MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Blizzard is legendary. Critically, financially and historically. When they release a game, it is an event. It is difficult to think of a company that knocks it out of the park as reliably Blizzard does both critically and financially, I think only Rockstar can truly compete, although Naughty Dog and Tokyo EAD are pretty up there as well. While they had a shaky period around the Cataclysm/Diablo III launch era, I think most would agree that they have made a recovery (except Warlords of Draenor. That sucks.) with games like Hearthstone and Overwatch, and the reception to Diablo III being turned almost completely around by Reaper of Souls.
Overwatch comes out in a few days, and it will be be Blizzard's first wholly new IP since StarCraft in 1998. Take that in for a second. Since 1998 Blizzard has relied on their big three - WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo and now Overwatch looks like a clear fourth pillar.
Overwatch in some shape or form used to be the game Titan, which had a very, very weird history. The game was never officially announced (even though everyone knew about it) but work was started on it in 2007, and it was confirmed cancelled in 2014, although the shift into Overwatch likely happened in 2013. Titan was going to be an MMO, likely some sort of successor to WoW but somewhere along the way plans went south and we ended up with Overwatch, which re-uses some design assets from Titan like Maps...but since nobody ever saw Titan that doesn't really mean a whole lot.
So now the shadow of Titan has been lifted from their backs, which makes me wonder what is next. Does Blizzard attempt another MMO in the year 20XX? What about their RTS series? Has the well been poisoned by StarCraft II's extremely long development cycle, which spanned the rise of the MOBA genre of which Blizzard has their own now? It is safe to say they will probably continue their tradition of multiplayer centric games and looking at existing genres and then doing their own spin on it.
What we know is next -
I'd like to think that I know a lot about Blizzard, as I've been playing their games for a loooooooooooooong time, but I'm going to try to avoid making assumptions. Blizzard keeps their games alive for a long, long time. We haven't seen the last Diablo II or WarCraft III patch, and both of those games are well over a decade old. If someone were to make a thread about the top 10 games you have spent the most time on, Blizzard's games would appear the most, and it probably wouldn't even be close.
First the obvious crap -
Legion, obviously. WoW will continue to get expansions forever.
More Hearthstone expansions.
More Heroes of the Storm content.
More Overwatch content. Overwatch had the most successful beta of all time (9.7m participants) and Blizzard's expectations for the game are high. They expect it to do as well as Diablo III and Warlords of Draenor's first 24h, which are 3.1m and 3.3m respectively. Considering those games launched only on PC and Overwatch will be on PS4 and XBO as well it should do that just fine. I wouldn't expect an Overwatch 2 any time soon if ever, as that isn't really Blizzard's style.
Now the more exciting stuff -
A new Diablo project. Diablo III sold 30m copies as of June 2015 (was at 13m in 2013, so legs are impressive) so a Diablo IV would make sense. 100% going to be on consoles day-of, whatever it is. Blizzard had been a primarily PC developer for a long time, but those days are coming to an end. Of course, games like WoW or StarCraft will be PC centric.
The RTS space. StarCraft II is finished. Finally. Blizzard has said that they plan to continue to support Legacy of the Void with new co-op missions like the Nova content. But other then that in the RTS space its unclear. While LotV sold over 1 million units in the first 24 hours, a lot of people question on whether or not RTS is still a big enough genre for Blizzard to capitalize on. But there was a job listing a while ago about returning Diablo II, StarCraft and WarCraft III to "glory." We haven't really heard any follow up on that, but they could be planning on remastering those three games, which would be cool. Or they are just going to implement them into the current Battle.net launcher. WarCraft IV ain't happening.
What I would like to see from Blizzard -
More games outside of their comfort zone, like Overwatch, but I don't know how many games Blizzard plans to keep live at one time. Right now they are at 6 - WoW, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Overwatch, Hearthstone and HotS and none of those are going anywhere. That's not counting older games which still have live servers but don't see any careful caretaking.
More spin-offs. Hearthstone has been a massive success so I think this a shoe in. Depending on the success of the WarCraft Movie, maybe more outside media as well.
Read my lips - custom games in Overwatch. Just allow players to do whatever the hell they want ala WarCraft III custom games. But if they do allow that, I'm sure this time they will install some kind of failsafe so the second coming of DoTA doesn't slip right through their hands. I bet Blizzard is still kicking themselves over that one.
HEY REMEMBER WARCRAFT ADVENTURES: LORD OF THE CLANS????? That black comedy point-and-click adventure game that got canned? Well point-and-clicks seem to be pretty hot right now so bring that shit back it looked cool!
World of WarCraft Vanilla servers. Although I personally wouldn't really want to go back to that era with all of the QoL changes removed, it is rather hard to deny there is a demand for that now and I believe they should at least attempt it. RuneScape has 2007-era servers and that has been a mild success for them. I'm more in it for curiosities sake to see if people really do want to go back to that clunky (but amazing) mess.
Creating a more unified experience. By this I mean content from Blizzard games criss-crossing. You have Lady Liadrin in Hearthstone, which you get by hitting level 20 in WoW. You have battle pets/mounts for WoW and portraits for SC2 included in every special edition ever. You have the Hearthsteed mount you get in WoW for winning three games of Hearthstone. All this is pretty trivial, but I can't imagine Blizzard pushing it further. With the variety of games Blizzard has now, you could easily see someone who only plays Blizzard games.
StarCraft Ghost is also not happening.
Overwatch comes out in a few days, and it will be be Blizzard's first wholly new IP since StarCraft in 1998. Take that in for a second. Since 1998 Blizzard has relied on their big three - WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo and now Overwatch looks like a clear fourth pillar.
Overwatch in some shape or form used to be the game Titan, which had a very, very weird history. The game was never officially announced (even though everyone knew about it) but work was started on it in 2007, and it was confirmed cancelled in 2014, although the shift into Overwatch likely happened in 2013. Titan was going to be an MMO, likely some sort of successor to WoW but somewhere along the way plans went south and we ended up with Overwatch, which re-uses some design assets from Titan like Maps...but since nobody ever saw Titan that doesn't really mean a whole lot.
So now the shadow of Titan has been lifted from their backs, which makes me wonder what is next. Does Blizzard attempt another MMO in the year 20XX? What about their RTS series? Has the well been poisoned by StarCraft II's extremely long development cycle, which spanned the rise of the MOBA genre of which Blizzard has their own now? It is safe to say they will probably continue their tradition of multiplayer centric games and looking at existing genres and then doing their own spin on it.
What we know is next -
I'd like to think that I know a lot about Blizzard, as I've been playing their games for a loooooooooooooong time, but I'm going to try to avoid making assumptions. Blizzard keeps their games alive for a long, long time. We haven't seen the last Diablo II or WarCraft III patch, and both of those games are well over a decade old. If someone were to make a thread about the top 10 games you have spent the most time on, Blizzard's games would appear the most, and it probably wouldn't even be close.
First the obvious crap -
Legion, obviously. WoW will continue to get expansions forever.
More Hearthstone expansions.
More Heroes of the Storm content.
More Overwatch content. Overwatch had the most successful beta of all time (9.7m participants) and Blizzard's expectations for the game are high. They expect it to do as well as Diablo III and Warlords of Draenor's first 24h, which are 3.1m and 3.3m respectively. Considering those games launched only on PC and Overwatch will be on PS4 and XBO as well it should do that just fine. I wouldn't expect an Overwatch 2 any time soon if ever, as that isn't really Blizzard's style.
Now the more exciting stuff -
A new Diablo project. Diablo III sold 30m copies as of June 2015 (was at 13m in 2013, so legs are impressive) so a Diablo IV would make sense. 100% going to be on consoles day-of, whatever it is. Blizzard had been a primarily PC developer for a long time, but those days are coming to an end. Of course, games like WoW or StarCraft will be PC centric.
The RTS space. StarCraft II is finished. Finally. Blizzard has said that they plan to continue to support Legacy of the Void with new co-op missions like the Nova content. But other then that in the RTS space its unclear. While LotV sold over 1 million units in the first 24 hours, a lot of people question on whether or not RTS is still a big enough genre for Blizzard to capitalize on. But there was a job listing a while ago about returning Diablo II, StarCraft and WarCraft III to "glory." We haven't really heard any follow up on that, but they could be planning on remastering those three games, which would be cool. Or they are just going to implement them into the current Battle.net launcher. WarCraft IV ain't happening.
What I would like to see from Blizzard -
More games outside of their comfort zone, like Overwatch, but I don't know how many games Blizzard plans to keep live at one time. Right now they are at 6 - WoW, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Overwatch, Hearthstone and HotS and none of those are going anywhere. That's not counting older games which still have live servers but don't see any careful caretaking.
More spin-offs. Hearthstone has been a massive success so I think this a shoe in. Depending on the success of the WarCraft Movie, maybe more outside media as well.
Read my lips - custom games in Overwatch. Just allow players to do whatever the hell they want ala WarCraft III custom games. But if they do allow that, I'm sure this time they will install some kind of failsafe so the second coming of DoTA doesn't slip right through their hands. I bet Blizzard is still kicking themselves over that one.
HEY REMEMBER WARCRAFT ADVENTURES: LORD OF THE CLANS????? That black comedy point-and-click adventure game that got canned? Well point-and-clicks seem to be pretty hot right now so bring that shit back it looked cool!
World of WarCraft Vanilla servers. Although I personally wouldn't really want to go back to that era with all of the QoL changes removed, it is rather hard to deny there is a demand for that now and I believe they should at least attempt it. RuneScape has 2007-era servers and that has been a mild success for them. I'm more in it for curiosities sake to see if people really do want to go back to that clunky (but amazing) mess.
Creating a more unified experience. By this I mean content from Blizzard games criss-crossing. You have Lady Liadrin in Hearthstone, which you get by hitting level 20 in WoW. You have battle pets/mounts for WoW and portraits for SC2 included in every special edition ever. You have the Hearthsteed mount you get in WoW for winning three games of Hearthstone. All this is pretty trivial, but I can't imagine Blizzard pushing it further. With the variety of games Blizzard has now, you could easily see someone who only plays Blizzard games.
StarCraft Ghost is also not happening.
