzard's fault. SC2 is still the most popular RTS game 14 years later.
can you fill "us" in abooot the starcraft bs ? i still play sc2 ... but i dont know all details of the bs ... i wish could still play legacy of the void rules
@@poika22 I'm just glad they left SC2 alone mostly. Let me keep playing Oh no it's zombies and Civilization sapphire, and my parasite games... and all the other amazing arcade games.
This should be taught in future schools several decades (centuries?) from now, as a textbook example of how late capitalism corporate greed destroys a brand and a company.
Blizzard not capitalizing on Dota before Valve did, has to be one of their biggest f*ck ups. You had a potential gold mine sitting inside your own game and never moved on it, until someone else did.
Expecting Microsoft to do good by Blizzard is like expecting Disney to do good by Star Wars. Back in 2012 we knew that "those 6bil$ aren't going to make themselves back". Now in 2024 we also know that "those 70bil aren't going to make themselves back". And mark my words - Blizzard would likely be shut down the same year as WoW. At this point it's nothing but a minor subsidiary, whose IP ownership can be re-appropriated by the ever-shrinking workforce, not without AI's involvement. In other words - you don't need BLIZZARD to make Diablo or Starcraft or even Warcraft. If Rumble, Immoral or, let's be honest, TARISLAND are of any indication. Blizzard's only lifeline are the subscription money they make. Their creative team was shut down the moment Activision prohibited them to make Titan to make room for Density.
Microsoft will probably lay off most of Blizzard's current employees and farm the games out to somebody who knows what they're doing. They've done pretty decent over the years as a games publisher, especially with the Age of Empires series.
Blizzard will never be shut down. The brand is too recognizable. Blizzard is itself at least as big of a name as their games are. Why would Microsoft give that up? Even if the game is developed by NetEase or whoever, they can advertise it as "the next Blizzard game" and edit together trailers showing all the old games people remember fondly.
@@poika22 Of course, if WoW would never be allowed to die, whether with xpacks or WoW 2 or whatever, Blizzard could be kept around. But plenty of studios have been shut down or killed, and when EVERYONE is making videos about how bad Blizzard is - do you really think Microsoft would care for a miracle to turn it around? People want Blizzard to die. Nobody is rooting for them. Starcraft 2 is a deadweight. Hearthstone and Overwatch a penny collectors. Diablo 4 is a neither here nor there. WoW is is the cornerstone of Blizzard, the reason they got bought by Activision in the first place. Rememebr all those controversies with PS? It was about Call of Duty. That's the big name. That's what Microsoft has been interested in in the long run. And even THAT part is being "optimized now". If even Call of Duty's future isn't bright - do you really think Blizzard is safe?
@@WirxawTanev Yes, I think Blizzard is safe. Not the employees of course. It might just be one guy in an empty office or just a name in the books. But there is absolutely no reason to shut down company. "Everyone" is making videos about how bad Blizzard is, but first of all people who watch this type of stuff are a tiny, tiny, minority of people who buy video games, and secondly even the people who do watch this stuff will forget in a year or two when they tease the remake or sequel for a game from their childhood.
Everytime a studio becomes really big and you start adding executives, shareholders, marketters, and all people who want to optimize money before everything else, you suddently see a drop of quality and innovation but also a big step in the prices. You also start seeing marketing methods to make players pay more and more. Blizzard was doomed when they started to become too big to stay that good old indie game studio
To be a Blizzard fan in 2024 is to have Stockholm Syndrome. It's OKAY to break up with Blizzard. You don't need them. You'll be okay. You'll find new love, honey. It will hurt in the beginning, sure. But you don't need to be degrading yourself so badly. You don't need to put up with Blizzard's abuse of you. Have some self-respect.
yall are weird. i had this attitude about them UNTIL this year. never gave em a cent after mop was done. d3 was terrible, ros was terrible, wasted a lot of time on latter. d4 is, by comparison and even by comparison of modern day arpgs that take time to release and add content to the base game, FAR better. Season of discovery in vanilla WoW is pretty great / fun concept. finally something that wont end up seasonal and will last at 60, adding new raids and content. the cash shop instant level 80 to be able to start leveling in cata "right away" supposedly, i think is fucked, but idk how long that is on the shop in the lifespan of a classic expansion, i dont play these x-pacs since i already did on pservers too much. might play cata since i hav ea sub for SoD, so fuck it. im legit confused why people are crapping on blizz in 2023/4 of all years, when they are actually doing some decent shit..? must be a generational thing. young people want everything immediately. absolutely they have tons of qol and little improvements and some additional perm end game seasonal stuff to repeat every season and be on top of hotfixing exploits. but in d3 vanilla, for 2 years, we ONLY had act 3 inferno to run. over. and over. and over. until we hit 100 paragon, and dropped that coveted legendary with an extremely rare affix roll to make us rich (or give us the perfect item for our build.) i was addicted to this and hated ros speedrun / give u gear fast tracked / no trading / no focus on itemization system and figured id never play a diablo again. d4 is so far ahead of d3's launch BY TODAYS STANDARDS that the crying is getting legit old. move on already, this is approaching clickbait level
Or you could just don't care about companies at all and just play the effin games that you like. The only one here talking about a game developer company as if it's their girlfriend is you. Speaking of self respect how about you go find it yourself? Imagine ranting about a company as if it's a freakin love interest. You clowns
@@coomsicle I have been playing Blizzard games since 1994. Your name is "coomsicle". You are a zoomer calling actual OGs young people while you lap up the dopamine zoomer shit that caused the fall of Blizzard.
30:02 What we need is forced Anti-Marketing or no more shills. People REALLY thought Blizzion (Kotek) had changed for the better? They conveniently forgot about everything Actard had done in the past 10 years???
I had a friend in college who got told not to come back because he stopped doing any work or going to class...because of his absolutely insane WoW addiction in 2008. It was absolutely unhinged. I would love to know what he makes of Blizzard these days.
@@Soumein Well, if you count LoD as a big enough expansion to be its own game I guess. Hellfire was an expansion as well, though it's the weird black sheep of the "classic" Diablo games, having been outsourced to a division of Sierra. Not that I think Hellfire's all that bad (or at least not terrible), even if it didn't really catch on, but it's one of those things where it's stylistically different enough that you can tell it's not by the same people.
Man, this video brought me back to like 5th grade. The Internet was new and my buddy and I both had Warcraft 2. We both had to somehow convince our parents to occupy the phone line after school so we could both jump on bnet and have epic wall battles. I can still remember the feeling of awe and excitement of playing and chatting with my best buddy who was miles away over the Internet. Something we totally take for granted for today.
I feel as though you skipped some major details -StarCraft was initially supposed to be a Warhammer 40k game, but Blizzard lost the license (or something) -at some point Blizzard tried to make “Warcraft in Space” with space faring orcs and humans and it was received TERRIBLY by those who tried the alpha(?).
I think they didn’t lose the license. From what I heard it was because they realized they’d make a lot more money if they replaced the faction names and such with there own concepts. This could be a rumor but it’s what I heard
I think they didn’t lose the license. From what I heard it was because they realized they’d make a lot more money if they replaced the faction names and such with there own concepts. This could be a rumor but it’s what I heard
Originally, Game Workshop want Blizzard to make W40K RTS. However, while progress reached 50% the deal between 2 companies be broken. Blizzard still developed the game to Starcraft, while later GW has Dawn Of War.
A lot of the Warhammer elements still exist in wow, like the big shoulderplate designs and orcs. Games Workshop must feel a bit dumb on what they missed out on
Play War Thunder now through my link and get a massive, free bonus pack including vehicles, boosters, and more: playwt.link/bigboss
Nah sorry
Maybe later
Bag that money bro
Even though it tries to get my retention. This game will never made for me.
*If you copy and steal my games; Be prepared for unforeseen consequences. -Valve Software.*
One of the reasons Blizzard caved for refunds, at least in Europe, is because they are forced by European Union law to accept them, I really doubt outrage and gestures of good will were the main deciding factor.
Yea when have they cared about optics, maybe before activision acquired then but certainly not anytime recently
Blizz has had amazing refund policies for their entire existance.
@@RazanaArcclawYeah right meat rider
@@RazanaArcclaw Please stop lying, they really did not have a good policy for refunds and it was not enforceable upon them if you even looked in the direction of the purchased item.
Blizzard refund policy: "We'll refund most items that you buy with real money and receive in-game within 14 days of purchase, as long as you have not claimed, opened, or otherwise used the item".
What this means is that if you bought a game and opened it (even if it was opened for 1 minute) then you are not legible for a refund, even more stringent for ingame microtranstactions which do not care if you used them or not, you will not get a refund!
@@RazanaArcclaw blizzbot
"Do you guys not have phones?" is *the* perfect example of corporate not understanding their customer base, it's just too perfect.
The funniest part of that whole long line of fuck-ups is that blizzard was pandering so, SO hard to the chinese market with all that phone game bullshit.
And then one of their employees made a tweet that was *slightly* critical of the Chinese government and now they've got a company wide lifetime ban from selling any of their shit in china, forever.
They sold out and alienated their core western audience trying to suck China's dick and now they have nothing and nobody.
What a loser company run by by losers.
Blizzard: Diablo is mobile.
Fanbase: BOOOO!!!
Blizzard: Do you guys not have phones?
Fanbase: "DEMON SCREECHING"
Diablo Immoral was still a massive financial success, they just didn't realise that BlizzCon isn't the place to market it, since mobile users tend to be on the casual gamer side and dont really go to gaming conventions, while more serious PC gamers go to BlizzCon.
It was one of the devs, not one of their pr people lol...
I can't imagine anyone I've met who loves video games, being able to say those words to an audience with a straight face. If their entire audience was neglected alpha babies who were stuck on tablets all day, they might be right, but a lot of Blizzard enjoyers haven't even touched a mobile game beyond, like, an idle game.
I was at Blizzcon for the “you all have phones right?” Moment. The tone deafness was incredible.
Core memories
I'm surprised the crowd didn't unanimously respond with "f*** you" but I guess he stunlocked everyone with such an insane line
The line was "Do you guys not have phones?".
Nice
Epic gamer moment
My favorite fun fact about the McCree naming situation is that after they changed McCree's name in the game, they gave everyone a free rename token so that players with the name McCree could change it to avoid having their accounts tied to that name. This resulted in EVEN MORE players named McCree.
LMAO! That's awesome.
In my opinion, with or without the controversy, Jesse McCree just sounds way better cooler than Cole Cassidy, not to mention how long it's been in use so it's not like people will get used to the name change or accept it so easily.
don't forget cole cassidy is the name of a pronstar
@@gunznblades3547Yeah you cant force a cultural zeitgeist change, is the same reason people still call X Twitter despite their best efforts
@@obsu exactly that too, bro
I think the quote from FUNKe describes blizzard perfectly, “whenever they get into a PR controversy they’ll drop a trailer with no release date for one of tracer’s new skins.”
Now with 2% more ass crack!
So same as Nintendo
@@chjk122_ Who hurt you? What's the problem with a TH-camr trying to make revenue?
@@sargasm169it posts the same comment over and over. It’s either a bot or a very sad individual. Hopefully the former.
Cheers.
@@chainsawplayin Atleast Nintendo release a full game
I remember that Hong Kong event. I cancelled my WoW subscription during that. I was required to provide a copy of my drivers license to close my blizzard account (despite not being required to provide it to open one). I have not touched a Blizzard product since. I don't miss it.
Its almost like thats been their policy for years. If someone has an account that they paid for shit on and then the user wants to delete the account they want to make sure its actually you and not some random so they dont have to deal with legal issues. Their privacy policy goes over this in detail.
@@Noriaela on mobile if you click on a username you can see the other comments they've made on that video. You may want to switch to your alt soon so that you can hide your embarrassing blizzard cuckolding.
@@Noriaela cancelling a sub doesn't mean deleting the account you numpty.
@Noriaela wait, you have to send a photo of your licence to them?
I feel that all this controversies around Blizzard started happening after Overwatch and Legion ended or stopped being popular. Say what you will about Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and or Heroes of the Storm, but if you look back at those games you will see that they are much better quality than what they offer today (BfA, Shadowlands, Overwatch 2, Diablo Immortal, etc...)
I basically stopped playing Blizzard games after the massive disappointment that was BfA and the Hong Kong event added insult to injury. Certainly don't regret it one single bit, no more subscriptions to play games I already own, no more lackluster content, FOMO, collectionist hell and predatory tactics to keep you engaged every day (Radiant quests, Raid limits, tedious leveling system, etc)
You forgot the part in 2012 after the Acti/Blizz merger, Activision forced Blizzard to lay off 600 employees to "cut cost" after a record profit year. The first time ever Blizz had laid off any employees and it was a HUGE deal. They even had police escort for laid off employees thinking they would go on full rage mode.
The fall of blizzard was due to the executives yet they have the gall to blame and fire the devs who were just following and were actually forced to follow orders and yet no manager gets fired
@@Omega-mr1jg Happens everywhere; the overseer's boss(es) demands improvement, and the blame-whip lands on the actual workers. The overseer's boss(es) receives boons and bonuses galore, the overseer receives a head pat and the whisperings of how he is such a good boy, while the workers receive unemployment and/or homelessness should they be out of a job long enough. The stupidest, greediest or most immoral people rise to the top, while the ones who really want nothing to do with this horrible system but to simply be able to work long enough without getting fired for no reason in order to provide for themselves and/or their families and work their way into a better job/life get pushed down.
Police escort to protect them, and people still don't think the police are the elite's goons?
Has nothing on the Microsoft/Activision merger that forced more than a 1000 layoffs to clear overlaps after telling regulators they wouldn't do so.
Welcome to late stage capitalism, where shareholder value must grow every year at nearly any cost.
Executives make a huge difference to the culture of your company. If you have an executive that just wants to cut and slash your employee base, doesn't provide value for customers, and doesn't please employees, you're just going to destroy even a great company. Losing their founder and replacing him with a jughead, was a HUGE deal.
Well, you know the old saying about that: "Fish rot from the head"
i like it when war craft 3 reforged launched they removed the old warcraft 3 from my library when I contacted support they denied that I ever owned it.
When i contacted my bank and had the receipt of the purchase and showed it to them, they still denied then I told my bank to force refund which they agreed to and got a cease and desist from blizzard which went fucking nowhere because of my country's customer protection laws.
it's about sending a message and giving some poor blizzard employee a stroke in the process.
A gaslighting move worthy of and expected from the kind of company that allows their guy to say "you think you want it but you don't"
Did you get the refund?
I'm glad I still have a CD copy of Warcraft 3... I can play the real game whenever I want
@@nathamiellhe said he called his bank and forced the refund so obviously yes
The CCP doesn't care about customers
If Blizzard owned the Titanic, they'd have charged tickets for the lifeboats
And still not have enough
And not have lifeboats
It's funny to think about how bad diablo game pass was. Compare it with Fortnite. You always feel like you get value from a Fortnite game pass.
Of course, people desperate for their lives are ripe for exploitation. Politics have mastered this principle.
Makes sense that Titanic prioritize women
_"Well, Blizzard is dead. It is a corpse being puppeteered by Activision and Bobby Kotick and it's going to be used as basically a factory to put the Blizzard stamp on things and stoke nostalgia to get sales and that's it. So, stop holding out hope that Blizzard is going to come back. Everyone who founded Blizzard; all of the principles that Blizzard was founded on, they're gone or they're dead... The principles that Blizzard was founded upon are dead. They've been desecrated and are destroyed. So, let Blizzard go. That's my main message. Let Blizzard go. Appreciate what was created back when it was done and stop holding out hope that it's going to come back, because it's not."_
_-Former Blizzard designer_
The unfortunate truth to a decent chunk of older gaming companies.
Nice to see you here btw man!
The main founder realized there was no plugging the hole on the sinking ship and realized better to leave with his dignity than stay and be used as a scapegoat
The best part of coming back in April of 2024 and watching this is knowing that by "Sprinkling in some PvE missions every few seasons" they meant "We are going to give you 3, and then nothing else ever again. Whomp whomp."
I remember when they promised stuff like Nova covert ops would become "the new age of Starcraft story content" only to later be announced (like a few months later, not that long) that it was indeed the last story and content Starcraft was ever getting beyond coop commanders (Which also got dropped some time later, with Mengsk being the last and ironically most interesting, he was probably the last love letter from the devs to us and I still love the lad or lass who designed him, such a good concept). The poor writing team spent so long building up so many new (and refining old) characters in the second trilogy, especially during LoTV, and Nova Covert Ops was the beginning of an "expanded universe", if you will, maybe we finally get to get some loose ends tied up from stuff like books and such.
Only for the higher ups to go "Yeah, no, we change our mind, some of you go work on Diablo Immortal and Overwatch, while the rest of you - out, you're fired. The future is quick dopamine fixes with "quirky" and "relatable" characters like in marvel movies cracking constant one-liners, compounded by freemium style mtx and battlepasses, not this... interesting and finished game garbage".
And Hots.... ah... my dream game as a moba addict. Blizz characters, completely casual but not without skill ceiling, and arguably some of the most interesting character mechanics on the market. Stuff like Abathur and Cho'gall are characters other mobas don't have the guts to make. Canned because it didn't get to league popularity in half the time it took for League to really pop off. Blizzard REALLY wanted to be king off the bat, and anyone with half the sense for the industry realizes is cause it needs time. It was finally gaining popularity but they just axed it before it reached it's potential. Now it's a dead game on maintenance mode. I will never forgive Blizzard for this game in particular. It could've been something really special, for those of us who don't wanna be tryhards. A callback to the olden days of League and mobas where building funny was always viable.
Just to clarify on 23:00 The reforged launch did not can the classic team. The classic team got canned HALFWAY THROUGH DEVELOPMENT because Activision said to the OG team "nobody is going to buy this. It's not like diablo immortal". You can find this information by hearing one of the original devs talking about it on a stream he hosted. Reforged WAS gonna have all of the promised features, it just couldn't because people got fired before they could even start working on them.
Such a shame. I noticed it genuinely got a bit of attention on release (e.g on Twitch it was in like the top 10 or so streamed games for a few days) but it was such a garbage 'reforge'. I still keep up with the Wc3 scene a little because the original game is just so well designed and fun to watch. I don't think it would have been huge if it had been good but I think it genuinely would have expanded the small pool of dedicated players to have modern conveniences with the UI, graphics, world editor, and controls.
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a kiddie diddler and pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard, you shouldnt believe anything he claims as he was caught lying and censoring people on his youtube vids.,
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a kiddietoucher and pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard, you shouldnt believe anything he claims as he was caught lying and censoring people on his youtube vids.
Just a heads up, DesignerDave is a pathological liar, he is trying to shift the blame for Reforged on Bobby Kotick and ignoring all the culprits from SC2 and other rotten apples from Blizzard.
@@JackMarcuson And what information do you have that contradicts his, exactly? And where is it from?
in mere 20 years, the phrase "what did you expect, it's a Blizzard game" changed 180 degrees
It is a true travesty. Their name was once synonymous with uncompromising quality. I had been playing their games since back in the days of Blackthorn and Rock 'n Roll Racing. The last Blizzard game I bought was Diablo 3. I doubt I will ever buy another Blizzard game again, which is just sad. I grew up on their stuff.
@@kirbyjoe7484Last Blizzard game thought was good was Warcraft 3
If i made a dollar everytime Blizzard and Activision fucked up
I would be a millionaire
you could have bought Blizzard by now
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
You could max out two whole Diablo Immortal characters!
@@chjk122_ Oh no, a youtuber uses ads to make money?
Not a sell out, would be if it was an ad for gambling or something as damaging as that. Blizzard screwed up through a history of bad choices and poor management... Hopefully they recover, I loved diablo 2 and Overwatch when it was released, it just got worse the longer it was out.
@@chjk122_ 🤡
Guess thats what happens when accountants run the company and not gamers.
Its funny how 3 blokes in their mums cellar can make a world changing game that kickstarts a company with thousands of employees, but a multi billion dollar company can’t do much of anything.
Research on this topic indicates that marketers rise above the rest in corporate environments because their increase in profit is far more visible than a designer's influences.
Unchecked capitalism is a wealth extraction schema in which all money in the world is funneled upwards on a tiering system. It has no inherent truth or good qualities to it, and its ultimate end point is that all wealth is owned by a couple people and meted out only for the benefit of those people to continue to extract wealth, as it has no end-point. It's a finite system based on a principle of infinite trends, which are impossible, and therefore it is structurally impossible for unchecked capitalism to last.
sure they can. they can ruin the shit out of a great franchise...
Hear me out
What if you are an accountant AND a gamer
@@dankmemes8254 well your not working for blizzard then 😉
@@dankmemes8254that's a subset of gamers called the min/maxer, who will try to achieve the highest and lowest stats at all costs
To be fair, they DID in fact redefine what a sequel means.
It means you slap a '2' at the end of the title of the first one, throw in extreme predatory monetisation, and call it a day.
Dungeon keeper?
Can't wait for WoW 2
Don’t forget to add plenty of salt to the player base, and a generous dose of extra spicy toxic social media “infotainment” streamers, to really zhuzh it up
And remove features lmao
Yup, to them a sequel just means a big update that lets them break all the promises they made about OW1
I hope they continue to forget about the single dev that lives in the cleaning closet so he can keep working on SC2 in peace
Did the closet intern got promoted to Dev?
And one works with HotS. Maybe in same closet.
@@АнтонДемин-ю4з same dev
Man the state of star craft 2 now. The ladder means nothing as you constantly fighter former masters players in bronze and the player base is so low that you are likely to be pitted against current masters players in bronze league just so it can find you a game.
@@АнтонДемин-ю4з i imagine the scene from the last airbender, when the gang passes through the village on the polluted river, and there is one guy pretending to be three by switching hats.
"No King Rules Forever"
I see only cubicle crawls and layoffs.... before me
thing is as much as i hate blizzard , this is not even core of problem , core of problem is stock exchange , once game companies stopped seing people who buy their game as "clients" , but "product" , (investors are clients now) things went down hill , and its not just blizzard or bigger studios doing this , cyberpunk is forever tainted by same reason and had one of worst releses in recently history.
"All good things come to an end."
cgp grey?
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
This video isn’t just a work of art. It’s entertaining, educational, historical. It needs to be watched by anyone who has ever played or thought of playing a Blizzard game.
yesss
no one should ever give this company another cent. im guilty i paid in. but never again will i even install the launcher.
This all boils down to the flawed notion of Shareholder Primacy that almost all corporations seem to be addicted to. A company's priorities should be its customers, its staff and its products or services. Get those fundamentals right and the success of the company is sustainable. Sadly, todays modern notion of shareholders is that once they arrive and start investing in the company the priorities shift and staff and customers are there to be squeezed to achieve short-term profit and bulging shareholder dividend payouts. This utlimately results in low staff morale which affects product or service quality and angers customers to the point that company success fails. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy.
It's unfortunately not a notion. The shareholders who have power over the company can switch CEO's as may times as they'd like until they get the one that will do their bidding.
It's not merely a corporate fad, it's actually a _law_ in the US. Look up Dodge Brothers vs. Ford. Henry Ford had been doing very successful for himself and decided to increase the wage of his workers, cut the cost of his cars so it was more affordable to the average person, and also decided to divert money from dividends to new plants. Some have made the argument this was purely in self-interest, however even if it was, more people were benefitting from it, more people except one small group, that being the shareholders (of which Henry Ford was the biggest, so if it was in self-interest, he must have had a lot of faith in what he planned). In come the Dodge Brothers, who also owned shares in Ford, and took Ford to court. The court ruled that corporations must be organized around the profit of shareholders, and that set the precedent going forwards.
A CEO's job is to please the shareholders. Us "customers" are the product, the real customers are the shareholders. This can only be fixed by removing shareholders from gaming, buisness ruins everything it touches
@@DrewPicklesTheDarkHenry Ford also wrote great books!! He was very based.
no it goes beyond that, it's PE firms. They buy the company and then sell it off and run it into the ground for profit.
Damn, you forgot about Starcraft 2 just like Blizzard did
who cares about it lmfao
@@don_chanGDconsidering it was a massive esport and was stupidly popular for a long time and IS still played and this is a video about the history of Blizzard, I assume people watching this care about this being accurate
XD
No he didn't. It was briefly mentioned!
and heros of the storm
First Bethesda, Now Blizzard
I’m hyped
Ubisoft next.
Rocksteady when?
Waiting for EA
@@fr0ck360suicide squad
next up: The Creative Assembly
I have not played one single Blizzard game ever and this made me sad. I know that fans of these games are even sadder. But the devastation the original founders must feel to see how their dream was tarnished, undermined and destroyed beyond recondition, while they are forced to just sit and watch it happen before their very own eyes, helplessly, not being able to do anything about it has to be one of the highest forms of sadness one can feel...
I have blacklisted any Blizzard games, regardless how good the game is, I will never touch it.
The sexual harassment suit was the last straw.
The original warcraft 3 was out of this world. The polish and attention to detail was breathtaking. It's absolutely heart breaking now. It feels like meeting your highschool sweetheart, realizing she has been doing crack for 10 years
The founders surely cried all the way to the bank.
@@thecandlemaker1329 Guess you never made anything original in your life that someone corrupted.
Yes, they were upset for a while, but they are still millionaires so we can't feel too sorry for them. It's the slaves in suits working at Blizz that are the sorry bunch. Being a corpo drone is one of the worst jobs in the world.
Fun Fact..ughbarf: The HotS esports layoff situation was so bad that South Korea passed a law with the games namesake to make similar situations illegal.
To be fair, south korea sucks.
I am starting to doutb I don't know what fun is. Every time I see a fun fact, I might think its cool, but never say its fun...guess a turn of phrase?
@@ravinraven6913 Yes now it just means "a random trivia" or just "interesting fact". Or people use the term ironically, like probably in this case.
starcraft, warcraft were big part of my childhood , Blizzard went down bad when the microtransaction desease arrived
Im right there with you. At least we got to enjoy the golden days of gaming and the internet.. it is sad to see what all my beloved franchises and IPs have morphed into. I dont even recognize them anymore.
Same, I distinctly remember Starcraft 2 being one of my staple childhood experiences. It is great to revisit the old glory days sometimes, while not paying current Activision a cent.
lol. i got all of their games. lol
Honestly the players are as much at fault as Blizzard is for that. The $15 horse mount for WoW made more money than one of the Starcraft games in like 2 weeks, so I mean if you're literally giving blizzard your money for trash why wouldn't they capitalize?
Yea, some sad sh^t really.
It's like I had to go and work out of town for the Summer. But when I came home I found out that all of my friends turned into homeless fentanyl addicts and are all living in a van down by the river, smfh.
It's kinda wild how "And stolen breastmilk." isn't a joke, but something that actually happened.
Keeping breast milk in the fridge at work, if it was a public fridge, is actually kinda disgusting.
@@CT2507not if its labeled, its super important for a woman to preserve milk in the event she has an issue and needs extra (also letting it build up is painful apparently) the gross thing is feeling entitled to taking someones stuff.
@@when-do-we-get-a-block-button A lot of things in this world are important. Why not keep blood vials in the fridge? Why not keep medicines in the work fridge?
It's still disgusting to keep your bodily fluids in the fridge others use to keep their lunch. Every time someone opens the fridge, they get reminded about someone else' breast fluids. They have to worry if they accidently touch the container by chance, they could get someone's fluids on them, and so on.
So, if someone removed the breast milk from the work fridge as a protest, I can fully understand it.
they will pay for their crimes
@@CT2507They didn't bring their toddlers to work, what are you even saying lmao
"You think you do, but you dont"
8 years later, Classic is what is keeping WoW alive
Blizzard no longer exists. Ppl need to stop calling it that. Blizzard died years ago.
Right? I jumped ship after Wrath of the Lich King, after it had become clear that Blizzard no longer cared about making quality content. Not gonna lie, I got excited when Warcraft 3 reforged was announced, and was keeping an eye on it, but knew better than to pre-order a blizzard product. And I'm glad I went with my gut. Idk how you can so badly botch a masterpiece of the game that you already made and have as a reference point, but it's clear to me "Blizzard" no longer makes games for the fans. It makes them in spite of the fans.
The last expansion I enjoyed was Legion. Since then, we have always received the same thing in slightly worse quality. They deliberately lower the quality. I hope one day there will be a usable single player mode for it.
Let's call it Shitard.
@@robbnoble1509SAME DUDE after wrath and cata the game wasn’t the same and seeing what they did with diablo 3….. I also jumped shit. So glad for grinding gear games for path of exile which has true blizzard engineering in it
Blizzard is gone. Blizzard north is gone.
You forgot 2 huge moments: first when Blizzard threatened all players that they will track what they do/say on the internet outside the Blizzard community and if they find out that they say unpleasant political stuff on any other outlet online they will ban them on the Blizzard community, and the other gem when they started banning players from Overwatch for playing too much with one particular character. These 2 show the absolute insanity of Blizzard and too bad they were left out of the video.
For the case of Overwatch, their balance team has 0 braincell and created the non-counter hero to turn OW into Shield and Support. They did not even make ban/pick system used on tournament of DOTA2 and LOL as the countermeasure of so broken meta
The only thing Overwatch is now good for is rule 34.
Winston x. Roadhog for life.@@markosimunic4770
@@markosimunic4770 amen brother, amen
@@markosimunic4770 Truth.
I remember being 11 years old, seeing people at an internet cafe playing wow. Damn i will never forget how badly i wanted to play.
The days of Wrath of the Lich King were magical 🥲 what a shame
Dude, the first year of wow were AMAZING! My first wife almost left me because it was work and WOW, thats it! 😂
@@DaRealKing303 You aren't kidding. I was a Day One player (beta player) and that first year was magical. I'm not sure I slept more than 4-5 hours a night in 2005.
Blizzard has been dead to me since warcraft 3 reforged
Id like to point out that Heroes of the Storm was originally called Blizzard Allstars, or BALLS for short
I'd like to point out that Blackthorne was my favorite title from Blizzard
Its been balls in our face for years now from Blizzard
Also hearthstone is pronounced ‘harth stone’ not ‘here-th stone’. Had to rant somewhere
@@JohnMcSmithI got to that part right as I read this, had a double take.
38 yrs old and this comment had me in stitches...I need to grow up.
I lost my eight years long job at Blizzard at the end of 2018. Also, we were shown the Diablo Immortal trailer in April that year, way before it was public and everyone was silent when normally, we all clap our hands when then announce something. It was apparent to everyone that it was doomed.
I don't understand.. It was unanimously disliked by literally every single person.. Every single higher up in the meeting where that game was pitched KNEW it would suck. Why would they do it? I'm trying not to put on a tinfoil hat but it really seems like they're TRYING to destroy the company and I cannot understand
@@moralesterdesperation and greed is a good motivator for bad decision making
@@Cairo40000 so wouldn't you want to be the one guy who tried to save the multi billion dollar company by saying the obvious? you'd surely be promoted to a million dollar job for doing nothing
@@moralester Nobody wants to hear the truth, especially the execs, and they knew that the guy would be right
@@moralesterthats thinking like a mentally stable human being. to the higher ups, the goal is money, not legacy, at the end of the day, they get to swim in their money while everyone else loses jobs.
Making a good product is always a risk, but using an already established ip is a guarantee that it will at least sell and get word of mouth before release. doesn't matter if its good or not, just that it sells enough, and the less money you put into it means higher profit. if the company fails completely from a bad product, the higher ups jump ship and move on like the parasites that they are to the next company cashing out on the one theu ran int the ground cutting corners. fir Activision/blizzard they knew the company would last longer to make more anyway after this but thats not what you were asking.
its the mentality of certain psycho paths (they aren't all this bad) but usually the ones that get into business get to the top and thats why you see this same issue repeat itself in every corner of established media when corporate is to blame.
“This entire studio must be purged.”
"At once sire!"
LOL, well met.
LOL
Stalinist mindset
Chris Metzen: Execute Order 66
Who are these absolutely moronic executives in charge of Activision-Blizzard?
How could they not forsee that firing 10% of their workforce would reduce their revenue in the future? How could they not see that destroying HotS would reduce revenue? How did they not realize that creating a classics department to remake older games, and then not giving that department enough resources to make a decent product would result in a terrible product, and reduce revenue
How did they not realize that destroying Overwatch gameplay by filling it with microtransactions, then changing the game to make more money from microtransactions, would reduce player numbers, prevent Overwatch from developing into an esport, and would reduce revenue?
How did they not realize that doing all that would destroy any possible goodwill left from the fans? That goodwill puts money in their pockets. Like, I get that they want to make money, but destroying future earning potential for a quick payday today just seems so shortsighted, and just plain... Stupid.
Those execs are business people. They only see "number go up=good" and "number go down=bad".
They're literally not morons because they're making more money now than ever before. Their plans worked and they have suctioned vast amounts of wealth out of the lesser number of players who stuck around. They aren't dumb, gamers are.
@@TRAMP-olineRelying on Whales isn't going to end well for Blizzard ..
Welcome to modern business. The first and only rule: Number go up = good / Number go down = bad. Shortterm record profits all the way baby.. At. Any. Cost.
Thank Jack Welch, the man who enriched himself and his cronies destroying GM, because layoffs drive higher stock value. Or thank Milton Friedman, who gave us the moral position that the only responsibility of a company is to increase shareholder value.
This is the system working as intended, it's not about providing better values/products. It's about hoarding wealth. It will purchase art to suck any and all value from it.
The saddest thing about Heroes of the Storm is that it is currently the least predatory monetized blizzard game there is, simply because it hasn't been touched since 2019.
(Excluding SC2 because it never had any loot boxes or shit like that)
Yup, and they could easily revive the game and do a lot with it. The engine is amazing, I just hope they dont make a 2nd one and kill it with a less smooth experiance. Current hots feels like sc2 and has the best champions in any game. When I quit playing LoL I went back to HoTS and play it all the time. Tried going bsck to league and I cant play it, it doesnt feel smooth.
And is easily the best moba.
Dota 2 is better than HotS due to its lightning in a bottle beginnings, the cumulative effort that has been put into it since Dota Allstars (2 decades of balancing), an extremely successful custom game option that has spawned moba subgenres like chess aka Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords, and so much more. But I will say that from personal exp, HotS is a much more enjoyable game to play with friends on a casual and competitive level, and is actually an amazing game altogether
I don't think I've ever played a game like I played HotS. It hit a perfect spot for me and felt like the first online community I was ever a part of. I played it so much I unlocked every character for free. I put money into it because I wanted to reward the game, in some misguided hope that support above and on top of what I put into the twitch scene could keep that community alive. And look how Blizzard rewarded all of us...
HotS is the only Blizzard game I still play
Dota in the hands of Blizzard would've lasted 1-2 years and then died, forever forgotten.
Thankfully papa Gaben took it and made the biggest e-sport game in history out of it
Truly, the greatest man of our time, possibly even all of human history.
there is a reason he looks like god
Gaben is the Captain America of the gaming industry
"you all have phones, right?"...that's like Ferrari disappointing fans at a launch by announcing a range of running shoes instead of the anticipated new supercar...and responding to the disappointment by asking "you all have feet, right?"
Thanks for metaphor! I dont play video games so that helps illustrate the frustration
Except that Ferrari People would gladly shell out four digits for Ferrari branded shoes.
@@heirofaniushhhh
ha
Corporate greed... Everywhere.
Just how late stage capitalism works
Kind of, but more a lack of discipline in a lot of these cases. A product blows-up so the next logical conclusion is to hire more staff and go bigger on the next game / product. Except, that isn't the logical conclusion, because then you have to factor-in the time between game releases & how much money you need to support those extra employees over that duration, and that's where the failure point is & all of these stupid quick cash grab choices come from. If they had the discipline to reel it in a bit once that first big game went Platinum, opted to make minor changes or research what people want from the next game, only grow the employee base slightly and take their time over things, they'd never have hit these issues. Same across a lot of companies!
So the greed comes mainly from the desperation of their ill-made choices that were a result of their monetary success. These mofos were never business people....
My friend was a professional Heroes of the Storm player, Drated, when Activision Blizzard decided to drop the esport entirely on a dime
Same here, Quackniix - team captain for fnatic. He pivoted into becoming a paddle tennis player and found a girlfriend lol.
that's why Blizzard competitive games suck. They're entirely propped up by the developer. the competitive scenes in games like Dota2 and CSGO happened naturally and were then supported by the developer.
@@Njursviktxdesports to pickle ball is a crazy pipeline
I remember that well, I stopped playing as soon as the esports was dropped. At that point the writing on the wall was clear. Blizzard did yall dirty.
What does drafted even mean??
IceFrog went to Blizzard with the offer to work as a designer on their take on Dota. Blizzard declined the offer. Valve, instead, acquiesced to his requests.
They lost on the MOBA craze, so now they had to show they were valuable even without a successful MOBA. This was the beginning of the end, the start of all the other bad choices. All because they didn't want IceFrog to maintain ownership of his creation. Absolutely mental.
IceFrog did not create DotA, but rather took over stewardship of it a few years after it was made.
@@Koresaurus I don't know much about the history of DotA, but did IceFrog then make it what it is now?
@@SyRose901 DotA was popular before IceFrog's involvement. IceFrog contributed to it over the years. It would be highly speculative to say what would have happened if someone else had maintained it. It certainly wouldn't have become nothing.
IceFrog's interaction with both Blizzard and Valve is also very simplified in the above statement. He was said to be difficult to work with and insisted on not changing anything about the game, which may have been why Blizzard declined. Heroes of Newerth's failure had already demonstrated that this stagnation was not a good idea. It could be argued that Valve's Dota 2 succeeded despite rather than because of IceFrog.
Blizzard's 'dota-like' game, Heroes of the Storm, is also a reasonably well-designed game that still has active players nearly a decade after its release. The reasons why it did not become as popular as others in the same genre make for an involved topic that includes plenty of mishandling by Activision, but IceFrog not designing it was likely not a major factor.
@@KoresaurusHeroes of the Storm? What?
It's literally canned after 3 years. What are you talking about?
@@KoresaurusAlso "Icefrog's interaction was simplified" doesn't change the fact that they're idiots and didn't see ANY reason to acquire the rights to the actual game
Blizzard is literally the definition of "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Westwood is another side of this coin.
If a company gets bought out and has to appease share holders; it's only a matter of time before they go under. There is a reason why EA and Activision are both know as the killers of game studios.
And Kotick got away with the whole thing
Literally? Literally? It was literally, huh? Was it, literally? Oh, literally? Literally literally literally! Literally is all I can say! Literally! I HAVE TO USE IT IN EVERY SENTENCE, CORRECT OR NOT!!! LITERALLY!!!! LITERALLY LITERALLY!!!!!
Is there anything in california that isnt villainous? Seems like everything there is pedos, sexism, racism, rape, crime, and violence.
It was the mandatory authenticator on the phone that pushed me way, that intrusion unforgiveable just to play a game.
The more money is on the table, the worse the product is going to be. You start getting the corporate stooges involved, responsible for making millions/billions, you can expect the end result to be a travesty.
Story as old as time, and the one where everybody forgets the adage, “ those that don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”
That’s why we call them the corporate machine. No soul, only crime and cash
Even Cyberpunk was a victim of corporate greed. I don't think there is one gaming company that didn't ruin their reputation other than perhaps Supergiant.
Unfortunately, the future seems bleak for all games since gacha-models inherited and refined from early games like Maplestory have taken root in the industry.
When games Clash of Clans or Genshin Impact both make 10x more money than amazing projects like Elden Ring or BG3, you know the industry is doomed. Over 80% of gaming is mobile nowadays too.
I remember when between 2005-2015 amazing games released every year, but now that gap between truly amazing games is getting wider and wider. Even BG3 took so long. Quantity over quality dominates the industry now.
@@thecolorgreen9022 Dude last year was some of the best year in terms of good games in a long time.
@@AL-lh2htif you are a pathetic normie who enjoys watching cutscenes in AAA garbage sure, to me last year was absolutely fugging awful
This is the reckoning you deserve, Blizzard.
what reckoning bro? they are making billions
Their stock is on the rise, they are doing fine unfortunately
blames blizzard --- check pinned comment. its a sell out . which is what killed blizzard. you're not a passionate dev youre playing the algorithm. hypocritical trash not worth watching
@@chjk122_”leave the billion dollar company alone guys”
@@jaflob6610 Yeah, this youtuber is clearly punching down.
As soon I saw you upload I dropped my newborn son so I could watch this video. I always prioritize things.
Blizzard would like to request an interview
Stupid scammers. They absolutely don't deserve peoples' trust. I did not know that there is such shit in Diablo 4.
holy shit the silicon and synapse logo unlocked a core memory of all the hours I spent playing rock n roll racing on SNES. what a game.
It was one of my favorite SNES games. It was alot of fun.
I still think about this game regularly.
There's a version of that on the Battle net, is it any good?
I'm making a top-down racer and I want to play it!
Facts.
@@sonictimmit’s amazing.
"Do you guys not have phones" is still one of the funniest moments I've ever watched live
Entire Path of Exiles community remembered that day as the day Blizzard make the biggest self-destruction to clear up the path of PoE.
@@superspies32 I think the other Diablo franchise releases had the same effect, although not as bad as Immortal.
Back when D3 released, I only knew the genre from Titan Quest or Torchlight.
I saw some footage of D2's horadric cube recipes, class trees, good old attributes, etc. and naively bought D3 expecting some intricate gameplay mechanics.
Anyway, after that I racked up about 2k hours in PoE.
I haven't played it for years though. Are toucans still praised as often?
@@Gnulcho Toucan still be praised but you will be muted for do that. And when you are muted you cannot listed items for trade since you always be offline, cannot pm and basically ssf
I still can't afford a fucking phone
@@iller3 phones are stupid anyways.
To me the 2020s will always be labeled the "decade of decay".
I think the change from "kinda bad" to "everything rapidly becoming terrible" happened around 2016 but yeah, it's going to mark this entire decade. People were still pretty optimistic in the early 2010s.
@@poika22 atleast we had Doom in 2016, I still believe it did some things better than Eternal, not that that means I didn't like it though.
We're getting some of the most banger modern games in the market, though.
The old giants are dead and decaying, those that remain stumble upon rotten limbs. The new sprout from their corpses and the now-fertile soil.
It's sad, but I feel like the gaming industry is slowly going back to the way it should be.
Slowly.
@@poika22
I’d say things became rapidly terrible more so around 2019. But yeah, something to that effect.
Don't say that, bro. We aren't even halfway through.
Original WoW was pretty amazing. But the context of its time was important.
My stepson had the Legendary An-Qiraj mount as he rang the gong. What an event! I knew people who _planned their vactions_ around the release of Burning Crusade so they could rush the level-cap for endgame.
It was a wild time!
Damn dude, your editing is superb. As someone who's done editing, I can't imagine how long it took you to make this 30+min video. And your delivery and style made it both easy to follow and kept my hooked.
It's hilarious and spot on every time. Reference game 110%.
The real question is. Does he do Internet historians editing, or does Internet historian's editor do his. Cuase this is exactly how I.H's content looks and sounds
Absolutely. The memes and clips throughout the entire Blizzard history was exceptionally well done. That absolutely took a lot of time. Just finding all of that shit to use would have taken forever. Let alone editing "Blizzard" and whatnot on people's foreheads in videos he used.
@@josepreciadocortes8224this!7😊
Well his videos are months apart.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain”
The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent.
kotick is worse than any villain or dictator...
A guy with a funny mustache: impossible
Things are not that simple. Those are two extremes. There is always middle ground between two extremes on opposite ends of a spectrum.
... become a joke to be exact, blizzard dota without reaching icefrog, lmao !
I played the warcraft 2, 3, starcraft 1, diablo 2, wow burning crusade & the lich king and i still have the CD copies of those games. Those were the most fabulous and the most fun times i've had. Maybe im getting too old now, but nothing will replace those great feelings back then. Blizzard games today are not just as good as they were back then.
Oh dude..... Get back into D2. It's ALL had a MASSIVE graphics upgrade and looks STUNNINGLY beautiful. Instead of 2D art getting rendered in 2.5D iso to give the ILLUSION of 3D, it's all been redrawn in 3D.... and whats more, the Runewords still work, the Cow King has been fixed (yes you can now kill him and re-enter the same level for more killing), and that annoying Multishot-Lightning Enchanted combo has been removed.
@@chalk6ix_nz950Oh yeah the D2 remaster is totally awesome! Im huge fan of D2 and this blew my mind how great the remaster actually is. Although i find myself sometimes switching to the old graphics just for the nostalgy.
Just not as good is quite an understatement. Those old games revolutionized their respective genres. Even if their releases were delayed multiple times and Blizzard just gave their "when it's done", people knew the hype was justified. Now, D2R is the only game that wasn't a huge disappointment.
Old D2 is still better than resurrected. People will never understand. You are not too old. Blizzard died with its last game in 2012.
Ah man, your mention of WotLK brings back memories!
the exact moment company went to hell is the "dont you have phones" moment
EA, Bethesda, Blizzard, what about Ubisoft?
Go watch reviews of skulls and bones.
I'd say Activision, specially with how much Bobby took down
It was always bad, now is just worse than before
Ubisoft in all honesty is just consistently extremely mediocre, rarely awful, but never good either.
@@sozius0 Ubisoft has mobile style monetization even in single player games like Assassins creed .
A year after Warcraft 3 Reforged launched my grandpa gave me his copy of Warcraft 3 (Version 1.00) and later I bought the expansion The Frozen Throne and still never had to update because I was playing on an actual dvd version
Based grandpa 👍
More reasons to have physical media! :)
More reasons to have a physical grandpa @@phantomtr1
The last proper version is 1.26 if I recall correctly
That’s awesome! You can find software copies of WC3 pre-reforged online. I recently held a classic WC3 LAN with 9 other mates for a long weekend.
Every time this guy uploads my brain automatically hears “tens of thousands of vibrant, multi-colored, rubber balloons”.
“Some horses were also injured.”
well put together and special effects buff on the edits man! well done
"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Blobby Cockdick was a villain their whole life. They shouldn't have trusted the merger. They were swimming in gold.
This is so deep that I don't even know what to say... this makes you speechless...
@@SkyRunner21no it makes you speechless
Damn right
@@SkyRunner21 It's been told since centuries ago where have you been?
24:08 - Fun fact: Activision-Blizzard had a "The Boys" show crossover event for the current CoD game at the time, with even the actor of Homelander getting a tour of the studio.
So for those who watched the show and know all of Homelander's quirks, it all makes perfect sense. 🧐
🍼🥛
He must've been envious of their (at the time, anyway) ability to also get away with doing anything no matter how heinous.
I still remember how Blizzard was in it's prime and it really hurts to see them now
theyre good now wow is great df has tons of positive feedback
@@wm1573 yea right
@@jannesrosenberg926 just look it up weirdo. I understand it’s cool to hate and follow the trends, but it’s in good state. Classic and retail have been insanely popular for the past few years
I think this is why people are hesitant to leave or boycott. They have a lot of love and connection to what they USED to be . They keep holding out hope , when they should just outright refuse . It’s yet another layer of exploitation.
Everything goes in cycles. Usually guys who can start a studio and make good games cannot also handle a big company. Bungie is a good example of the same problem. 20 nerds in an office making a masterpiece is not the same as 9000 people across many countries trying to coordinate on something. One is going to figure it out and the other simply costs too much sustain without screwing the player-base for every cent just to keep this 9000-person machine going. I'm convinced you could strip Blizzard down to like 50 people and they would make better games. They wouldn't be live service, and they wouldn't be as big as e.g., D4, but they'd be playable. They'd be priced fairly and they'd patch mistakes (instead of showing up at camp fire chats and over-promising on some BS no one really wants anyway).
32:26 this aged BADLY
BWAHAHAHAHA
"Don't you have phones?"
"You think you do, but you don't."
Some great moments. 😊
Immortalized, and will live forever lmao
When attempting to gaslight the audience goes wrong.
Still remember that day. Playing in Path of Exiles, preparing to end league and my PoE Discord gone uts because of this. Entire PoE subreddit exploded with joy and beginning guide for Diablo players switched to. The final cherry on the cake is GGG announced the next league: Betrayal league with entire content and trailer were a mockery to this moment.
@@superspies32 LMAO
GGG is master trolls
Bit of a shame that nobody's mentioning that Blizzard's horrifying abusive workplace culture is directly responsible for one one of their enployees being driven to suicide, because, like, that was a thing that happened and honestly is the main reason half the executive staff ought to have eaten punishments far worse than simply being laid off with all their bonuses intact. Like, if justice was a thing that existed in the world, they would have been jailed over that.
Yea jailed right true justice 😂
I hope those who did that got at least fired when Microsoft bought Blizzard
*citation needed.
how would that be justice? if you call someone an idiot for walking in front of your car and it turns out that was the last straw which lead them to suicide, do you deserve to go to jail?
Err... that's not how that works...
Never forget the time Blizzard sided with China against human rights.
And don’t forget how Actiblizz left China in shame later
As sad as that is. 🤣🤣
What's the freedom of Hong Kong versus hundreds of millions of dollars of China's market money? As being a soulless company there wasn't really any other option to logically take.
Every big company does that to get their hands on that sweet juicy communist dictatorship money
Human rights are for humans, the Hong Kong protestors don't make the cut
This took me down such a memory lane lol. Oh lord I remember so much of that. I remember being so mad and then hearing, "Do you not have phones?" The slow decline of trust and eventual just not caring about Activation Blizzard at all. My friends and I love playing wc3 as well, but we have all have to use a really janky modded version that is untouched by Activision. And some crazy Europeans run a server as well, but you'd be surprised how active it still is. But I honestly started to forget how there once was an age where game companies cared. Where game companies made good games. Though I will admit, in the past few years, we've had some amazing freaking games launch that took me by complete surprise. Honestly I was giving up on good games coming out, but I think a lot of indie companies are really taking advantage of this huge gap in the game industry of good development (not that all the banger were indie in the past few years).
Forgot about sc1 remastered and how Blizzard wanted Korean net cafes to pay a ridiculous premium just to have it.
Too bad for Blizz, at that time Overwatch and Leagues of Legends already dominated Korea
Looking at how insanely popular a PvE game like Helldivers 2 is in 2024, imagine being the guy at Blizzard who scrapped OW2’s PvE last year.
PVE was always popular… i mean… look many years back at the PvE Servers of World of Warcraft. Or Other games like Halo with the Coop, Dead Island… there are so many positive examples. But the industry is always thinking that PvP and Competitive things are the holy grail…
WoW is mainly PvE. The PvP is just a game mode (minigame) that a couple tryhards keep alive by being super loud and toxic towards any actually positive change.
@Nathanyel the tryhards are the pve nerds who rage when they keep wiping to the same mechanic week after week 20 times per raid and then nerd rage at eachother. 😂 can't even beat the damn computer lol. Your comment was a clownboi comment😂😂😂
It would have been massive for OW2 if there was even a small amount of PVE content on launch, they fumbled the bag so hard and practically killed the franchise for a second time before the sequel came out. Its gotten better, but its still impossible to justify all the money and dev time that went into what boils down to removing a tank and some graphic overhauls.
Not only helldivers. Look at granblue fantasy relink. Reached 1m sales in 11 days.
LOL huge props on the very effective use of memes and movie snips. This short documental was both very informative, and laughed all through with the memes. You sir have become everything Michael Scott could not in his office meetings; Teach something and entertain at the same time.
New to your channel but LOVE the way you make these videos. So much more entertaining with the snippets of shows and movies
I only bought Diablo 4 to beat it for my Grandfather, who had played Diablo since the very, VERY first Beta. He was actively playing D3 for almost a decade, and he loved it. He sadly passed away in the fall of 22’, so I promised myself I’d beat D4 for him.
I heard, D4 has a really bad endgame. So, looks like you are up to quite a task there. Godspeed!
@@Tamyndris Not really? Just took some time to beat as all.
My only problem with the endgame was how we didn’t get to choose if we wanted to side with Lilith or Inarius, which we really should have.
It blows my mind that they could've had Dota but didn't reach out to the guy. Og Dota was nuts and they probably could've scooped the modder up at a discount and had another massive hit.
I like hots more, it feels like starcraft smooth but has the charecters I like. If they did a lot with the game to make it more in depth like dota but keep it the same champion wise and feel it would be one of their best games. It was a big missed opertunity on their end.
Typical Blizz L and Steam thanks them for the mountains of free cash they made as a result of Blizzard's shortsightedness.
it's a good thing they never got it. imagine a dota 2 owned by blizz. the game would have been super casualized and probably discountinued already lol. valve getting it was the best case scenario.
What’s really scary is that this is pretty much the same thing that happened to Boeing
ivy league trash CEOs
Right? Instead of problematic games they release problematic airplanes that kill people
?
bad video games drop people outta the sky trapped in a cylindrical death box 40000 above the pacific?
and boeing execs r@pe and drive female coworkers to near suicide????
man whatever youre smoking that sh!t need to be confiscated cause its *S T R O N G*
also.
"happened to"?
sh!t didnt know boeing was an innocent victim that was just minding its own business instead of actively putting thousands of people's lives at risk to save a buck
@@aa-tx7thYes, happened to. A bunch of grifters with no technical skills and a document saying they're better than the engineers take over and force everyone to cut corners.
Give your editor a raise man.
editing made this video so fun to watch
Ohhhhhh. Hell yes. The yearly upload!
More like the bi-yearly upload.
@@Nordbon1523 I'm straight bro, go away.
I had a motorcycle accident in November the year WoW came out. I was bed ridden for a year so I started playing it. I was bed ridden for 14 months, and played it non stop 12+ hours a day. Soon as I was able to walk again I sold my account for £850 and never looked back.
xD
Wow, must have been quite a time
No other real options than to play one of the greatest MMOs of all time, at its peak, all day long!
@@Philip_Taylor life was hard lol
Damn, smart decision making.
Good story, but nobody will buy account for £850. I really doubt that you have something like spectral tiger or scarab lord title. Maybe mutli glad title/mounts. So i hope that you did enjoy your time in WoW, but dont lie to us. Especially, when you mostly cannot even borrow your account to friend, bcs Blizzard love to ban for sharing :D . But as i said, nice fairy tale.
The amount of editing that must've been involved in this video is insane.
Yeah props to this channel.
Good keyframe tracking always brings a tear to my eye.
a couple of odd pronunciations but excellent video. It's Harthstone not HereITHstone
@@bt7482 he is not supposed to pronounce as you want to, for he might not be native english
@@StallionStudios1234 He basically just copied off of internet Historian.
I’m catching up on your videos after discovering you a little while ago and I really like your style. I just wish you would post more often.
heres something funny guys; im playing prison architect lately and guess whos one of my guests? "Bobby Kotick" His info card is saying "He deserves everything thats happening to him" :-D
That man is right up there with many other Epstein listers in deserving their spots in the bad place.
No one cares , loser
Issues arose prior to Vinvendi. Things started already to go wrong around a half a year after the debut of WOW... around that time the good people started to leave and the greedy ones increased.
I love how every “the fall of blizzard videos” never mentions the disgruntled SC2 players and the franchise of starcraft. StarCraft made esports. Fuck blizzard
Because SC2 was a good game and the players' "disgruntlement" is due to the genre falling in popularity, which isn't Blizzard's fault. SC2 is still the most popular RTS game 14 years later.
can you fill "us" in abooot the starcraft bs ? i still play sc2 ... but i dont know all details of the bs ... i wish could still play legacy of the void rules
@@poika22 I'm just glad they left SC2 alone mostly. Let me keep playing Oh no it's zombies and Civilization sapphire, and my parasite games... and all the other amazing arcade games.
This should be taught in future schools several decades (centuries?) from now, as a textbook example of how late capitalism corporate greed destroys a brand and a company.
Blizzard not capitalizing on Dota before Valve did, has to be one of their biggest f*ck ups. You had a potential gold mine sitting inside your own game and never moved on it, until someone else did.
But i guess it turned out for the best. It wouldav been a disaster in blizzards hands hell bent on monetization of every godamn element.
At this point Blizzard was already starting to chase trends instead of innovating. Valve however created an entirely new, untapped market.
Bethesda did this by not making starfield mod focused, that alone would've keep the game alive for a decade to come.
Same for Palworld & Nintendo no? 0 understanding of their player base, yet wants to milk every game cash cow for all it's worth and then some.
Under Blizzard, The International will never existed and we may never have Dendi, Ice3, Burning and the miracle OG comeback.
Expecting Microsoft to do good by Blizzard is like expecting Disney to do good by Star Wars.
Back in 2012 we knew that "those 6bil$ aren't going to make themselves back".
Now in 2024 we also know that "those 70bil aren't going to make themselves back".
And mark my words - Blizzard would likely be shut down the same year as WoW. At this point it's nothing but a minor subsidiary, whose IP ownership can be re-appropriated by the ever-shrinking workforce, not without AI's involvement.
In other words - you don't need BLIZZARD to make Diablo or Starcraft or even Warcraft. If Rumble, Immoral or, let's be honest, TARISLAND are of any indication.
Blizzard's only lifeline are the subscription money they make. Their creative team was shut down the moment Activision prohibited them to make Titan to make room for Density.
Microsoft will probably lay off most of Blizzard's current employees and farm the games out to somebody who knows what they're doing. They've done pretty decent over the years as a games publisher, especially with the Age of Empires series.
@@damianjblackI lost hope when blizzard failed me on dragon fight and I stopped playing Diablo four because of the way treated the game.
Blizzard will never be shut down. The brand is too recognizable. Blizzard is itself at least as big of a name as their games are. Why would Microsoft give that up? Even if the game is developed by NetEase or whoever, they can advertise it as "the next Blizzard game" and edit together trailers showing all the old games people remember fondly.
@@poika22 Of course, if WoW would never be allowed to die, whether with xpacks or WoW 2 or whatever, Blizzard could be kept around.
But plenty of studios have been shut down or killed, and when EVERYONE is making videos about how bad Blizzard is - do you really think Microsoft would care for a miracle to turn it around?
People want Blizzard to die. Nobody is rooting for them.
Starcraft 2 is a deadweight. Hearthstone and Overwatch a penny collectors. Diablo 4 is a neither here nor there.
WoW is is the cornerstone of Blizzard, the reason they got bought by Activision in the first place.
Rememebr all those controversies with PS? It was about Call of Duty. That's the big name. That's what Microsoft has been interested in in the long run. And even THAT part is being "optimized now".
If even Call of Duty's future isn't bright - do you really think Blizzard is safe?
@@WirxawTanev Yes, I think Blizzard is safe. Not the employees of course. It might just be one guy in an empty office or just a name in the books. But there is absolutely no reason to shut down company. "Everyone" is making videos about how bad Blizzard is, but first of all people who watch this type of stuff are a tiny, tiny, minority of people who buy video games, and secondly even the people who do watch this stuff will forget in a year or two when they tease the remake or sequel for a game from their childhood.
dude... ur editing had me in stitches the whole way through.
That probably why I'm crying...
Everytime a studio becomes really big and you start adding executives, shareholders, marketters, and all people who want to optimize money before everything else, you suddently see a drop of quality and innovation but also a big step in the prices.
You also start seeing marketing methods to make players pay more and more. Blizzard was doomed when they started to become too big to stay that good old indie game studio
The editing on this video is.... purely magical. Consider me subbed.
Reminds me very much of Internet Historian, but like, without the plagiarism
@@theproducers1967 well it does use a lot of gifs and movie scenes so
To be a Blizzard fan in 2024 is to have Stockholm Syndrome. It's OKAY to break up with Blizzard. You don't need them. You'll be okay. You'll find new love, honey. It will hurt in the beginning, sure. But you don't need to be degrading yourself so badly. You don't need to put up with Blizzard's abuse of you. Have some self-respect.
yall are weird. i had this attitude about them UNTIL this year. never gave em a cent after mop was done. d3 was terrible, ros was terrible, wasted a lot of time on latter. d4 is, by comparison and even by comparison of modern day arpgs that take time to release and add content to the base game, FAR better. Season of discovery in vanilla WoW is pretty great / fun concept. finally something that wont end up seasonal and will last at 60, adding new raids and content. the cash shop instant level 80 to be able to start leveling in cata "right away" supposedly, i think is fucked, but idk how long that is on the shop in the lifespan of a classic expansion, i dont play these x-pacs since i already did on pservers too much. might play cata since i hav ea sub for SoD, so fuck it.
im legit confused why people are crapping on blizz in 2023/4 of all years, when they are actually doing some decent shit..? must be a generational thing. young people want everything immediately. absolutely they have tons of qol and little improvements and some additional perm end game seasonal stuff to repeat every season and be on top of hotfixing exploits.
but in d3 vanilla, for 2 years, we ONLY had act 3 inferno to run. over. and over. and over. until we hit 100 paragon, and dropped that coveted legendary with an extremely rare affix roll to make us rich (or give us the perfect item for our build.) i was addicted to this and hated ros speedrun / give u gear fast tracked / no trading / no focus on itemization system and figured id never play a diablo again. d4 is so far ahead of d3's launch BY TODAYS STANDARDS that the crying is getting legit old. move on already, this is approaching clickbait level
Or you could just don't care about companies at all and just play the effin games that you like. The only one here talking about a game developer company as if it's their girlfriend is you. Speaking of self respect how about you go find it yourself? Imagine ranting about a company as if it's a freakin love interest. You clowns
@@coomsicle I have been playing Blizzard games since 1994. Your name is "coomsicle". You are a zoomer calling actual OGs young people while you lap up the dopamine zoomer shit that caused the fall of Blizzard.
@@coomsicleWhat's the first Blizzard game you ever played? When did you start playing Blizzard's games? Pure curiosity here is all
@@coomsicleThey fell so low that anything slightly positive they do is great in comparison lol, but its still shit.
30:02 What we need is forced Anti-Marketing or no more shills. People REALLY thought Blizzion (Kotek) had changed for the better? They conveniently forgot about everything Actard had done in the past 10 years???
I had a friend in college who got told not to come back because he stopped doing any work or going to class...because of his absolutely insane WoW addiction in 2008. It was absolutely unhinged. I would love to know what he makes of Blizzard these days.
6:13 "And they could do no wrong"
Blizzard : Hold my beer. Hold his beer. Hold ALL of our beers.... we've got some WRONG to show you!
and this doesn't even cover the 'murder' of Kerri Moynihan
Hold my stolen breast milk *
It feels bad being an Overwatch fan, but not as bad as being a Diablo fan, imagine being one, out of the six games you only get two good ones.
Six? Diablo, D2, D3, Immortal, D4.... I'm guessing Hellfire?
@@Soumein idk, I never played any of them lol, sorry for my ignorance
@@Soumein Well, if you count LoD as a big enough expansion to be its own game I guess. Hellfire was an expansion as well, though it's the weird black sheep of the "classic" Diablo games, having been outsourced to a division of Sierra. Not that I think Hellfire's all that bad (or at least not terrible), even if it didn't really catch on, but it's one of those things where it's stylistically different enough that you can tell it's not by the same people.
And both came out over 20 years ago
Yeah Diablo has one game currently that isn't a headache to play and it's outdated asf. Hopefully microsoft either fixes D4 or makes D5
Man, this video brought me back to like 5th grade. The Internet was new and my buddy and I both had Warcraft 2. We both had to somehow convince our parents to occupy the phone line after school so we could both jump on bnet and have epic wall battles. I can still remember the feeling of awe and excitement of playing and chatting with my best buddy who was miles away over the Internet. Something we totally take for granted for today.
This, but we carried computers around the village to each others home. Dial-up was too expensive for our play style :D
For real
7:30 end of sponsorship
16:41
This Giga Chad single handedly destroyed a multi billionaire corporation with a single question
rito's *"You can type karthus ult. It's not hard"* is the new *"Do you guys not have phones?"* from blizzard even though it's intercompany.
I feel as though you skipped some major details
-StarCraft was initially supposed to be a Warhammer 40k game, but Blizzard lost the license (or something)
-at some point Blizzard tried to make “Warcraft in Space” with space faring orcs and humans and it was received TERRIBLY by those who tried the alpha(?).
space faring orcs?... so basically 40k? And how could it be received terribly assuming it was an RTS like warcraft?
I think they didn’t lose the license. From what I heard it was because they realized they’d make a lot more money if they replaced the faction names and such with there own concepts. This could be a rumor but it’s what I heard
I think they didn’t lose the license. From what I heard it was because they realized they’d make a lot more money if they replaced the faction names and such with there own concepts. This could be a rumor but it’s what I heard
Originally, Game Workshop want Blizzard to make W40K RTS. However, while progress reached 50% the deal between 2 companies be broken. Blizzard still developed the game to Starcraft, while later GW has Dawn Of War.
A lot of the Warhammer elements still exist in wow, like the big shoulderplate designs and orcs. Games Workshop must feel a bit dumb on what they missed out on