I like their games. I like Valve and Bethesda games too.
> I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.
I don't have exact figures either, but whatever people spend on hats cannot possibly approach what people have spent on WoW subscriptions...
According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion. Obviously, one produces many more games, but I still have a hard time picturing something like TF2 coming close to the amount of revenue that WoW or Hearthstone generates.
> WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG. When I called Valve/Bethesda games are similar, I was talking about how Valve games all feel like thin skins over the Source of Gamebryo engines. It feels like you could walk out of the facility in Portal into City 17.
> Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.
Counter Strike is a great game. I've been playing it all my life, since 1.6. But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.
> HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team
As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).
> I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.
They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins. I'm not interested in it, so I haven't played, but it sounds like it might be up your alley.
> Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools?
Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota.
I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious. Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.
