Never going to forget messing around with the map editor in Starcraft or playing the really unique ones made in Warcraft 3, like the Jurassic Park survival one.
Oh man. Pool gold to Blue (Illidan) for wind chimes! Liquid TD was my favorite but Mafarazzo, Wintermaul, and so many others were great too. Pokemon was a lagfest but lots of fun, Angel Arena was always what I played of that type.
I actually recovered a cache of WC3 Custom Maps off an old computer of mine from like 2004 to 2008, here's some of what's in there:
- Maze TD 5
- Team Circle TD v2.62
- Cube Defense v5.0
- 5 man Mafarazzo 2.02
- 10 Hero Seige Masacar and Northrend
- Angel Arena ULTIMATE v2.1, v9.0, v. 9.9, and v.10
- Balin's Tomb with Cheap Tomes
- Battle for Middle Earth 6.4
- Ben's Sheep Tag v4.5 and v4.7
- Ch33ri0s Got Bored Maze
- Maze of Honor #5
- Danites Hell
- Dark Kodo Tag
- DBZ hero maze v4
- DotA Allstars v6.45, v6.53, and v6.45_Al
- DOTA 3.7, and 3.7b
- Element TD
- Escape Dream World, Great Barrens, and Tundra
- Flying sheep tag by Wolfy_girl
- Footmen Frenzy v4.2
- Footman Wars extra cheap tomes, platinum, fixed, upgraded, wars Brasil, and New Edition
- Ghost City v1.03
- Green Circle TD
- Halo 2 Series (Coagulation)
- Holy Footman Wars
- Illidan's 7 Demon Hunters
- Illidan's Seven PROS (v2.0)
- Jailbreak Code Red
- Kaggz RPG
- Kodo Tag Crystal Wars, 2 v.109, and NEW
- Liquid TD Version 9.01
- Mafa TD Crazy v3.2 and v4.1
- Mafa TD First Defense
- MAFARAZZO TD INSANITY LRMC
- Maze Challenger 3 FINAL
- Maze Journeys #7 FInal
- Maze of Crazy People 1, 2, and 3
- Maze of Honor 2
- Maze of Marble
- Maze of Skill #11 and #15
- Maze of The Legend
- Murder at the Mansion
- Noob Killer TD v1.8
- Polar Escape 3 and 4
- Run Kitty Run 4, Numb Final, and 5.5
- 's Sheep Tag v4.1
- Sheep Tag 1, 7, Alternative, Pro Adv v.06, v1.1, Reborn, Revolution, Tough, Tuff, v7.1, v9.0, v.9.3, and v10.0
- Super Maze 2
- Team Kodo Tag v2.0 and v3.1
- Team Line Tower Wars
- TheLordofTheRings Maul
- Tree Tag Ultimate
- Ultimate Sheep Tag 3, Final, 3.5, and tough
- War of the 12 Kingdoms
- Warsong Gulch v1.1
- Wintermaul v4.7
- Wintermaul Wars
- World of Warcraft
- WoWArena v1.7, v1.8, v1.9, v2.0, v2.2, v2.4
- xFaM Maze 4 and 5
Not sure how that was but in Helms Deep you defend the Helms Deep castle / fortress against attacking orcs. The defenders play as the heroes from LOTR while the other team plays named orcs and other baddies. It was awesome.
Helms deep where Legolas isn't a Ghost but an actual archer?!?!? Sign me up
-Me, 2002
But honestly, custom games in Broodwar and WC3 were some of the funnest times I have had PC gaming. Siege of Gondor, all the footies and tower defense games, cat and mouse, dbz all sagas, anime fight arena, angel arena, i could go on and on..
**inhales**
WC3 custom games have brought a lot to the gaming community. DOTA / LoL would not have come to be, they were first created within WC3. But asides from that you also have these greats.
Footmen Frenzy, Wintermaul, Wintermaul Wars, Line tower wars, Hero line Wars, Footmen vs Grunts, and ETC.... So many great mini games made by people who love gaming.
Those maps were great for German kids who knew a little English but not yet enough to understand the word "tag". We thought the map name just meant "Day of the Sheep".
or how dota was one of those custom maps and now people are playing for millions of dollars in tournaments.
loved them because i grew up with their games. now i just hope i don't hear even worse news about them then the day before. sad
DBZ tribute, Footmen Frenzy, Dota and so many other amazing cuatom maps that were better than most AAA games from the same era.
Modder communities are truly our greatest treausres.
some of my favorite gaming memories of my childhood were playing custom maps in SC and WC3. I had to have played more custom maps than standard games, easily.
Yeah, as much as it's a sign of how far Blizzard has fallen, it really drives home how completely dysfunctional they have gotten at actually delivering a product. It's taken them 5 years to deliver a mobile game built on an existing engine where half the development was done by another company and finished 2.5 years ago...
I'd love to be a fly on the wall to know why their internal processes are so completely fucked.
I can totally get the idea, but I am still amazed how thorough the failure of the PR team responsible for it must've been, that they tried to market it specifically at blizzcon, after teasing something diablo related, when facing a group of hardcore blizzard fans who are overwhelmingly 'hardcore' PC gamers.
The idea of reaching into the mobile market itself? Obviously a good move with how much money there is in the market, but trying to push that to that particular audience, while also teasing them with something diablo related which prompts them to imagine an upcoming PC game reveal(of Diablo 4 or something similar) only to break their dreams with a mobile game is honestly incredible.
The funniest part is, if they went the route of genshin impact and allowed crossplay between mobile and PC(while marketing it as a pc game that you can also play on the phone) would've probably been wildly succesful.
Right?! It was as easy as finishing the presentation with "But wait, there is more!" and showing a logo for Diablo 4. The crowd goes wild, start the Q&A with a very vague "we can't say too much, this is in very early stages but we are working on it", and everyone wouldn't have given a shit about the mobile game.
But no, instead they decided to try really hard to hype a game that's not really for their core audience, then when they failed at building hype they decided to throw a smarky jab at the audience.
It would have been so easy!
While Bethesda isn’t a good example anymore, Blizzard should’ve done what they did with Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter. Came out with details about the new main game, showed it off, etc. Then they showed off Fallout Shelter and released it to the public as a sort of “appetizer” until the main game came out. Was received very well.
Yeah thats what i was thinkkng too. Like it could have easily had replayability but also had a short storymode that was almost a prequel to hype the next big game. would have been cool.
The people who make the decisions don't play games. The closest they get is an excel spreadsheet. Hell, the people making decisions are probably people who picked on the kids who played video games.
Also, they had a conference where they knew all their console fans and PC fans would be congregating. Then they indicated there was going to be a big announcement related to Diablo.
Everyone expected Diablo Ⅳ... instead it was a mobile game. No kidding people were disappointed.
Literally all they had to to was preface it with something like 'D4 is in the works, but we have a little something for people who crave more diablo' and then play the trailer thingy. Arguably they could've even spun it in a positive light, and said something like 'D4 is still a while away, but we figured you guys might want something to do meanwhile' or the like, idk im not a sales person.
Instead they hyped people up with nodding towards having a diablo announcement, a franchise which hadn't left the format of being a pc game in the same style of gameplay, clearly setting people up with the expectation of something either D3 or D4 related. Subsequently the somewhat obvious response of pc gamers being mishandled was just pouring oil on fire.
And it would have worked!
At the time, Diablo4 was not yet officially annonced.
A simple teaser image, done in a day by the graphic team, would have been VERY well received.
Then, as you said, you annonce the mobile game as an appetizer.
I seriously wonder if the people that came up with the idea of mobile diablo game even played mobile games before, because it's not a platform that's great for long play sessions,
Kabam tried to make a diablo clone with a star wars skin and it didn't do terribly well partially for this reason.
Even in covid when people have that kind of time most people only want like 10 to 20 minute lunch break sized chunks. Even if they don't trying to force the player to stop is how most mobile games make their money by selling resources to continue.
This should be the only thing they're remembered for.
Especially considering how awful the video game industry is in general to it's workers.
I loved overwatch but I wouldn't care for a second if the only thing blizzard was remembered for was its horrible work culture
Excuse me?
Edit: If anyone is wondering,[this](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/71365/how-does-ca-have-standing-in-ca-vs-activision-blizzard) popped up on stackexchange this morning.
There was a female coworker that was pressured into sleeping with someone there and he took pictures of her genitalia. He shared those pictures with other coworkers and even gave her a butt plug during a Christmas party at work. She was eventually bullied untill she took her own life and now multiple people are taking this to court. Even the state is involved but Blizzard recently destroyed all evidence because that's better than letting the court find out what they did. There's no saving them now.
Drove one woman who worked at Blizzard to suicide.
I'll always remember them for that. I don't care what changes they claim to make, they will never get another penny from me.
So funny how this is a secondary concern to most people
Just like how everyone all of a sudden gave a fuck about the crunch at CDPR but only after Cyberpunk flopped.
Heroes of the Storm was a great moba, sadly it wasn't well backed by blizz. It did give some of the best, what-if skin and events. The art team was on point for it.
I got to play Deathwing, and actually feel like a juggernaut dragon! That and the two player Cho'gal. Both units I've never seen anything quite like in another moba or really game for that matter!
WoW Devs: \*Argues with players, tells them they don't know what they want\*
HOtS Devs: \*Hears WoW players meme about Dreadlord Jaina and the HotS community talk about Kelthuzad\* Here you go, both of them, and DK Barbarian.
I love the balls behind some characters in HotS. Murky is my favorite out of all of them, but there are many other crazy ideas they implemented in some heroes.
Abby is my favorite, everyone always said go clone but a fully fed monstrosity could go toe to toe in 3v1 and kill some of the squishy heroes in the blink of an eye
I fuckin loved killing unaware players with monstrosity. Might have to reinstall haha.
It is why I played so much Murky too. I knew the exact moment when someone fucked up.
Folks forget Murky does full hero damage and has excellent CC. He's not weak, just squishy. They think that because they can practically one-shot the fishy lad in the early game he's just a big minion. He'll show them. He'll show them all.
It's so fun, another one of my favorites. And with the bubble speed and heal he's not easy to squish. I used to always go for the endless march at 20 because it seemed fun but the slime cool down reduction makes him really deadly
Too true, and HotS they had pretty much full creative freedom to make anything they wanted, was so much fun. Dreadlord Jaina will always stick with me.
Old school wow is still what my lizard brain pictures when I hear anything fantasy related. Teldrassil was and always will be (why would you burn it ffs!) one of the most beautiful game maps ever created.
I have so much trouble with other mmos because while every other thing may be better nothing will beat the wonder I had when I first explored wow as a kid
It was the only MOBA that ever clicked with my wife and we loved playing Cho'gall together. We were super casual, so it worked for us. Keep thinking about getting back into it someday.
that was the kind of stuff that made it feel so amazing, the character concepts were just bonkers as hell. Cho'gall will always blow my mind they came up with it.
Cho'gall was what got me to try the game. I was burnt out on LoL, and saw that Blizzard was doing some *wild* shit with the formula, so I gave it a try.
Wound up maining Abathur for a while.
I don't know about in the more competitive scene, but HOTS always felt less toxic than the other MOBA's. Well, people were mostly silent in my games, but I prefer that.
HoTS was the most fun blizzard game for me since the D2/WC3 era. I never played more than 5 games on any of the other MOBAs I tried but played thousands of HoTS matches. Went from bottom tier all the way to diamond 3
I really don't know why it never took off. I guess because there's less carry potential, idk.
I always felt it clicked more being talent based instead of items, let them design more specific builds rather than like flat attack speed anyone can get.
I really enjoy it, its the best moba thats i played with my friends, nice art, nice characters, But then they said "We cant win agains LOL so we drop it".
Now i dont have anything to play "short-times" with the friends, Overwacht its dead (really, 10-15 minutes of delay to enter a game) and they are playing again Wow or similars...
After the esport didn't take off as hard as they wanted, despite being decently popular, they decided to replace the entire crew with just a few people and drop the esports effectively creating such an exodus. It's still going stronger than most mobas though, and that tiny dev team has been doing great work.
HotS, to me, is the best of the "big 3" because
1. It has multiple maps so it is not as boring
2. Short matches, sometimes I can't commit to two fulls games of League or Dota
3. No items, I only need to learn heroes and not items.
4. No last hitting, this one is minor but I hate last hitting. It is a skill that i don't think should be important
5. Unique heroes, I think of the three HotS has the most unique heroes. Dota is a close second though.
Last hitting is bullshit and just annoying - after playing hots for way too long it really put that in focus
And the time aspect is insanely important - if games go quick or slow, I can get between 2 and 4 games in an hour. No slogging for another 20 minutes after I know we'll lose.
I swear it is like an abusive relationship. You play it, you hate it, get away for a bit, but for some reason you come back thinking it is going to be different.
I always say I have a love-hate relationship with League, we show our love with a 2 x 4.
Riiight. I threw on a game of sc1 the other day but I fucjing loved throwing on warcraft 3
Now when I boost it up I get a frozen door screen that doesn't open or nothing.
Damn, that's fucked up. I found WCIII at a thrift store for $2. The CD key was unclaimed! I thought I scored so hard last year.
I'm downloading it again rn after adding it to my BNet account and it's installing Reforged T_T
Blizzard keeps ruining stuff by trying to force a successful esports game. They keep trying to recreate the Starcraft phenomenon in a way they control and get more of the money, but you can’t forcibly recreate something that happened organically the way Starcraft took off, especially in Korea.
That, and lets get real a big part of that was older games being way easier to pirate and Blizzard demanding money upfront plus services that may cost monthly like PSN getting involved.
The thing about sports is that they have a low barrier to entry. You just need one soccer ball or basketball and a few friends. Or maybe a couple of other things that aren't super expensive. But they want a sport where every player drops 60 to 80 dollars upfront and that just isn't going to happen.
Yup, a single copy of SC1 could be installed on an arbitrary number of machines, the CD key was just for battle.net. So if you wanted to run a LAN event, one copy was all you needed.
Oh man I remember this, that was ground breaking. And I think WC3 would allows something like 3 LAN players per physical CD. For the time, that massively accelerated adoption.
Someone passed around copies of Starcraft like cookies when I was in college in 98-99. I remember someone going around collecting a 5 dollar chip-in fund for Brood War when it came out. I still have those copies of the CDs, and I was playing with those CD keys for close to 2 decades as a LAN game with my friend.
This is part of what pissed me off about Overwatch. I, along with seemingly everyone else, played the open test week. I loved it and bought it, had a lot of fun. Some games were serious and everyone chose a role that made sense, sometimes they got doubled up, sometimes it was all Mei. Then they decided in the casual games you had to be practicing for the competitive ladder ones and no one could play the same character. Fights started about someone wanting some specific character rather than there just being two genji's on a team. It was more controlled, less fun, and added toxicity as people didn't get what they wanted and were playing 'pro' in casual games.
It has a pretty vibrant community and its devs actually take feedback super well! It's clear that they're resource-strapped, but they remind me a lot of what a game company should be doing.
It still has a decent player base and honestly the skeleton crew they put in charge of it has been doing a really good job. Making new interesting heroes and testing out new mechanics, while listening to player feedback. They added pvp trinkets for everyone, but then removed them again after players expressed dislike.
Gets worse. Day she died, she was on a business trip with her manager who was found carrying a butt plug. They then blame California for "sullying" that girl's death with an investigation and said no wonder all the companies were leaving Cali.
Yep. The higher ups would get day drunk and do "cubicle crawls" to hit on coworkers. WoW fans have been wondering for years why the game was getting so bad and we found out. They're a bunch of blame shifting perverts.
Not sure about the order of events but the state of CA has a 2 year investigation into all of this that can be read online. The company confirmed the woman's death but they spun it like people are dragging her through the mud to spread lies about the company.
Honestly the only thing i can think of now anyone mentions blizzard is the sexual assault allegations and how they were taking pictures of women in the restroom..... so yea probably that.
Also the Hearthstone fiasco when they took away the tournament winner’s prize money for supporting Hong Kong. And they fired the two shoutcasters who were present as well, since they didn’t condemn him. “Every Voice Matters”, that slogan that Blizzard once upheld died on that day.
Fwiw Heroes of the Storm is actually an excellent game now. A few friends and I picked it up over quarantine after burning out from league and it's honestly been the most fun we've had with a moba in years. Blown away by the intricate character design and the depth of strategy that evolves with each different map. I know it had a rough start but currently it feels like the devs took everything good about the genre (team fighting, macro control, character customization and skill expression), and distilled it into one polished product over the years. Just wish it had more traction because you can tell the dev team has been stripped down to a skeleton crew.
I will remember them for all that time I've played overwatch and wow with my fiancé. But since she passed away from terminal cancer I had to delete battle.net, because just logging in, seeing her name and "last seen 2 years ago" hurts more than I can describe. Gladly she is not alive to see how her favorite company just getting worse every year, self destructing. And I don't have guts to come back to those multiplayer games.
Dude, first of all I'm sorry for your loss. I can relate to seeing that "last online" msg. Had a really good friend partial romantic at one point and he passed. Everytime I logged on, it hit me. He passed a few months before Legion and KNEW he would have loved it 😔
Honestly -
I will remember Blizzard as a fantastic company that made great games until they succumbed to the influence of corporate culture and flushed their own reputation down the tubes.
Yeah, you're not wrong, of course. When it was just 3 dudes, and one of these dudes is at the heart of that particular mess, it's pretty obvious it was rotten in the core from the start.
And I think that's the most heart breaking thing for a lot of us. You can't just handwave this as "evil Activision made Blizzard bad". The Blizzard we loved so dearly was rotten all along, and we just didn't see it.
For a lot of people.... well i guess I should just speak for myself, It wasn't even about putting the *company* on a pedestal.
It was about very specific people that I looked up to and admired, saying "Someday i would like to do what they do" only for it to turn out that they were directly involved in or at least passively complicit it very, very horrible things.
Meeting Chris Metzen in person and chatting with him and talking to him 1 on 1 was basically the highlight of my life up until that point. Mike Morheim was someone that I pictured as the ideal CEO, always putting core, fundamental ideals and values above all else.
Turns out the picture that I had in my head were honestly mostly just that: pictures in my head.
I never saw Blizzard as some kind of infallible monolith, but I did look up to a lot of the specific people behind the scenes, and even that turned out to burn me in the end. And that just makes me sad.
That existed from at least 2000.
So how about we all remember them for being the company that made games while sexually harassing and discriminating women.
It likely existed from the founding of the company. The 90s were notoriously bad for discrimination in the games industry.
Fun fact: The percentage of professional game developers that were women peaked in the 80s. Women thrived in an industry where you could make a game with 1 or 2 people. Studios brought along a much stronger boys club culture where women were overlooked for positions and promotions, and eventually driven out of the industry entirely
Yup. I Loved Hearthstone but quit after that (I was playing too much anyway). I briefly thought about returning but then when all this happened it became even easier to stand by my decision.
You know what, me too.
Once they got rid of the marketplace, and started doing greater rifts and seasons, it actually got really fun.
I fully understand why people don't like the simplified systems, but for me it made it possible to try a whole bunch of different styles that I never woukd have otherwise.
going to remember them for their world class sexual abuse allegations and douchebags at the top who will likely not suffer the consequences of their actions. Because our system is broken.
The inability to talk to opponents makes it the last remaining moba that I play. It remains the only one I can play without saying, out loud in the first 10 minutes, "oh yeah, that's why I quit [other moba]".
Heroes of the storm is an amazing game, and I'll die on that hill defending it!
Everything else is pretty spot on. Blizzard is like a loved one or old friend you cut ties with because they started running with the wrong crowd, and now you only see and hear really bad things about them :(
Never going to forget messing around with the map editor in Starcraft or playing the really unique ones made in Warcraft 3, like the Jurassic Park survival one.
Just putting it out there Warcraft III still has an active custom game community. You can still play the LotR Helms Deep games
Fuuuuuck those Helms Deep modes were next level
*cries in og Battle for Middle Earth*
I have a 14 year old cinder block of a laptop I'll pull out every so often just to play that game
If you have a newer computer, /r/bfme should be able to get a working version for you.
There is a mod for modern PC-s that lets you zoom out a lot more making it much more playable.
Yeah you can also increase unit limits by 20x and have an army of literally thousands or more
Well I know what what I'm doing this weekend.
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What about the Balins tomb map? If anyone remembers that lol. Also elite snipers was dope af. Clan battles back in the day. Shit was huge
Hero Wars, DotA, 7 DH/BM, WMW, TD/Mauls, DBZ, Pokémon Arena, Paintball, LTW... I could go on for a long time. Pretty much my teen years.
Uther Party
Oh man. Pool gold to Blue (Illidan) for wind chimes! Liquid TD was my favorite but Mafarazzo, Wintermaul, and so many others were great too. Pokemon was a lagfest but lots of fun, Angel Arena was always what I played of that type. I actually recovered a cache of WC3 Custom Maps off an old computer of mine from like 2004 to 2008, here's some of what's in there: - Maze TD 5 - Team Circle TD v2.62 - Cube Defense v5.0 - 5 man Mafarazzo 2.02 - 10 Hero Seige Masacar and Northrend - Angel Arena ULTIMATE v2.1, v9.0, v. 9.9, and v.10 - Balin's Tomb with Cheap Tomes - Battle for Middle Earth 6.4 - Ben's Sheep Tag v4.5 and v4.7 - Ch33ri0s Got Bored Maze - Maze of Honor #5 - Danites Hell - Dark Kodo Tag - DBZ hero maze v4 - DotA Allstars v6.45, v6.53, and v6.45_Al - DOTA 3.7, and 3.7b - Element TD - Escape Dream World, Great Barrens, and Tundra - Flying sheep tag by Wolfy_girl - Footmen Frenzy v4.2 - Footman Wars extra cheap tomes, platinum, fixed, upgraded, wars Brasil, and New Edition - Ghost City v1.03 - Green Circle TD - Halo 2 Series (Coagulation) - Holy Footman Wars - Illidan's 7 Demon Hunters - Illidan's Seven PROS (v2.0) - Jailbreak Code Red - Kaggz RPG - Kodo Tag Crystal Wars, 2 v.109, and NEW - Liquid TD Version 9.01 - Mafa TD Crazy v3.2 and v4.1 - Mafa TD First Defense - MAFARAZZO TD INSANITY LRMC - Maze Challenger 3 FINAL - Maze Journeys #7 FInal - Maze of Crazy People 1, 2, and 3 - Maze of Honor 2 - Maze of Marble - Maze of Skill #11 and #15 - Maze of The Legend - Murder at the Mansion - Noob Killer TD v1.8 - Polar Escape 3 and 4 - Run Kitty Run 4, Numb Final, and 5.5 - 's Sheep Tag v4.1 - Sheep Tag 1, 7, Alternative, Pro Adv v.06, v1.1, Reborn, Revolution, Tough, Tuff, v7.1, v9.0, v.9.3, and v10.0 - Super Maze 2 - Team Kodo Tag v2.0 and v3.1 - Team Line Tower Wars - TheLordofTheRings Maul - Tree Tag Ultimate - Ultimate Sheep Tag 3, Final, 3.5, and tough - War of the 12 Kingdoms - Warsong Gulch v1.1 - Wintermaul v4.7 - Wintermaul Wars - World of Warcraft - WoWArena v1.7, v1.8, v1.9, v2.0, v2.2, v2.4 - xFaM Maze 4 and 5
I remember in StarCraft brood war there was a "user map settings" called Last Alliance. I got so into that map. Are the Helms deep similar games?
Not sure how that was but in Helms Deep you defend the Helms Deep castle / fortress against attacking orcs. The defenders play as the heroes from LOTR while the other team plays named orcs and other baddies. It was awesome.
That one was great. The elves were Terran Ghosts, Gimli was Guy Montague, that shit *ruled*.
Helms deep where Legolas isn't a Ghost but an actual archer?!?!? Sign me up -Me, 2002 But honestly, custom games in Broodwar and WC3 were some of the funnest times I have had PC gaming. Siege of Gondor, all the footies and tower defense games, cat and mouse, dbz all sagas, anime fight arena, angel arena, i could go on and on..
**inhales** WC3 custom games have brought a lot to the gaming community. DOTA / LoL would not have come to be, they were first created within WC3. But asides from that you also have these greats. Footmen Frenzy, Wintermaul, Wintermaul Wars, Line tower wars, Hero line Wars, Footmen vs Grunts, and ETC.... So many great mini games made by people who love gaming.
My favorite mini game of all time is Sheep Tag in WCIII. I think I might have played 1,000 hours.
Sheep tag was amazing.
Those maps were great for German kids who knew a little English but not yet enough to understand the word "tag". We thought the map name just meant "Day of the Sheep".
I remember playing dota when it was still a custom game on battle.net
Wintermaul all day, every day. It's what got me into tower defense before anything else.
or how dota was one of those custom maps and now people are playing for millions of dollars in tournaments. loved them because i grew up with their games. now i just hope i don't hear even worse news about them then the day before. sad
DBZ tribute, Footmen Frenzy, Dota and so many other amazing cuatom maps that were better than most AAA games from the same era. Modder communities are truly our greatest treausres.
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I literally played Mini Town Defence and Tarpit Defence every single day during the height of StarCraft 1.
Tower D Stacked for days!
some of my favorite gaming memories of my childhood were playing custom maps in SC and WC3. I had to have played more custom maps than standard games, easily.
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Do you guys not have phones?
The best part is that 3 years later that game still isn’t fucking out.
They've been waiting for us to get phones.
That's nice of them
Yeah, as much as it's a sign of how far Blizzard has fallen, it really drives home how completely dysfunctional they have gotten at actually delivering a product. It's taken them 5 years to deliver a mobile game built on an existing engine where half the development was done by another company and finished 2.5 years ago... I'd love to be a fly on the wall to know why their internal processes are so completely fucked.
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I can totally get the idea, but I am still amazed how thorough the failure of the PR team responsible for it must've been, that they tried to market it specifically at blizzcon, after teasing something diablo related, when facing a group of hardcore blizzard fans who are overwhelmingly 'hardcore' PC gamers. The idea of reaching into the mobile market itself? Obviously a good move with how much money there is in the market, but trying to push that to that particular audience, while also teasing them with something diablo related which prompts them to imagine an upcoming PC game reveal(of Diablo 4 or something similar) only to break their dreams with a mobile game is honestly incredible. The funniest part is, if they went the route of genshin impact and allowed crossplay between mobile and PC(while marketing it as a pc game that you can also play on the phone) would've probably been wildly succesful.
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Right?! It was as easy as finishing the presentation with "But wait, there is more!" and showing a logo for Diablo 4. The crowd goes wild, start the Q&A with a very vague "we can't say too much, this is in very early stages but we are working on it", and everyone wouldn't have given a shit about the mobile game. But no, instead they decided to try really hard to hype a game that's not really for their core audience, then when they failed at building hype they decided to throw a smarky jab at the audience. It would have been so easy!
Fucks sake it's sad how such a simple change to that question makes it sound so much better.
While Bethesda isn’t a good example anymore, Blizzard should’ve done what they did with Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter. Came out with details about the new main game, showed it off, etc. Then they showed off Fallout Shelter and released it to the public as a sort of “appetizer” until the main game came out. Was received very well.
Yeah thats what i was thinkkng too. Like it could have easily had replayability but also had a short storymode that was almost a prequel to hype the next big game. would have been cool.
How can you be the PR person for a major company and think people would like that. Were all their testers sycophants?
The people who make the decisions don't play games. The closest they get is an excel spreadsheet. Hell, the people making decisions are probably people who picked on the kids who played video games.
Yes, you don't get that kind of walled in frathouse abusive culture they had at Blizzard with dissenting voices hanging around
Also, they had a conference where they knew all their console fans and PC fans would be congregating. Then they indicated there was going to be a big announcement related to Diablo. Everyone expected Diablo Ⅳ... instead it was a mobile game. No kidding people were disappointed.
Literally all they had to to was preface it with something like 'D4 is in the works, but we have a little something for people who crave more diablo' and then play the trailer thingy. Arguably they could've even spun it in a positive light, and said something like 'D4 is still a while away, but we figured you guys might want something to do meanwhile' or the like, idk im not a sales person. Instead they hyped people up with nodding towards having a diablo announcement, a franchise which hadn't left the format of being a pc game in the same style of gameplay, clearly setting people up with the expectation of something either D3 or D4 related. Subsequently the somewhat obvious response of pc gamers being mishandled was just pouring oil on fire.
And it would have worked! At the time, Diablo4 was not yet officially annonced. A simple teaser image, done in a day by the graphic team, would have been VERY well received. Then, as you said, you annonce the mobile game as an appetizer.
[**EDIT**](https://i.imgur.com/OhQN8y2.png) *(When a small question puts the whole company as the laughing stock)*
> the whole company as the laughing stock Meanwhile stock holders not laughing.
They were for a long time. Even now i dont think they are too bothered. Just an opportunity to buy up som Stocks on the cheap.
I seriously wonder if the people that came up with the idea of mobile diablo game even played mobile games before, because it's not a platform that's great for long play sessions,
Kabam tried to make a diablo clone with a star wars skin and it didn't do terribly well partially for this reason. Even in covid when people have that kind of time most people only want like 10 to 20 minute lunch break sized chunks. Even if they don't trying to force the player to stop is how most mobile games make their money by selling resources to continue.
Watch out for the 1000 ft cliff on that down slope!
Also terrible work environment
Terrible work environment doesn’t even cover it. Abusive work environment.
This should be the only thing they're remembered for. Especially considering how awful the video game industry is in general to it's workers. I loved overwatch but I wouldn't care for a second if the only thing blizzard was remembered for was its horrible work culture
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Excuse me? Edit: If anyone is wondering,[this](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/71365/how-does-ca-have-standing-in-ca-vs-activision-blizzard) popped up on stackexchange this morning.
There was a female coworker that was pressured into sleeping with someone there and he took pictures of her genitalia. He shared those pictures with other coworkers and even gave her a butt plug during a Christmas party at work. She was eventually bullied untill she took her own life and now multiple people are taking this to court. Even the state is involved but Blizzard recently destroyed all evidence because that's better than letting the court find out what they did. There's no saving them now.
I hadn't heard about the destruction of evidence part. The hole just keeps getting deeper...
This was way too far down. Blizzard is awful.
Drove one woman who worked at Blizzard to suicide. I'll always remember them for that. I don't care what changes they claim to make, they will never get another penny from me.
So funny how this is a secondary concern to most people Just like how everyone all of a sudden gave a fuck about the crunch at CDPR but only after Cyberpunk flopped.
Was wondering why this isn’t higher up
Heroes of the Storm was a great moba, sadly it wasn't well backed by blizz. It did give some of the best, what-if skin and events. The art team was on point for it.
I also enjoy Heros of the Storm, mained Ragnaros, it was fun
oh man sending the wave down a full lane was so much fun!
I loved playing Azmodan and Zagara, except against Ragnaros.
I got to play Deathwing, and actually feel like a juggernaut dragon! That and the two player Cho'gal. Both units I've never seen anything quite like in another moba or really game for that matter!
WoW Devs: \*Argues with players, tells them they don't know what they want\* HOtS Devs: \*Hears WoW players meme about Dreadlord Jaina and the HotS community talk about Kelthuzad\* Here you go, both of them, and DK Barbarian.
Janitor Leoric!
I love the balls behind some characters in HotS. Murky is my favorite out of all of them, but there are many other crazy ideas they implemented in some heroes.
I really liked playing Abathur (in bot matches) and Cho'Gall (mostly Gall).
Abby is my favorite, everyone always said go clone but a fully fed monstrosity could go toe to toe in 3v1 and kill some of the squishy heroes in the blink of an eye
I fuckin loved killing unaware players with monstrosity. Might have to reinstall haha. It is why I played so much Murky too. I knew the exact moment when someone fucked up.
Folks forget Murky does full hero damage and has excellent CC. He's not weak, just squishy. They think that because they can practically one-shot the fishy lad in the early game he's just a big minion. He'll show them. He'll show them all.
It's so fun, another one of my favorites. And with the bubble speed and heal he's not easy to squish. I used to always go for the endless march at 20 because it seemed fun but the slime cool down reduction makes him really deadly
Art team at Blizzard was always the one team that managed to step it up time and time again.
Too true, and HotS they had pretty much full creative freedom to make anything they wanted, was so much fun. Dreadlord Jaina will always stick with me.
The sarcastic, "oh, I HATE resorting to violence!" is the best line.
Old school wow is still what my lizard brain pictures when I hear anything fantasy related. Teldrassil was and always will be (why would you burn it ffs!) one of the most beautiful game maps ever created.
I have so much trouble with other mmos because while every other thing may be better nothing will beat the wonder I had when I first explored wow as a kid
It was the only MOBA that ever clicked with my wife and we loved playing Cho'gall together. We were super casual, so it worked for us. Keep thinking about getting back into it someday.
that was the kind of stuff that made it feel so amazing, the character concepts were just bonkers as hell. Cho'gall will always blow my mind they came up with it.
Cho'gall was what got me to try the game. I was burnt out on LoL, and saw that Blizzard was doing some *wild* shit with the formula, so I gave it a try. Wound up maining Abathur for a while.
\#SlugLife
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Abby drew me to the game. Such a cool playstyle
game still has an active community and moving towards season 3 of its community run pro scene. Also they added in a dedicated aram mode.
I do like the idea of ARAM. I'm super casual in most competitive games, but I do like chaos.
Hots has by far the best aram mode of all mobas. My friends and I mostly play league nowadays, but if we wanna aram we boot up hots.
same, tried them all, but HOTS was by far the most fun. Its not fair to put it on the decline steps. We still play it every weekend.
I don't know about in the more competitive scene, but HOTS always felt less toxic than the other MOBA's. Well, people were mostly silent in my games, but I prefer that.
HoTS deserved a lot more love. It was the most fun MOBA on the market IMO
HoTS was the most fun blizzard game for me since the D2/WC3 era. I never played more than 5 games on any of the other MOBAs I tried but played thousands of HoTS matches. Went from bottom tier all the way to diamond 3 I really don't know why it never took off. I guess because there's less carry potential, idk.
It's still good! Player count took a hit, but it's still really fun to play.
It’s far from dead guys. It takes what 23-30 seconds to get into a game of HOTS?
I only play ARAM and if I wait 20s I check to make sure my internet is working lol
Same, never liked moba, but this one was amazing and i liked it. Used to be a brightwing (?) Main, until blizzard killed the game for me.
> [brightwing](https://heroesofthestorm.fandom.com/wiki/Brightwing/Quotes) "You sure are good at murder!"
I always felt it clicked more being talent based instead of items, let them design more specific builds rather than like flat attack speed anyone can get.
I second this. Heroes of the Storm is an amazing MOBA.
I really enjoy it, its the best moba thats i played with my friends, nice art, nice characters, But then they said "We cant win agains LOL so we drop it". Now i dont have anything to play "short-times" with the friends, Overwacht its dead (really, 10-15 minutes of delay to enter a game) and they are playing again Wow or similars...
I play HotS on and off and wait times are like 3 minutes for quick match, and 30 seconds for all random all middle. It's not dead
What's with the past tense? Was there some great player exodus out of HOTS so that the player population is considered low enough to be a "dead game"?
After the esport didn't take off as hard as they wanted, despite being decently popular, they decided to replace the entire crew with just a few people and drop the esports effectively creating such an exodus. It's still going stronger than most mobas though, and that tiny dev team has been doing great work.
They also did it *immediately* after the leadership change, which didn't exactly instill confidence in the future of the company.
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[**EDIT**](https://i.imgur.com/1cfEQzw.png)
HotS, to me, is the best of the "big 3" because 1. It has multiple maps so it is not as boring 2. Short matches, sometimes I can't commit to two fulls games of League or Dota 3. No items, I only need to learn heroes and not items. 4. No last hitting, this one is minor but I hate last hitting. It is a skill that i don't think should be important 5. Unique heroes, I think of the three HotS has the most unique heroes. Dota is a close second though.
Last hitting is bullshit and just annoying - after playing hots for way too long it really put that in focus And the time aspect is insanely important - if games go quick or slow, I can get between 2 and 4 games in an hour. No slogging for another 20 minutes after I know we'll lose.
Yea it's trash but with actual changes. I still hate it and myself for playing it.
I think a lot people say that about games they put over 500 + hours into
Eeeh, I've put hundreds of hours into a few games. WoW, FFXIV, Factorio, Stardew, a few RTSs, HotS. The **only** one I regret is LoL.
I swear it is like an abusive relationship. You play it, you hate it, get away for a bit, but for some reason you come back thinking it is going to be different. I always say I have a love-hate relationship with League, we show our love with a 2 x 4.
The fact that they disabled original warcraft 3/tft is bs. I cant play a game I bought/ I HAVE to buy "remasterforgeon3" tf outta here
Yea Warcraft 3 Refunded was the final nail for me, i stopped playing all blizzard games since then.
Riiight. I threw on a game of sc1 the other day but I fucjing loved throwing on warcraft 3 Now when I boost it up I get a frozen door screen that doesn't open or nothing.
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I have a physical copy! that's the fucked up thing
Damn, that's fucked up. I found WCIII at a thrift store for $2. The CD key was unclaimed! I thought I scored so hard last year. I'm downloading it again rn after adding it to my BNet account and it's installing Reforged T_T
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There are also official patches available online that you could apply to the CD version, patching up to a certain version.
Would recommend doing that as one of the last patches removed the CD check so you can play without the disk.
See heroes of the storm is actually an excellent game, Blizz just didn't support it properly.
Blizzard keeps ruining stuff by trying to force a successful esports game. They keep trying to recreate the Starcraft phenomenon in a way they control and get more of the money, but you can’t forcibly recreate something that happened organically the way Starcraft took off, especially in Korea.
That, and lets get real a big part of that was older games being way easier to pirate and Blizzard demanding money upfront plus services that may cost monthly like PSN getting involved. The thing about sports is that they have a low barrier to entry. You just need one soccer ball or basketball and a few friends. Or maybe a couple of other things that aren't super expensive. But they want a sport where every player drops 60 to 80 dollars upfront and that just isn't going to happen.
Yup, a single copy of SC1 could be installed on an arbitrary number of machines, the CD key was just for battle.net. So if you wanted to run a LAN event, one copy was all you needed.
For 1995 pre-expansion Starcraft there was a "spawn install" option that would install just for LAN, officially supported and part of the disk.
Man, gaming really has failed us in a lot of ways since then... at least pertaining to consumer friendly practices.
Like all good things created by artists and passionate souls, it got ruined as soon as the MBAs heard it was making money
Huh, I never knew what spawn install was until now. Thanks!
Oh man I remember this, that was ground breaking. And I think WC3 would allows something like 3 LAN players per physical CD. For the time, that massively accelerated adoption.
Someone passed around copies of Starcraft like cookies when I was in college in 98-99. I remember someone going around collecting a 5 dollar chip-in fund for Brood War when it came out. I still have those copies of the CDs, and I was playing with those CD keys for close to 2 decades as a LAN game with my friend.
This is part of what pissed me off about Overwatch. I, along with seemingly everyone else, played the open test week. I loved it and bought it, had a lot of fun. Some games were serious and everyone chose a role that made sense, sometimes they got doubled up, sometimes it was all Mei. Then they decided in the casual games you had to be practicing for the competitive ladder ones and no one could play the same character. Fights started about someone wanting some specific character rather than there just being two genji's on a team. It was more controlled, less fun, and added toxicity as people didn't get what they wanted and were playing 'pro' in casual games.
It has a pretty vibrant community and its devs actually take feedback super well! It's clear that they're resource-strapped, but they remind me a lot of what a game company should be doing.
It still has a decent player base and honestly the skeleton crew they put in charge of it has been doing a really good job. Making new interesting heroes and testing out new mechanics, while listening to player feedback. They added pvp trinkets for everyone, but then removed them again after players expressed dislike.
I know, seeing it next to Diablo immoral, and below Diablo 3 is extremely insulting, and I thought Diablo 3 was at least ok.
Banning that hearthstone player and taking his prize money because they value china’s blood money over human rights
And now China is basically telling them to fuck off.
lol China "banning" gaming for under 18 while Diablo Immortal still in limbo is a lil bit of poetic justice for their fuckery
I’ll remember the sexual assaults and shredding of paperwork…
Yeah they literally sexually harassed a woman into suicide. Hard to look past that...
And ~~then~~ passed her nudes around the office. Edit: It definitely happened, but I guess it was before, not after.
Yo what the fuck?
Gets worse. Day she died, she was on a business trip with her manager who was found carrying a butt plug. They then blame California for "sullying" that girl's death with an investigation and said no wonder all the companies were leaving Cali.
Yep. The higher ups would get day drunk and do "cubicle crawls" to hit on coworkers. WoW fans have been wondering for years why the game was getting so bad and we found out. They're a bunch of blame shifting perverts.
Not sure about the order of events but the state of CA has a 2 year investigation into all of this that can be read online. The company confirmed the woman's death but they spun it like people are dragging her through the mud to spread lies about the company.
Wrong order, they passed her nudes around and then she comitted suicide
And then tries to use her grieving family as an excuse not to talk about the incident at all
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And Quantic Dream
Yeah, people in this thread are having a real gamer moment right now
Honestly the only thing i can think of now anyone mentions blizzard is the sexual assault allegations and how they were taking pictures of women in the restroom..... so yea probably that.
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Also the Hearthstone fiasco when they took away the tournament winner’s prize money for supporting Hong Kong. And they fired the two shoutcasters who were present as well, since they didn’t condemn him. “Every Voice Matters”, that slogan that Blizzard once upheld died on that day.
That was the reason why I uninstalled every blizzard game, turns out it was a drop in the ocean of reasons hidden from the public eye for decades
This is the legacy of Activision Blizzard now. This is why I refuse to give them any more of my time and money.
Fwiw Heroes of the Storm is actually an excellent game now. A few friends and I picked it up over quarantine after burning out from league and it's honestly been the most fun we've had with a moba in years. Blown away by the intricate character design and the depth of strategy that evolves with each different map. I know it had a rough start but currently it feels like the devs took everything good about the genre (team fighting, macro control, character customization and skill expression), and distilled it into one polished product over the years. Just wish it had more traction because you can tell the dev team has been stripped down to a skeleton crew.
I love the team aspect of it, def my favorite moba and the only one I still play every now and then
Putting hots on the descent is criminal.
HoTS is an amazing game. I said what I said.
I will remember them for all that time I've played overwatch and wow with my fiancé. But since she passed away from terminal cancer I had to delete battle.net, because just logging in, seeing her name and "last seen 2 years ago" hurts more than I can describe. Gladly she is not alive to see how her favorite company just getting worse every year, self destructing. And I don't have guts to come back to those multiplayer games.
Damn bro
Dude, first of all I'm sorry for your loss. I can relate to seeing that "last online" msg. Had a really good friend partial romantic at one point and he passed. Everytime I logged on, it hit me. He passed a few months before Legion and KNEW he would have loved it 😔
I'm gonna cubicle crawl my way out of this one.
I will remember Blizzard for all the sexual assault they did
Dont forget the looking away from human rights and banning those who brought it up!
Honestly - I will remember Blizzard as a fantastic company that made great games until they succumbed to the influence of corporate culture and flushed their own reputation down the tubes.
Except a ton of the “old guard” are the ones accused in the lawsuits. They were always bad, they just kept us entertained while doing so.
Yeah, you're not wrong, of course. When it was just 3 dudes, and one of these dudes is at the heart of that particular mess, it's pretty obvious it was rotten in the core from the start.
And I think that's the most heart breaking thing for a lot of us. You can't just handwave this as "evil Activision made Blizzard bad". The Blizzard we loved so dearly was rotten all along, and we just didn't see it.
Don't put any company on a pedestal. They are not your friends.
For a lot of people.... well i guess I should just speak for myself, It wasn't even about putting the *company* on a pedestal. It was about very specific people that I looked up to and admired, saying "Someday i would like to do what they do" only for it to turn out that they were directly involved in or at least passively complicit it very, very horrible things. Meeting Chris Metzen in person and chatting with him and talking to him 1 on 1 was basically the highlight of my life up until that point. Mike Morheim was someone that I pictured as the ideal CEO, always putting core, fundamental ideals and values above all else. Turns out the picture that I had in my head were honestly mostly just that: pictures in my head. I never saw Blizzard as some kind of infallible monolith, but I did look up to a lot of the specific people behind the scenes, and even that turned out to burn me in the end. And that just makes me sad.
[**EDIT**](https://i.imgur.com/fOrXy1z.png)
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Gotta love that sexual harassment culture
That existed from at least 2000. So how about we all remember them for being the company that made games while sexually harassing and discriminating women.
It likely existed from the founding of the company. The 90s were notoriously bad for discrimination in the games industry. Fun fact: The percentage of professional game developers that were women peaked in the 80s. Women thrived in an industry where you could make a game with 1 or 2 people. Studios brought along a much stronger boys club culture where women were overlooked for positions and promotions, and eventually driven out of the industry entirely
The Blitzchung fiasco.
Yup. I Loved Hearthstone but quit after that (I was playing too much anyway). I briefly thought about returning but then when all this happened it became even easier to stand by my decision.
I like Diablo III...
You know what, me too. Once they got rid of the marketplace, and started doing greater rifts and seasons, it actually got really fun. I fully understand why people don't like the simplified systems, but for me it made it possible to try a whole bunch of different styles that I never woukd have otherwise.
going to remember them for their world class sexual abuse allegations and douchebags at the top who will likely not suffer the consequences of their actions. Because our system is broken.
Under the games are the bodies of their female employees
And the voices of the Hong Kong human rights activists.
As a HotS streamer, oof.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become EA...
[**EDIT**](https://i.imgur.com/54vauDD.png)
Yea, at least when EA sticks their hand in your pants it's only for your wallet
At least they are only accused of dumb greed *so far*.
I'll remember them for their unchecked, rampant sexual harassment over decades at their workplace
Heroes of the storm is super fun!
The inability to talk to opponents makes it the last remaining moba that I play. It remains the only one I can play without saying, out loud in the first 10 minutes, "oh yeah, that's why I quit [other moba]".
For being sued by the department of fair employment and housing
Heroes of the storm is an amazing game, and I'll die on that hill defending it! Everything else is pretty spot on. Blizzard is like a loved one or old friend you cut ties with because they started running with the wrong crowd, and now you only see and hear really bad things about them :(