Usually consolidation is done by expensive buy outs (which this one was). And if the company is public, the CEO’s next goal (since it now has valuable IP and has eliminated a competitor), is to make that money back and do so fast (see Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, etc.). This means exploiting its newest IP, farting out something that a known audience / fanbase will show up for (again - unfortunately - see Disney).
This doesn’t necessarily guarantee shitty outcomes (see Andor in the case of Star Wars being bought by Disney, see Overwatch after Activision bought Blizzard), but usually it comes with the territory of new bosses eventually trying to squeeze more value out of the IPs and team resources they purchased (see “Secret Invasion” by Marvel under Disney, and see “Overwatch 2” by Blizzard under Activision).
Depending on the company, they’ll also do MASS layoffs to “eliminate redundancies” - which in theory means firing people whose jobs encompass the exact same practice, but in reality means a bunch of people are about to have their work load doubled.
The people at the very top of the bought out company will get HUGE piles of cash, plus some requirements they stay on board usually for some amount of time… and then most of them will probably bail the moment their stock “vests” - allowing them to start up new companies and begin the cycle of “make stuff, then get bought out by big company” all over again.
Rarely a key person stays on board for some time (see Carmack with Facebook / Oculus for example), but eventually even the most passionate dev sees that their new bosses will never fully get behind them in the way they were able to do when they were not owned by said parent company.
From a broader “industry-wide” perspective, it’s probably not great either, because the mass layoffs at a gigantic well-regarded company means more workers competing across a mostly non-unionized industry for less jobs (and if you’re just starting, now you’ve got to compete with someone who has “Blizzard” on their resume).
Worse still - because the video game industry is already pretty exploitative of its workers, since it (like VFX) mostly came into being after the Reagan era completely destroyed the public perception of unions, the jobs everyone will be competing for will just have even worse conditions since soooooo many (younger folks especially) dream of working on video games (until they get their first industry job, get a few years under their belt, and been there for more than one studio closure and decide that - if they ever want to enjoy having time with their family, owning a home, and living somewhere for more than 5 years, they probably should change jobs to some relevant field in software dev that pays better, has less hours, and is overall more stable).
TL;DR - Probably bad.
It’s all for game pass. They want to lock people into their favourite games with a subscription, that’s where the money is for Xbox at the moment, all these buyouts are for securing their service as ‘the one to want’ before others clamber into the space. So I suspect things at ABK will continue as they have been doing for the most part, but with the games on game pass and maybe some more Xbox ports.
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If you want to know how Games Streaming will look like in 10 years, compare today’s YouTube to how it was 10 years ago.
The interface gets a little better and that’s it basically? (Alternatively: They try to spin a social medium around it and fail somewhat and succeed somewhat?)
Okay, Youtube was maybe a bad example. They aren’t that far with the enshittification yet, and just started increasing the amounts of ads…
Things I do expect:
- Price increase
- Tiered pricing (okay, that’s already a thing for GamePass with the “PC” and “Ultimate” plan)
- Lower price tiers including advertisements (could for instance be placed in games streamed from the cloud)
- Other things that aren’t beneficial for consumers.
One thing missed is the fresh set of eyes on old IP.
Some of the older games / IP that is being bought over has had no or little interest with the old group, so the new company may have a team inside that says “hey we use that now”.
It doesn’t always work. But it’s better than nothing.
One thing missed is the fresh set of eyes on old IP.
Right - like the Andor example.
I feel like Andor was a result of someone talented taking advantage of the Disney Star Wars money hose that got lucky that the corporate Eye of Sauron (aka a bunch of producers and company execs) weren’t watching them too closely.
On the opposite side, look at what Microsoft did to Halo (under Don Mattrick’s leadership, btw). They decided they didn’t want to pay Bungie a nice fat thank you in their potential contract renewal, instead decided to keep the Halo IP, spin up a studio with only a handful of key people and then people who had no idea what Halo was for their LITERAL FLAGSHIP IP.
In general, I am skeptical of how companies will handle IP after big buyouts / corporate consolidation. That way when an Andor comes along, I’m pleasantly surprised instead of finally satisfied as a result of high expectations.
Layoffs have already hit this and other industries, including Microsoft, regardless of buyouts, and since this deal is fresh, it will likely happen again in the near future. But there’s no need for them to squeeze value out of what they bought. They can revive dormant IPs just by making sure they run on modern platforms and putting them on Game Pass. That alone is a tremendous amount of value that Activision couldn’t get regardless of how much they squeezed.
And a lot of people who leave or are let go in these situations go on to form new studios. If you think about it too, it doesn’t make much sense that the jobs would disappear. The industry will support a certain number of games being produced, and someone’s got to make them still.
A worse outcome to me still seems to me to be a world where Sony is uncontested in its console space.
All of what you said is true, but usually consolidation results in a net negative overall. It’s why we (at least used to) have anti-trust laws. Companies - regardless of industry - tend to be monopolistic when they can get away with it.
However, I will say that your point about “reviving dormant IPs” is just another way of framing (albeit much more charitably) what I described previously. Capitalizing on well-known or well-regarded IPs with built-in large fan bases who will likely buy based on name recognition rather than what its Metascore is or how well it runs according to technical tests run by Digital Foundry.
Also, I agree with you that as long as Sony and Nintendo exist in the console space, the industry can probably endure. That sort of consolidation would probably result in some really bad shit. Price gouging, no more owning games - just licensing with shaky terms that they can change at any time, required subscriptions, upgrades, more egregious micro-transactions… ugh… as long as there are major competitors, they will do things like this every time one of the other one makes a greed-driven decision that pisses off the consumers.
I just wish we had the number of big game companies we had in the 90s and 2000s. There used to be dozens of pretty big name independently owned game dev studios in the city where I am, and now - among those still even open - I can’t think of a single one still independently owned. The only 2 big ones I know of now in the area are subsidiaries of 2 major giant companies.
Trusts would be a very extreme case of consolidation, and if Microsoft were to qualify (they’re close), it’s certainly not because of its presence in video games.
I don’t think I’m being charitable at all when I say these old games are dormant IPs. Star Wars Episode 3 was only a handful of years old when Disney bought Lucasfilm, and they were still making all sorts of merch and other products. Actually dormant IPs would be things like Metal Arms and Tenchu. They’re not powerhouse franchises, but they’re fodder for porting to modern platforms and bolstering Game Pass. Activision is reluctant to revive any of this stuff because it’s money that could be spent on Call of Duty.
As to your last paragraph, it was inevitable, but we’ve been slowly trending toward getting that diversity back in the industry. It may not hit your town specifically, but the Devolvers, Paradoxes, TinyBuilds, Embracers, and Anna Purnas of the world are finding success catering to the customers the mammoth AAA companies abandoned.
Very well said
Thanks. :)
Just more monopolies coming I’d wager. Disney is supposedly looking at buying EA. Microsoft and Sony have shown they both would rather buy companies and consolidate studios over how it was before.
As others have said it’ll be not good for the gamer/consumer. Nor will it be good for people working in the industry.
This is the correct answer. The same is playing out in so many other industries; the big players don’t bother innovating anymore, it’s easier to make more money by buying out their smaller competitors and essentially killing them by subsuming them.
Consumers have fewer and fewer real options for anything, everything costs more and more (the majority of current inflation is actually driven by execs realizing they can just raise prices and blame it on the “economy”), and the quality of everything is going down because why bother with quality when the goal is to make more money?
“But the free markets will solve this! A company making a better product will win over consumers!”, the market liberal says. “Oh, a competitor! We can’t have that, let’s buy them and make sure they can’t affect our bottom line” says the megacorp, and before you know it the “superior option” will have disappeared because producing it was 15% more expensive than producing shit.
The big players don’t bother innovating anymore, which is why they don’t see any other option except to sell to someone bigger than them. Meanwhile, publishers that used to be small are getting much larger by offering the breadth of games that the biggest publishers haven’t for 20 years. To think that things can only get worse is to ignore what’s happening right in front of us.
If Microsoft and Sony get into an acquisition war, Microsoft will beat Sony out each and every time.
Microsoft just has WAY more cash, they’re a much bigger company. Sony can’t afford to do that.
That assumes Phil Spencer’s daddy wants to spend more cloud-earned cash on toys that nobody will use. While Microsoft is undoubtedly the bigger company, Sony’s revenue is much more dependant on Playstation.
At first, I was somewhat surprised that this was even a question - then I reminded myself that they’re asking how the merger will affect the industry, not the players.
I don’t care how it affects the industry. I’m not a high-level executive with a gaming company. Are you?
For the players, I don’t think it’ll be that great. Whatever savings are made due to the merger won’t be passed on to us. They never are. What’s good for players is competition between many companies, all doing their best to attract customers. An enormous, monolithic conglomerate will do us no favors.
There are too many articles posted in gaming communities which are actually just business articles which happen to be about companies involved in making games. Obviously it affects everything, but like you I don’t care about business bullshit!
The impacts it has on the industry affects what kinds of games get made.
Yeah, that’s what the last two sentences are about.
A big company will take fewer creative risks and be more likely to limit investments to proven formulas. They’d rather just churn out sequels to huge moneymakers. On the other hand, more competition means more incentive to try something new and interesting in the hope of hitting it big.
Yeah, but the big company that the bigger company just bought refused to make smaller games and constrained their catalogue over the past 20 years to make fewer and fewer games. This bigger company, via Game Pass, has an incentive to put out more games than Activision has been. Microsoft has an incentive to try to compete with Sony in a way that Activision hasn’t had competition for Call of Duty since…when was the last good Battlefield game?
If things actually work out to the benefit of the players, then great!
The most aggravating thing for me personally as a PC gamer with an obsession with fidelity/graphics, is any Microsoft acquisition becomes focused on console first (to sell Xbox) which leaves every game as a neutered PC port that had to be made shitty enough to run on consoles… It’s very irritating.
That hasn’t been true for a number of years, at least anything developed on Xbox.
Depends on your definition of savings, if the entire actblizz catalog ends up on gamepass then it’s a huge savings for gamepass subscribers.
…for now. This is actually why I don’t like that this merger has gone through. My guess is the strategy will be spending the next few years making GamePass such a value that it’s basically a must-have and dominates the market. Then they start jacking prices up and ruining the service.
That will likely happen, maybe. We really don’t know until it happens.
We’re literally watching that happen to just about every tech company right now. My Lemmy front page right now is “YouTube/amazon/netflix/disney+ are all jacking prices and ruining the services.” Although modern MS has a lot going for it, they have a long, long history of this exact behavior. And aside from that, it’s just a feature of unregulated or poorly regulated capitalism. All consolidation eventually leads to negative outcomes for consumers.
You really don’t know the history of Microsoft, do you?
I said it would likely happen, I wasn’t denying it.
Studios being bought up like this usually means stuff from them will degrade in quality fast. The last thing from Blizzard I liked was Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 so for me no big loss. I’m more upset about Obsidian and InXile.
My wonder is how do you degrade from an IP that Activision Blizzard already ran into the ground?
After Baldur’s Gate 3, contrasted against what EA’s Bioware has output lately, I’ll bet Microsoft is happy to let their RPG studios continue doing what made them a success in the first place.
I can’t think of a single exception to a big company buying up a game studio and that studio’s quality absolutely plummeting. EA has been buying up good studios and gutting them for decades, I doubt Microsoft is any better, they already have a history of doing that to different software.
Nether Realm Studios, Naughty Dog, Angel Studios (Rockstar San Diego), and Relic, without thinking about it too long, but there are also all kinds of reasons why a studio’s quality would struggle to hold up over long periods of time regardless of being purchased, and even then it can be very subjective.
Hasn’t modern Mortal Kombat been absolutely crap? And Rockstar games have felt worse ever since GTA 4 and they are currently just focused on milking online content.
Relic I only know for Impossible Creatures and Naughty Dog isn’t ringing any bells for me so can’t say anything about that.
Alright, no offense, but I think you need to expand your horizons, lol.
The last 5 games (all of which were post-acquisition) Nether Realm put out have all been multi-million sellers in a genre that struggles to do that, and their past 2 games are only second fiddle to Smash for number of copies sold. They’re the only ones who figured out how to do single player content in a fighting game that interests people enough to buy those games for that content, and while Capcom and Bandai Namco both tried, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who thinks they did it better.
Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 were both post-acquisition, and regardless of my feelings of RDR2 (which is still that it is not a bad game by any means), both games are critical and commercial smash hits.
Relic has had very successful Warhammer 40k and Company of Heroes releases over the past 20 years.
Naughty Dog has made far more games post-acquisition than pre-acquisition, and some of their best-selling, highest-rated games have been on the more recent end of things. Perhaps you’ve heard of Uncharted and The Last of Us?
I havent owned a console so that explains why I don’t recognise Naughty Dog. I vaguely recognise Uncharted and the last of us but I know nothing of the games themselves.
I haven’t played either of the RDR games or any Company of Heroes games and the last Warhammer I played was Soulstorm so I can’t comment on those.
I have played quite a few fighting games and the genre is definitely quite stale when it comes to single player. The only ones I can think of where I enjoyed the single player was the new Smash and Skullgirls. Mortal Kombat hasn’t had a new idea in like decades, they seem to be content with milking the franchise without doing anything new.
I don’t think commercial success is a good indicator of what makes a good game though, like all the Call of Duty games released every year are not good but they are successful. Not to mention the sport games that rake in obscene amounts of money while nothing much changes between releases. Or mobile games…
There’s a reason I mentioned critical and commercial success, because the two combined are the closest we can get to an objective measure of quality. If the game is selling well and reviewing well, it’s very difficult to make an argument besides your own personal taste that the quality has declined.
I havent owned a console so that explains why I don’t recognise Naughty Dog.
There’s never been a better time to play video games and not own a console, because there’s hardly such a thing as a console exclusive anymore, but you’d really have to live under a rock to be unaware of Naughty Dog if you’ve ever paid attention to E3/summer announcements, game of the year awards, or just what other people are saying on forums.
I have played quite a few fighting games and the genre is definitely quite stale when it comes to single player. The only ones I can think of where I enjoyed the single player was the new Smash and Skullgirls. Mortal Kombat hasn’t had a new idea in like decades, they seem to be content with milking the franchise without doing anything new.
This is a very strange paragraph. NRS are the fighting game studio for single player content, and they were even during the 6th gen era when people generally didn’t like Mortal Kombat games. If you think they haven’t had a new idea in decades, you definitely haven’t been paying attention for at least one of those decades…the past ten years. The most recent game added kameo fighters, which shook up the way those games play quite a lot, plus up blocking and a way to convert down 2 into air combos if you’ve got the meter for it.
They also bought out ZeniMax in the same deal, which means they also have ESO under their rap sheet.
The only thing that effectively changed in ESO since the acquisition in 2020 is that they added the endeavor system to the game, so there was an excuse to sustain loot crates and give people a means to get the loot crate items in the game… though that system is frankly still BS since the amount of endeavor and gems needed for that fluff is in real world dollars ridiculous. As is, I dumped ESO completely after High Isle and went back to only playing GW2 (I have been in both games since beta), since the nonsense happening in ESO was enough for me to see that Microsoft running into the ground was not an issue - ZoS already managed that themselves…
I imagine it will be the same for WoW. Zero sum game.
I didn’t even bought the 3rd SC2 expansion, I bought the 2nd one and not even playing through half of it. I did play a bit of overwatch due to friends asking me to play with them, but quickly drop it cause I really don’t have time to grind or play that game and keep up with the meta.
I’m more upset about Obsidian and InXile.
I’m with you on that one.
Obsidian and InXile had just started getting some new promising franchises up and running (Wasteland & Outer Worlds). It’d be a shame if they went ‘Storefront Exclusive’ already.
The last minute EGS timed-exclusive deal already screwed with the first TOW game’s launch.
The concept of Storefront Exclusivity just shouldn’t be a thing at all.
I don’t even care about exclusive. Obsidian, CDProject, InXile and Larian are like the only studios left that make really good RPGs and whenever a studio gets bought out their quality absolutely plummets, I can’t think of a single exception to that. I do like Larian’s and CDProject’s stuff but Obsidian RPGs have been my favourites and it just feels like I won’t get another amazing Obsidian RPG. Like I already saw Bioware, Bethesda, Troika and Black Isle either disappear or have their quality go to absolute shit.
Also FYI Wasteland is like a super old franchise.
Didn’t Troika and Black Isle essentially lead to the creation of Obsidian and InXile? You’re basically listing the same studios multiple times. Plus there has been a lot of communication between Bioware and CD Projekt, leading to talent moving between those studios, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same is true for Larian.
Like 5 developers of Black Isle founded Obsidian but as far as I know Troika just disappeared along with it’s developers. I can’t find anything about Bioware and CD Project or Larian collaborating though.
Bioware and CD Projekt worked together on the first Witcher, because that game ran on Bioware’s engine. The new director for Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk’s sequel came from Bioware, and he said in an interview that that past relationship is why they reached out to him for the position, insinuating it’s not the first time it’s happened and that the two companies had continued to be in contact over the years. Given CD Projekt’s last two games’ similarities to Bethesda’s formula, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was overlap with the developers of those studios as well; and the same extends to Larian and the inspirations they’ve clearly taken from old Bioware.
as far as I know Troika just disappeared along with it’s developers
It’s possible that all but about 5 developers from Troika left the industry after the company folded, but I’d call that the least likely scenario. In my own career (only briefly in games), people who liked working with me have reached out to hire me from previous working relationships between companies, and you tend to see a lot of the same people from job to job as a result.
I agree. It’s just one of those things that starts things off badly.
And MS has been pushing a bit for it, like EGS.
Also I’m painfully aware of the age of the OG Wasteland as I grew up with it. I was thinking more in the line of the crowdfunded ones, 2 & 3. InXile seemed well on track with 'em.
Can they please fix Overwatch 2 so it’s actually playable now? Or better yet just bring back Overwatch 1
We add John Halo to ow2. Thats the fix you wanted, right?
- Microsoft-activision-blizzard exec
Just move on, what has been lost there can never be restored.
I’ve only played Overwatch 2. Why is it regarded as inferior? I’ve had fun playing it so I don’t really know what the fuss is about.
With Microsoft taking control and Kotick leaving, shit might actually improve for the employees a little bit.
The employees being treated better under MS is probably the only positive about a trillion dollar conglomerate purchasing multiple of the industry’s largest third party publishers in the industry’s largest purchase ever.
This acquisition doesn’t benefit the average gamer in any actually good way
From a completely selfish standpoint, I hope they’ll do something with the neglected IP. Would love to see a new Sierra game, though that might just be the nostalgia speaking :)
Other than that, I recall Microsoft not going to interfere with any unionization attempts due to a neutrality agreement?
In the same vein: I hope they make a new Killer Instinct. PS4 was THE console for fighting games last generation. Microsoft is sitting on IP that would create a lot of hype for a sequel in the fighting game community. The dual sense controller is rumored to have a mushy D-pad while the Xbox controller has a very clicky one. Microsoft could make a real statement about fighting games having a home on the Xbox. To me, it seems like a really obvious strategic decision. The only problem is that fighting games are relatively niche so the weight of that decision isn’t too high.
The only problem is that fighting games are relatively niche so the weight of that decision isn’t too high.
Really? I thought fighting games got quite a bit of press attention, at least whenever a new game releases. Specifically because there aren’t a lot of them around but the interest is still pretty big.
I always saw them as kind of like a prestige thing. It might not be everyone’s favorite genre, but having the best fighting game looks good on your platform as a whole. There’s a certain… pedigree to them because of their arcade roots.
Anyway, I hope you’ll get your wish. It’s always a shame when these kind of titles are just languishing away because some company bought the rights but decides to sit on them.You might be right. It does seem like we’re entering another golden age of fighting games. But fighting games don’t have nearly the audience of some of the other genres. Most people who buy Mortal Kombat don’t even play online. It’s not like a lot of shooters or MOBAs where it’s a daily ritual for huge numbers of people. The people who are like that, are really like that, but it just isn’t a lot.
It’ll get slightly more sinister from Microsoft’s evil influence, but less incompetently douche baggy from losing some of the loot boxing CxO’s.
Ah, crap, same thing.
It likely keeps Microsoft in the gaming business, which isn’t a bad thing.
There will be a console to compete against Sony, and Microsoft will leverage cross-platfotm gaming with PC’s as a way to sustain this. That Steam effectively released a Linux-based console probably means Microsoft is going to have to fight more in the PC Gaming space. This is probably why a lot of the ads in consumer grade Windows has been to promote its gaming division.
Microsoft hasn’t been bad to Minecraft, so I don’t think the games will get worse. If anything, I might have expected Microsoft to go for a DLC route with Overwatch to add characters instead of doing what Overwatch 2 did.
I expect more stabs at RTS, with Microsoft going to get more people to game on a computer. They did buy the company that made WarCraft and StarCraft.
Xbox Game Pass advertising is going to get annoying.
I expect more stabs at RTS, with Microsoft going to get more people to game on a computer. They did buy the company that made WarCraft and StarCraft.
As much as I’d love to see that, they won’t do an RTS. Even Blizzard has not touched RTS games since their popularity waned against the League of Legends type games. The closest we got was the StarCraft “HD remaster” from more than half a decade ago.
The era of RTS pretty much ended a decade ago with StarCraft 2.
The big video game companies pretty much only chase trends. They’ve always done that.
Whether it was platformer games on the NES after the success of Super Mario Brothers, fighting games in the arcades after the success of Street Fighter 2, or Grand Theft Auto 3D clones after the success of GTA3, or loot shooters or DOTA clones or whatever - the game industry at a large scale is mostly risk averse.
Only privately run companies like to pursue certain genres that aren’t necessarily the most popular or profitable.
If you want to see new RTS, you’re going to have to look for relatively small indie companies - probably ones with some of the grizzled old industry vets who worked on the actual games. Those guys are the only ones who will make those sorts of games now.
@JDPoZ @HobbitFoot there is definitely talk that RTS split into moba and ‘grand strategy’/4x games. That most gamers fell into one of those camps and moved on from the genre.
I remember seeing some new RTS games at PAX east a number of years ago, and it always just felt like worse starcraft to me. Almost all of them feel that way to me.
…Microsoft has already remade/made several RTS’s since Starcraft 2.
Age of Empires.
Microsoft has already remade/made several RTS’s since Starcraft 2. Age of Empires.
Microsoft proper didn’t make the the remake. They farmed the AoE remake out to Relic and World’s Edge.
To be fair, Relic is composed of some of the people who made the Company of Heroes RTS games, so they know their RTS shit… but the original Age of Empires games were made by the legendary Ensemble Studios (a dev that made Microsoft more than a billion dollars while it was open… that Don Mattrick then infamously shut down right after they shipped Halo Wars… I guess because - even though it shit gold - maybe the golden goose looked expensive on the balance sheet??).
…And anyway, NONE of the RTS’s being made these days are anywhere near the scale that StarCraft 2’s launch was and therefore worth Microsoft pursuing outside of small “remasters” or up-rezzed ports for modern hardware.
Blizzard has to make its money daddy Microsoft some Fortnite tier piles of money to justify this massive a purchase… not a Blackthorne HD re-release money.
Given Activision was already letting groups come in to do Blizzard games, I’m sure they’d still do the same for the RTS games.
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League of Legends type games are called MOBAs.
As for RTS, keep an eye out for Tempest Rising, a Command and Conquer spiritual successor, that’s even headed to consoles. With Microsoft successfully bringing Age of Empires to console, I don’t think there’s any need to promote PC as the place where RTSes live.
Personally, I think if RTSes are to ever be mainstream again, they’re going to have to reinvent themselves, but in the meantime, RTSes doing what they’ve always done will make peace with the size of the market that exists for them these days.
I think Microsoft could test the waters with a WarCraft remaster, especially if they can test to see if Xbox Game Pass can tap into a new market.
The only Activision game I care about is WoW, but the game changed so much in a niche hardcore direction that even with Microsoft owning them, my hope is very limited about the game, probably I’ll never play again.
Right!? Was telling my partner the only game I’ve had more fun in than BG3 was WoW. When she asked why dont i play it, i had to explain how the WoW i feel in love with doesnt exist anymore. I played Vanilla extensively and never made it to the max level and had so much fun exploring and doing wpvp against characters my level, it was insanely fun. I had to quit cause i ruined my computer with Limewire, and picked it up again in the Cata expansion and the game was a shadow of what it used to be. Felt like it was a rush to max level and the soul of the game had been ripped out…
WoW is just pointless errands now. It’s so bad. All the things that made if fun have been removed or minimized. I don’t think I’ll ever return to it after Dragonflight. I’d rather wash my sink full of dishes than do another pointless grind. Vanilla wow back in the day was something truly special. It’s gone now, it won’t be back but I’m lucky I got to experience it before it soured.
Classic WoW exists & you could play Vanilla again if you wanted do. However that’s not really what I’m talking about. For me peak WoW was Legion and Pandaria probably and I still somewhat liked Cataclysm up until the final patch at least.
What is happening now is that if you have no interest in Mythic raiding or Myhtic+ timed dungeons, then there is barely anything else. The cash shop is also increasingly ruining everything, there is also how thanks to WoW tokens my brain just won’t allow me to casually buy something expensive on the AH anymore since gold has a tangible real $ value & then there is the abomination called the Trading Post.
Call of the O ring: Master Doody
Well.
I don’t know or care about the industry. Execs can lick my dick;
Player-side we can expect half a dozen well-known IPs to become Microsoft-platform exclusive. Like locking players from using Wine/Proton and only working on XBox and Windows.
Mind you, talking about it selfishly… It will not affect me. The only game from Blizz I played in the past 15 years is StarCraft 2, and only for the campaign, and I finished that quite a while ago. And on Activision’s side there’s… Crash and Spyro. Kinda cool nostalgia-bait games but I can do without. Plus I doubt we’ll be seeing them again after the remakes from a couple years back.
I actually don’t play many “AAA” games. All the titles I played in the past 2 years, with the exception of the Zeldas and Baldur’s 3 have been either Low-Scale industry releases or straight up Indie projects.
