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The Rise and Fall of a Blizzard Fanboi
I know because Blizzard is so hugely succseful and loved these days, Im probably not going to be very popular for this post. But I have had this inside me for quite some time now and had to get it out. Id rather tell what's in my heart and be disked, than hide whats in my heart and be liked.
I would also like to say that Blizzard have made some kickass games and I still love those games. I may even get stracraft 2 and most definatly Diablo 3 as that looks a little truer to the original Blizzard games.
Back in the time of the dinosaurs (and the fist personal computers,) a friend of mine borrowed a copy of a game called Warcraft.
Though not the very first Real Time Strategy, it was the one that caught my eye.
I couldn't believe there was such a cool strategy game based in an entirely new genre (bearing in mind most PC games were first person shooters like Hexen, Rise of the Triad and the first Doom.) that let you play with lots of fantasy/ medieval armies.
It was so cool. I begun playing this game at about 7pm that night and come morning, when my friends got up, I was still there, hunched over their computer, laying waste to orcs with fireballs and hacking demons up with wave after wave of noble knights.
If they hadn't kicked me off the computer later that afternoon (think it was about 2pm.) I would have happily played that game till I keeled over from overexuastion.
I became addicted to that game, and a few years later when the sequel Warcraft 2 came out, I brought it.
Then came Diablo. Another pioneer game of its genre. Another I loved.
By this time Blizzard had begun to get a name for themselves.
But it wasn't until they took the whole warcraft idea into the great beyond of space with the groundbreaking Starcraft that I really became in awe of Blizzard.
I instantly fell in love with the Protoss; fierce and noble warriors, bound by honour and an intense battle lust that was unrivalled in the RTS world.
The gameplay was excellent, the races were totally balanced yet unique, storylines were brilliant, the cutscenes before their time and the characters all so well done I actually cried when the Templar Tassadar sacrificed himself to save the Protoss homeworld.
Though the term was not in use back then as far as I know, you could have called me a Blizzard fanboi and I would have had no compunction to make you eat your words.
Diablo 2 just proved once again that this company were always pushing the bar with computer games. They had the best standard of excellence and they would only bring a game out when it was going to shake up the game world.
So you can imagine that when they announced they were working on Warcrfaft3, I was ecstatic. I used to check all the fansites for the latest screenshots and news, and download any trailers I could find.
For 3 years I waited impatiently for the release of what I considered would be best game ever made.
Finally it came out. I brought the collectors edition box set for $100 AUS. I brought that sucker home. I installed the game. I was so eager to see the best game ever, I sat with my knuckle in my mouth...
and was sadly disappointed by Blizzard for the first time in history.
It wasn't that the game was bad. By the standard of the day, it was excellent. Technically.
It was just... well... childish.
I had grown up with Blizzards games and as an adult I had no problem with the visceral feel of them.
But it was the whole "look" and "feel" of warcraft 3 that really disappointed me. The anime graphics most of all. But even if it was just my not liking a graphics style, it went beyond that.
The whole feeling of the game was dumbded down. There were goblins running around using 20th century vernacular, peons making immature fart jokes and main characters acting so incredibly lowbrow it was amazing they had access to entire realms and armies.
None of what I had come to expect from games like Diablo and Starcraft.
Dont get me wrong, I still liked this game alot. I played it for almost a year. It just wasn't in the same league as the brilliant games that came before it, each one rasing the bar just that bit more, till I felt Warcrft 3 would be THE game for me.
But after much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that Blizzard had just chosen a different market to aim this particular game at.
I still had alot of faith in them as a games company.
And so when they tried their hand at the MMORPG genre, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, they were good at what they did.
And if one game doesn't manage to reach the same bar of excellence they had themselves created, who was I to complain.
When I played World of Warcraft, I was again let down.
The same lowbrow toilet humour, the gaint ears and hands and feet and over-exaggerated features, the anime graphics, the distinct lack of any gravitas in the game what so ever. It felt like playing an MMO developed by Jar Jar Binks.
And so it became sadly evident Blizzard no longer wanted to retain the adult market it had grown up with. They were rebooting. setting the clock back to zero. beginning again. And its oldest fanbois were too old to be called bois anymore, so their dollar didn't count as much.
But I guess that's their prerogative. Just like George Lucas, whose earlier work I loved, had the right to change his overall direction with the Starwars universe- so too were Blizzard allowed to change their direction with their games.
I dont begrudge them their marketing savvy. The younger market is where the dollar is.
So, for the last few years, I have let Blizzard get further from my heart. It has continued on in its direction and I have gone in mine.
And deep down I have always feared the day they release Starcraft2. That was my favourite of all their games. And I still love their characters and wonder what they will do next.
But to see them kiddified and turned anime is what I dread the most.
When I was first sent the news some part of me chose to delude itself and pretend that it was only the Warcraft universe Blizzard had changed the feel of. And when they decide to go back to the more serious Starcraft they would raise the bar once again. I was fooling myself into thinking Starcraft2 would have the amazing uber graphics of Medieval 2, with the visceral feel and groundbreaking gampley of the Dawn of War series.
I could even see it in my head.
But sadly when I checked out the site, I was again disappointed in my one time favourite game makers direction.
Not only have they chosen the anime feel (and Im sure the Disney mindset to go with it.) they haven't even improved the graphics very much.
I may not like Blizzards direction in gaming on a personal level, but I have always felt they have the best standards. And when they release a game it will be to raise the bar on computer gaming for years to come.
But sadly they no longer seem to be interested in innovation, or raising the bar and making the most best ever game out at the time. Just making money off their old titles.
And with ten years to make a new game and all the advances in graphics and technology all they seem to have done is rearranged the units and given it a higher pixel count. Im sure it has disappointed alot of fans that waited ten years and expected something more along the lines of the quality of games today. (Funny, but it seems to me that the better Blizzards cinematic trailers get, their games quality degrades by the same ratio.)
This is all fine. Their business, their money and their games. I dont have to play them as Im sure people are sayinng right now. But what really irks me, is that for the past decade all other game developers have used Blizzard as THE benchmark. They have imitated them and been innovated by them.
This means that in recent years there have been so many non blizzard titles with that "cutesy" anime feel, or a total lack of desire to make a game as good as it could be.
For me blizzard has gone from being the king in games making to the sell-outs of games making. The George Lucus of the gaming world.
"When I was a child I flew! Then as an adult- I watched others soar."
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