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You could be forgiven for thinking that even Blizzard – perhaps the only company more powerful than the natural disaster it's named after – might not escape a run-in with and subsequent buy-out by Activision unscathed. After all, if the Infinity Ward fiasco proved anything, it's that Activision isn't afraid to bust down the doors and assert control when it feels like things aren't going its way. But unless Activision's got some kind of 24-hour hypno-ray constantly blasting Blizzard's offices, it sounds like Activision has yet to recreate the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo developer in its image.
“Since we had our merger with Activision, it hasn’t changed anything at Blizzard,” Blizzard VP Michael Ryder told MCV. “We operate in pretty much the same way we already have. Since we have been working with Activision we continue to be who we are. We make the same decisions in the same way we always have, and the relationship with Activision hasn’t changed that.”
“For example, one of our values is that gameplay is supremely important. We talk about play nice and play fair, which has to do how we work with each other and our partners. Preserving that culture is a key part of our ability to continue to deliver great games. We nurture it, protect it and take care of it as much as we can, because it is a big part of who we are.”
So yeah, if you thought Activision might have been pulling the strings behind the whole Real ID debacle, this seems to suggest that you were wrong. Granted, we're not ready to about-face and start handing out fliers for St. Activision's Church just yet. After all, what happens when Blizzard starts pitching something that doesn't fit nicely into its steady diet of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo? If the goose stops laying golden eggs, will its goose be cooked? Tough to say. Hopefully we'll get a definitive answer when Blizzard reveals that new MMO it's been working on.
Comments are closed on this article
TinFury
November 18, 2010 at 3:00pm
This is such crap. Activision hasn't changed blizzard?
Every game Blizzard has been epically innovative. Every game released was a step up, including features and advances that at first I even didn't understand (huh? A hero?), but once you played and understood it was amazing. I believe that every game up to Warcraft III was like fine art and I’m coming from Blackthorne days!
Now Starcraft II. This not only doesn't include ANY innovation but it's a step back from Warcraft III. We've gone from hero's, shops, items, and four races to a glorified graphics upgrade/expansion of Starcraft. This reeks of every other commercially oriented gaming house out there.
You can preach that activision hasn't changed you, but while you sit there trying to figure out a way to start charging us for DOC (Downloadable content) consider this. I fell in love with blizzard because of your innovation. I felt like every game was build by gamers. Starcraft II, feel as though it was designed by cowards and bankers.
TinFury
Cocoa Beware
August 24, 2010 at 1:35pm
"Ahem"
Too all koolaid drinkers:
What reason does anyone have to believe this decision was reversed mainly because Actoblitz love their customers?
Think a moment with me about this. If Actoblitz did not change their minds they would have suffered FAR worse then the customer. It would have been akin to financial suicide. The customer would merely be deprived of addictive games.
A company that seeks to blatantly breach the rights of the customer absolutely DOES NOT have the best interests of the customer in mind.
How is this gratitude even justified? If you propose one terrible idea and then recind it, what did you gain? Nothing, just a bad taste in the mouth.
Yet people were slobbering "thank yous" and "I love yous" ad nauseum. It was rather disturbing, but to a point it did explain why some people are doing things I cannot fathom, for example paying significant sums of money to buy pixels, aka in game pets. That is some potent koolaid.
burningbush
August 06, 2010 at 11:45pm
Nothing has changed about this company or it's customer service or technical support since 1995.
The original Warcraft was buggy and the the technical support was lame and rude. Their customer service absolutly sucked . (As a former customer service callcenter supervisor I know what I,m talking about) Bizzard consistenly misrespresnts system requrments and sells buggy incomplete software as final cosumer editions a that I would not release as beta. Technical support expected the consumer to write lines of code to make up for their lack of testing and debugging.. From Warcraft to to Diablo to WOW. (The lamest MMorpg ever) their software has been incomplete and filled with bugs. Blizzard programmers are simply lazy and there 0 QA. It is the ONLY company I advise my clients to never , ever to purchase or install. From 1995 to 2010 Blizzard is lamest game publisher on the planet. I just had to complelty format and recover a clients computer after a Bizzard game install mistook his wireless adapters for standard network adapters. Shitstorm would be a better name for this company. I swore never ever to purchase another game from this company in 1995 as I have seen how they operate. In 2010, nothing has changed. As long as you morons rave about them and spend money on WOW, they could care less about supporting any of their other piss poor products.
JohnP
July 30, 2010 at 7:45pm
No one can touch Blizzard. There is much to complain about, yes, but just wait a while. Blizzard DOES listen and improve a game greatly over time. WoW has become so polished lately that it just keeps getting better and better. It would take me hours to list all the great changes that have occurred in WoW in the past couple of years. I love the achievements, for instance, and they were not there at the beginning of the game.
An example for Blizzard listening to their customers in the forums was for me a personal thing. After missing my boat at the dock for the 10 or 15th time while surfing the web, I asked Blizzard on the forums to have a ship's bell ring when it docked (like the swoosh noise when a grayphon lands). Less than two weeks later, on the next patch, a ship bell rang out on one the M. Harbor's boats after it docked. Just one at first but quickly became ALL the boats. It may have been coincidence but I believe!
Keep going Blizzard! You are truly a global wonder.
Digital-Storm
July 30, 2010 at 4:52pm
I gave Blizzard my 60 dollars for Starcraft 2, and it was well worth it. I love all Blizzard titles. They make top of the line games that no other company could even come close to. Come on, custom maps with the Galaxy Editor are going to be amazing, already I see very good maps being put up that make other games look like a joke in comparison.
fry
July 30, 2010 at 2:30pm
Blizzard is not "associated" with Activision. Blizzard is owned by Activision.
However, I tend to agree that it hasn't changed them much. Just like every other video game maker, they've gone to the achievement/online play/social network/recurring revenue model of game design. It's not about just selling a product these days, it's about selling a perpetual cash generator.
And guess what? Blizzard pretty much started that trend with WoW. Long before Activision bought them out.
slowpoke2
July 31, 2010 at 3:47pm
True, but only after Activision bought Blizzard lock, stock, and barrel did they introduce micro transactions, take out the LAN multiplayer option from Starcraft II, annouced an incoming rule that was going to force people who pay for their games to use their real names on the official game forums without actually doing any kind of research into what kind of "shit hitting the fan" situation could arise with said new rule, and basically splitting Starcraft 2 into 3 parts BS. What's next Diablo 3 is too huge and must be split into 4 parts? Ever since the whole IW shit storm which has yet to resolve, and evertime Bobby Kotick opens his mouth and says something only someone like him could say I know that Blizzard is one game closer to imploding and becoming a shell of the shell of it's former self.
bling581
July 30, 2010 at 10:09am
This is hard to believe. In the last year or so they've really gotten crazy with additional pay for services and all the new digital game items you can buy on the Blizzard store (pets, mounts, etc.). I don't think it's right that they're charging for maps in SC2 either. It's understandable that they need some revenue by other means than your $15 a month, but the prices and some of the services make it seem like they're doing everything to squeeze more money out of their players. I've even heard that they're considering adding the option for a new character slot with Cataclysm, but you'll have to pay for it. In my opinion if they're adding new races or new classes they should provide 1 new slot for free (like in WOTLK) to allow maxed out players to experience the new content without having to fork over more money. They've promised over and over that they will never sell loot on the Blizzard store, but only time will tell. If they do it would really ruin the game.
JohnP
July 30, 2010 at 7:30pm
Frankly, the Blizz store sucks for WoW. The only thing worth buying was the "My little Pony" flying steed. That actually was a great idea as it is the only mount that can be used on the ground and in the air (that I have anyways).
Don't use Blizz store as an example unless everyone needs a stuffed gryphon in their bedroom.
Muerte
July 30, 2010 at 11:47am
Then I wouldn't buy it. The best way to tell them how you feel is to not buy it.
Lhot
July 30, 2010 at 9:59am
Blizzard was bad enough on their own, but since activision has accquired Blizzard, they have gone rapidly...downhill.
I still paly Diablo II and am happy doing so (there really hasn't been a new RPG that even approaches the glory that is Diablo II)...yes I know the WoW and soon to be StarCraft II numbers will SEEM to belie that, but D2 is still 10 years old and still played by hundreds of thousand of people.
NOW the bad part...since Activision took over and SC II has been released, Activision has not only taken 1/2 of the D2 servers but also a large portion of the bandwidth from Diablo II. Ya just don't treat your die hard fans that way and not piss people off. I still don't understand why Blizzard even allowed it to happen....well I'm sure money was involved :)
There used to be two good RPG-only companies, Blizzard and Bioware....now there's only one...Bioware. Activision is a huge entity but doesn't seem to turn out any thing worth playing, at least for someone over 15 years old. Even Bioware is falling behind it's past glory....the baldur's gate and Icewind Dale series of games were 300-400 hours of play time....NOW if I see an RPG with 60 hours of playtime, I also see games reviewers touting it as a large game....huh?
Dear Blizzard:
Whatever it takes...lose your association with Activision before it's too late! Get back to your roots....make more games like Diablo II....ya know 'computerized crack!' That was your strong suit. Also only kiddies like cartoons...with grfx cards the size of Wyoming, why do you create games with cartoon-ish characters? You DO realize that a lot of older folks play your games....right? More so, it's the older folks who are paying for them, even if a 15 year old drove them to it.
Lately, all games seems to be an excercise in "how close can we make a game to a console port and get away with it"....thats just bad juju. Who is running game companies these days? Boxxee?
The two most immersive, long lasting and stimulating games I've ever seen or played were: Diablo II and Planescape Torment....why are there no games like these anymore? PLEASE don't start replying with a list of games that you THINK are those twos equivalent....there aren't any. There aren't any that even come close.
Sales of newer games in huge numbers, don't mean they are better games..it simply means there are no more truly great games to compare them to. It's not just the gaming industry either....hardware is going the same way....all CR*P....we seem to be moving into the disposable age for games and hardware, which would be OK if the vendors weren't pricing this dispoable stuff at the same price points as the true...great games.
Think about it, a netbook or x-pad...right, leave it in your car on a hot day and you're off to Best Buy the next day. What's next styrophome device enclosures, 800 million flash games? I personally want "Tim the Toolman Taylor" games and devices....rawr, rawr, rawr! Full towers, 400 hour gameplay RPG's etc.
If the industry keeps heading in the current direction....the supposed 2012 apocalypse, is more than likely to become a reality, and it won't be because of the Mayan long calendar or some obscure galactic alignment...it will be a full out world wide, I'm not gonna take it anymore, revolution. Sure Blizz made a fortune on WoW and will prolly make another fortune with SC II.....but ya gotta weight that against some disgruntled postal worker slamming an RPG round through your front door. (NO, I'm not a postal worker and have no RPG rounds) lol.
To all comp/games vendors everywhere:
Wake up and smell the dissent...stop looking at the numbers and listen to the people instead. All numbers prove is fad-value...which is at best a false indicator or at least a temporary one. Let's try counting, shall we?
74% of businesses still run XP, there are prolly 3-5 games that are still being played after 10 YEARS....I DO understand the realities of economics, yet I also understand what happens when the PEOPLE finally get fed up with being sold 1/2 *ss products. It isn't/won't be pretty! We are currently immersed in a sea-change on both the hardware and software fronts...however, I have the distinct feeling that it's going to turn into one humongous Tsunami in the very near future, Tsunami in the worst sense of the word.
More quality, less quantity is the secret to long lasting success. Haven't we learned anything from the car companies? There isn't an American made car that can hold a candle to a Toyota or a Honda. Time to dispense with engineered obsolescense, and get back to offering long lasting quailty products.
As an aside, "touch" anything (except for maybe cell phones) is a lost cause...voice recognition is what we need. For that matter so is 3D anything...pfft....yeah rush out and buy 5 grand worth of 3D hardware and then suffer when the devs...decide the market won't support it....the solution is holographic...NOT 3D. In case some consumers haven't realized it...the absolute best 3D devices come already installed in your.....FACE !
LMFAO....guess what my Captcha was for this post? "defects or" I love it :)
samduhman
July 30, 2010 at 8:28am
First let me state the game is FUN. I was worried about them breaking up the game into 3 parts but its 24 lvls for single and it has an option to go back and replay missions to complete achievements if your into that sort of thing (I'm not). I've been playing on hard because normal was to easy and I don't see myself blasting through single player in less than 10 hours. Short of it is now that I've played it I no longer view it as the game being split into pieces to make more money.
Now on to the negative. REAL ID sucks. I installed game and logged in and it pulled my name from my WoW account. While I don't have a problems sharing my name with my friends, the issue is it used my real first name they are not fimiliar with. I go by my middle. From what I've researched Blizzard does'nt make it easy for you to change it.
Second- logging in to play single player, WTH. I hate that kind of "DRM". Just to clearify it does offer offine play if your internet connection is diabled (I tested it) so it's not online all the time like UBISOFT.
So the negatives while definately irksome don't over shadow how fun it is. It's what they promised Starcraft with a fresh coat of paint. BUY IT but COMPLAIN to Blizzard directly concerning the features you don't like.
FuriousDre
July 30, 2010 at 4:44am
WoW players are going to flood to their (Blizzard's) new MMO like mindless drones REGARDLESS of it being good or not. All they care is that Blizzard made it. Just like CoD fans only care to see CoD MW in the title. Won't stop laying "Golden Eggs" until they do something incredibly stupid (Not, not Real ID, I bet who who said they were gonna quit was bluffing, justl ike the MW2 "Boycotters")
fiXXer
July 30, 2010 at 7:27am
I think you have to give the what... 11-or-so million WoW players a little more credit than that. I really don't think that many people would play a game, buy the expansions and what-not if it weren't a good game to begin with. Activision or no Activision, Blizzard has always produced high-quality, polished products b/c they put so much time and effort into them. If Blizz were to make a bomb out of thier next MMO, whatever that may be, I think thier fanbase will call them out on it buy not buying into it. I've been playing Blizzard games since the days of Warcraft II and I've NEVER been dissapointed. I'm not saying it's impossible for them to make a game that isn't great (Starcraft Ghost?) but they do seem to have thier shit together and people give them credit for that buy buying the games.
Rocketpop
July 30, 2010 at 4:55am
No, Blizzard comes out with good expansions, and an expansion for WoW will sell because they always make them well. I'd be very surprised if Cataclysm was a let-down.
And if they had followed through on the Real ID thing, I would have quit if I were a WoW player.
Peanut Fox
July 30, 2010 at 11:50am
The real ID was only related to posting on forums for WoW. Why would that have made you quit the game if you liked to play it? It's not as if your real name would show up in game.
Hannah
July 30, 2010 at 4:26am
Activision clearly pressured Blizzard to rush the launch of Wrath of the Lich King to hit the 2008 holiday season. Everything about the quest design in Northrend pointed to Ulduar being the first intended raid dungeon, as the quest chains all led up to it. Instead, the players got a recycled raid (Naxx) and two one-room one-boss encounters that they could've whipped up over the weekend.
The expansion pack was missing features that were listed as selling points on the box, like aerial combat and dance studios. Very uncharacteristic of the old Blizzard, who would never release a game until it was finished. When they faced a similar situation in the previous expansion, they didn't force a November release, they pushed it back to the next year, holidays be damned.
And now, selling Starcraft 2 as an incomplete game so they can sell "premium DLC"? Blizzard, the company that let its players play Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Diablo and Diablo II on Battle.net for years and years without charging them a cent? Not to mention this was before they started making the really big bucks off World of Warcraft, so they shouldered the cost of all that Battle.net upkeep. Nothing's changed? Everything's changed.
Maybe Activision didn't have anything to do with it, but Blizzard sold out anyway.
routine
July 30, 2010 at 7:37am
I don't get the incomplete game argument.
Why is it an incomplete game?
Lord of the Rings is a 3 part book. Do you yell at JRR Tolkien for writing 3 separate books instead of writing 1?
StarCraft 2 is as big as the original in its current form! Get off your high horse. The industry is different now than it was 12 years ago. Technology moves forward. Would you rather they use the same technology?
Rocketpop
July 30, 2010 at 4:40am
And yet one of the big reasons why I'm not getting sc2 is that Activision put its heart and soul into ruining it. They're selling an incomplete game for $60 with more DLC to buy (for the record, Warcraft III had updated maps all the time that cost nothing). Having only the Terran campaign is such an astronomically insulting decision that quite a few people are losing their minds over it, including me.
Not to mention no LAN play, no chat rooms, the same you-always-have-to-be-connected-to-play feature, and a ridiculous friends system that won't let you just add by username.
So fucking stupid. Fuck Starcraft 2. Activision obliterated anything it could have been. I can understand anti-piracy measures, but not an incomplete game that requires more money to play in its entirety. PC gaming is going to die soon if this keeps up.
Muerte
July 30, 2010 at 11:44am
Its not incomplete. Its part one of a 3 part series. Its no different than Halflife and Halflife2, except your not going to have to wait years for the next episode.
slowpoke2
July 31, 2010 at 3:57pm
You know that Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm isn't coming out until 2012 at least right? Blizzard guesses that it will take at least 18 months to develop Heart of the Swarm from the date that Starcraft II Wings of Liberty is released, which means that it will launch in January 2012.
johnnyathm1
July 30, 2010 at 4:00am
Merger, or in this case, acquisition of an asset will often be followed by growing pains for the company acquired as well as its customers. It is doubtful that gamers that enjoy the products by Blizzard have seen, and or felt, the last of any ripple effects that this acquisition will have caused.
