I was working at Cyberlore as a playtester when Blizzard pulled the plug on the Warcraft 2 expansion. It was baffling to us all. They never explained why, to us anyway. All these years later, to read that they felt the work was subpar is a surprise. We tried to get more info, but all we got was "Decision is made. Hand over all assets." We just thought it was some kind of internal political struggle.
These days everyone does agile, so these kind of big expectation mismatches don't happen so often anymore. In theory, anyway.
Is Agile common in game development?
Do you know anything about the interactions between Cyberlore and NWC for The Price of Loyalty? I'm generally curious, as I lead a large modding project for that game. (I've gotten a couple case studies out of hacky Cyberlore code.)
Warcraft 2 was one of the very first games I ever owned. I still remember my dad taking me to Comp USA to buy it for me after I read about it in PC Gamer. You can hear Starcraft 1 sounds in the background in a bunch of the camera footage that my mom shot in our home while I was still in grade school. I nearly failed out of junior high because I would do nothing but play Diablo 2 outside of school. I spent all of my free time in 10th grade playing Warcraft 3 ladder and DOTA. I was playing WOW on prom night.
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 were two of the biggest disappointments of my life. Not just gaming-wise, but out of everything. It was obvious that the people involved with making the originals great were either not involved with the new games at all, or they no longer had a major say in anything.
I heard a second-hand account from someone who used to be high up at Blizzard in regards to what happened with Blizzard North. They said the original BN guys felt they were owed more than what they were getting, that what they were receiving in terms of overall compensation and creative control was disproportionate in comparison to their contributions for the Diablo franchise, which had become a flagship Blizzard IP on par with Starcraft and Warcraft.
They gave an ultimatum, and Blizzard scrapped all of the ongoing Diablo 3 work (the Diablo 3 we got was not what BN had initially started making) and shut down Blizzard North in response. They then made Hellgate London. This is in contrast with the Guild Wars people, who left of their own accord.
That does not make sense to me, though I may be missing something. It's either a "verbal [only] promise" or in the "terms", no?
GDC 2013: Shout at the Devil: The Making of Diablo III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG10e0-JyjY
GDC 2015: Against the Burning Hells: Diablo III's Road to Redemption with Reaper of Souls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajI1oGPhog
Not a book, but the blog posts on making the original Crash Bandicoot [2] make for a great read, especially due to some of the issues they ran into in trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance from the original Playstation. [3]
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/476291819/the-world-of-...
[2]: https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ba...
[3]: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-hardest-bug-youve-debugged
The journalistic 'style' of journalistic pieces seems 'too fiddly' for some, and even 'infantilized' for other people. It's a matter of taste and I'm sure this style is set as standard because it works, i.e., pleases the majority of readers.
I have an interest in this bacause I accidentally studied a bit (one of my majors shared some of its credits with the Journalism program at my college).
The things people dislike, as I see them:
1- Giving context through elongated prose or "fluff", instead of straight to the point facts. Some people would just rather have a list of the games Synergistic worked in instead of the five first paragraphs of this piece, for example. Also: "Blizzard’s protests fell on deaf ears. CUC was determined (...)" vs. "Blizzard protested but CUC did not comply".
2- Using examples when they're not needed (for that audience). Explaining what happened of relevance in the 70's for someone who was _there_ during said period, for example.
3- Nonlinearity in telling the story. Going back and forth on quotes from different people. Presenting the controversy kinda like a conversation. Makes the editing clear and some readers reject pieces where it's clear some stuff was left out or is out of order.
Anyway, maybe I've written too much about this. In any case, I really do believe that, in this age of personalized content, there are enough people who reject the 'journalistic style' to warrant publications that actively avoid it.
But you cannot see my comment because I was hellbanned, so enjoy wondering.
In a way the Diablo 3 RMAH helped validate the modern freemium/gacha business model for mobile platforms.
D3 was given away for free with a year subscription to WoW at the time which skewed the numbers a bit too.
This article[0] claims Blizzards overall MAU was close to flat YoY-Q4 2016-2017, knowing that Overwatch and Hearthstone are hitting records high MAU, while overall MAU is flat means that the other games (D3, SC2, HotS) are losing players.
It's a success in the way Matrix Revolutions was a success, massively profitable[1] yet a disappointment to fans (see diablo 3 fan ratings[2]).
[0] https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/08/blizzards-monthly-active-...
[1] https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Matrix-Revolutions-The#tab...
They decided no with D3, as did I (I played D2 for probably 7 years...)
How else would you judge a piece of art besides "I personally didn't like it?"
It would be seriously lame to like a game just because it made money or some critic told you to.
That said, the fact that they rebuilt the absolute core gameplay loop - loot collection - to incorporate a real-money auction house, and had to roll it back, speaks volumes. Business-people do not abandon a monetization strategy unless it's proving to be costly in unintended ways.
I think the problem is that Diablo at launch was a test bed for some of their other properties so it ended up with some bad ideas. The RMAH (for example) was a bad idea, but it helped to point them to the right direction in their F2P and other monitizing approaches. The way they handle auto-generated maps and monsters is used quite a bit in the changes they've made to WoW as well as some of their talent choices.
I think for alot of hard core RPG fans, Elder Scrolls and other similar titles do a better job of hitting the sweet spot as they support alot more long term character growth and have a bigger world. But Diablo 3 is still great for people who want to just beat up some pixels and enjoy a little gothic storytelling.
And just to double down on my unpopular opinion, Diablo 1 was the best game in the franchise.
That is a bold statement, but I am inclined to agree. Obviously D2 is bigger, prettier, has more varied classes, more items, more everything. I absolutely adore that game, and I have spend hundreds and hundreds of hours playing it.
But the original... It just has that darker and more grim, less cartoons tone. Plus it came out when I was 10 years old, which obviously influences my opinion a lot.
The season 14 tier ranking video has 350k views in 2 weeks[0], which is great considering patch 2.6 is essentially 3 seasons old now and RoS is several years old.
[0]: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-...
