Blizzard for sale? Microsoft on the prowl?

[The Magic Pen]

I would not mind if Microsoft bought them ..I mean they didnt Fubar Halo after all , but I think probebly blizzard would turn into a consol company :thumbsdow

BTW what has blizzard been sucking at ?? Warcraft 3 which sold a few million copies and was an excellent game ? :shrug:

[heavyness]

"..I mean they didnt Fubar Halo after all"

well, they kinda did. waaaaaay back in the day, halo was suppose to be a "Tribes-like" game [mulitplayer, working as a team to win...]. so in my eyes, they did, since i love Tribes and hate the basic "you verse them FPS", shoot shoot shoot.....

not saying halo is bad, i would of liked it more if it was made like Tribes.

[Array]

BTW what has blizzard been sucking at ?? Warcraft 3 which sold a few million copies and was an excellent game ?

Have you ever actually PLAYED warcraft 3? I was in the beta program, and the way they did things REALLY did not appeal to me. Blizzard listened not to the FEW educated opinions of a FEW testers, but rather decided to listen instead to the hordes of 12 year olds allowed into the beta. I was overall quite disgusted by their attitude. :annoyed:

[awnold]

Array, they are in the business to sell their games to those 'hordes'. If they had good business sense they would indeed listen to the masses. Look at their sales, no one can accuse them of not knowing what they are doing.

Matt

[Array]

that's true. so i guess blizz only wants to cater to the younger crowd, and not give anything to the generation of gamers that made them huge in the first place :shrug:

[awnold]

As is any business, money is always the bottom line. Not only is it the bottom line it also determines if the decisions you make are 'right or 'wrong' in the case of warcraft 3, I would say many of the decisions they made were 'right'.

Decision 1) to sit on the finished game for almost 2 years as they let their other products go through their complete market cycle, and release it at a point where they needed a cash infusion.

Decision 2) warcraft 3 was originally a first person RPG similar to everquest and warcraft thrown together. Somewhere they decided to stick with a sure thing and make another game similar to war2 and starcraft and branch that first person game into world of warcraft...

Bottom line, war3 can run on almost any computer, its based on the same time tested model as war2 and starcraft, and sold a billion copies at a time the company didnt have any other major product competing... in my opinion they very much know what they are doing.
Matt

[Array]

yeah i see your point, blizzard is great at making money, but not necessarily making fans happy. just look at the movie industry and how homogenous all movies have gotten. the game industry is the same way now :annoyed: follow a specific formula under a huge budget and rake in the money. when was the last time we've actually gotten a genre breaking game for pc or console? i think ultima online is the last i remember, and that was back in 1995 :shrug:

[Roger Eberhart]

Originally posted by awnold
Decision 1) to sit on the finished game for almost 2 years as they let their other products go through their complete market cycle, and release it at a point where they needed a cash infusion.


Very funny. Where did you get that info? I can assure you it's completely wrong. By the way, I heard the same rumor with regards to Starcraft. Apparently some people think games make themselves and the development teams spend all their time vacationing in the Bahamas. I wish this were true.

Roger Eberhart

[beaker]

>>Decision 1) to sit on the finished game for almost 2 years as they let their other products go through their complete market cycle, and release it at a point where they needed a cash infusion.

Blizzard works on the basis of we finish it when we are done, not when the publishers tell us its done. They don't sit on products for years.


>>Decision 2) warcraft 3 was originally a first person RPG similar to everquest and warcraft thrown together. Somewhere they decided to stick with a sure thing and make another game similar to war2 and starcraft and branch that first person game into world of warcraft...


I think you are mixing stuff up. There is another product that Blizzard is still comming out with in the summer called WOW(Worlds of Warcraft). It is a combo of warcraft and evercrack(MMPG).
http://www.blizzard.com/wow/

[awnold]

Well, your correct that is my assumption, and I made it based on the fact that war3 was shown looking the way it does now, at the previous 2 E3s before they finally released it. As far as starcraft, I dont know, that rumor is definitely not my opinion, they were still making balancing issues up to the day of the release.
Matt

http://www.nukewinter.com/screens/pc/war3/index.shtml

http://www.infoceptor.com/gallery/war3/photos/shot11.html

[bentllama]

Originally posted by negteen
not saying halo is bad, i would of liked it more if it was made like Tribes.

OMG

[Rudity]

Originally posted by Array
Have you ever actually PLAYED warcraft 3? I was in the beta program, and the way they did things REALLY did not appeal to me. Blizzard listened not to the FEW educated opinions of a FEW testers, but rather decided to listen instead to the hordes of 12 year olds allowed into the beta. I was overall quite disgusted by their attitude. :annoyed:



OMG OMG So im getting man handled by a bunch of 12 year olds on Bnet..?? Heh if I was 12 and had the time to play 20 games a day I guess id get pretty good too.


I got my eye on Impossible Creatures right now. :) http://www.relic.com/
Demo was cool.
Im out.
Rudity

[red_oddity]

Dld the Impossible Creatures demo last weekend, gonna try it tonight...
As for Warcraft 3, yes, it was IMHO the biggest let down of the year (i finished he damn game within a weekend, and the multiplayer game is tedious and repetetive (you ALWAYS play the same tactics over and over), not to mention the AI sucks, it's not fun. (some of us do not have a DSL conenction at home, let alone a proper stable connection))

[HapZungLam]

how come you guys seem very happy that Bill Gates took over the game market? He bought Sega earlier days, and now Blizzard. Althought i have no idea why Blizzard not making money.

Since there has tonz. i mean TONZ of bettle.net players are playing blizzard games. And it still not making money? i wonder.

I just dont' like Bill Gates has all the games, he is a perfectly bussiness man, He is EVIL:twisted: :drumrock:

[Roger Eberhart]

Blizzard has not been sold to anyone. These are just rumors. Blizzard is very profitable. Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal. VU is in serious debt. That is why these rumors are floating about.

[red_oddity]

Originally posted by HapZungLam
how come you guys seem very happy that Bill Gates took over the game market? He bought Sega earlier days, and now Blizzard. Althought i have no idea why Blizzard not making money.

Since there has tonz. i mean TONZ of bettle.net players are playing blizzard games. And it still not making money? i wonder.

I just dont' like Bill Gates has all the games, he is a perfectly bussiness man, He is EVIL:twisted: :drumrock:

Soooo, you would have been happier when everyone at Sega would have been laid off?

Besides Battle.net is free, they make no money on that (its Vivendi who's in trouble, not Blizzard), besides who wants to play on Battle.net anyway with all those dman cheaters and lamers going on (not too mention i suck at all those games online because unlike some 12 year olds i don't have the time to play 24h a day.)

[HapZungLam]

There has some cheats around, but same as the other pay servers. Since diablo2. They keep tracking of cheaters very offen. and the penalty is pretty hardcore. I don't fine why dont' they make money. Since a copy of their games is already $70-80 CAN. Is world wide.

Sure i get what you mean about sega. Hum.... i rather they join with different game company rather than MS. Because MS is very selfish. I don't want to put my money on any selfish company.

[Sieb]

I don't think MS's gaming department follows the same game plans as the rest of the company. I figured they bought the game company, then just paid their salaries and rent in favor of putting their name on the box, but didn't absorb the company and dissolve it like other companies.

A bunch of games lately by MS have been decent, Crimson Skys, the latest MechWarriors (after they bought up the FASA rights, Crimson Skys included), Mech Commander 2 rocked (to me at least), and now MechAssault or whatever for Xbox, Flight Simulater is still around, plus all the other stuff they own. Don't they own Activision too? If anyone knows how to play the game right, its MS. The only thing I have against MS is its lack of community feel for the games like what Blizzard had along with some of the other game companies, especially in beta phases.

Some MS products seem hurried at times though, like they just show up on the market out of no where. And I dont care much for their support as opposed to the developing company.

[googlo]

I would not mind if Microsoft bought them ..I mean they didnt Fubar Halo after all , but I think probebly blizzard would turn into a consol company

Well, Microsoft tends to take something cool and original and turn it into something mediocre in the process by trying to making it apply to the most people possible.

Take Mechwarrior for example. Once Microsoft got their hands on it, the game became pretty crappy.

BTW what has blizzard been sucking at ?? Warcraft 3 which sold a few million copies and was an excellent game ?


Warcraft 3 is gets pretty boring afterwhile. The reason why Warcraft 3 is so popular is because of Blizzard's Name and past game reputation, but honestly, Warcraft 3 gameplay gets monotonous afterwhile and the storyline, while cool, is the same as their other games like it.

I like Warcraft 3, but I don't play it anymore after playing it from start to finish in hardest difficulty level, and then various custom rpg maps for a period of about 2 months. But after that, it's just too boring, there isn't much strategic fun and creativity built into the game. My brother feels the same way. And another loyal Blizzard fan and friend of ours stopped playing warcraft 3 after only a couple of weeks.

Beyond what I've said, i'm not sure why but W3 was very temporarily satisfying compared to the usual games blizzard has released in the past.

Seriously, I hope they don't make WoW too generalized. But it looks like they are going that route to a certain degree. :(

Has anyone noticed that Blizzard seems to be getting less dark and cool with their game theme/style than they used to be? It's seems to be getting more candy-coated and disney like.

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