What does Blizzard mean to you?

So when you hear the name Blizzard, (the people who made Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo Universes) what do you think of? What element do you expect to see in their games? I'm aware there's alot of haters so this will probably invite flamming but w/e.

So In my opinion a Blizzard game means:

• A comparatively balanced MP experience.
• Easy to run game, high end hardware not required
• Active Support for the game for at least 5 years
• Sharp Gameplay
• A story with compelling characters and almost always a betrayal somewhere
• Quality, I expect all Blizzard games to be of very high quality that persists for years
• Easy to get into and hard to master

so there's been alot of people complaining about Innovation so I thought this video was relevant.

also we defined innovation, So i will pull it here:

does it still mean this? Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

That's more or less correct, the commercialization of an invention. Innovation means a wide range of things, not all innovation is radical or disruptive, it can be incremental, there's a coined term for "incremental innovation". For instance purposefully cooking something at 120 degrees instead of 100 is an innovation. And yeah innovation for businesses is either a product, a process or a service. Pretty much all of the stuff we talk about here that enchances the experience(loading time included) is a product innovation.

A fuckload of snow?

A relic from the past, albeit a reliable one.

Crappy MMO

Getting your account stolen and being told to buy the game again.

Crappy Login system

and Always online DRM

@Video_Game_King said:

A fuckload of snow?

I did specify Name... I guess there are characters named Snow(ff13 anyone) but you could have been wittier.

• Lost Vikings 
• Rock N' Roll Racing 
• Blackthorne (such a terrible game). 
• Putting stuff in Expansions that needed to be in the original game.  
• Funny stories that are not all that mature and/or serious.  
• Great characters 
• Intimidating Multiplayer

@Dagbiker:

Always online is kind of a new thing, Only SC2 and D3 will have it(Wow doesn't count since its an MMO)

@gamefreak9:

The sad thing is that I wasn't trying to be witty, at least primarily.

Fun Classic games. Their new stuff doesn't do it for me so far :/

@gamefreak9 said:

@Dagbiker:

Always online is kind of a new thing, Only SC2 and D3 will have it(Wow doesn't count since its an MMO)

Yah, but the only one before that was Warcraft 3 and that was like 10 years ago.

Also i couldn't get that to run.

Intelligently designed addiction

Best RTS on the market

@StarvingGamer said:

Intelligently designed addiction

when i'm being affected by it, I love it. But when I hear them talk about how they plan to addict us, it always bums me out. For instance in D3 they are much more open than other companies about how important items are going to be and will therefore require a long time to accumulate.

@Joker369 said:

Best RTS on the market

Though RTS is probably the LEAST competitive segment of games :P.

I have never in my life played a Blizzard game for more than 10 minutes. And that's Warcraft 3 only. 
 
Still, Blizzard to me is a PC god that deserves to be honored like an old tree that has its roots deep in the ground. I respect them for keeping the PC's balls as big as ever and setting the standard for video game quality and dev-player communications.

Longform quality.

I guess I think of how I hate MMO games. And my former flatmate who was addicted to WOW. But other than that, I think the only Blizzard game I've played was a demo for Warcraft 3. Or maybe Warcraft 2. I should probably give Starcraft 2 a shot at some point but man...I'm awful at multiplayer games.

Complete lack of innovation.

A company that is reliable enough for me to show my fanboy-ism without being disappointed.

It's a snow storm, right?

Simply put, a great developer that makes great games.

@gamefreak9: I appreciate it. I want my games to be addictive because I find it oh so easy to become bored with them nowadays. As long as D3 has me hooked I won't be wasting money on impulse-purchasing games just for something to play.

Videogames.

@ZeForgotten said:

• Blackthrone (such a terrible game).

Fuck you, Blackthorne was awesome and needs a reboot! Modern military kart-racer, here we come!

Not as much as they think.

@Dezztroy said:

Complete lack of innovation.

I hope that's a joke. The innovations they brought to D3 are unparalelled... if your serious you probably don't know what Innovation means. For instance lean processing is an innovation which implies identification of core functions and elimination of waste, this is the approach they take with their games such as D3. Not to mention that they introduced SOooo many new unit types and abilities in SC2. A unit that transforms ground unit into aerial is an innovation(phoinix), a unit tha can be hit by both ground and air attacks(collosus)... horizontal or vertical only attack units. The abiliy to create blocks in the strategy field(force field).

Just hearing about Blizzard Dota you ONLY hear about innovations, whilst every other MOBA doesn't change a thing, they just transfer stats and skills to alternative places to make it seem different when nothing changed. For instance league of legends, the rune system, there's no reason that those stats could not have been included in items, they just transfered them as an investment psychological thing, the actual impact on gameplay is null.

games.

A company that had Blizzard North, and its creative team, for the production of Diablo 1 and 2.

Some really devious smart motherfuckers.

They mean nothing to mean...ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh BLIZZARD!

(Seriously...zilch, nowt, nothing, zero, nought...irrespective of my UItravox reference)

Starcaft all day, erry day. Also Mac friendly which I appreciate to no end.

I associate Blizzard with "hitting rock bottom," so to speak, because that's exactly what I did eleven years ago, playing Diablo II. Fortunately, I haven't played any of their games since, nor have I ever played an MMO. I'm not interested in playing any game whose ultimate conclusion is "kicking the habit."

One of the few companies who reliably release only quality games.

Also, server maintenance.

@Catarrhal said:

I associate Blizzard with "hitting rock bottom," so to speak, because that's exactly what I did eleven years ago, playing Diablo II. Fortunately, I haven't played any of their games since, nor have I ever played an MMO. I'm not interested in playing any game whose ultimate conclusion is "kicking the habit."

Fortunately? Way to be open minded and not a "blind hater". I can understand the SC2 super competitivness not being for everyone and I can undersand not being interested in MMO's. But bashing something you haven't played that got universally great reviews? Geesh...

@Giefcookie said:

One of the few companies who reliably release only quality games.

Also, server maintenance.

Server maintenance being frequent? I'm under the impression its on par with everyone else.

World of Warcraft

pretty CG trailers

"Go play your WoW nerd!" that line wasn't directed a me I've never play a Blizzard's game but that's what comes to my mind when people name Blizzard.

all their games are boring so not much

@Dezztroy said:

@gamefreak9: Every single thing you said had been done years before Blizzard did them. Doesn't mean their games are bad. They're not. They just never bring anything new to the genres.

go ahead and name where it has been done.

Dairy Queen's tasty ice cream

Destroyed their WoW lore

Baal runs and Mephisto Runs

Polish, optimization and  long, long dev cycles.

Let's see....

• No innovation
• Bland MMOs
• Addiction
• Bad service
• An actual former king company that abandoned their fans to appeal to the mainstream crowd.

@Grimmy616 said:

Destroyed their WoW lore

Baal runs and Mephisto Runs

I feel you on the wow lore, I wonder if they will just ignore wow on the next Warcraft release or just make new stories with new chars.

Cinematics with a lot of dusty particles flying about.

@gamefreak9 said:

@Dezztroy said:

@gamefreak9: Every single thing you said had been done years before Blizzard did them. Doesn't mean their games are bad. They're not. They just never bring anything new to the genres.

go ahead and name where it has been done.

I could be wrong, but I think Supreme Commander had super units that could be hit by both ground and air attacks. Red Alert three had an air/ground transforming unit. Almost every RTS has units that only attack air or only attack ground.

Overrated.

@Dezztroy said:

@gamefreak9: Every single thing you said had been done years before Blizzard did them. Doesn't mean their games are bad. They're not. They just never bring anything new to the genres.

go ahead and name where it has been done.

Awesome cinematics!

@gamefreak9 said:

@Dezztroy said:

@gamefreak9: Every single thing you said had been done years before Blizzard did them. Doesn't mean their games are bad. They're not. They just never bring anything new to the genres.

go ahead and name where it has been done.

Red alert 3 for ground units transforming to air units at the very least. I'll let someone else with way more RTS knowledge to tackle the other examples. I wouldn't consider slight unit behaviours like blocking a path or shooting or moving a certain way 'innovations' personally but that's just me.

@Scrawnto said:@ShiftyMagician: @Dezztroy:

@gamefreak9 said:

@Dezztroy said:

@gamefreak9: Every single thing you said had been done years before Blizzard did them. Doesn't mean their games are bad. They're not. They just never bring anything new to the genres.

go ahead and name where it has been done.

I could be wrong, but I think Supreme Commander had super units that could be hit by both ground and air attacks. Red Alert three had an air/ground transforming unit. Almost every RTS has units that only attack air or only attack ground.

I don't recall about Super units but no that transformation is not the same. Theres the viking which is both, but the phoinix makes the ENEMY units from ground to air and enables air attack only units to attack ground units. I never said only air and only ground attack, I said units that attack in a straight(vertical) line in front of them as splash, and units that attack in a horizontal line in front of them. Or for instance, an air transport that also heals is also never been done, there's usually ground units, heart of the swarm will also add a unit that Pulls units to it. The vortex is also an innovation, a stun that affects friendly and unfriendly, whilst making them invulnerable and compressing the space they take to a 2by2 block.

Just because some innovations aren't radical doesn't make them any less innovative. For instance the Blizzard dota innovation of eliminating armor is small but it really makes sense.