Let's rewind the clock back to 1996: it was a hard year for 9 year old me. I had just moved to a brand new town, and a few weeks after that, I had lost my Grandmother on my Dad's side. It was tough on me, and on my Dad, who loved his Mom very much. Anyways, fast forward to late 1996, and a little game called Diablo appears in the gaming world, and my tiny self was blown away. I had played games like Wolfenstein 3d & Doom a few years before, but this was one of the games that left an indelible impression on me from the 90s. Right at the dawn of the new millennium, the sci-fi warfare of Starcraft was the next game I encounter. The first few years of the 2000s gave me access to both Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. World of Warcraft came, but I ignored that game like the plague (Apart from early 2016, when I played the free version). Then 2007, things changed.
In that year, Blizzard & Activision entered a deal where they would become a new entity, Activision Blizzard. At first it seemed alright: Diablo 3 & Starcraft 2 showed a lot of promise. However, cracks seemed to start immediately. Diablo 3 kept getting delayed & delayed, while the first part of Starcraft 2 (Oh yeah, Starcraft 2 was split into 3 separate games covering a specific race) came out to good reviews if I remember correctly. Then in 2012, D3 finally was released......and wow were the first few years rough! Constant need for an online connection, a little more colorful that prior games, gameplay elements not as polished as prior games, and a real-money auction house (There was also a in-game gold auction house, but I actually didn't have a problem with that) were just a few of the issues. Meanwhile, World Of Warcraft began showing issues of it's own, and it looked like it just got worse & worse as the years went by.
2014 rolls around, and we got Reaper of Souls, which seemed to fix so much.....to bad it was the last big thing they did for Diablo 3 apart from some game upgrades & the Rise Of The Necromancer DLC from last year. 2015 shows up, and we got the surprisingly good Heroes of the Storm. While it was released a bit into the MOBA genre's existence, and some elements were flawed, but it was actually a lot of fun. I had been invited to the beta by a friend (Got into D3's beta as well), and after getting over my apprehension of the MOBA genre, I found HotS to be an absolutely wonderful game (Read here for details). Then, in 2016, we got the company's first new IP with Overwatch, and I got invited to the beta for that as well. I was absolutely in love with the game (Read here for details), dents & all. In the short time that it's been out, it's gone through things both good & bad, changing in both directions.
However, it's obvious that it recent years, despite a new IP & other game related achievements, that we don't have the Blizzard of old. Since 2005 when the O.G. company (Blizzard North), the group ever so slowly drifted away from their original vision. Joining Activision didn't help, as that caused the company to drift away further, losing more of their identity, and becoming a little more like the people they joined. And then.....we have what transpired late yesterday.
As of Thursday night, people from the Heroes of the Storm have been moved off of that team, and onto others (It's never specified). On top of that, the college based Heroes of the Dorm & the international Heroes Global Championship have been completely shut down, not to return in 2019. This wasn't done because of a "Tough" decision by the higher ups (Read here to understand). This was done through the new ideology laid out by Activision to cut costs and save money.
Blizzard......you're not Blizzard anymore. Given the disaster that was Blizzcon 2018 last month, you have proven to your long time fans, and even to your newer ones, that at the end of the day.....you're just another face of Activision. You just another outlet of garbage gaming, and you now develop stuff just to appease the shareholders. You abandoned your long-time Diablo fans ,just to chase the banality that is the mobile market, and you're not even trying to hide that fact. I'm trying hard not to delete battle.net launcher, and throw away the games I've spent so much time and money on. Even seeing games like Black Ops 4 & Destiny 2 operate on the launcher are further proof that the company is just another aspect of Activision, even though I actually kind of enjoy Destiny 2. Given what's been going on with so many game companies in recent memory, it's scary to think we might get a games crash worse than the one in the 80s. Like it says in the title: Blizzard is not dead......but it is most certainly dying....and I really hope it doesn't.
Well, I'm sorry to be such a bummer, but this was something I wanted to type out. Thank you for taking time out of your day & reading this, and I promise that next week will be considerably happier with my remaining Christmas/Holiday content. Until then, somebody play the TAPS.
***
You can tell he's holding back the tears as he talked......I was too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUifL67bQac&t=513s
(Update 1): December 23, 2018/9: AM/Eastern Standard Time
Well, this centainly explains a bit. As much as I don't like the site in question, they do something right once in a while: https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is-cutting-1831263741
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